Bloodbound Page 14

  “Yes,” she continued. “But places that give you that feeling—they’re rare, right?”

  “Fortunately.”

  “Not here,” she said bluntly.

  He blinked.

  The priestess continued. “Many, many generations ago, this land was conquered. Not by any army of invaders, but by the angry dead.”

  His eyes widened.

  “The people were mostly slaughtered or forced to flee. A few managed to survive as slaves and sustenance for the leaders of the undead armies, but there was no resistance. The Kingdom of Ustalav was wiped out. The dead didn’t only threaten our people, though. After Ustalav fell, other nations fought back against the unholy invaders and their necromancer king, the Whispering Tyrant. Over decades and at great cost, the armies of the living defeated the Tyrant, but even their greatest heroes were unable to destroy his evil. So they locked him away and set guards over his prison. To the east, those guards still remain, in the land of Lastwall.”

  Tashan leaned closer while Jadain spoke, like a youngster hearing a ghost story.

  “But even after the evil was locked away, our land was not what it once was. The land had been tainted by decades of possession by the dead. Even with their master defeated, many of the Whispering Tyrant’s minions were not destroyed. Some just found quiet places in the dark, where they lurk still.”

  Tashan didn’t look reassured. “Why—” He stopped himself, trying again in a voice that was more than a whisper. “Why would anyone remain in such an accursed place?”

  Jadain smiled. “Because this is our ancestors’ home. Those who survived the wars had their homeland returned to them, to rebuild as best they could. The task was already beyond imagining—the cities were burned, the old kings dead, the land turned—but they weren’t about to let a few lingering shadows deter them. Certainly you can still feel it in some place: the grave sense, the wrongness. But you can’t give in to vague fears, or else it’s like the dead still rule. These are our lands, our home.”

  He still seemed doubtful, turning to look at the shadowy wreck. “But how can you know there isn’t something … waiting?”

  “You can’t always be. That’s why our people have so many superstitions—gourd lanterns, lines of salt, garlic wreathes, unlucky opals, hawthorn spirals.” She touched her amulet. “Many tie back to some legend, or magic, or charm against the dead. But most people don’t believe so many strange things because they’re sure to work. They believe because the traditions make them feel like they have a defense against the dark things, a recourse when they’re afraid.”

  “So your people …” he spoke delicately, “make up tales to protect themselves from the evil things in their land.”

  I laughed, probably harder than I should have. “The weak ones do. They need something. But you don’t have anything to worry about. Jadain’s superstitions work just fine, and it’s part of my job to put dead things back in the ground.”

  Jadain frowned. “Faith is no superstition. Not any more than your … insights.”

  Tashan’s attention snapped to me. I rolled my eyes—there was no need to hide what I was from the foreigner. “What? Trice didn’t tell you that one of your traveling companions was half-dead?” I smiled and leaned into the firelight.

  I didn’t understand his language, but I know what words go along with someone swirling Pharasma’s spiral over their heart.

  “Mother keep us.” Jadain put her palms between us. “I see you’re much less delicate about your heritage out on the road.”

  I shrugged. “He was going to have to find out sometime.”

  “Don’t worry about Larsa. She’s the same monster she’s always been.” Jadain tried to calm the Osirian, but his wariness had shifted from the burnt inn to me.

  “This will take time to understand.” He stood brusquely. “I will take our first watch. Sleep well.” With that, he walked to the edge of the firelight and set his back against a tree, his bronze sword glimmering golden in the dark. A stylized eye adorned the weapon’s pommel. It watched intently.

  I prodded the fire again. “I think I scared him.”

  “I think you offended him,” Jadain said, returning to cleaning up the meal.

  “Offended him? How?”

  “You’re treating him like a bumpkin. He’s not from here, but he’s not an idiot. I don’t think he’s sure what he can believe about what we just told him, but he knows you’re playing some sort of trick on him.”

  “Please. If he’s going to act like a coward, then he should expect to get spooked.”

