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Chapter Thirty-Eight



Weary and cold, Druadaen hardly remembered slipping into his own bed roll, shortly after midnight. As was often the case when he bivouacked beneath the stars, sleep came swiftly and started out dreamless—

—Until, with great suddenness, he was looking down on his own slumbering body, wrapped tight into his bedroll against the brisk air. Padrajisse was on one side of him, Umkhira on the other. As his dreams so rarely were, the scene was as hard-edged as reality itself—except that he heard murmurings. He tried to walk toward the sound, but instead, its ebb and flow seemed to lift and draw him to its source…

The next moment, he was just beyond the edge of the clearing the giant had made in creating a bed for itself. Within the intact tree line, he stood—or floated?—only a few feet away from Elweyr, S’ythreni, and Ahearn. The latter was shaking his head. S’ythreni was looking away from him, somehow managing to look bored and exasperated at the same time.

“No,” Ahearn said slowly but firmly, “I still say he did the right thing by bringing us here. It takes us in good direction.”

“Well, it’s not a good direction for money,” the aeosti tossed over her shoulder.

“Not right away, no, but his connections are a kind of currency unto themselves.”

“Perhaps, but we can’t eat it or spend it. And in the meantime, his ‘connections’ indulge his pointless questions and make it possible for him to come all the way down here…just so he can almost get us all killed. And for what? Those Bent didn’t have even thirty billon marks between them, and I’d lay odds that some came from the farm. And you know if there’s any doubt, he’s going to make us turn them over to whatever is left of the family.”

“And is that so bad a thing to do?”

“That’s not my point. I’m not concerned with whether we keep thirty marks or not. I’m concerned with taking jobs that have no profit. There wasn’t a weapon or piece of equipment on the Bent that’s worth the weight of carrying. Again. And now it turns out his ‘power’ to disrupt mancery and miracles may be a curse, instead.”

“The sacrista said it’s not a curse.”

“No, she said she doesn’t know what it is. And even though she insists there’s no connection, don’t you find it suspicious that a god rejects him on the very day of his epiphanesis? I am not sure I want to be standing beside him when the skies open up to tell him why. Besides, why didn’t Good Sir Integrity share that story until now?”

“And just when is the right moment to share such a thing? And with such a lot as us?”

S’ythreni started. “What do you mean, ‘such a lot as us’? I will consign my soul to the forests and seas, right now, if you try to convince me that we’re not ‘good enough’ for him.”

“No, my foolish, darling Iava. I’m referring to our constant foolery, particularly in the face of anything we’re expected to revere.”

Elweyr rubbed his palms together. “And how does that justify his decision to withhold the story of his failed epiphanesis? His curse has almost killed us at least three times.”

“Now don’t be getting sly on me, Elweyr. You know full well that the fellow didn’t realize he put spells awry until you told him so under Gur Grehar. But after that, well, wear his boots for a moment: Would you be in any rush to share such a strange and sobering tale with three rough-mannered fortune-hunters who refuse to take anything seriously? Tell me honestly, now: What do we three not make light of?”

S’ythreni sneered. “He might be improved by learning to make light of a bit more, if you ask me.”

“And I’d agree. But that might be hard for a fellow—an orphan, no less—who grew up after being turned away from his epiphanesis.” Ahearn shook his head at the notion. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“No,” murmured S’ythreni. “That is not our way.”

Elweyr shrugged. “And like you, Ahearn, I was never put before a dreamguide to become an epiphane.”

“Aye, but that doesn’t answer my question. A youngster being turned away so abruptly: it’s just not done, is it? An epiphane is invited by the deity itself, yeh? So the good-faith assumption is that, all things being equal, a young lad or lass is welcomed into that creedland. But our Dunarran arrives full of hope, only to be told ‘away with you’ and ‘don’t bother trying any other temple’? Nasty damn gods, if you ask me.”

Elweyr tilted his head. “That doesn’t quite make sense, actually.”

“Ah, the words of the sacrista herself, now. Is this a further sign of your silent reverence for her?”

