The Vastness Page 17

  I leapt off my horse and took cover behind a rock before the animated Chaukai pull me down.

  The stricken man fell while Chaukai farther up the ridge pointed toward at the source of song that had done it.

  My hand pressed into the fresh ash beside the tall rock, and a heat shocked me back. A rising waft of smoke dissipated to show me a palm-shaped scorched mark. I poked my bare finger down into it. It was like my skin made of lava. The moist ash smoldered and when I withdrew my finger a swirl of flame twisted up out of the hole. I clutched my finger expecting a lance of pain, but none came.

  I looked up at the broken mountain and worried my being there would wake it further. Was the new earth reacting to my skin the way older soil responded to my blood? Or had the slumbering spirit of the Earth begun to open her eyes?

  The crack of a bow brought my head up.

  “Singer there,” came the call as the arrow struck a rock above a knot of brush and trees. A score of our riders started up left and right of the spot. No one had laid eyes on our quarry in the twisted folds, but now the hunt was on. A healer sang to our wounded man, and the scouts began call out to each other as they rushed up to hem in our quarry. The rest pressed up behind.

  The ash upon those higher slopes was dry and we were soon in a fog of it, coughing through face wraps.

  A commotion on the right came to a quick end and a time later a pair of my flanking riders dragged in the bloody body of a priest.

  “He tried to draw us away, but we found trails up another gully.”

  We turned up the new route as the winds stalled and fresh ash began to drift down around us. I considered abandoning the pursuit, fearful my presence would stoke the mountain further, when word came down of a small cabin tucked in a fold above the next ridge. The men moved fast to surround it, and we announced ourselves by firing an arrow through the front door. The priest who opened to get a look at us was struck through the groin and chest. I’d not given the order to do it.

  “Come out, Lady Jayme,” Fana shouted, but got no response.

  The fine ash stung my eyes and crusted my mouth and nose. My face wrap became a muddy rag. The earth trembled and we all looked up the slope at the tumbling column of ash. If the northerly wind shifted, we would be buried.

  A voice called down, “Leave me, or I will rain fire down upon you.”

  “Go get her,” Fana said, and two troops of Chaukai started up with ready lengths of rope without a look toward me.

  The first two men through the door glowed purpled and fell. The third started on fire and dived left toward our healers while four more men charged inside. The first clutched his neck, fell backward, and fouled the rest. He struck the ground hard and his head broke off his neck as if frozen. No blood pumped out as it tumbled away, but the Chaukai were not deterred by this horror. The rest of the first troop surged toward the door, chanting their battle hymn as they crashed through. Three more went down, but the rest pressed in. Magic flashed once more before the commotion came to a sudden end.

  “We have her, ma’am,” someone shouted out and Fana started toward the cabin.

  “What game are you playing?” I asked her and hurried to follow.

  “None of this should surprise you. Are you ready to keep your promise?”

  I knew what she meant and wanted to refuse. The Chaukai looked on. “You ask too much.”

  “It is the same price the Vesteal have always paid. The Spirit of the Earth gave me this task. Will you help me see it done?”

  Fana’s anger rumbled like the mountain, almost as if in tune with it.

  “This has become something more than a recruiting trip. What is it you hope for this encounter?”

  “I want Lady Jayme. The rest she will bring to us.”

  “More Sermod?”

  “Not more of them. I want all of them—every woman capable of song who joined the church because there was nowhere else for them to get an education. I want the women who were strong enough to survive inside Sikhek’s Conservancy. You promised you would come and give me what I needed. I need Lady Jayme converted to our cause and I need her to bring to us the rest like herself.”

  “You assume she knows where to find them.”

  “She existed and survived because she knows them. No woman rises so high in Bayen’s church without a network of support that reached into every prelature from Eril to Khrim. She does not know the Sermod. She owns them.”

  “You spent too much time with Rahan.”

  “Do not be so sure it’s not the other way around,” she and led me up the hill.

  I knocked the ash from my sleeves as we started in. The Chaukai had Lady Jayme surrounded on the far side of the room, each with a loop of rope held taut around her neck. Two priests lay in a pool of blood to one side, and a small group of priests and Sermod cowered in the corners with a half dozen spears aimed at them. Master Herren cowered behind them women, hoping not to be seen. The priests could barely stand from the effects of so much song.

  “Weaklings,” Lady Jayme said at them. The Sermod in the group wore the same hateful masks.

  The earth trembled again.

  “I did not cause this,” Lady Jayme said and drew her wrap up across her mouth and nose as a cascade of fine ash fell from the windowsills and roof beams of the wide dwelling.

  I said to her, “We did not come because of the smoking mountain. We’ve come to recruit you.”

  “You heathen. You and your godless band would all be burned alive if I had my way. Kill me and be done with it. I’ll not stand here and listen to your idiot ravings.”

  Fana stepped in between us and said to her, “We have killed Chancellor Parsatayn. We have killed the thieves you worked for in Moorsmoth. Omar and the other thralls that infested the Pinnion Coast are dead. We took Sikhek’s magic from him and seized his archives. We know his secrets and yours.”