  “That’s a pretty cold opinion. I suppose I expected you to know a little more about how hard it is being an outsider.”

  “Ugh.” I blew out a long breath. “Fine. I’ll try to take it easier on him. Will that make you happy?”

  Her half-smile carried all the chiding connotations of a mother asking What do you think?

  I shook my head, clearing away the topic. “Anyway, it’s not me playing some sort of trick.”

  Jadain finished her chore and looked over at me. “Hmm?”

  “Before, when I rounded the house. You seemed to know what I was doing.”

  She nodded. “Your people have a connection with the undead, can sense them. Right?”

  “Yeah.” I returned her nod. “And I did sense something. But not back there. It was when I came back around.” I nodded at our guard. “It was when I was talking to him.”

  Her back was to where the Osirian had taken up watch. While her eyes shifted, she didn’t turn to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It was just for a moment, and I haven’t felt it again, but still …”

  Tashan was watching us from the edge of the camp, the fire glinting upon the bronze of his eyes and blade. It made them both looked like they were smoldering.

  “Our companion is hiding something.”

  16

  BEHIND THE VEIL

  JADAIN

  If you don’t have an invitation,” the lead red-plumed guardsman snapped in his gravely voice, “then you’re trespassing. Move along, or else!” Behind him, his two doubles moved hands to sword hilts wrapped with ruby ribbons.

  The flagstone road had turned abruptly and, following it, we found ourselves before a shining steel gate set within a wall of pale granite and spade-shaped finials. Dozens of sculpted, metal antlers locked together, forming the gateway, along with several metallic birds of prey that stared with dark stone eyes. At the center of each door, a circular shield bore the horned hawk of the Caliphvaso family and an ornate letter C. In the haze of misty rain, the ornate gate shimmered like silver.

  I tried to be diplomatic, even as I heard Larsa standing in the wagon behind me. “Sirs. We’re merely travelers headed north. It would seem that we’ve somehow lost our path. Would you happen to know the way leading into the mountains?”

  “Back the way you came. You just missed it.” The guard pointed to the bend in the road.

  Admittedly, the weather that had left us all huddling within our cloaks certainly wasn’t helping my sight, but it was clear that the road we were on led to a single destination.

  “Sir?” I started, but he interrupted.

  “Before the bend and north, past the paving’s end.” He stabbed with a red-gloved finger. “You won’t be able to rely on the countess’s graces from here on.”

  I squinted through the drizzle. Sure enough, the paving ended but there was a muddy opening between the trees that continued north. It was quite a change from the road we’d been traveling, so much that it was no wonder that we hadn’t noticed it in the rain.

  “Ah, I see now, sir, thank you. Might I ask, though, is that the only way into the mountains?”

  “Oh, not at all, Your Grace!” He swirled his hand. “I’m sure your porter and lady-in-waiting can find you a silver-paved deer trail, and maybe even a team of stags to carry you along your way!”

  “Ignorant oaf.” Larsa’s voice was less th
an a whisper.

  “What did she say?” The lead guard took a step forward.

  I shot a glare back at Larsa, but it was obvious she wasn’t interested in being mocked by the countess’s thugs. I had no idea what sort of jurisdiction the countess’s guards might claim or how it compared to a Royal Accuser’s, but I had a feeling that, out in the woods with no witnesses, steel and skill trumped official right.

  “Only that we’ve taken up enough of your time. Thank you for the direction, gentlemen. Good day now!” I leaned over to Tashan, whose grip had never left the horse’s reins, and urged him to turn the cart quickly.

  A few minutes later we were clattering through bumpy ruts upon a muddy trail, the path already starting to climb. This was obviously the backside of the New Surdina Road.

  “Why did the paving end back there?” Tashan asked after just a few moments’ jostling. “It’s clear the way isn’t going to get any easier.”

