Her Dangerous Visions (The Boy and the Beast Book 1) (10 page)

Enough to drive the big cats to complete madness.

She was alive with power. A luminous energy carried her feet further and faster and more nimbly than the forest had ever experienced her before. A bitch hungry for her pups. A hunter of assassins. An unfaithful wife. A bent, toothless hag restored to her youth. She was like these things and a dozen other living images that swam through her mind.

The dank smell of algae and warm, sitting water finally slowed her legs. A marsh filled the flat gully capping the eastmost finger of the valley. It was where Orum knew she would make her camp. She found a tree overhanging the water and climbed to where two upper limbs narrowly split, it was high enough to be out of reach of the tigers. She tossed the ketvell into the grass below. With care she unbound her quiver and laid it flat between the junction of the two branches, securing the leather chords to each limb. Her bed made, she climbed down the tree and began to pace the perimeter of the marsh, bow and arrows attached to her belt.

She would betray her master, Isolaug, for he had hid something from her. Something beautiful, and had smeared its splendor in shit. Words, words, and more words, until everything was so twisted around, his lie was like a dark poetic knot. But she’d unraveled it.

She wanted to destroy her master. Destroy everything she’d helped build for him.

Sweat glistened on her arms, trickled down her face, ran to the corners of her lips. Blood, brain matter, ragged tendons and torn muscle—she could see the gore drenching her, swelling up and up to the one being at the pinnacle of her newborn hatred.

She didn’t know where to start, or how it would end. She knew only what she wanted, and it felt good.

A small shelled thing wriggled in the wet vegetation. She scooped it up quickly, placing her thumb and fore finger between its neck, so it could not tuck its head back into the shell. A young terrapin. Red and yellow stripes ran beneath its eye down to its neck. She placed the head in her mouth and bit until she felt the skull pop, then dropped it into the grass. She found more as she walked the marsh. One fled toward deeper waters, she pursued it, the cool mud and silt squishing between her toes and sliding up her sore calves. The eleventh carcass had just fallen from her fingers when she spotted the figure moving toward her along the marsh’s edge.

She put her foot gingerly on the dead terrapin and pushed it down into the muck until the silt swallowed it from sight, then waited for him to come to her. She noted the unruly beard, the matted hair, long and uncut, the lack of limp, no favoring of an arm as he carried a cumbersome pack with ease on wide shoulders. Above each eye was one
Quahi
, tarnished silver spikes protruding from his skull that ranked a Shadowman among his brethren. One more than he had at their winter meeting. Two more and he would outrank her. But while he wore his in plain sight, she was a spy, and hers could only be affixed to her brow if her duties came to an end.

She met him on the bank.

“Do you like standing in mud?” said Orum.

Savarah wriggled her toes. “Where’s your grunt?”

“A day behind. They gave me a weakling. Skinny as a desert hare. You could snap him like a stick.”

She pretended to smile. “What news from home?”

“Two more went through the portal since we last met. Our influence widens within the Guardians. The tunneling continues, as does the training of your type.” He adjusted his pack. “What news from the Hold? Is the Luminary’s daughter still set on being a peacemaker?”

“Yes. And growing more radical with every book she studies in the Scriptorium.”

“Damn. What does Osiiun make of this?”

“Osiiun would tell Isolaug to rest his reptilian head. Trigon’s sickness has weakened his mind in our favor. He will not be Luminar for much longer, and Valcere is already in position to replace Meluscia as next in line to the throne. Osiiun has been working amongst Trigon’s closest men. All of them but Rivdon have counseled the Luminar to choose a more military-minded leader. Trigon’s fear and hatred of King Feaor have turned him against his daughter. Meluscia will not be Luminary.”

“That is good news,” said Orum. “But nevertheless, Isolaug wants her dead. She could stir up trouble, even if she is not leading the Hold.”

“Once Trigon is dead, killing her will be as easy as squatting a piss in the woods. Come, I made camp for us.”

