The Whitefire Crossing (19 page)

“How much farther until the canyon?” he asked Dev.

“About two more miles.”

Two more miles! Kiran didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. His body was already screaming at him to stop. He’d never done anything like this during a recovery period, and he had no idea what the long term effects would be. If he drained his strength too far, would he lose the ability to hold his barriers? Or merely fall unconscious again, in which case, would Dev abandon him?

Dev eyed him. “You want to take a break?”

Yes,
his burning muscles insisted. But high on the dark bulk of the eastern ridge, the dim pinpricks of convoy magefires were still visible. Kiran gathered his concentration to block out the pain. “We should keep going.”

Dev shook his head, but made no comment. He led Kiran across endless undulating fields of boulders. The moonlight painted everything in shades of silver, gray, and black, and the world seemed eerily silent except for the harsh sound of Kiran’s breathing and the painful pounding of his heart.

Without warning, the night split apart. Magic boiled over Kiran, seething against his barriers. Silent lightning clawed his nerves and blotted out his vision. For an endless moment he hung trapped in fire, the amulet a blazing star on his chest.

Somewhere, someone was calling his name. Kiran blinked, the world reforming around him. He was huddled on his knees, one hand braced on a rock, the other clenched so tightly around Lizaveta’s amulet that his fingers cramped and tingled.

“Hey! Kiran!” Dev’s voice was sharp with worry. He reached out a hand to Kiran, then yanked it back, frowning.

Kiran straightened. Rocks dug painfully into his shins. He took a deep, tearing breath, and released the amulet. He waited for panic to swallow him whole, but all he felt was a bone-numbing cold.

“What the hell happened with you?” Dev demanded, as Kiran climbed to his feet.

“Ruslan.” Kiran’s voice shook despite his best effort to steady it. “He’s come to the convoy.”

CHAPTER TEN

(Dev)

“R
uslan? Shit!” I glanced across the moonwashed basin to the pale streak of the Desadi Couloir. All was silent and still, the view unchanged from moments ago. Now I understood why southerners clung to their devil-ward charms. What else could you do, in the face of an invisible threat that could strike at any moment? “He attacked you? Damn your eyes, you said the amulet would protect us—”

Kiran made a noise that might have been a laugh. “It did.” He staggered forward, as unsteady as a miner on a five day tavern crawl. I grabbed his pack strap and dragged him onward, glancing again over my shoulder.

“You call that protection?” Khalmet’s hand, I felt like a target sigil was etched right into my back.

Kiran sucked down another ragged, harsh breath. “The translocation spell...it requires tremendous power, and Ruslan didn’t...didn’t bother with containment wards. Deliberately, no doubt. The amulet shielded me from the worst of the overspill, but even so...if I’d been closer, his arrival would have knocked me unconscious. At this distance, it merely...disoriented me.”

Disoriented. Ha. From his choked-off cry as he’d fallen, and his wide, blank eyes, he’d come closer to complete collapse than he wanted me to know. No choice but to keep moving, and pray his legs didn’t give out before we reached Garnet Canyon. So long as we traveled the open ground of the basin, far too easy for Ruslan to spot us by spyglass. My back itched more fiercely than ever.

We struggled up a boulder-strewn rise. Beyond, the ground sloped away into a great yawning darkness. Stubby trees poked up through the rocks, and a faint sighing of wind through pines drifted up from the void. Thank Khalmet, the canyon at last. I hurried Kiran down the slope, letting out a relieved breath as we dropped below the sightline from the trail.

The moon still stood high overhead in the star-spattered sky. The trees on the canyon’s slope wouldn’t be thick and tall enough to block the moonlight until right before the first set of serious cliffs. Even if Ruslan was breathing right down our necks, I’d never succeed in setting a series of tricky rappels in the dark. But by going slow and careful, we might continue down until then. I wanted every inch of distance from the convoy I could get before we had to stop and wait for dawn’s light. I eyed Kiran, who still wavered on his feet with every panting breath he took.

“This next bit’s gonna be steep, but you make it down, we’ll be in nice thick trees. Think you can manage?”

His white, drawn face turned to mine. “I’ll crawl, if I have to.”

“Good,” I muttered. I didn’t know how much of Kiran’s story I believed, but I was certain of one thing: his terror of Ruslan was real. Last thing I wanted was to meet a mage capable of inspiring that much fear in his own kind.

