The Rose of Sarifal by Paulina Claiborne Page A

despised. Even here on Moray the enemy still held fast, stubborn outposts of men and orcs and infestations of fey, all of whom must be driven out and destroyed, for the sake of the Black Blood.
    The boy allowed his thoughts to move and stretch a little bit. “Where are my friends?” he asked without asking.
    Another fish on the bank, slit open. “They are here.”
    “Where are you taking us?”
    “Into Orcskull.”
    “Why?”
    This one was darker, deeper, an eel slithering away. But he caught it and hauled it up, though it twined around his wrist. “Great Malar says it. Great Malar wants it.”
    No sooner had these words, unspoken, risen to the surface, than he caught a glimpse of something lower down, something at the bottom of the pool, a shadow or a shape that waited there, its red eyes glowing in the dark. Kip shuddered, and he felt the wereboar come awake under his body as without moving he slunk away from the inner water and feigned sleep.

    Not far away, Marikke lay on her back, her face unquiet, her long hair tangled and caked with mud. Unlike Kip, who craved physical contact even when he was in danger, who was always brushing up against you or else reaching out to touch your arm, she had dragged herself away from the night fire, humping on her elbows and her knees to be alone. This was not because she had any illusions of escape—her wrists and ankles were tied too cruelly for that. It was because she needed space for the goddess to find her and speak to her alone, space to become greater than she was. Now she was dreaming, close to the surface of sleep, because of the pain in her swollen hands. But even so the goddess crept out to her, lightly on the thin edge, and greeted her with the sign of the morning. In Marikke’s dream she had taken an unusual form, a cloud of bees buzzing without sound, and yet retaining the shape of a young girl.
    “Daughter, I am afraid,” she said, though she was young enough to be Marikke’s daughter. “The ice is breaking in the mountains, and Great Malar wakes. An angel comes to prepare the way. Swift is his sword, bright is his hair. But it is your choice, what happens next.”
    Hurt and cold as she was, Marikke said nothing. “You’re not listening,” said the girl, her mouth drifting and reforming as the bees turned and moved. “You’re not seeing what I see. Oh, it is because you are suffering,” she said, and even in this dreadful bleakmorning Marikke almost had to laugh, because now the goddess was around her like a golden cloud, caressing her without touching her, moving the blood through her body and opening her up. It was a cold, clear dawn in the Month of Melting, and there was frost on the rocks. Back to the east the way they’d come, the sun was rising over the straits.
    Always her heart lifted when she came into the mountains. It was a landscape she knew from the time when she herself was a little girl in her father’s stone hut in the Fairheight hills on Alaron, watching the wet clouds chase the rainbows up the valley. The Orcskulls were drier, the chalky ground the color of exposed bones. Still she took comfort in the graceful granite peaks that rose behind her, touched now with dazzling light. Surely the goddess was in all places, and all creatures served her in their own way.
    But where was the person who had attacked them on the beach, the mage with the shining sword who had taken the Savage by surprise as he cut the lycanthropes apart?
    “Where do you think you’re going?” Harsh and deep, the voice came from behind her. The first day of this journey from the coast, she could scarcely tell the lycanthropes apart, and all their words sounded like grunting and babbling in their distorted mouths. But now she recognized the Common tongue. Now the goddess had blessed her with understanding, which allowed her to twist away from the kick when it came, the clawed foot that caught her in the side and not thehead. The creature rose above her now, a