Remove the Shroud: The King's Ranger Book 3

by AC Cobble

  “Aye, just another four hundred leagues. We’ll be there before you know it,” replied Rew with a grin.

  Cinda kicked her legs, trying to move the sodden wool of her skirts. “How do women travel in these? I’d rather my robes.”

  “Your crimson robes will tell anyone looking for us that you’re a necromancer,” reminded Rew.

  “This garb will tell anyone that I’m a serving wench,” grumbled the noblewoman, leaving the skirts alone for a moment to pull up her bodice, which was cut lower than she was used to.

  “It’s a good disguise until we can get further from Spinesend,” responded the ranger. “Wear it until we find a village with a seamstress. Then, you can change. It’s a long walk, and there will be plenty of opportunities to find more suitable travel attire. I hope we’ve evaded pursuit for the moment, but no reason to make it easier for anyone looking for us, eh?”

  Cinda grumbled beneath her breath, but she stopped arguing.

  Anne, looking down the long, empty expanse, wondered, “Do you think Bressan would have sold us some of those horses? It would have made the journey quicker. He liked you, Rew. I bet you could have talked him into a good price.”

  Rew shrugged and did not respond.

  Along the highway, as the sun continued to shine down, traffic increased until there was a steady flow of people and wagons. Most of them were moving north, the opposite direction the party was taking. The highway was the main thoroughfare between the capital of the Eastern Territory, Spinesend, and the much larger capital of the Eastern Province, Carff. The cities were the two largest trading hubs in the east, but along the five-hundred-league stretch, there were several other towns both large and small. The way was dotted with roadside inns and stations of varying quality to accommodate the steady stream of travelers, and the party rarely went more than half an hour without seeing someone or something.

  At first, Rew and the others had been nervous, peering closely at each group they passed, twitching at anything that might signal an attack. But over the next several days, it became obvious that no one was interested in them, and that if there were watchers on the road, the party had gotten out ahead of them or had not yet found them.

  That’s not to say it was a relaxing stroll. The other groups they passed were heavily armed, and most of them had formed caravans for protection. Rew risked asking several of the other travelers what they were worried about, confused how the news from Spinesend had already spread so far. But instead of political unrest, he was told people were guarding against the Dark Kind. Rew hadn’t seen any sign of the creatures near Spinesend, but it seemed rumors of them had infected the land like a plague. After several serious-looking parties mentioned the narjags, Rew began to worry it was more than just rumor, but there was nothing to be done about it except to keep moving, so they did.

  On foot, after months of living on the road, even the children were capable of maintaining a brisk pace most of the day, and more often than not, it was the party who was overtaking their fellow travelers. Every couple of hours, though, they would have to hop off to the side of the road as mounted men or horse-drawn carriages thundered past.

  Messengers, Rew suspected, rushing to share word of what had happened in Spinesend. They could be working on behalf of merchants and the cabals such men formed, or they could have been spies for the various factions of minor nobility strewn amongst the cities bordering the highway. Rew didn’t know, or much care, but he was powerfully curious at what the messengers might be relaying. Was the news about the conflagration in the tower, about Duke Eeron’s flight, or had there been further disruption after they’d fled? Rew wanted to know, but given the chances some of those tidings might involve him and his friends, he couldn’t bring himself to stop one of the messengers and ask.

  So it was with a bit of trepidation and anticipation that they came across a carriage stopped on the side of the road ahead of them. The carriage was painted with a dark blue lacquer, trimmed in gold, and the horse standing beside it would have been the pride of Bressan’s stable. A footman, garbed in a crushed velvet coat and stockings the same shade of dark blue as the carriage, was up to his knees in mud. A wheel was lying, shattered, twenty paces off the road and behind the carriage, and the vehicle had flipped on its side.

  Half an hour before and half a league behind, the carriage had flown past them like the king himself was chasing it. Rew did the calculations in his head and decided the vehicle had been on its side for a quarter hour.

