Much to Blaine’s relief, Dacey kept their course on the ridges. Despite the occasional detour downslope to avoid rock outcrops, or abrupt hikes up to another level of the ridge, most of the path was flat. Much easier than walking on two different levels of ground with the same length legs... It was where anyone doing serious travel in the mountains would go — and the first place anyone looking for them would go.
No, she told herself, the first place anyone used to the mountains would go.
Poplar and maple, oaks and hemlock, ridgelines that swooped from one chain of hills to another, subtly veering east or west without notice — soon the landmarks became a blur in Blaine’s mind. A thoroughly disoriented blur. She realized suddenly that it was one thing to know the few ridges behind your homeplace, and quite another to know the pattern of the hills well enough to guide yourself through them.
Without Dacey, she doubted she could even find her way home; she marveled that he’d found his way to Shadow Hollers in the first place. There seemed to be no settled land in between.
And she badly wanted to find her way home. She wanted to be home. She wondered constantly if she’d done the right thing by going with Dacey, and she wondered how things had gone with with her family, if they were safe...if Rand had ever come to look for her or if Lottie was crazy with worry, adding more lines in her early-aged face. And she wondered just how far they would walk.
The dogs didn’t make it any easier. Excepting Mage, who traveled right at Dacey’s heel, the dogs ranged back and forth over the slopes, arriving and departing in great frenzies of excitement that never failed to scatter her thoughts and make her own weariness seem greater simply by contrast.
“Don’t they ever get tired?” Blaine asked, finally, during an afternoon that seemed especially long, on a day that seemed even longer — and only a day after Dacey’s escape.
“Never seem to.” Dacey’s hand dropped, as it often did, to rest on the crippled hound’s head. Then, as if he sensed the reason she’d said anything, he stopped, eyeing the trees around them. “Good place to take a breather, you think?”
“If you like.” She dropped to the ground while he was still shrugging off his pack, and watched with concealed surprise when he threw together a quick pile of easily found wood, started a fire, and spitted Blue’s latest catch — a rabbit, though Blaine didn’t know how the big dog had ever gotten his jaws on one — over it. Like magic, the hounds quit quartering the ridge and came to sit in an attentive circle. Blue, Blaine noticed, sat beside her, dividing his attention between the cooking meat and making sidelong glances toward her.
She pretended not to see him.
“Dacey,” she said, absently catching the end of a braid to fiddle with, “Who are those men? What did they want with you? I mean, why you instead of — well, Rand, maybe. After all, Rand lives right there. You were a stranger.”
He glanced at her, and then returned his attention to the rabbit. “I reckon that’s why it bothered them that I was there — I didn’t belong. They figured it meant I’d come there looking for ’em...and they were right. I warned your daddy of ’em the very eve I took supper with you.”
“But what did they want? That they kept asking and you wouldn’t answer?”
“I reckon I did answer, and they didn’t believe.” His knuckles went white around the spit he turned; it took him a moment too long to let go of it. “They wanted to know what magic it was I had that could track them down.”
“And?”
“And?” Dacey repeated, amused — which, she thought, was better than what he’d been a moment before. Haunted. “I told them the truth. Ain’t got no magic of my own — least, not aside from some spare seeings now and then — and I’m beginning to think you might have some of them for your own. No, I trap and hunt and trade for a living. But that wasn’t what they wanted to hear.”
“An’ that...that dark thing?”
There was a subtle tension in his face, a tightening at the corners of his eyes. “Jimson weed.”
“Jimson?” Blaine said doubtfully. “I’ve seen men on Jimson before. Boys, more likely, trying to show off, for all it makes ’em look stupid.” She couldn’t think of a single reference in her seer’s book — long left behind in the barn — to using Jimson, never mind in such a manner as she’d seen with Dacey. It was touchy stuff, and one time it might trigger visions and silliness; another it might just plain make you sick.
“Jimson and other things.”
She wasn’t sure she liked to see his features draw on that cold look, the one that made his jaw seem harder and his eyes more shadowed. And she realized he hadn’t at all answered her first question. Who are those men? She nibbled the end of her braid and frowned faintly at him.
He appeared not to notice, though his expression lightened some. “And now I’ll ask you something, Blaine Kendricks. I’ll bet anything you knew of those strangers before you come on me there. You knew of ’em the very day I come to your farm. I seen it on your face.”
“I run into ’em the day before.” She felt herself go stubborn, ready for censure, ready to care not like she’d had to care not about all the other disapproval in her life, not and get through it.
