Glyphbinder (20 page)

Trell slumped in the saddle. He struggled to keep his eyes open and failed. His world went dark as he felt his weight shift sideways. His sword tumbled from his grip.

“We must sleep,”
the voice inside him said.
“We did too much, but our power will increase each time you call on me. Rest.”

Trell was vaguely aware of the world spinning, a loud thump and the taste of dirt in his mouth. Someone called his name. Then sleep claimed him, wet and warm and safe.

TRELL WAKED TO FIND THE SKY dark and smattered with clouds. He heard water trickling through rocks, nearby, and the sound comforted him. He pushed out a cough and thumped his own chest. He felt like there was still water in his lungs, which was strange, because he felt the warmth of a fire by his side.

Boots crunched gravel, approaching fast. He heard a thump and then Kara leaned over him, eyes wide. Her glittering sun medallion dangled toward his nose.

“Thank the Five! Can you hear me? Are you well?”

“I’m fine.” Trell fought back a cough. “We’re safe?”

Kara dropped her head to his chest and breathed. Trell marveled at the way that simple contact tingled through his body. Finally, Kara raised her head. Her wide, real smile warmed him in a way a fire never could.

“We’re safe.” Kara blew back a clump of brown hair. “I thought the harvenger had struck you while you fought, that its poison had taken you, yet Sera assured me there was no poison. You were just asleep.”

“I slept.” Trell thought about the blue eyes he had seen inside his mind. “All afternoon?”

Kara helped him sit, and didn’t let him go after she did that. She didn’t need to hold him up, but her arms felt good around him. That bothered Trell, and he was not sure why.

“You slept that whole night and the whole next day. We’re almost out of Highridge Pass with scarcely a scrap of food between all of us.” She pointed into the dark. “We just found this stream. It was barely enough to water the horses and fill our canteens.”

Trell coughed again, tasting salt in his mouth. Strange. He searched the firelight and found Sera curled up in a bedroll, with Jair sleeping nearby. Two other bedrolls were empty.

Trell found three horses hobbled at the edge of the campfire, Stomper, Tack, and Chesa. He felt a surge of affection he didn’t expect as he stared at his sleeping mare.

“Wait,” Trell said. “Where’s Pacer?” Where was Byn?

Kara sighed. “We lost him. Pacer, I mean. Dead attacked them at Highridge Pass, and Pacer gave his life to get them through. Byn watched those dead tear his horse apart, and it tore him up inside. He’s distraught, can’t even use mindspeak.”

“But he’s alive.”

“For now.”

Trell stared at his brave mare. He wondered if Chesa missed the others, Spirit and Charger and Pacer. He wondered if Chesa knew they were all dead.

“We’re lucky we still have horses at all,” Kara said. “I’d set them free if I thought they’d survive. After what I let that demon do to Charger, I feel like I should never ride a horse again.”

Trell gripped her hand and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes widened and she smiled at him, a flush coming to her cheeks. He looked away as he felt a flush on his own, and released her hand.

“Anyway.” Kara leaned close. “Are you thirsty? We got water down your throat, but not much.”

“I’m fine,” Trell said, and as he stood he realized he was. He felt neither hungry nor thirsty. “You should know we encountered the battlemage at Highridge Keep. He was waiting there. He knocked Byn right into the moat and we never saw him.”

“Byn told me. You were right about him setting a trap.”

“Do we know where he is now?”

“Worried about a sneak attack?” Kara poked him and walked past, toward the fire. “Don’t be. Even a mage concealed by an astral glyph shows in the dream world, and I’ve been dropping in and out all night. We’re safe for now. He won’t surprise us again.”

Trell nodded, walking around the fire to find another open bedroll. This one had his Solyr broadsword beside it, no doubt retrieved by Kara, and Trell smiled as he strapped the sheathe across his back. He felt naked without a sword.

“What about the harvenger?” Trell’s eyes passed over steep gray walls covered in yellow and brown lichen. “Is it dead?”

