The Queen of Blood (21 page)

“I want to stop an attack,” Daleina corrected, turning in the direction of his voice. He was grinding some of the plants that he'd gathered—she could hear the pestle and mortar. When he wasn't tending to her eyes, he used his time to search for rare plants, herbs, and berries. He'd found ripe woundberries, as well as the root of a jump flower (used to prevent seizures), a rare bush of deadly nightend berries (used to ease the passing of a terminal patient), the powdered petals of a glory vine (used to slow the symptoms of a disease called the False Death), and many others. Daleina couldn't remember them all, but Hamon liked to rattle off their properties as he worked.

“I don't want to risk waking that earth kraken again,” Ven said. “We'll resume the attacks when we can be midforest.”

Very well, if that's what it took, that's what she'd do. She hugged Bayn, and he leaned his head against Daleina's cheek. Daleina then stood up and, with her hands in front of her, felt to the nearest tree. She knew from ducking under it that this one had a low branch, and she knew from sensing the spirits run up and down it that there were multiple limbs above her.

“He didn't mean right now,” Hamon said.

She climbed slowly but steadily, reaching up for the next branch, climbing by feel. It wasn't so different from climbing through her old village at night. She missed the shadows and bits of light that filtered through the trees, but other than that, she knew she could do it. Beneath her, she heard the sound of climbing—Ven was following her.

Clinging to the braches, she stretched her mind out to the nearest spirits. She kept her mind open, waiting for the attack that she knew would come—and it did come. She “saw” the wood
spirits converge, heard them chittering to one another, and she focused on them.

Grow berries
. She guided them with her mind to the berry bushes that ringed their campsite, imagining the bushes bursting with fat, ripe berries, and the spirits veered down to attend to the bushes.

“Is that the best you can do?” she asked Ven.

He laughed. She thought it was the first time she'd heard him laugh. It sounded like a rumble, as if a bear were laughing.

From there, the training resumed as intensely as it had been before. He tested her often, calling spirits to their campsite and ordering her up into the trees to face them. She wasn't fast, and she often came down with extra scrapes and bruises and the occasional more serious gash.

Hamon patched her up each night. “I can see why Ven wanted a healer along.”

“What were you doing before this?” Daleina asked him.

“Helping my master in the outer villages. All the usual sicknesses and injuries, plus childbirth complications.”

She leaned her head to the side so that he could smooth a salve on a scrape that crossed the back of her neck. She'd miscalculated on a branch, and it had snagged her as she jumped to the next one. Jumps were the scariest, since she had to trust Ven was right about the distance—he'd call it out, and she'd do it. As long as she didn't think too much before she jumped, it went fine, usually. At least she hadn't broken anything yet. “Why did you become a healer?”

“The same reason most do, I suppose. I want to help people.”

“But why?”

“You don't want to hear the sob story. It's not particularly original. My father was ill when I was young. If I'd known more about medicine, I could have helped him. As it was, he died.” He unwound the bandages from around Daleina's eyes. She cracked them open. They felt as if they'd been glued together.

Looking around, she thought she saw glowing orbs, orangeish. That was progress, wasn't it? “I see a glow, there.” She pointed.

“That's the fire. Good.” He began to wash out her eyes again.

“I'm sorry about your father.”

“It was a long time ago.” Gently, he wiped her eyes with a soft cloth. They didn't sting as much. She tried again to see the fire, trying to force it into a crisp shape. The glow undulated. “My mother did not take his death well, and so I left for an apprenticeship as soon as I could. Not an unusual story. Your childhood pain is more unique.”

“Ven told you?” She thought she saw a hint of movement, but it could have been her imagination. She closed her eyes again as he rewrapped the bandages. “Our stories aren't so different. I wasn't good enough to save them.”

“I understand how that must have shaped you. Survivor's guilt, it's called; it's an illness of the mind. I have been trained—”

Curled at her feet, Bayn tensed. Immediately, Daleina sent her senses out, as well as down and up—there was a spirit with Ven, several yards from their camp. She didn't sense anger, but she leapt to her feet, tense, ready.

“What is it?” Hamon asked.

Daleina heard Ven barrel into the campsite. “Got a message. I have to go. Bayn, take care of Hamon and Daleina.” She listened as he threw items into a pack.

“What do you mean, ‘a message'?” she asked as Hamon asked, “Where?”

“North Garat.”

“I'll come,” Hamon said. “You'll need me.” She heard him begin to pack as well.

