Hand of the Hunter con-2 Read online

  They were tiny spiders, transparent as crystal, their plump bodies pulsing with colors-reds, greens, blues, yellows, silver, gold, and purples of every shade. The lights they cast sparkled off webs strung around the cavern. Terrified as she was, every breath a stab of pain, still Hweilan could not help but feel overwhelmed at the beauty of it all.

  As her heart began to slow and her breathing to calm, Hweilan could hear them moving-the susurrus of millions of minuscule legs moving over stone and soil and each other. It sounded like the rustle of a summer breeze on the grass of the high steppe. Soothing. One of the spiders dropped from its web and landed on her shoulder. It felt soft as goosedown.

  But then she heard something else. Something scuttling in that impenetrable darkness far above. No, not something. Some things. Her eyes were adjusting to the new light, and she saw that amidst the millions of small spiders, dozens of larger spiders moved. She hadn't seen them at first, because unlike their smaller cousins, they were black as moonless night, visible only because of the other lights reflecting off their hard carapaces.

  "K-Kesh Naan?" she tried to call out, but it sounded no more than a whisper. Hweilan swallowed, winced as she gathered a full breath, then tried again, louder. "Kesh Naan?"

  The black spiders dropped, a dozen or more striking the ground around her. The smallest of them was big as a cat, and the largest was almost the size of a hound. They turned to face her, the mandibles on their faces click-click-clicking together, in a horrible rhythm. Something about the sound seemed on the verge of forming words.

  Hweilan forced herself to her feet, but the spiders surrounded her. She didn't dare try to rush between them, and she knew she wasn't strong enough to leap over.

  "Kesh Naan!" she screamed. Her side screamed at the movement, but she bit back a scream and forced herself to stay put. "Please. Gleed sent me to you."

  A sharp hiss from the nearest and largest spider. Nothing remotely human in it. Hweilan swallowed and decided to try another tactic.

  "The Master sent me," she said.

  Hweilan held her breath. Silence.

  "You must teach me!"

  The spiders surged into movement, so quickly that Hweilan screamed. But they weren't coming for her. All of the giant black monsters leaped onto each other, their legs scrambling in a writhing mass, faster and faster until they blurred together into a swirl of blackness. Before her eyes, the blackness took shape.

  Kesh Naan stood before her, clothed in the gossamer-fine threads of darkness. "You wish to Know, girl?" she said.

  Had Kesh Naan moved toward her, Hweilan might have scrambled away. But the woman just stood there, looking at her, the slightest curve of a smile on her lips.

  "You desire… en-light-en-ment?" She broke the last word into pieces, emphasizing each syllable. "You ask for Lore. Ahwen in the sacred speech. Say it."

  "Ahwen."

  "And why do you desire this?"

  Truth be told, Hweilan didn't. The only thing she desired at this moment was to be far away. Even Gleed's dank tower seemed a paradise compared to this nightmare. So she said the only thing she could think of. "Th-the Master sent me. Nendawen."

  "Yes," said Kesh Naan. "But why are you here?"

  "I… I don't know."

  Kesh Naan smiled-fully this time, revealing gums pale as her skin and teeth black as onyx. She raised both hands, palm outward. "I smell the lie in that, girl."

  "I-"

  "Truth now. Has fear so clouded your mind that you forget? Let me help you. What is the one thing you desire most? If you could have only one thing right now, what would that be?"

  "Vengeance," she said it without thinking.

  "Truth at last. But know this: The Master is not one to bargain. You do not make demands of the Master of the Hunt. Obey him, or do not. There is no middle ground."

  "My family-"

  "Vengeance will not bring them back. It will not ease your pain."

  "Jagun Ghen killed my family!"

  "Ah," said Kesh Naan. "Now we come to it. Jagun Ghen killed your family. Do you know why?"

  Hweilan could not look away. The woman's eyes… depthless. But they held her. Hweilan opened her mouth, but before she could speak" The truth now," said Kesh Naan. "Only the truth."

  And so she spoke the truth: "I don't know."

