The Griever's Mark (The Griever's Mark series Book 1) (2 page)

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Twenty minutes later I am standing in the courtyard, blinking in the blinding light, gasping in a heat that makes the Fortress seem cool. The courtyard is bare and dusty, like the rough hewn Fortress behind it. The only feature of the broad space is a dead and twisted tree. Belos brought the tree from human lands decades ago. It didn’t last long in the harsh climate of the Dry Land. Belos left it there, Theron once confided in me, to remind himself not to cling to things long gone.

The Fortress sits on a high mound of jagged rock. The dull plain below is as empty as the sky. The only water here lies deep beneath the surface, pumped into the Fortress by a feat of earthmagic that makes Straton far too proud of himself. That water is certainly too deeply buried to nourish anything green, and the wind has long since blown the surface of this place flat. The fingers of stone puncturing the horizon in the distance offer the only relief to the flatness.

I have to descend the Fortress mound to pass the barrier. Belos’s twisting of the Drift makes it impossible to travel straight to the Fortress. To my mind, there is little need for this precaution. Only Drifters can enter the energy world of the Drift, and there are few of us left. Besides, who would challenge Belos?

I am told there were once many Drifters, but no longer. Too many have been killed or driven into hiding because “normal” humans distrust us, and the Earthmakers hate us. Sorcerers, some call us. I wonder, briefly, if that is why my mother left me to die. Did she know what I would be? Did I horrify her?

I trudge to the slope, which winds around the base of the mound. It is smooth but long. The hidden stair is faster, but I am not supposed to know of the stair. One thing Belos has taught me is that you collect information where you can and you don’t let anyone know that you know it.

When I reach the flat plain, my knees ache from the descent. Sweat is trickling into the scabbed cuts on my back, and I shift my pack to lessen the sting. I breathe deeply, as Belos taught me to do. I draw my thoughts into myself and ease along my mooring, the glowing thread of energy that connects my physical body to the energy world of the Drift. Though every living thing has a mooring, and every living thing is part of the Drift, only Drifters can travel along their mooring to actually enter the Drift, or to draw power from it.

As I squeeze through my mooring, pressed and swallowed briefly by its darkness, I am collecting myself, pulling myself fully into the Drift. Sudden weightlessness marks my entry. Around me the Dry Land resolves itself into its dull energies. Everything is dim, like dusk. The Fortress is a dark hump, but faint threads of light twist and tangle around it. Belos’s barrier. The threads seem alive, like the other energies of the Drift. They strain and wind, a confusion of light. But barriers are one of those things that Belos refuses to explain.

Beyond the twisting of the barrier, I see the points of light that identify the Seven. I myself am also a lighted echo of my physical body, silvery-white edged with gold, with hints of blue and pink. Here, at least, I am beautiful. Belos, though I can’t see him clearly, is still in his study. I know that because my Leash, which glows whitish-blue, flows straight from my heart to him. Beautiful except for that.

I feel for any disturbance that would mark the approach of the Hounding. No one knows what the Hounding is really, but it has always been the greatest danger of the Drift. It comes usually as a fierce wind, both angry and deadly. Once, though Belos tells me I imagined it, I felt a hand reach from the wind and touch my back.

The faint blur of light that marks the Green Lands is far away. I don’t know how far. I don’t know where, exactly, the Dry Land is in relation to other places. I would estimate south and east of the Green Lands, but I can’t be more specific. Belos will certainly not tell me, if he even knows. It’s been many years since I have bothered asking such questions.

I focus all my energy on the distant glow until a faint, wavering thread develops, connecting me. I have heard it explained many ways, but the simplest explanation is often truest: all living things are connected by currents—or threads—of energy. That is why some describe the Drift as a web. The threads shift and thin, depending on distance, depending on how strongly one person is focused on another. Most people are unaware of these threads because only in the Drift can you see them. Only in the Drift can you use them.

I blend myself with the faint thread and drift along it. It strengthens as the glow in the distance builds to a flood of light, as the flood separates into thousands—millions?— of individual lights. As always, I am overwhelmed by my immersion into the roiling energy of the Green Lands, and I have to pause for a moment to orient myself within the chaos of shifting points and lines.

