Bones of the Empire (53 page)

Coming up on the wooded area around the water, Raeln called out, “Dalania? Are you here?”

Several robed men and women appeared from the trees and watched him briefly before fading back into the woods. It was good to know their least defended location was not entirely undefended. At that thought, Raeln looked over his shoulder and saw the white bear wildling waiting about twenty feet away, staring intently at him. There was nowhere for the man to hide.

Sighing, Raeln continued toward the edge of the spring, where Dalania sat, staring at the slow waves in the pond’s surface. She was still enough that had she not been green against the white and browns of the area, he could have easily missed her. In the southern woods, she probably could have vanished into the trees without much effort. Around her, several white rabbits scattered as Raeln approached.

“Are you okay?” Raeln asked, sitting down at her side. The moist ground made him uncomfortable in the chill climate, but he chose not to share that, given how relaxed Dalania appeared, with her toes in the warm water. He hesitated before speaking again, realizing several deerlike animals were watching from the trees. “Dalania?”

Blinking and sitting up straight, she seemed entirely surprised to see Raeln. “Oh…hello. I was…they…I mean…what day is it?”

Raeln put a hand to Dalania’s forehead to check for a fever, but she scowled at him and he felt nothing abnormal. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in days.”

“Usually here,” she admitted, looking back at the water. “I can’t hear them as easily here for some reason.”

“Them?”

Dalania brushed at her leaves without answering.

“The fae?” Raeln asked, genuinely confused. “I thought you had a deal with the nature spirits. What’s going on, Dalania?”

“The deal was that they can’t claim me until I die,” she explained without looking at him. “If I try to get out of the deal, the fae will kill everything around me. They aren’t breaking the deal, but they aren’t making it easy either. I can hear them talking all the time now. At first it was just the ones that I bargained with, but now I can hear a dozen or more. They’re following us, Raeln. Lots of them. They seem frantic about us going to the temple.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Dalania shrugged. “You have enough to worry about. As long as we keep traveling, they fade away. It’s when we stop that I can feel their attention press down on me. Even this pond is staring back at me.”

Raeln took her hand, ignoring her flinch at the touch. “You aren’t going to die, Dalania. We’ll hold them off together. They can’t have you.”

“I haven’t slept in days,” she confessed, closing her eyes. “When I try, they are there, watching me. I don’t even know what they want. They just stare, as though I should already know. They don’t want me dead, but there’s something they expect to happen.”

Raeln thought back on the three spirits that had come to take Feanne’s life from her as she lay dying after healing Estin. They had only relented in exchange for something more valuable to them—in this case, Dalania. He had never thought the bargain would matter until her death, given the terms of the deal, but he apparently knew far less about the fae than he thought. One more enemy to worry about—one he knew he could not fight. The fae were not alive and barely had form that a mortal could see.

“We’ll march again tomorrow,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. “Sleep while we ride.”

Putting her other hand over Raeln’s, Dalania whispered, “Get us to the temple before the fae find a way to kill or use me, Raeln. I want to see this end before they take me. I don’t want to know what they want of me, and I hope to end this before having to find out.”

“They won’t get you. We’re going to go through what the Turessians call the Maw and see how fast we can reach the temple. Once we’re there, we defeat Dorralt and then figure out how to protect you.”

Smiling sadly, she patted his hand without speaking.

*

At daybreak the army set out again, heading northwest toward the route Raeln had chosen through hills he could see in the distance. When they reached them, the army would turn west and hope they were strong enough to make it through whatever lay between the first hill and the temple of Turessi. No one had been willing to discuss the rumors of what lay in those hills, which had somewhat relieved Raeln, allowing him to dismiss the fears as little more than superstition.

Raeln had tried all morning to spark conversation with any of the Turessians, but they were somber and in poor spirits. That only served to further worry Raeln that he had made the wrong choice. Even the former slaves admitted they were in no mood to talk, leaving Raeln alone with his thoughts. He headed the long column of clansmen, with only Somn and the white bear at his sides. Dalania had been missing all morning, though Raeln had heard she was somewhere near the middle of the column, talking to herself.

“No storm on the horizon…that’s something,” Somn said, getting a curt nod from the bear.

Raeln looked over at Somn, who was riding one of the pack horses. “How much do you know about this place? I need to know before we get there. No one will tell me anything, and I’m pretty sure they are measuring me for a box each time I ask.”

“Not a lot,” Somn answered, keeping his voice low and glancing back at the nearest Turessians. “My sire told me that if I got free of my clan and wanted to make a run for it but the Maw was the only route, I should either kill myself or let the clan do it. Kind of stomps on the incentive to run.”

An airy cough from Raeln’s other side drew his attention to the bear, who was walking rather than riding. He pointed at the hills in the distance and then at himself. Pulling open the collar of his ragged shirt, he showed Raeln a series of deep claw scars that should have been fatal, from Raeln’s experience. The bear then grabbed Raeln’s bicep, squeezed it, and nodded.

“I think he’s been there and thinks we’ll be fine,” Raeln translated for Somn, getting a nod of agreement from the bear. “I’m glad someone believes this will work.”

They rode and walked throughout most of the day and reached the first hill around midafternoon. Almost immediately Raeln could see this was not a place he really wanted to go. The appearance alone spoke volumes about why its reputation was so dire.

