Wildmane Page 16

  Orem said practically everything in Denema’s Valley had been built with GodSpill, and so the city had been snuffed like a candle when Harleath Markin somehow stole it. Over the centuries, the toppled towers and razed buildings had been invaded by nature again, but there were still traces of these powerful threadweavers. They had kept an extensive library, writing down their thoughts and discoveries, protecting them over the years. The library was mostly intact, and that was where they were going to further Mirolah’s education.

  “Is this one of the ways you get in touch with the GodSpill?” Orem said from behind her, trying to see what she was searching for.

  “Maybe,” she said. She turned away from the wind to face him. Her hair blew into her face, and she pushed it back with a hand. “I mean, I feel things, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, so how can I know if I’m doing it right? You talk about the GodSpill like it’s water, or something like water. Am I supposed to bore a hole in a keg and collect what comes out?”

  “I...” he hesitated. “I wish I could tell you. I’ve never experienced the GodSpill myself.”

  “Well, there’s no such liquid. Or if there is, I can’t feel it. All I feel is this bright bridge that appears between me and something—or someone—else. It’s not...a rush of water, or anything else I can collect. It’s a feeling that I’m closer to whatever the bridge connects me to. When I stand here on the prow, with the wind pushing at me, it’s like I’m...closer to Amarion. Closer to nature. And the connection to nature is where the power seems to be.”

  The brightness she had first invoked against the monster connected her to everything. It connected her to Orem right now. She could feel his emotions, even if his face was placid. They radiated toward her like the heat of the sun overhead. She remembered how strong and confident he had seemed when she first met him. If all she had been able to read was his face, he would seem the same. But now she knew the truth: he was mostly uncertain. He had vast hopes, and only a little certainty to back them up. She knew without a doubt that he wanted what was best for the people of Amarion. But she thought he’d known exactly how to go about it. He didn’t, and his fear was now apparent to her.

  She saw new emotions now, as she talked to him, and what she saw surprised her. He longed to be a threadweaver. He wanted it so badly it made his heart beat faster when she talked about it. He wanted to feel the GodSpill. His sorrow and frustration leaked into her, and it made her uncomfortable, like he was looking at her like she was a piece of juicy fruit.

  Also, she felt embarrassed about it. She was supposed to be learning, she knew, and seeing Orem’s emotions was part of that learning, but she felt ashamed. He didn’t know he was an open book to her.

  “Orem,” she said, trying to bring the topic back to academics. Orem loved to talk about his many studies. “Why do they call them threadweavers? In my life, ’threadweaver’ is just a bad word, a curse on those in the Age of Ascendance who abused their power, who brought the wrath of the gods. People spit when they say the word. But the threadweavers must have called themselves that for a reason. We didn’t make up that name. Every history I’ve read uses the same word.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, why not call themselves GodSpillers or something else? What does weaving have to do with it?”

  “I think it started as a euphemism.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, weaving is an ages-old form of creating. It makes rugs, clothes, blankets, baskets. And creating was the threadweavers’ defining attribute,” he said. “It’s what the GodSpill does. I would guess the name was used long ago because their many creations were likened to weaving the wondrous into life.”

  “Hmm. Do you think they started off making enchanted rugs or something, and that’s how they got the name?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “If so, it must have been long ago in the Age of Awakening. In some of the books I have read, one threadweaver will refer to another as having ‘woven something of great import’. But I think it is just the parlance they used. Certainly I have seen no references to them actually weaving anything, or not more than normal people, anyway. A few of them worked with clothing or rugs or blankets, but even more worked with stone, with flesh, with the mind, with the wind...anything and everything.”

  “I was hoping it might provide some kind of clue,” she said, disappointed.

  “From my studies, I do know that belief in the possibility of your creation is important.”

  “So the more I believe I will see things, the more I see?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I don’t know if my belief has anything to do with it. For instance, when I look at Stavark...” She turned her gaze to the young quicksilver, who was forever minding the rudder. “I can see surges of energy around him that aren’t there around you.”

  “I would say it’s his flashpowers you are seeing,” Orem said. “Quicksilvers are infused with GodSpill. They can’t use their flashpowers without it.”

  “So he can use his flashpowers, needs GodSpill to use them, but he can’t do anything else with it. Whereas threadweavers can do whatever they can imagine, essentially,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “How did his people survive the capping of the Fountain?” she asked, looking for a change in the subject. “All the threadweavers died. Why didn’t they?”

  “Most didn’t survive,” he said. “Only the hardiest, and only those on the fringes of Amarion. There were clusters of quicksilvers in the Spine Mountains, out of reach of the Fountain’s influence. Of course, the most remarkable thing about Stavark isn’t that he can use his flashpowers. It’s that he agreed to help me at all.”

  “Why?”

  “Quicksilvers hate humans. Stavark’s people in particular hate us for what we did to Amarion, for how we bent the GodSpill to our will, and then destroyed it.

  Mirolah had never felt any malice come from the young quicksilver. “But he—”

  “Seems friendly?”