  “You recognized the guards, right?” Larsa said. “Those were the gates to the countess’s private estate, Chateau Douleurs. In fact …”

  She trailed off as we crested into a cleared section of hill, one that allowed for a momentary view of the lands below. Silent avalanches of mist rolled between the hills, pouring over mossy cliffs and through the sparse woodlands in unpredictable courses. But the fog cascades dispersed before the banks of a great lake, its placid surface so gray that it might have been filled with that same mist. Gaps in the haze revealed the path of the paved road we’d just been bullied from as it made its way along one side of the lake. It wound through half-seen gardens and snaked amid the silhouettes of topiary figures before finally becoming lost in the spectral scene. Near where it vanished, six towers lanced through mist, their heights uneven but stained in matching rusty red, their gables as sharp as cathedral spires. Only the ridges of lower roofs gave any hint of the rose-colored structure hidden in the fog, a multitude of peaks and glass pinnacles suggesting rambling decadence.

  “The road we’ve been following leads there.” Tashan’s tone made it not so much a question.

  “No. Just the part that matters—straight to the countess’s country estate.” I shook my head, “I hadn’t realized most of the New Surdina was nothing more than her manor’s private drive.”

  “Wasn’t so private this far,” Tashan said.

  “Guess no one of importance needed it to go any further.” Larsa spat into the bushes. “Nobles.”

  “We can’t keep on in this!” Tashan shouted against the winds, sounding as though he were under water, not just on the bench next to me.

  “You think you can turn around here?” Larsa yelled from the back. Her sarcastic tone might have been lost to the storm, but the impossibility of the act wasn’t. There wasn’t anywhere to go behind us anyway—we had no other choice but to push on.

  We’d been traveling narrow mountain paths for days now. Our maps and the occasional gray sign still marked our route as the New Surdina. Appropriately, none appended the word “road” to the name anymore. I’d stopped thinking the trail couldn’t grow steeper or more narrow, as I’d been proven wrong each time.

  On the third day of stone and cold, the clouds seemed to grow tired of our presence. They conspired against us, roiling and darkening, threatening us with some wordless language of the sky. It was about midday when the sun abandoned us, casting the mountains into an early dusk. Then the thunder peals began.

  We’d all been looking for shelter, the need obvious enough that no one had even bothered mentioning it. The goddess wasn’t smiling, though.

  The path had narrowed once more, now barely a thread between cliff face and ravine. That was when the heavens struck. The storm brought all the tears and moans of a million mourners.

  Small rivers coursed across the trail, eroding the already unreliable line between trail and endless plummet. More out of self-preservation than because of Tashan’s cautious driving, the horse pressed its body against the rising cliff, accepting the pelting of rubble and small mudslides that washed across its back more than once. Locked to our path and blinded by shadows and water, we were trusting in the horse for every step. If any portion of the trail ahead had collapsed in the storm, I feared we’d only know in the moment between toppling into the chasm and being smashed upon the rocks.

  With the realization of that quite real possibility, I bowed my head and began to pray.

  “Can’t your goddess do something about this?” Larsa shouted into my back. I ignored her, not willing to interrupt my appeal to the goddess with a theological debate. Of course she could do something, but Pharasma wasn’t known for overt miracles. Even the magic she granted me was thoroughly outstripped by the storm’s ferocity.

  “I think she just did!” Tashan called, daring to take a hand off the reins to point ahead.

  Looking up, two paths emerged out of the rain, momentarily rendered in stark grays by a flash of lightning and its immediate explosion of thunder. One branch continued around the mount we’d been following, while the other crossed a narrow ridge and wound higher.

  “Which way?” Tashan struggled to out-shout the storm. The route we’d been following carried on, narrow and treacherous, while the side path promised much the same, along with the dangers of an uncertain ascent.

  “Right!” I pointed down the somewhat-known path. “I don’t want to risk it.”

  Again, lightning flashed, momentarily revealing just how small and vulnerable we were.

  “There!” Larsa surged between us, pointing into the dark between the paths—a course leading directly into a fissure.

  “Are you mad?” I yelled.

