Soldier Scarred

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I had no other choice.”

  “Sometimes faith requires you to make a choice that doesn’t always make sense.” Urik kept his gaze on Endric and leaned forward, dipping his hands into the water and bringing them to his mouth, taking a long drink. “This is faith.”

  “I’ve already proven that the water is not toxic.”

  “Still, I have faith that you had a vision from the gods, and I have faith that you were meant to help your friend. And if this water is safe for you and for your friend, then I have faith that it is safe for me.”

  “You have always had faith. It’s not always been directed where it should be.”

  Urik shrugged and continued to drink. When he was done, he dipped his water skin into the pool.

  Endric focused on the water, feeling for the effective teralin within it. From what he could tell, it was all neutral, and he sent a surge through it, attempting to shift the polarity. There was too much water for him to influence or the teralin was too finely powdered to make a difference. Either way, he didn’t notice anything changing when he attempted to shift it.

  He changed his focus, shaking the water skin. He pushed on the teralin in it and felt a shifting of the polarity. It happened quickly in that small amount of water. He glanced over at Urik, then did the same to his water. When he was done, he considered attempting to do the same to the water that Urik had drunk before deciding against it. He wasn’t sure what effect that might have on Urik. Maybe he shouldn’t have changed the polarity of the water in the water skin, either. The man had an affinity for negatively charged teralin.

  Endric focused on himself. As he did, he noticed the presence of the teralin that he had drunk. He attempted to change the polarity of it and found that it resisted his efforts. He breathed in and out, steadying himself, and pushed once more.

  The polarity shifted.

  It happened slowly—much more slowly than when he had done the same to his water skin, and a warmth washed through him. Endric breathed out, sighing as he did.

  “What is it?” Urik asked.

  Endric considered him for a moment before shaking his head. “Nothing.”

  “It can’t be nothing. There is a look on your face that tells me that something happened.”

  “I changed the polarity of the teralin in the water that I drank.”

  “Only of the water that you drank?”

  “How would positively charged teralin affect you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of your connection to the negatively charged teralin. What would happen if you drank teralin with a positive polarity?”

  “I don’t think the polarity makes much difference.”

  “But what if it does?” Endric asked. “What if the polarity makes all the difference about whether it’s safe for you to drink it?”

  Urik focused on the water in the pool. He leaned forward, pressing his hand into the water. Endric noted pressure, something of an energy, and wasn’t certain whether Urik was attempting to change the polarity here or not.

  “I don’t think that you will be able to influence all of the teralin in the water,” Endric said. “Not unless you are much better connected to it than I am.”

  Urik pulled his hand back and wiped it on his pants. “No. I doubt that I have any more strength with teralin than you do. Probably less, given what I have seen from you.”

  Urik shook his water skin and tipped it back, drinking it. His eyes went wide, and he grabbed at his throat. “What did you do?” he croaked.

  Endric hurried over to him and Urik started to smile, lowering his hand.

  “See? There’s nothing to the water. At least, not from the positively charged water.” He tipped back the water skin, taking another long drink. “Teralin has never had any healing or restorative properties. I’m sorry, Endric. I don’t know that the vision you had was reflective of a way of helping your friend.”

  Endric sipped at the water in his water skin. It had a slight warmth to it now that he had charged it, and it washed through him much the same way, giving him the same sort of warmth that he had felt when he had changed the polarity of the teralin he had drunk.

  Why else would he have been given the vision that he had?

  Maybe it wasn’t a vision. Or maybe it was simply a hallucination. That was more likely than having a vision of some healing power of teralin. The teralin he had encountered before had never had any properties like that. The merahl used it, but it was part of their breeding. Then again, the groeliin used it, too. Didn’t both creatures have some magical connection to it?

  “I can only hope that there is more to teralin than we know.”

  Urik studied him for a moment and then nodded. “That’s entirely possible.”

  They made their way away from the pool, heading out across the plain. The day passed in silence, and Endric was thankful that Urik didn’t attempt to open a line of discussion. He was in no mood to continue to refuse to answer Urik’s questions.

  The sky continued to lighten, as if the haze overhead was blowing off. The distant sound of thunder continued to rumble, and he wondered whether they would stay ahead of the storm or whether it was nothing more than the tremors continuing. If it was only tremors, there had been no rumbling to the ground, nothing that signaled the same shaking that he had felt while on and within the mountain.

  By evening, the sky had changed from a pale orange glow to a darker smear. The thunder rumbled more regularly, reminding Endric of their first arrival on Salvat. Rain would come, and without any protection, they would get drenched.

  “I think we need to take shelter,” Urik said.

  The comment was punctuated by a steady rumbling. This was distinctly different than what they had experienced while they were on the mountain. There was not the same shaking to the ground. What came with it was something almost angry, a loud crack followed by the constant drumbeats that Endric felt through his body.

