The Griever's Mark (The Griever's Mark series Book 1) (31 page)

THE WORLD HAS disappeared. I am lost in darkness.

But not really darkness, because there is one brilliant, horrifying light. I will myself away from it, every instinct screaming for me to flee, but it wrenches me back. The face of my enemy looms over me, lit with madness. His form bulges and twists.

In the distance, a wind rises.

Belos looks up, and his brow furrows. He steadies his grip on me. In the next moment, we are flying through darkness, fleeing the wind.

Lights flit here and there, gold, silver, blue, pink, green. At some point we pass over a great concentration of them. I struggle weakly, but I am powerless here, and my enemy tows me like a fish on a line.

Lights disappear and we are moving now through nothingness. The wind gains on us, and I feel its fingers brush me. They are hungry, voracious.

Suddenly, I am squeezed all around, like I am being pressed through some tunnel that is too small. The wind is gone. Everything is gone.

Light blinds me.

Heat engulfs me.

I stumble back and fall onto hard, parched earth. I gasp dry air into my lungs.

He crouches beside me, light gleaming on the silver studs lining his shoulders. One shoulder has an ugly black slash, like a burn. His face is so familiar, so similar to the faces of my own people. Its planes are clean, proud.

He frowns at me. “What are you?”

I collapse onto my back. Pain is returning to me. My head spins. My right arm feels like it’s been torn away at the shoulder.

He nudges me roughly in the ribs. “Hmm? You can’t be an Earthmaker. And yet, you are. What are you?”

His questions skim over me. I have no answers for him and none for myself. The Drift should have killed me. I should be dead. But I am not. Which means I am not one of my people.

Belos sighs impatiently, prods me again. “What do you want with Astarti?”

Her name snaps me back into reality. I scramble away from Belos and stagger to my feet. I reach for my sword, but I’ve lost it.

He laughs. “You can fight me just as well without a sword as with one. Which is to say: not at all.”

“Where is Astarti?”

Blond eyebrows rise. “You should be much more worried about where you are.”

I dart a look around. We are at the foot of some plateau. The rest of the land is flat and dry, featureless except for strange fingers of stone on the distant horizon.

Reality stuns me. “This is the Dry Land.”

His mouth quirks in a smile. “It’s not much, but it’s home. For now.”

He tries to circle me, but I spin to keep my eyes on him.

He frowns. “I know your face.”

I try to hide my angry reaction, but his smile tells me I’ve failed.

“You look much like your mother.” He adds snidely, “My dear Gaiana.”

I freeze. Though it’s whispered, unacknowledged, all my people know the story of the Unnamed and how he loved my mother. And how they laughed at him when he asked for her hand in marriage.

No one has laughed at him since.

I say, because I will not die meek and cowed, “How could you ever have thought she would choose you?”

Anger sparks in his blue Earthmaker eyes. “Because Arothos was such a prize?” With a flick of his hand, he slaps the thought of my father away like a pesky insect. “He was weak.”

“My father wasn’t—”

“Your
father
? Please. I had his head on a pike for an entire month, until the stink became too much to bear. I know every inch of his face, and I see none of it in you.” He looks at me thoughtfully. “You are something else entirely.”

At his words, something gives way inside me, like a dam bursting. No one else would say this. So often my people have thought it, perhaps whispered it among themselves, but no one would say it, not to my face. I am furious, ashamed, yet somehow exhilarated as I tear into the dead, barely pulsing heart of this land. Yes, I am something else.

The dry ground cracks and heaves, buckling around me, snapping, breaking, bursting, and I come alive with the power of it.

Everything else vanishes, everything but this wild, hungry need. Dimly, I realize I am losing myself again; dimly, I remember Belos and that I should fight him. But how can any of that matter compared to the infinite power of earth? What could matter but this wild, beautiful movement?

I rip and tear, bending and shaping the earth around me. I find idle, nearly lifeless currents of air and wrench them into sudden movement. Deep, deep, deep, I feel the slow trickle of water. High and far, blazing with ancient anger, burns the sun. I draw them all to me. I will make something new here, something beautiful.

Pain explodes across my back. I am spinning.

Falling.

