Huntress (22 page)
T
hey breakfasted together, sitting at one corner of the table with their knees touching. Despite the shadow of Taisin’s vision, they felt enveloped in an enchantment: one in which even the drinking of tea was as magical as any fairy glamour.
When Con came out to join them, Taisin and Kaede hastily scooted apart, but the expressions on their faces were so plain that he laughed out loud. “I see that things have changed,” he observed, and Kaede flushed so deeply she couldn’t look at him.
The Huntsman came to collect them shortly after breakfast. He told them that the Fairy Hunt would accompany them to the northern edge of the Wood, and then they would have to continue on without their Xi escort. “We will not travel through the lands that she has taken for her own,” he explained as he led them through the palace to the outer courtyard.
“But how will we find her?” Taisin asked, hurrying to catch up with his long strides.
“You have a token of hers,” he said.
“I do?” Apprehension quivered in her as she tried to think of what she could be carrying that had been Elowen’s, and then her stomach dropped. “The medallion,” she said, and the alarm in her voice caused the Huntsman to stop and turn back to her. “Is that how—why I have seen so much of her fortress?” she demanded.
The Huntsman regarded her pale cheeks and wide, dark eyes, and said as kindly as he could, “If you were already sensitive, then yes, her medallion may have enabled you to see more of her.”
Taisin felt for the chain around her neck and pulled the medallion out. It was black and opaque, as usual, but she felt newly aware of it, and now she wondered how she had ever not known that it once belonged to Elowen. “How did she lose it?” she asked.
Sadness washed over the Huntsman’s face. “She left it behind when she left Taninli. It was a gift from the Fairy Queen.”
He came toward her and touched the black stone with a gentle finger. A tiny glow burned in the stone for a moment. “It wants to be reunited with her. It will show you the way.”
Taisin closed her hand around the medallion, intending to take it off; she wouldn’t wear Elowen’s chain around her neck. But at the last minute, struggling against an equally powerful desire to keep it, she slid it back beneath her tunic. When she felt the stone pressing coldly against her skin, she was disconcerted by the sense of relief that flooded through her. The Huntsman nodded at her as if she had made the right decision. “The longer you wear it,” he said, “the more it also becomes yours.”
In the courtyard, half a dozen riders of the Fairy Hunt awaited them, along with riding horses and packhorses loaded with canvas-covered gear. Con did not see their own, ordinary steeds, and he asked, “Where are our horses?”
“They are resting for your return journey back to your kingdom,” said the Huntsman. “You shall ride our horses as far as you can. The dogs will take your supplies the rest of the way.”
Eight dogs, each with thick gray coats shading into white bellies and paws, had been led into the courtyard by a thin, spry Xi woman. She spoke to the Huntsman in their language, and her green eyes glanced quickly over the humans. She said nothing to them before she left, but she bent down to her dogs and each met her nose to nose in a solemn farewell.
They left Taninli by the same route they had taken through the city when they arrived. At first the few Xi they saw were simply going about their business as usual, but as they descended into the streets, more and more Xi emerged from their homes to watch them ride past. Once again, Kaede had to look down to avoid their eyes. She couldn’t bear to see the doubt in their faces—or, even worse, the hope.
Outside the city gates they turned north, leaving the boulevard almost immediately and riding straight into the Wood. The manicured trees quickly turned wild, and within an hour of leaving Taninli and its pocket of summer behind, the air began to carry the bite of cold. The horses and dogs moved swiftly—more swiftly than horses or dogs should move, Kaede thought. When she looked ahead of them the trees were a bit blurry, and the dogs blended into the landscape, running silently over fallen leaves. She felt increasingly detached from her body as the day progressed, and it would have disturbed her if her senses had been more alert, but instead, she felt a kind of haze that prevented her from doing anything but staying in the saddle.
At night they stopped beside a bubbling stream to water the animals, and the Xi set up small, strange tents in the spaces between trees. They were round, like bubbles made of canvas, stretched tight over ingeniously bent poles. Kaede crawled into the one the Huntsman told her was hers, and she slept as soon as she lay down on the fur-covered pallet.
The next morning she emerged from her solitary tent, and one of the riders gave her a horn cup full of a hot, bitter drink. It was shocking on her tongue, and when she looked up she saw a barren landscape around her. Tree branches that should have been heavy with green needles were stripped clean, as if a giant had come and swept them bare with his fingers.
