The Griever's Mark (The Griever's Mark series Book 1) (12 page)

I am struck dumb for a moment because I can see the logic behind his suspicion. I can also see that it will be impossible for me to prove him wrong. I say simply, my voice tight because I know he will not believe me, “I’m not a spy.”

“Oh, you’ll have to do better than that.”

I wonder out loud, “Why didn’t Belos think of this?”

“Better, but I’m still not convinced.”

I look up in surprise. It’s dim in here, but everything in the Arcon’s body language tells me that his eyes are glowing with satisfaction. With triumph.

“Didn’t you think we would suspect you?”

“I didn’t think. That’s not why I’m here. I never
expected
to be here.”

“Your master must value your life very little to have sent you.”

“You’re right he doesn’t value my life, but I’m still not a spy.”

Frankly, I’m at a loss. I cannot prove my claim. “Why don’t you just kill me then?”

“What’s this? Giving up already?”

“I can’t prove you wrong, as you well know. You’re toying with me. Just get it over with.”

Aron frowns, disappointed that I won’t argue. His eyes narrow. “Why do you serve him?”

That rouses me, as he meant it to, and I snap, “I already told you that.”

“Right. Leashed as a child.”

The way he says it—condescending, disbelieving—makes me feel ugly. What a horrible lie that would be. I tell him, “You are as cruel in your own way as he is. Because you understand where to hurt people.”

He doesn’t like the comparison. He storms toward me, grabs my arm. “I will not be insulted by a servant of the Unnamed.”

I jerk my arm free. “Touch me again, and I will break your face.”

He grabs me anyway and starts wrestling me toward the wall. “You will learn respect. The shackles, Clitus!”

The familiar word sends a thrill of terror through me. I twist frantically. I am free only a moment before Aron’s hands latch onto me again. I reach for the Drift, hunting it through that strange haze, finding my dim mooring.

I spin toward Aron. Light flashes hotly from my hand. It’s not much, but it makes Aron cry out in surprise.

I turn instinctively for the open cell door, but I have taken only two steps when the earth shakes. Soil and stone erupt from the floor. They rise in a barrier around me, closing rapidly.

I reach for the Drift. I feel it dimly, but my world is stone, stone, stone. Above, around, below. Blackness. The arguing voices are far away. I am buried, my nose filled with the smell of deep earth, my body pressed by its cold, hard bones. I can barely breathe. I search for the Drift, search for the power within myself, but there is only stone.

I will not die like this. Buried alive, suffocating.

I pound at my stone prison, my hands bursting with pain. I push with my mind, willing it to give way.

I sense a tingling response, like the Drift but different. I latch onto it, press myself into it. I am filled with the ponderous weight of stone, the deep, sleeping energy. And energy, I understand. I draw on it, make it bend to me. The energies respond, shifting, shifting.

I push harder with my mind—with my will. Finally, it breaks, like a dam bursting as it surrenders to the will and force of water.

Stone crumbles.

I fall through the rubble.

My knees strike stone with sharp pain, but I scramble to my feet. Dust swirls in the rectangle of torchlight made by the open cell door. Stone litters the cell. Aron and Logan—I jerk a little to see him—lower their swords. Polemarc Clitus staggers back.

“That”—Aron swallows—“is impossible.”

Chapter 15

“WHAT’S IMPOSSIBLE?” I say into their silence.

Aron and Logan share a look.

“How did you do that?” Clitus demands, his broad, plain face filled with shock. Or horror? I’m not sure.

“Do what?”

He says weakly, “You broke the stone.”

Logan lowers his sword and picks his way through the rubble. He gazes at me wonderingly. “My mother was right.”

“About what?”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Aron argues. “What difference could it make? She is still a spy.”

“You don’t really believe that, Aron,” Logan says with annoyance.

“Why not? It makes more sense than her story.”

“There’s no evidence.”

“She’s here. That’s evidence enough.”

When Aron starts toward us, Logan growls, “Stay back.”

“Why do you defend her? What would Father think of you right now?”

A sound rumbles from deep in Logan’s throat.

Clitus says, businesslike, “Loganos, what are your intentions?”