  “This is about the time where you abandoned us,” he said.

  “I think we have established that I was captured.”

  “We might have established that you were captured, but that doesn’t explain why you made no sound during your capture. If you would have signaled in some way, Senda and I could have—”

  “You keep repeating that as if it changes things,” Urik said. “I have told you that I have no intention of repeating the same mistake.”

  “Just so long as you don’t begin making brand-new mistakes,” Endric said.

  A sharp crack was followed by the distant sound of rain. It came toward them rapidly, growing with intensity. Endric scanned the area around them, searching the rocks, but there wasn’t any place where they could take shelter. Somehow, they would have to find a way of getting to safety, but where?

  In the distance, he saw where they could go.

  It was a collection of rocks that formed a small circle. It reminded him of the rocks that surrounded the pool of teralin-infused water, though he saw no sign of trees around it as he had around that pool. He motioned for Urik to follow and started across the barren and rocky land, trying to outrun the storm.

  It was a futile attempt. Nothing he could do would prevent them from getting dumped on. When the rain came, it did so as sheets of water, sluicing down around them. It made seeing anything difficult and Endric tried to keep going in the same direction, though he wasn’t certain whether he was.

  “We need to take shelter,” Urik yelled.

  “I’m trying to reach those rocks. I think that if will find shelter anywhere, it will be there,” Endric said.

  The rocks seemed to be too far away. Every time he thought they were getting closer, it seemed as if he were still no nearer to them than he had been. At one point, he slipped, and were it not for Urik grabbing his arm and keeping him propped upright, he would have fallen and likely would have cracked his head. The footing was treacherous, the rain making the rock slippery, and Endric nodded a quick nod of thanks.

  The rain continued
to pound on them.

  It was difficult to see. Endric blinked away the water, trying to wipe it from his face, and struggled to see anything more than a few steps in front of him.

  He slipped again and this time, Urik wasn’t there to catch him. He staggered to the ground and his knees scraped on the rock. He cried out, not bothering to hide the pain. He looked up, searching for signs of Urik. Where was the damned man?

  He saw no sign of Urik.

  How had he lost him already? Had Urik chosen this is an opportunity to create separation between them? It seemed an odd thing, even for Urik.

  Endric staggered to his feet and took a few more steps before slipping again. This time, when he fell, he didn’t brace himself in time. He struck the rock and his vision blurred before fading to black.

  25

  Pain welcomed Endric awake.

  He blinked and saw a swirl of colors. For a moment, he was reminded of his time recovering in the Antrilii lands, healed by Nessa. Had everything that he’d just seen been a dream?

  Then the smell of roasting meats came to his nostrils. It was accompanied by the smell of strange spices and far more fragrance than what the Antrilii preferred.

  Someone moved nearby and Endric tried to raise his head to see but found that his neck throbbed. How badly had he been injured? Unlike other times when he had been hurt, this time there had been no attack. He had been injured out of his own carelessness. Had he been more cautious, he doubted that he would have slipped, though maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. With as much as the rain was dumping on them, there might not have been anything he could have done differently.

  “Where am I?”

  “Don’t move,” a harsh voice said.

  Endric licked his lips. They were dry, but not quite as dry as they had been. He tasted the bitterness of the teralin-infused water that still lingered on his tongue.

  “Who are you?” Endric asked.

  A face loomed close to him. The owner was not male, as he had assumed. It was a stocky female, and she had pudgy cheeks and thick gray hair she had wound into a tight braid that trailed down her back. “What were you doing out in the storm?”

  Endric shook his head. “I was searching for someone.”

  The woman leaned close to him. Her breath smelled unpleasant, almost a hint of rot to it, though he suspected that was little more than his imagination. “You found someone.”

  “There was another man with me.”

  Would he have lost Urik the same way he had lost Brohmin when they had traveled together?

  “The other. Yes, we found him. He won’t move.”

  “Is he injured?” Endric hated that he felt any concern for Urik, but he needed the man in order to complete the task that he thought must be done.

  “No more than you are.”

  Endric frowned. He tried moving his fingers and his toes, and everything seemed to work. Only his neck throbbed, and it felt as if he’d been in a great battle. He started to sit but nausea rolled through him with the motion. Pain that he hadn’t realized was there bloomed in his knees and he was reminded of crashing into the rock. Long moments passed before the pain eased enough that Endric could withstand the nausea.

  He looked over at the woman—really looked at her this time. There was strength in her face and features. She tottered around a small room, moving from a table to the shelf before returning to the table and leaning over, nothing but her back visible. Where was he? Had they been captured by the people who had attacked him while in the temple? This woman didn’t seem like any of the priests in the temple. He expected them to have pale skin and to share similar features, though what if she were a priest? They weren’t so far from the mountain that it would be impossible for one of them to have gotten to him.

