In Stone's Clasp (9 page)

The Dragon chuckled, and folded his wings slightly. “You’re about to find out,” he said, and dove.

The harsh crimson glow that bathed the Emperor’s face was fading, replaced by the gentle orange light from the crackling fire. The advisor to the Emperor glanced from his lord to the black-clad figure who stood behind the Emperor. Gloved hands dug into the Emperor’s shoulders for a moment, then released their grasp.

The advisor shrank back as his lord emerged from his trance. After two such definitive and humiliating setbacks, he was convinced that the Emperor would be in a black mood.

Instead, he sighed heavily and reached for a goblet of wine with a hand that trembled. With the other, he grasped the hovering object that had enabled him to have such access to the Flame Dancer. At once, the scarlet object, round at its base and tapered at the tip like the drop of blood it so resembled, settled into his hand, all its magic now quiescent. At the Emperor’s feet, as ever, crouched the ki-lyn
.
Was it the advisor’s imagination, or did the beautiful, captive beast look pleased?

“That,” said the Emperor heavily, running his thumb absently over the smooth red surface of the object, “was not the success I had envisioned.” Carefully, he replaced the goblet on the table next to him.

“Regretful, my lord,” the advisor said, his gaze flickering
from the Emperor’s face to where that of the Mage should have been…if he’d had one.

“I thought I had the chance, when she was here, but…” His voice trailed off and he dangled the fingers of his free hand to stroke the ki-lyn
.
It tried to duck from his touch, but when the chain about its elegant neck prevented the movement, it endured the caressing.

“You are not yet as familiar with the tool you are using as you might be, Your Excellency,” said the Mage in the cold voice that made the advisor’s skin crawl. “Give it time.”

“I am certain that my lord has other plans,” lied the advisor.

“You would be correct, my old friend,” said the Emperor calmly. “She has gone beyond my direct influence now, that much is true. But I am not without my servants in other lands. Servants who crave what I have to offer, whose minds are molded to my way of thinking.” He looked at his advisor beneath lowered lashes and suddenly laughed. “Come, you expect me to have revealed everything?”

“If I may speak frankly—yes, my liege,” replied the advisor somewhat testily. “I am after all your advisor. How may I advise you properly if you do not tell me everything?”

The look was no longer surreptitious. The Emperor stared at him boldly, and inwardly, the advisor quailed. But he stood firm. He did not dare show signs of weakness, not to this ultimate predator. The Emperor respected only strength and power.

“Those who know too much could pose a threat,” the Emperor said, his voice deceptively mild. “But trust me, old friend.” He dropped his gaze to the object the Mage called the
Tenacru,
staring at his reflection in the glossy surface as if entranced by it.

“I have allies you cannot imagine. Allies that are bound to
me by the most primal of emotions—love and grief. Some allies that don’t even know they are allies.”

His lips curved in a smile that chilled the advisor. For a moment, the advisor’s gaze flickered to the large, sensitive eyes of the imprisoned ki-lyn, and he read in those limpid depths a reflection of his own fear.

The white surface seemed to surge to meet them. Despite her trust in the mighty creature, Kevla found her fingers clutching a spiny ridge on the Dragon’s back. She need not have worried; the Dragon came to earth as softly as a feather falling, his landing muffled by this white stuff called snow.

The Dragon had warned her that the snow was cold to the touch, but Kevla knew that it would not chill her, as it would others. She was always warm, no matter where she was or what she was wearing. It was something that had been granted to her with the onset of her power. Still, she was not prepared for the sensation of the snow on her skin as she slid off the Dragon’s back.

It was indeed cold, and—“It’s wet!” she yelped accusingly at the Dragon. He threw back his enormous head and laughed. “You did that deliberately!” She was thigh-deep in the white wetness, and the more she tried to brush it off, the wetter it—and she—became.

“No, I did not do it deliberately,” the Dragon chuckled. “But I confess, it’s amusing to watch you.”

She eyed him, not pacified by his comment. “It’s fine for you, it barely covers your toes. How am I to walk in this? I thought it was like sand, but instead it turns to water.”

Water.
“I know the people here suffer under this winter you speak of, but to me they seem rich. To have this much water simply lying on the fields and hillside….” Her voice trailed off as she took in the stark beauty. “A
khashim
would lead many a raid for this treasure.”

“What is valuable depends on the time and place,” the Dragon said. “Ten thousand gold coins mean nothing to a man starving alone in the wilderness. And water covering every surface does not mean much when everything it covers is dead. The people of this land may never thirst, Kevla, but it is likely that they are cold and hungry.”

Kevla was becoming used to the heavy wetness of the snow, and now she noticed something else: the profound silence. She had been slogging through the white stuff, her
rhia
becoming increasingly soaked and heavy, but now she paused, listening. There were no bird calls. The wind did not stir the branches.

“It’s so quiet,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, reluctant to thrust the sound of speech upon this silence. She gasped. “My breath—I can see it!”

