9 CHILDREN OF CROSSING

9

CHILDREN OF CROSSING

Domacridhan

Domacridhan saw so much of Cortael in her. Beneath her mother’s influence there was Corblood in her veins, as vital to Corayne’s being as roots to a tree. And just as tangled. She struggled with it, grappling with what she could not understand.

Cortael was the same, in his youth,Dom thought, remembering his friend when he was a boy. Restless and searching, hungry for a place to belong but hesitant to drop anchor. Such was the way of Old Cor: humans born of travel and crossing, conquest and voyage from one realm to the next. It was in their bones and blood, in their steel, in their souls.

And she does not understand, for there was no one to tell her.

He watched as Corayne haggled at the Lemarta stables, negotiating for three horses. The trader was eager to see them both gone—his eyes darted to Dom standing at her shoulder, and to the sword hanging at his side. Dom kept still under his scrutiny, trying not to draw more attention than need be.

She easily bargained the trader down to half his price, handing over a purse for reins.

There were two stallions and a mare, fully tacked with filled saddlebags, all common bays with brown bodies and black manes. Dom thought of the fine horse that died beneath him in Iona. It was like comparing a hawk to sparrows, but he did not complain. The horses would serve their purpose, and their destination was only a few days’ ride away.

Corayne smirked as they walked, leading the horses from the stables clustered against the western gate of Lemarta. Their shadows were short beneath them, the sun high in the sky.

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to work with me when this is all done?” she said.

There was laughter in her voice, but he could not fathom why.

“I do not follow,” he said, the words stilted.

She shrugged. “Merchants are easier to bargain with when they’re terrified, and you seem to terrify them.”

Dom felt strangely self-conscious. “I’m terrifying?” he blanched, glancing over himself.

Well, there’s the sword, and my daggers, and my knives, and the bow and my quiver, but that isn’t much,he thought, taking stock of his weaponry. He looked from his polished leather boots to his finely made breeches and tunic, and then his belt, his cloak, and the embossed bracers laced from his palms to elbows. Everything he wore bore the antlers, worked in muted colors, green and gray and golden brown, like the misty glens of Iona. His fine steel and mail, his master-woven silks and surcoats, lay forgotten at Tíarma. I look like a pauper, not a prince.

She looks even worse.

Corayne’s loose tunic frayed at the hem, there were stains no washing could remove on her breeches, and her boots cracked at the knee, wrinkled like a mortal’s aging skin. She had stuffed her dark blue cloak away, not needing it in the heat. She bore no weapons but an old dagger, and her eyes seemed oddly open, as if they could drink in every step forward. He knew she was young, barely more than a child, but she still seemed so small and weak alongside him. Most mortals did.

“Oh,” he offered. Again he glanced down, trying to comprehend himself through a mortal’s eyes. It felt impossible, like translating between two unknown languages. “That was not my intent.”

Those words are becoming uncomfortably familiar.

Corayne didn’t mind. “Well, keep it up. That scowl will serve us well on the road.”

“I do not scowl,” Dom said, scowling. He tested the corners of his mouth, pulling his lips into what he hoped was a less foreboding expression. “Do you expect trouble?”

The west road out of Lemarta wound further inland, with the cypress forest thickening up the hills. Dom could see clearly for miles over the cliffs and the Long Sea. Even the Tempestborn did not escape his gaze, a black speck with purple sails moving merrily into deeper water. If there was any danger ahead, he would sense it a long way off. But he had little concern this far south, in the sleepy lands of Siscaria. It had been long centuries since Old Cor had ruled these shores.

“I don’t suppose bandits will bother you much,” Corayne admitted. She watched not the water but the road as it wove away from the cliffs, pale pink stones giving over to a packed earth track, rutted by cart and carriage wheels.

Dom could not imagine what fool of a bandit would try his blade, but then mortals weren’t terribly intelligent to begin with. “Because I am intimidating?”

She nodded, pleased. Her eyes were still black, even in the sun of high noon.

She has Cortael’s eyes.

“Even when you aren’t trying.”

