The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (39 page)

The notch was just that: a few rough steps that averted the need to swing oneself over the ledge, but which then opened at the pinnacle of the rock-slide, providing no more of a path.

Blinking, she examined what she could through the dust.  She had seen this place from the flatland-side many times, and knew that rockfalls along these cliffs were common.  The ancient impact that had created the inner sea—now Riddian's salt flats—had also blasted great fissures into this part of the Garnet Mountains, causing them to crumble over the course of millennia rather than eons.  Riddian considered this the advancement of their territorial claim, for the Empire permitted them residence in the mountains within a certain mileage of the cliffs' edges, so the continued collapse pushed their boundaries progressively into what had once belonged to Trivestes.

Trivestes naturally opposed that rule, but as most Trivesteans refused to live on flat land, they did not fight hard over it.

Far to the northeast, the cliffs merged into natural foothills as they left the ancient arc of destruction.  Signs of inhabited buildings showed among the trees there, trailing faint ribbons of smoke into the sky.  To the southwest, the cracked edges of the northernmost Trivestean plateaus showed distantly beyond the thinning trees.  Directly north, the fresh rubble mixed with old rubble, which stretched onward in smaller and smaller chunks until it subsided into a flattish plane of pebbles, sand and salt.  A pale haze obscured everything further.

“What did you do?” she said, drawing back to look at Cob.

“Started a path.  Stabilized the rubble.”

“That's it?”

“I'm not an idiot, y'know.  If I made it look like stairs, someone'd notice.”

She grimaced, chagrined.  Idiocy was what she had expected, as she'd never known Cob to be crafty. 
I guess things have changed.

“I thought we'd go down through the foothills,” she said.  “That's where the people are.”

“We're already here.”

“So you want us to just—“

“I'll make sure no one falls.”

With that, he stepped down into the notch, not bothering to look back.

Dasira grimaced, then glared after Fiora as the girl immediately followed.  Forcing herself to be cooperative, she took a moment to exhale her anger before pursuing.

Beyond the notch, the descent became pure rubble, and she took it tensely despite Cob's assurances.  But no single pebble skittered out from under her feet, all staying as if glued there, and it wasn't difficult to find a course that inclined gently enough for walking.  Even the places that required her to climb down hand-over-hand were few and short.  Still, the act of clambering over stones that had so recently fallen from the heights made her twitch.

She tried to keep an eye toward the little town she had glimpsed in the foothills.  If it had a Sapphire presence and they were spotted on the rockfall, it would be as bad as if Cob really had crafted stairs.  Why he had not called for a veil or gone with her plan, she couldn't guess, except that perhaps he was getting too comfortable with the tectonic lever.

If it could half-fuse, half-collapse an entire cliff-side, she did not want to see what he could do with it when angry.

And when Arik slid right over her head in wolf-form, hit the rubble on his paws and proceeded to bound from ledge to ledge in demented glee, she resented her inability to pry up a rock to pitch at him.  Cob's forethought had robbed her of all satisfaction.

“Stupid wolf!” she heard Lark holler from above.  Arik cackled a wholly un-wolfish cackle then scrambled back the way he had come.  Dasira shook her head as more yelling and happy wolf sounds filtered down.

Ilshenrir floated past, moving from boulder to boulder like a petal on the wind.  She wished she could throw a rock at him too.

Finally, they managed to rejoin Cob on an unremarkable span of stabilized scree, and he turned from staring into the desert and glanced to Dasira.  “Where now?”

She gestured toward the twists of smoke among the trees.  “Village there.  Might as well try it.  With luck, it will have what we need.”

“Food, water, robes, eye-guards?”

“And anything else we can get.  Yes.”

With a nod, he started off, Fiora hustling to walk beside him.  Dasira fell back, not wanting to hear what went on between them, and after a moment found Lark at her side.

“Scarf?” said the girl, offering one from her collection.  “Since we'll all have to wrap up.”

“Thanks.”

“So you've done this a lot?  Crossing the desert and such?”

