The gathering, p.26
The Gathering, page 26
part #1 of The Cleaved World Series
The usually buzzing streets were quiet, though no less crowded. In fact, there were even more people than usual; refugees from the fire, wearied, injured, and bedraggled, hunkered in nooks. Shrouded dead lay in heaps in alleyways and wagon beds. The numbers of downtrodden in Tullashel had swollen markedly. At every crossroads posting board, she saw scrawled bills naming those missing—children, lifemates, elders, parents. Tantaren had destroyed more than the wood and the mountain. She had destroyed this part of the world’s way of being. Its life.
Business was conducted, and people were about, but the vendors called out their wares dully, and people walked with their heads down, their faces covered, scurrying from one errand to the next. The fog cloyed around them, motes of ash scuttling with their movements.
Lea rode with her hood down and her cloak pushed back from her shoulders, showing her black leathers and long black hair. Mounted on Aradros, she knew anyone who looked on her knew her as the Rider they revered, despite the cloth covering her mouth and nose. But these people cast dark, chary looks on her and her party, their suspicion only easing after a moment’s contemplation, as if they struggled to believe the Rider had come.
Soldiers patrolled the streets in pairs and fours. The party was stopped each time they encountered a patrol team, and always they addressed Lea, who explained that they had come to Ellerema on business and had only just learned of the trouble here. They let them pass, because she was the Rider—and because they did not know she traveled with a magic-bearer of Farborn blood, or that she was a Saapian magic-bearer herself.
Several times, before they reached their destination of the central plaza, with its large inn and livery stable, the soldiers told Lea that the Rider had come too late. The storied Wood of Derehar—named in honor of the True God of War, a forest of black-trunked trees with golden leaves so sharp they cut the skin—had been destroyed, and Mt. Falisle was nothing but a smoldering mound of ash.
“The people here are full of sorrow and anger. It is as if their souls were burned,” Mya said as Xian helped her down from her little horse. Continually, the girl surprised Lea with the depth of her insight.
“They are bleak indeed,” Xian said as he watched a stableboy lead his stag to a stall in the livery stable. “It has been long since I’ve stood in this city, but I remember a place fat and glowing with pridefulness.”
Another stableboy opened a stall door and bowed to Lea. He knew not to try to take an Elleren war horse’s reins without leave. Lea led Aradros into the stall herself.
When she stepped out to the aisle again, she said, “If the Wood of Derehar is truly destroyed, that is the heart and soul of these people gone. So Mya, yes—it is exactly as if their souls were burned.” She turned to Callyn, who had taken on the guise of a middle-aged Carrican woman, with watery blue eyes, a sunbaked complexion, and hair the color of old straw. They were quite too tall and slim for the average Carrican woman, but such anomalies would not be of so much note. “Be sharp. Do not falter.”
Callyn nodded and signed, Shall I have a different name?
“Urna,” Xian supplied. “’Tis a common Carrican name.”
Then I am Urna, Callyn signed. A common Carrican woman.
Mya, Lea noticed, had at some point stopped speaking all of Callyn’s signs. She seemed to know when Lea and Xian could understand the Hantung and when they could not.
“Come,” Lea said and turned to the stable door. “Let us see what we can learn at the inn.”
“Rider!”
“Rider!”
“Oh, Rider, please! My children! I cannot find my children!”
Now that she was on foot, the folk felt free to ply Lea with plaints, called out to her in Frentung and Ellerish and amalgams of the two. They’d amassed outside the stable and followed her and her party to the inn next door. Long learned of the ways of the wandering hero, she knew if she spoke to each in turn, the day would have turned to night and then again to day, and she’d still be standing where she was. Instead, she let them follow without addressing any until she stood beside the tall carven door of the Tullashel Inn.
Then she turned and addressed the people all at once. “I am sorry for your plights, all of you. I have heard of the attack and the ruin left in its shadow. My party and I have business of our own in Ellerema, and little time to tarry, but if we might ease your troubles on our own path, we will do what we can.”
