The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (79 page)

That mare had been with them from
the beginning. Another one of them dead.

She was missing something.
Someone had fallen on her.

Her eyes cast about the forest
for some sign of him, and sure enough, she made out another shape that looked
darker against the darkness of the ground. She rolled onto her knees and
gasped, cursing again at her weakness and the pain that shot through the length
of her body.But first one knee, then the other, she forced herself to move,
crawling over to him, palms slick with earth.

Like the mare, there was an arrow
in his back.

***

There was an arrow in his back.

He knew that full well. Had known
it the moment it had struck him, but then again, pain had always been a matter
of perspective. His mind could have managed that pain quite easily had not his
body begun to rebel. With each movement of the horse, the barbed tip sliced
more of the tissues within his ribs, and while he could feel little blood on
his back, he knew it was filling up inside. The weight, which had initially
settled on his shoulders, was crushing him now. None of his limbs seemed to
know how to move anymore and his mind was wading in tar-like blackness.

He could feel tugging now, as if
someone or something were trying to remove the arrow, but the barbed tip
prevented this. Hands were moving on him now, and he did not need to open his
eyes to know it was the Major. He did not wish this on her. She had been
through enough, but his world had grown very small and for his part, he was
grateful she was there.

He smiled at her, finally seeing
moonlight through the clouds.

“I cannot pull this out,” she
growled. “But if I push this through, it will kill you.”

Seeing silver in her hair and
face.

“Push it through,” he whispered.

She took a deep breath, adjusted
her grip on the shaft, and with a sharp cry, shoved the arrow through.

Suddenly, his perspective of pain
became a great deal broader.

More tugging, and the bolt was
gone. He could feel the blood escaping from the wound in his chest now, felt
the blackness rise up all around him, felt her arms, her hair, her tears as
they splashed on his face and rolled into his eyes.

***

Dawn over mountains is always a
breathtaking sight.

The golden sun sends her rays
first to the peaks, which shine like tips of brightly polished daggers, as if
they wish to do her the honor of reflecting her rays back in salute or praise.
Then the edges of the mountains glow with color, sometimes pink, sometimes
purples, sometimes a fiery red. This morning the color was orange, and the sky
began to streak with orange and pink and red. Colors of warmth and
companionship and blood.

They had left the Humlander and
stood at what was obviously the edge of a great fire. In fact, it looked like
the outer ring of a great fire, and it reminded Solomon of a bomb blast, minus
the crater. To Fallon, it reminded her of the fire circles Sherah had drawn on
occasion, to protect them from the rats in
Roar’pundih,
from Gowrain in the not-so-big mountains of
Hirak.
There were remnants of tents as well, smoldering, still burning in some places,
boxes and barrels reduced to cinder.

But it was the bodies.

Burned, blackened, smoking
bodies. Some still with scraps of pelt, others burned beyond knowing, some even
fused together from the heat. Most were holding weapons, charred swords and
bows and she shook her head, wishing she were not seeing but unable to tear her
eyes away. As they walked through this graveyard, she counted thirty-seven dead
and she knew these had been the dogs that had been tracking them. It froze her
blood to know how close they had been.

Solomon raised a hand, pointed at
one particularly long, angular skull. “Is that a horse?” he asked, and she
turned to look. Sure enough, smoking and skeletal, there were several horses,
or pieces of horses, scattered around the camp as well, and it was only when
they neared what had seemed to be a central hearth, that her heart leapt to her
throat.

It was a body of a cat.

She hurried over, knelt down to
examine it even as her every instinct told her to run. It was indeed a cat
– easily identifiable by the shorter skulls than the dogs, and the longer
tail. His pelt was charred completely off his face, but she could tell he had
been in black and silver robes, and she felt the relief drain from her muscles.

Not Kerris. NotKerris.

Not the Captain either, nor
Sireth, nor Ursa. An Alchemist. Jet barraDunne?

“Here too,” said Solomon, as he
wandered away from the hearth. “And here…and there…”

“All in black robes? Tell me
they’re all in black robes…”

He nudged one body with the toe
of his boot. “Hard to say. Maybe…”

She pushed up from her knees and
looked around. The sun was rising in the sky, giving the scene an surreal air.
Gruesome dead bodies and sunshine.

“We, um, we need to burn them.
The bodies, I mean. We need to do that.”

He glanced at her. An unusual
reaction, he thought, but fitting He grabbed the first at his feet and began to
drag.

***

She was cold. The night had been
cold, the body beneath her cold, her heart very cold.

There were birds now, announcing
the first break of dawn, singing and calling, whispering and warning. Even they
knew winter was coming. Even they could feel the cold.

She had failed.

She pushed herself up from the
Seer, from his blood-stained robes and she wished she had grabbed the packs. He
needed his monk’s robes, the ones from
Sha’Hadin.
Perhaps she would go back, if she could find the way. If she could make it
without a horse. If she didn’t find a pack of dogs to kill first.

No, she stopped herself. That
would not be the way. Not her way anymore. She had failed in her duty to
protect the last Seer of
Sha’Hadin,
and as a result, had lost her honor. No matter what they had done, no dog could
have taken that away from her and she remembered his words, from beneath the
pistachio tree.

He had to have seen. He had to
have known. That was a heavy thing to carry. She was glad he hadn’t told her.

She looked up at the sky beyond
the treetops. It was streaked with pink and red, and she could see those birds
flitting from branch to branch above her. It was a beautiful morning. She could
almost see her breath.

She would bury him with rocks,
for here it was impossible to dig. The soil was too hard, the roots of the many
trees too close to the surface. No, she would bury him with rocks and continue
building the mound for as many days it took until she too died. It shouldn’t
take very long.

So, she cast her eyes around,
looking for the first of what would likely be many rocks.

