Much to her credit, Meraude did not seem to be so in the least. “You’ve made a vow,” she said, her voice lacking any emotion, as if she were simply commenting on the state of the weather.
The Sightful simply nodded, her expression unchanging. “Dewhurst is dead.”
“So I have gathered from reports.”
Mai Larkin’s expression darkened. “He found a way around his vow.” Her eyes flashed. “I assume you did not know that?”
At first Jinn’s mother made no reply but stared on coldly at her servant. “And I assume that you found a way around yours?”
The Sightful tossed her head, her looks giving away nothing. “The one you forced on me? Might have done. Might not have done. But one thing is for certain: Dewhurst betrayed you. He has withheld information from your people.”
Finally, Jinn noted, there was a break in Meraude’s mask. “I compel you to tell me all.” When her servant made no immediate answer, the would-be mage queen pulled a dagger from her sleeve.
The Sightful backed away. “He has the maps now,” she spoke, though she was obviously trying to stop herself. “He is coming for you.” She cringed.
“Dewhurst’s corpse is coming for me?” Meraude said in all seriousness.
Mai Larkin was struggling. Her eyes bulged, her face turned blue, and she shook as the words pushed their way out of her mouth, “The S—” Again she struggled against her own tongue.
“You know, Larkin, I will find out anyway. But let me hear it from your own lips.”
“Su – mmoner.” Larkin gasped and collapsed to her knees, panting. Then, before her master could ask another question, the Sightful reached out her hand and the most unexpected thing happened: the dagger flew out of Meraude’s hand and into Mai Larkin’s, and she drove the blade through her own throat.
The vision ended, and Jinn woke up, panting. “The Sightful is also a Summoner?” she croaked, forgetting about her own throat. Jinn gagged and rose up onto her knees. Again and again she choked on her own spit, until she could slow her breaths and remind herself that she was no longer being strangled.
In the present, Quick had a nice blaze going. She had not seen him at first upon waking, but now realized his clothes were hanging up on a makeshift clothesline made of sticks and twine. He sat nearby, chewing on something.
“Quick,” Jinn whispered. “What are you eating?”
Proudly her brother held up a fish bone, picked clean of its flesh. “Cooked trout. Slippery fish did not want to be caught, so….” He now looked guilty. “Might have looked ahead a bit.”
Jinn shook her head. She was too tired to express her displeasure in any other way. “I had another vision.”
“Quick noticed.” He skewered another gutted fish that lay near him and put it on a rock before the blaze. Quick rose and brought Jinn one of the waterskins. When she tried to refuse it, he said, “Refilled them all.”
She frowned. “But the water here—”
Quick laughed. “Not here. Water bad. Went upstream for it, so drink.” He pushed the vessel into her hands, and she drank deeply.
The water was cold and refreshing, and Jinn thanked him in a hoarse whisper and handed the skin back. When her brother sat down next to her, his expression inquisitive, Jinn told him all she had seen.
As she spoke, he listened intently, interrupting once or twice for clarification on something she had said. When she told him about the Sightful killing herself, Quick’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Sightful is not a bad person, then. Maybe on our side, even.”
Jinn nodded. “It would seem that way. But what of the Summoner? The Sightful killed – I mean, will kill herself at some point to stop herself from sharing information about the Summoner. What does she know?” She turned the matter over in her mind, but no easy conclusions were coming to her. The Sightful obviously held no love for Mother and would rather die than help her. But what else might she be compelled to say?
The smell of baking fish reached Jinn’s nose, and her stomach snarled. “How long was I unconscious?” she asked Quick, who was rushing to the fire to turn the fish over on the stone.
“Don’t know. Maybe an hour. Jinn, we need to stop Sightful.”
“From killing herself? Quick, I don’t even know when this will happen. Maybe some time this year, maybe in five years.”
Quick was already shaking his head. “No, we must find Mai Larkin and stop her from going back to Mother at all. She knows things she should not, methinks.”
