by Kim Wedlock
Neither could help a laugh of joy. They pushed themselves back to their feet and continued onwards through genuine daylight, their spirits finally buoyed.
Luck, too, suddenly smiled upon them: within a copse of trees that stood strangely but welcomely untouched in the desolation, they found an abundance of blueberries. After gorging themselves ravenously, they filled the bag with as many as they could find, then followed the sound of trickling water as it gurgled delightfully in their ears. A stream cut through the miniature forest, most likely the very same Anthis had found that morning, where Rathen spared the energy to conjure two waterskins. They drank their fill and stored what they could, and as they stopped to rest, he dared and achieved further progress over the ancient relic.
Their fatigue subsided, at least for the moment, and as they followed the stream which, they decided with much effort, must have been uninterrupted all the way back to its source for it to still be flowing, their spirits were as high as the clouds.
It led them along to another curious copse, which they reached just as the stars began to twinkle, and after a sleep far less fitful than those they'd become accustomed to, they ate their fill of berries, adding to their hoard what few they could scrounge from these sparser bushes, and set back out in the correct morning light to face the same trials yet again. But where the world became familiar with elements of the ordinary, they found it easier to put one foot in front of the other, and they had both gathered bearings enough to note their direction from the sun. Finally, they were heading south, towards Voiland and on to Ivaea.
But with those bearings came clarity, and their morale dampened as their minds wandered again towards the others. Where were they? Had they been captured? Or had they taken this very same trek south? Were they in Ivaea? Or even back in Turunda?
Or had they fallen victim to the rigours of the world, caught in the tides of war and fallen to Ivaean or Kasiri blade? Or simply starved? In their haste to escape the collapse of Khry's Glory, their supplies had been forgotten - a silver lining, at least, for the pair trapped inside - and Dolunokh, as they had seen, was almost empty of any sustenance. Would they soon come across three corpses? Or would they find only scattered bones after the feasting of opportunistic scavengers?
Rathen gritted his teeth against the thought as they crossed the widening stream through its shallows, neglecting in their wealth to pause and take a drink, and waded through the reeds to the far bank where an apple tree grew in another verdant grove.
They'd found no trace of pursuers since that lone assassin days ago, and as neither were sure how much distance they'd covered, they weren't inclined to relax their guard. The Arana would certainly have the area under watch - the simple fact that Salus, the obsessively-driven head of those spies, wanted the Zi'veyn that was currently half-repaired inside Rathen's bag was enough to justify that assumption, and the fact that there had been no sign of pursuers equally meant nothing. They were professionals, after all.
A light splash behind them forced hearts into throats and the quickest movements either had made in weeks. But while Anthis had drawn in a flash the plainest of his two concealed daggers and Rathen had raised one empty hand and tightened his grasp on the bag with the other, neither, it seemed, were quite so prepared to utilise their weapons.
Their tracker was upon Rathen in a moment, gripping him tightly and pinning his arms to his sides. He attempted to free himself, but his body was still too weak to put up any kind of fight, and as Anthis had not yet come to his rescue, he could only assume that he was similarly incapacitated.
But at the very moment he felt a desperate helplessness begin to overshadow his being, he caught the warming scent of forest and the fever in the muffled words spoken into his shoulder. It took him a long while to comprehend them, and even as the figure pulled away and he stared into a perfectly beautiful face accented by piercing emerald eyes and framed by a tangle of brown waves, curls and ringlets, it wasn't until she embraced him again that he finally recognised her.
"Kienza?" He felt her nod against his shoulder, and when she pulled away again, he was almost knocked down by the intensity of emotion in her watery eyes.
She raised her hand and stroked his gaunt, hairy, salt-and-peppered cheek, smiling in amusement through her tears, though sorrow lingered at its centre. He caught her hand as the sorrow began to dominate and smiled himself, with nothing but relief. He leaned down and kissed her. She returned it vigorously.
