Ironhand (Taurin's Chosen Book 2) Read online

  I hear the Director say, “… round up the eerie men… they will be useful as laborers… the rest of the creatures are useless to us… fumigate the place.”

  The cloaks and cobble-crunchers… hope they’re safe.

  Now, it’s up to Daral to do his part. What kind of man is he, with his scholar’s demeanor and weapons hidden in his clothing? But Flutter trusted him, right before she left.

  Taurin, let me not fail. Not again. Not—

  The desert sun is not kind to mourning cloaks. I’m pressed against the horse’s sweaty neck, my face in its mane. It smells warm and feels solid, and there’s a constant twitch in its hide.

  It doesn’t like me, and if I sit up, I can see its unhappy rolling eyes, flattened ears, and bared teeth.

  But I don’t need another reminder of what I am. I close my eyes and hold myself together. Sun rays pour upon me. Heat spreads through every part of me, exciting every atom, sending it into a frenzied spinning. The bonds holding me together are taut and strained.

  I say the words again and again: lalita vey lalita vey. Taurin… itauri… eilendi. The inside of my skull feels hollowed out and dry, every thought that wells up is snatched away by the hot hungry air.

  A gust of wind catches my cloak, sets it streaming to one side. Particles spiral away from the edges, vanish into the landscape. Many atoms are barely holding on. I grit my teeth and haul them in. I feel myself start to lose shape and solidity.

  Alarmed, I tether myself to the thing nearest me.

  The horse.

  I sink slightly into it, send tendrils of myself burrowing into its flesh, anchoring to its bones.

  The horse jerks, its gait is stuttering, unsure.

  I can control it.

  I loosen the ropes and the horse breaks into a panicked gallop, muscles bunching, desperate to throw me off.

  Shouts behind me, hoofbeats pounding on either side. A hand grasps the bridle and my horse whinnies, high and shrill. Its panting is loud in my ears.

  I send more tentacles into it, learning what a tug here, a slackening there does. I find its nerves and its brain, send thoughts of calm into it.

  By the time the baradari are in control of the situation, I’m in control of the horse.

  I keep its brain in a dull stupor, numbing its sense of my presence. I urge it to follow the other horses, keep its gait at a bone-jarring trot. I look out of its eyes and hear with its ears.

  A hand shakes me, but I dare not lift my face.

  What if I’m fused to the horse, my skin melded into its hide?

  A voice says water and I hear the precious liquid sloshing in its skin.

  I don’t answer.

  The men withdraw. I could hear their conversation but I don’t want to. Don’t want to hear the words abomination or witch or demonspawn.

  Something huge and light falls over me. The horse and I flinch; I catch a flutter of white. The intense heat on the back of my head eases.

  Shade. They’ve given me shade.

  I want to say thank you, but it’s hard enough controlling the horse.

  We both hate this, it and I.

  How long do I have to do this? Every moment merged with the fearful unhappy beast is like an itch I can’t scratch.

  I close my eyes and sing in my head. I sing the Greater Invocations, the Noonday Prayers, the hymns for the ordinary people.

  And in the middle of those I slip in, Taurin, be with Kato. Help him, Taurin! Let us not be too late!

  I feel our approach long before I raise my head and see it. The light changes, goes from a hammer-blow to a dancing patter. Light drops, I used to call them. As the light changes, so does the heat. No longer a searing, tearing beast, but a simmering cauldronful of comfort.

  The air changes as well. Its dryness no longer sucks at my breath and tugs at my atoms. There’s a tinge of coolness in it, a hint of moisture. Instead of space stretching up and on all sides for miles, we’re hemmed in, going through a narrow canyon. The hoof beats sound different, echoing off the walls.

  I lift my hand and let it run across the surface on my left. It rasps like sandpaper against my fingertips. I know without looking that the walls are bands of warm red, pale orange, and happy yellow, like solid sunshine.

  Antel Canyon, home of the eilendi. Also known as the Light Wells.

  And then I hear the bells, jingling sweet and silver and just a touch out of place. Their notes pierce me to the marrow, flow in mirrored shards through my thin gold blood.

  I straighten, throwing my head back.

