Dawnsinger (26 page)

She trudged on, caught in a dream without end. A growing ache of homesickness troubled her, although she no longer truly belonged to Whellein. She pined for the carefree innocence of her early days, a time when nothing had changed between herself and Kai. Her ankle throbbed, but she bit her lip and did not complain. An odd pain of another sort twisted inside her, for she’d wanted to take Kai’s arm, to lean into his warmth and revisit their bond of shared love. She couldn’t remember a time she had not borrowed his strength. It had always been so between them, but she couldn’t let it be so now. She blinked away foolish tears and pulled her cloak tighter about her, stumbling on through the night.

It took her more effort to cover the same ground as the others. When she stepped into a soft place in the road and pitched to the ground, she cried out and grabbed her ankle. She’d wrenched it again. Kai called for a rest, and after that, they proceeded at a more moderate pace.

Dorann found his way to her side, his solicitude a balm. He held back the encroaching underbrush and steadied her whenever she faltered. The road stretched before them, curving only to avoid places where solid ground gave way to mud flats and salt bogs. Night birds whistled. Water lapped and mud sucked.

A pheasant erupted from a stand of marsh grass. Shae jumped, and her heart thudded. Aerlic already notched an arrow to his bow, but the bird winged across the faen
to become a shadow limned by moonlight. The arrow glinted as Aerlic returned it to its quiver. Just as well. They had no means of retrieving a fallen bird from the faen nor could they abandon caution and raise the scent of blood or light a cooking fire.

Brael Shadd glowed near the westward horizon, and the thinning darkness suggested morning. Kai called a halt near a grove of stunted draetenns where the road left the grasslands to plunge into Weithein Faen.

Shae sheltered beneath the trees
,
too weary to follow as the others climbed a small knoll for a view of the road as it cut through the faen.

From the small distance between them she heard Dorann’s whistle and Aerlic’s soft cry. “May Lof Yuel protect us.”

22

Road to Pilaer

Shae stopped to rub a stitch in her side. She’d run too fast to reach her companions. Without waiting to catch her breath, she turned her head to see what held the others enthralled—and gasped.

Golden morning light fell across the faen and in the near distance touched broken marble pillars flanking a wide stair. Above the stair a marble and granite fortress overlooked the rooftops of an abandoned town. With its base still in darkness, the stronghold seemed to float above the drowned lands.

Pilaer!

Her knees went weak. The ancient fortress hung suspended in the mists of time, at least in her imagination. The reality might prove as mysterious. Indeed, rumor gave it that this ruin was haunted not only by what had been but by what could never be.

The road to Pilaer narrowed and meandered across the faen. Waters lapped over it and quick mud consumed its edges. Here and there, the road sank below the surface to vanish altogether.

Shae pressed a hand to her throat. “How can anyone cross those sunken places?”

Kai spoke beside her. “We have no choice.”

She hesitated. “Can’t we go around the
faen?”

He shook his head.
“That would take far more time than we can allow.”

“I’d rather you gave a different answer.”

“Then you join your wish to mine. Come, Shae, and rest. We’ll pass through the ruins after all welkes return eastward—before twilight, with any luck. I don’t wish to visit such a place in full night.”

She shivered, needing no explanation of Kai’s words.

The small stand of draetenns draped curling leaves about them and bore the brunt of the ever-present wind. Shae settled herself on the hard ground and pulled her cloak close. She shifted to remove a small stone that gouged her side, but then had to settle all over again to avoid the draetenn root bumping her feet. For speed of travel they’d not burdened themselves with luxuries such as bedding. But how would she ever rest?

Kai’s touch summoned her from the depths of a deep, dreamless sleep. If fearsome birds of prey had hunted overhead while she slept, she never knew. At her smile, a pained expression crossed Kai’s face. She stared at him, baffled, until memory returned and her smile faltered.

The comforting words she longed to speak stuck in her throat. Her hand itched to touch him, but already he turned away. She would not call him back.

Emerging from the trees as a flock of ungainly brown waterfowl winged across gray skies glowing with subdued light, she stood transfixed. She’d never seen such birds before.

