Cordimancy (9 page)

9

smoke ~ Toril

A
thud interrupted Toril’s pacing. The light leaking into his room from around the door frame dimmed. He raised his staff and stepped deeper into the shadows.

“Stonecaster?” a voice whispered.

“Oji?” asked Toril, incredulous.

“Quiet.” Bolts slid. The door opened. A short silhouette beckoned.

“What are you doing here?” Toril said, stepping forward. “I thought you’d be laid up somewhere recuperating.” The osipi warrior had shared the page’s horse as far as the outskirts of Bakar, claiming he wanted to find a healer and an inn with plenty of food and
kalu
to take the sting out of his injuries. Toril had insisted that he take some silver coins for clothes and lodging.

“Healing is fast with the osipi, like our eating and sleeping,” Oji said.

Toril nodded thoughtfully. The rags Oji had worn at their first meeting had been replaced by sturdy, well-fitted outdoor gear. A shortsword was belted horizontally behind his waist. The man looked like a competent, confident warrior—not the waif he’d rescued. The transformation was impressive.

“Come. I may have convinced your friends to take a little nap, but others could be along at any time.” Oji gestured to the two guards who were slumped in the hallway, helmets ajar.

Toril looked from his small friend, whose forearm was still splinted, to the burly, heavily weaponed men on their backs. He raised his assessment of the man’s capabilities another notch.

“I believe I can get you out of the building if we leave by the east door. It’s almost full dark outside now, and the sentries are worried about arrivals, not departures.”

“How did you know I was locked up?” Toril murmured, as he crept behind his catfooted guide.

Toril had debated as he paced about his decision not to support the war. His heart burned with resentment at Gorumim’s duplicity and inflexibility, but he knew defiance was a dangerous game, and that he had yielded to pride at the worst possible moment. Regardless of the rightness of his decision, the way he’d announced it had made enemies. Was he doing the right thing to escape, now, instead of waiting to confront his captors when they fetched him?

“I found you with good old-fashioned eavesdropping.” Oji said. “After my belly was full and I’d slept, I decided to sneak up here to see if I could understand Luim’s scheming better. I came over the wall and across the roof of the hall where your people are meeting. They must have just kicked you out; some of the clan chiefs were giving the shaved one a hard time about it. I gather they didn’t like your attitude, but they didn’t appreciate Gorumim locking up one of their own, either.”

“Wish they would have said as much before the guards marched me out. I can’t believe...”

Abruptly Oji held up a hand and flattened himself against the wall.

Toril clamped his jaw and followed suit, ears straining. At first, he heard nothing—but after several guarded breaths, he caught a scuffing of booted feet. He remembered how acute his own senses had been, in the fleeting moments when he’d tasted osipi experience in the river.

Eventually the noise receded, and both men relaxed.

“When we get to the east door, go out and to your left, where the horses are stabled. Take a fresh mount; yours will be too tired. As soon as I hear hooves, I will shout and run out in the opposite direction. They’ll think I’m one of the patrol they captured, and they’ll follow for sure.”

Steal a horse? Men were flogged for that kind of thievery. How had he gone from clan chief to prisoner, to escapee, in such a short time? Should he just go back and confront his peers?

“There were at least a dozen soldiers around the building when I rode in,” Toril said aloud. “You’re going to let them all chase you?”

“Does a hare fret about a dozen tortoises?” Oji snorted, as he began padding forward again. “Or a hundred? I’ll move slowly enough to let them get close, but there’s no chance they’ll catch me when I’ve got a head start and it’s dark.”

“Let’s meet up again at the inn near the fork of the river,” Toril said. “I’d like to hear what you learned while you were on the roof, before I contact Tónume to talk him out of Gorumim’s crazy plan.”

Oji stopped walking again and turned around to face Toril. His expression was a queer mixture of trepidation and pity.

“It took me quite a while to find you. I thought they would have told you by now,” he said.

“Told me what?”

“Like I said, the shimsal and the clan were arguing about your imprisonment. Things got pretty heated, when all of a sudden the shimsal called a recess. Gorumim had news. When he rejoined the discussion, it was to announce that Noemi had been attacked and overrun.”

“What!” Toril exclaimed, nearly forgetting the need for silence. “Attacked?”

Oji nodded, hesitated, and then added in a rush, “He claimed it was by a patrol of osipi, but he is lying. There is no...”

Toril cut him off. The only
who
that he cared about was his bride, tender and alone, and his father, frail and grim, at the epicenter of a battle. “No way could a single patrol of osipi waltz in and capture the durga. No way would they want to. But what kind of attack? When did it happen? Did he mention casualties or who is still alive?”

Oji shook his head. “I left to find you as soon as I heard. If they didn’t bring you the news, I think the only way you’ll learn more is to go there yourself.”

It
was noon again when Toril crested the ridge overlooking his home. His back ached, his thighs were raw from the saddle, he had a fierce headache, and he could barely keep his eyes open.

But the sensations didn’t register.

Although Oji’s diversion had enabled an escape, it had also split the two men up, leaving Toril alone to wrestle his imagination all night as he rode. Would he find his father wounded, and Malena nursing townfolk who’d been caught outside the walls of the durga?

Or would he find something far worse?

He touched the heartstone that he carried in a leather pouch beneath his shirt. He’d mined the lump of turquoise himself, soon after his naming ceremony. He remembered swallowing his claustrophobia and descending alone into the cold and dark with hammer in hand. A man’s first proof, his mam had called it.

Later, he’d spent weeks with a craftsman, practicing, before he dared alter the shape of the nugget he’d selected. Some skipped the tedious work of shaping and polishing a heartstone, preferring to purchase a gem ready-made. But Hasha valued the slower, more private, more personal crafting of a gift for the woman who would someday be his daughter-in-law; he’d given Toril grinding tools and admonished his son to take his time and do the job right.

