Sworn To Ascension: Courtlight #6

by Terah Edun

  “Shall we put the bodies in and go?” Sebastian said in a heavy voice. “We need to find a suitable place to camp for tonight ... preferably closer to Kifar than farther away and we journey onwards at mid-morning.”

  Ciardis nodded and looked over at Raisa. The dragon didn’t look any less pissed off than she had minutes before, but she was restraining herself from attacking the Muareg so Ciardis left her alone.

  “Raisa, you brought us here, which way should we go?” Ciardis asked when it was obvious she couldn’t catch the dragon’s eye and get her to step up with a more subtle hint.

  “How should I know?” the dragon hissed.

  Ciardis sighed. “I know you’re angry Raisa, but—“

  Raisa waved an irate hand. “Angry doesn’t touch on the depth of feelings I endure. My people were abandoned and now we are accused of enslavement. We are not you, you humans and your strange degrading concepts. But I must stand here and bear insult on top of injury.”

  Sebastian interrupted. “Look we’re all angry, we’re all aching, we’re all hungry.”

  Ciardis raised an eyebrow. Now that you mention it, I could devour a good steak.

  Tell me about it, Sebastian replied.

  He continued aloud, “But snapping and having hissy fits helps no one here. Let’s get to camp, prepare for the night, open up some of the scavenged food from the stagecoach, and plan for tomorrow.”

  General murmurs of agreement rose up around Ciardis.

  Nodding Ciardis looked over Raisa.

  The dragon refused to meet anyone’s eyes. But she did speak and even her tone was less ... confrontontial.

  But even congeniality from a dragon was a bit more aggressive than any other species Ciardis had encountered.

  “I was not being flippant when I said I don’t know,” the dragon offered, “We dropped out of the Aether Realm too soon for what I had planned. It felt almost as if we were pushed out.”

  “Pushed out?” asked Sebastian slowly.

  “By what?” Ciardis said in puzzlement.

  “The more accurate question would be by who,” the shaman said in a stone-cold whisper that had Ciardis’s eybrow raising.

  She turned to look at Rachael, only to see that her as well as the dragon’s gazes were pinned on the opponent that had started this whole thing.

  The Muareg.

  Chapter 28

  For a moment Ciardis was impressed. It wasn’t everyday that you came across something or someone that had the power to push around dragons.

  “You don’t think—” Christian started to say.

  “I do,” said Rachael.

  Ciardis shrugged. “Only one way to know.”

  “Ask him,” Terris muttered in a tone laced with disbelief.

  “Think he’d tell us?” Sebastian said in an offhand manner.

  “Not a chance,” Ciardis said as they all stared at the still and silent individual known as Muareg.

  Then a polite snort from Raisa causght her attention. “I suspect something more dire at work.”

  Sebastian shifted his stance warily and looked over at Raisa. “With what proof?”

  Raisa gave him a toothy smile. “The proof that says I did not get my butt handed to me by a lone individual of the Mua people.”

  “And what about a tribe of them?” Rachael said with a cocky tilt of her head. “My people have heard myths about the Mua for as long as we’ve inhabited this part of the world. The myths say they can do things. Things that only a dragon could teach them.”

  “And what would those things be?” said Raisa in a deadly whisper.

  Ciardis looked between the two nervously. She had no love lost for either of them. But she didn’t want to see the shaman gobbled whole by an enraged dragon either.

  At least not before she leads us to the damned collar, Ciardis grumped.

  Christian stepped in with a hasty cough. “Now, ladies, it’s just speculation.”

  Raisa held up an angry hand to halt Christian’s speech without saying a word. Rachael squared her shoulders and stepped forward with a proud tilt of her head.

  “Whispers of magic that could turn the night sky as light as day. Children that never aged. Servants that could walk between worlds,” Rachael said calmly.

  Ciardis could have sworn as silence descended within the group that the only thing other than Rachael’s words that she could hear was the whisper of the desert wind along the open sands.