She spoke for Xian and the others with no prior consult; after these weeks in his company, she knew Xian would want to help, and Mya was content to simply be with Xian wherever that might be. Callyn might not be pleased, by Lea spared little thought for them. It was her way, and Xian’s, to help where they could.
“It was a Farborn—showing as a woman with locks as blue as the richest skystone!” one of the folk called from the midst of their huddle, with the gruff tone of masculine age. “The Dark Ones have breached the wall!”
Another, a young one, by the voice. “She rode on a giant serpent, like the one in the stories! Ayluphun! It spewed fire!”
“We have heard the story, and we mean to go to Mt. Falisle. If we can find survivors, we will return them. This is the boon we offer.”
“You cannot! The air is death. It fills the lungs and makes them stone.”
“The Rider can! She is stronger than any other.”
“Will you fight the Farborn, Rider? Will you give us our vengeance?”
“The Rider fights for justice, not vengeance!”
“One is the same as the other!”
While the people squabbled about the details of her legend, Lea turned to Xian. Understanding, he pushed open the heavy door, and the party slipped into the inn.
Inside, the inn was much the same as ever it had been—in appearance, at least. The main public room was wide, with high ceilings from which pendulant firewheels dangled on pulleyed chains. A large round pit stood ablaze in the center, completely encircled by the bar, around which two dozen stools held two dozen backsides. An array of wood tables, seating two to six, or in a few cases pushed together to seat even more, bore metal plates and cups and fired steins. The rich scents of braising meat and sweet honey mead were a boon to the nose after so long in the poison firesmoke.
Lea pulled the mask from her nose and mouth and took a deep breath. Even the mingled odor of tired bodies was sweet just now. Xian and Mya did the same. Callyn—Lea reminded herself to speak the name Urna here—hesitated, and then followed suit.
Crowded as it was, the room was quieter than usual; no musicians played on the corner stage, and the tone of talk was more muted. And the people were rumpled and sooty. This inn, the central public house of the large city, was the only that welcomed through its doors any who could pay. Others charged a fee at the door or maintained a membership list. And then there were the back-door rooms that offered the dregs of mead barrels to the lowly workers Tullashel tried to keep out of sight.
But this inn was the home of travelers and citizens alike and the best place to really know the city and its secrets. It was also a place where the Rider could enter and not be suddenly beset by a crowd. She was noticed, and recognized, but none did more than nod her way. There was a way of doing business here where so many different people with so many different purposes crossed paths. It was done discreetly, and in turn.
Seeing two small empty tables at the farthest reach of the room, Lea nodded in that direction. They could push the tables together to make room for four, and she and Xian would be able to see most of the room and, importantly, both the main door and the stairs up to the sleeping rooms. Xian nudged Mya and then Callyn to follow immediately behind Lea, and they wended their way to a place to take their rest.
She and Xian pushed the tables together, but there were only three chairs. Lea turned on her heel and saw a man sitting alone at a table for two, his broad back slumped and his dark head resting on his folded arms on the table, as if too much drink had stolen his consciousness. A large, empty stein at the center of the table suggested the same.
He was dressed in the russet leathers she recognized as the garb of an Elleren soldier at rest. They were sooty and singed, and Lea noticed that one of his large hands was wrapped in a filthy bandage. He’d been in the fire, or in the rescue. Or both.
When he woke, she would offer him a seat with them, and a meal and a drink, and hope to gain information in exchange. For now, she would let him rest. Lea took hold of the empty chair across from the soldier and pulled it quietly from the table, meaning to turn and add it to her party.
One of the chair legs brushed against the table leg, barely nudging the table. The warrior reared back, wide awake at once and reaching for his sword. Lea dropped the chair, and her breath stopped in her chest, where her heart had frozen solid.
