Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (4 page)

4

Ferrets and Vipers

SUGAR WALKED INTO Shim’s chamber and immediately felt she’d made the wrong choice.

The room was lit only by candles. The windows had been shuttered and a thick drape pulled across so no sound could escape into the bailey. Shim, Eresh, the Creek Widow, and a number of the more powerful dreadmen were there, the candles casting odd shadows behind them. A woman stood at the table in the middle of the room. She had the kind of figure men liked, but her hair had been cut too short and ragged. And while her face might have been beautiful once, it was now crossed with lines and planes of pain and weariness. The woman smiled at Sugar and revealed she was missing a few more teeth than most.

Argoth followed Sugar in and closed the door behind him. “Our eyes arrive,” he said.

There were enough soldiers in the room to make a fist. She spotted Oaks, the only mature dreadman among them, and suspected that these were the men who had been selected to try to break into Blue Towers with her and assassinate the Skir Master.

She shook her head. A fist of men against patrols of dogmen and maulers and Walkers and who knew what else. A fist of men against five legions.

Deep down in the pit of her gut, her misgivings grew. Urban was right: Shim’s army had no chance against the might of Mokad. There was no way this mission could succeed.

Argoth walked up next to her and put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a fatherly squeeze. “As bold as the mother that bore her. She’s going to lead us in.”

Eresh turned the gaze of his one good eye upon her. “She looks like she’s about to faint. Are we really sure we want to trust all of our lives to some weak paste of a girl?”

Despite her misgivings, Sugar bridled at the insult.

“She’s not going into battle,” the Creek Widow said. “She’s going in to ferret.”

“She’s not going to do much ferreting if she wilts along the wayside, is she?”

Sugar spoke. “I’m not going to wilt, Zu.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m Sugar, Sparrow’s daughter. Wilting is not in my blood.”

“It had better not be,” Eresh said. “Because if you fail, we might as well throw our hats onto the water and go stand underneath them. There’s not going to be a second chance. If you fail, Mokad will rise in fury and devour us.”

“I’m Purity’s daughter, and I wear Purity’s weave. I will see us in.”

“Indeed she shall,” said Argoth.

“Perhaps it’s time to bring Flax into our circle,” Shim suggested. “He could be a great asset on this venture.”

“No,” Eresh said. “That is what we must not do. That snake is hiding something. Time after time, he slips my men. Where does he go? Who does he see?”

“He’s a spy,” Shim said.

“He’s more than that, my lord.”

“We don’t need him,” the Creek Widow said. “I can go.”

“You can’t,” Eresh said.

She gave him a withering look. “Do not presume to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“No,” Argoth said. “He’s right. You know you can’t go. If something goes wrong, you need to bear off the Grove. We have enough dreadmen. We’ll make do. You and Eresh need to be ready.”

Eresh looked over at her and leered. “I’m ready, but is she ready for me?”

She groaned and rolled her eyes.

Eresh grinned. “I think that’s a good sign. I think she’s warming up to me.”

“Indeed,” said Shim, “there are nothing but twinkling stars in her eyes. Now, let us get to the matter at hand.”

Argoth motioned Sugar to the table. Upon it lay a large piece of linen. An outline of the Blue Towers fortress had been sketched upon the linen with charcoal. Argoth turned to the woman. “Let’s go through it again. Explain what you told us to Sugar and the other dreadmen.”

The woman stepped up to the table and pointed at a spot by the river. “Here,” she said through her missing teeth. “The rocks here hide an escape from the lord’s tower. Lord Hash often has guards posted at the corners of the fortress here and here. But there’s a way up the cliff between them.”

Cliff?
Sugar thought, and her dread returned.

The woman said, “The way in is across the face above the cliff, into the secret door under the tower, then up to Lord Hash’s room.”

“Do we know how many soldiers accompany the Skir Master?” Oaks asked.

Shim said, “Our eyes say there are at least three thousand stationed in the fortress itself. Thousands more outside.”

A handful of men against an army.

They were going to die. There was no doubt about it. And Urban was going to sail away. And she could have been on that ship, both she and Legs. She could still be on that ship.

Sugar clenched her jaw and focused on her friends here. Focused on the fact that if she fled, all those that remained would die. But if she stayed, if she saw this through, if they could actually eliminate the Skir Master, then the thousands who followed Shim just might have a chance to survive.

She looked at the map. “And where is the Skir Master?”

