Heaven's Needle Page 25

  The younger woman canted her head to the side. “Yes, why?”

  Asharre shrugged uneasily. It had only been a passing mention in a dream … but it troubled her, somehow. “Tell me.”

  “It’s a children’s story.” Evenna waited for a moment, but when Asharre did not seem dissuaded, she went on. “There was a prince who lived in a seaside castle and saw the Storm Queen’s daughter singing amidst the waves at daybreak. She was beautiful, with hair and skin as white as sea foam and eyes that shone like pearls … but she was not human. From the waist down, her body was that of a silver fish, all covered in scales. Still, the prince fell in love and resolved that he would have her. He went to a sorcerer and begged for a boon that might bring the lady out of the sea.

  “The sorcerer gave him a golden crown, and the prince laid that crown on the shore. At dawn the next day, the Storm Queen’s daughter picked it up from the strand and lifted it to her head. When she put it on, the crown transformed into a golden net, and the prince ran down to claim her.

  “She did not want to go with him, and she struggled and wailed, but the prince would not be deterred. He carried her off into the castle, intending to make her his bride. So that her mother could find her and save her—or, in some tellings, so that she’d be able to find her way back to the sea—the Storm Queen’s daughter clawed off her own scales, one by one, and left them shining in a trail of blood to mark the way she had gone.”

  “The prince did not notice?” Asharre asked.

  Evenna brushed the question away with a tired wave. “It’s a story. The prince never notices anything in stories. So the Storm Queen’s daughter left her trail of scales. But a strange thing happened when she dropped the last one: she found human legs inside her fish’s tail, and she forgot what it was to live in the sea. She had no more interest in returning to her cold life of stones and water; she wanted to stay with her prince.

  “It was too late, though. The Storm Queen saw her daughter’s blood and came to the castle in a fury. Crashing waves tore the castle down; lightning killed its soldiers. The Storm Queen drowned the prince herself, dragging him into the deeps, and brought her daughter back under the waves.

  “But her daughter had become a princess, human in heart and body, and the sea was no longer her home. She drowned alongside her husband, and that is the story’s end.”

  “A fine tale to tell children.”

  “Most folk stories are like that. They might have meant something else, originally … but they’re for children now.”

  “Yes,” Asharre said, wondering.

  They were on the move again before the sun rose over the Shardfield. The day was gray and hazy, and the forest closed around them as the road climbed northeast along the mountain walls. Years of neglect had healed the scars left by soldiers and miners; as often as not the road vanished into undergrowth. Pine and spruce cloaked the slopes, leaving little to betray the fact that men had ever lived here.

  Asharre wondered if they’d find anything more substantial than ghosts at Shadefell. It seemed impossible that the surviving townspeople of Carden Vale could have retreated into such isolation and left no signs of their presence. But they’d already come this far, and they had nowhere else to look.

  That night she dreamed of Falcien again. The dead Celestian sat cross-legged on the embers of his pyre. Nothing was left of his flesh, and most of his bones had been consumed by the fire. Only the sunburst pendant fused to his sternum, a glob of gold and ash, told who he had been.

  “You are traveling too fast,” he warned her. Threads of burnt hair crumbled around his shoulders. “You will not have time to learn what you must before reaching Shadefell. Better if you slowed; better yet if you turned back and retrieved the solaros’ writings from the Rosy Maiden. If you had his work to build on, your studies would go much faster.”

  “We can’t go back,” Asharre said. “Maelgloth infest Carden Vale, and Evenna’s getting weaker every day. Returning might help me, but it would hurt her, and her strength matters more than mine.”

  “Even if it means your life?”

  “My life matters only as far as it shields hers. Help us find Aurandane. If we have the sword, we have a cure.” I hope.

  The dead man’s jaw creaked into a grin. Most of his teeth had fallen out. “Yes. Yes, that is so. Its magic is still strong. Maol’s creatures cannot touch the sword. It burns their flesh; it destroys their bodies. Only human hands can hold Aurandane. That is why the Mad God has not claimed it, all these many years, and has hidden it away instead … but the signs are there, for those who know how to find them.”

