The Fanged Crown: The Wilds (17 page)

Liel stared at the sky again. “What happened, Harp? You were there, and then, just like that, you weren’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were close. And then you just retreated from me.”

“We talked about it being over from the moment it started,” Harp reminded her. “I wasn’t sure how you felt.”

“You should have talked to me. You should have told me that you felt like what we were doing was wrong. But the fact that I wasn’t even worth it to you …”

Harp started to speak, but she continued.

“… It can only mean you never had any regard for me in the first place.”

“That isn’t true,” Harp protested.

“Isn’t it? It wasn’t ever about anything but your convenience. Do you know what that makes me? Your whore.”

“I’m not sure what to say,” Harp said, managing to keep his voice steady despite the shock that she remembered their relationship in such a way. “You wanted it to be uncomplicated. You knew you were going back to Cardew.”

“But it became something we didn’t intend. You should’ve made an effort, not just left me without an explanation.”

“I should have done a lot of things.”

“I hated you. No, it was something different. I regretted ever knowing you. I wished that it had never happened.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Harp assured her. “That was never my intention.”

“But you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s easy to apologize. Those are just words.”

Harp had a sense of vertigo as if he were sliding down a steep slope, and there was nothing to grab onto and stop himself. He felt exhausted and had no idea how to make things right.

“I didn’t think you loved me, Liel. You never said you did.”

“Why love someone you’re never going to be with?” Liel said bitterly.

“If it means anything, you stayed in my head in a way I never expected.”

“You were in prison. Holding onto a fantasy is expected.”

“It was more than that,” Harp said. “Even after prison. In life, I think you only get a few people who stay in your heart, whether you want them to or not.”

“And I’m one of those?”

“This many years later, I think it’s safe to say yes.”

“I don’t want to hate you anymore,” she said, after a moment of silence.

Harp felt bruised, as if he’d just been hit with something very heavy. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to drink himself blind or simply go to sleep and never wake up. He’d never felt so alone, even locked in the Vankila Slab, when her absence felt like a wound that wouldn’t heal. He thought nothing could make him feel worse until she moved close against him. He put his arms around her, and even though it made no sense, the warmth of her body made him miss her in a way he hadn’t for a long time. He spent the night with her sleeping in his arms and wondered if the loneliness would ever go away.

1 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR) Chult

I wo shadows moved quietly through the unquiet jungle. A torrent of rain had fallen as the sun was setting, and a humid fog laid heavily on the hot night air. The figures moved carefully, disappearing into a strand of brush or behind a large root whenever a branch shook above them or they heard the sounds of large feet padding across the jungle floor. When they reached the edge of a clearing, one held back while the other scuttled across the open ground, moving as silently as a spider traversing a leaf.

The moon broke through the canopy, casting silver light on the young male dwarf who had entered the clearing. The dwarf known as Zo froze, the way a deer might if caught in a place it hadn’t meant to be spotted. Zo pulled his hood over his

long dark hair to obscure his face. He wore a leather breastplate under his thin black cloak, a crossbow slung across his back, and a sheath belted at his waist.

A tenday before, Zo’s chieftain father had been killed in a skirmish with the Scaly Ones, and Zo had taken the mantle of leader, even though he was too young to be married and still went by his childhood nickname. “Zo” meant “happy” in that particular dialect of the Chultan dwarves—or Dwarves of the Domain, as they called themselves.

When the moon disappeared behind a cloud, Zo made a low noise that resembled the call of a hawk. At the sound, another dwarf—an older female dressed in layers of colorfully embroidered cloth—scurried into the clearing. The elder dwarf, called Majida by her tribe, ducked into a thicket of crimson flowers that brushed against her bare hands and feet without irritation. After checking the clearing one last time, Zo followed her into the floral-scented undergrowth. The dwarves were so used to the crimson nettles that they could easily navigate the tangled thickets while most creatures had to walk around or suffer painful rashes. The two dwarves crouched down and stared at the high mudthorn walls in the clearing in front of them.

