The Many Gifts of Malia--Part 137: "The Significance"

Although we moved at pace, we’d only covered a third the remaining distance by midafternoon. Hasda set the pace, Gunarra always not quite at his side. Her jackals chattered back at us, but every time the Sukalla shook her head. Nothing to report.

And so we moved on.

The speed was nice, for Hasda’s sake, but it felt like slow going, which was good for me. I hadn’t so much as smelled an oglelov nearby, but Gunarra reported that there’d been at least two among the trees we’d passed, separated from the Weeping Queen’s alleged train. Their unseen presence felt out of place. They belonged in the swamps and, unless they were hunting corpses, they’d be forced to take a more vegetarian bent.

What bothered me more than the oglelovs, though not quite as much as Gunarra’s allegiance, was the thought that the Duraein held significance I’d missed. Oh, the lion-faced jackal had lauded its praises, true, but there was a more immediate meaning to its presence. The skeletal soldier had come from somewhere, and its brand hinted that it marched to another’s orders.

But Gunarra certainly wasn’t beating its drum. The Stitcher’s magic was another brand entirely, not to mention he’d been far preceded by whatever had animated its bones. And it had tried to communicate with Hasda before being cut down, without so much as twitching when he did. It must have recognized its imminent demise. Why, then, did it let the killing blow fall?

There was something I was missing. It wasn’t in the rune, though, because I’d seen nothing like it before. And it wasn’t in the bones because, as strange as their coloration was, they’d gone to dust the moment their enchantment ended. The armor?

I sucked a breath and passed it slowly through my nose. Ears twitching, Gunarra looked back at me, but I shook my head.

It was the armor, and the sword. They’d been of the same fashion as those in the strange in-between I’d met the Serynis. So either those witches had been looking for, and found, these mythical soldiers, or they had stumbled through the Duraein domain and let one slip free. Maybe there were more, roaming these woods. Maybe not.

I watched the jackal’s three tails swish as she trotted behind Hasda. How much did she truly know about these warriors? And how much was legend, her own or otherwise? But worse than that, how did the Serynis discover something that someone closer to the source, for far longer, had failed to find? And how had I bumbled behind them?

If they truly didn’t know what they were doing, odds were they’d opened without knowing how to close, and I had come behind before they’d realized they needed to seal the breach. I frowned. But they’d certainly known enough to be worried about my presence.

The Weeping Queen’s daughter had been there, as well, taunting the sisters. For a place so difficult to find, it was starting to sound crowded. But maybe that was why the formless daughter had been there, to contest the pillaging of her land’s mythical army. And though the Serynis had fought with the Sea Mother’s strength, albeit inconsistently, their allegiance was still an unsure thing.

When I’d found them in that strange in-between place, they’d had none of Tamiyat’s stink. And they certainly hadn’t been acting at the Weeping Queen’s behest. That they’d submitted to the Stitcher seemed the most obvious scenario, and what fledgling god wouldn’t want a troop of legendary soldiers who’d shed their mortality? But there’d been a desperation to the Serynis’ words that insinuated an uneasy alliance with the necromancer.

Perhaps the Duraein were their way out, a force with which they could lay their own foundation. Or they’d used the Duraeins to ingratiate themselves with the Sea Mother, to gain a more powerful ally. Or the elder goddess had folded both the witches and the necromancer beneath her wings, and we just hadn’t yet seen the signs of the Stitcher’s submission.

So many unknowns, and no way to close the breaches.

“The stench of hard thinking lays heavy upon the air,” Gunarra said, half eyeing me.

I grunted. “I’ve been around a long time. Maybe not quite so long as you, but still, this is the first I’ve heard of these ‘Duraeins.’ And I’ve heard a lot of legends.”

Snorting, she looked ahead again. “A fable of old that the horned boor plowed under the sands of time. Would you let legend of an immortal soldiery to rival the tuzshu you’d just razed run rampant among your people?”

An unseen root tripped me up as I processed what she said. I frowned at the protrusion, which somehow disappeared in the interim. “The Duraein were god killers?”