I took a firmer grip on Kiran’s pack strap, and tugged him through gnarled dwarf pines. As the slope steepened, the talus changed over to broad, curved slabs of polished granite, ghost-gray in the moonlight. Kiran edged down them at a snail’s pace that made me twitch with anxious frustration. I didn’t dare push him to move faster, not with the way his legs wobbled. A misstep here would mean broken bones, or even a snapped neck.

Though a snapped neck might be preferable to what we’d face if Ruslan caught us. I’d seen a man once who’d crossed a mage. He’d been writhing on bloodsmeared flagstones, his skin bubbling into red ruin as he screamed loud enough to crack glass. The wind mage who’d cast the spell on him hadn’t even bothered to stay to watch him die. She’d stalked off with no more expression than if he’d been a blackfly she’d crushed.

Gods, if Kiran was wrong, and Ruslan hurt Cara...I should have told her everything, convinced her to run with us.

Yeah, so she could die right alongside me, when Ruslan hunted us down. My estimate of our chances, never high, was dropping fast. Maybe that amulet meant Ruslan couldn’t strike at us directly, but after watching Kiran nearly collapse from the guy’s gods-damned travel spell, I had a nasty feeling the amulet’s protection didn’t mean half as much as he’d claimed.

Kiran was still breathing hard as we negotiated a dirt gully coated in slippery pine needles, but I judged him steady enough to speak again. I caught his arm.

“So Ruslan shows up, finds we’ve left the convoy. You say he can’t track us with magic. What’s his next move?”

Kiran braced a hand on a pine trunk. He stood a moment with his head lowered, breathing in deep gulps. “He’ll question those at the convoy, in hopes of discovering our intended route, and likely send men to hunt for us. He’ll also try and...force me to reveal myself again. Target possible routes, and cast spells to trigger avalanches or rockslides...but powerful spells take time to prepare. If we cross the mountains quickly enough, I’m sure we can reach Alathia.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as me.

Alathia...an awful thought surfaced, as we shuffled down another moonlit slab. “So he can’t track us, what difference does that make? He’s gotta realize where we’re headed. What’s to stop him from warning the Alathians about us, to keep us from crossing the border?” Message charms didn’t work through the Alathian border wards, but a mage surely had other ways of communication.

“Ruslan won’t contact the Alathians,” Kiran said, like it was a fact set in stone. “He doesn’t want me captured by them. I’d be of no use to him then.”

That sounded awfully optimistic. I let it slide, for now. “Okay, what if he spells himself to the border ahead of us and waits near the gate to ambush us?”

“He can’t translocate there, not from the convoy. I told you, translocation takes tremendous power, and the mountains here are magically inert. He’d have to return to Ninavel first before he could cast another such spell.”

“But he could ride to the border, same as Pello...shit! Can he contact Pello, use him to set an ambush?”

Kiran bit his lip and nodded. “But you said we could beat Pello to the border...” He looked at me with the hopeful eyes of a Tainter seeking reassurance. I scowled.

“My shortcut’ll get us there faster than a normal rider on the trail, but can Ruslan cast spells on a horse? Keep it from faltering, or tiring?” I’d thought we had a fair time margin, but that assumed even a hard-driven horse would need rest and food on the trail. If a man rode straight for the border without any stops or slackening of pace, that’d narrow our margin to a whisker.

Kiran stumbled, caught himself against another pine. “Perhaps, but he’d need a complex spell to alter a living creature that way—one that would take a day or more to prepare.”

His hands were trembling on the pine trunk, and strain tightened his voice. I shut up, not wanting him to waste energy on talking. Another half mile to the cliffs, I judged. Already, tree branches stretched across the sky, filtering the moonlight to a dim haze.

I had to help Kiran more and more often as the shadows closed in. His breathing grew labored, and he clutched at tree trunks and branches for support. When we came to a hollow amidst a cluster of twisted pines, I pushed him down onto matted needles.

“Rest here,” I told him. “We have to wait for dawn before we tackle the cliffs above Garnet River.” No matter how my badly my nerves twitched at the idea of Ruslan’s searchers gaining ground.

Kiran slumped over on his side without speaking. He didn’t move, his body limp, as I tugged off his pack and threw a blanket over him. I cursed, silently. If he needed something more than sleep, we were screwed, because I sure as hell was no healer.

