Enoch continued. “The Keeper wants us, sir. He knows we’ve avoided him for fifteen centuries, and now we are marked, more than a hundred thousand souls. We all should have gone to the underworld long ago. They are effectively dead, but still marching.”
Utros felt a flare of anger. “The Keeper can’t have us yet. I need my army, and we still have a war to win.”
*
Wrestling with grief while also stoking the fires of revenge, Ruva washed the body of her sister and used a razor-sharp knife to shave any hint of hair from her cold body, not a strand left behind.
Ruva applied herself with reverence to this last task for her sister. She placed small round stones in Ava’s burned eye sockets, and wrapped boiled white cloth around her sister’s breasts to cover the black hole where her heart had been. When Ava was clean and pure again, Ruva made fresh pots of paint, blood red and pitch black, and painted new designs across the pale flesh, then reproduced the symbols across her own body.
When Ruva proclaimed that she and her sister were ready, General Utros commanded two of his soldiers to carry the bier and place it carefully atop an unlit pile of wood that would serve as a funeral pyre. Except for the white wrapping across the burned hole in her chest, the slender woman lay naked on the kindling.
Letting his arms hang at his sides, Utros turned to Ruva. “You are my sorceress now. I trust you to be strong.”
“I cannot be as strong without my sister,” Ruva said. “But I would do anything for you.”
“As would we all, General,” said First Commander Enoch.
His soldiers raised their voices in a shout of affirmation. Utros absorbed it all, and when the cheers fell silent, he called for torches to light the pyre. The dead willows caught fire quickly, and the flames grew to an intense blaze.
“The Keeper will have to be satisfied with Ava for now,” Utros shouted to his army, “for the rest of you are needed here!”
The pyre roared so bright and hot that Utros had to step back. Transfixed, Ruva stayed close to the blaze as the fires blackened her twin’s flesh and destroyed the painted markings. Ava’s skin cracked as the fire consumed her. Her face fell away, leaving only a skull with two pebbles inside the eye sockets. Though the intense heat reddened Ruva’s own skin, she refused to retreat. Utros grasped her arm and pulled her away, pressing the slender woman’s shoulders against his chest armor.
As the orange fire devoured the remnants of Ava’s body, the pyre shifted and the flames swirled as if a whirlwind had caught the embers in a circle. The color changed from a bright yellow to a sickly green as Ava’s bones fell apart into the core of the fire. A translucent green image rose from the flames, insubstantial and shimmering.
The soldiers gasped in superstitious terror. Ruva let out a low moan that sounded like surprise, not fear. The apparition sharpened, became more intense, and Utros recognized the dead sorceress.
“Ava, you aren’t in the underworld!” Ruva cried.
“I cannot go.” Ava’s spectral form brightened to stand out against the bonfire, where her blackened bones crumbled into the embers.
Utros held on to Ruva with his powerful arms, although she struggled to break free and throw herself into the flames. He needed to know Ava’s purpose. “Has your spirit decided to remain with us? Did the Keeper allow it?”
“My sister and I are twins,” said Ava’s shimmering form. “We are bound together, heart and mind and soul. We share the same Han. The Keeper marked both of us. As infants, after our bodies were cut apart, we two died briefly and traveled through the veil, but a healer brought us back to life and snatched our souls from the underworld. The Keeper knows us. He is waiting for us?.?.?.?but he needs both of us.” The shimmering spirit hovered before Ruva. “My sister must pass through the veil with me. I cannot go alone.”
Ruva looked longingly at her twin, but pressed her shoulders back hard against the general’s chest. “No, I must remain here. You know it.”
Ava laughed. “And therefore, I must remain! You are an anchor that keeps my spirit here in this world. I am trapped between life and death.” The greenish spirit flitted directly through First Commander Enoch, shocking him, and then she circled the soldiers, who scattered in panic. She wafted back through the fire, entirely unharmed. “I am a spirit unfettered by physical form. I can go wherever I wish, see whatever I like.”
She swooped closer to Utros. He was not afraid, but intrigued. Her spectral face was very close to his as she hovered before him. “And then I can report back here.” She smiled. “Beloved Utros, I will be your perfect spy!”
