Rein: A Tidefall Novel Page 4

  Curiosity didn't begin to describe how his mind and body always listed toward Oliviana. No matter what trap she had just sprung, he knew where to look for her. Spied her in hawk’s nests and trenches and shadowed alleys. He and Oliviana bypassed 'curious' after their encounter at Lake Saimaa. She had become essential to him, holding his End in her hands.

  Nikolas breathed out slowly, releasing pressure and willing himself calm. "I'll do this mission. I'll show you all that Unamene has always dealt falsely with us. I'll show you that she lies."

  "Good." Lady Remy smiled, appearing pleased. "You have less than a fortnight to reach the city. It is a three-day festival, commencing with the full moon."

  "Bloody hell," Artur mumbled and gave Nikolas an incredulous look. "We're Calling during the Tidefall?"

  Nikolas shot a look toward Lady Remy, who remained frustratingly staid. The Tidefall was their annual period of mourning, remembering Unamene's single attack on the Wolfkinders. Hell, Matelessness and Madness had sprung from the bloodied battlefield of the Tidefall.

  "The full moon of the Tidefall?" Nikolas just shook his head grimly. "Are we so desperate, Lady Remy?"

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned and left the room with Artur on his heels. But he was a Wolfkinder. Lady Remy's voice chased after him as he passed through the rowdy taproom.

  "Did you catch that last bit, Marcus?"

  "Yes," his Prime replied. "He's afraid that she won't Answer his Call."

  Lady Remy chuckled.

  Nikolas knew they weren't idiots. They wanted him to hear.

  "The fools," Lady Remy replied coolly. "Wasting so much time."

  Chapter 3

  Prussian Winter Camp, Silesia, Austria

  Winter 1742

  (Present)

  Oliviana crouched low on the roof, doing her best to not cast a silhouette against the first waxing of the moon. She had just reached Dresden. The new moon set her back by several days, leaving her unable to Port away once she had finished replenishing Krynica's spawning water. Now that she’d reached Dresden almost two weeks had passed, and her Reiner was long gone.

  A year ago, she wouldn't have lost him so easily. The Wolf Masters roved all over the Continent as human kingdoms employed them to fight in their wars and following her Reiner had gained her quite an education. Her hunting had improved since that night at Lake Saimaa so long ago. She also drew her knives much faster and knew what vital organs to strike. To do nothing but crouch on a rooftop, foolishly trying to catch a whiff of his scent, wasted all those hard years that she spent following him.

  Gods, she should just find him and End him. Teodor deserved his vengeance for being betrayed. Her father, with his brusque bearing, had always spoken so highly of her Reiner. Time and again, Teodor told her that he was a Wolfkinder who could be trusted.

  Poor Teodor, to be proved wrong in such a vicious manner.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willingly submerging herself in a swift swelling of grief. "Hitto."

  Despite cursing, she relished this ache. The sadness had become precious to her. It meant that she still missed him. Still loved him.

  "Oliviana," Krynica whispered, her voice trickling like stream water.

  "I'm here, Krynica."

  The tiny Eye trembled in a shallow dish that Oliviana had clamped to the roof tile, spilling water over the lip as she shook. "Put me away. Please hurry!"

  Oliviana heard the fear in the Eye's voice. With practiced, nimble fingers, she unscrewed the flask at her side and silently poured the water back in until Krynica slipped inside.

  Oliviana tightened the cap just as the dish, with some water remaining and reflecting the sliver of the moon, bubbled. A slithering Eye burst forth. Tengis.

  "Hand," the Eye said contemptuously.

  "Eye," Oliviana replied tersely.

  Oliviana warily regarded the dish. It had been years since she'd challenged the Eye for her Reiner—a risky, outright crazed impulse. It still baffled her that she'd come out on top in that engagement. Tengis, as an Eye, was thousands of years old. Oliviana was merely fifty-three years young. It should have been no contest—an Eye of Unamene versus a green Hand. Yet, she'd won, and even set about building his pyre.

  Truly, a delightful evening.