***

Fallon Waterford paused and wiped
her arm across her forehead.

If anyone had told her nine
months ago, that she would be beyond the borders of the Empire, having spurned
a Royal lover and burning dog carcasses with an Ancestor, she would have likely
clapped her hands and wished for such a wonderful adventure. Now, as the ash
from the bodies rose up to the sky and the smell of roasting flesh was forever
in her nostrils, she realized that her desire for adventure needed some serious
revisiting.

However, as she surveyed the
remains of the camp, she also realized that she had grown strong. Physically,
emotionally, she was no longer a child, and this land of womanhood was stark
and unforgiving and cruel. Like so many women before her, she had seen things
that had shaped her, and would continue to shape her for the rest of her
life.Choices made, regretted, accepted. These were the things of real life. The
real
way of things.

She watched Solomon stoke the
fire that consumed the dead. Once dead, now alive, tending the dead. It was
sad, somehow, and yet, there was something else, a power in the raw act of
living, that stirred her soul. It needed to be captured somehow, written down
in a story, poem or a song.

And so, as the mountain of
blackened bodies smoked and burned, Fallon Waterford began to sing.

***

She had placed the first rocks
over his eyes. It seemed a natural place to start. Then his forehead, lips,
palms and chest. It was a ritual now, the placing of rocks, as if each rock
closed a door on something remarkable, something sacred. She had found many
rocks.

Walking had been difficult at
first, and the shift had been stained with fresh blood as her body sought to
rid itself of all remnants of dog. But as always, her will was stronger, and
she moved stiffly at first, but at least she moved. It was mid morning now, and
she was coming back to the place where he died with her third armful of rocks.

His body was gone.

The rocks that she had placed
over him were scattered, and she dropped those in her arms, retaining a few
choice stones for throwing at the offender’s head. It was likely an animal, but
a large one, and she wondered what sorts of predators were found in this land
beyond their borders.

If it were a dog, she would kill
it with her own claws.

There was a trail, for she was a
tracker, and she followed it slowly, cautiously, deeper into the trees until
she heard the sounds of breathing. Light streamed in shafts down from the
treetops, and she spied a figure clutching a trunk, struggling to stand. She
squeezed the stone in her right hand and approached.

She slowed, stopped breathing. It
was the Seer.

Perhaps she was the one who was
dead.

She bit her lip, drew blood.
Was there blood after death?
She
narrowed her eyes, flipped the stone once, twice, three times in her hand
before flinging it with a good measure of force at his head. He yelped, tried
to turn in her direction, still clutching the tree for support.

“Who is that?” he cried. “Petrus,
please! Stop this!”

“Not Petrus,” she growled.

“Major,” his voice cracked and he
sank to his knees, hands still grasping at the tree. “Is this real? Is this
death? What is this?”

She moved a little closer, eyed
him suspiciously. “I do not know, Seer. Perhaps I am also dead.”

With a deep breath, he leaned
back against the tree, blinking and pushing his palms into his eyes. He looked
lost, exhausted, confused. But against reason, he also looked alive.

She knelt down very close to him.
Breathed deep the scent of him. The blood on his chest was dried, the wound
once gaping seemed closed. Something else was different. His chest, once blackened
and scarred, was apparently healed, the pelt grown back tawny and spotted and
striped. It was against all reason.

“How
have you done this?” she asked, for she did not wish to believe. “How is it
that you were dead and now are alive?”

He shook his head. “I have no
idea,” he moaned. “Petrus said…” His voice trailed off.

“Petrus Mercouri is dead. Like
you.”

“Yes. Yes, he is. But I spoke
with him…”

“When?”

“I don’t know. And the Alchemist,
I spoke to her as well…” He frowned now, still blinking. Clearly, there was
something wrong with his eyes.

“You spoke to the Alchemist. Is
she dead as well?”

“I have no idea. But she kissed
me and sent me back…” And he pressed his palms into his eyes yet again.

The Major snorted. This seemed to
be a running thing, this Alchemist and her kisses. She hoped the woman was well
dead.

“What is wrong with your eyes?”

“It’s all wrong. I can’t see
rightly.”

“Rightly?”

“Everything is blurry. It is hard
to look anywhere without falling over.” So he closed his eyes and sagged
against the tree. “I wish she had blinded me completely. This is worse than
half.”

Ursa stared at him for a long
moment. The Seer was alive. Some sort of magic was obviously at work here,
whether on the part of Petrus Mercouri or Sherah al Shiva or the Seer himself.
Her bet was on the Alchemist. Alchemy was the nature of Change, and nothing
could symbolize change more than life to death and back again. Either way, it
was magic, and she didn’t trust any of it, not one bit. However, the mongrel
was alive, and that meant she still had her duty to perform. She had failed but
her honor had been restored.

She reached down to the bottom of
her shift, grabbed an end in each hand and pulled, ripping off a perfect strip.

“Hold still,” she ordered and he
complied, waiting as she wrapped it across his eyes and around his head. She
tied it snug in the back.

“There,” she said. “This will
help you stand without falling over.”

He caught her hand, squeezed it.
“You feel quite real.”

She said nothing. She had no
words for him.

He brought her hand to his lips
and she had to catch her tears before they fell. He was alive. It didn’t matter
how, it didn’t matter why. The last Seer of
Sha’Hadin
was alive.

And therefore, Major Ursa
Laenskaya had a job to do.

***

There was a time, there was a time,

Beyond all cities, walls and lines,

A people fought, a people died,

There was a time.

There was a year, there was a year,

The Sign of Tiger brought good cheer,

The number six announced a fear,

That Tiger Year.

There was a place, there was a place,

Where people lived because of Race,

And others died to serve the Fates,