Chapter 8

The Dourlands, Aurim-That-Was

The canyon ran on for what seemed like forever. They soon lost track of how long they walked: in the constant darkness, lit only fleetingly when the sun was high, time lost its meaning. Shedara thought it was around eighteen days, but it could have been twelve or thirty. The whole time, they met no greater threat than the scorpion swarm. There were no demons, no dragons, no hungry dead—just rocks and more rocks and the occasional centipede or lizard that scuttled away when it saw them.

They lived on Shedara’s conjured food and water, their way lit by her magical light. It was a grim and joyless journey, and they spoke little at first, then hardly at all. They were alive, but there wasn’t much more to say about it. Tumbled rockfalls and narrow clefts they had to slip through sideways slowed their progress. Shedara tried climbing out of the canyon a few times to see what the surface looked like, but she had no more bearings up above than down below. The surface was nothing but ash and broken stone and the stubs of old pillars and walls, littering the landscape like skyfisher-picked bones. Wind scoured the plains, whipping up huge twisters of dust. Once there was a dim line of gray mountains, far off to the west. Otherwise there was just devastation, trailing off into haze.

“We have no idea where we are, do we?” Hult asked her after one ascent, huddled by the stone-fire. He kept his voice low, so Essana and Azar couldn’t hear.

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“When will we?”

“We’re still going the right way,” Shedara answered. “We’re still headed north. In time we’ll reach the sea.”

“And then?” Hult asked. “How do we reach these islands? We have no boat, and I don’t think there are many ports on the coast.”

“There are a few,” she said. “The Rainwarders cross the straits sometimes. I’ll know where to find them… once I have any idea where we are.”

Hult snorted, looking up. The stars wheeled above, a distant slash above the canyon. “Say we do get to the Rainwards—” he began.

“We will.”

“All right. We will, and we’ll warn them about Maladar. Do you think anyone there will be able to help with Azar?”

Shedara glanced over at the boy, asleep by the fire, his mother sitting nearby. Was it her imagination, or did he look older than when she’d first met him? Then, he’d seemed barely twenty. Now, she could see lines on his face and even a few gray strands in his long, tangled hair. That could have been just the arduousness of their journey, she supposed.

“There are a lot of mages in the Rainwards,” she said. “Including a fair number more powerful than me. Someone should know a spell that can tell us what happened to him.”

“We know what happened to him.”

She rolled her eyes. “We have a guess, that’s all.”

“What’s to guess?” he shot back. “You saw it as well as I did. The Brethren killed him. He’s sitting over there alive now, though”—they’d felt his neck for a lifebeat while he slept, just to make sure—“so they must have brought him back after Maladar was done with him.”

“If it was Maladar.”

“Do you really think it wasn’t? Do you think his power came from somewhere else?”

Shedara shrugged. “Azar’s powers have saved us twice now.”

Hult spat in the flames. “Chovuk Boyla’s powers saved me too, more times than that. It still came to no good, for him or my people.”

They sat quietly for a while, gazing at the ghostly flames that danced above the rocks.

“We might find someone who can help him,” she murmured at last. “But then again, we might not.” She bowed her head, blowing out a long breath through pursed lips.

Hult leaned forward and laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right not to know, Shedara.”

She looked up at him, tears blurring her eyes. Frustrated, she wiped them away. He was smiling, but there was a sorrow in his eyes that she recognized at once. It was the same thing she felt: he was out of his depth, in a place where he didn’t belong. In a just world, Hult would have lived out his life on the Tamire, riding horses and hunting antelope and warring with neighboring tribes. And she would be back in Armach, or abroad doing the elves’ dirty work for them. They certainly wouldn’t be huddled at the bottom of a hole in the midst of a ruined empire, wondering whether the soul of a dead sorcerer might kill their friend’s son.

She smiled back at him, then started to laugh. Fatigue, and the ludicrousness of their situation, made it hard not to. Hult’s eyes widened; then he started laughing too. She laid her hand on his, felt the stumps where he’d lost his fingers, back at the arena in Kristophan, and waited for him to pull away. He didn’t. They looked at each other. Then, so swiftly she didn’t realize it was happening, he leaned forward and kissed her.

And she kissed him back.

She didn’t know why. All she knew was, for a while, with his mouth on hers, with his lip in her mouth, with his teeth on her lip, with their tongues touching, she forgot. She wasn’t in a hole; she wasn’t in Aurim. There was no Azar, no Maladar, nothing but the two of them. She clung to that like a drowning woman.

