Bear Knight, page 29
“Can’t you?” Lee spread his hands. “Look now what you’ve seen. This ship, for one thing.”
“Man’s handiwork, not the High One’s. A wicker basket under an overlarge festival toy.”
Lee frowned. “Without the High One, this toy could not have passed the barrier.”
“You forget, I came here in a ship that passed the barrier. Storm portals are a natural wonder—a strange feature of our world. Nothing more.”
“Then what of the Keledan armor you saw in our battle against the wraith and its creatures?”
This gave Shan pause.
After a moment, he opened his mouth, but Lee cut him off with a wave. “Don’t say sorcery. You know better than any Aladoth that there is no Keledan sorcery. We depend upon the power of the High One and his Rescuer.”
Shan furrowed his brow. “All right. I saw his power. I’ll acknowledge that. And your armor is something I never witnessed nor could have witnessed deep in the shelter of the Liberated Land. What else?”
“Must I also mention you met a talking bear—a Havarra shepherd that most here would deny could ever exist?”
Zel, quietly observing from her usual place by the rudder, stifled a laugh.
“A talking bear.” Shan turned away from them. “Score another point for the lightraider cadets. But if—” He seemed to spot something in the forest and leaned over the rail, staring down. “Brother, come here!”
Lee ran to join him, and he pointed. “More prisoners in the forest. Ten at least. I didn’t know any others escaped during the revolt.”
Looking straight down, Lee saw only trees, fog, and darkness. “I don’t see them.”
“They’ve passed under us.” Shan pushed off the rail and ran to the other side. “Over here.”
This time, when Lee joined him, he lowered his best lens into place. Thanks to Belen’s invention, he could count the needles on every black pine, yet he could not find the prisoners Shan spoke of. “I still can’t see them.”
Shan sighed and sat on the bow bench. “Me either. Not anymore. Perhaps they hid. They must have seen our shadow in the moonlight and mistaken us for a dragon passing over. We should land and convince them otherwise.” He looked up at Lee. “You could rescue them too.”
You could rescue them too.
Too.
Lee’s heart thumped in his chest. “What are you saying, Brother? Are you convinced?”
Shan took a long moment before answering, then smiled—the softest smile Lee had ever seen from him. “I am. The way you and the others fought off the dragon’s creatures showed me my folly. I want to come home.”
“If you want to go home,” Zel said, interjecting for the first time, “there’ll be no landing to rescue more prisoners. I’m sorry. There’s no good place, and we don’t have the fuel. Besides,” she nodded off the port side, “we’re here. Emen Kar lies there, to our south.”
Shan would not be denied. Lee did not even get the chance to pray with him. As soon as Zel landed in the glade on the south side of the long ruin, Shan vaulted over the side. “I can reach those prisoners, Lee. I’m one of them.”
“You’ll never find them, Brother.”
“I will. I escaped the dragon’s camp, didn’t I? Found my way through the forest until your bear sniffed me out. Those feats were nothing compared to this. Pray for me, and I’ll succeed.”
Zel watched him with a cautious eye. “Succeed in doing what?”
“Bringing them here, where you two can share the Great Rescue. With me on your side, they’ll listen. I know it. What a glory it will be to bring a dozen brothers home to Keledev instead of one or two.” Shan ran off without allowing any further argument. “I’ll be back before the others reach this place. I promise!”
He disappeared around the corner of the ruin.
58
CONNOR
SIL SHADATH
“Nothing quite like it, is there?” Tiran asked, flying at breakneck speed beside Connor, daggers held out.
Connor gripped Ioanu’s fur tighter. “Eyes on the forest, please. Or do you want to snap your spine by running into a tree?”
They hit the underbrush beneath the ground fog for another leaping stride, and Tiran laughed. “A funny thing to say, Brehna, since your eyes have been shut for most of this run.”
Connor had considered Zel’s wicker airship the most frightening form of transport possible. He’d been wrong. Riding a bear capable of leaping long distances and rushing headlong through a thick forest of mist and black pines was much worse.
