Hunter and Fox (28 page)

She looked surprised—as if for a moment she had quite forgotten what he meant. “No, not really, but it doesn't feel quite like my own skin yet.”

Si stared hard at her for a moment before wolfing down the last of his mushrooms.

The others remained silent, but Equo caught Si's eyes across the tiny fire. In his mind was the uncomfortable thought that the last time Si had spoken such a great deal, bad things had happened after. Si was closer to the wildness that had once been the Ahouri's nature. Being Shattered had changed Equo's own perception, but there were things Si sensed that the others could not. Unfortunately, he did not have the ability to tell them directly—Varlesh was the talker.

Nyree knew little of what passed between the three of them. Having finished her food, she set about braiding back her hair in a businesslike fashion. “I will require a little time to open a path for us.”

Hearing a trace of concern in her voice, Equo was moved to ask, “Is it dangerous?”

“Anything to do with the White Void is risky. It touches Conhaero in many places, but each opening has its own particular dangers.”

They packed up and quenched the fire in silence, watched over by Azrul. The eagle no longer battered her cage; instead her attention seemed locked on Nyree. She shifted uneasily on her perch and tucked her white wings tightly about her as if sensing an oncoming storm.

Unnerved though he might be, Finn still managed to feel tired. They had spent a difficult morning watching the Salt. His eyes burned and every part of his body ached in sympathy. Talyn had used her jacket and a pile of rocks to at least make him a shelter to keep the sun off. He'd thanked her for the thoughtful gesture and asked if she would like to share the shade. The stare he got in return threatened to cool even the salt plain completely.

“There is room enough for one only,” she said, “and a Vaerli doesn't hide from the sun—or anything else.”

For a moment Finn contemplated asking her if she was afraid to be near him, but somewhere in the progress of the last few days he'd learned a little restraint. The idea of being kicked off onto the Salt had little appeal.

Instead, he dozed fitfully beneath the small shelter and watched Talyn out of the corner of one eye. She was crouched not far off, leaning back on her haunches, pistol resting on the ground close by and sword lying across her thighs. Everything about her was alert and those dark eyes never stopped scanning. It gave Finn the illusion that someone was watching out for him. He wasn't quite foolish enough to think it was any more than that.

Finn passed his time watching her. He liked doing that. Her face had stern beauty, but it was nothing like the wonder it had been when she laughed. Little chance of that now.

Finn's eyes drooped as the heat washed over him. His body felt far away, with only his mind floating in the whiteness.

“She would slit your throat in an instant if the Caisah commanded it.” The quiet voice reached him from a nearby dream—or perhaps it was his unconscious.

Talyn was beginning to like him, he was sure.

“What about that poor boy?”

Ysel. Guilt washed over him suddenly—with everything that had happened since Perilous he had almost forgotten the child. All Finn's attempts to make the pattern had failed.

“Don't you want to help him?”

He did, he needed to—but here he was stuck on the salt plain.

“All things are possible.” Suddenly the whiteness was not so calm. It was pulling at him. He felt stretched as though every inch of his skin was being flayed alive. He called out Talyn's name. This no longer felt like a dream. He caught a glimpse of her dark hair, a suggestion of hands grazing his arm, and he suddenly knew with dread certainty that it wasn't a dream.

He fell for a long time through the white with the echo of laughter around him. Fear made his heart race and his ears roar. Finn yelled against the blankness of it all until there was no other sound to the world than that.

Then he began to discern patterns in the whiteness, fluctuations that reminded him of the patterns he'd once woven with his fingers. He grasped this suggestion of sanity. Raising his hands to them, he let his mind blend into the lines as they had before. A curious calmness drifted over him, until there was nothing but the patterns and the shifting light.

They resolved themselves into a woman's face and, though the light passed through it, he could still tell it was the face of a Vaerli woman. It wasn't Talyn, though. This face had none of the warring emotions and barely-held dark passions. Instead it was a face of deep peace that made even this frightening in-between place seem safe. Finn smiled—or at least he felt as though he was smiling, even though he was no longer sure he had a face.

