Wanderling (Spirit Seeker Book 1) (21 page)

“You knew this was the end of it,”
cried Adala’s voice inside, cutting into Tobin even though her words were
directed at Burano. “You saved the final scroll until we were all the way out
here because you didn’t want me to know how it turned out.”

“You may go,” came Burano’s voice,
loud and clear. “I have no further need of your services.”

“You are despicable,” she seethed.
“You knew that the monk died from the beginning and you led my brother out here
for slaughter.” Adala’s voice boomed from within the tent, quivering with
anger. Her anger reflected the resentment rising in Tobin’s chest, and his fear
for Shem’s life. He swallowed, an immense wave of guilt washing over him.
I’ve
helped Burano do this,
he thought.

“There will be no slaughter if the
desert people find his skills impressive,” Burano said. “Now please return to
your day. I’m sure you have something to keep yourself occupied for a few more
hours.”

Adala spoke urgently from within
the tent now, voice full of emotion. “Shem, you need to persuade them you
aren’t the spirit guide. Tell them you can’t feel where people are, that you
made it up. Don’t let them test you or perform any kind of ritual.”

“Tobin, get her out of here,”
Burano called.

Tobin jolted out of his frozen
state and ducked into the tent where Adala knelt in front of Shem, holding his
shoulders and speaking in emotion-filled words. As Tobin took her arm to lift
her to her feet, she pleaded with her brother, “Shem, don’t let them perform
the spirit feast!” she said.

“Get her out!” shouted Burano.

“Adala, come on,” Tobin said
quietly.

She thrashed, and Tobin tried to
pull her out as gently as he could. She continued speaking to Shem as Tobin
tugged her towards the tent flap, crying, “Don’t do it. Be strong and don’t let
them push you around!”

Shem’s startled figure disappeared
behind the flap of the tent as Tobin pulled Adala out. He pushed her away from
the door and released her, letting out a long-held breath. His heart pounded in
his chest with panic, and he felt he had failed both Adala and Shem by letting
things get this far.
Surely there must be a way to save them from all this,
he
thought, searching his mind for answers.

“You knew too,” she said, spitting
at his feet. She shoved her palms against his chest, causing him to fall back
two steps.

Tobin looked at the dirt, trying
to explain himself. “I didn’t know before today. He just told me. I had no
idea, Adala. I would never put Shem in harm’s way.”

She struck his face with a
stinging slap, and Tobin turned away, blinking from the pain.

“Don’t pretend you have any sort
of affection for my brother,” she said, her voice dripping with spite. “If you
understood at all the love for a younger sibling, you wouldn’t be a part of
what Burano is doing.”

She stalked away, her hair tossing
back and forth with the bewildered shaking of her head. Tobin did not follow.

I deserved that,
thought
Tobin, turning to walk the opposite direction. He knew Burano would want him to
stay at the tent, but he needed to take a moment before the commander fetched
him again.

He found himself wandering through
the tethered horses to Leyenne, Havard’s old horse.

“Sweet Leyenne,” Tobin said,
stroking her soft muzzle. “How am I going to make things right?”

“I can’t tell you how many times
I’ve asked myself that in my life,” said a gruff voice behind him.

Tobin turned around to see Ollie
reclining against a barrel, sipping from his flask.

“I haven’t done half the things I
claim credit for,” Ollie said, getting a faraway look in his eyes, which Tobin
realized were glistening with tears. “But no story I can tell is as terrible as
the truth.”

“What was it that really earned
you your brand?” Tobin dared to ask, nodding towards the T engraved on Ollie’s
brow.

“I stole from a healer,” he
admitted. “A witch by the docks. I thought her poultice would heal my darling
Ana of her fever.” He gulped from his flask.

“Was that your wife?” Tobin asked.

He shook his head. “Cynthia and I
were so happy when Ana was born. We got married that day, with her still in the
birthing bed. She was a happy baby, always smiling at me and tugging my beard.
She grew very ill her first winter, though. She shivered and shivered, nothing
would make her stop crying.” Ollie wiped away a tear. “I waited until it was
unbearable, and I stole medicine to save her.”

“Did she live?” asked Tobin. “Is
she still in Gerstadt?”

“No,” he said. “I got confused
looking at the bottles—I couldn’t read the labels, you see, so I thought I
remembered which one was the right poultice….” He shook his head, shoulders
quaking with silent sobs. “She didn’t survive the day after I gave her the
medicine.”

