The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (68 page)

It was mid-afternoon now and
still they had not slowed. Her heart was in her throat and she couldn’t tell
which frightened her more – the thought of something so terrible that
would send Sherah al Shiva fleeing into the night, or the thought of meeting up
with Kerris Wynegarde-Grey once again. Both caused her stomach to twist into
knots and she tried to keep her mind on balancing at these fantastic speeds. If
she fell asleep, she would surely fall and break something important.

As if reading her thoughts, the
Alchemist pulled her mare up sharp, hauling the black neck in a marked U, so
that the animal actually skidded on the dusty ground. It took the tigress
several moments to bring her own horse around, and she was met with the sight of
the cheetah, bent over on her mount, clutching her middle as if struck. Her
golden eyes were wide, in pain or fear Fallon could not tell, and her mouth
gaped open as if she could not catch her breath.

And from that open mouth came a
scream as horrible and soul-rending as anything Fallon had ever heard, more so
even, for this horrible, soul-rending scream had no sound.

Behind her, the little red pouch
stretched and writhed, twisting like a living thing.

Fallon didn’t know what to do.

Finally, the cheetah released a
long held breath, and straightened up on her night-black mare, pushing the
thick mane off her face and wiping her forehead with her arm. There were fresh
tears in her eyes.

“Sherah…?”

“It is over, little sister. We
will be free soon.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Quickly, they will be waiting
for us.” And she spurred her mare onward again, as if nothing at all had
happened.

Fallon watched for a moment,
before digging her heels into her own steed and followed.

And so they rode, two black
horses side by side, into a strange, hilly golden land, toward lions.

***

“Sahidi.”

“Go away.”

“Sahidi,
please, we have a problem…”

“What kind of problem?”

“The others are disturbed.”

“Disturbed?” Ice-blue eyes rolled
sleepily. “And how, pray, is their disturbance worthy to cause mine?”

“The soul purse is moving.”

With a growl and a lash of his
white-striped tail, Jet barraDunne threw off his cover and swung his feet to
the floor. He hated being awakened, even if it was late in the afternoon. They
had been traveling for months. They deserved the occasional day spent in a soft
bed. But still, a moving soul purse was not a good sign.

“I knew she would betray us,” he
muttered as he clambered out of the fine bed the Magistrate had prepared for
him. “She stole my horse. She probably started that damned fire as well. Call
everyone here. We will discuss what this means,
once
I’ve had a cup of tea…”

And the First Mage of
Agara’tha
reached down to light the
lantern near his bed with a simple motion of his fingers and went in search of
his clothes.

***

She had no more than ten summers
when she killed them all.

They had lived in a three room
hut in the peaks of
Kangchen’Dzongah,
a good day’s trek from any village, but her father made
chaang
, and he made it strong, so men from all over came to drink
at her father’s house. There were always men at her father’s house.

 
It had started before
she could remember.

At first, it had been him alone
and at night and only occasionally, but soon, as demand grew for his
chaang,
it also grew for his only
daughter, youngest of nine born to a quiet and frightened woman. In the years
they had lived in those mountains, only five had survived their first winters.
It was the way of things. Before she saw her eighth summer, most nights were
not her own, and even her brothers were given leave to use her as they willed.
She was a pretty thing, and small, and her pelt as soft as a kitten’s. She grew
to despise the creak of the floor as the curtain was pushed aside, the smell of
chaang
on their breath, the lies they
would whisper as they moved on top of her and then left. She learned to hate
very early, and she learned it well.

One day, while playing by herself
in a rock cut, she found a blade.

It had no hilt – it was
just a blade, but she slipped it into her boot and took it home and tucked it
underneath her shoulders as she prepared for bed. That night, when her father
came in, she slit his throat and watched him die in her bedding. Then, after
she bundled her few clothes, she moved like a ghost to each of their beds,
killing brother after brother in much the same silent way, until she stepped
into the great room and found her mother sitting by the fire, skinning a chiwa
in silence.

