The Black Star (Book 3) (62 page)

"Afraid my chief neglected to teach me that one."

She stood. "Then I'll go with you."

"What, just like that?"

"You made us free. If it's in my power, it's yours."

"I don't know how to put this. They're on horseback, right? And, well, you're a little big for conventional horses."

"Josun Joh has seen fit to provide me with a replacement." Sitting on the bed, she stuck out her legs and waggled her feet.

He couldn't help laughing. "Then show us the way."

Her name was Aldi, and after a brief stop at her shack on the east end of town, they were on the road, riding/jogging amid the smell of pines and dew.

"All right," Minn declared once Dollendun lay behind them. "Is one of you going to tell me what just happened? How did she find out where Kinnevan is?"

Blays shrugged. "Magic."

"And who is Josun Joh?"

"Norren god. Like Arawn and a couple of his buddies rolled into one."

Minn drew back her head. "She didn't actually..?"

"Speak to him?" Aldi said. "Don't you speak to your gods?"

"Daily. That's why we had to look for the help of a complete stranger to take us into the wilderness."

"This is merely the biggest secret in norrendom," Blays said. "As far as I know, anyway. The way they keep secrets, I wouldn't be surprised to learn each one of them is actually two tiny people stuffed inside a giant person suit."

Aldi looked at him sidelong. "We're not."

"Good to know." Blays turned back to Minn. "You should probably pretend you didn't see any of this."

Minn shifted in the saddle. "Sounds like home."

Aldi wouldn't have been able to keep up with a full gallop, but her long strides easily matched the horses' trot. They sped through the evergreens covering the border of the Norren Territories, miles playing out behind them, resting every two or three hours. After some twenty miles, Aldi left the road and jogged east through the woods, a thin layer of pine needles coating the ground. The afternoon dwindled. Abruptly, the woods gave out, and they entered a rhythmic stretch of low hills and tall grass, trees lining the streams winding through the up-and-down land. The Norren Territories encompassed a vast swath between Narashtovik and Tantonnen, covering topographies of all sorts, but when Blays thought of the homes of the clans, he always imagined these undulating hills.

They continued until twilight, stopping with just enough daylight left to toss up a lean-to and rub down the horses. Aldi took a long breather, sitting on a rock while Blays and Minn tended to camp, but the norren didn't look done in. If true, Blays thought they would reach the lands of the Clan of the Splitting Sky early the next morning.

Aldi checked in through the loon. The Splitting Sky's scouts had located the party from Setteven and were shadowing them from a couple miles away. According to her, Kinnevan's people had been heading east all day. Blays and company had made up significant ground, however. If they continued to press, they might catch up in two days.

Blays poked at the half-assed fire he'd built. "Do the scouts have any idea what Kinnevan might be after?"

"Nope," Aldi said. "In fact, they had the same question for you."

"Something stupendously old? Possibly a book, also old. Or an artifact."

"So they might possibly be after a thing."

Blays sighed. "Hey, it's remarkable I've gotten
this
close. Tell the Splitting Sky to be careful. These men are extremely dangerous."

Aldi got a twinkle in her eye. "Should I reconsider my role as your guide?"

"Just get us close. Minn and I will take it from there."

The days were starting to grow longer, but even after a good night's rest, Blays was up and about before the sun. They got a quick start, traveling due east into the hills. When the horses flagged, Minn was able to restore some of their stamina, allowing them to gain extra miles on the king's nethermancers. During rests, Blays practiced shadowalking. He was able to do it at will, but discovered that unless he leaned on the nether of the kellevurt, he couldn't sustain it for long. After a minute, two at most, the starlit world began to fade, disgorging him back into the real, which always looked disappointing and tame by comparison.

The first time he did this in from of Aldi, she gasped. He reappeared, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry about that. Should have warned you."

She laughed. "I should have expected you're able to poof away like a blown-out candle. You're Blays Buckler."

It was a quiet day, but a productive one. When they made camp and Aldi checked in with the scouts, she determined their group was well inside Splitting Sky territory and that they had more than halved the distance between them and Kinnevan. This was good news, in that they might be able to catch up the very next day, but it raised the question of what exactly Blays ought to
do
once Kinnevan was in striking range. Sneak up on them in the night and kill them all? Not out of the question, what with the shadowalking, but it was an inelegant solution.

