Voice of Crow (8 page)

“You’re not your father,” he said, “and what he did to mine had nothing to do with you.”

“That’s not exactly true, is it?” She met the Otter’s gaze. “He made a deal with the Descendants to protect Kalindos. To protect me, mostly. Your father got in the way.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”

“I know that,” she said.

He looked away and scratched the back of his neck, fingers rustling the strands of dark red hair that fell below his nape.

Was it only the last full moon when she had made love with this man in Deer Meadow, and they had talked about getting married? No, the last full moon the sky had been cloudy. Must have been the month before. The past was turning into one long haze of pain. She wanted to leave it behind.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I hope we can be friends again.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “Maybe someday we could even try—”

“No.” To his startled look she replied, “I mean, yes, we can try to be friends. But nothing more.”

“Alanka—”

“You turned away when I needed you most, after my father died.” She gestured to the ditch ahead, where Morran and Endrus dug, shirtless and sweaty. “I thought you were different from all those Cats, not careless. I thought you were kind.”

She’d rehearsed this speech weeks ago, before the battle, back when losing her mate made her feel as if she’d been stabbed with an icicle. Now it sounded hollow in her throat. She didn’t care anymore. Nothing could touch her now.

A crack sounded, and the forest disappeared.

Arrows formed a wall of whistles around her, but they couldn’t hold back the charging Descendants. They came, armor gleaming in the wheat field fire. She shot, again and again, hearing the snap-twang of the bow, the harsh song of an arrow’s flight, the wet
thup!
of flesh parting at its point.

And the shrieks. Sometimes
Mother
or the name of a god or Spirit or no words at all.

The metallic tang of blood filled her nose and the back of her throat. Then vomit and waste as men died. Wolverines came, slicing flesh and smashing bones. The Descendants smelled like slaughtered animals, right down to the eyeballs. Their scents would drown her.

“Alanka!”

That voice didn’t belong on the battlefield. Someone had her arms so she couldn’t shoot. She snarled and raked her fingernails against soft skin. Alanka opened her eyes.

Pirrik sat before her, holding her wrists. The forest was back. She was kneeling in the dirt but couldn’t remember how she got there.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“About to ask you the same thing.” He released one of her arms and wiped a streak of blood from his cheek where she had scratched him. “The tree’s all the way over there. It won’t fall on you.”

“Tree?”

“The one they just chopped down.” He pointed to his left. Ladek the Bear stood with an ax by the stump of a small fallen spruce, watching her.

Everyone was watching her. She stood slowly.

“When the trunk cracked,” Pirrik said, “you screamed and hit the ground with your arms over your head.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged. “Ten seconds, maybe.”

“It felt like hours.”

He put a hand on her arm. “Let me take you to see Elora.”

“No. There’s a better way.”

She broke away from him and strode toward the fire ring. On the other side of the ditch, Vara the Snake sat on a log nursing an infant. Her sharp gaze shifted to Alanka as she approached.

“Anyone afraid of trees shouldn’t live in Kalindos.” The wink that followed was the only indication of a joke.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

Vara tilted her head. “Sit.”

Alanka settled herself on the log next to the Snake, then remembered her manners. “He’s a beautiful baby.”

“I know.” The Snake flipped her long blond braid over her shoulder, away from the infant’s face. “He’ll be a heartbreaker like his father, no doubt.”

“Aren’t they all?”

Vara chuckled and threw her a glance of appreciation, and Alanka let out the breath holding her tension. Lots of Asermons looked down on Kalindons, but this one seemed friendly enough.

“You’re second phase now, right?” Alanka said.

Vara’s answer was an eye roll and a nod to the baby in her arms.

“Obviously,” Alanka added. “So now you can burn away memories.”

“Being able and being willing are two different things.” Vara winced. “Ow, his teeth are right under the gums.” After a moment, her grimace faded. “I’ve hardly had any training yet in memory burns. About all I can do is wipe out a person’s whole life, and no one wants that.”

Alanka felt an urge to shift away—maybe even run away—from the woman beside her. A Snake’s powers were said to be so dangerous, only the strongest minds were chosen by that Spirit. Lorek the Kalindon Snake had frightened her even when they’d played together as children. But she missed him as much as any of the others who were taken.

“You can’t help me, then.”

“Not yet. I’m sorry.” Vara’s eyes softened. “What do you want to forget?”