“No, I need you to stay with Daleina,” Ven said. “She can't be left alone out here. Not on the forest floor, and not when we've been drawing spirits. Not until—”

He stopped short, and Daleina knew he was going to mention her eyes. She clenched her hands and forced her voice to sound calm, reasonable, competent. “What's happening?”

“He gets messages with warnings, about rogue spirit attacks,” Hamon explained when Ven didn't answer.

“Then I'm coming too.”

“You can't keep up on the forest floor.” Ven's voice wasn't cruel, just factual.

“We can travel the wire roads,” Daleina said. “I don't need to see to fly. All I need is someone to call out when it's time to switch wires.” She managed to say it as if she thought it would be easy, even though the idea of hurtling through the air unable to see the end of the line was terrifying. “I can help. You know I can. This is why you picked me, why you brought me out here, isn't it?” She remembered the conversation with Headmistress Hanna, the cryptic remarks about messages that hadn't made sense at the time. “This is why we're here.”

She braced herself for an argument, but it didn't come.

“Fine,” Ven said. “Let's go.”

All three of them began to climb.

A
s she climbed, Daleina felt the air change. On the forest floor, it tasted damp, thick with the smell of earth and moss. By midforest, the air was sweeter, mixed with the scent of nearby villages, of smoke and cooking meat and drying clothes. Higher, near the canopy, it was like breathing fresh, cold water. She felt the wind on her face and heard the whispering of leaves.

Below, Ven called, “The platform is to your left.”

Stopping, she reached around the trunk with her foot, feeling for it. Her toes brushed the edge. Intellectually, she knew how high she'd climbed, but she pretended she was only a few feet from the forest floor as she shifted weight and lunged onto the platform.
Just like climbing back home, right?
Wind whipped around her, and she clung to the tree trunk. Feeling above her, she found the wire.

Soon Ven joined her, and then Hamon, panting. “This is insane,” Hamon said. “Daleina, you can't do this.” He caught her shoulder, and she shrugged him away.

“Tell me when to switch wires,” she told Ven, and then she hooked herself on to one. She held her other clip in her free hand and breathed deeply once, twice, three times.
You can do this. No fear
. She heard Ven clip on behind her and felt the wire tremble.

“We'll have to make three switches and then climb down to the bridges,” Ven said. “Be ready. If you can't do it, stop and I will
come back for you later.”
And then deliver you to the academy,
he didn't say, but Daleina heard.

“I can do it.” Hoping she wasn't wrong, she kicked off the platform. Wind hit her face, her arms, her legs, and her back so hard that she felt wrapped in wind. Branches slapped her legs, and one caught her hair, yanking out several strands. Tucking her chin down, she kept her free hand out, the other clip ready. She listened, as if she could somehow hear the end of the wire, but for all she could tell it went on endlessly.

“Three! Two! One!
Now!
”

Daleina reached forward, and her arm hit the next wire, stinging as the wire sliced her skin. She clipped on and released the first clip. She swung wildly, her arm wrenching in its socket as she switched, and then she was going, speeding up again. She felt the wire shake as Ven switched behind her and then again when Hamon switched.

She sailed between the trees, and for a moment, she felt free, for the first time since she'd been pulled beneath the earth. She felt as if she were all that existed, soaring through an empty world.

“Three, two, one, now!”

She switched again, and then again, until at last Ven cried, “Brace!”

She held out her feet, knees bent, letting gravity tell her which way to face, until she felt the impact of the tree reverberate through her body. She collapsed onto the platform and unclipped. Her arms ached, and her legs stung where branches had smacked into her. She felt and heard Ven land beside her. Standing, she pressed against the trunk, hoping she was out of the way enough as Hamon landed beside her.

“Let me look at your wounds,” Hamon demanded.

“There's no time,” Ven said. “Climb down.”

Hamon kept his hand on her, letting her use him to guide her to the ladder. She then climbed down by feel until she reached the bridge. Reaching out, she grabbed Hamon's hand, and he held it as they ran along the bridge, following the sound of Ven's footsteps, pounding on the wood as the bridge shook beneath them.

She heard screaming up ahead. Multiple voices. And the rip of wood. Instantly, she was plunged back in her memories to when she was ten years old. Her breath, already harsh in her throat, felt even faster, and her heart raced. Every muscle wanted her to turn and run in the opposite direction, but she kept running toward the screams. Her hand was gripping Hamon's so hard that sweat stuck their palms together.

