he heard what the dead had to say. With his own eyes, he saw there were no tracks of marchers. A small party, perhaps a dozen of the invaders, touched down a little distance from the village and walked toward it. No tracks brought them to that point. They just dropped from the sky. They flew.”
“Flew?”
“Atop beasts with large footprints. Like a man’s print, but massive.”
“This is foolishness,” Edell said. “How much does he want to go away? I’ll pay him myself.”
The Marah captain Bledas and the Senivalian Perceven had just arrived, but they paused inside the door. Haleeven shouldered between them. He spoke to the Scav.
“Haleeven is greeting him with respect,” Gandrel narrated. “They seem to know each other. Kant’s… telling him what he has told us… Now Kant says that he did not come for himself. He did not come for the Acacians. He came for the dead. They want vengeance. They howl for it.” Gandrel paused a moment, before finishing. “There is another thing we should know, he says. The invaders have made the turn inland. The bulk of the main force, that is.”
“He saw this?”
“No, but his ancestors did,” Gandrel said. “He speaks to their ghosts, remember?” He smirked, but the expression quickly faded. “The Auldek are making good time. He says they move despite the weather, day and night, slowly and steadily. That means fast in the north.”
“And that was over irregular terrain,” Perrin said. “They may be able to move faster when they reach the Ice Fields.”
Gandrel said something to Kant, heard his answer, and nodded. “He thinks the invaders will be out of the Ice Fields before the spring.”
Edell began, “But do we believe him? What proof-”
“He needs none,” Haleeven said. “I know this man. I know his people. They saw the Numrek come through. Back when you knew nothing of them, we did. The Scav did. He had relatives in the town of Vedus, the first to be slaughtered and left flaming with that vile pitch the Numrek brought with them. If he says this about Tavirith, it’s true. About the war column-it’s true.”
“How do we know that?” Edell asked. “It was you who invited the Numrek down in the first place. You lit the torch on the pitch that burned Vedus.”
Haleeven looked at the young soldier secretary with a measure of the disdain Kant had shown earlier. “We never meant for that to happen. I have reckoned with Kant on the past already. That’s between us. Do you doubt my word?”
“When your word is based on stories of ghosts, yes, I’d say so.”
“The dead don’t lie. And they don’t speak without having something to say. That’s a trait of the living.”
Edell’s mouth twisted into a snarl, but his voice kept an official precision. “The Acacian military cannot move on the word of a Scav who claims he’s been talking to the dead. You may have sucked from the same mother’s teat as this Scav, but I didn’t. I think we need confirmation before we do anything.”
Mena cut in before Haleeven could respond. “Peace, Haleeven. Peace, Edell. I want no arguing between you.”
“Especially not now,” Perrin said. “Mena leaves this afternoon. Let’s give her no cause to doubt our leadership when she’s gone.”
“Will you still go?” Bledas asked. “This changes everything.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” Perrin said. “We’ll be here doing the things Mena would want us to. We’ll start for the Ice Fields earlier. If the enemy can travel in winter, we’ll find a way to travel in winter, too. No matter what, we’ll still meet them on the fields and defeat them.”
Edell touched his temple, wincing. He was prone to headaches. “We should send a party to Tavirith to check the Scav’s story.”
“In these conditions?” Haleeven asked, swinging an arm as if asking them to take in the view. “The howling wind from Tavirith is well known to my people. It may not stop for weeks. Marching into it would eat men alive.”
“You both speak wisdom,” Mena said. “We should step away from this, regroup in a moment. Let’s go to the conference room. It’s warmer there, and there are the old Meinish maps to consult. We’ll plan while we can.”
Bledas pushed his unanswered question. “Your highness, the royal coronation-will you leave to attend it?”
The room hushed as Mena considered her answer. “Yes, I’ll go. I meant what I said-I have faith in you all. We’ll plan what we can before I fly, but I will fly.”
She looked at Kant, who sat motionless, a bland look on his face as if he had already forgotten the confusion he had just brought with him. “Haleeven, stay with us a moment. Translate for me. I would speak with Kant about some things, just the three of us.”
W ith the Scav’s promises still in her ears a few hours later, Mena climbed atop Elya. Her head cleared as they rose into the frigid, angry skies. Mena leaned into Elya, her cheek on the scented feathers, breathing them in. She smelled and felt so good that Mena almost could not ask of her the thing she had decided to ask. What part did Elya own in all this anyway? None of it, perhaps. In a perfect world she would be home with her babies, raising them, but this was not a perfect world. Mena was not perfection herself, so she had to rely on someone. Fair or not, it was to be her winged companion.
They slid down along the eastern edge of the Black Mountains. The raging torrent of air funneled through the pass from Tavirith shoved them forward. They could not have fought it if they tried. Mena let Elya ride it instead, over Scatevith and the woodlands rimming the Sinks. They scattered herds of woolly oxen beneath them. From there they traced the meandering line that was the frozen River Ask. Ironic, Mena knew, that she was flying the same route Hanish Mein had attacked by, first on sleds and then on boats. She wondered what the landscape had looked like to him. To her, despite the cold, despite the coming war and the many things that roiled in her stomach… To her the frozen land beneath her was beautiful. All Acacia, all the Known World was filled with wonders worth fighting for. She had long ago decided she would die for it. Before this was all over, she would die. It seemed the only possibility, the only way through it for the people and the nation and the land she loved. The certainty of this belief made what she did next easier.
Back when Bledas asked if she would go, her answer had not been as certain as it sounded. Now, on the wing and with the world cold beneath her, she decided upon another course. She turned Elya toward Candovia. From there she would keep flying, all the way to Tavirith and then beyond. She and Elya would see these Auldek with their own eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kelis jogged up from the town at a steady pace. He told himself to be calm, to move efficiently but not in a hurry. He had just enough time. It wouldn’t do to attract attention with too much haste, or to trip and twist an ankle or something foolish like that. He had come too far-and brought Shen and Benabe too far-to spoil it with a careless mistake.
Since the night Kelis was attacked, they had traveled with all the stealth they could manage. It never felt like stealth, though, considering the crowd of Santoth that trailed them every step of the way. He had still not gotten used to them. He could still not quite believe that nobody outside their group saw them, but as he had no choice in the matter, he did the best he could. And the best he could do, he decided, was to ignore them.
It seemed to work.
They crossed through Balbara territory heading toward the trading city of Falik. It was exposed country, flat as a plate and spread like a clear night sky with a constellation of settlements, villages, and farms. The entire time, Kelis felt like any eye within twenty miles could see them. Gone was the solitude of the south. Daylong, from whatever scant shelter they found under acacia trees or beneath a geometry of cloth propped by Kelis’s iron spear, they watched movement on the horizon. Near or far, there was always somebody: herd boys switching droop-eared goats, teni root farmers piercing the ground with their pronged spears, groups of women attending to some work Kelis could not imagine, who seemed to communicate mainly in bursts of laughter.
