by P. M. Biswas
Tam’s morning ablutions consisted of her sticking her head into a basin of icy water, because nothing less than that would get rid of the bleariness in her eyes. She tumbled into her tunic, hopped into her breeches, packed in less than a minute, and tore out of the tree that had been housing her, only to find Loren hovering on the doorstep like Emeraude’s aforementioned persistent suitor.
“C’mon, then,” Tam said brusquely, catching Loren’s sleeve and hauling him full tilt toward the court. Loren had longer legs, but he stumbled behind her like a mule tied to a racehorse. When they reached the court square, it was a hive of elves abuzz with purpose, going to and fro on errands Tam couldn’t make heads or tails of. How much preparation could a group of just four require, and for a trip of only a month?
Tam had packed as lightly as it was possible to pack without leaving herself behind. She had her menstrual herbs tucked into the pouch sewn to her belt, a few essentials she’d raided from Kay’s satchel of treatments—just in case no elf was around to heal her, because she, unlike them, was not immortal—and a single set of spare clothes, including a cloak that could double as a blanket to sleep on.
She’d rolled her clothes up and shoved them into an overlarge sock she’d stolen from Borik ages ago. The sock got clipped to Tam’s belt, along with her waterskin, and that was it. All that remained was her spear, which she strapped to her back. Armor would only weigh her down, and her shield was too bulky for a mountain climb, so she wasn’t taking those.
To her surprise, Loren was similarly unencumbered, bearing only his bow and his quiver filled with arrows. There were no packed clothes at all; there wasn’t even a waterskin.
Tam had pictured Loren packing tons of fine garments, just like those foppish ministers had. This degree of practicality was startling.
“Are you planning to wear those clothes for weeks? Admirable of you. Foul, but admirable.”
“Our bodies and our clothes clean themselves. We do not need changes of clothing unless it is for variety, and we needn’t bathe unless it is for refreshment.”
“Oh, shut up,” Tam said enviously, already sweaty in her tunic. “I’ll show you refreshment.”
Refreshments did, in fact, arrive in the hands of a parade of elven cooks—parcels of food wrapped in cotton cloth and thread, conveniently stored in packs for the journey ahead. If it could be called real food. It was just leaf-bread. Bundle after bundle of leaf-bread.
Tam moped.
“What?” Loren asked. “Worried about the mission?”
“No, about my taste buds.” Tam sighed. “Look, your leaf-bread isn’t that bad—”
“What a ringing endorsement,” Loren said dryly.
“—but I am not having that for my last meal. I insist on having cake. Apocalypse cake. Can it not be baked in time?” Tam pouted, staring up at Loren with wide, pleading eyes.
Loren cursed. “Miniature human gnomes and their unreasonably big eyes,” he groused, and Tam immediately took offense.
“Oi! Who’s a gnome?”
Loren ignored her and signaled an elf clad in a triangular apron, and when the elf drew near, Tam identified him as Ato.
“Ato!” she said cheerfully. “Do you bake?”
Ato’s eyes twinkled, merry as ever. “For the court, yes. And increasingly for my wife, Rivkah, who demands the most grotesque combinations of baked goods as her pregnancy progresses. Just today, for breakfast, she asked for fermented moonflowers stuffed into a lettuce-and-kale pie.”
That… sounded revolting. “I wish her well,” Tam said sincerely, because Ato’s wife was clearly suffering. Nobody in anything but the extremities of agony would invent that atrocity. “May Astar grant you both a healthy baby.”
“We… we too wish you triumph on your quest.” Ato drooped, likely remembering that Tam might die. “We hope to host you with us again, Tam the human. I will bake you cakes to enjoy on your expedition.”
“Er….” Tam was beginning to have second thoughts after that lurid description of Rivkah’s pregnancy pie. “Not cakes of leaves, right? There’ll be butter in ’em? Sugar?”
Ato guffawed. “Aye. Aye, they shall have butter and sugar, human.”
“And no leaves?”
“None at all.”
“There’s a good man!” Tam slapped Ato on the back.
Ato staggered, then gave Loren a look as if to say, Does she do this to you too? Which, as far as Tam was concerned, was completely unjustified. It wasn’t her fault most of the elves were so scrawny that they tipped over like playing cards at the slightest breath.
