[Shadowed Path 01] - A Woman Worth Ten Coppers (17 page)

As they walked, Honus seemed to brood. His expression was morose and Yim wasn’t tempted to inquire what thoughts troubled him. Yet eventually she asked the question foremost on her mind for three days. “Master, why did we stop at Tabsha’s?”

“Do you think we did her good?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Honus sighed. “I’m no Seer. Yet that’s the real question. If we did her good, my reason’s unimportant. And if she comes to harm, good intentions matter not.”

Yim wanted to press him for a less evasive answer, but his expression discouraged her. Instead she asked, “Will you hunt today?”

“I’m too tired. Tonight, you must forage or fast.” He noted how Yim’s expression darkened and added, “Surely you don’t begrudge her our sack of grain.”

“She thanked
you
for
your
generosity,” replied Yim, “but I, too, will go hungry.”

“I’m certain she was grateful to us both.”

“We have a saying back home: ‘You thank the goat’s herder for the milk, not the goat.’ She knew I was your property. In you, she found comfort. In me, she found someone to pity.”

“If that’s true, then you’ve given her more comfort than I.”

Yim glared at Honus bitterly. “How wonderful for her! She’s found someone more miserable than herself!”

Honus replied evenly. “I didn’t make you a slave. I haven’t asked you to endure more than I.”

Yim fought the impulse to throw the pack on the ground. Instead, she said, “It’s true. You haven’t
asked
me to do anything.”

Honus sighed and resumed his brooding. Yim slowed her pace so that she could follow at a distance. They walked this way until Honus eventually stopped and waited for Yim to catch up. “You must carry my pack because Theodus said it’s Karm’s will,” he said. “But I’ll try to make your life easier. I’ll hunt this evening. If there’s anything else I can do, you need only tell me.”

“I want to know who you are,” said Yim.

“What?”

“You asked me what you might do, and I’ve told you. I’d feel more easy if you weren’t such a mystery.”

Yim smiled at Honus’s discomfort, knowing she had trapped him. He would either have to admit the emptiness of his promise or expose himself to her.

“What would you like to know?” asked Honus.

Yim knew exactly what she wished to ask first. “Why do you trance?”

“It’s a useful skill,” replied Honus.

“That’s half an answer at best,” said Yim. “It reveals nothing.”

A rueful look came to Honus’s face, much to Yim’s satisfaction. “I’ve always had the gift for trancing, even as a child.”

“It wasn’t part of your training as a Sarf?”

“No. Few Sarfs can trance. I was never formally taught the necessary meditations, but picked them up from an older boy.”

“Why would a child want to trance?”

“I missed my parents.”

“Were they dead?”

“No, but they might as well have been. When one enters the temple, all worldly ties are cut.”

Honus’s reply made Yim recall her lonely childhood. “But if they were alive, why trance?”

“To find remembrances of mothers and fathers and relive them. I mostly sought out bedtime stories. You’d be surprised how common those memories are. Since then, trancing has become a habit. I find solace in it.”

“Did Theodus approve of this habit?”

“Not really. Yet he was indulgent, especially in the last few years, when our road was hard.”

“What’s it like?”

Honus paused to consider. “The Dark Path is all around us,” he said at last. “It mirrors our world, except it’s lifeless, worn, and wrapped in mist. One feels one’s way with the mind. As spirits travel westward, they leave a trail of reminiscences. When you chance upon one, it briefly becomes your own.”

“Do you encounter the spirits themselves?”

“Yes. That is when the memories are most vivid.”

“Like Toff’s?”

“Yes. Like Toff’s. Now are you satisfied?”

“No,” said Yim. “Did you expect Tabsha to still be beautiful?”

“She was never beautiful,” answered Honus. “Only to Toff.”

“Oh.”

“To be loved as she was…” Honus paused as if overcome by emotion. “Perhaps recalling that gift will sustain her through a trying spring.” He gave Yim a knowing look. “I didn’t go there for amorous reasons.”

Yim blushed. “That never crossed my mind.”

A grin formed on Honus’s face. “Posing questions is a revealing business. Are there any more you wish to ask?”

Yim’s blush deepened. “No, Master. At least, not at present.”

