The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (67 page)

“Sahidali,”
he said hesitantly. “Your horses have just been
watered—“

“Excellent,” purred the
Alchemist, and she continued moving closer to the man, so close that he could
feel her breath on his cheek. Her golden eyes gleamed from under her hood. “We
will be needing them again. The saddles are where,
sidi?”

Her lips so close to his, his
breath leaving his body, his head floating high, higher as her hands ran over
his chest, up to his throat, stroking his jaw. “Third alcove past the door…” he
croaked.

“You will help us saddle them,
sidi?”

He breathed out. “Of course.”

She turned to the Scholar.
“Follow me,” and slipped into the stables, the guard stumbling at her heels.

“Wow,” muttered the tigress. “I
wonder how she does that…”

***

Fallon tugged the cinch of the
black horse and stepped back. He was a magnificent animal, with a proud arched
neck, thick feathering on his feet and a tail that dragged on the ground.
Definitely not the horse she’d rode in on, but Sherah had assured her it was
fine to borrow this one, as she knew its owner ‘quite well’. Sherah herself had
disappeared into the stables with a bag of what might have been fire powder,
the red satin pouch, the candle-less wick and the stable guard. Not entirely
the safest combination, Fallon thought, but this was Sherah’s plan. She was
interested in seeing how they would manage to get out of a gated city so late
at night, and how she’d manage to get past the line of tigers at the Empire’s
frontier.

Just as she was thinking these
things, Sherah slid up to her. There was no sign of the fire powder, the wick
nor the guard. The pouch, however, bobbed behind her, a little fuller than it
had been before.

“We need to go,” she said, as she
swung her long legs up and onto her black mare.

“Okay.” Fallon mounted as well,
but swiveled in her saddle to study the cheetah. “Where is your candle?”

“Hmm…” said the cheetah. “That is
a mystery.”

There was a great boom from
behind them, as a wall of flame began to unfurl from deep within the stable,
and together the women spurred their horses out into the night.

***

Kerris awoke to the sound of his
stomach rumbling.

He pushed himself up on his
elbows and looked around. The sun was beginning her ascent into the dawning
sky, bringing brushes with her to paint the colors of morning. Purple, pink,
crimson then gold, which somehow turned the sky blue in the process. He’d never
been much of a painter, but it had always fascinated him, these colors of the
sun. It was a puzzle, and Kerris was fond of his puzzles.

The horses were milling about,
content with grazing dry grass at this early hour, and he felt a pang of
disappointment. Imperial horses were reknowned hunters, but even Quiz had
failed to bring anything down since they’d left
Sharan’yurthah
, and the possibility of famine on this last stretch
of their journey was taking an ugly shape in the reaches of his mind. That
would not be a good thing, he reckoned, spending over half a year traveling
this far only to run out of food before the end of their quest. At least right
now, they had water, but for how long was another question.

He looked around the sputtering
fire. Kirin was asleep in his bedroll, looking as peaceful and content as ever
he could, his golden mane spilling across the ground like wheat. The Seer was
sleeping as well, face in his arms, blind-eye closed to the sun, and Kerris
wondered what it would be like to have such a limitation. Then again, the man
saw in many other ways so perhaps it wasn’t a problem. Ursa, he assumed, hadn’t
slept at all, as she sat cross-legged, watching everything with her sharp eyes.
She was staring at
him
, now. He
grinned and shook his head. The woman was relentless.

“Good morning, love,” he said
quietly. “Would you like me to put on the tea?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Did you keep watch all night?”
He rummaged through his pack, pulled out a package wrapped in oil-cloth, began
to undo the string.

“Yes.”

The wrappings parted to reveal a
large amount of dates, ideal food for desert crossings. He peeled one away from
the rest and popped it in his mouth.

“Mm, wonderful. Here, this will
take the edge off your belly.”

“I value the edge in my belly.”

He grinned again. “I’m sure you
do, love. But it may be awhile before we get anything richer. I might venture a
fishing hook or two in that river.”

“That is a good idea.”