She came upon Kai beside a raft of draetenn branches lashed together, so small it could carry only two at a time. He spoke without turning his head. “We built it while you slept.”

She frowned. “Will it ferry us in safety across the breaches in the road?”

He shrugged. “We’ll soon answer that question.”

They set out almost at once, keeping to the road as it plunged into the faen and leveled at waterline. Kai led while Dorann and Aerlic shouldered the raft behind Shae.

She took care to keep her feet out of the ruts, which in places shone with water. Dragonflies darted through the tall reeds that closed her in. She flipped back the edges of her cloak and basked in the residual heat shimmering above the road’s surface.

She avoided the edges of the road where water bugs skittered in green water. Birdsong flowed all about her, the warblers hidden in reeds and grasses. The beauty of the marsh sang its own melody in her heart. She could almost forget their destination, at least until reeds gave way to burbling mud flats affording views of Pilaer.

When they reached the first of three breaches in the road, Aerlic tested the raft, paddling across the pool that had swallowed the road. Although it tilted and sank at one edge, the raft remained afloat. They drew it back by means of ropes, and Dorann went next. He hesitated, but then offered his hand to her.

Shae looked to Kai before she thought but met a shuttered expression. With effort, she returned the smile Dorann gave her and grasped his hand.

He balanced her as she stepped onto the raft. It gave beneath her, and she sank to her knees, fearful that if she stood it would tip. Aerlic pulled the rope, his muscles straining. The water slid by, murky and silent. When they reached the other side of the breach, Dorann offered his assistance once more. She gave him her smile and felt her cheeks go warm at the light in his amber eyes. After Kai took his turn, Aerlic and Dorann hoisted the raft between them again.

Low tide exposed great boulders laid below the surface to support the roadbed. But they’d barely begun to cross the flats when the tide rushed in to cover the sucking mud. Shae eyed the rising water and did not stray from the middle of the road. A long-legged bird landed near the road’s edge and waded through the water, pausing here and there to dip its beak and capture delicacies.

Storm clouds gathered, sending shadows over the faen. Wind pierced the folds of Shae’s cloak. Aerlic and Kai took the lead, while Dorann hung back beside her. Did someone call her name? She looked behind her, for her skin crawled, but only windswept marsh and rippling grasslands met her eye.

They halted at the second breach while her companions settled the raft in the water.

Kai straightened. “It’s shallower here. If we catch the waves right we should make it, but we’ll have to go one at a time.”

Dorann helped Shae sit in the center of the raft when her turn came, and then pushed off as a wave washed toward the raft. Aerlic and Kai strained together against the rope. The raft broke free of the bottom with a scrape and bucked beneath Shae. She put a hand against her mouth to keep from crying out.

The raft glided through the water toward Kai. When she landed, she steadied herself against him. “I’m glad we don’t have that to do again.”

“But we have one more crossing,” he reminded her.

Already Dorann pulled the other rope and the raft bumped and scraped across the breach toward him. Kai relieved Aerlic at the rope, and hauled the raft toward them. Dorann jumped from it to safety.

The sun stood low in the sky, so they pressed onward in earnest. The road meandered now, curving to follow solid ground between the reeds. Shae paused only to shift the satchel on her shoulders and to take the weight off the foot she’d wrenched when she fell. Although she tried to ignore the pain that grew in her ankle, she began to limp.

Dorann matched his pace to hers but Kai and Aerlic waited at intervals. With a sense of despair, she acknowledged the truth. She could not go on much longer. And yet she must. How cruel that, by some trick of light, Pilaer seemed to recede as they advanced.

They reached the third breech just before the road lifted onto the peninsula before Pilaer Hold. A stand of reeds stood thick before them where the road should lie.

Dorann and Aerlic set the raft aside, and Aerlic lay on his stomach to search in the muck below the reeds. “I can feel the tops of boulders!”

Shae looked away while the others removed their boots and leather leggings. After a splash, Aerlic’s voice came to them through the reeds. “Follow with care.”

Another splash sounded.

