Salvation's Fire Page 13

  Tricky was taken aback. It was the face of the filthy child from Taib Post, whom she had made a scene for, scattering the dimwit stallkeeper’s poms. She was so surprised that she made no move as the face suddenly yawned impossibly wide, filled with teeth, pouring the inside to the outside so that a ball of whirling razors was almost upon her, eager to devour her. Only the clap and thunder of Taedakh’s wingbeat saved her.

  “Thank you,” she gasped as she was deposited on her knees on the outside earth, the sun overhead, Nydarrow behind her. The paper was in her hand, the writing back on both sides. She looked up and around her as she caught her breath, blinking in the blinding light as her vision slowly changed from mere shadow and light to reveal a group of Yorughan hunters. Tusked and armed, they were peering at her, their spears pointing her way, bows drawn and knives ready. She held up her free hand as she hid the paper with the other beneath her wet cloak. “I can explain everything.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BUKHAM STRUGGLED FORWARDS in the near darkness, getting tangled in brambles as though they wanted to criticise him personally for his lack of faith. By the time he had torn himself free, ripping his trousers in the process, Murti was far ahead, vanishing into a tall stand of witherwills.

  As he reached them Bukham heard other voices, surprised ones, and the crackle of a fire. He smelled the scent of bacon frying on a too-hot griddle and seedcakes browning in butterfat. He stepped forwards into a camp of several people, seeing the glint of weapons, eyes and teeth in the growing blue of the twilight. He moved behind Murti, trying to look smaller but he needn’t have bothered with the effort. All eyes were on the old man and the woman greeting him at the fireside.

  She was tall and well built, of the old human stock of the midlands, blonde haired and battle-suited in mail and leather. A crest of a curled fiddlehead fern adorned her cloak. She was looking at Murti with an expression of delight and relief on her face, as though she had been expecting him a long time. Bukham was so relieved by this moment that it took him a while to register the other faces trained on the scene. There were two Yorughan, tusked and fearsome in their travelling and fighting paint; he didn’t meet their eyes. There was an elegant looking young man, slight and well dressed, holding a lute. He moved with the careful stiffness of someone suffering and he tried unsuccessfully to hide the bruised side of his face in his scarf. There was a centaur… He tried not to stare at her because he’d never seen such a thing before but he couldn’t help it; she was huge, larger than a human and an ordinary horse together, and a deep chestnut brown with golden hair that was a prized combination in the horses used by farmers up and down the valleys. A spear the size of a sapling was upright in her hand, its blade and tip gleaming. But then, beside her and lying against her huge round barrel of ribs, there was a dark woman in an incredibly ornate gown, jewelled and gilded, her hands ringed, her neck heavy with precious metals and there, in her lap, asleep, her chin shiny with butterfat, was the runaway girl.

  It was a sight he could barely take in and he gawped for a good while, all the talk passing him by as the scene imprinted itself on his mind and struggled to find meaning there.

  When he came out of his moment of reverie he realised that the attention of the blonde woman, Murti and the Yorughan, the bard and the centaur were all fixed on him, quietly, mildly interested, waiting for something. The crackle of the twigs in the fire were all he could hear. He searched back to see if he could recall anyone asking him a question and looked at Murti for help.

  “They want to know are you going with them,” Murti said after another terrifying moment of calm. He was smiling and he looked amused, so Bukham knew that they had already said what they were doing and where, but he had missed it and now he recalled nothing at all. For a second or two he felt the crippling humiliation that had always paralysed him in front of his uncle, but then something of the day’s horror and weariness came up through him and he lost his patience with himself.

  “I’m sorry, I was looking at… her,” he said. “I don’t know how we came here or who you are, or where you’re going. My uncle told me to be sure she was safe—” He had been going to say “safely away” but stopped because he didn’t want it to reflect badly on Taib Post. “Safe.”

  “We are going north, to the Dharhak Waste,” the Yorughan male with the carved tusks and the fearsome appearance was speaking. He was not in favour of north, it seemed by his growling statement and scowl, but his determination was clear. “We are going to the Veiled Ice, to discover what has happened to the gods.”

