Firewalker (38 page)

“And the Woven are different in the mountains,” Dana added as they dismounted and started their ascent. “More raptors. Remember to look up every now and again.”

Lily tilted her head back and scanned the skies. She'd never seen a raptor Woven, and she hoped she never did.

“I wouldn't try to study raptor behavior yet,” the other Tristan said with raised eyebrows. “I'd just duck for now.”

Since their talk under the tree, Lily and her Tristan had spent every guard duty taking notes on what they observed about the Woven, and they had dissected three of them together, but so far they hadn't found a pattern in either the Woven's behavior or their biology. Lily hadn't given up hope yet that she would find something. She and Tristan had to work much too fast when they dissected, and a lot got missed. Woven organs were so full of toxins that they seemed to dissolve from the inside out as soon as the creatures were dead, and Lily still believed that she would find something if only she got a fresh-enough sample to work with, which was proving difficult. The fourth Woven carcass that was brought to them was so far gone there was no point in putting on gloves to take a look.

“It's useless. You have to start dissecting it immediately in order to find anything that hasn't been corroded,” her Tristan said in frustration.

“It's like they've got a self-destruct button,” Lily added, her brow knitted together.

“And what doesn't dissolve gets eaten by other Woven. One dead Woven brings dozens, like they're their favorite food or something.”

Lily turned to Tristan, shaking her head. “That doesn't happen in the natural world.”

Since then, Lily had told her braves not to bother bringing her any Woven that had been dead longer than a few minutes. Secretly she knew that if she really wanted to see what made the Woven tick she'd either have to dissect one still alive or kill one herself, which no one would allow. If she got hurt, they were all vulnerable.

The first day up the mountain her tribe made record time, but by the time twilight was falling, Lily was dead on her feet. Juliet came alongside her as they toiled up a steep hill to the campsite.

“You shouldn't keep giving them extra energy,” Juliet said. “Save your strength for yourself.”

Lily smiled at her sister and shook her head. “If I lie down without being completely exhausted, I think about
him
. And then I don't sleep at all.”

Juliet looked away, her face in shadow. “Isn't it odd? They hurt us, but now that they're gone, we beat ourselves up even more. Why do we do that?”

“I don't know,” Lily admitted. “Maybe we think we deserve it.” They both let the conversation drop. Neither of them were ready to talk deeply about Rowan and Alaric yet, and they each got back to work. Work was good—it kept them both glued together.

The days passed, and the higher Lily's party climbed, the colder it got, taxing the tribe even more. Icy, rotten snow still clung to the edges of the trail, but fresh green shoots and bright blossoms grew between the patches of snow. It gave the ponies something tender to eat, though they rarely dared to duck their heads. The mountain slopes were eerily quiet, setting both the humans and the horses on edge. Occasionally, Lily saw a normal deer, or a normal hawk, its wings spread wide as it hung on an updraft, but there were fewer normal wild animals in this world than she would have thought. The ones that she did see were the furry burrowing kind, although once she did catch a glimpse of puma far away on another slope.

“Where are the regular animals?” she asked Dana after spending a morning searching fruitlessly. “The non-Woven kind?”

“They're around, but they steer clear of Woven,” Dana whispered back. “Which means there are Woven nearby right now, so lower your voice.”

As she watched her footing in the treacherous slurry of rock, ice, mud, and water, Lily saw a great shadow blanket the ground. At first she thought it must be a storm front rolling in, and then she felt her Tristan tackle her from behind and cover her body with his.

“Raptor,” he whispered, his lips brushing the edge of her ear.

She heard the horses whinny and paw at the earth, ready to bolt. Lily turned under Tristan until she could see up and caught her breath. Circling above them, still hundreds of feet in the air, was something the size of a small aircraft. She saw the wings beat once lazily and it climbed up onto a higher updraft and flew away, as if it sensed it had been spotted.

“It's enormous,” Lily said, still unable to completely grasp what she was looking at.