“We meet again!” the woman's voice rang through the light.

He was incapable of answering. Perhaps his throat was in the same place as his face.

“You don't remember anything of me, I know that. However, a child knows his mother all the same.”

He should have been shocked, horrified, or denied it. Yet a deep core of his being recognized an echo of his own features in her. Blood knows blood. A warmth and peace emanated from her, and a deep sorrow that washed over him.

“You have escaped them this once, my son, but they will come for you again. Remember when the storm is the darkest and blinds you, I will be there. You have my blood in you. Hold tight to it and do not forget your mother.”

The light was burning brighter now and whatever strange world he had slipped into was letting go of him. He had the fleeting impression of lips on his forehead and the scent of flowers, and then his body materialized around his senses.

Finn felt an iron grip on his upper arm, more real than anything else. It pulled with a persistence that could not be denied. By sheer pressure of will, Talyn the Dark pulled him back into the real world. He fell into it with a gasp, to find himself lying across her: heart pounding, face-to-face. For the briefest of moments he could have sworn he saw stars in that gaze.

He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was and how much he had missed her despite everything, but the words would not come. It was a real first for him.

“You are no feather,” Talyn finally said, rolling him off her with a huff.

“I'm sorry,” he stammered leaping to his feet. Was he imagining a blush on her cheek as well? “What just happened?”

“They tried to take you. Somehow they opened the White Void and were pulling you through.”

“To where?”

“That I cannot say—but nowhere pleasant, I would think.”

Remembering the woman with the ring of heads, Finn shivered. “In that case, thank you.”

“I would hold onto your appreciation. I don't know if I have the strength to do it again. My powers, unlike theirs, have their limits.” It was the first time Talyn had shown real concern, and the slight crack in her voice made Finn even more nervous.

A light remark, something to break the tension would have been his usual response—this time though he could find nothing. He sat back down under the makeshift shelter and waited.

It didn't take long. She came and sat down next to him, folding her arms around her legs. Finn was aware how close she was—the smell of leather mingling with the strange, spicy scent of her hair and an almost palpable heat against his arm. “What happened to the Kindred that saved you at Perilous?”

That one caught him unawares. He shifted uncomfortably. “Why do you ask that?”

Talyn whirled about and glared at him. “Because there is more to you, Finnbarr the Fox, than meets the eye! A Kindred saved you, the Caisah wants you, and I was told to bring you here by an apparition.”

The last one made him blink. “What?”

She only smiled enigmatically and wouldn't explain.

He feigned disinterest and shrugged. “I'm nothing special.” He hoped his small gift would make her drop the subject.

“I'll be the judge of that.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Now tell me about the Kindred.”

“It left me or lost me…I can't tell which…back at the Caracel.”

She considered that for a while, lowering her eyes and seemingly consulting some interior knowledge. “I doubt that. Kindred can develop very fierce attachments. For one to intervene seems to say there is more to you.”

“Well,” Finn murmured, breaking her gaze with difficulty, “you must be wrong, because it isn't here now.”

“The connection remains.” She fiddled with the Caisah's pistol. “I think you should call it.”

For a moment he couldn't quite believe what Talyn had said, but despite that he could only ask, “How?”

She held out her hand, and after a hesitation he took it. Talyn shook her head. “I never would have thought…”

Daringly, Finn squeezed her fingers. “You'd be holding hands with me?”

She laughed, a short, sharp, surprising sound. “No, never would have thought I'd be showing someone not a Vaerli how to do this. Never mind. Close your eyes. Think of the Kindred.”

Doing so gave Finn an intense moment of vertigo similar to the feeling of the pattern in the cat's cradle. He could feel Talyn, not just the warmth of her hands but also her presence. She burned through his senses. Finn could smell her and feel her behind his eyes. It felt as though if he reached out, he could crawl inside her head. Her thoughts were not so very far from his…

Call for it!
Her voice crawled up his spine, reminding him of the task at hand.
Think of the last time you saw it. Think of it coming to you.