“So now you can breathe smoke, too,” the Dragon joked. She smiled at him, grateful for the little jest.

The snow bowed down the still-green, needled trees and limned every branch of the skeleton trees. As she stood observing, her breath coming in small white puffs, she felt small, cool pricks on her skin. She looked up, and as the snow kissed her face, she realized that it came from the sky, like the rare rain in Arukan. Kevla bent and scooped up a handful, tasting it, feeling it dissolve on her tongue. She stood in the falling snow, taking in the bowed trees, the dim light and the shadows of the deep forest. The silence seemed to swallow her voice when she spoke.

“I don’t like it here, Dragon, plentiful water or no. I want to find the other Dancer quickly and move on.”

“That may be harder than you think,” the Dragon said. “You were able to sense that he was in the North, but thus far, that is all we know. We are in the North, Kevla, and we are discovering that it is a large place indeed.”

Her spirits sank even lower. “How
are
we to find him, then?”

“Try to remember, Kevla.” He looked at her intently. “You’ve done this before. The strongest bonds are between a Dancer, her Lorekeeper, and her Companion animal, because they form a complete whole. But all the Dancers have a connection with one another. Jashemi would have been able to sense the Stone Dancer, to feel him more strongly because he was a Lorekeeper. Such was his duty. But you can do some of that yourself, as can I. You were quite good at it once. Keep trusting in your ability to sense him. Practice reaching out to him. Listen when a little voice says, go this way. The Dancers are unique in this world. Their abilities would be known. Someone will be able to point us in the right direction.”

The Dragon’s reassurance heartened her somewhat, but even so, the enormity of the task was intimidating. She leaned against a tree trunk. Absently she ran her hands over its white bark with curly, rough patches of a darker hue.

“This is not Arukan, with its open stretches of desert,” she said. “This is a land with dark forests and hidden places. We will not be able to learn much from the air, Dragon, and if this forest is any indication, you are too large to walk between the trees.”

He narrowed his golden eyes. “Let us fly, and see what we can see, and feel what we can feel, before you give up.”

Her eyes flashed. “I’m not giving up!”

“Good. Because for a moment there, it certainly sounded as if you had.”

“You know me better than that.”

His scrutinizing gaze softened. “Indeed I do,” he said. “Come. Climb aboard my back, and let us find the people who dwell in such a harsh place.”

She was relieved to leave the ground, to be safely in the air once again, away from the wet snow and the dim forest and the eerie silence. Seated atop the Dragon, Kevla wrung out the sodden
rhia
and with a thought, dried it. They continued on, no longer flying directly north this time. The Dragon flew in a search pattern, lower to the ground, so that they had every opportunity of finding places where people might dwell. Kevla tried to extend her thoughts, to sense the Stone Dancer as the Dragon had told her she could, but all she could feel was an oncoming headache from concentrating so hard.

She abandoned the attempt and concentrated on scouring the landscape that unfurled beneath her. She realized that she didn’t even know what they were looking for.

“What kind of dwellings should we be watching for?”

“What is the greatest resource here?” replied the Dragon, answering one question with another.

“Snow,” she joked, then added more seriously, “trees. They probably build their shelter out of trees.” Now that she thought about it, she supposed that wood would make an adequate building material, though no one in Arukan had ever done so. No one was
rich
enough to do so. Not even the Clan of Four Waters could afford to throw away gold on wooden housing when stone was more plentiful and easy to quarry.

“And if they make their homes out of trees,” she continued, working it out in her mind, “we should look for clearings where it appears that trees have been harvested.”

The Dragon lowered his right wing and swerved. “I think I saw such a clearing a few leagues to the east.”

They were flying over open land now, away from the forests and rivers. Within a few moments, Kevla saw small dwellings. As she had surmised, they appeared to be made of wood.

“There,” she cried, pointing. “Over there. To your left.”

“I see them,” the Dragon replied. “Let us hope they are in a mood to welcome visitors.”

The houses were clustered together at the edge of the forest, but the Dragon had been right—there was a large clearing where several small lumps bulged beneath the snow.
Probably the trunks of the mighty trees, felled to create the shelters,
thought Kevla. She was both nervous and excited as she slid from the Dragon’s back into the snow. But as soon as she approached the first house, she felt hope die inside her.

The houses were constructed of logs from the white, slender, straight trees Kevla had observed earlier. The timbers had been cut and arranged atop one another so that they interlocked well, and what chinks remained had been stuffed with some kind of daubing material. But now that she was closer, she could see what she hadn’t been able to see from the air—that the roofs, covered with the bark of the slender white trees and what appeared to be chunks of sod, were in great need of repair. In some areas, they had collapsed.

No one had dwelt in these houses for a long time. Apprehension building inside her, Kevla drew nearer. The doors, heavy wooden things that bore intricate carvings, had either been left open or had come off completely. Some still had metal locks attached to them. Over time, the snow had intruded inside, an unwelcome guest, to almost completely fill the space.

