Of fire and ash, p.16
Of Fire and Ash, page 16
Surely that was not her voice.
Finnian’s head rose sharply from the bandaging, casting her a look of reproach. “Can you tell me how many there were?” he asked, more gently.
“Some thirty . . . maybe forty? It . . . all happened so fast . . .”
Ceridwen crumbled the ash between her fingers and went to offer the old man her refilled waterskin. He took it in trembling hands. Forty soldiers must have seemed an overwhelming force to the small village, but so few would not march far from support in hostile territory. Odds stood the main Nadaarian army still trailed behind, so the attackers were probably just an offshoot of a larger host out raiding for supplies and spreading fear in flame and sword.
“We offered no resistance, and still they killed us.” Voice wavering, tears coursing down his cheeks, the old man gathered up the thread of the story and carried it beyond what Ceridwen had read in the bloodstained ground. “They spared our young, chained them behind the priest’s chariot, and we begged them to kill them instead.” His voice broke. “Do you know why we would do such a thing, why we would plead for the death of our own?”
She shook her head, not trusting her voice.
“The priest thanked us for their sacrifice.” He shuddered, and Ceridwen felt the chill of his words in her bones. Rumors told of the sacrifices Murlochian worship demanded. She could imagine few worse fates. “The priest smiled as he spoke of terrible things: of defeat, of slaughter without end, of the war-chiefs betraying one another and the ayeds riding over our own. He said the king was dead, the Dominion of Murloch come. Tell me . . . is it true?”
For the first time, his eyes seemed to focus, and beneath the watery gray of his grief, she found strength. It was the strength of one who had seen herds come and go, survived storm and drought, and coaxed a living from hard, windswept ground by the sweat of his brow and the blisters on his hands, and who through all had endured. There was a strength to him even now as he held his wife amidst the ruins of all he had, tattered clothes falling from withered shoulders, singed hair standing out in wisps around his age-spotted head.
He deserved the truth, raw and bitter though it might be.
“There has been a defeat.” She met Finnian’s eyes, and he shook his head, warning her to rein in her tongue. “The war is not over, but the king is dead.”
“Oh,” the old man gasped, “Aodh have mercy . . .”
Finnian straightened abruptly, snapping his saddlebags closed. She could sense his disapproval, but this village stood in Lochrann, in the chiefdom that even more than the throne should have been hers by right of blood to shield from harm. That right was denied her. The truth was all she could offer them now. Or was it?
It was too late for salvation. But what about vengeance?
Finnian’s voice rose. Too late, his words sparked her attention. “King Desmond may be dead, but hope is not. She who stands—”
Warmth drained from her limbs.
She stood, too late to halt the words.
“—before you is his daughter and heir, Ceridwen tal Desmond.”
And like an arrow loosed from the string, there was no reclaiming them. They fell around her like a rain of fire, landing with a hiss that made the survivors who had gathered in silence pull back in alarm. But no, that hiss came from her own lips, expelled by the fear clawing its way up her throat. Finnian’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Blazes, he had no idea what he’d done. How could he without the kasar on his skin?
She felt every gaze on her scarf-bound forehead, confirming the weight in her stomach. But she would not shrink from shame. One step, two, to Mindar’s side. Hand to saddlebow, foot to stirrup. Swinging up, she checked his restless plunge, ignoring the twinge in her leg, and lifted her voice to carry over the ruins. “The war-chiefs will not abandon you. Help will come—”
“Too late to save the dead.” The old man gazed up at her. “Too late to aid the living. Tell me, Ceridwen tal Desmond, what help will come?”
She hesitated only a breath, then knotted her hand around the sabre, and murmurs rose at this mark of a blade oath. “The blood of Lochrann will come. This I swear.” She repeated the words to herself as she spun from the ruin, Mindar’s mane and tail igniting to release the pent-up heat in his veins. Not until the next rise did she slow, allowing Finnian to catch up. By then, at last, the way before her feet was clear. “Our paths split here, te Donal.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“I cannot ride on to Rysinger. I have sworn to help.”