“Don’t mistake respect for reverence, Ahearn. And no, I don’t give a fig for what comes out of Padrajisse’s mouth, except for when its accurate. Like her summation of Druadaen’s situation. I don’t know much about gods in general or the Helper pantheon specifically, but is it plausible that its patron deity of justice would have him made an epiphane only to turn him away? It makes no sense. Worse: it is exactly the opposite of how Amarseker is said to behave.”

S’ythreni straightened, eyes bright. “Unless that’s exactly why Amarseker brought him to the epiphanium.”

Ahearn started. “To make a poor, well-meaning stripling of a boy miserable? Gods, S’ythreni, that’s a more cynical ploy than I thought even you could imagine.”

“No, no; I don’t mean that Amarseker wanted to hurt him.” She leaned forward, as if she were tracking the ideas as they came out of her. “What if Druadaen’s rejections by the other temples was exactly what caused Amarseker to take pity and find a way to talk to him, to save him further misery by warning him that he would not be welcomed in any creedland?”

Elweyr started rubbing his palms together again. “But that’s not what Druadaen told us.”

“He was thirteen,” rebutted S’ythreni. “And he was terrified. And in the end, he was crushed. I’m not sure that even at my age, it would ever occur to me that Amarseker was trying to help rather than hurt me. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if the god itself was bound not to share that information.”

Ahearn crossed his arms, frowning. “Why do you think that?”

“Because if providing an answer wasn’t a sensitive issue, why didn’t any of the other gods simply tell him that he should abandon his attempt to find a creedland?”

Elweyr nodded. “Yes. It’s almost as if Amarseker crossed a line the others weren’t willing to, although why gods would have such trepidation is…well, it’s imponderable.”

S’ythreni nodded back. “Exactly. Which makes Druadaen just that much more risky as a companion, and why it could be suicide to embrace him as a friend.”

Ahearn’s frown had deepened. “Leaving aside all the fine and futile speculations upon the deeds and reasons of deities, let me be sure I’m understanding you, High-Ears. Are you saying we should forsake the fellow?”

Her eyes widened. “‘Forsake’ him? If by ‘forsake’ you mean ‘abandon,’ then no: we’re partners and we have an agreement. We see this out. But we are only partners, not kin. So to part ways afterward is not ‘forsaking’ him; it is simply a business decision. One we should consider very carefully.”

Ahearn shook his head in disappointment. “Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s clear you haven’t liked him. Not from the start.”

“And why do you say that?”

“Well, look at how you treat the fellow!”

“Ahearn,” Elweyr muttered as S’ythreni smiled faintly, “how is that any different from how she treats us?”

The swordsman frowned. “Well, now that you mention it…But see here: whatever sass and sniping you may aim at us, you’ve never made any noise about parting ways.”

“That’s because as far as I can tell, you two don’t have any cosmic mysteries hovering around. Mysteries that could get me killed.”

“As if our trade makes us strangers to peril?”

“Yes, the peril that we assess and then accept or decline in the pursuit of our goals. We may not have perfect foresight, but our futures—together and separately—are the product of our own choices.

“But traveling with a mancery-smothering Dunarran orphan who was inexplicably turned away by the god who should love him best of all?” She shook her head. “That is one mystery nested inside another. And we have no means of assessing the danger we court by associating ourselves with it. So of course we’re not strangers to peril, Ahearn; we survive by being able to measure and decide just how much of it we’re willing to accept. But we have no way to do that with Druadaen.” She looked down. “Which I regret.”