“An’ while I was at your table, you said nary a thing about them — nor did your daddy, an’ he would’ve, if he’d knowed of ’em. Would have been natural, me being strange, too. Blaine...why didn’t you tell him what you seen?”
Blaine drew her knees up, pulling her skirts down over them as far as they would go. A sullen, defensive posture. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“But I’m asking.”
She searched for a way to explain, until her frustration welled up and finally came out in a rush of words. “’Cause he don’t know I go to the hills, that’s why! ’Cause it’s a waste of time for a girl to learn the wilds, when she might be learning proper women things, and ’cause he’d forbid ’em to me if he knowed. And I got to have the hills, Dacey, I just got to — they’re the only thing that makes me feel better when someone compares me to Lenie, or tells me I got to marry some man who won’t much like my sharp bones poking him in bed. How’re you gonna understand that? You’re a man — you don’t get wore out with babies. You’re on your own, you don’t got someone making all your decisions for you. There warn’t no way I was gonna tell Daddy about those men, not till I knowed they were trouble enough to be worth the losing I’d do over it. Anyways, up till I found you with ’em, I just thought they was here to trade. I never got a close enough look to tell me otherwise.”
Dacey raised his eyebrows. “Huh,” he said, as Blue sidled closer to her, gazing from one to the other of them in concerned perplexity. “Who’d’ve guessed that was in there. ’Course, I shoulda known, after what you done for me.”
She realized, rather dazed, that he wasn’t judging her for what she’d done. He’d just wanted to know.
And she didn’t quite know how to react to that — but Blue saved her the trouble of figuring it out. Some decision had finally occurred in his doggy mind, and he was at last close enough to act on it. Slowly, as he had the day before, he reached for the braid she’d been twisting, his mouth open in anticipation, his lips drawn gently back —
“Shoo!” she exclaimed, and Dacey laughed, and that was that. She had the distinct impression that he’d sidetracked her with that question, that there were things he knew that she ought. Things she ought to be afraid of. But for now, dinner was all that mattered.
~~~~~
Rand was supposed to be grateful, that Nekfehr had given him this time off to plant Willum’s grave. But he felt far from grateful. Hostile was closer to the mark, rife with mutiny and half-formed plots to kill the Taken man. And he wasn’t the only one. Despite the warnings, there was talk, and the planning had already begun.
He tossed another shovelful of dirt down on the almost-covered casket — the diminutive, Willum-sized casket — and wiped the sweat of his upper lip, pausing to stare down at the homestead from the little flat that held their family graveyard. Lenie, her hair in an uncharacteristic braid and her skirts soiled and torn, planted in the garden. His mommy struggled with the steps to the porch, one of which had given way under the weight of the many friends who had come to pay condolences on Willum.
He should be down there, wielding that hammer. And Willum and Sarie should be playing in the yard. And Blaine —
He still didn’t believe she was dead. He couldn’t. He’d have found her, surely —
That didn’t bear thinking about. Rand turned back to his shoveling; he had only half a day for this chore. Willum’s casket disappeared under the steady rain of dirt, and soon enough he was tamping down the small mound of extra soil it had displaced. Unlike the early stages of this task, his mind no longer churned with defiance and hatred — instead, he gave it over to the repetitive nature of the shoveling, going blank and dull, closed to the world around him.
Which was why he didn’t notice when the leader and two of his fighters climbed the path to the graveyard, not until he was flanked. He startled around to find Nekfehr regarding him with an unnerving false geniality.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” the man said.
“You come all the way up here to ask me?” Rand frowned, and tried not to. Tried not to show what he’d been thinking moments before, or the trickles of unseemly fear that made him clench his hands around the shovel. “Ol’ Bayard’s the one that knows the most about things, not me.”
“He doesn’t know your sister.”
Rand narrowed his eyes. “What about her? She’s dead, didn’t you say so?”
The man ignored the question. “Not many people seem to know much about her, other than the fact that she’s skinny, somewhat impractical, and hasn’t garnered any suitors. But they all seemed to think that you know her better than anyone.”
“I reckon I do,” Rand said, sounding stubborn even to his own ears. “I guess that means I’ll have the best memories of her.”
“Two days ago you didn’t believe she was dead.”
Two days of time to decide that for Blaine, being considered dead was better than being looked for. He muttered, “I’ve had time to wrestle with the notion some.”
“Where would she go, if she was looking for a place to hide?”
Rand shook his head. “She don’t know the hills.” It was an easy lie, after all this time.
The man considered him, his dark eyes cold, but without hostility. “She knew them well enough to elude my men when she came for Dacey Childers.”
