Meliu Page 9

  She squinted as lightning lit the clouds: thirty paces to shore. The world disappeared from beneath her step and she plunged into deeper water. Her feet found bottom and she shoved off, resurfaced with a sputter and gasp, and paddled toward shore with one good arm. Words of prayer passed through her head, but opening her mouth brought water, and body and soul were so exhausted there was no way to know if the gods could answer.

  Her feet kicked sand and she struggled forward quicker. She fought to stand when the water was waist high and two desperate steps later she collapsed, rolling to her back to keep from drowning. She lacked the will for prayer, hells, she lacked the will to drag herself from chill waters. The only will left to her was to lay there and die. Or live. Whatever fate long ago decided. She closed her eyes and just breathed.

  Finger’s clutched her right wrist, lifting her arm, dragging her from the surf and onto a pebbled beach.

  She kept to her plan to die, breathing easy, her eyes closed, but she vowed her last action would be to plunge the Tek arrow into the eye of whatever fate this was.

  The grip loosened and her arm dropped, and she snatched the arrow’s haft, her eyes opening, expecting to find a dark eyed Tek looming. There was no one.

  “A favor fair, is a favor repaid in kind.” The voice was of a young boy, but the quote was from the Book of Emhon, a tome studied by venerated priests, not children. And sure as the hells, not by a Tek of any nation.

  She rolled to her good elbow, pain surging in her other shoulder as she raised her head. A boy stood beside a small fire, poking it with a stick. She panicked, but her body couldn’t respond in kind as she flopped to her chest. “Put that fire out! They’ll see.”

  The child turned to her with a face familiar; days before, she’d carried him to shore. “Do not worry. They will not see a fire.”

  Meliu rose again, this time to her knees to crawl beside the blaze before collapsing. “How the hells are you here? I left you beneath the docks.” Her face slumped into the crook of her elbow and she relaxed, relishing the heat of the fire. “This’s impossible. There’s no way you could be here.”

  The voice came deep and soulful, no longer a child’s. “You were a hard lady to find.” She raised her gaze to the child’s same blue eyes, set atop the same child’s body, but they rested in Lord Priest Ulrikt’s face. “Sleep now.”

  Shriek beak,

  glower in the green eye imprisoned black,

  Eagle, Owl, Falcon, or Crow…

  the Raven, don’t you know?

  Of course, of course, sentimental me.

  Supplemental deterioration of detrimental interrogation,

  secondary, tertiary, quaternary.

  Nary a thought to be had to matter to the most,

  to the host, to the living and breathing Ghost.

  What say you to the vivid Dreamer,

  the chaotic Weaver,

  the false Believer,

  the true Deceiver,

  the Ghosts who see you as the dead and decayed.

  What word have you, to deny reality’s greatest lie?

  —Tomes of the Touched

  BONUS CONTENT

  Foreword to “Hiding Fire”

  A Prequel Short Story to Eve of Snows

  Hiding Fire was written well after the first draft of Eve of Snows was complete. I wrote it for several reasons, but the key driver was to get the story out of my brain.

  In early drafts of Eve of Snows there was a prologue that took us back to the time Eliles met Ilpen, and of course, Ears and Ears. As the story blossomed, it became apparent that the prologue was unnecessary, so it got the axe.

  But, after Eve of Snows was complete, I had a reimagining of the story based on the opening line. About that same time, I felt the urge to write a short story (which is something I am not a fan of, to be blunt) and this fit the bill. I had also been discussing various point of view strategies for the writer on a fantasy forum, and it occurred to me that I had never written anything in first person.

  Hiding Fire, then, is the result of Eliles’ backstory kicking around in my head, merging it with the twisted urge to write a short story despite not liking short stories, and to do so in First Person when I don’t much like reading first person.

  In the end, Hiding Fire was something of a challenge set for myself… aka, short story torture.

  I hope you enjoy.

  Hiding Fire

  “Little girls don’t survive in the woods.”

  Those were words my mama hammered into my head from the time I first toddled, and tempered with tales to keep my feet from the underbrush.

