Hand of the Hunter: Chosen of Nendawen, Book II Page 5

  “Demons,” Jatara rasped. She had heard stories of demons and devils called forth to serve practitioners of the dark arts. Some managed to break free of their would-be masters and possess them—or worse. That Argalath managed to maintain control over such spirits proved how powerful he really was.

  Argalath laughed. “Call them what you like. But that is not what we must discuss, Jatara. What we must settle. Once and for all. Look at our friend there. You shattered his leg. Even the strongest living warrior would be weeping in agony at such an injury. But there he sits, calm as you please, awaiting my command. And yet … something out there managed to best one of them. For as formidable as our baazuled are, they are not invulnerable. Can you guess it, Jatara? The weakness?”

  Jatara looked down at Guric. He—no, it—just sat there. But she had seen what these baazuled could do. That Guric wasn’t howling in pain over his shattered leg was impressive enough. But she’d seen them heal wounds that would have been lethal—heal before her eyes, after feeding.

  “The mask,” said Argalath. “The body. In this case—the corpse. A dead shell. Powerful as the spirit is, even it cannot overcome this. It is not a weakness of the physical. No. It is a weakness of the … elemental.” Even though he was sitting in shadow, Jatara caught a flash of white and knew he was smiling. “The baazuled are beings of vast power—far beyond we pitiful mortals. But this world is not theirs, and though they can use our empty shells, it is not unlike a Nar warrior trying to ride a dead horse—forced to move the limbs himself, fill the lungs with air, force it to gallop. How much better, how much stronger is a living warrior upon a living horse? But what if warrior and mount could be one? One living, breathing, thinking …”

  Words seemed to fail him at last, and he looked at Jatara. He took a deep breath, and when he next spoke, his tone was that of the Argalath she knew—soft spoken, almost weary, but always as if he knew something she didn’t.

  “Your brother died in my service. That debt must be paid. To strike one of my servants is to strike me. To strike me is to strike the one I serve. Is it not so?”

  Jatara said nothing.

  “So, the question you must now ask yourself is whether you will mind your place, and bring vengeance to those who killed your brother. Or whether you will blame me. You can’t have both.”

  Jatara forced herself to sit up on the bed. It made the room spin around her and her stomach clenched, but she managed. She still felt hollow inside. Completely drained. Stripped of all will to live. But the rage was gone.

  “You said my brother died in your service. I thought we were taking Highwatch, and then … whatever we please. But what you’re doing … goes beyond that. Yes?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Argalath, and again she saw the dim flash of his teeth in the darkness. “My plans extend far beyond this hovel. Are you ready to …” He paused, and seemed to search for the right words, then said, “Expand your vision?”

  “Will it bring vengeance to whoever killed my brother?”

  “Oh, yes. That I swear to you.”

  “To strike one of your servants is to strike you. To strike you is to strike the one you serve. Your words.”

  A moment’s silence, then, “Yes.”

  And so Jatara asked the one question she had never asked—had never dared, and never much cared, because to her it did not matter. It mattered now.

  “Whom do you serve?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SHIVERING DRAGGED HWEILAN BACK TO consciousness. When she heard the loud rattling, she gasped and sat up, fearing some huge insect was scuttling near her face, then realized it was only the chattering of her own teeth.

  She opened her eyes.

  Gleed, the tower, the lake …

  Gone. She was alone in the pathless forest. She remembered Gleed yammering on, feeding her some stew that was surprisingly good, then more of the herbed water. One moment she’d been listening to him extol the wonders of the Master, the next …

  “That little toad put something in the drink,” she said to herself.

  She looked down and saw that she was dressed only in a strange sort of cloak. More like a knee-length blanket with a hole in the middle for her head. Compared to frigid Narfell, the air seemed balmy, but it was still cool enough that her breath steamed, and the thought of the old goblin taking her clothes gave her a sick feeling in her stomach.

