41. Cirri
Chapter 41
Cirri
I slid from the horse, palms sweaty, knees shaking, and collapsed to solid ground under the blessed sun.
The darkness in the tunnels… it had been like a living thing, pressing in on my eyes, my ears, filling my nose and mouth and pouring into my cells with every breath, every blink. Not even Miro’s lantern had driven away the worst of the shadows.
Instead, that single bright point of light had felt like a shout in the midst of the silence, a beacon to summon every hungry thing that lived beneath the earth.
But Bane was right. The Fae were dead, not that the knowledge had helped any. I wasn’t the only one trembling; the horse was lathered with fear and frothing at the mouth despite the slow walk under the mountains, and Miro fumbled at the reins, face still ghastly pale.
The route itself had been almost offensively simple, a mineshaft dug straight through from the eastern side of the Rift, to the western mountains of Foria. Miro had counted the junctions under his breath as we rode through. “First, left. Second, right. Third, right. Fourth, left…”
Each junction had taken us onto the next course, well-traversed by warg paws, but it was the ones we didn’t take—deep, dark tunnels shored up by rotting timbers, the mountains exhaling their dry, dusty breath through the shafts—that gave me the screaming terrors in the back of my mind.
At each one, I’d expected something to be waiting, lurking in the shadows. I’d expected the shine of eyes against the guttering lantern flame, or the gleam of skin that wasn’t quite skin as I would expect it to be.
The absolute nothing at every turn was almost worse. A constant anticipation, my muscles growing tighter and harder each time the shaft split, to the degree that I’d almost seen things, heard things, that weren’t there. Once or twice I’d been convinced there was a scratching sound following us, or a distant shriek echoing up from far below.
Even Miro had squirmed at times, jerking his head to the side as though he heard something, a spastic twitch beginning in his left eyelid by the third junction. It was still there now.
But nothing had come for us. As Bane had said, the Below was empty… at least in Veladar.
I’d thought I was hallucinating when the first faint rays of daylight appeared ahead of us, afraid to let myself hope, but Miro had nudged the terrified horse into a trot, bursting out into the salvation of the sun… where we had both released our collective breaths.
He’d allowed me to dismount and stretch my legs, but the second my feet hit the ground, they turned to jelly. On my hands and knees, touching the sweet solidity of sun-warmed dirt, I thanked the Lady, the Mother, even the gods of the Nord pagans that I’d emerged alive.
But my moment still hadn’t come. I’d hoped to find that moment in the darkness, but Miro was on his guard the whole way through, and now my plans were askew.
I couldn’t return through the mineshaft; the junctions had been not only ahead of us, but sideways and diagonal, branching in ways that turned the deceptively simple path into a snarled knot. Even if I turned tail and fled right back into that blighted shaft, even if I managed to steal the lantern from Miro and, by some miraculous chance, had enough oil to light the whole way through, the odds were high that I would choose the wrong path at the wrong junction, and possibly find myself face to face with something better left alone.
Which left the over-mountain route as my only option. I finally raised my head, squinting up at the ridge over the shaft’s entrance. This side of the mountains, on Forian soil, the timbers were bare of cold iron or charms, but they had been clawed into splintered shreds.
Beyond it, the mountains rose in high, ugly peaks. A sharp and deadly switchback trail had been chiseled into the cold gray stone. I licked my dry lips, imagining what it would take to climb it… and deciding it was well worth the effort if it meant never inhaling that mephitic breath of the earth again. Better to spend a week crawling inch by inch over the mountains than to face that soul-crushing darkness again.
My bag, containing both my journal and the ritual book, was slung over the saddle. Miro had the lantern, the packs, the food, and my pen. All I had to my name was the wilted bloodrose tangled in my hair.
But I was willing to sacrifice the books to get home. Because we were in Foria now; I turned my head away from the mountain and mineshaft with no small effort—every inch of my body screamed at me not to turn my back on that gaping hole in the mountainside—and looked out over the enemy’s territory.
It was like the gods themselves had drawn their hands over the earth, raising mountains between the misty, green coolness of the Rift and the blasted ruin of Foria itself. Before me was a sea of waving grasses, baked brown by months of summer sun. There were few trees, and what little there were grew stunted and gnarled.
I narrowed my eyes, seeing deep grooves in the earth, places where the grasses gave way to rocky embankments and old walls.
“That’s where they fought,” Miro said, taking a deep draught from the waterskin. “This was a small sliver of the battleground. Most of Foria’s western border looks like this now; if anything grows, it looks poisoned. We can thank the bloodwitches for that.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sourly surveying the dead-looking land. He must be well again, if he was back to lecturing me on the evils of the war Foria had started to begin with.