  "You will," said Kesh Naan. She clapped her hands. Just once, but it filled the air like the crack of a whip.

  And the spiders came. Thousands of them. Millions. Dropping from the ceiling and running across the floor, covering Hweilan's skin, crawling into her ears and nose. She rolled and thrashed, crushing hundreds, desperate to shake them off. But for every dozen she managed to smash or shake loose, a hundred more took their place. Their tiny legs did no more than tickle, but their fangsThey bit, again and again and again. One of them surely would have done no harm, been no more than an irritation. But thousands biting her at onceHweilan screamed.

  Spiders swarmed into her mouth, biting and biting and biting…

  Lights exploded in Hweilan's mind. Each tiny bite bringing a spark, every flicker its own unique color, every one trying to swallow all her other senses.

  She let them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On the northern ice the winter dark lasted for months, and even high summer could not melt the frost. Yet still people managed not only to survive there, but to thrive in their own way. It was a hard land, and the people harder still, but even so, Jatara could remember a time when she'd been allowed to be a little girl. Pampered by the elders. Fed the choicest meats from every hunt. Given the softest, warmest clothes. She'd even had a little doll, made from baby-soft sealskin. In the darkest winter nights when the wind howled over the ice and the elders made sacrifices to keep demons at bay, Jatara had huddled in her blankets near the fire, the doll cradled against her chest, and with her free hand she would stroke the soft sealskin over and over, imagining that she was her mother, and the doll little Jatara. No matter how the wind howled or the priests shrieked their blood rites, that little doll had helped Jatara feel safe. As an adult, when she thought home, it was not her clan's faces she saw, not her mother or father, but the scent of a fire, and the feel of that little doll against her palm.

  "Home…" she said. It came out a croak. Her throat felt raw. The pain jolted her out of her reverie. She held the doll close and stroked it.

  But something was wrong. Felt wrong. Not the softness of sealskin. She could feel the doll's skin, yes, but it was not seal soft. No. It was rough, torn, andWet.

  Warm, yes, but that was quickly fading.

  And the smell… no. Smell was the wrong word. The stench was tangy, coppery, and foul.

  Jatara stroked the doll again, grasping for that reassurance of home, but the ragged wetness under her palm only drove it farther away.

  With a very great effort, Jatara opened her eyes.

  And remembered.

  Home was far away. Not separated from her by hundreds of miles, but years upon years. She was not a little girl anymore. The doll long gone. Under her handA man's head lay in her lap. It was still loosely attached to the body by a mangled web of skin, flesh, and tendon. His jaw was gone, as were both eyes and an ear.

  "What-?" she said.

  Then her eyes saw the wet blackness under her nails, and she could feel more of the same in her teeth and gums.

  A small part of Jatara-a very small part-screamed at the memory of what she had done. But the scream was very faint, like the final cry of a drowning man. Something else filled her. Immersed her. Like rich dye permeating old cloth.

  Jatara laughed at that image. How fitting. The new presence within her was not her, but it filled every pore. She had no word for it.

  "How do you feel?"

  The voice came from behind her. She recognized it at once. Argalath… and something else. Something like her. Like flame is both heat and light, two separate things combined into one vibrant… power.

  Jatara stood, and the corpse fell off her l
ap onto the blood-soaked grass. The sun was up, but hidden behind a curtain of thick cloud. The wind cut over the steppe, making a sound like a saw through dry wood. It still held the bite of winter, but she didn't flinch. The cold of Narfell was a kiss compared to the land where she'd been born. Swaths of snow still clung in the shadowed places of the hills or in the gullies, but dun-colored grass had broken through on the high ground where they had performed the rites. Where Jatara had been reborn.

  She looked down at her hand and bare arm, black up to her elbow in blood and gore. It was like seeing it for the first time.

  "I feel… alive," she said. "More than alive, I feel… there are no words."

  "I know," said Argalath.

