by J B Cantwell
Lesley leaned in. "I think there are two," she whispered. "Tosia and Trina. Sisters. But they will deny it. Hundreds of years living under Arte's command has made them frightened."
"How did you two find each other?" I asked.
"We grew up together." Lesley looked up at Carden. "It started off as silly pranks, but over the years, we began to try more difficult tasks. Carden here can raise things with his mind. And I, well…"
She reached out with her hands, and a moment later, the tips of her fingers were alight with blue flame the color of Light.
I smiled. "They're beautiful."
I held up my own hands and lit them, watching her eyes grow first with surprise, then with recognition. She looked like she might cry, and I understood why.
"You don't have to hide anymore," I said.
She shook her head sadly. "You don't understand. They'll hate me."
"Then let 'em," Duna said. "It's better than denying who you are. I'm guessing doing that doesn't make you happy. As far as Tosia and Trina, I'll deal with the parents."
I was happy to see that Duna had put her wand away, though her scowl remained.
"Tomorrow," I said. "It's going to take people some time to digest this."
"I just can't believe he left," Carden said. "How could he leave us this way?"
"Because he's a coward," Duna said angrily.
"People do strange things when they're scared," I said sharply.
I remembered the look on Oriana's mother's face the first time she caught me healing her daughter. She was terrified, and she’d ordered me from the house, smacking me across the face for good measure.
Hiding the truth about the magic in his village, about Torin, had been enough to terrify Arte. Maybe he was even more frightened than Oriana's mother had been.
I was surprised when Connell spoke up.
"Fear isn't a good enough reason," he said. "I can't deny that Arte helped me immensely over the past few weeks. But that doesn't fix what he did. Lies and deceit are never a good way forward. I don't know if he would've taken me in if I'd still had magic. Probably not."
"I would’ve," Duna said.
Connell smiled. "Yes, I know. In fact, I wish I’d come upon you before Arte found me. Living with someone so frightened made me frightened, myself. It's no way to live."
Suddenly, I felt sorry for Arte. He had lived his life in fear, and Connell was right. It was amazing to me that Arte had lasted so long without telling his story to anybody. I wondered if he'd even told his wife.
It was too late for that now. Whether she knew or not, the secret had followed her to the grave.
"I propose that we all decide right now that we will not lie to each other," I said, looking around the group, making eye contact with each of them. "We have a long road ahead of us, and trust is the only thing that will get us there."
Heads nodded. The message had gotten across. I just hoped it would be enough.
Chapter 17
I woke up in complete darkness. I shivered, and it took me a few long moments to realize it was raining. Soon it wasn't just raining; it was storming. It was as if all of a sudden, the clouds had become angry and began to beat us with their deluge.
"What's going on?" Carden yelled over the gale.
The rain made it even more impossible to see the others in the group, though I still looked around, searching in vain for my traveling companions.
This was not a normal rain.
"We need to move!" I yelled into the wind. "You take Lesley and go find some of the others. We need to gather them up and make a plan." I turned to Duna. "Is this kind of rain normal for you?"
But I already knew the answer. I had been through a rain like this before, and it had been Varik's work, not nature's.
"No!" she yelled.
I realized then that the rain was probably following us, that we wouldn't be able to get away from it until its master stopped the spell.
But how to get to its master?
I thrust my arms up into the air and sent a bolt of power up toward the sky. In a moment, half the tribe was enveloped in my spell, drying them and the earth beneath our feet. They looked at me in amazement, and suddenly I realized that maybe I wasn't set to be such an outcast after all.
The giants started moving closer together, each of them eager to join the rest of us in my dome of protection.
"Connell," I said. "You have to help me."
He shook his head sadly, and I could see the fear returning to his eyes. He’d been so brave the night before, but words were not the same things as actions.
I thrust the staff into his hands and pulled my knives from my belt.
"It's all about your intention!" I called. "Just point at the sky and focus on banishing the rain!"
He looked worried. Probably he had never done a spell like this before, for why would Zahn have taught his pupils to protect themselves from something as simple as rain? Maybe he had kept it to himself all these years, knowing that it would weaken his group should he ever need to exercise more control over them. He'd wanted his students to be strong, to know how to attack, but the last thing he needed was for his own pupils to turn against him. That, I was sure, was why he'd sent Connell away in the first place.
Connell held up the staff, trying to be brave, but when he made an attempt to help me, nothing but a few sparks came from the wood.
"Don't give up!"
I turned to Duna. "You're going to have to help too. Take out your wand."
The wind was deafening despite the barrier against the rain, and I could tell she could barely hear me. I pulled out my own wand and motioned for her to do the same. This time she got it and pointed hers up to the sky. But, like Connell, little happened. I realized then that it would be my responsibility to keep everyone alive. The rain was freezing, and I knew that a day or two of traveling and sleeping in the icy cold would eventually result in the deaths of us all. The storm would begin to pick off our numbers one by one.