  If they had been inside the palace walls, a pin could have dropped and she would have heard it, her ears were so attuned.

  Then Raisa smiled. It wasn’t a welcoming smile or even a “woman-you-don’t-know-who-you’re-talking-to” smile. It was a smile that said “I heard what you said and I’ll see you in hell first.”

  No one moved as Raisa said, “Rumors of a time long since passed.”

  “But not false rumors,” Rachael said in a calm voice.

  “Not necessarily no,” Raisa said with a curl of her lip.

  “And the skills needed to perform these gifts?”

  “Possibly breed into the line,” Raisa said calmly enough as if she was discussing a sheep breeding program and not a human-magic splicing technique.

  “And they got away from you?” Rachael said curiously.

  “A mutually agreed upon separation,” Raisa replied.

  “Right,” someone whispered in a dry tone.

  Then a startled cough broke the calm. Terris hurriedly ducked her head before either the shaman or dragon could see the amusement on her face. Ciardis had to admit, the idea of former servants outdoing their masters at their own magic was rather ... funny.

  Thanar however didn’t see any reason to hold back his thoughts on the hilarious situation.

  “The mighty dragon was overcome by....” Thanar said just before Ciardis did something she’d wanted to do since he’d initiated the damned soulbond between the two of them.

  She gathered up her power and sent a raw surge straight at Thanar while shouting as loud as she could mentally, Thanar, shut up! Just shut it.

  She watched as the daemoni prince winced and reeled from her mental blow. When he got his footing once again, Thanar whirled towards Ciardis from fifteen feet away with clenched fists.

  He didn’t take a step towards her, but the aura that was emanating from him wasn’t friendly. Not at all.

  You know I’m getting tired of being harassed and belittled, he said in her mind.

  Take a number. There hasn’t been a moment since I left the only home I’ve ever known when my problems weren’t forced to take a backseat to someone else’s; the way I spoke and acted wasn’t dissected like it was a game; and the entire world thought they had the right to tell me what I should do.

  What are you saying?

  I’m saying grow a pair of balls, Thanar, she snapped, Act like an adult who expects consequences for his actions.

  The anger in her voice was beginning to match his. But if Ciardis thought her tirade would quell Thanar’s constant need to be the adversary in every situation, she was wrong.

  How dare you, you sniveling....” he said.

  Ciardis’s eyes widened and she gasped. “Oh, you finish that sentence. I dare you.”

  “Or what?” Thanar said with fire in his eyes. “You’re going to do what, Weathervane?”

  Before she could respond, others intervened and to Ciardis’s surprise, it was none other than Prince Heir Sebastian and Ambassador Raisa who did the honors.

  “That blast is nothing compared to what I’ll do to you if you take one step forward daemoni,” Sebastian said with an iron tone.

  Raisa cocked her head and said sinuously. “Yes, the sarin was merely preventing you from bringing about your own death by my claws. You should be thanking rather than rounding on her.”

  Thanar clenched his fists tighter until Ciardis felt her bones crack, but still he said nothing.

  “We just need to chill, that’s all,” Terris said helpfully.

  Thanar cr
acked his neck and turned his back to them all.

  But he didn’t leave and for that Ciardis was grateful. She knew she’d pay for what she’d done but at this point, taking the brunt later rather than now as preferable.

  And she had managed to stave off another dragon and daemoni fight. One that Ciardis had been fairly sure Thanar would not be able to win. Therefore she had saved him from being torn apart by a queen dragon’s vicious claws.

  Not that he cared or appreciated my efforts at having a heart-to-heart, she thought with a sigh. They never did. Him or Sebastian.

  Men, she thought dismissively.

  “So let’s get back on topic and assume that your guess is true. That you were pushed out of the Aether Realm by something or more accurately several someones,” Christian ventured. “Do you know what could cause something like that or how to approximate where we landed off-course?”

  “No,” said the dragon curtly, “Though I have my suspicions.”

