Soldier Scarred

by D. K. Holmberg

  “How much farther do you think we will need to go?” Pendin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Endric said.

  “You said that the last time I asked.”

  “And the answer hasn’t changed,” Endric said.

  Pendin considered him for a long moment, his gaze fixed on his friend. “We are running out of time. Pretty soon, she won’t be breathing anymore.”

  Endric sighed. He had been watching Senda and thinking much the same. He tried to ignore that, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that even with everything they might do, she might not survive.

  “It shouldn’t be far from here.”

  “Is that what your vision showed you?”

  Endric swallowed. He didn’t know that either he or the horses would be able to handle going on for much longer. At a certain point, the horses would likely collapse, and he and Pendin only had so much water with them.

  “Everything the vision showed me was true.”

  “Other than it showing you the way to save Senda.”

  “Other than that,” he said.

  “What if the vision was meant for you and not meant as some way for you to help her?” Pendin looked over. “I believe that you had a vision. I don’t know what it would have meant, but I believe you when you speak of your vision. Yet it’s possible that your vision was more about enlightening you than about helping Senda in any way.”

  “Why show me if there wasn’t any way to help Senda?”

  “Maybe because you came here for another reason,” Pendin said.

  “I came here to help return Tresten to others who might be able to help him.”

  “A dead Mage. To others who might help?”

  “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Endric said. “But I trust Novan. And if he’s convinced that this was the right thing to do to help Tresten, then who am I to argue with him?”

  “Who are you? You’re Dendril’s son. You have experience more than most. If anyone has a right to argue with him, why wouldn’t it be you?”

  Endric smiled. There was so much that Pendin didn’t know. That he couldn’t know. Not without revealing more of the Conclave than Endric was willing—and able—to do. “Dendril wanted me to take this journey. That much I am certain of.”

  “Why would your father want you to come here?”

  “Because he wanted me to gain experience. He wanted me to gain a certain level of knowledge. And there might have been other reasons that I haven’t begun to understand.”

  Pendin started to say something, but Endric ignored him as he caught sight of shapes in the distance.

  He squinted, trying to peer farther away, thinking that he could gain some insight, and saw the trees that he had seen when he had been this way before.

  Relief washed through him. Could it be that he was finally reaching the place where he wanted to bring Senda? Could it be that he finally had found the pool of teralin-infused water?

  He urged the horse forward and they started off at a rapid gallop. Senda started to sway in the saddle, and he grabbed onto the straps holding her, trying not to think about how much they might be hurting her.

  “Not much farther,” he said to Senda.

  Pendin caught up to him, riding alongside him. “Is that it?” He nodded toward the trees in the distance.

  “That’s where I was before,” Endric said.

  “It seems so… small.”

  “Only because we’re still quite a ways away,” Endric said.

  They continued to ride, and the trees began to become clearer. The air took on a better scent to it that managed to even overpower the stench coming off Senda. Pendin’s nose wrinkled and he glanced over. “That smells like—”

  “Teralin. It’s teralin. It’s all around us. There is some in the rock, and the water that I found is infused with it.”

  “Are you sure that teralin will help her?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Endric said. “Only that whatever the Teachers in the canicharl have been trying hasn’t worked.”

  “You heard the head healer.”

  “Yes. I heard the head healer. So if they weren’t even doing anything for Senda, it’s better that we at least try. I don’t know if there is anything that will make a difference for her, but I’m willing to see if there’s anything we can do.”

  They reached the outer edge of the pool. Life sprang up here in ways that it didn’t in other parts of this barren rock. There were clumps of grasses that gradually changed over to scrub brush, and then to stunted and twisted trees. Endric followed these all the way to the edge of the water. It was much like what he remembered, with the bitter odor coming off the water and the strange shimmery quality to it.

  When he dismounted, the horse hurried to the water’s edge and began drinking.

  Pendin reached for the horse’s rein’s, trying to pull the creature back, but Endric waved him off.

  “Let her drink.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “It was the last time we were here.”

  Pendin reluctantly released the reins and the horse started forward again, dipping her head down into the water and taking gulps of water. Pendin’s horse did the same.

  Pendin watched for a moment before turning his attention back to Endric. “What now?”

  Endric carried Senda to the water’s edge and held her there for a while. Would it work? Would anything that he might do here even make a difference?

  He had to push past the doubt. That was the influence of whatever negatively charged teralin was around him—and there had to be some negatively charged teralin, even if he couldn’t determine where it was.

  “Now I think it’s time to see if this will make a difference.”

  He crawled into the water, carrying Senda with them. At first, he held her above the top of the water, but then he gradually began to lower her into it. It might only be his imagination, but he thought that her breathing quickened, but then it returned to the steady, shallow breaths that she had been taking.

