“Saydhi? Yes, there is. In fact, that’s probably a very good idea.”
“Let’s move, then,” he said, cautiously rising.
“I assume you want me walking in front?”
Siris nodded. “And you lead the monster.”
She obeyed, striking out, horse in tow. Leaving the roadway made the path more difficult. However, the opportunity to put most of the gear on her animal meant that—rougher though the terrain was—he had a much easier time of it. He actually found himself enjoying the walk, particularly as the weather took a pleasantly cool turn.
Over the next few days, they slowly climbed in elevation, and the furrowed landscape of rocks and cliffs gave way to more greenery. Isa knew a little-used pass through the heights, and they began passing thickets of thin, reedlike growths that climbed high into the air.
It was bamboo, Siris realized. He’d seen wares crafted from it come through Drem’s Maw, but had never seen the plants alive. It seemed incredible to him that a week or two of walking could change the vegetation so soundly—Isa tried to explain something about a “rain shadow” with the mountains, whatever that meant.
He kept close watch on her, binding her tightly every night. She submitted wordlessly, though her wrists got rubbed raw, and each morning when she rose her steps were stiff with soreness and cramps caused by the awkward sleeping. When he could, he tied her to a tree instead. That seemed to be slightly more comfortable.
They didn’t speak much. Not nearly as much as they had on that first day, when he’d still nurtured a glimmer of trust. Siris tried to spend the time thinking about what to do. Unfortunately, he kept thinking of things he wanted to add to his list. That distracted him.
And so, he decided to try some of them. Isa watched him, baffled one night, as he constructed a rope swing and hung it from a branch, then swung on it.
“That’s a children’s activity,” she said.
“Oh?” he said. “Are they the only ones allowed to have fun?”
His reply seemed to disturb her greatly. That evening, he took down the swing and used the ropes to bind her. Then, in his book, he wrote down rope swings as one of the things he definitely enjoyed.
They continued their hike. During the traveling, Isa proved her competence on more than one occasion. She always found fresh water for the camp, even when he would have thought it impossible. He tried to learn how she did it, and found himself very satisfied as he learned to spot good campsites.
A few times, she ranged on ahead, then returned to lead them a different direction. Apparently, these highland hills and valleys were populated with a large number of free daerils that roved in bands. He never caught sight of them, though he and Isa did cross a few old camps and the remnants of the occasional caravan, skeletons peeking through the charred, burned-out remains.
As they left one such location, he found himself wondering about her motives. Was all of this—the care she took with the camps, the show of protecting him from roving daerils—just an act? Like her laughter had been on that first day, her wry friendliness? Could guiding him be a long-term attempt to get him to let his guard down?
Would he go to sleep one night, then never awake, killed by a hidden dagger?
Each night, he tied the bonds tightly, hating himself as he did so. Better to hate himself than to die because of another betrayal.
Siris followed Isa and the horse up the forested hillside. He was surprised the horse could make it up the steep incline; the beast seemed to have less trouble with it than he did. He had to be wary not to get too close, lest the animal drop a gift down at him. He was increasingly certain that it waited until Siris was close to do its business.
The air was hot and muggy, and the sun was veiled in a sheath of gray clouds. They were coming down out of the hills, leaving the pass behind them. If anything, the land here was even more lush than before. Enormous forests of bamboo spread like green blankets over the rolling hills. The tall, slender plants were almost like the lawn of some gigantic creature—which made Siris and Isa the insects that prowled among the blades of grass.
The Infinity Blade hung in its sheath on his back, where he’d moved it after getting it caught repeatedly in the underbrush. He no longer wore the cloak; they hadn’t passed a living soul in days.
He practically crawled the last steep distance up to the hilltop, pulling on grass slick with dew. The ground here smelled alive. If the people of Drem’s Maw knew that just across those mountains, they’d find this paradise of growth and life . . .
They wouldn’t know. They would live their lives at work, slaving as they hung from the roof of their cavern and cut the fast-growing stalactites, delivering the minerals to the God King as tribute. Siris reached the top of the hill and stood up tall, taking a deep breath of the misty air. If he could get the weapon to the Worker of Secrets, would that start something that truly brought freedom to his people?
It was an oddly daunting thought. Though the God King still lived, Siris had defeated him in a fair duel. He didn’t believe that he’d won by accident, or that the God King had allowed it. He had enough dueling experience to know when someone gave their all.
That victory, however small, left him wondering. Could they all be defeated? Could his people actually be freed? He reached over his shoulder, touching the hilt of the Infinity Blade.
Isa stood atop the hill, looking up to the right, toward one of the lower peaks in the mountain range. She seemed thoughtful.
“What?” he asked.
“The rebirthing chamber I told you about,” she said, sounding distracted. “It’s up there. On the slopes of that peak. I stumbled upon it by accident. I was lost . . .”
“I thought you couldn’t get lost,” he said, smiling.
She didn’t hear the humor in his voice. “I can’t now. But I still could, back then.” She shook her head, then continued on her way down the slope.
