Prelude The Past #3
Other dustwitches ran toward Kai, not realizing the cantrip had failed.
He flung another intention that would scramble the wits of anyone who got within twenty paces of it for the rest of the day.
They scattered in confusion, some falling to the ground.
Dust rose in walls; it interfered more with the dustwitches still trying to attack than it did Kai.
Someone slapped a cantrip on his shoulder and he plucked it out and turned it back on her before it could do more than singe his skin.
Angry shouts and pain-filled cries told him somewhere across the camp, Ziede and Tahren had arrived.
He glanced up and saw Ziede in the air, the two child-sized mortals tucked under her arms. More dustwitches screamed; probably they had run into Tahren and her sword as she covered the other mortals’ escape.
The dustwitches running afoul of the confusion-intention started to attack each other. Kai reached the prison tent and the two still trying to guard it sensibly fled. Kai pulled the flap open and stepped inside.
He saw immediately that Ziede’s guess had been right.
It was almost bare, except for a bucket and a water jug.
Two people huddled on a thin pallet, their hands bound.
They were dressed as Arike women, in long tunics over pants, their clothes torn and dirty.
One had tightly curled dark hair wrapped in a scarf and the other’s was a lighter brown hanging in lank waves.
They had the brown skin and slightly rounded features that could be from anywhere to the west, borderlands to the coast. They looked up at him, wide-eyed and shocked.
One breathed a word Kai didn’t understand.
He knelt, put a hand on each set of ropes binding their hands, to leach out the little life left in the fibers so the bonds rotted and fell away.
It was a good thing they hadn’t been bound with chains; iron should be just as much a part of the cycle of decay and rot as plant matter but somehow all metals resisted this interpretation, no matter how logical it was.
In Imperial, Kai said, “I’m Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth, I was once Kai-Enna of the Kentdessa Saredi.
” He saw recognition spark at the word Saredi.
“Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik invites you to his camp. I’ll still take you out of here if you don’t want to accept that invitation, but it’s better for now if you come with us. ”
A dustwitch burst into the tent behind him and Kai was already up and turning. He caught her arm before she could finish the cantrip, drained enough of her life to teach her a lesson, and tossed her away.
As he turned back, one prisoner staggered to her feet, clearly weakened and sick. She tried to speak and bent over in a racking cough instead. The other stood to steady her, then shook her head hard and said in halting Imperial, “Can’t … they capture, they kill—”
Kai signed in Witchspeak, My friends are freeing your companions. Ziede Daiyahah of the Khalin Islands already has the two little ones out.
The two exchanged a look of wild hope. The coughing one croaked out, “We’ll go. I’m Raihar, she’s Cimeri.”
“Call me Kai.” The quick decision was a relief, because they didn’t really have time to discuss it anymore. “Stay close, stay behind me.” He stepped to the tent doorway and looked out.
An angry storm of dust raged, the air choking and coarse, as the dustwitches tried to overwhelm Ziede and Tahren, and Ziede blasted them back with her wind-devils.
Up by the trees where the mortals had been held, Kai caught the flash of Tahren’s sword.
He spotted Ziede carrying another mortal away, hopefully the last one.
He knew there was a chance that the dustwitches down here had had time to regroup and plan, that the one who had burst in was the brave stupid one and the others lay out here in wait.
But they had to go now. Kai stepped out.
A dust cloud swirled and three dustwitches burst out at him.
The pinprick pain of their cantrips crawled across his face and he reached for his last intention.
The one that in his heart of hearts he didn’t want to have to use on these misguided fools, the one that would do the most damage.
Then Cimeri reached past him, extended her hand, and the ground cracked open.
The rock split under the dustwitches’ feet, folding down into a fissure more than waist deep.
Two fell in and the third caught her foot and fell flat on her face at Kai’s feet.
“Should she close it?” Raihar yelled. “Should she crush them like bugs?”
“Stop!” someone called out in Arike.
Kai had no intention of stopping. He circled around the fissure, Cimeri matching his pace and Raihar behind him, holding on to a fold of his coat.
The dust storm fell away in waves as they walked, dustwitches scrambling out of their path. Kai had to swing out to avoid the spread of the confusion-intention; it made their route longer but at least kept anyone from coming at them from that direction.
Nightjar appeared out of a drift of dust to the left. Cimeri flexed her hand and sent a spiderweb of cracks through the ground. Nightjar leapt back and spat, “You go with that, Raihar? You can see he’s an expositor in a demon’s skin.”
“I ate an expositor.” Kai kept walking. “So it’s the other way around.”
“Go drown in shit, Nightjar,” Raihar responded.
They made it past the confusion-intention and to the top of the path that led to the spring. A dustwitch waited there, tall and straight, her veil pulled back to show a face with light-brown skin gently lined at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
Cimeri groaned under her breath. Raihar whispered, “That’s the Doyen, their leader. Careful.”
Kai told the Doyen, “Don’t make me go through you.”
