The Wild Road (20 page)

“Perhaps a kindness, in his own way.”

“
Kindness
!”

“To keep you in hope.”

Davyn stared at him. Now he was blearily curious. “Then you think he lied.”

“He may have,” Mikal said judiciously.

It was not quite accusation. Davyn squinted at him, trying to still the tent from its slow revolutions. “I thought you were friends.”

“Rhuan and I?” Mikal shook his head. “He comes here to drink. I am not friends with every man who does so.”

“But you give credence to what he says. You did earlier today.”

“Because I believe Rhuan is very experienced in many things. But that is part of the problem. He knows too much.”

Davyn shook his head. “I believe he meant what he said.”

“About the road?”

“About the road. About me safely meeting my family
on
that road.”

“You are so certain.”

“I have to be. For the sake of my family.”

Mikal ran a thumb back and forth across his upper lip. “I don't like it. Why would Rhuan tell you about a road through Alisanos, but not any of us?”

Davyn rubbed one side of his face, elbow planted on the table. His skin felt tight. “I don't know. Ask him.” Earlier he had let information about the road slip, despite promising he would keep it in confidence. Rhuan, now, was the only connection he had to his family. He could not betray him.

But disbelief tugged at him.
He said he is a god. A god
! Once again Davyn took up the tankard. This time he drained it. Oh, indeed, he was drunk. Was that why Mikal had given him spirits? To make him speak of things he shouldn't?

Davyn said with meticulous enunciation, “I have no reason to disbelieve Rhuan.”

“Well. Perhaps not.” Mikal leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You would do well to understand that, for all his affability, for all his charm, Rhuan is a dangerous man.”

Memory found its way through the fog of strong spirits. The same vision in his head: Rhuan, killing Hecari with deadly accuracy; throwing long-bladed knives that cut into Hecari throats.

“To save us,” he said as the tent continued to spin.

“Save you from what?”

“Hecari. You should have seen it. Him . . . matter of moments. And then all of them were dead.” Oh, Sweet Mother. He was going to pass out. Or be sick. Perhaps even both. “—did this on purpose.”

The one-eyed man smiled. “I did.”

“You think I'll give up secrets.”

“I do.”

Davyn attempted to hang onto concentration. His eyes wished to close. “Why does it matter?”

Mikal smiled. “Rhuan exaggerates. He can tell a twisty tale when he chooses. But he was deadly serious when you spoke about the road.”

“And I repeat: Ask
him
. Not me.”

“I intend to. “

Davyn squinted. “Why ask me at all?”

“Because you are far more likely to tell me the truth.”

He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. But he was afraid he might be sick first. Well, better than being sick in bed.

His eyes wished to close again. “I told you. He said a road would be built. And I could go to my family.”

“Did he say anything about why he came out of the deepwood with impunity?”

“He's a god.”

Mikal froze, single eye widening. “A
what
?”

Davyn's eyes won the battle. Lids closed. “He said . . . he said he's a god.” With great effort he managed to open his eyes, albeit the merest slit. “Half a god.”

The ale-keep said nothing. He just stared from his single eye.

“Maybe he is,” Davyn said thickly. A yawn overtook him. “Or not.”

“Or not,” Mikal echoed.

“I am quite drunk,” Davyn said.

“Yes.”

He pushed the tankard toward Mikal. “More.”

“I think not.”

Briefly it annoyed him, that the ale-keep would deny him. Was he not someone who sold spirits and ale to anyone who asked? But only one more question made it through the fog of spirits and profound sleepiness. “How will I get to my wagon?”

Mikal laughed softly. He rose, pushing the stool out of the way. “I'll take you there. It's a task I know very well. You are not the first to lose his wits to spirits.”

Davyn sighed his relief. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” Mikal hoisted him up, steadied him.

“He
said
he was a god. Half.”

“Well,” Mikal said. “Either he's telling the truth, or it's one of his twisty tales.” He set a shoulder under Davyn's, hooked a limp arm around his neck. “I'm not entirely sure which I'd prefer.”

Davyn let the ale-keep take much of his weight. “I want him to be a god.”

“Blessed Mother, why?”

“Because then I can go to my family. When the road is built.”

