Markswoman (Asiana #1)(35)

She couldn’t understand it. Maybe they had decided that just two of them would not be a match against an armed Markswoman? Perhaps they had gone to fetch the rest of the pack.

But they hadn’t appeared that interested in her—more as if they simply wanted to see her, and be seen by her.

There was no time to puzzle it out, for every minute that passed brought Tamsyn closer to her heels. Kyra turned Akhtar around to try to find a way up to Yashmin-Gah.

It wasn’t long before she spied the rock-strewn path to the forest in the upper reaches of the hills. They climbed, Akhtar picking his way among the rocks, Kyra scanning the horizon. No sign of pursuit yet. No sign of the wyr-wolves either, and it was getting to be daylight. Good; Akhtar should be safe then, if she sent him back to the caves.

They entered the old spruce forest, dense with undergrowth and sweet with the scent of rhododendron. Kyra dismounted and patted the stallion’s head. “Go home, Akhtar. Nineth will take care of you.” The horse whinnied and nipped her shoulder.

“Go back, Akhtar.” Kyra put as much command as she could muster into her voice.

Akhtar snorted and trotted away, down the path they had come. Kyra felt bereft. The last link to the Order, and she was sending him away.

Now was not the time for sentimentality. Anyone seeing Akhtar returning riderless might assume she was dead or injured. It could throw Tamsyn off her trail, at least for a little while.

She went deeper into the forest. It was cool and dark. Birds chittered at her and she saw a monkkat, its whiskered black face splitting in a snarl before it leaped away. She moved through the undergrowth, pushing aside branches and vines from her face, letting instinct guide her.

She came upon it suddenly, as she had all those years ago, a little pool of water surrounded by rushes, the boughs of an old elm touching its surface. The water was dark and still, like an unseeing eye.

She parted the rushes and stood by the edge of the pool, scrutinizing the area. The door was close now, hidden somewhere a few feet from her. Her skin prickled with the certainty of it. She walked around the pool, summoning the vision that had brought her there.

The third time she circled the pool, she caught a glimpse of the door from the corner of her eye. It was beside the elm, beneath a mound of earth covered by a prickly bush. She stooped in front of the mound and pushed aside the spiky green plant, ignoring the scratches to her hands and arms. She scrabbled away at the earth with her fingers, feeling the hardness beneath her palms. And there it was—no more than two feet high—a dark rectangle embedded in the ground, unused for decades, perhaps centuries.

Kyra carefully held her katari to the slot on the diminutive door. As with every other Hub, the slot glowed blue and the door swung open, as she had hoped it would, revealing a low, dark tunnel inside. She smiled. Easy, it had been easy. With a sigh of relief, she bent her head and squeezed in, crawling into the tunnel.

Behind her the little door swung shut, engulfing her in darkness.

Kyra stopped smiling and her sense of triumph vanished, replaced by dread.

It wasn’t merely the darkness. It was the dreams, except that the dreams were real now; she was in them and there was no escape. The door had closed behind her and she was five years old, weeping because she was trapped and they were all dead. No, she was dead and they were trapped and what difference did it make whose face she saw; the door would be how everything ended.

Stop it. Stop it now. You’re okay. This is an old Hub no one’s used in a while, that’s all.

Kyra counted her breaths, trying to slow them down.

She went farther in. The tunnel became larger and she was able to stand up in the corridor without hunching. The glowing blue slots of Transport doors stretched away into the darkness. All was as it should be, so why was she having trouble breathing? Why was her heart thudding away fit to burst her rib cage?

She placed her katari on her palm and spoke a word of power to summon light—a simple word, and the only one that apprentices were taught. “Rishari,” she whispered, and the katari glowed, a beacon in the dark.

Still her dread did not go away. She had dreamed of this many times. A foretelling? No, it could not be. She couldn’t possibly be meant to die, not yet.

She took a step toward the first door and placed her palm upon it. Perhaps she would be able to sense what lay beyond.

The world twisted. Kyra blinked, blinded by the bright light of a midday sun.

The Transport corridor had disappeared. She stood at the edge of a narrow, crowded street. It was cold; people wore thick furs and woolens, and the sloping roofs dripped icicles. Tiny shops jostled for space with inns, shrines, and food counters. Open vats of soup steamed next to loaves of freshly baked bread. Men carrying palanquins shouted at passersby to make way for them. At one end of the street, an arched blue and white stone gateway glinted in the sunlight. The air was thick with smells: smoke, spices, open drains.

“Please can you help me?”

Kyra jerked around, almost falling over her robe. So intent had she been on the street before her that she had not noticed the child, a small figure huddled to her left, dressed in an oversized patchy gray coat that blended with the gray stone of the walls behind him.

“What—who are you?” she stammered.

The boy sidled up to her. His dark, intense eyes held her gaze. “I am Arvil. Do you have any food? We haven’t eaten in three days.”

“Three days!” Kyra was horrified. Now that he was standing next to her, she noticed how thin and hollow-cheeked he was. “Don’t you have parents?”