A dog butted against her leg, and she bent down to stroke him. His brown eyes regarded her with gentle curiosity, and then she saw Taisin come out from a nearby tent, and soon Con emerged from another. There was no time to do more than wish one another a good morning, for the Fairy Hunt was readying to go, and they thrust cups of the hot drink into Con’s and Taisin’s hands and told them to hurry.
They rode again.
Midmorning on the third day after leaving Taninli, the trees abruptly ended. Kaede twisted back in her saddle and stared at the bare trees behind her, trunks the color of ash. Her breath made clouds in the air. The Huntsman was dismounting from his horse, and his boots touched down in snow. She looked north, away from the Wood, and the land was a broad expanse of white stretching toward a faraway horizon. The blue sky arched there in the distance, but above her head the sun was blocked by clouds.
The Huntsman and the other riders were taking bundles down from their horses, and Kaede watched them in confusion, for it was too early in the day to set up camp. They were unpacking long, slim pieces of wood that folded and unfolded in strange ways, and when they put them together, they formed a strong sledge. Stacks of firewood were then lashed onto the sledge, and most of the provisions that had been carried by the packhorses were transferred there as well. The dogs submitted to being harnessed to it, and before she knew what was happening—there was still something wrong with her sense of time—the Huntsman was asking her to dismount from her horse.
“What’s going on?” she asked, trying to inhale the chilly air to wake herself up. Con and Taisin seemed as muddled as she was.
“We must leave you here,” the Huntsman said. “Your way lies over the ice field.”
Kaede shook her head; it felt woolly.
Taisin said, “We are close.”
“Yes,” the Huntsman said. “I would suggest you put on your warmer clothing.”
One of the Xi came to take Kaede’s horse away, and she felt the lick of winter against her skin as she looked out over the glacier.
“We have given you everything we can,” the Huntsman was saying. He explained how to use the round oil lamps; how to strap the broad snowshoes onto their feet; how to command the dogs.
Kaede blinked again. The light was so odd here. She turned to the Huntsman, willing herself to focus on him. He seemed just slightly worried. “Tell your queen,” she said, “that we will do the best we can.”
He looked at her gravely and, for the first time, came to her and squeezed her shoulder in the way her father had done once, when she was a little girl and had been knocked down in a fight with her brother Tanis. She had not cried, even though her nose was bleeding, and her father had crouched down to her eye level, his large, warm hand engulfing her shoulder and upper arm, and said somberly, “My little hellion.” But she had known that he was proud of her in that moment, and the memory of him suddenly made a lump rise in her throat, and she had to turn away from the Huntsman to stare at the ice.
T
aisin and Kaede walked ahead of the sledge, leading the dogs north, while Con followed behind in their tracks to make sure the load remained stable. Every step across the snow sloughed off a bit of the fog that had clung to them as they traveled with the Hunt, and by midafternoon the vista ahead shone with a clarity that was startling to eyes recently glamoured by Xi magic. The sun was bright overhead; the ice field was broad and unbroken; the air stung their skin with its briskness.
Taisin and Kaede did not speak, for they were wrapped from head to foot in furs, and it was hard going. But more than once they glanced at each other, and each was surprised by the pool of happiness that spread through herself even as she trudged through the falling temperatures and growing dusk.
Their first night on the ice field, they built a small, hot fire in the lee of the sledge, and boiled water for their first hot drinks since morning. The wind had risen and was whipping up the snow in frozen imitations of dust devils, but the night sky was clear and black, with thousands of stars spread in unfamiliar constellations overhead. They crouched as close to the fire as they could, eating a supper of dried fruit and hard, round crackers that tasted, ingeniously, of cheese.
Afterward, as Kaede fed the dogs, Con and Taisin pitched the two tents and unpacked their sleeping furs. Con took five of the dogs into his tent, and Taisin and Kaede took the other three. With the dogs curled up around them, their nest was cozy enough. Kaede slid her arm across Taisin’s stomach and nestled her nose into the crook of her neck, and sleep overcame her moments after she lay down. Taisin was awake for only a few minutes more, long enough to wonder if Elowen would come to her tonight, but she was so tired that she couldn’t even be properly anxious about it.
Sometime in the hours before dawn, Kaede awoke to hear Taisin speaking. They had shifted apart; Taisin was turned away from her, one arm flung out over the furs. One of the dogs let out a low growl, and Taisin’s voice changed, deepening. Kaede could not understand what she was saying, for the words made no sense. The dog beside her tensed up. When she reached out to calm him, she felt his fur rising stiffly down his back.
Kaede shook Taisin’s shoulder. “Taisin,” she whispered. One of the dogs barked.