  She sat in a bed of old leaves, made sodden from last night’s rain, surrounded by the roots of a massive oak. At least she thought it was an oak. The leaves were the right shape, but just one of them was larger than both her outstretched hands. And though the bark was the right texture—even encrusted in lichen as an old oak ought to be—the color was just a wisp lighter than black.

  Hweilan had grown up in a land nestled between mountains and steppe, where most of the moisture fell as snow and clung as ice for six months out of the year. What few woods there were clung to the foothills and mountain valleys—mostly pine and spruce, trees that could survive the harsh cold. The forest she’d seen in the realms of Kunin Gatar had been dense. But nothing like what surrounded her.

  Nothing but trees and brush in every direction. Trunks and branches turned and twisted, almost as if they’d been dancing and had frozen in place at the sight of the strange girl blinking at them. Never had she seen such monsters as these trees. Some of the leaves were big as shields. The sky lay hid beneath the ceiling of the leaves, and Hweilan could only guess at the trees’ height. A hundred feet? More? No way to know. They might climb all the way to tickle the moon for all she could tell.

  But the faces …

  As a child enjoying Narfell’s brief summers, she had often lain in the tall grass of the steppe and seen shapes in the clouds or the profile of a face on some crag. But the knots and holes in the trees around her …

  The trunks had knots that looked much too much like eyes, and they seemed to watch her. A broken branch looked very much like a nose. And the cracked and split bark in the trunks stretched like mouths. Some seemed almost sad, or frozen in a scream. But far too many held a malicious glee.

  Hweilan stood. She had no idea where she was, had no idea what time of day it was—the wood seemed caught in a perpetual twilight; enough light to see, but plenty of shadows in which anything could be hiding. She knew she wanted to be anywhere but there.

  Leaves rustled far overhead as the upper boughs caught a slight breeze, but down below the air was still. She could hear the chirps of birds, but they stayed hidden in the upper branches. There was no sound of the waterfall. She was obviously far away from Gleed’s tower but had no memory of how she’d come here. What had that little beast put in her drink?

  Hweilan started walking. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, so she simply went down the slope. Other than her bath and bed, Hweilan had never gone shoeless in her life. To do so in Narfell would be folly. But here, the floor of wet leaves was soft and easy on her feet. Still, it was cool, and even after walking briskly for what seemed a mile or more, she couldn’t stop shivering.

  Once, she thought she heard singing in the distance—childlike voices, though raucous. But when she stopped and held her breath to listen, there was only the sound of the breeze in the highest boughs. Down here, the air was deathly still. Black moths and dark blue butterflies flitted around her now and then, and once a dragonfly shot past her so fast that her first thought was that someone had loosed an arrow at her.

  Which brought Gleed’s words from the night before fresh to her mind.

  There are far crueler things in these woods than me.

  Almost as if summoned by the thought, she heard something approaching from her right, crashing through the brush.

  Hweilan stopped and held her breath. A few of the black moths fluttered around. But nothing more. She looked for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a sizeable rock or broken branch.

  Then she saw it—a flash of red. A fox bounded out of the brush, its back almost arrow straight as it ran. It saw
her, stopped, then bounded off again, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

  Hweilan let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her heart beat so fiercely that she could feel her face pulsing like the skin of a drum.

  “Only a fox.” It came out a whisper, but still seemed very loud in the silence of the forest.

  Hweilan kept going, following the lee of the hill. It was getting steeper the farther she went, and the light dimmer.

  The trees grew even larger, and some of their roots broke out of the ground, forming arches under which she walked. Spiderwebs draped the low branches, and although the few spiders she saw were no bigger than her smallest fingernail, still she walked around the webs rather than through them.

  The hill was getting steep enough that Hweilan was beginning to slip and had to lean against one hand as she walked. But she could hear the rush of water again and thought she might be getting close to the lake and Gleed’s tower.

  Ahead of her a particularly massive root broke out of the side of the hill and arched over her path before seeking ground again. Sitting atop it, watching her, was the fox. Its golden eyes seemed very bright in the gloom.

