The Sah'niir Page 16

  "N-no, no--I mean, yes, I am. I suppose so." He chuckled disparagingly before sighing in defeat, shaking his head at his own foolishness. But just as he finally found the courage to set his parchments down and for once try to have a normal conversation with her, to ask her the questions he'd suppressed first out of respect for her culture, then out of consideration for her loss, and now out of nothing but embarrassment, he was interrupted by a brusque voice from the trees.

  The two looked up at the girl's name to see Petra emerge from the forest, her sharp gaze fixed entirely upon Eyila. But though her eyes didn't once graze Anthis, contempt encircled her like a tornado and dragged only him inside. "Would you help me fill the waterskins?"

  Politely, Eyila smiled and nodded. But she was not blind, and as she rose and Petra turned away to collect them, Eyila flashed him a smile that stopped his heart once again and let in another foolish flutter of butterflies.

  He watched her leave, three of the six waterskins in her arms, a number the duelist could easily have managed by herself, and sighed so heavily that his breath stoked the flames.

  Then his eyes slipped resentfully onto Rathen, who sat stroking Aria's hair and staring far beyond the edges of the nameless forest. "Promise, huh?" He mumbled to himself. Another weary sigh slipped out. He couldn't fault the observation, as much as he tried, but neither could he help the bitterness.

  Anthis turned back to his work before jealousy's hook could dig in too deep.

  But as he squeaked in surprise and further crumpled his parchments, he found himself this time staring into the even sharper, frightfully keen emerald eyes of Kienza.

  "I liked the beard too."

  He grumbled. "You were listening?"

  "Should I not have been?" The sylvan sorceress peered down at the parchments while he mumbled in abashed irritation, scrutinising the words with untold proficiency. Then her attention slipped down to the notebook that lay open at his feet. "How are you progressing, my dear historian?"

  "I don't know..."

  "A little bit distracted?"

  "What?"

  "Your voice rose too high, it's a dead giveaway."

  He shook his head at her frustratingly knowing smile and once again attempted to find some distraction in his work. "Honestly, I don't have a clue what you're talking about."

  "All right, all right, I'll play along." She propped her chin upon her hand and began quite openly to watch him. He shifted under her gaze, but she didn't relent. "So how does it feel?"

  "What?"

  "Being right. Recovering the Zi'veyn - though you were surely the only one in your field who could have done it."

  It was subtle, but she didn't miss the curl of his lip. "You mean Rathen recovered it."

  "Uh, no," she frowned, "I mean you. You think he would have gotten anywhere without your guidance? The Zi'veyn was your suggestion, they were your leads, your research - you found it. It may not have been where you thought it would be, but would you have tried to sail the Roquna at all if not for everything that led you to insist on Kasire?"

  "But if not for Rathen, we would never have gotten to Khryu'vahz at all. Or found the elves."

  "In both cases, he only opened the door." Her eyes narrowed. "And don't think that once you get it working you'll have outlived your usefulness. Garon may have the map, but you have the locations. Without your expertise, they'll be working with gossip, and they'll never manage to quiet the magic like that. There are far more arcanised ruins in the wilds than any of them realise. You know this well enough."

  "I suppose..."

  "You will see this through with him."

  Finally, he put down the scrolls and turned towards her with guarded interest. "Why are you saying this?"

  "Because," she replied quite easily, "I can see your jealousy in him, and I believe there is no reason for it. He isn't one to be envied by you. Elven blood or not. You've seen what it's done to him, and you can't imagine the pressure he endured in the Order from the elders who sensed something different within him. Don't envy him that."

  "What's he told you?"

  She raised a languid hand. "Absolutely nothing, Mister Karth--sorry, Anthis. But to my eyes, you are simply an open book. And you shouldn't let yourself be intimidated by Petra, either."

  "I'm not intimid--"

  "Open book. Now, I need you to do something for me."

  His blonde eyebrows rose. "Me?"

  "You. As I said, you will see this matter through together. And so I want you to watch him. Look for anything...different."

  "Different?"