Chapter 17

D
ESPITE HER INTENTION
to go to the ale-tent, Bethid decided against it. She was tired in mind and body. It felt like she had been battered one way and another for days. She pulled off boots, stretched out on her pallet, dragged blankets over her body. Still clothed, she lay flat on her back, eyes fixed on the ridge pole, the Mother Rib, high overhead. And on the dangling string of charms that all couriers respected as a thing to ward them against dangers of the road.

She sighed heavily and draped an arm over her face, elbow jutting upward. Little by little she relaxed knotted muscles, one limb at a time. As always, it was her spine that took the brunt of stress; that and her neck. She felt dirty, gritty, itchy. A bath was called for, but she would not go to the river in the dark, even if she carried a lantern. She respected what Rhuan said about the dangers of the night, camping so close to Alisanos. So she would rise with the dawn, dunk herself in the river, put on clean clothes (though they would soon stick to her flesh) and join Jorda and the others heading for Cardatha.

Bethid badly wanted to sleep, but her mind would not permit it. And for the first time, she felt a faint flutter in her belly. What if she were wrong? What if none of the Cardatha Guild couriers wished to involve themselves in her plan? What if they declined to pass the word directing people to the settlement? She was, after all, inciting war.

Blessed Mother . . . am I wrong
?
Should I just let things go on as they have before
?

Certainly that was the easiest course, but even as she asked herself that question, she felt again the surge of determination to strike a blow at the Hecari. She well understood the pervasive fear among Sancorrans trying merely to survive in a province now ruled by the Hecari. She herself had been frightened and still was. But now she had a task to do. Now she knew of a way to help her people.

If only she could convince other couriers about the need—well, no; they understood the need. And the danger. The Guild had a truce of sorts with the Hecari. If word of this were carried to the warlord, that truce would end, and the Guild would be destroyed.

Couriers would die.

Timmon and Alorn, her closest friends among the couriers: dead. Halleck and Gathlyn, both of whom she esteemed highly: dead. And even the youngest, the one whom she teased, Corrid: dead.

Bethid lifted her arm from her face and rubbed at eyes that felt hot and dry.
Blessed Mother, let me do this thing
. She pondered that a moment.
And let all of us survive it
.

EVENING SETTLED OVER
the encampment like a shroud. Birds stilled, tucking heads under wings. Cook fires, banked for the night, glowed as if to light his way, but Darmuth did not need such aids. He walked as a man, as the man so many recognized when they saw him, not knowing what he was. Rhuan and Brodhi had established that they were Shoia; he was merely a man. He let no human know—or suspect—otherwise. And so he walked among the humans as if he were kin-in-kind. They saw what they saw, what they expected to see, marking him as eccentric, perhaps, with his taut-fitting, colorful clothing, winter-ice eyes, a green gemstone set in one front tooth; but one of them all the same and tasked with getting the karavan from the settlement to distant portions of Sancorra, where there might be fewer Hecari.

Walking as a man, he slipped through the elder grove, noting that lanterns glowing in the wagons' interiors were being snuffed out one by one. A dog barked; another answered, but the tone was not of alarm or aggression. Perhaps they, too, were saying goodnight.

Darmuth smiled crookedly. Maybe what he should do, at some point, was to take on the guise of a dog and learn what they knew of life, why they did what they did. There were no pets in Alisanos.

Except perhaps for the lesser demons. They might be viewed as pets by the primaries. In fact, they probably
were
viewed as pets by the primaries. Lesser demons, such as himself. Such as Ferize.

He did not wish to be a pet. He wished to be greater than he was. To gain respect. To ascend even as the
dioscuri
who killed their sires ascended, save that a demon had no hope of rising so high, or in the same manner. Demons were made. They were not born as infants, did not experience childhood, knew nothing of how a baby in the creche grew to young adulthood. They were
made
creatures, he and Ferize and hundreds of others.

Providing Rhuan and Brodhi were guided along their journeys in a way the primaries approved; providing they gained the insight and drive required to properly challenge their sires, neither he nor Ferize would be unmade.

Already, pathways were being formed in the elder grove. Grass was pressed to earth, showing where humans walked. Soon it would be torn, killed beneath boot soles, and the soil underneath the destruction would rise up through broken stems.