I suck in ragged, pained breaths, and fine dust stirs at my mouth and nose. The earth rumbles in discontentment, unsatisfied, but it is quieting, returning to sleep.

A boot slams into my ribs, shocking me with pain. I try to get up from the torn and tumbled ground, but something heavy hits me from behind. A fist punches into my stomach. I swing wildly, but a heavy blow comes down on my arm. Another blow to the back of my knee brings me down. Now they are raining on me, and my world is flashes of pain.

“Enough!”

Several booted feet step away from me. I cannot raise my eyes, but I know who these newcomers are: the Seven.

“Koricus! The Shackle!”

Shackle. I know that word, and it drives panic through my pain. I try to get to my feet. I have to fight. I have to make them kill me. I cannot be Leashed.

Hands grab me. A smooth, warm cuff claps onto my wrist. I jerk away, but I am already being sucked through that tight space and into the darkness of the Drift.

I will myself away, but Belos yanks the Shackle, and I fall before him. I scrape at the cuff, but it is insubstantial, only energy. A white thread snakes along it from Belos to me. I flail wildly, but the thread twists around my wrist and disappears within me. I feel it slide through me, violating the very core of my being. I am sickened.

The wind flares to life around us. It grabs me, and I beg it to take me, to kill me, but something yanks at my heart, sending sharp nausea through me. I am squeezed tight again and wrenched into the harsh, dry brightness.

I fall to my knees, retching, wracked by nausea. But though my stomach heaves, I can’t throw up the Leash.

He crouches beside me, and I shove him. The punishment is immediate. Something jerks within me, and I am slammed face first to the torn ground. He turns me over roughly and plants a hand on my chest.

I scream at the pain and violation. I try to pull away, but I am trapped, helpless. I feel my mind break apart as a cruel, sick, foreign will spills into me. With the last fragment of my mind, I grab for something, anything, and it is Astarti’s face. It hovers, pale and beautiful. Then it’s gone.

Chapter 33

I WAKE WITH sunlight in my eyes. I am tangled in slippery silk blankets. A cream-colored, embroidered canopy stretches above me. Tornelaine. Heborian’s castle. I’m in the same bed where I awoke with Logan—

The brightness swims. Despair deadens me, weighs down my body. I am a corpse. I will never rise.

“I was worried you wouldn’t wake.”

Bran’s voice startles the feeling of deadness from me. I hastily swipe tears from my eyes so he won’t see. He is sitting in a deeply cushioned red chair, one leg draped over the other. He wears a pale gray tunic and loose linen pants. His reddish-gold hair is pulled back at the nape of his neck. Tidy, as usual. But, though his face reflects that Earthmaker calm, I see hints of pain scrunched around his eyes.

“Bran.”

He rises fluidly from the chair and comes to the bed, resting one hipbone on the edge of the mattress. He knits his fingers in his lap. “What happened?”

I tear the covers aside and push myself from the bed. I am wearing the sleeveless nightgown. Who changed my clothes? I feel exposed, so I grab a finely woven wool blanket from the chair where Bran was sitting and snug it around my shoulders. It’s still warm from Bran’s body.

Head throbbing enough to make me nauseous, I pace to the glass doors that open to the garden. The mild spring colors look out of place, surreal.

“Astarti. What happened?”

I close my eyes, willing everything to disappear, but only the Drift responds to will. Here, nothing is changed. I open my eyes to find the garden still childishly ignorant of reality. I want to tear the faces off those daffodils, whack the blossoms from the crabapple. Their fragility sickens me. I press one fingernail to the glass pane and make a long, slow downward scratch.

“Astarti.”

Why is he making me say it? I already told him.

“Please leave.” I whisper it. If I let my voice grow any louder, I might shout.

“Don’t you think I have a right to know what happened to my brother?”

I bow my head, pressing it against the cool glass. Of course he has a right to know.

“Start from the beginning. Heborian said you and Logan went after Martel, that you were going to bring him here so his Leash could be cut. But that was all he could tell us. What happened with Martel?”

That, at least, I can tell him, though my voice comes out flat and foreign. “Martel was riding with his army. I grabbed him. I was going to meet up with—” My voice cuts out on his name. I am stuck, my mind a blank.