  “Tell me how to find it.”

  “Carden Vale’s solaros followed the same path you walk now. Trace his footsteps. His people lit the way to enlightenment, and he saw the sword, but he did not have the strength to hold it. When you find his tracks, you will know the path … but you must not falter, as he did. You must not fail. Maol’s creatures will try to stop you—but I can show you the wards that will defeat them.”

  She set her jaw. “Show me.”

  He did, and she watched closely, but the dream lessons proved nigh impossible. Asharre’s strengths had never lain in the scribe’s arts, and that was all Falcien taught her. He showed her protective runes and warding circles, arcane sequences of numbers and invocations that could counter-spell corruption. Asharre began to understand what Laedys had been trying to capture in her lonely cottage, and why the woman had worked so frantically to record each shape and pattern before it evaporated with the dawn.

  It was impossible to remember everything. There was too much of it, coming too fast, and the dream’s nature worked against her. No sooner did a wheel of sigils appear on a page than her perspective shifted, or the page’s contents changed, or time stuttered and started again elsewhere, and she was stymied. The blisters on her injured hand, which had hardly troubled her in waking life, here made her as clumsy as if she were trying to write with a plum wedged between each finger.

  The only thing she was able to master was a simple sunburst, the ends of its rays flattened like hands … and there was something that tugged at her memory about that too. But the thought was gone as soon as it came, a little fish glittering in a brief leap of light before it was pulled back into the dark and drowning sea.

  Falcien touched the back of her hand with the three skeletal fingers left to him. Dawn softened the darkness to the east. As it was in the dream, so it would be in the world.

  “You must go,” he said. “When you find the sword, let Evenna wield it. She is Blessed, and her faith is strong. Aurandane will be better in her hands than yours … but you are the one who must find it. Go, and do not falter.”

  The bed of embers had nearly gone out beneath him. Shadows swaddled the dule tree and filled the hollows between his bones. Asharre knew, somehow, that when the fire died completely and the darkness claimed Falcien, he would no longer be able to help her. Maol would swallow that spark of resistance, and she would be alone in the night.

  “How do I keep the fire alive?” she asked.

  He did not seem to think it was a strange question. “The price of that is too high.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Bones,” he whispered, as the dream faded with the night. “The fire burns bones.”

  She woke. Around her the forest was blue-green and tranquil in the dawn. Evenna was still sleeping. Asharre traced the sunburst on the Celestian’s brow, hoping she remembered its shape correctly, and was relieved to see Evenna’s strained features relax. For a heartbeat she was tempted to carve the mark in with a knife, to make it permanent … but no, that was absurd. She shook the impulse away almost before realizing it was there.

  Falcien’s secrets worked. There was hope for them yet. Asharre let the girl sleep for another hour, until the morning was lively bright, then shook her awake.

  “I’ve missed prayers,” Evenna said as soon as her eyes opened. She looked around, confused as a child. “How did I miss the dawn
?”

  “You were sleeping. Peacefully, for the first time in a long while. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Please don’t let it happen again.” Evenna hobbled to a patch of sunlight falling through the leaves. There was an ashen cast to her porcelain skin, and her body trembled visibly. She swept her hands skyward to begin the ritual, turning her face up to the morning. “I can’t sleep through dawn prayer. It makes me weaker.”

  Asharre let her pray in peace, abashed. When she was finished, they went on. Late that afternoon, they came to Shadefell.

  It was a grand folly: a collection of arches and interlocking courtyards that ringed a central tower like filigree around a jewel. Tiny windows peered out over ornamental bands of stone. Blind arcades adorned the front walls, converging on the great doors at the center. A circular emblem of carved stone, its details masked by dirt and moss, crowned the doorway’s arch.

  The Rosewayns must have spent a king’s ransom to build it. Asharre tried to calculate the cost of bringing workmen and materials to this godsforsaken corner of the valley, floundered, and gave up. Even with the roads in good repair, they were days from Carden Vale, and that town was itself a speck on the backside of nowhere. Add in Duradh Mal’s curse, and it was hard to see how the Rosewayns had managed to raise Shadefell at any price.