He shoved a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back from his eyes. “You will help by regrouping with the Outriders, with Apex Markham. It is our duty. Ceridwen, the war-chiefs await—”
“Let them wait. I am an Outrider, yes, but only an Outrider. Tor Nimid. Not tal Desmond. That name was seared from me by the kasar—” She checked herself like an unruly steed. Given loose rein, the words rolled off her tongue like a fireblast. Had she no control? “But I am honor bound to protect this people. Hunting those who harm them is my duty.”
His brow furrowed, but her mind was already set.
“I will not ask you to stay.” She brought Mindar dancing around, felt his limbs tighten beneath her, neck arched, nostrils flaring, burning to run. “Tell Apex Markham we are a pair no longer. Ride on, Finnian. I cannot.”
Mindar sprang forward.
But Finnian snagged her reins. “Wait!”
His grip flew open again before Mindar flamed but it still brought the fireborn to a stamping halt. Finnian rubbed at his forehead, ruffling his hair until it stood on end like a wolf’s hackles, then cast her the same exasperated and weary glance she’d received many times from Markham. “Shades, Ceridwen!”
“Yes?”
“Just . . . shades.”
TWENTY-TWO: RAFI
Only a fool watches the sky and ignores the leak in his hull.
—Alonque saying
Deafening birdsong greeted Rafi even before he peeled his eyes open to stare at the mossy concave ceiling, just as it had the past. . . however many . . . days he had been here in the rebel camp. It beat jolting awake to the screams of sea-demons.
Or it would have, if he hadn’t been a prisoner.
“So, here’s the deal,” he remarked, not bothering to lift his head from his hammock. “I know how this goes. I demand to see Umut. You grunt. I ask for Iakki. You grunt again. I respond with something witty and you forget to laugh, killing the conversation. Again. What do you say we skip the routine, just this once, and you take me to see them both now?”
Not surprisingly, he got only a grunt in response.
Sighing, Rafi raised himself onto one elbow, ignoring the tug in his side, and squinted against the daylight that leaked through the hut’s woven walls. His guard lounged beside the brightly colored cloth door, arms crossed over a leaf-bladed spear, black hair rising in a spiked wave like the dorsal fin of a sailfish.
He looked to be near Rafi’s own age, but Rafi didn’t know his name. Still, his voice identified him as the rebel who had yanked a sack over Rafi’s head, threatened to kill him before letting him see Umut, and stood guard over him every moment since.
“So, that was a yes? Great, let’s go.” He slung his legs over the side, and his toes brushed mossy earth before the spearpoint tickled his ribs. “On second thought, I’ll stay. It’d be a shame to have to redo those stitches, don’t you think?”
His guard grunted again.
Rafi rubbed at the persistent ache behind his eyes. Really, as far as prisons went, this wasn’t half bad. Oh, he complained, but he had food, air, sunlight, not to mention the breeze that ruffled the cloth door and stirred the edge of his blanket. He had a blanket. Good thing too, since he had awakened days ago with fresh stitches in his side and barely a stitch on otherwise.
He half expected the ghost to chime in with a sarcastic response. The voice had been growing more and more audible, more distinct from his own thoughts, more real. But apparently, not even the ghost was talking to him anymore and—
“Ah, good, you’re awake.”
That was not the ghost. Or his guard.
Rafi jolted up, ignoring the twinge in his side, eyes latching onto the burly man halfway through the doorway, one arm raised to push back the cloth. Salted hair tied at his neck, beard dusted white at the chin, sweat-stained tunic hanging loose over a frame as rugged and worn as the driftwood that washed up on the Alon coast. Sea-blue eyes studied him, weighed him. “How is that ugly wound of yours today?”
Was this the healer who had stitched it up? He had been half out of his mind with delirium then. Rafi gestured at the bandage. “Still there.”
“Ah, it will heal.”
“It will scar.”
“And it will not be your first, Nahiki of the Alonque.” Letting the cloth fall, the man lurched into the hut. His strange gait confused Rafi until he saw the man’s crutch and the leg missing at the knee. “Those marks on your chest are from scadtha claws, if I’m not mistaken?”
