The Path of Giants

by B. T. Narro

  “I had no idea about Gerald,” the sheriff said.

  “I understand,” I answered. He did seem to be telling the truth, as far as I could determine.

  “I’ll take responsibility for Shelly,” the sheriff continued. “I’ll make sure Gerald knows that if anything happens to her, he’ll be at fault.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  He went on to ask how I knew Veronica. It took just a short while to explain everything I had told to Gerald. I was glad when he didn’t bring up the marriage proposal. He had probably seen the way his daughter had looked at me at the end of this and decided it was better not to push it.

  Soon enough, I was leaving Granlo on my horse, glad to be out of that place for good. The cold winter wind went straight through the hole in my shirt. I should’ve moved out of the way of his attack. I didn’t know why I’d wanted to put on a show.

  Maybe I was just bored. This has been a long trip, I thought. But wasn’t I just wishing for boredom not that long ago, when I was dealing with Cason? That’s right, I was.

  Thinking back, I had enjoyed the boredom at first. But now I was sick of it, craving some excitement. One last stop, this one to Kataleya’s home.

  It wasn’t so much that I was excruciatingly lonely, but I did sorely miss my friends. I really could’ve used Kataleya’s company during this time. I was a little angry at her that she had chosen to go ahead of me. We were friends first before we slept together. I missed that side of her. She didn’t have to take it away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I couldn’t reach Livea that day, so I made camp and practiced lifting myself a bit before trying to get a good night’s sleep. I fell asleep almost immediately after I was done.

  I thought I was dreaming sometime later, but it didn’t seem like a dream at all. It was like I was awake but couldn’t move, like I wasn’t in control of myself.

  I suddenly felt like someone was near me, an attractive girl I had never met before. I tried to speak to her, but I couldn’t seem to do it.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  I couldn’t hear her words. I felt them. They were spoken cautiously.

  I couldn’t hear her voice. I felt it. She had an alluring tone, strong and purposeful.

  I didn’t think I had the power to reply, so I was surprised when I heard myself answer. “Jon Oklar.”

  “Are you looking for me, Jon?”

  I suddenly knew things about her I shouldn’t. This was the witch. She was beautiful, powerful, but afraid. I knew I shouldn’t answer her. This was some sort of spell I was stuck in. Did that mean she had come upon me while I was sleeping? Was I vulnerable?

  I tried to wake up but couldn’t. I felt myself becoming more aware of her. I saw long and thick black hair, then an innocent face with pouty lips and dark, striking eyebrows. She had long lashes and a delicate nose. I thought it weird to perceive her as beautiful before I’d even seen her, and that’s when I realized that her appearance must be part of her spell. The doll face I was seeing could even be an illusion.

  I tried not to answer, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “Yes, where are you, Hadley?”

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “No,” I was glad to tell her. “We want your help in this war.”

  “I am not a fighter.”

  “But you are a witch?”

  “I do not harm the innocent.”

  “You can prove it,” I said.

  “How?”

  There was a fog in my mind. I couldn’t figure how to answer her. I didn’t even know why I had told her she could prove it. How was she supposed to do that?

  “With your mana,” I answered.

  It felt like this voice wasn’t my own. I didn’t understand where it was coming from. I didn’t understand any of this, in fact.

  That’s when my thoughts started to become clearer. I was asleep after all, but I was falling out of this dream. I tried to dive back in, but I didn’t know how.

  Then I was fully awake. I sat up. It was still night out.

  “Hello?” I tried.

  I heard nothing.

  I couldn’t see much in the dark night, so I fed my dying fire. It shed more light on my surroundings, but only my horse was near. I shut my eyes and tried to reach out to the witch. I knew it wasn’t only a dream. It had felt too real. But what was it, exactly? I had never heard about an experience like this one.

  I found myself wanting to find her and protect her. This was not natural.

  I let my mana go through my body to search for signs of a curse, but it found nothing. I decided to search through Hadley’s bag more thoroughly than I had before. There had to be something in one of these pouches that might explain what had happened.

  It took a long while to go through every pouch, but there was just a variety of what I thought to be ingredients for curses. I didn’t come across anything that exuded any form of power.

  There seemed to be something about the bag itself, however. I could almost feel her presence again when I held it close.

  I rummaged through the now empty bag, feeling for anything that might be hidden in the sewing. Sure enough, I felt a lump at the bottom of the bag where there shouldn’t be one. I cut away the fabric, revealing a hidden layer. Cautiously, I reached down and grabbed what felt to be a stone of some kind. I pulled it out for a look in front of the fire.

  It looked like a red diamond to me, very rare and expensive. It was large as well, a nice weight to it. But there was something more to the red diamond. I could already feel it before casting Identify on it.

  My spell seemed to be telling me something, but I couldn’t decipher what it was. I had no natural talent for ordia, which was used for enchantments and spells like Identify, which specified what kind of enchantment an item possessed. More complicated spells of ordia could coat the caster in an illusion. I could reach the notes needed to make my own, but it didn’t seem to work for me. I had planned to practice more, but all the time I had spent on it so far had been a waste. Lifting myself seemed much more important, especially after I had seen what the demigod of dvinia had done with the same spell.