Ahearn cocked his head to the side, smiled, opened his mouth to speak—

—And Druadaen snapped upright from his bedroll. He hadn’t had a dream like that—so lacking the Wildscape’s transmogrifications of time and place and even persons—since shortly after they had set to sea from Araxor aboard the Swiftsure. It was so extraordinary, so believable, that he momentarily wondered if it was not a dream but a vision. He rubbed his already sagging eyelids, and they opened long enough to show him that—just as at the start of his dream—the only two other people present in their camp circle were Umkhira to one side and Padrajisse to the other. But only Ahearn was supposed to be awake for the middle watch, although he might well have wakened at least one of the other two. Still, it was suspiciously akin to the scenario that he’d seen in his dream…

But it was also true that one’s mind remained aware even as it slept. So the odds were infinitely greater that the watchful part of his sleeping mind had noted the departure of Elweyr and S’ythreni and incorporated them into his dream. It was certainly not as strange (not to say bizarre) as his chaotic runs through the Wildscape, which grabbed and warped and fused recent elements from his waking existence into a collage at once strange and unnerving.

Still, this dream had seemed so real…

* * *

The next morning’s journey further up the stepped falls of the cascade began as a long, uninterrupted climb, for no other reason than the giant had not stopped along that stretch. If anything, the signs they found suggested that it had bounded up the rocky staircase in great leaps, or as Ahearn put it, “two stairs at a time.”

When they finally noticed a wide clearing in the forest canopy near a small waterfall, they hoped that they would find another place where it—and now they—could rest. What they hadn’t expected was the singular sound that occasionally rose above the constant rush and crash of plummeting water: harsh voices, speaking in Undercant.

The Bent were so busy squabbling and shouting to be heard above the cataract that they were not aware of Druadaen and his companions until hit by a volley of arrows. And one quarrel. Loosed from under thirty yards, all but one of them hit their marks. Druadaen rapidly drew again to the ear as the survivor—a haggard ur gabar, from the look of him—fled into the trees. He disappeared behind a cluster of close-grown firs, but Druadaen waited, aiming just beyond the farthest pine bough—and loosed again as the wiry little Bent ran back into the open.

The gabar’s shriek was short, as if permanently pinned in its throat. The shaft hit him just above where his neck joined his body.

Umkhira ran ahead, turned a mercy knife upon the two that were still thrashing, and surveyed the scene. As Druadaen and the others approached, she gestured around at the bodies. “A lame hyek. A small HalfBent. Two escaped urzhen slaves, one missing his tongue. And the ur gabar. All half-starved. They were fighting over that.” She pointed to the scant remains of a lamb and then raised her finger to indicate a long, wide gap in the forest. The ground beneath the gap in the trees was hard-packed; a few immense footprints had been captured in now-dried mud. Umkhira pointed at them. “Those are the only tracks the giant made going away from this place. It has left the falls.”

Ahearn leaned on his unstrung bow. “Looks like he’s headed off home, now.”

Elweyr glanced at the corpses. “And these were the rats that lived off his leavings.”

Umkhira nodded. “It is not surprising. They were all outcasts from their tribes, although for different reasons.” She studied the rugged highlands into which they had ascended. “We seem to have come to the start of falls.” She nodded up at a cluster of white frothing streams that rolled down through channels worn in the rocks above. “Those three small waterways: they are what flow into the wide basin here, just beyond the lip over which the narrow water flies.” She finished by pointing at the source of the gushing cataract.

“Meaning?” Padrajisse asked, panting from the morning’s long, upward hike.

Umkhira shrugged. “Another reason this is a likely place for it to make a home. The pool holds enough water for all its needs.” She frowned. “Actually, it is enough water for the needs of several giants.”

Ahearn rolled his eyes. “Well, isn’t that a cheery thought.” He secured his bow, drew his bastard sword with both hands. “I guess there’s nothing for it but to see if the great pillaging pillock is at home.” Together, they started upon the widest footpath any of them had ever seen.

* * *

The giant’s lair was located at the end of the footpath, or rather, the stone shelf that extended onward from it. Trees clung tenaciously to either side. A sheer rock face dropped steeply to the left; another rose just as steeply to the right. The lair was situated at the point where the shelf ended: a wedge-shaped cleft in the rocky shoulder of the slope. It could also have been described as a shallow, wide-mouthed cave: exactly the kind of den described by the majority of the accounts Druadaen had perused in the Archive Recondite. But instead of having a peripheral population of cooperative Bent, the approach was completely undefended and unpatrolled.

