The mountain wind cut through Katlyn’s clothes and ground through her flesh as she sat on the bluffs looking to the south-east.
That was the direction Adamantus and Gail had gone days before, following a rumor that another Rakne had been spotted. Adamantus still wanted answers, Gail revenge, a respect having grown between the two of them and their shared target, if not shared goal.
Katlyn had felt left out and had not liked it.
“Why can’t I come,” she had asked.
“It’s too dangerous,” Gail said.
“It’s too dangerous alone, that first Rakne nearly bested all of us together.”
“We’re more experienced this time,” Gail insisted, buckling her baldric.
“Katlyn, we need you here. Help the Maurvant rebuild or they will forever be a ruined people,” Adamantus said.
Katlyn had turned and walked away at that point, determined to give both Gail and the elk nothing but silence until they departed. She had followed through on that intention but it did not take long for her to regret her choice. What if those were the last words she exchanged with them? Adamantus was her friend and Gail . . . well Gail was something, even if Katlyn did not have a word for it yet.
The uncertainty of their fates burned in her chest and each afternoon she climbed up to the bluffs overlooking the village and the grassy steps beyond, hoping to catch sight of Adamantus—even Gail—returning, safe.
A week had passed without a sign. Tallia accompanied her each day, her presence soothing to Katlyn. The two of them had become nearly inseparable, Katlyn helping Tallia learn to read and Tallia teaching Katlyn the customs of the Maurvant, at least when they both were not sitting on the bluffs, waiting for news, waiting for change.
Help rebuild, Adamantus had told her. It was a circumstance Katlyn could never have anticipated: helping their former enemy in their own lands. It did bring to mind one of Val’s expressions, however: the best way to stop an enemy is to make him a friend. Friends, Katlyn had made, but her success helping the Maurvant rebuild had been limited. With so many of the tribe’s people dead, missing, or migrated, those left in the village were weak and crestfallen, the spark gone from them. After the destruction of the revenant there had been muted celebration, but the same oppressive sense of loss and despair soon returned. After all, their lost chief had been found, dead.
Katlyn scanned the clouds for Soot’s black shape. Gail had sent him back to Karrith, to Darid, with the imperative to confiscate the moonstone from King Oean before it was too late. Another mission, another loose end for Katlyn to wait on, passively, helplessly. It was no wonder she gravitated to the windy outcrop each afternoon—it was a break from the gloom of the village. After so many months of doing, the tedium of waiting was unbearable. She imagined Tallia accompanied her for the same reasons. By midday, after their morning chores were finished, a restlessness stirred in both of them. While the rest of the Maurvant settled down to pass the sad and empty afternoon in desultory silence, neither could sit still nor could they concentrate on reading lessons or doing any other tasks for that matter. The bluffs called to them.
“Staring does not cause the seed to sprout,” Tallia said as the wind flattened her hair across her face, painted this day with the barest of touches: an inverted blue V on one cheek and red one on the opposite. Katlyn took the simpler choices of face paint to be a sort of mourning sign her friend had adopted since returning to her homeland.
“Funny,” Katlyn said, driving her hands deeper into her pockets, her eyes unfocusing. “We have a similar expression: ‘A watched kettle does not boil.’”
The wind gusted between them and hissed in the grasses. Sapphire hopped from one stone to another, her tail feathers ruffled.
After a moment, Tallia said, “They will be back.”
“I hope,” Katlyn said. She turned her gaze to the path just below them. A figure on crutches was trudging up the slope with speed that belied his misshapen leg.
“Joginn is coming,” Katlyn said, but she did not move to meet him. One thing she had learned in her time in the Maurvant village was that Joginn took satisfaction in climbing the slopes above the village, undeterred as he was by his crutches. He was panting, his cheeks flushed when he reached them. He offered greetings in the Maurvant language which Katlyn was able to understand and respond to, but the rest of his message was still incomprehensible to her. Tallia, however, rose, brushing the seedpods and chaff from her skirt, her expression grave.
“Come, Katlyn, they found a carrier pigeon with news from your people.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. Maybe things are, finally, happening.”
The villagers were gathered in the hut of one of the elders, Goumri, whose son Alzod had come across the pigeon while hunting. It was a brown-gray bird with splotches of white on its neck. Alzod explained that he had been ready to capture and kill it for food, until he saw the message—a tiny piece of scroll—wrapped around its leg. He handed the scrap to Katlyn. Sure enough, its letters were in the script of Anthor, unreadable to most of the Maurvant but recognizable to her.
