Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (4 page)

The reader!

Could this malefic creature have brought its dark craft to bear on the old man? It would explain his absence at Northsun. The thought brought fresh panic and the anticipation of deeper sadness.

Tahn remembered to breathe, and drew a cold stab of air that burned his throat and billowed out into the frigid air. He tried to breathe again, to calm himself. The figure across the draw only stared from the shadow of its cowl.

The motionless Velle and its dark intent were maddening, and Tahn felt again the pure, irrational dread a child feels when trapped in the dark.

He could think of only one thing to do.

His bow forgotten in his hand, Tahn ran.

He dashed into the cover of the trees, glancing back once to see the cloaked figure skirting the mouth of the draw, giving chase.

Tahn drove his trembling legs faster, and soon came to the forest path. He stopped, panting hard, his breath pushing short stabs of warm air into the cold.
Just like the elk.
He had to think quickly. The dark figure would track him easily and quickly down the path to the south road. Quelling the urge to hasten toward the Hollows, he ducked left into a dense stand of ash. Choosing mossy ground to quiet his steps, he doubled back toward the draw; the creature wouldn’t expect him to come back toward it. Tahn knew these woods as well as his own home; he hoped his pursuer did not.

A moment later he heard a thrashing in brush to his left. The other had found the path. Tahn pulled his cloak over his face to mask his labored breathing, hunkered low, and listened.

A few wet steps on the path. Then a howl that shrieked into the treetops.

And silence.

Something about the quiet unnerved Tahn. Did the other know he’d doubled back? He didn’t wait to find out. Staying low, he rushed back toward the draw where he’d seen the creature. He recalled its bony, pallid finger pointing toward him. But why destroy the elk? It was the wrong kill. And again Tahn thought that this creature had wanted him to realize that it knew the bull should not die … but that it did not care.

He flew into the draw, barely keeping his balance as he pounded down one muddy slope and up the other side. He finally shouldered his bow, using his hands to claw to the top.

Another howl. Closer.

The creature had found him out.

Tahn scrambled up, and stopped dead at the lip on the far side of the draw. He stood now where the figure had been. Underfoot lay a patch of ground as dry and untouched by rain as the Sotol Wastes. Rain beaded and ran across the spot as though it had been coated with wax. In the ground were two holes where the being’s hands had thrust into the earth. Scorch marks flared from the holes. He knelt to touch the dry, black surface. Not wax. Glass. The soil had burned into a thin crust of dark glass.

“Great Fathers,” he whispered. He’d never seen the work of a renderer. But here it was.

He knew little of such things, just what he’d learned from listening to Ogea’s stories. Only the Velle and members of the Order of Sheason possessed the power to render. And rendering came at a price. The difference was that only the Sheason bore that price themselves, drawing on their own life-energy. Velle transferred the cost to something (or someone) else.

He ran his finger around the glass-encrusted holes.

But these were matters of myth, weren’t they? No one Tahn knew had ever seen a Sheason, let alone a Velle. Velle were a Quietgiven race said to live only inside the Bourne. And the Sheason, though they lived in the nations of men, were spoken of almost as a cautionary tale, at best a secret. Somehow death seemed an equal threat from both.

A chill ran across Tahn’s arms and down his back.
Velle! Here in the Hollows!

He whirled, checking his back, just as the creature glided from the trees to stand across from him on the other side of the draw. It lifted its hands. Stepping over the scorched soil, Tahn plunged into the deep wood. The air behind him crackled and spat as if lightning sizzled after him. Trees splintered and cracked at his heels. He dove behind a great rock, just as a wave of heat pushed past where he’d been running.

Another howl rose into the murk.

Tahn got moving again, racing with a sure foot over terrain he knew well. Somewhere behind him, the Velle again gave chase.

He ran for an hour, never stopping to rest. Over chasms and through rivers and streams he fled in a wide turn until he’d doubled back again, angling for the south road. The woods had grown quiet, leaving him with no sense of how close the creature might be. He didn’t wait. He lurched several hundred strides up the road to a stand of cedar where he’d tethered his horse, Jole.