  It was still harder to see why they’d bothered. Shadefell House defended nothing, controlled nothing. There were no passes nearby, no roads, no easy access to the river. The outer halls had no towers, no walls, only decorative battlements. Shadefell’s sole defense was its remoteness.

  “They’d be helpless if anyone attacked,” Asharre said, marveling at the absurdity.

  “It’s a temple,” Evenna said. “This is a perfect copy of a Vendathi temple. It was never meant to be defended.”

  “I do not know the Vendathi.” She studied the buildings, looking for anything that might indicate they had living occupants. Not a smudge of smoke darkened the sky; what little she could see of the stables looked as dilapidated as the main house. The weeds between the courtyards’ paving stones grew tall, untroubled by footsteps.

  “They were a minor kingdom in Ardashir. The Vendathi believed that peace was the only true road to enlightenment, and they welcomed the world to it. They built all their palaces and temples without fortifications. This house is designed according to their precepts.”

  “Why? I thought the Rosewayns wanted to retake Ang’duradh. It’s a long leap from coveting a Baozite fortress to emptying a treasury on an Ardasi peace temple.”

  “They lived in the shadow of Duradh Mal. Maybe they thought peace would protect them where walls and soldiers had come to ruin.”

  “Then they were wrong.” Asharre pushed out of the brush. “There is nothing here. Perhaps the other side of the house will show more.”

  Evenna nodded. They followed the forest’s hem, seeing nothing more than weeds and wildflowers and the brown veins of ivy wrapped around the courtyards’ pillars.

  The northern wing of the house swept out to the remnants of a kitchen garden. A tangle of blackberry vines spilled over the garden wall. The green spikes of new onions and feathery carrot shoots struggled for sunlight amidst the young pines and purple laceflower that had conquered the old beds. A doorway, partly blocked by fallen stone, led from the garden into the main house.

  Asharre started toward the door, but Evenna pulled her back. “Wait.”

  She shrugged the younger woman’s hand off impatiently. “What?”

  “By the doorway. Look at the water.”

  A rill of inky water trickled out from a crack in the wall there. Where that thread of water flowed, nothing grew. A few yellowed weeds wilted at the edges of its reach, dying where they stood. Blooms of tiny mushrooms, blue as a corpse’s kiss, sprouted from their remains. Otherwise, from the time the rivulet emerged from the house until it sank under the earth in a rippled fan of black sediment, the dirt was poisoned bare.

  “Morduk ossain,” Evenna said. “Dead man’s feast. The hand of Maol is here.”

  16

  “I’ve found the missing Celestians,” Malentir said. He brushed a finger along the underside of his dead sparrow’s chin. The little bird sat motionless on his shoulder, as it had since returning from its flight. “One went south on horseback; my bird saw him retreating across Spearbridge. Two went north on foot. To Shadefell.”

  Bitharn winced. Kelland closed his eyes. “Which two?” the knight asked quietly.

  “Two women. One bigger than most men, with runes scarred on her face and short white hair. She carried a sword heavier than yours.”

  “Asharre,” Bitharn said. That description could be no one else. No wonder she’d thought the tracks by the pyre were a man’s; the sigrir’s height and stride would confuse anyone who hadn’t seen her in person.

  “The other was younger, smaller,” the Thornlord continued. “Black hair bound in a healer’s halo. No weapons. She walked slowly; she might have been wounded.”

  Bitharn glanced at Kelland, who shrugged. “The lack of weapons confirms that she’s an Illuminer, but it isn’t much to go on. Jelian, maybe, or Evenna. I don’t know the younger ones as well as I should. How far ahead were they?”

  “Too far to catch easily,” Malentir said, “and the auguries did not favor going to Shadefell immediately. Our chances are better if we go to Ang’duradh first.”

  “We’ll be too late to help anyone then,” Bitharn objected.

