The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (12 page)

W
e all agreed
we needed to get to the entry point of the Tunnels where Lymbok and I had emerged the night before. We also agreed that venturing anywhere near Amethyst’s father’s den was a bad idea, as Amethyst’s father and the mage, Alessio Rarmont, were likely to be searching for us there.

“We’ll split up,” Amethyst announced. “It’s better that way. Miki and Lymbok, you two go together. Two boys on the Bottom City streets will draw little notice provided you wear filthy clothes.” She wrinkled her nose at Miki’s appropriate attire. “That’s…perfect. I suppose you have something else?” she asked Lymbok.

Lymbok threw his costume tunic on the ground. Beneath he wore a plain brown shirt and thin linen breeches. He unlaced his boots to reveal dirty feet as hardened with callouses as a Gantean’s in summer. “All the other fingersmiths know me,” he muttered. “I gotta figgur a way to disguise my face and hair.”

Lymbok did cut a striking figure, what with his almost white, strawlike hair and his deeply tanned skin. Amethyst tapped her lips with her hand, studying him.

“Just use dust and grime.” Amethyst flung her hands around the small, narrow space in which we’d been trapped for too long. “There’s plenty of it all around.”

Lymbok crawled into a corner and ran his hand over the filthy wall. It came away black. He swiped his cheek and left a black streak. “How’s that?” he asked, breaking into a grin.

“Yes,” cried Amethyst. “You too, Miki.” Amethyst, I began to see, had a managing streak. Not that I minded. We needed management to get out of this predicament.

“You know where to go?” Lymbok asked as he mounted the steps with Miki.

Amethyst nodded.

“We’ll meet up in the Tunnels then. If anything happens, try to get in the Tunnels and head east.”

“East?” Amethyst sounded worried.

Miki pointed to his right. “East. It’s that way.”

I had been disoriented since coming up out of the Tunnels with Lymbok, unable to see the sun from the pall in the air over the city, so Miki’s confidence in the direction shocked me. “How do you—”

“Let’s hurry,” Lymbok said, pushing open the trap door. “The sooner we get outta Galantia, the better. Hush up and come on.”

I followed in Amethyst’s footsteps with my head down, eyes trained on the ground. She walked briskly, as though she had a purpose. I almost ran into her when she stopped abruptly. The boys had gone ahead of us; we stood alone on an unfamiliar street.

“What is it?” I whispered.

Amethyst shook her head. “Trouble. Galatien Guards and a mage.”

I peeked over her shoulder. Bile rose in my throat. I knew that figure in black, though he stood with his back to me: Laith Amar. His inky blue-black hair looked disheveled, and he wore the same clothing as he had at the Brokering. He stood speaking with two men in Guard’s uniforms.

I cowered behind Amethyst. “We should turn,” I whispered. “I can’t pass them. I—”

Amethyst didn’t require convincing. She pushed against me, turned her back to the men, and drove me before her like livestock. I ventured one glance over my shoulder.

The mage Laith faced us, an unreadable expression on his face. He caught my gaze and his frown deepened. He recognized me.

“Don’t look,” hissed Amethyst, prodding my back.

Laith made no move to expose me. Instead, he turned in a graceful sweep and pointed up the avenue away from us.

As soon as we turned the corner, Amethyst began to run, still pushing me along. We skirted a block and returned to the street with the Tunnel entrance. At the opening Amethyst bent to lift the door while I scanned for observers.

There he was again, leaning in a doorway two buildings up, arms crossed over his chest. Alone. At the Brokering he had struck me as a flippant sayantaq creature, even for a southerner, but his expression as he silently watched Amethyst descend into the Tunnels betrayed neither amusement nor satisfaction at catching us.

He inclined his head slightly and flourished a hand, as if to say,
Go on. I won’t tell.

I hesitated. The mage lifted his eyebrows, shook his head, and gestured again more urgently. I scrambled after Amethyst, half expecting some burst of southern magic to prevent me.

But nothing happened. The hatch fell closed behind me, Amethyst tugged on my arm, and Lymbok’s voice whispered in the darkness, “You made it.”