His face was filthy, and a long, stitched wound tracked from his ear, over his cheek, and across his nose, and he wore a full black beard, but she knew that face as well as she knew her own. Better. Turnings had passed, a lifetime, and yet she had forgotten not one detail.
But it could not possibly be. More than twenty turnings since she’d last seen him, and he was not as long-lived as she. He would have shown those turnings.
Also, he was dead. She’d held his dead body. She’d burned him on a pyre in the Sacred Sea, the place that had killed him.
It could not possibly be.
The man who was and yet could not possibly be, the man Lea had fled her homeland to love, blinked up at her. He wiped his eyes with his bandaged hand and flinched when the act caused him discomfort. After a quick glare at his wounded hand, he returned his attention to Lea, who could not make herself understand. Or, yet, draw a new breath.
“You are the Rider,” he said in Frentung.
Her shock broke. His voice was wrong. Similarly deep, but of a different tone, and with a different accent. Alyk had been born on Saapia as a court Vassa, a man bred to breed with the royal line. He’d spoken Saapian and had had no cause to learn any other language or way of speaking. He’d died before they’d crossed the Sacred Sea and reached any dwellers of Brisira and their ways.
He had not been strong enough for the journey. She’d thought herself strong enough for them both, and she’d been wrong. Reckless and arrogant and so horribly wrong.
But this man—this man shared blood with Alyk. He must. He was kin. “Who are you?” she asked. Her throat croaked the words out in shattered pieces.
There were so many questions she had, so many she could never ask. To tell him about Alyk would be to reveal all her secrets, all her vulnerabilities, even—especially—those she had held deepest and never shared.
He crossed his chest with both arms, in the way of Elleren soldiers. “I am Benon, van rider of Ellerema.” His head tilted. “You are the Rider, yes? The one of legend?”
Van riders were the most elite of this elite breed of soldiers, leading every charge atop their mighty horses.
Lea nodded to answer his question. “I am.”
A wry grin twisted his injured cheek, but he didn’t seem to feel a pain. “You are late, hero.”
A cramp of nostalgia, painful in its loss but pleasant in its remembering, tightened her heart. He had a humor like Alyk’s. A grin slid up her cheek to answer his. “So I have been told. But I am here now. Do you have news you would share with me and my party?”
He peered into his empty stein, and Lea chuckled.
“There’s mead and meat in my offer, soldier.”
“Then I have much to say, hero.” He stood, and was steady. He wasn’t drunk.
He was tall—near a head taller than Lea—vastly broad, and hugely muscled. His black hair was long, shorn close at the sides to show the tattoos of an Elleren officer, and braided in several braids down his back. Lea marked him as born of the far north. Alyk had been large like this as well, sired from a northern Elleren warrior. The royal Saapian line was always sired of warrior blood, Elleren or Boreldan. Girls became royals. Boys became court Vassa, the highest caste of slave, whose role was to seed the next generation.
Lea picked up the chair again and turned to her party. All three stood staring. Callyn’s look seemed wisely interested. Mya’s interest was more lively, like an eager student getting a lesson.
Xian stared at her with naked shock.
She didn’t know what it was she’d said or done, with her back to them, to make them all so keen.
Setting the chair at the table as Benon brought his own around, Lea said, “This is Benon. He has news.”
21. XIAN
Xian did not like this soldier.
He stood and glared while the others sat, until the soldier had sat, insinuating himself between Callyn and the Rider as if he had a right to such proximity.
And perhaps he did. Did the Rider know him? She behaved as if she did. Her posture had changed as she’d spoken to him, softening to near ease. She’d even laughed at something the soldier had said, while Xian had ridden long at her side before he’d been granted such a boon.
Did she know him? If so, why had she asked who he was?
Xian did not like this soldier at all.
Spinning his chair around, he sat astride it and rested his arms on the back. Mya turned and frowned softly at him, a sweet expression that showed her worry for him and her confusion as well. He tried to make a smile for her, but his face would not comply.