“So why can I not simply intimidate a ship’s captain to deliver us to Ascal directly?” he mused, looking back at Lemarta. Fishing boats bobbed like jewels among the shoals. “Why bother riding to the Siscarian capital at all?”

Scoffing, Corayne eased her mare to a stop. “Because, frightening as you might be, my mother is more feared in these waters.” With a sigh, she hoisted herself up into the saddle. Mortals were graceless beings, but she was particularly clumsy in this.

She is not well accustomed to traveling on horseback,Dom realized, his gut twisting. It will make the journey all the slower.

“We’ll take our chances in Lecorra,” Corayne said, gathering the reins in one hand. “The capital port is ten times the size of this harbor.” She looked back over her shoulder, glaring at Lemarta. “And I’m not known there as I am here.”

Sarn’s voice was a hiss. “I prefer horses to boats anyway.”

“By the Spindles,” Corayne cursed, startling as Sorasa stalked out of the tree line.

Dom was not so affected. He knew Sarn was following them all the way from the city gate, where she’d split off to “avoid problems” with the soldiers guarding the city. It felt silly to him. The assassin scaled the walls and kept to the shadows where, Dom had to assume, no mortals could see her. To his eye, she stood out sharply among the leaves and tree trunks, as obvious as a second sun in the sky. At least she moved well in the woods, stepping lightly instead of crashing through the undergrowth with the usual mortal grace of a broken-legged cow. Her silence was her best quality. Perhaps her only good one.

“You needn’t come if it’s such an inconvenience,” Dom said, both sets of reins still clasped firmly in his hands. “I’ve found Lady Corayne. Our quest is our own. You’ll have payment when it is finished; on this I give my word.”

Beneath her hood, Sorasa curled her full lips.

That is a scowl,Dom thought.

“I learned long ago not to trust the promises of men. Even immortal ones,” she said. “I have an investment to protect, and I intend to see it through. The deal was to Ascal. I’ll give you no reason to go back on our bargain.”

Dom wanted no more deadweight to slow their progress, not to mention threat to their lives. Sorasa Sarn was worse than a mercenary, bought at the highest price, with no allegiance or care for Corayne or the Ward. It would be best to leave her behind. Better yet, to kill her where she stands. The realm would not mourn the loss of an assassin. And the day will come when it is my head or hers, if we are not dead already.

She stared back at him, her vibrant copper eyes pinning him in place. He held his ground and her gaze. He did not doubt she knew his mind.

“Very well,” Dom snapped, breaking first. He tossed the reins in her direction.

She caught them and swung into the saddle, at ease on horseback. She sneered at the stallion beneath her, looking over its flanks with the air of a butcher inspecting a bad cut of meat.

“You’ll lead, Sarn. I presume you know the way to Lecorra.” Dom hardly liked calling the Amhara assassin by anything other than what she was, but it felt rude to do so now.

To his surprise, she did not argue, and maneuvered her horse onto the road with a twitch of her heels. At least horsemanship is well taught in the Amhara Guild. Corayne fell in behind her, giving her mare a few tentative kicks to get her moving at a decent trot. With a sigh, Dom brought up the rear of their strange company, a mismatched trio the likes of which the Ward had never seen.

This is how all our troubles began. A line of horses on the road, a quest ahead, with Allward hanging in the balance.He shoved the grief away and leveled his eyes on the girl riding ahead of him. Her body swayed in time with the horse, finding a rhythm. From this angle he could not see her eyes, nor her father’s stern face. She was black-haired and small, as far from Cortael as a person could be. She will not share her father’s fate. That was a promise, to the Ward, to Glorian Lost, to Corayne—and to himself.

But then she turned her head to look out to the Long Sea. The sun put her features in silhouette, and there he was again, a ghost Dom could not believe in. Cortael. He was in her eyes, in the way she raised her face to the wind and searched the horizon. There was movement in her always, constant as the waves and the stars wheeling through the sky.