A
fter
a long and
occasionally wrong-turning trek through the underground passages, we found the route Lymbok wanted—the narrowest tunnel of them all, so tight that even Miki had to crouch. We spent a nightmarish time crawling through the dark, our way lit only by the wavering light cast by Lymbok’s purloined magestone. I preferred any light to nothing, so I held back my concerns about using the stone. I walked last, behind Amethyst, in our single-file line.

The gaping blackness stretched behind me like a shadow of pursuit. I worried about Laith Amar. I worried about Costas. I worried about Ghilene Entila, who must be in a steaming fury about my defection and ready to set the mages of House Entila tracking my magemark. My concerns weighed on me as though I carried an extra burden through those Tunnels, but I placed one foot before the next like a Gantean walking through a blizzard towards safety.

Lymbok stopped, lifted his glowing magestone, and pushed at the tunnel wall above his head. “Fuckin’ hells. It’s stuck.”

Miki added his efforts to open the overhead hatch to no avail. Finally Amethyst shoved. The hatch sprang open with a shriek of hinges that made me jump.

Lymbok swung himself up and out of the tunnel, as agile as a snow fox. Miki followed with equal aplomb. Amethyst caught the edge of the opening but could not swing her legs as well as the boys. I pushed at her from below and she managed to scramble into the fading daylight. I followed, breathing a sigh of relief.

Above ground we found ourselves in a clearing surrounded by dense trees. I untied my skirt—I had knotted it around my waist for ease—and smoothed it as Lymbok slammed the hatch closed and kicked dirt over it.

Miki sniffed the air like a sled dog in new terrain. “Almost due east of Galantia,” he said.

“How do you know?” The twisty underground passages had completely disoriented me.

“We gotta go southeast through these woods,” Lymbok announced from behind us. “That’s all I know. The road runs south outta the city, but we gotta avoid the road. We stick to the woods on the east side of the road to Anastaia.”

Miki shook his head. “No. We’ll go to Murana.”

“Whaddaya mean, we’ll go to Murana? It’s almost double as far!” cried Lymbok.

“My master had dealings with traders from all over,” Miki explained. “We often went to Murana. It’s bigger than Anastaia. It’s a better place to hide.” He pointed into the forest. “It’s that way.”

Lymbok scowled. “It’s also on the other side of a blasted mountain range.”

Miki turned dark eyes on him. “So?”

“So, if we go there, we gotta climb the mountains! If we go south to Anastaia, it’s a nice walk through southern farmlands, full of coaching inns and places to eat. Flat. Straight. Easy.”

Miki snorted. “Easy? Any who pursue us will think like that, too. If we go into the mountains, they’ll never expect it and never find us.”

Lymbok crossed his arms. “I say we vote. Nobody else gonna want to hike up in the Savalias in springtime. Sometimes the snow doesn’t melt up there ‘til mid-summer. You can see it on a clear day from the High City. I vote the south route.”

“I vote for the mountains.” Miki gazed at me questioningly.

“Mountains,” I said. “The south sounds too obvious.”

Amethyst bit her lip, looking first at Lymbok and then at Miki. “I’ve never been outside the walls of Galantia,” she said. “But I think the mountains sound safer, too. There are some places to get food in the Savalias. My father orders ales for the den from a brewery up there near the village of Rotham.”

“Aw, hells.” Lymbok kicked the dirt again. “You all are crazy.”

I worried the boy would simply leave and continue on his own way—he seemed more capable than the rest of us given his independent life in the High City—but he rolled his eyes and muttered, “I guess there’s somethin’ to be said for safety in numbers. And mountain ales. ‘Sides, how would you all manage without me?”

“Mountains and then Murana,” Miki said firmly, pointing. “We walk that way.”

Making our way through the trees ate the rest of the daylight hours. Though the trees—an unfamiliar type—had slender trunks and branches, they grew close together, and we picked through them slowly. Miki led, and I hurried to get directly behind him. I still wanted to know how he knew which way to go.

“Miki, how do you—”

“Rarmont used to meet a Gantean captain down in Murana sometimes,” Miki murmured, too low for the others to hear. “I never met him, but Rarmont said the Gantean came to Murana every new moon. We can catch up with him there. He’ll know how we can get back to Gante, how we can find others.”

