"Estrid, stop," I hissed, stepping between her and Arun. "He didn't do anything."
When she finally focused on me, her cheeks were flushed red. "Didn't do anything? What was he doing in your bed?"
"I was in his bed."
She paused, looked back and forth between my cot and Arun's, realization dawning on her face. "You … you…," Estrid collapsed onto my cot.
I looked at Arun, who had gone completely still, prey afraid to remind the predator it was still there. "Can you give us a minute?"
He nodded and left without looking at my sister, closing the thin wooden door behind him. I was sure it was too late for privacy, though. The whole ship had to have heard Estrid's blow-up.
She didn't look up at me when she spoke. Her voice was so low I wasn't even sure I was meant to hear her, but I did. "I'm supposed to protect you from this."
"I don't need to be protected from Arun," I said, willing her to look at me, to look up and see me.
As if she didn't hear me, she went on. "I'm the only one left who can keep you safe. You and Erik go around fulfilling your own destinies, doing whatever you want to do, and I'm left chasing you around, trying to save you from yourselves. And now … now it's just you and me. And Arun, I guess. What are you doing with him?"
"I just … I'm…" It was hard to answer her when I didn't have an answer for myself. "I'm giving him a chance. Giving myself a chance to … to let someone in."
"I can't protect you from things you walk into willingly. I can't…"
"I don't need to be protected," I said again. "I need…" I sat down beside her, the cot sinking below my weight and pushing us together. "I need to be loved. Not by him. By you. I need you to love me. That's all. Love me and accept me for who I am." I was rambling. I reached under my pillow and pulled out the wayfinder's stone and brandished it at her as if my identity were bound to it. "The non-heir. The maybe savior of the world who has no idea what she's doing most of the time. Just love me. Frida Svand."
When I worked up the nerve to look at her again, she was staring up at me, speechless for once.
Then, suddenly, my hand was on fire.
I dropped the stone. It clattered to the floor and we both stared down at it while I rubbed my aching palm on the smooth material of my trousers. The room, which had been mostly dark, was now filled with a yellow light as the whole stone blazed.
"What is it doing?" Estrid asked.
The stone wasn't pointing in any particular direction, which led me to believe we were already where we were supposed to be. How long had it been doing this, hidden under my pillow? I felt the strange need to apologize to it before remembering I hated magic and it was a stone. "I think we need to land."
We put our argument to the side, and she went to the deck while I hurriedly dressed. When I came up, the ship was already dropping below the veil. The sailors were quiet for the most part, lining the railing, weapons in hand, as if expecting an attack. Even Stiarna was pacing and nervous. I joined Estrid on the starboard side and looked out. The Bruhier jungle had cleared and we were above a vast brown grassland dotted with flat-topped trees. The only thing that moved was the breeze rustling the grasses. I'd never seen anything like it. Not in the Western March and not on Bruhier.
Quynn put the Wind Wraith down and her crew hurried to lower the gangplank. She handed me a curved horn. "I'm not leaving my ship here. You do what you need to do and blow the horn when you're ready to leave. Good luck."
Estrid, Arun, and I disembarked with Stiarna at our heels. The grasses were so high that the tops brushed my thighs and nearly covered Stiarna, who stretched her neck high to be able to see. I didn't like it. Somehow, the quiet grasses were worse than the jungle, which at least offered somewhere to hide from its horrors.
I turned and watched the Wind Wraith disappear into the veil, all the while turning the horn over in my hands and contemplating just using it now. Only the stone burning a hole in my vest pocket kept me there until Estrid clapped a hand down on my shoulder and took the horn from me, sliding it into a hook on her belt. It was as if she knew how tempted I was to call Quynn back.
"Well, Frida Svand, where to now?"
Chapter 16
Where to. That was the golden question, wasn't it?
I drew the stone from my pocket to see if it would tell us. When I placed it in my hand beside the compass, the left side began to glow. We walked west, stepping carefully through the high grass, and the faint glow of the sun through the veil cast tall shadows ahead of us. A few yards ahead of us, something rustled in the tall grass. I froze and Arun plowed into my back. I hissed at him to be quiet even though he hadn't said a word and waited. Finally, a long-legged creature with big eyes and fur the same color as the grass came into view, picking its way along. Spotting us, it froze, nose twitching, and then bounded away. Delighted, Stiarna took off after it. Soon, the only thing visible was the tawny tops of her curved wings.
With small, breathy laughs, we continued forward. When nothing else jumped out at us, I began to relax. With no ur’gels and no monsters in sight we seemed to be okay, at least for now. I couldn't forget what Xalph had told me though, that Bruhier was a tricky place. Even if I was relaxed, I couldn't let my guard down, not for an instant.
After a few minutes, Arun fell into step beside me.
"Do you think she's here?" he asked.
Wind rustled my bangs and I brushed my hair back from my face while I decided how to answer him. Finally, I went with a simple, "Yes." I didn't know how to explain it to him beyond that. There was a feeling, a thickness to the air, a tightness in my chest, which told me she was close. Ravyn had told me we were bound to each other, and I hadn't believed her then. But I felt it now, like a thread tying the two of us together. Fate, maybe. I could just imagine Foregin, the god of fate, looking down at us and laughing, tugging me ever closer.