The bear had explained the strange properties of the vapors and how they interacted with the alloys and creatures from the Tagamoor. But that knowledge didn’t assuage his fear. He’d have preferred to walk, especially given the terrors of Sil Shadath.
“The scent is growing strong,” Ioanu said. “Keir is close. This time I’m sure. The other Aladoth is no longer here to muddy the trail, and now warm queensblood mingles with the cold and dry. Your brother still has open wounds.”
The bear slowed to a stop, prompting Kara and Tiran to do the same.
Connor dismounted. “Where is he?”
“Ahead, my Keledan friend. A hundred of your human paces or so. But as before, our objective is not alone.”
Did this smaller party have the numbers for another fight?
“How many?”
“Three”—Ioanu sniffed the air—“no, four others. Three forest goblins and an Aladoth. The Aladoth smells of rotten breath and old burns.”
“Old burns.” Kara tapped her whirlknives against her legs, chin lowered, glaring in the direction Ioanu had sniffed. “A barkhide.”
Connor heard as much growl in her voice as he’d heard in the bear’s. “Take it easy, Kara.”
“I’ll take it easy once I have my brehna back.”
KARA
Kara crept through the forest on the mist, as lightly as Ioanu. The four had formed a line for their advance, each separated by ten paces. She and Ioanu took the center, and they were the first to spot Keir. Kara halted and held up a fist to signal the others.
Ioanu’s nose had missed two of Keir’s tormentors. Apparitions—a young man and woman in wedding clothes like those Kara had seen in Charlotte’s boutique in Trader’s Knoll. The ghostly woman’s dress was not rich but not one for peasants either.
“What a happy couple we are,” the woman moaned in mock glee, hovering near Keir. “Together forever. And you, too, will be with us”—her mournful frown became a wicked sneer—“forever!”
Keir strained against the barkhide’s hold and lurched at the creature. She lurched back at him with a hiss and a wide mouth filled with sharp teeth.
“Leave him,” the barkhide said. “He’s mine. My catch. I want the credit from General Moach.”
Kara wondered if the barkhides who first took Keir from the Highland Forest had thought the same—that they might earn some favor or rank by his capture. Perhaps they had. But this barkhide would get nothing.
“Keir!”
Without a sign to the others, she rushed into the open. The apparitions stood no chance. The ghostly woman had hardly extended her long claws before a flying whirlknife passed through her. She shuddered, frozen in place, and then dissipated into the fog when the knife sliced through her again on its return.
Her ghost husband tried to run, but the second whirlknife did the same to him.
In her fervor, Kara had forgotten about the goblins. She sensed a presence bearing down and turned her indigo shield just as a long knife came stabbing at her neck.
With a flash, the blade glanced away, and in the next instant, the goblin vanished under a flurry of claws and blue-gray fur.
Ioanu growled. “Watch yourself, Queensblood.”
Two other goblins fell to Connor and Tiran’s swords, leaving only the barkhide. He pushed Keir to the foggy ground and squared off against Kara. “Who is this? A feisty creature to add to our ranks?”
“No!” Keir sprang up and rushed at them. Connor grabbed him and spun him away, sparing him a blow from the spike the barkhide had driven through his own arm. In the next beat, Keir had gained his footing, and he rushed the man again. Connor and Tiran needed their combined strength to restrain him. “It’s you,” Keir kept saying, staring wild-eyed at Kara. “It’s you!”
“Hold my brehna fast,” she said. “I must deal with this one.” Ioanu stood beside her, fur bristling, but Kara motioned her away with her sword. “I must deal with him alone.”
She’d faced this test before, in the Arena with Swordmaster Quinton. And she’d failed. She’d thought then that the failure cost her dearly, but the cost of failure this time would be far greater.
“Are you certain?” Ioanu asked.
“Very much so.”
The barkhide chuckled. “I’ll not argue. I’m happy to take you one at a time. Makes my work easier. What are you? Devotees of Lord Valshadox’s rivals?”
Kara matched his stare. “Lightraiders.”
