Forest of Ruin (19 page)

T
he farther they followed the wagon, the more anxious Moria grew, seeing the camp disappearing behind her and feeling as if it truly was disappearing, like a mirage in the desert.

They had to follow on foot, leaving the horses behind. They continued at a distance, until the camp vanished into the darkness and Gavril proclaimed they'd gone far enough.

Moria hurried on with Daigo, getting far enough ahead of the wagon and its two guards that she could slip into their path and collapse there. Well, fake a collapse. She sprawled on the trodden path they used as a road, her cloak abandoned in the long grass with Daigo. She'd left her boots there, too, so she was barefoot. Gavril claimed her skin glowed in the moonlight. She rather thought he exaggerated, but it was pale enough to be spotted in the darkness. She fanned her long hair out, too, in hopes that would help keep her from being trampled.

Eyes closed, she listened to the pound of hooves and the squeak of the wagon wheels, and with each passing moment, her heart beat faster and the urge to peek was almost overwhelming.

Daigo will protect me.

So she trusted, yet those hooves and that squeak grew closer and closer until she could hear the heavy breathing of the horses and she swore she could smell them and—

“Hold up!” someone called.

The horses whinnied to a halt, and Moria exhaled a soft sigh of relief.

“A pretty girl lying on the road?” One of the men snorted. “Clearly the local bandits have heard too many bard songs. You two head out. Find where they hide and take care of them.”

This was exactly as Moria expected. The ploy was so hackneyed that no one would fall for it. She did peek then, since they did not truly think her unconscious. The man giving the orders was the wagon driver. He sent the warrior guards to find the bandits. Then he climbed down, approached Moria, and bent beside her.

“So, girl,” he said. “You thought you'd take a wagon full of riches, did you?” He laughed. “You'd have been mightily disappointed. We've nothing in our wagon but a prisoner. You waylaid a supply wagon on the wrong leg of its journey.”

Moria said nothing, just kept her eyes open enough to watch him.

“This might be an inconvenience,” the wagon driver said. “But you'll repay us for that.” He reached out and toyed with a lock of her hair. “Amuse us enough, and we'll bring you home.
If you do not . . . well, there are brothels that will pay richly for a pretty Northern girl.”

Moria leaped up then, not with her daggers, but simply jumping to her feet to run. The man grabbed her. She struggled about as hard as he'd likely expect from a girl, which was not much at all. He easily hefted her over his shoulder, with her weakly kicking and pounding at his back. Then he carried her to the wagon. As he opened the back flap, he froze.

“Release your hold on her,” Gavril said. “Or I shove this sword through your neck.”

Moria kicked the wagon driver's stomach as the first note of his call for help escaped. He fell back with an
oomph
and dropped her. By the time she got to her feet, Gavril had him on the ground, his sword at the man's throat. Daigo crouched beside him. At a motion from Moria, the wildcat took off for Tyrus, who was stalking the two warrior guards.

Moria searched for weapons on the wagon driver. While he did not appear to be a warrior, he had a blade, plus a dagger in his boot. She disarmed him and climbed into the wagon to search for something to bind him.

When she caught sight of a figure in the wagon, she readied for attack. Then she saw that he was slouched against the side, facing away, his hands bound behind his back and she remembered the driver saying they were transporting a prisoner. He seemed to be unconscious, and she was about to ignore him, but . . .

There was something about the prisoner. Something familiar.

Moria opened the flap and thrust out a torch she'd carried in her belt.

“Light this,” she said to Gavril. And then added, “Please.”

He cast a quick spell and lit it with his fingers. Moria pulled back into the wagon and took hold of the young man's shoulder. As she was about to give him a shake, something happened outside. Gavril snarled at the driver not to move or—

The wagon jolted as if one of them had fallen against it. Moria stumbled. The prisoner fell and jerked awake, his limbs flailing, one catching her in the leg before she pinned him with a bare foot.

“Ash?” Ronan stared up at her, blinking hard. Then he looked at the foot planted on his chest. “Moria?”

The wagon flap opened and Gavril pushed through, the driver hanging from one hand, the other brandishing his sword.

“Gavril?” Ronan said.

Running footsteps sounded outside, and Tyrus appeared, breathing hard and flecked in blood. Daigo was at his side, breathing just as hard and looking just as blood-speckled.

“Thank the goddess the driver lives,” he muttered as he walked toward them. “Daigo and I had less luck with our targets. Neither was very interested in being captured and—”

“Tyrus?” Ronan said, scrambling up.