Dom bowed his head. He tried to think of his cousin Ridha, riding through the enclaves. Of Taristan and his horrendous wizard, their army spewing from a Spindle. His aunt, cowering in her great halls. Anything but Cortael’s gray corpse, skewered alongside his daughter.

It did not work.

By nightfall, they were so far inland Dom could barely hear the waves. At least Sarn isn’t a nuisance, he thought. The assassin rode on in blissful silence, never turning back, never lowering her hood. Occasionally her hand darted into one of her many hidden pouches or pockets, and then he could hear her crunching on something, perhaps nuts or seeds. A good meal for a mortal traveling light and fast, Dom knew. Corayne dipped a hand into her saddlebags in the same manner, helping herself to a dinner of flatbread, a smear of cheese, and thin, cured meats. She was also well prepared for their journey.

Dom felt no such urge to eat. The Vedera did not hunger so often.

Nor did they need half as much sleep as mortals.

Soon Corayne drooped in the saddle, her breath slowing to a deep and steady rhythm. With a nudge, Dom urged his horse alongside hers, ready to catch her should she fall from the saddle. Once or twice her lids fluttered, her eyes twitching through a dream.

“We should make camp so she can rest properly,” Sarn muttered, her voice barely a whisper to mortal ears. “The horses too.”

Dom frowned, pulling at the scarred side of his face. It stung. “She’s resting now. The horses we can push,” he said. “Or is it you who would prefer to stop? I confess, I have no intention of keeping you upright too.”

“Touch me and I’ll cut your hands off,” she said dryly, keeping her face to the road.

“You mortals have such a different sense of humor than we do.”

She threw a dark look over her shoulder, one he recognized from Byllskos. When she nearly put a blade through his shoulder. When she loosed a herd of half-mad bulls on him.

“I will be requiring my hands for the time being,” he whispered back.

Corayne snuffled in her sleep, her full weight balancing on his arm. In the weak light, with her hood raised, Dom saw her father in her face. He thought of Cortael at seventeen, back in Iona, when he insisted he needed only as much rest as an immortal. In the following weeks, he wavered between menacing his tutors and falling asleep in the training yard, a sword still in hand. It fell to Dom to wake him, because he weathered the ensuing outbursts best.

The memory turned bitter. The boy he taught was a man dead. A seed that grew and died in full bloom. Thinking of him was like picking at a barely healed scab, scraping dried blood away to bleed anew.

“We’ll stop before that rise,” he said sharply, pointing to a hill hunching black against the deep blue night. Will that shut your viper mouth?

“We’ll stop at the top,” she shot back. The bitter ache of memory gave way to frustration. “I’m not getting caught on the low ground.”

“You won’t be caught by anything,” Dom whispered in annoyance.

But the edge of his mind itched with doubt. Certainly no one will pursue us. The cursed mortal and his red priest do not know of Corayne, nor can they scour the Ward looking for every branch of the Corblood tree. He glanced at the cypress forest, reading the shadows. I hope.

“I’ll keep watch,” he said.

Her bright eyes flared again, flame in the starlight.

“That isn’t a comfort to me.”

On that we can agree.

Again Dom thought he ought to forsake an oath just this once and leave Sorasa Sarn dead in a ditch.

To the north, the Corteth Mountains were a jagged dark haze, even to his eye. Snow clung only to the highest peaks this deep into summer. The Corteth, the Teeth of Cor, were dozens of miles away, on the other side of the Impera, the Emperor’s River. It wove through the valley, making its way west to Lecorra and the Long Sea. They would reach it soon and cross the river from which Old Cor had sprung. Dom did not know what legends the mortals kept or if there was even a grain of truth left in their histories, but in Iona, things were more certain. The Corborn mortals of another realm had first come to Allward somewhere in this golden valley, stepping through a Spindle to build their empire.

Trees grew over the rise, good camouflage from the road below. There was no campfire—Sarn would not allow it—but the air was warm enough. The Amhara slept strangely, her back propped up against the roots of a tree, her face forward, so she might only need to open her eyes to spot Dom at the far side of their meager camp. She did just that every twenty minutes, eyes glowing like hot coals before they closed again. Dom shook his head at her every time.

