To Wield the Wind (Enclave World Book 1)

by Remi Black

  The Rho climbed above the granite slab, across the old scar, filling with the long wisps of grass browned for late autumn. The trees thinned as they climbed. He didn’t head straight up the mountain’s flank, but his steep path was more grueling than the gentler trail. Orielle’s legs burned long before he stopped a second time.

  Gasping, she sank against a boulder. Her parched throat longed for a drink. Ghost carried her waterskin, though. Tossing back the black cloak, spelled against cold and rain but not against heat and weariness, she leaned into the wind that teased with coolness.

  “Here.”

  She opened her eyes. A scarred hand offered a small flask.

  He had frowned at her last gratitude. She took the flask inches from her nose. Before she could lift it, he turned to peer downslope.

  Orielle jiggled the flask. She wanted to drain it, but she didn’t know when they would find fresh water. Two swallows eased her throat. A third began revival of her energy. She stoppered the flask then balanced it on a knee.

  He turned back. She offered the flask. He hefted it. Dark eyebrows rose, and her withered pride revived a little. Not such a fool, she wanted to say. Then she watched his throat apple jump twice as he swallowed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The same hand that had gripped hers so tightly.

  A tingle that had nothing to do with magic coursed through her. To hide from those grey eyes, she peered into the trees around them. If he followed a trail, she couldn’t see it. Where had the wyre gone? Did they still track them? How had that wolfen known where to set his trap? How long had he waited for her?

  How had the Rho found her in time?

  “How did—?” Her voice cracked. She coughed. “How did you know—?” Another cough seized her.

  He waited until the spasm ended. “Crossed your camp this morning. Smelled the gobber that had been there, too. So I tracked you. Curiosity, mainly, until I sniffed the wyre on your trail. Came on his scent about midday.”

  Gobber distracted her. “Is that what that was? It tried to steal my food bag.”

  “You’ve never seen a gobber.”

  Orielle treated the slow words like a question. “No. The description I read wasn’t really accurate. I saw sprites—if that’s what those sparkly lights are—.” She paused, expectant, and he nodded. “They were in the trees. They scattered before I saw the wyre. They’re not described accurately either. That book needed illustrations.”

  Those grey eyes lightened although the sun rode the azure sky behind him. “I guess most people who can draw don’t live past their encounter with a gobber.”

  She suspected that he laughed at her, but he hid his amusement. Only that ashy cast in his eyes revealed—something. “You’re saying I was lucky.”

  A smudge darkened the grey. “Lucky with the gobber. Lucky I followed your trail. Lucky you faced only one wyre and not the whole pack of 13.”

  “Thrice lucky is better than thrice damned.”

  He tucked the flask inside his jacket and cinched it with a jerk of the laces. Then he held out his hand.

  Orielle’s legs still burned, and the spurt of energy from the water hadn’t reached her feet. “Do you think he’s following us still?”

  His hand dropped. He scoured the trees below, the flank level with the boulders. The well-traveled path had disappeared. He surveyed the crest still far above them.

  She wondered where his horse was. And had Ghost found the horse? Or was he racing back to the last comfortable stable in the civilized Lowlands? Or gutted in some gully, fresh meat for the wyre? Or other predators?

  She shivered.

  “I’ve tried to confuse our trail,” the Rho said. He offered his hand again. When she accepted it, he lifted her easily. “We’re leaving tracks. That can’t be helped. The wyre track by scent, though, not sight. That’s a boon. But—.” His grip shifted, tightened just a fraction before easing off. “I can only mask so much. We need to deaden our scent. You should spell that cloak you’re wearing.”

  “It is spelled, against rain and cold.”

  “Spell it to mask your scent.”

  “Do I stink?”

  “No.” That light returned to his eyes. “The wyre would find you a juicy morsel.”

  “I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

  “Just mask your scent, Orielle of Galfrons.”

  The Enclave tutors frowned on the tricks that Orielle and her friends had practiced, sparkling their gowns and hair before a party, washing a fabric with magical hues that shimmered, creating auras that brightened and shadowed with their moods. She re-cast one of those spells, replacing brilliants with exotic chypre.

