Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (19 page)

Giliead shook his head. “Laodice didn’t think there
were enough guls up there to take all those people. And the settlers knew to be
careful of them. Unless they were trapped somewhere, and couldn’t get away.”

Ilias shifted uncomfortably. He was imagining the
hapless settlers lured out and caught in a cave-in somehow, being slowly fed on
by guls while he and Giliead and the traders waited and wondered. It made him
want to leave for the pass now, this moment, no matter how stupid or suicidal
it was. “You really think they could be alive?”

Giliead was silent for a long moment. “No. Not really.”
He pushed off from the tree trunk, looking off into the gathering darkness.

* * *

There was an old trade road that went up through the
pass, and the construction of the city had made it well-traveled. It wound
gradually up through the grassy hills, past sparse stands of trees. The morning
sun was bright and the day promised to be warm; it still didn’t look anything
like godless curse-haunted territory and Ilias could understand why the
settlers had been lulled into believing all would be well.

Laodice, her husband Macchus, and three other men
accompanied them, along with the Chaean Tolyi.

Giliead was walking at the front with Laodice, and
Ilias heard him ask, “Was there any word of strangers visiting the city? Any
newcomers moving in?”

“We heard of no one, but then we only saw the Taerae
once a year ourselves.” Laodice looked up at the cliffs above them, frowning.

Ilias found Tolyi walking beside him, and gave her a
brief smile.

She smiled back, and said, “The Chosen Vessel is your
brother?”

“Not by blood,” he told her, “I’ve been with the
Andrien family since I was a boy.”

“I see.” They walked a little more, and Ilias kept his
eyes on the brush, though it was an effort. Tolyi was far more interesting to
look at. Then she said, “It surprises me that you’re both so young.”

Ilias managed not to throw her a wary look. He
suddenly suspected that her walking with him had nothing to do with his
personal attractions. He shrugged, tugging on his baldric. “We’re older than we
look.”

“Not that much older.” Her voice dry, she added, “I
have a son older than you, I expect.”

This time he did look at her, but incredulously. “Really?”
He had thought she was only a little older than Giliead’s sister Irissa, at
most. She did have the bearing of an older woman, but he had thought it was
because she had an important duty as a trading factor.

“Really.” Her look was a little amused, and a little
flattered. “And I know Syprians keep their boys close. Especially pretty,
marriageable boys.”

“Not that close.” But Ilias looked away, scanning the
scrub off the trail and giving himself a moment to think. “Chosen Vessels don’t
marry. Not often, anyway.”

“But he takes his younger brother—”

“Older,” Ilias corrected automatically, then swore
silently at himself.
You idiot
.

“Older brother, I see.”

“What are you saying, Tolyi?” Ilias was obviously
losing the subtle battle, he might as well bring it into the open. “Do you
think we’re lying about Gil being a Vessel?”

“No!” Startled, she stopped, catching his arm to pull
him to a halt. “Not that at all. I can see he’s a Vessel.” She regarded him
seriously. “I don’t doubt your word. So I’d like to ask you how long you two
have been doing this, how many of these hunts have you been on?”

Ilias took a deep breath, pressing his lips together. It
was an honest question, and he wouldn’t lie to her. “This is the second. The
first was...not long ago.”

“Oh.” She lifted her brows. They looked at each other
for a long moment, and by mutual consent both started to walk again.

“Will you tell the others?” Ilias asked her. His heart
was pounding. It was hard enough having this much responsibility. Having this
much responsibility but with the added burden of the traders looking at Giliead
as if he didn’t know what he was doing would be just that much worse.

“No,” she said quickly, “No.” She threw him a wry glance.
“I’m sure some of them have guessed already, but it wouldn’t do any good to say
it aloud.”

Ilias suppressed a wince. They walked along for a time
in silence. Or at least Ilias tried to keep silent. But he finally had to ask, “What
did you mean when you said that you could see Gil was a Vessel?”

