“I’m…not certain, sir,” she rasped her eyes flicking back and forth. “I just lost contact with the Zarul commander.”
“Lost contact?” Tenel asked, tossing a meaningful glance back at Horsch. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not certain, sir, but I can no longer sense him through our mental link,” Mirrel replied. Her eyes continued to flick back and forth for another few seconds before she swallowed heavily and glanced upwards. “I believe he is dead.”
“Dead?” Horsch stammered. “How? I thought you said he’d secured the prisoner!”
“He had, sir. She was unconscious and fully restrained. I do not understand what happened.”
Horsch hissed beneath his teeth. “Is it possible that he just closed himself off for a few moments? Maybe he tripped and hit his head.”
“The High Sovereign believes he was ambushed and killed,” Mirrel said. “But there is no way for us to know the details.”
“Order that retrieval unit from our nearest camp to leave immediately,” Tenel said, folding his arms across his chest. “I want answers. She must have gotten help somehow.”
Horsch’s lip twisted. “We’ve never heard of anyone accompanying her before. She has always operated alone.”
“None of our people have ever gotten a good look at her before, either. It’s entirely possible she’s had backup this entire time. It would go a long way towards explaining her effectiveness.”
“Maybe,” the other man whispered. “It makes me wonder if all these protestations from the Last Dawn are just for show—perhaps they secretly have another knight working with her.”
“Their ire is legitimate, and the Dawn wouldn’t resort to trickery or targeted assassinations. No, she’s not working with another paladin.”
“Then who? A Solarian soldier?”
“Possibly. We’ve also never been able to account for Jason Moore and his entourage after Garos.” Tenel waved a hand. “At the moment, it doesn’t really matter. We can speculate all we want, but we won’t know anything for certain until our people can investigate.”
“Assuming there’s anything to find,” Horsch muttered as he leaned his palms upon the table. “I swear, if I ever find that elf cunt I’ll slit her throat myself.”
Tenel pursed his lips. “Keep me informed if you learn anything else, Lieutenant. I will be in my office.”
Horsch cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you were going back to sleep.”
“I was, but not anymore,” Tenel said, turning towards the door. “I have work to do.”
***
A crisp breeze blew across the frozen fjord, and Elade’s eyes slowly fluttered open. At first she had to squint to see anything; between the searing beams of the morning sun and their even brighter reflection off the thin layer of remaining snow, she felt rather like she’d awakened in the fiery core of Mount Zereloth. But eventually her eyes adjusted—insofar as they ever adjusted to the light on the surface—and she experimentally reached her fingers up to brush against her face.
Her skin was cold and clammy, and long strands of her white hair were plastered across her eyes and forehead. Restorative channeling techniques had virtually eliminated casual illness in Maz’Belar, but she felt as weak and helpless as when she’d contracted balaxian fever almost three decades ago following a long battle against a horde of demons. She could barely move her arms or legs, and after a few more minutes she gathered the strength to crane her neck down and make sure everything was still attached.
“You were poisoned,” a soft voice said from behind her. “I don’t know what type they used, but you should thank the gods that you’re even alive.”
On instinct, Elade dropped a hand down to her belt, but her sword wasn’t there. Neither was her scabbard, for that matter, and closer inspection revealed she’d also been stripped of her armor…
“We’re safe for now, I think. I haven’t seen any signs of reinforcements nearby. The Green Coats must have only sent one squad.”
Elade took in a deep breath as the memories flooded back over her—her journey north from Lanesk, her exploration of the fjord, her idiotic bumbling into a Zarul ambush…
“I remember you,” Elade rasped as the speaker’s dirt-streaked, youthful face finally came into focus. “You’re the Izarian conscript from Lanesk. I thought I told you to travel with the others to Amberwood…”
“You did, but…” the girl trailed off and swallowed heavily. “I figured you’d head this way, and I knew you’d need help.”
