Progeny - Book IV

Bad Omens

Home.

Tara knows these hills, this long road, the golden, pale wheat grass. This is Rikki Moorjin; the southern cusp of Roften, and the high peaks of the mountains in the distance, the birds, soaring high in the sky above, call her home. This is her land, the land without smoke, the land without machine.

Here in the glens, brooks, and vast plains, shifting, whispering in the breeze, is a language long lost to human ears. Those who can listen can catch snippets of it sometimes, through the animals, the beasts, the creatures of the forest. And, in time, the listeners can start to understand it too. The breeze murmurs of clouds in the distance now, of thunderstorms brewing out on the horizon, rumbling this way in hours, days, and of cold air rushing down from the north, bringing a bite this warm sunshine does not yet possess.

Even here there are ill tidings in the air, bad omens trawling their way toward Tara; but she already knew they were coming. Just as she already knows where they are going.

This road may be smooth and rolling, but the path ahead is thornier, mangled and twisted, and she wonders, she wonders if what she must do can be done.

"Take the throne of Roften," Allayria said two days ago, ordered, all iron and smokelight in the long shadow of Solveigard. "Secure the north."

But the Paragon failed to understand what she asked. That is not how these things are done up here. There is no securing, no wielding Roften's reins like Halften or Keesark. Roftenians, Tara knows in her heart, are wild, submitting to no wrangling, no gathering that other folk might permit. They roam, and who leads them is chosen, not ordered.

That's what'll happen at Cai Morij, Tara thinks. Because for all her might, a Paragon's seal of approval will do nothing for this task. It will mean nothing at the Moot.

There's a snort of a horse behind her and, on her, left Dost's second-in-command, a wiry man called Engle, appears.

"We'll reach camp by nightfall, Sharaf," he says and she nods. His gray eyes dart from her to the long road ahead, perhaps also catching the whiffs of frost, and his head inclines toward hers, a small bow, as he falls back again into the crowd behind them.

"Sharaf?" Hiran asks from her other side and Tara starts.

"It means 'Honorable One,' " she tells him. " 'One Who Has Served.' "

Engle gave it to her in the shadow of Vatra, amidst the fields of the dead. Sharaf, he called her after she crossed the graveyard of machines with the remains of their units and brought him Dost's body. Sharaf; an old title, given only for a great service.

The horse wickers underneath Tara, tail swishing, nostrils snorting, and she places a soothing hand at its neck, wishing as she Skills it calm she could be so easily set at ease too.

But it is not to be, and its banners and Cai Morij that linger on her mind as they move farther into a glen, into cool shade and soft trees, and fractured sunlight. It's dimmer here, darker, and in the shadows Tara ruminates on a place she knows by name but not by sight, of a summoning she's heard in tales since she was a child but never seen herself. She's going into the heart of it all now, with Keesark and Halften soldiers at her back and a Solveig man at her side.

I have Roften people too, she assures herself. Engle and the other generals, who saw her quality on the battlefield, who can vouch for her talents, as young as she is.

The last thought churns her stomach.

It doesn't matter anymore, Tara tells herself. She stands at the head of what remains of the Roften army, given special honors by its remaining commanders.

But only because Allayria willed it.

There's a chill in here, a cold, unnatural silence that seems more familiar than foreign anymore: it's a shadow that has followed them all the way back from Vatra.  Perhaps it's the weight of the dead—for they too have come for this long journey home—but Tara thinks there's something else lingering in the air. Something she hasn't been told.

The impenetrable silence from Allayria did not surprise Tara; likewise, she and Lei have never been close; but Hiran...

Tara spares a glance over at the Nature-caller who rides, stony-faced and oblivious to her gaze, beside her.

There is something going on with Hiran. And it's not like him not to tell her it.

Before Vatra they were a team within the team, always together when the larger group split apart, working jointly, looking after Finn jointly, and now...

This newfound anxiety blooms again, because though there's dirt beneath her horse's hooves and green-leafed branches above her head, Tara feels moored in a rough and cold sea. Alone, clinging to shipwreck with no land on the horizon, and she circles back to increasingly repetitive thoughts, because it has to be something to do with Finn, doesn't it? With whatever happened up above in Vatra. Because Hiran found him, and Tara wants to ask, wants to tell Hiran that he can tell her about it, exorcise that awful memory—she can hold that burden for him if it brings him back, but she doesn't know how to broach it without causing him pain. And they've all had enough of that.

I don't know how to make you better, she thinks, vexes, hands twisting on the leather reins, shoulders shifting uncomfortably under this stifling, puffy ceremonial garb. Snapped bows, broken arrows, yes, but this...

I don't know how to fix this.

Any thoughts of time healing wounds have to be delayed because, alongside Aren Dost and the rest of the Roften dead, they've brought Finn too.

She tries not to think about him back there, in one of the carriages with the others. Wrapped for the journey. It means less than shit that he wasn't from Roften—he was a Beast-caller and Tara wasn't going to leave him in the dead gloom of Solveigard. She wasn't going to leave him to be cold and... lonely.

It's a shard of pain, radiating as it so often does when she thinks about it, like a fragment of glass wedged between all the valves and muscles of her heart, catching her breath, spearing her apart.

It must stutter her breathing because she hears Hiran turn toward her, though it's her turn to stare ahead and ignore the silent inquisition. She's conscious of not just the dead behind her, but all the living too. They're watching her back, watching her movements and she'll need them for what's coming. She'll need their support at the Moot.

No one's going to stand for someone who cries. Not even if it's over a child.

She blinks and breathes and tries to find something to distract her—rustling leaves, fluttering wings, birdcall. She looks in the canopy, on the road, at the sky.

There's nothing but dead silence.

It's then that she realizes that something is wrong.

A/N: Tara! You're looking a little blue. That might turn red though, because you are in so much trouble and you haven't even gotten home yet. 🙈 Theories on what's going to happen next?

Chapter Notes: Tara stayed back to take control of the Roftenian army in Prodigal's "Dust to Dust," thus earning her honorific.