His legs almost useless, it took him three attempts to mount. Finally, muscling his way into the saddle, he said simply, “Go.” Jole flew toward the Hollows.

*   *   *

Rushing up the road, Tahn checked behind him often, trusting Jole to his course. His mind raced, wondering at what he’d seen. It seemed so deliberate, as though Tahn specifically had been tracked into the woods. The figure must surely have been following him to know where he would be hunting, because even Tahn had not known where he would end up. The images of the rain driving savagely upon the elk and the scorched earth belied the calming smells of loam and wet bark around him.

A Velle in the Hollows—something that had never happened, as far as he knew, in all its history. And it had tried to kill him.

He rode hard into the middle of town. A hundred strides to his left, great billowing plumes of smoke rose to mingle with the clouds above Master Rew Geddy’s smithy. The smith kept a hot fire burning every hour of the day. The smell of his forge filled the air, even through the rain.

Looking ahead, Tahn spied the towering chimneys of the Fieldstone Inn through of the gloom. Reassured by the sight, he slowed Jole to a walk, then dismounted. He’d find his friend Hambley there. Hambley had a level head on his shoulders. After what Tahn had just seen, he needed the man’s patient logic.

He took hold of Jole’s reins and rushed up the muddy street toward the inn. It rose up like a square mountain, hemmed in by large, overhanging cedars. The stone structure looked palatial in the Hollows, where most homes were fashioned from the planks produced by the mill to the south on the Huber River. Gables protruded at even intervals along the top floor over the chamber windows. The roofing had been quarried from a red sandstone pit somewhere near the low steppes of the High Plains of Sedagin, or so Hambley said. He also claimed the Fieldstone to be the first edifice built in the Hollows after the High Season of the Great Fathers. But most folks in the Hollows felt sure he made that claim to attract customers. Still, the stones were smooth, washed and worn by countless cycles of the sun and winter’s chill.

Tahn went through the stable yard to the rear outbuildings reserved for guest mounts. He stabled Jole, but left the saddle on in the event he needed to leave in a hurry.

He had just emerged from the stable when something hit him from behind, knocking the wind out of him and driving him off his feet and into the mud. He took a mouthful of sludge as he went down. Someone straddled him, pinning his arms to the ground. A strong hand pushed his head deeper into the mud, and his nostrils filled with muck. Panic seized his chest. Had the Velle gotten here so fast?

Then, vaguely, he could hear familiar laughter. Tahn twisted his head free and looked up to face his attacker. The grinning mug of Sutter Te Polis hovered above him.

“I’ll bury you ’neath the Hollows!” Tahn cried, spitting out the mud, a smile of relief on his lips.

“I see. Well, my esteemed hunter friend, you seem to be the one half buried in the mud and,” Sutter said as he picked up a bit of horse mulch, “the rich stuff.” He smeared the dung over Tahn’s face, barking laughter. Tahn began to writhe, struggling to get up, but Sutter simply rode him like a horse master taming a willful mount.

Tahn spat the foulness from his teeth and kicked up with his hips propelling Sutter over him and into a pool of rainwater. He jumped to his feet and untied his muddied cloak. Sutter splashed to his feet and whirled around to face Tahn. Hambley came to the kitchen side doorway to check on the commotion, retiring inside again after mumbling something about “that foolish Sutter boy.”

“If I win, we leave the Hollows tonight, go find ourselves some maidens in the Outlands. I’ll be done with harvesting roots and you’ll be done with the woods,” Sutter said, circling. “Maybe we’ll settle for something a little less than maidens.” He smiled knowingly. “How’s that strike you, Woodchuck?”

Tahn spat again, the horse dung still pungent on his lips. Another time, he would have taunted Sutter that the Outlands had forbidden dullards from traveling abroad. Today, he didn’t have time for their usual games.

Sutter whooped and feinted toward Tahn’s belly. Tahn wasn’t fooled by the old Sutter move. He dropped into the mud, swept his leg out in a wide circle, and upended Sutter. His friend splashed again into the large puddle. Before Sutter could right himself, Tahn jumped on him.