She took a deep breath, and seemed to consider before
replying. “I’ve met several Vessels, here and in the Chaean islands, when they
come to make treaties.” She looked up, her face set and sad. “He has that look,
the fey look. Fated.”

Ilias didn’t reply to that. He knew what she meant,
but he had never seen it. Maybe he had lived with it so long, he couldn’t see
it. “We’re young. But he knows what to do. He’s been waiting for this all his
life.”

* * *

They followed the road up through the hills, until the
ground grew rocky and the mountain’s brown stone shoulders started to rise up
on either side. The pass turned into a winding gorge, a few hundred paces wide,
with a shallow stream cutting through rock and yellow grass and low scrubby
brush.

Walking ahead a few paces, Giliead came to an abrupt
halt. “Stop,” Ilias said without thinking, shifting the bow off his shoulder. Somewhat
to his surprise, everybody did. Laodice and Macchus and the others warily
scanned their surroundings, though there was nothing obviously threatening. A
few tall trees threw some welcome shade on the road and the stream. The ground
was sandy and rocky, and mostly bare of scrub or anything that could be used as
cover, up to a hundred paces away. On the far side of the road, nearest the
gorge wall, boulders and the remains of an old rockfall lay scattered. Ilias
couldn’t hear anything but sparrows and rainbirds chirping and the hum of
insects.

Giliead cocked his head, turning deliberately toward
the stream and the stone cliff face far on the other side. Ilias followed his
gaze, stepping up beside him. “You see it?” Giliead said softly. “Right below
that pointed grayish rock, in the shadow, there’s a ledge.”

Ilias squinted. The dappled shade of the trees, the
shadows, the striations of the rock all made it hard to... There it was. “I see
it.” Crouched in the crevice, barely visible, was a man-shaped creature. It was
a little like a rock monkey, but taller, and too skinny, and there was something
about the way it sat, watching them, that was not at all animal-like.

“That’s a gul.” Laodice spoke quietly, stepping up
beside Ilias. “Where there’s one, there’s others. They hunt in packs.”

“One to lure travelers off the road, the others to
kill and eat,” Tolyi added, her face grim.

Uneasily fascinated, Ilias reached for an arrow. “Kill
it?”

As if it had heard him, the creature faded back into
the shadow, vanishing. Ilias grimaced. “It doesn’t matter,” Laodice said,
absently giving Ilias’ shoulder a squeeze as she turned away. “They know we’re
here, anyway. There’s too many to kill them all.”

Giliead lifted a brow, exchanging a look with Ilias.
Next
time I’ll know not to ask,
Ilias promised him silently.

“How did you see it up there?” one of the younger men
asked Giliead.

“I didn’t see it. I felt it looking at us,” Giliead
told him. He didn’t bother waiting for their reaction, following Laodice as
they started down the road again. Ilias moved after him, feeling his back
prickle and knowing they were all looking at each other in that way he was
growing to hate.
You asked for a Chosen Vessel,
he thought, bitterness
settling in his stomach.
What good would it do to be a Vessel who couldn’t
tell a gul was looking at him?
Just because Giliead had never done it
before...

“If all curselings were created by wizards, what
wizard created the guls?” Tolyi asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

Giliead glanced over at her. “The Journals don’t say. As
far as we know there have always been guls in the godless territories,
especially the mountains. As long as there have been gods.” He frowned, facing
the trail again.

The sun was nearly straight overhead by the time Ilias
had a chance to speak to Giliead in relative privacy. They had reached a point
where the stream widened into a pool, fed by a waterfall that broke and tumbled
down the rocks of the cliff face. The pool was low now but the channels it had
worn showed it was much deeper in the spring when the rains sent water
cascading down a much wider section of the cliff. There was a bridge here,
built by the Taerae to keep the trade moving when the water covered the old
road’s path.

