Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

He had wild, red-blond hair and a tangled beard that half obscured his wrinkled face. A wolf pelt rode on his back. For a brief instant, he reminded Ashok of his father, a big man in hide armor, his hair shining red in the meager sunlight. The vision hit him sharply and made Ashok catch his breath. He recovered quickly and caught Mareyn’s arm when she started down the slope.

“We don’t know he’s an ally,” Ashok warned her.

“That’s why I haven’t put my blade away,” Mareyn said, but she was no longer looking at him. She fixed her attention on Les’s unconscious form.

As she moved down the slope, Ashok called out to the man in Common. “Well met. You have our thanks for killing the wolf. If you hadn’t, we’d be dead.”

The man’s gaze shifted from him to Mareyn. It was impossible to read his expression. He put his skinning knife away and pulled a length of rope from his belt. He used it to tie the wolf’s back legs together.

Mareyn had reached the boy. Ashok kept his weapon looped around his arm, but the man ignored Mareyn and stood up. He turned his back to them and dragged the wolf carcass up the slope in the opposite direction.

“Are you of the Rashemi?” Ashok called after him. He knew they must be nearly in the witches’ lands.

The man paused to look back at them. His expression reminded Ashok of Ilvani. He looked at them without seeing them, almost as if he inhabited another world entirely, and they were only shadows probing at the edge of his vision. Then the man turned away and resumed dragging his burden up the slope. Ashok watched him until he was almost out of sight.

“Ashok, we have to get Les down to the nightmare,” Mareyn said.

Shaken from his thoughts, Ashok bent to examine the boy. His leg was broken, twisted out awkwardly from his body, but otherwise there were no physical wounds. The wolf’s teeth had torn away most of his boot, but the flesh beneath was intact. The boy’s eyes were half-open, but he didn’t seem to recognize Mareyn, even when she spoke to him in a soothing voice.

She was right. Cold was the enemy now.

He ripped off some pieces of his bone scale armor to use as a splint. The snowfang had ruined most of the breastplate. He’d have to replace the rest. Mareyn took rope from her pack and together they worked on the boy’s leg.

When they tried to move him, Les came to life at last. The pain made him jerk and thrash about in the snow. Ashok took hold of the boy’s shoulders and pressed him down while Mareyn spoke quickly in his ear. After long minutes, she got him to know her, and he calmed. She took her cloak off and draped it over him, rubbing his arms and legs to warm him.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Take his shoulders. I’ll brace his legs so the pain won’t overwhelm him.”

They lifted him. The boy moaned but made no other complaint. Even so, it was a long, slow climb out of the small valley and back down to the nightmare. Ashok carried the boy over to the stallion and started to drape him over the nightmare’s back.

“You can’t mean to let that thing carry him?” Mareyn said incredulously. “It’s a demon, not a packhorse.”

“It’s the only way to keep him alive until we get back to the caravan,” Ashok said. “You and I are too weak to carry him far.”

“He’s barely conscious. What’s to stop the nightmare from invading his dreams?”

Ashok wouldn’t lie to her. “Nothing,” he said. “You’ll have to watch him closely once we return. He’ll need someone nearby who can tell him what’s real and what isn’t. At least he’ll be alive.”

Mareyn opened her mouth to argue, but in the end, she said nothing. They arranged the boy carefully on the nightmare’s back and started down the trade route to meet the caravan.

For a long time, neither spoke. Weariness and pain marked Mareyn’s face. She checked the boy to see if he still breathed. Her own wound bled through the hasty bandage she’d put on it. Ashok watched her struggle through the pain to put one foot in front of the other.

The idea of pain as a weakening force in humans was a concept he still could not grasp. He wanted to tell Mareyn to use the pain, to let the burn in her side act as the anchor that kept her centered in this world.

Humans functioned differently. Pain yanked at their souls the way the shadows pried at his, tempting them to oblivion.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Mareyn said abruptly.

“Like what?” Ashok said.

“Like a shadar-kai.” She laughed, but it turned into a groan. “When you’re human and you’ve lived in Ikemmu long enough, you start to notice that shadar-kai look. It’s either distaste or intense fascination-the fascination is more disturbing, if you want the truth. That’s how you looked at me just now.”

“I’m sorry,” Ashok said. “It’s just-”

“I know,” Mareyn said. “We’re too different for it to be otherwise.”

Silence fell between them again, but it didn’t last long. Mareyn slowed her pace until she was barely moving at all. Ashok came up behind her and touched her shoulder.

“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The nightmare can carry both of you if you need to rest.”

“Not even Tymora’s blessing could coax me onto that beast,” Mareyn said. “And I have to keep a clear head. I can’t afford to have nightmares haunting me the rest of this journey.”

“At least stay close to its warmth.”

They picked up the pace. After another long silence, Mareyn said, “Did someone do that for you-tell you what was real and what wasn’t-when you first tamed the beast?”

“Vedoran,” Ashok said. “He was a sellsword and one of my first companions when I came to Ikemmu. He was with me when I awoke from the worst of the dreams.”

“The two of you were close?”

“For a time, yes.”

“But he’s gone now, isn’t he?” Mareyn said. “Otherwise he would be here on this journey with you.”

“Yes. Vedoran would have relished a challenge like this,” Ashok said, gazing at the unforgiving landscape, the beauty of the snow-covered mountains. When he turned away, he caught her looking at him with a wistful, sad expression in her eyes. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking of a question that’s hard to ask, and maybe it’s not entirely fair.”

“You can ask anything you want,” Ashok said. He noticed that conversation distracted her from the pain, kept her alert and moving.

“When you volunteered to come with me to save Les, what was your first thought? Did you do it out of concern for the boy? Was it for me, or did you do it because you wanted to hunt down the snowfang?”

Ashok thought back to the moments after the wolf battle. They’d all been distracted by the need for haste, both to evade the brigands and to catch up with the escaping wolves. The snowfang had blinded him with its frost breath. Ashok remembered feeling anger, both at the snowfang and at himself for being caught off guard. He’d promised himself it wouldn’t happen again, that the next time they encountered each other, Ashok would have the upper hand.

He tried to sort out where in the tangle of those thoughts he’d considered Les or Mareyn, but he couldn’t get past the excitement he’d felt at the possibility of the chase, of using the nightmare’s fire to burn the snowfang down.

His silence seemed answer enough for Mareyn. The wistful expression deepened. “I didn’t really expect anything more or less from you,” she admitted. “And you’ll always have my deepest gratitude for what you did for me-for Les-out here.”

“There’s no need to-”

“Yes, there is,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s strange-the other races in Ikemmu, especially the humans, view your people in so many different lights. I used to wonder why your leaders revered Tempus. All this time, I’d convinced myself the shadar-kai were meant to be Tymora’s servants. Your fortunes and fates are so mercurial. You plunge into every experience as if it could be your last, and you dance right to the edge. I love to watch you when you fight for the same reason. I thought you were embracing life by behaving that way.”