She couldn’t very well voice her other objections. If she did, Gerant would have doubtlessly said that sparing his feelings wasn’t worth a broken bone, either, and Darya abstractly agreed. Still, she cringed before she let go of the rope and tried not to feel the warmth of Amris’s arms—one at her shoulders, one at her knees, large hands and nimble fingers curving around her body. Silently Darya thanked the gods for both of their armor, which made a considerable leather-and-plate barrier between their chests.
“Thank you,” she said. She looked into his face for that, and so she noticed his eyes again, and the sheen of sweat on his dark skin.
“Glad to be of service,” said Amris, sounding only calm. That should have been an unmixed relief. That it wasn’t entirely, made Darya want to slap herself.
While he set her down, carefully, she delivered a short but firm silent lecture to her body, to the effect that there were plenty of attractive men two or three days’ ride away, and none of them had been the great dead love of her sword-spirit’s life. Then she stretched, trying to shake off lust along with cramped muscles.
Chapter 7
Klaishil had been smaller in Amris’s day.
That wasn’t strictly true, or factually true at all. If any person had stayed in the city after the last battle, it hadn’t been for long. Certainly nobody had lingered or returned to build. All the same, a smallish city had become an unending maze.
In part, that was due to Amris’s state of mind. The more practical side was that he and Daryacouldn’twalk across the city as he had done in the past. Dodging around crowds and carts didn’t compare to picking their way across small, unstable heaps of stone, nor to backtracking and trying another road when fallen stone blocked the path they’d been taking.
After one such retreat, Darya frowned upward at the purpling sky. “I don’t think we’ll make the forest by dark,” she said, “and I want to pass the night under wards—gods know what comes out in this place once the light fades. Watch for a place that’ll do.”
“Have you any particular requirements?”
“No. A roof would be nice, if you can spot a place that’s not big enough to have hidden undead and won’t collapse on our heads.”
Amris tried to picture their road in what he knew of the city. “Which direction are we going, generally speaking?”
“West. Southwest. My horse is there, and he can carry two back to Oakford, though he’ll not be happy about it. That’s our nearest outpost.”
“That way, then.” Amris pointed along a street that doglegged toward the setting sun. “We’ll find the temples. If any building still stands here, it’ll be Sitha’s, and if any is free of walking dead, it’ll be Letar’s. That is, if these are the sort I remember, though I’d think the Threadcutter would drive all of them away.”
“Gerant says he doesn’t know how much power the temples would still have. They’re notlikelyto be defiled, unless Thyran and his crew stopped on the way out, but disuse isn’t great either when it comes to keeping a place sacred. On the other hand”—she shrugged—“the undead I’ve seen so far have just been lurching corpses. Mindless, drawn to warmth, eating things even though they can’t actually eat, and so on.”
“Masterless forces,” said Amris, grimacing at the memory. “A few of Thyran’s lieutenants were skilled with the dead. One in particular.”
“Lovely talent. Anyhow, without a leader, they’re not much of a threat. Nasty if they take you by surprise or you stumble into a nest, but I don’t mind clearing out a few to make camp. I just don’t want to run into one in the middle of the night.”
She fell silent. The fading light picked out her pale face in sharp, severe profile; she could have been on a coin. Light and leisure let Amris notice that her skin wasn’t entirely white, but slightly iridescent. Faint rainbows flickered across it while they walked.
“Is Oakford your home?” he asked.
“Only the closest fortress. We’ve two Sentinels there permanently, plus a few more who come and go. Maybe a hundred regular army, one or two of Tinival’s paladins if they’re traveling through.”
“You’re one of those who come and go, I take it.”
“So long as I have legs. I’m based in Kvanla, by the sea, but—” Darya smiled sheepishly. “Truth to tell, I like it out on the edges.”
The street opened up into a circle, and Darya gave a quiet whistle. While storms, war, and time had touched the temples, the contact had been a feather stroke compared to the fate of the other buildings. Three stood with smoothly curved domes and colored stone walls intact: the red and black of Letar, the Threadcutter; the blue and silver of Tinival, the Lord of Justice; and the many-hued gold of Sitha, the Weaver. In the middle of the plaza, a tall jade fountain in the shape of a pine tree gave tribute to Poram, ruler of the wild. Water yet ran up the trunk and fell steadily from the branches; below, a patch of grass and weeds spread outward through the cracked stone of the plaza, and the green was actually verdant, not the pale, whiteish color Amris had seen earlier.
“Good idea,” Darya said, replying to whatever Gerant had suggested. Her voice had fallen to a hush, almost reverent. “Verygood idea.”
Chapter 8
Old temples were familiar ground for Darya in one sense. The world had plenty of abandoned towns and cities. Naturally, most of them had a few places to worship. Most of the places where she’d been had been smaller, though, and the temples likewise. Most, too, had been more damaged; the gods’ power might have kept away the undead and let the temples weather the worst of the storms, but when mortal hands set fires or catapults launched boulders, the divine didn’t help very much.
She gawked like a peasant girl at a fair, but she also went to the fountain, made a quick holy sign, and refilled one of her waterskins, then drank and splashed her face as well. The water tingled with more than cold as it hit her skin.
“Honor to Poram, lord of the waters and wild,” said Amris, before he bent his head to take his own drink.
He spoke sincerely, but the prayer had a practiced note to it. “Poetic,” said Darya, inviting more information but not asking. The man might not want to talk about the past more than he had to—and he would likely have to again before too long.
“A common blessing in Silane,” said Amris, and then chuckled, “and I do mean ‘common.’ Like as not, I kept the habit as much out of defiance as any true reverence when I came among men of rank.”