  Walls flow upwards in graceful curves to right and left. They flirt with each other over our heads, now touching, now merging, now moving apart. Shakes of sunlight dapple the ground—the damp brown soil of an ancient riverbed. The scent of water and growing things wafts to my nose; tiny plants put out tendrils of fresh green across the bottom of the walls.

  We’re in single file, following the twists and turns of a long-gone river. My gaze trails across markings in the wall, all but invisible to the naked eye. Eilendi markings, etched into the strings of this place. If I try hard enough, I could probably still read them, but memory supplies the words.

  Rakshara gave up her golden voice to Taurin this day… Maro sets out today on an adventure… Baral, who will always be remembered…

  I stop before memory gives me familiar names, familiar faces.

  No. It is of no use to think on the past.

  I am outcast. Darkchild. Even if Taurin has pity on me, I belong at his feet with all the rest of the miserable twisted creatures of the world instead of in his arms with the singing eilendi.

  A tunnel opens up in front of us, a mouth expelling ancient, musty breath. There’s a flicker of movement to one side of me. I glance up and see sunshine glinting off the a guard’s crossbow. He’s lying on his stomach, bow pointed at us.

  He’s not the only one.

  My eyebrows draw together. Since when did eilendi post guards at Antel Canyon?

  Since when did the eilendi feel threatened in their own stronghold?

  Unease threads, cold and snakelike, through me. It adds to the acid churning of my stomach, that fragile mourning cloak organ that had never been designed for the vagaries of human emotion.

  We’re inside the tunnel now, and as darkness descends, I begin counting my heartbeats.

  No, not my current heartbeats, the soft, too slow ones, but the ones I remember from before.

  Five… six… seven…

  Eleven heartbeats until that first turn to the left. Six heartbeats and then a pause for an arrow to swoosh harmlessly through the thick black. Five heartbeats and a right turn. Twelve and the hoofbeats change, no longer muffled by the damp but loud, rattling, cracking like Highwind firework cannons.

  We stop and there’s a figure in the dim light, with a hand on my bridle.

  I dismount in one quick shivering movement, tearing myself from the horse. I think I should hear the noise of it, like a ripping bandage, but the transition is soundless, if not painless.

  The horse’s hide ripples all over, and I put myself out of the reach of its teeth and hooves. I spread myself thin against the warm walls. I could just sink into the porous rock, right here, right now, sink into the bones of the earth and sleep away the heartache and the end of this age and the coming of the new one.

  Perhaps I would wake in a land made anew, with angels walking the world.

  Mehmet grabs a handful of my cloak, and the choice is no longer easy.

  It’s so much easier to let him lead me, and I follow him meekly enough, into the atrium.

  It’s a round chamber, rough in shape, with flecks of mineral glistening in the ruddy walls. Light falls from a circular opening at the top, creating a pool of brightness in which green things grow. The sharp scent of herbs stabs me. For a moment the garden of potted plants, Mehmet’s hand on my arm, and the brown and cream robes of novices and full-fledged eilendi are a smear in my vision.

  “Take us to the khavan,” Mehmet
is saying. He tugs on my arm. I stumble after him, my head down, hair covering my face. My feet remember the step down into the meeting cave, the one that catches most visitors by surprise.

  Woven rugs and wooden legs go past. Mehmet puts me against the wall, drops my arm, paces the chamber. His boots are dusty; he waves away the novice with the basin of water, accepts a traditional roll of sweetbread from another. The rest of his men are with their horses, it’s just him and me and…

  Footsteps from the far end of the chamber, behind a curtain of beads. A moment later the beads clatter aside, and the khavan sweeps into the room.

  My head spins. I want to throw up.

  Not her.

  First Daral, now her? Taurin, this trial is too hard.

  She’s aged, her face more lined and yet softer than I remember. Her shining hair is hidden under a wimple, and she turns mild eyes on Mehmet.

  “Welcome to Taurin’s house, my child.” She dips her hand into a small bowl of clean water. Mehmet bends his head, the motion impatient and jerky, but she performs the ritual of blessing with practiced care.

  She half-sings, half-chants as she sprinkles water over Mehmet’s dark hair. My lips shape the words along with her. I press them together when I realize what I’m doing.