Finn had a hard time recalling what it looked like. It had a tail and wings, but it seemed to have been more…

The connection was suddenly broken, and Talyn was throwing his hands away from hers with a shout. “What have you done?” She looked simultaneously horrified and delighted.

Finn blinked, still stunned by the abrupt breaking of the connection. “What?”

Talyn leapt to her feet and now scanned the sky. “You Named him, you idiot—you Named a Kindred!” The delight had faded away quickly. Now she seemed just very, very angry.

“I don't understand.”

She dragged him up and pointed back in the direction they had come. Finn didn't understand until he saw the shape of dark wings flying toward them like a spear of darkness against the shocking blue of the sky.

“What…” his voice dried up on him. “What is that?”

Talyn growled, “Save me from mad fools! You have summoned something you do not even know the Name of, but it was you who gave it to him!”

Finn felt his stomach drop away. He'd studied at the Master Talespinner's knee. He knew the tales of the Named Kindred. The shape in the sky was drawing closer, and with it a power almost unrivaled in Conhaero.

“Now, foolish man, you will see the power of the Named.” Talyn, in a frightening gesture of surrender, sheathed her sword and turned toward the shadow.

T
he White Void. Equo looked over his shoulder at Varlesh and Si. Though their people had come through it long ago, it had not lost any of its mystery and danger. Songs of the passing had been lost, along with all their other memories when they were sundered. Still, some deep racial memory made him uneasy.

Shortly after morning, Nyree had asked them to build up the fire and take their places cross-legged around it. Then, as unashamed as only a Vaerli could be, she stripped off her tunic until all she wore was a chased-silver necklace. Equo watched her with a dry throat as she unbound her dark hair. It did nothing to hide her golden-skinned beauty or make him any more comfortable.

He tried to concentrate on the necklace. She must have worn it beneath her clothes all this time. It was an intricate creation—as all Vaerli art was. The swirling silver arms of the World Tree held a small vial of a dark substance. It was very beautiful; nestled there between her breasts, beating with her heart…

Equo looked away. Varlesh nudged him hard, so he dared to look back. Now Nyree raised the vial to her lips. A vague shimmer seemed to run down that beautiful form, then she began to dance. Circling the fire with strange shuffling steps, Nyree sang wordlessly. Her voice rose, finding impossibly beautiful notes. A powerful rhythm ran through the song described by the beat of her bare feet on the earth.

Before long, the rest of the group found themselves clapping along with it. Time seemed to flow oddly. Eventually, Equo's hands stung from the clapping and his eyes from the smoke. The whole world seemed to be encompassed by that circle. Reality blurred to nothing. Only the sound and the dance remained.

How long had Nyree been moving? That long black hair was stuck to her body with sweat, and her eyes were fixed to a point beyond any sight. The rest of them swayed to her rhythm, pounded out the circle with her in their heads.

As the pace changed, rising faster and faster, Nyree held out her hand to the Blood Witch. She joined the dance. The two women swung around each other, pounding feet and hands. Finally, as the song rose to a climax, the Witch tore her hand open with her own fangs. Nyree abruptly dropped to her knees as Iola placed her bloody palm against the Vaerli's chest.

She threw up her arms so that the firelight ran down the blue tattooed lines as if they were filling up with something. She called out, the first words in what must have been hours. “I accept!”

The air bent and shifted as white light burst forth from the spot where Nyree stood.

Few things in the world surprised Equo, but he was not of the Vaerli and had no knowledge of the White Void. It spilled out into reality with the power of all nature unleashed. The roar and the fury of it ruptured the trance that Nyree had built—knocking the others to the ground. Through his fingers, Equo peered out into the pure whirlwind of the space between worlds, the agony of which his ancestors had dared to reach this place. It tore at him with its beauty and its peril.