Caleb crouched down next to Lily and Tristan and shaded his eyes to look up. “They can carry a full-grown man away in their talons,” he said. “They just swoop down, and all you hear is a shout that fades away, like someone jumping off a cliff.”

“How many times have you crossed the mountains, Caleb?” Breakfast asked.

Lily repositioned herself and saw Breakfast pinned under Una the same way she was pinned under Tristan and she gave him a weak smile in camaraderie.

“Only twice before, to get to the buffalo-hunting grounds. I'm not much of a buffalo hunter. Rowan and his dad used to go every—” Caleb suddenly broke off and looked down, his brow furrowed.

Lily knew she was holding her breath and forced herself to let it out. Every time she heard Rowan's name it knocked the wind out of her—out of all of them. It was like he was still with them, riding on the currents above them and casting a shadow upon the whole group.

Over the next few days as they crossed the mountains, Lily's neck got sore from constantly scanning the sky. She wasn't even aware that she was doing it half the time. Fear would slink in every few paces, and she'd have to glance up. The raptor stayed with them, biding its time, and waiting for the moment when they got careless. It got close enough once that Lily could make out its bald head and scaly talons. The greasy black color of its feathers reminded her of a giant buzzard. Caleb had told her that the hooked beaks had teeth. After that, Lily pictured a feathered pterodactyl when she thought of it. The one consolation was that raptors couldn't hunt at night. But that was when the lion Woven came out, and Lily's tribe traded an aerial terror for a terrestrial one.

The raptor got one of the pack ponies on the fifth day in the mountains. They all felt a pounding rush of wings, saw a flash of greasy black feathers, and the pony, the extra tents, and the grain it was carrying disappeared in one swoop.

It was the lions that got one of the braves. He was picked off so quickly, he didn't even have a chance to scream.

Lily noticed that there was a kind of begrudging respect that the Outlanders reserved for the Pride, the Pack, and the Hive that went hand in hand with a deeper kind of hatred. It was a personal hatred they felt, one that outstripped the disgust and loathing they seemed to feel for the insect, simian, or reptilian type of Woven. Of course, Lily wanted to ask either Caleb or Dana why that was, but the time couldn't have been worse for questions—not when the loss of one of her claimed was still so near.

At first the group didn't dare go out into the brush to try to fight the Pride for the body. It was too dark to risk it, and the brave was already dead anyway. But as the night wore on and the tribe had to listen to the lions snarling and snapping at the other as they fought over the feast, it wore away their morale, and at Lily's patience.

“The Pride is too smart to attack us head-on. We've got too large a group,” Dana told Lily as she huddled miserably inside her jacket. The dead brave had been one of hers. She'd never liked Lily's command that they only kill attacking Woven to begin with, and Lily could feel resentment building in her. Dana's whole point in joining her was to kill the Woven, not study them. “They'll follow us like we're a walking icebox, picking us off one at a time,” Dana grumbled.

Caleb grunted his assent and threw another log on the fire, trying to drown out the sound of a human being eaten. “We need to get out of the mountains,” he said. “With a raptor above and the Pride all around us, we're sitting ducks.”

Lily could feel the hatred her tribe harbored for the Woven building with every growl from the Pride. She felt her tribe's anger seeping into her. She didn't want to be merciful and fight off only the ones that attacked anymore. She wanted them all to die. Lily pulled the heat of the fire into her skin. A witch wind moaned, silencing the lions.

“Kill them,” she ordered.

Enflamed with Lily's strength and anger, Caleb, the Tristans, Una, and Dana stood up from around the fire and rolled into the darkness like a cloud of deadly smoke.

Leave one alive
, Lily whispered in her Tristan's mind.
Dana said the lions were smart.

What are you going to do with it?

I'm going to run a little experiment.

Lily could hear sounds of a skirmish, but it was over quickly and none of her braves were injured. It wasn't a fair fight with a witch fueling one side, and Lily repressed a twinge of regret before thinking of the brave she'd lost. Then she didn't regret a thing. A few hisses, a few shouts, and then she heard her Tristan's voice in her head again.

It's a female. She's badly injured.