  This last narrowed my eyes as much as Lady Jayme’s. The Chaukai had not shared any of this with me.

  “The Shadow will feast upon you,” she said.

  “No, and he will not feast upon you either. You are not bound to him anymore. Lady Soma sailed this coast. She freed every man, woman, and child from his grip. You must recall the day it happened, and know what it meant when the Shadow was pulled from your soul.”

  Her face did not register surprise. Her chest rose and fell, and her hot breath wet the dust upon her face wrap. She studied Fana like a Puma trapped upon a tall branch. She had weapons yet to fight us.

  “Which of you am I speaking to?” she asked, and Fana slapped her so hard her lip split. “What would you have of me, girl?”

  “I required the service of all those who can sing to the Earth and the Shadow. We know nouns and verbs you can only dream of. I would teach them to you so that you may sing songs that tear the world down.”

  She scoffed. “What do you know of how magic is made, little girl?”

  Fana turned and took hold of my hand. She drew a knife and cut my thumb before I could protest. She pinched blood into her fingers, took hold of Lady Jayme, and smeared my blood under her wrap and across her lips and teeth.

  She cursed and spat, but the effect of my blood silenced her. She stumbled sideways into a table. Dust trickled through the table’s thin boards and over the sides. When she turned, she stood as steady as a sergeant despite the ropes that circled her neck. The Chaukai got ready to yank as songs broiled in her throat.

  Her gaze moved from the steel aimed at her breast, to my bloody thumb, and then to Fana. “What are you?”

  “The blood of Barok’s family is the source of all magic upon the earth. We mean to kill all those faithful to Bahen’s church and the Shadow. We are going to hunt them until they are nothing but food for the crows. Join us and I will give you what you desire.”

  “What do you know of my desires? Do you think you are the first person to promise me power?”

  “We are bound for Enhedu. From there will march an army south to Bessradi. There are people t
here you would see persecuted for their crimes against you—against your son.”

  “Do not speak of my kin again.”

  “Come with us, Lady Jayme, and all those who wronged you will burn.”

  She was feeling more of the power that came with my blood. She licked her lips and stood up into the ropes, daring us to kill her before she slapped us with a song that would lay us all low. “You were a fool to come here and give me such power.”

  “Perhaps,” Fana said, “but not as much a fool as those who stole your son to the Priest’s Home to make him Ashmari. Barok’s daughter and wife have been stolen away to the same place.”

  She stumbled back into the table and her teaming though began to collide. “I ... how did you know of my son? There was record of him in Sikhek’s archives? His daughter was taken, too? Why?”

  “The same reason they took your son. The same reason they propped up a false god for Zoviya to worship. The Hessier and the Ashmari are servants of the Shadow and they desire a cold end to this earth. If we do not stop them, they will turn your son into a bloodless monster using Barok’s daughter’s blood and bones as the fuel. We mean to save his daughter and your son. We mean to hunt those who took them and all that support them to the very end of the earth.”

  “What of them?” Lady Jayme said with a snarl toward the languishing priests.

  “We have no need for priests,” Fana said and signaled to the Chaukai. They leveled their spears and pierced the priests before anyone could object.

  “Sermod only,” Fana said, took hold of my arm, and extended my bloody thumb toward Lady Jayme. “It will be your flaming voices that kill all those who have chained us. Join us and be free.”

  A tear cut a line down her ashen cheek before she stepped closer, bowed, and drank my blood. Her Sermod gathered close for their turn.

  20

  Leger

  The old road was cold and dark. A fog hug thick in the air.

  I stood up from the wet cobblestones and searched for my bottle of vanilla wine. Had it smashed on the road? I could not find it.

  “Haton?”

  My voice made no sound. I could not find his body or his blood. I’d put my sword through his guts. He’d poisoned me with mercury. He’d made me a thrall of the Shadow.

  Soma was not there, nor Bohn.

  “Darmia, why did you betray me? Why!”

  My scream made no more sound than the mists.

  I made out the nearest building through the fog. The storefront was crowded with empty butcher’s racks and closed for the night. It seemed I was still in Moorsmoth, but all those I was with were missing.

  I lifted my hands and saw only a waft of black smoke.

  The clop of hooves and the grind of wagon wheels started down the hill toward me through the fog. Colonel Bohn was at the reins and Barok rode beside him.

  I tried to back away as the horse trotted into me. They passed through me instead as though I was not there.

  “At least the sun is out today,” the Chaukai said to Barok.

  “Get me back to the harbor.”

  I screamed and waved my arms. Neither of them saw or heard me, but a woman sitting in the back of the wagon turned up her head.

  Fana?

  She smiled at me as the wagon continued down.

  The world began to fade.

  Barok seemed older. Fana was pregnant.

  How long had I been dead?

  The fog raced around me like a flood and stole me back into darkness.

  21

  Emi

  Blathebed

  “Oh, not again,” Dame Franni said.

  “Another tremor?” I asked. The previous evening’s shaking had inspired hysterics, but the only cause for concern I’d seen was the antics of panicked people. Rahan and Avin paid the quakes no mind, so I did not either.