She read the words aloud, Tallia translating for the waiting Maurvant. “To our sister kingdom of Karrith. A plea for help. Antas city has been overrun by creatures from the dark-wood. Help is requested to save us from the monsters. Send word to our king.”
Katlyn read and re-read the writing, cursing the scrap for its small size and the brevity of its message. It left her with more questions than answers, but her fear quickly filled in the gaps. The creatures could only be the vaurgs. Had the monsters ventured north out of revenge for the attack Katlyn and her friends had delivered on them? It seemed that not even the Antan Council, who would have sent the message, had knowledge of King Talamar’s death. Had other pigeons been sent? Would Oean be in any state to answer, to respond, or was he still in thrall of the moonstone, on his way to becoming a revenant himself?
Was her family safe? Katlyn thought of her aunt and uncle, her cousins, Jessamy and Maxwell.
“I have to go,” she said, dropping the message and running out of the long-hut. The villagers remained in stunned silence, except for Tallia who followed her to their own small hut where they kept their belongings. Katlyn was already rolling up her sleeping mat when Tallia caught up with her. Without word, her companion began to pack her own things.
“What are you doing?” Katlyn asked.
“I shall come with you,” she said, her stare level, a satchel in her arms.
“You have to stay here. Wait for Adamantus and Gail.”
“There is nothing for me here,” Tallia said, her voice low as she rubbed the corner of her eyes with her fist.
Katlyn picked up the short sword she had carried since their time with Pathus. “It could be dangerous. I think I know the creatures that have invaded our lands. They are living nightmares, but I have to reach my family . . . to see if they are safe.”
“I can fight,” Tallia said.
The memory of her fierce expression as she had challenged the Rakne at the lake’s edge came to Katlyn’s mind.
“You’re right. You can. Help me prepare the horses.”
So expansive were these big-sky lands that oftentimes in a sweep from one horizon to the other, one could witness all varieties of weather: slanting slopes of rain draining from clouds, patches of brassy sunlight, rainbows slung over rainbows in-between, and of course there was always the wind. It blew down from the dragon’s teeth of the Rimcurs, setting all things in constant motion, grasses, hair, hems, saddle straps, and horses’ manes.
After a few days of riding, however, the wind died down, the Rimcurs were softened by distance, and the empty steppes gave way to the river lands of eastern Karrith. Katlyn and Tallia rode along branching tributaries and around isolated elbow lakes. Finally, as trees reappeared they had wood for fires and cover from view. It was a mixed blessing, in all, because despite their progress westward, Katlyn did not know what to expect in these borderlands between Karrith and Antas to the north. They saw a few bands of refugees and fewer soldiers. After reports of creatures emerging from Sidon, Katlyn did not know what else they might encounter. As two young women without an escort, she knew it was best they avoided being seen. Katlyn kept her sword and spear handy, but was not sure what use weapons would be if they were overpowered, outnumbered, or both. Although, knowing what she knew of Tallia, Katlyn was certain they would not go down without a fight.
Her Maurvant companion had put on weight since returning home. The sunken hallows were gone from her cheeks, replaced by a more attractive roundness. But Tallia was far from preoccupied with her appearance: she kept her hair pulled back, except for a few short stands she kept feathered out to the side. Today she wore two streaks of white with red in between on each cheek. Something about how she kept her clothes belted close to her body with her baldric, crisscrossed with the strap of her quiver, reminded Katlyn of Gail, even Chloe.
Their journey continued. Katlyn’s mind was restless with thoughts of her family during the day and occasionally disturbed by nightmares at night. The skies they slept beneath held stars that were bright and piercing, like the winter air that had taken on a sharp edge. They slept close to the fire when they felt safe enough to build one, otherwise they spooned together for warmth, Tallia placing an arm around Katlyn when she woke from night terrors, Katlyn doing the same when Tallia shook and wept at night for her family.
It was after one particularly cold night that they were roused by the sounds of voices.
Katlyn moved slowly, stiff from the cold and sleep. Tallia bore no signs of such lethargy, leaping to her feet and reaching for her bow and quiver. But it was too late. The party had already spotted their horses and half of dozen men converged on their camp.
They were Maurvant. Katlyn knew this with certainty after having lived among them. They recognized Tallia as one of their own and spoke to her in their language, Katlyn only catching fleeting words and meanings. But from the way Tallia closed ranks with her and kept her arrow nocked back on her bowstring, Katlyn did not take their visitors to be friendly.
The men, wrapped in cloaks and furs, their breath forming clouds about their heads, who had found them called to the rest of the party. At first Katlyn was encouraged to see women among their numbers, but these women’s expressions were hard and unforgiving. One pointed at the antler-knife from the Rakne that Katlyn had stuffed under her belt and mumbled the Maurvant word for “killer.”