  Hweilan’s feet slipped out from under her. She went down and caught hold of a sapling before she slid down the hill. Lying there in the cold, wet leaves, she looked up and saw that the fox was gone.

  In its place atop the gnarled root, a woman crouched. Like Hweilan, the woman’s feet were bare, but she was dressed in an array of stitched skins and leathers. She had the look of an elf—lean, angular build, a face of sharp angles, canted eyes, and ears that topped in sharp tips. Crouched as she was, her hair, thick as a pelt, hung past her shins, and in the gloom of the wood it seemed just a shade above black. Her skin was even darker than Scith’s, and black designs—whorls, waves, and vinelike twists sprouting thorns—decorated her hands, bare arms, and face. Seeing someone, if not human, then at least more familiar than Gleed, almost put Hweilan at ease. But then she saw that the woman’s eyes were a golden yellow, very bright in the gloom, and split by vertical pupils. And her toes and fingers ended in claws. A dark, wet something ran out of the corner of the woman’s mouth—that can’t be blood, Hweilan thought—and then the woman licked it away.

  Gleed’s words sprang to her mind—Tomorrow you will meet Kesh Naan. Kesh Naan will give you the Lore.

  Hweilan swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “A-are you K-Kesh Naan?”

  The woman canted her head to one side, expressing something between curiosity and amusement. “ ‘A-are you K-Kesh Naan?’ ” she said, in perfect imitation of Hweilan’s own voice. She licked her lips again, as if tasting the words, then shook her head, left shoulder to right shoulder, very slowly, and said, “No.”

  “Who are you?” said Hweilan.

  The woman’s lips peeled back, revealing sharp, yellow-white teeth.

  Hweilan almost screamed, but her breath caught in her throat. She pushed herself carefully to her feet.

  The woman jumped down, landed a few feet in front of Hweilan, then slowly stood and said, “I am …” She paused, as if searching for the word, then finished, “… hungry.”

  Hweilan turned and ran.

  She made it perhaps five or six strides, then a weight hit her square in the back and two arms wrapped around her—one around her neck, the other under her arm. Claws bit through the cloak and into her skin.

  Hweilan fell, the full weight of the woman coming down atop her, knocking all the breath from her body. But they kept moving. The slope was steep and they slid, gaining speed, crashing through bushes, over roots, breaking through young saplings and bouncing off bigger ones.

  A snarl, and then Hweilan felt sharp teeth sink into her shoulder. She screamed, and an instant later they slammed into the trunk of a tree. The rough bark scraped a swath of skin off Hweilan’s arm, then they were moving again.

  Hitting the tree had weakened the woman’s grip around Hweilan. The next broke it altogether. But it also knocked all the air out of Hweilan, and she thought she felt a rib crack.

  She kept going down the hill, the world tumbling around her, branches and rocks scraping and gouging her skin. Hweilan could hear the other woman crashing just behind her, but all she could see was a blur of green and brown as the world shot past.

  And then there was nothing. No grasping arms. No roots scraping her back or trees slamming into her ribs. Just open air washing past her. She had time to take in an agonized breath as she went over the cliff.

  Hitting the water felt like slamming through a wall. But this wall had a current. Hweilan scraped along a rocky bottom that tore away the cloak she’d been wearing. Panic seized her. Hweilan had just enough rational thought left to clench her jaw shut. Terror pushed her to scream, but she knew that if she did the river would fill her lungs and she would die down in the cold gloom.

  Hweilan pushed off the riverbed. Her head broke the surface just as the river crashed down a steep slope over boulders in a series of rapids. She had only an instant to take a breath, then she went under again.

  This time she tumbled. She lost the light, had no idea which way was up, and could no longer see the bottom. Hweilan clenched her jaw shut, fighting the reflex to breathe.

  I’m dying, she thought. A moment of panic, so fierce it shut out all other thought, then a strange sort of peace settled over her. The pain in her chest was beyond agony, and her head felt as if it were about to burst. She knew that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t be able to hold her breath much longer.

