Jolyon ran his hand through the still water and thought idly about the way it moved over his hand. It was different from the water he was used to – but how could it be? Water was supposed to be the same whether you were from the rolling hills of his hometown or the castles by the cliffs, wasn't it? It was cool, and wet, and if you drank too quickly your teeth would buzz like a hive of bees.
They were only a day's walk from home, but this water felt different. It was smooth and soft, like molten wax that was somehow, impossibly, cold. When he slid his fingertips under the surface they disappeared, even though the water looked clean enough. The marshy pools gleamed with a silvery strangeness (Joly had never even heard the word iridescence; he hadn't been around Master Samalin for long enough for his excessive syllables to take effect). He moved his hand back and forth and wondered if he was the first person to make this water move, and to dirty it with the grime from his fingernails, and to hunt for his reflection in the oily opaque shallows.
Something slithered against his hand. He gasped and yanked it out of the water, rubbing it fitfully. A fish, he told himself, but his hair stood on end. It had almost felt like...
"Has anyone drowned?" A voice asked. He turned around quickly and, seeing the horrified expression in his eyes, Daine's voice grew a little softer. "They... they'd float. Did you... did you see...?"
"They were all torn up in the village." The boy said bleakly, turning back to the water and telling himself not to be the first person to vomit into those peaceful depths. Behind him he heard the woman sigh, and he could imagine the set of her chin as she shook her head.
"We told you: there wasn't enough... enough remains." She swallowed and for a second Jolyon wondered if the girl was going to be sick instead of him. She had seen a few more battles than he had, though (Jolyon made the comparison having seen a grand total of none), and seemed to know how to shake off the horror of what they had found in the village that morning.
The boy had stood in the center of the town square, one hand resting on the warm splinters of the well shaft, and he had to will himself not to dive in just so he didn't have to look any more. He found it impossible to believe that the gore had only come from a few people. The mages told him that it had been five or six victims at the most, probably dead at the hands of the spidren... but there was no sign of anybody else. The village must have housed nearly a hundred people.
"Their horses are still in the fields, and they say they didn't see anything," Daine had told them with her eyes focusing and unfocusing in a dizzying blur. Jolyon had to look away, but Numair pressed her to ask more and more questions without seeming to notice.
Daine held up her hand, biting her lip when his questions grew too rapid, and shut her eyes for a long time. Her lips moved silently, and she breathed evenly until she gasped in a sudden deep breath and her eyes flew open. The first thing she saw was a chipped axe buried in the stained wall behind her companions, and a line appeared between her eyes.
"It's not right." She muttered, shaking her head as if it ached. "They must have seen something."
"What did they say?" Jolyon belatedly realised she'd been speaking to the animals, and looked at the nearby trees in such awe that he forgot his trembling for a moment. Daine glanced at him, but she spoke to Numair.
"Everything was normal last night. They woke up at dawn and the village was empty. Apart from the... the..." She swallowed and looked up at a circling bird. "...carrion."
The man gripped her shoulder for a second and Daine met his eyes with an expression which was so tired and empty that she looked like a blank-faced marionette. "Numair, do you think I should ask the bats? If I can find where they're roosting..."
"No, magelet. You look like you've asked every animal in ten miles." He looked at the child and tugged at his nose. "There are three of us. We can search the buildings for survivors or... maybe they left a note."
"A note." Daine echoed in a flat, sardonic voice. When the man narrowed his eyes at her she shook her head fitfully and her voice grew harsh. "You know as well as I do that every single person who was living here must be dead."
Jolyon shivered. He was terrified by the empty, bloodstained village, but he was equally frightened by this change in the two adults. They had been distant in the village, but in a reserved, polite way. This cold distance didn't suit them, and it scared the boy to see such an abrupt shift in their humour. Neither of them looked like they were ever going to smile again – even at each other.
He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and stared at the ground. Even the dirt was reddish, marred.
" Jolyon, wait for us by the lake." Daine said suddenly. "You'll be safe at camp, it's still warded. You don't need to see this. You've done plenty."
"Daine..." Numair started objecting, and then yelped when the girl stood on his toe. He followed the line of her pointing finger to the boy's waxen, greenish cheeks and he sighed. "Yes, fine. You'll be safer and we'll know where you are, unless whatever did this grabs you. Or us. Off you go."
Jolyon muffled a yelp and sped away at high speed towards the lake, kicking up dust as he went.
"I should have stood on your toe harder." Daine muttered, and left to search the first building.
It took them hours to search the village, far longer than they expected. They moved... slowly.
There was something unbearably eerie about the deserted buildings, and as she pushed open doors Daine found her heart beating a little too fast. They all swung open easily; none of the houses were locked or barred. If the villagers had been defending themselves from the immortals, then surely they would have barricaded themselves behind the strong walls? Or at least, Daine thought as she pulled the curtain rags back from a bed box, they would have protected their children? Every time she found a crib she expected weak infant cries, or (worst of all) bloodstains and torn sheets, but there was nothing. From the old to the young, from rocking chairs to basket beds, the village was deserted.
So why did it feel so uncanny? They had found empty houses before, where families had left at the news of an approaching attack. Sometimes people crept away from their homes in the night, as if they would be safer if even their neighbours could not find them. When they left, though, they packed up all their supplies and clothes, and anything they might sell.
Here, in these empty rooms, were signs of life. Meals were left on tables, with pieces of bread half-sawn off next to oozing pats of butter. Bedpans were stone cold in empty fireplaces, and laundry hung dry and stiff from the fireguards. Even the children's dolls had been left behind.