Argoth pointed at a grand apartment down the hallway from Lord Hash’s chamber. “We’re fairly sure he’s here.”

“Fairly sure?” she asked.

“They are the best rooms in the fortress,” the woman said.

And if the Skir Master hadn’t taken the best rooms, then they’d have to find him in a fortress filled with three thousand dreadmen.

“Right,” said Sugar. “Let’s go through this again.”

They went through it again. And again. They talked about how they would cross the river below the fortress, where they would land, and the trail she needed to look for that would lead them up the steep slope above the cliff. They brought out other maps and talked about the escape. They talked about what to do if they were separated. And when Sugar and the others could recite it all from memory, they let her go to get some rest.

Sugar walked out of Shim’s chambers, down the stairs to the clerk’s table, and out into the sunlit bailey. She blinked in the sunlight.

A normal ferret was sent in to scare up rabbits into the teeth of dogs. But they weren’t sending her in to scare up rabbits. They were sending her into a pit of vipers. Fat vipers that would like nothing better than to swallow her whole.

* * *

Sugar found Legs in their cellar quarters, but the barrels had been moved out. All that was left was their bedding and the ferrets, which she was sure the ferret master would soon be along to pick up.

Legs had been sitting on the bed. He rose. “Where are they sending you? It’s something big, isn’t it?”

She thought about Urban’s comments about traitors in their midst and said, “I’ve been sworn to silence. I’m sorry.”

“Silence with even me?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, then moved over and gave him a hug. She looked down at him, his honest face and wild hair. “I love you, brother.”

“I kind of like you too,” he said.

A beat passed.

“I want to behold your face,” he said. “I want to see your hair. Will you let me try the weave?”

“We talked about this—”

“You might not come back,” he said.

“I need some sleep.”

“Just let me try.”

Everything was high risk, she thought. Why not give him this one thing? She couldn’t come up with a good reason, so she removed the necklace from the pouch she carried about her neck and handed it to him. She yawned. “Follow the thread,” she said, “and find the mouth.”

Legs tried for almost an hour. He found the thread easily enough, but the weave would not accept him. Every time he tried to feed it, he said it seemed to sprout thorns.

He tried once more, then yelped and dropped the weave to the cobbled floor. Tears sprang to his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” he said. He turned to the weave. “Mother, it’s me.”

“I don’t think she can hear you, if it is even her in there at all.”

“Why won’t it accept me?”

“I don’t know,” said Sugar. It was puzzling. “But I’d wager Withers would.”

“You must take me to him.”

She paused, then told him Urban’s opinion of their odds as well as his offer.

When she finished, Legs was disgusted. “Fat lot of good Withers will do us now,” he said. “The cowards.”

“We could join them.”

“What are you talking about?” Legs asked.

“Urban’s not a coward; he’s prudent.”

“He’s running when he’s needed most.”

“A mouse might pip and squeak at a cat, but the cat is still a cat, and the mouse is a fool not to run and hide.”

“Flax is staying as are all his men of the Hand,” Legs said.

“He told you this?”

“He thinks we can win. And I trust that Flax and Argoth and Eresh have experience we don’t.”

“Urban has experience as well,” she said.

Legs sighed in frustration and slumped. “What do I know? I’m just a blind boy. I sing and joke. And while Flax has been nice to me, I’ve no better friend than you, sister. If you think the right course is to run, then I will happily trust your decision. You’ve never led me astray before.”

“Oh? Not even that one time when I led you into that patch of thistle so I could ditch you?”

“Well,” he said.

Sugar reached out and stroked his hair, then held him close.

Her misgivings about her choice to stay and fight this fight had not gone away. If anything, her doubts had increased. She knew if she failed, she would lose Legs. And it wouldn’t be just to death.

In death, the soul separated from the flesh and was then free to find one of the Ways that led to the brightness of the Creators. Such a soul would face all manner of peril. But if that soul could overcome or elude the dangers it encountered in that new world, it would be gathered into the company of the ancestors.

With death there was possibility. But she was not walking toward death. She’d seen the skir collect the souls for their masters. She’d heard the horn. She’d felt it call to her. She knew what awaited her in Blue Towers if she did not come back alive. She was walking toward oblivion. They all were.

“It’s just my luck,” Legs said, “to lose the one man who can help me precisely when I need him the most.”

“There might be others who have similar wisdom.”