“Astarti comes with me.” Logan’s tone is a warning.

The Arcon and the Polemarc say at once, “No.”

“She’s not a spy and she’s not a danger. And if you weren’t so blinded, you would recognize that she could be a useful ally.”

That chills me a little. Is that what Logan wants of me, why he’s been defending me? He wants to use me against Belos?

Aron’s eyes gleam with anger. “You will never be able to trust her.”

Logan darts a look over his shoulder at me. “Get to the door.”

Clitus edges forward. “Loganos, you cannot take her. You can’t just decide on your own and expect others to accept it.”

Logan raises his sword to halt Clitus and his brother. “Now, Astarti,” he says, and I move, picking through the rubble.

Clitus says warningly, “Logan, do you realize what you are doing?”

Logan hesitates a moment, regret flashing briefly across his face, then he follows me from the cell.

* * *

Despite my expectation that we will be swarmed by guards at any moment, no one meets us at the top of the stairs. Logan takes the lead, and we are soon running along one of the covered walkways lining the interior courtyard. I squint in the strong light. After days of shadow and torchlight, I had begun to think of all time as night, and the square of blue above the courtyard looks surreal to me.

We enter another hallway, also empty, and jog to what at first I take for a dark, dead end. Logan feels along the wall while I wait impatiently behind him, looking over my shoulder every two seconds.

A bolt scrapes into its housing, and the hidden door swings open onto an overgrown stone path lined with trees. I follow Logan onto the path, which rises to higher ground. At first, we are so enclosed in green that little else makes an impression on me. Then the trees begin to open.

I stop. Logan calls my name, but I am frozen, stunned.

Through a break in the trees, I look down into a broad horseshoe bay with rocky arms. Sunlight sparkles on the water, rippling over it like a living thing. Pale stone buildings, some round with domed roofs, some square and flat, seem to grow out of the rocky slope. Wide porches and balconies stretch before the buildings, and columns and balustrades stand everywhere. Bridges arch over numerous little waterfalls, and trees and gardens color everything.

Logan is beside me. He takes my hand, gives it a quick squeeze of understanding, and tugs me onward.

Our path takes us over stone bridges, where the water hurries beneath, and up sets of stairs. The air is cool and moist, and I smell greenery and stone and soil.

Ahead, smooth round columns mark some kind of boundary. Logan doesn’t hesitate. He runs between them. I follow and find myself in a wood. Though the trees are beautiful and healthy with little undergrowth or dead wood, there is no question: this wood is wild. I feel it in my bones.

Logan has slowed to a walk and I follow him between thick trunks, some flaky with papery bark, others rough and ridged. The hair rises on my neck and arms. Something is brushing over me, brushing
through
me. I spin, swatting, but nothing is there. But something, somehow, is touching me. Something conscious, living.

I stop, breathing roughly, fighting panic.

Logan stops, looks back. Surprise wrinkles his forehead. “You feel it?”

“What is it?”

“Don’t be afraid.”

I repeat, more insistent this time, “What is it?”

He comes back to me. “The Wood. I’m surprised you feel it. Well, I guess, maybe I shouldn’t be.” He gives me a searching look that I don’t understand. “The Wood is one of the best guards we have against the Unnamed.”

“What do you mean?”

“It would never let him through.”

“How can it...” I gesture, unable to find the words.

“The trees here are...awake. Aware of themselves and of us.”

I stare at him dumbly.

A look of impatience crosses his face, but he drives it away and explains, “The Current flows between all trees. They are...connected in a way that even the Earthmakers don’t fully understand. Any Earthmaker—even the Unnamed—can enter the Current. But not here. The Wood is different from other woods. Other trees are idle. Asleep, I guess. They take no notice of who passes by them. But the trees here
do
notice. And they make their own decisions.”

My mind races with this disturbing information. A sudden thought occurs to me. “You brought me here through the Current, didn’t you?”

“It was that or swim.”

“It let me in?”

Logan hesitates before he admits, “It didn’t want to, but yes.”

I look around at the trees with distrust, expecting them to lash out with limb and branch, to devour me. I shiver at the thought of their consciousness.

From far behind, voices shout.

Logan shifts anxiously. “Astarti, take my hand.”
“Why?”