Tobin looked away, stunned by
Ollie’s story. He wished he could believe this was just another dramatic story
of Ollie’s creation, but the tears in the old man’s eyes betrayed the truth.

“Cynthia turned me in to the city
guard that day. She said that she didn’t want to see me anymore, and she made
sure it happened. They gave me this because of stealing the medicine,” he said,
gesturing to his branded forehead. “But no punishment could be greater than
living with the death of my daughter on my conscience.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Tobin. “I had
no idea.”

“You don’t want to be a part of
the death of a child, or anyone you love,” said Ollie, tossing his flask of
cactus hooch to Tobin.

Tobin snatched it from the air.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, looking down at the small canteen in
his hand.

“Drink it,” instructed Ollie as he
rose to his feet. “You’ll need to dig deep in your spineless self if we are
going to set Shem and Adala free. I’ve seen the way you look at that girl, and
I won’t let you stand by anymore while Burano puts them in danger.”

Within the hour, Adala found
herself shadowed by four guards instead of the customary one. She had to admit
that Burano was not unfounded in his suspicion of her, especially after the
morning revelation. Jarod, Willie, Tosser, and Reggie followed her everywhere
she went, and they weren’t very good company. She wished that Trigg and Boggs
weren’t out on lookout duty. After her revelation in Burano’s tent that
morning, she needed time to think, so she watered and groomed Dusty in a tense
silence, her bodyguards barely saying a word.

She wrapped her head as the day
grew hot and often touched the bulge underneath her tunic to reassure herself
that she had at least snatched a weapon before Burano had sent the guards to
watch her. The best she could hope for was that the camp would be all a bustle
when the clans arrived and she could shake her guards and steal Shem away. It
seemed a desperate hope, and an unlikely one, but she had no better plans. She
had no gift for battle tactics, nor vanishing acts.

Horns sounded as the first of the
traveling clans arrived. The group, larger than Shairo’s clan, was greeted by
Burano and Shairo, Tobin and Shem at their sides. Adala hovered close by,
watching from a short distance as they were welcomed to the camp. Shairo
offered them water from the spring, and they accepted. Not much was said of
Shem, except that he was close to the spirits and that Shairo hoped that the
priests and priestesses would evaluate him at sunset. The newcomers moved on to
drink from the spring and then mingled with Shairo’s clan, not associating much
with Burano’s soldiers.

Three more clans arrived soon
after. One included only seven desert dwellers, five men and two women, but the
others were fifty strong. They all carried bows or spears and dressed much the
same in leather and faded cloth, though some of the clans wore charms and
colored wooden beads in their hair that distinguished them from the other
groups.

Burano’s greetings of each tribe
grew dull and repetitive to Adala’s ears, especially when her hatred for him
was so fresh. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn away. She watched her
brother obligingly greet each clan leader at Burano’s side, hoping and praying
for a moment to speak with him. A simple privy break could offer the
opportunity to snatch him away and put the camp behind them. But she had no
such luck.

The gathering of desert dwellers
collected until Adala lost count of the clans. A sense of dread grew in her gut
with each new arrival. As the crowd assembled, the devastating potential of an
alliance between Burano and the desert clans loomed more ominous in her mind.
The masses huddled in the shade most of the day, their heads bare as they
mingled with other tribes. Unintelligible words of their conversations drifted
to her, and she resented the pleasant interactions between clanspeople of
varying groups.

“Aren’t these people supposed to
be competitive and highly territorial?” she muttered. “They aren’t supposed to
be pleasant and united, ripe for the plucking from a conniving, ruthless
schemer like Burano.”

“They are territorial, that much
is true,” Jarod said. “I’ve never seen the clans gather, but Tobin says they
have a meeting like this every ten or twenty years. If they call a meeting, it
is a truce. All disputes are forgotten for one day.”

“Wonderful,” she said. “The
savages are more diplomatic than our own people.”

“They’re backwards as ever.” Jarod
watched her as he continued. “Just you wait. I heard that if your brother
doesn’t impress them with his magic, they will skin him alive and feed him to
the fire.”

Adala clenched her fists until her
knuckles grew white, resisting the urge to snap at him. She didn’t want to lose
her temper. If they took her away from eyeshot of Shem, her plans were over.
Instead, she thought of the knife in her belt and felt comforted.
Whatever
happens,
she thought,
as long as I have a weapon I am not powerless.