  I tried casting Identify a few more times on this red diamond, but it was like trying to listen to someone who was speaking too quietly. I couldn’t hope to make out the message.

  I wondered what the witch had done to this diamond to allow her to communicate with me through it. I didn’t understand it at all. It was like her voice had been in my head, not within this cursed gemstone.

  It wouldn’t be long until morning. My time was better spent sleeping. I set my curiosities to rest and settled my heavy head on my bedroll. I might be able to learn more if the diamond caused another dream like the last. If not, Kataleya might know what to make of all this. I would see her tomorrow.

  *****

  I did not dream again that night and eventually arrived at Livea. It was a small city governed by Kataleya’s father, Whitley Yorn, and surrounded by a small stone wall. Its purpose seemed to be keeping out predatory animals more than stopping people from entering, but that wasn’t to say there were criminals here. In fact, there was a sense of peace about the city that I felt soon upon entering. I doubted there was any crime here at all, and that probably had something to do with the large number of armed forces at Whitley’s disposal.

  Kataleya’s family had worked closely with the king for many years, including aiding his rebellion against the last king, which led to Nykal’s coronation. There was no doubt in my mind that many of the tax collectors going around Lycast reported to Whitley, who would get that coin to the king as safely as possible.

  A river ran through the town that I followed as I led my horse. On the northern side stood a mill spinning from the gentle breeze. It stood on a wheat field spanning across the backyard of several homes. On the other side of the river sat a barn and what appeared to be a blacksmith’s stone forge, given the sharp cracks of hammering I could hear coming from within.

 
There were many homes scattered along the roads, most with their own small field and some animals at pasture that were fenced by stacked rocks. Trees lined the riverbanks as if this had once been a small forest that had mostly been cleared. There was one main road. It twisted east and west on its way north, passing by several fields before traveling uphill and ending at the front of a large estate I assumed to be Yorn Manor.

  As a contrast to the capital, there was a fair amount of space between every home here. People were at work, but there didn’t seem to be the hurried competition that I could feel from most everyone in Newhaven.

  I soon relaxed. It was a cold day, but the sun was out. I listened to the river on my way toward Kataleya’s house. Livea appeared to be a lovely place to grow up.

  The only structure that seemed a bit ominous to me was what I assumed to be a church, given its long windows and its pointed steeple. There was a stone turret built beside it, as if to serve as a lookout, though there didn’t seem to be anyone up there from what I could tell.

  I smiled as I thought about seeing Kataleya soon, but a couple of young boys brought me out of my reverie as they stopped me on the road.

  “Are you the healer?” one asked excitedly.

  “I am,” I said.

  They shared a look, each silently telling the other to do something.

  One nodded and seemed scared as he glanced up at me. “You can really heal anything?”

  “Just about,” I said. I had already sent my mana through their bodies for a quick expedition, feeling that neither of them had an injury or sickness.

  Knowing how I was at their age, I had a feeling what this was about.

  “Are you asking because you would like to see an example of healing?”

  “Yeah!” they said at the same time.

  I crouched in front of them. “I will be healing many people later, but I don’t know when exactly. It is up to Whitley Yorn. You can see me healing then.”

  They looked at each other once more. Again, the same little boy spoke to me.

  “What if…? Um.” He cautiously pulled a hand-sized rock out of his pocket. “If I hit my friend can you heal him?” He laughed.

  “No, no, no,” the friend said with his hands up as he backed away. “You said you would hit yourself!”

  They seemed to notice something behind me, both of them halting and one hiding the rock behind his back. I turned around to see Kataleya approaching with a look as if catching the boys misbehaving.

  Kataleya had on a simple dress, not something I’d seen her wear around the castle during our training. Her blonde hair was loose. There was a hint of a smile on her lips, though she contained it well as she stopped in front of the boys.

  “Well…?” she asked, her tone hinting. “Are you going to hit yourself so that Jon can heal you? Because you surely can’t be about to hit your friend, now can you?”

  “No, ma’am,” the boy said as he took the rock out from behind his back.

  I stood up from my crouch, figuring he didn’t have it in him. “You don’t have to,” I informed him.

  “Wait. I want to. Are you sure you can heal any injury I give myself?”

  “I’m absolutely sure.”

  “Miss Yorn?” he asked Kataleya.

  “I have seen him heal injuries far worse than you could ever do to yourself with that rock.”

  “Do it!” his friend called out.

  The boy stared at the rock for some time. He offered it to his friend. “I will…if you go first.”

  The other boy took the rock, looked at it fearfully, glanced up at me, then back at the rock…then back at me.

  “We have things to do,” Kataleya informed them, most likely sensing my impatience. “If neither of you are going to do it, then I’m going to take the healer to my house to meet my father. You can see him heal others later.”