I am uncertain of my exact location until I see a familiar pulsing energy. Now I know I’ve reached Tornelaine because I am sensing the presence of King Heborian and his fellow Drifters. Drifters are brighter, stronger, easily identifiable from within the Drift.

King Heborian has ruled Kelda for twenty years, but it’s not only because he is a foreign conqueror—a Runian, from the far north—that so many Keldans resent him. Many will never accept a Drifter on the throne.

As for Martel, he is the hidden remainder of the royal line that Heborian destroyed. It’s no surprise that Martel wants Tornelaine back. But he lacks the resources to take it.

That’s why Belos has sent me to strike a deal.

Chapter 2

STEPPING FROM the Drift into the physical world is bound to draw unwanted attention, so I make my shift outside of Tornelaine. I’m told that this southern part of Kelda is fairly arid, but coming from the Dry Land, I feel a rush of moisture to my parched skin. I’m in a vineyard a little northeast of the city. It’s already spring here in the south, and the dark vines are covered in tender, folded leaves. Rocky hills block most of my view of the southern ocean, but I spot a wedge of blue in a notch between hills. Within that notch lies Tornelaine. From here, it looks like a splotch of rusty orange from all the tile roofs.

I brace one hand on a sturdy old vine, breathing deeply until I stop shaking from the energy lost by traveling so far through the Drift.

It’s a long walk to Tornelaine from here, but that’s what I want. Despite my weariness, it feels good to move after two weeks in a cramped cell. An image of the pitted stone walls and the overhead iron grate flashes in my mind, but I force it away. At least Belos let me out. He’s right, I suppose, that I should be grateful. There were dark moments when I thought he would just leave me there.

I wander between rows of vines, breathing the scents of green things and soil. In the distance, a man moves along another row, tying the new vines to the training wires. As usual when I have first come from the Dry Land, I am dazzled, shocked by so much life.

The walk to the city takes me through hilly farms. I startle a flock of sheep grazing a steep hillside. The freshly shorn ewes call, “Baa,” in their deep voices as the lambs dart about with frantic, “Maa’s!” The lambs are cute, but the mothers have coarse, heavy heads.

It’s nearly an hour before I reach the high stone wall surrounding Tornelaine. I avoid the main gate with its twin guard towers and make instead for the smaller gate that leads to the port and the brothels.

It’s midafternoon, and the guard on the high platform is obviously bored, his glazed eyes roaming with disinterest over carts and people. To my right, the buildings mount higher and higher up the hills toward the king’s castle, where pale towers and battlements pierce the blue sky. To my left lies the port. Small fishing vessels skim between the slow-moving trade ships. On the deck of a broad, heavy ship loaded with timber, burly men from the bordering country of Valdar shout to one another, their harsh consonants connected by rolling vowels. The ships from Ibris, loaded with huge earthenware jars that probably contain spices and oils and with wooden chests no doubt full of silks, are quieter. The Ibrisians are a dark, suspicious people who tend to quietly watch the western countries with disdain.

Straight ahead lies the stone-paved port road, which is lined with brothels and inns. I am elbowed by Valdarans in their leather jerkins and skirted by Ibrisians in silk shirts heavily stained by salt-water. A cart mounded with silvery fish trundles noisily along the road beside me, bringing me a strong wave of the sea’s salty tang. I step out of the way of a wet-shirted fisherman with a soggy pipe clenched between his teeth. He grumbles in a heavy, south-Keldan accent about “idlers.” After the isolation of the Dry Land, all this commotion puts my teeth on edge, and I’m starting to get jumpy.

I scan the wooden signs that hang from the eaves of squat little buildings, looking for the Trader’s Choice. Finally, I ask a sun-weathered, squinting fisherman for directions.

The man adjusts his salt-stained cap as he stares me up and down. He smirks. In his mind, I am either trying to track down an errant husband or am looking for work. Apparently, he finds either possibility worthy of his contempt. I breathe calmness into my belly. He is not worth the fight.

“Take the last right before the end of the port road, second...establishment...on the left.”

I nod my thanks, unwilling to give him any more than that. When I’ve taken three steps, he chuckles.

Heat flares in my chest. My fingers edge to the knife strapped to my forearm. I will just scare him.