Kevla stepped inside and looked around. The snow had drifted deep and high, covering everything. The only light came from the open door and through the slats of the shutters that covered a single, small window. Here and there, shapes swelled, enveloped by snow. Kevla brushed snow from one such lump, her hands finding the hard curve of a small wooden stool. The walls were bare, and the entire place spoke of abandonment and desertion.

“Well?” the Dragon asked as she emerged.

“The houses are filled with snow. Perhaps people tired of the harshness of…of winter and traveled south, where it is not so bitter.”

“A possibility,” agreed the Dragon. “Did you find anything inside?”

Kevla inhaled swiftly. “Yes. Furniture,” she said softly as the full impact of the realization swept through her. “They left their furniture.”

She and the Dragon regarded each other. The unspoken question hung between them: If these people had left of their own accord, wouldn’t they have taken their furnishings with them?

Kevla knew what she had to do. Dreading what she now suspected she’d find, she reentered the house.

She concentrated on the snow piled so thickly and gave a mental command. Like water slowly receding from the bank of the Nur River, the snow obeyed her, melting and running in warmed rivulets over her feet and out the door. And slowly, inexorably, the horror was revealed to Kevla’s gaze.

Some of the lumps were indeed furniture, like the stool she had touched. But the others…

“Kevla, what do you see?” asked the Dragon.

“They…they didn’t leave,” she said in a trembling voice. “They’re still here.”

Six of them sprawled on the bedding and floor. Two men, three women, and one child, bodies emerging from the blanket of snow that had mercifully hidden them. Kevla’s first thought was that somehow they had frozen to death, but as the snow melted, it began to turn red. Blood once frozen began to thaw and drip from wounds that gaped like open mouths. As Kevla stared, unable to tear her gaze away, she saw that the corpse of one of the women had been hacked nearly in two.

She backed out the door quickly, almost running into the Dragon. She looked up at him, knowing her face told him more than her words would.

“Marauders found them,” Kevla rasped. “They were—they were killed.”

“When the land does not provide enough to eat,” the Dragon said in a low voice, “some take what they need from others. By any means they can.” He craned his neck and looked around. “There are other lumps in the snow out here as well. More victims, I would think.”

Kevla looked where he had indicated and shuddered. “Are the men who did this still in the area?” Kevla asked. She was torn between apprehension and a furious desire to exact revenge for the brutality she had witnessed.

The Dragon sniffed the air. “No living flesh is nearby.” He frowned. “I have seen no tracks, either. Not so much as a squirrel’s.”

Kevla was too agitated to ask what a
squirrel
might be. She tried to calm herself, pressing her hands to her temples and breathing slowly and deeply.

“If the Stone Dancer was ever here, he is not now. I think—I think I would know if any of the other Dancers were dead.”

“You and I would not be here if any of the others were dead,” said the Dragon. “The Shadow comes with haste, once a champion of the world has fallen.”

Kevla looked at her friend. “The bodies are thawing,” she said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “We need to burn them.”

The Dragon shook his head. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We must press on.”

“No,” Kevla said quietly. “They deserve to have their remains respected. I would imagine there are predators in these woods, similar to the desert dogs or
simmars.
I won’t have these people gnawed on like—” A wave of nausea washed over her, but she forced it back. “Will you help me or must I do this by myself?”

The Dragon sighed. “Let us be about it quickly, then.”

The Dragon had been right. When Kevla melted the snow in the clearing, several more victims were revealed. She went into each house, melting the snow she found within. Every dwelling had its share of corpses. Her heart breaking for them, she gathered pieces of furniture and piled them in the center of the clearing. The Dragon removed the roofs from the little houses, gently brought forth the butchered bodies and placed them on the pyre. As she worked, Kevla realized that there was at least some comfort to be taken. She was in the right place to find the Stone Dancer, for each body that was piled atop the pyre had milky pale skin and tresses as yellow as the desert sand of Arukan.

“So many,” Kevla murmured. “They must have killed everyone in the village.”

She walked toward the pyre and gazed at the broken bodies with compassion. “This is probably not your rite for the dead,” she said aloud, as if they could somehow hear her. “But I won’t leave you for carrion. May the winds carry you to whatever gods you believe in.”

She closed her eyes, extended her hands, and thought:
Burn.

With a
whumph,
the pyre exploded into flames. For a moment, Kevla watched the crackling, curling fire, recalling how she had lit a similar pyre not so long ago for her own people, after the battle with the Emperor.

“You have done what you needed to do here. We must go.”

She nodded, knowing the Dragon was right, but for a moment unable to stop staring at the conflagration. The often-pleasant scent of burning wood was becoming tainted with the stench of flesh as the bodies began to be consumed. Kevla deliberately turned away, and once again climbed atop the Dragon’s back.

They found nothing else the rest of the day, and the night seemed to come on more quickly than usual. When Kevla commented on this, the Dragon said, “We are continuing to travel north, and it is winter. The sun does not shine strongly now, and night lasts many hours. In some places it lasts for months.”