Realization bloomed within Rand, double-headed realization. She’d eluded them. She was alive. And — “It’s Dacey you want, ain’t it? They’re together somewheres, and you’re looking for them.” He jammed the shovel into the dirt and let it stand up on its own. “Why say she’s dead? Why make us think we’ve lost two?”
“Because it suited my purpose,” the man said. “And because it’s only a matter of time. Your sister is a symbol of defiance, and we will not tolerate defiance. Dacey will live until my questions are satisfied. Blaine will not.”
“And you think I’m gonna tell you where I think they are?”
“Yes. I do.”
That was all the warning he got. A physical threat he would have reacted to, he would have ducked or blocked. But the man simply reached out and touched him, and —
Rand’s body stood, stiff in shock, while the force that plundered his mind ignored it. His awareness, his soul, ran in frantic circles, trying to evade the tendrils of oppression closing in on him.
Suddenly there was nowhere else to run. His body grunted, a reflection of his inner scream of terror, and purple haze over sifted jumbling memories, Blaine heading into the hills, Blaine talking wild dreams, needing soothing in the night, Blaine’s well-hidden interest in Dacey’s words at supper, words about seers —
The oppressive force stopped there, hesitating long enough to come to some decision, and reached for another line of memories from much earlier days. The seers moved south after their victory, south to some place Rand had never been, but that he’d occasionally heard about. South, a week’s travel through the mountains, over the huge obstacle of Sky Mountain and into its valleys — unless you risked the much short trip along the swift, rocky river — dangerous travel that got you to the same place much faster.
Rand staggered, not ready to catch his body when it suddenly became his to control again, too dazed to do anything but blink and throw himself to the side, retching in reaction.
He was only vaguely cognizant of the two plainsmen stepping away from his side and out of the graveyard. But he was painfully, distinctly aware of the satisfaction in the leader’s voice.
“Thank you, Rand. That will do just fine.”
~~~~~
The annektehr within Nekfehr reeled with the delightful intensity of Rand’s fear and revulsion — anne-nekfehr — and in the reverberating feedback from Nekfehr himself, the very same feelings generated from within the annektehr’s permanent vessel. With the plainsmen at Nekfehr’s heels, the annektehr let his information flow to the Annekteh whole, sharing with all the linked, those who were embodied annektehr and those who were not — the nekteh, whose incorporeal existence lent the annektehr strength.
None of the nekteh would have been able to say which brought the whole of them more satisfaction...the information gained — a means to find Dacey Childers, to find the fled seers — or the feelings stolen from the Rand Vessel. The anne-nekfehr.
Survival, the Annekteh demanded.
The anne-nekfehr, the Annekteh craved. Needed.
Would do anything to get.
~~~~~
After five days of walking and climbing — with one fully devoted to simply crossing Sky Mountain, even though Dacey knew where the gap was — Blaine found it almost impossible to get moving in the morning. Short rations, long days, constant worries. They didn’t talk much; she never had the breath nor energy to voice the questions with which his habitual silence left her. By now she at least knew that they were headed for his homeplace, that she was going to visit the hills to which the seers had fled. And that they wouldn’t stay long — just enough for Dacey to visit some folks, tend to some business, and give them each time to take a breath.
For he hardly looked any better than she felt.
The strain around his eyes didn’t disappear with the bruises her potion had helped to heal so quickly, and she had the feeling he hardly slept at night. Still, she knew he stopped for more rests that he’d have given himself, and at evening, when she collapsed, he set up the night’s camp with efficient moves that Blaine only slowly grew used to seeing in a man. She watched him with his dogs, and lived with his silent companionship, and wondered what it would be like to have such a life. Confident. Independent. Making his own decisions, not minding what people like Cadell said about them.
It ain’t seemly to covet. And that’s what she was doing — coveting not his possessions, but his very life.
But when Dacey finally led her to a small clearing and ushered her into the tiny but well-built cabin that occupied it, Blaine’s only thoughts were grateful ones. She didn’t protest when he gave her a gentle push toward the bed in the corner; she fell on top of it and just as quickly fell asleep.
When she woke, sunlight poured through the open cabin door and the thickly glazed window. She found herself alone, and covered with a brightly patterned quilt which hadn’t been there when she’d fallen asleep. The next day? Had to be, to judge from the stiffness in her bones and the pang in her bladder. Slowly, she hitched herself up in the bed to look around.
Dacey’s was an orderly little home, one room with an alcove of stored food goods and a small door in the floor that Dacey had made no attempt to hide with a rug. She decided, since she hadn’t seen many outbuildings on the way in, that it must be his dairy: cool, stone and underground. Everything he owned seemed to be neatly tucked away on shelves or in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, except some herbs that hung high off the ceiling. Despite its size, the cabin lacked the perpetually cluttered look of Blaine’s home — the result of a busy family with five children merely going about life.