Orum made his bed in his usual place. A clump of tall grass not far from her tree. They ate in silence for a while, until Orum stood to pee on an anthill. “So, tell me, Savarah, is the Luminary of the Mountain still under the belief that it was King Feaor who poisoned him and his wife
?”

“Trigon has gone beyond suspicions,” said Savarah. “The nearness of death has made him all but certain.”

Orum grinned. “King Feaor believes the farm massacre at Tilmar was the work of Trigon, and not our master’s Nightmares.”

Savarah glanced out into the tall grasses swaying in the distance. She had thought she heard something. “As long as Meluscia does not take the throne, the stalemate will eventually erupt into war.”

“The only thing that concerns our master is the boy diviner of the Verdlands. He is a Tongue for the Makers. Our attempts to end his life have failed. Isolaug warns that the Makers are protecting him.”

“Why him,” asked Savarah. “The other diviners—Tongues, Eyes, Healers—they were easy enough to kill, I am told. Why were they not protected?”

“That, I think, is partly what concerns our master. We haven’t had any Diviners in more than fifty years, and now one appears that we cannot kill. Isolaug fears the boy might not be the only one. There is rumor that a Healer exists. A girl.”

“How is this boy protected? What does it look like?”

“Two of the Verdlands spies have tried to take his life. Llani said as she approached his bed where he slept, a wall of fire appeared. The wooden house was not consumed by the flames but the inferno felt real enough to her. She tried to throw herself through the flames to reach the boy inside, but when she did, a fiery gust blew her back, consuming the clothes off her body and marring her face and arms horribly.

“When Oevah gave her attempt, she said ten Aeraphim loyal to the Makers stood around the boy where he played in the dirt outside his home. Each, she said, was as tall as two men. Oevah watched them from afar, and when the boy went back inside his home, the ten Aeraphim surrounded the house. She didn’t think the boy saw them, for when he entered the house, he passed right through them without a glance or a pause.”

Savarah stared at Orum. The accounts did not sit well with her. She’d thought those Aeraphim who were submissive to the Makers had left the worlds in the first age. The gods themselves had only been distant enemies to her, and to all of Isolaug’s forces. She had been taught about them by her master. The Makers were the strangest beings of all—designing weakness and frailty into the universe they created. They were like parents purposely bringing forth a deformed child.

Were they in some way cruel allies? Could the gods fit into her picture of vengeance? The thought left her uneasy. Best to avoid them. The power Orum described was disturbing.

“What can one lone voice do?” said Orum.

“You should know,” said Savarah. “Even a stable boy can shape history if he’s under our master’s teaching. Look at Harcor, the woodcutter. He’s stirred up Trigon’s anger and brought the Hold and the Verdlands to the gates of war.”

Orum pulled dried meat from his bag and reclined on his pack. “I wish I had been chosen. It’d be much more exciting to live your life than mine, what with all this sneaking back and forth and gathering reports.”

She stared at him, her annoyance barely contained on a razor’s edge.

Fool
, she thought.

He did not grasp what she’d undergone. The training required under the master’s presence. No one knew but those on the inside. How many fellow children had she killed before she was declared sufficiently worthy? She’d stopped counting after fifty. She’d been stabbed countless times. Sliced, pierced, flayed like an animal. Gaping, mortal wounds had been opened on her legs and chest. Her face slashed, twice her right eye gouged out; she’d kept her guts from spilling onto the floor, holding them in with a forearm as she’d run her sword through an opponent’s heart.

Despite the many mortal wounds, she never died before her opponent. Once she had them down, she would hack until they were a quivering mound of flesh, or until she lost consciousness. The quicker they died, the sooner her master would use his power to heal her, and the agonizing pain would end.

The master had made her a heartless weapon. She could deliver convincing performances in the master’s theater, feign heartfelt love and joy on stage, while ruthlessly taking lives in the battle sessions. Her emotions were a tool just as deadly as a weapon in her hands. Every word from her mouth could cut like a knife, or heal like a kiss. Controlled. Calculated. Convincing.