  He stood nearby, his robes around him, his deep cowl pulled down so that she could see only his chin. But she heard the pleasure in his voice. And more, she could sense his mood, and his thoughts seemed just beyond her reach, almost as if there was some invisible string between them, vibrating with life, and together they formed a beautiful chord. Jatara was awestruck at the power she felt there, just below the surface. She was amazed that the man's skin didn't vibrate at containing such power.

  Over Argalath's shoulder, she could see Vazhad standing atop the next rise, holding the reins of their horses. He was almost a quarter mile away as the crow flies, but even with only her one remaining eye she could count the stitches on the horses' saddles and see the few strands of hair that had come loose from Vazhad's topknot and wafted in the breeze. She could even smell the leather and sweat, and in the lulls of the breeze she thought she could hear Vazhad's heart beating. Something inside her stirred, and an urge struck her. For a moment, she wanted nothing in the world more than to bound over Argalath, use the raw power in her limbs to run over the grass, then seize Vazhad, throw him to the ground, and ever so slowly burrow her finger between his ribs until she could feel his heart thrumming. How he would scream… even Vazhad, who never laughed, who never cried out even in battle. He would scream if she did that.

  Jatara swallowed and buried the urge.

  "It worked," she said, and looked around. Carnage-the remains of the three Creel guards and one horse, the gore and torn earth obliterating all but a few traces of the pact circle Argalath had burned into the grass. She remembered the rite. The words of Argalath's incantation that had seemed so strange to her the previous night had a comfortable, even familiar flavor. She remembered the blade flashing in the firelight, the pain of the cut, and then the thing that had come, rising from the pact circle like a lover creeping through her bedroom window. For a moment, the old Jatara had recoiled. Sensing the mind of the other, she had wanted nothing more than to run. But she'd held one thing firm in her mind.

  Kadrigul. Her brother. The only thing she had truly loved in the world. In the years since their clan had been slaughtered and they had had only each other to hold in the dark, he had been the one constant in her life. The one remaining bit of him that was more than memory. The memories were dear to her, but Kadrigul was flesh and blood. He was real, and he was hers. And he was dead.

  And so she had opened herself to this new power.

  "Oh, yes," said Argalath. "It worked. Now you see. Now you understand. Now you know."

  "Now," she said. "I hunt."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lights swallowed Hweilan's senses, her emotions, her…

  Everything.

  She let them. More, she welcomed it. All the fear, all the confusion, all the hurt-burned away by the light, until she was left with only…

  Hweilan. That essential spark of her. Not of wanting or doing or hurting. Just being.

  And when she knew that, when she was only awareness, the light became not just a purifying fire, but revelation. Thought became more than the light. Before she had seen the light. Now, she could see by the light. And she sawA hundred lifetimes of her ancestors. Vil Adanrath. People of the Hunt. She saw through the eyes of her grandmothers and grandfathers, every intimate detail. And she saw with the eyes of gods, beholding all as if from afar. Life for her people was not paradise, but it was good. They lived, they loved, they served their gods, and they died, for hundreds of generations. To survive they hunted, mostly the deer and elk and other herd animals of the high hills and northern snowfields. But there was never any lack. And when the Vil Adanrath died, their bodies returned to the ground, where they fed the grass, which fed the herds, which fed the people. And thus did they live in the Balance of Dedunan, of Silvanus the Forest Father, living, loving, killing, dying, being born, world withoutNo. Because it did end. With Jagun Ghen.

  Burning Hunger. The Destroyer. From the Abyss he came, and for generations we fought him, but he grew stronger, destroying our homeland. We fled…

  A voice out of her past. She almost put a name to it, then it too bled into the light, swallowed.

  She saw the devastation Jagun Ghen brought. She felt disgust and horror, and even anger and pity at seeing what the Destroyer did to the People. But it had not touched her. Years and generations separated her from all this.

  Dedunan intervened, the familiar voice again. Jagun Ghen was cast from the Hunting Lands, and escaped to Toril.

  But his flame was not extinguished. Only banished.

  The voice from the light changed, and this voice she did know. It was the mind that had ripped through her own, that face that almost drove her to madness. Nendawen. Hunter.