I got to my feet, knees still weak as I brushed dirt from my skirt. I motioned to the waterskin and Miro handed it over willingly enough. I was valuable to him, which meant I needed to play that up, collect supplies while I could.
Despite the dryness of my throat, I took the most perfunctory possible sip and tied the waterskin to my belt while his back was turned. If he asked what I was thinking, I would simply tell him I’d done it out of habit.
Then I kicked my ankle leash aside and stepped towards him, meeting his eyes and touching my stomach, miming taking a bite of something.
A slight smile touched the corner of his mouth. “How can you be hungry after that?” he asked, but he lifted the flap of a saddlebag and dug around, pulling out a small package of oilskin. He unwrapped it, revealing strips of toffee. “Well, I suppose it’s been at least a day since I fed you. Here.”
He passed me two strips of the toffee, and I took one bite, chewing slowly, making the caramelized candy last. The rest of it I tucked it into a deep pocket while he was replacing the oilskin.
“We’ve got a few miles to go before we make camp. I want to see the creek before we stop for the night.” He buckled the saddlebag, shielding his eyes from the setting sun as he gazed into the distance. “Hakkon will find us by the signal-fire.”
I nodded, as though I were complicit in my own kidnapping. As though I wanted him to take me. As I turned my back on the mineshaft, a violent shiver coursed down my spine, sending the sensation of cold water trickling through my veins.
It was violent enough that Miro noticed, turning to give the shaft a dark look. He mounted the horse again, reaching a hand down to me. “Too damn right. Come on. We’re wasting sunlight.”
I took his hand, allowing him to pull me up sidesaddle once more, my thighs protesting after that long, tense ride, and gathered the loose coils of the tether, holding them in my lap.
Miro nudged the horse to a walk down the mountain, following a worn switchback path cut in dirt.
I looked down, picking out distinct shapes pressed into the path. Paw prints bigger than a man’s head, elongated and deformed.
Light save me.
The route through the dark had worn both of us to the bone, and the anxiety had clearly gnawed away at Miro’s chatty good mood of earlier. He was silent and watchful as he guided the horse down to the flatlands, aiming for the northeast. My fingers itched to pick at the knot of the tether, but he kept one arm around me, his hand resting loosely on the pommel, fingers covering the knot.
So my chances remained near zero as we moved through the grass. Day became evening in sullen silence, the sun sinking below the mountains and casting long shadows over the grasslands.
Miro swore under his breath, using the last stray rays of light to move the horse faster, and it was only when I heard the trickle of water that he slowed.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “Get down.”
I dismounted, legs aching, and leaned on the saddle for support, watching like a hawk. He would want light, and while he lit the lantern, I would jump back on the horse and make a break for it the way we’d come.
But Miro gave me a nasty sort of smile as he dismounted, and he kept the reins looped around his arm as he untied the tether from the saddlehorn. I thought about baring my teeth in a snarl, furious that he couldn’t be stupid and careless even for one minute, but kept it to myself.
Kept my expression pleasant and neutral, even as he led me to one of the spindly, stunted trees and tied the tether to the base.
“Pull down some of those branches,” he instructed me, turning his attention to the lantern. This time, he got the match lit on the first try.
The tree was so short, stunted and dry that it was easy to snap the lowest-hanging branches off, which I did in a desultory way as Miro cleared a small ring for a firepit. He tied the horse to another tree about ten yards away, leaving it just enough room to crop the grass around it, then lined the pit with stones and dry grass. But he kept one eye on me as he did it, ensuring that I didn’t have time to tackle the knot he’d made.
I found myself hoping that his little fire would set the whole countryside ablaze, and I’d either perish in the flames, thwarting his plans, or find the opportunity to run to the horse. But he cleared it carefully, taking my collected twigs and branches, and shoved a ball of tinder under the pyramid he made from them.
In the next ten minutes, he had a fire blazing merrily in the dark, the saddlebags set off to the side as he chewed a mouthful of dried meat and berries, and I was crouched on the other side of the flames.
Miro also had my bag, and my journal was open in his lap. I stared at him sourly through the leaping flames, wondering if he’d sleep at all, because I sure as hell wouldn’t. What I would do was curl up and pretend, and hope he drifted off on his own.
But for now, he had my full attention, because he was prying into private things that didn’t concern him.
“‘Her name is Cirri, and she is pretty’,” he read aloud, making a face. “By Wargyr, be serious. How can you love this… this absolute shit poetry, and then look at my paintings and say they’re just fine? Fine ? In comparison to this? ”
He threw back his head and laughed, but I had to suppress a smug smile—because that laughter was entirely manufactured. He went through the motions, but there was genuine bitterness and irritation in it.