Only Nyree had remained on her feet, staring into that rift. Her dark nakedness was a shadow against its brightness, while her hair streamed in a wild corona. Squinting against the light, Equo saw her help the Blood Witch up. She screamed something into Iola's ear, something that she had to repeat twice. The other woman nodded and then turned away from the Void, running hard to escape its pull. She disappeared into the frantically waving forest.

He had no time to question Nyree about what she had said, for she was now calling to them.

She seemed so fragile, but she was Vaerli, and so they placed themselves in her keeping. Varlesh, pulling the shocked donkey after him by sheer physical strength, went first.

The light took them up and fluttered around the space they had been. The other men followed. Silence beat on Equo's ears painfully until he gave up his own scream unto the Void. The weight was too much, and he was sure they would all be shattered into thousands of pieces.

Then they were through on the other side, blinking and dazed. Varlesh was throwing up into the scrub, while Si gazed about in a dazzled awe. A wave of nausea washed over Equo, and he had to lean against their pack animal for a moment.

“Are we there?” Varlesh asked weakly, standing up and wiping his mouth.

Nyree commandeered a new bundle of clothes from the stunned creature and pulled them on quickly. Equo noticed how her hands were shaking. “Indeed. We are only minutes from the mesa cave.”

The surroundings were thankfully not those weird tilted trees, but blasted scrublands.

“Is this the Chaoslands?” Equo asked Nyree, keeping his eyes averted as she dressed.

Lacing up her bodice, she nodded. “The very edge, though. I can feel the Road in the distance, so the mesa cave is not that far.”

Varlesh was nervously watching the sky. “Crone's whiskers, we're cutting it close.”

Si was solemnly patting the twitching nose of the still-trembling donkey. “Wings, meet their match.”

“Here's hoping you're right,” Equo said, and pulled the hood of his cloak up as a warm wind began to whip over the hills.

They trailed after Nyree in silence. Watching her closely, Equo noticed that she was not moving as quickly as usual. Now and then, she would stop to wearily push her dark hair out of her eyes. So coming through the White Void had not been without its toll. He would not cheapen her choice by saying anything, though.

Cresting a small rise, the group could see down the rest of the blasted landscape. A broad valley opened up, at the end of which was a huge tabletop rock formation. While this dark red lump of stone was interesting, Equo found his attention drawn to the tent city that had sprung up around it.

“Must be half the Portree tribe down there,” Varlesh, still puffing slightly from their ascent, gasped. “By the Crone's whiskers, if the Swoop finds them…”

Nyree was already running down the slope with one hand holding her skirts above her knees. The three men exchanged a glance, but if the Vaerli could abandon her pride, then so could they. The donkey protested, but soon all of them were dashing down the hill. Despite the ridiculous nature of the moment, Equo found he enjoyed the run; he stretched his legs, the air raced through his throat, and the wind pressed against his face.

They all staggered to a halt when they reached the valley floor. Varlesh bent over with his hands on his knees. “That wasn't fair—the damn donkey slowed me down!”

Before they could have an argument on just who had won their impromptu race, Equo looked up and realized they were surrounded by young Portree—all armed and all looking less than hospitable.

Before things could turn really ugly, the crowd parted and the tall, burly figure of Baraca strode toward them. The man looked very different from the young, angry Manesto Equo remembered. Time had battered the rebel leader; his forked beard was now pure white, his face profoundly weather-beaten, and most obvious of all was the patch over his right eye. Yet despite all that, he was still taller than anyone else in the crowd, and with arms thick with great cords of muscle. Such a distinctive person could never go into any town unrecognized, but then life in the wild had always been his choice.

Looking them up and down, Baraca took extra interest in Nyree's new tattooed arms. “Welcome to my secret gathering place, Seer.” The rebel's face might not be pretty, but his voice was a deep, handsome baritone.

Varlesh bristled. “And what about us, you old bear? Are we welcome?”

