“You never have.”
“All I meant was that—”
“You don’t need to tell me what you meant,” he said. “Because none of it matters.”
Imogen frowned at him. She still didn’t know who he was, but he knew her.
“I don’t intend any offense,” she said again.
“You never would, would you?” He turned and walked away.
Imogen stood speechless. She obviously had wronged him in the past, and with her frustration and her arrogance at that time, there were probably many people she had slighted without knowing it. Which meant she owed him an apology.
But she wasn’t sure how she could provide it to him.
She made her way through the camp. There were several tents and small cook fires set up, along with the much larger central campfire. The smells of smoke, people, and Leier food drifted to her. All of it felt familiar, but it also felt strange. It was no longer comforting the way it once would have been.
She found General Derashen at the campfire and took a seat next to him. “You wanted me to join you again, I was told.”
“I did,” he said. He glanced across the fire at the five-notched master swordsman Imogen had angered, then turned his attention back to her. “We have seen no evidence of creatures. Our scouts tell us that the Koral are camped only a few days from here.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“Tell me about this girl you have with you.”
“She has done nothing.”
“She is with them,” he said.
The captive Koral were not a threat, but perhaps General Derashen intended to use them in ways Imogen had not accounted for. She had thought him an honorable man, and this prospect made her think less of him, especially if he intended to use the Koral in some way. Prisoners were supposed to have a measure of respect given to them. Even Koral prisoners.
“She was not with the Koral when we came across her,” she said.
“How did you meet her?”
Imogen shrugged. “In a tavern.”
He arched a brow. “And what were you doing in a tavern?”
“Eating.”
He chuckled. “You do not need to fear me.”
Despite the hesitation she’d felt when interacting with his second-in-command, Imogen met General Derashen’s eyes and kept her gaze locked on him. She would not look away. She wasn’t afraid. Others wouldn’t dare look at him this way, but she’d changed more than she realized.
“It seems you’re trying to intimidate me,” she said.
“You are unbonded,” he said loudly enough for the others to hear.
Imogen took a deep breath. He intended for those around them to know that she was unbonded, wanted them to realize that she did not deserve the same treatment.
She certainly was a different person now.
“I am unbonded,” she agreed.
“And yet now you are here. Tell me why.”
“Because I am chasing these creatures.”
“With the strange man who’s watching over one of the Koral.”
“Yes.”
“And rumors out of the west speak of magic. They speak of the Leier who are involved with magic.”
She snorted but quickly composed herself, then nodded. “Yes.”
“You aren’t going to deny it?”
“What’s there to deny? You have already come to your own conclusions.” She looked around at the other Firsts of the Blade and the master swordsman, and all of them were watching her. All of them were still bonded, unlike her, which made them more honorable to their people.
“We are seeking to understand,” the general said.
Something Master Liu had said came back to her. “If you are seeking to understand, then you wouldn’t have already cast judgment.”
General Derashen frowned at her. “We are going to reach the Koral, and then we will return to the plains. Once we do, you will be dealt with.”
“That is what you intend for me?”
“That is what is intended for you, Imogen Inaratha, unbonded.” He glowered at her. “This is my decree.”
His dismissal meant that Imogen could leave. She didn’t owe him anything, other than commitment if she wanted to still serve her people. Having been away from the homeland for as long as she had, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for her to depart again, to go and find her own path. Perhaps to discover a new bond quest.
But it would mean abandoning these people—some of them her people—to the branox. She might’ve been dismissed by General Derashen, but she was not going to leave these people to that danger. He and the others might not believe what she told him, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She had to stop the branox and prevent Timo from using the queen for whatever purpose he had in mind.
She had stepped away from the others when Benji appeared out of the darkness.
“Don’t,” she warned as he came toward her with a frown on his face.
“Don’t what?” he snapped.
“Don’t harass me. I’m not in the mood for it.”
He chuckled softly. “What do I care what you are in the mood for?”
“I suppose you don’t care at all, do you?”
“Oh, I care, Imogen Inaratha, a great deal. Why else would I still be here?”
She didn’t know. At this point, she had no idea what he intended or why he was even bothering to stay with them, other than to fight the branox.
“They are going to move north,” she said. “And when they encounter the branox, we can help them destroy the creatures. It will be over eventually.”
“It will,” he said softly. “But I have a feeling you don’t want that.”
She shrugged. “What does it matter what I want?”
“You believed that you would be able to return here, regain your place, and that would be all.”
Imogen reached into her pocket and touched the enchantment that she carried on her, the one that connected her to her most recent past. So far, she had avoided using it, even though the temptation had been there.
“I knew it wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “I just don’t know that I was prepared to be an outcast among my people.”
“You have always been one.” He turned away, heading into the night.
