Sworn To Ascension: Courtlight #6

by Terah Edun

  No, it’s more than that, she thought grimly as she eyed the dully painted pale orange and brown stagecoach that rolled along the path beside her.

  Kicking her spirited horse in the side swiftly, Ciardis felt the mare jump in anticipation, and they leaped forward to bypass the stagecoach. Her mouth dry from anxiety and her hands gripping the reins anxiously, she didn’t turn her head to acknowledge Sebastian; instead she settled her mare in beside the roan gelding of one of his guardsmen and tried not to let any of her thoughts leak. On any subject.

  It was as odd a feeling as she had ever imagined. Trying to keep her thoughts from Sebastian. Trying to block his emotions from seeping over to hers. Trying to be completely unaware of his presence riding at her back and Thanar’s form high up in the skies far ahead.

  She succeeded. But it took all of her concentration.

  She couldn’t do much more than keep her trotting mare on a straight path, and she was quite sure it was obvious to anyone who bothered to look at her that something was going on.

  But the soldier beside her was well trained. He didn’t say a word to the ramrod-straight princess-to-be with a furrowed brow sitting astride a prancing horse beside him.

  He was a smart man.

  After a few hours of riding, even Ciardis couldn’t keep up the stiff posture. As her muscles slowly relaxed and she tried to shift in the saddle to give her aching bum a break, she turned back and put one hand on the horse’s rump just behind the saddle while keeping a firm grip on the reins with the other. They were on flat terrain, with barely any trees to mar her vision of the way leading back up the slowly sloping road toward Sandrin. She could still see it, but it was growing smaller and smaller as they rode further west.

  A wistful smile came over her face. Not at the thought of returning, but at the thought of at least knowing the pitfalls and challenges Sandrin represented. She had plenty of enemies there, but at least she knew who they were. Titles, faces, reasons. Kifar was a large unknown. What was the pet wyvern set to do? Who would challenge them at the gates? Could they obtain the collar of Diamis with only a pretty seeress’s help?

  So many fates rest on the answers to those questions, Ciardis thought bitterly as she turned back to the horizon and rubbed her brow furtively.

  She would have liked to talk over their plans about their ascent into Kifar more thoroughly. But she knew that they also had plenty of time to discuss their approach and their priorities.

  “Weeks, even,” she muttered as she looked from left to right at the closely cropped grassy fields that lay to either side of the imperial road to the west.

  She didn’t know when the lush greenery would begin to turn into the arid environment she had been told that she had to look forward to. But she doubted a couple days in the desert could be that much worse than traipsing through snowdrifts as tall as her in the north.

  She hoped.

  Eventually the boring placidity of a sea of grass and silence got to her. Wrinkling her nose, Ciardis thought about trotting over to the stagecoach to engage two of her friends in conversation. Any conversation. But before she so much as twitched the reins in her hands, she heard a loud bray that swiftly changed her mind.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the stagecoach had been surrounded on all sides by a pack of gray, irritable four-legged beasts with short tails and stubborn dispositions.

  Terris’s desert mules.

  When they had left the city, they had been following behind the stagecoach with their typical stubborn dispositions. When Ciardis had rode around them then, she had noted that they smelled to high heaven.

  When she had complained to Terris, citing the fact that they hadn’t been anywhere yet and if they smelled this terrible now what would it be like after a few weeks of hard travel, Terris had told her that it was in their nature to smell horrible in moisture-dense climates. It was when they reached the desert that they were worth their weight in gold, as they didn’t mind the harsh climates and could go for days without being supplied water.

  Ciardis didn’t know where she had gotten them from, but she took the woman’s word for it.

  Even now Terris was leaning so far out of the stagecoach window that her entire torso was hovering over the road as she balanced one hand on the neck of one of the smelly beasts and used the other to adjust its bridle.

  Ciardis sighed and turned around. And so the journey would continue.

  Alone and in silence.

  She didn’t want to talk just to talk. But neither was she used to enforced quiet.

  It was quite unnerving for a young woman used to the loud and ever-present chatter of a laundress’s quarters and the multitude of opinions from her own companions ... good or bad.

  After a while Ciardis descended into her own thoughts. Hours more passed as the steady clip of the horse underneath became as natural to her as her own two feet walking. Even the ache in her bum started to numb.

  Mind away from her friends and the aches of her muscles, Ciardis forced herself to plan for what was coming.

  Brow furrowed, she wondered if Vana would have any luck with the “resistance” without them. She certainly hoped so. If anyone could, Vana would be able to make them talk and possibly marshal them into a somewhat formidable fighting force at the same time.

  Chapter 19

  They were maybe twenty miles out from Sandrin when the water mage, also acting as the navigator, called a halt to their activities.

  After dismounting, Ciardis swiftly hobbled up to the wagon’s front.

  “What’s the problem?” Sebastian asked briskly from the other side.

  She stopped at the wagon’s seat and looked up at the driver and seated water mage with a glare.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ve barely gotten out of sight of the city.”

  The water mage nodded with a stiff look ahead. “I’d say that’s a pretty big problem.”