Elade closed her eyes and tried to settle her nerves. The girl’s name was Sabine, if she remembered correctly, and she looked about twice as haggard as she had at Lanesk. How in the Void had she followed Elade all his way without being spotted? And how had she dealt with the Crell?
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t trust the Solarians,” Sabine went on. She leaned down, and her slight figure blocked out the worst of the sunlight. “I didn’t want to end up in an alliance prison camp. I’ve heard stories…” She swallowed again, and after a few moments of silence she seemed to steady herself. “I almost turned back around and headed from Brackengarde, but the Crell would probably just kill me…”
“It’s all right,” Elade soothed. Licking at her parched lips, she braced a hand against the dirt and tried to hoist herself up…but then a fresh spike of pain knifed through her stomach. She crumpled over and struggled not to vomit even as Sabine offered her a steadying hand.
“You shouldn’t try to move yet,” the girl warned. “I bandaged your wounds as best I could, but I’m no healer. The ‘Coats had a few salves on them, but they’re probably making your muscles numb.”
Elade closed her eyes and tried to channel, but she couldn’t focus. It was like the Aether was dangling just out of reach, teasing her with its presence…
“What happened to the other soldiers?” she asked. “How did you…?”
“Most of them were already dead by the time I caught up,” Sabine said. Her voice was so soft and brittle it seemed like it might shatter on the breeze. “There was only one left, and I…I took him by surprise.”
“You killed him?”
“It was a lucky shot,” she whispered, glancing away. “I’m not sure what I’d have done if I missed…”
Elade frowned. She had a hard time imagining this girl stepping on a nephix beetle, let alone shooting a trained Zarul agent in the back. Still, the Crell assuredly taught their conscripts the basics of archery, and Sabine had successfully tracked Elade without being spotted for several days. She clearly had some skill.
“Then I owe you my life,” Elade whispered. “I’m just surprised they didn’t kill me…”
“From the looks of it, he was planning to tie you up and drag you back to Brackengarde with him,” Sabine said. “The ‘Coats have been taking a lot of prisoners recently. Rumor has it they’ve been scouring every village they come across for potential Unbound.”
Elade sucked in another deep breath, and the worst of the nausea faded. The numbness, unfortunately, didn’t go anywhere. She still felt like she’d been used as a target dummy by a squad of groll. “The Crell want to train any Unbound they can find as Breakers. At this point, I doubt the Zarul even care if the Unbound swear fealty to the Imperium or not. They just want to spread this technique as far and wide as they can in order to sow chaos.”
Sabine’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story, but I’ve had the opportunity to speak with several of Sovereign Damir’s goons over the last few months. I’m not convinced she actually cares about the Imperium at all. She’s an Unbound supremacist—she believes that her kind are meant to rule the world, and anything or anyone that destroys Ascendants or their Bound is a boon in her eyes. She doesn’t even seem to care about her own Imperators—surely you’ve seen that firsthand.”
“Yes,” the girl whispered. “Everything changed so quickly after the invasion. Many of the Crell officers were recalled to Drakendaar…and they never
returned. These Breakers were put in charge of entire units, and if anyone talked back, the Green Coats showed up and dragged them away…”
“As far as I can tell, the ‘Coats are in charge of the Imperium at this point,” Elade said. “It’s like Damir has pulled a coup, and I don’t understand why the High Sovereign or any of his minions are going along with it.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” Sabine rasped. “They say the ‘Coats murdered all the other Sovereigns in a single night. They say Damir and the High Sovereign are secretly running the Imperium all by themselves…”
Elade grunted softly. “Soldiers say a lot of things, especially when they’re afraid. But I suppose anything’s possible at this point.”
An awkward silence fell between them, and after a few minutes the girl pursed her lips and straightened her posture like she’d suddenly tapped into a hidden well of determination. “I should take you to Amberwood. The Alliance has plenty of priests stationed there, right? They should be able to help you.”
