Cordimancy (35 page)

In the early years, the drought was less severe in Altria, but after a decade every throat was parched, and Lin began to hear rumors of Altrian soldiers raiding the wells in the border lands. She arranged to meet her sister at the mountain pass between their two lands. As a token of hope and friendship, she took with her a small seedling—the last healthy tree from once-verdant palace gardens. With the tenderness of a mother, Lin had skimped on her own water ration for months to keep it alive.

"The years have been good to you," Lin said with a smile, when the line of Altrian standard bearers knelt and her twin stepped forward. Indeed, though her retainers were gaunt and almost ragged, Viro seemed scarcely to have aged at all. Time had deepened her natural beauty, and added a regal remoteness that fairly took one's breath away. She had none of the wrinkles that Lin had gained from years of work in the sun and wind.

"Let us not mince words," Viro said, ignoring the sprig of green in Lin's outstretched hands. "You wish for the raids on your wells to stop?"

"We have little moisture to spare," said Lin, stung at her sister's lack of welcome. "So let us counsel together. Surely the blood of our people is worth more than a few drops of water."

Viro raised her eyebrows. "You threaten war?"

"Of course not," Lin said. "But desperate folk may do something that we both regret, if we are not careful."

"Is Zufa's situation so dire? Somehow you've kept most folk alive these last ten years."

"Let us say that even the tears are scarce for us, now."

Viro was silent for a long time, as if waging an internal debate. "I can stop the drought, if you let me," she said at last.

"What do you mean?"

"I have studied the ancient lore, paid the price to learn secrets hidden for centuries. I know a deep magic that will bring the rain."

Something in her sister's voice stopped the joyful exclamation half-formed on Lin's lips. "What deep magic is that?" she asked.

"Does it matter? We are talking about grain in the fields. Lush pastures. An end to famine."

"Then why have you not stopped it already?"

Viro did not respond, and as the silence stretched out, Lin felt her heart tighten. "What do I have to let you do?"

Still Viro said nothing, and as Lin searched her sister's eyes, she read a mixture of fear and harshness that scared her. Lin sighed and bowed her head. "I was not the pride of our tutors, and I never had your talents, Viro, but I read the
Kaporo Tarana
often enough. It says The Five permit only three deep magics. I assume any others are unmentionable for good reason."

"It is sanguimancy,” said Viro at last.

Lin's face blanched. She opened her mouth to protest, but Viro raised her hand. "Let me finish. I know the taboos as well as you do, and I admit that they exist for good reason. It is evil to take another's life essence to strengthen your magic. But this is different."

"How can it be different?" Lin stuttered.

"The blood need not flow through malice in the dark. It could be offered willingly."

Lin stared at her sister.

"Set aside your prejudice for a moment and listen to me," insisted Viro. "I know a way to make rain. But all magic has a price, and this one is blood. It is the willful taking of a life, not the fact that blood's involved, that makes such actions evil."

"I'm not sure it's so simple..."

Viro's eyes narrowed. "Yes it is. But just like Father, you flee what's expedient and disguise your cowardice as virtue."

Lin's expression grew sad. "I don't deserve your contempt, Viro. I have made my share of sacrifices for the realm. But I will not spill anyone's blood. The law is crisp, and it has not changed since the dawn of time. I cannot uphold the law if I reinterpret it for my own convenience."

"Convenience!" hissed Viro. "How dare you speak of convenience when wells are dry and mothers can't even suckle their children!"

"Would it be a kindness to fill wells at the price of an entire nation's conscience?" Lin whispered. "It is an abomination. What mother would be glad to suckle her child on the blood of a stranger?"

"I would."

For the first time Lin noticed the slight curve of her sister's belly.

Viro smiled grimly at Lin's widening eyes. "Anyway, piety on someone else's behalf won't get you off so easily. Rain will only fall on land that recognizes what blood's been spilt. If I want to save more than one village, I can't use a nameless nobody. I need blood that matters."

In a flash, Lin understood. She wore the crown that had once governed from coast to coast. The royal blood of Zufa meant something even to the lowliest peasant on the far borders of Altria.

"I will think on this," she said stiffly. And then Lin walked back to her tent with as much dignity as she could muster, the seedling clutched against her wildly beating heart.

