The Whitefire Crossing (26 page)

Dev eyed him with wary confusion. “Sounds like aspen. No groves in this valley, but down near Arathel Pass, the south-facing slopes are covered with ’em. What in Shaikar’s hells does that have to do with us, or Ruslan?”

Arathel Pass. Kiran’s chill grew deeper. He pressed a hand to the cold weight of Lizaveta’s amulet. It lay silent and still under his shirt, without any warning twinges of heat or sparks. “Ruslan and I are linked. The amulet blocks that link. But just now, I saw a vision of aspen trees in a meadow, and earlier, a view of snowy peaks. Both times, it was as if I looked for an instant through someone else’s eyes. I fear those eyes are Ruslan’s—and that he might also have seen through mine.”

Dev tensed. “You mean your amulet doesn’t work anymore, and he can find us?”

“Not directly. Believe me, I’d know it if he’d circumvented the amulet completely.” Kiran remembered all too well the crushing, inexorable pressure of Ruslan’s will on his unprotected mind. “I think he’s found a tiny flaw in the amulet’s protections, like a hairs-width crack in a cistern cover. He’ll try and widen it, to break through entirely. In the meantime, he’ll glean what information he can.”

“From whatever he sees through your eyes?” Dev frowned. “Did you have any warning, before you saw this—vision?”

Kiran shook his head, reluctantly. “I think I opened the way for Ruslan, somehow, by healing my arm—the first time it happened, I’d just drawn a little
ikilhia
from a tree. But the second time, I hadn’t touched anything.”

Dev thumped a hand on fissured red bark. “If he saw cinnabar forest, he’ll know we’ve made the Whitefires’ western slopes, but that’s still a broad area to search. Thank Khalmet you weren’t looking at the Elenn Gorge. Keep walking, and describe what you saw, exact as you can.”

Kiran did his best to describe every detail of both visions. Dev listened with a thoughtful scowl. He said, “Sounds like Ruslan’s in the Sondran Valley, maybe a mile below Arathel Pass. That’s four days’ ride from Kost in the ordinary way. Based on how fast he covered the distance to the pass from the Desadi Couloir, I’m guessing he can halve that. But we should still beat him to the border, if we cross tomorrow like I planned.” He sounded cautiously relieved.

“It’s not a physical race any longer,” Kiran said quietly. “If Ruslan breaks through the block on our bond before I cross the Alathian wards, the distance between us won’t matter.” His breath shortened at the thought. Ruslan had proved after the
akhelashva
ritual that he could crush any resistance on Kiran’s part with casual ease. Doubtless he’d first force Kiran to kill Dev, and not in any way as simple as draining Dev’s
ikilhia
. A demonstration of his control, a removal of a source of interference, and a punishment for Kiran, all wrapped into one.

Not something he wanted Dev to realize, this close to the border, lest Dev abandon him in favor of safety. But Dev gave Kiran a sharp, wary look, as if he’d picked up on Kiran’s thought. “How long do we have?”

“I have no idea. Days, hours, minutes...impossible to tell.” Kiran held Dev’s gaze. “Whatever supplies you need to purchase in Kost, get them quickly.”

“Oh, I will,” Dev said.

Kiran searched his face, but Dev’s expression was as unreadable as Mikail’s had always been when he chose not to share his thoughts. Sweat dampened Kiran’s hands on his pack straps. He had no choice but to place his fate in Dev’s hands, and hope Dev didn’t betray his trust as badly as Mikail had.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

(Dev)

I
’d thought I’d seen Kiran twitchy with nerves before, but the hunched shoulders and restless hands I remembered paled in comparison to his behavior as we scrambled down the ravine toward the cabin. He near jumped out of his skin every time a twig cracked, and he alternated between squinting fearfully at cinnabar trees and staring holes in my back.

My own nerves weren’t too quiet, either. It didn’t take a scholar to figure out my lifespan would be measured in heartbeats if Ruslan weaseled his way past that amulet. I ignored the queasiness in my gut. Damn it, this wasn’t far different than racing to finish a climb in the face of an oncoming storm. Panic was a fool’s reponse that only led to deadly mistakes.

I stopped Kiran when we reached a gurgling rill of water bounded by a blaze of crimsonweed. “You had any more of those visions?”

He shook his head, his mouth a bloodless line.

“Ruslan knowing we’re on the western slopes is bad enough, but if he spies a cabin, he won’t need a wildfire to figure our position.” I pulled out one of the cloth strips we’d used to bind Kiran’s injured arm. “I’m gonna tie this over your eyes, and lead you the rest of the way. Should be only a quarter mile.”