She wasn’t sure whether she liked it more, or less — but it was certainly different.
Dacey’s recent absence showed in the dust and cobwebs — mostly occupied — decorating the corners and floor. She pushed off the quilt, grateful to see that the cookstove was going and had warmed the cabin despite the half-open door. Dacey was nowhere in sight, but Blue lay across the threshold, and he greeted her with hearty tail slaps. She stepped over him to run to the outhouse and back, suddenly aware that she was starving. With some relief, she found tea simmering on the stove, and some precious sugar to put in it. A handful of dried turkey strips sat on the windowsill beside the stove, and she gnawed off a bite to soften in her mouth. And then, unable just to sit there and eat, not interested in wandering around to look for Dacey, she found a broom behind the door and put herself to work.
Blue watched her with great interest and an oft-thumping tail, making her sweep around him — for she couldn’t bring herself to broom him when he aimed mournful eyes at her. When she finished with the broom she usurped a rag to clean the lamp chimney — and spent some time examining the lamp itself, a coal-oil lamp with a strange, perforated deflector under the wick sleeve, like none she’d ever seen before. Finally, she found a pan and cloth and went outside to draw water so she could clean the two thick-glassed windows.
She was admiring those windows when he came back, staring at the distortion in the glass and wondering how he got such a treasure up into the hills. She knew two families that had paid for glass windows, but her family did with open shutters in the summer and well-greased rawhides in the winter — which weren’t clear but at least let in some light.
Dacey cleared his throat to let her know he was standing in the door and she backed away from the window to look at him. He was a sight she had grown used to, although the fading bruises were still changing the landscape of his face.
“I thank you for cleaning the place up,” he said. “It’s been neglected some lately, I guess.”
“It was plenty neat,” Blaine told him. “I just didn’t want to be sitting around.” I want to be back home. But she didn’t say so; she’d said it often enough on the journey, and he well knew it. Instead she asked the questions their flight and breathless climbing had not left time for, fiddling with her skirts a moment to work up the nerve. “Dacey, you ain’t once really told me what’s happening. I been real patient, but I gotta know who those folks were, and what they want with us — us and some sassafras groves they consider we know about.”
“Ah, you heard that, did you?” Dacey responded, setting a string of traps down inside the door. Blue gave them a perfunctory sniff and wandered outside into the sunshine, greeting Mage as he went by. Dacey left the door ajar — for the dogs, Blaine figured — and took the only chair in the cabin as Blaine backed up to the bed and sat down.
“Yes, I heard that,” she said. “You know what’s going on, Dacey — you have, right from the start. Whatever it is, brought you all the way up to Shadow Hollers. I think it’s ’bout time you just spit it out.”
“Ain’t you full of questions.” He gave her a crooked little smile, full of his wry nature.
“Always have been. Since you’ve done took me from my home, you might as well get used to it.”
“What if you don’t get no answers?”
“I reckon you’ll get tired of hearing the questions after a while.”
He studied her a moment, the smile gone. “And what iff’n you don’t like what I got to tell you?”
She shrugged, feeling herself on the edge of victory. “I don’t guess I can hold it agin you, can I?”
His gaze went inward, then, and his foot twitched a couple times — a tense motion Blaine was certain he hadn’t meant to do. “There’s some I know about this, an’ there’s some I don’t. Those men come from the north, and they want what they’ve always wanted: more. Territory. Slaves. Things of magic, like these hills got. They’re looking for the sassafras special, for the way it soaks up the hill magic.”
She blinked at him.
“You knew that, didn’t you? You and your sassafras potions?”
Numbly, she shook her head. “I guess things more’n I know ’em. I got this book...but it’s just bits and pieces.” Numb, because she wasn’t thinking about sassafras, or lumber of any sort, or even potions. They come from the north, and they want —
“What hill magic?” she blurted — anything to keep from thinking —
“It’s there,” Dacey said gently, as though not to scare her thoughts from the path they were taking. “It’s coming back. They know that. They needed to act before folks learn how to use it again. Before they learn to fight back.”
“What makes you think we ain’t no good at looking out for ourselves now?”
He raised an eyebrow into the shaggy bangs of his dark ash-blond hair. “You know the tales, Blaine. You’ll know all the answers, if you’ll only think on it.”