Too soon, it was over. He ended it, pulling back. Another time, the look of confusion on his face would have made her laugh. At that moment her heart broke a little. Hult’s face darkened, and he started to turn away.

“Wait,” she said.

But he didn’t. With a shake of his head, he turned and stalked into the shadows, lost in his dark thoughts. Shedara started to rise, to go after him, then thought better of it. Hult needed to be alone, and strangely, so did she. Perhaps he was thinking of Eldako. She knew she was. What would the merkitsa think if he’d seen the two of them together? He’d been Hult’s friend—and for Shedara, more than a friend.

She heard movement behind her and turned to look. Essana had risen from her son’s side and was coming toward her. Shedara raised a hand to her mouth, wiping her lips as if some sign of what she and Hult had been doing might still linger there… as if Essana hadn’t seen. The way the firelight danced in her eyes told Shedara that wasn’t likely.

“Milady,” Shedara said as she drew near.

“I just realized something,” Essana said, crouching beside the fire. “If part of Maladar is in Azar… then all of him can’t be in Barreth, can it?”

Shedara thought about that. “Maybe. I’m not sure it works like that, like water being poured from one bucket to another. But yes… it’s possible that Forlo doesn’t have all his power.”

“Then he’s not fully Maladar, is he?” Essana asked. “I mean… there’s a chance.”

Shedara bit her lip, seeing where Essana was going. “Milady,” she said, “Forlo’s dead. Hult and I both saw him die—so did Azar, for that matter.”

“You can’t be certain. The Brethren killed Azar, but he’s here, alive. Why not Barreth, then?”

There was a gleam in Essana’s eyes as she spoke. It took Shedara a moment to realize what that gleam was: hope. Hope, she thought, could be dangerous. It could get us into a lot of trouble if we have to fight Maladar directly. If we have to kill him, she’ll bridle if she thinks Forlo’s still in there.

Or… she could be right.

Shedara was still wondering about that hours later, watching the stars wheel overhead.

Five days later—or was it six?—the canyon finally became too narrow to pass. Even sliding sideways, neither Shedara nor Hult could fit between its walls. Indeed, Hult got stuck, and it took the better part of an hour to pull him loose. When he came out, he was scraped and bloody.

“I could feel them trembling,” he murmured. “The stones. It felt like they were going to start moving… like they wanted to crush me like a locust.”

Shedara shuddered, feeling ill. Her people had trouble with confined spaces, fears she’d trained herself for years to ignore. For a moon-thief, tight squeezes were often a fact of life. But the notion of being lodged so tightly that the slightest tremor would kill her… she shuddered.

“What do we do now?” Essana asked.

Shedara shrugged. “Only two ways out, aren’t there? One’s back, and we don’t want to do that. Which leaves…”

She trailed off, glancing up. The others followed her lead. The sky above the rift was lit by the day, yellow-gray.

“We’ll be out in the open,” Azar said. “Vulnerable.”

“You don’t say?” Shedara snapped, then shook herself when he flinched. “I’m sorry. I don’t like it any more than you, but I don’t see any other choices. With luck, the chasm will widen out again in a quarter mile or so, or there’ll be another one close by, and we can take shelter again. With luck we won’t be exposed for long.”

“We should scout ahead, just the same,” Hult said and loosened his sword in its scabbard. He held out his hand. “Give me the rope.”

She did, pausing long enough to make sure the enchantment was still upon it. “I’ll go with you.”

“No.” He held up a hand and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “If something goes wrong, it’s best that I’m alone. If both of us were lost, Jijin knows what would happen to them.” He nodded at Essana and Azar.

An urge came over her, fast and strong, to kiss him again. She held it back. It wasn’t love. Lust maybe, worry certainly, but not love. She couldn’t afford to addle Hult’s wits right then just for the sake of calming herself. She settled for squeezing his hand.

“Be careful,” she said.

He looked at her, and she saw that he wanted to kiss her again too. He’d probably wanted to since that night. She shook her head, stepping back.

“Tie the rope off at the top,” she said. “Just a simple knot—the magic will take care of the rest.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll toss the rest down when it’s all clear.”