  "Any changes. Magic, bearing, behaviour, enthusiasm - nothing is too small."

  A dubious frown marred his young face. "Why? What are you concerned about?" His misgivings grew when she glanced towards Rathen and dropped her voice a shade lower.

  "The elves did something to him, didn't they? So he could control his transformations - that's how he was able to subdue it in Khryu'vahz, wasn't it?"

  "He did, though it wasn't a quick adjustment...why? What's worrying you?"

  "Having met them for yourself, do you trust the elves?"

  'No.' But he didn't answer right away. He gathered his thoughts, recalled all the details he could from that incredible encounter upon the mist-shrouded island, and considered them from every angle. Because it seemed that his answer mattered.

  But he came to the same conclusion. "No, I don't."

  "Though this Eizariin fellow is an exception."

  "He's unlike the rest."

  "I'll take your word for it. But he was not a part of...whatever it was they did to Rathen, was he?"

  "No..."

  "Which, by the simplest process of elimination in history, means that no one we deem trustworthy was present while it was happening."

  "Kienza, what did they do to him? Why are you concerned? What do you know?"

  "Nothing, at this point. But he feels different to me. His magic."

  Anthis's alarm tamed at a thought. "The cuff, that band around his arm - it's a do'osos; the elves used to put them on their children. He said his mother gave it to him when he was young...to aid his human constitution, they said, but the spell inside was degrading, so they repaired it - perhaps it's just doing a better job keeping his magic in check."

  She pursed her lips. "Perhaps..."

  Her thoughtfulness subdued him, and he found himself able to offer a smile of reassurance. "I will watch him, of course."

  She smiled back, her veiled ponderings abandoned, and patted him on the head. "I knew you would. Now, stop getting distracted and get back to work. There is a lot riding on you."

  "You distracted me."

  "You could have told me to go away. I wouldn't have listened, but you could have tried." She smiled fondly, an affection that always roused the same in return, and rose to her feet. But though she turned to rejoin Rathen, who now slumbered against the tree trunk, exhausted by the grief she'd unleashed, she paused.

  "I have great confidence in you, Anthis Karth. Do not let me down."

  Her words, though barely above a whisper, rung in his ears like a gong.

  Chapter 11

  By Rathen's estimate, it must have been only a little past six when his eyelids flickered open. The morning sun, though on its way up, hadn't yet found its way through the rolling slopes or thick, blooming canopy. And so the camp, set in a depression between the broad trunks of chestnuts, was still blanketed in blue-tinged shadow and the sparse clusters of grass carpeted in dew.

  But the first thing to rattle his abstract awareness was not the damp, a chill, or the smell of the earth, but a heavy numbness in his arm. He grumbled, shifting to find some feeling, but quickly discovered not a root at fault, but the small, huddled shape of Aria lying right up alongside him, clinging to his arm with a grip so powerful that not even sleep seemed able to loosen it.

  With one look at her peaceful little face, his bloodless limb was forgotten. He smiled softly, brushing the curls from her cheek, and a sigh dri
fted free at the release of the immense weight that had haunted him like a spectre for well over a month.

  But another weight had thundered down in its place, a keening that stung his eyes, a loss he was surprised to feel any strike from at all. A weight he had faced, at Kienza's behest, and forced now into the deepest recesses of his mind.

  With effort, he focused acutely on the rise and fall of her chest as she slept, the breath that warmed his arm - on that which was his sole reason. For whom his neglectful father had given his life.

  But when a childish giggle bubbled through the air, one that had not come from Aria, he remembered at last what had roused him in the first place.

  He sat bolt upright, sleep forgotten and immediately alert, and at the sound of a harsh, vulgar voice and an irritated snort, he discovered Eyila crouching behind a thick tree trunk eight paces away. But the girl couldn't have made those sounds, and after pulling himself out of Aria's iron grip, blustered to his feet and up beside her to find himself staring into the faces of five horses of various shades, tusks and patterns being clambered over by five children.

  Five very pale, very scraggly, very large-eyed children.

  Rathen's shoulders dropped as he groaned. "Oh good..."