They looked at each other a long
moment, before her mother turned back to her work, saying nothing. Her only
daughter slipped the blade back in her boot and left the house in the middle of
the night, never to return.

It will be terrible, what the dogs will do to her.

He let out a long, deep breath,
reached up to catch one of the hands that still clasped his face and pulled it
to his lips. He kissed her palm.

“Remember that no one can touch
you,” he said softly. “They can do what they will to this, to the flesh, but no
one can touch who you are inside. Inside, you are steel. Remember this.”

moonlight and silver

Her mouth was at his ear. “I
will.”

he will die in her arms

He kissed her hand once more,
before rising to his feet and gazing out at the southern horizon.

There was a cloud of dust
approaching.

***

Kirin had to admit that he was
impressed. His brother was quite the fisherman. He had managed to scramble down
the steep incline of the river gorge and find sufficient footing on the shale
bank below. Together, they skinned fish after fish, letting the thin white
flesh dry in the afternoon sun.

alMassay whinnied and Kirin was
on his feet in a heartbeat. He noticed the Major and the Seer standing in the
distance, hands raised to block the sun as they stared at something on the
horizon. Horses, he knew it instinctively. Two, by the size and shape of the
dust cloud they left, and he knew also who it was likely to be.

His heart leapt inside his chest,
even as he cursed their foolishness.

“Do you think…?” Kerris had
fallen in at his side, and Kirin threw his brother a quick glance. He seemed to
be holding his breath.

Closer and closer the riders
came, until it was obvious, even with the billowing black cloaks. The pelts
were unmistakable.

Fallon sprang from the back of
her horse even as Kerris was running to meet her, and he caught her in his arms
and swung her around and around and showered her with kisses which she most
eagerly returned. Kirin was dumbstruck at such a display so he turned away to
await the Alchemist, who would undoubtedly halt her mare just steps from him
and await his hand to dismount.

She did no such thing.

Instead, she walked the
sweat-flocked animal past him without even a glance. Her gaze was locked upon
that of the Seer, and it wasn’t until she was immediately before him that she
halted and dismounted to stand facing him, eyes narrowed, chin held high.

The Major was as taut as a strung
bow.

First one, then the other, the
last Seer of
Sha’Hadin
removed his
gloves.

Kirin didn’t like this one bit.
He strode towards the trio, hand on the hilt of his katanah.

The Major stepped in front of
him, hand on the hilt of her own.

The Seer reached out, grabbed the
cheetah by her milky white throat and swung her against the bark of the
pistachio tree..

“No,
sidi,”
growled the Captain. “What are you –“

“Hush,” hissed the Major, flashing
a glance at the pair against the tree, then at her Captain. “This is beyond
us.”

The Alchemist did not fight. In
fact, she almost willed it now as the Seer pressed into her, eyes closed,
fingers reaching into the crush of her hair.

“No, stop this now!” Kirin tried
to push the Major aside but grey arms stopped him now. And orange. And white.

“Kirin, please no…” It was Kerris
and Fallon, together with the Major.
An
uprising,
his first thought,
a
betrayal,
and yet…

The Seer adjusted his grip,
fingers cupping the back of the woman’s skull now, pulling her close to him,
eyes still tightly closed, his own brow furrowed deeper, deeper still in a
battle for remembrance and survival and steel. She gasped, her body twisting as
if to get away but her hands clapped deliberately over his, clearly not wanting
him to let her go. Suddenly, he released her and took a few staggering steps
back, breathing deeply as if dazed.

“Forgive me,” Sherah whispered
and she sunk to her knees, her back to the pistachio tree.

benAramis swung around, glanced
first at the Captain, then – for some reason, the Captain’s brother
– before extending his claws and taking several steps toward the black
mare and the little red satin pouch bobbing at the end of a spider-silk tether…

Sherah al Shiva closed her
painted eyes.