Taisin jerked awake, letting out a half-strangled moan. “What? Who is there?”
“It’s me,” Kaede said.
Taisin pushed herself up. It was too dark to see, but she felt the dogs creeping back to her, their hackles lowered now, and one rubbed his head against her arm.
“Why did you wake me?” Taisin asked, her voice rough. It didn’t sound quite like her own.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
Kaede thought she sounded nervous. “I couldn’t understand you. It wasn’t… it was not our language.” A beat later, Taisin lay down again, and Kaede asked, “Did you see
her
again?”
“I can’t remember,” Taisin answered. It was unsettling; her mind was so fuzzy. She lay awake for some time, trying to sort through the hazy memories that kept slipping away from her. But it was no use, and now she could not sleep, and the wind was buffeting the walls of their tent, keening like an army of ghosts.
“Kaede,” she whispered, wondering if she had fallen asleep.
She had not. “Yes?” Kaede murmured, and she shifted closer. She heard Taisin’s breath grow short; she felt her own skin suffused all over with heat.
Taisin turned to her. How strange and wonderful, she thought, that in the middle of this bizarre journey, there should be this: Kaede, who kissed her.
After a few moments, the dogs slunk off to the foot of the tent, affronted. Kaede stifled a laugh, her hands sliding around Taisin’s waist, and later, they slept again.
In the morning, Taisin drew out the medallion and cupped it in her hands. She thought of the fortress of ice; she could imagine the walls of it so clearly, the windows bright in the sunlight, the sea all around it deep sapphire blue. The stone became warm; it pulsed like a tiny heart. Taisin felt it tugging at her until she faced northeast. On the horizon, the blue sky faded into the field of ice, making the land seem endless. “We go there,” Taisin said, her voice small, swallowed up by the world of the glacier.
The dogs barked as if in affirmation.
Kaede woke again on the second night to the sound of Taisin’s voice. This time she lay still and listened. It might have been the language of the Xi, but Kaede could not make out the different words. They flowed into one another in a singsong pattern that reminded her of chanting, but she had never heard any chanting like this. And then Taisin arched her back and laughed out loud, and the voice that came out of her body sounded nothing like her. The dogs, who had already been stirring awake, backed away and began to growl low in their throats.
“Taisin!” Kaede called, reaching out to touch Taisin’s arm.
Suddenly Taisin’s body went limp, her eyes blinking open in the darkness of the tent. She let out a weak sigh. “Am I dreaming?” she whispered.
One of the dogs whined and went to lick her face with his rough, wet tongue.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked again, more loudly.
“I don’t know,” Kaede said, disturbed by the confusion in Taisin’s voice.
“I don’t want to dream anymore.” Taisin sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.
“What were you dreaming of?”
“Elowen,” Taisin answered, and the dogs barked. She gave a panicked laugh and added, “She wants to know who you are.”
Kaede felt drenched in cold. “What? Why does she want—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s doing to me,” Taisin said, her voice rising.
Kaede pulled her close, pressing her lips to Taisin’s hair. “You shouldn’t say her name again.” She felt useless, and it frustrated her.
Taisin was groggy. She knew that Elowen had been inside her again, but things were different now that Elowen was aware of her. In the past, Taisin had seen the fortress clearly; when she awoke, she remembered. Now she had the feeling that Elowen had been erasing her memory somehow. Her mind felt rubbed clean in some places, and in others it felt like it had been scratched raw. It frightened her.
Kaede fell asleep again; the dogs stretched out, content, on either side of them; but Taisin lay awake thinking for a long time. She could not allow Elowen to take over her mind, and she began to formulate a plan to prevent it from happening.
On the third day, Taisin crumpled in midstep, and when Con and Kaede ran to help her up, she snarled at them. Elowen’s voice came spitting out of her:
“Fools.”
They halted, shocked, their hands outstretched to Taisin, lying on the snow. Her face was twisted into a grimace; her eyes were glazed. She began to mutter to herself in the same strange language that Kaede had heard at night. “What is wrong with her?” Con demanded.
“She has been like this before,” Kaede said. “The Fairy Queen’s daughter visits her when she’s asleep.” The fact that Elowen seemed to be visiting Taisin now while she was awake was extremely disturbing.
Taisin’s eyes were half shut, and her face was so pale it was almost white. Con asked, “What can we do?”