His own boots packed down the grass, tore it, killed it, as they pressed into soil. Odors permeated the grove. His sense of smell was far superior to that of humans. Odors of meat, bread, fire, smoke, spices, the barest trace of tea, warm horseflesh, herbs, grain, and grass, dampness, stone, earth, wounds in trees whose limbs were freshly broken; all, he smelled. And the scent of humans. To him, to a demon, lesser or no, the scent of living human flesh, human blood, was the most significant scent of all.

At night, he hunted. Rhuan periodically reminded him he should not take for a feeding the horses, mules, oxen, dogs, milk cows of the karavaners. And Darmuth was willing to leave them be,
if
he found other meat to eat, the meat of wild animals, of birds, of ground vermin, of snakes, of insects, and others. He was an omniverous demon; anything would do. But meat was what he craved. If a hunt brought little, he occasionally appropriated a chicken from karavanfolk, or a goat, taking care not to do so often. It did not please Rhuan when he did so, but the
dioscuri
did grudgingly understand that a demon, like any living creature, had to feed to survive.

Perhaps he and Ferize could dine on the two Hecari whose forms they took.

Trees grew sparse at the edge of the grove. Now he smelled the river.

And blood.

Rhuan's blood.

Darmuth broke into a run, following a scent that spoke of anger and injury, and of power.

Primary. Where none should be.

SHE CAME TO
him on the cusp of night, that portion of time between dusk and dark. Brodhi waited for her at the edge of the elder grove in an area free of wagons. Maiden Moon illuminated that verge between grove and plains, and so it was easy to watch Ferize come down from the air, to see the blurry shift between demon form and human. This night she was red-haired, green-eyed, clad in a rich amber-dyed gown. A glint of gold flashed at her throat, where a pendant lay against pale skin.

She came up to him, smiling, and he took the initiative. He captured her arms, pressed them against her body, and caught her bottom lip in his teeth. Ferize laughed softly and then poured out of imprisonment into a woman who stood just in front of Brodhi. Before he could do anything more, she spread flattened hands against his chest and pushed.

An off-balance step collided with tree root. That step, accompanied by Ferize's push, set his spine against the wide trunk of an elder tree. And it hurt. Ferize, as all demons, was much stronger than he, even in human form. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ferize deftly undid his leggings and slipped a hand inside.

She gripped him. “Ah,” she said. “I doubt you will last long tonight.”

“I last as long as is needful,” Brodhi retorted, stung.

Ferize laughed, locked arms behind the back of his neck, and pulled herself upward, against him, tucking legs around him. He embraced her as she rode his bared hips. “Now,” she said.

He had brought a blanket for that very reason. He lay her down upon it, knelt, and covered her body with his own.

“Perhaps twice,” she said against his mouth.

Brodhi grinned into darkness. “Oh, more. Certainly more. I'm a god, remember?”

Ferize laughed. “
Half
a god.”

HEARING RETURNED BEFORE
vision, and Audrun realized she had fallen asleep upon the cot. She remembered nothing of the movements necessary to lie down, only knew that obviously she had resorted to them at some point.

Eyes opened. She turned over onto her back, wincing from stiffness. It was dark in the chamber, no sunlight creeping between tapestry curtains covering the long, slotted window openings. Nighttime had fallen in Alisanos, as it did in her own world. But this nighttime, she did not doubt, was far more dangerous than the one she knew.

She could see little of the other chamber from her bed, save for a faint shaft of moonlight forming a delicate column from fire ring to skyhole. Reflecting her long practice with assessments and decisions made on a daily basis, Audrun realized that she and the older children would have to be vigilant about the hole in the chamber ceiling. First, there was the possibility of rain; secondly, light from two suns was dangerous, and the skyhole would concentrate it.

She felt groggy, still exhausted. Joints ached, limbs stung from cuts and slashes, and her abdomen was flaccid, sore.

She turned onto her side, looking for her children. Gillan was asleep flat on his back, injured leg baring scales, discoloration. Ellica slept with the infant tree, its rootball nestled against her side. Torvic and Megritte lay curled up on one cot, arms and legs intertwined. Audrun saw the bellies of both her youngest rising rhythmically as they breathed. They slept so deeply, blessed by innocence, as if Alisanos had never come upon them.

And then she realized that Torvic was not asleep at all. He lay in a tangle with Meggie, as she had noted, but his eyes were open and fixed upon her. And Audrun realized that while she had chosen Meggie to join her for a hug, she had not offered the same to her older children.