Banewreaker (45 page)

We shall dwindle, and pass into legend.

Lilias shuddered. "I'm sorry," she whispered, horribly aware that if she had not given counsel to Aracus, the bargain might never have been struck. "I didn't know what he would ask. Phraotes, I'm sorry!"

There was no answer, only the Were's dead, sharp-toothed grin.

If it were a bad joke, she hoped it was on Haomane's Allies.

A HALF DOZEN RAVENS PERCHED in the green shadows of the outermost edges of the Delta, drowsy in the midday sun. Beneath them, Ushahin Dreamspinner crouched, watching horses grazing on sedge grass.

He had been raised by the Grey Dam Sorash and, outcast or not, a part him would always be kindred to the Were. He knew the paths the Were trod; the dark paths of the forest, the dark paths of the pack mind. Although his path had diverged, he heard the echoes of their thoughts. When Oronin's Bow was raised against one of his Brethren, he felt it, and shuddered at the killing impact. When a dire bargain was struck, he bowed his head and grieved.

"You are too hasty, Mother," was all he whispered.

It was her right, the Grey Dam Vashuka. And he understood, oh yes, the thought behind it. Oronin's Children had never sought anything but solitude; the right to hunt, the right to be left alone. Still, he thought, she had surrendered too much, too soon. Perhaps it was a trick; yes, perhaps. The bargain held only as long as the Grey Dam lived. And she might live many hundreds of years upon the hoarded years her brethren sacrificed to her. His dam, the Grey Dam Sorash, had done so.

Or she might not. It was yet to see.

Ushahin watched the horses.

They did not care for him, horses. Although he was of the blood of two races, Lesser Shapers whose mastery of the lower orders of being went unquestioned, it was his years among the Were that had shaped him the most. Horses sensed it as if it were an odor on his skin. Ushahin, the predator. They carried him reluctantly at best, and when all was said and done, he preferred to travel on his own two feet. It had been a fine arrangement, until his Lordship had closed the Ways. Now, Ushahin had need of speed. Darkhaven was waiting; and the horses of Darkhaven lay to hand.

They were splendid creatures, there was no denying it. Their inadequate disguises had long since worn off; ill-cropped manes and tails re-grown in flowing splendor. They were poorly groomed, aye, but they had shed winter's shaggy coat, and their summer hides gleamed with good health.

He had his eye on the best of the lot, an ill-tempered bay with a coat the color of drying blood, a black mane and tail. It had been Hunric's mount, if his memory served. A long-legged stallion with a fine, wedge-shaped head and snapping teeth to boot. The others bore scars of his temper.

The horses of Darkhaven had sharper teeth than those bred elsewhere.

Ushahin waited until dusk, when his own abilities edged toward their height. It was then that he emerged from the verges of the Delta, a length of rope in his crooked hands. It had served to secure his skiff; it would serve for this.

"Come," he crooned. "Come to me, pretty one."

It didn't, of course. His target stood poised on wary legs, showing the whites of its eyes, aware of his intent. He had to use the glamour, a Were trick, catching its mind in the net of his thoughts. Once it was done, the horse stood still and trembled, its hide shuddering as if fly-stung. Ushahin limped from his place of concealment, placing the rope around its neck, winding a twist about its soft muzzle and knotting it to create a makeshift hackamore.

"So," he whispered. "Not so bad, is it?"

The blood-bay stallion shuddered. So close, their hair was intertwined; Ushahin, leaning, his fine, pale hair mingling with the horse's black mane. He could smell the sweat, the lather forming on the horse's blood-dark hide. Its defiance would only be held in check so long, unless he wanted to fight it all the way to Darkhaven. He did not. Now, or never. Ignoring the pain in his crooked limbs, he slid one arm over its neck and hauled hard, pulling himself astride, and clamped hard with both thighs.

"Home!" he shouted, casting aside the net of thought that bound it.

The bay exploded beneath him: bucking, sunfishing, limbs akimbo. Ushahin laughed out loud and clung to its back. It hurt, hurt beyond telling, jarring his ill-mended bones. Yet he was one of the Three, and he had breakfasted with a dragon. No mere horse would be his undoing, not even one of the horses of Darkhaven.

It was a long battle nonetheless. Almost, the bay stallion succeeded in unseating him. It plunged toward the Verdine River and planted its forelegs in a halt so abrupt Ushahin was thrown hard against its neck. The other horses watched with prick-eared interest as the bay twisted its head around to snap at him. It charged, splashing, into the fringes of the Delta and sought to jar him loose against the trunk of a palodus tree, bruising and scraping his flesh.