  "What are they?" Eyila whispered, peering around the edge of the tree at the child hanging upside down beneath a mottled grey, his bare feet in the stirrups, while another lounged on the neck of the dun, and another poked at the sharp points of the bay's perfectly straight tusks drawn forwards in threat. And though he couldn't see Eyila's eyes, he certainly heard her fascination, even if it was restrained by some small degree of caution.

  He frowned for a moment in bafflement at her question, but quickly recalled the creatures' own intrigue at their last encounter at the edge of the Ivaean desert. "Of course...there are none in the desert... They're ditchlings--"

  "Arkhamas!"

  "For the love of--" He stepped out from behind the tree at the Arkhamas' loud and collective protest to stand over them with a shadow of disapproval, as though they truly were little more than mischievous children. "What are you doing here?"

  "Checking in," the one poking at the tusks replied offhandedly, his keen stare unmoving from the ivory projections.

  "'Checking in'?"

  The boy that had been braiding the tan's mane slipped easily from its saddle and hopped towards him on light, calloused feet. He scrutinised the three, as Garon had appeared at Rathen's side, with oversized silver-green eyes - eyes that didn't miss a thing.

  He puffed and blew a knot of lichen-speckled hair from his face before jabbing a stout finger past them in Aria's direction. "Why'd you leave her with some old man to go on yer adventures?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I told Pip," Aria's sleepy but urgent voice rose as she clambered to her feet to join them, woken by her father's escape, "it was to keep me safe!"

  "Pip?" Rathen's eyebrows rose higher as the ditchling stepped forwards and embraced her. He managed to restrain the impulse to snatch her away from him.

  She was released soon enough, and the boy offered her a big, toothy grin. "Glad you're okay. We searched that village but we couldn't find no trace of you. But we did find--" He stopped suddenly, and all five looked towards Rathen in a very peculiar way. Until the lichen-haired imp glared at him in suspicion. "And we ain't seen sight nor sound nor smell of you buggers since just afore you booted her off. Where'd you go, huh? You better not 'ave been fixing up other places, 'cause you promised--"

  "We've not fixed anything," Anthis assured them, suddenly among the group, "we haven't...gotten quite that far yet."

  "Then just where have you been?"

  "We--"

  "We've been working on it," Rathen interrupted, agitated by the wild children's accusations so early in the morning, and further by the headache that came with such confusion. "And when we get somewhere, I have no doubt at all that you'll know about it. So don't worry your muddy little heads about it and leave us be."

  The boy grunted. He didn't look around as his comrade who'd been hanging beneath the irritated grey dropped heavily upon his head. Instead, he wagged his finger across Garon, Eyila and Petra, who had also joined them without announcement, and only then did Rathen notice that Kienza was, once again, nowhere at all to be found. "You three 'ave been pottering about and doin' nothing at all of use for weeks. We seen you. But--oh, yeah, first of all, why's there a statue with you? And why and how's she movin'? And can they all do that?"

  Eyila continued to stare, still half-hidden behind the tree at Rathen's side, with a distinctly familiar and dangerous curiosity in her eyes. Rathen glanced instinctively towards Anthis just in time to see his own gaze flick away. He frowned. For the briefest moment, he was sure that there was some trace of spite in his studious green eyes, but it was so fleeting and so unmerited that he decided that he'd surely imagined it.

  "She's not a statue," he replied, brushing it off, "this is Eyila. She's from a wind tribe in the desert--"

  "She's..." With more caution than any would have thought possible from such bold and impulsive creatures, the ditchling stepped forwards, raised a clay-painted hand and reached out to poke her bare arm. She didn't flinch or shrink away; his own wariness seemed to soothe her. Eyila stepped out from behind the thick old trunk and knelt with very open interest. The ditchling pursed his lips, and the others behind him, still entertaining themselves with the stoic beasts, glanced up with the same conclusion. "...'Intriguing' is the word, I reckon."