  His eyes watered.

  “Too much? It’s the rage at court.” She coughed as she got a mouthful of the scent emanating from her clothes. She exchanged the chypre for rose, the heavy pink blooms that filled her grandmother’s garden.

  He choked. “Not that either. Something natural, dammit.”

  “Roses are natural.”

  “Something from the forest around us. And not all at once. Confuse your scent with other scents. Pick one that’s predominant.”

  She blanked the attar and snatched at the trees, the deep resin, the rich needles, the sturdy bark. Ghost had nosed the trees near the stream. The scent mixed with her aunt’s herbary and scythed grass and—.

  “Good choice.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself with that praise.”

  “I didn’t know if you knew the spell.”

  “We aren’t supposed to use magic this way,” she shared. “It’s like casting glitter over my gowns. My tutors would punish me.”

  “I won’t. This should confuse the Wilders, too.”

  She sniffed her hood. “What is this scent?”

  “That’s spruce. Add in other scents.”

  “Spruce,” she whispered, naming it so she could remember it. She knew cedar. The wood saved her winter clothes from the moths.

  He bent and ripped up wisps of grass as she mixed a whiff of cedar into the spruce. He held the grass so she could catch the odor. She sniffed and crinkled her nose. It lacked any green scent. She smelled mold and something like old root and rot, like decay or age or—. “Ugh.”

  “You can use the deer scat on the trail over there.”

  “No!” She quickly peppered the grass into the spruce and cedar.

  He chuckled then sniffed and nodded. “Good enough to confuse a Rho.”

  “And a wyre?”

  “Confuse a Rho, confuse a wyre. An old lesson. This is a start. Mix in other scents as we pass them until nothing’s left that you started with. It may not stop him, not if he’s determined, but it will slow him down. The slower he goes, the better for us.”

  “And where do we go?”

  “To the horses.”

  “He could just track the horses.”

  “If he thinks of that. Let’s hope he doesn’t.”

  ~ 3 ~

  Sunset from the mountaintop captured her heart.

  Vibrant orange and coral, pinks and lilacs flung themselves across the clouds dotted along the horizon. A golden glow spread upward, turning to rose gold before pinking the edges of the clouds drifting overhead. Here on the crest, the leaves had browned and died, stripped from the limbs by the ever-present wind.

  Leaning against an exposed boulder pitted by weather, Orielle drank in the colors while she snatched a rest. The Rho had climbed atop the boulder to gain vantage over the obscuring trees.

  She rested in a shallow bowl of soft dirt. With the horizon before her, the breeze cooling her face, and a hawk performing a lazy wheel through the afterglow, she might imagine herself on a picnic.

  But the vista was endless forest, more ridges and mountains to climb, no smudged smoke trailing up to mark the Haven’s location deep in the Wilding. The forest sheltered wyre and other predators, the ones she had expected and the ones that had surprised her. Gobbers. Ogres. Surely she wouldn’t encounter a gryph?

  To the eas
t, the next mountain towered. Snow clung to its steep crevasses on its north reaches. Beyond were the jagged spires of snow-capped mountains, nearly impenetrable barriers to the Shifting Lands. “There be dragons,” she murmured, quoting another ancient tome. She didn’t remember reading much of it. In her schooling, surrounded by powerful students who wielded multiple elements, she had scarcely dreamed her one-element self would venture into the Wilding. Adorée wielded both the Air and Water of the Letheina clan as well as the Earth of Galfrons. She would have made a better emissary to Iscleft Haven. Why had Adorée accepted the appointment then refused it?

  The Rho hadn’t mentioned camp. He hadn’t mentioned where he expected to find his horse and hopefully Ghost. Did he know wards that would keep gobbers out of their camp? Gobbers and other creatures of the Wilding, creatures that her tutors had glossed over.

  He leaped down, landing with a muffled thud that barely disturbed the exposed dirt. He straightened then touched her arm. His finger touched her lips. Then he pointed behind him. She peered around his wide shoulders.

  The dancing lights wove among dead leaves.