That night, Lin summoned her senior leaders and explained Viro's proposal. Their counsel was both indignant and predictable, and after an hour of careful listening, Lin dismissed them to be alone with her thoughts. The incense she’d lit with evening prayers collapsed to ash as she paced. The moon rose and began to fall again.

Blood magic was the vilest behavior imaginable—milking the final drops of someone's life from a punctured vein, lifting bloody fingers to your lips, swallowing as you felt the magic rise. It was a parody of a babe’s lifeline to its mother—as sensuous and invasive as incest. And because it added murder to the magic, it was even more forbidden. How could she ever countenance such a thing?

And yet, and yet—could Lin refuse if she could save the lives of all her people? Perhaps Viro was right, and having a willing victim made all the difference. Was she sick with horror or just with fear of a knife at her own throat? Of late, Lin's hope for an end to the oppressive dearth had begun to ebb, though she'd done her best to keep a brave face. Ten years of choking dryness, each worse than the last. She'd helped to bury dozens of children only last week in a village where thirst had paved the way for fever. Would The Five condemn her for solving a problem in the only way she knew how?

Perhaps it was time to dance with one of The Five in the Ordeal of Names. Karkita loved water; Jurivna sponsored spring, and all green things that grew… But somehow, she suspected that Gitám, god of the suffering and of lost causes, would be the one to ask. Would He listen? Would He speak back? How would she feel if the price of His help was the very thing her sister proposed?

Nor were all of Lin’s doubts ethical. As one general had pointed out, there was no way to know if Viro was being honest about her ability to work this magic. She would only know its power if she’d done such things before. Did she actually intend to kindle, or was this proposal merely a bid to take back the throne she’d coveted for so long? How would Viro treat Lin's people in a power vacuum? When the old raja had found her crying over wilted flowers all those years ago, Lin had offered the kindest explanation she could think of, but she’d known the truth. Perhaps the millet on Zufa’s plains had shriveled for a similar reason. Perhaps drought had spread to Altria through Viro’s miscalculation.

Just before dawn, a breathless page dashed up to report that Altrian troops, reinforced by columns that had crept through the pass in the night, now surrounded Lin's camp. They were outnumbered at least four to one, and Viro was demanding another parley.

"Your decision?" Viro snapped, when her older sister approached.

"I thought you wanted a willing victim," said Lin. "Send your soldiers home." She extended the tiny seedling she'd hoped to give the day before. Its beauty seemed even more precious to her, after her wrestle in the dark.

"I need blood," said Viro. "And I'm going to get it, one way or another."

Lin's bodyguards, loyal to a queen they loved like a sister, had their swords out before she could stop them, but Viro was even faster. She twisted her fingers ever so slightly, and the air crackled as Lin's men shriveled and crumbled into husks of leather and bone. A moment of shocked silence gave way to battle cries—first from Lin's followers, then from Viro's. Arrows darkened the sky. A crescendo of steel on steel, punctuated by harsh groans and the gallop of horses, rent the parched sunrise.

But the fight halted almost immediately. Without a weapon or attendants, Lin soon stood white-faced and stiff, an Altrian sword at her throat.

"I have your queen!" Viro crowed. "Drop your weapons, or she dies!"

A hush fell.

"Your impatience makes you foolish!" hissed Lin. "Kill me now, this way, and you inherit a nation in turmoil. Thousands will die."

Viro chuckled grimly. "Everyone will die, sister. Do you hear me? Everyone. This is no natural drought. It won't get better this year, or the next, or the next. It will devour us all unless I stop it. I won't be deterred by anyone's blood. Not even yours."

"At least let me explain this to my troops so they don't try to avenge me. Let me send to the capital so you can be crowned in peace when I'm gone."

Viro smiled sadly. "Oh, Lin. You always were slow on strategy. Did you imagine I'd plan to kill the Queen without any thought for the seat of her power? Did you imagine that I requested a summit here, on the border, just for my convenience of travel?" When Lin did not respond, Viro shook her head. "My men took Zufa yesterday, sister. I am told that your Royal Guard fought to the end, but they were sorely outnumbered."

