chest.
A shudder passed through Colin’s body, and something gripped his throat. He didn’t lurch upward, didn’t scramble back. The boy’s face, so like his own, held him transfixed, breath caught.
And in that still moment, he realized he’d been asleep, that he’d forced himself into an unnatural slumber in the forest. He’d hidden there from the world, from his parents’ deaths, from Karen’s. He’d willed himself into nonexistence, living off the Well, off the Lifeblood, smothering himself in his grief, just as Osserin and the other Faelehgre had said.
He needed to wake up. If he didn’t, the Lifeblood would claim him. The spot on his wrist would only be the beginning. He’d die, as surely as this boy had died here on the battlefield, a sword lodged in his side. And he realized he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to sleep anymore.
He turned at the sound of a banner flapping in the breeze, the motion startling him out of his paralysis. He glanced once more at the boy’s face, reached to close his eyes and murmur a prayer over him, then climbed carefully to his feet, making certain to place the end of his staff on ground and not flesh. The banner flapped again, a stylized shield on a background divided in half diagonally, one side red, the other yellow, a banner he didn’t recognize. He hadn’t traveled outside dwarren territory on his excursions, had only made it to the Escarpment-what they had once called the Bluff-and the edge of human lands. Frowning, he searched for more banners, looking for the colors on the overshirts and surplices, the sigils stitched into shirts or etched into shields. He found numerous tilted crosses and references to Diermani-clasped hands, fire, white candles-but he didn’t recognize anything else. No Family crests, no stylized symbols from the Court.
When the stench became too great, the feeding of the crows too much, he retreated back to the hill, passing back out through the ranks of dead. He paused, scanned the scope of the death, then returned to where Osserin waited at the edge of the forest, the lantern he’d lit in memory of Karen, his parents, and all the rest still burning in the shepherd’s hook. Dusk had fallen, the few clouds in the sky orange and gold over the sighing of the trees.
What did you find? Osserin asked.
“A battlefield,” Colin reported, his voice muted. “Hundreds of dead. Thousands. I didn’t recognize any of the humans’ banners except those of the church.”
It has been over sixty years. The world changes.
Colin grunted.
Who fought in the battle?
Colin shrugged, troubled. “Men and dwarren. I didn’t see any of the Alvritshai.”
The Alvritshai are less willing to fight. They live longer, and they do not like to risk their children’s lives. They respect life more because it is so difficult for them to bear children. That is why they halted their expansion southward from their northern mountain reaches and the foothills and forests beneath. The dwarren made the expansion onto the plains too costly for them. But the Alvritshai have fought here before. And they will again.
Colin thought about what he’d just seen, all the faces, all the blood, particularly the face of the boy, and grimaced, sick to his stomach. He could still taste the vomit in his mouth.
He glanced back toward the plains, to where the smoke had thinned to wisps and the black cloud of birds had increased.
After a long moment, Osserin asked, What will you do? Where will you go?
“I don’t know. Portstown, I guess.”
Then safe travels.
And Osserin began drifting away.
Colin watched the Faelehgre’s retreating light with mild shock. “Farewell to you too,” he murmured.
You’ll return, Osserin said before passing out of sight beneath the trees.
Colin snorted, then shifted uncomfortably. He almost glanced down at the black mark on his arm, then realized he didn’t need to. He could feel it, a shadow beneath his skin, a taint.
Then he adjusted the satchel and headed away from the forest.
Toward the plains. Toward the Escarpment and the human lands beyond.
12
Six weeks later, he stood at the edge of the main road leading down to Portstown, shocked into immobility.
“How could I have missed all this?” He drew in a deep breath, tears burning at the corners of his eyes, and let it out in a heavy sigh. What lay before him had no resemblance whatsoever to the town that he’d left behind so many years before.
Where the port used to be-the docks where the riot broke out, the gallows where Sartori had threatened to hang him in order to gain his father’s cooperation for the expedition to the east-he could see building after building, smoke rising from the chimneys of most, black and sooty, the stone used in their construction old and gray, leeched of life. Warehouses and stockyards, he guessed, where most of the dirty, hard work got done. The buildings blocked the shoreline, but he could see the masts and rigging of ships lined up and down the waterfront, ships larger than any he’d seen before, judging by the number of masts and the complexity of the rigging.
The buildings farther south, near where the river drained into the bay, were newer. The road led down through estates and residential buildings to this section, and even from this distance Colin could tell that he’d find the marketplace there. He could see gaps between the buildings for fountains and plazas, and piercing through the rooftops here and there were the spires of churches, some topped by Diermani’s tilted cross, others by winged statues or simple poles, banners flapping in the breeze from the ocean. Across the inlet, he could see the swath of sand that protected the town from storm surges, what they’d called the Strand.
But the thick wall of stone and the buildings to the north of the town drew Colin’s attention most. Behind the defensive wall, he could see the square towers of a large building, a manse of some sort, although twice the size of anything he’d seen before, and the angled rooftops of a few smaller buildings, including another church. The manse stood where Lean-to would have been, on the hill overlooking the town.
As Colin watched, the gates of the outer wall opened, and a large force of men on horseback emerged, standards flying. Guardsmen, what Colin would have called the Armory in the Portstown of his time, but what he’d heard others refer to as the Legion since he’d reached the first human outpost of Farpoint at the top of the Escarpment, where he’d traded for coin and information. His eyes narrowed as the group descended from the walled manse down into the city proper, heading toward the ships. The banners catching the wind were half red, half yellow, the field cut diagonally. He couldn’t make out the symbol in the center, but he’d be willing to wager it was a shield.
The same banner he’d seen on the battlefield outside the forest.
The guardsmen vanished among the buildings, and Colin turned back to his study of the city. His hand massaged the grip on his staff with nervous tension, and he could feel a tightness at the base of his back, in the center of his shoulders.
“What am I doing here?” he whispered to himself.
He didn’t know. He’d expected Portstown to be similar to what he remembered, not… this.
He glanced around at the people passing on the road, a cart loaded down with late autumn squash, a man on horseback with an escort of uniformed guardsmen. No one had noticed him. No one had even looked in his direction, not even the few men and boys traveling on foot.
Loneliness settled on his shoulders, the weight of over sixty years of isolation suddenly too great a burden. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t belong here. Portstown had changed too much. But if not here, and not within the forest, then where?
As if in answer, his stomach seized. Fear lanced through him as he clamped his hand to his side, the heat already building. Before he’d left, he’d thought the pain of withdrawal from the Well and the influence of the Lifeblood had been bad but tolerable. He’d discovered otherwise on the plains when the first seizure hit. It had begun like this, a cramp, followed by the searing heat. He’d stumbled to the grass, lips pressed tight, as the pain increased, the heat seeping outward through his side into his chest, into his left arm and his legs, until it had