The half-beat that preceded his overloud laughter told her the very word frightened him. News of Vorax’s death had traveled—the first defeated dragon in two generations.
“Come and kill me then, Lightraider,” the barkhide said. “Destroy a dragon’s creature. Is that not your calling? Is that not your mission in holy zeal for your Overlord?”
He circled, as Quinton had done in the Arena, and Kara countered in the same way. “You are not a dragon’s creature. You belong to the High One. He is your creator.” She spoke the first verse of the Great Rescue, The One and Only, in the Elder Tongue—a prayer and preparation for her effort. Then tried to explain its meaning to the Aladoth. “Because you’re his, the High One sent his son the Rescuer to die for you. Won’t you see that?”
“Lies!” The barkhide drew a whip from his belt and slung it at her neck.
On instinct, Kara leapt out of the way, forgetting the Suvoroth gear she wore or the fact that she had one hand already occupied with her sword. Her flight reached the tips of the pines. On the way down, she whipped one whirlknife open, but it could not stop the growing speed of her descent.
Protect me. You are a shield about me.
Her armor glowed bright, sending a pulse of indigo through the mist from her hard landing.
The barkhide backed away, eyes shifting from side to side, no longer hiding his fear. “Sorcerers. You’re all sorcerers, as the dragons tell us. Kill me, then. I am an abomination to you and your Maker, like my master Moach.”
Kara heard Quinton’s voice from the Arena, what he’d said moments before she’d almost delivered a killing blow. Admit it. Ya see me as an abomination.
She did. Still. She saw the barkhides that way even more now that she was faced with a real one. And again, she could not lie by denying it.
As if fighting were his only hope for survival, the barkhide came at her with whip and sword.
Kara fought off his blows. “He’s our Maker, yours as much as mine.” Had those same words not fallen from her lips during the failed quest? “Twisting yourself away from what he made you, mutilating your body to be something you were never created to be is an abomination. The Scrolls say so.”
The barkhide smashed his sword against her shield in repeated, futile blows. “Your Scrolls mean nothing to me.”
“They should. Don’t you see? They were written in love—love for all his creations.” She spoke the second verse to the High One, Not One is Perfect, and tried to rephrase it in a way the barkhide would understand. “All of us are corrupted, in need of restoration. That’s why the Rescuer had to sacrifice himself.” She followed quickly with the Perfect Sacrifice verse. “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become his righteousness. That sacrifice proves his love. Why can’t you see that?”
Kara’s own words echoed off the pines, and echoed off the walls of the Arena back at Ras Telesar. Love! Can’t you see? That’s why I’m fighting you!
This was the moment her failure had reached its peak. But what had come after the failure? What had Master Quinton told her?
If ya ever hope ta lead a real barkhide ta the High One’s forgiveness, lass, you’ll have ta forgive him first.
How could she forgive what she saw here? A mocktree acolyte—one who desired to be a soulless dragon corruption, and one of those who’d cost her Liam and caused Keir’s suffering?
With unconscious motions, she continued circling and fending off the barkhide’s blows. The attacks no longer angered her. They were just something the poor man did because a terrible infection had taken hold of him. A distant voice called to her. “Kara! Should we take him for you? Kara!”
She saw Quinton in the Arena, with her clunker blades at his throat—the tunic with the oak symbol, the leather gauntlet with the spike through it. In the Arena, she’d seen only the barkhide Quinton pretended to be, and it had enraged her. But under the trappings of that corruption, she’d been fighting a fellow Keledan.
Wasn’t this fight the same, at least in potential? Behind the mutilations, was this man not Aladoth, to be rescued and shown the path to Keledev?
“I see you,” she said.
The barkhide stumbled back, breathing hard. “What did you say?”
“I see you as the Maker sees you—as a child he loves and desires to heal.” Kara lowered her sword, holding back tears. “And I see those who took Keir and Liam from me in the same way. I forgive them. I forgive you for these attacks.”