  When she was nearly submerged, Pendin grabbed his shoulder.

  Endric looked back at him.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  “I want to find some way of helping Senda. That’s all I want.”

  “But this way? If this doesn’t work…”

  “If this doesn’t work, it’s on me. I am the reason that we came to Salvat. I’m the reason that she was attacked. I’m the reason that she ended up treated by Aria, and I’m the reason that she ended up at the canicharl. I want to be the reason that we find some way of helping her.”

  Pendin let out a deep breath and nodded, releasing his grip on Endric’s shoulder.

  Endric submerged Senda.

  He wasn’t sure what else he needed to do, but there was something that felt right. He pushed on the sense of teralin within the water.

  It was the same thing that he did when he changed the polarity, shifting it from neutral to positive. He had no ability to change it to negative, and wasn’t sure if that would harm her if he did, but it seemed that the only way that he could help her would be by using the positive polarity.

  There was resistance.

  It seemed as if the water—or more specifically, the metal in the water—pushed against him.

  He focused, but focus wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was strength. In order to overcome the resistance, he didn’t need to keep a tight focus, he needed to have a diffuse sort of strength that would allow him to power through it and somehow change the charge of the teralin.

  “Endric?” Pendin asked.

  He ignored Pendin and instead continue to focus on the teralin.

  It seemed impossible to change the polarity of this much, especially with as diffuse as the teralin seemed within the water. Was there a different way that he could manage it? Did he have to change all of it at once, or could he start out smaller and spread that influence? Wasn’t that the same way that he had changed the polarity when workin
g with the merahl in the Antrilii lands?

  Rather than trying to push with great strength on all of the water—and all of the teralin in the water—Endric focused only on what was near him and what was near Senda. With her submerged, she wouldn’t have long. He would either have to succeed or he would lose her.

  As he pushed, the water around her began to take on a faint glow. It was subtle, and at first, he thought it nothing more than his imagination, but the longer that he saw it, the more convinced he was that it was real.

  Was it the teralin?

  Endric continued to push, sending more and more strength through the water surrounding Senda. As he did, he had an idea. Rather than focusing on the water around her, he started to push on the water within her.

  This proved an easier task. The water started to shimmer again, and the resistance that he’d detected faded. With another shove, he forced the teralin to change to the positive polarity.

  Using this, he was able to push on the water around her. More of it began to glow, taking on the faint sheen, enough that he thought that he might succeed.

  Then it failed.

  “Endric?”

  Pendin reached for him, grabbing his shoulder, and pulled. He was stronger than Endric—strong enough that he pulled Endric and Senda out of the water, away from the pool, dragging them free.

  “I needed a little more time!”

  Pendin reached for Senda, pulling her from Endric’s arms. “You don’t get any more time. That was all she had.”

  “It was working, Pendin. Didn’t you see the way the water was glowing? That’s the sign that what I was doing was working. The polarity of the teralin in it was changing.”

  “How much longer were you willing to push it?” He rolled Senda over and let water drain from her mouth. When he set her on the ground, she was still breathing.

  “I’m willing to push it as long as I needed so that I could help her.”

  “Were you helping her, or were you helping yourself?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That means that I don’t know how much of what you’ve been doing is because you want to see Senda well and how much of it is because you don’t like the idea of failing.”

  Endric looked down at Senda. She was covered in water, and he could feel the positive polarity to it. There was a strange pressure on his senses from the teralin, and it was not unpleasant. He had felt it many times before, but this was a little different. Endric wasn’t certain why that would be and why it would feel different now, only that it did.

  “I’m doing whatever I can to help her,” he said. “I know you don’t agree with my technique, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, only that it’s not what you would have done. The Teachers weren’t doing anything for her. You saw that! She deserved a chance to get better, even if it was little more than a prayer of a chance.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  “Because it doesn’t deserve an answer. It’s not about me losing or winning. It’s about whatever I can do to help Senda. And I have no idea if there’s anything that can be done, only that I had to try.”

  Pendin stared at him for a long moment before turning his attention back to Senda. As he took her in, the anger in his eyes melted and he looked up at Endric once more, the anguish that he’d seen before once more visible on his face. “What now? Since there was nothing that could be done for her, what now?”

  Endric sighed. He had put so much hope into the possibility that he could help her, so much hope in the chance that bringing her to this pool and the water here would make a difference, that he hadn’t fully planned for the possibility that it wouldn’t.

  And now? What would he do?

  They could return to the city, but there wasn’t anything there for him. The Teachers might be angry if he appeared. In many cities throughout Thealon and Gom Aaldia, the Teachers had significant influence. He suspected it was much the same on Salvat. Perhaps more, especially considering what he had learned about Salvat.

  There was only one answer for him. He looked down at Senda. If he succeeded, if he found Tresten, maybe he could somehow help her.