He didn’t even speak, just bent his head. I knotted the strip tight, and took him by the arm. His muscles quivered under my hand, but he followed without hesitation.

I’d found the cabin on my way up to Bearjaw Cirque two summers ago. Its abandoned state had been obvious—half the roof had fallen in, and timbers were missing from several walls. I had no idea why anyone would have bothered to build a hideaway so far up a nondescript side canyon, or what had happened to the owner, but since the stout storage locker remained intact, it made a handy cache for food and supplies.

Kiran trailed a hand across the log wall as I led him toward the rusty-hinged door. He made a small, surprised noise. “The whole building is made of wood?”

I’d forgotten he’d likely never seen any structures not made of stone or adobe. “Wood’s no scarce resource here.”

“A shame. Stone, I could perhaps have linked to the amulet...” He sighed, heavily.

“No caves around here, either.” Not that I wanted to spend any more time in a cave.

The door squealed like a hare caught by a hawk as I opened it, and we both flinched. I helped Kiran duck through into the dim, musty interior. The main room had once been some twenty feet long, but when the far section of roof had collapsed, the space was halved by a bristling wall of broken timbers. I tugged Kiran over to a corner and kicked aside mouse droppings. “Sit here. I know it’s not much for comfort, but it’ll keep out wind and wet. I’ll leave your pack right beside you.”

He sat down, cautiously, and drew his knees up to his chest. He tilted his blindfolded face up to mine. “Just...hurry. Please.”

“Fast as I can,” I promised, and backed away. His head tracked my movement. The desperate hope there made my breath catch. Gods damn him, he was a blood mage, not some scared little Tainter. He didn’t need my protection.

The cabin’s storage locker was a sturdy wooden substructure with a heavy cover secured by a sliding bear-proof latch. I sorted rapidly through the contents of my pack and threw our food and everything that didn’t fit with my intended guise as a solo prospector into the locker. I latched it tight, and yelled to Kiran, “See you mid-morning.” I didn’t wait for a reply, just raced straight for the forest fast as a roundtail released from a snare.

The buzzing of my nerves eased a touch as I vaulted down boulder piles and zigzagged around fat cinnabar trunks. I hadn’t realized how badly the need to hold myself to a pace Kiran could match had weighed on me. Not his fault he was slow, but gods, what a relief to cover ground at a decent pace. I made it down the ravine with the sun still a handspan above the gorge rim.

A rough trail ran along the floor of the gorge, past scattered log cabins tucked amongst slender molasses-scented syrup pines and massive cinnabar trees. Alathians weren’t supposed to settle this side of the border, but King Arkenndren sure didn’t bother enforcing the law way out here, and the Alathian Council only cared about their own rigid rules. If a few misfits and loners wanted to live on the Arkennland side of the border, the Council’s attitude was one of good riddance.

Most of the cabins sat silent and shuttered. Now the winter snows had melted, most settlers would be out hunting, fishing, or prospecting during daylight hours. I made a mental note of the few cabins with horses grazing outside, or woodsmoke trailing from their chimneys. On my way back I’d need to find someone willing to rent a cart to me. Shouldn’t be hard, since many settlers made a little extra money by renting spare equipment to hunters or prospectors. It was the other supplies I needed to find that might be tough to come by.

Two miles later, the trail spilled out onto the broad, rutted road coming up from the south to the Kost gate. The gorge widened as it met the gentle Parsian Valley and the Deeplink River joined its lazy, looping spirals to the green rush of the Elenn. Kost sat on the delta formed by the confluence of the two rivers. Tiered streets jam-packed with wooden buildings layered the valley’s side, and the smoke from countless wood fires hung trapped in a dense pall over the town. I much preferred the clean white stone and magelights of Ninavel, but for once I welcomed the sight of the throat-clogging haze.

Kost’s border gate lay on the far side of a broad bridge built of granite blocks and cinnabar planks that spanned the gleaming swirl of the Elenn. The gate itself was a wide freestanding arch some twenty feet high, carved from rock the faint yellow of old bone. Ward sigils covered the arch’s surface, in inset lines of an odd, glassy black substance. Metal or crystal, maybe. I’d never managed a close enough inspection to find out. The Alathians didn’t take kindly to gawkers.