The bridge was wide enough for a big trade wagon, with
stone pilings and wide seasoned planks. A ford would have probably worked just
as well, but Ilias was beginning to think the Taerae had had more coins than
sense. Laodice called a halt there to refill their waterskins, and Ilias moved
to join Giliead, who was standing on the bridge looking further up the road.

“How did you feel the gul looking at you?” Ilias asked
quietly. The rush of water down the rock would cover their voices but he still
kept his back to the others.

Giliead shrugged a little helplessly. “I don’t know.
It was like it was trying to touch me, from all the way across the gorge.” He
looked away again. “I think it might have something to do with the way guls
shapechange to lure people away. Maybe they see inside our heads, and because I’m
a Vessel I could feel it doing that.”

It made Ilias uneasy. The seeing inside heads thing
was not a comfortable thought, but it would explain why the guls were able to
take shapes that were familiar to the people they were trying to lure away. But
at least Giliead had demonstrated to the traders that he was a Chosen Vessel. A
young Chosen Vessel, but a Vessel nonetheless. That was one less thing to worry
about.

* * *

The sky was at the edge of twilight when they reached
the city.

Ilias stopped next to Giliead as the gorge widened
out, the sparse trees and scrub brush giving way to rocky ground. There was a
natural gap in the gorge wall, the entrance to another canyon that had been
closed in with a wall of cut stone blocks, stretching up a whole ship’s length.
A log gate was set in the wall and the trail signs and Syrnaic characters for “Taerae”
were carved into the blocks above it, touched with paint that was already faded
a little from the wind and sand.

The old road curved through the open rocky flat,
disappearing as the pass wound away. A new branch of it, lined with stone,
turned off and led through the open gates.

It would have been a welcoming sight, after the long
walk up the pass, except for the silence, and the unattended wall. Cineth’s
gates stood open, but there were always at least two sentries there, even though
there hadn’t been a Raider attack on the city for decades. “See anything?”
Ilias asked. Uneasy prickles were climbing his spine, and there was something
cold and empty about those open gates, the glimpse of painted pavement he could
see through them, the silence that hung over the place. The birdsong had
stopped when they had left the trees and the stream behind, but the quiet hadn’t
been oppressive before now.

Giliead frowned absently, studying the ground. “Just a...
Huh.”

Distracted, he moved away, parallel to the wall,
pausing occasionally to kick at a rock or scrape his boot over the dust. Ilias
followed at a distance, the others trailing more cautiously behind. He knew
Giliead wasn’t following tracks, but the invisible traces that a wizard’s
curses left behind.

After a short distance Giliead found a footpath that
ran along the city wall. It led through a scrubby grove of trees, to the edge
of a shallow pit carved out of the hillside. Giliead stopped, studying the pit,
brows knit.

When Ilias drew even with him he saw why. In the
center of the pit was a large stake, driven deep into the dirt. Chains with
manacles hung from it. “This is interesting,” Giliead said, brows lifted. He
turned to regard Laodice and Tolyi. “Did you know about this?”

“No, and I don’t understand.” Laodice came to stand
beside them, her expression incredulous. “It’s for punishment, I see that, but...”

“They just left criminals out here to starve?” Macchus
asked, dubious. “It’s a little mad.”

Ilias understood their confusion. They couldn’t see
what Giliead must be seeing. And he thought it was likely that they hadn’t
known about it. The trees and tall grass blocked it from the road, and the
footpath wasn’t well-traveled.

“It stinks of guls and curses,” Giliead said, watching
them carefully. “No one chained out here starved. I doubt they lasted the
night.”

Macchus swore. Tolyi and Laodice exchanged a look of
startled disgust. “Their reasons for secrecy seem more clear now,” Tolyi said
with a grimace.

Ilias shook his head. No lawgiver worth the name would
have permitted this. If one had tried, she or he would have soon found
themselves deposed by the town council or the Chosen Vessel. Of course, the
Taerae hadn’t been burdened with a Chosen Vessel, not having a god to choose
one.