Additionally, the main reason they'd been able to close on the king's men so fast was that the other group was zigzagging across the hills. Hunting for something. If they went missing, Moddegan could simply send a second group to snatch up the mystery object. Blays would have to stake out the region for weeks or months to make sure any other efforts met the same fate as the first. Frankly, that was a shit solution.

The only way to do this was to let them find whatever they were after, then take it away from them. In the event the item turned out not to be a tangible object held in the hands, but rather knowledge stored in the sponge of the brain, then Blays was going to be tasked with some unpleasant business. But at the very least, knowing the source of the information should allow him to cut it off, putting Moddegan's scheme to bed for good.

They got off to their usual early start, trotting eastward. Deer watched from the ridges, then continued their crusade against the year's first grass shoots. By early afternoon, Aldi scheduled a rendezvous with the clan's scouts. They walked down to the spot, a glen between two hills with a sluggish creek flowing from an oval pond. They'd no sooner stopped by the pond's shore when two norren men walked out of the trees.

"Aldi?" the shorter one said. "Shorter" being entirely relative—he was at least six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than Blays.

Aldi nodded. "You said you had news?"

"Late this morning, the humans disappeared inside a hill. Galt is still waiting for them to emerge." He sat down on the bank of the pond, resting his elbows on his knees.

"That's it?" Blays said.

The norren didn't look up. "Until Galt comes back."

"I suppose I shouldn't complain about being forced to take a break for once." He found a rock that was dry and sunny and plunked down. After a while, the short norren volunteered that his name was Otus and asked how their trip had been. Blays loosened the collar of his cloak. "Uneventful. Have the humans caused you any trouble?"

"Since the day they were born," Otus said. "These specific ones? They've done no harm. In the last three days. That we have seen."

Blays hid his smile. Norren pedantry. That was the end of the conversation. An hour later, leaves rustled up the slope. A norren woman walked from the trees and sat beside them.

"They came out of the caves an hour ago. Made camp nearby." She related directions and the unnamed man got up to go keep an eye on the place. Galt cleared her throat and went on. "Interesting things. First, six men went in. Five men came out."

"Lost one to the caves?" Blays said. "Too bad the underworld didn't try a little harder. What's inside?"

"We're not completely sure."

He raised a brow. "I thought a clan knew every leaf and pebble of its domain."

Galt gave him a long look. "I will ignore the fact that is impossible, as new leaves are growing every day. In the sense that we might be expected to know every semi-permanent feature of our territory, I would agree this is unusual. My best guess is they discovered an old catacomb."

"A norren one?"

"I can hardly believe it myself. What would a norren tomb be doing in the Norren Territories?"

Blays suppressed a sigh. "I thought your people tossed your dead on the tops of hills."

"These days," Galt said. "But not in old days. Maybe we ran out of ground to put them in—we're very large, after all. In any event, our burial practices changed a long time ago. We don't care where every last catacomb might be."

Minn folded her arms; it was chilly and their blood had grown sluggish as they'd waited for Galt. "You said there were interesting things, plural?"

"When the men got outside, they ran from the entrance, then stopped in the trees to gather themselves. One man withdrew an object from his cloak the size of a fist on top of another fist. A statue, I thought. It was as black as nothing, but when a shaft of sunlight struck it, it glittered like the stars."

Blays whacked his thigh and laughed. "I have never heard a more gravid description of a precious artifact. Are they on their way back to Setteven already?"

Galt nodded. "Before making camp, they put the cavern miles behind them."

"Heading west? Then we've got to hit them tonight."

"You're sure they've got what they came for?" Minn said.

"No. They rudely declined to fill me in on that one. It sure sounds like it, though. And if they make it back to Dollendun, they're on a boat back to the palace and we're left holding our nether regions."

"Will you need help?" Galt said.

Blays grinned lopsidedly. "Would you offer it?"

"These people serve a land that enslaved us for centuries. Also, we probably ought to be upset that they've just looted one of our graves."

