Cordimancy (33 page)

“Let me see,” said Oji.

“Where’s Shivi?” the old man said instead. Scuffing and panting told Malena that he was attempting to stand.

“Here.”

Malena turned to see a familiar form limping toward them from beyond Toril.

“Are you hurt, Shiv?” Paka quavered.

“Got knocked over by that fool horse. I twisted my knee going down,” said Shivi. “I’ll live.”

“That horse saved our lives, I think,” muttered Toril. “As soon as they saw that we were standing our ground and the horse was running, they lost interest in us. We’d be stuck full of spears otherwise.”

“They’ll come back soon,” Oji said.

In the dimness, Malena could see that Toril shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. They were after food, not murder. Did you see the formation they used?”

“The line?” she asked.

He nodded. “That’s a dumb setup for a battle, if numbers are on your side. We only had to fight from the front.”

“Ah,” Oji said meaningfully.

Toril turned to face the direction where the horse had disappeared. “It’s the same maneuver my tat had me practice with Hika. Drives the sheep.”

“Where?” Malena asked.

“Into a trap. Or off a cliff, maybe.”

45

blue sky ~ Malena

“
What
do we do now?” Malena asked.

The sound of disembodied voices swelled in the dimness. Malena tensed and held her breath, but in a few moments, silence reasserted itself.

“We put distance between us and the pishachas. As much as we can,” Oji said. “They might find their way here, but unless they sense better than I do, tracking us farther, in these fumes and in the dark, will be tough. That gives us a chance.”

“Can you manage?” Malena said, turning to Paka. Although he was close, murk hid the expression on his face. His posture, however, communicated pain.

“For a while,” he muttered.

Oji gestured. “I think we want this way.”

At her side, Malena felt Toril stiffen.

“Wait,” he said slowly. He stretched out the staff until it was horizontal, then pointed into ashy fog, shuffled slightly, swung one way, hesitated, turned back. Finally he settled on a direction, dropped the tip of the staff to the dirt, and sighed. “We go there.”

Malena inhaled softly.

“Almost the same direction the horse disappeared?” Shivi said. “The same direction those boars and their riders went?”

Toril’s voice sounded apologetic. “The staff just lit up for me. You still can’t see it?”

“We barely see your outline,” Oji said. “Let alone any glow.”

“It gets brighter when I point in some directions, dimmer in others.”

“Well, it is not north,” Oji said. “At least, it doesn’t feel north to me.”

“I’m not so eager to meet those little monsters again,” Paka said, his voice full of strain. “Are you sure?”

The group waited, but Toril did not speak.

“What if the staff is just finding nearby magic?” Malena suggested. “If some old spell lingers in that wood, maybe it responds to any similar power. The hairs on my neck have been warning about something all day. Something that grows stronger.”

“Maybe it’s pointing to danger, not escape?” Shivi said.

Toril seemed to shrug. For a long time, he didn’t respond. Malena thought she saw a silhouette of knuckles against his bowed forehead.

“I could be wrong,” Toril whispered at last. “Or I could be imagining the whole thing—a figment of my wishful thinking. I don’t think so, but how much should we trust what
I
think? Five know none of us want to believe we’re wandering blind, here. I’ve made enough mistakes, skipped enough sleep, and seen enough awful things in the past few days that it all begins to blend into a sort of nightmare. It makes me take any challenge to my sanity seriously—especially if someone accuses me of foolish hope. How sane was it to come after the children? Or to think we might cross this cursed valley?”

“Your staff put us in the river,” Oji said. “That took us from the obvious path, and it was not crazy.”

“No?” Toril asked. “It about got Shivi killed. And don’t forget that the staff put us in the path of the pishachas, too.” Malena sensed a plaintive, almost desperate tone as her husband’s words were swallowed by gloom.

“Don’t have time for this,” Paka said, gasping like he spoke through gritted teeth. The strings of his instrument twanged slightly as he hoisted. “We need to make a choice now.”

“I say we follow the staff,” said Shivi. She stooped and lifted Paka’s arm across her shoulders. “Not just because our clan chief asks us to, but because that’s what we decided to do when we came here. I’m not changing my mind now.”

Oji exhaled quietly, then shrugged. “She’s right.”

When nobody dissented, Toril bent to position himself beside the old man, opposite Shivi.