After Ato scurried off to bake his emergency cakes, Tam saddled Maple. As she did so, an additional horse was led in by Emeraude’s stable hand. Tam recognized it as the inky gray gelding that belonged to Lady Zameen. It was more docile and cooperative than most horses and was thus suited to a woman of Soma’s age.
“Is that horse for Soma?” Tam asked curiously.
“Yes,” Loren confirmed. “For Nala and the Seer.”
Tam blinked. “For both of them?”
“Both of them. They will share the horse, as only Nala can ride it. I was hoping—” Loren cleared his throat. “That is, I will share your horse.” It was a declaration, not a request, as if the princely git couldn’t bring himself to ask like a normal person.
“Just like that? Without even asking my permission?”
“We elves don’t keep horses,” Loren said somewhat anxiously, surveying Maple with more apprehension than he ever had before. “Only Nala knows how to ride one, and even that, only through her observation of the human riders who strayed close to the Wanderwood and within range of her senses as the Sentinel.”
“So what you’re saying is, you have to ride with me because you don’t know how to ride yourself?” Tam gloated. “Oooh, His Highness is asking me for help. His Highness is asking me to babysit him.”
“Stop calling me that.” Loren scowled. “And you won’t be babysitting me.”
“No, just ensuring you don’t topple off our horse in a graceless tangle of limbs.” Tam clapped Loren on the shoulder mock-comfortingly. “Never fear, princeling. I’ll protect you from the big, mean ground.”
Before Loren could retaliate, Soma emerged from the trees with the Earthstone in her hands. It was wrapped in its magical fabric again. Soma gave the Stone to Loren, who accepted it solemnly. It was funny, somehow, seeing Loren take himself so seriously. It was like that mask Loren had worn when Tam had met him—the mask of princeliness—except this time, it was for real.
“You are now the bearer of the Stone,” said Soma. “You are worthy. Carry that knowledge within you, just as in your arms you carry the Stone.”
Loren—apparently so humbled that he was speechless—could only take the Stone and hold it.
“Aren’t you going to secure it?” Tam prodded him with a finger.
“I… I have a bag. I’ll put the Stone in it and will sling it over my back. It’ll prevent me from dropping the Stone should the terrain prove difficult to traverse.”
“We can only take our horses up to the base of Mount Zivan,” Tam lamented. “From there on, it’ll be hard climbing. Seer Soma, you can lean on me and let me bear your weight when we reach Zivan. You can’t possibly climb a mountain that steep by yourself.”
“You’re too kind, dear. But I shall try to be self-reliant until it is impossible for me to be so.”
Nala materialized out of nowhere—as she always did, having the stealth of a Sentinel—and looked Tam over critically.
“What?” Tam said defensively.
“That tiny spear is all you have?” Nala herself was armed with her bow and quadruple her regular amount of arrows. She was also toting an armful of climbing equipment—hastily hewed wooden picks and several yards of rope coiled into a serpentine figure eight.
“Her spear is more dangerous than it seems,” said Loren.
“I don’t need you to speak up for me,” Tam protested, just as Nala said, “She can sp
eak for herself, Prince Loren.”
“Why don’t you two speak to each other, then, if neither of you would like me to be a part of this conversation?” Loren stalked off in an inexplicable tiff, to do… whatever he did before a journey. Mayhap he was emptying his bladder. Tam should do that too.
“The sensitive type, isn’t he?” Tam observed.
“More so in your presence,” Nala said tonelessly, which was either a compliment or an insult. Given that it was Nala uttering it, though, it was more likely to be an insult.
“Uh-huh,” said Tam dubiously. “Listen, I’m going to take a leak. If Ato drops by with my cakes, shove ’em into that sock dangling from my horse’s saddle, will you? It’s not an unwashed sock, don’t worry. It doesn’t reek.”
Nala only curled her upper lip in her habitual distaste.
“Knew I could count on you,” Tam said, beaming before hurrying off to relieve herself.
When she got back, the cakes were socked, Nala and Soma were on their horse, and Loren was standing next to Maple, talking quietly to his father. Eras embraced his son, murmuring what must be advice into Loren’s ear, and Loren colored, his eyes cutting to Tam.