No, she didn’t. She didn’t want to, even though she suddenly realized she had known for days, had hidden it in exhaustion and worry and annoyance at the hounds. Men from the north, men who knew magic. Men who intended to enslave her people. Like before. Dacey, seer’s blood come north. And the sky she’d seen that one day, the one he’d so easily called a Taker’s Sky when he sat down to sup with them. “Spirits,” she whispered. “It’s them, come back.”
Brief satisfaction flashed in his eye. “Last time, they came a’blazing down from the north, figuring nothing could stand ’em off — but when we’re prepared in these mountains, there ain’t nothing can get in. This time they’re sneaking in quiet as they can, and they’ll win iff’n we don’t get to fighting.”
Blaine sat back a little and let the air run out of her body. Five generations earlier, at Annekteh Ridge, they’d had seers to point out the dangers — the Takers and Taken.
There were no seers in Shadow Hollers, now.
“Everyone thinks they were killed at Annekteh Ridge,” she said, her voice still hardly more than a whisper.
“Killing the Taken don’t do nothing but kill parts of the Annekteh,” Dacey said. “Not even that, if the annektehr can leave out before the Taken dies, and return to the Annekteh whole.” He ran a hand across the back of his neck, and that weary look was back. “But not many believed that. They wanted to think the Annekteh were kilt, and it was fussing over that that drove my family south. That’s why you’ve no seers up your way.”
“No,” she said, in borderline belligerence, “we’ve no seers. We haven’t, for a long time. We’ve been getting along, though.”
“For some time.” Dacey tipped his chair back so the front legs lifted off the ground. “But I seen the signs so I come on back, hoping I could help.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have any magic!”
“I did,” Dacey said, deceptively mild. “Which means I don’t. No one here does. The magic’s not strong like in your parts. My grandmother had the eye, but it weren’t common no more even then. Any longer, there ain’t anyone to do real seer things, like calling up visions a’purpose, reading things in the hills and the sky, having the knack and the learning to work potions and charms and protections. I wish I were a seer, and could tell which of those men at the camp had been Taken, but all my grandmother left me was her hounds, and that were a long time ago. I got seeings now and then, like I told you before.”
Something in Blaine didn’t want to know, and she was surprised when she asked it anyway. “Seeings?”
“Dream-like things,” he said. “Come night and day, don’t matter which.”
“I got dreams,” she whispered.
“Thought you might.” His smile held sympathy. “The magic’s coming back to Shadow Hollers, like Gran said it would. That’s what drew the Takers. You hearken that your brother didn’t see the Taker’s sky like you did? It comes to some people different than others. That’s why only some of our folks was seers in the first place.” He tipped the chair upright, ending what was for him an abnormally long conversation. “If you’ve got seeings, you’ll learn to sort ’em out from plain old dreams soon enough.”
But Blaine wasn’t ready to end this discussion, not yet. Not while she had him actually talking. She scooted forward on the bed, and Blue took it for invitation, sticking his heavy-boned head in her lap.
“Then what’re we gonna do?” She gave the dog a half-hearted shove and twitched her braid back behind her shoulder, out of his reach.
“We-ell,” Dacey said, rubbing his stubbly whiskered chin, “I’m going to have me a shave, handle a few chores around here. Then I’ve got to take a trip into town. My kin don’t have no more magic, but they still got lore. Might be I can learn something of use. Got to warn them, in any case, though the Annekteh ain’t got no call to come this way, not yet. Then we’ll circle back up to your home and get you back to your folks. And I ’spect soon after that, you all will have another Annekteh Ridge for your winter stories.”
Blaine shuddered. One Annekteh Ridge, kept far in the past, had definitely been enough for her.
~~~~~
Willum’s soft crying —
Blaine jerked up straight, cocking her head to the breeze.
Nothing. Since her talk with Dacey the day before, she’d been hearing —
Nothing.
One of the dogs, likely, making some soft protest about its perpetually hungry belly.
Blaine sighed and settled back into place on the moss and lichen-covered rock above Dacey’s covered spring, where she watched him soften the hides he’d had tanning while he was away. She’d seen fox, wildcat, beaver and wolf in the pile of pelts before him, and she’d already noticed, in the little shed behind the house, a stack of folded deerhide.
It seemed that Dacey and his dogs were very good at making a living for each other.
She hoped he was as good at dealing with the Annekteh.
Blaine sighed again and shifted her bony bottom against the rock, knowing she ought to offer her help...but pulling and stretching the dampened hides didn’t much appeal to her. Besides, to judge from the sweat standing out on Dacey’s upper lip, she wouldn’t have the strength to do much good. Not the strength she saw in his shoulders, bare of his shirt in the sunshine. She recalled their run together, the dash from the Takers, and suddenly recalled the feel of clutching his arms, when they’d only been trying to keep one another going.