  She was glaring at the Muarag.

  The Muareg stayed expressionless. Of course with everything but his eyes covered he could have been grinning like a fool under the cloth hiding his face and they wouldn’t have known. Although Ciardis suspected that the solemn tone his voice was projecting was not a fake. She wasn’t sure what that meant though. They had already established that his people couldn’t lie. That didn’t mean they couldn’t flat out decide not to answer your questions if it required telling the truth.

  Then the Muareg looked up at the sky and back down at the ground. When his gaze had settled on land again, he said, “If you refer to my people, you would be correct. It is a good defense to put together the best offense. By forcing you to jump out of the realm without preparations, we were able to gain the upper hand.”

  “Hold on,” said Terris with wide eyes, “You are confirming that you pushed a dragon out of the Aether Realm mid-transport?”

  “We did,” he confirmed.

  “No wonder she wants your head on a pike,” Ciardis heard a soldier mutter in a disparaging tone.

  Ciardis eyed Raisa nervously. It was one thing to suspect something. Quite another to have it confirmed and rubbed in your face as it were.

  Kind of precisely what Thanar was trying to do, Ciardis thought grimly.

  However Raisa seemed determine to not acknowledge or even deign to notice that the conversation between Terris and the Muareg was taking place.

  Which suited Ciardis just fine.

  Clearing her throat Ciardis said, “Well, you must know where we are. Will you lead us to a camp of sorts Muareg?”

  “No,” he said and stood.

  “Why not?” Ciardis demanded.

  “We do not rest in the desert,” he said. “The danger here is too great.”

  “Well, yes,” Ciardis said in confusion, “Which is why I’m asking you to move us away from here. Preferably to an oasis of some kind, a waystation on the imperial road ... or even better the city of Kifar.”

  The last suggestion was said with enough urgency that Ciardis could have called it pleading without being incurrate.

  “I understand your desires,” the Muareg said, “But the dangers of the dead are not for the living.”

  They all looked over at each other in confusion.

  “If not the living, then who?” Sebastian asked.

  “The dead, of course,” the Muareg said with a practicality that made it seem like whatever he said was the sanest thing in the world.

  Ciardis blinked while wondering if she had misheard or should clean out her ears.

  No, you heard right, Sebastian said grimly.

  “Excuse me?” said Terris weakly. “What did you say?”

  The Muareg explained, “There isn’t much time. Your hours were displaced when you travelled by Aether Realm to here. It is no longer late morning and the sun will set soon. Before that comes, we must be ready. You must be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Thanar snapped as he turned around. Ciardis guessed he was done sulking.

  “For the dead to rise,” Rachael said in a stunned voice.

  Several voices said “What?” in shocked tones. Ciardis wasn’t sure who said it when, but she was fairly sure she was one of the few.

  “Can someone explain this without speaking in riddles?” Ciardis asked.

  She looked over at the dragon. Raisa shrugged and said, “Don’t look to me to answers. I cannot tell where this fool is getting his fables. I can only tell you that he believes it to be true, because the Mua people I remember cannot lie.”

  Ciardis grimaced and looked over to the shaman. “Well?”

  She really didn’t like relying on Rachael for anything besides her stated mission, because call it a hunch, but she didn’t trust the woman, but nevertheless she could see the shaman was the only other person here who had any idea what the Muareg was going on about.

  “Is this another of the myths associated with the Muareg?” Ciardis demanded.

  Rachael laughed bitterly. “I wish. No. This particular bit of local lore is no fable.”

  “Great,” grunted Sebastian, “The undead. Well, we’ve dealt with them before. We can do it again.”

  “Not like this you haven’t,” Rachael said, “I assure you Prince Heir.”

  Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Elaborate.”

  Rachael nodded. “Perhaps after we make camp somewhere else far from here. In a place that’s defensible.”

  “That isn’t a bad idea,” Sebastian said.

  Ciardis’s jaw dropped. “Isn’t that exactly what I just said?”