At sundown, the crowd had grown to
an unimaginable size. Situated at the center of Burano’s camp near his tent,
she was surrounded in every direction by native clans. Burano had said there
were a couple thousand, but she thought that a very low estimate. The thrum of
their foreign conversations throbbed in her ears.

As the evening breeze sent up a
first gust, Shairo stood on a boulder at the center of the crowd and blew a
horn for silence.

The crowd grew quiet, and he began
speaking loudly.

Tobin stood next to the rock with
Burano and Shem and translated the words rapidly for Burano’s comparatively
small group of soldiers.

“Friends, I have called you here
tonight because I have been a witness to a boy with a gift from the spirits.
This boy can feel the hearts of men. Where they are, who are their kin, and
what they feel in their spirit. In the past ten days, I have been more and more
convinced that this child is not entirely of our world, but of the spirit
world. He knew from afar that my clan was coming, and even knew what my wife
only knew weeks before: that she is growing a life inside her. He has great
insight, and also bears the mark of the gods on his shoulder. But I am no
spirit warrior. Knowledge of the spirits is not my gift from the gods, and I
ask that the priests come forward to meet this boy Shem for themselves.”

From the crowd emerged different
individuals of various sizes and shapes. Women with hair so coarse it stuck out
from their heads, men with shaved heads and burn marks on their arms, elderly
people with beads and pouches strung around their necks and hanging from their
belts. Many wore colorful feathers and painted bones in their unruly hair. A
few of them had eerily bleached blonde hair, which stood out against their
bronze skin.

Adala was surprised to see that
none of them carried bows or any type of weapon, just leather bags or woven
pouches that attached to their belts. They made a tight crowd around Shem,
maybe a hundred of them, and Adala tried to move in closer to hear Tobin’s
translations of their murmurings. But Jarod put a hand on her shoulder to hold
her back. One of the priestesses spoke Bolgish, and she took over conversations
with Shem, asking him questions that Adala couldn’t hear. Shem appeared to be
making statements about members of the crowd, giving his insights about them in
the same way he had when Shairo’s clan arrived at camp. The priests and
priestesses examined the birth mark on Shem’s shoulder and debated amongst
themselves. Adala hoped Shem would have the wisdom to give them false information.
Better to disappoint them immediately than to suffer the spirit feast, whatever
that was.

Her hopes began to ebb, however,
when Burano entered the conversation. She caught the words “must know for
sure,” and “spirit feast.”

Burano is encouraging them to
perform the ritual,
she thought angrily.
If I live past this night, I
want a chance to kill that man myself.

After what seemed like an eternity
of debate between Burano and the priests, a priestess stood on the boulder and
announced something to the crowd. Before Tobin began interpreting, Adala could
see the restlessness of the natives. They began talking amongst themselves,
enough that Tobin had to yell over them, his voice hoarse.

“They’re putting him to a test of
the spirits, a spirit feast. Stand back, they’re going to make the fire a lot
bigger,” he said.

A group of clansmen pulled up
several bushes and threw them over the fire, sending sparks rising in the night
sky. Different clanspeople brought other dried weeds, and some of them even
threw their spears into the pyre. Every nerve in Adala’s body tingled as she
watched the procession, waiting to see what they would do next.

As the crowd shifted and Burano’s
men stepped away from the fire, so did Burano, Tobin, and Shem. Adala was glad
to realize that they were within earshot. Only four soldiers stood between her
and her brother.

The desert dwellers quieted, and a
priest stood next to the fire, speaking loudly.

“We must unite our voices to call
the spirits of the desert,” said Tobin in translation. He turned around
halfway, searching the crowd of soldiers anxiously. His eyes lingered only a
second on Adala’s, surveying the rest of the group before turning back to the
fire. He fidgeted and shifted on his feet nervously.

“This boy carries the mark of the
spirits, and today we ask the spirits to claim him if he is theirs.”

Adala reached a hand beneath her
tunic to grasp her stolen knife, tensing in preparation to lunge into action
when an opportunity presented itself.

“And if he is not of the spirits,
and is therefore an imposter of evil, we ask that they vanquish his soul and
spill his blood as an offering to the gods. The spirits will serve us justice
this night, whether by calling us to follow this boy to our ancestral home by
the great water, or by destroying a false spirit warrior for us.”