  Tengis hovered in Krynica's dish as a diminished version of herself no greater than two hands high. The Eye undulated like a wisp of candle smoke; her tiny size didn't diminish her dangerousness. Oliviana's fingers itched to unsheathe her knives, curved blades that she'd gotten quite adept at wielding.

  Tengis surveyed her surroundings and smirked. "Visiting brothels, are we? Wicked little Reiner."

  Oliviana gasped and glared at the building before her where Nikolas's days-old scent drifted in the air.

  A brothel? He visited a brothel! She slept in muddy fields and rat-infested haylofts, while he dallied at a rutting roost.

  Tengis snickered. "I wonder how long he spent there? I know that your Reiner has amazing stamina. One woman would not be enough."

  "What do you want?"

  "Oh, not I. She has need of you."

  She. Oliviana heard the inflection, the reverence in the Eye's voice.

  "Unamene can choke on it, whatever it is."

  Tengis glared at Oliviana. "Hands. I find you difficult and ungrateful."

  Oliviana huffed. Ungrateful her ass. She never asked Unamene for anything.

  Feeling spiteful, Oliviana yanked Krynica's dish from its clamp and tipped it over the roof's edge. "Eyes, I find it best to throw you out with the bath water."

  An unseen force roughly yanked Oliviana forward.

  Stupid. She knew Tengis had Tiding, the ability to pull and push objects without touching them, just like the tiding effect of the moon on the ocean.

  "I go, you go," Tengis said darkly.

  Oliviana held steady, bracing herself against Tengis's Tide. "Talk, Eye. Tell me why you're here."

  Tengis snarled, as if she would've preferred the cobblestones below rather than deliver her mistress's message. "You are to travel to Orondomia."

  Oliviana blinked in disbelief. "I've sworn never to go there."

  Tengis shrugged. "That is on your honor, not mine. She requires Her Hand there by the full moon. You are to observe the Wolfkinders' Calling."

  Oliviana stared down the Eye for a moment. Teodor had always spoken of Calling with such disappointment. He had Called once, and he said that the silence that followed had crushed him.

  She narrowed her eyes at the Eye. "Why?"

  "I do not ask why," Tengis said bitterly. "I just obey."

  "Unamene told you this?"

  "She sent a Hand." Tengis's lips curled. "One She actually makes use of."

  Oliviana registered Tengis's barb. Until this very moment, Unamene had ignored her, which suited Oliviana just fine. She'd never agreed to any terms of service, yet Unamene foisted her 'gifts' onto her, regardless. Gifts that had horrified her father the first time she had Moved.

  Despite her deep-seated hate, Tengis piqued her interest. Damn her inquisitiveness. Over the decades, it had caused such trouble and rarely satisfied her curiosity.

  "I'm to observe," Oliviana said slowly. "Nothing else? No action?"

  "The Wolfkinders must truly Call." Tengis's eyes flicked to the moon. "She will be blameless."

  Blameless. Such conceit. Unamene cursed Mates, thus corrupting the Call, and now she wanted to wash her hands clean so that when the Wolfkinders' Calls went Unanswered, no one cursed her name in return?

  Of all the wicked things Unamene could do—to give false hope.

  Oliviana studied Tengis closely and smiled. "I'll watch? Only watch?"

  "Yes," Tengis seethed, reacting to Oliviana's point before she could drive it home.

  "Why send a Hand to do an Eye's work?" she mused. "It's as if…you're not needed."

  Tengis twisted her way up to Oliviana and glared at her.

  "Yes, Little Hand, I know how you like to watch, like you did at Lake S
aimaa." Tengis pointed to the brothel. "He will be there. You will go? Watch him Call, yes?"

  Oliviana couldn't help it. Her breath caught. Her Reiner headed to Orondomia to Call for a Mate? But that could mean that there existed someone out there, specifically for him. Someone made for him, if she Answered his Call.

  "Do you hope it is you?" Tengis said cruelly.

  Oliviana huffed, hoping she convinced Tengis as well as herself. She cared not.

  "And will you still End him, once he has found true love?" Tengis hovered, her face taking on a quality that Oliviana had yet to see from the Eye. She looked wistful and a bit frightened, like she had contemplated this question for herself. Tengis stilled—such an eerie sight to witness. All her writhing tentacles suddenly ceased moving. "I would."