Except for cats. Big cats. Some might have been bobcats or hybrids between them and domesticated varieties. But whatever their origins, none of them were smaller than spaniels.

They did not behave like feral felines. The half dozen of them—or maybe more; who could ever be sure with cats?—were all lounging in the general vicinity of the overhang. Most rose when Druadaen and his companions approached but did not spring up in alarm or with the fixed gaze of big cats about to attack. Two retreated until they were beneath the overhang, their tails fluffed out like pipe cleaners. Another one let out a long, low, whining yowl: the classic sound of a tomcat encountering a hated rival in a midnight alley. Two others stood, stretched, hissed hoarsely, unwilling to give up what were obviously favorite spots on favorite rocks. And one simply looked over at the approaching bipeds before laying its head back down.

“This,” Elweyr muttered, “is very strange.”

Umkhira nodded. She glanced at Druadaen, who also nodded. They resumed a slow approach.

The cats all departed eventually, but more out of irritation than fear. They reluctantly gave ground, a few hissing, spitting, and then running, but just as many simply yawning and padding over the lip of the downside slope.

Ahearn muttered, “They’re just damned big barn cats.”

Which was the conclusion to which Druadaen had come, having known a few barns and their cat populations in his youth. Like them, the only thing they had in common was that they all grudgingly tolerated each other’s presence. No, definitely not wild cats.

As the last and largest slipped over the slope toward the forest below, Elweyr muttered, “Hope this giant doesn’t have dogs, too.”

“From your lips to an avatar’s ears,” Ahearn said through a soft exhale. “Let’s go find out.”

Druadaen held out an arm before the swordsman could advance on the small rise that led up to the space beneath the overhang. “Wait.” Moving slowly, he edged to the downhill side of the narrowing rock shelf and peered over.

No sign of the cats. But at the base of the slope there was a small glen, not much more than a notch among the trees—where a flash of white caught his eye.

A bone. And now that he looked more carefully, he saw bleached hints of others protruding from what looked like a pile of—

“Ah,” sighed S’ythreni, who was peering around him, “I believe we’ve found the privy.”

“Yes,” Umkhira agreed, having come up on the other side of Druadaen. “But more than that, I think.”

Druadaen glanced beyond the offal, following the Lightstrider’s gaze, and was surprised to discover a thatch of bright yellow stretching away from it, winding out of the little glen.

“Sunflowers?” Padrajisse breathed in doubt and wonder. Apparently, everyone had come to stand on the edge of the slope, which was not a wise tactical choice, but Ahearn tended not to think about such minutiae.

“Quite the odd contrast,” Elweyr muttered.

“But it is not odd at all,” Umkhira said. “See how the slope runs down through the glen?”

“Yes,” Padrajisse said, frowning, “and so?”

Druadaen saw it suddenly, remembering one of those pictures which, if you changed the focus of your eyes, the scene altered. Whatever had been discarded, or excreted, down the slope into that tiny glen had ultimately become rich soil, which rains had washed further down the gentle dip into the notch. That was the fertilizer that had allowed the sunflowers to flourish, which would otherwise have had no chance taking root on the rocky hillside.

“Those flowers: they are not there by chance,” Umkhira said thoughtfully.

The Corrovani sacrista reply was indignant. “You assume it meant to create this strangely fortuitous arrangement? Come now; do not ascribe intent to the actions of a creature that can barely be called sapient!”

Umkhira smiled as she leaned to look past Druadaen. “Servant of Thyeru, see how the notch between the trees lies? It follows the path of the sun so that the light may shine on the flowers from shortly after dawn until the hills behind us block its rays.”

“Wait,” muttered Ahearn. “Are you two actually saying that this giant means to grow these plants?”

Druadaen’s answer was a smile…as he sheathed his sword.

“Are you mad?” gasped Ahearn.

“No. And I think you would do well to put up your own blade.”

