Sky Woman: Book One of The Empress Saga

CHAPTER FOUR

There was a stillness about Enfri's home. The chickens bobbed around their coop, but kept silent. The pigs weren't making a sound, and the cow kept a wary eye on the strangers' horses. Even the winds were absent. The air settled upon the land like an oppressive blanket.

The rattling of Haythe's cart seemed a clamor as it came to a stop in front of Enfri's home. Haythe offered his hand to help Enfri down, but she failed to notice. Her eyes wouldn't leave her front door, which stood slightly ajar.

"Enfri?"

Haythe saying her name startled her back to herself. Enfri shook her head clear and accepted the hand he offered. She was so distracted by the prospect of strangers inside her house that she hardly registered the way Haythe took her by the waist and set her on the ground.

He seemed to catch on to her anxiety. "Would you like me to come in with you?"

Enfri nodded without thinking.

Why? she wondered. This isn't anything new. Folk come by for remedies or a treatment sometimes. Why should I be nervous now?

Enfri made herself approach the door. Her breathing was all she could hear in the unnatural quiet. One foot in front of the other.

Through the cracked doorway, Enfri could only see darkness. The hearth had been burning down to embers when she left with Haythe the night before, but wouldn't her visitors have built a fire if they had come to find her gone? Perhaps they were only recently arrived.

She looked to the black horses. The grass around the hitching post was nibbled down to the roots. No, they had been there several hours. Before the dawn. Riders in the night upon dark steeds. Enfri swallowed and felt that her throat had gone as dry as the dunes.

Through the door, she saw motion. A shadow moved within the darkness. The door was pushed the rest of the way open, and the shadow stepped out into the light and resolved into the figure of a man.

At least, Enfri assumed it was a man. When her eyes went to his face, she felt cold and feared he was some monster arrived from the desert.

He was slender, though his bare arms with milky pale skin bore prominent muscles. He was clad in black. His torso was armored in hardened leather studded with rivets of iron. The cloak on his back seemed to be sewn from the night sky, and upon his head he wore a cowl that made Enfri stop short and draw in a sharp breath. The cowl bore the visage of a black wolf, a hunter's pelt worn as a mask. The stranger's jaw was all that Enfri could see of his face.

The last thing Enfri noticed— foolishly so, she would later decide— were the blades he carried. Two curved swords were strapped to either of his hips, and a number of knives were carried about his person. He had daggers on his thighs, calves, chest, and waist. A quiver of arrows was carried on his back alongside an unstrung horn bow.

Enfri couldn't see any eyes through the wolf's head cowl he wore. Behind the mask's eyes, she could make out nothing but empty, black pools. Though she couldn't see them, she could feel his eyes taking her and Haythe in. Enfri knew she was being weighed and measured, but what he thought of them was a mystery. The man gave no outward reaction. Calm and stoic as a stone.

"Dashar," came a woman's voice from within. "Don't be such a boor. You're barring the healer's own door to her."

The man, this Dashar, didn't respond with any words of his own. He did, however, step aside from the entryway and bow his head to Enfri.

Not knowing what else to do, Enfri bobbed a curtsy in return. Well, as best she could with her back the way it was.

Dashar held the door open for her. As he did, there wasn't the slightest change in the set of his jaw.