CHAPTER 38
When she plunged into the river from the stern of the serpent ship, Lila swam deep. The shouting Norukai hurled their spears into the water, but she didn’t head toward the shore as they expected. Rather, she stroked powerfully down the current and moved far ahead of the three anchored ships. When her lungs were about to burst, she surfaced again and forced herself to exhale with only a whisper of sound. Far behind, she could still hear the raiders raging at her escape. She suspected Bannon would pay a price for her failure, but she knew he could endure it. She had made him tough.
She wrapped her arm around a floating log, and it kept her above the surface as she drifted downstream. With the serpent ships anchored for the night, Lila realized she would be able to cover a great distance if she simply floated on the current all night long.
Then she would be far enough ahead to make another attempt to rescue Bannon.
Resting, she let her thoughts drift just like the brown water around her. Lila tried to process how she had failed, and how Adessa could have been so brutally defeated. Lila felt dismayed and empty; although she had seen many trainees and morazeth sisters die in combat, Adessa had been different, seemingly invincible. She had fought the Norukai king so Lila could rescue Bannon. And they both had failed. Adessa was dead, and the young swordsman remained a prisoner.
“I will not give up on you, boy,” she muttered as river water lapped against the floating log.
Locking her arms and legs around branches, Lila dozed for an hour or two and woke when her feet brushed against a large slimy creature beneath her. Startled, she grabbed her dagger. The sword was still strapped to her back, but she couldn’t get it in time. As faint dawn suffused the eastern sky, she could see large forms swimming next to her, each smooth tan body as large as a canoe. The channel catfish lumbered along, not predatory, only dangerous because of their size. Lila drew her legs against the floating log, and the catfish swam past her into the widening channel.
In the light of sunrise, Lila looked around and saw how far she had traveled during the night. The sight struck her with awe, then alarm.
The widening river sprawled into a diverse delta of numerous channels and sandbars. Beyond the land’s end, she saw the estuary spill into the ocean, an open expanse of blue water that extended to the horizon. Lila had never seen such a sight in her life. The Killraven River ended here.
She released the log and drifted in the water, swimming to a low sandbar covered with tufts of grasses. Lila had gotten a substantial head start on the serpent ships, but they would come soon, on their way to the sea. Once the big
ships passed the estuary and reached the open ocean, Lila knew she would never be able to catch them. This was her last chance to free Bannon.
She had to stop them.
*
For half an hour after Lila escaped, King Grieve coddled Chalk, touching the shaman’s battered face, wrapping a big arm around his scrawny shoulder. Consoling his albino friend seemed to make him even angrier. “I’ll make them all grieve.”
Chained to the deck while the ships remained anchored during the night, Bannon could not escape King Grieve’s fury. The big man strode up to him, his heavy boots ringing loud on the boards. His war axe was still stained with Adessa’s blood spray.
The bolt holding Bannon’s chain remained set in place, and when the young man tugged on it, he felt the sharp scabs and bruises of the manacle around his ankle. Big Erik sat nearby in the darkness, knees drawn up to his chest, shoulders hunched with contained sobs.
Bannon steeled himself, sure that Grieve meant to lop his head off, but Chalk scuttled over to them. The shaman was miserable from his smashed face, but he touched the king’s arm to stop him. Grieve shook him off and stood over Bannon, raised the weapon. The young man glared at him, knowing he couldn’t escape, and the Norukai king brought down the heavy weapon with a hard thunk into the wood of the deck, smashing the plank so he could uproot the anchor bolt.
Chalk bobbed his head and clapped his hands in delight. “The axe cleaves the wood! The sword cleaves the bone!”
Grieve uprooted the chain and dragged Bannon by the legs toward a pool of light from one of the lanterns. “Scrub the blood from the deck and get rid of the dead woman. Feed her to the catfish.”
Grieve kicked at Erik. “You! Help him!” The big man shuddered and moaned, paralyzed.
“I’ll do it myself,” Bannon said, climbing to his feet and grabbing the brush. “Leave my friend alone.” He realized it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words passed his lips.
“You have no friends,” the king said.