And Toril had. Gradually he’d ground out the gritty, discolored yellow corner, the extrusions along one edge, the lopsided bulge. He remembered the nagging dimple he’d struggled with during his fosterage, when he met Malena for the first time; that particular flaw had taken weeks to erase while preserving the balance he was after.

Over the years the stone had become a glossy, symmetrical oval, narrower but about as long as a hen’s egg. Toril was proud of what it symbolized. When friends swapped bawdy stories, Toril had fingered the stone in the pouch around his neck and kept his silence. While peers visited brothels, Toril polished. He’d bored the hole for the binding cord from the wedding ceremony only weeks ago.

Giving Malena this final gift to consummate their marriage... mattered. Had he lost his chance?

A thread of smoke curled from a cottage near the footbridge, and for an instant Toril’s heart leapt with hope. The sight looked so comforting, so utterly normal, that he almost convinced himself the announcement from the shimsal had been nothing more than a savage lie.

The horse snorted.

What was that inert bundle casting shadows across the ruts up ahead? He nudged his mount forward, and the shape became human—a shepherd boy who’d once traded pointers with Toril on proper technique with the sling.

Three arrows sprouted from his chest. His eyes were open, staring at them in sightless surprise. Blood had pooled around his shoulders and back and in the dirt. His arms and legs were splayed, his face waxy.

The wind shifted, bringing with it the bitterness of soot and char. Toril spurred his horse into a weary canter, realizing now that the smoke he’d seen was not rising from a chimney. In fact, what he’d first thought was mist was a layer of fumes, blanketing the town. For the first time, he noticed a column of condors lazing overhead.

He rode past the mill, which stood with doors wide open and its wheel creaking. A smashed cart lay nearby, bags of flour torn and leaking down the banks of the creek.

At the tar kilns a dozen men lay on their backs in the dust, a rictus of death upon their faces. Two had been felled by arrows; the rest lay near picks or axes, killed in close combat.

A suggestion of sound, like a lament sung at immense distance, slid into his awareness. He started, then noticed his lips pricking, and shook his head. The noise was not natural—not when it stirred his magic like that. One of the dead had been a kindler, apparently—an ear, since the ghost manifested as an audible resonance. Ordinary folk died cleanly, but magic wielders sometimes lingered...

He whispered a prayer and turned to go. He had no time to dissipate the echo properly so its owner could be free. This one was weak; left alone, the echo would only flit around the ruins of Noemi for a few hours or days before it subsided. For now, he had other priorities.

What he sought would be at the durga.

But instead of striding away, he found himself hesitating again. Something about the posture of the bodies niggled. The men looked broken, scattered.

One man was curled in a fetal position. Another was missing an arm, and just beyond him, half a sheep lay in the grass. The shoulder and the sheep’s hindquarters were mangled, not cleanly cut. They seemed...chewed.

A few paces farther up the road, Toril paused over a deep, clawed footprint, nearly four spans long. The horse shied and tossed its head; apparently it didn’t like the idea of a rakshasa any more than he did.

Toril clenched his staff.

He rode on, now alert to every noise and shadow. Could the rakshasa still be nearby? Such beasts were gluttons; this one would be loathe to abandon its newfound food supply.

At the smithy, he saw two men with tattoos and topknots lying motionless—bandits, dropped by a sledge. The sight sparked a little hope, until he rounded a corner and saw the blacksmith with an axe in his spine.

A discarded longbow lay nearby. As he dismounted to retrieve it, he heard flies buzzing. The sound emanated from deep grass; he picked up a half-full quiver, took a step forward, saw a child’s hand, and turned to stifle the bile rising in his throat. Was this whole place a graveyard?

He opened his mouth to shout—if there was anyone alive in this carnage, he needed to find them quickly—then caught himself. He didn’t want to announce his presence to a rakshasa. He didn’t know who else might be waiting, either.

Oji had been right about one thing—this was no osipi attack. If Noemi had been a strategic target, the assault would have focused entirely on the stronghold. Most folk would have scattered, and the golden would have let them go. They never would have brought a rakshasa. This wholesale butchery was the work of barbarians, not men.

The horse was becoming dangerously skittish. Noemi was unfamiliar territory for it; Toril had taken Oji’s advice and selected a fresh animal for his escape, rationalizing that he was leaving a mount of greater value behind. So much for his indictment of horse theft.

“You can wait here,” he said, hobbling the horse near a stand of aspen. “You don’t like what you smell, and I don’t blame you.” The horse whinnied. “If you’re scared of a rakshasa’s footprint, you won’t do me much good in a fight.”

He continued on foot, unease prodding his leaden legs into a trot.

Inside the walled portion of the town, anything that was not adobe or stone had been razed. The smell of bloating bodies and charred flesh was strong, but overwhelmed by acrid smoke. The cooper’s shop was a pile of ash. A mass of rounded shapes broke the plane of carbon in one corner of the foundation, punctuating the sizzle and crack of coals. He realized with revulsion that they were corpses, many small enough to be children.

Toril’s jaw had been clenched in anger, but now he fell to his knees and vomited. Though not a seasoned veteran of battle, he’d seen death a few times. This was different. Despite an empty stomach, his body spasmed over and over from disgust.

He caught a flicker of movement as he straightened and wiped his eyes. Vultures were already scouting for carrion. He reached for an arrow, then cursed and turned away. Better to save his supply.

When he saw the gates of the stronghold his trot shifted to a lope. He’d guessed what he would find, but the sight of twisted metal and tortured hinges, brained horses and soldiers piled crushed and lifeless on the cobblestone, jolted him all over again. These were men he knew well—men who’d shared his campfire and drilled beside him, who’d given him a friendly wave as he’d ridden away less than two days before.