Lin stared at her sister as a tear trickled down her weathered cheek. "Your conscience will carry a heavy burden, sister," she said in a whisper. "All I can do now is spare you the weight of one more life." And then she leaned into the sword point under her chin, and blood gushed.

"No!" shrieked Viro, springing forward to catch her sister as she fell. "The magic won't work that way!"

Lin's eyes were already fluttering. "Take the blood," she gasped, pulling Viro's fingers to her throat. "Heal the land."

"I can't!" Viro wailed. "Not now! I wanted you to consent, but it had to be my hand wielding the blade. Blood magic works by taking, not giving."

Lin did not answer. For several heartbeats, silence clung to the air as Viro crouched over the crimson body. Then, with a shout, Viro was on her feet again, eyes flashing with madness. Seizing the sword that had killed her sister, she decapitated the man who had held it. As troops from both armies watched in horror, she rubbed the palms of her hands on the bloody stump of his neck, raised fingers to her lips, and made a vicious flinging gesture. A stream of grating, harsh syllables erupted from her throat.

Death seemed to leap from her fingertips. The dry grass, already withered to a listless brown, blackened and crumbled. Hundreds of soldiers sagged into lifeless piles of armor without a word. One horse, caught at the borders of the zone of destruction, squealed in terror as its hindquarters rotted away. Its shrill soprano panic went on for an obscene interval, mixed with shrieks of psychotic merriment from Viro.

She conjured more swaths of death. Men and animals dropped in their tracks as they fled. Thunder rumbled. The ground heaved.

Hours later, Viro stood alone at the epicenter of the destruction she'd wrought. Nothing moved except steam emanating from gaping fissures she'd torn in the soil. The high pass between Altria and Zufa was now a wound in the earth, full of broken rock and lava flows. She staggered to her sister's body and gazed into lifeless eyes.

As she turned on her heel to limp away again, a glimmer of green caught her attention. The seedling Lin had carried as a peace offering peeked from cold white fingers.

"Insolent sprig!" Viro snarled. "See how long you last with nobody to coddle you." And she walked into the smoke, cackling.

47

the heartstone ~ Toril

As
Paka wound down his story, Toril gazed at Lin’s tree. Somehow it had survived, even flourished; the thought gave him hope.

Oji and Shivi dressed wounds. Then hunger impelled all of them to search for food. They had consumed the provisions from the horse’s saddlebags yesterday, and had nothing to eat since.

Bees buzzed among the wildflowers, and the prospect of honey was tantalizing. Unfortunately, the hive was distant, or else it was well hidden; weak from fasting, Toril’s energy faded as he canvassed the hillside, scanning for higher concentrations of the insects. However, Shivi picked a double handful of wild raspberries, and Malena discovered a patch of edible mushrooms—“bark-bonnets”, she called them—sprouting in the damp at the roots of the tree. Oji contributed some prickly pear cactus that he gathered and de-spined, with sore fingers, from the much drier land along the margins of the haze.

It made an odd breakfast, but everyone was grateful to add something besides water to their bellies.

Anxiety over the children nagged, reminding them of the preciousness of each moment they weren’t on the move. However, after eating, the toll of a full day and night on their feet, plus a harrowing climb, settled on all. Shivi was rubbing her temples. Toril’s limbs felt leaden, and he could barely keep his eyes open; he wondered how Oji, used to frequent catnaps, was able to move at all.

“Can we afford to rest longer?” Malena asked, voicing the question in everyone’s mind.

“The staff’s not showing me much at the moment,” Toril said, “but from what I saw before, we’re just about through the Rift. There’s no way Gorumim could float his detour ahead of us. We ought to have at least one day to spare. Maybe even two.”

“I worry about climbing,” Oji said. “What if the only way out’s more of what it took to reach here? We could waste days seeking a route.”

Shivi shrugged. “The staff got us this far. It’ll help us again when we need it.” She scanned faces, seeming to weigh the doubts she saw there. “Or not. We’ll find out soon enough. But first, we rest. None of us can keep going. We won’t help the children if we break a leg sleepwalking. And we’re in no shape to fight off pishachas, either.”

Blink met blink in bleary agreement.

“I’ll take first watch,” Paka announced.