“Where's Ashyn?” Moria said.

“I . . .” Ronan blinked hard, as if his sleep had not come naturally.

Moria grabbed him by the shirtfront and gave him a shake. “Wake up, blast it. Where is my sister? Is she with you?”

“I . . .” Ronan's eyes snapped open and he pulled from her grip. “We need to go to her.
Now
.”

“We will,” Gavril said. “As soon as you explain.”

“No,
now
. I'll explain on the way.”

A
s much as Ashyn missed Ronan, she was, in one way, glad that he was not there, or she'd have been enduring his grumbling all day. It seemed time did not progress the same in the North as it did in the rest of the empire, because apparently “day” extended to cover the following dawn. That's when the ritual would take place.

Still, she missed him. There was no denying that. As kind and friendly as Edwyn's people were to her, she was keenly aware that she and Tova were among strangers. Edwyn had tried to make her day pass quickly with preparations. Ashyn didn't know the purpose of any, and all were conducted in a foreign tongue. None required much more of her than her presence, which meant a very boring day. Between rituals, Edwyn had entertained her with histories of the North, but as keen as Ashyn normally was to learn, it all became a bit, well, tedious.

Later, when she reunited with Moria, she would be far
happier about having Edwyn in their lives. Right now, though, her thoughts were consumed with worry about everyone she'd left behind, most of all Moria.

Night came but sleep did not. She'd gone to her tent too early, partially from boredom and partially from excitement for the day to come. But excitement certainly did not calm the nerves for sleep, particularly when night dragged doubt in its wake. What if she failed the ritual? What if she failed her grandfather—was not the girl he expected?

She kept thinking about the Seeking rituals. That was how all this started. Her first venture into the Forest of the Dead to soothe the souls of the convicts who'd died in exile there. She had gone in with the Seeking party from Edgewood . . . and emerged with Ronan, one of those exiled convicts. Everyone else in her party had perished horribly, killed by shadow stalkers, and all she'd been able to think at the time was “I did this.” That somehow she'd conducted the rituals wrong and raised these creatures, and it was all her fault. She knew better now, but that didn't stop her from remembering how it felt. That crushing guilt and horror. What if this time she truly did fail? Or if she woke the dragons . . . and they massacred everyone around them and then flew into the empire and—

So she did not sleep. Not for a very, very long time, and only then after one of the women came to check on her, discovered she was awake, and withdrew in alarm, returning with a cup of wine.

“You must rest, child. You truly must.”

Telling her she had to rest only added to the anxiety over
not
resting, particularly when Ashyn began to worry that a lack
of rest could
cause
her to fail the ritual.

Surprisingly, though, despite her knotted stomach, sleep did come. Perhaps there was more than wine in that cup. The next thing she knew, she was waking to a commotion outside her tent.

She heard a shout in the common language, the words drowned out by the scream of another. Then the clang of steel and an oath, and she grabbed her dagger and cloak, Tova already at the door, growling. She pushed open the flap to see three unfamiliar warriors, blades raised, encircling a fourth, prostrate on the ground. The downed man seemed dead, unmoving, and Ashyn let out a gasp. She heard another oath, this one from a woman, and turned as one of Edwyn's people ran toward her, saying, “Back inside, my lady! Quickly!”

Ashyn ran
along
the tent instead, with Tova at her side, the woman calling after her. Strong arms grabbed her. Tova snarled and leaped, and her captor let out a strangled cry as the hound's fangs dug into his arm. He dropped Ashyn. She twisted to see another unfamiliar warrior and lifted her dagger to plunge it into his arm, when the woman who'd chased her shouted, “No, my lady! He is one of us!”

Ashyn stopped short. She stared up at the man. He was brown-skinned and dark-eyed, like Ronan. Not Northern-born and very clearly no one Ashyn had met in camp.

“He is with us,” the woman said, gripping Ashyn's arm.

Tova backed off, still growling.

“But we are under attack,” Ashyn said. “Those men—the warriors—”

“They are ours.”

“I am sorry I frightened you, my lady,” the warrior said, dipping in a slight bow. “I thought you were panicked and running blind.”

“No, I was escaping the apparent attack.”

She returned back to the front of the tent. The three warriors had lifted the corpse, a man with wildly curling dark locks and bronze skin. A lantern light fell over the dead man, and she saw his face and his tattooed arms. Swirling wolf tattoos.