Siris joined her, walking beside her, rather than in his customary place behind. She eyed him at the irregularity, but he was tired of watching that animal’s backend. The thing was demonspawn for certain.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“A little over a day,” she said. “Then we’ll have to decide if you try to sneak in or challenge the guardians.”
“Sneak?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Have you heard me in my armor?”
She nodded. “I just . . .”
“What?”
“It’s so odd, the way you people do things. Stepping right up, announcing you want to fight, going into it.”
“It’s the path of honor and civilization.”
“I wonder if that’s one of the ways the Deathless keep you in line,” Isa said. She was so subdued. Professional, quiet—not cold, but giving up no more than she had to. He missed the way she’d been on that first day.
“Keep us in line?”
“Sure. They convince everyone that it’s ‘honorable’ to fight one on one, formally. That way, when we rise up, we do it with loud declarations and challenges. It gives them more time to prepare.”
Siris pushed a bamboo branch out of the way, frowning. He didn’t like the idea that honor, like everything else, might have become just another tool for the Deathless. There had to be some things that were beyond their touch, didn’t there?
“Watch your step,” Isa said.
He paused, then looked to the side. The ground here had grown rocky, and was broken by cracks, each about as long as his leg. There was a pungent scent to the air and, Siris realized with surprise, heat was rising from the cracks.
“They’re all over the place out here,” Isa said. “You have to watch yourself around pools of water; some of them grow so hot, they can boil you faster than you can scream for help.”
Siris shivered, stepping away from the cracks. They continued on their way in silence for a few minutes, before Siris finally found himself asking something he’d been wondering for a while. “Isa, why do you want the Infinity Blade? Really?”<
br />
She kept walking.
“You talk about humankind fighting back,” he said. “A moment ago, you used the word ‘we.’ Half the time, you act like a freedom fighter. The other half, you act like an opportunist trying to make off with whatever wealth you can get. Which is the truth and which the mask?”
“You, with good reason, don’t trust me not to kill you in your sleep.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“The preemptive kind. If you don’t trust me not to kill you, why would you trust any answer I give about my true motivations?”
She has a point, he thought. “Well, maybe I’m just tired of walking in silence.”
“Please tell me that doesn’t mean you’re going to start singing.”
“I happen to have a very good voice,” he said with a huff.
She cracked just a hint of a smile. After a few moments of walking through the bamboo—they were following some kind of game trail—she spoke. “Maybe I don’t know which one I am. Maybe part of me thinks we should fight back, but the rest of me thinks there’s no point. There’s no real way to stop them, so why try? Why not just take care of myself, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do know.” He stopped himself from asking the next question. And that’s why you betrayed me?
Isa started to slow.
“What?”
“This path,” she said, kneeling down and inspecting the ground. “It’s getting too wide, too regular.”
“Someone else uses it?”
“Maybe,” she said. “We’ve come to the area where villages are more common, and we just intersected with the outflow from one of the more well-traveled passes.” She stood up, then handed him the reins of the horse.
He took them, and she pushed away through the bamboo. He hesitated, then tied the horse off and followed. She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t send him back. They made their way toward a higher elevation, where the bamboo was thinner.
He joined her atop the rise, scanning the valley before them. It didn’t look like anything special. A wide, but shallow stream ran through the middle of it, and there were some hills along one side.
“Well?” he asked.
“If I were going to ambush travelers coming this way,” she said, pointing, “I’d do it there, where the pathway turns along with the stream toward those two lower ridges. I’d also make sure the ‘game trail’ through this area was kept well-cleared and made obvious, so that people drifted my way.”
Siris rubbed his chin.
“It’s not likely,” she said. “But I think we should go around.”
“All right,” Siris said. “Sounds good to me.”
She led the way back to the horse, then backed them up a ways before cutting around. Was this a trap? But . . . if it was, she wouldn’t have said anything. He’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t know much about being a woodsman.
He shook his head, joining her in front again. “Isa,” he asked, “what are the Deathless?”
“I don’t think anyone can answer that for you except the Deathless themselves. Not that people haven’t tried. In some of the world’s larger cities, I could throw a stone in any direction and have a good chance of hitting some theologian or scholar who thinks he knows the answer.”
“What do you think?”
She didn’t answer at first. “They’re gods,” she finally said. “What else would they be?”
“A god wouldn’t have fallen to my blade,” Siris said. “Even if the death wasn’t permanent. If they were really gods, no mortal could have fought one of them and won.”
She didn’t reply, though he caught her giving him a measuring glance.
“Maybe,” he said, “there’s nothing special to them other than knowledge. They know things, like how to make the rings work, like how to manipulate others.”
“And how to stop aging?” she said skeptically. “And come back to life when killed?”
“In the next town over from ours,” Siris said, “there was a very learned doctor. He was trained by a doctor before him, and that doctor by another doctor. This man could bring a mother giving birth—and the child—back from what other healers thought was fatal. Maybe it’s like that. If you have the right information, you can do what everyone else thinks is a miracle.”
“No,” Isa said softly. “There’s more to it than that. Being Deathless is about more than knowledge. I—”
She was cut off by a scream. Both of them spun toward the sound. The shouting continued, and Siris caught what might have been a call for help.