“A few times.”  Dasira looped the scarf loosely about her shoulders and adjusted her borrowed coat under it.  “I was assigned to the Sapphire Eye when my Palace duties allowed.  Did reconnaissance, some assassinations.”  Catching Lark's look, she sighed.  “You know what I am.  Don't make that face.”

“I—  Sorry, it's just...you're so blunt about it.”

Dasira shrugged.  “A job is a job.”

Lark looked forward, gloved hands fisted on the straps of her rucksack, and Dasira sighed again.  “You're so squeamish.  For people who can jump through shadows, you don't exactly utilize your potential.”

“I'm not a shadowblood,” said Lark tightly.  “I can't do anything unless the eiyets help.”

“I meant your organization.”

“They're sworn to nonviolence as much as feasible.  If we start fights, the eiyets get involved, and that's bad for everyone.  We don't control them.  Your bloodshed back when we first met is what caused the massacre in the tunnels.  When eiyets taste blood—especially that of Morgwi's children—they go crazy, and even eiyensuriel can't stop them.”

Dasira nodded slowly, remembering the beady-eyed spiky black things that had torn apart the city guards and later tried to take pieces out of her.  The other word was unfamiliar.  “Eiyensuriel?”

“Morgwi's daughters.  The ones who can't leave the Realm on account of being dead.”

Dasira eyed her sidelong, not sure if she was joking.  Her time in service to the Empire had taught her a lot about the nastiness of the world, but no one on the Light's side knew much about the Shadow Folk, and captured ones rarely admitted anything.  She knew there was some kind of unreachable organizational structure involving the Shadow Lord, but no more.

“Still,” she said, “I'd think you could figure out a way to use these eiyets as strike-teams.”

“Morgwi doesn't like it.”

“Not ever?”

“Look, I don't know.  That's an Enforcement issue.  We're—  We were a subsidiary of Collection and Distribution.”

“Ah.  Smugglers.”

“Not smugglers.  Distributors.  Anyway, just tell me about the desert.”

“Don't get snippy.  What do you expect?  It's a toxic salt desert.  Full of toxic salt.  The end.”

“That's it?  Just salt?”

“A few creatures.  Slow lizards, glitterbacks, some weird birds.  Salt-slimes.  Wraiths.”

“Salt...slimes.”

“Ever seen a janitorial slime?”  Lark gave her a half-baffled, half-disgusted look which she took as a 'no'.  “Well then, they're just...creeping slimy things, full of sand and salt and whatever debris they've picked up along the way.  That's it.”

“Nothing else?  Are you sure?”

“No, I'm not sure.  I don't spend my piking free-days here.  We can ask at the village.”

Lark looked dubious.  “You're sure they won't tattle?”

“Probably,” she said, looking toward the approaching village.  What she could see through the trees seemed standard for eastern Riddian: low wooden cabins half-built into the hills, surrounded by row upon row of terraces and irrigation-channels.  There was no snow this far into the Garnet Mountains' rain-shadow, leaving everything a dead winter-brown, and though she counted more cabins than she had estimated by the cooking smoke, only a few shapes moved on the hills.  Unusual for such a clear day.

“Huh.  Stay here.”  She strode forward before Lark could protest, past Ilshenrir with a curt repeat of the order, then up to flank Cob opposite Fiora.  He glanced quizzically to her, and Fiora cut her a sharp look.

She ignored it.  “Halt a moment.  I think there's something wrong.”

“What kinda wrong?” said Cob, obeying.  Fiora looked dubious.

Chewing her lip, Dasira looked to the village again.  “Couldn't say, but it doesn't seem normal.  I think I should go and the rest of you wait here.  We're a memorable group, after all.”

“Not lettin' you go alone into trouble,” said Cob.

Dasira grunted, aware that nothing she could say would dissuade him; as much as she still considered herself his keeper, he had grown past her.  It was a good thing, but frustrating.

“Fine,” she said, “but just you.  The rest stay here unless we look like we're in danger.”

