Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (120 page)

Not the voice of reconciliation. Not the voice of a father.

And Tahn hated him the more for it. “Yet I understand you are father to children in your Scar. How did you decide that
they
were worthy of your care and protection, but your own son was not?” Tahn raised his hand. “No. I don’t want an answer. You could have none but lies, and I won’t listen to them anymore. Balatin may have been too weak to tell me the truth, but he loved me. He was good to me.
He
was my father. You are only a tired, used husk that keeps vigil in a dying place. Even death is too good for you.”

“It wasn’t easy…” Grant started, and failed.

Tahn held no sympathy. “You stole my childhood from me twice: Once when you used it to prepare me for your own purpose, and again when you wiped it from my mind and sent me away. If I go to Tillinghast it will be because of the decency of another man, not the secrets and lies of an exile.”

Grant stood a moment, as if he might try to say something more, but finally only walked away.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Stain

Winds drove the clouds from the Saeculorum, leaving Tahn and the others in brittle cold under clear skies. For two days they trekked into the mountains, attended by a groaning that was as much a vibration under their feet as a warning to their ears. The mountains themselves seemed to resist them, denying whatever purpose Vendanj had brought them here to achieve.

For most of that time, Tahn kept his own company in silence. He had not turned back, but neither had he decided he would go to Restoration. And he would take no counsel on it from anyone.

On the morning of the third day, beneath the shimmering sun, glittering points of refracted sunlight sparkled like gems on a blanket of snow. The clean, bright vista relieved, if only slightly, the sullenness that had afflicted them all since they’d entered the Saeculorum. Somehow, this brightness spoke of another season in which dormant seeds nourished on melting ice would flourish and set in motion another cycle.

For the first time since her kiss, Tahn sought out Mira. “We’re close, aren’t we?”

Her eyes continued to search the tree line. “Yes. And how are you?”

A bitter smile rose on Tahn’s chapped lips. “I’m still headed to Tillinghast.”

“I heard your cries on the bluff above the Soliel. And I inquired of the Sheason. It does you honor that you have stayed on this path.”

Tahn hurried to clarify. “I haven’t turned back. But I also don’t know if I can go to the Heights, Mira. I’m trying to understand…”

“That is all anyone can ask, Tahn. But I have faith that you will find your way. There is much more in you than the hunter who left the Hollows. I have seen it.” She smiled. “And not just under a Far blanket.”

Tahn laughed for the first time in longer than he could remember.

He looked down then at the ground. “Won’t the snow make it easy for Quietgiven to track or hear us?” Tahn had often taken immediately to the Hollow Wood after a good winter fall of snow had made hunting simpler.

“Yes but there is no mystery about where we’re headed. The Bar’dyn know it. The Velle assuredly have counseled their scouts to find an opportune place to make their stand.” She looked out over the delicate green and white blanket of pine and snow spread below them. “And you, Tahn, have sacrificed yourself in showing the Bar’dyn scouts which of us is the prize.”

“What do you mean?” Tahn’s breath billowed in the air.

“When last the Quiet came upon us, you showed them your awareness of something within you, when you drew your bow with no arrow. They won’t hesitate to kill us all.” She paused, seeming to judge whether to say anything more. “But I think they will want you captive, to employ your gifts in the interest of those who lay within the Bourne … the interest of Quietus himself.”

The unanswered questions from their night together at Naltus came again to him with renewed anger. “I’m weary of the threat of secrets. If the Quiet wants me, tell me why. Why do a Sheason and a Far come into the Hollows to find a hunter? It must be more than my connection to the Will. And what is it that awaits us at Tillinghast? Haven’t I a right to know?”

Tahn’s last words echoed over the tops of the trees below them, startling several ravens from their perch. As the flutter of wings answered Tahn’s fury and filled the morning air, Mira turned to him. “Let me speak to you plainly, hunter.” The replacement of his name with the common term felt like a slap across the face. “I respect your willingness to be here, to place your faith in a renderer and his designs. But do not put us at greater risk with your foolishness, your insecurities. Why do you think Vendanj has kept his tongue about so many things? Perhaps it is because a child, barely become a man, hasn’t the fortitude to hear the fullness of truth. Perhaps if you knew all, you might have shrunk from a task clearly greater than you, greater than any of us.