“I can’t,” Elade said, hearing the hollowness in her own words. “I’ll be fine in a few days. I just need some rest.”
“You need healing—real healing from a real channeler,” Sabine said. “I think I stopped the bleeding, but I have no idea what to do about the poison. If you were human, I think you’d already be dead…”
Once again Elade attempted to reach out to the Aether…and once again it slipped through her fingers. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to heal herself anyway, but the girl was right—Elade could still feel the poison burning in her veins, and without the Aether she was unlikely to get any better. She needed to find a real priest, and Amberwood was the only legitimate option.
“There’s a small village not far from here,” Sabine said into the pause. “I saw some scouting reports of this area; I know the villagers stable some horses. If I told them you were wounded, perhaps they’d loan me one…”
Elade grunted. “No Solarian villager is going to give away a healthy steed. Not with the war raging so close to their doorstep, and definitely not for a wounded foreigner.”
“I could tell them that you are a Knight of the Last Dawn.”
“I doubt it would matter,” Elade muttered. “There’s a coin purse inside my pack. It should be enough to barter for a decent horse.”
The girl nodded and began rustling through the nearby packs. She seemed to have already gathered up most of the equipment from the fallen Green Coats, which Elade found disturbing for some reason. Not because it was wrong—salvaging equipment from the dead was an entirely sensible and pragmatic choice, given the situation—but because rifling through corpses didn’t quite seem to fit the personality of a skittish Izarian refugee…
Perhaps Sabine was more hardened than Elade had thought. War brought out the best in some people and the worst in others, after all. Not that it really mattered—whether Elade liked it or not, at this point her fate was entirely in this girl’s hands.
“I can take some of these weapons with me, too,” Sabine said once she located the coin purse. “The villagers might be willing to pay for them considering how close they are to the front lines.”
“Just be careful and don’t overplay your hand,” Elade warned. “Solarians are a welcoming enough people, but they’ll still know you’re an outsider. You’ll want to get out of there as quickly as you can.”
The girl nodded soberly. “I know. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She started to leave, but a few paces later she stopped and pivoted back around. “Here, you should take one of these just in case…” She picked up one of the Crell crossbows and pressed it into Elade’s right hand. She barely had the strength to squeeze the trigger, but Sabine helped her reload the cartridge. “It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Yes,” Elade whispered. She offered the girl a weak smile. “Thank you.”
Sabine smiled back as she wiped a loose strand of dark hair from her dirt-streaked face. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
Chapter Nine
“The ghosts of the past become the demons of the future.”
—Faeyn proverb
The sun had fallen by the time Sabine returned from her horse-fetching excursion, though Elade wasn’t sure if she had been asleep for twelve hours or twelve days. She had flit in and out of consciousness all day, and each time she assumed she’d wake up in the Void surrounded by demons and dark spirits...or perhaps just not wake again at all. But somehow her body endured the Crell toxins, and even though she remained too weak to channel, she managed to force down some rations and even stand up under her own power by daybreak. Mounting the horse was more difficult, but with Sabine’s help she crawled into the saddle and strapped herself in.
Amberwood was, at best, a fifteen hour ride from this part of the Lirisfal Fjord, which meant the trip would probably take them closer to twenty or even twenty-five. Elade knew she’d have to survive at least one more night camping in the woods; her eyes might have been sensitive enough to travel at night, but Sabine’s were not. Thankfully, they weren’t harassed by bandits or wandering Crell patrols—they weren’t harassed by anyone at all, as far as Elade remembered during her fleeting bouts of consciousness—and once night fell they made camp off the main road inside a thick, sprawling forest.
Sabine wasted little time in starting a fire and heating up a pot of broth. The girl was nothing if not efficient. She’d probably been forced into the role of cook in her scouting unit, given how effortlessly she chopped up and tossed in some miscellaneous vegetables.