Spirits. That was a thought worthy of Lenie. She blushed good and hard, and concentrated on other thoughts. More familiar ones...the way she felt out of place and useless. The worry that plagued her every thought, the wondering about —
Willum’s faint cry...
Dacey paused in his work, looking down at Mage, grinning a little at the dog’s sprawl-legged position.
How could he look so calm? So normal? How dare he?
Hot breath gusted down her neck.
Blaine squeaked, wrenching around so fast she almost lost her balance and fell off the rock.
Blue. Grinning, drooly Blue.
She scowled at him and pointedly turned around, refusing him a greeting. As if she wanted to encourage him! The other hounds surged down the hill behind her and split to flow around the blue ticked dog, yapping breathless little greetings to Dacey. They quickly settled — if only after Whimsy stepped on Mage and provoked his quick snap of ire — flopping to the ground, happy and panting, their tongues looking twice as long as their heads.
Blue lay down and slowly inched up beside Blaine, ignoring the fact that half his substantial body wouldn’t fit on the rock; he ended up draped over the side of the rock with two legs standing and two couchant. Blaine snorted at him and crossed her arms.
“One thing about a hound,” Dacey said, grinning at Blue, “they don’t spend too much time doting on you — but when they decide it’s time for a little loving, there ain’t nothing you can say about it.”
“I’ve noticed,” Blaine said dryly. To keep the dog from pushing his big slobbery mouth into her lap, she patted him. He lowered his head with a contented whfff, and was soon slumbering in his improbable position.
Impatience stirred anew. It was too homey, this little scene of Dacey working on furs and his dogs watching him. Too normal. Here she was, sitting on a rock in the cool spring sunshine, and her family was...what? Facing down Annekteh?
She needed to be doing something, anything. “Got any greens planted around here, or ought I to find your creek and pick ’em wild?”
Dacey held a raccoon pelt up for inspection. “Creek’s your best bet, but I got a patch. If it warn’t more weeds than mustards this year, you’d near be able to see it from there. Blue, go check the garden.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got him trained to pick your supper,” Blaine said, unable to keep the smart tone from her voice as the dog gave a rumbly groan and rose. “An’ do the other dogs plant it?”
Dacey laughed outright, a noise which took Blaine by surprise. Somehow she’d assumed that this taciturn man just...didn’t.
“That makes a pretty picture in my mind,” Dacey said. “But no, I done the planting, and do the picking, too. But I do have him check for rabbits and groundhogs of the evening — he likes that. Follow him an’ you’ll find the garden.”
Blue seemed pleased to find Blaine behind him, and waited, his tail slowly wagging, while she ducked inside to get a bucket. Then he led her down a faint path through last year’s tall, dried sweet goldstalks, until they came to a small square garden spot filled with overgrown greens and weeds. Blaine stared skeptically at it.
It took some scrutiny, but she finally she spotted some lamb’s quarters and pokeweed along the outer edges of the garden, both still young and tender, the poke not yet purple with its poison. She could mix them along with the mustard greens and some early leeks, and then bread-fry the poke for poke sallet. She drifted down to the creek — Dacey’s mountains were enough like hers that she found it where she expected it — and discovered both jewelweed shoots and cowslip — enough greens to do them for a day of meals, and she’d be careful to cook that cowslip through. The hound, she noticed, had moved on to his own business and was searching the garden rows for the scent of furry interlopers.
The work didn’t last half long enough to keep her busy, or take near enough concentration to keep her from fretting. But at least when she returned to the cabin she had the chore of washing and cutting the greens — and it was nice finally to add some effort of her own to this venture. She poked around the cabin and found some lard, corn and wheat flour, and an egg beside the sink basin. Now where had he found an egg? Were there chickens around here somewhere, too?
Well, the hounds probably laid the eggs. They did everything else.
Blaine put the pone together and set it aside to wait on cooking until Dacey came in. It was late afternoon, and they’d not had a midday meal, so surely he’d look for something to eat soon. And it was time to get the woodstove going anyway, to keep off the chill of the early spring night.
When the fire was started and steady enough not to need constant adjustment of the draft, Blaine retired to the bed, curling up around herself to stare out the window. A reminder she wasn’t at home, that window was.
She’d be back home soon enough. Dacey had said they were going into town, and then the next day they would start back. She didn’t know what they’d find when they got there, but he had so much quiet purpose about the whole thing that, for now, she was inclined to trust his unspoken plans. For now. And tomorrow — well, seeing a new place, a new town — her first real town — was a lure to which she couldn’t help but respond.