Ashyn gasped. “That is—you've killed—it's Dalain Okami.”

“He is not dead, my lady,” the warrior said. “Merely knocked unconscious. My fellow warriors and I were coming to join you for the ritual, to control the dragons if needed. We found the young Okami skulking about the perimeter of camp, and we captured him. He seemed to come along willingly. Then he pulled his blade as we reached camp so we were forced to disable him.”

“That is correct,” said a voice beside them. Edwyn walked over. “I'm sorry this startled you, child. We had no warning ourselves. It seems the young Okami had followed us here to finish what he began in the woods outside his father's compound. We will not harm him, of course. His father is a staunch ally of the empire. His pursuit of you is merely misguided. I will attempt to speak to him, and if all goes well, he will join us tomorrow for the ritual and witness what you are doing for our empire so he may set the story straight with his father and others.”

“Might I speak to him? That may help.”

“Of course, child. Once he regains consciousness. I fear my
men had to give him quite a blow to avoid using their blades. I suspect it will be dawn before he recovers, but you will get a moment with him if there is time. Now, come along back to your tent . . .”

Shortly after Ashyn returned to her tent, one of the women brought her wine again. She tried to refuse, saying she was quite tired enough, but the woman insisted. So Ashyn took a long drink from the skin, sank into her blankets, waited for the woman to leave, and then spat the wine onto the hard ground. The slight fuzzy feeling in her limbs told her that the earlier wine had indeed had more than fermented honey and rice in it. She had consumed enough of the sedative already to quickly fall back into slumber without needing more.

When Ashyn woke again, it was to another noise—the sound of ripping fabric. She rose, blinking against the darkness. Tova didn't even twitch and she wondered if she'd dreamed the noise. Then she saw a knife blade cutting through the rear base of her tent. She grabbed her dagger and shook Tova. The big hound only grumbled in his sleep. She was about to shake him harder when the knife withdrew and a slender hand pulled up the cut flap. A girl poked her face in the hole. She had bronze skin, like Dalain, and dark, wild hair like his, though nothing in her features suggested the resemblance was more than regional.

“Oh, goddess be praised,” the girl said. “It
is
you, Ashyn. I thought I heard the hound snoring, but I could not be sure. It would be my luck to slice into the tent of those blasted warriors.”

“Who are you?”

The girl gave a slight smile. “My apologies, little Seeker. You look so like your sister that I forget we have not met. I am Sabre. My father is a subject of Lord Okami. I came with Dalain to find you.”

“You say you have met Moria?”

“Yes, I told her I'd join the hunt for you.” The girl peered at her. “Ah, I see. You do not believe me. Clever girl. All right, then. Hmm. How is this? She said Tyrus was a fine swordsman, and I teased her about his . . . other sword skills, and she said she did not know about that but hoped to find out. Does that sound like your sister?”

Ashyn's cheeks burned. “Yes.”

“Excellent. Now we need to clear up this mess. It does not appear you are being held captive.”

“No, I'm with my grandfather. He . . . It's a long story.”

“But the short of it is that we mistook the situation for a kidnapping, and the people here mistook Dalain for a kidnapper himself. We must straighten this out and get him free.”

Ashyn sat up, shaking her head to clear the sedative from it. “You said Moria sent you after me?”

“Well, Tyrus asked Dalain to find you, given that he lost you the first time. Of course he was already looking. Warriors. So blasted honorable. Anyway, I told Moria I was going along to help Dalain.”

“My sister is well?”

Sabre shifted, adjusting her position, which must have been uncomfortable, peering into the tent like that. “She was well when I left her.”

“And with Tyrus?”

Another shift. “I saw her with Tyrus, yes. Now—”

“I am to trust Dalain then? I'm sorry, but I find that difficult to do when he shot my companion in the throat.”

“What? Dalain would not—”

“He did.”

“No, little Seeker. Neither Dalain nor his men would do such a thing. Tyrus asked Dalain to watch for you and your warrior boy while he searched for your sister. Dalain handled it poorly—not surprisingly—but he certainly did not shoot your companion. That would be dishonorable.”

Sabre withdrew as if looking about, and when she poked her face in again, her whisper was softer still. “I must go and find Dalain's men. We were separated. I simply came here to explain and to ask that you insist on speaking to Dalain and straightening out this misunderstanding.”

“I will do it now.”

“Thank you.”