The ground fell away steeply as they approached the Maw, creating a wide ravine broken only by “hills” farther out, which he was pretty sure were actually tall spires. They rose from the bottom of the ravine to stand as tall as the hills on the plains. How high they might be or how deep the ravine was, Raeln could not guess, due to a thick fog that filled the entire ravine. From its depths, Raeln heard the screeches of bats, as well as something else that cut many of the cries short. Each animal scream made his fur stand a little farther up.

“We can still go around,” offered Somn, pulling his horse back to stay well behind Raeln.

Looking to the east, Raeln could see the mists at the edge of Turessi without having to strain anymore. They had risen many hundreds of feet, creating a wall around the land that spread as far as he could see in either direction. From the look of things, the entire edge of Turessi was enveloped in a horrific thunderstorm, undoubtedly tied in some way to the mists.

“No time,” he admitted, shaking his head. “We might have until the full moon, but not much longer. We either die trying now, or we die in that cloud in a few days.”

“This is what free people do with their time?” Somn asked, sounding horrified. “I’ll take a whip any day over deciding which way I want to die.”

Laughing—and hoping Somn was joking—Raeln flicked his reins and began the descent into the ravine, with hundreds of living people following him and hundreds of ancestors behind them. Somn and other noncombatants hurriedly dropped back to the middle of the line, while several of the orcs joined Raeln and the bear wildling at the front. Those with him were among the most battle-hardened and scarred members of the army, the few willing to face the Maw ahead of the rest.

They made their way down the hill slowly—perhaps more slowly than necessary—and soon Raeln had no choice but to dismount. The horse was terrified and fighting him, tugging at the reins until Raeln stopped and put a hand on its brow to calm it. The beast was frantic, trying to get back to the edge of the fog.

“Take the horse back near the others,” Raeln told a Turessian nearby, who took the reins from him. “It won’t be able to see as much from back there.”

The Turessian bowed and walked away. He had only gotten a few steps from Raeln when a blur of fog passed between him and Raeln. When it cleared a second later, a long trail of blood led off to Raeln’s left. Neither the man nor the horse was anywhere to be found. Even more disconcerting, the dozens upon dozens of people who should have been somewhat in the path of whatever had taken the two were looking around with the same confusion as Raeln.

“Close ranks,” Raeln said loudly, shifting to be closer to the orcs and bear. The orcs drew weapons hurriedly while the bear straightened and squinted to stare into the fog. Barely visible, the Turessians closed in those who could not fight in a tight ring of robed warriors. “If something’s going to take anyone, I want to hear combat. No one dies alone. Scream if you hear anything.”

They began walking again, the crunching of hundreds of feet on the snow making it impossible for Raeln to be sure of any sounds he thought he heard. Everyone moved in procession, first Raeln taking a step, then those behind him, repeated on and on for almost a mile back. They continued that way for an hour or two with no change in the limited scenery and no further attacks. Gradually the path leveled off, and Raeln got the sense of the area opening up, though he could have been in a closet for all he could see. All he knew for certain was that he was no longer descending.

Raeln’s ears twitched to his left as he heard paws come down on snow.

Raising his hand to stop the group, Raeln looked over his shoulder to his right, where the bear wildling stood. To his left there were Ildorn and another orc. Nothing that direction should have sounded remotely like padded feet.

As if in reply, the orcs raised their axes and swords, waiting for a signal to attack.

Raeln motioned at the fog somewhat to their left and pointed at his own eyes, hoping the orcs knew that meant to watch for threats. Whether they understood or not, they advanced more slowly, keeping their weapons high. A pair of Turessian men moved up from the main force, joining the orcs, their gloved hands looking as weapon-like as the orcs’ steel.

A rush of movement came from the fog, knocking Ildorn down. Raeln leaped over the man, trying to shield him, but whatever was out there darted away again, fading into the fog. Kneeling while watching where the creature had gone, Raeln touched the orc and found he was still breathing, though raggedly. Raeln glanced down quickly, unwilling to look away from the mists for long, and found Ildorn was clutching a massive gash in his chest that poured blood down his side.

“Get him back to one of the preservers,” Raeln ordered, and the two Turessians ran over and dragged Ildorn away. “Hold the line tightly. No one moves without the rest.”

Raeln started down the path again, this time with a Turessian at his side to replace Ildorn. The whole line walked slowly for some time, just long enough that Raeln thought they might have moved past the creature or creatures.

A low growl ahead of them let him know he was very wrong.

Raeln slowed his pace, as did those around him. Advancing barely a paw’s length at a time, a few steps later, his feet came down in cool water. Inching forward, he found the water flowed past them, cutting off their path. To his surprise, it was warmer than anywhere else in Turessi beside the spring at their last camp, making it possible to ford it without too much risk. Still, the last thing he really wanted was to be soaked when the next snowstorm hit.

“River,” he hissed over his shoulder. As he turned his head back, something flew out of the fog at him.

Reacting swiftly, Raeln deflected the object, sending it clattering away. He spun and saw another shape fly from the fog. He slapped that aside before it hit the bear wildling. The second object rolled to a stop within sight, and Raeln realized it was a spear. Crude tufts of fur were tied to the haft of the weapon, just below the stone tip. The wooden shaft was as long as he was tall.