Summerblood (47 page)

Strynn examined it carefully in the waning light. It was as she feared; the catch hadn't been opened to free the wire for removal. Which meant it hadn't fallen out by accident. A closer inspection showed what looked like bloodstains on the mounting.

“This isn't good,” Strynn breathed, trying to remain calm. “Were there other—?” She broke off, as something occurred to her. “Oh, Eight, Div, you don't suppose it could've been
Krynneth
, do you? He disappeared from War-Hold, and you said they thought he might've gone west …”

Div scowled thoughtfully. “There'd be no point in him going north, since he'd just come from there. East is the sea and not much between the hold and there, but south is Ixti, and we already know he was afraid of the so-called burners. Also, for what it's worth, those tracks
were
about his size.”

Strynn shook her head, not liking what the evidence implied. “But that earring … he
couldn't
have! He liked her. They were almost lovers.”

“Liked her once, perhaps,” Div countered. “But if he's gone mad, there's no telling how he might think of her—if he even
recognized her. If he's obsessed with the burning, he might well have remembered who caused it.”

Strynn's eyes were huge, and her heart was beating at twice its normal rate. “Oh, Div, we really do have to hurry!”

“And hope,” Div added quietly. “After all, we're only assuming it's him—not that the alternative is any better. In any case, we know one of them is Merryn, and I can track her while the ground's fairly springy. But over rocks …”

As if in reply, the birkit nudged her now-empty hand, then padded the half pace to where Strynn stood dumbfounded. It nuzzled her hand as well, and she had to resist an urge to snatch it away. Something buzzed in her head—a sign that the beast was thinking at her. She had no idea what it said or what it wanted, but it seemed interested in the earring. Casting Div a dubious glance, she opened her hand and took the bauble in the fingers of the other so it could dangle while permitting her a modicum of control.

The beast sniffed it, then sniffed the ground. It paused, looked at them, then ran a short way back up the bank. They had little choice but to follow. It was sitting when they arrived, and between its enormous front paws was another set of tracks. It sniffed them as well, then trotted off.

Div and Strynn followed.

“Well,” Div sighed, after they'd followed the beast half a shot, a good part of it across an expanse of bare rock, “I guess we know how to find them. How they'll
be
when we find them—well, I hate to be negative, but I'd say that was any-body's guess right now.”

Eddyn's shrine, in the water court behind Smith-Hold-Main, was as close as Tyrill dared come to her former seat of power, and she ran considerable risk even going that far. Which was why she only dared visit it at night, when she could navigate as much by feel and memory as by eyesight—which wasn't what it had been, anyway. She'd become a moonshadow, she decided: something that only appeared after sunset. Days she spent in Lynee's house on South Bank or in one of the caves in the cliffs behind Smith-Hold, depending on whether dawn or fatigue found her first.

Why she continued to come here, she had no idea. Perhaps because it was one of the few remaining links to her previous life. Perhaps because it was just close enough to both Argen-Hall and Smith-Hold that she could observe something of what transpired there. She had Avall to thank for that, for it was he who had gifted her with the pair of distance lenses she'd accidentally left here the afternoon before the Night of Masks. She'd been amazed to find them still present eight days later, when she'd finally returned. Fate—or someone—was clearly looking out for her.

As to what she'd seen through them—not much, in Argen-Hall. Little more in Smith, save day before yesterday, when she'd observed a phalanx of Priest-Clan soldiers marching most of the apprentices out, along with what had to be the hold's supply of sword blanks. The captives were probably at work now: pounding out blades in the forges beneath the Citadel—blades to use against their own kind. And plotting escape, if she knew her kin.

She was plotting escape, too, but escape of a different kind. Escape of the souls of Priest-Clan's Chiefs from the traitorous bodies that confined them.

How she would accomplish that, she had no idea. All she had at the moment was strength of conviction.

But that wasn't uppermost in her mind, as she waited with increasing impatience for the night to advance to a time—generally two hands after sunset—when she felt safe to dare Eddyn's shrine. There were still lights on in the hall—a few. Mostly, by the colors, second-rate candles, which meant someone was either economizing or being stingy. Meanwhile, she crouched beneath the arch of a hedge arbor, into which she could melt if required.

And continued waiting.

She had just started to creep out to begin the routine of dash-and-hide that would take her to her goal when she saw other movement in the garden. Another person, it appeared, lurking in the shadows directly across the shrine from her, so that she could make out almost nothing save that whoever it was moved furtively and fast. Which logic told her meant that figure was young, and instinct that he or she might not have the best interest of her foes in mind.

If only she could be certain. Maybe that figure was seeking
her
. Maybe her tracks had been discovered and she was moments away from facing death in truth. It was what she deserved, she supposed, for maintaining even this small degree of predictability. After all, it was the predictability of her fellow
Chiefs that had got most of them killed. Only the fact that she had not behaved as predicted had saved her.

Or Fate.

In any case, she was at once very frightened and very curious—so much so that she let the latter rule long enough to peer around the hedge's close-clipped corner. She saw no one at first. But then there was another flurry of motion, this time somewhat closer, and by squinting into the gloom she saw a black-cloaked figure edge around the shrine on the side away from the hall, crouch into the denser shadows there, and slowly crawl toward the open archway that was the shrine's only entrance. Tyrill snorted. Not even she was that furtive, though perhaps she might've been, had scooting along on hands and knees been an option for someone her age.

But what was he—she?—whoever?—doing?
Whoever it was had reached the steps and flowed up them like an incarnate shadow, to disappear inside.