"You have no idea how relieved I am to see you," she told him before they'd even parted, and grasped him firmly by the arms, though her grip quickly loosened. "You're so thin..."
"There wasn't much to eat." He stared into her eyes, his sudden severity not in the least compromised by his starvation. "Aria? Is she all right? Tell me."
Kienza nodded earnestly. "She's fine. Just fine. She's been working very hard."
"Working hard?" His frown passed as he recalled the task he'd set her, then returned in shame. He shrugged the bag from his back, rummaged through the berries and withdrew the gilded onyx pyramid which sat snugly in the palm of his hand. "I'm afraid I won't need it..."
Her eyes brimmed with an intense and sudden intrigue, and her hand rose instinctively to reach out for it. Catching herself, she promptly forced it back into her other and diverted her gaze onto him with abruptly veiled thoughts. His own, troubled eyes were already lost in the tangle of black and gold.
She turned away, leaving him to his guilt-riddled ponderings, and pulled Anthis up from the floor where he'd dropped in exhaustion and into an embrace of his own. He looked on in shock, though not devoid of appreciation, then received from her the same look of concern. She stepped back and regarded them both, then ordered them to remove their shirts and sit before thrusting a plate summoned from nowhere into their hands, each bearing a generous chunk of bread, meat, cheese, grapes, and a tall glass of chilled milk. "Summoned, not conjured," she declared before Rathen could protest to the false nutrition of equally false food, and set about looking over their multitude of severe cuts, bruises, burns and fractured bones.
Rathen eased a deep breath, certain at last in the safety of her presence, and as he felt the movement of her magic weave first into Anthis's skin, he recalled, not for the first time, the words she'd given them before they'd departed Ivaea for the Roquna sea. "'Where we need to go'."
Anthis glanced at him in confusion while he crammed bread into his mouth, but Kienza merely smiled from behind them.
"You knew everything, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," she replied easily.
"About my mother?"
"Mhm."
"And that there was an island full of elves out there?"
"Well your mother had to come from somewhere."
"And--"
"And that you would be ensnared in the enchanted mists and twisting current and reach said island rather than the Ronar Coast of Kasire?" She shrugged easily again. "Yep."
Anthis's shoulders sagged. Whether it was for the ease of pain or in shame for having been so easily tricked, Rathen wasn't sure, but he knew for which of those reasons a defeated smile graced his own lips. He nodded and asked nothing more about it. "And Aria is safe? She's being looked after?"
"You've already asked. Don't worry - your father's care would surprise you."
Anthis looked again in curiosity, but his mouth was full now with cheese.
"And the others? Are they--"
"Fine, all fine. Relax, my love. The world has not crumbled in your absence."
Reluctantly, Rathen eased in acceptance. At a pleading gurgle from his stomach, he finally made a start on the food, having neglected it in his nausea. It didn't take him long to pick the plate spotless, and after a brief wave of dizziness, he felt energy overflowing. Mind racing, heart pumping, determination aflame, he seized the Zi'veyn from the blueberry bag.
Anthis and Kienza both stared on in silent fascination, each wishing to snatch the thing and marvel at it in their own hands bu
t unwilling to interrupt Rathen's immense concentration. His focus was suddenly and absolutely consumed. A thing so small, so insignificant - not even truly a beauty by the standards of most recovered elven pieces. But as they stared, they soon began to squirm beneath its presence. This tiny little thing, the tiny little thing they had searched two months for, could block the magic of elves. It could render the original spell casters defenceless. Made as a weapon, a show of power, to end elven conflicts in the favour of its wielder - who could then obliterate them with his own magic without resistance. For what did elves know of swinging a sword? Or of using their hands at all?
Truly, it was a terrible thing.