“Is that—” Siris began.
“—The place where I said there might be an ambush?” Isa said. “Yeah. Looks like someone wasn’t smart enough to go around. I advise hanging back to watch, but I suppose you’re going to want to go rush and help the fool who . . .”
Siris didn’t hear the rest of what she said, as he was already charging toward the sound.
Chapter Six
Siris burst out onto the stony bank of the stream. He could hear splashing downriver.
There! he thought, running toward a group of daerils with pale yellow skin and bony ridges. They hooted, surrounding a solitary figure who had fallen into the shallow water while trying to cross the stream. The traveler wore a brown robe; Siris couldn’t see much of him beyond that.
Four daerils. Could he handle four at once? There was no reason to think that feral daerils would obey the Aegis code of honor. Not much choice now, he thought.
Siris spun, sweeping outward with the Infinity Blade. Bamboo rattled against itself, clattering to the ground as he cut two dozen stalks free. The clamor brought the daerils up short, and they turned on him, one sniffing the air. The poor wayfarer crawled toward shelter beside some rocks.
The four daerils prowled toward Siris. One at the front grunted something, and the others split up, moving to surround Siris. Gripping his blade, he stepped into the shallow river, the water coming up only to his calves. If he got surrounded, the splashing of those trying to come at him from behind would give vital warning.
The daerils were all of the same species. These grunted and hooted rather than speaking, though they wore crude armor and carried swords. They had hollow-looking, almost skeletal faces. He couldn’t distinguish them by their features, though the leader wore armor stained the color of blood. This one stepped into the river directly in front of Siris, and for a moment, it looked as if he might follow the ancient ideal after all.
Then the leader waved, and the other three moved into the river to attack. Rustling and hooting came through the bamboo in the distance. More were coming. Great.
Siris positioned himself, trying to watch—or at least listen for—all four. The cold mountain water was icy on his feet as it seeped through his boots. Something about his circumstances suddenly struck him as familiar.
I’ve never been in this situation before, he thought, spinning on one of the daerils that tried to come at him. The beast moved back in the water, growling.
All of Siris’s training had been focused on single duels. And yet, there was a sense of familiarity to this larger fight . . . as there had been in the castle, when he’d faced the two golems. There was something there, something inside of him. If he could just reach it . . .
The daerils attacked, and he shook out of the reverie. Siris jumped forward and engaged the first one to gain a second or two breather from those coming up behind.
He slammed the daeril’s sword out of the way, then rammed his weapon into its chest. Splashes behind. Siris ripped the sword free and yelled, spinning, coming down on the arm of a daeril swinging for him. The daeril’s blood was red, just like that of a person.
Keep moving, keep moving. Splashes and hoots, cries of rage and pain. A third daeril was coming at his side, where Siris had intentionally left himself open. The creature struck as Siris snapped his fingers together, summoning the God King’s shield in a flash of blue. The daeril’s eyes opened wide as its sword was blocked
by the steel.
Siris shoved the beast’s weapon aside, then struck, sword through the neck.
That left Siris completely exposed from the back. There was no way to stop the fourth daeril in time. Siris spun, expecting to feel the blow at any moment.
Instead, he found the daeril splashing and flailing, a figure in a long black coat hanging onto its back, her arms around its neck in a choke hold. The daeril tried to stand, and Isa cursed, kicking at its leg and bringing them both down in a splash of water. The creature was wheezing.
“Wow,” Siris said.
“If . . . you’re done . . . admiring,” Isa said, straining, “could you please stab this thing?”
Siris leaped forward and rammed the blade down into the creature’s chest. Isa rolled free, water pouring over her as she puffed in and out. “Damn,” she said. “Those things are strong.”
Siris helped her to her feet, and she pulled off her coat—it was so wet that it flopped when she moved. She dropped it and let it float away, fishing out one of the daerils’ fallen swords. The hooting of other daerils was growing closer. A second later, eight of them broke out into the small clearing.
“Hell take us,” Siris whispered.
“I believe I warned you that this was a perfect place for an ambush,” Isa said, her teeth chattering as she raised her sword.
“You did.”
“And I believe I suggested restraint as you charged off like a fool.”
“You did.”
“Well, so long as I’m proven right, I guess I can die happy. And cursing your name, of course.”
Siris smiled wanly as the newcomers fanned out, looking at the corpses of the fallen, the blood coloring the river. One of the daerils—the one whose arm he’d cut off—had crawled to the bank. One of the newcomers killed him with a strike to the head, a sneer on his lips.
“If it turns out that guy yelling for help was just a means of drawing us in here,” Isa said, “I’m going to be really annoyed at you.”
“You aren’t now?”
“Too cold to be annoyed yet. Did we have to fight in the river?”
“Felt right at the time,” Siris said as the daerils closed in. Their hooting had grown agitated. They obviously didn’t like having lost so many members during a simple ambush. “I don’t think the guy we saved is with them. He seems terrified.” Siris couldn’t make out much of him, only a robed figure cowering behind the rocks.