  I never saw no wolf, though I heard them singing some nights, and the witches were rarer still. But I believed. The woods terrified me, and I clung to mama’s hem every time we drew close.

  I was five years old when she took me to them same woods in the dead of night. She kneeled, grabbed my shoulders, and looked me straight in the eye. “Run, Eliles. Don’t let your father and them priests catch you. Run! And never come back.”

  I cried, argued, stomped, then I ran. My feet wanted to make a big loop, take me home to the only place I ever knew. My child’s mind tried to convince me I could hide under the floorboards, find comfort in the sound of their voices even if I could never let them see me again. The animal inside me knew I needed distance and shelter to survive.

  I ran until my lungs gasped and my legs dropped from beneath me. I crawled under the prickling branches of an evergreen, a cedar by the scent, and pulled my blanket tight around my shoulders, the only feel of home remaining. I rocked and sobbed and muttered: “Not my fault, the fires ain’t my fault.”

  It was a lie, but truth gave me no peace.

  By the time my tears dried a pack of wolves yapped a frantic song to the west; papa once told me the unnerving yips and barks marked excitement after a kill. I didn’t know whether to find comfort in their bellies being full, or fear they were so close. I drug myself to my feet and walked opposite the terrible sounds until my legs would carry me no more. I squirmed through the branches of another cedar and climbed to find my bed for the night.

  Winter was fading into spring, but I could see my breath cut by the needles of the tree. My fingers grew cold clutching branches, with only thin wool gloves covering my hands. My little friend arrived without my invitation; warmth seeped through my blanket and clothes between my shoulder blades.

  “Go away. I don’t need you.” I spoke to them often, but never knew if they listened, or if they were alive in a way I understood. Sometimes they obeyed, sometimes they didn’t, just like the head strong cur who wandered the streets of the village sniffing for handouts.

  The warmth disappeared, but it didn’t leave. My friend hovered before my eyes, invisible except for a ball of wavering mirage about the size of my fist. It was warmth within reach, comfort, but it was also the reason I dangled freezing in a tree to start with. The night grew colder, my lids heavier, and my fingers weaker. Clouds crossed the stars and promised rain. My anger at my friend faded with practical considerations.

  It wasn’t the flame’s fault that Bunter and his horse-faced mother saw me with fire sitting on my finger like a baby chick. Burning their barn down was another matter, but didn’t something in the back of my angry head ask for that too? I’ll admit, years later now, to such a notion.

  I whispered, “All right, just a little fire.”

  The wavering mirage turned into a wick’s flame hovering in the night and I grasped it, the glow turning my hand red and showing off the bones inside. It didn’t burn, it was a fluttering heat that eased the ache in my joints and spread through my body. I closed my eyes, savoring the moment, forgetting the glow spreading from the cracks between my red fingers.

  “I’ve spotted her!” A lantern in the distance cast shadows of a hooded man in dark robes. Hounds bayed further away.

  My heart stuttered into a race, and I descended quicker than intended, crashing through branches the last several feet. I landed hard on my
rump, jarring my spine to my skull. My friend went dark, but I could sense it by my ear as I rolled from beneath scratching branches and ran. I took the advantage of my short legs in the underbrush, ducking and weaving through gaps a big man couldn’t fit.

  I cursed myself for a fool as I ran, recalling a tale papa told often about a brush with bandits and its obvious lesson: You can’t hide fire in the dark. My mind raced, searching papa’s hunting tales for lessons recalling wily critters that escaped him.

  The big man ripped through bushes and vines, lumbering my way, crashing and cursing in the names of all the Twelve Hells. Slipping through the brush I was quiet and quick, but he was powerful and determined. I glanced back, the light of his lantern growing closer, and the world dropped from beneath me. I fell, tumbling with snags of roots and broken branches. I sprawled face first beside a stream, and hope flashed, but I wasn’t some fox able to survive a swim in icy waters. The banks were too wide for me to jump, my lungs burned, and my body ached. If the hounds caught me, I might be torn to shreds before an inquisitor had the chance to cleanse my soul for the Seven Heavens.