  There was another possibility, though Endric wasn’t sure if he could be so lucky.

  “Am I free to go, or are you holding me prisoner?” he asked.

  The woman straightened and turned to him, staring at him with a deep frown. “You will be free to go when the storm passes.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Do I look like a prophet?”

  Endric shrugged. Even that small gesture was painful, sending a steady throbbing through his back. “I’m just trying to get a sense for how long you might hold me here.”

  “As I said, you are free to go when the storm passes.”

  She leaned back over her desk and began working, ignoring Endric completely.

  He stood, testing his body, flexing his legs and arms so that he could work stiffness out of them. He hurt, but it wasn’t any worse than what he would expect from a vigorous sparring session. His neck ached the most, and he suspected that was what he had injured the worst when he struck his head.

  He checked for his sword and found that it was still strapped at his waist.

  Maybe he wasn’t held captive.

  If he had been captured by the soldiers who had attacked him in the temple, they would’ve stripped him of his sword. They likely would have confined him differently. And if it were the priests from the temple, he would have expected… What? Endric wasn’t entirely sure what he would’ve expected. Not this. He didn’t know what this was, only that it wasn’t what he would expect.

  He took a few steps, making sure that he didn’t hurt so much that he couldn’t move. When he was convinced that his body would tolerate activity, he stopped at the table near the woman and leaned toward her, watching what she was doing. She made notes on the page, dipping her pen into a bottle of deep black ink before scratching words onto the paper. Endric wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize the language she wrote in.

  “Are you with the Conclave?”

  The woman’s hand froze, and she looked over at him. “Must you stand so close?”

  “Would you rather I stand somewhere else?”

  “I would rather you not stand over my shoulder. Your breathing disrupts my writing.”

  Endric chuckled and took a step back. “Are you with the Conclave?”

  “How is it that you know of the Conclave?”

  Could it be that he had finally found the Conclave? “I was sent to Salvat with instructions to find them.”

  “Why?”

  “We brought a man to meet with them.”

  “We? You and this other man?”

  “There was another, but we lost her.”

  The woman turned toward him. She crossed her arms over her considerable chest. “And just who are you?”

  “I am Endric, son of Dendril, general of the—”

  The woman turned away and started toward the door, leaving Endric staring dumbfounded after her. She pulled the door open and left him alone. Endric debated for a moment what to do before deciding to follow. He hurried through the door after her.

  They were in a sizable building, and though he couldn’t see anyone else, he followed her down the hallway before she stopped in front of another door. She rapped on the door until it popped open. The woman leaned forward and whispered something that Endric couldn’t hear. When she was done, she motioned down the hall toward him.

  “Are you sure?” Endric heard. It was a softer voice, and distinctly female.

  “See for yourself,” the other woman said.

  The hidden speaker popped her head out and stared down the hall. She had bright blue eyes and a sharp jaw. Hair that once had been deep black had grayed, leaving a peppered appearance. Despite that, she remained beautiful.

  “Is it true?” the woman asked.

  “It is what true?”

  “You claim that you are Dendril’s son.”

  “I claim it because it’s true.”

  The two women shared a look before the dark-haired woman waved to him. “Come with me.”

  Endric glanced at the first woman, the one who had been with him in the original room, before following the darker-haired woman. She led him down the hallway, and he trailed after her.

  If they were from the Conclav
e, this wasn’t what he had expected. These women didn’t look like they could help him with anything. They might not even be able to defend themselves against the man who sought to harm them.

  “Where am I?”

  The other woman considered him for a long moment before shaking her head. “Where? You came to us, and now you ask where?”

  “I didn’t come to you. I slipped and woke up here.”

  “You slipped outside of our residence. That tells me that you were attempting to find us.”

  “And you are the Conclave.”

  The woman considered him for a long moment before nodding.

  “The real Conclave?”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Only that there are others who attempt to reveal themselves as members of the Conclave. They betrayed Urik, trying to convince him that he could join them, and they used him to find the temple of Salvat.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “You found the temple?”

  “Why?”

  “The temple is not meant for any outside of the priests to discover.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you found it, you would understand.”

  “Because of the fountain of lava?”

  The woman grunted. “Lava is not unique. If you live around here long enough, you will eventually experience lava in all its forms.”

  “Then what?”

  “As I said, it’s not meant for any but the priests to discover.”

  “How do I know that you are really with the Conclave?”

  The woman cocked a half smile. She paused for a moment, then she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  When Endric followed her, his mouth dropped open.

  He stood inside a massive library. Rows and rows of shelves filled the entirety of the space. On each of the shelves were books. He imagined that thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—of books existed here. This was the kind of knowledge that Urik would search for. This was the kind of place that he would have wanted to find.