When their leader stepped into their midst, Katlyn understood why. The others she had not recognized, but the chief, this man with dark inky pools for eyes, his sulfur-yellow cloak clasped at his shoulder with a bone buckle, she remembered. He was the same man who had stared at her with such animus at the lakeshore when they had killed the Rakne.
“These are those that worship the Rakne,” Katlyn said.
“Yes, the Candelin. And they remember us.”
Not fondly, Katlyn thought.
“They know you are Maurvant?”
“It does not matter. We killed their master.”
And they intended to kill them as well, that was clear to Katlyn. The chief gave a signal and the others closed in for the attack. Tallia let fly an arrow, and struck a man in the shoulder, but there were too many of them. Their resistance, although fierce, was quashed quickly and soon they were both pinned down. Without other means, Katlyn cried out for help, her voice echoing like a ghost among the trees. There was no one to answer. But for good measure the Candelin tore a strip of her sleeve and stuffed it into her mouth. The chief gave another order and Tallia protested with a stream of incomprehensible words, her face pale. But she moved no one, not even the women, who began to gather firewood and stack it in a pyre.
“No—” Katlyn said.
Tallia met her gaze for the briefest of moments. “I am asking that they spare you.”
“No. Both of us, spare both of us!”
Tallia shook her head as an old woman, her mouth puckered in a frown, dumped a bushel of branches onto the pile. “It’s no use. They want to punish us for the sake of their god.”
“Your god is false. It was just an animal. A twisted creation,” Katlyn cried out, even though she knew her words were useless. The men found a log, and using their axes, chopped its end to a point and drove it into the ground so that it stood upright in the pyre. Using rope from Katlyn and Tallia’s own saddlebags, they tied them to the log and continued to pile wood. Katlyn’s bladder suddenly felt full to exploding and ready to burst when two of the men started to rub two sticks together to create an flame.
“Katlyn, I’m so sorry,” Tallia said, her face turned close to Katlyn’s. Katlyn reached her fingers out and locked them with her friend, words failing her completely for a response.
The firewood was piled up to their knees now. It was only for the others to wait now. Katlyn knew she was crying. She could not help it. She knew her words, her pleas for mercy were lost, even the ones she spoke in the Maurvant’s own tongue. The women, the men, most of all, the leader in the sulfur-colored cloak, watched with soulless eyes. Katlyn had heard of woman being ravished and that they had survived the ordeal by imaging themselves somewhere else, a place of peace, a moment of happiness: a childhood day playing games in the garden, resting in a mother or father’s arms. She reached into her mind for memories of her family, remembering meals with her cousins, her aunt and uncle, the glow of laughter in the love in their tiny house in on the fringes of the city. Would she be able to hold onto that memory, those feelings, even as the flames licked her flesh, scorched her hair, and blistered her skin?
“Don’t cry,” Tallia said. “Don’t cry.”
Katlyn tried to compose herself, tried to summon the courage she had seen in Gail, in Tallia, in Chloe, even in herself when she had faced the vaurgs, but even that was not as terrible as this. Then she had been free to move, to fight, not a helpless victim, immobile, impotent.
The men sparked a flame with the sticks, blew on it, and fed it strips of bark. The flame kindled. They handed it to their leader.
Not like this. Not like this. She was thinking it, then she was saying it, her fear turning to pleading as she clutched Tallia’s fingers painfully with her own. Something warm was running down her leg. As the chief stepped closer her breaths became shorter, her chest fighting against the ropes. Tallia spat. It was fruitless but the symbolism meant something. Katlyn’s own mouth was too dry but she noted with satisfaction that Tallia had struck true. The chief reached up to wipe his face with the corner of his cloak, the color of bile. Finished, he dropped it back down, the hem flapping close to his knees, Katlyn wishing it would catch fire and he would be immolated with them. There was no such twist, no such turn of luck. He stepped forward into the pyre, kindling snapping beneath his footsteps. His eyes locked on Katlyn’s, eyes that were pitiless and already aflame with the fanaticism born of cults formed in times of destitution.
The wood crackled around her. She could already feel the heat. As the chief began to move his eyes away, back to his followers, there was a soft thud, like a whip striking a hollow pumpkin. His lips parted and he dropped the burning brand completely, the flames roaring up to engulf all three of them. Still he did not flee. Instead he leaned towards Katlyn, his lips parted, flecked with spittle and blood. He put his hand on the center pole next to Katlyn as if to balance himself. His eyes were now wide and lidless. With a grunt he fell into the very flames he had fed, an arrow with red fletching sticking out of his back.