But only for a moment. The figure reappeared no more than three breaths later, and this time stood full upright, a blot of shadowed moonlight against twilight. Female, Tyrill guessed, by the height, though that was a guess indeed.

To her amazement, the figure seemed to look straight at her, made a series of quick hand motions that were almost certainly meant to evoke the hammer-strokes of forging, then raised one hand to her mouth and drew it outward in the sign that generally meant “wait so many breaths”—and followed with five raised fingers.

Then, with a swirl of graceful movement, the figure melted back in the shadows on the shrine's other side. Which put her in sight of the hold if anyone was looking, and out of Tyrill's sight as well.

Well, this was a pretty situation!
She'd almost certainly been found out, though how she could've been seen, she had no idea. Still, whoever that had been had obviously known her habits, and more to the point, who she was. Which could be
good, or not. This could well be a trick, a ruse designed to lure her into the open.

But that was ridiculous. Everything she'd seen of Priest-Clan since the coup indicated that they moved by the straightest route to their objectives. If they knew she was here, they'd simply have taken her where she stood. There was no need for this game of feint and deception.

Besides which, Eddyn's shrine was legally consecrated. No blood could be shed there, nor anyone be removed from it against their will.

Maybe they intended to starve her out. In any case, she wasn't even certain she knew what the stranger had meant. Had she meant to wait five breaths and follow, to some clandestine meeting? Or five breaths and enter the shrine itself ?

“Eight go with me,” she murmured—and before she realized that she had, in fact, decided, she eased into the open.

Nothing moved in response, but she hadn't really wanted it to. She'd made her decision, now she had to stick with it. All that remained was plotting the proper path through the shadows—for the multiple moons changed that every night.

She was breathing hard and cursing her aged joints as vehemently as she ever had in her life when she finally found herself beside the shrine's steps, in the same place that other figure had stood.

It was now or never, she realized. Ignorance or knowledge— or death, which was itself a kind of knowledge. And she'd never know which unless she went inside.

A deep breath, and she managed to make it up the stairs. Another, at the top, and she slipped inside. In the slight, steady light of the votive flame, Eddyn's statue almost looked alive. Indeed, his cast bronze eyes seemed to gaze down on her with compassion—so much so that she felt tears start in her eyes. She rubbed them away ruthlessly. Whatever she'd first come for, she had another agenda now. Another mystery to solve.

So intent was she in gazing upward as she slowly made her way, that she forgot to watch her steps—until her foot came
down atop something cylindrical, which sent her stumbling forward, arms flailing. Somehow she kept her feet, if not her balance, but she still fell heavily against the pedestal on which the statue stood. Her arms went around the bronze knees, and she leaned there desperately, catching her breath, as frightened as she'd ever been for so little reason.

Or maybe not. She could've broken something, and then where would she be? Captive, is where. Or dead. Perhaps very visible and dramatically dead, so as to leave no doubt who was in charge of Eron Gorge, and why there was no reason to expect that to change.

On the other hand, she'd been here two nights ago and whatever she'd slipped on hadn't been here then. And there was that figure …

Steeling herself, while trying not to think about a new pain across her lower ribs, and a matched set on her shins, she turned, still bracing the pedestal with one hand.

Something gleamed in the moonlight. No,
two
somethings. One was, as expected, cylindrical: as long as her forearm, but no bigger around than her largest finger, and apparently made of something pale, most likely wood or bone. The other was a leather bag no longer than her hand, and irregular in a way that said it wasn't empty.

Cautiously, she crouched down where she stood, and only when her knees were on the floor did she begin to creep toward where they lay a span away. She reached the larger cylinder first, and flicked it toward her. It rolled smoothly across the marble.

The votive light behind her cast it into shadow, so that she had to twist around to see it properly. It was hollow, perfectly cylindrical, and there was writing—or etching—on it. By squinting in the light and moving it closer yet, she saw that it was in Ixtian. A name, it appeared, which told her nothing. Probably the person who'd made it. But what was it? She studied it curiously, then shrugged and retrieved the leather bag. A flap covered one end, tied with laces, which she undid,
wondering even as her fingers worked at them, why she was doing this here, when she should be seeking some place of greater safety. That fatal curiosity, she supposed. A final tug, and she got the flap open, to reveal at least three dozen tiny glass darts, carefully packed in cork and cotton. A finger proved how sharply they were pointed. Abruptly she knew what she had. A blowgun. An Ixtian weapon little practiced in Eron.

Someone had deliberately left her a blowgun
—so she could only assume. But who? And why?

Well, there were still a fair number of Ixtians around, though none that she knew well, or who knew her, as far as she was aware.

But why a blowgun? That was the real mystery.

And then it came to her, like a moon from behind a cloud. A blowgun was a distance weapon. It didn't demand much strength, was easily hidden or disguised, and was an Ixtian weapon. Any use of one would therefore be difficult to trace, and that trail would lead, at first, in a false direction.

Of course a blowgun dart was of itself not very dangerous unless one happened to strike one of a very few particularly vulnerable places. But with proper … augmentation …

She examined the dart case again, and this time located a separate pocket at the opposite end from where the darts were housed. A double clasp closed this one, and she had to work to free it.

She gasped at what rolled into her hand. A tiny brass jar, no larger than her eye. And graven on the lid, which seemed to screw on, was a symbol that made her skin crawl.

A scorpion.

Which didn't exist in Eron. But which she knew, from talking to both Eddyn and Merryn, was the source of Ixti's most virulent poison.