They ended up carrying her to the sledge, making room for her among their tents and blankets. She struggled a bit at first, and Con had to pin her arms to her side while Kaede held her legs. She wondered whether they would have to tie her down, but when they settled her onto the sledge, Taisin’s body relaxed. She looked up at them with dreamy eyes and said in Elowen’s voice, silky and cold, “It is such a pleasure to meet you both, at last.” She laughed, her whole body shaking with mirth while Kaede and Con watched her, horrified.
But as quickly as it had begun, the laughter choked off, and Taisin let out a moan as if she were in pain. She curled up, holding her head in her hands. Kaede stroked Taisin’s feverish forehead and asked, “Taisin, what can we do?”
Taisin jerked away from her touch as though it hurt her, and for the first time, Kaede truly wanted to kill Elowen. The anger filled her unexpectedly; her fingers curled into fists.
Taisin, her eyes squeezed shut, said in a shaking voice, “I’ll be all right. We just need to go.”
So they continued on.
That afternoon they came to a cliff. When Con and Kaede walked to the edge, they saw that the ice field ended in what seemed to be a sheer wall of white. It plunged down a hundred feet to a beach. In the distance, they could see the ocean: intense, cold blue dotted with ice floes.
Con looked in either direction and pointed south. “There. It looks like the cliff is lower there.”
Kaede nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
After walking for two hours, they found that the ice field did slope down to the beach, but it was a steep descent. “We could continue on,” Con said, “and see if there is an easier way down. But we’re going farther and farther away from the direction Taisin told us to go.”
“We might be able to climb down,” Kaede said. “Some areas are not as steep as others. We’ll have to be careful, though.”
“What about the sledge?” Con asked.
“We can leave the sledge up here. We’ll leave half the firewood for the return journey, and the dogs will have no problem.”
“And Taisin?”
She glanced back at Taisin, who was sitting on the sledge with a dazed look on her face. The sight of her twisted Kaede’s stomach into knots. The closer they drew to Elowen’s fortress, the more Kaede wanted to finish this—and finish it quickly. She felt a hard determination growing in her, and though the feeling was new, it was not unwelcome. It gave her courage, and she knew she would need that soon, for she had every intention of making Elowen pay for what she was doing to Taisin.
Kaede met Con’s worried gaze and said, “We’ll tie her to us. We have rope, don’t we?”
He considered it for a moment. “I suppose we have no other choice,” he said reluctantly.
Kaede unhitched the dogs, who seemed both surprised and excited at being allowed to roam free at this time of day. Some of them ran along the edge of the cliff, but two sat down behind her as she grimly approached Taisin with the rope. She wasn’t sure how Taisin would react to being tied to them; all day she had been slipping further away, and it wasn’t clear if she was actually aware of what was going on. But she did not fight when Kaede came with the rope, and just as Kaede knotted it tight beneath her armpits, she gripped Kaede’s hand and said fiercely, “I am still here. I am still here. Don’t let her tell you otherwise.”
Kaede looked into Taisin’s dark brown eyes; the sun was reflected in them in bright white spots, and she knew it was Taisin speaking, not Elowen. “I won’t,” Kaede assured her. “You will have to climb down after Con. Can you do it? I’ll stay beside you.”
Taisin nodded, though her face was pallid and drawn. “I can do it.”
Con descended over the edge first, his belly flat against the snow, and a few of the dogs followed him. They had already bundled their supplies together and pushed them over the cliff, where they slid down the slope until the bundles lodged against an outcropping of ice. Con began to make his way carefully toward the supplies as Kaede helped Taisin begin her descent. From her vantage point on top of the cliff, Kaede kept an eye on Con as he shoved one of the larger packs along. She was reaching for her gloves, which she had removed to tighten the knots in the rope linking them together, when he slipped.
The rope jerked, and Taisin screamed as she was pulled down the cliff face. Kaede reached for Taisin’s hand but was just a moment too late, and the rope tightened around Kaede’s waist and yanked her toward the edge.
She fell to her knees and dug her fingers into the ice, but the rope dragged her painfully over the lip of the cliff until her legs were dangling over the precipice, her chest flat on the ground, her chin scraped raw against the snow.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears; panic rushed through her body. She could not see Con or Taisin. The pack leader came and snuffed at her head. She called out, “Con!”
But he did not respond. And the rope continued to pull at her. Dead weights. Fear threatened to overwhelm her.
She let out her breath in a sob. She began to swing her right leg out, searching for footing—searching for anything. She kicked the glacier wall; small pellets of ice and snow rained down the cliffside, but there was nothing to break her fall.
Her fingers were freezing. Her hands began to slip. The ice would cut into her palms any minute now, and she would die leaving bloody handprints in the snow.
