I try to mark the places that we have passed before, remembering a rocky overhang where Gáspár and I sheltered one night, wrapped together for warmth, or a small ravine that had once been a river, the old waters etching a permanent groove into the earth. If I stare all the way to the horizon, I can glimpse the dark silhouette of the pine forest, trees bristling against the vicious wind. Gáspár keeps a steady pace beside me, and my eyes dart to his with an animal’s unconscious twitch, just to make sure he’s still there. I would rather be looking at him than thinking of what we left behind in Király Szek, or about Nándor’s men snarling through the snow after us, or about the dangers of the forest ahead. His presence soothes me, though only by a small measure.
Katalin has taken to her role of guiding us with a true táltos’s steely determination, her horse pacing out several yards ahead of ours and her face ever forward, like an arrow aiming true. Once the sparse daylight winnows away, the sky goes dark and the snow starts to fall with such ferocity that it feels as if Isten himself is hurling handfuls of it down upon us. At the very least it covers our tracks, and we ride doggedly through it, but I begin to think that it is some sort of divine punishment. If Isten can read our intent, he must be trying to stop us. Katalin doesn’t do very much to dispel the notion.
“There will be some vengeance for killing it,” Katalin says, as we bed down to steal a few precious hours of slumber before riding on. “There must be. The gods won’t let you have anything for free.”
“Did you see that in your vision?” I ask, half-hopeful and half-despaired.
“No,” she says. “Only the path to the pine forest where the trees grow as wide around as huts, and tall enough to brush the highest clouds.”
“What is the power that’s worth risking your gods’ vengeance?” Gáspár’s voice is level, but I see the flicker in his eye.
“The power to see,” says Katalin. “To see everything. What has happened before and what is happening now in the most far-off places you can imagine and what will happen in a day or a year or even a moment. You could even read the thoughts in men’s minds. That’s the sort of power your father was going to kill me for, even though I don’t have it. No seer does. Only the turul.”
Gáspár leans back against the rock that we’ve sheltered ourselves beneath. I have the urge to bury myself in his chest, but I feel oddly afraid to reveal my affections in front of Katalin. Though she has nothing to gain from hurting me now, I can tell by the cut of her gaze she thinks me a traitor, a slave to the Woodsmen and the Crown. I swallow hard instead.
“It would be like burning your chapel to the ground,” I say. “Or looting Saint István’s corpse. Killing the turul is like defiling something sacred, something we all spin toward like a compass point.”
Katalin makes a derisive sound in the back of her throat; I know she is taking offense at me comparing the turul to any of the Patrifaith’s holy symbols.
Overhead, the sky is turning to a riot of color, ribbons of green and purple light wavering across it. The Juvvi believe that when whales in the Half-Sea breach the surface of the dark water, they’re so elated at the sight of the stars above them that they let out streams of rainbow light through their blowholes, winking radiance into the night. The Juvvi think this a good omen, portending a bountiful fishing season, a glut of silver-backed fish squirming in their twined nets. I don’t know what sort of future this portends for me.
“We can’t rest for very long,” Gáspár says. “Nándor’s men will be close behind.”
I nod, my eyes watering with the sting of the wind. I am about to lie back and rest my head on my arms when I hear Katalin gasp softly. She tips backward into the snow, little more than a heap of wolf fur and thrashing limbs, her pupils gone empty and white.
It is mere instinct that moves me, primed after so many years of watching Virág succumb to her visions. I kneel beside Katalin and roll her head into my lap, even as she flails, her mouth gaping open and then closing again silently, as if she’s gasping for air.
Gáspár draws a short, sharp breath. “Is this what it’s like every time?”
“Yes,” I say, as Katalin’s phantom hand nicks a chunk of flesh from my cheek, the bloody skin wedged beneath her fingernail. I think about how I held Virág the same way, and then how I held the secret of her writhing weakness close to me, too, so that no one else had to know the truth of what happened behind the walls of her hut in the dark. My fingers close around Katalin’s wrists, pinning her arms to the ground. Gáspár grabs hold of her ankles until the shaking stops and her eyes slide shut.