Shadowheart (8 page)

It was one thing to see the forests of the Eion coastline from the rail of a ship, their unending dull green spread along the coast like a rumpled blanket, but quite another to be
in
one and to think about crossing it. Qinnitan was a child of the desert, of streets where, despite the autarch’s thousand sweepers, the sand still blew, and of gardens where water was abundant precisely because it was expensive and rare. Here, Nature squandered its blessings without discrimination, as if to say, “The way you and your people live is small and sad. See here, how for my own amusement I shower my riches on mere beasts and savages!”

For a long time she could only kneel, shivering, overwhelmed by the frightful vastness and strangeness of this alien world.

 

She did not find food that day or the next. She tried chewing on the grass that sprouted between the trees; it was bitter and did not ease the gnawing ache in her stomach, but at least it did not poison her. She heard birds, saw squirrels leaping through the upper branches, and once even saw a deer poised on a rise before her as if hoping to be noticed, but Qinnitan knew nothing of hunting or trapping. Neither had she seen a single residence or any sign of human habitation. While she was a prisoner her only thought had been to get off the boat, to free herself from Daikonas Vo so he could not give her to Sulepis, since she had decided long ago that it would be better to die than to fall into the autarch’s hands again. But now that she was free and still alive, she wanted to
stay
alive but did not know how to do it.

What was this place that Vo had called Brenland? She could not understand how such a place could even exist, endless forest crisscrossed with fern-lined streams, green hills that looked out over more green hills, silent but for the rasping calls of hawks. If such a place existed in Xis, people would come by the thousands to enjoy this abundance of greenery and shade—it would be a byword for luxury, comfort, and beauty! But this wilderness was empty of people, lonely as the cries of its winged hunters.

Qinnitan knew from something Vo had said that Brenland stood east and south of the place they had been headed, which meant there must be some kind of settlements to the west of her, perhaps even cities. She tried to use the sun as a guide but had trouble finding it sometimes, and when she found it again she often seemed to have lost as much ground as she had earlier gained. She could drink almost whenever she wanted from clean, cold pools, which did much to keep her from despair, but her hunger was growing every hour. When the discomfort became too much, or when her legs would not carry her any farther, she piled leafy branches on herself and did her best to sleep.

Once or twice, when she had reached a high place out from beneath the trees she thought she saw a dark shape behind her, following her trail. If it was not the murderer Vo, it was likely nothing much better, a bear or wolf or forest demon. Each time she saw something that might be that shape slipping along behind her like a lost shadow, her heart felt cold, but each time she hurried on, determined that whatever else might happen, she would never be a prisoner again.

Two days passed, then three, then four. Each night it grew harder to ignore the griping pain in her stomach long enough to get to sleep, and harder to get up and go forward in the morning when yet another night had brought her no dreams of Barrick Eddon. For all she knew Barrick was dead now, or worse. When she most needed him, he had left her alone.

 

In the Seclusion, Qinnitan had fallen in love with one of Baz’u Jev’s poems, called “Lost Upon the Mountain,” and as the hours and days of Qinnitan’s ordeal passed, she recited it to herself over and over again like a magic spell, though it merely gave words to her sadness and added to her growing certainty that she would die here in this unknown waste.

Keeping something familiar and sweet in her mind when the strangeness was crowding in brought her only a small amount of relief, but in this wild, empty country, that felt like a great deal to be grateful for.

Despite her year of leisured luxury in the Seclusion, Qinnitan had become considerably tougher long before she staggered out of the water and onto the shore of this strange place. She had worked hard in Hierosol, harder even than when she had been an acolyte in the Hive, and Vo had kept her since in painful and uncomfortable conditions, feeding her only enough to keep her middling healthy; she had also slipped part of her own food to the boy Pigeon while they were still together. So Qinnitan was no hothouse flower, no orchid in the autarch’s greenhouse, like the woman Baz’u Jev described in one poem,
“A fragrance of ineffable sweetness, but the first brisk wind will carry it away, never to be tasted again ...”
But now she was coming to the end of her strength. The fifth day—she thought it was the fifth, but she was no longer certain—and then the likely sixth passed in a smear of dappled forest light, of needles and leaves sliding wetly underfoot, of first one stream to cross and then another, like shining stripes on the back of some giant beast . . .

