Eyes of Crow (18 page)

Marek squeezed her hand. “It’s not far now.”

A soft gurgle of water floated beneath the hiss of wind in the pines. The tree cover thinned enough for Rhia to see clouds loom high in the sky, illuminated by the sinking gibbous moon.

A battered hut sat on a flat piece of land about twenty paces from the river. Part of one wall had caved in so that from a certain angle the hut looked more like a lean-to. A rickety canoe lay on its side on the icy bank.

“Winter hasn’t been kind to this place,” Marek said, “but at least it has a roof.”

They crept inside and huddled together against one of the sturdier walls. Now that the wind was no longer stripping away their body heat, Rhia could imagine becoming warm.

Marek’s pack appeared, and he withdrew some dried venison. “Tomorrow I’ll catch fish.”

“Thank you.”

She felt his shoulders move in a shrug. “It’s what I do,” he said.

“No, I meant thank you for bringing me.”

“Couldn’t let you go off wandering alone in the forest.”

She wondered if he really believed she would have left Kalindos without him. If he had refused, she would have gone back to Coranna. At least the ritual offered a chance to return to life. A night this cold could kill forever.

“Here’s the plan.” Marek bit a piece of venison and chewed for a moment. “We’ll take the canoe down the river to Velekos. Coranna’s last apprentice lives there. Maybe he can train you.”

Another Crow! Perhaps she could yet fulfill her duties. “What phase is he?”

“He might be second phase by now.”

“Oh.” Rhia bit her lips, dry and chapped from wind and fear. She wouldn’t have to die. But could this Crow man teach her everything she needed to know?

“Then again,” Marek said, “if he had entered the second phase, he would have returned to train again with Coranna.” He took another bite. “But he may be able to help you anyway.”

Rhia didn’t respond. The meat felt dry as dust in her mouth.

“I can find work on one of the Velekon fishing vessels.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll be fine.”

She nodded without conviction. In Velekos she would be alive, but what else would she be? Could her Crow powers soothe the dying if her own heart still harbored a fear of death? How could she assure them that beauty and peace lay on the Other Side if she had never journeyed there herself?

They would see through her lies. They would die afraid.

And someday, so would she.

Marek turned her chin toward him. She sensed the intensity of his gaze, as though he were searching her face for something he feared.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

His breath rasped in the silence as he whispered her name. Suddenly he kissed her, hard, with a hunger that bruised her lips and obliterated her dread. Past and future faded as she gave herself over to the moment and the feel of his hands on her body. Whether it was wrong or right, it was life—something she craved without shame.

They clutched each other in an embrace that was more than a pure, naked craving, more than an ethereal joining of spirits. Rhia wanted to call it love, but that was impossible. Love was kind and content, always giving more than it took. What lay between her and Marek burned whatever it touched, and she wondered what it would leave in its wake.

Despite the cold, or maybe because of it, they shed all their clothing. Rhia needed to feel every inch of his skin against hers. They lay facing each other on his spread-out cloak. She traced the outline of Marek’s face and nearly wept with the desire to see his eyes.

Suddenly he appeared, gazing at her with a mixture of trepidation and the thing-she-wouldn’t-call-love.

She gasped, and he shimmered into invisibility again.

“I saw you,” she said.

“It worked?”

She nodded.

“Because of you,” he said.

He touched every part of her, fingertips filled with fascination, as if memorizing each detail of her body. The warmth of his mouth and hands marked a map on her skin in the bitter air, each kiss or caress leaving a trace of itself behind.

Rhia ached for release, which came the moment he entered her. She felt his gaze on her face as she cried out.

They clung together afterward, limbs shaking with cold and exhaustion, finally parting to dress quickly and wrap themselves in every blanket they’d brought.

“I can’t make you leave your home forever,” she whispered. “I can’t do that to you.”

He placed a finger across her lips. “Listen to me. I feel more alive, more of a man with you than I’ve ever been. You can’t take me from my home, Rhia. You
are
my home.”