It wrenched my heart to hear him say that. He’d been away from Gante for years—much longer than I. He didn’t know what I had seen—the wholesale slaughter of our last existing community. “There isn’t much of a home left to us on Gante anymore.” I selected my words carefully to avoid upsetting him, but Miki only blinked his coal black eyes as if he didn’t believe me.

“What do you mean?”

“The children and the younger women were sold away as slaves, like you and me. The others—the raiders killed many, maybe all of them. My community was the last one. I heard House Entila plans to recolonize the island.”

Miki’s lips quivered as he absorbed what I said.

To comfort him I added, “We’ll look for this captain. Perhaps he will know better what—what remains in Gante.”

I could tell my bad news weighed on Miki. Who knew how long it would take us to find others? And who knew if they would want to return to Gante’s shores if we found them? I wasn’t sure myself if I wanted to go back. Malvyna Entila’s attempt to colonize would fail—these soft southerners would never adapt to life on Gante. But if no Ganteans returned, what did that mean for the world’s magic? The Hinge had quenched its deep thirst well on that day of the raid when I had left Gante, but someday its needs would rise again. Was it possible that we could maintain it sufficiently from a distance? Obviously the Cedna had found a way to do so, and I meant to ask her about the technique when I found her, though after that attack at the Brokering, the notion of confronting her gave me more anxiety than ever. I clasped the empty space on my neck, cursing inwardly. I needed Nautien’s anbuaq.

Miki pointed us in a new direction shortly before darkfall. “There’s water that way,” he announced. “We can find something to eat there.”

Lymbok groaned. “Good. I’m starvin’.”

Amethyst added, “And I’m parched.”

Eventually we found small stream. Miki sat down at the edge of the creek with his folding knife in hand, watching for fish.

I tugged Lymbok and Amethyst a little distance away to give Miki a quiet space to hunt. I asked, “Do you know what waterway this is? Where is the stream’s source?”

“All the waters come down from higher up in the range,” Lymbok said. “There’s a big lake up there and winter snowfall.”

“And roads?” I wondered. “Are there roads running through the mountains?”

“Just the post-chaise road. All the villages are along it. It ends way up at Rotham. I ain’t never been up there, but I heard about it. Some nob family owns an estate there, but there ain’t other roads.”

All roads leading away from the High City would be closely watched. Would Costas be able to convince his father that I had played no role in the attack? Would he bother trying, now that I had disappeared? More importantly, would he remember that I had lost my necklace and return to the garden to collect it for me? The constricted ung-aneraq chafed on my chest. Did Costas feel it too? I had an ulio now, but I couldn’t cut the cord until I’d retrieved my necklace. The cord would keep me connected to Costas and him connected to me, and I needed that.

T
he trees thinned
the higher we climbed. The soil became rockier and drier. We stuck close to the stream, knowing that water represented our paramount need. Amethyst and Lymbok still refused to eat the worms and crickets Miki and I collected with our bare hands to supplement our diet of fish. The Lethemians needed more food; they weren’t accustomed to spare rations.

“Someone should venture down to the road,” Amethyst said. “And get us some real food.”

Miki gestured with his handful of worms. “This is real food. It’ll keep you alive.”

She scowled. “I mean bread, butter, ale. Civilized food.”

“I could try to trap some rabbits or other small creatures,” I offered.

“The road’s nearby,” Amethyst said. “We need better clothes. It’s getting colder.”

No one could argue with that. We agreed that Amethyst and Lymbok would spend the next day on the road until they came to the nearest village, and each of us turned out our pockets for any money we could contribute to the mission. Lymbok had several jhasstones, as did Amethyst, and Miki surprised me with having a few squirreled away as well. Only I had nothing, though the others didn’t chastise me for it.

Miki and I settled in to wait in the woods beyond the road. Lymbok marked the path back to us as he went, bending certain branches so he would find his way.

“How do you know so well where we are and where we are going?” I asked Miki as we leaned against a tree trunk.

“I feel the sun,” he replied.