  “Well, I… uhh, I’d have to ask about that,” Bukham said. “I never was north of Ilkand Freeport. I don’t know anything about ice and my cousin is minding the stall for me and if she has to keep it on for more than a couple of days I think she’ll be very angry with me.”

  “I’m going,” Murti said cheerfully.

  Bukham did a double take. “You can’t go. You’re old. The north’s no place for old men. Everyone says so. Besides, the world’s in a terrible state. You should stick to the regular roads or… whatever you do.”

  There was something about the way they were looking at him that made him think a joke was on him.

  “You won’t go with your own godling?” the centaur said finally, eyes wide.

  “Yeah, you go home, boy,” the other Yorughan said, grinning. He thought it was a female, but clearly that was madness and he must be wrong.

  “Godling?” Now he really was lost.

  “You worship the Wanderer, don’t you?” the man with the lute asked, eyes twinkling.

  “I… it’s not so much worship, because he’s only a Guardian. It’s more a sort of life-philosophy.”

  The lute man burst out laughing, “Oh I like this one! Let’s keep him.”

  The blonde woman grinned and frowned at the same time. Snickers let him know the Yorughan were amused. Only the strange woman—rather lovely—in her incredible dress was looking straight at him without an expression. The intensity of her gaze was unnerving. He felt suddenly hot all over and wished he were tiny, as he felt, not the big, capable creature he looked like. “I didn’t mean…”

  “No matter,” Murti was saying, chuckling, patting him on the arm. “I was a little mean, I suppose, not to mention it.”

  “Mention what?”

  “This is Wanderer,” the blonde woman said and then she pointed at herself, “Celest of Fernreame, that’s Heno,” she gestured at the male Yorughan who bowed his head. “The bard is Ralas and there’s Nedlam.” The other giant gave him a cheeky nod upwards as if greeting an equal, which really threw him. She was definitely female. He looked at the centaur.

  “I am the Voice of the Forest. Called Horse, for now,” the centaur said.

  “And we have no idea who these are,” Ralas waved at the woman in the tattered finery and the child, “Their names are Kula and Lysandra, but apparently they have taken away the Kinslayer’s fire from the vale.”

  Bukham felt his mouth trying to work, except it didn’t know what it was going to say. He looked at Murti, searching his face that was familiar but suddenly new in his sight. “You are the Wanderer?”

  “Someone has to be,” Murti shrugged. “Now, to business. Have you got any dinner about you? We’ve been on the road all day.”

  Celest nodded. “Unless Nedlam ate it all.”

  “You insult my soldier’s heart,” Nedlam said, opening up the pot which had cooked their food an hour before. “I take only my share. There is enough for a small bowl each.”

  She and Heno set it out for them and Bukham found himself seated at the fireside, eating, which was good because it occupied him without him having to say anything or think very much. He looked at the sleeping girl and let himself feel the immense relief he’d longed for since they set out on their walk. She was safe, at least as safe as she could be. And then it crept on him, the notion that there was nowhere truly safe that was outside the span of the vegetable stall, and even that was uncertain if he were hones
t. He had not been very honest with himself, secure in the caravan, protected by the special nature of the traders’ reputation and the need for their presence. Surely they would have fallen to the Kinslayer’s armies if only Uncle had not had the foresight to roam ahead of them, always avoiding their passage. Did this mean that they were cowards? Did it mean that they ought now to have more obligation to those less fortunate? A travelling trader relied on the needs and curiosities of those they met on the road and in return for safe passage they relayed messages, offered good deals and hospitality. It was the Wanderer’s Way. Did his obligation somehow stop now? If it did, what was he doing here—the Wanderer himself—making plans with these strange people? What did it mean that the girl had found a mother in this most unlikely woman. Why was she wearing the wealth of a nation with such carelessness, as though it were rags? Why was she here? How could either of them have anything to do with the Kinslayer’s fire? He stopped eating, appetite lost.