No.

Just a little. Because he deserves it. Because he will scorn the next woman also.

No.

I walk on.

The Trader’s Choice looks like all the stone buildings surrounding it, but when I push through the heavy wooden door, I cough from the thick, oily smell of burning incense. Linen, painted to look like silk, hangs in swags over the windows, making the place dim. I blink until my eyes adjust.

Serving girls in colorful, low-cut dresses, their waists jingling with fake gold chains, move among the tables where a scattering of men watch them over the rims of beer mugs.

“Madame!” calls one of the girls. “A new one!”

With a start, I realize she’s referring to me. My eyes narrow at the insult until I remember this is why I’m here: to be one of them, at least for tonight. Besides, I should not look down on her, as the fisherman looked down on me. Desperation drives women here.

I try to look appropriately desperate as “Madame,” a heavyset woman in coarse silks with her hair piled in a messy bun, swaggers from the back. The girl who called out jerks her chin in my direction, and Madame narrows her eyes at me.

“Yes?” she demands in a harsh Valdaran accent that is at odds with her Keldan title and the bright red Ibrisian lipstick. “What do you want, little bird?”

I try to look flustered. “I, I’m—”

Her lips purse. “I see.”

She motions me forward, and I step further into the room, my cheeks flaming as she walks a circle around me, as the men at the tables look on. She tells me to drop my pack. When it hits the floor with a thud, she tsks disapprovingly at my rear. She pinches my arm, which makes me jerk, and shakes her head when she squeezes one of my breasts. I am breathing furiously through my nose by the time she stands before me, arms crossed.

“Too wiry,” she pronounces. “Men do not like this. Breasts too small. How will you impress them, with a footrace?”

One of the men chuckles.

I color and have to stop myself from clenching my fists. I am a desperate young woman. This is my last resort. I say, putting a quiver into my voice, “Please, Madame.”

Madame sighs, and a thoughtful look comes into her eyes as she gazes at me, a finger now on her lips. “Some will like these pale blue eyes. Hair is good. So dark is unusual. From Rune? Doesn’t matter.” She waves it away as I open my mouth on a made-up story. “Skin very nice, if dry. Face pretty. Any experience?” I color further, and she says, “You will learn. Imelda! Take—name?”

“Amara,” I lie.

“Take Amara upstairs and get her changed.”

A slight young woman with rich brown hair and slanted eyes glides toward us from one of the tables. Ibrisian, very pretty. The one Martel has been seeing.

Imelda gives me a small smile of sympathy, a rare thing from an Ibrisian, and says, “Come.”

I grab my pack and am about to sling it over my shoulder. Instead I hold it to my chest, like I am frightened. I hate that deception comes so easily to me, even though it’s useful. I follow Imelda past the bar, where stout mugs hang in neat rows on the wall and jugs of wine stand on a shelf above kegs of beer. We enter a wide stairway lit by a gaudy, gold-painted sconce.

The stair leads to a hallway lined with doors. Most are closed, but a few stand open to reveal beds draped in fake Ibrisian silks and walls painted to look like tiled frescoes. The scenes they depict make me blush. I spot a simpler room marked only by a thick sheepskin rug and an iron brazier glowing with coals. A blonde Valdaran woman in a short leather skirt and a leather top that reveals more than it conceals scowls at me and shuts the door.

Imelda leads me into a room at the end of the hall. Silk hangs around the bed and over the window, some of it real. A small fireplace graces one wall, and an intricate rug in a dizzying Ibrisian pattern stretches before it.

Imelda notices me looking. “It takes many years to earn a room like this one, but if you are good with the clients and do what Madame Adessa says, you can hope to have such as this one day.”

I smile weakly. I am sad to think of these women aspiring to no more than a nice room in a brothel, as though this is the best life can offer them. But I remind myself that these women are, in truth, freer than I am. They may have chosen this life out of desperation, but they still
chose
it. No one forces them to stay. No one has Leashed them.

“It will be an adjustment, I know,” says Imelda, and I am startled by her gentle tone. I can see why a man would like her, especially compared to someone coarse like me. She’s soft and makes you feel like she really
sees
you. Suddenly, I am uncomfortable.