I increased the size of the barrier so that everyone in the group was covered and dry. Shocked faces stared around as the rain pelted the bubble as if it had a tin roof. And yet, they were protected. I could tell that despite Arte's fear of magic, many in the group embraced it now.
It wasn't so unlike Eagleview.
But Duna wouldn’t be accepting their apologies anytime soon. No, the only way to get her on your side was to show her kindness, not just your need for her abilities.
But now, she was all business. She walked around the crowd shouting out instructions.
"Stay in close!" she yelled. And they obeyed her. This only made her scowl deeper, her old, saggy skin knotting her features together, anger clear on her face.
But this wasn't enough to stop her. I’d given her a job to do, and she was doing it without hesitation. Suddenly, I felt a great kinship with Duna, not because she was doing as I asked, but because she trusted me. I had made a friend in the most unlikely of places.
I supposed Bevyn had been a sort of friend, too. I’d certainly cared about him. Maybe deep in these mountains there were more people like me. People who wanted change. People who were willing to fight for it.
Who else lived in the dark?
Slowly, the noise lessened as my spell grew in intensity. I noticed several giants in the tribe shaking off as if they were still covered in water, even though the spell had resulted in everybody becoming completely dry.
I wondered how long this rain would last. How long I would last.
We needed to find shelter.
I’d learned through many weeks of travel in the Shadow Mountains that there were caves just about everywhere. But would that be enough? Would we be able to sit and hide from the wind and rain? Somehow I doubted it. If Torin wanted us dead, he would do as he pleased.
I thought about this idea, and it made me angry because I knew it was true—five untrained sorcerers against the most powerful wizard in all the world. Connell, of course, had been through Zahn's trai
ning, but I was learning that that didn't mean much. He'd failed in his fight against Phalen even though he'd been training for years. It solidified my idea that Zahn had been using his students to his own ends. He wasn't training his pupils to protect themselves; he was training his pupils to protect him.
I looked over at Connell, and he looked worried, his eyes on the tip of the staff. I could tell what was running through his mind right then; would he ever be able to use his magic again?
I walked up to him, trying to keep my attention on both the spell and those before me. "Don't get scared; that's what he wants. I know you can still do this. I saw you last night, and without your help, I’d probably be dead."
He looked at his feet, clearly ashamed.
Suddenly I was angry. "Don't you give up on me. Duna is having trouble, too, and you don't see her quitting."
He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
"Don't give me your excuses," I said. "If you're coming with us, you need to promise me that you'll try to fight, even if that means nothing more than picking up and throwing a few rocks."
He glanced up at me, at first looking confused, but then his eyes hardened.
"That's what I thought," I said. "I know you're in there. Don't try to tell me that one or two losses have banished your magical abilities forever."
He nodded and raised up the staff again, pointing it at the sky.
This time, a great bolt of red fire burst forth from the wood, surprising him. It joined my own high above our heads, and I felt the energy needed for me to uphold the barrier was cut in half. I smiled.
"I told you," I said.
He didn't smile back. Instead, his face showed concentration as he kept his part of the barrier alight.
Duna seemed to be having a better time of it now, too. I looked toward the front of the tribe and found her there, her wand high above her head, full of fire.
"We must keep going!" I called to the group. "We need to find shelter before we can stop."
Together, with Duna at the front and Connell and I at the back, we moved the tribe forward. It was tricky, trying to keep so many people underneath our protection, and I realized that it could be a long time before I would get to stop again.
Still, with the help of the other sorcerers in the group, we were able to move as one. Carden and Lesley didn't even need to be told to help. Instead, they thrust their power from their bodies, adding to the protection of the barrier.
Two younger giants, girls, soon joined us at the back. The wind had died down, making it possible to hear one another without shouting, and they clearly wanted to speak to me, though they looked uncertain.
"You're Tosia and Trina," I said as they approached. They looked very much alike except that one had white-blonde hair and the other stark black. I’d never met them before, but it seemed obvious who they were now. "Did Duna speak to you?"
"She came up to us, yes," the blond girl said. “I’m Tosia. Our father, well, he left us last night. We've always been told to hide our magic, but our mother seems to understand now that that's no way to live."
"So she believes in you now?" I asked.
"I think she always has," the other girl, the one with the black hair, said. Trina. "But Father was very strict. And he was the one in charge." As she stepped out of the shadow and into the light that my magic created, I could see that her face had several ugly scars upon it. It surprised me. The first girl, Tosia, had been so pretty. It was unnerving to see her opposite before me. She looked down, and she seemed ashamed.
So maybe it wasn't such a terrible thing after all that he’d perished the night before.
"Tosia was his favorite," Trina said.
"You must have been very good at hiding," I said to Tosia.
She stepped back, seeming to take my comment as a reproach.
"I don't judge you," I said. "It could be that your skills could help us yet. What can you do?"
Tosia shrugged. "I guess I'm good at hiding like you said."
"Show me," I said.