  Mehmet waits for just a fraction of a moment after she’s done, before lifting his head and beginning, “Now, then, khavan…”

  Rockhead, I think, indignantly. Must he always rush about so? Doesn’t he hear her prayers for him, her intercession on his behalf? What can man do that Taurin couldn’t match a thousandfold?

  This was the way of warriors—always wanting to be doing something themselves, instead of waiting on Taurin.

  “A moment, Taurin’s child.” The khavan—Couldn’t it have been someone else on duty today? Someone I didn’t know?—dips her hand in the bowl again and turns to me.

  She turns to me.

  My first reaction is to mist, to hide. My second is to stay absolutely still. My cloak clenches with my indecision, sigils flaring to brief life.

  “A darkchild,” the khavan says.

  “Less than that, even,” Mehmet says, offhandedly, as if I were a monkey or a halfwit. “A Highwind demon. A twisted thing with no soul.”

  “We cannot know that,” she says, gently. “It is not written in our scrolls, and when matters are outside Taurin’s given revelation, we must tread with much humility and care.” She lifts her hand.

  I flinch.

  “It may shrivel if you do that, khavan,” Mehmet’s eyes are black with a dark humor.

  I want to hit him. He doesn’t know who she is. He doesn’t care. Only horses and swords and campfires matter to men like him.

  She ignores him, makes a slow sign in the air. Her blessing to me is different, the one given to a stranger. An ishtaur.

  I wish Kato were here, if only to share this lonely place with me.

  “Khavan…” Mehmet breaks in, then says, plainly annoyed with the rites of politeness, “…forgive me, I do not know your name.”

  I slant a sideways look at her, then watch Mehmet, eager to see his face change.

  “I am Jazala,” she answers, serenely.

  She changed her name. My wings twitch. She changed her name.

  She changed her name to Sorrow.

  I stand outside the meeting chamber, doing my best imitation of a wall hanging.

  No, this is not my best imitation. I could spread myself in a rectangular shape on the wall, but I think the eilendi would have a collective fit if they saw me.

  The elders are inside the meeting chamber, a place dappled with sunshine from air holes in the high ceiling. There’s a polished stone in there that serves as a tabletop, its edges smooth and rounded from centuries of use. Water trickles out a spout in the rock wall, splashes into a small pool, and disappears underground again.

  It’s a shocking sound in the desert, that happy tinkling.

  It also masks the noises of the meeting, already distorted from reverberating off the walls.

  But I’m no longer human, and I hear their conversation, the khavanum and Mehmet’s, threading through my wings and up to my brain, completely sidestepping my ears.

  Mehmet’s trying to convince them to launch an attack on Angel Crater. Another khavan is stuck on the theological implications of me. Jazala says little, though I strain for her quiet voice amongst all the rest.

  No one’s talking about the most important thing. No one’s talking about the salt.

  I can’t stand it anymore. Guards—two of Mehmet’s baradari and two eilendi from the small but martial Akstar school—block the doorway.

  They never learned how to deal with someone like me.

  I leap for the wall next to the meeting chamber’s entrance. A flicker of movement on my periphery as the guards startle, then I’m misting through the rock, my particles finding miniscule gaps to scrape through.

  In the half-light of this neither-here-nor-there state, I brush across a sparkling something that tingles through me.

  The pattern of the world? A Seeing, here?

  Then I’m through on the other side, gathering myself together. There’s no time for cosmetic adjustments, for shading eyes from faceted dark to human brown, for forcing my voice low and mellow. It emerges thin and high and buzzed.

  “Gather seven Circles, go to the salt valley. Cast a Seeing and mend the rift between worlds. The demons are rising again.”

  They’re on their feet, Mehmet with a knife in his hand he’s not supposed to have, half the khavanum mouthing incantations.

  An Akstar eilendi rolls through the doorway, hand blurring. Poison-tipped needles hurtle through the air. I half-turn, the left side of my body vaporizes, the needles pass harmlessly through.

  “Use the Raksharan prayers and a nine-strong diamonded pattern, nested. The strings are out of alignment. Containment might be all you can do.”