  I rolled to my back, lantern light casting shadows over the ravine’s bank as the holy approached. Priest or monk, it didn’t matter. He was the inquisitor’s man. I’d run further, but I’d never escape their long legs. I imagined picking up a stick and fighting back, or my friend burning this man to cinder. It was a flicker of a thought.

  Fire lit my face and streaked through the night quicker than a diving hawk and struck the holy as he reached the bluff of the ravine.

  I jumped to my feet.

  His robes caught fire.

  Flames and shadows and shrieks.

  “No! Don’t kill him!” I sprinted into the dark and in a flicker my friend was again by my ear.

  Shouts gave us chase. “I’ll kill you, witch! Kill you myself!”

  I can’t say if insight struck then as I ran, or later as I wandered: Mama sent me into the woods because it’s where she thought I belonged, where the wolves and witches live. If given a chance, I might’ve thanked her later, but I’d never have forgiven her.

  The rains came after, washing away tears and pursuit. The trees thinned and as the sun struggled to light the world behind heavy clouds, I stumbled into open ground gone soggy from the downpour. The heat of my friend gave me warmth against soaking cold as it snuggled under my coat where I could stick my hands. I swiped streams of water draining over my brow in rivulets and wrung my hair.

  The great forest I’d always imagined had come to an end, and as I looked back at the woods, a little of its mystique died. But it still held death, and it hunted me.

  I slogged forward, the ground sucking at my boots ‘til I came across a wagon rutted road that was little more than two streams of mud with a grassy island running its middle. Roads lead to people, safety or doom, but my stomach growled. I followed right, taking me further from the wood.

  I saw the donkey’s ears first, then heard the cussing. A big man stomped around a wagon, its wheels stuck in the muck. What he lacked in furor he made up for in creativity. “Son of a turd sucking toad poker!” He stopped to stare at me when he realized he and his two-donkey team weren’t alone. His hands went to two knives at his belt. “Where the Twelve Hells did you come from?”

  I stared, a drenched kitten uncertain whether to purr or dash. Instead, I sobbed, shaking, on the verge of dropping to my knees. He raised his hands from his blades.

  “I’m sorry, girl. Weren’t meanin’ to scare you.” He walked slow, kneeled, and hugged me. It was a soft man’s move, if I had a dagger even a child could find his kidney, but his gentle nature broke my fear and I leaned into him. “It’s all right, child. Ain’t gonna hurt you. Nobody will, not now.”

  I sniffled. “Eliles. I’m called, Eliles.”

  He looked into my eyes and his nose crinkled, a corner of his lip lifting into a grin. “Your eyes are so brown, like my youngest, Zezze.” It was peculiar, my eyes are blue, but it made no sense to argue, and the man faded into his thoughts. “Consumption took her and her brother some time ago… But that ain’t no conversation for a rainy morn, eh?”

  I shook my head and he lead me to the wagon. Biscuits with honey butter was a feast finer than I’d ever tasted. Ilpen was a tinker, his wagon full of copper ware and tools of his trade, and his tongue was full of glib words for a little girl lost.

  With me at the reins encouraging Ears the Elder and Ears the Younger, we got loose the mud as the rains passed, but as the wheels rolled, I couldn’t escape the question.

  “What’s a wee girl doing out here alone?”

  I sat as still as the buckboard allowed, wheel mill turning in my head. “I’m an orphan.”

  He kept his tone tame as if speaking of a joke rather than serious matters. “If you were an orphan, you’d know that ain’t story enough.”

  “I just was.” Ilpen might’ve taken my lack of answer with a dollop of patience, but on the horizon men milled on horseback. I squinted but couldn’t tell who they were. “I need to run.”

  Ilpen slowed the wagon. “You run and they’ll see.”

  His arm swung over my back, he fiddled with a latch and lifted a door covering the wagon’s cargo. I slipped inside, elbows and knees rattling cups, plates, and other goods.