“I wanted to
walk
,” Leg said. “If I die, how will I even know what you look like to find you? How will I find Mother and Da?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But we know one thing: there will be no finding anybody if Mokad is allowed to continue its harvest of the land.” The image of the souls trapped like flies in the hair along the bellies of the horrible golden skir rose in her.

She picked the weave up off the floor. “Don’t give up. I’m sure it just takes some practice.”

“Maybe Flax knows,” Legs said. “Maybe Withers isn’t the only one who can help.”

“Maybe,” Sugar said.

Next to them, one of the ferrets woke and yawned, showing its sharp fangs.

Sugar yawned as well. “I need a little bit of a nap,” she said. “Will you make sure I’m not disturbed?”

Legs rose. “I’ll slay anyone who tries to enter with my vast wit and charm.”

Sugar slipped her candidate’s weave over her arm to multiply her rest and fell asleep as soon as she hit the pillow.

5

Spiderhawks

ABOUT A MILE from the white ridge beyond the wurm vale, Harnock halted at a rock face that wept clear water. Talen slurped a number of mouthfuls of the sweet and cold water off the rock, then found a spot where the water dripped off a ledge, unstopped his waterskin, and began to fill it.

Harnock retrieved more of his cooked grubs. He didn’t eat them one by one, but took a handful and tossed them in his mouth, chewing them, bead heads and all, like a normal person might eat a handful of nuts. “This was Moon’s recipe,” he said. “Nobody made them better.”

Talen was going to say that was because nobody else made them at all, but he kept his mouth shut.

“What about the crows?” asked River.

“If those two pests find us, the woodikin have birds that can deal with them,” said Harnock. His fur was damp with sweat, and Talen could smell him in the breeze. He was pungent. He didn’t smell as strongly as a wet dog or horse, but he smelled. Talen wondered if Harnock bathed like a man or a cat. The ridiculous image of Harnock licking himself with that rough tongue made Talen smile.

“What’s so funny?” Harnock asked.

“Nothing,” Talen said. “I’m just in shock. Here I am in the Wilds, eating grubs with a sleth who stirs up wurms for entertainment.”

Harnock grunted. “You keep that smile off your face when we meet with the woodikin. There’s more than grubs they like to eat.”

“I’ll be sober as a cow,” said Talen. “And when we’re done, even if you don’t want our gratitude, we will repay your efforts.”

“You’ll bring back my peace and solitude, will you?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Harnock looked at River and shook his head. “If anyone gets us killed,” he said, “it’ll be that one.”

“Give him a chance,” said River.

“He’s hopeless,” Harnock said. “But you”—he reached out and took her gently by the jaw as if appreciating a flower—“you’re another matter.”

River politely, but firmly moved his hand away. “We should get moving,” she said.

Harnock grunted, then turned to his pack. “Indeed.”

Talen said, “I don’t understand why we’re running from them. You’re more powerful than any dreadman. More powerful than that Divine.”

Harnock shook his head. “You know nothing, Hogan’s son.”

“Then educate me.”

In the distance a squirrel chittered.

Harnock batted a horsefly away from the back of his arm. “The lion is strong. He’s changed everything. My skin, my eyes, the power of my nostrils. He turned my muscles and sinews into iron. I can do things no man, no dreadman could ever dream of. Lumen wanted brawn and brains, cunning and ruthlessness. And he got it. He figured it out, something few Divines have managed, although he killed plenty of us before he twisted me. But as strong as this twist is, I was his creature. The Divines always work something into a thrall to bind what they’ve wrought, to keep it in their control. Which is why I cannot fight this Nashrud. He’ll know my weakness. He’ll know how to pick up my chain. And then it won’t matter—man or lion, I will not be my own. And neither will you.”

“Nashrud didn’t enthrall me.”

“He didn’t have to. Where were you going to run? What were you going to do? He was probably forbidden to make you his thrall. In fact, I’m sure of it. You were destined to be at the end of someone else’s chain.”

“Can’t you fight a thrall?”

“I’ve tried closing my doors, but there’s something in the weave of the tattoos.” He pulled back the fur at his neck to reveal a tattoo there. He held out his wrist. “Neck, chest, wrist—it doesn’t matter. They enter the flesh there. That’s what a thrall does. It comes in, inserts itself into you, mind and soul, and takes command.”

Harnock’s wrists were tattooed in the normal Koramite fashion, but there were scars all over them. “Are those scars part of your thrall?”

“When Lumen had me, I thought if I could break the pattern of the tattoo, I could break his control, but the tattoo is not just ink. The thrall weave grows deep, all the way down to the bone. You can’t just cut it out. I’ve tried.”