Imogen sat at the edge of the camp, resting her head against a rock. She drifted in and out of sleep, dreams of her time at the sacred temple coming back to her, times when she was still a part of the Leier.
In those dreams, she saw herself once again with Master Liu. He had his staff in hand, standing motionless in the garden. She remembered this moment, realizing that this was a memory rather than a vision or some imagined scene. She had faced him like this several times. He had demonstrated Tree Stands in the Forest three times for her. Once had been when he’d first agreed to show her the sacred patterns, a second time when she’d struggled and defaulted back to the traditional patterns, and a third time when he had begun to push her away.
Each time, Imogen had been convinced that he was simply faster than her, but now she knew the truth.
What would happen if she went to him now? What would he do with her understanding of Tree Stands in the Forest, along with other sacred patterns? She hadn’t mastered all of them, but she’d started to feel like she could. The possibility remained within her. All she had to do was find it.
When she awakened, the camp was already starting to break for the day. She got to her feet and helped several families fold their tents before setting off on the march up the mountainside. They had not gone far when she heard a shout up ahead.
Not only a shout, but there was a sizzling energy that streaked across her skin.
Magic.
Imogen moved through the army, ignoring the looks of the Firsts and Seconds. She didn’t fit in, but she didn’t care. She needed answers.
She craned her neck to see where the magic was coming from. A dozen Leier darted off and headed up the mountainside. As soon as they did,
stone began to move.
“Enchantments!” she yelled as she scrambled up the rock.
She ignored the shouts behind her, the commands that were designed to keep the Leier in order. She was not a Leier soldier serving under General Derashen. He had made that incredibly clear to her.
She climbed up the rock and reached the first of the enchantments, a massive creature made of stone. She had faced something like this before when they had dealt with the Sul’toral, and she knew that a blast of power would be needed to defeat it, perhaps more than what the Leier would be capable of.
The creature swiped at her. She dropped, rolling to the side, and she nearly crashed into one of the fallen Leier scouts who’d been up here. His head was caved in, blood staining the rock nearby. She scrambled backward in horror.
Imogen focused inward for a moment. She readied herself the way she did with every battle, preparing her mind and her body as she started to see the fight play out in her head.
She started slowly, bringing her hands in Petals on the Wind, and energy began to build. As the stone golem swiped at her, she brought her blade down, carving through one outstretched arm. She twisted, jerking her sword around again, whipping it up before slicing it back down once more. Each time she wrenched her sword, she could feel stone creaking beneath it.
What she needed was power. Real power.
She spun, bringing the blade up, then stabbed toward the center of the stone golem. The blade struck its chest, and the sudden thrust—Lightning Strikes in a Storm—shattered the stone. The golem crashed to the ground.
Imogen dropped to her feet and swept her sword in a quick arc. There were at least three other stone golems around her. She darted toward the next, and she found several Firsts of the Blade attempting to fight. They struggled against this kind of enchantment. They might have trained to fight sorcery, but Imogen had actually fought magic much like this. There was a vast difference between the two.
In a moment of hesitation, she wondered why these enchantments would be here. There should be no reason to attack this place. The Koral didn’t have this kind of enchantment, at least not that she knew.
It was the kind of power that a Toral would use.
Or a Sul’toral.
Could they be pursuing another one? Or was this only Timo?
Imogen readied herself. When she’d fought stone golems like this before, she hadn’t had the same understanding of her sacred patterns, but she had also not needed it.
She was prepared either way.
She flew forward, but her blade smacked off the stone, unable to crack it. Though she flowed through a series of her traditional patterns as quickly as she ever had, with her blade movements precise and perfect, she realized immediately that it wasn’t going to be enough.
She used Stream through the Mountain, which was the easiest way to weave between the Firsts standing nearby. She drifted between the stone golem’s legs and brought her blade around, moving into Petals on the Wind. Then she swept to her left, then to her right, before carving the blade up and jabbing in Lightning Strikes in a Storm.
The stone exploded, shattering around her. Imogen held herself in place for a moment—Tree Stands in the Forest—and the stone bounced off her protection.
She scrambled down and met another stone golem. Five Leier lay littered around the creature. As she approached, she noticed that two of them were Firsts of the Blade and three of them were Seconds. So many had fallen to these creatures.
She brought her sword around, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to get to this golem in time.
Somebody cried out—the bearded swordsman. He was trying to use the sacred pattern Waterfall down the Stream. The technique was precise, but there was no flow.
The golem swept a stone arm toward him. Imogen pushed energy through herself using Tree Stands in the Forest, then switched quickly to Petals on the Wind, and the combination allowed her to blast upward. She carved her blade through the stone golem’s arm, cleaving it off.
She rolled and hurriedly flowed back into Stream through the Trees, and used it to jab her weapon into the center of the golem. It shattered, sending stone raining down around her, and Imogen protected herself with Tree Stands in the Forest once again.