“Enough! Listen to me. I’ve just seen a Velle!”

Sutter stared up, confused. “What? Is this a new game?”

“No game!” Tahn blared. “I was down the south road and out east hunting. I laid up in a draw for a herd of elk.” He stopped, still amazed at what he’d seen. “And a dark, hooded figure stepped out of the trees, raised its hands, and whipped the rain into a funnel to beat a bull elk to death.”

“A dream,” Sutter offered. “You fell asleep waiting on the herd.”

“Then it looked at me,” Tahn said, ignoring Sutter’s remark. “I think … it knew me. And it chased me through the wood. I got away, but I heard the crack of lightning at my heels more than once.” He looked at his friend, fear again seizing his gut. “It was trying to kill me.”

Tahn relaxed his grip and stood up, letting Sutter free. He went to Jole for his waterskin, took a mouthful and washed out the foulness, spilling yet more water over his face and ears. “Has the reader come yet?”

“Not yet.” Sutter took the waterskin and washed himself off before drinking deeply. He now looked a bit more like himself, his shoulder-length hair again the color of harvest just before it’s taken in nearly matching his brown eyes. This, and an angular face make him look older than Tahn, whose own hair was again black, and whose blue eyes were bright in a lean face tanned from much sun. They both stood a little more than two strides tall, and had each gotten what they called “outdoor strong” from their respective occupations over nearly eighteen cycles.

“It’s got to have something to do with the Velle.” Tahn turned to his friend. “In the Hollows, Sutter … a Velle in the Hollows.”

Tahn reached into one of the pouches on his saddle and took out a flake of salt. He dropped it onto his tongue as he tried to think of what to do. His heart still raced at the images in his head of the cowled creature smiling and a helpless animal beaten into a watery grave.

Sutter kept an uncustomary silence.

They stood together in the high doorway of the stable and looked up the road. Since the break in the rain, people had begun filling the streets. The clouds remained a complete canopy over the land, except to the east where small blue patches could be seen near the horizon over the Jedgwick Ridge.

“I thought the readers had some kind of special protection.…” Sutter cocked his head back and assumed an orator’s pose, gazing into the distance—his humor had returned. “Riding from village to village, city to city, telling the old stories, stewards of the histories of the peoples of the land, even those in the Shadow of the Hand, and those … harbored deep within the Bourne.” Sutter held his pose, glancing sideways at Tahn.

Today, the jokes wouldn’t help his mood.

“I suspect you’ll be a reader yourself someday, root-digger, you’re so horribly poetic.” Tahn tossed a salt flake at him, which Sutter caught and bit in two.

“And why not? There’s certainly not much to listen to around here these days. Even the gossip is old.” Sutter put the other half of the salt flake on his protruding tongue and coiled it back into this mouth with a flourish. Any moment he would return to his only topic of conversation: leaving the Hollows. Sutter wanted to leave digging roots behind, visit other cities, meet other races.

Tahn had just met one—today, as it happened, and Quietgiven no less. He had no appetite for more. He’d always been satisfied with the slow, easy way of life in the Hollows. Usually, just breathing Hollows air filled him with a sense of comfort. Now, his encounter in the woods had shattered his sense of safety and peace.

Panic again tightened his chest. “Let’s get in to Hambley’s fire. We need to tell him what I saw.” He strode quickly, forcing Sutter to hurry to keep up.

They paused at the main door (Hambley didn’t allow anyone but staff through the kitchen entrance) and scraped the mud from their boots on the last stone step before entering the inn. Already, Tahn could smell the fragrant scents of fresh bread and roasting duck, and the sour tang of ale hops. Muted conversation wafted from behind the door. Sutter pushed Tahn aside. “Let a man lead the way, Woodchuck.”

Sutter shoved the heavy cedar door open so hard that it slammed against the inner wall, resounding with a loud crack. Talk lulled as guests turned to regard Sutter, who stood arms akimbo, chest out as he received their stares. Spying the root farmer, people went back to their conversations. Tahn shook his head and followed his friend inside, quietly drawing the door closed behind them.