  He didn’t let her watch as long as she wanted. He stepped away from the boulder, and the sprites darted away.

  Orielle sighed. “They charm, don’t they? ‘Jewel on the wing.’ That was printed in the margins of that book, Creatures of the Hinterlands. ‘Jewel on the wing’ and something about a sting.”

  “Bite. Painful as a hornet’s sting. You don’t want to anger a nest of them.”

  “Is that the way of the Wilding? Danger in the glove of beauty. Remove the glove, and sharp talons will claw you?” His head cocked, like a hawk trying to figure out its prey, so she explained, “My training is useless here.”

  “I wouldn’t call it useless. You can punch with Air.” He rubbed his arm. Had her earlier thrust with the element left a sore bruise? “I doubt any of your Enclave wizards would do better.”

  “The little I know won’t keep me from being killed.”

  “That’s the first step to learning, admitting you don’t know. The second is a willingness to learn.”

  “Don’t get excited,” she warned him. “My tutors complained that I fell back two steps for every three forward.” But she smiled to diffuse the complaint. “Do we continue off-trail? For I don’t think you’ll camp up here.”

  “Too exposed,” he agreed. “You’re willing to go on?”

  “As long as you know where we are.”

  “I always know where I am.”

  Was that arrogance or truth? Rather than search those eyes with their silvery cast, Orielle swept an arm toward the changing forest. “I don’t even know the trees. Fruit trees I can name, even out of season, but these—I’m limited to red leaves, yellow leaves, orange leaves, and evergreens.”

  “Don’t forget the plum leaves, city lass.”

  “Oh, aye,” she agreed with a country expression, and surprise flickered over his battered face.

  “Ready?”

  For answer, she pushed off the boulder. Turning, she stumbled over a stack of rocks hidden behind a stunted evergreen. The rocks toppled.

  He hissed then dropped to his knees, gathering up the rocks like they shouldn’t touch the ground.

  “What?”

  “Hsst. It’s a cairn. You know what a cairn is?” A rock slipped from his cradling hold. He snatched it back with the others.

  She knelt beside him. “A way marker.”

  “Grave marker,” he corrected. “We have to re-seal the grave.”

  She gaped. “Like—a formal ceremony?”

  “Yours the deed that disturbed it; yours the hands to restore it. And pray we didn’t loose more than we disturbed.”

  He was serious. Energy emanated from him, waves radiating over her, impelling her.

  “Now, wizard.”

  “What could we loose upon the world?” she whispered.

  “The cairn,” he mouthed.

  She brushed back the little tree with its prickly needles and saw what it had hidden. Four irregular stones forming a square sunk into the ground—or so old in place that time had built up the soil around them.

  Orielle swept off the imbedded rocks. One flat surface looked like frozen ripples. Another had a scuff across it. She didn’t know what ceremony he wanted, but the sealing chant of the dead was the same for human and Fae, wizard and mundane, townie or farmer.

  She flattened her hand over the plain rock above the one with scuffing. “Earth” then “Air” as she touched the scuffed one. The rippled one was “Water.” And the Rho exhaled, slow, long. He clearly had feared she would get it as wrong as her other knowledge was. “Fire” was the fourth rock.

  “Earth and Air, Water and Fire,” she named and touched them again. He handed her a rock, flatter than others. A base, she reckoned as she carefully placed it. “Blood and breath, flesh and bones.” A rock for every word.

  The light was fading, more quickly than she’d thought it would. The wind had a cold nip, reminding that autumn was harbinger of winter.

  He handed her another rock, uneven of shape, harder to steady in place. “Sun and shadow, soil and stone.” The sealing chant was slower as she timed each word to a rock’s placement. “Sleep and peace. Sleep and ease. Return you to the path of Neothera.”

  He gave her the last rock, one extra beyond the sealing chant. Orielle asked with her eyes. His gaze shifted to the cairn.

  With a crack, she set it on the top. Both hands wrapping the rock, she repeated the chant. And she poured magic into it, imagining the power sinking through every placed stone and into the ground. Soft sifted dirt, the shallow depression, and the cairn the only evidence of the ancient burial.