  “No, I want to know what it feels like to be healed,” said the boy holding the rock. He gritted his teeth and smacked himself in the arm with it ever so lightly. “Ouch! Ow, ow!”

  With a roll of my eyes, I told him, “I can’t cure pain if there is no damage to go along with it. You’ll have to hit yourself a lot harder than that.”

  “Give it to me!” said the other boy as he took the rock from his friend. He had a few little breaths of fear before letting out a whimper and smashing the rock into his forehead hard enough to startle both me and Kataleya.

  His screams were for real as blood trickled down an open wound. Soon he started to cry, but I was right there to close the wound and fix all the damage.

  “It’s done,” I said. “You shouldn’t feel anything anymore.”

  Slowly his whimpering stopped and a smile grew on his face. Kataleya wiped a bit of blood off his forehead with her handkerchief.

  “What did it feel like?” the other boy asked.

  “It hurt, and then it didn’t.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah. You try!”

  The other boy took the rock and stared at it for some time before finally giving it back to his friend. “You do it to me.”

  “All right,” he answered happily, then smashed the rock against the side of his friend’s head.

  The blow was hard enough to take the boy off his feet. I caught him before he fell and healed the welt on his temple as he screamed.

  Then I steadied him and let him know it was done.

  He sniffled a few times, then tentatively touched his temple. There was no blood this time.

  He showed his friend a toothy smile. “Wow! It really works!”

  “I know!”

  But then the last boy who was hit had a sinister look in his eye. He grabbed the rock out of his friend’s hand and motioned as if to hit him, but his friend ran with a scream. As the boy with the rock took one step to chase after him, Kataleya grabbed him and took the rock out of his hand.

  “Jon can’t spend the whole day healing just the two of you. There will be no more hitting each other with rocks, or anything else, for that matter.”

  “What about before he heals everyone else?” asked the closer boy.

  “No, you will not hit each other.”

  The other asked, “What if we fall and hurt ourselves…a—accidentally. We could really need healing.”

  Kataleya had a serious look as she crouched in front of the boy. “This is not a game,” she explained. “Jon is a sorcerer of the king. We are busy defending the kingdom. But we have taken time away to give people water and take away their suffering. Now I don’t think it’s right to take any more of Jon’s time for games. Do you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “No,” agreed the other.

  “Run along, now.”

  They hurried off, leaving Kataleya with just me and my horse.

  Kataleya was not only smart but looked the part as well. There was a twinkle in her sharp gray-green eyes that made her appear clever. She had a way of smiling with half of her mouth when there was something she wanted to say.

  “So?” she began. “Are you engaged to any of the fine girls of Lycast that you met?”

  I scoffed. “How did you know I would receive many proposals?”

  “Because the same thing happened to me, and I’m no healer.”

  “Yes, but you have the Yorn family name.”

  “Does that mean you denied every proposal?”

  “Of course. I’m in no position to be married right now.”

  I worried for a moment that I had offended her. She had spoken to me about marrying a man named Trevor whose last name I had not cared to learn. He was the pick made by not only Kataleya but her family as well, which apparently carried great importance to Kataleya.

  But she shrugged off my comment and asked, “How many proposals did you receive?”

  “I lost track. What about you?”

  “I believe in the tens.”

  “Did you have any other trouble during your trip?” I had feared for Kataleya traveling on her own, but she had assured
me that with her newly learned spell of fire, even someone sneaking up behind her and putting a knife to her throat wouldn’t be able to do much to threaten her.

  “Everything went just fine,” she said. “Though I did miss you. Did you miss me?”

  “Kat…” I started to lecture.

  “As a friend of course.”

  “Yes. I really missed you.”

  She nodded solemnly. “I wish to apologize. I know it would’ve been nice to travel together, but…” She glanced around. A few people were watching from afar, most likely just curious. I knew it didn’t look too bad for Kataleya to be speaking with me. We were peers after all.

  “I may have misled you earlier,” she continued, “when I gave you my reason for wanting to travel separately. It wasn’t so much that I would regret anything that would happen between us if we traveled together. I would only regret what it would do to us later, because I knew it was very unlikely we could be together.”

  “I see,” I said, but I did find it strange that she now said it was very unlikely we could be together. Earlier she had given me the impression it was impossible. I didn’t want to go down that road of guessing, however.

  “I’ve moved on,” I said. It had been easier to let go of Kataleya over time, as I knew it would. She was still beautiful to me, still someone I enjoyed spending time with, and if things were different, of course I would pursue her. But I didn’t like myself in that state. I didn’t want to fall back to it.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Having said that, it is really good to see you.”

  That brought a smile to my lips. “You as well.”

  We shared a quick embrace.

  “You’re going to enjoy your time here,” she said.

  “Oh? And how do you know that?”

  “Because we have plenty of food that will soon be prepared for you.”

  “You know me so well.”

  We started toward her mansion at the end of the road.

  A question came to mind that was difficult to ask without sounding jealous, but I figured I could rattle it off smoothly enough. “Does Trevor live here?”