The Sacred Band

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

A cave on an outcropping of rock at the very edge of the Outer Isles, out beyond Thrain and Palishdock. The dark of a cloud-heavy night. The air and sea in furious struggle. Not a place many would choose to rest, and yet that was what Corinn and Hanish knew they had to do. Atop Po, they had ranged over hundreds of miles, gathering sorcerers all along the way. They had pushed Po to great speed over the sea, leaving the Santoth far behind, but not so far that they would not catch up with them soon. Though he showed not the slightest indication of needing it, Po had earned a rest, such as it was. Having furled his wings, the dragon perched sentinel above them, still as the wet stone and just as black. Corinn hoped that his wounds were healing. She thought so. The turmoil in his mind had grown calm. Damaged, yes, but resolved.

She did her best to always keep a part of her mind speaking to him, and to the other dragons. They were each of them faithful to her, but she could feel their desire for freedom. When she was gone, no other would be able to keep them tamed.

He will warn us, Corinn said, if they come faster than we expect .

Hanish stood at the mouth of the cave, gazing out into the night as if he were keeping his own watch. “I know he will,” he responded. “I’m not doubting him. Just looking is all. Just looking.”

The leaning rock walls around them provided the only shelter from the heaving of waves and the wind. A small fire cast their only light. Corinn fed it with things her servants had packed into her saddlebags: a tent and its bamboo poles; thick, hard crackers that burned as well as wood and that she could not eat anyway; rolls of parchment she would never now need; the leather bags themselves. My servants: what would they think to see me now? Though she took warmth from the fire, she knew she could have sat in the damp chill and not been affected by it. Just as she had gone days now with no food or drink. She was as empty as she had ever been, and yet she went on, feeding on the goal she had set herself.

To Hanish, she sent the thought, We have them all behind us.

“You’re sure of it?”

Yes. I can’t tell you how many they are. Their number never sets in my mind, but I can feel that they’re all together. They have a different energy. It hums at the same tune now, with only one purpose .

“Catching us?”

Exactly.

“We have the scoundrels just where we want them, then,” Hanish said, turning back toward Corinn and the fire. “Ha-ha! Take that!” He swiped at the air with an exaggerated flourish that made Corinn smile. Or that made her know she would have smiled, had it been possible. He came away from the cave mouth and settled himself beside the fire. He rubbed his hands together and held them, palm out, toward the flames.

Old habits, Corinn thought to herself, are hard to break.

Hanish said, “I guess that’s it, then. We have a few hours. Until dawn, perhaps. Then it’s nothing but the Gray Slopes for us. Have you any way of calling this worm of yours?”

I won’t need to. It can hear the song even more clearly than the Santoth. It has been telling me as much for years. I just didn’t listen. I suspect it already knows we’re coming.

“Ah. So the worm is expecting us,” Hanish said. “I guess it’s not the first time either of us has had dealings with worms.”

No, but this one I like better than senators and leaguemen. It’s not like anything else. It doesn’t really talk to me. That’s not quite right. It’s more like the way I communicate with Po. It thinks to me. It’s very old, Hanish. I think it’s something the Giver made when the world was still new, before Elenet, before any of the creatures of the land. It has a quiet mind. It’s gentle, except that it knows the Giver’s tongue is not for us to speak. That’s one thing that matters to it.

“And what, exactly, happens when we find this creature? You’ve not filled me in on the specifics yet.”

I don’t know, Corinn said. This was not entirely the truth. She did know. The worm itself had shown her what was to happen in images that she had once thought of as nightmares. Now, those same images were the exact fate she sought. They were not, however, things she could say. Not even to Hanish. I think we just have to find it, she said. The rest will come with that.

“All right, love,” Hanish said, “the rest will come with that. You should sleep now if you can. Even just a little. This next flight will be long. Come.”

He indicated that she could rest her head on his lap. She did so, and, without prompting, he began to talk. Corinn lay, watching the play of the firelight on the cave wall, marveling that even now-with everything that had happened and was happening-she was still learning more about how to love this man. How was it possible that she could rest her head on a ghost’s lap and learn of things he had never told her while he lived? How could she feel the warmth of him, the texture of his tunic against her cheek, the weight of his hand where it rested on her shoulder? She tried to listen to his tales, but after a while what she truly did was listen to the sound of his voice. How she liked his voice. It managed to be truthful but at the same denied that life was anything less than a grand amusement. Corinn breathed him in, wishing she had some of his equanimity herself, wondering if this was how she gained it, by having him complete her.

Later, after Hanish had fallen silent, thinking her asleep, Corinn remembered another dream. It had nothing to do with the worm. She had only had it once, on the morning that she had worked three acts of magic, including bringing Aliver back from the dead. In the dream, she had been riding in a carriage down from Calfa Ven. When Aaden became unwell, she stepped out and walked the path to avoid smelling his stink. Aliver and then Hanish had walked beside her for a time, and then both of them had rolled into somersaults and become leaves that blew away on the breeze. For some reason, she had whistled a tune for them.

She asked, Are you real?

He still sat as before, stroked her hair slowly, as if counting the strands one by one. “Yes, of course.”

Are you sure you love me?

“Corinn, you’re the single woman who has ever had all my heart. You did in life and you still did in death, and you will do forever.”

Why? Asking it, she was not seeking praise, not looking for false comfort. She really meant the question. At times, thinking of all the mistakes she had made, she thought herself unlovable. Unworthy of anybody’s trust. She had proven herself that so many times, in so many ways.

“Who knows why anybody loves anybody? I love you for the things I love about you. I love you for the things I hate about you. I think, Corinn, that you love me as well; me, the one who would’ve killed you. Don’t ask me to make sense of it, and I won’t ask you. My heart is yours for as long as you want it. Do you want it?”

Yes.

“Then it’s yours. In life and in the afterdeath. Glad that’s decided.”

He leaned forward and kissed the damaged skin where her mouth should have been. Though she knew he was but a ghost, a vapor that no other eyes except Barad’s could see, she still loved his touch. There in that small cave at the edge of the Gray Slopes, with her eyes closed, it seemed each of his kisses glowed with golden warmth, each of them a pulse of light in the midst of an ocean of darkness.

A s the sun broke over the eastern horizon later that morning and cast crimson highlights over the gray waves, Po spread his wings and lifted the couple into the sky again. Gaining height, they saw their pursuers. They still ran atop the surface of the water, rising and falling with the swells. Unrelenting.

Po turned and headed west. Before them stretched nothing at all except moving mountains of water, and the rest of their lives.