Toril, who had been steeling himself to say the same thing, and wondering if marching back and forth would be enough to keep him awake, sighed in surprise and gratitude. “You sure?”

Paka nodded. “Still gonna rub my feet for a while. Use up the last of the salve Malena made for me.”

Torn between duty and fatigue, Toril hesitated. But when he saw the others accept the offer without comment, he sank onto grass and closed his eyes.

Hours
later, Toril kneaded neck muscles and inhaled as he yawned, gathering cool air into his lungs. His body and mind felt refreshed, if not exactly energetic. Yet a sort of weariness still lurked. Would he feel... quick, or carefree, or... buoyant, ever again? Or would the awfulness he’d seen in recent days weigh on his heart and his bones forever?

Morning sunshine had blanketed the glade as Toril and his companions closed their eyes. Now the four stars that formed the lips of The Maiden were dropping behind the mist at the west edge of the glade, and sky in the east was graying. Toril’s stomach twisted again with hunger. He hadn’t expected such a long hiatus. He felt uneasy about it.

Shivi had wakened him, not Paka. Who else had played the sentry while he snored? Had Oji?

He should have planned better. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly…

He tightened his belt and stood.

In pre-dawn dark, the oak emitted a silver glow from every vein and stem in its leaves. Though no breeze blew, he thought he caught a rustle from the branches as well—a musical murmur of peace.

Such a tree! Such beauty, in the very center of wasteland…

The others were assembling bundles of gear, lacing boots, tucking tunics into belts. They’d be busy for a while. But Malena, Toril noticed, had wandered over to the water to wash sweat out of some clothes; that meant that for once, she was beyond listening ears.

He sat down on a high spot at the edge of the brook, extended a hand, and smiled when she glanced up.

“Hunk of soap from the saddlebags,” he offered, nodding at the footwraps she was scrubbing against a rock.

Malena looked at the lump he held. “Thanks,” she said at last. She took it and rubbed.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About us.” Toril cleared his throat. “The awkwardness makes me sad.”

Malena swished. Her cheeks were painted in tree-silver, but the hollows below her brows were shadowed.

“I had hoped we’d be friends,” Toril continued after a pause.

Malena turned her head and stopped scrubbing. He watched the lift and fall of her shoulders through two breaths.

“Me too,” she whispered.

“We’ve had a rocky beginning.”

Her head nodded, and Toril heard a sigh.

“Can we work through how I’ve hurt you?” he said, doing his best to make his voice neutral. It was not easy. A part of him rebelled at the question; he had done the best he could, at every juncture, and he longed to make a defense. As long as she didn’t accuse him directly, he was condemned without a trial.

Another part of Toril’s heart was a harsher critic than even Malena might be. In one way or another, he had put them on this course with his bungling of the war council. He had failed his father and his wife. He had lost his magic. He had gotten them caught in Two Forks…

Malena looked him in the eye. “It’s... complicated,” she said. She placed a wet hand on his knee and forced a smile. “You have good intentions. I know that, and I honor you for it.”

Toril blinked several times, waiting. He wondered what expression she read on his face.

“Remember the letters you wrote me, Toril?”

He nodded, surprised at the question. “I was happy about our troth. I wanted you to know.”

“You shared a few of your dreams.”

He nodded again.

She searched his face. “Didn’t you wonder why I sent such short responses?”

Toril raised his eyebrows.

“How I felt was... impossible to put in a letter.” Malena shrugged, then sighed. “My mother read most of what you sent, and no doubt my replies as well. But I hadn’t been able to share my dreams with my parents for years...”

She trailed off, seemingly lost in thought. Then she puffed her cheeks and breathed out. “I remember you described your mother’s illness, and how your father had nursed her through it. You said you hoped we could have that same tenderness.”

“I still do.”

Malena lifted a clammy palm to his cheek. “You gave me a daisy. Twice.”

Toril inhaled, preparing to speak, then hesitated. He had noticed a tear arcing down her jaw line.

In his mind’s eye he saw his mother rocking in a splash of sunlight from the open window, staring at nothing as saltwater glinted on her cheeks. She’d just received word of Amar’s death. He remembered his own desolation at the loss of a brother, deepened by a vague sense that his mother’s pain was worse, and that nothing he did could ease it.