“You should eat some of this,” she said once the stew had simmered for a while. “I added some deska herbs I found along the way—they’re supposed to help the body purge a wide variety of toxins. At least, that’s what the Crell apothecaries always said…”
She poured a bowl and handed it over, and after a bit of anxious stirring Elade eventually decided to take a bite. It didn’t taste nearly as bad as it smelled, though considering how tempted she’d been to pinch her nostrils closed, that wasn’t really saying much. Still, this hardly seemed like the appropriate time for biting criticism.
“I hope you like Izarian spices,” Sabine said. “I smuggled a few pouches with me before my unit was sent to Brackengarde. None of the others ever complained. Most Crell food is completely tasteless.”
“It is fine, thank you,” Elade replied with a tight smile. “It reminds me a bit of stewed letchara root.”
The girl frowned. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Letchara only grows underground, as far as I know. It’s probably the most common plant in Sulinor aside from the various types of lichen.”
“I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live underground all the time,” Sabine murmured. “It must be so dark and cold.”
“Not this cold,” Elade said with a shiver. She’d wrapped herself in a cloak and two blankets, and for once she was thankful not to be wearing her armor. Metal scales and plates weren’t exactly the warmest accessories on a cold night. “It is much darker in Sulinor, though. There’s no moonlight, and even the qilo’kuan—the glowing lichen—are still dimmer than a candle unless the whole cavern is covered in them.”
Sabine took another sip of her stew and swallowed nervously. “Is it true that your homeland is filled with demons? They say your people live side-by-side with them…”
“There are plenty of demons living beneath the surface in the Calharan mainland, but no, we don’t live with them—we fight them. In fact, the vaeyn are the only reason the hordes haven’t flooded to the surface and laid waste to the human kingdoms above.”
The girl paused. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“You’re not alone. In my experience, Torsians aren’t taught much about the vaeyn or the underworld.” Elade grunted and closed her eyes. Dimly, she wondered if the bitterness in her voice was as obvious to Sabine as it was to her. “If they were, I suspect they might try and help us destroy Zereloth and seal the Void rifts within. But
instead…”
Elade shook her head and returned to her stew. Despite the sudden welling of resentment in her thoughts, she was definitely feeling better overall—the worst of the fever seemed to have broken, which presumably meant that the poison had nearly worked its way through her system. She just didn’t understand why. She hadn’t been able to channel any healing magic, and the Crell salves were designed to clean and seal skin wounds, not purge toxins.
“Did you know that I’ve never even seen a dark elf before?” Sabine asked after a few moments of silence. “I mean, I’ve never seen a vaeyn before,” she added hastily. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to offend you…”
“You didn’t,” Elade assured her. “I’ve been called worse, believe me.”
The girl shuffled nervously in place and took another bite of her stew. “From all the stories I expected you to look…scary.”
Elade grunted softy. “We don’t have horns or cloven feet. And we don’t raid the surface and kidnap children, either.”
“I just didn’t think you’d be so…” Sabine trailed off and glanced away even as her cheeks flushed red. “Pretty.”
An awkward silence settled between them, and Elade finished her stew and set the bowl down in the dirt. She had seen the same look many times over the past few years while traveling with Tevek. Many humans they came across—especially those living in farms or rural areas across Torsia—had grown up hearing tales of the valorous Knights of the Last Dawn, and they were instantly awe-stricken by the sight of real-life paladins.
Elade herself had only rarely experienced the phenomenon; her gray skin and luminous eyes tended to overshadow her Dawn-forged armor and silver-blue tabard. But some of the younger Solarian soldiers had come around after the many battles at Serogar, and apparently this Izarian conscript had been similarly smitten. It was a foolish reaction, of course, especially considering how Sabine had just dragged her “heroine” out of a cave where she’d foolishly blundered into a Zarul trap. But idolization wasn’t about logic, and Elade knew she needed to be careful how she handled this. She didn’t want this girl to take any more foolish risks on her behalf.
The Godswar Saga (Omnibus) Page 102