None of it worked.

By the time the bay's efforts slowed, stars were emerging in the deep-blue twilight. The capitulation came all at once; a slump of the withers, the proud head lowering. It blew a heavy breath through flared nostrils and waited.

"Home," Ushahin said softly, winding his thoughts through the stallion's. Leaning forward, he whispered in one backward-twitching ear. "Home, where the Tordenstem guard the Defile as it winds through the gorge. Home, where the towers of Darkhaven beckon. Home, tall brother, where your attendants await you in the stable, with buckets of warm mash and
svartblod
, and silken cloths for your hide."

The blood-bay stallion raised its head. Arahila's gibbous moon was reflected in one liquid-dark eye. It gave a low whicker; the other two horses answered. From verges of the Delta, a half dozen ravens launched themselves, flying low on silent wings over the moon-silvered sedge grass.

Ushahin laughed, and gave the bay its head. "Go!" he shouted.

With great strides, it did. Bred under the shrouded skies of the Vale of Gorgantum, it ran with ease in the pale-lit darkness, and thundering on either side were two riderless horses. One was a ghostly grey, the color of forge-smoke; the other was pitch-black. And before them all, the shadowy figures of the ravens of Darkhaven forged the way.

Homeward.

DANI HAD SLIPPED.

It was as simple as that. He did not know that the terrain he and his uncle traversed was called the Northern Harrow, but he did not need to be told that it was a harsh and forbidding land. He knew that bare feet toughened by the sun-scorched floors of the desert were a poor match for the cruel granite and icy clime of the northern mountains. And he had discovered, too late, that ill-sewn rabbitskin made for clumsy footwear. When the cliffs edge had crumbled under his footing, he slid over the edge with one terrified shout.

Unmindful of the pain of broken and bending nails, he clung to the ledge he had caught on his downward plunge, fingertips biting deep. Below him, there was nothing. It was an overhang that had broken his fall; beneath it, the cliff fell away, cutting deeply back into the mountain's peak. His kicking feet, shod in tattered rabbitskin, encountered no resistance. There was only a vast, endless drop, and the churning white waters of the Spume River below.

"Uncle!" Craning his neck, Dani fought terror. "Help me!"

Uncle Thulu—
lean
Uncle Thulu—peered over the edge of the cliff, and his eyes were stretched wide with fear in his weather-burnt face. "Can you pull yourself up, lad?"

He tried, but something was wrong with the muscles of his arms, his shoulders. There was no strength there. It might, Dani thought, have had to do with the popping sound they'd made when he caught himself. "No."

"Wait." Uncle Thulu's face was grim. "I'm coming."

Since there was nothing else for it, Dani waited, dangling from his fingertips and biting his lip at the pain of it. Overhead, Uncle Thulu scrabbled, finding the braided rope of rabbit-hide he'd made, looking for an anchor rock to secure it.

"Hang on, lad!" Thulu called over his shoulder, letting himself down inch by careful inch, a length of rope wrapped around his waist, his bare feet braced against the mountainside. "I'm coming."

The rope was too short.

Dani's arms trembled.

At home, the rope would be made of thukka-vine. There was an abundance of it. It was one of the earliest skills the Yarru-yami learned; how to braid rope out of thukka. Here, there was only hide, only the scant leavings of one's scant kills, poorly tanned in oak-water. And if
Uncle Thulu had not tried to make him shoes, Dani thought, the rope would be longer.

"Here!" Plucking his digging-stick from his waistband, Thulu extended it, blunt end first. "Grab hold, lad. I'll pull you up."

Dani exhaled, hard, clinging to the ledge with the fingers of both star-marked hands. Against his breastbone, the clay flask containing the Water of Life shivered. A fragile vessel, it would shatter on the rocks below, as surely as his body would. What then, if the Water of Life was set loose in Neheris' rivers, where her Children dwelled? It was the Fjeltroll who would profit by it. "Take the flask, Uncle!" he called. "It's more important than I am. Use your stick, pluck it from about my neck!"

"No." Thulu's face was stubborn. "You are the Bearer, and I will not leave you."

Gritting his teeth, Dani glanced down; down and down and down. Far below, a ribbon of white water roared over jagged rocks. It seemed it sang his name, and a wave of dizziness overcame him, draining his remaining strength. "I can't do it," he whispered, closing his eyes. "Uncle, take the flask. As I am the Bearer, I order it."