Fiora scowled and Arik huffed with displeasure, but no one objected aloud.  Once Lark had handed over the bag of garnets, Dasira turned and started toward the village, Cob's long strides easily pacing her.

“What kinda trouble?” he asked again as they crossed the parched, rocky ground toward the equally parched-looking hills.

“Don't know,” she said.  “Might just be paranoid.”

“Paranoia's right sometimes.”

They were nearly to the treeline before the figures on the terraces caught their approach, and that was strange too.  “Leave the talking to me,” she said quietly as they started up the incline, the earth hard-frozen under their boots.  Cob nodded.

But then there were dogs—a half-dozen of them, silent and swift—and her heart tried to lurch into her throat until she realized they were focused on Cob with ears up and tails wagging.  He gave her a guilty sidelong look and kept going, through the sudden shaggy swarm toward the people.

Piking Guardian
, she thought, and struggled to keep up.

By the time they reached the lowest terrace, a man and a woman awaited them.  Both were weathered and lean, their garb tooled leather over heavy knitwear in shades of grey and brown.  Their faces too were brown, their hair greyed; they blended in with the trees and the rocks.  Others lingered beyond them, standing or crouching at the lips of the higher terraces or watching from doorways—no more than a handful and no different from the couple.

Dasira signaled Cob to a halt a few yards away, and said, “
Ei-ya
, clanfolk,” inclining her head to the couple.

“
Ei-ya, oharu
,” the man replied in the soft, old dialect of Ridvan—a merging of Gheshvan and the wolf-tongue Thiolanc.  It wasn't Dasira's native language, but she knew enough to get by.

“
Au oharu
,” she said, then repeated for Cob's benefit, “I'm no stranger.  Te'Navrin.”

“Far from home,” said the man.

“
Aa
.  Came through the wild lands.  We seek Crystal Valley.”

The man pursed his lips and squinted.  He had a thick but short beard, the sign of a clan lieutenant rather than a leader, and by the patterns on the woman's kerchief and apron Dasira could tell she was also a sub-leader among the women.  None of the others wore marks of higher rank; in fact most were elderly, past the age of leadership and into the age of wisdom.

“We can not help you, clan-cousin,” he said.  “Our spring has dried.”

She grimaced automatically.  That was a death-sentence out here.  “I'm sorry.”

“It once flowed easily, but became clouded this summer, and meager.  For the last moon, there has been no flow at all.  The others seek a better spring higher in the hills.  We have nothing to spare for you.”

Dasira eyed the other villagers.  No spring meant that most of them were here to die—too old to travel rough, with the sub-leaders and dogs remaining to make sure no looters came prematurely.  By the look of the terraces, food would be as scarce as water.

“There is another clan-village a day's walk along the hills,” said the man, pointing along the curve of the mountain range.  “They may take outlander coin.”

“Y'can't go there?” said Cob, and she restrained herself from throttling him.

The Riddishman frowned and looked Cob over: hip-deep in happy dogs yet blatantly foreign and still barefoot.  “They will not welcome us,” he intoned as if to a child.

“It's a different clan,” said Dasira.  “They don't cooperate.”

Cob gave her a quizzical look, but she couldn't elaborate further in front of the Riddishfolk, so she made a 'later' gesture and focused on them.  Both man and woman looked hale, but it would not be difficult to overcome them even in her damaged state.  Likewise, the old folk would provide no challenge; the only problem was the dogs.

That was the point of them, of course: to prevent marauders like Dasira from just taking everything.  She figured she could do it anyway.  Serindas agreed.

But she knew Cob wouldn't help.

She was just opening her mouth to tell him to go back to the others when he said, “Where's the spring?”

The Riddishman frowned.  “It is dry.”

“Yeah, but why don't y'show me anyhow.”

The flat command in his tone took her aback, and the Riddishman's yellowish eyes narrowed in response.  Unbothered, Cob tapped his fingers lightly on the shaft of the tectonic lever, still slung over one shoulder like a stick.