“You’ll want to kilt your skirts and take off your boots or the mud may suck them from your feet.” Kai’s voice startled her. She hadn’t expected him to wait for her.

She hesitated. “Turn your back then.”

“I have already done so.”

She tucked her skirts and cloak up at her waist and removed her boots and leggings. Putting her leggings inside them, she tied her boots outside her elkskin satchel.

“I’ll go first,” Kai told her. “Hold to me.”

A splash came, and Shae turned to follow Kai into the water. She stepped what seemed a long way down and gritted her teeth as water rose cold about her thigh. Cold mud oozed between her toes and over her foot, and she groaned. When her foot met the top of a sunken boulder, she balanced and lowered her other foot, but wobbled and flailed. With another hasty step she slid against Kai.

He reached backward to steady her with a hand at her waist. “Are you well?”

“I am.”

He took another step forward.

Water swirled around her legs and weighted the bottom of her kilted skirt as she followed, but her foot slid in the slippery mud. She lurched sideways.

Kai spun around to catch her, and they swayed together. “I’ll not let you fall.” He spoke above the racing of her heart, which was not entirely due to physical danger.

She pulled away although she longed more than anything just then to remain in his arms.

He touched her cheek. “Stay close.”

She followed his lead, step by slow step. Something glanced against her leg and creased the water as it darted away, but she swallowed her scream. She feared a living creature in the water far less than what might await them within the ruins. By the time they found the place where the road lifted from the faen, her muscles ached and cold numbed her feet.

She rinsed the slime from her legs in the shallows along the shore, wrung out her skirt, and put her leggings and boots back on. After wrapping herself in her cloak, she joined the others on the bank with slow steps, all at once in no hurry to approach Pilaer, which watched them and kept its silence. Before they came upon it, they would need to pass the ruined town itself.

She lay beside Kai, and the rich smell of mud rose about her. Birdsong trilled from a stand of marsh grass, riding above the faint lap of water against shore. Her heart ached at its piercing beauty. If only they could remain in such peace!

She ran her tongue over her salt-crusted lips and closed eyes that stung. As clouds chased the declining sun, the play of light and shadow moved over her lids, and an image of Elcon formed. How did he fare? Had the loyal shraens reached him in time, or had Torindan fallen? A place of prayer beckoned from within—an Allerstaed
not contained in a building—and she pushed past exhaustion to reach it. Her surroundings fell away and she saw in her mind’s eye a white light flaring forth to find Elcon.

She did not mean to use the shil shael. She did not even know at first that she did, for it came with the ease of breath. It brought her to Elcon, surrounded by blue light. A sharp pang slashed through her with fever heat. A floodgate of emotions broke open—despair, sorrow, fear—emotions that belonged not to her but to Elcon. She could almost see him pacing. Thoughts touched by his soul drifted into her mind. Torindan lay under siege with no hint of rescue by Faeraven’s loyal shraens. And he’d heard nothing yet of
her
. She curled her fingernails into her palm in quick sympathy, seized by a longing to comfort him. He paused and looked toward her across time and space. Somehow she’d touched him.

A flash of red flashed across her mind. A whiplash of power engulfed Elcon, dimming his light.

Shae tried to hold on, but the connection to Elcon faded.

The assault turned against her now, stinging her mind with raw pain. Strength drained from her like blood from a wound. She clutched her head and moaned. Did Kai speak her name? She opened her eyes to darkness. Her mouth went dry. Had the evil touch blinded her? Panic screamed in her mind.

Lof Yuel
!

The inner place where the white light flamed pulled her to its heart, and she recognized the Allerstaed within. There she hid.

The evil grasp slid away.

Kai’s face swam into view. “What happened? Are you well?”

“Well enough, except that Freaer found me.”

He moaned and gathered her into his arms.

She wanted to protest, to pull away and keep him at a safe distance. Instead, she closed her eyes and let herself pretend nothing hurtful had happened between them. She kept silent about what she had learned from Elcon. No good would come of burdening the others with misery.

When she stood her knees wobbled, but the curtain of night waited to drop. They must not linger.