  Then her foot scraped along the bottom.

  Her body reacted instinctively, and when she pushed, half her body shot out of the water, and she filled her lungs with sweet air.

  She had never learned to swim. In Narfell, the only water were the shallow streams that thawed in summer. At Highwatch, the deepest water she’d ever seen was her bathtub. But the river wasn’t deep—not much above her head. Hweilan sank, pushed off the bottom to breach the surface, took a breath, sank, pushed off the bottom, breached, took a breath … again and again and again.

  The initial panic subsided, but she knew she couldn’t keep this up. Already her limbs were aching, and she knew all it would take was one cramp to put her under the water forever.

  On her next breach, she took a look around. She was in the middle of the river, and the shores on either side were at least fifty feet away—and both were sheer rock walls, slick and mossy. Upstream and behind her was only the river—no sign of the woman that had attacked her. Downstream …

  Panic seized her again at what she saw.

  Nothingness.

  A hundred yards or so, and the river just ended in a mist. She’d grown up in mountains. She knew what that meant. She was headed for a waterfall. It might only be a few feet, or it might be a thousand. No way to tell from her vantage.

  She went down again—and this time she went deep. Her feet could not find the bottom. The constant roar of the river deepened, strengthened, filling her so that her entire body thrummed with it—and by that she knew the fall before her was no slope of a few feet. She was about to go over a cliff.

  Hweilan scrambled and kicked and thrashed, desperate to find the bottom. Nothing. Only water, flowing faster and faster by the moment. Her lungs, wanting air, began to ache. She gave up trying to find the bottom and began to try to claw and thrash her way to the surface. But for every foot she gained, the current pushed her down another two.

  Hweilan clamped her jaw shut, but her body betrayed her. Try as she might, pure instinct took over, and she inhaled, filling her lungs with water.

  The water’s roar became an explosion. For a moment she felt herself going down and down, water above crushing her, and then …

  Hweilan sat up and retched so hard that her ears popped. Water and bile poured out her mouth and both nostrils, splattering the ground in front of her. She took in a ragged breath, then retched some more. Again and again, until she fell over on her side, her eyes closed, pant
ing like a dog.

  Never had she felt so wretched. Every fiber and pore of her body, inside and out, pulsed with pain. But she was alive, and every ragged breath filled her body with air. She lay there a long time, listening to her own hammering heart and labored breathing. Before, up on the hill, she’d been shivering from the cold. But suddenly, she was shaking so hard that she could feel her flesh bruising against the rocks. But she couldn’t muster the strength to move.

  After the fall, after drowning …

  She didn’t know. Had no idea how she’d come here. Come … where?

  Hweilan opened her eyes. She lay on a bed of stones—gravel really, though each one was round and smooth as river stones. Lifting her head, she saw that a black pool lapped the shore just beyond her toes.

  Hweilan rolled over onto her stomach, forced herself to her hands and knees, then fell into another coughing fit that tinged the world red. When she was able to breathe again, she raised her head and looked through the wet lanks of her hair.

  The red tinge hadn’t been just brought on by her coughing. She was in a cavern. Stalactites large as temple columns hung from the ceiling above. Some had melded with similar columns springing from the floor and formed pillars of rock that glistened in the red light. Roots poked out from the ceiling, some twisting around the stalactites in thick braids. Long strings of lichen and spiderwebs dangled between the stone like thin curtains. They waved back and forth slowly, almost as if the cave were breathing.

  Hweilan looked around, searching for the source of the light. It wasn’t red like fire or late sunset, but it completely filled the far side of the cavern away from the pool. She could find no direct source. Even the columns of stone cast no shadow. It was almost as if the rock itself glowed.

  Hweilan pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt hollow and brittle. Looking down, she saw that under her right breast a swath of skin wider than her palms had been raked away, and blood oozed down flesh that was already turning an angry purple. She could feel more blood running down her shoulder from where the woman had bitten her, and the rest of her naked body was a latticework of shallow scratches and deeper cuts, oozing blood.