Chapter 7 #4
“I’ll try,” she said, praying that the stone was merely a shortcut to Luda and not a door locked shut to keep out a malice that waited with slavering anticipation on the other side for some careless idiot to set it free.
“Try quickly,” Bron said. “Cimejen and company will be here soon.”
She stepped back from the menhir so she could better see the symbols carved at the top.
As with all the translations she’d read before, she turned to one side and eyed the stone askance.
A dull ache started at the back of her skull as the runes reshaped themselves in her vision, becoming characters and glyphs, words she’d learned to read in the cold, spartan surroundings of a village schoolroom.
She silently read the passage revealed, trying to parse out if the writing direction was top to bottom, left to right, or the opposites of both.
“How odd,” she murmured.
Bron shifted impatiently beside her. “What’s odd?”
The passage was a piece of verse, comprised of nine lines, each smaller than the one above it and read from top to bottom.
One of the lines drew her near for a better look.
A symbol within it had been altered. Faint remnants of the original mark beneath it remained but was mostly illegible.
This, she thought had to be the modified symbol that changed the function of the gate and made it a trap instead of a conduit for long-ago armies.
Wish the place and wish the name my love
As I await your coming here
And will greet you at the gate
With joy and hope in heart
For you have searched far
Always for me
Your dear one
Who waits
Long
“Can you translate it, Disa?” Bron’s voice had taken on a more desperate note as he repeated the question.
Dear one.
Disaris inhaled, almost lightheaded with excitement. If she was right, the key to opening this gate was more than just translating. She held out her hand to Bron. “Hold on to me,” she said. “So we go through the gate together.” His warm fingers closed around hers and squeezed.
If only she could translate faster, but this was the language of an ancient people not human and mostly hidden from the world of men. She didn’t want to get it wrong by reading too quickly and mispronouncing something. The gods only knew what might happen to her and Bron if she did.
The thunder of hoofbeats sounded behind her as she read the verse out loud, mindful of her words and cadence, even the tilt of her head as she read from the corner of her eye.
Bron’s hand gripped hers so hard her fingers went numb.
A blast of wind, smelling of flowers, spun about her and Bron, whipping her hair across her face to block her view of the stone.
She shoved the strands out of the way with a frustrated growl.
Behind her the curses of their pursuers and the whinny of frightened horses grew ever louder.
She didn’t turn to look or halt her recitation. When she reached the end, she closed her eyes, pictured her sister’s face in her mind and said her name with the fervor of a supplicant before a deity. “Luda.”
“Jin Hazarin!” Cimejen’s voice boomed behind them. “Stop!”
Disaris opened her eyes as the carved symbols blazed to life, turning the menhir into a tower of violet light. She turned her face away, blinded by the brightness.
Bron gathered her into his arms. “You did it, Disa. Now hold tight.” He stepped across the threshold, chased by the whine of fired arrows and accompanied by the chorus of chanting voices lifted in either welcome or warning.
Disaris fell in love with Bron jin Hazarin twice in her life, the first time when she was six years old and met the shy child she called “moon boy.” That love had been an innocent one, an affection between playmates that built a foundation of devotion and steadfast friendship that lasted for more than two decades.
The second time she fell in love with him, she was fifteen—almost sixteen—and thoroughly confused by the burgeoning feelings of longing when he wasn’t by her side, jealousy when he drew the attention of other girls, and despair when the Daesin army stole him from her to turn him into a battle mage.
Burnpool garrison was a day’s journey from Panrin, but it may as well have been as far away as the moon in her opinion.
Since his too-brief visit in spring, she’d schemed of a million ways to see him again, even broaching her father with the outlandish suggestion of letting her ride to Burnpool.
Reylan, normally the more lenient of her two parents, had taken his pipe out of his mouth and stared at her as if she’d suddenly grown another head.
“I would have to be dead and buried half a league under the village square before I allowed you to visit anyone at a fortress full of soldiers.” He pointed the pipe at her as a thundercloud rolled across his brow.
“Put that thought out of your mind, Disa, and don’t ask me again.