  Ciardis frowned and looked at the flat stone road ahead, lined on either side by thick forests, with broad meadows interspersed around every corner.

  There was nothing else there. Just trees and wind.

  “You big shots can’t see that?” the water mage demanded.

  Ciardis looked back up at him with narrow eyes. “See what?”

  She sniffed in the air suspiciously, wondering if the pouch in his hand contained something more potent than water.

  That’s all we need ... a drunk water finder, she thought with gritted teeth as she looked back and forth pointedly from the empty space ahead to the water mage’s fixated gaze.

  “There’s something in the road,” cried the water mage. “Something that’s shielded.”

  “There’s nothing there,” said one of the four soldiers derisively.

  The water mage insisted there was.

  Finally Ciardis snapped at the driver, “And you, what about you?”

  The driver, dressed in an ill-fitted as well as dirty set of tunics and pants, shrugged and shook his head. Either he didn’t see anything either or he didn’t want to answer her.

  Sighing patiently, Ciardis reached up to brush her curls out of her eyes and said, “It’s all right. You can speak up.”

  The water mage gave a shrug. “Not that he won’t. He can’t.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “He’s mute.”

  Ciardis blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Show her, Shafer,” the water mage commanded.

  The man obligingly opened his mouth. Ciardis didn’t bother containing a gasp of horror.

  Instead of a pink tongue waggling at her, there was a gap where the tongue should be, and only the jagged edges of lumpy flesh remained.

  The driver started to make noises with his mouth. Maybe he was talking, she didn’t know.

  But it made her skin crawl.

  “That’s enough,” said Sebastian sharply with an unreadable look at her.

  Ciardis was happy Sebastian had spoken up. If he hadn’t, she wasn’t sure what she would have d
one, but fainting could have been high up on the list. She had never fainted before in her life, but the maiming of this man was on par with some of the worst scarring on individuals she had seen in the north.

  It felt worse because the mute driver seemed to be making a mockery of his own situation, with comical expressions on his face as he made exaggerated eyes and even smiled at her.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  The tongue had clearly been ripped from his mouth, but the unsettling look in his eyes said that maybe his sanity had been taken along with it.

  From the other side of the wagon seat, she heard metal leaving a scabbard, and looked away from the wagon driver’s face to see Sebastian’s sword out and pointed at the water mage.

  “Tell him to settle down and get back on the road,” Sebastian said firmly. “We’ll have no tricks and no delays on our journey. If you have a problem with that, you can walk back to Sandrin.”

  The water mage raised trembling hands slowly. “No problem at all, sire. No problem.”

  Sebastian’s green eyes glinted like cold emeralds. “And your man?”

  The water mage chuckled uneasily. “He was just having a bit of fun, that’s all. Shafer will be good, won’t you?”

  The water mage reached out to the mute driver’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze to emphasize his request.

  The man’s face settled down, and he nodded placidly and leaned back.

  As if it was all an act and his part had been played.

  Ciardis sighed in relief as Sebastian sheathed his sword.

  “Why would you bring a man like that on this journey?” she demanded. “We need all our wits about us.”

  The water mage smiled stiffly but didn’t look at her. “Shafer may have lost a bit of his mind under torture, but he’s still sane.”

  “Answer the question,” Sebastian demanded hotly. “Why him?”

  The water mage shrugged. “Shafer also knows the road to Kifar like the back of his hand.”

  “Really?” Ciardis said skeptically.

  The water mage gave her a droll look. “He was born there, after all.”

  Ciardis rocked back on her heels as she processed that, and then nodded. “Keep him in line and get going, then.”

  The water mage shook his head and said, “No can do.”

  “Why not?” asked Ciardis as a soldier walked up and said, “Anything I can do here, my lord and lady?”

  Ciardis turned to see a lightly-armored man with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “Arrest this mage for insubordination and insanity,” said Sebastian in disgust. “Return to Sandrin quickly and find us another water mage.”

  The man saluted with a closed fist. “Aye, sire.”

  Then the soldier turned to Ciardis. “If you’ll excuse me, miss?”

  She stepped back silently as he walked up to the passenger side of the wagon seat and the doors of the stagecoach opened behind them.

  The shaman stepped out of the conveyance as Thanar landed a few feet away.

  “What’s going on?” the daemoni prince asked as he walked across the stone pathway.

  Ciardis glared at no one in particular. “Apparently our water mage no longer wants to participate in the journey.”

  “That isn’t what I said!” the water mage shouted as he was dragged from the front seat and his mute companion howled in accompaniment.

  Ciardis clapped her hands to her ears. “Shut him up!”

  The water mage wasn’t paying her the least bit of mind as he grappled with his captor and yelled, “Prince heir, prince heir! Look. See what your eyes cannot. I show you the truth.”

  Sebastian marched around the team of horses hitched to the front and growled, “What truth?”

  The man looked at him helplessly as he lay between two strong soldiers; each clutched one arm tightly.