There was no arguing with that. “We’ll look for the Sightful after we find the Summoner. We know where he’s headed…well, I mean, we don’t know where the place is, but we know he wants to find Cedric’s grave. And, judging from my vision, he will find it. We’ll just have to make certain our paths cross.”
Her brother did not look convinced. “Why we need to find Summoner, anyway?” He sat back down next to her and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. The look he gave her was piercing.
Jinn cleared her throat. “I think he’ll be able to stop Mother’s plans, whatever they might be.” She left out information about a potential situation she had foreseen. The future was so tenuous, one shift of the wind and it might break into a thousand different threads.
“Fish is done,” he said, sniffing the air. He went over again to attend to what looked like a rainbow trout.
She tried to disguise her relief. Whether or not Quick would want Mother dead remained yet to be seen.
* * *
They slept in the open that night beneath a clear sky. Jinn made a half-hearted attempt to keep watch, but she was still sore and tired from her encounter with the merrow, so sleep caught her midway through the night, and she did not awake until the dawning.
When she sat up, covered in dew, her stomach rumbling, she was surprised to find that Quick was already awake and tending to the fire. More fish had been gutted and were baking next to the fire on sizzling-hot rocks. The waterskins were all full, and large handfuls of starberries were mounded atop a clean handkerchief. Jinn marveled at these most. “Quick, how did you find these? They’re not in season.”
Quick set down his fire-poking stick and came over to her, a big grin on his face. “The strange place let Quick pass.”
“‘The strange place’? What is that?”
Her brother flapped his arms about in excitement. “Lots of starberries everywhere. Big hills.” He held a hand high over his head in measurement. His smile soon wavered. “Felt odd there. Felt…scary.”
Still waking up, Jinn took in the information as she picked up a starberry and then hesitated. “Have you had any?”
“Oh, yes. Ate lots, but lots more to be picked. Quick shows you.” He ran to the fire and turned over several fish, and then brought one to Jinn on a leaf. “Here. You eat, then we go. Maybe they’ll let you in too.”
Jinn, who had been taking a large bite into the cold, sweet berry, paused. “They? Someone is out there?” It was as if the berry had turned to ash in her mouth, and her stomach soured.
Quick chuckled. “No, sister. Feelings. Feelings told Quick he could enter.”
Now she found herself even more confused and full of dread. “Feelings told you you could enter? What are you talking about, Quick?”
But her brother had lost interest in the conversation and returned to tending the fire and the fish. What was he on about?
Shaking, Jinn set the fish on the ground before her, closed her eyes, and scouted ahead. Five minutes ahead: they would begin to pack up camp. Ten minutes ahead: she would follow Quick. She looked to twenty minutes ahead where Quick would lead her down a path that had not been there the day previous. That was the least of strange things. There were no various future paths to be followed, which struck Jinn as ominous. There were always variations, different paths to be chosen in the future. Why was there only one possible path no
w? Jinn peered ahead again, thirty minutes. That was when the first hole appeared, a ten-minute gap. When her vision resumed, she was watching Quick’s back as he trudged off into the distance. Her sight stopped entirely then, which could only mean one thing. She searched in vain for an alternate route, but none appeared.
“Jinn? Time to pack up camp and put out fire.”
Swallowing hard, Jinn opened her eyes and looked at Quick. “Quick, I think you’ve found something important.”
Chapter Twelve
Aidan
Aidan walked the remainder of the day at a distance from Slaíne. She seemed to know the way, even though he was growing more and more uncertain. Whatever magical Pull the place held, the direction and strength seemed to be changing. For that day, at least, the Pull was mostly north, so Slaíne followed whatever guide she was going by, and as it was in tune with the Pulls that Aidan sensed, he did not question her judgment.
The day was, mercifully, not a hot one. Cooler weather meant less water drained from their water bladders. They would need to refill the following day, however hot or cold the weather might be.