Malena waved him off. “You’re too tall,” she said. “And Oji’s too short. Let me.”

The two women took enough weight off Paka’s legs that he managed to move forward. Toril paced ahead. Oji brought up the rear, sword in hand.

Malena held the string that bound them to her husband, and kept eyes on the ground, hoping to avoid stones and depressions that would cause a stumble. Within a short time, however, full dark swallowed them, and even her own feet became invisible.

They shuffled on, starting and stopping as Toril picked his way forward.

Over and over, Malena felt Paka’s rib cage heave beneath her arm as he breathed in uneven gasps. Sometimes he convulsed and staggered, overcome with fits of coughing.

She was laboring more than an ordinary walk demanded, and she puffed in and out through her mouth. Her throat parched. The thirst that had bothered her all day was now a constant, nagging imperative. Her lips had cracked; when she attempted to moisten them with her tongue, she felt roughness and tasted copper.

Soil slid and sank with the feel of loose sand.

They curved right, then zagged left.

It felt like the ground began to trend upward, although it was hard to be sure. Malena’s thighs and back protested. She’d been trying to shoulder more weight to spare Shivi, but now she found the strain unsustainable, and she slumped slightly. Paka seemed to shuffle more slowly.

She began to resent her husband, able to walk freely while she struggled behind. Was he seeing anything at all in this inky hell? Or was he just wrapped up in a fantasy of his own making?

Did he think they could all move as easily as he did?

A piggish squeal, and an echo of malicious laughter, wafted out of the oppressive obscurity, as if at immense distance.

Oji’s hand touched her arm lightly—a gesture of reassurance. He had grabbed a corner of her cloak when the darkness became impenetrable. How long ago had that been? An hour? Three?

She stubbed a toe on a boulder, felt blood seep around the nail.

Sweat trickled off her nose.

More shuffling. More noises in the dark.

How could Shivi sustain this? Surely Toril would call a halt when they were far enough away from the site of the attack. Surely, that would be soon.

A hundred more steps. She would go that far, and then she would stop. If the pishachas were tracking them, and if this march had not put them beyond danger by then, she would sit and be slaughtered.

But she could not sit.

Tupa needed her.

She went a hundred steps.

Two hundred.

Suddenly, Paka lurched forward and down, and Malena heard Shivi moan. Malena dropped to her knees; the cord to her husband jerked from half-numb fingers. The hilt of Oji’s sword poked between her shoulder blades as he sagged to a stop and pushed off to avoid a tangle of arms and legs.

“Are you all right?” Toril rasped.

Malena heard boots scuffing in the sand. She croaked, rolled onto a hip, and allowed herself to collapse face up, knees bent. A wave of dizziness overpowered her. She spat grit. Beside her, Paka wheezed urgently.

“We’re spent,” Shivi whispered, sounding shaky.

“We’re not safe,” Toril said.

“Didn’t you hear?” Malena snarled. “We can’t go another step!”

The sentence left her winded. She coughed, sucked in a deep breath, coughed again. Every muscle in her legs and back trembled with exhaustion. Beside her, she sensed Oji squatting to help Paka.

Sand cascaded as weight shifted nearby. Toril’s fingers found her hand.

She was too weary to pull away.

How much time passed, Malena could not say. Her breathing quieted, and she discovered that her head was cradled in her husband’s lap. He was brushing sand from her forehead, and pulling tangled hair out of her eyes. She was sure she had not slept; a great weight of fatigue still hung like lead on her limbs, and her eyelids wanted nothing so much as to close.

Instead, she sat, acutely aware of shooting soreness as her trunk contracted. Toril’s hand lifted at her neck.

“Shivi?”

“Here.” The old woman’s voice sounded gaunt, almost a whisper.

“We’ve all been catchin’ our breath,” Paka added. “Gimme another twelve hours, preferably with my eyes closed, and I may be able to walk again. Little, anyway.”

“We should stop here,” Oji said. “We
need
rest.”

“We’re not safe,” Toril said.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Malena sputtered. “You’ve got two good legs, and you can see where you’re going.”

The smooth shaft of Toril’s staff pressed against her side. Her husband’s hand found her own, and pushed her fingers around it.

“What do you see?” Toril demanded.

She felt him twist the staff, guide Shivi and Paka and Oji into grips of their own.