  She shivered as she finished. The world felt fogged, distant.

  Then the Rho gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet. He towed her away from the cairn.

  Her hands prickled from the evergreen’s sticky needles. The twilight brightened. Had a shadow—? Orielle peeked over her shoulder. No. The ancient grave at the boulder’s base would catch the last light of the sun.

  But she shivered.

  The slope on the mountain’s east wasn’t as steep as the west, Lowland-fencing side. Deeply shading trees clogged the incline. The way remained tricksy, but the Rho kept her moving, faster and faster, faster again as they hit a narrow trail and turned onto it.

  The trail crossed another. He took that one, climbing briefly before descending again.

  She clung to his hand. Roots snagged her toes. Stiffly-fingered branches snagged her hair. Light faded rapidly. How was he seeing?

  She heard water, rushing, drowning the sunset bird calls.

  The trail angled sharply down. The Rho stopped. She plowed into him.

  Grim—for that was the name she’d dubbed him—steadied her before she pitched over. “You hurt?”

  “Tired,” she gasped.

  “Camp’s ahead.”

  Camp. Pampered by the Enclave’s comfort, Orielle would never have imagined that a fire and a seat on the hard ground would inspire her to keep moving past aching muscles and joints. Pampered by the Enclave’s safe walls, she’d considered the wyre a nebulous threat rather than lethal hunters. The hardships she had expected were the journey to the Haven and the carefully marshalled arguments to convince the Rhoghieri Haven to return to the alliance. When they’d abandoned the pact three generations before, the Enclave’s only threat came from a rebel heretic named Saldoran. Frost Clime now threatened. Frost Clime was winning.

  “Waterfall ahead,” Grim said, an explanation for the drowning noise that she mutely appreciated. “We’ll cross above it before we continue down.”

  She started to ask how Grim intended to make camp in the rapidly-falling darkness, but her ignorance covered so much that she decided to wait and see. She sighed at more walking, though, and hoped the waterfall obscured the soft sound. “Will the horses be at our camp?”

  He lifted a shoulder. Orielle expected another explanation. As a
teacher, he was more patient than her Enclave tutors. Yet those grey eyes sharpened. He focused on something just off her head. Then he grabbed her shoulder.

  His fingers bit into her flesh. She cried out as he jerked her around. He swiped down her back, over and over, long sweeping motions, like he brushed off a clinging web.

  “What?” She didn’t remember backing against anything. She had leaned against the boulder. She craned to see over her shoulder.

  Those viselike fingers kept her from turning. “Hold still.”

  He flicked his fingers, flinging something off. Again he swiped down her back and again, brushing off whatever clung. He flung away a misty, webby thing. She heard a high-pitched whine, like a summer insect buzzing her ears. Then the sound vanished with his last swipe down her back.

  The day brightened. The chill left the air.

  He kept brushing her off. His grip eased, but he still held her still while he brushed her shoulders, her back, down the length of her cloak.

  “Take this off.” He tugged the oiled cloth.

  A tug removed the brooch, a luck charm from her mother. She held the circle and stick-pin while he gave her cloak a strong shake. A wind kicked it, billowing through the cloak, ensuring no trace of the thing lingered.

  When he settled the cloak back in place, he took the brooch from her fumbling fingers and fastened it quickly.

  While she searched the ground for what he’d gotten off her.

  Shifting fog caught her eyes.

  She gasped as the fog lifted from the ground. Misty tendrils rose, a cloudy mass that shaped into a head and thin shoulders, a torso with separating arms, wisps of hands and elongated fingers. The ghostly mist didn’t form a lower body as it hovered above the needle-carpeted ground.

  In the air between them and the mist, Grim shaped a ward. The sigil glowed amber. The foggy mass retreated. The ward faded as the fog drifted upslope, obscuring tree trunks as it flowed past, following their back trail. Like a man with legs, the ghost climbed, hazier as it left the twilight cloaking the lower slope and mounted the upper reaches.

  It had ridden her back.

  “Just a ghost,” she breathed, reassuring herself. “I’m not afraid of ghosts.”