The thick, wavy glass showed her Dacey’s distorted figure, and she uncurled from the bed. Maybe he’d tell her a little about the town over their meal. Maybe he’d even tell her a little about his family. Anything to keep her mind busy.
Anything.
~~~~~
Nekfehr’s annektehr could feel the man tremble inside, wrenching himself, if only momentarily, far enough apart from the Taker to do so. These hill folk might not know what was coming next, but Nekfehr did.
They thought to rebel. Of course they did. Just as Nekfehr’s home village — an insignificant, failing little Breeder village — had once thought to rebel, shortly after Nekfehr himself was taken from them.
If the Annekteh had realized that the woman belonged to one of their most useful vessels, they might not have used her as an example for the others.
But oh, his anguish had tasted fine, when he’d come across her body. And his despair, the torment when the annektehr had released him just enough to hold her, but not enough to take his own life as he so badly desired — for anything, anything, was preferable to serving the bastard Annekteh.
So thought Nekfehr, the Annekteh’s finest.
~~~~~
Rand stared warily at the men inside the hall, standing out in the meeting hall yard in the early evening drizzle, along with everyone else from the Hollers. So much for their suppers. Most of the children sat together, trading bits of their hastily wrapped meals. In front of the barn, two small, sturdy, hollow-bred horses snatched at wet grass, their flanks and shoulders steaming; they’d run from the head of one hollow to another, spreading the news of this meeting and then galloping on to let the word skip down the hollow from homestead to homestead.
The meeting hall itself was filled with the plainsmen; most of them were at their own evening meal, and the others were simply keeping dry. Only the leader and two other men, Annekteh-took both, were actually out in the yard with the locals. Rand had had no personal contact with these Taken, but he’d learned to identify them after a few moments of careful study. They often acted just as anyone else, but inevitably there came an odd moment when their expressions went vague, or their movements were awkward. For the most part, the Annekteh stayed with the same small group of men. Rand knew who they were, and so did everyone else.
But he had no idea what the gathering was about. He hadn’t heard of any incidents besides the one the day before, when a pair of Shadow Hollers men had managed not only to fell a tree at just the right wrong angle, but then to yell their warnings just a tad too late to save one of their overseers from a broken arm and who knows how many broken ribs. As far as Rand knew, their red-faced apologies and proclamations of distress had convinced the guards it had been an accident. At least, there had been no interrogations, not like the one he’d been through by Willum’s grave.
Rand realized that he was smiling — and that he was being watched. The chill that washed over him might have been the combination of rain on top of a long sweaty day...or maybe not. In any case, he was not smiling any longer.
Someone drifted up behind him; Rand barely turned his head to identify Nathan, a young man from the western edge of the Shadow Hollers territory. Lenie had turned his eye at one of the first of their enforced gatherings, and now Nathan had managed to partner himself with Rand in the timbering.
“Heard something today,” Nathan said, in the quiet but natural tones they’d all taken to using when they didn’t want to be either overheard or suspected.
Rand merely grunted in reply, his gaze on the one called Nekfehr; the man seemed distracted by something within the hall, and was naturally unconcerned by either the growing darkness or the continuing rain in which his slave labor stood.
“He ain’t like the others,” Nathan said; of course he was talking about the leader. “They say he’s mad.”
Rand glanced quickly back at Nathan, then at the leader, and another hard look at Nathan. Mad Annekteh? Or mad beneath the annkektehr within? But he fought to keep his curiosity from his face.
“Our guards was talking about it today. When I was getting water, ’member — they was all taking a break. The fellow even gives them the creeps, from the sound of it.”
“Why would he be madder’n any of the rest of ’em?” Or a better question — why weren’t they all mad.... Rand shuddered, thinking again of the moments by Willum’s grave.
Nathan’s voice lowered even further. “He weren’t ever supposed to be took. They got Breeder villages — they sounded right scornful of ’em, though. Them inside are used for Breeding, left alone otherwise. But Nekfehr, they Took anyway, once they found him. And when the village rose up agin it, the Takers done had him kill his family.” He let the words settle, heavier than the rain, not as easily shed.
“Spirits,” Rand said, eyeing the man, who had just made an imperious gesture to someone inside the hall. “Ain’t no little wonder he comes across so spooky.”
“Even the other Taken are some scairt of him, I think,” Nathan said, then abruptly shut up as Nekfehr’s attention turned on the group.