  Eilendi hiss, shock and anger registering on their faces. A baradari charges me, slashes his blade at my face, to stop the spill of my words. I wrap my wings around his arms, holding him in place. Chill spreads into his skin and muscles and veins.

  Satisfaction flickers in my heart. For a moment, it’s so natural to have and use this power. The next, my stomach lurches, sickened.

  My wings whip back, tuck around my body like armor.

  “Leave the crater to Kato Vorsok and Daral Shaldur,” I continue. “The eilendi are needed at the salt.”

  They’re all staring at me, frozen still. The baradari I touched stumbles, and Mehmet steadies him with a hand on his shoulder. The man trembles, head down, confused.

  “How do you know such things?” breathes Jazala. “How do you know the ways of the eilendi?”

  You taught them to me. But the words are lumps in my throat. I cannot stand there and tell them what I was and have them see what I’ve become. I hate my long pale hands and the ever-whispering black wings. I hate my buzzing voice that betrays me when I chant the prayers, and I hate the weight trailing from my shoulders as I dance the Rakayas.

  It was different, back in Highwind, when I was so desperate to be known. Here, I’m glad that Toro is hundreds of miles away and Kato keeps my secret.

  I am ashamed.

  Mehmet scoffs. “Isn’t it obvious? That thing ingested the minds and souls of all the people who’ve been lost to us. All the ones who were kidnapped by Highwind. All the eilendi who disappeared.”

  They look at me, waiting.

  I lift my chin, and let the cloak part of me take over, protecting me from hurt. Thin and cold is my own voice, saying, “That is so.”

  I wake to pain.

  That, in and of itself, is not unusual.

  I’m chained to the wall of some building, an awning over my head. My limbs feel heavy and my eyelids like sandpaper. I recognize the feeling.

  It’s the same as after the injection Sera gave me, which kept my spiders from transforming and freeing me.

  No, not quite the same. Spiders st
ill move slowly through my body, drifting in blood, clinging to bone. They’re being careful, gathering strength, setting up ambushes and traps for the enemy in my bloodstream.

  They’ve learned to fight.

  The spiders are adaptable. The Director doesn’t understand that. A smile twitches my lips, but the effort of it hurts my face.

  I squint at the crumbling, broken landscape outside the shade. Brown cliffs form a bow shape in front of me. Rubber tubing and small machinery litter the damp ground. Wide track marks are sunken deep into soil saturated with holy water.

  Malaki Crater. I’m looking at the remnants of the Angel Eye Lake.

  I made it here. Did Daral?

  Three Highwind soldiers walk by, sloshing through puddles, guarding a group of eerie men bent double under heavy loads. The soldiers are unknown, but I can name every one of the eerie men: Bound, Gash, Sleek, Jaws. I wince, expecting them all to fall writhing to the ground, but they don’t.

  The water of the punctured lake doesn’t zap them or eat their flesh or rise up in tentacles and strangle them.

  Why doesn’t Taurin defend His holy places? I mentally catalog all of Taurin’s failings: the misconception that for centuries had us fighting the golems instead of figuring out how to lead them, the unpunished kidnapping of his eilendi, picking me to be his Chosen.

  Flutter’s transformation, Sera’s betrayal.

  And still, even after all this, here I am at this place. Doing his will again. I feel hounded, as if I’ve been driven on to a narrow path with a hunter fast on my heels. That whatever I do is already known by my pursuer, one I cannot outrun or outwit. That someone knows me better than myself, to know what I will do before I do it myself.

  Or perhaps this is what destiny feels like when you’re not on parade, but in the hands of the enemy.

  “Good, he’s awake.” Soldiers crowd under the awning, grab my arms, unshackle me from the wall. They half-drag, half-carry me into the brightness. I squint, eyes watering. One of the soldiers has pity on me, wipes a sweat-stained cloth across my cheeks, then blindfolds me.

  My spiders slip-slide across my eyes, pinprick along my ears and skin. My senses sharpen. The soldiers’ fingers bite into my arms; rocks dig against my feet as they force me on. I hear grinding machinery and the panting of eerie men. The stink of oil and sweat is in my nose.