“What do you see?” he said again, sounding desperate.

Malena opened her mouth, ready to describe the surrounding blackness in sarcastic detail—but the syllables died on her lips.

The dark became dim, then merely gray, then brightening fog, and ultimately transparent. She saw a glow from the staff—glyphs that spelled out words she didn’t recognize. She saw the members of their company—Shivi with her braid half undone, a sleeve of her blouse ripped, face lined and drawn; Paka, his beard askew and his thigh soaked with crusting maroon; Oji, a triangle of sweat on his chest; Toril, pale and swaying, a slash along one cheek, kurta bloody from armpit to hip.

Her gaze took in the steady incline they’d followed for hours, its slopes riddled with fissures and debris—and beyond that, the full sweep of the valley, and even the encircling mountains beyond. Dawn was rising in the east; no tendrils of light touched the blighted basin, yet—but somehow, she could see without it. The land was broken and wild, with venting steam, pools of noxious, boiling water, flows of mud and lava flanked by concentric rings of calcite and sulfur. Cactus, and patches of blasted weeds, clung to hillocks here and there.

A fleeting regret for her censure of Toril crossed her thoughts. That they had been able to walk steadily, despite their blindness, and had avoided all the serious obstacles that now crowded her vision, was nothing short of a miracle. Guiding them safely across such terrain could not have been easy, and she now understood why he’d felt compelled to lead.

Somehow, distance was irrelevant; leagues away, the imprint of human feet in the sand leapt to her eyes. She saw a scorpion scuttle across one, a tarantula crouch beside another.

She followed the tracks back across the floor of the valley, and spied a large skeleton at the mouth of a box canyon. Its ribs were scarred by teeth marks and circled by a mangled cinch and saddle. The gristle at the joints was fresh. A pishacha crouched on the skull, gnawing a foreleg; as she watched, it tossed a hoof at a snake that slithered too close.

Returning to the trail they’d traveled more recently, Malena’s eyes climbed until they hit a cluster of figures mounted on
suvars
. The lead boar had its snout to the ground, snuffling intently. The pishachas did not look at one another, and their eyes blinked without seeing, but they seemed to call back and forth, and their heads swiveled as they reacted to one another’s sounds.

Toril had seen this unfolding for hours?

The span between humans and pishachas was difficult to judge; Malena perceived with a detail that normal eyesight would never have supplied. Everything looked close. As she watched, the pig raised its head and began moving—trotting—toward them.

Malena inhaled sharply.

“They’re coming,” she said.

“You see?” Toril said, an ironic relief flooding his voice.

“I see nothing,” Shivi said. Malena observed her eyes darting blindly.

“Same,” said Oji and Paka, together.

“I see the pishachas,” Malena said. “They’re tracking us by smell. And they are close. Maybe a quarter of an hour behind.”

Shivi lifted a hand to her mouth.

“Fight? Or hide?” Oji said.

“Neither,” said Toril. “We run.”

“Run where?” Malena said. “Our legs barely work.”

Toril pointed over Malena’s shoulder.

She turned, and sucked in her breath all over again. The land behind her grew steeper; what had been a gradual rise became a slope, then layers of rock and shale, and then a bluff. Mist billowed at its lip, but seemed to cease at the border.

“We’re close,” she choked out. “I see sky.”

“
Where
?” Oji asked. “How close?”

“Few hundred paces, I’d say. But we have to climb.”

“I wasn’t kiddin’ about the need to rest,” Paka said. “I don’t think I have a hundred paces in me, especially uphill. Even if my life depends on it.”

“Climb on my back,” Toril said. “Malena is going to lead us.”

They hurried.

As the steepness grew, gravel gave way to loose talus, and footing became unreliable. Now blind, Toril blundered under his burden, smashing shins and knees against jagged boulders, and once half-dropping Paka.

Shivi limped badly.

First they leaned, then began using hands to steady themselves. Then they climbed.

Malena still had little energy, but she’d recovered enough to press ahead, suppressing soreness and fatigue. With the staff in hand, she saw clearly. However, she found that her own footsteps weren’t adequate guidance for those who followed. They still moved through blackness. She was forced to divide her attention between pathfinding, ahead, and instructions to those who followed. “Come left, Shivi,” she’d say. “Oji, stretch a little farther; there’s a place to grab just above your hand.”