Ahearn’s chin came out. “I will not. So maybe the giant likes flowers. Well and good. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t like to gnaw on my thigh bone even more.”

Well, there’s no arguing that, Druadaen allowed with a shrug.

But as he did, Umkhira slung her axe across her back and said, “Come, Druadaen. We shall seek the giant together. Perhaps, if it, too, is familiar with Undercant, I might help you communicate with it.”

The others followed a good ten paces behind, shaking their heads and muttering darkly about the imminent demise of their friends.

* * *

One of the many things that Druadaen had learned during his time in the tunnels of the Gur Grehar was that lairs were almost always musty and rank with body smell. Whether that was the sweat of the Bent or the secretions and oil and shed-skin stink of wild creatures, one or both of those scents invariably marked where they slept, regardless how the odors varied by species.

Here, there were none.

Nor was there the usual litter of bones and half-chewed pelts. No spoor whatsoever. He looked left toward Umkhira, who met his surprised look with one of her own. To his right, Ahearn advanced in a wide stance, sword ready in both hands. If he had noticed anything ominous, he gave no sign of it. Once under the jagged chin of rock that protected the cleft from the elements, they paused, examining the area carefully.

Along one side of the curving rear wall were unusual lengths of dried venison, as if after having been gutted, the meat of the animal had simply been stripped off the larger bones in one great yank. They reminded Druadaen of skinned rabbits, hung near the fireplace of borderers and farm folks. And judging from the row of empty wooden pegs stretching away from those that still had a carcass secured to them, a once considerable supply of meat had been considerably diminished.

The area in front of them, and the other side of the rear wall, were given over to the tidiest pile of junk that Druadaen had ever seen. Old doors and barrels propped up against tree trunks and fire-scored roof beams. Sledgehammers leaned against various weapons which had probably belonged to others who’d met their ends doing exactly what the three of them were doing now. Except…

The barrels had lengths of rope strung across their openings: carrying handles for containers that would be just the right size for a giant’s bucket. The bark-stripped boles and beams were either parts of a skinning—and maybe drying—rack or pieces of a travois. The door had clearly started out as a fixture on a castle or a fortified outpost but had since been fitted with either oxen tack or a horse’s girth strap across the back to create a serviceable shield. The two-handed battle-axes would have been merely outsized hatchets for a giant, but then again, for them, most trees were the equivalent of saplings. The trimmed bole of a young oak with a shillelagh-cut head—obviously a club—lay across the tops of a half dozen sea chests from which mice were scattering: makeshift grain bins, apparently. And the sledgehammer was just that, although it would look like a toy in a giant’s hand.

But the great sword did not seem to have a purpose other than the one for which its human smith had intended it: a weapon. And although it would seem akin to a narrow huntsman’s sword when wielded by a being at least ten feet taller than either Druadaen or Ahearn, it would certainly be capable of cutting either of them in two at a single blow.

The only strong scent in the wide cave came from the edge of the overhang farthest from the dried venison: pine pitch. A bucket—well, barrel—of it stood a few feet back from a firebreak comprised of boulders.

Ahearn leaned away from his ready blade to whisper, “All the comforts of home, hey? I wonder if he’s got a—”

Shhhh!” Umkhira hissed. “Listen.”

They did.

“Do you hear that?”

From the dark alcove at the center of the rear wall, there emanated a deep susurration.

“If the earth itself breathed,” Umkhira said quietly, “that is the sound it would make.”

Ahearn smiled. “I’ll bet whatever you like that we’re not hearin’ from any elemental force of the rock and soil.” He started forward, sword raising up over his shoulder…and bumped into Druadaen’s outstretched arm.

“Firstly, we came to converse, not kill. Secondly, I am the one who brought us here; it is only right that I should be the one who meets what awaits us.”

“Well,” Ahearn sighed, “You need to swap the order of those two points to put the most worthy first. But otherwise, I’m in agreement…and right behind you.” He smiled. “You mad bastard of a Dunarran.”


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