Tahn felt the bite in her words and wished to retreat. But there was no place to go, and he became aware that all ears heard this exchange.

“We may well reach Tillinghast safely. I suggest you make peace with your decision to come, and lend us whatever skills you possess to reach our destination. Do you understand? What a waste of words to have to say all this to you. You may have alerted our pursuers with your declaration of your
rights
. Turn back if you cannot stand it another moment, if insecurity causes your heart to falter. Because that will surely cause you to fail at Tillinghast.”

She stopped; the silence that followed was deafening. Tahn could bear her gaze no more and looked out over the peaceful scene he’d shared happily with her a mere moment before. When at last Vendanj proceeded down into the trees, the others following, Mira shocked Tahn by placing a hand over his own as it rested on his saddle horn. “Sometimes we must speak sharply to those we care about. But fear not, Tahn, I have faith in you.”

With that she kicked Solus ahead, passing everyone and disappearing deep within the pines.

Tahn thought of what Sutter had said, about the horror of his true parents and what almost happened to him. He thought of what his friend had said about their fathers, the ones who hadn’t abandoned them. He thought of Wendra’s forgiveness.

And then he thought of the cutting truth in the words Mira had just spoken to him.

The indecision he had felt since the painful revelations had threatened to undo him was gone. These many small wonders of words and actions had stiffened Tahn’s resolve. He would stand at Tillinghast, whatever it meant to do so.

And stronger still than this, though still a small thing, was a love for the Far that he could neither explain nor deny. Yet even that concerned him, when he considered Sutter’s vision.

*   *   *

They moved with caution over the undisturbed blanket of snow. Towering pines rose around them, many with an ivory bark Tahn had not seen before. Patches of sunlight fell through the trees, producing crystalline shards of reflected light. With the scent of pine needles and snow, the air smelled clean, free of the mold of last year’s leaves. The crunch of hooves broke the silence, much louder than usual in the stillness, but even Grant seemed at relative ease until the boom of a beaten drum shattered the morning air.

The deep sound spooked the horses. Several of them reared up, as though they recognized the portent the drums bore. Their shrill whinnying filled the morning with chaos as another drum answered the first, and a third called back to both, from ahead, downslope, and upslope.… They were trapped.

When the horses quieted, Tahn quickly surveyed every direction. He pulled his bow and nocked an arrow. Braethen already had his sword in hand, touching the blade in a thoughtful fashion. Then distantly, the sound of feet breaking through the snow rose from every quarter like a mother shushing her child, rushing in upon them.

Mira dismounted and pulled Tahn from Jole. They ran into a clearing, just up the hill from the path they’d been taking. Vendanj and Grant already stood at the northern edge, the Sheason preparing his hands, the exile kicking snow back and clearing a wide circle in which to stand. Wendra sheltered Penit behind Sutter and Braethen as she strode into the small clearing and shot worried glances at Tahn. Only Sutter seemed both prepared and anxious. He made several figures in the air with his Sedagin blade, his muscles now more used to its employ.

Again the drums sounded, closer and deeper, resonating in the thick ivory trunks of the evergreens around them. The very ground shivered with the beat, snow sifting and crusts of ice cracking. Birds took to the air, calling as they dispersed, leaving the band utterly alone.

The pounding of heavy footfalls came closer, the gentle shushing increasing until it sounded like a stampede of hooves. The splintering of wood came with them, and Tahn imagined small trees being snapped like kindling beneath the girth of towering Bar’dyn. Movement caught Tahn’s eye, and he looked up in time to see a treetop thirty strides north disappear. The Quiet were crashing down upon them; the air was taut with the expectation of violence and death.