Lily released the loop of power and her witch wind died, allowing her to drop to the ground and go to Tristan. Caleb and Una had joined him, and they were looking from her Tristan to the injured Woven, confused.

“Just finish her off,” Una said. “She's suffering.”

“No. Hold her down,” Lily countermanded as she strode through the brush.

She got close enough to clearly see the massive, leathery body of the mountain lion Woven. She was twice the size of a regular lion and she had the rounded shoulders and sloped back of a saber-toothed tiger, but her hide was not covered in pretty striped or golden fur. It was bare, thick, and nearly armored, like a rhino. Her eyes were different, too—rounded instead of almond-shaped. Lily leaned in, looking the Woven in her all-too-human eyes.

“Don't get that close!” Caleb chided, pulling her back. “Tristan, kill that thing.”

“No,” Lily insisted. “Hold it steady.”

The Woven struggled under Tristan's and Una's hands, but it couldn't move. Her back was broken and she could barely raise her head. Lily grabbed her neck and felt the skin along her throat. She could hear Dana and Caleb protesting, but tuned them out. Her fingers found a lump at the notch in the Woven's collarbone. She pinched the lump through the skin with the tips of her fingers and looked the Woven in the eye.

Lily felt a mind there, shying away from hers. She delved deeper and reached through the Woven until she found the suggestion of other minds attached to this one, the way a shadow is attached to a body. Those minds weren't there anymore, but the shape of them was. Lily realized the shadow minds were the dead of her Pride.

As the Woven heaved her last breath, Lily felt a surge of emotion directed at her, coming from the Woven. It wasn't anger or animal terror. It was a complicated emotion she could only describe as defiance.

“Give me your knife,” Lily said, holding her hand out to Una. Una gave her knife over, and she cut around the lump.

“Your hands!” Dana warned as stinging fluid landed on Lily's fingers. “Woven turn acidic after death,” she added needlessly.

Lily ignored the sting that quickly turned to an itch and then a burn, and dug around inside the pocket she had cut until she extracted the root of the lump.

“Water, quick!” Caleb said, and started rinsing the acid off Lily's hands.

When all the acid was gone, Lily rushed to the campfire to see what she had extracted. It was a crystal, only slightly corroded around the edges. Everyone gasped.

“I got it out in time,” Lily said. “The acid their organs release when they die didn't have a chance to destroy it.”

“That's a willstone,” her Tristan said. A long silence followed his statement.

“What does this mean?” Breakfast asked quietly.

“I have no idea,” Lily replied.

*   *   *

After another week, they made it to the foothills on the other side of the Appalachians. The Woven had kept their distance after the incident with the lions, and with no attacks to fight, Lily's tribe traveled swiftly.

Although the respite was welcomed by most, it frustrated Lily. She desperately wanted to study the Woven and get some answers to her questions. Debate over the Woven raged among the braves. They could accept that the pack hunters—especially the wolf Woven out west—used willstones to communicate in some basic way, but they all swore up and down that no one had ever seen a Woven do any kind of magic.

“They're not that intelligent,” Dana argued. “And they're scared of fire. If they had crucibles and witches among them, wouldn't they be attracted to it?”

Lily couldn't argue with that, but still, the notion that the Woven had willstones inside their bodies disturbed her. It seemed as if the willstone had grown inside the lion Woven as if it were a part of her, like another organ. Not even humans were
that
bonded to their willstones. Lily needed to know what the Woven used their willstones for, if they used them at all.

Lily spent more time on guard duty desperate for a glimpse of them. Occasionally, she would catch a flash of pale fur in the distance and she would be tempted to rush out and chase it, but something always held her back. Lily had a sense that the apparent cease-fire between their two species was more than just coincidence, and she didn't want to make the mistake of thinking these creatures were her friends. Just because the pale Woven hadn't attacked the main group didn't rule out the possibility that she would pick off strays that wandered too far from the campfire.

They followed a cold, fast-flowing stream of melt water out of the mountains for another week. The small streams fed larger and larger tributaries until they reached what Lily knew of as the Ohio River.