  The woman and the child he had buried earlier in the day were suddenly there with him. He could feel their ghosts at his side. He realised, as he looked over the flames at the living woman stroking the girl’s hair, that the spirits of the unknown people would always be with him and somehow, though he’d never known them, he loved them and they were his family. Further away the dead man stood, watching, waiting for him to make things right, to explain, to show a way forwards on the road because they didn’t know where to go, these lost things.

  The woman Lysandra looked at him looking at her through the flames. She looked slightly to the side, as if she could see them too. “T’sk,” she said to him and gave the slightest of nods.

  He looked around. All of them seemed surprised she had spoken.

  “What did she say?” Bukham didn’t know the language at all, which was strange for traders knew nearly all the languages spoken on the ways of their countries.

  “It’s Tzarkish,” Ralas said, sounding puzzled. He too was looking between them. “It means ‘kin’.”

  “Well, if you’re family then you come with us.” Nedlam said.

  “I thought we’d be going home,” Bukham said, not daring to make a comment on what was going on.

  “Home?” Murti sounded cheerful. “Home is wherever you are, no?”

  No, Bukham wanted to say, it’s where the trading post is. But because this was apparently a Guardian he didn’t say anything, just nodded, because how could he disagree? “We’ve come too far to go back,” he heard himself saying—one of the platitudes of the traders, said so often it meant nearly nothing. Now it struck him with the force of a blow.

  Tzarkish—he’d not known that because there was no trading with the deathly ones. Even if he’d wanted to, none of them ever undertook any transactions with people outside their own. Maybe it explained at least why she could see the dead but the rumours about Tzark were the least comforting stories he’d ever heard. She was very pretty. It seemed wrong for things like that to be true of pretty people.

  He sighed. He was a fool and knew it. Then he wondered if the girl ought to be with her. And the dress. It wasn’t right. But they looked right together. He rubbed his hands together where the backs of them were patterned in pale brown, chestnut, ochre and nightshade, just as his own mother’s were. They were of an Oerni colouring that was most commonplace and it had always made him comfortable, that sensation of belonging to a larger band than others.

  “Then it’s decided,” the blonde, Celestaine, was declaring. “We go north to the thinning point.”

  “I don’t want to get ahead of things but what will you do even if you find them?” Ralas asked, putting his musical instrument away, wrapped carefully, in a carrying case. He looked at Murti and his gaze was deceptively mild.

  An uneasy moment stole through the group. Bukham could watch its passage through the individual faces—only the centaur and the one called Lysandra showed no concern. They looked towards Wanderer for an answer but he didn’t give it—it came instead from a new voice that cut confidently through the darkness.

  “We’re going to get some answers.”

  As they all turned, rising, startled, hands going to weapons the voice added, “Sit down. I’m not here to make trouble.”

  And then a short woman stood with them; not emerging from the brush and striding in but just as if she’d been there all along unnoticed. She was next to Murti and gave him a cursory nod as she settled down next to the fire, her heavy cloak wrapped around her, hands outstretched to the flames for some heat. Beneath the hem her boots poked out, gold and silver buckles and embossing on them in the shape of leaves and birds.

  “Another one,” Horse said, her eyebrow raised, hand relaxing a little on the haft of her spear.

  She seemed very cold, Bukham thought, because the night was quite mild, not even damp for the time of year. If she got any closer to the fire she’d be in it. Her face in the yellow light was haggard, but young. She wasn’t interested in him. She glanced only at the girl, once, fleetingly, and then fixed her stare into the flames, rubbing her hands.

  “Then if it’s not trouble, what do you want?” Celestaine asked.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” the woman said. Then she spotted Bukham’s bowl. “Is that left over?”

  He passed it around to her and she fell to eating like a starving dog, entirely absorbed for the couple of minutes it took while they waited and Lysandra fell asleep against the centaur’s belly. The newcomer licked the bowl clean and then the spoon, and put them aside before she said, “You might be walking into a trap.”

  “What makes you think so?” Celestaine said, sitting down beside Heno.