Ven stopped her with his hands on her shoulders. “Hide here, both of you.”

Hamon pulled her down behind what felt like a wall. Her fingers touched the seams between wood boards—the side of a house or just a crate. She couldn't tell which it was. She heard Ven pull his blade from its sheath, the ring of drawn steel, and she cast her mind outward, feeling for the spirits.

There were six. Small but vicious wood spirits, tearing through the houses, biting any flesh they saw, ripping any cloth, breaking any wood. She felt them like vibrations in the air, tiny earthquakes in her mind.
Stop!
She sent the thought out, and it was swallowed in their whir. She doubted they even felt her. They were all whirling rage and joy and ecstatic, blood-crazed destruction. She wasn't going to be able to overpower them; she'd have to redirect them, somehow.

Growing a few branches was not going to be a tempting enough substitute for the bloodlust. She needed to offer them something grand. Like a palace. Or a fortress. Or the academy. Drawing a picture in her mind of soaring spires and fused trees, she crafted her command. She'd have to hold it firm and be—

“What do we do?” Hamon whispered in her ear.

“I talk to the spirits; you keep me safe.” Standing, she threw everything in her into that picture and sent it spiraling out toward the six spirits.
Build!
she commanded. She held the picture of the spires.

The spirits shrieked. She felt them rip into a woman's leg. Distantly, she heard screams, but they faded as she bore her will down on the spirits.
Build!
She painted the picture for them, beautiful and tall. And she felt the spirits swirl around one another, faster and faster, in a cyclone, and then they burrowed into the trunks
of six of the village trees. They wanted this: unfettered growth, wild birth.

The trees began to grow, and she felt as if the growth was being pulled out of her own body. She swayed and felt hands on her shoulders, steadying her. She kept the pressure on the spirits as sweat poured down her forehead and trickled down her back.

Build!

The trees burgeoned wider and burst upward, stretching and soaring and twisting together. The spirits fused them and, laughing, spread the branches into a lacework canopy above. The wood was hollowed and peeled, its bark flayed and split, and she felt as if it were her flesh being peeled, and she felt her throat aching, as if she were screaming, but she couldn't hear herself. She couldn't hear anything. Couldn't feel her own body. She was the trees, growing and widening and stretching.

And then she felt nothing.

She collapsed.

W
HEN
D
ALEINA WOKE
,
HER FACE FELT CHILLED
. S
HE TOUCHED
her cheeks and then, gently, her eyelids. The bandages were gone. Carefully, she opened her eyes and saw a yellowish glow above her. It was framed by blurred light green.

“Good,” Hamon said. “You're awake. Ven? She's all right.”

She saw a shadow shift beside her. A shadow! Eagerly, she tried to force it into a shape, but it stubbornly refused. “What happened? Is the village okay?”

“You have an interesting mind,” Ven said. “I'm not sure anyone has ever controlled the spirits quite the way you do. No wonder you didn't test well. You seem to be more effective when the spirits are already agitated.”

“Did it work?” She struggled to sit up. Her head pounded, and she blinked. For once, it didn't feel like knives slicing her. The yellowish glow stayed above her. Sunlight? She tried again to shape the shadows and glowing orbs into recognizable bodies and faces.

“You turned the village into . . . well, I don't know what it is.
Spires? Towers? A palace?” Hamon said, awe in his voice.

“I had to redirect them, and it had to be something big.”

The shadow moved again, and she heard heavy footsteps on the bridge, felt the boards tremble—Ven's footsteps, receding. She heard his voice, lower, muffled, and then another voice replied. He'd gone to talk to someone else.

With his usual gentleness, Hamon helped her stand. All her muscles ached, and she couldn't tell if it was from the trip across the forest or from the magic. She reached out with her mind, trying to feel for where the spirits had gone, and pain shot through her temples. She staggered backward, but Hamon didn't let her fall. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“I've felt worse.”

“I'm sure you've felt better too.”

“You're not wrong.”

“You might not want to do something like that again for a while.”

She rubbed her temples. “Probably a good idea. How are the villagers?”

“Three dead, fifteen injured, but the vast majority are safe, only minor injuries, and getting over their terror,” Hamon said. “Lean on me. You need a softer place to sit.”

“You need to help the injured.”

“Once you're taken care of.”

“I'm fine. Go, Hamon. This is why you're here.”

“I'm here for you. Because of you. No,
for
you.” He touched her cheek gently, and then he took his hand away and her cheek felt chilled without it.