“I’ll stand aside, Demon. But first make that stop.” She lifted a hand toward the scatter of dustwitches trapped in the area of confusion. Most were sprawled on the ground, flailing as they tried to stand. “And we will talk, you and I.”
Her voice was soothing and convincing, her gray eyes kind, and something deep in Kai’s chest pulled toward her.
Not a cantrip, not a spirit, but however she did it, it sounded too much like an order to charm Kai’s temper.
He said, “We offered you a chance to talk, to make an alliance. You sent Nightjar to trap me instead. Now get out of my way.”
Alert at his side, Cimeri watched the tents and dust clouds to the left, wary for anyone trying to flank them.
Raihar, one hand still gripping Kai’s coat, had turned all the way around so they were back to back, watching for anyone creeping up behind.
This was how borderlanders and Witches had fought the legionaries, in tight units that relied on each other, often with a Saredi demon along.
These two had fallen into it like they had done it before and it swayed Kai’s heart more readily than the Doyen’s attempts at manipulation.
“I sent her to free you from the mortals.” The Doyen stepped sideways, slowly, gracefully.
Something in her voice still lured him, the way her body moved soothed fear.
It just made Kai itch to kill her but it must affect the dustwitches differently.
In gentle reproof she said, “Nightjar was supposed to ask you to join us.”
Kai wondered how Nightjar liked being painted as the one who caused all the trouble, but he was too cautious of the Doyen to even flick a glance in her direction.
He paced forward as the Doyen moved away, the two Witches moving with him.
“I won’t be a Hierarchs’ slave, you think I’ll be yours?
Who would you hold hostage against my good behavior? ”
“A misunderstanding.” The Doyen shook her head. “Not a slave, not a beast of burden for the mortals. You could fight for us.”
“Fight who? You’re hiding from the legionaries when you should be killing them.
” Cimeri squeezed his arm in warning and Kai realized he had stopped without meaning to, letting himself be drawn into an argument.
The fight on the other side of the camp was over, more dustwitches were coming this way.
Whatever power the Doyen had, it was real.
He took another step and it was as if his feet were stuck in mud.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to take another step, and another.
“Prove to Nightjar you are no expositor, then we can talk,” the Doyen urged him.
Kai was mildly horrified that it sounded like a good idea, even though he knew it wasn’t. He pushed forward toward the path downslope and growled, “I can prove I’m a demon. You pick out which of your people you like least.”
Air whipped up, cold and sharp. Ziede landed a few paces away.
She was as light as a drifting feather, as menacing as a roll of thunder.
Dust blasted away from her, whipping their clothes and hair, laying the campsite bare.
Kai took a sharp breath; he hadn’t realized how much dust had collected on him until it was gone.
It made it easier to think. The air went abruptly still. Ziede said, “Tell me I’m an expositor.”
The sharp words cut through the Doyen’s haze of benign omniscience.
The other dustwitches had fallen silent.
Kai hadn’t realized they had been murmuring, like wind stirring leaves, until that moment.
It sent a chill through his skin. He took the last few steps, drawing the two Witches up behind Ziede.
The Doyen said, “I will not apologize for caution.” Her gaze went to Kai again. “He uses power like an expositor.”
That was a little stab to the gut. But Ziede seemed to know better than to be drawn into an argument. She said, “Think twice before you speak to imply I’m a liar.”
The Doyen didn’t betray any annoyance or impatience. “We are not here to make enemies.”
“A little late for that,” Kai said.
Raihar whispered, “Kaiisteron said you freed our family?”
Ziede answered, “Yes, they’re safe with our friends.”
“She lies.” Nightjar laughed. “They have an Immortal Marshall with them. They are Hierarch slaves.”
“We offered you an alliance,” Ziede said, ignoring Nightjar as if she didn’t exist. “Before we knew you treated your own people like prisoners, holding their families hostage. Our mortal allies will not treat with thieves who are little better than the Hierarchs.” She added in Saredi, “I can only take two of you and they’ll be on us as soon as I move. Will you use the death intention?”
Kai still didn’t want to, despite everything. There were Witches like Hawkmoth here, barely more than deluded children. He replied in the same language. “I won’t. Take them, I’ll fight my way out.”
Raihar said in Saredi, with possibly the worst accent Kai had ever heard, “Cimeri get us out. Kai fly ahead.”
Cimeri nudged Kai’s arm and nodded.
Kai said, “Ziede, take Raihar. Cimeri, let’s go.”
Ziede wrapped an arm around Raihar’s waist and shot into the air. The dustwitches surged forward but the ground shifted with an alarming rumble and spikes of bedrock broke upward in showers of dust. Cimeri grabbed Kai’s wrist and they ran.
Two dustwitches came at them as they reached the trees just below the camp, and both found out why you don’t try to grab a demon.
Kai paused only to rot away the ropes holding the riding animals while Cimeri ran at them waving her arms. As the creatures lowed and bolted in panic, they followed into the scrubland.