Then, into the clearing just to the left of Vendanj and Grant, came six Bar’dyn. The exile waited patiently in the small area he’d cleared. The Sheason smote his hands together, calling a whirlwind from the ground that twisted ice and snow and the hard, cold rocks and earth beneath it into a maelstrom. He then thrust both hands at the coming Quietgiven. The whirlwind leapt at the Bar’dyn. Three were drawn into the tangle of snow, stone, and ice, and lifted from their feet, tumbling over as they were battered and slashed.

Two Given turned on Grant, the remaining one fixing his eye on Tahn and heading for the center of the clearing. As it did, six more Bar’dyn emerged at a full run from the east. But these were different; they wore charcoal tunics with a grey insignia in the center of their chest: a single tree whose roots spread and grew downward to become several smaller, withered trees. These six each carried a heavy pike in one hand and a spiked shield in the other.

Sutter turned on the six as Tahn loosed his first arrow at the leftmost Given. With his shield, the Bar’dyn batted Tahn’s arrow away as though it were a fly.

Braethen began to dash to Vendanj’s side, but the Sheason shouted at him to stand with Sutter against their flank.

The three Bar’dyn caught in Vendanj’s swirl had crashed down in a dead heap. The two spoiling for Grant came within the exile’s circle. They fanned out quickly to opposite sides of the man, but before they could calculate a strike, Grant drew a small hidden knife from his belt and threw it not at the first Bar’dyn’s face, but at its ankle. Its howl thundered terrible and low. Tahn seemed to feel it in his gut. The second Bar’dyn, taking advantage of Grant’s first attack choice, simply threw itself at the exile, and went tumbling with him to the ground.

Vendanj turned his attention to the dark-clad six, and began gesturing at them with first one hand, then the other. Bits of bark dislodged from tree trunks and hurtled toward Bar’dyn eyes, as sharp and menacing as tiny daggers. Two lost their sight immediately. The others pushed against the onslaught, covering their faces as they came.

The single Bar’dyn heading for Tahn slowed as it came near Mira. It drew a second sword, and swung each in tight, quick, looping figures, its arms working together so that a wall of whistling blades began to advance on the Far.

Mira did something Tahn had never seen her do before. She simply lifted one sword to eye level, and dropped it. Surprise brought the Bar’dyn’s impressive display to a pause. The Far sprang, dropped low, and thrust her sword with savage intent. The sound of shattered bone cracked in the bright morning air as Mira’s blade found the Bar’dyn’s knee. It staggered backward, its guttural scream erupting in the air, until Mira leapt and buried her blade in its open maw.

A mighty flail hit Sutter. The spiked ball lifted him into the air and sent him heavily to the ground. The attacking Bar’dyn lifted its weapon to deal a death blow. In an instant, Tahn let fly an arrow at full draw. The missile caught the Bar’dyn in the neck. Nearly before the first arrow had found its home, he’d released a second, and then a third. All three hit the Bar’dyn in the same place, driving it backward.

A second Bar’dyn leapt at Sutter, who lay in the snow. Before it could strike, a cry filled the air.
“I am I!”

The call, utterly primal and inarguable, raised the hair on Tahn’s neck. Braethen surged into the space between Sutter and the Given, whipping a blow at the creature in a vicious, tight arc. His sword hummed in the air, glowing faintly in the morning light. Then the steel found home, and burned the flesh of the beast as it tore a deep gash in its chest.

Grant escaped the Bar’dyn that had wrestled him to the ground, and as he did, Vendanj raised his hands in a grand motion, sending the creature skyward thirty strides. Then the Sheason fell to the ground, breathing heavily in the snow.

The two remaining Given ran past Braethen and headed for Wendra. Their dark tunics marked a dread contrast to the white powder snow they kicked up ahead of them. Nothing lay between them and Tahn’s sister, and Tahn knew he would not reach her in time.

He nocked another arrow. From his bowstring to the Bar’dyn was but a moment, but when his arrow struck its side it hardly slowed the beast.