The paths were fairly easy for a while, but the trees soon thinned, and the underbrush gave way to a new problem: marshy soil. We’ll have to be on the alert for quicksand, Aidan thought with a grimace. And there was another problem: the strange Pull from the previous day was now following them again. He made mention of it to Slaíne at one point, but she shook her head.
“Today looks to be fine,” she puzzled him by saying in response.
Something was different about Slaíne. She had been a little less herself since the declarations – or near-declarations – of the morning. It was almost as if she had acquired an air of eccentricity. Or perhaps it had always been present and he had failed to notice before. Or maybe it had been a dormant characteristic that only now had awoken. Aidan did not quite know what to make of her muttering to herself and her sudden sense of direction. Maybe this whole journey was driving her mad. Or maybe it was he who was losing his sanity.
As nightfall approached and they had traveled a good fifteen miles with the occasional break in between, Aidan broke the easy silence between them. “We should find water wherever we make our camp tonight. I don’t want to be long in the sun with the amount of water we have left.”
Slaíne bobbed her head and veered off to the left without warning. “This way, sir.”
Aidan frowned but followed. Sure enough, he began to hear the keening of insects, and felt the Pull of smaller life that might belong to frogs and fish. He crashed through the thicket of marsh plants and nearly stumbled into Slaíne and into a small inlet of water that apparently ran from a stream. “That was fast.” He Summoned all six bladders and began to fill them one at a time, cleansing the water by Dismissing the Pulls of dangerous things.
“Sir,” Slaíne said as he filled the fourth.
“Are you hungry? Here.” He Summoned some brown bread and a cold slice of roasted beef onto a nearby rock that seemed to be clean. Then he went back to what he had been doing. But when he realized Slaíne was not eating, Aidan paused and looked up at her. “Is something wrong?”
Her pupils were huge in the growing dimness, and her small frame trembled. “I don’t know if we should find the Questing Goblet,” she said in a small voice. “I have an odd feeling. Here.” She put her hand over her heart and then over her stomach, before shaking her head and walking away.
Had he said something amiss? “What did I do now?” Aidan murmured before going back to filling the bladders. There was no time to worry over what one should or should not say, nor was there time for going back over things in one’s mind. It was enough to drive any man to insanity. He wondered how his father had done it with his mother. The thought brought him little comfort, as he recalled the rotting corpses he had buried back on the estate. Dark thoughts to dwell on, he knew, so he put all of his concentration into filling the bladders and Dismissing anything harmful. The process took him nearly twice as long as usual, but he did not care.
Slaíne’s Pull gave him a slight tug, and he at once Dismissed the waterskins and went to look for her. When he found her, she was sitting cross-legged under a tree, finishing up the last of the food he had Summoned. Her looks were of one who was guilty. “Guess I was hungry.”
“What?”
She gave him a sheepish grin. “I et all the food. Sorry.”
Aidan waved the remark away. “It wasn’t much.” In truth, he had been meaning to partake of half, and had planned to reward the both of them with a greater meal in the morning. But as his mother had always told him and Sam, “Butchered pork is not for mourning.”
“Are we ter make camp here?” Rising, the girl wiped filthy hands on the fabric of her torn yellow dress, the one he had bought her in Abbington a fortnight or more ago. “What?” Her eyes went to where Aidan was looking, and she worried her lip. “Don’t mind that I ruined it, d’you?”
“What? Oh, not at all. I have the one still in Nothingness, if the need arises.”
Apparently satisfied, Slaíne nodded and looked to the sky. The sun was a little more than an hour from setting. Clouds moving in from the west were tinged red from the brilliance of the waning light, signaling a still evening. Good. No wind to blow them about.
“Are we making camp?” she asked.
Aidan was about to agree, but he stopped himself. There was that obnoxious Pull out there. It was closer now than it had been earlier; closer still than days previous, and fast approaching. He held up a finger for Slaíne to be still and quiet so he could concentrate around her Pull and her sound.