The crowd murmured, but Adala’s
mind raced in confusion.

“I thought they would kill him
themselves if he fails,” she said, leaving the hilt of her knife hidden at her
belt for the moment.

“Their faith is strong if they’re
asking their gods to kill him for them,” Jarod admitted. “We may survive this
just yet.”

The priests gathered in a circle
around the fire and began passionately speaking as one voice, chanting with
their heads bowed. Sparks danced from the flames, which cast dancing shadows of
the priests in their rhythmic chant. The priests and priestesses cried out in
their reverie so loudly that Adala couldn’t hear Tobin’s translation. They
knelt and pounded their fists to the ground in near-perfect synchronization.

Nothing can happen to Shem,
Adala thought.
They’re just going through a superstitious ritual, and they
might decide it is inconclusive when their gods don’t show up.
As much as
she tried to reason with herself that the “spirit feast” would culminate to
nothing, she found her anxiety rising as the pitch of the priests’ chant grew
higher and the rhythm faster. One of the priests stepped forward and thrust a
fistful of dirt into the fire, then sprayed the contents of a water skin into
it. The voices cried out in one escalating note at the very end, and then all
of the priests stepped forward in unison to toss some type of dried leaves into
the fire.

The flames turned white as snow
and erupted instantly into a great pillar. Adala shielded her eyes from the brightness
and felt herself jostled backwards with the crowd as everyone stepped away from
the incredible heat. The clamor of abrupt conversation, cries of alarm, and
speculation among the crowd was silenced by a great roar from the fire. Not
just the roar of a fire, but of a beast.

Adala made herself look towards
the blinding light. The pillar of white flames rose fifteen feet into the air
and spread wide over the priests at its base. The form twisted and stretched
until the flames unfolded into wings and a horned head with icy blue eyes.

Terror seized Adala’s very being,
and she stared at the winged creature made of fire, her muscles frozen for a
split second.
I have to get to him,
she thought, seeing Shem’s small
form gazing upward at what the fire had morphed into.

“What is it?” she heard Tosser
ask.

“It’s a dragon!” someone cried
from behind Adala, but by then she was moving. Without realizing it, she had
grabbed the knife from her belt. Now she rushed forward, shoving between two
soldiers and darting over someone who had passed out from the initial burst of
light.

Someone grabbed her tunic and
jerked her backwards, but she was hardly even aware that it had happened before
she wheeled around and thrust her knife into his chest. It was Willie, one of
her guards. No sooner had she pulled out her knife and turned back towards Shem
than five sets of arms seized her. She screamed, kicking and writhing, elbowing
and biting, but in only a few seconds she was helpless, held fast and
surrounded by Burano’s soldiers, her arms firmly held behind her back. Adala
heard someone call for help behind her.  “Bring bandages—Willie is hurt
badly!”

They tried to pull her back, but
she screamed, “Stop! I have to see!” Through hot, angry tears, she watched her
beautiful, sandy-haired brother glance back for just a second, nodding his head
at her, and then walk towards the fire.

His silhouette moved slowly and
certainly. The priests all knelt in a circle around the fire and the beast
which it had become. The head priest rose to his feet and called up to it. At
last, the roaring of the fire lowered enough for Adala to hear Tobin’s
translation.

“We pay respect to your sovereign
reign over the fire of the desert and ask you a favor this night. A stranger
has come into our midst in the guise of one in communion with the spirits and
the gods. He claims to be the spirit warrior. Please, guide us and discern for
us if this boy is of the spirits or an imposter. If he is false, we ask that
you spill his blood as a sacrifice to replenish the earth. It would not please
the gods to let a deceiver walk away.”

Adala’s chest pounded as the beast
swooped its head low, locking its blue eyes on Shem.

In front of her, Adala saw Tobin
step forward and seize Shem’s arm, attempting to tug him away from the beast,
but Shem shook his head, pushing Tobin back to Burano’s side.

She saw only her brother’s
silhouette, but he stood tall and spoke in a loud voice to the spirit. His
words howled like the wind and cracked like a fire. It was no language Adala
had heard or dreamed of, with whimsical whistles and low, earthy tones, all
tied together into a lyrical song. She had never heard such sounds from a
human, much less from her kid brother. The crowd stood still when the boy
finished speaking, everyone holding their breath for the response.