“I doubt it. Even an avalanche won’t do much more than piss one of those things off.” Kara settled herself beside the fire. “When it comes for us, we’ll need to run again.”

Trell walked back to her. “When do we break camp?”

“With daybreak.” Kara rested her head in her hands. “I’ve been driving everyone so hard. We’ve been moving for more than a day with no food and little water. Byn caught a few rabbits, earlier tonight, but even that wasn’t much.”

“You’re doing fine.” Trell settled himself beside her. “You’re keeping us together. You’re leading us well.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Kara, we just faced a harvenger and lived to talk about it. All of us. It’s buried and we’re not. That’s a good sign.”

Kara looked up. “You always make things simple. You make me feel better, like we’ll somehow survive. How do you do that?”

Trell looked away and stood. “I should take my watch.”

“Belay that. There’s no way you’d sense that harvenger before it chewed you up. I’m watching our backs.”

“All right.” Trell glanced up the pass. “I’ll go relieve Byn.”

Kara hopped up and stepped in his way, pushing her hands hard against his chest. “You certainly will,” she said. “After we’ve talked.”

Her hands were warm and she stood close, much closer than he found comfortable. “We need to talk?”

Kara stepped back. “Too much has happened I just don’t understand. We’re going to sort it out, now, so I can stop worrying about it.” She pointed one finger down. “Now sit.”

Trell sat and watched as Kara did the same. Right next to him. He resisted the urge to scoot away and he knew she saw that. Her mouth twisted as she huffed.

“What’s going on with you? Sometimes, you hover so close it’s suffocating. Other times, you act like I’m going to bite off your head.” She leaned close. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything.” Trell blinked at her, tried to understand what he felt. “I just…”

He couldn’t finish. With her hair fallen across her face and the firelight upon it, Kara looked beautiful, strong and vulnerable at the same time. Yet that wasn’t what took his words away. It was the memory of water flowing through his limbs, wide blue eyes staring from inside his head. A voice that made him feel safe and calm.

“I just need to protect you,” Trell said. It really was that simple.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmmph.” Kara brushed back her hair. “You shouted a battle cry when you first came to me at that tower.
Al elite sancadynis tyl adres.
Do you remember what it means?”

“No. Are you certain I yelled that?”

“What you shouted means ‘The will of the Five is my Life’ as spoken in the ancient language. It’s a battle cry no soldier has used since the days of the All Province War, almost seventy years ago.”

“I don’t know the ancient language.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s not all. What worries me worse is that Mynt, Tellvan, and Rain never used your battle cry. You used the battle cry of Metla Tassau, of soldiers who thought they were fighting, and killing, in the name of the Five. Under Queen Tayla, those soldiers almost destroyed our world.”

“But … I’m Tellvan. Do Tellvan soldiers shout that?”

“A Tellvan would fall upon his own blade before uttering that cry today, and this comes back to your missing memories. We have to consider every possibility, no matter how strange.”

“Like what?”

“Forces manipulating you in ways you may not fully understand. You have no memory from before you woke in Solyr, but I know things I didn’t tell you. I’m going to tell you everything now, like I should have done the moment you woke up.”

It took Kara only moments to describe how they had first met beneath the Thinking Trees, followed by their brutal fight with the maddened graybacks. Trell listened to her tale of his walking with a broken leg and fighting wolves despite injuries that should have killed him. When Kara finished, Trell looked to the stream.

“I have no memory,” he said, “of any of that. But given the speed and strength I felt when I fought that harvenger, I’m certain it was magic. I’ve kept things from you as well.”

“Oh really?”

“I see blue eyes when I fight.”

“Blue eyes?”

“At the edge of my vision. As if they’re watching me. There’s a voice, too, that tells me what I need to do.”

“That’s not terrifying at all.”

“While I was sleeping, I was deep inside a lake. There was a woman all in white. She has the blue eyes I see and we both breathed water. I felt like I was safe with her.”