What? What was that about?
Tam would have snuck closer to snoop on them—she was not above snooping to discover what had made Loren redden like that, if only to humiliate him with it later—but then Emeraude showed up to give Tam an embrace of her own. It was a tighter embrace than Tam had expected, more earnest and more desperate. Tam withstood it as best she could, determined not to cry in public when she hadn’t even permitted herself to do so in private.
“My heart and my son’s heart beat within you,” Emeraude said. “Come back to us, Tam. However you can, come back.”
“I’ll try.” Tam scratched her head. “But bringing down a mountain while being on the mountain is more or less a guarantee of death. More rather than less. We can avoid getting caught in the landslide if we approach the peak from the north and bring down the south side, but if that destabilizes the north as well… um, we won’t be coming back. Or I won’t,” Tam corrected. “If the elves are injured, they can still heal themselves, since they’re immortal. But if a rock the size of a house falls on me, it won’t matter how much they try to heal me. I’ll be gone.”
Emeraude looked at Tam with wide eyes. Which was odd, because it wasn’t like Emeraude wouldn’t have predicted this exact outcome ten steps ahead of Tam, but perhaps saying it all aloud had been rude? Or not rude, but… depressing? Tam didn’t want to depress people before she left them, possibly forever. That wasn’t the way to make an exit. Better to put a brighter spin on things.
“But I’ll be with Astar! And my parents, and Dale, and… wait, that’s even more depressing than what I originally said.” Tam hugged Emeraude back clumsily, unaccustomed to hugging queens. “Please don’t let this haunt you. Gah, that wasn’t the word I should’ve used! I mean, I won’t haunt you? Not personally. Just don’t let this haunt you. This situation, y’know?” Tam smacked her forehead. “I should shut up.”
Emeraude only hugged Tam even tighter. Tam’s ribs creaked. “We won’t miss you,” Emeraude said fiercely, “because we won’t have to. You’ll come back. Astar has to bring you back.”
“I’d like it if He did too,” Tam said. “Ha, ha.”
This was getting intolerable. Tam disliked sentimental displays, and this was why. Sentimental displays ended up exposing sentiments. Seeing the coolly rational queen so emotional and, well, religious was upsetting, if only because it revealed how terrible the odds were—terrible enough for Emeraude, bastion of logic, to resort to the irrationality of religious faith.
Or perhaps this was merely an act, an entirely sensible effort of Emeraude’s to instill some faith in Tam. Morale was as vital a tactical consideration in this mission as the height and distance to be traveled.
Still, even if it was an act, it had some truth in it; Tam knew that look of Emeraude’s intimately from years of seeing it on herself, in the mirror, back when her parents were still alive and were given marching orders. It was the look of one waiting for the day when they would hear the news they had been dreading… the news that their kin had died.
That she was kin to Emeraude—and to Kay and Borik—was morale enough for Tam. She believed in Astar, of course she did, but what would bring her back—what would make her claw her way back from death itself—was the knowledge that her family was waiting for her. Family that would mourn her, even if they were not her family by blood.
Unable to express all that, Tam just let out a choked noise and turned away to hoist herself onto Maple’s saddle. Loren parted from his father and climbed up behind Tam, waving graciously at the citizens who had gathered in the court to bid their courageous prince goodbye.
Tam couldn’t do that, though. She couldn’t say goodbye to Emeraude. Not properly. All Tam could give of herself was the sight of her own knuckles whitening around Maple’s reins. Tam wasn’t like Loren or Kay, after all. She hadn’t been trained by a lifetime of etiquette lessons on how to conduct herself during a tragedy.
For this was a tragedy. Tam could discern that much, although she was only seventeen.
Tam’s end had begun… before her beginning had even ended.
Chapter Five
SACRIFICE
THE RIDE to Mount Zivan was four days long, and by the fourth day, Tam was fed up with having Loren at her back. They weren’t under the sheltering shade of the Wanderwood anymore, and summer had chosen this precise timing to begin heating up, which meant that Loren’s added warmth behind Tam was an incessant, excruciating torture. It plastered her tunic to her back with what felt like rivers of perspiration. Tam was sweating like a hog in her clothes. She could smell herself sweating, rank and awful.