In learning to feel nothing, she became capable of anything.

An envious light blazed in Orum’s eyes as he stared at her. It was then she caught the minute smell of dusty fur and ketvell pollens. Her skin crawled and every muscle in her wanted to spring for the bow and quiver lying next to her, but she maintained her composure.

“The wastelands eat away at the forests,” said Savarah, glancing windward. “I fear the encroaching sands may be a catalyst for foes to become friends.”

A tall blind of grass swayed gently in the breeze. The wind shifted slightly, and Savarah searched the rocks to the right of the blind.

“There is nothing we can do to stop it. The timber is needed for the tunneling, and the land. It will require more work on the part of your fellow—”

The sound came from her right, a soft padding of feet. The sound of her plan turning to shit. She stood, swiveled, released three arrows, then her hand jumped to her longknife as the creature hit her full force.

Her back slammed against the ground emptying her lungs of breath. Her mind teetered on the edge of darkness, Orum’s cursing fading in and out. She fought to remain conscious, concentrating her energy on her knife hand. A mouth full of teeth came at her and she brought her head up, just under the incoming jaws, pushing her skull up into the animal’s muscular neck, and then her knife hand found an opening past the powerful limbs, stabbing deep, ripping. The creature’s neck opened in a gush of blood. She hugged it, wrapping her legs around the huge hind quarters, keeping free of the powerful claws as the animal fought to repay death for death.

When the powerful limbs began to quiver, she pushed the remains off her, and rose trembling to her feet.

Orum had managed only to draw his sword in all that time and was standing lamely, mouth gaping, looking at her as if she were a beast herself.

Her left shoulder screamed in agony, but she bit back the pain. She had to finish this. A glance revealed a ragged puncture where a claw had pierced her. She knew without fingering her shoulder that the clawtip had pierced through her back. Examining her attacker, she noted that her three arrows had found their mark. One arrow sagged from the black whiskered cheek. Another had merely caught the meat at the bottom of the tiger’s ear. The third was buried in the chest, a few inches from the tiger’s heart.

“Come here, Orum.”

He swore reverently before moving timidly beside her, sword in hand.

“What in the stars is that?”

“Kneel down. You’ll never see sharper claws.”

“You sure it’s dead?”

“Yes.”

He knelt, setting his sword down.

She squatted beside him and hefted the huge paw, digging her finger in between a pad, pushing out a claw the length of a dagger.

“Do you see the serration?”

Orum bent closer.

With her remaining strength, she grabbed the back of Orum’s head and thrust the paw up, driving the claw through his ocular cavity and into his brain.

Orum screamed, lashing the air with his hands, but her grip on his hair held him in place. His screams turned to sputtering breaths, and his arms soon hung limp at his side.

Once Orum lay still, she dropped him to the ground beside the tiger and used the claws to pepper his body with slashes and pierce his chest and arms. Orum’s grunt would arrive eventually. Her story would be simple, the evidence lying in plain sight. The boy would go back home with her report and she would be sent a new contact, one who did not have the experience or knowledge or history that Orum had with her.

A fresh start. She breathed deep and looked toward the marsh with a desire to continue her terrapin massacre, but the sun was dipping low and the rush of her second kill was wearing off. She had to attend to her shoulder. Blood enough had been spilt for now.

LOAM

Your last letter stank of mockery, belying your ignorance on these matters. Do not question the very real, and very dangerous, power of the Makers and their Oracles. If you wish to remain Magnus Empyrean, you will do exactly as you are told. That threat is not mine, but Sentinel Cosimo’s.

Within your tiny corner of our galaxy exists three worlds of the highest significance. They are close in proximity to one another and form a near perfect equilateral triangle—the arrowhead of the Huntress constellation as seen from the planet, Seedling Four.