“Oh!” I knew Miki had magic, but this was rare talent indeed. Miki was a wayfinder born; he could find north better than any compass. He knew his location that way a spider knows to spin its web or a bird where to fly in winter. He could dead reckon by instinct. “I have magic, too,” I said. “I was a knotwoman, a weaver.” Miki would know this meant I could manipulate bloodlight with my hands, like a Lethemian mage. I almost told him about the anbuaq Nautien had entrusted to me, but for the shame I felt for losing it.

Amethyst and Lymbok didn’t return until the following morning, but when they did, they brought not only a basket full of food that could be strapped over the shoulders like a rucksack, but new clothes, something for all of us. I was given a boy’s breeches and a thick wool tunic with long sleeves that hung nearly to my knees. The new clothes would make trekking in the mountains much easier than the tattered ball gown I’d been wearing since we fled Galantia.

On we hiked, sustained by the tack biscuits, nuts, and dried fruit bought—or stolen?—in the village. The terrain, though steep, never became prohibitive, and if we encountered a rock wall too sheer to scramble up safely, we would detour, using Miki’s sun-sense to keep us moving in the right direction. Soon we walked through patches of snow as we reached the summit of the pass.

We stood looking out over a considerable vista. “The descent will be faster,” Miki promised, surveying our tired faces and skinny arms. “We’ll follow the streams.” Fortunately, plentiful streams ran down both sides of the mountains, relieving our need to find water, at least for the moment. We refilled the ale bottles Lymbok and Amethyst had brought from the village with stream water.

Lymbok had grown quieter and quieter the colder our journey had become. As he gazed down into the valley far below us, he frowned and said, “I heard about those grasslands down there.” He pointed to the wide expanse of yellow land stretching endlessly into the distance, unmarked by a single tree or building. “Ain’t nothing in there for leagues and leagues. We don’t wanna get lost in grasslands.”

“We won’t get lost,” Miki said. “I know where I’m headed.”

After a harrowing descent, that took only half as long as the climb—three days—we arrived at the edge of the grass-covered flatlands. The trickle of water we’d followed down the eastern face of the mountain spread into a marshy bog. I worried that the source would dry up entirely the farther we ventured into the grass.

Miki surveyed the landscape, no doubt using his talent to locate us precisely in relation to the city of Murana. As Miki had been to Murana, he now had that location in his blood, and he could find his way there from anywhere.

“We have to risk it,” he said, frowning.

The grass sea went on for days in all directions. Without a distinct stream to follow we would be lost without a source for more food or water, and our tack biscuits and nuts were running thin. I concentrated on trying to disturb the grass as little as possible as I walked. I still feared pursuit, even in this vast wasteland. I had not forgotten the magemark on my shoulder that Tiercel had said could be tracked.

Darkness fell over the grasslands. Lymbok and Amethyst dropped to rest in the grass when the sun disappeared.

“I hate walking,” Amethyst said. “My legs ache. I’m sunburned. I’ll have freckles for years after this.”

Miki gazed into the fading sky and said, “I’ll walk on ahead and see if I can find water or something to eat.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

Miki and I walked in the darkness without fear; Miki’s talent logged every change in our position. He needed no eyes to know how to return to where the others rested.

He suddenly dropped to his belly, gesturing for me to do the same as an unexpected splash interrupted the night.
Water
! We inched forward through the grasses until our hands encountered wet earth. The grasses thinned to reveal a glistening black river beyond.

Miki pinched my arm and put a finger to his lips, his face glowing palely in the moonlight. He pointed up the river.

A vessel slid over the water, made visible by a single lantern lighting a circle at the stern. A rhythmic soft splash cut the quiet night. The boaters must be rowing or poling their vessel.

Lethemian voices drifted to the shore. “How much farther is it to Murana?”

“Not far, not even two leagues along the river, but we aren’t getting through the gorge in this boat. All this wide water suddenly constricts through a narrow cut in a granite face. We’ll have to stop and go around on foot, let the boat go through on its own.”

“I’m sick of these accursed grasses. She must have taken a different route. I always said a northern girl would head north. Should we wake the mage, have him try the tracking spell again? This can’t be right.”

“I wouldn’t bother. If she’s lost in the grasslands, she’s as good as dead. There’s no food in there. It’s leagues of nothing.”