He’d killed it?
He was too exhausted and pained to feel much relief. Its stink filled his nostrils; its weight made it hard to breathe. He was face to face with its bloated countenance. Its eyes were open, thick black tongue lolling from its mouth. The brown eyes gave Gerak a start.
They looked entirely human, almost childlike.
Squirming to the side, he maneuvered himself from under the creature and stood, covered in mud, blood, and stink. He stared down at the creature’s bulbous form, the folds of flesh, the network of burst veins on the surface of the skin. The tip of his sword stuck out of its back.
With a grunt, he rolled the creature over so he could retrieve the blade. The rags it wore were the muddy, torn remains of a homespun and trousers. He pulled his blade free, wincing at the stink it freed. He remembered the lanyard he’d seen, and used his blade to lift a fold of flesh at the creature’s neck.
Hung from the lanyard was a charm, a dirty cube of amber.
At first his mind refused to draw the conclusion. He stood perfectly still, eyeing the charm, the clothes, insisting that it wasn’t what he thought it was.
But it was. He knew the charm. It had belonged to a little girl from Fairelm, Lahni Rabb.
But her family had left Fairelm days earlier. Had it killed her and taken the charm? Or. .?
He stared at the creature. Its hair. The brown, childlike eyes. The torn homespun.
The reality hit him and he vomited into the grass until his stomach had nothing left to give. He sagged to the ground.
“Lahni,” he said. It seemed obscene to connect her name to the bloated, twisted form before him, but it was her. He was sure of it. And he’d killed her. Some magic or curse had changed her into something awful and then he’d killed her.
“Gods, gods, gods,” he said.
He tried not to think about what might have happened to the rest of her family.
Sickened, he cast his blade away and kneeled beside her-the tiny, waifish young girl he could still picture running and laughing in the village commons. He reached out a hand but did not touch her.
“I’m so sorry, Lahni.”
What could have done this to her?
Thunder sounded. A trickle of rain started to fall.
He sat there for a long while, engulfed in night, wrapped in a sense of grief not just for Lahni and her family but for himself and Elle and the baby, for all of Sembia. The land itself was corrupted by darkness. He had to get out, get Elle out, but he could not just leave Lahni there. He had to do something with her body, burn it. It was the least he could do.
He found his wood axe amid the scattered debris of the camp, split some dead broadleaf limbs he found nearby, and started to build a pyre around Lahni’s body. He took her by the wrists to move her a bit and get some of the logs under her. As he did he realized that she was holding something in her closed hand.
He uncoiled Lahni’s swollen, misshapen fingers, already stiffening in death, to reveal Elle’s locket-a bronze sun. Of all the things in the campsite, she’d taken Elle’s locket. He remembered once, long ago, Lahni telling Elle how beautiful the locket was. Elle had mussed her hair, thanked her, and Lahni had run off.
Emotion bubbled up in Gerak, raw, bitter, and he couldn’t swallow it back down. He wept as he worked, and in time had built a serviceable pyre. A pyre for an adolescent girl that Sembia had turned into a monster. He gently placed Elle’s locket back in her hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her again, and worked on the kindling. When it took, he tended the logs until the fire was going strong. He thought he should say something, a prayer, but he could not manage one.
“The gods damn this place,” he said softly, as the flames darkened Lahni’s bloated body. “The gods damn it all.”
He watched for a while, until he was sure it was going, then gathered what he could find of his gear and headed back out. He had to get back to Fairelm and get Elle away.
He walked with his bow in one hand, his sword in the other. He had no intention of stopping, and he put leagues behind him before exhaustion made his vision blurry and caused him to stumble. Still he pressed on. His purpose compelled him, a fishhook of fear set deep in his guts, pulling him back to Fairelm and Elle.
After two hours, he was blinking so much with fatigue that he could hardly see. His legs felt as if they were made of lead, slabs of meat attached to him at the hip. He stumbled, fell, crawled, and finally collapsed. He attempted to stand but couldn’t. His face hit the wet ground. His strength went out of him, drained away into the ground. Shivering with cold and exertion, he decided he’d rest for just a moment. Just a moment. .
Rain fell as the pilgrims gathered on the high rise that overlooked the valley. They stood in a huddled, sodden, miserable mass, hoods pulled over their heads. All but Orsin. He stood apart from the others, dressed only in his tunic, trousers, tattoos, and boots. The rain seemed not to bother him. The pilgrims gave him a wide berth. He was not one of them, and they must have sensed it.
The deva caught Vasen’s gaze, nodded.
The pilgrims stared down at the valley, its towering pines backed by the teeth of the mountains, the vein of the river, the pitted stone walls of the abbey nestled among the greenery. Not for the first time, Vasen wondered what the valley would look like bathed in sunlight. He imagined the river flecked with silver, the bits of mica in the walls of the abbey glittering like jewels, the snow caps of the mountains shining like lanterns. It saddened him that the valley would never see unadulterated sunlight. He vowed to himself that when he saw the pilgrims to the Dales, out from under the Shadovar’s shroud, he would allow himself a few hours of sunlight before returning to the darkness.
“Your thoughts wander, First Blade,” said Byrne, standing beside him.
Vasen turned to look into Byrne’s heavy lidded eyes, overhung by thick brows. A jagged scar marked Byrne’s temple. Vasen sighed.
“My thoughts seem to do that a lot of late.”
“It’s the time of year,” Byrne said, gesturing at the sky with a gloved hand. “Winter approaches. The mind wanders in hopes of finding spring. But soon we’ll see the sun.”
“We will,” Vasen said with a firm nod. “The pilgrims are ready? You’ve done a head count?”
Byrne nodded, his conical helm falling over his eyes. He seated it more snugly on his head and said, “Twenty-three, plus the four of us.”
The four of them. Four servants of Amaunator would lead the faithful through the Shadovar’s perpetual night. Eldris, Nald, Byrne, and Vasen, the first blade. Veterans all, good men. Each of them knew the markers to follow across the plains to the Dales, to safety, to the sun.
“Take position, then,” Vasen said to Byrne. “A prayer, and then we move.”
“Aye.”
Vasen pulled his long hair back into a horse’s tail and secured it while Byrne, Eldris, and Nald took position around the pilgrims, shepherds ringing their flock. When they were ready, Vasen ran his hand over his beard and addressed the pilgrims. He saw the fear in their eyes and did what he could to dispel it.