He found the kettle now, filled
it with water from the skins, tossed in a handful of dried tea leaves and set
it in the fire to boil. He began to assemble the cups.

“Any luck with your Seer?”

“He’s not mine and no, still
nothing. I let him sleep.”

“Kind of you.”

“He is not a soldier.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Neither are you.”

“That is true.”

He had made it a point not to
look at her, to busy himself with the fire and the tea and the preparation of
his hooks, and he wondered at her easy conversations this morning. It had to
mean something, but with Ursa, one never got too far. Still, he found himself
curious and enjoying it.

“It is not his fault,” she went
on. “There has been no discipline for his soul out here. It is too busy.”

“I see.” When, in fact, he
didn’t.

“Solomon is not trying. Or maybe
he is dead.”

“Now that would be interesting.”

“We should go home. Restore the
monastery, rebuild the Council. There is no honor in chasing a dead man.”

“True.”

She was quiet for some time, and
when he finally mustered the courage to glance at her, he found her eyes boring
tiny holes into him. It was a strange thing. She opened her mouth, closed it,
opened it again.

“Kerris,” she began. She never
called him by his name. This was strange indeed. “Kerris, do you think—“

She never finished her strange
sentence, as the Seer suddenly sat up and wiped his eyes with his gloved hands.
He glanced around at them, barely acknowledging their presence, before rising
to his feet, taking several steps backward and raising his hands in the air.

There was a faint whistling
sound, and the limp body of a very large hare dropped from the sky and into his
grasp.

“Haha! Thank you, dear heart!” he
cried out to the falcon as she swept past high above them. “Yes, yes, east now.
Find us tonight!”

The bird dipped a wing and began
to follow the river east. Sireth, for his part, finally looked at the pair by
the fire, and to the Captain, now stirring from his slumbers. He tossed Kerris
the hare and smiled.

“Breakfast.”

***

“Something is happening,” said
Sireth benAramis as he washed the last remnants of roasted rabbit and dates
down with his tea. “In fact, some-
things
are happening, and I believe that I am being deliberately blocked from
discovering what they are.”

“What would be blocking you,
sidi?”
asked Kirin. The fresh game had
been a most welcome surprise, and the very smell of it had made the horses
restless. Perhaps they would feel like hunting soon. He felt as if their fates
may have begun to change.

“I don’t know the answer to that.
It seems that every time I get near, it slips out of my mind. I have never
experienced anything quite like it. It is almost like a cloud of blackness, of
deception…”

“And the sundial,” Kerris now,
emptying the last of the tea into skins. “Nothing came of that?”

“Only devastation,” he answered.
“Devastation and fire and man.”

“Man?” Ursa sat forward, picking
her teeth with a tiny bone. “Why Man?”

Kirin glared at the Seer.

“Ah, well…” he began, catching
himself.

“The sundial was a remnant, yes?”
said Kerris. “From the Ancestors’ time. Do those things make good conduits?”

“Yes,” said Sireth carefully.
“They make good conduits.” He rapped the dusty earth with his tufted tail,
once, twice, three times. As if it would help him think.“But there has been
something missing, something since…”

“Since?”

He frowned, the rapping of his
tail stilled. “Since before
KhahBull…”

“What was before
KhahBull?”
Kirin tried to remember. It
seemed so long ago.

“Well, if you’re talking about a
battlefort,” said Kerris. “That would be
Pesh’thawar…”

“Pesh’thawar…?”
the Seer repeated the word over and over, as if
tasting it could trigger the missing thing. “
Pesh’thawar…”

“Nothing happened at
Pesh’thawar,”
said Kirin.

“Many things happened at
Pesh’thawar,”
corrected Kerris.

“Yes, yes…She kissed me…” The
Seer rose to his feet, turned to face the rising morning sun. His brow was
drawn, and Kirin couldn’t tell if he was remembering or seeing. He ran a finger
along his lips. “Why did she kiss me…?”

Ursa’s tail lashed once, and she
spit the remains of the bone on the dusty ground.

Suddenly, he breathed in sharply.