With no words to reply, she drew him close, craving his heat, for it seemed the sole source of life in this harsh world.

As her consciousness tumbled into slumber, a thought rattled within her mind, that Marek had made love to her as if it were the last time.

A crow yanked Rhia out of sleep. She jerked to a half-sitting position, nearly knocking her head on a jutting plank.

The bird called again. Through wooden slats Rhia saw nothing but white, and her disorientation grew. Was she dead already? Was the Other Side on the other side of these walls?

Something stirred beside her.

“It’s late,” murmured a familiar voice.

She turned to see a sleepy-eyed Marek, and reality flooded back in an instant. They were running from her destiny.

Without answering, she crawled over him and pushed open the door. Fresh snow covered the riverbank, and the bright morning sun stabbed her eyes from all directions. Her stomach felt heavy and sour.

She shaded her eyes and stumbled outside. The startled crow hopped away, flapping its wings to hasten its escape. At the edge of the icy river, it threw her a cautious glance, then ignored her to continue its search for breakfast.

No other birds had ventured out into the brittle morning. Rhia recalled the stifling summer afternoons when crows alone would ignore the heat, refusing to let any weather interfere with their plans. Blustery days made them cavort and dance in the winds, not cower in their nests for shelter.

They waddled the world as if nothing could harm them.

Marek appeared in the doorway. He rubbed his eyes and said, “We should take a look at that canoe.”

“I can’t.”

Rhia found herself sitting on the snowy ground as if she had melted there.

“I can’t run away, Marek.” She covered her eyes. “But I can’t go back. I’m so scared.”

“I know. I’m scared, too.” He knelt beside her. “I can’t lose you.”

The mirror of his fear suddenly made Rhia feel like a child. If she left now, she would always remain as she was, alive but incomplete, untrusting in her Spirit and in her own powers. Like Marek.

The path she now trod was her own, not Crow’s. Only she had the power to merge them into one.

She drew what felt like the deepest breath of her life. “Take me back.”

Marek stared at her for a moment that seemed to stretch into the afternoon. His hesitation unnerved her. Would he refuse? Without him she could never find her way back to Kalindos, much less to Mount Beros.

His eyes grew wet. He looked down at her hands and grasped them tight in his own. “Let’s go.”

Breakfast was cold, and the air colder. Rhia and Marek ate as they walked. Her stiff legs pained her but loosened after about an hour of steady movement.

Movement that slowed as they climbed higher. The slope of the hill confused her.

“Aren’t we going back to Kalindos?” she asked him.

His face was stone. “We’re going to the mountain.”

“How will Coranna know to meet us there?”

“She already knows.” His jaw tightened. “She knew you would run, and she knew you would change your mind. Hoped, at least.” He looked at her. “She trusted you to return, and she trusted me to bring you.”

He didn’t need to add, “I almost didn’t.”

Rhia understood his reluctance, for she shared it. Her Bestowing had taken her to the end of her spiritual and physical endurance, and she had survived, surely stronger. But the Bestowing was not death. Her lungs ached as if already straining for a last breath.

Her mind fought to distract itself. It observed the way the trees grew shorter and sparser here, and how the snow was drier, curling in wisps through the air, which held a sharp, bitter taste.

These observations numbed her thoughts until she and Marek began to climb the steepest ridge yet. They clambered up using roots and rocks as toeholds and had to remove mittens to maintain their grasps.

Finally the ridge leveled out onto a meadow, which seemed to cower in the shadow of a mountain whose distant profile Rhia had known her whole life.

The silver-white peak of Mount Beros pierced the sky, jagged and unforgiving. A fresh sheen of snow blanketed the meadow, thin and soft, like flour on a kneading board. Tiny purple flowers poked their heads through the snow, but rather than adding cheer, they only served to accentuate the starkness of the landscape.