Tat, face creased with sorrow of his own, had come to sit beside her. Toril had wandered away, unable to abide the silence. When he returned an hour later, his parents still sat, suffering together. He saw Tat fold his mother into his arms; she’d leaned into her husband then, as he ran calloused fingers along the whorls of her ear and kissed her forehead.

Toril found himself longing to offer that same comfort and understanding, and to feel it accepted. He had held Malena after he found her in the stable, with a breaking heart; as soon as she woke up, she’d pushed him away. He’d knelt at her side, calling life back into a limp body… and been accused for it. He’d cried for her at night, when she thought he was sleeping. He’d felt closeness, for a moment, when he held Malena in the dark and wet. That moment had been all too short, and it seemed unreal now, pushed into distant past by all that had happened since. He’d tried to give her space...

“I can’t... reciprocate,” Malena choked out, leaning her head sideways. “I just... can’t.”

“Not even a smile, now and then?”

Malena’s face went white. “You think I haven’t tried? What do you think it costs me to sit next to you, speak to you in a calm tone of voice,
sleep
next to you?”

Toril leaned back and blinked several times. “I don’t understand why it should ‘cost’ you anything. I’m only talking about simple courtesy.”

“You’re
not
talking about courtesy! You don’t want polite nods and respectful conversation between strangers; you want a wife.”

“Well, of course I want a wife,” Toril said, his voice rising. “Why do you think I got married?“ He could hear the tremble in his tone. “Why did you?” He heard his own volume, swallowed, and took a breath. “I don’t pretend to be a perfect spouse, but I haven’t been cruel or evil. And I’ve stayed at your side. You think that was easy for me?”

Malena’s reply, when it came, sounded forlorn.

“No.” She averted her gaze and sat for so long that Toril almost thought she had ended the conversation. At last she continued in a husky murmur, “No. Not easy.”

Toril reached out, hesitated, placed a hand on her shoulder. At first she stiffened; then he sensed a gradual relaxing. It wasn’t a moment of warmth, exactly—but at least it wasn’t a rejection.

“I can try to be friends, Toril,” she said, her voice scarcely audible. “Can we just start there?”

Toril stood, not speaking, not removing his hand, gazing with Malena into the wall of darkness at the edges of the glade. He felt tears of his own brimming. This woman would
consent to try
to be his friend?

When
his arm was weary and his feet began to tingle, Toril sniffed, and rubbed his jaw on a shoulder to dry it. Surely the others were about ready to leave, now. He reached inside his shirt and lifted the leather pouch that hung there, tilting his head to free the cord around his neck. He loosened the drawstring and spread it open. The turquoise of his heartstone glinted, surrounded by a coil of silver chain. He caressed it with a thumb, then closed his eyes and nodded to himself.

He collected his breath.

“I think it’s time to give you this,” he murmured. He offered it cupped in both palms, the way precious gifts should be given.

Malena leaned forward, saw what he held, and froze.

She looked up at him, then back at his hands.

“Take it,” he urged. “We don’t have to... hang it the traditional way...” He felt his face flushing.

“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Malena asked, her voice tense. The undercurrent of anger in her tone was unmistakable, and Toril felt confusion and hurt swirl.

He opened his mouth, but no words emerged.

She grabbed the heartstone out of his hands and held it up near his nose, the chain dangling. Her hand was trembling.

“This isn’t just jewelry, Toril, and I can’t ignore the traditions around it. It isn’t a token of friendship! It’s a symbol of marriage—
consummated
marriage. Intimacy in every sense of the word. The very thing I’m afraid of. The exact pain...”

Her voice broke.

“I just want to feel more connected to you,” Toril ventured.

“We’re
not
connected! And if you keep pushing, we’ll
never
be connected!” Malena yelled. She attempted to yank the stone; when the chain caught on his fingers, she jerked a second time, wild with anger. Toril felt a sting at his hand as the chain broke.

Malena flung the stone away.

Green flicked from his eyes. He heard clatter fade into billowing haze.

Malena looked up, registered his stare, and seemed to realize the import of what she’d just done. Her face contorted. She looked toward where the stone had vanished. Then, before Toril could stop her, she darted away, disappearing into the same darkness.