But it had the potential to be a saviour. Nothing else could remove elven magic, in the veins of its caster nor the spells they left behind. But while the latter could, at least, be countered once understood, the shattered chains that had seeped like a plague from the elven-made realm were too clueless and chaotic to truly be deciphered. A counter-spell could not be created, not against every individual and half-degraded chain that gathered in uncountable pools all across Turunda and well beyond. In such an unnatural state, it would take nothing less than an unnatural, barbarically conceived spell to oppose it.
Kienza dragged her attention back to her own work, and soon gave Anthis a gentle pat on the shoulder. "All finished, Mister Karth."
He was already sitting taller, and now rolled his shoulders and flexed his back, discovering right away the absence of every single twinge and crack that had hounded him for the past two days - or at least since he'd regained his faculties. His muscles, too, felt lighter and stronger. He was very nearly seized by the urge to leap up and climb the apple tree. "Thank you," he said with evident surprise, "and Anthis, please."
She nodded graciously and her hands then fell upon Rathen's bare skin, but he didn't react, and nor did he notice her immediate recoil.
She glanced towards Anthis, who noticed her shock, and only then did he truly see the extent of Rathen's wounds - most of which seemed more like rips than cuts, as if his body had grown without his skin.
Or his bones had broadened and reshaped themselves beneath it.
He looked back towards Kienza, whose perfect lips were puckered in thought as her hands returned to his skin, her forest green eyes just as pensive, and recalled through the haze of creeping wilds, floating paths and melting walls two incidents in which a monster had set upon him - one with a startling likeness to Rathen.
He turned away, his eyes grazing his shirt and the two blades he'd hidden from the sylvan sorceress within it, and suppressed the shame that came with the return of the equally hazy memories of his own bestial attacks.
Silently, he slunk away to redress.
"You transformed, didn't you?" She asked Rathen quietly as she pretended not to notice Anthis disappear around the other side of the tree. But he didn't answer. She inhaled to ask him again, thinking him too absorbed to have heard, but was cut off before she could begin.
"Yes."
The single word was hollowed out by so much contempt she could almost hear its echo. Only then did she notice the stiffness of his muscles. "And you're ashamed."
"What sort of thing is that to say?" He spoke emptily.
"A silly thing, I suppose," she conceded, "but I do think it might be necessary to remind you that, when it happened, I was not there."
"And why would you need to remind me of that?"
Her eyes narrowed, and a smile twitched over her lips. She knew that tone, and knew he was being deliberately obtuse. But she would play along and spell out for him what he was already well aware of. "Because there was no one there to heal you."
She smiled again as he failed to retort and watched the scabbed-over tears across the back of his ribs vanish into smooth skin. "So that means - and correct me if I'm wrong - that you have some kind of control over it now."
He jolted with what at first seemed like a bark. "Control." He shook his head and scoffed again. "I couldn't stop it from happening at all."
"Stop it from happening, no, but stop it from continuing, yes." She moved around to his front and set to work on the additional rips and what seemed like knife wounds across his front. She paused to stroke his cheek which was suddenly not so gaunt anymore, though it did appear more aged. "Usually," she continued just as lightly as he stared down into the reflective onyx, "you're damn near dead. It takes my magic, or Eyila's, for you to recover - or standard medics and two to three weeks of bed rest just to be able to sit up. And yet here you are, moving around, fighting, it would seem, and healed but for cuts and bruises without the help of magic nor medics. And after what your body goes through, that can only happen internally."
He growled tiresomely. "What are you talking about?"
"That whatever the elves tried to teach you, something of it got through. And now you have to grasp it and use it, sharpen it and perfect it. And then it will stop happening, unless you will it."
"Why would I ever will it?"
"Because its foundation, as the elves themselves have told you, is defence. A deterrent against violence, to strike such fear into the hearts of enemies with the dreadful visage of the God of Eternal Peace that they would not want to even try raising a hand against you ever again, and so saving both sides from harm." She abandoned her magic and lifted his bearded chin, running her fingers through the tangled black and white hairs. She smiled at them, then at him, and her green eyes softened, revealing her heart. Her gaze gripped him, and his anger similarly melted. "You are not fully elven. That is why it shreds you. It isn't meant for you. But with the understanding you're cultivating, in your mind and in your magic, your body can better steel itself against it. You will learn to control it, and learning to force it into submission once it has taken hold is the first - and biggest - step."