To avoid explaining any of that to Arun, I paused and pulled out the compass and the stone. It wanted us to keep going west.
The sun was nearly above us when the veil thickened, and the grasslands grew dark. Rain fell in thick, heavy droplets. We took shelter under a flat-topped tree and waited for the storm to pass.
"Something feels wrong, doesn't it?" Estrid said, peering up at the clouds. She was pacing back and forth beneath the tree's thin canopy, her shoulders dark with raindrops.
I nodded. "It's too easy. It feels like a trap." I said what I'd been too afraid to even think: "What if we're too late?"
"We're not." Arun shook his head. "You can't think like that."
The rain finally stopped, and we pushed forward, emerging from beneath the tree and crossing a muddy creek that didn't come up past my ankles. I scrambled up the opposite bank, and when I reached the top, I felt … something. Looking over, I saw Estrid shiver and brush at her skin, as if fighting off invisible insects. My own skin was tingling. Beside me, Arun showed me his arm. The hair there was standing on end.
There was a splashing sound behind us, and I turned to see Stiarna coming through the creek. When she got a few feet from us, she jumped back as if something had shocked her.
"Come on," I told her, patting my leg.
She took a tentative step forward but gave a sharp cry and retreated back into the water.
"What is it?" I asked as if expecting her to be able to answer me.
She didn't try to cross again, but raised her beak to the air, the feathers at the nape of her neck standing on end, just like the hair on Arun's arms.
Estrid drew her sword. There was a buzzing sound and she was knocked backward by some invisible force, dropping the sword.
I rushed to her side, pulling her up. "What happened?"
"I was … I was zapped." She brushed herself off and stared down at her sword, unwilling to pick it up.
"Zapped?"
"Like," she grabbed my arm and dug her nails into it, then shook me. "Bzzt!"
"Bzzt?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Yes, bzzt."
"A
protection spell," Arun offered. He was standing completely still, his own weapons still sheathed. "It's why Estrid couldn't draw her weapon. And why Stiarna couldn't cross the creek. It must be the boundary of the spell."
"Is that what's crawling all over me?" Estrid asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.
He nodded. "It's very strong magic."
Extraordinarily strong magic, used to protect a particularly important person, I suspected. We were getting close.
I told Stiarna to wait for us and then gestured for Arun and Estrid to follow me.
Estrid elbowed her way to the front. "Let me go first."
I put a hand on her arm. "I told you, I don't need protecting."
She smiled. "Maybe not. Maybe it's that I need to protect you."
We moved away from the muddy banks of the creek, through the sparse trees surrounding it, and back into the dry grasses.
"Look," Estrid said, pointing ahead of us.
I stepped around her and that was when I saw it, a small stone house rising out of the grasslands, its thatched roof the same color as the surrounding grass, which I was sure made it invisible from above. This had to be it—where the heir was hiding. My first instinct was to run for the door but Estrid held me back, forcing me back behind her as she took one painfully slow step after another. I understood. I didn't want to get zapped either, but I wanted this to be over sooner rather than later.
There was a short wooden fence surrounding a well-tended garden. It was difficult to grow anything beneath the veil, so I suspected magic had a hand in this, as well. The gate creaked open and we walked up the flagstone path to the door. When Estrid knocked on it, the door creaked open. It hadn't been latched.
"That's not a good sign," Estrid mumbled to us. Then, to the empty house beyond the door, "Hello?"
No one answered.
"Do we go in?" I asked.
"Not much of a choice," Arun answered.
"I'll go first," Estrid said, narrowing her eyes at me when it looked like I was going to argue. She pushed the door wider, its hinges squeaking, and we followed her inside.
Inside was completely dark. I opened my hand that held the wayfinder's stone and held it flat in my hand, thinking it could provide some light, but the rock wasn't glowing anymore. And it was completely cool to the touch, but not icy cold. Just like a normal rock that I might have picked up on the bank of the creek.
"Hm," Arun grunted, looking down at the stone in my hand. "That's weird."
Weird, but not bad. I chose to believe that it had stopped working because we'd finally arrived. "The heir has to be here. That's the only explanation."
Estrid was already moving forward, her hand on the hilt of her sword though she dared not draw it again. It was more of a security thing, I thought.
I pocketed the stone and followed her. The house was nothing special: a small living area with a hearth and a dining table on the eastern wall. There was one bedroom in the back, divided from the living area with a screen, and another in a loft accessible by a small wooden ladder, like where I'd slept with Erik and Estrid in our childhood home before Erik got too old to sleep with his sisters and started sleeping on a pallet by the hearth.
Arun was at the hearth. He touched the ashes. The tips of his fingers came away sooty and black. He peered in the pot hanging over the hearth. "Cold and empty," he said.
Estrid emerged from the back bedroom. "The bed is unmade. Seems like maybe there were three women living here based on the clothes in the wardrobes."