  Running, hiding, climbing, falling in the woods terrified me, listening to the gentle clack of a latch locking me into a box sent spasms through my spine. My bladder swelled, more full of a sudden than when my cousin Tinle and I wagered the last hard-honey on who’d sit the longest. A silly memory, and maybe that was its point.

  I breathed deep and clinched my knees, praying to Januel, goddess of love and war to save me, even if it were the servants of the gods hunting me. The wagon wobbled and banged on rocks in the road, and I held tight as we climbed the hill. I squirmed to a beam of light, peeping through a crack beneath Ilpen’s creaking weight.

  But the splatter of hooves on wet turf came from behind. “Ho, merchant!”

  I daren’t move, but oh how I wanted to find another hole to look through. There were three horses, maybe four.

  Ilpen said, “I ain’t got time, no offense mind. I’m on road to Coerkin Fost, and then to Istinjoln, and I lost a week with a broken axle not far back.”

  “We seek a girl, a youth.”

  Ilpen chuckled. “You’ve found the wrong sort of wagon for those tastes, your holiness.”

  A horse stepped in front of the wagon to force Ilpen to pull his reins. All I could see was a leg in black trousers,

  “I trust you aren’t a man to hide a child wanted by the Church.”

  “That’s excellent, you’ll be out of my way then, before more rains come.”

  “You’ll be opening that wagon.” I no longer feared for only myself, my fire would get this kind man killed.

  “Right you are! In the Fost and Istinjoln, feel free to follow me there, until then…” Ilpen snapped his reins and the donkeys fidgeted, but the horse didn’t budge. “Now gentlemen, I’ve entertained your little stop, but the Church has no authority on these roads, as it were.”

  “An inquisition carries the authority of Sol, king of gods.” I knew little of Sol or the gods, my family had never been pious folks, but I did know the power of prayer. I’d seen wounds knit before my eyes and a man turned into a blithering dalcop because he dared insult a priest. Some holies even commanded fire through the power of prayer. If these holies turned the power of the gods on this man, his two knives might never leave their sheaths before he fell.

  Ilpen’s voice raised, I figured in desperation or fear. “Were we in Istinjoln I’d succumb, but this road is kept by Clan Choerkin.” I thought to call out, admit to my fires and pray with the inquisitor for a safe trip over the Road of Living Stars before my execution. And I would plead for this man’s life. But the words choked in my fear dried throat.

  Not for an instant did I think the tinker knew what he was doing until I heard hooves coming down the hill, sprea
ding to surround the wagon.

  The horse blocking the road pranced, perhaps as nervous as me.

  “Ilpen of Esteden, is that you?”

  “Aye, I were in a hurry ‘til interrupted, too. How’s your bride?”

  The holy in front snarled. “This is business of the Church and Istinjoln.”

  But the new arrival ignored the man in black. “Dead. For three years.”

  Ilpen answered, “Sad news. No new mistress?”

  I couldn’t tell how many new riders had arrived, I was guessing six, but I had no way to know. Papa always said a holy was worth two swords, maybe more, with their prayers. Voices were tight as bowstrings but the words remained pillows. I wondered how many men would die today because of me.

  Saddle leather creaked, but I didn’t see a thing. “Little Sister here is the closest to my heart, but despite her name, she’s more a daughter to me. Only sixteen and she can put an arrow through a wolf’s snarl.”

  A woman chimed in. “You’ve caught the Wolverine in a good mood after a rain, normally I’m the brat lass.”

  My heart thudded and my eyes flicked back and forth nervous with hope. Everyone knew of the Wolverine, head of the Wardens, whose word carried the law of the Choerkin themselves.

  The man in black spoke, “Inquisition’s been chasing a defiled girl since last night.”

  “Hear that, Little Sister? These two-faced boys huntin’ a girl for using magic just like them.” There were chuckles all around, saddles groaned and horses stomped. It was an unbearable insult, comparing feral magic to prayer. I couldn’t see the rage, but I knew the tension pushed toward blood. There was nothing for it now, not from me, that would stop it. It was a strange relief.

  The man in black’s voice was stern. “We saw a passenger—”