darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,55
don’t want to speak of it.”
“Heavy lies the heart that holds command?” she asked, sympathetically.
“Something like that, yes.” I wanted a drink then as I had not for months—with my whole heart and more than half my soul.
Aral? Triss could sense my mood if not my exact thoughts.
It’s nothing, Triss. We both knew I was lying, but he didn’t press.
Siri spoke again. “Remind me sometime, under the morning sun when the world is bright and sleep is far away, to tell you about the nightmares I had in the early months of my run as First Blade. But not here, and not so close to night. Now, you should get some more sleep. It’s an hour still till the time you set for us to move on.”
“Not going to happen. I’ll take a turn around the perimeter and see how things stand with Altia and Jaeris and the other sentries.” I needed to get my mind off foul dreams.
Siri looked dubious for a moment, then shrugged and went back to her bedroll. She was asleep by the time I passed her on my way to the nearest of the guard posts less than a minute later. It was the one I’d given to Malok. I’d assigned the duty to some of the younger students who had not participated in the slaying of the Avarsi, both because they were more rested, and to make them feel as though there were other things that they could do for the order. Important things.
Tell me about the dream, sent Triss. Bits of it bled over our link, but only bits. All I could tell was that it involved the goddess and that it frightened and revolted you. If Siri hadn’t woken you when she did, I soon would have.
It’s really nothing, Triss. Guilt at trying to take the place of the goddess in our order mostly.
Tell me.
All right. So I did, spitting it out in bursts of mindspeech as I climbed up the steep rock wall to the spot where Malok and Yinthiss waited and watched.
The place where we had camped was little more than a flatter section of trail at the bottom of a long winding crevice carved into the mountainside by the spring floods. It was dry at the moment and very defensible, but also a potential death trap if a big rainstorm came through, and this was the season where storms could yet bring rain as easily as early snow here at the lower altitudes. I would have preferred not to risk sleeping there, but Kelos said this was the last good place we could stop short of the actual top of the pass, and that was at least another seven hours of hiking and climbing ahead of us. At that point, exhaustion had won over caution, and we had collapsed on the spot.
“Any sign of clouds?” I asked as I poked my head out of the narrow chimney I’d used to reach the ledge where the young man and his Shade perched.
Malok had assumed a cross-legged pose—it was that or let his legs dangle—with his back against a bend in the rock. He smiled at me, exposing white teeth in a face nearly as dark as Siri’s. That plus his straight black hair suggested that his family came from the high mountains in the northernmost part of Kadesh.
“Not so much as a wisp, First Blade. This sun has driven Yinthiss deep into my shadow. It’s really brutal—much worse than it would be at this height in the village where I was born.”
“Janpor Province?” I asked, naming the region I had guessed.
He nodded. “The western edge, more than three thousand miles north and east of here—mostly north—beyond Hurn’s Gate even.”
“That explains the difference in the sun. We’re close to the dividing line between north and south here, and the light is stronger at every height.” He gave me that look that youth reserve for when their elders tell them things that they already know, and I had to suppress a laugh. “I’ll leave you to your watching then, if you have nothing else to report.”
“Nothing at all, First Blade. The only things I’ve seen are the sun, a few birds, and a lone gryphon flying high up and far away an hour ago. I would have called an alert if it came closer, but it stooped on something not long after I spotted it, and I haven’t seen it since. So it must have downed its prey.”