I was glad that Bane’s small, silly poem, the words that had brought me so much happiness, were able to get under Miro’s skin and nibble him to pieces.
Good. Be eaten alive by envy, you puffed-up, self-obsessed ass. I hope you choke on it.
I would have liked to say it to him, but Miro made no move to return my journal or my pen. He flipped through the pages idly, the cap of my pen glimmering in his breast pocket, and I watched him and let my mind turn over quietly.
I could leave the pen and the journal; I remembered enough of the lexicon on my own that I could recreate it. The poems, the conversations, I would miss those deeply, with an almost physical pain, but in the end, they could be sacrificed.
But the ritual book… that I could not leave.
Once Miro succumbed to sleep, I would have to get my own hands dirty. I’d never before been in a position to have to consider taking another person’s life. I’d never wanted to be a warrior like the Silver Sisters; violence had never appealed to me.
But I had to. He was not yet a warg, but he worshipped Wargyr, and that meant he forfeited the right to live. As he slept, I would cut his throat with his own dagger, and escape with the horse, the ritual book, and my journal, and leave his body for the wargs.
I accepted it, internalized it, and then tried my damnedest not to think about it. Better to let the fury of the moment carry me through, than to anticipate the sickness and terror of the deed.
Miro turned yet another page, and another round of laughter came pealing out of him. “What is this? You were jealous about Auré putting her hands all over him?” He looked up, eyes twinkling and reflecting the fire like red pools. “You really are twisted, Lady Silence. Imagine being jealous over that thing.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten, exhaling slowly.
“‘Are you all mine?’” he mocked in a falsetto voice. “Is there something wrong with me?’”
My teeth gritted together painfully and I started the count over, trying to let the anger leak away, but it was dammed up inside me and I wanted to pull a burning brand from the fire and shove it in his eyes.
“Yes. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: you actually believe a fiend has feelings. You’re too na?ve for this world, Cirrien. You serve one purpose, and that’s for him to feed.”
I opened my eyes, yearning to respond in a way that’d be clear even to him, and my body froze before my brain fully understood what I was seeing.
Miro, still leaning against a saddlebag, the firelight playing across his features, the darkness all around us. The flat yellow shine of eyes behind him, a multitude of stars dropped to earth. The elongated snout hanging over his shoulder, a thousand teeth gleaming.
He saw it in my face before he turned and fell away towards the fire, shouting several curses as he scrambled away from the warg.
Gods, they’d approached so silently, here between one breath and the next.
The warg made a terrible sound, a dry, scraping chuckle like laughter from a dead man. It had crouched behind him on all fours, and the others appeared from the dark, slinking along the perimeter of the firelight.
In a dim, numb part of my mind I wondered why the horse hadn’t screamed in terror, like any self-respecting horse would, and then I heard the wet sounds of tearing meat and understood.
Well, then. I was to die, I supposed, sometime in the next few minutes. Moving like a sleepwalker, completely cut off from my emotions, I picked up the journal, which Miro had dropped dangerously close to the fire. I brushed the dirt from its crimson leather binding, cradling it to my chest like a baby. All of my last words were in here; if Bane ever found my body, if the journal survived, I hoped he’d know from what he read that I had loved him with everything I had.
I stared up at the warg’s white pinprick pupils, so incongruously calm, and waited for it to descend in a maelstrom of tooth and claw.
“Well, then, Miro Kyril, what have you brought me?”
The voice that flowed out of the night was deep, masculine, with the rolling melodical burr of a northern Forian.
Miro rushed to his feet, still panting and pale, eyes frantically searching the crawling pack of wargs. He spun, looking for the speaker, until the wargs parted and he stepped through.
My first sight of Thurn Hakkon, and I knew him instantly. He would have been a handsome man in another time and place, tall and well-muscled, his deep auburn hair spilling over his back in braids, with a neatly-trimmed beard. But his chiseled features were sharp, brown eyes set in a predator’s gaze. His mouth was a cruel slash.
Hakkon stopped at the edge of the firelight, hands spread. “Well?”
Miro pointed at me, finger trembling. “Sir. I brought Cirrien lai Darran, Lady of the Rift.”
Hakkon turned that gaze on me, as though he hadn’t noticed me at all. Not an iota changed in his expression, but his eyes went glacially cold. “The Lady of the Rift,” he repeated in that musical voice.