Talen looked down at his own wrists. Harnock was right. The tattoos weren’t just brands—they were living things. And his had been changing, growing.

River spoke. “You have to wonder why the Divines seed every child with them. We’re not all thralls. So what other purpose do they serve?”

Harnock shrugged. “There are insects like the weem that lay their eggs in the bodies of their prey. Is that what the Divines are doing for their masters? Or is it something else? I don’t know.”

“Surely, there has to be a way to diminish a thrall’s power,” Talen said.

“Distance,” said Harnock. “For some reason, the pull lessens when the distance between the master and thrall increases, but it doesn’t disappear altogether.”

“But you broke Lumen’s thrall upon you.”

“Lumen wasn’t my direct master. Mine was a lazy-eyed priest Lumen had chosen. One day he choked on a hard bit of bread. Choked good and died. When he did, the link broke, and I ran. And because Lumen could not catch me, he could not shackle me with his own fetter.”

“But the Devourer said I was not a thrall. She said thralls were only good to be used and then devoured.”

“And you believed that creature? Why create a blend if you cannot control it? Do not deceive yourself. You’re a horse, all bridled and saddled up, waiting for a rider. Somewhere, something wants to take hold of the reins to your soul. And the best thing to do is avoid them.”

Talen and River finished filling their waterskins. When he hung his over his shoulder, a bird’s shadow passed over the rock. Talen looked up, expecting to see the crows, but saw a vulture high up instead.

“We’re getting close now to some woodikin orchards,” Harnock said. “Don’t take anything. Don’t say or do anything unless I tell you. Do you understand?”

Talen and River nodded.

“This tribe owes me. I’ll get you through their lands, and then you’re on your own.”

“Why don’t you come back with us, back to the settlements?” River asked.

Harnock looked at her. “Why don’t you stay with me instead?”

“This is the Grove’s moment,” River replied.

“No man will make you happier,” Harnock said.

“War is not the time to wed.”

Harnock shook his head. “Come on, then. Time to meet some grub-eating friends.”

They set off at a pace that was fast, but Talen’s Fire was responding better now, and he was able to keep up.

Talen had never seen a woodikin. Decades ago, woodikin and humans had spilled much of each other’s blood when the first settlers came to the New Lands. It was said that when you killed one woodikin, you obligated whole tribes and families to come after you. But they never really fought in open formal battle. Instead, the woodikin loved to ambush. They’d surprise a company of men, attacking from tree tops, sending in swarms of hornets and wasps. They’d sneak in at night with their poison darts and stone knives and murder you as you slept. But they’d mostly destroyed farms and crops, killed cattle, absconded with chickens, and sometimes children. There was a two-year stretch in that long war when the early settlers, having been starved nearly to death, had almost lost.

But with the coming of a Divine, the woodikin were beaten back, and the hostilities ceased. A line had been drawn and marked with the giant border obelisks. Woodikin and humans were to have no contact unless approved by the Divine. Only a few families were given charters to trade, and most of these were temporary. Furthermore, the families were allowed to trade only with the Orange Slayer woodikin, the most powerful tribe.

Talen and River followed Harnock for perhaps another mile or three, but Talen couldn’t tell for sure because the Wilds were nothing more than an endless puzzle of hills, ravines, and hollows. Distance was hard to gauge. As they ran, his anticipation grew. He was about to be one of the few humans to ever see the woodikin in their tree villages.

They crossed yet another creek, walked partway up a gentle wooded slope, and then Harnock stopped. “We’re here,” he said.

Talen looked around. This didn’t look like any orchard. “I thought the woodikin ate bugs.”

“They eat a lot of things,” said Harnock, “but they love tango nuts. They farm them just as we farm carrots or apples.”

Talen had been expecting neat rows, but this didn’t look any different than the rest of the woods. Then he saw a regularity of one type of tree growing among all the others.

Harnock pointed. “The woodikin have paths up there. You see the other trees between the tango nuts. They use the branches as walkways.”

Now that he’d pointed it out, Talen did see them. The closer Talen looked, the more signs he saw of cultivation. He even saw ropes and a platform up in one of the bridge trees. A number of wooden collars ringed some of the trees’ trunks. Talen asked what they were for, and was told they were there to keep other animals from climbing up and getting the fruit.

Talen remembered River saying that Moon was a smuggler. “You trade with them despite the restrictions, don’t you?”