“We have something to discuss,” the man said. He moved out of the doorway with little regard for the rain that fell on his fine white linen shirt. From behind him, one of his two attendants discreetly settled a black cloak on his shoulders. That, too, seemed to go unnoticed. “I’m surprised this conversation is necessary, after the little demonstration I gave when we first arrived.”
Rand stiffened; he couldn’t help it. When the leader looked his way, he aimed his glare at the ground, but he didn’t try to school his face into bland respect. Willum, a little demonstration.
“My men seem to be having more accidents than usual. A sprain here, a stumble there, wayward falling trees...it adds up to something I don’t like. For instance, there seem to be an unusual number of incidents with large animal snares.”
They’d almost lost a man the day before, to a bear trap. Pity; it had been so close. Pity, too, it had come on top of the tree-felling, for that pointed to plotting amongst them.
But the Annekteh would find no collusion in the hollows. There was none. They knew better — it only took catching one, Taking one, to get the lot of them in trouble. So there was merely an unspoken, gritty determination to undermine these invaders. So far they’d done a surprising amount of damage. Minor damage, of course, but even the little things began to add up.
“Do you really want us to start random checks on you people?” the leader asked, inserting true surprise into his voice. Sometimes, Rand reflected, he sounded almost human.
On the other side of the gathering, a thin, undersized youth with full-sized ears flashed a look of panic. He was flanked by two others of about the same age, Blaine’s age. One was a strapping boy, larger in height and girth than Rand himself; the other was unremarkable, aside from a certain expression of adult determination, and had some of the awkwardness of a boy not yet come into full growth. They exchanged scowls; the larger boy nudged their skittish companion, an understated but urgent gesture.
“Ah, I see someone has something to say.” There was that odd moment of hesitation, while the leader seemed to be listening to something none of the others could hear. “Estus, is it?”
The smaller boy seemed to steel himself. His voice was thin. “Yessir.”
“Do you know something about the snares and traps? Perhaps why they seem to be in such annoying locations? Perhaps, even, who is doing it?”
“I —” the boy said, and then quickly shook his head, his face reddening.
The leader said nothing, but crooked his finger in a distinct command for the boy to approach. It was the kind of gesture meant to shame, and in the damp twilight, the blush of the boy’s face crept down his neck, deepening.
“It was mine.” The middle-sized boy grabbed Estus’ upper arm to keep him in place, though Estus had shown no sign of stepping away from his friends. “Can’t help it none if your men done picked animal trails to patrol on. You sent us out to hunt, and by the spirits, hunting’s what we’re doing.” He tried to hold the leader’s gaze, but couldn’t. In the end, he joined his smaller friend in staring at the ground. But his expression was still more defiance than fear.
“I see,” the leader said.
“Reckon you all done stumbled into some of my snares, too,” the big youth said. “We got an unlikely number of big critters coming around this spring. Got to keep ’em cleared out or they’ll eat up all our game.”
From the back of the crowd, another young voice piped up. “I been setting some ’long my ridge, too — had some few sprung and nothing but boot prints around.” The anonymous confession prompted a number of murmured declarations; Rand hid a smile. No doubt they were all true, for the boys knew there was nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by lying. No doubt they’d talked amongst themselves of the large number of big predators in the area, and then carefully, individually, laid their traps along the obvious human trails. Any one of them might get caught, but it could never be traced to organized mutiny.
The leader seemed to realize as much. His features were mostly shadowed by the darkness, but enough light from the hall washed over his face to show the tight set of his mouth. “Your...carelessness has wasted much time. There will be no more timbering accidents. There will be no more trapping accidents.” He looked at Estus’ friend, the boy who’d confessed to setting the bear trap; with sudden, smooth strides he was in front of the boy, and had taken his chin with gloved fingers. The boy had very little time for the fear that flashed across his face; his eyes rolled up, and his body trembled with little jerks that Rand thought were pain-induced. Some kind of Taker pain. Nekfehr smiled, pleasuring in the boy’s reaction, and Rand was sure of it.
After a long, breathless moment, the leader removed his grip with the kind of disdain that Rand’s daddy used to toss dead rats out of the barn. The boy would have fallen had not his strapping friend caught and easily held him.
With that same disdain in his eyes, the leader looked around the assembly with quiet menace. “Do I make myself clear?”
He did. There was nodding; there were murmurs of assent; there were shuffled feet. In the arms of his comrade, the dazed boy blinked and stood on his own, pale in the waning light.
The men and women of Shadow Hollers, enslaved to the Annekteh, dispersed without conversation, apparently cowed. But Rand knew they were not. They had made the enemy blink and take notice.
It was a start.
~~~~~~~~~~