If nothing else, the man seemed grateful for the rest. His arm, the one with the spike driven through it, hung at his side. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. More than that, he seemed to be listening. His resolve to oppose the Rescuer was fading. “You really aren’t going to kill me, are you?”
“No.” Kara shook her head. “I don’t want to. I’m not angry with you anymore. I forgive you, and so will your Creator.” She glanced up and spoke the Liberation verse in the Elder Tongue, then locked eyes with the Aladoth. “Proclaim the Rescuer. Claim him as your lord instead of that mocktree corruption. Declare that he lives, and you will too.”
The man met her gaze for a long time, then looked down at his hands and dropped his sword and whip as if they were poison. He fell to his knees in the fog. “I do. He lives, and I want him as my lord.”
Kara’s shield faded. She knelt with the man, and together they prayed.
When she opened her eyes, she found Keir kneeling with them, tears streaming down. His hand trembled as he lifted the bear pendant from her tunic.
“Kara.”
She nodded, and he let the pendant fall against her. “I could not protect you. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s no need. You were never meant to protect me. The Rescuer had me in his hands all along.”
Keir let out a sob. “I see that now. And I see him in you.” He took her hand in his, and with the other, he took the hand of the man she’d been fighting. He raised it up so that their forearms were pressed together, showing her the same barkhide burn scars in his own skin. “See? I am like him. And like him, I believe.”
59
TEEGAN
KELEDEV
PELLION’S FLOW
A murmur passed along Ras Telesar’s raid party as they climbed the goblin tunnel to the surface. The cadet in front of Teegan turned to whisper in her ear. “Dame Silvana says you are to join her at the column’s front. Immediately.”
With a nod, Teegan began working her way up the line, and soon reached Silvana, two paces from the tunnel’s outlet. “You sent for me?”
“Time to put your huntress skills to the test, my girl.”
“I left Aethia at the fortress. Master Jairun would not let me bring her.”
“Not falconry. Stealth. How close can you sneak to the enemy without alerting them?” She glanced down at Teegan’s boots. “Remove those spikes.”
Once Teegan was ready, Silvana set off in a crouch and held a hand low near her heels—a command for Teegan to stay close. The guardian ranger moved across the ice flow without a sound. Her feet left no impressions. Teegan could not say the same, although without the spikes, her footprints were light, and she avoided the crunch of punching through the packed snow.
Silvana stopped after ten paces and pointed two fingers at her eyes. Then she pointed ahead. A pair of goblins—guards, perhaps, left behind to watch the tunnel outlet. But goblins have notoriously short attention spans, and they were now watching the main force downslope.
The ranger drew her knife, and Teegan did the same. She knew the job that had to be done. They’d need this kill to be silent—no screeching. This was likely why Silvana had not dispatched them with her bow.
The two snuck up behind their quarries, and they slit both goblins’ throats in the same moment. No sound escaped either creature beyond a rattling rush of air.
A quick scout of the area showed no other foes. “The party’s path is clear now,” Silvana said, drawing close to Teegan.
“Yes, but what path, exactly?”
The ranger pointed east and slightly up. There, extending out at a sharp angle over the small army of goblins, trolls, and golmogs, was an ice formation loosely resembling a giant bovine figure. A corner of Teegan’s mouth curled upward into a half smile. “The ox Pedrig spoke of.”
“A beast that has graced these Celestial Peaks as long as the Order. But I think his time to shed his icy bonds and roam free has finally come. Let’s get the others.”
The lightraiders made the short climb to the ox’s back without incident. Shouts from the rocks far downslope held the goblins’ focus and covered the noise of the party’s footfalls. Teegan felt a touch of pride. Her tehpa was making good use of the companies.
The ox’s back sloped upward toward the moons, blocking the lightraiders’ view of the army below, but Teegan knew they were down there.
“Is it time, Avner,” Quinton asked.
The headmaster nodded. “Take your posts.”
Teegan moved upslope into the rocks behind the ox while every lightraider with a blade lined up along the crease where its back met the slope. Their weapons chipped away at the ice in what seemed a futile effort. But during the climb, Master Jairun had told them they needed only a few fingers of depth. They achieved this quickly.