“In some legends.” Her tails swished. “In others, their lauded glory came from their devotion to their deity, who granted them immortality.”

“Not very immortal if they fall to pieces the moment their binding rune is broken.”

Her ears flattened. “It wasn’t slain, merely dissolved. Its ashes returned from whence they came while I mourned the loss.”

The thought of a silent skeletal warrior stealing behind us brought a frown to my face. “Any other particularly insightful stories about them?”

She flicked her tails, claws digging a little too deeply into the earth. “They had already been shrouded in uncertainty before the bastard bull stomped out what remnants remained. And none so useful as to locate their burial grounds, or the means to resurrect them.”

“I thought you said they were immortal.” I grinned at her backwards frown. “Or is that part of the not dying we just witnessed?”

“As I bear witness to the progenitor of this tuzshu’s flippancy.” Tossing her head, she trotted a little closer to Hasda. “You ask as many questions as I myself once did, chasing the vapors of their rumors on the wind with my mistress. Would speculation satisfy your curiosity? Mine was not.”

“I guess not.” Something in the way she carried herself, maybe the swagger in her shoulders, spoke of secrets she congratulated herself in shielding from me, but then again, she infused enough of the truth to mask the scent of the lie. It didn’t take many generations for a forefather’s half-remembered ramblings to be forgotten, especially if the heavens were determined to see them expunged.

But she knew some kernel of truth that had given her enough faith to seriously hunt the Duraein, however long ago that had been.

Excited yipping ahead brought us to a standstill. Gunarra tilted her head, listening, then sent back a series of eager yelps. The ranging pair of jackals were close together, but far enough apart that their barks belied the distance between them. Digging her claws into the dirt, the Sukalla whined and then yapped a few short commands.

Hasda’s head followed her as she darted ahead of him. “Another one so soon?”

She spun, her eyes boring into him. “How did you understand that?”

He shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

Frowning, she thumped the ground with her tails. “Luck was a bitch every time I met her. Is she your mistress?”

“Of course not.” He shook his head. “But, of the things you’ve shown an interest in, the Duraeins are the only possible reason for you to be this excited. If it were your mistress, I doubt you’d still be here.”

Her eyes thinned. “Yes. As duplicitous as your sulking deity deems me, only my mistress would motivate such a breach of faith. But I have promised to lead you to the Hall of Balphar, and lead I shall.”

I stepped up behind Hasda. “So another delay. How long before your jackals return? Or can you send for more?”

A low growl rumbled in her throat. “Such diversion will not be necessary. We are close. With good speed, we shall see the walls of the Hall by day’s end.”

“Haste straight into an ambush would lead to a failure I’m wont to witness.” I frowned at her. “Your face still looks like you bathed your snout in a nest of hornets.”

She bared her fangs. “My nose can smell well enough now to reach our destination at a pace that does not drag maddeningly.”

Folding my arms, I stared her down. “The line between ‘safe’ and ‘safe enough’ has formed the hangman’s noose enough to keep generations of boneyardsmen busy. I’ll not be having his neck numbered among them.”

“I will lead,” she snapped. “My body his shield, my life his surety. Though it strains the fibers of my being to see this pledge fulfilled, still will I see it done.”

I held her glare. “Hasda?”

He sighed, sagging a little. I hated how weighed down he looked like that. “With how little you get from this commitment and how distracted you are, it seems unwise to follow you. But I would likewise be remiss if I forced you to hold to such a lopsided agreement. If you wish to chase these Duraeins, then go. We are near enough to the Stitcher that I can find my own way.”

The jackal clacked her teeth and surged to her feet, stalking past him. “My word is not so cheap that I would break it now. Follow. Before nightfall, I will show you the walls.”

Shrugging, Hasda plodded after her. The weight that had settled kept his shoulders bowed. I scowled and hurried after them. When the Trial ended, I would do what I could to pull that burden off him, or lessen it if I could not. But I wouldn’t let Gunarra lead alone. Something had my hackles up, and until I found out what I’d have to keep an eye on her.

Hasda had come too far to fail now.