  “If we walk, yes. That was never my intention. Gethel had a way of traveling by magic; he must have, else he could not have exploited my opening of the seals as he did. As soon as I was removed, he entered Duradh Mal. No one had time to see or stop him. He could not have acted so swiftly if he traveled by foot or horse … yet he had no magic of his own. Therefore he must have been using a perethil. This house once belonged to Renais Ruin-Hunter, and it is very likely that Gethel used his.”

  “That name doesn’t mean anything to me,” Bitharn said. She knew what a perethil was, of course, and she supposed some of those relics might have survived in Duradh Mal. The Baozites used perethil as engines of war, and the ruins had been sealed to scavengers for centuries, so any that Ang’duradh possessed should still be inside. But that didn’t explain how Gethel could have used one outside Duradh Mal.

  “You might have noticed that this house is wealthier than one would expect of a farmer in Carden Vale,” Malentir said.

  “Maybe,” Bitharn said cautiously. She had, and she had also noticed that its treasures were decidedly old fashioned, more so than mere provincialism could explain. The silver had been lovingly polished so many times that its engravings of songbirds and rose-entwined wheels were worn down to suggestions, and it had still tarnished black after that. Two of the rugs appeared to be of genuine Khartoli make, woven from silk threads shot through with real gold and imported at staggering cost … but they were faded and worn, despite having been stored carefully and, probably, reserved for special occasions. Whatever the source of this family’s wealth, it had come and gone long ago.

  “Renais Ruin-Hunter, an ancestor several generations back, was the source of this family’s wealth,” Malentir said. “Within Carden Vale he was famous, or perhaps infamous, though the townspeople did their best to keep the rumors hushed. Renais found a secret way into Shadefell, where no one else dared go. He looted the Rosewayns’ treasures for years, jealously guarding the means by which he found them. Those treasures made him a rich man … and, in the end, a mad one. His family walled him up in the house he built them—the same house where we now stand—and never went back to the ruins themselves. But death did not hide their family sin, or their secrets. I found them, and it seems that Gethel did too. He used Renais’ perethil to enter Duradh Mal, and we will do the same.”

  “How did a farmer in Carden Vale get his hands on a perethil?” Bitharn asked.

  “It was the Celestians’,” Malentir said. “It was placed in Carden Vale’s chapel when they first
sealed Ang’duradh. If the seals failed, or some new danger came, they could use it to travel swiftly to the Dome of the Sun for help or to the wards on Duradh Mal to deal with it themselves. In the early years, Knights of the Sun stayed at the chapel, vigilant against any threat. But after centuries of peaceful silence, people … forgot. The Sun Knights stopped coming. A few Illuminers came—new ones serving their annovair. Then they, too, were needed elsewhere. Decades passed with no Blessed here, and the Dome sent less and less aid, and finally the village solaros sold off the chapel’s treasures, one by one, to serve his people’s needs. Food and medicine mattered more than brass and crystal. So Renais bought the perethil. He was the only one who knew what it was … and he only knew because it had come to him in dreams. Maol reached through sleep to instruct him. And he, fool that he was, chose to listen. When I found his bones and questioned his shade, he babbled incessantly about the lore he’d learned in dreams. Lies and traps, all of it, but they were all he could remember.”

  “Then it was already corrupted,” Kelland said. “Maol was already trying to escape the seals on Duradh Mal.”

  “I do not believe the perethil was corrupt. Not at first. But over time, as Renais used it again and again to return to the Rosewayns’ haunts, and altered its symbols to match the ones he saw in dreams, it changed. Once the path was opened to him by mortal hands, the Mad God was able to bend its magic himself and, eventually, turn it to his own uses.” The Thornlord left the kitchen’s waning light, stopping before the night-sky painting in the next room. He regarded its elaborate frame grimly. “The perethil made Renais such a monster his own family walled him up. It might have done worse to Gethel. But we must use it.”

  Kelland’s mouth twisted. “Your spells would be safer.”

  Malentir stared at the knight. His eyes were flat and black as a snake’s. At length he made a chill little smile. “I do not know whether to credit you with extreme cleverness or extreme foolishness, but in either case my answer is no.”