  “Yes, go on, Tricky. Tell them. It’s safe enough, not like we’ve much choice is it?” Murti added giving a rather fond glance at to the newcomer who had started to look a bit familiar to Bukham, though he’d never seen anyone pick her teeth with a silver toothpick before.

  “Because I’ve just come from Nydarrow,” she said, and spat something into the embers near her feet. “And he spoke to me.” She rolled her eyes as there was a general alarm rushing through them all, leading to hands reaching for weapons and clenched jaws. “Nah, nah. Not like this,” she made her thumb and fingers into a yapping mouth. “In here,” she tapped her head. “He always spoke to me like that even when he was alive, and that’s how I knew when to see him and when to avoid him so, maybe, I get you, maybe it’s not him, but it sounds like him, yes? And it always knows what he was doing. It’s like a kind of spying. Or maybe fearing. Hard to say. But it’s saved my butt too many times to mention so it’ll do for me.” She paused to flick the toothpick around her molars. “So what’s her story?” She pointed at Lysandra. “Runaway is she? From…” and then she paused and her animated little face went very still and pale. “Wait a second. Where did you find her?”

  “On the hill,” Nedlam said, watching carefully. Bukham could see her weighing up this new person and not quite liking her.

  The little woman got up suddenly and turned about, scanning the dark sky. She revolved twice and then she said, “Where’s the godforsaken fire, then?” in a tone of absolute amazement.

  “Funny you should mention that,” Ralas murmured. His hand had left the lute case and was straying in the direction of his dagger.

  She noticed the movement and looked irritated. “Put that hedgehog sticker away. Like you could beat me in any kind of fight.” Her head went up and suddenly Bukham saw her, the dark, mysterious woman who had taken his fruit and given it to the girl days ago at Taib. He opened his mouth, drawing breath, and she turned to him faultlessly and said, “Shut it, before the moths fly in.” Without pause she turned to Murti as she sat down again in a little huff. “You’re not seriously taking him anywhere are you? He can barely manage an applecart.”

  “He’s very good at minding the applecart,” Murti said, with a mild reproof in his tone. “You, on the other hand, talk too much when you’re nervous.”

  “Yeah well, I just realised what she
is,” she said, gesturing to Lysandra with a sigh. “I just can’t figure out what that is,” she said, and nodded towards Horse, “or that…” and then she looked at Kula. “Or why they are together.”

  “Well…” began Ralas but she waved at him with such effortless disdain that she shut him up.

  “No, don’t tell me, I’ll get there.”

  Bukham found Murti patting his hand amiably. “She loves a puzzle.”

  “While you’re thinking on it,” Celestaine interrupted, “what is she?” She indicated Lysandra.

  “Kinslayer’s Bride,” Tricky replied.

  There was a moment of contemplative alarm.

  “But…” said Heno.

  “What?” said Nedlam.

  “Oh dear,” said Ralas.

  “You have to be joking,” said Celestaine.

  “Ah, I thought as much,” said Murti.

  The fire slumped on itself, sending a shower of sparks high into the air.

  “Why were you in Nydarrow?” Celestaine asked into the anxious quiet.

  “I was looking for things,” Tricky said.

  “You were always his lapdog,” Heno said suddenly. “The lady in green. Always doing his work.”

  “Yeah, well, how else was I going to find a way to stop him if I didn’t know everything he was doing?” Tricky said as if his accusation had no interest for her. “You were his executioners, torturers, labourers and general dogsbodies, speaking of dogs. I suppose you think it was some kind of accident that you were on that duty when she appeared,” and she jerked her thumb at Celestaine.

  “Are you saying that you…” Ralas began but was imperiously waved off again.

  “I’m not saying it,” Tricky said as if the entire conversation was annoying her while Heno bristled and Nedlam started stabbing the embers with a stick. “Ah ha! I’ve got it. This Draeyad is here because the fire is out. This girl just wandered here when it was still burning. This mazagal is here because they tried to get rid of it in the fire but it didn’t burn for some reason and so the girl found it and now it is hers. The Draeyad is protecting her in thanks. That’s it, isn’t it? Tell me I’m right.” She looked immensely puckish and pleased with herself.