“Man’s handiwork, not the High One’s. A wicker basket under an overlarge festival toy.”
Lee frowned. “Without the High One, this toy could not have passed the barrier.”
“You forget, I came here in a ship that passed the barrier. Storm portals are a natural wonder—a strange feature of our world. Nothing more.”
“Then what of the Keledan armor you saw in our battle against the wraith and its creatures?”
This gave Shan pause.
After a moment, he opened his mouth, but Lee cut him off with a wave. “Don’t say sorcery. You know better than any Aladoth that there is no Keledan sorcery. We depend upon the power of the High One and his Rescuer.”
Shan furrowed his brow. “All right. I saw his power. I’ll acknowledge that. And your armor is something I never witnessed nor could have witnessed deep in the shelter of the Liberated Land. What else?”
“Must I also mention you met a talking bear—a Havarra shepherd that most here would deny could ever exist?”
Zel, quietly observing from her usual place by the rudder, stifled a laugh.
“A talking bear.” Shan turned away from them. “Score another point for the lightraider cadets. But if—” He seemed to spot something in the forest and leaned over the rail, staring down. “Brother, come here!”
Lee ran to join him, and he pointed. “More prisoners in the forest. Ten at least. I didn’t know any others escaped during the revolt.”
Looking straight down, Lee saw only trees, fog, and darkness. “I don’t see them.”
“They’ve passed under us.” Shan pushed off the rail and ran to the other side. “Over here.”
This time, when Lee joined him, he lowered his best lens into place. Thanks to Belen’s invention, he could count the needles on every black pine, yet he could not find the prisoners Shan spoke of. “I still can’t see them.”
Shan sighed and sat on the bow bench. “Me either. Not anymore. Perhaps they hid. They must have seen our shadow in the moonlight and mistaken us for a dragon passing over. We should land and convince them otherwise.” He looked up at Lee. “You could rescue them too.”
You could rescue them too.
Too.
Lee’s heart thumped in his chest. “What are you saying, Brother? Are you convinced?”
Shan took a long moment before answering, then smiled—the softest smile Lee had ever seen from him. “I am. The way you and the others fought off the dragon’s creatures showed me my folly. I want to come home.”
“If you want to go home,” Zel said, interjecting for the first time, “there’ll be no landing to rescue more prisoners. I’m sorry. There’s no good place, and we don’t have the fuel. Besides,” she nodded off the port side, “we’re here. Emen Kar lies there, to our south.”
Shan would not be denied. Lee did not even get the chance to pray with him. As soon as Zel landed in the glade on the south side of the long ruin, Shan vaulted over the side. “I can reach those prisoners, Lee. I’m one of them.”
“You’ll never find them, Brother.”
“I will. I escaped the dragon’s camp, didn’t I? Found my way through the forest until your bear sniffed me out. Those feats were nothing compared to this. Pray for me, and I’ll succeed.”
Zel watched him with a cautious eye. “Succeed in doing what?”
“Bringing them here, where you two can share the Great Rescue. With me on your side, they’ll listen. I know it. What a glory it will be to bring a dozen brothers home to Keledev instead of one or two.” Shan ran off without allowing any further argument. “I’ll be back before the others reach this place. I promise!”
He disappeared around the corner of the ruin.
58
CONNOR
SIL SHADATH
“Nothing quite like it, is there?” Tiran asked, flying at breakneck speed beside Connor, daggers held out.
Connor gripped Ioanu’s fur tighter. “Eyes on the forest, please. Or do you want to snap your spine by running into a tree?”
They hit the underbrush beneath the ground fog for another leaping stride, and Tiran laughed. “A funny thing to say, Brehna, since your eyes have been shut for most of this run.”
Connor had considered Zel’s wicker airship the most frightening form of transport possible. He’d been wrong. Riding a bear capable of leaping long distances and rushing headlong through a thick forest of mist and black pines was much worse.