It was as if the man or beast knew Aidan had sensed it, for the Pull stopped where it was, two clearings behind, and came no closer. In fact, it retreated what felt like three paces and then changed. Its essence remained the same, though.
Mindful of exactly where the Pull was coming from, Aidan motioned for Slaíne to come near, and then whispered, “That creature that’s been following us….”
Slaíne grimaced. “I knew it was still out there. What is it? Can ya tell?”
Not knowing what hearing this creature possessed, Aidan lowered his voice further still and leaned in even closer. “Its Pull keeps changing.”
“Shape-shifter.”
The word made Aidan queasy. If there were such things, it would be a difficult type of being to fight against…at least, he imagined. Without further thought, he Summoned the silver sword that he had taken from Slaíne the night he ran off with her.
But Slaíne shook her head and motioned for him to hand it over to her. When he hesitated, she smirked and said, “I think I should be the one who kills it.”
Again Aidan was impressed with the thought that something was not quite right with Slaíne. Not only was her Pull increasing in strength as the day wore on, something was wrong in her eyes. They were…darker.
The girl’s smile fell, and she looked as she always did, her Pull lessening before curling back in around her like a hug. Or had it? Perhaps Aidan had imagined it all. “What was I saying?” she asked in a soft voice.
“You said something about a shape-shifter,” Aidan reminded Slaíne, frowning. “What makes you think it might be one?”
“What makes you think it might not be?”
Aidan felt his ire rising to meet hers, but he let it cool before continuing. “You just said it with so much assurance. Why is that?” When he saw a glint of malice in her eyes, he continued, attempting to smooth things over. “Don’t get me wrong, Slaíne. It seems very likely that this creature, whatever it might be, can change appearances. I’ve noticed its Pull since leaving Grensworth, but it keeps changing in quality.”
She gave him a look as if to say, I told you so, but her temper seemed to cool at his words. The grin was back again, only this time it was nowhere near as maniacal. It almost seemed resigned. “Should we both go after it,
yes?”
What could he say to that? He dearly wished the blasted thing would simply go away, but he knew they were being followed with a purpose. Here was the opportunity to deal with the menace or nuisance once and for all. Now was the time. Aidan raised the sword and was prepared to charge after the creature, but again Slaíne stayed him.
“What’re you going to do? Just charge at it an’ hope for the best?” she snipped.
Aidan rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let’s—”
“Give me the sword.” When he stood there staring at her, unmoving, Slaíne groaned. “Mr. Aidan, the sword is mine. Also, I doubt you’ve had as much practice with a blade as I have.”
That would be a blow to his pride to admit, but it was true. He hadn’t taken a blade with him when he had fled Lord Dewhurst’s manor as a youth, and he hadn’t acquired any on his travels. Aidan knew he was better suited to a dirk or magic, so he lowered the sword and tipped the pommel toward her.
Without hesitation, Slaíne took it by the grip and slunk off into the distance, her feet scarcely touching the ground. Or perhaps they did not touch it at all.
Aidan had lost sight of Slaíne, so he followed her Pull, which was confusing the shifting one who was following them. The strange second Pull changed again, to something far less substantial, and moved high up into the air in the distance. Slaíne’s Pull followed suit. Swearing, Aidan was forced to watch from the ground as the girl soared overhead, chasing the creature, who now looked like a bird.
To his amusement and horror, she was flying around after some great bird of prey, her dress catching in a current and billowing up around her. Aidan shook his head and averted his eyes. “Slaíne, you’re not going to catch it. You’re going to get yourself killed. Come down from there.”
Slaíne, however, had different ideas. She paid him no heed, but swooped around in one large circle, chasing the raptor higher and higher into the sky. Surely the curse would take her, what with the distance she was putting between herself and him.
Aidan cringed in anticipation and called out again, “Leave it be. We’ll catch the beast another day.” He thought she would not listen, so he was surprised when she dove back to earth, barely slowing as she hit the ground.
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