I approached the bridge with the brisk stride appropriate to a prospector eager to wet his dusty throat at a riverside tavern. The buzz of my nerves was back, loud enough to set my neck muscles twitching. Gods, but I wished I could spare the time to study the way the guards handled entry inspections. If Pello had beaten us here, or if Kiran was wrong about Ruslan’s willingness to involve the Alathians, the guards would be looking for men matching our descriptions.

But with Ruslan chipping away at Kiran’s amulet like a miner hunting an ore seam—not to mention tracking me down in the bargain—I couldn’t afford any delays. I’d have to trust to Khalmet that our shortcut over Bearjaw had given us enough lead time, and I wasn’t only steps away from getting arrested.

I crossed the bridge just as a guard lit the great torches at the gate in advance of twilight. Three more guards lounged against the squat stone building of the gatehouse, and another two stood beyond the arch, their gray and brown livery melding into the shadows. The mage handling inspection duty wasn’t in view. He was probably lurking in the relative comfort of the gatehouse, along with the guard captain.

When the guards came to attention, it was the half-hearted, lazy attention of men faced with a scruffy prospector of no importance. A trickle of relief lightened my stomach, as two of them ambled over to bar the way. The guard captain strode out of the gatehouse with his logbook under his arm.

“State your name and business.” He sounded bored, but his eyes were a mite sharp for my taste.

“Devan
na soliin
, out of Ninavel.” I used the old Arkennlander form that politely indicated I lacked a family name. I didn’t dare lie about my identity, and not only because the mage would be listening for it. I’d been in and out of Kost too many times under my own name to chance not being recognized. Times like this I always wished Suliyya had seen fit to bless me with a pair of properly nondescript dark eyes to match my Arkennlander coloring.

The way to deal with Alathians was to tell the truth, just not all of the truth. “I’ve been up mountain-side, and I’m coming in to arrange sale of my wares,” I told the captain. He wrote in the log, and I shrugged out of my pack and handed it to a waiting guard.

The mage finally deigned to appear from the gatehouse. He was a small, stiff-backed man whose olive skin had a sallow tinge, as if he rarely saw the sun. His dark hair was cut screamingly short in the formal Alathian style, the gold seal of the Council prominent on the chest of his gray and blue uniform. Unlike the guards, his every move was as rigidly proper as a soldier on a parade ground.

The mage stalked in a slow circle around me, his ringed hands spread. Long practice let me keep my expression bored as that of the guard rifling through my pack while the captain peppered me with questions. How long did I intend to stay in Kost, which importers did I mean to deal with, how many times had I crossed the border before...the usual annoyingly nosy list.

After a small eternity, the mage stopped his circling. He moved to my pack, and spent a further age fondling each charm in my much-reduced stash. I’d taken care to bring only those so weak as to be Alathian-legal. Too bad I couldn’t have left them all at the cabin—but Alathians would never believe a Ninavel prospector who claimed to carry no charms.

“He can pass,” the mage finally announced. Beyond him, the guard crammed my gear into my pack and nodded to the captain.

The captain scribbled another note in his log and handed me a token stamped with an identifying number and my date of entry. I slung my pack onto my shoulders and sauntered forward.

The gate arch loomed above, its wards dark and silent. With an effort, I kept my breathing regular as I crossed beneath it. There was no reason the wards should spark for me. But the way this trip had been going, I half expected the wards to trigger on general principle.

The gleaming black swirls stayed dark, and I passed the final pair of guards without incident. An immense wave of relief swept over me. Gods, it felt good to know no spell Ruslan cast could touch me now.

Temptation struck like lightning. I didn’t have to go back. I could lay low in Kost, long enough for Ruslan to hunt down Kiran and drag him back to Ninavel. Sneak back to the cabin after a week or so, retrieve my stash, and only then go to Gerran. Tell him he couldn’t blame me for losing against an angry blood mage, take my usual, much smaller fee for Bren’s other items, and cut my losses.

This time it wasn’t only Melly I saw in my mind’s eye, but Kiran, blindfolded, white-faced and desperate. I scrubbed a hand over my face and sighed. I’d never taken the easy way out in my life; no point in starting now.

I hurried on past the boatyards to the stables, and secured the use of a sturdy little bay pony and a lantern. The oil lamps of shops and taverns lit Kost’s main streets, but Gerran’s office wasn’t exactly on a main street. He did business out of a set of warehouses deep in the twisting maze of Kost’s riverside district. Unlike similar areas in Ninavel, not many people wandered the riverside streets past sunset. Alathians did their business during the day and tended to congregate inside taverns and dancehalls at night, probably due to the winter rains that drenched the city for half the year.