“You think I’m going to follow the law set down by some Mokaddian Divine?”

“That’s how you made a living with your wife, smuggling woodikin goods outside.”

Harnock gave him a look and said nothing.

Talen continued, “Which means you’ve got a contact out on the coast. But I thought you didn’t want to get close to the settlements. I thought you said that was dangerous.”

Harnock looked at River. “Does he always talk this much?”

“Yes,” she said.

Harnock grunted, then said, “Follow me, and keep quiet.” Then he began to walk up through the orchard.

As they walked, Talen spotted many more ropes and platforms in the distance and realized the orchard was large, even if it wasn’t kept in the fashion of the clans. And they didn’t have to walk far before Talen saw his first woodikin. The creature sat high up in a tree, watching them. It was hairy, but wore some kind of tunic and carried a small bow. It had a mane of white fur.

Harnock shouted up to it in a language Talen did not understand. The woodikin blew a whistle of sorts, then continued to watch them.

“What do we do now?” asked Talen.

“We wait. There will be some discussion and barter, but this tribe of Orange Slayers owes me. They’ll give us passage through the borders of their tanglewood and out to the other side.”

The woodikin tribes and nations named themselves for various things. There were the Long-bodies, Bear Eaters, Toadmen, and dozens of others. The Orange Slayers were named after a giant hornet with an orange head. The hornet sometimes grew as long as a man’s palm and had a wing span of almost five inches. They looked like sparrows when they flew. Everyone knew about orange slayers and their dagger stings—it’s what the woodikin had sent against the humans in the old wars.

Which was why the clans destroyed their nests whenever they were found. In the old wars, some of the Koramite settlers had died from the stings, but in battle the woodikin wasp lords had used them more to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies, distracting them, injuring them, breaking their lines, making it easy for the woodikin warriors to pick them off. How the woodikin controlled the wasps, nobody knew.

Talen himself had seen the bodies of a small nest of wild orange slayers. A farmer had destroyed the nest at night by knocking it into a large barrel of water, putting a lid on it, and drowning the creatures. Afterwards, the farmer had cooked some up for eating and sold others for a fine price. At the time, the sight of the wasps’ large bodies and stingers and powerful-looking jaws had filled Talen with dread. He couldn’t imagine facing a swarm of thousands of the creatures. The old settlers had worn thick clothing and special hats with netting as defenses, but even those sometimes failed. Talen had nothing of the sort here—just his tunic and trousers. Furthermore, his head, neck, arms, and feet were bare. He began to feel very exposed.

“What do we do if they send their hornets at us?” Talen asked.

“We run,” said Harnock.

Talen looked at River in alarm.

“Relax,” River said. “I doubt they use wasp lords to protect orchards.”

“Not unless they’re expecting a raid from an enemy tribe,” said Harnock. “We’re very close to Spiderhawk territory.”

“Spiderhawks?” Talen asked.

“Another tribe, named after the black wasps that attack large spiders and drag them down into their holes.”

An insect flew by, and Talen jumped, but it was just a plain old fly.

Above them the woodikin made more calls. Flute-like whistles responded from deeper within the forest. A look of concern crossed Harnock’s face. He yelled up to the woodikin watching them from above. His voice seemed full of anger.

The woodikin yelled back down.

“He says we’re thieves, and that we are now property of their queen,” said Harnock.

“We didn’t touch anything,” said Talen.

“Of course, we didn’t,” said Harnock.

In the tops of the branches in the distance, a troop of woodikin moved into view. They were carrying sticks. Then Talen realized they weren’t sticks. They were blow pipes. The woodikin were famous for their poison darts.

Talen increased his Fire.

Harnock yelled up at the woodikin again. They exchanged a number of words. Then Harnock grimaced. All the while, the troop of armed woodikin came closer. “He says to give up the boy, and our debt will be paid.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Talen.

“It’s tempting,” Harnock said.

“What would woodikin want with Talen?” asked River.

“Woodikin like human slaves,” said Harnock. “It’s a status thing. They might put him to work on the ground in their orchards. Or turn him into a pack animal and make him haul things about. But my bet is they’d use him in their weapons practice. They’d pit their ring warriors against him in a spectacle. He’d be released when he was dead.”

“Ring warriors?” Talen asked.

“You ever wonder why the woodikin stay out of our lands? It’s not just the threat of Skir Masters blowing their hornets away. Mokad buys them off with weaves of might.”

“They have dreadmen?” Talen asked.