“Did they build the walls to keep something out or something in?” Majida asked. “Stupid humans. Don’t they know about the Jumpers?”

Shorter than their northern kin, the tribe of Chultan dwarves were small enough to avoid the big predators, clever enough to avoid the traps and barbs of the jungle, and humble enough to be happy in their Domain, an extensive network of grottos and caverns. The dwarves avoided cities and other trappings of civilized life, but they were hardly feral, and would have had objections-with anyone who described them as such. The Domain dwarves had a written language and a long memory, particularly about the savagery of the Scaly Ones and their abominations that still roamed the jungle

thousands of years after the sarrukh had vanished. The serpent-abominations retained all of the cruelty and none of the finesse of their makers.

“Are you sure about this?” Zo whispered.

Majida glanced at him, surprised that her chief had expressed doubt. Majida had read the signs, and they had been obvious—or at least as obvious as anything in the realm of prognostication could be. She had discussed that with Zo and the tribal leaders—several times. Zo was like an infant when it came to leadership, but Majida was in her autumn years and had been shaman since before Zo’s father was born. Her spell wouldn’t be difficult, but the rest of the plan depended on Zo and his dwindling band of warriors. If Zo couldn’t handle it, the whole plan would fall apart.

“I’m sure,” Majida assured him. “Besides, we don’t have a choice. We’ve lost three more in the past tenday.”

“We’ll fight harder.”

Majida sighed. Typical male, thinking all the answers came from how he handled his sword.

“We’ve endured many things,” she said. “But he is a particularly bad man, Zo. We have to stop him before he goes any further.”

“How do you know they are any different than the others?” Zo asked.

“I only need to be sure about one.”

Zo jutted out his chin. “I want to think about other plans.”

Zo began to speak, but Majida touched his forehead in silent warning moments before a green-scaled jaculi slid out of the gloom. They waited in silence as it slithered by, the sickly glow of its eyes scanning the underbrush for prey. It paused just outside their thicket, the sound of its hissing breath uncomfortably close.

From where Majida was crouched in the underbrush, she could see that it was an exceptionally large snake, and she

had no interest in tangling with it. The clever jaculi were much faster than either she or Zo, so there was no point in trying to run from it. It would simply overtake them, immobilize them, and eat them while they were still alive. The jungle had thousands of gruesome deaths to offer, but being slowly digested by a jaculi was one of the worst ways to die that Majida could think of.

Zo was trembling beside her, and Majida could sense the fear cresting in him. Soon he would bolt and run like the child he was. She laid a restraining hand on his shoulder and pressed her finger to her lips. She whispered a few words, and an indistinct form appeared in the palm of her hand. At first it was just a circle of blue light. But soon there was an outline of a wing, and she felt the distinctive feel of feathers against her hand. Smiling faintly, Majida hunched her shoulders over the glow and held it close to her chest. When she felt the little body grow warm, she opened her hand to reveal a perfect white bird with a crown of golden feathers.

Majida slipped a dagger out of the sheath she wore strapped to her upper arm. Holding the trembling bird tightly in one hand, she pushed the tip of the dagger into the skin just under its wing. When she pulled the knife out, blood flowed down the bird’s breast and stained its white feathers. Majida held the bird up, and it fluttered from her, out of the thicket, and directly past the jaculi, who caught the obvious scent of blood. An injured bird was easy prey, and the snake followed the bird away from the nettle thicket back into the gloom. As soon as it was out of sight, Majida felt Zo relax beside her.

“Poor bird,” she said sadly.

“You can make another,” Zo told her.

Majida wanted to chide Zo for such a statement—as if the bird were no more important than a hood or a new breastplate—but she held her tongue.

“Let’s go around to the southern wall,” she whispered. But when she moved, Zo caught her elbow.

“Do we have to go tonight?” he asked. “Why can’t we wait and see what happens tomorrow?”

“They’re vulnerable for an attack. They might as well cut their own throats. That’s how safe they are in there.”

“You said they weren’t going anywhere until morning,” Zo reminded her.