  In a burst of movement, Tengis lashed a tentacle around Oliviana's wrist.

  Hissing in alarm, Oliviana yanked her arm back, but it was too late. Tengis had already opened a portal and tugged her through.

  Since she had been crouching when Tengis ambushed her, she was still in that position when the Eye deposited her. For a scarce moment, the portal's blue glow created a bubble of light in a darkened space. Icy water rushed all about Oliviana and the force of it pitched her forward. Her hands slapped down, making contact with a sleek, slippery surface. She scrambled to find a hold as the gushing water swept her along, throwing her out into the open night sky where she could see the waxing gibbous moon.

  The instant Oliviana knew her location—at the opening of a large drainage pipe where the moonlight sparkled in the torrent of cascading water—she plummeted toward the gorge and the roaring river below.

  As she opened her mouth to scream, she caught a metallic twinkle. In sheer desperation, she focused and Moved, reaching and pulling herself toward the shining object. And it hurt. Hitto, it really hurt. Never had she tried to Move against so much pressure. Forces dragged her back down, as if she were kicking toward the surface of a frozen, slushy swamp.

  Her impact with solid ground blew all the air from her lungs. She lay stunned for a moment, seeing triple and then double, until finally she focused on one polished, bronze coin. It dangled from a red ribbon about the hairy neck of a goat.

  Oliviana moaned and sat up slowly, thankful that she’d landed flat on her back and not her stomach. With her bellowing gasps, she could feel the hardness of Krynica's flask between her breasts.

  Her fingers shook as she opened the flask, releasing the little Eye's mountain spring scent and the sounds of frogs and crickets.

  "Krynica," she whispered, her chest hurting. "Krynica?"

  "I'm good. Good." Krynica spoke softly.

  Oliviana waited, but the little Eye said nothing further. Her silence drained Oliviana's adrenaline, filling her with disappointment. Nothing had changed. She heaved a ragged sigh and recapped her flask.

  Well, at least they’d both survived.

  Damn Tengis.

  Oliviana hated gorges. And ravines. And crevices. Any fissure that plunged into darkness with no bottom in sight. As a child, she’d often had recurring dreams of an endless, pitch black fall. In those dreams, she would wake screaming and sobbing. On a good night, Teodor would be there with her. On full moon nights, she would be left to soothe herself because she rarely went into the cave where Teodor kept his cage. After Teodor had gone Mad, yet before the Reiner had come, she would often dream that Teodor fell into the thick, inky blackness. That nightmare plagued her regularly for years, so much so that she would sit in the cave, keeping an all-night vigil over Teodor as he raged inside his cage.

  Gazing up at the quarter moon, Oliviana bitterly realized that since that day in the Tatras Mountains, when Nikolas had come and Ended Teodor, she'd not had another dream of Teodor falling.

  Her fingers dug into the soft, fragrant grass that surrounded her. Heat radiated from beneath her, the warmth rising about two feet off the ground. As she looked about, she saw squat, square buildings surrounding her. All had flat roofs with the shadowy silhouettes of one or two goats mewling about. She realized that she, too, lay on a roof with a gray brick chimney and several covered water troughs.

  As she gasped for breath, a sense of familiarity fluttered over her. Everywhere she looked, the moonlight illuminated odd things, like goats on rooftops, yet it all made perfect sense to her. Even the obvious obsession with draining everything away into the gorge.

  By the gods. Tengis, while doing her best to kill her, had dumped her in the middle of the Wolfkinder's mountain city of Orondomia.

  Oliviana shivered, alarmed by the Eye's viciousness as the cold air hit her wet clothes.

  Well, hell. She just arrived in a city obsessed with draining water, and there she sat, soaked to the bone. She might as well tattoo 'Hand' across her forehead. How could she explain being drenched on a snowless night?

  With shaking hands, she began to strip off her sopping clothes. She also pulled off her boots and skivvies. Tucking it all into a wet heap, she looked out across the rooftops, sighting the cistern below her, and Moved her gear into the gorge. Gone. Only her hernest remained. She now wouldn't have to explain any wet clothes. Squeezing droplets from her chin-length locks, she hoped that no one would notice her hair.