Alanka sank her chin into her hands. “A simpler question would be, what do I want to remember? It’s all so awful. Look at us.” She motioned to the men working the fire ring. “We’re willing to risk burning down our own village to prevent another invasion. That’s how silly scared we are.”

“You won’t burn down your village,” Vara said indignantly. “That’s what I’m here to prevent.”

Alanka barely heard her. “I wonder if this is how people acted before the Reawakening. During the Collapse?”

Vara scoffed. “There’s no such thing as the Reawakening. Why do you Kalindons cling to that myth?”

“Because it makes sense. These Descendants are like the people before the Reawakening, believing they can take whatever they want. If that’s what people are like without the Spirits, then that’s what everyone was like back then, before the Spirits chose us.”

Vara blew out a snort. “If that’s true, then where were the Spirits before the Reawakening? Standing around doing nothing? Being weak?”

“Maybe they thought we could save ourselves. And when we couldn’t, they had mercy on those who would listen to them. Who would be peaceful and live close to the land and trust the Spirits to provide for them.”

“Like you Kalindons.”

“Exactly. We don’t farm or build roads—”

“Or plan for the future.” Vara nodded toward the village. “Look where all that peace and trust got you.”

Alanka knew she sounded naive, like her father. A new thought hit her. “But what if there’ll be another Reawakening someday, when things get really bad again?”

“You think the Spirits will come rescue us from the Descendants?”

“Or help us rescue ourselves.”

Vara gazed at the baby in her arms. “It’s a nice dream.” She blinked hard, then turned her attention back to the fire ring. “But I’d rather plan for the worst, just in case.”

The cloud settled over Alanka again. She thanked Vara and crossed the ditch to collect more wood, pulling on her gloves as she went.

Perhaps the Asermons were right, and the Spirits had always been strong, and things had always been the same. But everything had changed with the Descendant invasion, and if the future was one long decline into oblivion, she wanted no part of it.

Someone shook Filip’s shoulder. He rolled away from the urgent whisper, hoping to slide back into his dreams. It was the only place he could run.

“Sir, it’s our last chance. Get up.” Kiril gave him a shake that threatened to topple him out of bed.

Filip sat up and peered into the darkness. “Last chance for what?”

“To go home before they try to make us become like them.”

Filip wiped the sleep sweat from his forehead and examined the faint outlines of Kiril’s face. “What do you mean?”

“I heard Zelia tell her apprentice that Galen is coming tomorrow.”

“Who?”

“The Asermon Council leader. But not just that, he discerns people’s so-called gifts, like you with the animals and me with the lights.”

Filip seized the lieutenant’s arm. “I said never to speak of that.”

“I haven’t. But the other soldiers are having the same problem. Someone must have noticed.”

“Have you seen them do magic?”

“No, but I know that look—the shifty eyes, the nervousness around each other, taking care never to reveal anything. You haven’t noticed how quiet they’ve grown this last month?”

“I don’t mingle much,” Filip said.

“You’ll have to mingle now. We’re going.”

“What about the archers?”

“Those weaklings won’t kill unarmed men. Besides, even death is better than living here.” He jerked Filip’s blanket. “You hate it, too, so come with us.”

Filip looked up at him, for a moment imagining the possibility. Home. Family. Hearing a dog bark and only hearing a dog bark.

“You know I can’t,” he said.

Kiril let out a gust of air, as if he wanted to argue. He looked at the door, then back at Filip. “I couldn’t leave without asking.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Kiril stood up straight, snapped his heels together and saluted, fist to heart. Filip returned the gesture for the last time, then held out his hand. Kiril grasped it, and they stared at each other for a long moment.

“Good luck,” Filip said finally. “If you see my parents, tell them—” He let go of Kiril’s hand. “Tell them I died.”

“I will, sir,” he whispered.

When Filip heard the soft footsteps of the seven men pad through the front room, his own feet—the one that existed and the one that didn’t—longed to follow. It was his feet that made him grab his shirt and yank it over his head, then seize his crutches. The feet that craved the smooth stone streets of Leukos.

As Filip lurched for the door, he heard a muffled but commanding voice yell, “Halt!” He kept moving. When he swung the door open, it banged against his right crutch, and he faltered for a moment.

He reached the porch and realized what that moment had granted him.

An eternity of exile.

His comrades’ bodies lay sprawled on the grass in front of the hospital. Two writhed in agony, blood and foam spurting from their mouths. The rest lay unmoving. Arrows protruded from every back.