This wasn’t even the toughest aspect of her journey. She’d be sweating a lot more when she was climbing the mountain with her bare hands, heaving herself—and likely Soma—upward only with the power of her own muscles.
But Tam had confidence in her muscles. What she didn’t have confidence in was her patience. Especially when it came to weathering Loren’s constant, unremitting company. And his scent. His absolutely infuriating scent.
“Do you always smell like flowers?” Tam wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting.”
Loren was wearing the expression of one struggling not to pinch his nostrils. He said through clenched teeth, “What’s disgusting is your simmering stink.”
“No, my stink is the stink of honest sweat. Yours is some flowery, magical perversion.”
“Magic is not a perversion.”
“It is when it makes a man smell like roses when he should be smelling like refuse.”
“There you go, comparing me to roses again. I might begin to entertain the notion that you like it.”
Tam all but retched. “No! No. I just want you to smell as bad as I do so I don’t hate myself for it. Instead, I’m sitting here giving off fumes like a cesspool while you emanate the sweetness of a bouquet shoved unceremoniously under my nose.”
“Please,” Loren said desperately, “don’t mention cesspools.”
“I’ll shoot you if you do,” warned Nala from behind them. “I’m downwind of you, human. It’s bad enough I have to withstand your stench—must I hear your atrocious analogies on top of that?”
“My analogies are amazing,” Tam countered, “because they wouldn’t be having such an effect on you if they weren’t so accurate. Cesspools,” she added gleefully. “Cesspools, cesspools, cesspools.”
“Your Highness,” said Nala to Loren in a tone that was almost beseeching, “may I shoot her?”
“You’re welcome to,” Loren replied, the traitor. “Pull even with us, though, or you’ll have to shoot through me to get to her. Which may not be a terrible option,” Loren reflected, “if it grants me the blessing of never having to smell her again.”
“Swamps with carcasses floating in them,” Tam said brightly. “Sewage from a ta
nnery, reddish with rotting blood. Slippery sludge beside an outhouse that you step in only to realize it’s feces.”
“By Astar, kill her,” Loren pleaded, and Nala actually made as if to draw her bow before Soma, chuckling, stopped her.
“I thought you didn’t believe in Astar!” Tam accused Loren. “Don’t just call His name in vain!”
“It wasn’t in vain,” Loren said forlornly. “Please, let it not have been in vain. I am willing to worship at any shrine and sacrifice on any altar if by doing so I can rid myself of you.”
“And my fragrant aroma of piss slowly evaporating in the stifling heat?”
Loren brought his hands up to cover Tam’s mouth—or to pretend to cover her mouth—and Tam laughed, loud and riotous, because she’d finally gotten Loren to play. Playfulness was generally considered beneath the dignity of a prince, which Tam ought to know, because she’d also struggled to get Kay to play years ago. She’d worn down Kay’s walls with a steady onslaught of absurdities, and the same approach appeared to be working on Loren.
More than working on him, if Loren’s muffled sounds of laughter behind Tam were anything to go by.
“Infants,” Nala grouched, and that was the first time Tam had heard her criticizing her prince. Nala was usually respectful of rank, but perhaps seeing the circus that Tam and Loren were enacting was stretching even her patience to the breaking point.
“Yes,” Soma agreed peacefully, “but that’s why they’re so adorable, isn’t it?”
“Adorable?” Nala said uncomprehendingly. When Tam glanced back at her, she saw that Nala’s fingers were still twitching toward her bow.
“Nala may kill us,” she whispered to Loren.
“It’ll be a mercy. For me, at any rate.”
“Oh, shush.”
Mount Zivan loomed above them at the border of Axenborg. There wasn’t anything suspicious… not within Tam’s range of sight, anyhow.
“Sentinel!” Tam yelled back to Nala. “You’re up! Do you see any scouts or soldiers across the border? Even if it’s miles and miles away? Because if you do, we do not want to cross them. I doubt the four of us will be sufficient to fight off a horde of the undead. When I last encountered Danis’s demons, I was fighting alongside a much larger unit of spear-wielders, and we scarcely made it.”