  Then his great eyes snapped back onto Rathen and he straightened with a chillingly serious demeanour. The others, too, forgot their frivolity and hurried forwards to join him. "The forests are broked," he declared with more than a hint of accusation. "We're losing our homes - some have been swallowed by mouths we didn't know the ground had! And it ain't just the Lady doing it out of anger! She's been up and moving about like she's following a wasp, and her sisters are no better. Mostly we found 'em again, but not everyone's been so lucky. Some have fallen asleep forever without being nowhere near her!"

  "But I thought the Lady looked after your dreams when you went to sleep," said Aria, timidly. "What will happen to them without her?" Beyond brief, grievous looks, the ditchlings didn't respond. Her little brow knitted in regret.

  "Where?"

  They each looked to Garon and puckered their lips in thought, then peered for a distracted moment at the white hammer insignia on the hilt of his sword before answering. "Ziili and Big Swing--oh, yeah, you call it 'Ellen's Drop', don'tcha? Ziili and Ellen's Drop. Oh and the High Dells, but that's harpy terr'try and no busyness of ours - fishally speaking."

  "How is it affecting them?"

  "Pff, who cares?" A girl with a delicately constructed crown of eggshells scoffed, and the others rolled their eyes with her. "Some've buggered off, which is good for us, but some've tried to drive us out of our setts so they can have the trees. It's made 'em even angrier, that's how it's affecting 'em. Good enough?"

  "So your situation--"

  "Still as good as having hungry ants in yer jimmies."

  "...And that's--"

  "Bad, yep."

  "Harpies?" Eyila stepped forwards, frowning in concern, and five pairs of silver-green eyes immediately crashed onto her at the sound of her musical voice. "Ayuia? What is your business with them?"

  The boy cocked his head. "Ayweeuh? Ayweeuh."

  "Ayweeeeeeuhhhh." The other voices chimed in.

  The boy grinned. "That's a fun noise. And the harpies think we've got summit to do with all the hocus pocus going on, or that the Lady does, that she's ruining their nests by making other places more pretty, but that's a load of horse dung 'cause why would she do that unless she was already mad?! We don't really know what's got in their heads, but they been swooping in and trying to drive us off like a wren on an ant. First it was only if their trees got broke or all weird and our sett was too close to their nests, so they figured it was the Lady or whatever, so they tried to shoo us off thi
nkin' the Lady would follow us, but then it excallated when we showed 'em where to stick it."

  "We ain't gonna leave the Lady on their say so!" A leaf-haired boy declared with the utmost conviction. "Stupid turkeys!"

  "Yeah yeah! But 'cause of that, now they attack us any time a feather falls out. We're just defending ourselfs."

  "And that, mind you, is as well as hooman attacks," the lichen-speckled boy continued with even plainer accusation. "Your folks are still burning our homes and killing us. We ain't even stolen that much lately, we been good, keeping our distance. But it looks like it ain't good enough."

  "These people--"

  "Oooh," the boy shook his head and leaned in closer. "Sneaky buggers they are. They miss all our traps, like they saw us layin' 'em, and follow us without being seen. It's weird. Scary. We seen people like them around a lot, but they never were no trouble to us. Now they're searching for us, though, and it ain't no accident what they're doing neither. But we didn't do nothing to provoke 'em all of a sudden. And they ain't working with the harpies-ayweeuh either, 'cause they're burning their nests and plucking their bums just the same."

  Rathen passed Garon a meaningful look; the inquisitor's jaw tightened.

  The ditchlings' eyes narrowed. "You know who it is, then. Can you stop 'em?"

  "No," Rathen replied assuredly, "we can't. We can't even get them off our own tail."

  "So it is the same people. We thought so. 'Course they're easier to mess with when it's you they're after. I s'pose 'cause they ain't looking for us."

  Mischievous grins suddenly swept across their faces. "We drew footsteps in the mud and scuffed over yours and led 'em to all our poop ditches!"

  Aria giggled, and even Rathen had to stifle a smile. Garon, however, was as ever unamused. "How did they not see your footprints?"

  They blinked back at him. "We hung from the trees. Duh."

  "Of course... Well, we're grateful for the help."