Жаклин Кэри - Banewreaker

“I would say no,” she said softly.

“So.” He let his reaching hand fall back to his side. “It is no less than I expected, Lady. No less, and no more.”

“Why did you refuse?” The words sprang impulsively from her lips, and Cerelinde wished them unsaid the moment she uttered them. But having been uttered, they could not be taken back. She forged onward. “This … rift, the Shapers’War. Haomane First-Born asked you three times to withdraw your Gift from Arahila’s Children. Why did you refuse?”

“Why?” Thunder rumbled in the distance and clouds began to gather above the Vale of Gorgantum, obscuring the stars. Lifting his head, the Shaper watched as scudding wisps occluded the sundered disk of the silvery moon. In the dim light that remained his throat was an obsidian column, his breast a shield of night and the slow tide of seeping blood that glimmered on his thigh and trickled down one leg was oily and black. Something in his stance, in his presence, reminded her that he was one of the Seven Shapers; reminded her of the unbearable torment glimpsed when he had donned the Helm of Shadows. “Ask my Elder Brother, Lady. It is him you worship.”

“He is not here to ask,” Cerelinde said humbly, clasping her hands together.

“No.” Slowly, Lord Satoris lowered his head to regard her, and his eyes glowed as red as blood, or dying embers. “He is not, is he?”

The clamitus atroxis shivered in resonant grief as the Shaper turned away, head held low, the dark bulwark of his shoulders rising like the swell of a wave. Cerelinde struggled against a sense of loss. A loss, but of what? Of a moment lost, an opportunity passing. Something slipped away, slipped between her slender fingers and through the gaps in her keen Ellylon mind as He who had Sundered the world trudged across the garden, leaving droplets of dark blood on the dying grass in his wake.

“My Lord!” she cried aloud in despair. “ Why? ”

A gentle rain began to fall as Satoris walked away from her, his words floating back to reach her. “Whatever stories they tell of me, Cerelinde, they will not say I slew you out of hand. That, at least, I may ensure.”

Left standing alone in the garden, she flinched as the first drops struck her, but it was an ordinary rain. Water, no more and no less, leaving damp spots on her silk robes. It fell like a soft balm on the moon-garden, washing away the stench of sulfur, the dark traces of the Shaper’s blood. In a nearby bed, pale flowers opened like eyes to welcome the clean rain, and the poignant odor of vulnus-blossom wafted in the air.

Their scent evokes memory. Painful memory.

Tanaros’ words.

It was an aroma like nothing else, delicate and haunting. Cerelinde stumbled, backing away from the source, not wishing to see what it had evoked before: Lindanen Dale on her wedding day, Aracus struggling under the deadly onslaught of the Were, her kinsmen and his falling, slaughtered, and Tanaros looming before her on his black horse, reaching for her, blood staining the length of his black blade.

“No,” she whispered.

It didn’t come. Instead, she saw again the dark silhouette of the Shaper; Satoris Banewreaker, Satoris the Sunderer, with the shadow of his extended hand on the dying grass between them.

“I do not understand!” Turning her face to the night sky, Cerelinde let the rain wash away the gathering tears. “Lord-of-Thought,” she pleaded, “I pray you lend me wisdom.”

“Lady.” A bulky figure trudged across the garden toward her, its path marked by the yellow glow of a bobbing lantern. “The Mørkhar said his Lordship had left you. Come on, I’ve not got all night.” Holding the lantern aloft, Vorax sniffed. “Vulnus-blossom,” he said in disgust. “You’re better off avoiding the foul stuff. After a thousand years, I can tell you, some things are best forgotten.”

“Lord Vorax.” Cerelinde laid one hand on his arm. “What do you see?”

He turned his broad face toward her, illuminated by the lantern’s glow. It was a Man’s face, an ordinary Staccian face, plain and unhandsome. For all that, it was not a mortal face; the eyes that regarded her had watched a thousand years pass, and gazed without blinking at all the long anguish contained within the Helm of Shadows.

“You,” he said bluntly. “I see you.”

Ushahin turned his forked stick, rotating the slow-lizard’s gutted carcass.

It was an unlikely breakfast, all the more so for being prepared by virtue of a dragon’s courtesy. The lizard was roasting nicely in the outer verges of the searing flame she provided, held under careful control. Its charred hide was beginning to crackle and split, tasty white flesh bulging in the seams. Ushahin brought it in for inspection and scorched his fingers wedging loose a chunk of flaky meat. It had a sweet and mild flavor, with a smoky undertone. “Very pleasant,” he said, extending the stick. “And done, I think. Will you not share it, Mother?”

The twin-sourced jet of flame winked into nonexistence as Calanthrag the Elder closed the iron-scaled valves of her nostrils, blinking with slow amusement. “My thanksss, little ssson. As I sssaid, I have eaten.”

“Anyone I know?” He picked out another chunk of roasted lizard.

“Perhapssss.” The dragon shifted one submerged claw.

Ushahin paused in the act of raising the piece to his mouth. “Vorax’s Staccians.”

“Perhapssss.”

He chewed and swallowed the bite, conscious of the fact that he owed its delectation to her hospitality. “And yet you spared me.”

“Are you sssorry?”

“No.” He thought about it and shook his head. “Of a surety, I regret their deaths. Yet if you had not devoured them, I do not think I would be sitting here. And you would not have told me such mysteries as stagger the mind.”

The nictitating lids blinked. “Even ssso.”

The morning sun slanted through the mangrove and palodus trees, its warmth dispersing the vapors that rose from the swamp’s waters in the cool hours of night. Insects chirred and whined. Overhead, birds flitted, dining on the prodigious swarms. Here and there the raucous kaugh of a raven punctuated their calls. Filled with a deep sense of contentment, Ushahin Dreamspinner sat in his skiff and ate roasted slow-lizard, until his belly was as full as his thoughts.

When he was finished, he laid his roasting stick carefully in the skiff beside his pole and the makeshift spear with which he had slain the lizard. The restless ravens settled in the trees, watching and waiting. The dragon was watching too, endless patience in her inhuman eyes. Ushahin touched his chest, feeling the scar’s ridges through the fabric of his shirt, remembering the pain and the ecstasy of his branding. The scar throbbed beneath his touch, exerting a westward tug on his flesh. He thought of Lord Satoris, left with only one of his Three at his side, and the urge grew stronger.

Raising his head, he watched the ravens fluff and sidle, catching the tenor of their feathered thoughts. A winding wall encircling a vale, dark towers rearing under an overcast sky, yellow beech leaves and messy nests.

Home, home, home!

Calanthrag’s voice hissed softly. “Do you ssstruggle againsst your dessstiny, Sson of No One?”

“No.” He shook his head. “What you have told me, I will hold close to my heart, Mother, and ponder for many years. But it is Lord Satoris who gave meaning to my existence. I Am his servant. I cannot be otherwise.”

“He is the Sssower. Ssso it mussst be. Ssso it is.”

There was a tinge of sulfur and sorrow in the dragon’s exhalation. Turning away, Ushahin knelt in the skiff and worked at the knot in the rope he had tied around the palodus tree. His crooked fingers were unwontedly nimble. Oh, there was power in this place! It sang in his veins, heating his blood and rendering irrelevant the myriad aches that were his body’s legacy. There was a part of him that was reluctant to leave. He sighed, bowing his head and winding the rope, laying it coiled in the prow. Straightening, he grasped the pole and stood, meeting the dragon’s gaze. “Do you know how my story will end, Mother?”