Corayne lay between them, tucked under her cloak. She’d woken just long enough to tumble out of the saddle and find a soft patch of grass.

With both his companions asleep, Dom finally allowed himself something to eat, if only to pass the time. It did not take long for a rabbit to pick its way into their circle, nose twitching and eyes bright. Dom made no noise as he snapped its neck and skinned it clean with a few quick cuts of his knife. With no fire, he made do and consumed it raw, eating the liver last.

Slowly, Corayne raised her head, her eyes wide and fascinated.

“Won’t that make you sick?” she whispered.

He wiped his fingers off on the rabbit’s fur. “We do not get sick,” he answered.

Corayne sat up slowly, her cloak pooling around her. “You don’t sleep either,” she said, resting her chin on a hand. Dom felt like a plant being studied, or a page of riddles deciphered. It was not unpleasant, somehow. Her curiosity was innocent.

“We sleep, but not often,” he replied. “We don’t need it as much as mortals do.”

“And you don’t age.”

“After a fashion.”

He thought of Toracal, with his streaks of gray hair, earned over thousands of years. His aunt, with the lines on her brow, at the corners of her eyes, around her mouth, on her hands. The Vedera are called immortal by those who can not fathom a life of so many millennia, stretched beyond the mortal ability to measure. Death avoids us, but it is not a stranger.

There was steel in the world, blades that could cut and kill them. Immortality seemed far less certain after seeing so many of his own die before the temple, their blood indistinguishable from that of any low mortal walking the Ward. And my scars are proof enough of our vulnerability, small as it may be.

“It’s a good thing there aren’t very many of you,” Corayne said in a low voice.

Dom startled, not in confusion, but surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Or else your kind would have conquered the world.” Her answer was blunt.

“That is a very mortal impulse to have,” Dom said, and meant it. Conquest over the men of the Ward seemed foolish to him, even at his young age. Mortals rose and fell like summer wheat. Kingdoms were born and died. Those he’d known in his first century were dust now, barely shadows in his long memory. Why bother reaching out a hand for what could disappear before you grasp it?

Even so, there were histories of the Vedera too, records of immortals who fought alongside or against the men of the Ward. For glory, for sport, for nothing at all. Dom could not imagine it for himself or his people now. They defended their homes on rare occasion, but nothing more. Cowards they are now, hiding in their enclaves. Ready to let this world crumble around them.

Corayne stared with her keen gaze. She had a way of prodding without words.

“My people are focused on finding a way home,” he offered. “But the way was lost to us, the Spindle closed, and even its location destroyed long ago.”

“Destroyed?” she asked, cocking her head.

“The ground my people first arrived on is now at the bottom of the Long Sea, swallowed by the waves,” he answered softly, trying to see a place he had never been. “Every day we hope for another doorway, another Spindle. A way back to Glorian.”

The last cobwebs of sleep seemed to lift from Corayne, and she leaned closer, sharp with interest. Her tangled braid fell over one shoulder, gleaming almost blue in the starlight.

“Your realm must be magnificent,” she said.

“I suppose.” Dom shrugged again. “I am Wardborn, still young among my people, still learning the realm we live in now. And what I know of my own realm comes from others.”

He felt the familiar lick of regret that came every time he thought of the realm he did not know, the home he might never see. It was tinged with sour, green envy of all those who did know Glorian and could remember its stars.

“They are whole while I am not.”

“We have that in common, I guess,” Corayne said softly. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around herself, though the air was still warm, even for mortals.

Dom narrowed his eyes. He felt worlds apart from her, separated by a pane of glass. “How so?”

She dropped her gaze to the grass. “I only know my father, his blood, what we come from, what we were born as, from what others tell me.” Her fingers picked at a leaf nervously. “And they’ve told me very little.”

She’s interrogating me,Dom realized, looking Corayne over.

The curious gleam had not left her eyes. There was hunger too, a thirst for answers she could not get elsewhere, and a strong will to find them. Dom was reminded of scholars back in the enclave, combing their archives for some scroll or tome, for word of Spindles, for any whisper of Glorian Lost. But I am not a shelf of books eager to be picked through.

