The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(174)
Peering through the chaotic thatch of their blind, the three of them watch as another Scylvendi horseman, apparently alone, rides into view, sinking into a depression then climbing the swale nearest to them … and stopping …
She cannot hear it yet, but all the south seems to shiver with teeming portent.
The People of War in sum …
The man almost seems to sniff the air. There is a brutality to him, the odour of an ignorant race, of souls too simple to countenance nuance or doubt. His arms are bared like the other’s, but nowhere near so many scars stripe their length. A looseness in the skin about the crotch of his armpit reveals his age, but little else. Blue paint adorns his face, as pale as his eyes. Fetishes dangle from his bridle and saddle, what look like desiccate mice strung by their tails. His pony paws at the leaves and loam. Like someone hunting something glimpsed, he rakes the surrounding forest depths with his glacial gaze. There is an alacrity to his eyes, something reminiscent of a weasel’s nose …
Unerringly, it seems, his look settles upon their little pit.
No one so much as blinks. The Princess-Imperial’s heart drops the length of her spine.
He is one of the Few.
Daylight dwindles, draining at a pace that matches their anxious, arboreal flight. She leads despite the late stage of her term. Just behind her, the old Wizard tramps in his anarchic way, looking for all the world like an old hermit, nimble and mad. The boy trots effortlessly in the rear, alternately peering from side to side, probing the greenery that screens their flanks.
They do not talk. The barking of distant Sranc is all they can hear above their breathing. Suddenly it has become all too familiar, fleeing from wilderness into wilderness. The premonition of disaster about the neck and shoulders. The prick in every swallow. The way the birches close the curtains on the environs surrounding, allowing fear to populate them.
They continue huffing and trotting until dusk and darkness reduces all distances to ink and wool. The decision to break for the night comes as a knuckle in the landscape: a balding dome rising to the waist of the encircling trees.
Achamian leans gasping against his knees upon the summit. “He saw us,” he says, peering into nocturnal confusion. She cannot imagine what he hopes to see: the forest is little more than tangled hair and smeared charcoal to her eyes.
She lies against the mossy back of a log, her eyes fluttering, her hands across her distended abdomen. Her every breath pinches her throat at the clavicle. An acidic heat creeps between her ribs.
“What would you have us do,” she pants. “Run through the night?”
The old Wizard turns to her. The sky is overcast. The moon is little more than a lantern in the fog, so she can see nothing of his eyes beneath the coarse line of his brow. He is inscrutable and frightening for it.
Suddenly she has difficulty seeing past the blasted ache of his Mark.
“If we took more Qirri …” he says.
What is it in his tone? Elation. Appeal. Dread …
The craving fills her.
“No …” she gasps.
Yes-yes-yes …
“No?” Achamian repeats.
“I will not risk our child,” she explains, leaning her head back once again.
“But this is exactly what you do!”
And so he continues cajoling. The Scylvendi were a race like no other, he insists in wary tones. Godless. Worshippers of violence. As vicious as Sranc and far more cunning. “They are not the artless savages you think!” he cries on the back of worry and obstinance. “Their traditions are ancient, but not hidebound. Their customs are ruthless, but not blind. Trickery and deception are their most prized weapons!”
She lies with one hand hooked like a swing beneath her belly and another held to her forehead. Tiresome pendant!
“Mimara! We must keep running!”
She understands their peril. The Scylvendi were no small matter of concern upon the Andiamine Heights, but less so than in the days of the Ikurei. The Battle of Kiyuth had consumed an entire generation of their manhood—and more. The People of War had always depended on the Chorae their ancestors had accumulated as spoils through the millennia. Shorn of these, they simply could not cope with the sorceries of the Three Seas.
“Back to the mountains …” he says, gazing out toward the Demua. “They’ll be loathe to risk their ponies in the dark. By morning we could use bare rock to obscure all trace of our passage!”
There is a vacancy in his manner, one that repels her. She is suddenly sure that the Qirri, and not the Scylvendi, motivate his exhortations. He does not want to taste to run so much as run to taste.
A cannibal yearning for the ash clasps her as a lover might.
Even still, she will not be swayed. A sudden wave of heat afflicts her, and to the old Wizard’s disgust, she pulls her She?ra corselet over her head, dumps it and begins shedding her pelts. Her skin pimples in the chill air. She strips to her tunic, which clings like sodden leather for the accumulation of filth. Within heartbeats, it feels as cold as lizard skin about the dome of her maternity. Her eyes flutter shut, and she sees tumbling purple. The lost forests of K?niüri wobble like a top second-guessing its spin. She concentrates on breathing around her myriad discomforts.
“Are … Are you well?” Achamian asks from the oblivion above her, suddenly penitent.
“Now he asks,” she mutters to the boy, whom she cannot see. She undoes her belt, throws aside her scabbard, as much to infuriate the old Wizard as to relieve her belly.