Softer, she said, “Go. If anything tries to hurt me, I'll make it build a shed.”

He insisted on helping her shuffle a few more feet, and then she sank onto the wood floor of whatever platform she was on—the village? her new building? a bridge?—so that he had to leave her and help the ones who needed it more.

She lay on her side, cheek against the warm wood, and just breathed without trying to focus her mind on any particular
thought, except how nice his touch was. The village smelled like an odd mix of burnt wood and freshly planted grasses. She heard lots of voices, talking, some crying, their words mixing together. She didn't try to separate them out.

“Hello? Are you dead?” It was a girl's voice.

“I don't think so,” Daleina said, “but thanks for asking.”

“Are you a queen?” she asked.

“No, just a candidate.”

“I thought only queens could build things.”

“These spirits had a lot of energy,” Daleina said. “I told them to do something else with it.”

“Oh. It's pretty.”

Daleina didn't know what to say to that. “Good.” She wasn't sure exactly what she'd done or what the spirits had built. Opening her eyes, she tried to focus on the girl. She saw a blob that bobbed in front of her. It seemed vaguely girl-like in shape.

“You're pretty too.”

“Uh, good?”

“Except for the blood. I got a cut too. See?”

“I hurt my eyes a while ago, and I can't see very well.”
Or at all
. Except that she could at least see glows and shadows and blobs. She tried to squint at the blobs, and her head ached as if her skull were a bell hit by a hammer.

“My granddaddy can't see very well either. He mostly stays inside. But that's because his knees hurt him too. I don't know if he's dead.”

“Is your mother or father nearby?” She hoped the spirits hadn't made the girl an orphan.

“My mommy is talking to the green man. He scared the spirits away from my little brother. I'm glad the spirits didn't eat my little brother, even if he fusses a lot. Mommy said we're going to be great friends when we get bigger, but I don't think that's true. I never wanted a brother. I wanted a sister so we could play queens together. Do you want to be a queen?”

It was hard to follow the tumbling words with the way her head was pounding. “Yes, I do.”

“Mommy says that people who want to be queen don't live
very long, so I don't really want to be queen. I want to be a woodcarver and make beautiful butterflies out of wood. But I need a lot of charms to do that without angering the spirits, and I don't have very much money. Mommy says maybe I can apprentice when I'm older. Are you an apprentice?”

“Sort of. Yes. I am.”

“Do you think Mommy will let me live in the spires if I ask her?”

“I don't know.” Daleina thought about sitting up and then decided it was nice lying right where she was. At least while the child was talking, she knew nothing bad was happening. She was certain she couldn't handle another attack right now. She wasn't even sure she could command her legs to move, much less command a spirit. “Can you tell me what it looks like?”

“It's like a palace!” In a happy burble, the little girl described six trees, fused together and spiraling up to pierce the canopy. The bark was stretched smooth, like skin pulled taut. “Like this,” the girl said, and Daleina guessed she was demonstrating. She then continued to describe the soaring structure that Daleina had pictured in her mind.

It had actually worked. She'd done it.

Maybe she
was
meant to do this.

S
PRAWLED ON A DIVAN
,
THE OWL WOMAN LICKED CHOCOLATE OFF A
spoon. “He brought a woman with him this time, a powerful one.”

Queen Fara sipped her pine tea and schooled her face to show only pleasant interest. “Oh? I hope this woman didn't cause problems. Please, have more.”

Discarding the spoon, the owl woman dipped her hand into the chocolate and then licked her many-jointed fingers, one at a time. Each finger ended in a talon. “My spirits were not displeased. With the addition of the woman, they were able to create both death and life.”

Fara knew perfectly well who “he” was, but she hadn't known he'd chosen a new candidate. She made a mental note to have her gatherers make inquiries, discreetly. “I am glad everything was satisfactory, despite the disruption.”

“Indeed.” She shifted, her wings fluttering, then lying flat on her human back. “But today is not for talk of business. I came to play.” Before dawn, on the night of the first full moon, was the time for bargains—lately, the owl woman preferred the poetry of it.

“But of course.” Fara studied the garden. A few gardeners toiled in the flower beds, creating spreads of blossoms to complement her topiaries. Her latest addition was a miyan set, comprised of snarls of branches tethered to the ground by vines. As long as the vines were intact, the living game pieces could be moved. Flicking a finger, she sent an order to a small, docile spirit next to her piece. It cajoled the plant to pull the piece three spaces.