She paused and looked around. There were no other golems moving.
The bearded swordsman looked up at her.
“You can thank me,” she said.
“Thank you?” He got to his feet, and he dusted himself off as he glowered at her. “I will not thank someone like you. You have betrayed everything we stand for. You have embraced sorcery.”
She frowned, glancing down to the remains of the fallen creature before looking back to him. “I embraced nothing. I used a sacred pattern, and if you trained with me at the sacred temple, then you recognize what I used.”
“There was nothing sacred about that pattern.”
The sudden surge of anger within her was surprising, but she didn’t hold it back. “And I could tell you that your Waterfall down the Stream was precise,” she snapped, “but the flow was inaccurate and your technique sloppy.”
These same words had once been said to her. More than once, in fact.
He stormed toward her, sword raised. The smart move would be to back away, to defer to him—he outranked her by a considerable amount. But she did not back down, much like she had not backed down from General Derashen.
Even more surprisingly, she didn’t fear him, which she would’ve expected to. Under other circumstances, maybe she would have, but after seeing him fight and seeing the way the stone golem had nearly crushed his head, she doubted she had any reason to fear his skill. Not anymore. What did rank matter?
“Lower your blade,” General Derashen said, striding forward. “We have lost enough life today.”
His second-in-command sheathed his blade in a moment and stormed back to the line of Leier marching up the mountainside. Imogen stood before General Derashen.
“An interesting technique there,” he said.
“It’s not sorcery.”
The general chuckled. “Of course not. I’ve trained with enough sword masters in the sacred temples to know what would constitute a successful sacred pattern. And that was a successful sacred pattern.”
“Yes.”
“You understand what you have done?”
“Other than defeating the sentries set along this path?”
That had to be part of their purpose, one reason they were situated here, though Imogen didn’t know why that would be. If they were searching for the Koral, then it didn’t make much sense for them to be here because there was no way of guaranteeing that the Leier would’ve moved through this place.
“That is one thing,” General Derashen said, glancing around. “We have encountered them before, though perhaps not ones quite so powerful. They have been difficult to defeat. We have not lost so much life in the past. It is why our Firsts and Seconds march near the head of the caravan. We must ensure we’re prepared if we encounter them.”
“I understand.”
“But that is not my point,” he said, looking back to her. “No. It is that you may have made yourself an enemy.”
She glanced toward the master swordsman in the distance and sighed. “I must have made an enemy of him long ago,” she said softly, wishing that she remembered who he was.
“He is skilled.”
“His skill did not help him with those enchantments.”
General Derashen smiled. “No. It did not.”
He spun around and left her alone. What more had he intended? He had gone from angry to this? She struggled to understand his reaction.
It was more than just him reacting to the attack—he had been making a point that she was unbonded. There had to be some purpose behind that. Somebody like General Derashen would not have announced that to others without an underlying purpose, to embarrass her, or because of another reason.
She headed back to the caravan and made a point of t
aking up a position near the rear, close to the prisoners. She didn’t care how it appeared. Benji joined her, appearing out of nowhere.
“These people did not do that,” he said.
“I know.”
“But it is significant magic.”
It fit with what she had been thinking. “Toral,” she said softly.
Benji looked over to her, nodding once. He didn’t need to say anything more. Her brother may have wanted the power of the Sul’toral, but he already had the power of the Toral.
“How many were there?” She had reacted without counting them first, but she knew she’d brought down three herself.
“Five,” Benji said. “That general carved down two of them. He is quite skilled.”
“He is the greatest swordsman in the Leier lands.”
“Is he?”
She arched a brow at him, nodding.
“Anyway, animating five of those creatures at one time is a considerable feat of magic. And if there are no sorcerers around”—something in the way he said it suggested that there were not—“then we must be careful.”
“I don’t understand what Timo hopes to accomplish in doing this,” she said, keeping her voice low, controlled. She didn’t want anyone else to hear that she was talking about her brother, even if they wouldn’t necessarily know who she was referring to. She couldn’t deny the unease that continued to creep into her. Unease that came from worrying about what Timo might do next and how he might be involved in all of this.
Imogen tried not to let that worry fill her, but it did.
“There’s only one reason he might want to do this,” Benji said.
“He’s slowing us,” she said, starting to understand.
“That would be my fear.”
“Then he thinks to get to the queen first.”
He nodded. “As you suspected.”
“But it means the queen’s appeared somewhere,” she said.
“Somewhere.” Benji touched his hand to the stone, his eyes going distant for a long moment. “But somewhere I cannot quite determine.”
“Then I need to go ahead and scout.”
“I fear you must. Worse, I fear you are the only one capable.”
Chapter Nineteen
Unseen (First of the Blade Book 2) Page 19