  “Well, distant and strange, but I thought that was just because he was a quicksilver.”

  “Stavark understands that one doesn’t achieve harmony by hating. He wants to help remedy the situation, rather than blaming those who brought it about, like his father does.”

  The young quicksilver overheard their conversation and met her gaze. He held a firm grip on the tiller, giving and taking in increments as the waves pulled at the boat.

  “He is so serious,” she said softly. “Like a warrior shoved into a child’s body. Seeing him with the guards in Rith, I... I was so shocked when that silver flash turned into a boy.”

  “You have seen how hard the GodSpill Wars and the Devastation Years were to us. It was worse for his people. They almost went extinct. There are thousands of us left. There are only hundreds of his people left, probably less than five hundred, scattered all along the Spine Mountains.”

  She looked at Orem. “We’re not doing this a moment too soon, are we?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “We’re probably a few centuries overdue, actually.”

  “There’s so much to learn...” she whispered, looking again at the water, feeling the breeze against her face.

  He put a hand on her shoulder, and it made her feel better.

  24

  Mirolah

  Mirolah sat on the sand and faced the clay pot. It still didn’t move. They had anchored for the night in a cove along the western shore, and the fire Stavark had built crackled pleasantly under the stars. She was full of the hot meal of rabbit and potato soup that Orem had supplied. Orem was an accomplished hunter. Every time Orem went to get food, he came back with just enough to fill everyone’s belly. Both Orem and Stavark treated her like a queen. They collected the firewood. They made the fire, hunted, cooked. They wanted her learning, exploring, expanding what she knew about the GodSpill.

  And she was doing a terrible job.

  She sighed and looked back at the pot. The point was to move the pot. If s
he was really a threadweaver, she should be able to move a single, small pot, shouldn’t she? The problem was that she had no idea how to go about it.

  “Move,” she whispered through her teeth. The bright light between her and the pot intensified to a white-hot brilliance, but nothing else happened.

  She threw every image she could across that blinding bridge. She pictured the pot flying into the trees by the shore. She pictured it hurtling into the ocean. She pictured it breaking into a hundred pieces. She pictured it falling lazily on its side. She pictured everything she could imagine to do to a pot. But the reality remained unchanged. The pot sat smugly in the sand, tilted to one side as it had been since she’d set it there two hours ago.

  Her butt hurt. Her legs ached, and her scalp itched. She kept shifting, but no position was comfortable. Still, she refused to let herself be comfortable until she achieved some kind of success.

  What she really wanted to do was jump to her feet and throw the pot into the ocean, but every other time she came to such frustration, she noticed the bright bridge begin to fade.

  She studied the pot again, hoping that another examination would reveal something. There was a hairline crack down the left side. The lid was not perfectly round, and it had a chip in it. It had two clay nubs on either side that served as handles. She stared and stared. If she had closed her eyes, she could have taken a quill and drawn the damned thing from memory!

  And then Mirolah noticed something in her peripheral vision. She looked at it directly and it vanished, so she turned her focus back to the pot. Yes. There it was. Something was slightly different about the edge of the bridge of light that connected her to the bane of her existence. There were thin, transparent lines, like fibers in a blanket. Like threads.

  Threadweaver.

  Her heart beat faster, and she looked directly at them, and again they vanished.

  She stared back at the pot, looking at the tiniest details. She attempted to see the pot’s essence like she could see Orem’s moods.

  The little fibers of light became clearer at the very edges of the bridge. Slowly, the bright threads moved from the periphery of her vision toward the center. The bright bridge was comprised of an intense cluster of these same threads. They were so bright that she hadn’t known they were separate before, just one glowing arc between her and the subject of her focus. The tiny tendrils flowed from her stomach into the pot. She kept her focus on it until the fibers became even clearer. She imagined the same images she had used before flowing through those tiny threads like blood through veins.

  The threads shimmered, but nothing happened to the pot.

  She growled under her breath. The vivid threads began to fade as she relaxed her concentration.

  What a threadweaver I am, she thought ruefully.

  And then it occurred to her. She returned her concentration to the pot. The threads appeared much more quickly this time. Now that she’d seen them, it was as if they’d always been there, begging her to look. She thought for a moment that she could see color in them this time, not just a bright white light, but variations of red and yellow. She reached out with her hand and plucked one of the threads.

  The pot shifted in the sand.

  She let out a whoop and yanked all the threads in a fist. The pot leapt from its perch with a shocking speed and smashed into her forehead.

  “Mirolah,” Orem warbled to her. “Mirolah,” he said again, and this time it was clearer.

  She groaned and blinked her eyes. The ground swayed, and for a moment she thought she had awoken on the boat, except the swaying was not welcome at all this time. She wanted to throw up.

  “Are you all right?”

  She felt his concern like warmth on her face. Stavark stood behind him, looking down at her with that perpetually serious expression that was so out of place on a young boy. He said nothing.

  Mirolah sat up slowly. Her skull felt like she’d head-butted a tree. “Did you see it?” she whispered.

  “I heard the crash and I found you here, laying in the sand.”