I climbed the ladder to the loft. There were two straw mattresses, both topped with fleece blankets. One bed was meticulously made. The other’s blanket was thrown to one side, and the pillow still had the indent of a head that had been sleeping there. The rest of the room was littered with pieces of paper. Each paper held a sketch done in confident lines of black coal. There was the house and the creek and the grasslands. There were eyes and hands and full faces of old women with wrinkles around their mouths, and a younger girl with an easy smile. And there was one—only one—of another young girl, this one with big eyes and curly dark hair. I picked it up from the floor and studied it. The face looked strikingly like the one I'd seen staring back at me from the scrying pool. Then I looked at the mess all around me. Had she drawn these? Was this her easy life, hidden behind a protection spell?
Suddenly, I wanted to rip the drawings to shreds and burn the pieces in the hearth. She'd stolen that easy life from me, turned me into something I never wanted just so she could survive, so she could carry on Onen Suun's legacy.
I hated her.
But I had also promised to help her.
Leaving the drawings behind, I rejoined Estrid and Arun in the living area. "She's not here."
"No," Arun agreed, "but she was."
"Now what?"
Estrid smiled. "Now, we track her."
Chapter 17
I was only three when I realized I would never win a game of hide-and-seek when I was playing with Estrid. Only a few years older than I, she could already track anything as well as the hunting dogs some of the D'ahvol kept. Our father had never had a wounded deer or boar escape, because Estrid would always find it, through rain, snow, or darkness. That was why, when she knelt outside the cabin and pressed her fingers to an impression there that I hadn't even noticed, I knew we would find the heir in spite of the fact the sun was already heading down for the day.
She looked up and squinted, as if that helped her see farther. "They went west."
Away from the way we'd come, into new territory, then.
"How many?" I asked.
Estrid took a few steps forward, keeping low to the ground. She passed through the gate and turned left, studying a place where the grass had been stamped down. "Four. Four women. Running."
"Wait." Only four? If there'd been three downstairs and two in the loft, we were missing one.
My sister, who had been ready to follow the trail, looked up at me. "What?"
I remembered what else we'd seen in the scrying pool, the old woman's dead body. I cut through the garden, trying and failing not to stomp on any of the plants. The first thing I saw when I rounded the back of the house was the mound of freshly disturbed dirt. A grave. I was silent as I stared across the yard at it, remembering the priest’s dull, grey eyes. How did she die? If I'd gotten here sooner, would she still be alive? It seemed to be screaming at me, too late, too late, too late!
Estrid pulled me back. "We need to hurry, find the others before they meet the same fate. The tracks are already a few days old."
Arun and I fell in behind Estrid. He leaned over and asked, "How does she know?"
I shrugged. "It's all to do with the depth of the print, the direction of the grass, things like that. Most people just see them on the surface for what they are, but she sees stories in them."
When we entered a copse of the flat-topped trees, Estrid ran her fingers across the bark and then picked a scrap of linen from a nearby thorn poking out of the underbrush. Orange, like the robes of the priests.
"Let's keep going," I urged.
Eventually, we reached an open field where their path was obvious, so we ran, following the trail of trampled grasses. We turned south at a narrow river and crossed at a wooden bridge. Someone had dropped a purple flower halfway across the bridge, and I remembered seeing this same plant in the yard. It seemed like something the artist might do—stop to pluck a flower before running for her life. I kicked it off into the water, where it quickly sank out of view.
Estrid picked up the trail again on the other side, moving slower now that the world had sunk into twilight. We were getting farther and farther from the cabin, and I wondered just how far the protective bubble extended. If these women had lived inside it for the last couple of decades, they were not ready to face what lay waiting for them in the outside world. They likely had no way of knowing they were running straight into danger.
Eventually, we happened upon another copse of trees, t
his one beside a wider, cleaner river. On the riverbank was a circle of rocks and, though the ashes had been scattered, what was clearly the remains of a campfire. Estrid examined the ashes and the tracks around the campsite.
"We're gaining ground on them," she declared. "This must have been last night's campsite."
Arun collapsed on a nearby log. "Still a day away at least, though."
"At least," Estrid agreed. Then, she looked at me. "Do you want to stop or keep going and try to catch them by morning?"
I wanted to keep going, but Estrid and Arun looked as exhausted as I felt. "We can stop," I said. "Why don't we make camp here and leave before dawn to try to gain on them some more?"
While Estrid worked on the fire, Arun went with me to the river to see if we could catch anything for dinner.
"Are you and your sister okay?" He asked when we stopped on the riverbank to take off our boots and roll up our pants.
"Yes." I hadn't said anything earlier because I was worried that talking about it might lead to a conversation about us, and I was not ready for that.
"And she's okay with," he waved his hand back and forth between us. "With this?"
I cringed. "Hmm, ‘okay’ might be a strong word."
He laughed. "‘Okay’ is probably the most generic word I could have used."
"She'll be fine with it. Just give her time."
We waded into the water until it came up to below our knees. It was cold, but bearable. I stooped low, letting my fingers dangle in the water. He did the same beside me.
"Have you ever caught a fish like this?" he asked.
I hushed him. "You can't talk. The vibrations will scare the fish away."
A few more moments passed, and then, in a whisper, he asked, "Well, have you?"
I tried not to smile but couldn't help it. "Yes."
He made an impressed grunt.
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