47
For the rest of the day they had pressed east, past the Tower, past Buri’s Leap and the Harpies, past the Black and Gold Knives, dropping into valleys and scrambling through passes no wider than their shoulders until they were in a region of peaks Kaden had never seen before. In the early morning, Pyrre pushed them hard, but as the day wore on, the assassin began to flag and the monks’ long years in the mountains started to show their value. Tan kept the pace, never slowing, even when the others stumbled or paused for breath. How Triste managed to keep up, Kaden had no idea. On the steeper sections, he put a hand on her lower back, helping her up the scree and talus, but for the most part, she climbed and ran on her own, face drawn with the exertion, chest heaving as she gasped the thin air, but she ran. No one had forgotten what happened to Phirum when he began to fall behind.
They didn’t stop until the sun hung just above the western peaks, a bleary red smudge on the darkening sky. They had just crested the steepest ridge yet, a great wall of granite running north and south as far as the eye could see, when Tan finally called the halt. Triste collapsed into a heap on the rocks, shuddering with exhaustion and falling asleep almost instantly. She had lost the second of her light shoes crossing a river, and her feet were an excruciating mess of slices, blisters, blood, and bruises that made Kaden wince just looking at them. It seemed a miracle that she could continue to stand, let alone run.
Wearily, he peered over the ridgeline to the east. The terrain made his heart sink: rank on rank of mountains and ridges stretching away toward the horizon. He started to say something, to point out that they couldn’t possibly cross all of them, but Pyrre and Tan were looking west, studying a saddle they had passed through maybe an hour earlier. It had been a brutal climb and an even more brutal descent, interrupted by a few paces of level ground where Kaden had wanted nothing more than to sprawl out on the earth and surrender himself to slumber. He had suggested they stop there for the night, but Tan was having none of it.
“You were right, monk,” Pyrre said, gesturing.
Kaden stared. There were men in that saddle, he realized, squinting until his eyes hurt. Aedolians.
“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” the assassin continued, hunched forward to catch her breath, palms on her knees. “Dismayed, but impressed. I didn’t think they’d be able to track us.”
“How did they track us?” Kaden asked, incredulous. He was a fair hand at tracking himself, as were all the monks. It was possible to follow their path through the mountains—Pyrre’s leather boots would scuff the stone and Triste had been bleeding since they fled Ashk’lan—but it would be laborious, time-consuming work, work that should have slowed their pursuers to a crawl. “They should not be able to move so fast.”
It was a fatuous comment, an inane denial of empirical fact, but for once Tan let it go. The older monk’s mouth was set in a grim line as he stared west. “The ak’hanath,” he said finally.
The assassin raised an eyebrow. “Is that some kind of secret monk word?”
“It’s what’s been tracking us,” Tan replied, then shifted his eyes to Kaden. “More than likely, it’s been tracking him.”
In the mad terror of the slaughter of the monastery and the exhaustion of their flight through the mountains, Kaden had forgotten all about the terrible creature Tan had shown him on the parchment nights before.
“Why?” he asked wearily. “What does the ak’hanath have to do with any of this?”
The monk shook his head. “Impossible to be sure, but it seems the Aedolians found it … or bred it. They used it to keep an eye on you while they were setting up their attack.”
“I don’t want to seem like the dunce,” Pyrre said, “but what is it?”
“All these months,” Kaden said slowly, “and it was there just to watch me?”
“Hard to be certain. If the annals are correct, the creatures are fearsome fighters, but they were not made to fight. The Csestriim created them to track, to hunt.”
“It killed all those goats. It ripped out Serkhan’s throat easily enough. Why didn’t it come for me?”
“I don’t know,” Tan replied. “Perhaps it did, but failed to find an opening. Perhaps Ut and Adiv did not want to take a chance with your assassination, did not want to risk assigning the task to a creature of which they remained uncertain. This is all speculation, worthless as wind.”
“I don’t like to make frivolous offerings to my god,” Pyrre said, raising a hand to slow the conversation, “but it is growing very tempting to stab one of you repeatedly in the neck until the other explains to me what you’re talking about.”
“A Csestriim creation,” Tan replied, ignoring the assassin’s skeptical look. “A creature built to hunt.”
Pyrre laughed. “I’m no historian, but I think the last of the Csestriim died a few thousand years ago.”
“The ak’hanath is not Csestriim,” Tan responded, rounding on her. “It is a creation of the Csestriim.”
“I’ve traveled two continents, from the Waist to Freeport and west beyond the Ancaz Mountains, and I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Now you have.”
The assassin pursed her lips and nodded. “All right. We’ll use the assumption, for now. Why does the thing hate Kaden so much?” She turned to Kaden. “You piss in its nest or something?”
“The ak’hanath follows commands,” Tan replied. “A dog set on a hare doesn’t hate the hare, but it will harry it and tear it apart just the same.”
“Then we’ll have to make sure the hound doesn’t find our rabbit,” Pyrre said, clapping Kaden on the shoulder jocularly. “There are a dozen ways to cover his scent. The next time we cross one of those rushing streams—”
“It doesn’t track by scent.”
“Then what,” Kaden asked, trying to make sense of that, “does it use?”
The monk shook his head. “There’s not a word for it—not a modern one, anyway. The histories call it atma. ‘Self’ might be the best translation. The ak’hanath is tracking your sense of self.”
Kaden stared.
“That,” Pyrre said, raising an eyebrow, “is by turns fascinating, implausible, and horribly inconvenient.”
“Take your pick,” Tan replied grimly. “It’s out there—one of the monks saw it back at Ashk’lan—and it has Kaden’s atma. You put the thing on a boat to the Manjari Empire, and given enough time, it will find its way back to him.”
Kaden shuddered at the thought of those awful, unnatural eyes, those skittering claws, bent to one single purpose—hunting him.
“I’m waiting for the good news,” Pyrre said.
“There is no— Get down,” Tan growled, hauling Kaden beneath an overhanging shelf of rock. “Get the girl and get under cover.”
Pyrre, for once, didn’t waste time bandying words, turning instead to gather Triste up and duck beneath the same shelf. Only when they were hidden away did the assassin turn to the monk.
“What are we doing under this rock?” she asked, her voice curious rather than annoyed.
Tan gestured toward the sky above the Aedolians. “We’ve got more than the ak’hanath to worry about. Now they’ve got a bird, as well.”
Aside from once, as a child, Kaden had never seen a kettral, and he marveled at the sight of the majestic creature. So that’s what Valyn’s been flying around on all these years, he thought, envy, for the moment, threatening to overwhelm dismay as he studied the massive wingspan and huge, raking talons, each big enough to support two tiny figures in black. He watched as the bird circled once, then landed gracefully among the Aedolians. The assassin was not so excited.