Qinnitan fell down at last and could not get up. The shadows of the late afternoon had turned the forest into a single dark place, a great tomb filled with columns to hold the crushing weight of the world and the sky. Her head seemed full of voices, chanting wordlessly, but she thought perhaps it was only the shadows of the trees falling on her, heavy as drumbeats.

She tried to remember the prayers the Hive Sisters had taught her but she doubted Nushash could even hear her in this place so far from the sun and the red desert: a few words came to her, fragile as sand-sculptures, then quickly fell apart again.

Please,
she prayed,
please do not let me die alone.
The noise in her head grew deeper, greater, like the rush of a tremendous wind.
Please help me find a way to Barrick . . . to the red-haired boy who was kind to me. Oh, gods and goddesses, please help me! I am so deep in the forest that I can’t think anymore! Please help me! Where am I? Where is he? Please help us . . . !

 

For long moments after Qinnitan awoke, she did not even realize that rain was falling on her, though she was shivering hard. Then, before she could do more than rise to a crouch, a nightmare shape lurched out from between two trees and into the clearing before her. He was bent double and walked with a shambling, crablike gait. His hair sprang wildly over his head and he had the beginnings of a shaggy beard to match, but what sent a cold knife of fear deep into her gut was the mask of blood that all but covered his dirt-smeared face—blood from dozens of cuts, blood that had streamed in gouts from his nose and dried there, blood at the corners of his mouth and smeared in his whiskers. And when he opened his mouth to grin at her, there was even blood between his teeth.

“Ah, yes,” said Daikonas Vo as calmly as if they had met in the marketplace. “Here you are.”

The messenger from Syan had the look of a man who had nearly killed several horses reaching them; his cloak and breeches were more travel stains than cloth.

“Forgive me, your Royal Highness,” he said, kneeling before Eneas. “I have left an exhausted mount in every post between here and Tessis but his lordship the marquis wanted you to have this as quickly as was possible.”

Eneas reached out for the oilskin pouch, pulled out the letter, and looked briefly but closely at the seal. “My quartermaster will see you are given a meal and a place to sleep,” he told the young courier. Standing there, Eneas opened the folded letter to read it while Briony waited as politely as she could. She guessed the marquis must be Erasmias Jino, a man Prince Eneas trusted despite his profession as spymaster. Briony herself had not particularly liked Jino to begin with, but unlike most of the folk in King Enander’s court, he seemed to have done more good for her than bad.

“You should read this too,” he said when he had finished. His face was grim; Briony felt her throat tighten.

“My father . . . is he . . . is there anything . . . ?”

“Nothing to say he is not well,” Eneas quickly assured her. “Your pardon, my lady—I did not mean to frighten you. There is no direct mention of your father at all. But I do not like the other things Jino has to tell me.”

Briony took the letter from him. A frowning moment passed before she could make anything of the Marquis of Athnia’s hand—he had the ornate Tessian style, all filigree and curlicue, so that his words were almost more ornament than information—but after a moment she began to get the feel of it. Also, ornate hand or not, she had to admit that after the customary greetings and salutations Jino did not waste time on needless fripperies.

she read out,

“In other matters, though, things are not so satisfactory. Many at court do not even acknowledge that we are at war despite the events to the south and the attack
on
Hierosol. This will change when it is their own lands being snapped up by the autarch, of course, but by then it will be too late for many of them, if not for all of us.”

“Isn’t the marquis rather full of himself?” asked Briony. “Even when he’s trying to be unctuous, he can’t quite do it.”

“He’s a good man, Princess.” Eneas sounded offended. “He is my right arm at the court—a place I avoid when I can, and where I desperately need men I can trust.”

“Certainly, I didn’t mean ...” She turned back to the letter.