  “Where is the pot?” she asked.

  “This pot?” He held up a couple of clay shards.

  “It broke?” She laughed.

  Orem looked at Stavark, and she felt his worry.

  “No,” she said through her laughter. “No, I’m okay. It’s good.” She touched her forehead and winced. A knot was already forming.

  “Mirolah, maybe you should lie down—”

  “It flew, Orem! It shifted in the sand and then flew right through the air.”

  “Right at your head,” Orem said, concerned. “Can you make it go somewhere else?”

  “I’m certain of it.” She cast about for a likely object. She chose the iron cooking pot that Stavark had just washed out in the ocean. She had acquired a certain intimacy with pots. It lay stacked with their other dishware by the fire pit.

  “Mirolah, really. Why don’t you rest for a moment. You don’t need to—”

  “Shhhh,” she said, and concentrated on the pot. The bright bridge formed, and soon after, the threads. She grinned from ear to ear. It was easy this time. Now that she knew what she was looking for, they were all right there.

  When the threads began to take on colors, she reached out with her hands like she was playing a harp and pulled all of the threads gently. The metal pot shifted forward, dislodging a plate and a bowl as it left the stack. It cut a groove toward them, sailing on the sand like a little metal boat.

  Orem gasped, and Stavark’s eyes widened. The young quicksilver breathed. “Kalik. Maehka vik Kalik.” He looked at Mirolah and smiled wide, gave her an approving nod.

  The pot sidled up to Orem’s knee, and she left it there.

  “Threadweaver,” she said. “I know what it means. There are threads connecting me to the pot, to you, to the ground, to everything. And I can touch them. I can move them. That’s what it means.”

  He knelt down and took the pot by the handle. His hand clenched it, and he bowed his head.

  “Orem?”

  There were tears in his eyes. “All my life...” he whispered. “I have wanted to see this. I have wanted to be a part of this. But I doubted. Even when I saw the laughing stone in your hand, I doubted.” He looked at her. “But you have made the impossible possible. Thank the gods for you, Mirolah.”

  “You did this,” she said. “Without you, I’d be dead.”

  He put his hands on her arms. “We will return wonder to the lands.”

  “You’re damned right,” she said.

  Stavark began to laugh. It sounded like music.

  25

  Medophae

  Medophae pulled up short at the edge of the gnarled, dry trees. He crackled with an aura of golden fire. He hadn’t eaten or slept in days. Oedandus fueled him now, and he gladly boiled in the vengeful god’s rage.

  His mount, the fourth in four days, frothed at the mouth. Wind snorted from her nostrils, and she hung her head. He had ridden north and west from Teni’sia with no rest, stopping at villages only to leave an exhausted horse and pick up a fresh one. Now he was in a different land; not just another kingdom, but a wild place that civilization hadn’t touched in centuries.

  Tyndiria was dead, and he didn’t care about eating, about sleeping, about anything. He would find the “master” of the bakkaral, deal with him, and then he could vanish from the lands forever. He wouldn’t languish in a cave this time, where a crazy adventurer like Orem might find him. This time he would go far away, maybe so far that Oedandus would lose him. And when that happened, he would find a way to die.

  But first, he had to know for certain that the GodSpill had returned. Amarion had been stripped of it for years. He hadn’t seen a darkling or a bakkaral for years. But just because both had visited Teni’sia didn’t mean the GodSpill was back. For all Medophae knew, either one of those supernatural creatures could survive for weeks, maybe even years without GodSpill present. Could it have been sent from somewhere over the Spine Mountains
? He needed to know for certain.

  Make them suffer, the dark voice breathed in his mind, hearing his thoughts. Make them all burn.

  Medophae forced himself to breathe. The glade was quiet, save the frantic huffing of his horse. He needed sleep. Only the return of his normal mortal rhythms would push back Oedandus’s ever-present voice. If he didn’t eat, didn’t rest, Oedandus stayed awake to keep him from wasting away.

  But he couldn’t sleep. The moment he closed his eyes, he dreamed of Tyndiria. Sweet Tyndiria...tortured in the last moments of her life because she had loved him.

  Give them justice by fire, his dark god demanded.

  Medophae took the bridle and saddle off his horse and left her to drink from the slender, struggling brook. It used to be a stream. Even water didn’t seem to want to stay in this dried-out husk of Amarion anymore. The small leaves of the trees, twisted and shrunken from the way they had once been, had turned autumn colors, and Medophae walked beneath reds and golds as he approached the rocky cliff. It bordered the far side of the glade, and was choked with fibrous brown vines.

  His memories came back then, vivid. In his mind’s eye, the glade transformed and the past three hundred years blew away like those autumn leaves. He saw the glade as it used to be.

  The tall, vibrant trees and grass sparkled in the moonlight. It was dark and quiet as he arrived, and Princess Silasa waited for him. She always knew when he was coming. The clopping of his horse’s hooves must have sounded like thunder to her. She stood at the entrance to her cave, porcelain skin as pale as the moon, her long black braid laying over one shoulder, her eyes the milky white of a vampire....