” He scowled at his wife. “Did she ask you about this?”
Gheza had sputtered in disbelief. “Do you really think she’d ask me such a thing? I’m fine with tossing her in her room and nailing her door shut for even having such an idea.”
Disaris had slinked off her bedroom to pout, thoughts still whirling with ideas for how to see Bron. His last visit was too short, the kiss they shared too wonderful to forget.
Of all the people in the world she least expected to help her, Ceybold jin Pasith had found a way.
For a price. Bron had returned to Panrin in the hard depths of winter, when the days were short and cold seeped into every crevice, no matter how hot the hearth fire or how many layers of clothes one wore.
She had turned sixteen a week prior to his arrival and celebrated with her family the turn of her birth year by eating milk pudding topped with a drizzle of honey.
Tired and cold from working in the tannery, she had almost fallen asleep in her dessert and went to bed, wishing that Bron had been there to celebrate with her.
He’d turned eighteen three months before and sent a short note home to his mother that he was fine and not to worry for him.
Hazarin had shared the message with Disaris, her mouth downturned.
There was something strange about the note, a feeling riding below the neatly written words that did the exact opposite of what he wanted: made them worry.
So when he appeared unexpectedly in front of her as she walked home, she thought the cold was making her see visions. The lingering stench of the tannery prevented her from throwing herself in his arms, but she danced around him and chattered nonstop as he accompanied her home.
She bombarded him with question about his days at the garrison, his training there, what spells he’d learned, what food he’d eaten, had he seen his mother yet. When she paused to take a breath, he held up a hand to forestall the next battery of questions.
“I’ll answer one of your questions now and the others later. No, I haven’t seen my amman yet. I will after I walk you home.” His nose wrinkled. “You can bathe and change while I visit with her, and then I’ll return to your house.”
On the surface, he was still the perceptive, enigmatic Bron she’d always known.
Slow to warm to others but devoted to them when he did.
His demeanor, however, had changed. Her mother had warned that might happen once he adjusted to military life, but Disaris’s gut told her the subtle shift in Bron’s personality didn’t come from that particular well.
While she kept her distance from him, not wanting to knock him flat with the aromas wafting off her, she still stretched out a hand to him. “Are you all right, Bron?”
For the tiniest splinter of a moment, his smile faltered, giving way to an expression so bleak, it brought tears to her eyes. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared, and the easy smile was back in place.
“I’m fine,” he said, and waved her along. “It’s cold enough to freeze the bollocks off a rooster. No reason to stand here. I’ll race you home.”
He easily beat her to the front gate and stood there panting, his breath fogging around him in the cold air.
“Not fair,” Disa protested between gasps. “Your legs are a lot longer than mine, and you’ve been training.” She wiped at her nose, which had started to drip.
Bron’s grin was unapologetic. “But I bet you’re a lot warmer now, yes?”
That was true. She no longer quaked beneath her many layers of wool. She did, however, still reek. “Go see your amman,” she said. “When I’m done here, I’ll come to your house. I was supposed to go there tomorrow anyway and give her the lesson plan I completed.”
“Ah, that’s right. She’s your teacher now.” He crossed his arms, regarding her with a puzzled look. I heard ten different stories about your brawl with the schoolmaster.” His eyes rounded. “Did you really beat him with a cudgel?”
“No, I did not,” she snapped. “You’d think those gossiping ninnies would at least get their facts straight.”
“What fun is there in that?” He whooped and dodged the handful of snow she scooped from the ground and threw at him.
“Take a bath,” he shouted as he darted down the road leading to his mother’s house. “And don’t dally. I won’t be in Panrin for long.”
It was the fastest bath Disaris had ever taken, and the fastest hair-washing as well.
Her teeth threatened to chatter right out of her mouth as she sluiced barely tepid water over her body and scrubbed her scalp.
She enlisted her mother’s help to braid her hair and secure it at the nape with the hair bodkin Bron had made for her.
“Keep still before I accidentally stab you with this lovely pin,” Gheza had admonished her. “Bron isn’t going to run off if you’re a few minutes late getting to his house.”