Rafi glanced at the puckered scars that scored his ribs and considered denying it. But what was the point? “Own it,” Sev had insisted, and if it would buy him and Iakki refuge here among the rebels, he would do just that. “You’re not.”
“Sounds like an interesting story.”
“Umut will think so. When can I see him?”
“Oh . . . soon enough, I daresay.” Waving Rafi’s guard back, the man planted his crutch and eased himself to the mossy ground where he settled his legs before him. “I hear you have been kicking up quite the storm to see him.”
It might have been the twinkle in those sea-blue eyes. Or it might have been his guard’s stifled snort and the blank expression that erased his habitual scowl. Somehow, Rafi knew. “You are Umut, aren’t you?”
Still staring at him, the man laughed a hoarse throaty laugh. “You should have warned me he was so sharp, Nef.”
The guard sullenly crossed his arms. “He’s not.”
“As a kaava’s thorns. Give merit where it is due.”
“You haven’t had to watch him drool.”
Rafi coughed, swinging his legs over the side of the hammock again so he could face Umut and maybe reclaim some shred of dignity before revealing his true identity to this man who had been an unknown piece of his past for so long. The blanket tucked around his waist slightly lessened that effect. Umut barked something at Nef who shoved away from the wall to retrieve a bundle and toss it to Rafi.
He caught it against his chest. Ah, clothes. Such generosity.
Gingerly, he stepped into the baggy trousers and wide beaded belt—Mahque style, like Nef wore, with symbols and patterns that told the story of its maker—and settled the loose tunic over his head. By the time he eased back onto the hammock, arm tucked against his wounded side, he was sweating, and that familiar headache had started up again, right on cue.
“That was a strange wound,” Umut observed. “You shouldn’t be alive, much less standing. How does it feel?”
“Hurts less than it did.”
Which really wasn’t saying much. Like comparing a river and the sea. Both were capricious bodies of raging water that could kill you in an eyeblink.
“I imagine it should.” Umut opened a pouch at his belt, pinched a dark curved object with the hem of his tunic, and held it up for Rafi to see. “Tip of a scadtha claw. We found it buried in your wound. It should have festered. You should have been dying from the inside. Oddly, it didn’t and you didn’t. Like I said, strange.”
A chill prickled Rafi’s arms at a flashed image of the claw on Cortovah’s hand. But the priest had stabbed him with a dagger, hadn’t he?
He had seen it. Or thought he had.
“So tell me, Nahiki of the Alonque, this tale I will find so interesting.” Behind the claw, Umut’s sea-blue eyes seemed as bright and fierce as the sea-demon’s. “Tell me what winds have blown you against so many scadtha and left you alive to tell the tale?”
Swallowing, Rafi ignored the way Nef glowered down at him and grounded himself in the story he would tell. His life before Zorrad would wait until he was certain this Umut was actually responsible for rescuing him and his brother. Instead, he began with the discovery of the sea-demon in the net. Nef shifted uncomfortably at that, but he snorted at the scadtha’s attack and laughed outright at Rafi’s claim to have killed it.
“Oh, sit down,” Umut commanded. “Stop looming like a thunderstorm about to burst.”
Nef’s spear dropped with a muffled thunk, and he sank sullenly beside it.
This was where things could get tricky, so Rafi kept the next part vague. “It all happened so fast . . .” He muddled the details of the failed sacrifice and Sev’s revolt, removing himself as a key character so it seemed like he had stumbled onto the priest’s dagger by accident. “I knew this would be the only safe refuge for us, so—”
Nef leaned forward, eyes hard and glittering. “So, you fled and brought your storm down on our heads? Are you even here to fight, or are you too much of a coward?” After days of grunts and stony silence, Rafi found the sudden rush of words more amusing than aggravating. “You fisher folk cling to your shores, content to woo the sea and the imperial beast too, ignoring the plight of your cousins and—”
“Peace.” Umut flicked a hand at Nef but focused on Rafi. “I am more interested in how you knew our location. Knew my name. We guard those carefully to keep the Emperor’s Stone-eye from sniffing us out.”