The bear had explained the strange properties of the vapors and how they interacted with the alloys and creatures from the Tagamoor. But that knowledge didn’t assuage his fear. He’d have preferred to walk, especially given the terrors of Sil Shadath.
“The scent is growing strong,” Ioanu said. “Keir is close. This time I’m sure. The other Aladoth is no longer here to muddy the trail, and now warm queensblood mingles with the cold and dry. Your brother still has open wounds.”
The bear slowed to a stop, prompting Kara and Tiran to do the same.
Connor dismounted. “Where is he?”
“Ahead, my Keledan friend. A hundred of your human paces or so. But as before, our objective is not alone.”
Did this smaller party have the numbers for another fight?
“How many?”
“Three”—Ioanu sniffed the air—“no, four others. Three forest goblins and an Aladoth. The Aladoth smells of rotten breath and old burns.”
“Old burns.” Kara tapped her whirlknives against her legs, chin lowered, glaring in the direction Ioanu had sniffed. “A barkhide.”
Connor heard as much growl in her voice as he’d heard in the bear’s. “Take it easy, Kara.”
“I’ll take it easy once I have my brehna back.”
KARA
Kara crept through the forest on the mist, as lightly as Ioanu. The four had formed a line for their advance, each separated by ten paces. She and Ioanu took the center, and they were the first to spot Keir. Kara halted and held up a fist to signal the others.
Ioanu’s nose had missed two of Keir’s tormentors. Apparitions—a young man and woman in wedding clothes like those Kara had seen in Charlotte’s boutique in Trader’s Knoll. The ghostly woman’s dress was not rich but not one for peasants either.
“What a happy couple we are,” the woman moaned in mock glee, hovering near Keir. “Together forever. And you, too, will be with us”—her mournful frown became a wicked sneer—“forever!”
Keir strained against the barkhide’s hold and lurched at the creature. She lurched back at him with a hiss and a wide mouth filled with sharp teeth.
“Leave him,” the barkhide said. “He’s mine. My catch. I want the credit from General Moach.”
Kara wondered if the barkhides who first took Keir from the Highland Forest had thought the same—that they might earn some favor or rank by his capture. Perhaps they had. But this barkhide would get nothing.
“Keir!”
Without a sign to the others, she rushed into the open. The apparitions stood no chance. The ghostly woman had hardly extended her long claws before a flying whirlknife passed through her. She shuddered, frozen in place, and then dissipated into the fog when the knife sliced through her again on its return.
Her ghost husband tried to run, but the second whirlknife did the same to him.
In her fervor, Kara had forgotten about the goblins. She sensed a presence bearing down and turned her indigo shield just as a long knife came stabbing at her neck.
With a flash, the blade glanced away, and in the next instant, the goblin vanished under a flurry of claws and blue-gray fur.
Ioanu growled. “Watch yourself, Queensblood.”
Two other goblins fell to Connor and Tiran’s swords, leaving only the barkhide. He pushed Keir to the foggy ground and squared off against Kara. “Who is this? A feisty creature to add to our ranks?”
“No!” Keir sprang up and rushed at them. Connor grabbed him and spun him away, sparing him a blow from the spike the barkhide had driven through his own arm. In the next beat, Keir had gained his footing, and he rushed the man again. Connor and Tiran needed their combined strength to restrain him. “It’s you,” Keir kept saying, staring wild-eyed at Kara. “It’s you!”
“Hold my brehna fast,” she said. “I must deal with this one.” Ioanu stood beside her, fur bristling, but Kara motioned her away with her sword. “I must deal with him alone.”
She’d faced this test before, in the Arena with Swordmaster Quinton. And she’d failed. She’d thought then that the failure cost her dearly, but the cost of failure this time would be far greater.
“Are you certain?” Ioanu asked.
“Very much so.”
The barkhide chuckled. “I’ll not argue. I’m happy to take you one at a time. Makes my work easier. What are you? Devotees of Lord Valshadox’s rivals?”
Kara matched his stare. “Lightraiders.”
The half-beat that preceded his overloud laughter told her the very word frightened him. News of Vorax’s death had traveled—the first defeated dragon in two generations.