  If he still lived.

  “Now I have to resume my previous assignment,” he said.

  “You think you can find Tresten after everything that’s happened?”

  “I need to find Tresten, and I need to discover what Urik intended for him. And I need to understand why my father allowed Senda to come with me.”

  There was something to that last bit, though what?

  “How do you intend to find him? How do you intend to find anything out here?”

  “I don’t know. There is supposed to be a group of people who have some influence and some knowledge. That’s what Urik was after.”

  “And if you don’t find him?”

  “If I don’t find him, then I suppose we need to return to Vasha and to the Denraen.”

  And if that happened, Endric would be returning a failure twice over. Not only would he have failed to find help for Tresten as well as losing Urik, he would have now lost Senda. It was unlikely that he would be welcomed back with quite the same homecoming as he might have had he not failed so spectacularly.

  Maybe this was a lesson his father had hoped he would learn. Endric had begun to understand that his father had plans for him that he often didn’t reveal, plans that were more complex than Endric had ever given him credit for.

  “Where do you propose we start?” Pendin asked.

  Thunder rumbled behind them, a constant presence ever since they had appeared on Salvat.

  Endric frowned to himself. Could it be more than a coincidence?

  He turned toward the mountain in the distance. “There,” he said, pointing. “We go there.”

  Pendin looked to the mountain in the distance and his eyes widened slightly, but he clenched his jaw, took a deep breath, and then nodded.

  17

  They had ridden for the better part of a day when Senda moaned.

  Endric stopped, adjusting the straps holding her in place. It might have been his imagination, but it seemed as if the swelling in her arms and legs was less than it had been before. Her skin still had a weepiness to it, and her hair was less greasy, though that might only have been because of her time in the water rather than any change to her health. Her breathing remained unchanged. The only change had been the moan.

  “What was that?” Pendin asked.

  He had grown more distant and, if anything, perhaps a little more irritable, especially as they made their way toward the sloping peak of the mountain. Was it the proximity to the mountain that bothered him or the potential loss of Senda?

  “That was her,” he said.

  “Her? She hasn’t said anything since you brought her to the canicharl.”

  Endric checked to see if there was any change, any potential connection to the teralin, but couldn’t feel anything. It was possible that his connection to teralin was impacted more than anything else, and that he couldn’t detect it only because he wasn’t strong enough.

  “She moaned.”

  “Then we should turn around. We should head back to the city and the Teachers and—”

  Endric shook his head. “No. We need to continue on as we have been. Now that we’re here, we’re far enough along that we need to see if there’s any way for us to get answers as to what happened with Urik.”

  Pendin studied him for a long moment. “You’re the commanding officer.”

  “It’s not about that,” Endric said.

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t that why you refused to turn back?”

  “What more do you think the Teachers in the canicharl can do? What can they do that we haven’t been able to do? They had their chance, and there was nothing that they were able to do. To the point where they tried nothing.”

  “Only because she was so far along.”

  “Still. They should have done something other than simply study her and watch her insid
es decay. They should have done something for her.”

  Pendin said nothing and they fell silent as they continued along the road. After a while, they started heading up a steeper section of slope. The horses struggled a bit, and the farther they went without water, the more they would struggle. Would they come across a source of water anywhere nearby? If they didn’t, would the horses be able to continue? He and Pendin had filled water skins, but those were only enough to keep the two of them hydrated. It would do nothing for the horses. For them, Endric counted on the likelihood that they would come across some sort of water, especially with as much rain as they had seen when they first appeared on the island.

  As they went, the horse slipped and Endric fell forward, crashing into Senda.

  She moaned again.

  It was the second time she had made a noise, something other than the silent and steady breathing. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

  Pendin looked over. He watched Endric for a moment before clenching his jaw and nodding once more.

  “Senda?” Endric said. He didn’t think that she would respond, but he wanted to try, hoping that perhaps she might answer. He rested his palm on her cheek for no other reason than wanting her to know that he was there. That she wasn’t alone.

  She made no other sound.

  Endric took a controlled breath and guided the horse back onto the path they had been following. It meandered along the base of the mountain, gradually heading up, so that before too much longer, they would be clinging to the volcano itself.

  “If this erupts…” Pendin started.

  Endric could only nod. “I know.”

  “We’ll be lost. All of us.” His gaze darted to Senda strapped to the saddle.

  “I know,” Endric said again.

  “Fine. I just want to make sure that you are aware of what you are trying to put us through.”

  “Would you rather I leave her here as we search?”

  Pendin frowned. “It doesn’t require both of us, Endric. If you’re going after Urik and Tresten, after whatever secret that you refuse to share with me, you don’t need me. And if there is nothing more that can be done for Senda, then let her come with me. Let her at least have the chance for safety.”