She ran her hands through the grass like a child. It was a good act.

This wound will never heal if you keep cutting it open,he warned himself. But somehow Dom wanted to. He wanted to remember Cortael and give Corayne something to remember too.

Do not,he thought. Shut the door on those decades, and let them turn to dust as the centuries pass. Such is the Vedera way, our only defense against years of memory.

“You’re Spindleblood. Corblood,” he said flatly, if only to give her something. “Your ancestors were travelers of another realm, mortal as the men of the Ward, but set apart. Some say the Cors were born of the Spindles themselves, not another realm. But your kind fell with Old Cor, your bloodlines dwindling through the centuries.” Her eyes shone in the starlight, egging him on. “It makes you restless; it makes you ambitious; it gives you a want so deep you can hardly name it.”

Her black gaze seemed to deepen. He could smell the eagerness on her.

“I said the same to your father, decades ago.” The wound opened again, a tear through his heart. Dom winced against it, carrying on. “When he raged in his way, frustrated, a mortal boy among living statues, who could not make his flesh into stone no matter how hard he tried.” His breath caught. “I am sorry you had to grow up with no one who knew your blood, what it demanded. What it makes you,” he said quietly.

This time, she did not scold him for the apology. Instead her face turned hard, and her eyes were shuttered windows. Whatever she looked for, she could not find.

“And what of my father, raised by immortals, who could not even fathom what it is to live in mortal flesh?” she said. “If you pity me, you must pity him too.”

The sting burrowed deep, a needle of white-hot pain. Dom flinched and looked away. He heard Corayne stand, her feet rustling the grass like a rough wind.

“Elders don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t age,” she bit out, standing. “But you bleed. Can you love? Did you teach my father to? Because he did not love me.”

“There is not a creature in any realm who cannot love,” Dom answered hotly. His ancient temper flared and guttered. It filled him; it hollowed him out. Anger was still foreign and corrosive in his body. Without knowing it, he crossed the grassy hill, until he stood over Corayne, tall as a mountain.

She held her ground.

“And I certainly loved your father,” he said. “Like a brother, like a son. I was there for his first steps, his first tooth, his first words, screaming as they were. The first drop of blood to fall.” Inside he roared, seeing it all over again. “And the last.”

Corayne’s mouth pressed to nothing; her questions finally failed her. Over her shoulder, Sarn’s open eyes were two burning candles.

“Go back to sleep, my lady,” he whispered, turning his broad back on Corayne.

She was happy to oblige, settling down with a very mortal huff. She stilled quickly, eyes firmly shut, but Dom could hear her heart beating rapidly, her breath uneven. Across the clearing, Sarn’s heart thumped a steady, slow beat. Her eyes did not close.

He was tempted to sneer at her, but an odd smell stopped him cold.

Smoke.

He stilled, head raised to the air. There was smoke, somewhere close, its scent curling around him in a phantom wind. He could not see it, but he could smell and taste the acrid burn. It was not woodsmoke, nor a brush fire. Nothing common.

But it was not unfamiliar.

This was the charring of flesh, hands cracked to bone, skin flaking to ash.

Terror lashed down his spine.

Sarn was already on her feet, her hood torn away, her body coiling with tension. She glared at him, reading the fear as it crossed his face.

“Corayne, get up. Sarn, the horses,” he barked, already at Corayne’s side. He took her by the shoulders, pulling her upright before she could open her eyes.

The Amhara made for the animals without argument, but froze at the tree line. The sword at her side sang free of its sheath. Her grip adjusted and she raised the blade high overhead, the steel like a bird of prey poised to strike from the sky.

Dom could hear the horses, undisturbed in their sleep, as if nothing were amiss. The smell of burned flesh only deepened, until Corayne clapped a hand over her nose, her eyes watering.

“What is it?” she said, her voice shaking. Dom did not answer, but moved in front of her, one hand still on her arm.