And with the force of a legion of
Seers, he slashed the pouch with his black claws and every cat – the
Major, the Scholar, the Captain, the Seer and the Guide - was thrown backwards
with the impact. Souls, hundreds of souls, burst forth, and memories, lifetimes
of memories,
their
memories filled
them once again. Ursa with the memory of tea in a snowy mountain pass, Fallon
with the memory of a white face in a bowl under the moon, Kirin with the memory
of rats and armies and brothers and an Empress alone at a desert oasis, Sireth
with the memory of dead men and dead wives and Alchemy and finally Kerris, poor
Kerris, in memory after memory of bad choices and those not-so-bad, of snakes
and avalanches and dances and jail cells and brothers, memory after memory
stolen by Alchemy and beauty and volition, and every one of them was sent
hurtling backwards by the force of it all, save the cheetah on her knees under
a pistachio tree.

The returning falcon cried in her
shrill sharp voice and the sun began to set across the long golden plain of
Beyond.

***

A dark room, a group of five men
dressed in black, a circle of chalk on the stone floor, and candles. In the
center, a red satin pouch emptied and lifeless next to a large silver bowl,
flattened like a wok, and in it, smoke and mist and vapor swirling in eddies
around the rim.

Souls.

One cat stretches out a hand,
raises a blade, slices a finger. Blood drips into the bowl and the mist reacts,
retreating, condensing, congealing as if avoiding the blood, but in a sudden
and unexpected turn, the smoke leaps up and out of the bowl, swirling in
dizzying circles above for several heartbeats before bursting into sparks and
then nothingness.

The cats are stunned, for such a
thing has never happened in their experience. Only one presumes to know what
has happened, the one with the silver eyes.

He stands and leaves the room.

There is only blood in the bowl.

***

Kirin knelt down by the fire.

“How are you feeling now?” he
asked.

Kerris turned baleful eyes on
him. “Terrible,” he groaned, and tugged the blanket tighter around his
shoulders. “Woofed up all of that lovely rabbit. And the dates. Pity.”

“He’s thrown up three times.”
Fallon leaned forward, her hand rubbing across his back. “And he’s still
shivering.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Your head still hurts. I can
tell.”

“It’s still attached, love.
That’s what matters.”

“But you’ve remembered so many
things…”

Kerris took the tigress’ hand,
gave it a squeeze, smiled at her fondly. “Even a cobra that wasn’t there.”

She beamed.

He looked back at his brother.
“But Kirin, what was that? I mean, what exactly happened, to all of us, back
there?”

“I’m not certain, Kerris. But I
mean to find out.” He placed a palm over his brother’s forehead.

“Kirin, I’m fine.”

“I’ll get another blanket.”

“Get me a great big bowl of Arak
and we’ll talk.”

The golden lion grinned. “You’re
fine.”

He stood and placed his hands on
his hips, his long hair pulled back and waving in the breeze. It was evening,
and the sky was red, beautiful painted vibrant red, in streaks from horizon to
horizon and he turned away from the fire to the silhouette of the pistachio
tree and the figures waiting below.

The falcon sat perched on the
shoulder of her most familiar host, well fed with the last of the hare, and
hooded, seeing nothing. Both the Major and the Seer were standing near the
tree, and he felt the weight of their gaze as he approached, but he only had
eyes for the woman still seated with her back to the tree. She had not moved
from that spot, nor had she touched the tea the tigress had brought for her.

He towered over her now.

“You will answer my questions
, sidala.
You will answer them
truthfully, without ruse, without riddle, or I will take off your head, right
here, right now. Do you understand this?”

“Of cour—“

She stopped herself.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He exhaled, swallowed,
formed his first question out of the buzzing swarm of questions in his head.

“That thing, what is it? What…has
it been?”

“A soul purse.”

“What is a soul purse? What does
it do?”

She looked up at him, her eyes
great and golden, but he made his heart steel.