“Yes?”

I clear my throat, find my voice again. “We were going to meet up. But Belos came. Belos and I fought in the Drift, but he was too strong. I couldn’t—I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t stay there. I should have, but I couldn’t. If I would have, Belos would’ve killed me, and it would be over, and Logan—” His name chokes me. “—wouldn’t have—he’d still be—”

I don’t hear Bran approach, but his arms slide around me. I grab onto him, clinging like it will save my life. I don’t cry, but I am sick, sick, sick.

Bran finishes the story, “He took Logan into the Drift.”

I close my eyes, but even there I cannot escape the vision of Belos. His hands clamp onto Logan. He smiles. Logan’s eyes widen with surprise. They vanish.

I wrench away from Bran. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“I wanted to know what happened.”

I want to strike that Earthmaker calm from Bran’s face, so I hold my fists against my belly. “Now you know. Leave me alone. I know how you must hate me. Stop pretending to be nice!”

“I’m not pretending anything.”

Bran’s hands are flat and calm, loose at his sides. I feel reckless and out of control next to him. I feel like a child, and that snaps the last of my restraint.

“I
know
you hate me. I am a vile,
filthy
Drifter, and I took your brother away, and now he’s—”

“I’ve known Logan much longer than you have. I know better than to blame anyone else for his choices.”

I want to scream that it’s my fault, that I couldn’t save him, but the words won’t come out. They are lodged deep, their barbs hooked within me.

Bran says, “Get dressed. Then walk with me. I’ll wait in the sitting room.” He starts for the door but pauses when he hears no movement from me. “Unless you want to sit in here all day?”

After the door clicks shut, it takes me ten minutes of pacing to realize that Bran is right. I don’t want to be in here. I stalk to the armoire.

Minutes later, not even sure what I’m wearing, I am following Bran through corridor after corridor. When we see people, I do not look at them. We could walk right by Heborian and I wouldn’t know. I am determined not to know. I will not tell the story again.

Bran takes me up a narrow flight of stairs. I dimly note how well he already knows the castle. When my legs are burning from the climb, we reach a door, which opens onto the battlements. I suck in a surprised breath at the rush of cool spring air and wince at the crisp blue sky of afternoon. The weather is determined to mock me.

I follow Bran to the wall, where I lean against the square-toothed crenellations, pressing through one of the slots designed for an archer. The cool breeze slips through the loose weave of my shirt. I shiver, wrapping my arms tighter around myself. Our bodies don’t care about our grief; they make all their usual demands.

Beyond the castle, hilly Tornelaine bustles. Soldiers line the city wall. More move through the streets, where people dart out of their way. I look to the neat rows of barracks within the castle grounds. What are Heborian’s numbers? I shake my head. I don’t care. None of this means anything to me.

The question seems to occur to Bran also, but he does, apparently, care. “Heborian has just over a thousand within Tornelaine. A sizable standing army, really. And he’s been calling up the countryside. They’ll organize to the west. Heborian’s council is hoping that this second force, some two thousand at the most optimistic estimate, will be able to attack Martel’s troops from behind once they’ve set in to siege us. Another four hundred are already on their way to ambush Martel when his army passes through the river valley to the north. They’re hoping to at least pick off some of his number.” When I don’t react, Bran asks, “What will you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you join Heborian?”

I shrug.

“This fight still matters.”

I say harshly, “Not to me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Bran looks down into the courtyard, ignoring my glare. I follow his eyes to the grouping of blond heads. Earthmakers. Hmm. And I know Aron is here. And Clitus. I remember them from—never mind.

I frown at the blond heads, realizing their significance. “Will
you
join Heborian?”

“Aron is trying to use it to make a deal”—I shudder at the word—“but Heborian is very...strong-minded. Every time Aron reminds him that
we
are helping
him
, Heborian says that Belos is
our
‘monster.’ Aron isn’t happy, but, yes, we will fight.”

“So your Council finally woke up.”

“Uncharitable, but yes, you could say that. They don’t like to make hasty, irrational decisions, but they do, in the end, decide.”

I sniff. “Almost too late.”

“I hope
you
won’t be too late.”