She looked at me with surprise, but then she did as I requested and broke away from the group. I saw her walk out of the protective barrier and into the night. The closest wall of the mountain wasn’t far, and she stood with her back against it. Her hair, stark white, immediately vanished against the black stone, and I realized her talent. The rest of her body disappeared soon after, leaving me awed and grateful for her inclusion in our group.
We walked along slowly, and soon Tosia was trotting back to stand at my side.
"That's really something," I said. "They weren't kidding when they said giants knew how to hide."
She smiled sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders.
"It came in handy, I suppose."
"And you never tried to help her?" I glanced over at Trina, her scars just visible in the dim light. Maybe it wasn't a fair question, but it was one I needed an answer to. But when Tosia opened her mouth to reply, Trina butted in.
"It's not her fault," she said. "She took her beatings, too."
Tosia crossed her arms over her chest, a gesture that left me feeling sick. I didn't want to know what their father had done to her. The look on her face told me enough.
"Well, he's gone now, and you're free to join us."
I wondered what he’d done to their mother.
It was a whole new life for so many of us. Everything that had been static before was now in motion. We’d all been uprooted, cast away from our homes for some reason or another. Misfits.
That suited me fine.
"So what can you do?" I asked Trina.
I didn't expect to be surprised, but when Trina looked at me, a glint of confidence came into her eyes. She squatted down, and before I had a chance to ask her what she was about to do, she was in the air.
She could fly.
She flew all around the giants, even out into the wind and rain. Nothing seemed to be able to stop her, and I racked my brain, already trying to figure out how to use her in the fight. A scout maybe?
She floated over to where we were walking and slowly descended, her feet landing delicately on the earth beneath her.
"That's a trick I would like to learn," I said as she came back to our sides.
Suddenly, the wind was whipping through my hair, and I realized I hadn't been paying attention to my own spell. I needed to stay alert if I was going to protect everyone.
"Can you fly ahead and check for places for us to hide?"
Trina was breathless, but she was smiling.
"Yeah. What should I be looking for?"
"If you can see through the rain, look for caves that might fit thirty giants."
She chuckled and shook her head. "We're unlikely to find that here. This is the Valley of Fynbar. The cliffs are straight up, and there are no caves until we reach the end of it."
I deflated.
"And how far is that?"
"A day at least."
"And how long until we reach the tiger?" I asked.
"Three."
My heart sank.
I looked up at the barrier and then over at Connell. He was holding his own well enough, but I knew that it wouldn't be long before the three of us would tire.
We would have to keep this going all night if what Tosia said was true. While we’d all been amped up and ready to fight, the truth was that many obstacles had followed us along the way. While I had expected some new kind of attack, this rain was unrelenting. Maybe it would've been easier if I were the one challenged, called to fight one on one. But I hadn't counted on having an entire tribe to protect.
Or an army.
I walked around, weaving myself through the crowd, looking at the faces of those who were following me. They were tired, these people who had lost nearly half their numbers. And I felt sure that even though everyone had been ready to fight, that their hearts were broken inside. I went back and forth between thinking I should rally them or wondering if I should, instead, let them rest.
I deci
ded on the latter.
"Everyone!" I called. people turned. "You’ve all had a miserable time. I can't imagine what it’s been like for you to lose your families and your homes on the same night. Tomorrow, we’ll look for caves. But tonight, let us all rest. There’s nowhere for us to hide." I looked over at Tosia, and she raised her eyes to meet mine. So much pain. "Here, I’ll stay awake, sheltering you from the rain until we’re all free of it. For now, all of you rest. You’ll need your strength to make it to the other side of these cursed mountains."
Duna and Connell gradually made their way to me.
"Shall we take it in shifts?" Connell asked.
"I don't think that will work. I think it will take all three of us to keep them dry."
Duna sighed, irritated. It wasn't surprising that she was unwilling to help those who’d rejected her for so long.
"You know they won't care," she said. "You know they're just going to…"
"They'll care when we get there," I said. "When they see what we're up against, they'll come to all of us, thanking us for our service."
"Our service?"
"They’ll have a chance to repay us. I swear it."
Connell looked around, then spoke his piece.
"It doesn't matter how they treat us. Bree is right; they'll thank us in the end."
Duna scowled, shaking her head, but she didn't speak again.
"We should all spread out," I said. “Try to keep the barrier intact for the night."
"You know that if we do this until morning, we’ll be too exhausted to help them in the event of an attack," Duna said.
So it wasn't just me. I wasn't the only one who tired when my magic ran low. We weren't capable of giving all of ourselves in the name of magic, and the loss of strength wasn't my experience alone. I had questions about this, but they would have to wait.
"Five hours," I said. "Then we get everybody up and move on."
Nobody argued this point, and I was relieved. Here before me, I had a group of powerful sorcerers, untrained as they were. Together, we still had an immense amount of power. We had a shot.
The giants around us gradually sank to the ground, laying their heads back into the rocky dirt, not even bothering to look through their packs for something more comfortable. They were exhausted.