He stared back at her doubtfully, his eyes flicking between hers, but she was hiding nothing. He nodded. "But to reach that point, it will have to happen again."
She moved around to his side and lifted his emaciated arm to erase the streaks of burns from around his waist. She glanced only briefly at the steel cuff about his bicep, shrunken to keep itself in place. "Perhaps. But at the same time, every occurrence is also an opportunity to fight it into submission from the moment of onset - is it not?"
He sighed and looked back to the Zi'veyn. She smiled. He agreed.
But then he looked up again, a new spark in his eye as he regarded her with a burning thought.
"Uh-oh," she jested, but he ignored it.
"Tell me something: the elves cast spells without seals or signs, they can teleport, they--"
She chuckled softly and smiled. "No, Rathen, my love, my dearest, I am not an elf. Strikingly beautiful and disgustingly knowledgable about all things magic, but not an elf."
The spark died and his eyes turned away again, brimming now with confusion and defeated assumptions.
She saw quickly to the wounds beneath his shredded trousers before Anthis reappeared from around the tree, then rose to her feet, pulled him up, kissed him and declared that she had 'things to do'.
"Wait!" Rathen abruptly thrust the artefact forwards, inches from her face. "Can you...?"
She blinked in confusion while Anthis looked on, itching to take it and finally look it over himself. "Can I...? What? Juggle it?"
"No," he smiled despite himself, "can you check it?"
"Check it?" She frowned and took it - tentatively. It was remarkably light. "You mean you've repaired it already? Then again, I suppose you've had a month to work it out..."
The two blanched, but neither could find their tongues.
She frowned and concentrated into its depths just as he had, though with noticeably more composure, but soon shook her head and handed it back to him. "I can't detect anything broken," she said carefully, "but it's such an intricate spell that I might have missed something..." She watched him curiously as he reclaimed it, turned it over and dropped it back into the bag of berries. She didn
't voice her suspicions even as her eyes flicked again to the glinting of the cuff through his torn sleeve.
Her lips pursed at another passing thought as he slung the sack over his shoulder, and their clothes suddenly refreshed; frays sealed, rips stitched, filth evaporated. Then she dragged them together, embraced them both fondly, and their stomachs lurched with the abrupt shift of the world.
Chapter 5
The world brightened. At first it seemed to be the curious displacement of light that always accompanied the casting of such invasive and unnatural spells, but when it didn't diminish, there followed the belated recollection that while such a phenomenon was always expected, it was also absolutely always imagined.
The thought was lost an instant later when a chill joined the blinding air, crisp, fresh and welcome, if fleeting, and the suddenly notable absence of running water was marked by the green chirp of a grasshopper and the gradual arrival of distant braying and bleating. As senses grounded, the subtle aroma of damp soil and summer blossoms trailed in the wake of the breeze, and a hint of earthy bark, with the slightest, smoothest note of sweet almond.
Aryll trees.
Turunda.
A roughly snapped curse renewed the abating nausea in a panic, and the ring of steel over scabbard lockets silenced the insects. Efforts were enforced to subdue the somersaulting of their stomachs, and their bearings urgently tumbled back into place.
Rathen was seized immediately, but even as the breath was once again squeezed out of him, a flash of red infused with spices and rosehip assured him there was no need for alarm, and he observed a black-clad officer of fine bearing sheath his sword from beyond the woman's embrace.
As suddenly and as roughly as he was grasped, he was released, but as a smile of relief began to twitch into place, it was promptly slapped away. Rubbing his cheek, which Kienza had not seen fit to shave while making him otherwise presentable, he stared instead into a visage of fury.