The two large men glared at each other like angry combatants, making fake feints at each other, before roaring and embracing. Varlesh had always got on best with the rebel.

“Lost something, I see,” he shouted. “Lucky for you that we're out there keeping an eye on you.

While he began to tell the rebel why they were all here, Nyree slipped up to Equo. “There's something different about him, don't you think?”

“Not really; the same old Baraca. He's a bit older and the eye patch is new.”

“He is here,” Si whispered, taking a hesitant step forward, “and now the wings are too. All is in place.”

From the cage on the donkey's back, the eagle screamed, though from delight or fear was impossible to tell. Nyree and Equo turned their faces to the sky. Si was right; out from the clouds were coming the black mass of the Swoop. Dropping down out of the light Equo saw death coming on silent wings.

The warm thermal winds of the mountains had betrayed them, and now there was nothing left to do but fight at Baraca's side.

A Kindred had not been Named since the Harrowing. It was an indisputable fact that Talyn knew. It was also indisputable that it had been done, and by someone not Vaerli.

Glancing across at Finn, she realized that he really didn't understand. As a talespinner he knew the stories, yet he could never understand the raw power of the Kindred and what it truly meant to harness that. Finn was listening to the approach of beating wings, and he had no idea he was a walking impossibility.

Yet, how beautiful he was in that moment before realization hit: bright and fresh and totally unaware of his power. He was so wide open to the world, as she couldn't remember being even when she was a child.

Locked away behind that guileless smile were mysteries she hadn't spotted. The Caisah had perhaps seen deeper into her bounty than she'd given him credit for. Whoever or whatever he was, Finn was an undoubted power to contend with.

The light was being bent now as the Kindred he had Named made its true presence felt. It smashed the air above them, and for a long moment Talyn could not bring herself to look up. If she did, everything would immediately change.

For Talyn, awe had been removed from her life, just like real joy. She'd been a walking ghost all this time, and as long as her eyes stayed down she would not have to face the certainty; she could continue to lie to herself.

However, even a stalwart Vaerli has curiosity, and when she did finally join Finn in staring up at what he had wrought, it was everything and more.

For, Finn had not just been content in Naming a simple being. He had given it a quite specific and powerful name.

He couldn't have known what he did, or the price that would have to be paid later. Perhaps something in the flame of this Kindred called out for greatness and he'd only voiced what he sensed. It was a Name that only two in the past had dared to give. The second had failed in his conviction, knowing what power he was trying to bind, and his torments were Vaerli legend. The other was Ellyria herself, but such bravery was only to be expected of her.

Tears poured down Talyn's cheeks as she stared up at Finn's dragon, and unconsciously her hand caught at his. Such beauty tore away all concerns for safety and life. It pierced through Talyn until it felt as though death was a worthy sacrifice to see such a thing.

Now she understood why no dragon had flown the skies of Conhaero for generations; it was simply too much.

Sunlight streamed off polished golden sides, the air thrummed with the power of its wings, and the eyes of darkest magic stared down at them. Such intelligence and joy beamed from those opal eyes. He was unlike any scaly reptile or any other creature she had ever seen. He was larger than the great ships of the Portree and darkened the Salt with his billowing shadow.

Every line was smooth and beautiful like some exquisite drawing by a master artist. The dragon turned his proud head gracefully down toward them.

Talyn finally remembered to breathe. Her body suddenly seemed very small and insignificant. “Oh, Finn…” Those were the only words she could find. She might have been angry a moment ago, but somehow the dragon had taken her emotions.

“I cannot have done this…” Finn's voice was shaky.

The dragon dropped closer, until they were almost blinded by the light shining off its crystal belly.

Talyn squeezed Finn's hand. “Tell him his name, quickly, the name you thought of for him in your heart of hearts. The Name you called him forth with!”

“Name?” Finn stammered. “I never Named it.”

The dragon's eyes flashed like twin suns.