Page 66 of Queen Demon
“No, not me, no.” Kai looked toward where Ramad and Arnsterath stood. Ramad was doing a good job of pretending not to be harried as he spoke, and Arnsterath listened patiently, a faint smile on her face. Kai missed his fangs again.
Sura sighed a little. It had the feel of anat least one of these strange people is rationalsigh, or at least Kai would like to think so. He didn’t feel particularly rational right now. She added, “Do you know why Scholar Dahin did this?”
“I have no idea,” Kai said. Near the firepit, Dahin rolled up his map, nodding as he listened to something Veile was telling him. “But I’m going to find out.”
According to Veile, the ride to the site would take more than half the day, but Sura had said the daylight lasted longer here. The riding beasts were big but placid, and fortunately for Kai not much disturbed by demons. Their strong legs moved steadily, eating up the ground.
The plain wasn’t nearly as empty as it had looked at first: birds wheeled in the sky, and in the distance, long-legged tan and white herd animals trotted away. Kai and the others were headed toward the higher ground to the south, the hills that lined the horizon above the plain. The ground would rise up to become rocky, then smooth out into low rolling hills and slopes. Feeling the strong wind and hearing that it would rise higher when the season changed, was the first time the earthworks the Hierarchs had constructed started to make sense.
They didn’t make sense for the middle of the Sana-sarcofa, but the Hierarchs had meant to remake the rest of the world into the shape they wanted.
According to the expedition’s map, the tor stood by itself in one of the open shallow valleys, and the first work group had gone to examine it to see if it was natural or a construction. They had first spotted it with their distance glasses, and had notedthe resemblance to some of the Hierarch earthworks, though it appeared to be made of stone.
Kai was betting it was not a natural rock formation.
Arnsterath and Ramad were riding together, Kai a short distance ahead. Dahin nudged his beast up next to Kai’s and said, “I’m sorry.”
Now this apology, Kai didn’t believe. He said, “No, you’re not.”
Dahin sighed, more weary than theatrical. “You’ve got me there.”
“What are you trying to do, Dahin?” Kai asked, his frustration bubbling over like a burning pot. If Dahin had been lying to them all along… “Is it even true that the Well is here?”
“Of course it’s true, I showed you all my evidence!” Dahin weathered Kai’s skeptical glare, then his mouth twisted in resignation. “It’s here.”
Kai admitted that Dahin would never have the patience to document the evidence in that treatise if he didn’t think it was true. But there had to be something he had intentionally left out. “Why did you drag us all the way to Ancartre if you wanted to come here alone?”
“I didn’t know about the anchor stones. I thought I’d have to fly all the way up here in an ascension raft and I—” He stopped speaking as if he had hit a wall. Or thought of a very good reason he couldn’t finish that sentence the way he had meant to. “I didn’t want to go alone,” he finished, and winced, as if well aware how inadequate it was.
“You went to the Summer Halls, a stinking flooded death well, alone, and stayed there for months, diving in putrid water—”
“I know, I remember!” Dahin snapped. He took a deep breath and clearly decided to take a different approach. “I don’t want to lie to you—”
“But you did,” Kai interposed. “I thanked you,thanked you,for trusting us!”
“—we’ve been friends forever. You helped raise me during the war, when Tahren was busy…”
Yes, I did,Kai thought bitterly.I helped raise you and I helped raise Bashat, and look how that turned out. At least Ziede’s daughter Tanis had never tried to kill him. Though she was only five decades old now, there was plenty of time for that later, he supposed. He said, “If you don’t want to answer my questions, then I don’t want to talk.”
Dahin made a sulkyhumphnoise, which did not help the situation one bit. Kai nudged his beast into a faster walk, and Dahin didn’t try to follow him.
They reached the higher ground and stopped briefly to rest the beasts and themselves. A small spring poured down in multiple rivulets over a wide stretch of rocky ground. It was surrounded by short grasses with tiny white and yellow flowers and small bushes that looked related to the woody silver sage from the Saredi grasslands but probably weren’t. While Dahin watered the animals, or stood by while the animals watered themselves, Kai looked for tracks.
Rain was apparently infrequent here but the ground near the springs was damp. Kai found plenty of signs of hoofprints from riding animals and human boot prints. So the two work groups had stopped here the same way they apparently did whenever they went up toward this area, before they discovered the tor. Kai wasn’t sure what the tracks told him, except that Veile and the drovers were telling the truth, and nothing odd had happened to the scholars until after this point in their journey. He looked up to see Ramad pacing thoughtfully around on the far side of the stream, examining the tracks over there. Kai should check that area himself, but Ramad had no reason to lie about what he found. All his reasons for lying were about other things, not the lost scholars.
Kai sat down on a rock, facing into the chill wind, and reminded himself it would be two more days at least before Sura could return with Ziede and Tahren.
Dahin was chewing something from one of the supply bags the drovers had packed onto their beasts and pretending he needed to study the map. Arnsterath eyed Kai from across the stream, then started to pick her way over toward him. Kai considered waiting until she was a few paces away and then getting up and moving, but he was too tired for petty games.
She stopped and said, “Are the anchor stones supposed to do this to demons?”
Kai didn’t have to ask what she meant. He said, “Probably.” He had felt sick since the raft reached the first anchor stone, but the others hadn’t shown any sign of lingering discomfort. He had seen Dahin hide illnesses before, and he wasn’t showing any of the signs of it.
Kai had had some water and some of the hard flatbread from the supply bag on his saddle and it hadn’t helped much. This body was also obviously unaccustomed to riding and his muscles ached. It was enough discomfort to be annoying but not enough that it would be helpful toward powering an intention.
Arnsterath grimaced faintly and looked away.
Kai decided he might as well make the effort, and asked, “Where did your body come from?”