  On rubbery knees, she crawled over and embraced the goat, cooing and petting the animal. She basked in its body heat and covered herself in its scent. Her Reiner, when she'd pulled him from Lake Saimaa, never made mention of Krynica. She suspected, that if he had caught a whiff at all, he just assumed Tengis's scent had lingered. Here in the city, with so many Wolfkinders about, she would have to keep Krynica—her watery scent and stream song—in the flask.

  She gazed up at the gibbous moon, noting the tiny sliver missing. If Tengis hadn't Ported her, she never would have made it in time for the Calling.

  The noises of people—footfalls and doors opening and just general commotion—rose up, through the rooftop. Her landing on the roof hadn't gone unnoticed. She was too weak to stand up, let alone Move away. Nothing to do but wait and see.

  A young woman popped her head up over the ledge of the roof.

  Oliviana huffed. What a trusting action on the woman's part, to lead with her head into the unknown.

  "Oh my!" the woman exclaimed sweetly. "Is my goat all right?"

  Chapter 4

  Western Tatras Mountains, Poland

  Winter 1742

  (Present)

  Tengis burst into the stream at the mouth of Teodor's long neglected cave. She crested above the water with both grace and strength. Her tentacles whipped about her, poised and ready to strike. It partially drained her energy to push her way through the portal. The stream belonged to another Eye, and Tengis was trespassing.

  Darting her eyes about, Tengis hissed in disappointment. There was nothing to attack. Nothing but wild goats. Their mawing echoed in the surrounding darkness. She hated the sound and smell of the beasts. Wolfkinders had made the gruffy animals their chosen livestock for centuries, and she had come to associate the two so closely that she couldn't scent one without thinking of the other.

  She sneered, "Vermin."

  How fitting that her insult applied to both Wolfkinders and their goats.

  If Tengis had had the time, she would've tried to spear a few of the goats with her tentacle hooks, but time moved against her this evening. Besides, she’d already had her play. Dropping that nasty little Hand into the opening of the cistern had been blissfully satisfying. If only she could have stayed to watch her fall into the gorge.

  Still wary of a challenge from the resident Eye, Tengis did one last visual sweep of her immediate vicinity. Moonlight cast eerie shadows amongst the deserted settlement. In the valley below, she could see the silhouettes of the cabins and outbuildings as they crumbled. Tengis dismissed what used to live there and turned her attention back to the cave to search for what had died there.

  She swam through the stream, flowing against the puny current, and into the cave. She paused at the ravine a
nd looked about the large chamber. Above her, an old, rusted cage swung precariously over the plunge. Cobwebs and mold covered the wooden platform and scaffolding that trussed the rickety cage.

  Tengis smiled wickedly at the cage. These things she liked. Since the Tidefall, she had occasionally encountered a handful of trapped Wolfkinders inside cages and treated each as a present she delighted in opening.

  The platform and scaffolding could hold two such cages, although only one creaked over the ravine. When she Ported into the roaring river below, she found the second cage, smashed to bits and rusted into a brittle, brown frame.

  Tengis swam on. The raging water ran deep, and the mountain pressed down, eradicating any air pockets. She channeled the waters for miles and finally emerged at an underground lake.

  In the complete blackness, Tengis's subtle glow appeared like a blazing blue beacon. She snaked her tentacles up along the sloping and jagged walls of the cave, illuminating the chamber. Throwing her head back, she reveled in the glorious acoustics of the enclosed space. Her lyre and whistling sea song never sounded sweeter.

  Even the stinking creature that sprawled on a narrow outcropping didn't sour her mood. At least, not immediately.

  "Ah!" She smiled at the wretched thing. "There you are, you lovely darling. I have been sent to fetch you. Eye am Tengis."

  A gnarled, gaunt Mad One shrank back from her light. Cowering, it tried to shield its eyes with an arm that was far too thin. Green mold matted down its black fur. Its appearance matched Tengis's notion of the Wolfkinders' true state—not fully a man yet not fully a wolf. The form held strength and menace, yet the Wolfkinders feared it and called it Madness. How small-minded of them.