Sarn took measured steps backward, careful to keep her footing with her sword still raised. Her focus locked ahead, on the shadows wavering beneath knotted cypress. Dom did not need to stand in her place to know what she saw.

It was only a question of how many.

Corayne bit back a gasp of fear as he pulled his own sword free, its keen edges cutting the air. He wished for armor, but leather would have to do, for as long as it could.

How did he find us? How could he know?Dom cursed, searching the trees for the scarlet-robed wizard and Taristan himself. In Dom’s mind, he was still painted in Cortael’s blood, laughing as it bubbled over his lips, with the Spindleblade in hand, more taunting than any smile.

The corpses, the corrupted creatures of the Ashlands and Asunder, wove up the hill in their lumbering steps. White faces leached of color, burned to the bone, their lips torn and cracking, their armor black and greasy with oil, like chicken fresh from the skillet. At the sight of their weapons—rusty knives and broken swords, notched axes and splintered shields—Dom nearly fell to his knees. By the grace of Baleir alone did he remain standing, though every piece of him wished to crumble. Corayne’s arm felt cold in his hand. They could run, but without the horses they might be driven into an ambush at the foot of the hill.

The first came through the trees with a lipless smile, leering at Sarn and her sword. It plodded on twisted limbs, undeterred in its path. The Amhara moved in time, keeping her distance as she retreated across the clearing, her eyes wide and unblinking. Twin spots of color rose in her cheeks, the only evidence of her own fear. Still her heart beat slowly, as if she were only sleeping.

Six more followed, with other shapes wavering through the trees. They smelled like a pile of burned bodies, like a rotten inferno.

“Elder,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Can they be killed?”

Despite all, Dom felt the tug of a grim smile.

“Yes, they can.”

Sarn stopped moving, her feet set.

“Good.”

All lethal grace, she moved in a killing arc, her sword cutting the air in two as she drew a slanting path.

Dom narrowed his focus to the corpses and Corayne, keeping both at the edge of his perception. With the girl behind him and the creatures ahead, he took lunging steps, his sword twisted in both hands, flashing with the weight of starlight. He drove through the first creature, hefting his blade like a woodsman’s ax. It cut the corpse in half, severing the body at the waist with the ease of steel through water.

Were they always so frail? he thought, turning on his heel to chop down another.

Despite her training as an assassin, Sarn stumbled next to him, nearly losing her balance as her sword passed through an Ashlander. She bit out a cry of bewilderment, stopping to watch the corpse soldier.

Dom did the same, and hardly believed his eyes.

Instead of cutting the Ashlander from shoulder to hip, cleaving through flesh, her sword moved as if through mist. The edges of the creature curled from the blade in wisps of white, black, and a shock of ghostly blue. The rest faded like the smoke of a snuffed candle, trailing into nothing.

Sarn did not react, her focus snapping to the next Ashlander, and the next, still coming through the trees. They were faster now, lunging, spurred to action by her strike. She never lost her balance again.

Dom balked, looking back at the two he had already dispatched. But instead of bodies, there was only smoke curling on the ground, disappearing into the grass.

Corayne gaped, slack-jawed, at the sight.

One roared a tortured scream, the voice inhuman, and Dom reacted with blurring speed, raising his sword to parry a cursed blow. Instead his blade passed through the ruined iron of corpse armor, and another Ashlander gave over to nothing.

The others did the same, fleeing before every strike. Their own weapons turned to dust against steel, until there was nothing in the clearing but the trio and the drifting smell of flame.

In the trees, the horses continued to doze.

Dom spun in a circle, searching for more. Searching for the trick. He expected Taristan to fall on them, expected the wizard to rain lightning. He thought he heard the bell again, tolling for the temple and the fallen. But there was nothing but the breeze in the cypress. His breath came hard and heavy, not from exertion, but from pure bewilderment.

Corayne fell bodily to the ground, her face bone white.

Before Dom could reach her, Sarn blocked his path. The scorpion on her neck looked poised to strike.

“What the fuck was that?” she growled.

The world wheeled around him.

Dom opened his mouth to answer, and vomited rabbit liver in reply.