“There, there and there.” He
swung his hand south, east then west. “Danger from all sides. Evil and danger
and death. We are surrounded and we will not escape…”

They looked at each other, and
the Captain rose as well.

“Can you see Solomon?”

“No. But it has begun and it
cannot be stopped. Evil and danger and death. Horses and dogs and alchemy.
Fire, much fire.” Sadly, he smiled. “And death…”

“You see this,
sidi?”
Kirin was standing very closely
now, brow furrowed, hand having fallen to the hilt of his sword of its own
accord. “It is a vision?”

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell.”

“Is Solomon there?”

The Seer closed his eyes,
scrunched his face, but finally shook his head.
“I
… do not see him. He may be but
I
do not see him.”

Kirin dropped his head as the
will began to drain from his body. Without Solomon, this was pointless, as
Kerris had so rightly said earlier. Without Solomon, there was no quest, there
was no honor, there was only death, and death, without honor, was simply death.

“It is coming again, the
blackness,” the Seer went on, making scratching motions with his claws at the
sides of his forehead. “Right here, trying to take away even this vision. Even
this! And I have no idea how to fight it!”

“Come with me,” and Ursa grabbed
his wrist. “I can help you fight.”

“Major,” said the Captain. “This
is not that kind of fight.”

As one, they looked at him. “Yes,
“ as one they replied. “It is.”

And as one, they turned and
walked away from the fire, the horses and the lions, toward the sole tree, a
dry pistachio, that stood on the plain.

There was a moment where only the
wind could be heard.

“Right,” said Kerris. “I’m going
fishing.”

Leaving Kirin standing by the
fire, wrestling with his honor, his desire, and the sorrow that they brought.

***

“Sit.”

Obediently, he sat.

She circled him once, twice, eyes
fixed, moving like a coiled snake, before she slipped her long sword from its
sheath and plunged it into the dry earth between his knees.

“Steel,” she hissed, pulled out
the short and did the same with it, a palm’s breadth away from the first. “Like
steel.”

And she proceeded to create a
fence with her blades - knives, daggers and shir’khins, a fence of pure silver
steel. She knelt in front of him, nabbed his bearded chin between thumb and
forefinger, as if he dared look anywhere else but her.

She leaned in closely.

“Your soul is your weapon, but
you have forgotten how to use it.”

“Yes,” he muttered.

“You are a fighter, but you have
forgotten this as well.”

“Yes.”

“You must remember. You must
become steel once again. Look at it.”

He did.

“Look at its color, its shine,
its symmetry. Study it.”

His breathing became deep as he
focused on the steel. The gold of the grass and the blue of the sky and the
white of the snow leopard were gone. The blackness, the shadow that crept at
the corner of his memories faded into silver. All there was now was steel.

She had moved in behind him,
seated herself with her knees on either side of his ribs, clasped her hands on
either side of his head. She had literally wrapped herself around him, a
blanket of snowy white, but still, all there was, was steel.

“You are the last Seer of
Sha’Hadin,”
she was saying. “Study the
steel, and become it once again.”

steel, steel, alchemy and steel, Shakuri and alchemy, fire and steel,
stolen by a woman’s kiss high in a battlefort at Pesh’thawar, blackness again
and a hole in the blackness, find it, tear it, use the steel, become the steel

He closed his eyes and was
released.

***

Fallon Waterford was certain her
third horse would die out from under her.

They had been going all night at
a full gallop, and to the credit of the horses, they had not slowed their pace
overmuch. Actually, Fallon found that sitting was much more comfortable at
these greater speeds, as the animal stretched out its neck and back, flattening
the top line and reducing the rocking motion to almost nothing. It would only
hurt if you fell off.

The blackness of the night had
been broken only by the large moon and the odd torch held out in the
Alchemist’s hand. This was no candle, just torch, and not even the rushing of
the wind could dim it as they rode. It served to light their path as well as
the moon, even better Fallon thought, and prevented what could have been some
terrible stumbles across unknown terrain. Then again, these were Alchemist
horses, as unnatural as their riders.