The crutches fell from his grip, and he clutched the porch railing with both hands.

A woman leaped to the ground in front of him, as if from the sky.

“Move no farther.” She leveled an arrow at his chest, her bow creaking with tension. “Or you’ll meet the same fate.”

He looked up, past the arrow, into the pale green eyes of a hooded Asermon. Four others dropped around him, as lightly as cats, and he realized they’d been on the rooftop and in the limbs of a nearby tree. Two more raced down the street, bows in hand.

“Get inside,” the woman said to Filip.

He reached for his crutches.

“Leave them,” ordered one of the men. “We want you empty-handed.”

“I can’t walk without them.”

“Then crawl.”

Dazed with shock and fear, Filip obeyed, turning to place his palms on the porch. Then he heard a third guard snicker, and he stopped.

“No,” Filip said, on his hands and knees. “Either let me walk or shoot me. Shoot me in the back, the way you did my comrades, like the cowardly beasts you are.”

The woman gave a guttural oath and kicked him between the legs. Filip collapsed, his chin slamming into the wooden porch. The pain from the kick shot to his core, turning his vision black, then sparkling red, then black again.

Somewhere, beyond the haze of his agony, a familiar voice said, “What have you done?”

He wanted to tell Zelia he hadn’t done anything, and ask why everything always had to be his fault. But he couldn’t breathe, much less speak.

“They tried to escape,” the first male said. “One got away.”

“Who gave you authority to shoot them?”

“The Council. They said to take them alive if possible, but under no circumstances let them return home with what they know about us.”

“We’ll track down the last one.” The female guard toed the sole of Filip’s foot, sending an aftershock of pain up his body. “And this one isn’t going anywhere.”

“Don’t touch him.” Zelia knelt and lay a cool hand on Filip’s forehead. His throat emitted a low whine with each breath.

“Hold still,” Zelia told him. She placed her fingertips below his navel and began a deep, soothing chant. Filip’s pain dulled enough for him to open his eyes.

“Who?” he managed to whisper. “Who escaped?”

“I’ll see.” Zelia’s feet swished through the grass as she examined the bodies, all of which were silent now. “Kiril’s the only one missing.”

Thank the gods, he thought. If he made it home, Kiril could confirm Filip’s parents’ second-to-worst fear—that he, like his brother, had died of his wounds. They would be proud of him, and he would live in their memories as a brave warrior who had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Somehow he would find a way to be something else.

“As you’re aware, Filip, each of our people possesses the magic and wisdom of their Guardian Spirit animal. That magic and wisdom combine to form that person’s Aspect.”

Filip gave an almost imperceptible nod, his gaze switching among the three men who sat across the garden table from him. Two of them seemed close in age, late thirties or early forties, with similar short dark hair. But one of these two, the man in the center, had a presence of self-assured leadership—maybe too self-assured, Filip thought. This was Galen, who supposedly held all the answers. The other older man, Tereus, hadn’t spoken yet. He looked as if he had spent many hours listening to Galen pontificate.

The third man could have been no older than Filip himself. His smooth blond hair grew past his shoulders, brushing against the braided horsehair fetish around his neck. Filip had lived here long enough to know that these people sheared their hair to mourn the death of a close family member. This young man, Bolan, was only the second or third Asermon Filip had seen without short hair.

When the men had first arrived that morning, Galen confirmed Kiril’s escape from Asermos. The rescue effort to bring back the Kalindon prisoners had depleted the Asermon police force of its best officers. Filip tried not to look as pleased as he felt.

“My Guardian Spirit is Hawk,” Galen now continued, touching his red-tipped feather fetish. “My magic includes the ability to accurately recall events and words spoken, thereby making me an ideal messenger, either among humans, or between humans and the Spirits.” He bowed his head at the last word. “I act as both a spiritual and political leader. My wisdom focuses on the discernment of others’ gifts, which is why I’m here today.”

Filip’s shoulders tensed at the thought of his own powers, which was the last subject he wanted to discuss. He turned to Tereus, glancing at the dingy white feather he wore. “What about you? What’s your Aspect, or whatever you call it?”

Tereus tilted his head with a humility that seemed more genuine than his companion’s. “I’m a Swan. I interpret dreams.”

“You make a living doing that?”

The man laughed, something he seemed to do often, judging by the creases around his mouth and the natural sparkle in his blue eyes. “Unfortunately, no. I have a farm where I breed wolfhounds and horses.”