Gods, the dolls were the worst thing. Daine started to dread the sight of their painted faces. They perched on chairs and pillows and smiled sweetly at the girl every time she pushed open the door. Enchanted, one of the more intricate ones trembled at her soft footsteps and cried out in a thin, cloying voice: Mama! Mama!
Daine jumped and glared at the toy which had spoken, feeling like it was mocking her after her hours of searching. In the dim twilight its voice was ghostly and pale, and she shuddered. A whole village full of secrets and blood was the worst thing she couldn't have ever imagined. For once she understood how Numair must feel, when he zealously demanded that everything make sense. Nothing about this village made sense, and the more she puzzled over it, the more Daine despised it. How could she help – how could she defend herself? – if she had no idea what was wrong?
Filled with a rush of petulant anger, she picked up the doll and threw it against the wall. It whined as it struck the wall and then began to speak again. Mama! Mama! Mamamamamama...!
"Figures." Daine growled, and prodded the broken toy with her boot. A shadow fell across its face and she heard the sound of snapping fingers. The endless stream of words stopped so quickly her ears rang. Filled with sudden remorse, Daine picked up the stupid thing and placed it carefully back on the chair.
"I feel it too." Numair said, his voice a little cowed. Daine shivered and took one last look around the empty room, as if the villagers might jump out and shout "Surprise!" Of course, they didn't.
"It looks like things are back to normal," She folded her arms and glared at the doll. "Well that didn't take long."
"Normal." Numair laughed shortly and shook his head, unable to hide his own unease. "This place is certainly not..."
"Not the place. I mean us. The way we live. This is normal for us, isn't it?" She looked up at him with wide eyes, as if daring him to suggest something else.
"I think the difference is that we stayed." The man said, obviously choosing his words with care. "Most other people would have seen the blood and kept walking. Running, even. I know I was rather tempted."
"Maybe we should move on." Daine gestured around the room, and out of the shuttered window towards the street. "If the other houses are all like the ones I checked then... I don't even know what we could do if we stayed. If we told the people at Corus they could send help, and then..."
"Who would they send, Daine?"
The girl looked up in surprise, hearing the same weary resignation in his voice which she had been trying to hide in her own. Despite herself, the corners of her mouth twitched in a rueful smile. "They'd send us."
"I'm not a good enough rider to risk the potholes in the King's Road twice in one week." Numair shook his head and rested a long hand on the doorframe thoughtfully, looking up at the protection runes carved above his head.
Usually this glib silence was enough to finish the conversation. Daine could never think of a retort. Instead, she remembered the tens of times this had happened before, and how she always (grudgingly) decided that Jon had been right to choose them, or Numair was right to coax her into staying an extra night in a town where something wasn't quite right. It had happened so many times that now they didn't even talk about reasons, they just reminded each other that this was what they always did. And why did they always do it? Because they always had!
She picked up the doll and stroked its yellow hair back from its grubby face. Numair might make a joke out of it, but he sounded just as tired as she felt. For the first time, the girl wondered how much he got back from this life, where he always talked himself into giving. Perhaps it was his way of repaying the generosity that the Tortallans had shown him when he was fleeing for his life. Maybe he felt guilty, as if he could give back his overgenerous share of the gift to those who had less by helping them out. But it had never really occurred to Daine before that sometimes – or at least this once – her friend felt as trapped by their dutiful obligations as she sometimes did.
"Numair," She asked softly, and then stopped and swallowed because the words seemed easier in her head, when he wasn't looking back at her with those dark eyes. "I... I wish this wasn't normal. I wanted... I hoped..." She closed her eyes in frustration and the words came out in a rush. "I thought all of this was... was done with."
He didn't answer, and in his silence Daine could hear all of the excuses that he respected her too much to say, and all of the answers which she already knew. She saw her life then, in colour and in bright, sharp lines from the bandit attack through rebellions and battles and the divine war, like a series of stories that always had to end in agonizing climaxes. And what came before that? A childhood where she was despised for the colour of her hair, or the crippling struggle with her magic that made her distrust even the safety of her own mind?
Perhaps the war would be over soon. But even if it was, her life was so tied up in chaos that it seemed to inevitably find her. And she could fight through that, and win, because that was how she had survived for so many years. Normality was as alien to her as speaking to horses might be to a villager who cleaned soot from a rag doll's face. And so Daine longed for the tedium of a normal life, but only knew how to fit into a world torn apart by brutality.
And because she knew how to survive, she saw every single body that had fallen by the wayside.
Numair had not intended to include her in that kind of life, but after their first year together he knew that she was an excellent archer, and was growing into a powerful mage. In the middle of a war a child weapon was still a weapon, and he often saw Jon forgetting that Daine was still only fifteen or so, younger than most of the wide-eyed women who were introduced at court.
Numair himself found the life quite exciting – a chance to use the spells he had only learned in theory at the university. But then, he knew the tedium of that kind of studious life. He remembered the peace of it on nights when the roar of magefire lit up the night sky. Daine would lie in her bedroll with her arm thrown across her eyes and her ears smothered in the blanket, contorting her body to take her to a tranquillity which her mind could not imagine.
"What do you think normal means? Couldn't this be... part of it?" He asked her, finally daring to break the hurt silence. She shook her head and looked distractedly at the doll which she still carried. Without thinking about it, she touched its painted pink cheeks and frowned.
"You said you wanted children," She said, and the lost note in her whisper broke his heart. "I can't bear even to let myself want..." her voice cracked and she covered her mouth, as if she had said something which she didn't want to. Not meeting his eyes, or even looking at his feet on the dusty floor, she coughed and said, "We need to get back to the lake. Jolyon will be worried."
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