Kara squeezed his arm and made him look at her. When he did, she sat straight and smiled. Pleased with herself.

“What?” Trell asked. “Do you know who that woman is?”

“I think I do. I think the woman you saw was Life.”

“Life. As in—“

“One of the Five Who Made the World. You saw a goddess.”

Trell wanted to deny Kara. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but something inside him told him she was absolutely right. “Why would I have visions of Life? What interest does she have in me?”

“You’re her champion, Trell. I’m sure of it.”

“All right.” Trell considered her words. “So I am.” The concept felt right in his mind. “How is that possible?”

“It’s a lot to explain, but I’ll try. What we’re seeing now, Demonkin, davengers and harvengers tearing our world apart … it’s a nightmare we’ve all experienced before. The All Province War. The history of that war is why I think you have the spirit of Life inside you, and I hope I can explain why.”

Trell knew something of the All Province War. Mynt, Tellvan, and Rain had united against Metla Tassau after it crushed the fifth province of Rillan. Yet how could he remember that when he had forgotten so much else? More signs his memory had been altered.

“What do you know of our schools of magic?” Kara asked.

“Nothing but what you’ve told me.”

“Then I’m going to start a ways back. Stop me if something doesn’t make sense.”

Trell nodded.

“At the start of everything, there was Order. She made the Five and the Five made our world, among many others. Our world was easy to make. We were hard. We were the greatest challenge the Five faced, but Order had taught them what they needed to create us.

From Life, we gained the water that creates and sustains us, and from Heat, we gained the warmth that fills us. Breath imbued us with her spirit, and as long as she’s inside us she keeps us alive. Land made all that supports us and feeds us, giving us the animals and plants we use to feed our children and build our homes.

Finally, Ruin waits at the end of it all. When we can sustain ourselves no longer, he frees us from our mortal forms and sends us to his mistress, Order. To the Heavens.”

“I think I knew all that,” Trell said quietly.

Kara almost laughed. “I know, it’s ancient, but you’re the one without a memory, remember?”

“I remember.” There was a joke in that.

“Not all of Order’s children were pleased by what the Five had made. They hated life in all its forms and made their own realm, the Underside, where only spirit remains. We call them demons, but they’re far more complex than that. Some are tricksters, like the Shifters, and others are beings on par with the Five. Regardless, there’s a name for all of them. Mavoureen.”

Trell shuddered when Kara spoke that name. Just the sound of it made him feel cold. “So these demons want to destroy us?”

“Eat us, more like. Eat our souls. We’re little candies wrapped in fleshy packages. They want to strip off our skin and gnaw our juicy centers.” Kara shuddered. “Drown me, I’m morbid tonight.”

“Yes, well, it’s been that kind of week.”

“Anyway,” Kara said, “that’s the ancient conflict. The Five made us and protect us. They also left us a way to protect ourselves. The ancient language. Few today speak it, but long ago some very smart people built the glyphs we learn at our magic schools on top of it.”

“On top of the ancient language?”

“Like a foundation.” Kara drew a single blood glyph on the air, and Trell marveled both at the floating blood and the way her finger healed over. She snapped her fingers and the glyph vanished.

“What I just drew is simple, but the design itself is complex. I don’t know why all the lines are formed the way they are, and I don’t need to know. Someone else figured that out through years of study. They also tested it, finding the ways it could go wrong. They don’t teach us how to use the ancient language directly. There’s too much we could screw up.” She pointed to her orange eyes.

“What does any of that have to do with Life being inside me?”

“I’m getting there. Each time I scribe the Hand of Life, it draws our world closer to her. She lends us her power to maintain a connection with this world, with us, because her presence here would literally tear our world apart.”

“So she protects us by lending us her power, rather than intervening directly?”

“That’s pretty much it. The Mavoureen are different. They didn’t make this world, so they
can
influence it directly, even invade if they wish. That’s their goal. They want our world and all its souls, and they found a very clever way to get us. Demon glyphs.”