This had to be the stupidest thing I’d ever done. I pressed my hands to my temples, then grimaced and settled back against my pack. No point in stewing over it; I’d made my choice. I needed rest, especially if I’d have to haul Kiran over tomorrow’s rougher terrain.

Sethan had long ago taught me how to block out nerves to gain a sound sleep the night before a tough ascent. Focus on the memory of a favorite climb, calling up every move, every sensation in exact detail until everything else fades away...the trick had never failed me before. But despite all my attempts to call up happier times, the image that chased me down into broken, troubled sleep was Cara as I’d seen her last, sprawled on the wagonbed with her pale hair straggling out of her braid and her face marked with lines of stress and sorrow.

***

Dawn’s light and the twittering of whitelarks woke me. I sat up and rubbed my aching side with a muffled groan. In my sleep, I’d slid from my cushioning pack onto a tangle of knobby pine roots.

Yeah, and if that was the worst discomfort I suffered on this Shaikar-cursed trip, I could count myself favored by Khalmet. I thought of Harken and the other dead back at the convoy, and my throat tightened. Their friends would burn the bodies, using the flashfire charms Merryn carried for that purpose. Sing death chants to call Noshet’s spirit guardians, and erect a few rock cairns draped with personal mementos that might last a season or two before storms demolished them. Not much to show for a life spent in the mountains, though the tale of their death would doubtless long be recited around convoy campfires.

Assuming Ruslan didn’t kill everyone in the convoy, out of sheer spite. My hands clenched. The bastard wouldn’t, surely. Not if he wanted men and provisions for hunting us.

I glared down at the source of all the trouble, wishing I’d never laid eyes on him. Kiran lay curled on his side, so tightly wrapped in his blanket that only the tip of his nose showed. He didn’t stir when I called his name. I grabbed a fallen pine branch and poked him, not gently. He rolled away with an unintelligible mutter.

“Time to move,” I announced.

He sat up slow as a man ten times his age. I didn’t much like the bluish-gray tinge to his skin, and the circles under his eyes had darkened to near black.

“How bad off are you?” I asked. Khalmet’s hand, if I had to carry him the whole way, we’d never escape Ruslan.

He darted a wary glance at me. “I’ll be able to walk, if that’s what you’re asking.” He started to stand, and nearly fell. “I’m only a little stiff. Give me a minute.” He tottered away through the clustered pines. I muttered a curse. Just a little stiff, my ass.

But when he emerged from the trees a few minutes later, he looked a lot better. His face was merely pale, rather than sickly gray, and though he still moved like every muscle hurt him, he was at least walking at a reasonable speed. Even more interesting, the cuts on his hands had vanished, the skin of his palms unmarked under the dirt. Maybe he’d done some kind of mage healing ritual back there in addition to relieving himself.

I handed him his pack and a handful of jerky. “Eat while you walk. Once on the cliffs, we’ll be visible for miles down the canyon. We’ve gotta do the rappels fast, before any searchers get low enough in Garnet to spot us.”

He nodded, his face set in determined lines. Slung on his pack, and clambered over jackstrawed logs after me, chewing as he went.

My thoughts slid back to the convoy like iron filings to a lodestone. Ruslan, questioning Cara and Jerik, casting spells on them...every dreadful tale I’d ever heard of angry mages cycled through my head, punctuated by images of Cara contorted in agony.

Damn it, if I kept this up my nerves would fray away entirely. Time to employ another of Sethan’s little mental tricks. He’d always said the best way to stop fretting over a problem you can’t solve was to focus on one you could.

The border crossing, for instance. Assuming we survived Ruslan’s pursuit, sneaking Kiran past the Alathians wasn’t exactly a trivial matter. Khalmet’s hand, I’d thought the task hard enough when I’d believed him only an ordinary highsider, but now? Half the spells at the Kost gate were meant to detect what the Alathians called “unregistered mages.”

I turned to Kiran as he slithered down a boulder. “Not telling me you were a mage...didn’t you think that might be a
tiny
problem when we hit the border? How exactly did you expect me to sneak you through without knowing what I was doing?”

Kiran laid a hand flat on his chest. “A mage has a distinctive aura, true, but the amulet should conceal mine from the gate wards in the same manner it conceals me from Ruslan.”