Rhia looked across the meadow at the foot of the mountain. A woman sat on a shaggy red-and-white pony, the reins slack so the horse could graze. Blond hair fell straight past her shoulders. The woman stared at Rhia for a moment, then turned her head as if to speak to someone behind her.

Another figure appeared then, leading her own small, sturdy pony, a bay with two front white-stockinged feet. The person’s long silver hair shimmered to her waist.

Coranna.

It was too late to turn back.

Coranna’s eyes did not condemn her. In fact, the Crow woman acted as if all had gone according to plan—which it had, from her point of view.

“Welcome, Rhia.” She gestured to the other woman. “This is Elora, an Otter healer of Kalindos. She will help you recover after the ritual.”

After I’m dead.
Rhia nodded, unable to utter a greeting. As instructed, she sat in front of Coranna on the bay pony. Elora followed, and Marek trailed behind on foot. No one spoke.

They entered a path shadowed by more trees, and Rhia missed the sunshine immediately. Her heartbeat quickened, every instinct straining in protest against this journey. The world tilted suddenly, and she clutched the pony’s black mane to keep from falling off.

Faced with the inexorable climb to the end of her life, her thoughts began to scramble for a way out.

I’ll fight this,
she told herself.
I’ll live as long as it takes for them to give up. Then I’ll—

What? Go back to Asermos as a failure? Tell her people, “Sorry, I could have helped you in your journeys to the Other Side, brought peace to your lives and deaths in a time of turmoil, but I was afraid of a little cold weather”?

An idea occurred to her: Perhaps this ritual was a test of her faith in Coranna and Crow. If she displayed obedience to the will of the Spirit, maybe He would spare her, not make her cross over.

She clung to that scrap of belief as they journeyed up the mountain. Soon they were above the tree line, where only knee-high scrub broke the monotony of rock and snow. The air bit at her face.

A power pulsed ahead, dark and seductive. She wanted to shrink from it, but Coranna sat behind her, arms encircling her to hold the reins.

They rounded a bend and came upon a cave hewn into the gray rock, big enough for two or three people. Outside the cave was a flat area the size of a small horse paddock. It jutted out from the mountain to create a platform.

Coranna halted the pony, dismounted and beckoned for her to do the same. Rhia imagined grabbing the reins and galloping away, knocking over whoever might stand in their path. She and the horse would run until they reached—where? Someplace warm.

She slid off the pony’s back. He was shorter than the horses at home, and her feet slammed into the ground sooner than expected. She didn’t bother uttering an oath of discomfort. Whatever pleased or pained her body was irrelevant now. Her hands shook as she looped the reins over the pony’s head to tether him to a sturdy piece of scrub.

Elora dismounted and opened the pack attached to her own pony’s blanket. She unfolded a plain white garment and handed it to Rhia.

“This will cover you and protect you from frostbite.” Her gaze was sympathetic. “It won’t keep you warm.”

Rhia took the garment and examined it. It was like a stocking for an entire body. It even had a small hood and veil that would cover her ears and most of her face.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice wooden.

Coranna instructed Rhia to change into the strange white garment. As she did so in the cave—out of Marek’s sight—she realized she was donning her own funeral garb. There was no sense anymore in pushing away such morbid thoughts. From this day onward, death would surround her, infuse her dreams, become a sacred but unremarkable occasion. She would learn to view the end of life as a mere passage to another form of existence, however final it appeared to others.

If she survived.

Elora was right. The garment, though it covered nearly every inch of her, right down to her fingertips, was light and porous and seemed to draw heat away from her body. Even in the cave, the wind cut through the thin material.

She began to shiver.

In the clearing, Coranna set up a rattle and a small drum. From a pouch she withdrew some herbs, separating and measuring them into several pots. Her face was a mask of concentration. Rhia wondered if she herself could ever watch someone die with such distance. Unless she learned to do so, the sorrow would cripple her.

She ventured halfway out of the cave. In the middle of the clearing, Marek was building a tiny fire, the size for burning herbs, not for keeping humans warm. The fire sat off-center within a wide circle of stones.

