Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

“What-not use the pony?” Skagi’s voice came from behind them. Ilvani and Ashok turned to see the brothers approaching the shoreline together. Cree’s vacant eye socket with its serpent tattoo drew Ilvani’s gaze, but the warrior was looking at Ashok.

“Ilvani says the Rashemi won’t appreciate having the nightmare here,” Ashok said.

“Afraid to get singed, are they?” Skagi laughed. “Fine, then. We don’t need the beast or the Rashemi, not after the ice trolls.”

“And the brigands,” Cree added. “Don’t forget the winter wolves, either. What will you conjure up for us on the journey home, Ilvani?”

Ilvani said nothing. She couldn’t look away from Cree’s missing eye. The serpent had taken it. Why had she gone walking in the caves that day? She didn’t remember what impulse had led her to the pens, but if she hadn’t gone, the shadow serpents would never have gone mad. She imagined Cree’s eye in its proper place, his face as it was-whole-but she couldn’t picture it. His face was as it was. She couldn’t see him any other way.

The silence stretched, and Cree finally realized that she was not ignoring him-he saw where her gaze rested. His lighthearted expression changed, becoming sober.

“I jested, Ilvani,” he said. He pointed to the serpent tattoo and the empty socket. “This wasn’t your doing.”

“Yes, it was,” Ilvani said. She let the other worlds intrude too much. She let the snow rabbit invade her mind and mark her body. If they were to survive, if she wanted to exist fully in this world, Ilvani knew she would have to find a way to silence the voices, the shadows that invaded her thoughts and dreams. She felt lost. She’d never before asked for help from anyone.

If Natan were alive, she would have asked her brother for guidance. She’d waited too long to find the words. Now Natan was dead, and she had to find her own way.

“After tonight, your link to Yaraella will be severed,” Ashok put in. “The journey home will be much less eventful.”

Skagi groaned. “So we can look forward to the witch blasting us with black lightning every few miles, is that it?” He leaned toward Ilvani conspiratorially. “I’d rather have the monsters. Can’t you bring just a few into our path?”

They jested to put her at ease. Ilvani had never experienced this type of companionship. She saw it when the brothers bantered with Ashok as well, the ease of their friendship, the way they fought side by side. They became more and more as one every day they were together, but Ashok was the center of it all. He was the link that bound them.

The more he grows, the more shadar-kai will look to him to lead, Ilvani thought. The bonds between those here were strong, but the brothers didn’t realize how weak Ashok was without them. What will happen if that link is severed?

He will be tested, Ilvani realized with a shuddering clarity. His will against the shadows. Natan had seen a prophecy with Ashok and Ikemmu at its center. Ilvani saw something quite different looming, a shrouded future brimming with uncertainties.

She pushed the speculations aside. They would not serve her or Ashok now. Not until she was whole again, with Yaraella released from her, could she help him.

“The nightmare stays in the stables,” Ashok was saying. “We’ll have to fight this battle ourselves and trust in Rashemi aid.”

“They don’t trust us,” Cree said. “Most of them look at us like we’re ghosts. They ignore us.”

“It’s because we’re prettier than they are,” Skagi said, snickering. “Makes them nervous.”

Ilvani focused on the words and let their bantering distract her from her dark thoughts. The sun descended into the cloud-filled horizon, and the colors bled from the surface of the lake.

The wychlaran came with the darkness.

Masked and swaddled in brown cloaks and hoods, the witches walked single file onto the dock and stood facing the Rashemi berserkers. One by one, the warriors lit torches and stood them on ice patches at the shore of the lake.

Agny in her mask of water carvings raised her arms and made a sweeping gesture toward the torches. Water surged up around them and formed an icy wall to trap the flames. The cold should have extinguished the torches, but Ilvani noticed Sree had also raised her hands, and the flames answered her call, flaring brightly against the ice.

The entire portion of the lake the witches occupied was now illuminated. The Rashemi berserkers stepped into the shadows and turned to face any threats that might approach the lake. Ashok and the brothers went to join them.

Ilvani turned and met Ashok’s gaze before he left her. He nodded once, but he didn’t speak. She turned and joined the witches on the dock.

Agny went first, and one by one, the wychlaran stepped onto the raft. The ethran Reina led Elina by the hand. Ilvani came last and took up her place in the ritual circle next to the child.

She felt the power already. The symbols carved into the raft held their own magic, but the circle was wider than just their small craft. Lake Tirulag itself boiled with the ancient powers of the living and the spirit world. Ilvani felt the arms reaching up from the lake, the silent cries of the telthors.

Above her, the sky was full of bright, shardlike stars, eclipsed only by the owl’s wings as it circled the ritual ground. Ilvani traced the path of its flight and didn’t realize until a breath later that the witches had begun a chant. They’d joined hands, trapping Ilvani and Elina within the circle.

Ilvani knew her part now. She kneeled before the witches-Elina sat with her knees tucked up to her chin-and reached over to lay her hand on the child’s arm.

“The connection is sealed,” Agny said. “We will not leave this circle until our task is complete, or until death takes us.”

“The circle is complete,” the witches echoed.

“The circle holds me,” Ilvani murmured. Power surged through her limbs, the combined strength and magic of the wychlaran. She gasped. Agny, Sree, and the rest were suddenly in her thoughts and she in theirs. The whispers were deafening; she couldn’t tell one voice from another or hear her own thoughts in the barrage of sounds and secrets.

Throwing her head back, Ilvani sucked in the cold night air and watched the stars whirl above her. The owl soared high and called out to her, but she couldn’t answer him. The wychlaran chants grew louder. All the barriers, not just those erected in her mind, were breaking down.

The Veil, Ilvani thought. The Veil between the worlds dissolves in this small, protected space. She had no choice but to walk the dark roads with these unfamiliar women and pray that they did not intend her death.

The last sound Ilvani heard before oblivion was the sound of trees ripping themselves from the earth.

In the darkness, and with only one eye, Cree still saw them first. He waved his katar to get the others’ attention and pointed to the darkness beyond the ice-encased torches. The swaying motion of the trees wasn’t caused by the wind, but by a spirit walking the earth on two legs, thick gnarled trunks covered in ice and pine needles woven like sinew. The weight of the tallest branches bent the treant over so that it walked stooped, its branches dragging the ground and picking up snow and dirt.

“They’re bigger than I thought,” Cree told his brother, who stood beside him.

“I still think burning them is the best way,” Skagi said. “What do you think, Ashok?”

When Ashok didn’t reply, Cree turned to look at him. Ashok stared out over the lake, watching the ritual. He held a small metal vial in his left hand. It was empty. He wiped his mouth and threw the vial in the water.

“Are you ready, Ashok?” Cree asked. He didn’t know what had been in the vial-perhaps a healing draught given to him by the witches. Many of Ashok’s wounds in the fight with the winter wolves had been slow to heal.