  “They might need my help,” murmured Anne. “Rew, can we…”

  Rew shrugged. It was quite possible whoever was involved in a wreck at such speed might need Anne’s care, and while the empath tended to any victims, he would have a chance to question the footman. The children remained silent, observing the wreck cautiously. Rew was glad that if nothing else, they’d at least learned to be careful over the last several months.

  Anne, on the other hand, rushed forward and began chastising the footman and inquiring about his cargo. When Rew and the others caught up, his stomach fell. Anne was scaling the side of the overturned carriage. She looked down at the ranger.

  “I’m going to need your help. There’s a woman inside, and it seems she’s giving birth.”

  “King’s Sake,” growled Rew. “Maybe we should keep—“

  “Rew!”

  “Right,” he said, shrugging his pack off his back and tugging open the flap. He turned to the footman, who was standing around uselessly. It appeared the man had been trying on his own to right the carriage. Ridiculous. Snapping to get the man’s attention, Rew asked, “Does your mistress have a tent that you can set up?”

  The man blinked back at Rew stupidly, and the ranger decided the horse peering around the overturned vehicle showed more intelligence than the footman.

  “Where did you sleep last night?”

  “I, ah, underneath the carriage,” mumbled the footman. “We didn’t pause long enough to prepare for a proper journey. The lady doesn’t even have her entourage. You asked… A tent? No, we don’t have one.”

  Muttering under his breath, Rew glanced at the children and instructed them, “Work with him to set up… something. Use our tarps if you need to. We’ll need shelter for the baby, and judging by the sounds in that carriage, we’ll need it soon.”

  Glancing around the open hills, Zaine mentioned, “There’s nothing to string a tarp from, Rew. This isn’t a good place to make camp.”

  Rew waved his hand at her irritably. “Figure something out.”

  “Of course,” said Raif, and he moved to the back of the carriage, likely just happy to have something to do that didn’t involve helping with or listening to what was going on inside.

  Steeling himself, Rew scampered up after Anne and peered down to where she was crouched inside of the overturned carriage next to a woman.

  Seeing Rew, the woman tried to shove down her skirts, but Anne slapped the woman’s hands away. “No time for that foolishness. He’s seen worse.”

  Grunting, Rew dropped down into the carriage and handed Anne his packets of medicinal herbs, a few waterskins, and the spare clothing he’d pulled out to use as rags. He unstopped one of the liquor bottles Bressan had given him and drank two large gulps. Anne snatched it from him and began splashing it on her hands. Muttering to himself about how much she was using, Rew began arranging pillows beneath the sweating, screaming woman. Anne put her hands on the woman’s stomach, and Rew frowned. The woman was screaming in pain.

  “Anne? Are you going to—“

  “I need to turn the baby,” she said calmly.

  “King’s Sake.”

  The woman wailed, and Anne was quiet for another minute. Then, she declared, “No, I can’t. I’m putting too much empathy into the baby, and I cannot stop. Rew, you’ve got to turn it.”

  Rew stared at her, aghast, unable to even formulate an appropriate curse.

  “Wash your hands, Rew,” instructed Anne. She raised an eyebrow at him. “You hav
e touched a woman there before, correct? You know how this works?”

  “I’ve touched a woman, aye,” babbled Rew. “Not like this. I, ah… Anne, are you sure?”

  “All of you men ought to do this at least once. The world would be a better place if you had some idea of what we women go through,” declared Anne. “We wouldn’t get asked such stupid questions, for one. Of course I am sure, Rew.”

  She began giving him instructions, and Rew’s mind went blank.

  The next morning, Rew was standing outside of a tiny, road-side way station. The way station had been back toward Spinesend, but the children hadn’t managed to erect a shelter by the time the baby was born, and Anne had insisted. The empath had carried the baby, and Rew had carried the woman. Miraculously, both had survived, and Anne judged they were healthy.

  That night, while stripping out of his ruined clothing before realizing many of his other garments had been sacrificed during the delivery, Rew had consumed the rest of the bottle of spirits they’d used as disinfectant and half of another. He’d wished for more, but he’d stopped at Anne’s steady stare. His answering look had been anything but steady.