Filip’s eyebrow twitched at the last word, and he looked away.

Galen leaned forward. “You have an affinity for horses?”

Filip stared at the stone paving next to his chair and felt his jaw tighten almost to the point of cramping. “I was a cavalry officer.”

Bolan gasped. “You rode horses into battle?”

He glanced up at him. “It’s an honor, reserved for the most intelligent men from the best families.”

“Couldn’t they get hurt?”

“Who?”

“The horses.”

“They wear armor, like us.”

“But they still get hurt, right? They still get killed.”

“Bolan, not now.” Galen held up a hand, clearly sensing that he was losing control of the conversation. He turned back to Filip. “I’ll get to the point. I believe that you have the Aspect of Horse.”

Filip’s lip curled. “What in the name of all the gods does that mean?”

“The Horse Spirit has chosen you, given you the ability to hear the meaning behind the voices of animals.”

A sensation cold as a knife blade trickled across the back of Filip’s neck. “How do you know this?”

“Bolan, also a Horse, is Zelia’s son. She knows the signs. The way you look at her dog, for instance.”

“I don’t look at her dog.”

“Exactly.” Bolan’s eyebrows pinched in sympathy. “Ignoring them doesn’t shut them up, does it?” He leaned in to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “The birds are the worst.”

Filip’s eyes widened, then he looked at Galen. “So what good does it do me to know I have this Horse thing? The animals don’t understand when I talk back. I can’t even make them stop.”

Galen spread his hands on the table. “You’ll be able to return the communication when you enter the second phase.”

“Outstanding,” he replied, with a satisfying sarcasm. “How do I do that?”

“Before you can claim your first-phase powers, you must undertake the Bestowing.”

“But how do I reach the second phase?”

“You must father a child. Bolan recently became a second-phase Horse.” Bolan arched an eyebrow at Filip, a subtle boast of this proof of his virility. “He will help you learn to use your powers,” Galen said.

“Use them for what?”

Galen motioned for Tereus to speak. The man who called himself a Swan set his elbows on the table and pressed his fingertips together. “Zelia tells me you’re ready to leave the hospital. You’ll come back to be fitted for your prosthesis when it’s ready and when your leg is healed enough to—”

“It’s not a leg,” Filip snarled, “and it will never heal.”

“When your stitches are out, then. In the meantime, you need somewhere to live.”

Filip ground his teeth. Now he was a charity case—for the enemy, no less.

“As I mentioned,” Tereus said, “I have a farm with dogs and horses. I live there alone, and—”

“You call those horses?” Filip snorted. “Those tiny, fluffy creatures dragging carts down the street?” He ignored Bolan’s glare. “Where I come from, the horses stand tall and sleek. Their beauty inspires great works of art.”

“I know.” Tereus shrugged off Filip’s insults. “One of your horses lives at my farm.”

Filip’s jaw dropped.

Tereus continued. “Keleos, his master called him. Does that sound familiar?”

Filip’s jaw dropped farther. “The colonel’s stallion? How did you get it?”

Tereus waved his hand. “My daughter Rhia stole him, but that’s beside the point. As I was saying, I live alone and it’s difficult to handle all the farm chores myself. You can have room and board in exchange for helping with the animals.”

Filip looked away, turning over the options in his mind. At least he wouldn’t have to depend on handouts, and he could see Keleos, who had been off-limits to everyone but the colonel and his attaché. His fingertips tingled at the thought of touching the animal’s gilded hide.

Then his nonexistent left foot stabbed with pain.

“I can’t,” Filip said to Tereus. “Not with—” he gestured to his leg “—this.”

“I’m not asking you to do cartwheels. You’ll groom, feed and water the animals. And you can ride, even without the prosthesis.”

Filip looked up at him suddenly, trying to catch the lie in his eye. But Tereus’s gaze held no guile. “I can ride?”

“If you want. Though our style might be different from what you’re used to, and like you said, our ponies are—”

“Can I ride Keleos?” Filip heard the tone of his request, like that of a little boy pleading with his father. He cleared his throat. “That is, if he needs exercise, I could provide him with the sort of equitation to which he is accustomed.”

Tereus looked amused, but not in a patronizing way. “Of course you may ride him, though not to the exclusion of the other horses. Are you coming?”

Filip hesitated. His father would have wanted him to be practical, and the alternatives—staying at the hospital or wandering homeless—would humiliate him more. Perhaps he should bide his time in Asermos until a better option presented itself.