His expression was somber and shadowed. Did he mourn her upcoming death or that of his long-ago mate? Even he probably didn’t know. She drew the white veil tighter around her face.

Elora watched her with concern. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” she heard herself lie.

A spark leaped from Marek’s flint onto the twigs and leaves he’d laid out. The blaze was small but would serve its purpose. Coranna entered the circle and perched the pot over the fire. In a few moments a pungent odor Rhia didn’t recognize filled the air. Marek bowed to Coranna and withdrew from the circle. She returned the gesture and faced Rhia.

“It is time.”

“May Crow envelop you in his wings, set you on his back, and carry you home.”

Coranna anointed Rhia’s eyelids and lips with warm, thick oil scented with the strange substance. Despite her fear, Rhia felt a ripple of peace flow through her at the Crow’s touch.

Peace that disappeared with the next gust of wind. She gritted her teeth to keep from moaning in pain. Her body wanted to curl up in defense against the onslaught of cold, but she steeled her muscles into holding the kneel as long as Coranna wanted. Even this hardship was probably part of the test.

It’s not a test,
said a voice inside her.
You’re really going to die.

She closed her eyes and heard, in the farthest distance, the flapping of wings.

I know I am.
She shivered.

The sun had started its descent by the time Coranna left the circle. She picked up her rattle and handed the drum to Marek. At her signal, he drummed a slow rhythm, which her feet matched. She walked around the outside of the circle, heel to toe, each step placed with care as if it were the first she had ever taken.

The chant began, low in Coranna’s throat. The chill darting down Rhia’s spine had no rival in the wind.

The wings grew louder.

Marek looked up then, and Rhia followed his gaze. A single crow perched on the cliff above them. In a moment, another joined it. They bent their heads together as if sharing information or intimacy.

Rhia craned her neck to look behind her, off the edge of the mountain. Below her circled several more crows and their large raven cousins. Were they responding to the ceremony or the prospect of dinner?

She scrambled to her feet. They wouldn’t take her. Inside the circle, she began to pace, stomp and rub her arms. If she kept moving, the birds would see that she lived, and maybe they’d leave for a faster, tastier meal.

A whimper escaped her throat, and she stuffed a fist against her mouth. It rattled her teeth as another violent shiver quaked, almost knocking her over. If she kept moving, she’d never be a corpse, tasty or otherwise. Fear filled her with an eternal energy that would burn forever. The people around her would die from old age long before she finished pacing and stomping and blowing on her hands.

Her hands.

She stopped and stared at them, flexing the fingers that no longer felt a part of her. The stiff joints bent long after her mind told them to, and much more slowly. She was losing her hands.

“Move,” she whispered to her toes, and tried to wiggle them. They obeyed, once. “Move,” she said through gritted teeth.

She raised her hands to blot out the sight of her unresponsive feet. She couldn’t do this. It was too much like her childhood illness, when she had woken one morning with tingly feet and palms and a day later couldn’t so much as turn her head without help. Everyone had waited, helpless, for the weakness to paralyze her heart. Crow had come, also waited, then left without a word.

He was not here yet, inside this sacred circle. He would not come until she was nearly dead. He would not comfort her until she accepted her fate. Until then she was alone in her battle for survival.

“Bastard.” She spit the word toward the sky, suddenly full of spite. “You send your minions to hover over me, think I’ll be afraid and give up, give in to your demands. I’m—” A shudder overtook her, interrupting her speech as her jaw locked and vibrated. “I’m not a little girl anymore. Even when I was, you couldn’t take me. You won’t get me now.”

She forced her legs to carry her back and forth, though she barely felt the earth under her feet anymore. Coranna walked a steady pace around the circle, eyes closed and rattle shifting in the offbeats of her steps. She seemed so serene, so removed from this place and time, that rage welled within Rhia.

“Look at me!” she screamed at Coranna. “I’m dying. You’re killing me and you don’t even care. How do you live? How many others have you killed?”