“Yes.” Miro swallowed, and bowed nervously. At any other time I would have been gleeful to see him terrified, cringing like a worm, but now… all I could do was sit there, tethered to the tree, clutching my journal like a shield. “She’s a lai, sir. Due to inherit a vast—”
“Kyril.” Hakkon touched two fingertips to the bridge of his nose, as though a sudden headache had afflicted him. “Kyril, Kyril, Kyril.”
Miro went silent, his hands fisted at his sides and trembling. With each repetition of his name, Hakkon shook his head in disappointment, and Miro shrank further into himself.
“I asked you to bring me something of value, Kyril.” Hakkon gave him a quizzical smile. “I asked for maps . I asked for the number of his legions. I asked for their locations. I asked for gold , I asked for weapons. ”
His voice steadily grew louder, a vein throbbing in his temple.
“I asked for anything of value, but I did not ask for his goddamned wife! ”
Miro was struck silent as the grave, staring at Hakkon like he was watching his own death approaching.
The man curled his lip, revealing teeth far sharper than those of any human being. “What worth do you have to me now? You didn’t see the point, Kyril. I needed footholds in the Rift, not a sacrifice. The girl was already meant to die.”
“He loves her!” Miro blurted, pointing back at me with a shaking hand. With his gaze fixed on Hakkon, it was shockingly accurate, his finger aimed right at my heart. “He loves her, he won’t just let her die, he’ll come for her. You can lure him in, kill him on your ground, and use her estates as your foothold. The lai Darrans are already dead. It’s all hers now. There’s plenty of room for a pack.”
My palms and back had gone clammy, a tendril of terror piercing the numbing fog of accepting my own death.
What was worse than dying on a warg’s teeth?
Watching Bane be torn apart by a pack of them.
I shook my head, wordlessly denying Miro’s claim, but Hakkon had looked at me again with a new speculation in his eyes.
“Does this boy speak the truth, wife of Bane? Will he come for you?”
I shook my head again. Inwardly I was praising Miro’s plan to forge my writing, to tell Bane never to come for me. I hoped he listened. I hoped he threw the letter in the fire, cursed my name, and never gave me another thought, if it kept him out of Foria, away from these circling things that called themselves wolves.
“She’s mute.” Miro glanced at me sidelong, venom in his gaze. “She can’t speak. But I assure you, if Bane knows she’s here, he’ll come for her. The proof is there, in the book she’s holding.”
I clutched it tighter as Hakkon pushed Miro aside with ease, coming to stand before me. The Forian commander knelt, bracing his arms on his knees and letting his hands dangle between them.
I didn’t want to meet his eyes; I kept my gaze lowered, picking out all the small details that turned Hakkon from a monstrously mythic figure into what he was: simply a twisted man. His knuckles were heavily scarred, the tiny red hairs dusting the back of his hands and arms catching the light like embers.
“Let’s have it then, lass.” He held out one of those scarred hands, his voice soft and kind. If I didn’t know what he was, if I hadn’t seen the cruel lines of his face, I could hear that voice and truly believe it was the voice of a good man. “I’ll take a look for myself.”
I leaned back, ready to kick him away, but there was the slight crunch of paws on grass behind me, and hot, fetid breath washed across the back of my neck.
Goosebumps rose on every inch of my skin, which crawled from head to toe. I didn’t have to see to know what was behind me, a gullet lined with teeth just inches from my neck.
I swallowed, tears of fury and terror building in my eyes, and Hakkon easily reached out and plucked the book from my hand.
He flipped it open, frowning as he carelessly flicked by the pages, and then he stopped. “Ahhh, there it is. I recognize the hand of my old enemy.”
Deep in the calm, sane part of my mind, where there was no warg breathing down my neck, I noted that he moved his lips, slowly sounding out the words; he was not a native speaker of Nord. It took what felt like an eternity as he parsed through the poem Bane had written, and finally his gaze moved up over the edge of the journal to my face.
“I wouldn’t call it proof,” he mused, slowly closing the journal in one hand and waving off the warg. “But never have my spies brought back word of Bane with such romantic notions. I suppose that whatever love he is capable of, he has given to you, little redling.”
To my surprise, he gave the journal back to me. I hugged it close, not realizing how afraid I’d been that he’d simply throw it in the fire when he was done.
Hakkon slowly rose with a fluid grace, silhouetted against the flames like a titan.
“I suppose a lovesick poem has saved your life, Kyril,” he said with a chuckle. “Never let it be said that I can’t admit when I am wrong. You’ve brought me something of very, very great value.”
Miro exhaled slowly, his face taking on a greenish tint as he understood how close he had come to joining his poor horse.
“Bring the girl.” Hakkon nodded to me. “And tell me about these estates of hers.”