He paused to incline his head toward Essana, glancing at Azar—the distrust on his face was plain—then jumped up and caught hold of an overhanging crop of rock. He was a bit clumsy, with half a hand gone, but he still managed to hold on and swing up a leg to get a foothold. Once that was done, he hauled himself up, leaned back against the canyon’s other wall, and began to scuttle upward. Shedara watched him go, impressed. She could have done the same, but climbing was part of a moon-thief’s training. Hult just did it. He’d told her and the others once—she thought it was while they were sailing to Panak, half a continent and a lot of grief ago—that he’d been a climber since he was a child, so much so the elders had nicknamed him Jasho, which meant monkey in the Uigan tongue.

When he was gone from sight, she turned her attention to the others. Azar could barely meet her gaze. She studied him a while, not for the first time since she’d looked inside his mind. She could see the scar, faint and pale across his throat, so wide that it nearly touched either earlobe at its ends. She bit her lip, remembering the sounds he’d made when the Master’s blade cut him.

Essana watched her with earnest eyes. They hadn’t spoken of Maladar or Forlo since the other night, but the woman’s belief that her husband still lived had only grown since then. And Shedara was no longer so certain that Forlo was dead. There was a logic to what Essana had told her. Shedara’s rational mind told her it was only wishful thinking to believe he hadn’t been killed at Akh-tazi, but she’d given someone up for dead too early before, when Eldako fell to Gloomwing’s breath on the shores of Neron. She’d been wrong then: he’d survived, though grievously injured. She might be wrong about Forlo too.

Perhaps.

After a while, she heard movement from above. A few pebbles dropped down, then a shower of grit. She glanced up, frowning; then her mouth went dry when she saw Hult, half sliding, half climbing back down the chasm with the rope still clutched in his hand.

“What’s going on?” Essana asked.

“Shh!” Shedara hissed, holding up her right hand. A dagger dropped into her left, just in case. “Keep your voice down.”

They watched in silence as he grabbed the last overhang, then let his legs swing down and free. His maimed hand scrabbled at the rock but lost its grip, and Shedara jumped forward to catch him as he fell the last short span to the ground. He sat on a rock, panting hard. There was a cut above his right eye. Shedara dabbed at the blood there with the hem of her sleeve. Waiting tensely for him to catch his breath, she bit the palm of her hand—a habit she’d picked up from Hult without realizing it until that moment.

“What happened?” Essana breathed, bending down beside the Uigan. “What did you see?”

He coughed, looking at them. “Hobgoblins,” he said. “There are hobgoblins everywhere.”

Shedara hauled herself halfway out of the crevice, looked around, and felt cold. Astar’s arrows, she thought, I’ve led us right to the midst of an army.

She and Hult had climbed up together, with spells to make them silent and invisible. She glanced at him—she alone could see him, just as he alone could see her—and he nodded.

No matter where they looked, there were hobgoblins, hundreds—no, more than a thousand, by her guess. They huddled around dung fires, sharpened axes and swords, wrestled in the dust, shot bows at lashed-up corpses, and drank black brew from leather flasks. A few tents stood here and there, made of crudely stitched-together hides, but most of the creatures slept in groups for warmth, with skins and fur blankets to cover them.

Somewhere, in the distance, a hoarse voice was screaming. She couldn’t see who it was, but the sound was so full of anguish that her skin prickled. She looked at Hult, who shook his head.

They climbed back down.

“All right,” she said when they reached the bottom, where the others waited. “We’re staying in the hole for now.”

Hult described what they’d seen for Essana and Azar. They both glanced up at the sky above, as if expecting to see cruel, apelike faces peering back at them.

“It’s just a bivouac, not a real camp,” Shedara said. “They’ll probably be moving away at sunset. Hobgoblins travel at night.”

“But… an army?” Essana asked. “Where are they headed?”

“To join a bigger army, probably,” Hult said.

“Why? Who are they fighting?”

The Uigan shrugged, looking at Shedara. She spread her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “But the hobgoblins in the Steamwall Mountains are always warring with each other. It’s what keeps their numbers down, thank the gods. Some tribe probably profaned another’s sacred ground or killed the son of a chieftain, and things went out of control from there.”

“No,” Hult said. “It’s more than that. Someone’s gathering a horde.”

They all looked at him. A chill settled in Shedara’s stomach. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’ve seen clan-fighting among my people,” he replied, “and I’ve been part of a horde. I know the difference.”

“No one lives here but the hobgoblins,” Essana said. “Who else would they be attacking?”

“Perhaps they aim to leave Aurim,” Hult answered.

Shedara shook her head. “You don’t know any of this,” she said. “Not for certain.”

“No,” he replied. He glanced up, one hand resting on his sword. “Which is why I plan to find out.”