“Come and kill me then, Lightraider,” the barkhide said. “Destroy a dragon’s creature. Is that not your calling? Is that not your mission in holy zeal for your Overlord?”
He circled, as Quinton had done in the Arena, and Kara countered in the same way. “You are not a dragon’s creature. You belong to the High One. He is your creator.” She spoke the first verse of the Great Rescue, The One and Only, in the Elder Tongue—a prayer and preparation for her effort. Then tried to explain its meaning to the Aladoth. “Because you’re his, the High One sent his son the Rescuer to die for you. Won’t you see that?”
“Lies!” The barkhide drew a whip from his belt and slung it at her neck.
On instinct, Kara leapt out of the way, forgetting the Suvoroth gear she wore or the fact that she had one hand already occupied with her sword. Her flight reached the tips of the pines. On the way down, she whipped one whirlknife open, but it could not stop the growing speed of her descent.
Protect me. You are a shield about me.
Her armor glowed bright, sending a pulse of indigo through the mist from her hard landing.
The barkhide backed away, eyes shifting from side to side, no longer hiding his fear. “Sorcerers. You’re all sorcerers, as the dragons tell us. Kill me, then. I am an abomination to you and your Maker, like my master Moach.”
Kara heard Quinton’s voice from the Arena, what he’d said moments before she’d almost delivered a killing blow. Admit it. Ya see me as an abomination.
She did. Still. She saw the barkhides that way even more now that she was faced with a real one. And again, she could not lie by denying it.
As if fighting were his only hope for survival, the barkhide came at her with whip and sword.
Kara fought off his blows. “He’s our Maker, yours as much as mine.” Had those same words not fallen from her lips during the failed quest? “Twisting yourself away from what he made you, mutilating your body to be something you were never created to be is an abomination. The Scrolls say so.”
The barkhide smashed his sword against her shield in repeated, futile blows. “Your Scrolls mean nothing to me.”
“They should. Don’t you see? They were written in love—love for all his creations.” She spoke the second verse to the High One, Not One is Perfect, and tried to rephrase it in a way the barkhide would understand. “All of us are corrupted, in need of restoration. That’s why the Rescuer had to sacrifice himself.” She followed quickly with the Perfect Sacrifice verse. “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become his righteousness. That sacrifice proves his love. Why can’t you see that?”
Kara’s own words echoed off the pines, and echoed off the walls of the Arena back at Ras Telesar. Love! Can’t you see? That’s why I’m fighting you!
This was the moment her failure had reached its peak. But what had come after the failure? What had Master Quinton told her?
If ya ever hope ta lead a real barkhide ta the High One’s forgiveness, lass, you’ll have ta forgive him first.
How could she forgive what she saw here? A mocktree acolyte—one who desired to be a soulless dragon corruption, and one of those who’d cost her Liam and caused Keir’s suffering?
With unconscious motions, she continued circling and fending off the barkhide’s blows. The attacks no longer angered her. They were just something the poor man did because a terrible infection had taken hold of him. A distant voice called to her. “Kara! Should we take him for you? Kara!”
She saw Quinton in the Arena, with her clunker blades at his throat—the tunic with the oak symbol, the leather gauntlet with the spike through it. In the Arena, she’d seen only the barkhide Quinton pretended to be, and it had enraged her. But under the trappings of that corruption, she’d been fighting a fellow Keledan.
Wasn’t this fight the same, at least in potential? Behind the mutilations, was this man not Aladoth, to be rescued and shown the path to Keledev?
“I see you,” she said.
The barkhide stumbled back, breathing hard. “What did you say?”
“I see you as the Maker sees you—as a child he loves and desires to heal.” Kara lowered her sword, holding back tears. “And I see those who took Keir and Liam from me in the same way. I forgive them. I forgive you for these attacks.”
If nothing else, the man seemed grateful for the rest. His arm, the one with the spike driven through it, hung at his side. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. More than that, he seemed to be listening. His resolve to oppose the Rescuer was fading. “You really aren’t going to kill me, are you?”