  The jealousy was evident.

  Rachael looked over at her and blinking. “Of course, Lady Companion.”

  Ciardis couldn’t pinpoint it, but she could hear the woman’s mockery and it was like nails scraping against the wall to her ears.

  Knock it off, she grumbled to herself, Now is not the time to be jealous of an annoyingly helpful and beautiful woman.

  She wanted to call her something else. She wouldn’t

  “Then where should we go?” Terris interjected hastily as her eyes looked back and forth nervously between Ciardis and her foe.

  They all looked at the Muareg.

  It looked to the west. “The ruins will do.”

  Sebastian looked back at Ciardis—confusion written on his face. She didn’t blame him. Getting a straight answer out of this Muareg seemed like it would need the patience of a god.

  “The ruins of what?”

  The Muareg whistled. “I will take you there. First my dead must be honored.”

  Thanar cleared his throat. “Can we speed this up?”

  Sebastian’s head snapped up from where he was gazing down at his captive. “I’m sorry, do you have somewhere to be?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” Thanar said in a bored tone as he slowly picked bloody pieces of entrails from underneath his fingernails.

  Only Ciardis felt the condemnation in his mind. He was acting exactly as Christian had predicted, but she wouldn’t give him any leeway because of that. She was tired of Thanar’s laissez-faire attitude about their mission

  “And where might that be?” Ciardis asked in an irritated tone. She knew that Thanar liked to bait Sebastian, but there was a time and place for that and this was neither.

  Thanar didn’t bother looking up, but he did deign to answer Ciardis. “We’re standing in the middle of the bloody desert, exhausted from the exhertion of both traveling here and encountering foes, parched and hungry—at least I am, some of us are wounded, and none of us know where the hell we are.”

  Ciardis blinked as another throat cleared.

  Terris grimaced and snapped her nunchucks closed. “Unfortunately, he’s right.”

  “About which part?” said Christian heavily.

  “All of it,” said Terris, “We have no food, no water and it was Raisa who brought us here in the first place.”

  “Which is why we need him,” Sebastian pointed out.

  Terris looked o
ver at the Muareg who was currently re-wrapping the flap around his mouth and standing up with the help of his soldier guards. “Yeah, he looks like he’ll be exceedingly helpful.”

  Ciardis almost choked on her own laughter.

  “Alright, fine,” Ciardis said when she got her expression back under control, “We’ll head out due west and camp outside of the desert. If we get lucky we’ll hit Kifar. If not, we’ll still be closer than we are right now.”

  “But there’s something else which we must do first,” Rachael quickly said.

  “Which is?” said Thanar blithely.

  “Bury the dead and say a prayer that they don’t reanimate to kill the living,” Rachael said frankly while looking at Sebastian.

  Ciardis rolled her eyes when she saw Sebastian nod at Rachael. That quickly changed to a glare, when Rachael smiled back with far too much smoulder for Ciardis’s liking.

  “This woman is going to be the death of me,” Ciardis Weathervane grumbled as she looked around for something else she could use to speed up the process and shovel more dirt back into the open pits they’d made.

  Chapter 29

  They set about burying the dead as best they could with instructions from the Muareg.

  At one point Ciardis turned to him and said, “You know I can’t really keep calling you ‘the Muareg?’”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not a name,” Ciardis responded.

  “It is not?”

  “It not a name for an individual,” Christian said.

  “It is not.”

  That sounds suspiciously like an affirmative, she thought.

  “So then you agree?” Ciardis said blinking while wiping the accumulated sweat off her brow.

  “It is the name for our collective.”

  “Collective what?” Terris asked tersely.

  “Our collective people.”

  “Well, yes,” Ciardis said gently, “But do you yourself have a solo name?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want one?”

  “No.”

  “Alright, end of story,” said Sebastian as he covered the last body with sand. “He’s good with ‘the Muareg’.”

  Ciardis hummed, but there was nothing she could say to that.