  “No, not a tremor. You know full well what I am talking about,” Franni said, and pointed at the bloodstains hem on my dress while several of the girls worked to get a new one ready. It had become part of our morning routine within the tower. Thirty days in a row, in fact.

  “How is it that you always find a spill of blood?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes and watched the 14,432 who had gathered to move off the grassy triangle and back toward the Warrens. They were a happy group. The same could not be said for the men north of the wall. The park and streets were crowded with groups of freemen working to become proper soldiers. They were exhausted. Some did not want to be there at all, including a number of the men who trained them. Their threads were divorced from everyone around them. Their discontent drew my attention like a loose thread in a weave.

  “Does it make the healing magic better, if you get the blood of the wounded all over your dress?” Franni asked.

  She knew the answers were no. I said nothing and left my eyes closed. We had discussed the linen dresses. I would stop getting them bloody when they gave me something else to wear. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t wear a comfortable wool tunica like the rest of them—like I had every day of my life. I’d hoped they would run out of the yellow dresses, but there seemed no end of them.

  “You’re late again, too,” Franni went on to say. “Benjam is waiting in the hallway.”

  That was becoming part of the routine as well. There was more wounded for us to see to each morning as Rahan efforts risked more and more of them. As it got colder, the number would only increase.

  “Are you finally having that dinner with the Exaltier tonight?” she asked.

  He and Avin had broken their promise to share a meal. They’d did find me a nice room in one of the towers, and I’d counted a great many things for them, but they’d not found the time to visit after our first meeting.

  Franni saw that I was angry and would have hugged me like she used to if she could. She tried words instead. “Rahan moves very fast these days, my dear.”

  “Marries quickly, too,” one of the girls said, and they all giggled. “He’s got nine wives in the far tower. Did you see the last girl? Her breasts were bigger than her head.”

  I’d heard nothing about it, but before I could ask, Franni shushed the bunch of them and hurried them out. This suited me well enough. I liked the girls but hated all the fussing and gossip. If there were any looms to be found in the Warrens the girls would have been happier and much better occupied. It did not take four girls to get me into a stupid yellow dress.

  The next dress was made of the same soft linen. The cool air made my nipples hard and they were too sensitive for the constant brush of the cloth.

  “Find me a shawl, could you?”

  She brought one and wrapped it around me. The warmth was what I needed. I said a small thank you.

  She whispered to me, “Don’t let Rahan take you to the other tower. He’s got plenty of baby makers already.”

  “Franni, hush,” I said and asked her to show Captain Benjam in.

  “Emi?”

  “What, Benjam?”

  “Can you open your eyes?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said and searched the river. I found the places Blathebed’s men had attacked before the dawn. Crowds had gathered at each spot, working to put out the fires or cart away Yarik’s dead. Benjam and I had gotten good at finding unguarded spots along their side of the river.

  I had to search to find the spot where Yarik’s had tried to do the same to us. His men had died before getting ashore so our side of the river looked normal. He tried to attack us every three or four days. A few thousand men would carry new boats down to a landing, climbing in, and row across after the sun had set. I’d spotted every group as easily as a pour of white paint down a black wall. Sewin’s galleys simply rowed them under.

  I turned my attention to Yarik’s dam and the river of people flowing along its surface.

  The admiral had had his fun with them, too, swooping in with a dozen galleys to kill everyone upon it. They’d built their ramp of stone higher in response. It would take them twice as
long to finish it, but Rahan hadn’t come up with any other way to delay them. He had started fortifying the hill on our side of the river, but that had been his last good idea. He could not stop Yarik from crossing.

  “Emi?”

  “What?” I asked, and opened one eye long enough to see Benjam’s frown and the box he held. “No more dresses. I do not care who it is from this time.”

  “It’s too heavy to be a dress. Opan Bleau sent it.”

  “You open it, I’m busy searching for Yarik’s next attempt to cross,” I said, but peeked as he did it.

  He removed the wrapping to reveal a wide engraved box. He opened the lid and blinked at the contents in surprise. I hoped off the chair to see for myself. Inside was a wide tablet, a dozen bottles of ink, and a collection of brushes.

  “Sit down on the sedan,” Benjam said. I did so but wished I had not.

  “I don’t like being told what to do,” I said and crossed my arms and legs.

  “No child does.”

  “Damn it, Benjam,” I said. “I don’t like it because my habit is to do what I am told like a slave. I’m not as childish as you think.”

  He starred back at me until I unfolded my arms and legs.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  He said nothing more about it and lifted the tablet free. It had legs and when he set it on my lap, it made a nice little desk. It had recesses along the sides for the ink bottles and brushes, and a sheet of vellum was already clamped in place upon it. Two, I discovered, when I lifted the first away. The second was covered in words.

  Benjam frowned at it when I handed him the sheet, but he did not make me ask him to read it. He looked once back at the closed door before he read Opan’s note to me.

  * * *

  Little Goddess,

  I understand that you have a mountain of dresses but nothing with which to draw the many things that you count. I made the vellum in the desk myself when I was last in Kuet and hope these sheets help you pass the days.