He turned back to the interloper at their table. “Who are you?” He’d heard him tell the Rider his name, but Xian wanted it said to his face.
The soldier squared his shoulders. He was big—both taller and broader than Xian. That wasn’t unusual; Elleren warriors were a slow, lumbering lot, said to have crossbred with ice giants in the ancient days—unlike the agile, fleet, far more versatile warriors of his own people.
Size was not prowess, though the Ellerens liked to think so.
The soldier slammed his crossed arms against his chest. “I am Benon, van rider of Ellerema.”
“Sitting drunk at the back of a public house while your home smolders?” Xian returned. The man was wounded, yes, but not disabled.
“Xian,” the Rider muttered, which served only to abrade Xian’s feelings more. Why would she take up for this stranger? Against him?
But the soldier seemed unaffected. “Even the strongest must rest from time to time. You are here in this inn, too, Boreldan.”
“But not at rest, and not at home. Were it my home so wounded, I would not sit until I had my vengeance.”
The soldier grinned on, but Xian could see in the man’s black eyes that he’d struck meat.
Discounting Xian, the soldier turned to the Rider. “When I find the path to vengeance, I will take it, and I will have it. But what happened here—it is not so easy to find the path that will bring us to our satisfaction.”
“What do you mean?” the Rider asked.
“This was magic. Farborn, and pestilent. It was no mere fire.”
Benon plucked the end of his bandage free and began to unwrap his arm and hand. What Xian at first took to be the black marks of the martial tattoos that covered his skin became, when the covering was removed, the marks of charred wounds and veins swollen with black horror. His bronze flesh throbbed visibly, as if each beat of his heart pushed fire farther into his body.
Callyn gasped, and one glamoured hand fluttered toward the soldier, before they remembered themself and pulled back. It was the strongest reaction Xian could remember witnessing of that enigmatic being.
The Rider, however, reached out and set her hand on Benon’s arm, just above the wound. It was a light touch, and tender. Xian had mayhap found some scrap of sympathy for this man, but he did not like, nor trust, the easy way the Rider showed amity with him. Not after such hard work of his own in building rapport with her.
“The fire was magic. The damage it did, continues to do, is magic as well.” Benon said as the Rider studied his wound.
Mya leaned forward. “It hurts grievous bad,” she whispered, her voice quavering with sympathy.
The soldier smiled warmly at her. “It does, little sprite. But not more than I can bear.” He thumped his chest again with his good hand.
Xian rolled his eyes. Despite their garish armors, Elleren warriors were hardly more than beasts themselves, with all their thumping and grunting.
Wrapping his wound up again, Benon swept his gaze around the table, pausing with a passing beat of curiosity on Callyn, and then returned his attention to the Rider.
Xian could see the man fancied her. He’d all but displayed his swollen cock like a bellowbear, and he’d thought to garner her affection through sympathy for his pain. The fool was in for a disappointment, then; it was not so easy to excite the Rider’s sympathy, or her affection. Besides which, she favored her own sex.
Feeling smug, Xian crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, nearly forgetting that he’d turned the chair around. He caught himself before he fell backward.
“It is as though my blood is flame, and creeps up from the wound, a bit more each day,” the soldier explained with his greedy eyes on the Rider. “I am fortunate, that only my hand was burned. It will take some time to reach my heart, when I will die, as others have. All who were burned will die of their wounds, because the burn will not die. I would use the time I have to right this wrong and take my vengeance, there is an army of men and women who would join me, but how? She was gone from here before we could cause her any wound, much less kill her. Failing that, only magic can undo what magic has done. As it has been said, so it is true.”
The Rider set her hand on Benon’s black veins—only for a touch, then she jerked her hand away and rubbed her thumb over her fingers. Her eyes lifted and slipped toward Callyn, who’d watched the exchange with blade-sharp intensity.
Xian understood the import of that look. This party had brought magic into Ellerema, a different kind of power, wielded by at least one good soul. But they could not reveal that truth.