“So I did. Which means tonight is the perfect time to sit here and weigh our options,” she said sarcastically.

Zo looked at her with a hurt expression. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”

Immediately Majida felt bad. She liked Zo well enough. When his father died, their tribal customs had thrust leadership on him, even though there were other dwarves more qualified to lead than he. Majida thought that he would be a good leader in a few years, if he lived that long and was smart enough to learn from his mistakes. The dwarves of the Domain were particularly shortsighted when it came to embracing talent and recognizing the accidental nature of a person’s birth. At different points during her long life, Majida’s tribe had considered her a miscreant, a sedition-ist, and a rescuer. Several times, she had thought her tribe would exile her from the Domain, except she was the best healer and caster the tribe had ever produced.

“There are two ways the conflict can end: We can be picked off one by one until the Domain is empty. Or we can move.”

“Move?”

“Find a new Domain.”

“Where would we go?” Zo asked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

By the look on his face, Majida knew he was imaging some green and verdant land just waiting for them. Majida had meant the last option as a farce, something that would

bring him back to his senses, but he was actually considering it. Most of the dwarves of the Domain hadn’t strayed far from the hidden caverns they called home, and Majida was one of the few to have traveled extensively outside of Chult.

“They don’t want our kind anywhere else,” she said firmly. “This is where we belong.”

Zo scrubbed his stubby hands across his face. “All right. I’m putting my trust in you. What do you need me to do?”

“Follow me.”

ŚŠŚ •ŠŚŚŠŚŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ

The sun hadn’t broken the treeline when Boult woke up, but he could see well enough in the dim light to know that Harp and Liel were not in the room. And by the snoring coming from opposite sides of the room, he was sure that both boys were still sound asleep. Keeping an eye on the door, Boult began a systematic search of every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling. Shaking his head in disgust at the shoddy craftsmanship of the hut, Boult ran his fingers along the timbers at the base of the roof and poked at the seams between the boards on the walls.

On one side of the room was a chest filled with clothes. Boult slid it away from the wall and saw a cracked floorboard. Using his grubby fingernails to pry up the broken piece of wood, Boult saw that a small box had been nailed under the planks. He pried it open and pulled out a rolled-up parchment. A circle of red wax had sealed the parchment before being broken, and Boult took special care to examine it. He held the parchment to the light, examining the waxy ridges of the seal.

“An otter? Or maybe a weasel?” he murmured to himself.

Boult unrolled the parchment and held it up to the dusky

light coming through the uncovered window. After reading the parchment several times, he put it back into the small box under the planks, replaced the chest, and headed outside.

Stepping around Harp and Liel, Boult trotted down the stairs. He stopped mid-step when he noticed something on the trunk of the nearest tree. Glancing back over his shoulder at the sleeping figures intertwined on the porch, Boult inspected the ground between his feet and the tree. Besides a few rotting goldenfruit buzzing with flies and some patches of scrubby grass, the ground revealed nothing interesting.

Boult moved closer to the trunk where three runes had been seared into the bark. The marks were still fresh—a wisp of smoke hung in the air as if the bark still smoldered under the mystical mark. Boult stood in front of the trunk for a long time as he analyzed every nuance of the scorched lines. Slowly, he made a circuit around the house and found runes on trees every few feet around the hut. Behind the house, where the vegetation was thicker, it took him longer to locate the runes, but they were there. When he was done, he paused for a moment, watching as the streams of sunlight angled across the tops of the trees and flooded the grove with rose-tinted light.

Boult lit his pipe. He made a slow walk around the perimeter of the fence, chewing on his pipestem and standing for an overly long time in front of the goat pens. Then he returned to the front of house and sat on one of the logs around the cold fire pit. Boult puffed on his pipe, turning his griffon-head tamper around in his hands. When he saw Harp stir, he tamped out the pipe and secured it in his pouch.

“You look terrible,” Boult said as Harp sat down across from him on a log.

“Thanks,” Harp said, resting his head on his hands. “Kit and Verran still inside?”