“They are too close. We must use the Current.”

“But the trees—”

“Take my hand.”

His eyes, which I have actually never seen in daylight before, swirl with bright blue and green. They beg me for trust. They are beautiful.

I put my hand in his.

* * *

The Current is a whirlpool of gold, and I feel the truth of Logan’s words: the trees are alive, aware. They reach out with ghostly fingers, and their touch is light, chilling. I shiver in fear. They see my heart, my Leash. They know what I am.

Logan’s wild energy shifts beside me. He says nothing, but he smiles assurance. I let him pull me into the flow.

Fingers trail over me, tugging now and then, reaching into my energies. It is uncannily like a pull on my Leash, and I don’t like it.

Suddenly, Logan is tugging at me, and I feel the suck and draw of the Current, reluctant to let me go. I break free abruptly and tumble into Logan.

Blue sky and trees flash across my vision as I fall, taking Logan with me. He hits the earth with a thump, my shoulder driving into his sternum.

I scramble off him, planting a hand on his hip in my haste. I snatch it back. “Sorry.”

He rubs his chest, sitting up. “We made it,” he says in relief, and I realize with a chill that he wasn’t sure we would.

“What would have happened if the Wood hadn’t let us”—I don’t say “me”—“pass through?”

Logan drops his eyes and says again, firmly, “We made it.”

He stands and offers me his hand. My heart is still pounding with fear of the Wood, but his offered hand makes me smile wryly. I’m not exactly a lady to be helped prettily to her feet. I take his hand anyway. It’s warm and dry, calloused along the palms from years of sword practice. The touch is like a shock of energy from the Drift; it shoots from my hand and up my arm, into my breast. I take my hand back quickly. He gives me a puzzled look, and I am suddenly awkward. I clasp my hands together in front of me.

We are at the edge of a wood—is this still part of
the
Wood?—in the foothills of mountains. They rise beyond the trees into rocky, jagged peaks.

“Where are we?”

“The Outer Islands.”

Though Avydos is located on the large, central island of the Floating Lands, I know that numerous smaller islands lie scattered around it. Beyond that, I know nothing.

Logan jerks his chin. “Come on.”

A faint trail, little more than a goat path, winds through the foothills. It’s littered with loose stone, and the smooth soles of my sandals make me slide. What I wouldn’t give to have my boots on right now. I left them at the Trader’s Choice. Probably already out with the trash.

We are moving down, not up, and the trees soon give way to scrub. Before long I hear sea gulls. After perhaps half an hour, the ocean comes into view. My breath catches. On the horizon, pale blue sky meets dark water. The water lightens as it reaches toward the beach, its deep, rich blue melting into bright turquoise until the white sands emerge.

As we wind down to the beach, coarse rock smoothes into sand beneath my feet. A breeze comes off the water, light and cool, slipping through the weave of my linen shirt and wool pants. I rub my arms for warmth and remember that it is not yet summer.

The beach is small, a slim white crescent between slopes of sharp-bladed sea grass. I want to know where we are going, but the moment is so beautiful that I hesitate to shatter it with questions. Instead, I study Logan as he walks ahead of me. This is the first chance I’ve had to really look at him without his notice. His white linen shirt slides over the muscles of his shoulders and back, tugging with each step to show the cut of his waist. Dark blonde hair curls along his collar, messy as usual. The sword at his waist hangs comfortably; he is obviously used to moving with a blade and clearly was quick to replace the one that Belos broke. The black leather of his pants is scuffed, and I can’t help but think that he dresses nothing like his people and that he looks very rough for a noble, if that’s the right word for a Primo. I like it.

As we slog across the beach, sand working its way into my sandals and between my toes, I notice a house tucked into the rolling sand hills. The house is white and has the smooth look of plaster.

“Who lives there?” I ask.

Logan stops in surprise, as though it had not occurred to him that someone might occupy the house. “No one.”

“No one?”

“I found this place when I was young. It was abandoned even then. I don’t know who lived there. An old hermit, most likely.”

“Are there many old Earthmaker hermits?” I ask teasingly.

Logan’s mouth quirks. “You’d be surprised.”