“No.” Kara shook her head. “I don’t want to. I’m not angry with you anymore. I forgive you, and so will your Creator.” She glanced up and spoke the Liberation verse in the Elder Tongue, then locked eyes with the Aladoth. “Proclaim the Rescuer. Claim him as your lord instead of that mocktree corruption. Declare that he lives, and you will too.”
The man met her gaze for a long time, then looked down at his hands and dropped his sword and whip as if they were poison. He fell to his knees in the fog. “I do. He lives, and I want him as my lord.”
Kara’s shield faded. She knelt with the man, and together they prayed.
When she opened her eyes, she found Keir kneeling with them, tears streaming down. His hand trembled as he lifted the bear pendant from her tunic.
“Kara.”
She nodded, and he let the pendant fall against her. “I could not protect you. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s no need. You were never meant to protect me. The Rescuer had me in his hands all along.”
Keir let out a sob. “I see that now. And I see him in you.” He took her hand in his, and with the other, he took the hand of the man she’d been fighting. He raised it up so that their forearms were pressed together, showing her the same barkhide burn scars in his own skin. “See? I am like him. And like him, I believe.”
59
TEEGAN
KELEDEV
PELLION’S FLOW
A murmur passed along Ras Telesar’s raid party as they climbed the goblin tunnel to the surface. The cadet in front of Teegan turned to whisper in her ear. “Dame Silvana says you are to join her at the column’s front. Immediately.”
With a nod, Teegan began working her way up the line, and soon reached Silvana, two paces from the tunnel’s outlet. “You sent for me?”
“Time to put your huntress skills to the test, my girl.”
“I left Aethia at the fortress. Master Jairun would not let me bring her.”
“Not falconry. Stealth. How close can you sneak to the enemy without alerting them?” She glanced down at Teegan’s boots. “Remove those spikes.”
Once Teegan was ready, Silvana set off in a crouch and held a hand low near her heels—a command for Teegan to stay close. The guardian ranger moved across the ice flow without a sound. Her feet left no impressions. Teegan could not say the same, although without the spikes, her footprints were light, and she avoided the crunch of punching through the packed snow.
Silvana stopped after ten paces and pointed two fingers at her eyes. Then she pointed ahead. A pair of goblins—guards, perhaps, left behind to watch the tunnel outlet. But goblins have notoriously short attention spans, and they were now watching the main force downslope.
The ranger drew her knife, and Teegan did the same. She knew the job that had to be done. They’d need this kill to be silent—no screeching. This was likely why Silvana had not dispatched them with her bow.
The two snuck up behind their quarries, and they slit both goblins’ throats in the same moment. No sound escaped either creature beyond a rattling rush of air.
A quick scout of the area showed no other foes. “The party’s path is clear now,” Silvana said, drawing close to Teegan.
“Yes, but what path, exactly?”
The ranger pointed east and slightly up. There, extending out at a sharp angle over the small army of goblins, trolls, and golmogs, was an ice formation loosely resembling a giant bovine figure. A corner of Teegan’s mouth curled upward into a half smile. “The ox Pedrig spoke of.”
“A beast that has graced these Celestial Peaks as long as the Order. But I think his time to shed his icy bonds and roam free has finally come. Let’s get the others.”
The lightraiders made the short climb to the ox’s back without incident. Shouts from the rocks far downslope held the goblins’ focus and covered the noise of the party’s footfalls. Teegan felt a touch of pride. Her tehpa was making good use of the companies.
The ox’s back sloped upward toward the moons, blocking the lightraiders’ view of the army below, but Teegan knew they were down there.
“Is it time, Avner,” Quinton asked.
The headmaster nodded. “Take your posts.”
Teegan moved upslope into the rocks behind the ox while every lightraider with a blade lined up along the crease where its back met the slope. Their weapons chipped away at the ice in what seemed a futile effort. But during the climb, Master Jairun had told them they needed only a few fingers of depth. They achieved this quickly.