Yim and Honus walked until late afternoon, when Honus went out to hunt. Yim rested at the roadside in his absence. He returned empty-handed as sunset approached. In response to Yim’s disappointed look, he said, “The woods were empty. I didn’t even hear a bird.”

“Should I set up camp?”

“We’ll walk a bit more. I don’t trust a place that animals avoid.”

They continued down the road until they reached a river. All that remained of the bridge that had spanned it were a single stone arch on the far shore and five piers barely jutting above the water. “Unless you care to swim tonight,” said Honus, “we must camp here.”

“This place is fine with me,” said Yim. “I’ll gather firewood.”

When Yim returned, she found Honus bent over in the river, trying to catch a fish. Yim didn’t wish to spoil his chances by talking. Since some daylight remained, she decided to forage in case he had no success. Before she left, an uneasy feeling made her take the knife from the pack. Thus armed, she headed out.

Yim followed the riverbank, thinking it would be a likely place to find something edible. The fallen bridge had forced travelers to look for another place to cross, and there was a crude path heading upstream. Yim hurried along it, knowing there would be little time to find food before nightfall.

Yim was far from the ruined bridge and still empty-handed when she came upon a stone-paved road. It emerged from the forest and entered the river to create a ford to the other bank.
At least I’ve found a place to cross
. Yim turned toward camp, for it had grown too dark to forage. Then she heard something that made her halt. From up the deserted road came an unmistakable sound—the faint wail of a small and terrified child.

TWENTY

Y
IM LISTENED
carefully, afraid the wail would cease before she could find its source. However, it continued unabated, expressing terror so intense that Yim found herself shaking. She couldn’t imagine what horror could provoke such a cry. Remaining passive was unthinkable. Despite the deepening dark, she felt compelled to attempt a rescue.

When Yim sought to locate the child, she discovered that its wail was not a sound that ears could hear. Another of her senses—one honed under the Wise Woman’s tutelage—had detected it.
Am I hearing a spirit?
Yet no ghostly voice had ever sounded so immediate.
This is no echo from the Sunless World. It’s a scream from this one.

Yim stopped using her ears and followed her intuition. The cry seemed to be coming from the road that led into the woods. Trees crowded its edges so tightly that in the failing light it resembled a cavern, not a thoroughfare, a place one enters without assurance of return. Nevertheless Yim followed the cry up the tree-shadowed lane. As she slowly advanced, the wail became louder. The sky darkened until Yim was walking nearly blind. She stumbled along the uneven pavement and at last approached a large ruin. All she could see was its silhouette, a huge expanse of blackness against the night sky. Though the structure appeared abandoned, Yim took no comfort from that. She felt the presence of something or someone malign. The impression was as distinct as the scent of a corpse in a dark room. Yim held the knife at the ready and advanced warily.

The night was absolutely still; yet the wail sounded so loudly in Yim’s head that she could hardly bear it. Only its piteousness prevented her from fleeing. Just then, the moon peeked over the horizon, and its light revealed more of the structure. It was a castle where vines and trees were completing the destruction wrought by some ancient enemy. Yim could make out a gateless and crumbling gatehouse, breached walls bearing stumps of watchtowers, and a cylindrical keep.

The cry came from the gatehouse. Yim entered it. Between the outer and inner archways was a roofless space littered with rubble. The night sky provided the only illumination, for the moon was too low to shine into the gatehouse’s interior. Yim stubbed a toe as she stumbled about in the gloom. While she waited for the pain to subside, she noticed a doorway in one of the walls. It was pitch black, but she could make out a pale object that was suspended in the opening. It was the source of the wail.

Yim carefully felt her way across the rubble-strewn space. She reached the doorway and touched the object. It was a child’s skull, dangling from a cord that passed through the eye sockets. Yim’s sensitive hands felt the subtle tingling that she recognized as the presence of a spell.

The cries inside Yim’s head were agonizing. They conjured images of a toddler trapped in a pitch-black cave, screaming for help that would never arrive. Most appalling was the freshness of the terror. It seemed as if the spirit had just realized its doom and was trapped perpetually in that terrible instant.