  With wide eyes, the water mage said to the background howls of his driver, “The dragon, sire. The dragon that sits in our way.”

  “What did he say?” Rachael exclaimed in astonishment behind Ciardis.

  Ciardis was no longer focusing on the woman or the water mage. Instead she turned and stared at the open road in front of them. Seeing nothing and no one that would block their way.

  “He’s gone insane,” declared the soldier who restrained the water mage’s right hand. “We’ll take him back to the city—”

  Ciardis took a few steps from the conversation so that she didn’t hear the rest of the soldier’s words. Distantly she heard Sebastian do the same.

  She paused when she saw a glimmer in the air. She raised her hand hesitantly and it was gone.

  “Ciardis?” whispered Sebastian.

  She didn’t turn when she said, “I saw something ... I think.”

  She took another step forward, and another. He echoed her soft footfalls.

  Two more.

  Three and she stood a few feet away from the closest soldier guarding their caravan. But she was alone. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Sebastian. For a moment they stared at the empty road in front of them. Then Sebastian blinked and turned around.

  “I see nothing,” the prince heir declared while standing near her but acting like he was a world away. He didn’t acknowledge her. That was all right, because she did the same. She stayed turned toward the horizon. Listening to no one, but opening her eyes to everything.

  She wanted to see what the water mage saw.

  She wanted to open her eyes.

  “This is preposterous,” Rachael stuttered behind her. “He’s just delaying us more—”

  Terris chimed in, “Maybe he’s hallucinating? Lots of drunkards take opiates with their wine of choice.”

  “No,” Thanar said. “I already sniffed that wine pouch he was trying to pass off as water. He may be drunk on piss-poor wine, but he’s not out of his mind on opiates.”

  “And I never was,” the water mage screeched. “I’m not a drunkard, either. Just a bit of wine here and there to take the edge off.”

  “Listen here,” Sebastian growled, “we are on an important mission, the emperor’s mission, and cannot afford fools like you. You are dismissed, and may you rue the day I ever come across your sorry face again.”

  “Sire—”

  Then a shimmer went through the air in front of Ciardis. Like a glimmer, it was there and gone instantaneously.

  Ciardis tilted her head while still staring forward. What was that?

  She waited for it come again. Nothing happened for a few seconds.

  And then there it was again. A glimmer midair. Like a sparkle off a clear glass pane.

  This time Ciardis took a step forward. Wondering what it could mean.

  She even opened her mage sight and tried to dive down into her gifts. But she could see within her mind’s eye that her mage core was still as turbulent as the sea on a dark, stormy day. Even pulling a small strand of power from it when it rioted with surging movements and the thick ropes of the soul bond magic fed into it would do her no good.

  She didn’t trust herself to tap into it.

  Not alone.

  As she heard Sebastian with half her mind focused on something else, Ciardis reached out without warning and gripped the prince heir’s wrist.

  “Sebastian, wait,” she said, breathless.

  She didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to. He halted the minute she touched him. She could feel his magic and his mind fighting to reunite with hers. Almost independent of him. But he was resisting.

  Oh, how he is resisting, she thought in admiration. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one feeling the effects of this separation.

  Sebastian turned his head toward her but kept his body facing away, and he didn’t speak. Impatience lined his face as he watched her.

  She knew it wasn’t necessarily prejudice that motivated him to do no more than briefly acknowledge her touch. She could feel him fighting the bond with all his strength and knew it was taking quite a bit of concentration just
to hold fast when they stood in such proximity.

  She didn’t know how. She didn’t know why. After all, it had never felt like this before, when he had closed himself off to her. But she also didn’t care. He had brought this on himself. Let him suffer.

  “What is it?” she heard someone else say.

  Christian, she thought through the roar in her mind.

  Then Terris said something else while coming up on Sebastian’s side, but she didn’t hear that at all.

  Instead she turned her head to Sebastian’s, and he—unwillingly, she was sure—stared fully into her eyes.

  “I see something,” was all Ciardis could force herself to say. She didn’t know what that something was. She couldn’t explain the glimmers in the air.

  But she didn’t have to, because she could see the decision in Sebastian’s eyes.

  He might not believe the water mage so readily, but he wouldn’t disregard her testimony. No matter how he felt about her that day.

  She was confident of that.

  But when the prince heir gently disengaged his arm from Ciardis’s hand, she felt disappointment flash through her like a hot poison.

  I was wrong, she thought. I was wrong.

  But she didn’t have time to think more than that before he turned around to face the road side by side with her and held out an upraised palm.

  She couldn’t feel the tumult of emotions roaring through them anymore. Now that they weren’t touching.

  But she knew that he was holding his powers in check, just barely.

  “Take my hand,” Sebastian said firmly.

  “Are you sure?”

  His hand remained upraised, and he nodded.

  “I’m sure,” he said, and she slid her uncovered palm into his and their fingers clasped.

  Chapter 20

  The rush of power and magic she felt when her flesh connected with his was almost like being tossed into the cold darkness of a churning river. A chaotic push of both their gifts as the power surged and met like the rushing waters of two convergent rivers.