Without looking, he heard the agonized curse as his uncle reversed the stick. He felt the pointed end of his uncle's digging-stick probe beneath the cord about his neck, catch and
lift
. For an instant, there was a sense of lightness and freedom, so overwhelming that he nearly laughed aloud.

And then; a gasp, a sharp
crack
as the tip of the digging-stick broke under the impossible weight of the Water of Life. The flask thudded gently against his chest, returning home to the Bearer's being, nestling against his flesh.

"Dani." Thulu's voice brought him back, at once calm and urgent. "It has to be you. Grab hold of the stick."

Fear returned as he opened his eyes. Once again, it was the blunt end of the stick extended. The braided leather rope, stretched taut, creaked and groaned. "The rope's not strong enough to hold us both, Uncle."

"It is." Uncle Thulu's face was contorted with effort, his own arms beginning to tremble under the strain. "Damn you, lad, I wove it myself. It has to be! Grab hold, I tell you; grab hold!"

"Uru-Alat," Dani whispered, "preserve us!"

The end of the peeled baari-wood stick was within inches of his right hand. It took all his courage to loose his grip upon the steady ledge, transferring it to the slippery wood. What merit was there in the mark of the Bearer? Dani's palm was slick with terror, slipping on the wood. The vertiginous drop called his name. He struggled to resist its call as Uncle Thulu's digging-stick slid through his grasp, scraping heedlessly past the Bearer's starry markings.

Slid; and halted.

Against all odds, Dani found a grip; there, near the end, where the slick wood was gnarled. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Clinging to the rope with one arm, Uncle Thulu hauled hard with the other, grunting and panting with the effort. The leather rope thinned and stretched, thwarting their efforts… but it held and did not break. The muscles of his arm quivered as, inch by torturous inch, Thulu of the Yarru-yami pulled his nephew from the abyss. When his head reached a level with the overhang, Dani clawed at the rock with his free hand, ignoring the pain in his shoulders and levering himself upward until he got a foot beneath him, toes digging hard against the granite, and drew himself up onto the ledge to stand on wavering legs.

"Oh, lad." Uncle Thulu embraced him with one arm, weeping. "Oh, lad!"

"Truly, Uncle," Dani said, his voice muffled against Thulu's shoulder, "if I am the Bearer, I could ask no better guide."

It took a long time to get from ledge to cliff-top. When it was done, both were trembling with a mix of exertion and the aftermath of fear. Uncle Thulu unwound the rope from his waist and unknotted it from the anchor, a proud jut of granite. He kissed the rope in gratitude, and for good measure, the stone itself. "Uru-Alat be praised," he said fervently, shoving his digging-stick into his waistband.

"Truly," Dani murmured, collapsing onto the chilled stones. His arms ached and his shoulders felt half-pulled from their sockets. "How much farther, Uncle?"

Uncle Thulu paced the edge of the cliff, eyeing the river below. "We'll find another route." His voice was decisive. "A
better
route, Dani. The Spume is a key, I'm sure of it. There are… traces, a foulness in the current." He stroked his digging-stick, humming absently for a moment, then stopped. "There is a branch underground that leads to the Defile. That much I sense for, even here, the waters are tainted." Pausing in thought, he tapped his lips. "It must happen some leagues to the west. Perhaps, if we abandon the heights and cut westward… yes. Such is the pattern of Uru-Alat's veins." Thulu glanced at his nephew, who sat huddled in his cloak, cradling his aching limbs. "Have you the strength, lad?" he asked gently.

"Aye." Dani shuddered, and laughed. "At least," he said, "we've not encountered the Fjeltroll."

"WE HAVE RECEIVED NO REPORTS of such travelers."

Their host spoke smoothly; but then, Coenred, Earl of Gerflod, was a smooth man. His auburn hair was smooth, flowing over his shoulders. His beard was groomed and silken, and his ruddy lips were smooth within their tidy bracket of facial hair.

Osric nodded. "Like as not, they've not been spotted yet."

"Like as not," Earl Coenred agreed, hoisting a tankard of ale. His fingers, with their smooth nails, curved about the bejeweled tankard. He nodded to one of the serving-maids. "Gerde, fill our guests' cups. Drink up, lads, the mutton's yet to come!"

Bobbing a nervous curtsey, she obeyed, circulating around the long trestle table. It took a long time to serve the Staccian lord's contingent and Osric and his men. There were a great number of the former, clad in handsome attire. Another servant brought her a fresh jug of ale. As she reached the far end of the table, where the Fjeltroll were seated, her steps began to drag, and her hand trembled visibly as she poured.