Yim cut the cord with the knife and carried the skull to the moonlit road to examine it. There, she saw that the skull was painted with runes. They were the source of the spell her fingers had detected.
This wail I sense may be only a trick, a way to frighten off intruders.
Yim rejected the notion.
It would serve no purpose. Ordinary persons couldn’t hear it.
Yim pondered the problem and decided that she should try to contact the spirit within the skull—if there was one. She assumed that the technique for contacting the spirits upon the Dark Path should serve in this instance also. Placing the skull before her, Yim sat on her heels and began the mental rituals that would allow her mind to reach beyond her body.

Yim wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Spirits on the Dark Path were distant from the living, but the skull held a spirit that had never left this world. When Yim contacted it, the immediacy of the experience nearly drove her mad. In a confused and horrifying instant, Yim experienced an abduction, a bizarre ritual, a frightening glimpse of a boiling caldron, and a state of perpetual terror. She felt like a swimmer gripped by a drowning person who threatens to sink them both, and it took all her will to break free. When Yim returned to the earthly realm, she was shaking and sobbing.

The skull imprisoned a soul between life and death. Yim couldn’t imagine the purpose of such an abomination, but she knew that it must be ended. Picking up the skull again, she felt its magic and realized that destroying it would release the trapped spirit. She took a loose paver from the roadway and used it to smash the skull.

The piercing wail stopped abruptly. Yet Yim wasn’t at peace, for it became apparent that the child’s cries had drowned out fainter ones. These were no less heartrending. Yim could detect several distinct voices within a cacophony of despair and terror. A woman sobbed. Another screamed. A man moaned piteously. All the cries seemed to come from within the dark castle.

Yim was in a quandary: She was afraid to enter the castle, but she couldn’t ignore the tormented spirits. Moreover, she knew Honus would be curious about her absence.
I might convince him I got lost if I return now. That would mean abandoning the spirits.
Yim knew that returning tomorrow would mean revealing her powers—something she had been warned never to do. It was her guardian’s strictest injunction, and Yim had taken it to heart.
Should I keep my secret or save these spirits?
Yim felt she would regret whatever choice she made.

A dark figure emerged from the gatehouse while Yim was wrestling with indecision. He moved so silently that she was unaware of his approach until he stepped into the moonlight. Even then, he seemed wrapped in shadow. The dark face over the inky robe appeared featureless, except for two glaring eyes. Yim gave a startled cry and pointed her knife at the advancing stranger. He glanced at the weapon, but didn’t slow his pace.

“You’ve taken something that was mine,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Now you must replace it.”

“Stay back!” said Yim as forcefully as fright permitted. “I’ll use this if I need to!”

“So this sneak thief has a sting.”

“You’re the thief! I know what you did.”

The dark man bared his teeth in a grin. “You do? Then you must have powers. Good! Good! That spirit would have sustained me for years, but you’re a greater prize.” While he talked, the man slowly advanced. His empty hands hung limply. “If you wish to stop me,” he said calmly, “you must kill me.”

“I will!” shouted Yim, hoping the man couldn’t see how her hand shook.

“You lack the courage,” replied the man. He stepped in front of Yim, his arms still passively at his side. Yim gritted her teeth and stabbed at his chest. She felt her blade touch flesh; then there was a flash of brilliant blue light. It illuminated a cadaverous face that grinned in triumph. Yim felt a jolt so painful that it seared away her consciousness. She collapsed in spasms on the roadway as the blade, which glowed eerily, was flung from her twitching hand.

Through a fog of drowsiness, Yim thought a goat was licking her stomach. It was a pleasant sensation, and she was inclined to let it lull her back to sleep, despite the fact that the goat was sitting on her thighs. She lay still, enjoying the gentle stroking until a confusing thought came to her—
I no longer herd goats. So where did this goat come from?
Another question arose.
Where am I?
Yim reluctantly decided to open her eyes and find out. When she tried, some force opposed her. As she struggled against it, her initial puzzlement became fear that approached panic. Through intense will, she forced her eyes open. They gazed upon the ceiling of a vast circular chamber. Though a fire cast reddish, flickering light on its stones, the room was shadowy.

The sensations on her stomach were created by a paintbrush. Yim’s memory was restored when she saw that the man who had emerged from the gatehouse wielded the brush. He was sitting on her thighs and painting runes upon her naked body. The red-brown paint smelled of herbs, decay, and blood. It tingled slightly as it dried. Already, the man had painted her torso down to the navel. Concentrating on his work, he didn’t notice she was watching him.