It startled Rafi to hear Delmar’s derogatory title for Sahak—inspired by the chained stone-eye Lykier kept close to hand, much like his unacknowledged son—in common use.
“So, Nahiki, who told you my name?”
Umut’s voice was calm as the bay in summer, but Rafi caught the glint in his eyes. His answer was important, he realized. Maybe life-or-death important. But Nef’s scowling presence impeded the truth. “My brother told me. I don’t know how he knew.”
“Convenient.” Nef snorted. “And you only mention him now? Where is he? Spilling secrets to the Stone-eye? Leading soldiers down the trail you left for them to follow?”
“He is dead.”
Thankfully, that quieted him.
Umut wedged his crutch and used it to lever to his feet. “Nef, why don’t you take our guest outside and show him around? Get him some food too.”
That was it? Rafi blinked and saw his surprise magnified to shock on Nef’s face.
“Show him . . . what?”
“Everything.”
“But—”
“Humor me, Nef.” Umut’s voice briefly took on an edge. “You know I appreciate any evidence you have some control over your rampaging temper. It gives me hope for you yet.”
If Nef’s scowl had been a thunderstorm before, a hurricane now churned across his expression. But he stood sharply, snapped his spear to his chest in salute, and pushed through the cloth door without looking back. Rafi followed just as stiffly, but that was because everything hurt, not because he had an iron rod for a backbone. Still, something nagged at him.
“Speaking of names”—he twisted to face Umut—“how did you know mine?”
“To borrow the Alonque expression, your cousin has a leaky hull.”
“Like your brother,” Nef muttered outside.
Was he lurking out there just to eavesdrop?
Umut winked as he limped to the curtain. “Clever boy, that one. Weaves a good tale.”
Rafi’s stomach flipped. So Iakki had been talking, had he? What exactly had he told them? More importantly, how had it differed from his story? But before he could stew in his worry, Umut flung the curtain back, and all else faded.
Rafi halted on the threshold of a lush green place where birdsong soared over the sound of rushing water. Not the ceaseless wash of the sea, but the heavier roar of a waterfall. He smelled roasting meat and tangy spices, and he heard children shrieking in laughter, voices chattering, and warriors shouting as they trained. The raw life of it all reminded him so strongly of Zorrad, it cracked the dam he had built around his grief, flooding his throat.
He hesitated and then stepped out into the sun.
TWENTY-THREE: CERIDWEN
Shadowers walk in silence and can fade into shadow, smoke, and fog, rendering even their riders invisible. This is referred to as ghosting. Beware the moonless battle.
“Shades, Ceridwen.” Finnian dropped into the grass beside her.
They sprawled atop the crest of a hill, their steeds waiting behind, combat raging below. A ragged force of solborn riders harried their quarry, the Nadaari raiders, who had drawn into a tight block formation around the chariot and chained captives. Spears jutted over the soldiers’ broad shields, and their helmets gleamed crimson in the dying sun.
She shifted to see over a clump of gorse. “You said that before.”
“I have a feeling I’ll be saying it a—where are you going? Stay down!”
Ignoring his warning hiss, she slithered forward to gain a better view of the combatants. Of course, she would be careful. Did he think she wanted to get killed? Not yet, at any rate. Not from a distance and not without slaying many before she fell.
It had taken a full day to run down the Nadaari raiders, only to find them already embroiled in a fight and outnumbering their opponents three to one. Unhorsed warriors fought beside downed steeds while mounted riders plunged through the fray, held at bay from freeing the captives by nearly forty Nadaari. Combat under such terms could not rage long. Her countrymen were failing. They would die. Or join the captives. But she read steadfastness in their dogged, relentless advance, and pride warmed her: they would not retreat.
A riveren collapsed, speared through the gut.
Its rider rolled free of its thrashing only to take a spear in the neck.
Behind, a thrown spear carried a stormrider from the saddle. He hit headfirst.
Her sabre was half-drawn before she realized it. She would not watch them die, not as she had watched her father. Not without wielding blade or flame in their aid, though it cost her life. To her steed, she ran with Finnian at her side. He might have disagreed with delaying their return, but no one could witness that slaughter below and not know that this was right. This was their duty.