Marek stared at her.

“What are you looking at?” Her eyes felt full of hot sparks that could leap forth and sear him. “I can’t feel my hands and feet anymore. If I were blind I’d think they’d been cut off. Imagine what that’s like.”

He lowered his gaze and maintained the steady rhythm on the drum. A distant part of her admired his composure, even as the greater part wanted to tear out his eyes with the fingers she could no longer detect.

Coranna passed between them. In her long white coat, she looked
so warm
. Rhia sprang to strike her.

The circle snapped her backward as if it were a solid stone wall.

Rhia tested the edge of the entire circle with her elbows, since she had lost feeling in her lower arms now. Every inch held. She was trapped.

“No…”

The Crow woman passed her again.

“Coranna, please, I’ll do anything if you let me go. I’ll take all the other tests five times over, memorize every ritual.” A strangled laugh erupted from her chest. “I understand now. I don’t need to die to understand. I have no fear. Not a bit.”

She shook her head as hard as her stiffening neck would allow. Another path occurred to her. She faced Elora.

“What about you? Healers need assistants. I served my mother before I turned into this horrible Crow thing.” Her hands pressed together in a plea, though the fingers would not bend to clutch each other. “Do you have children? I can help with children.”

Elora gazed at her with more compassion than Rhia could tolerate.

She turned to Marek. “It’s not too late to run away. I’ll bring you home with me.” She pointed to Coranna. “Then you wouldn’t have to see her every day and remember what she took from you.”

Marek’s jaw tightened, but he wouldn’t look at Rhia. She noticed that he also avoided the sight of Coranna, to whom she turned again now. Another shiver came and went, then she took perhaps the last step her feet would recognize.

“Coranna…” She wanted to kneel, but knew she’d never get up again. “Coranna, I want to become what I am, not something I want to be.”

Her mind reviewed the last sentence. Had it made sense? Had she even said it aloud? How long had she been standing here wondering about the last sentence? How long had she been standing here wondering about how long she had been standing here wondering about the last sentence? Now how long—

The edges of her mind had frozen. She imagined the crystals forming inside her head. Pretty flakes floating, joining, making certain thoughts impossible, impassable, like snow-covered roads. Pretty. Frozen. Pretty.

She blinked and discovered she was still standing, though it felt more like floating. She looked down to see her feet on the ground. Perhaps the right one would move. No. A while later it occurred to her to try the left foot. Before she could attempt it, another shiver rattled through her. How long had it been since she last shivered?

She must keep moving, though she had forgotten why. Maybe she had to reach those people nearby. Did she know them? She should find them. Now.

Something solid smacked her face hard. That should hurt, she thought. Someone shouted a word that sounded like “Rhia!” (What’s a “Rhia”?) and the thumping noise, the one that had inhabited the background of her world as long as she could remember, suddenly stopped. Voices spoke, but not to her, and the thumping started again eventually, taking a while to regain its steady rhythm.

When her eyes opened again, she saw a world on its side—on the left a sky, on the right, a mountain, out of which grew rocks and little bushes.

It was better to be on the ground, she told herself as she drew up her legs to curl into a ball. Warmer that way. Like this she could live forever. If she wanted to. Did she?

It was all the same, life and death. She knew that now. It didn’t matter whether she lived or died, or if anyone did. It didn’t matter if the Descendants conquered Asermos or Kalindos or any of the other villages. The world didn’t matter, not the “real” one, or the one where the Spirits dwelled, or the Other Side.

Another shiver, brief. The last one. She was too tired to shiver anymore. Sleep yanked at her, and she gave in for a moment. She needed strength to fight. Sleep would strengthen her.

Darkness.

No.

She opened her eyes wide. The sun had descended behind the mountain, casting a shadow over the clearing where she lay. Was it still the same day? As if from a distance, she heard a woman’s low chant, but the drum and rattle had silenced. The sky was a deep blue in the direction she gazed.