  She kept pointing. “Look higher. Wait for the lightning.”

  Praying that the next strike wouldn’t be the one that blasted us from the mountain wall, we stared into the dark.

  When it appeared, it was nothing more than a collection of sharp peaks. But they were too severe, to similar to be natural.

  “A castle!” Larsa confirmed that we’d all seen the same improbable vision perched on the mountainside ahead.

  “All the way out here?” Tashan didn’t believe his eyes so readily. “Impossible!”

  It dawned on me that he was right. “Not a castle. A monastery. That must be the Monastery of the Veil. My brethren can give us shelter!”

  No one cared to debate, and Tashan tugged on the reins to coax our steed toward the ridge trail and the salvation hidden in the dark. But the horse refused to move.

  Lightning webbed through the sky, and for an instant it looked as though the clouds had shattered. There was something else, though. In that instant of sight, something in the path ahead had changed.

  When I looked over, Tashan was already staring at me—he’d noticed, too. Neither of us spoke. Trying to overcome our blindness by force of will, we strained our eyes against curtains of stinging rain and darkness.

  It took an eternity, but the merciless light blazed again. What it revealed was as unmistakable as it was impossible: A figure stood on the trail ahead, a soaking robe and deep hood masking any hint of his identity. He stood in the middle of the trail, head bowed against the rain, little more than a silhouette in the burst of light.

  I raised my voice. “Someone’s out there!”

  “Another traveler?” Tashan asked, his doubt obvious even through the wind.

  “Maybe a monk from the monastery. He might need help.” I indulged my optimism. “Or maybe he’s here to lead us to the refuge.”

  When the sky tore open again, the figure hadn’t moved.

  More glances passed between us, and a frozen weight not caused by the icy rain crystallized in my stomach.

  “Larsa, can you see—” I stopped, as she was already peering past me.

  “It’s there.” Her words slit through the wind.

  Calling the man “it” wasn’t reassuring. My hand slid to Pharasma’s symbol, hanging from my neck. “Can you tell if he’s … living?”

  She nodded that he was. At least t
hat was something of a relief.

  “I’ll see who he is. He must have come from somewhere, and might know where there’s shelter.” I tried pulling my soaked cloak and robes tighter, but there wasn’t any warmth left in them. Climbing from the cart, I ducked into the wind. Every step was a struggle against the wind and the rain-slick trail, the elements conspiring to push me toward the ravine.

  Another bolt, and still the figure stood unmoved. The storm appeared not to touch him, his posture seemingly bent less by the storm and more out of some silent reverence. He seemed totally unaware of my approach.

  Although the trek was one of only a few dozen steps, that alone was more harrowing than our entire journey this far. I stopped several strides away from the ominous figure, coming no further than my shouts would need to carry.

  “Sir!” I yelled into the shadows. “We have to get out of the storm! Do you know a safe place? Can we take you there?”

  If the strange monk moved, it was entirely lost amid the shadows. It dawned on me that the only thing tethering me to the cart and the world beyond was Larsa’s remarkable sight. Otherwise, I was completely alone in the freezing dark with this mysterious figure.

  The idea chilled me, but the need couldn’t be more urgent. I took a step closer. “Brother!”

  Still not a twitch, so far as I could tell. I stepped closer, purposefully stopping just outside the stranger’s reach. Again I yelled.

  The figure’s arm snapped up like a sapling released from bonds. A gloved hand jabbed from his robes, a single finger lancing out to point north—away from the monastery path.

  I stumbled back, startled. Behind me I thought I heard a voice, but it was lost in the rain. “Brother! I am one of the faithful, traveling from our lady’s monument in Caliphas.” I proved my words by lifting up the wooden spiral around my neck. It seemed strangely fragile in this lost corner of the world.

  His arm didn’t fall.

  “You’re a brother of the Monastery of the Veil? We saw it through the storm. Please! Can you take us there?”

  His posture didn’t so much as tremble, his head still lowered. His gesture seemed like an exile.