"The best way for you to help will be to make sure they don't go anywhere. Minn and I will handle the theft ourselves."

If Galt had been human, she likely would have taken offense to the implication that she'd be no use to the strike itself. But norren egos were a less truculent beast. Galt nodded as if Blays' assessment were a matter of fact—or at least, that it was his mistake to make. Everyone understood implicitly that they'd be moving under cover of darkness, so they all sat around the pond, absorbing the sunlight. They got a minor scare when the other scout came back to tell them the men were on the move, but Kinnevan's band was just making use of the remaining afternoon to get a few miles closer to the river. They had found their prize and were taking it home.

Blays still hadn't glimpsed the king's men himself. Otus told him they were all dressed in the same anonymous travel garb, but that the man who'd been carrying the sparkling object had hair as white as a swan's wing.

They ate a cold dinner, waiting for the sun to depart so they could get on the move. Galt had left to keep a direct eye on the king's sorcerers. Around ten o'clock, Otus left to spell her. When Galt came back, she informed Blays the king's men had gone to bed three hours earlier. They'd left one man on watch, but according to her, the others were sleeping "like people who have eaten so much it is all they can do."

It didn't much matter. Not when Blays intended to shadowalk right up to Kinnevan and take his trophy.

The men were set up in a grove of trees straddling a stream between hills. Galt showed Blays and Minn the way. After a brief hike, she stopped to point out the sentry. The quarter moon was hidden behind a scudding layer of clouds and at first Blays couldn't make out the sentry at all. Then a silhouette rose and paced in a circle, likely to keep himself awake.

The man was undoubtedly a sorcerer, so even though Blays was about to render himself invisible, he backed off to approach the camp from the side that wasn't being watched. He had already warned Galt about he and Minn's upcoming disappearance, and that if anything happened in the camp, the norren should clear out and give the men a wide berth until they'd left the clan's territory. With his implication the clan wouldn't be able to handle it, a hooded look had come over Galt's eyes—
that
was how you offended the norren ego—but she had agreed.

He and Minn crouched down behind a screen of shrubs. There were no lights in the camp and it was too dark and tree-addled to see anyone, but he heard a horse snort. He drew a cut on his arm and gave the nether a little tug. As it rebounded back to its home in the interstices, Blays followed it in.

The night shifted. It was as dark as ever, yet he could now see the dew on the grass, the gopher mounds pimpling the ground. Beside him, a luminescence flooded over Minn as she joined him in the nether. Together, they rose and walked toward the camp. They weren't entirely removed from the physical world, but their feet whisked through the grass more softly than the first stir of a breeze.

The trees enclosed them, leafless and reaching. His eyes were drawn to the birds roosting in the branches, then to the horses tied away from the men. In living bodies, the nether nested so densely it fairly glowed—or exactly the opposite—it was hard to say. In either event, it drew the eye.

The men lay in their bedrolls, breathing evenly. One of them slept on his back with his hair draped like a banner over the rolled-up clothes that made up his pillow. His hair looked pale, but walking in shadows made color do funny things. Blays faded back into the world for a moment. The man's hair was white.

Blays half expected him to have the relic clutched in his hands, or wrapped up in the clothes beneath his head, but in the half second he was out of the shadows, Blays spotted a small bag beside the sleeping Kinnevan. Something had fallen halfway out of it, a black lobe of matter, a carving or statue. Flecks of silver spat back the starlight. Kinnevan must have been holding it as he went to sleep and it had fallen off his chest.

Blays ducked back into the shadows. He allowed himself a grin. For once in his silly life, his plans were going easier than expected. He glanced at Minn, then back at Kinnevan.

Whose eyes were now wide open.

Blays froze. Minn likewise. Kinnevan wasn't moving aside from the even rise and fall of his chest. Yet Blays felt motion—in the nether. A presence. Prowling, stealthy. He had the distinct impression that if he moved, it would lock on him. At that point, however hard he tried to stay out of sight, he may as well be hopping up and down on one foot waving a flaming brand over his head while blowing into a trumpet with every orifice capable of producing wind.