  In the Hunting Lands, Jagun Ghen almost conquered. Only hundreds of years of blood and sacrifice vanquished him. Here…

  And she saw Toril, floating in the void amidst the stars.

  … in this corrupt world beneath its cold stars…

  And she saw mountains. Ones she knew. The Giantspires, running like a jagged spine between frozen Narfell and the lands of the Damarans.

  Here… Jagun Ghen could become a god…

  "The power you seek," said the old crone, "is not like the Art of southern spell-weavers with their muttering and powders and twaddling fingers."

  She leaned in close over the low fire, the orange flames painting her pale skin and paler hair a devilish orange. So deep were the wrinkles in her face that each of them was its own well of shadow, so that her eyes shone out as if from a burning mask.

  The man across from her sat in shadow by the wall of the tent. But when he looked up the light of the fire caught in his eyes.

  "Sorcerers' spells, the incantations of the strongest wizards I could find, ministrations of priests… none could help me, could cure my…"

  He leaned forward, leaving the shadows behind, revealing the horror of his features. He was bare from the waist up, completely hairless, his skin a mottled patchwork of snow-white and bruised blue, and he squinted against even the dim light of the fire. Spellscarred.

  When his sentence remained unfinished, the old woman said, "Affliction?"

  "Will this pact cure me?" he said.

  The crone closed her eyes and shook her head. "As I told you, the power you seek… it is not like the Art. Here, there are no strict laws-give, take; empty, fill; push, pull; act, react. Here, you are not dealing with the forces of nature, or even the intricacies of the Weave. Here, you are wrestling with a will, a being of vast power and knowledge beyond our imagining. It is not in its nature to serve another. To bend it to your will-"

  "Will it cure me?"

  Even though her eyes were still closed, she turned away. "Spellplague" she almost spat the word. "If there is a cure, it is beyond any power I have ever known."

  The man's face twisted in a rictus of fury, and he took in a rattling breath.

  "However," the old woman spoke before he could, "the one you seek has power far beyond any I have ever known. Beyond any mortal's. If there is a cure-if! — then it lies in the pact. But I give you no assurances. Only hope."

  "Then I need only one thing from you-the name."

  The old woman opened her eyes and gave a resigned nod. She seemed, for once, at ease, relieved. "You have everything else you need? The
words of summoning? The sacrifice? The-?"

  "I need only the name."

  The old woman hesitated, as if catching something in the man's tone. "I wonder… what is your… affliction? I have heard that the spellscars grant some great power. Yet you seem desperate to be rid of yours."

  "Some"-the man's upper lip curled, revealing flawless white teeth-"bear no more than a tangle of blue flesh, easily covered. Look at me." He leaned forward so far that the smoke from the fire wafted over his torso. "Look at me!"

  The old woman shied back a moment. Then she cackled and said, "Look at me."

  She spread her arms so that the fabric of her robe fell away. Scars riddled both arms, front and back. Her left hand lacked two fingers, and half the thumb was gone from her right. One of the larger scars running from the inside of her elbow to her wrist trembled slightly, as if something were wriggling just beneath the skin.

  "The pact…" she whispered. "You play with fire, boy, you be ready to burn. And you are playing with something much worse than fire now."

  "I am not playing, old woman."

  "And yet you still haven't answered my question." She lowered her arms and leaned forward so that her nose was only inches from his. "What does your spellscar do?"

  He didn't back away. "I want the name."

  "Tell me the nature of your spellscar, and I will tell you the name."

  The man opened his mouth, then looked askance as if something had occurred to him. The hint of a grin flickered in one corner of his mouth, then he sat back, both hands on his knees. "Tell me the name," he said, "and I'll show you."

  She watched him through narrow eyes, weighing his words, searching for any sign of deception.

  "Very well," she said at last, and she told him the name. "Jagun Ghen. Destroyer. Burning Hunger. The rites you have prepared… call Jagun Ghen."

  "Thank you," said the man.