The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(173)

“We don’t have a—” she begins, but a sudden realization tosses the thought to oblivion.

Akka calls after her in alarm, far more loudly than he should. She silences him with a backward frown, then nimbly floats across the forest floor, ducking from tree to tree. She pauses twice, thinking that she hears thunder beneath her breath. In the surrounding obscurity another Sranc screeches at some insult. The sound is wet with nearness. She clenches her teeth about a hammering heart. At last she finds the tree the boy had climbed. She walks about it, alternately peering upward and casting glances over her shoulder. She sees him, as motionless as barked wood, watching her without expression. She calls him down with a violent wave of her hand. He gazes southward rather than reply, his head queerly bent. “Come!” she dares call.

The boy flies down the great elm like nothing human, legs and arms hooked about space. He thumps to a crouch on the humus. Before she can even acknowledge him, he has her arm in his crabbed hand. He yanks her back toward the old Wizard violently, his strength unlikely, his manner ruthless. The thunder is louder now. Panic pricks her from behind, sparks her stumbling gait. She sees the fallen tree, overthrown at the socket. She glimpses Achamian’s wild-bearded face watching through the blind of early-autumn weeds. The rumble climbs, a thrumming monotone, then breaks, as if a bladder overcome, becoming a cacophony of pounding hooves and equine complaints. She runs as if perpetually falling over her belly, always catching herself, always almost …

We are caught, a corner of her soul notes—one too weary not to be wry.

But the boy thinks otherwise. He yanks her, bruising iron in his claw grip, racing full bore. She crashes through the screen of weeds, into stinging gloom, a confusion of limbs, muck, and loam.

“Seju!” Achamian cries under his breath. “What were yo—”

The cacophony towers as if above them. Instinct brings her to her feet, leaning to peer at their pursuers—at the identity of their fate. But the boy has her again, pins her down, his odour sour for lack of bathing, yet sweet for youth. Paralysis. And they are in the belly of the thunder, the three huddled side by side, riven, dark save for a dragon’s claw of light across her belly. Rifling shadows. Pounding hooves. Huffing snorts and pinched indignations. Intimations are all they need.

Scylvendi. The dread People of War range the dead lands of K?niüri.

Please.

Afterward she will wonder just when her every thought became a prayer.

Because of the toppled tree, the riders give their overgrown cavity a wide berth. What seems like a watch passes, lying curled and rigid. Only the boy is perfectly motionless.

Then the thunder climbs ahead of them, and the inability to discriminate wraps the whole once again.

They lie in its receding, rumbling wake, drawing breath in the earthen gloom.

“A patrol,” Achamian murmurs, pulling himself to his rump. He cautiously raises his eyes above the forest floor, renews his vigil.

She has to roll sideways onto her hands and knees, so onerous is her belly. She climbs to his side. The boy simply sits behind them, perfectly impassive, his knees caught in the circle of his arms.

“So you think there’s more?” she asks the old Wizard.

“Of course there is,” he says, peering. “They resemble your idiocy that way.”

Her apprehension is slapped from her. She is a heartbeat in understanding.

“What? I should have left him?”

“That boy has survived more than you or I can scarce dream.”

“And he is still a child! He’s—”

“Not so helpless as the one you carry in your womb!” the old Wizard cries, turning on her with sudden savagery. She shrinks from the display, understanding instantly and utterly that he speaks out of an outrage borne of terror … The terror belonging to fathers.

She makes to speak—just what, she does not know—but another screech, strangely piteous, yowls among the bowers from places near and unknown. Another Sranc.

They both resume their anxious peering, and despite their straits, she cannot but think that this is the way with husbands and wives. A part of her even grins …

It is proper, she thinks, that they should be married in a grave.

“Those Sranc are called Exscursi,” Achamian says grimly. “Their scent fills their wild cousins with lunatic terror, clearing the land. The Consult uses them to secure safe passage for their human allies …” He glances at her, speaking this last, and something in her expression ignites a furious scowl.

“What are you smiling about?”

“You are a dear old fool,” she hears herself whisper.

“You don’t understand,” he cries. “Somewhere … out there …”—he points toward the south, to the throng and pillared deep of forest obscuring forest—“lies the People in War in sum … An entire host of Scylvendi!”

“I do understand,” she replies, staring into his eyes as if trying to lean into his irritable old soul … Reassure him. Even still, he refuses to trust what was happening.

“You do? Then you understand this means it’s really happening! The Second Apocalypse is really hap—”

The boy is upon them, hands whole and crabbed hard upon each of their shoulders, warning them to silence. Breathless they peer across the trampled humus and debris. The sound of a pony snorting jolts her—for some reason she had assumed the boy had heard one of the Sranc.