  The mother, grateful at first for the successful birth of her child on the side of the road—within a tumped-over carriage, no less—had grown irritable and demanding several minutes after both she and infant were deposited in the simple way station. She was nobility, and it seemed she thought that meant they ought to act like her servants. For anyone who’d spent time with nobility, her attitude was not a great surprise. A minor family from Spinesend, barely landed, Raif had explained. Rew had lost interest once it became obvious the woman did not know or care who they were, so the ranger stopped paying attention to anything she said.

  When he had woken the next day, Rew had hoped to send the woman on her way, but it’d been quickly apparent that wasn’t going to work. Without the carriage, and the woman barely able to walk, they were days away from safety for the baby. While even Anne had started ignoring the noblewoman’s shrill demands, the empath would not abandon the newborn.

  None of them were heartless enough to argue with her, so they’d sent the noblewoman’s footman off alone with the horse to secure transportation for his mistress while they waited with her in the way station. The structure wasn’t more than three walls and a roof, with a small hole cut for smoke to escape, but there was plenty of water in a briskly running stream, and it was the only shelter nearby. The woman and her footman had the misfortune to wreck the carriage halfway between villages, and in the new mother’s condition, it wasn’t clear when she would be capable of making the walk.

  As they settled in to wait, everyone except Anne and the noblewoman had drifted outside. The way station was too small a space to share with a woman who had such a high opinion of herself.

  Once outside, Rew stretched and sipped his coffee, hoping the dark liquid would do its work to quell the pounding in his head. He was considering another cup—he could use it following the inundation of alcohol he’d subjected his body to the night before—but he didn’t want to admit that to Anne, and he was growing concerned they would run out of the dry coffee beans. They’d packed lightly when departing Bressan’s, knowing there were plenty of places on the highway to stop for provisions, but if they weren’t moving, they weren’t getting closer to any of those places. Rew was finding, given his condition, that the problem of the diminishing coffee beans was an easier thing to stew over than what else lay ahead of them.

  Behind him, inside the shelter, he heard Anne’s whispered instructions to the new mother, teaching the woman how to latch the child and feed it. Two dozen paces away, Raif and Zaine were working through their morning exercises, looking rather lethargic, but the ranger wasn’t any peppier, and he couldn’t find the energy to chide the children into more effort.

  The baby was healthy, and it had the lungs of a lion. Even in his stupor the night before, Rew had not slept long and doubted that anyone else had either. The child was quiet now, biding its time, Rew was sure, for the next moment any of the adults tried to catch some sleep.

  Cinda joined him, a mug cradled in her hands. She inhaled the steam rising from it and then covered a yawn with her hand. She asked him, “Back at Bressan’s inn, I got to thinking I no longer needed sleep. It seems I was sorely mistaken. Maybe I don’t need as many hours as I used to, but King’s Sake, I need some. Are all babies like that?”

  “Crying all night? Yes, I suppose they are. All the ones I’ve been around, at least.”

  “And you’ve been around a lot of babies in the middle of the night?”

  He frowned at her.

  Cinda grinned then sipped her coffee. She scowled. “Do you like the taste of this stuff? It’s awfully bitter, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “At Worgon’s keep, where I first drank coffee, we added sugar and milk. It made it quite good. We should have gotten sugar from Bressan before we left.”

  Rew didn’t respond.

  “You don’t enjoy yours a little sweeter?” she pestered him. “It’s more pleasant, and not even you can argue with that.”

  “There’s bitter and sweet in life, lass,” he told her. “You can’t enjoy the sweet without the bitter. I take my coffee black in the morning so that the rest of the day is sweet.”

  Cinda snorted, shaking her head at him. “Still feeling the effects of that liquor from last night? I saw you trying to hide the empty bottle. Pfah, that’s why we don’t have any sugar, isn’t it? You and the innkeeper got to be thick as thieves, and it seems it was only your luxuries that made their way into our packs.”

  “Black coffee is an acquired taste, and I’ve no doubt by the time this journey is over, you’ll have acquired it,” he advised her. “But for now, if you’re not going to drink it, give me the rest of your cup. You ought to practice with the others. We seem to have made it out of Spinesend safely, but the world is full of danger, particularly for you.”

  Cinda shifted uncomfortably then responded, “I tried a bit earlier to draw power like Anne had taught me, but there wasn’t much there. It was easy to draw enough for the funeral fire when we were staying at Bressan’s, but here, it’s like this place is… dead, I guess. That’s not the right world.”

  Rew cackled, the sound like glass breaking on the quiet morning. “No, that’s not the right word,” he managed. “The opposite, in fact.”

  Looking around, Cinda’s eyes widened. “There’s nothing here, never has been, has there? No settlements, no one dying. That’s why I didn’t feel anything. No souls have departed here.”

  “There hasn’t been much here at least since Spinesend was founded, which must have been a thousand years ago,” remarked Rew. “In this place, there’s never been more than souls simply passing through. It’s not strategic, not easily defended, so I imagine whatever battles have happened in the past, did not happen near this way station.”

  “I can feel that,” murmured Cinda, still looking up and down the road and at the stand of oak that surrounded the small station. “No one has died here in years, I think. With no one dying, there’s nothing for me to grab a hold of. I have no power.”

  “Not much,” acknowledged Rew. “Necromancers draw from the strength of departed souls, conjurers summon creatures from other planes of existence, enchanters imbue their strength into physical objects, and invokers tap their own power, utilizing arcane movements and phrases to amplify what is in their blood. Everyone has to pull from something.”

  “And rangers?”

  “Rangers do their best to stay away from it all.”

  Cinda rolled her eyes. “What was that magic you cast which hid our flight from the battle between Duke Eeron and Baron Worgon’s men? How did you hide us in the tower?”

  Rew’s lips twisted. He explained, “Low magic. Anyone can cast a bit of it if they really try, though some have more of an affinity. Most rangers can manage small illusions and extend our senses a bit. Works better in the wilderness where we
can connect with the natural world. Anne’s empathy is low magic as well, though what she does with it is rare.”

  “The fire you started on the thatch roof in Umdrac?” questioned Cinda. “Was that low magic?”

  Rew coughed, nearly spilling his coffee, which would have been tragic.

  “So you’ve a bit of high magic, then?” pressed the noblewoman. “How is that possible?”

  Rew sipped his coffee, sighed, and explained, “Low magic is cast through connection. Anyone can do it, but it requires an openness to the world, which less charitable folk might say is why nobility rarely uses it. The strength of the caster of low magic grows as the connection grows. As a ranger, I’ve spent my time out in the wilderness communing with nature, practicing my craft. It means I can cast quite a bit more than I could when I first arrived in Eastwatch.”

  “And Anne practices healing,” said Cinda.

  “Aye, healing, but her empathy goes beyond that. We’re here in this way station because of her and the connection she’s forging with that new family. Same as when she ran her inn, it was about people, right? Every time she meets someone new, every time she strengthens a bond between herself and another person, through her empathy or just conversation, she increases what she’s capable of. Not much, mind you, but thousands of tiny steps add up. And yes, her healing is the core of it. To get where she is now, she’s had to come a long way. To heal your brother’s wounds, she had to heal many, many more before him. There are few empaths who have experienced what Anne has.”

  “I understand,” responded Cinda, frowning, “but high magic isn’t like that at all, is it? It was high magic that started the fire on the roof?”

  “No, high magic is not about the connection,” agreed Rew, “and it was how I started that fire. High magic comes from your blood. It’s similar, I suppose, in that your blood is the product of dozens of generations of men and women with talent coming together and mixing those traits until you’re capable of far more than what your ancestors were capable of. I doubt your great grandfather could have banished those wraiths like that or called death’s flame like you did. At least, not untrained, he couldn’t.”