“Stop arguing,” Novikke cut in. “If you can’t talk without arguing then just be quiet. It’s not helping anything.”
“We aren’t arguing,” Neiryn said primly. “We’re discussing.”
Novikke crossed her arms. She glanced down at Kadaki and frowned. “Kadaki can transport people from place to place with a spell? She could have magicked us out of the forest this whole time?”
“Of course not. She’s only one mage. Look at what taking the four of us from the village back to here has done to her. She couldn’t take us across miles and miles of forest. You ask too much of her.”
She leaned back on her heels. “I didn’t mean it that way. Is she all right?”
“She will be,” he said, but he was watching her with a concern that conflicted with his words. Novikke watched as he reached out to brush a lock of hair away from her face. She frowned.
“What’s really going on between you and her?” she said.
Neiryn pulled his hand away, looking up at Novikke. “We’ve become friends,” he said.
“That’s it?”
“What business of it is yours, Novikke?” he said with a tightening smile.
She narrowed her eyes. “She’s my friend, as well. And she seemed taken with you very quickly. Just like Shadri did. I think you have that effect on people, when you want to. And I also think that your desire for companions tends to line up with the extent to which they’ll be of use to you, whether it’s getting you out of a prison or guiding you out of Kuda Varai or hiding you from a bunch of Varai villagers or casting spells.”
Neiryn’s lips twitched. She saw a shadow of anger cross his features. “And when I was saving you from that psychopath who had you pinned? Was that self-serving also?”
She looked away. “It was not.”
“But you still don’t trust me? Do you not believe it’s possible for me to care about someone? Or for them to care about me?”
That cut her a little. She was being unfair. She was taking her stress out on him. “You did say we weren’t your friends. ‘I don’t befriend Ardanians.’ Remember?”
“Kadaki is not just any Ardanian,” he said. “Neither are you.”
Novikke chewed her lip. “Sorry. I didn’t really mean that. I just…” She shook her head.
Neiryn tipped his head toward Aruna, who had wandered off toward the edge of the ruins. “Anyway, are you the only one who’s allowed to have an unusual relationship with someone across enemy lines?”
“That’s not what’s happening with us,” Novikke said, trying not to let her regret leak into her voice.
Neiryn gave her a dubious look.
“Ask him, if you don’t believe me,” she said, with more bitterness than she’d meant to reveal.
He blinked. “Well. Sorry to hear that. I thought you were… You seemed…?”
Novikke turned away to avoid further scrutiny, but her gaze landed on Aruna. He was looking at the trees creeping into the edges of the ruins.
The trees were dry and gray, like they’d been burned. Leaves had fallen off into piles at their roots. She turned in a circle and saw others—thin, withered trees dotting the perimeter. Many more than there had been at Rameka. Like death was spreading from the ruins outward.
“Gods,” Novikke whispered. “Look at that.”
“It’s happening so quickly,” Neiryn said. “Natural death doesn’t come on this fast. It’s like the life is being drawn out of them.”
She went to Aruna and hesitantly rested a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around, he wore an expression like someone had died. He turned to Neiryn and spoke.
“He says he has an idea,” Neiryn said. When Aruna didn’t go on right away, Neiryn prompted him to continue.
After a moment, Aruna quietly replied.
It took Neiryn a few seconds to react. Then he scoffed, and said something that sounded like an argument, and Aruna argued something back. Of course. Did they know any other way to communicate?
“What’s happening?” Novikke interrupted.
“He wants to take us to Vondh Rav.”
Novikke turned to Aruna, arching a brow. “Why?”
Aruna started talking to Neiryn again, and Neiryn rolled his eyes.
“He thinks someone there might know what to do.”
“He has a point. What other resources do we have? And who else would know more about Kuda Varai than the Varai themselves?”
“It’s suicide,” Neiryn said. “Or volunteering yourself for enslavement, which is even worse.”
Novikke motioned for the notebook, and Aruna handed it to her. Trying to keep an open mind, she asked, “What do you want us to do?”
“Come to Vondh Rav with me.”
“Why?”
“There might be something there that could help us.”
“Like what?”
He gave an uncomfortable smile and shrugged.
“You’re thinking of something in particular.” She stared up at him, demanding an explanation, and he looked away.
“Ask him what he’s not telling us,” she said to Neiryn.
There was a long exchange between the two of them, which ended with Neiryn throwing his arms in the air in frustration and turning away. She heard the tone of his voice change, and realized that he’d switched from the Varai language to Ysuran to, presumably, curse in the comfort of his native language.
“Stop yelling…” Kadaki shifted, covering her eyes. Neiryn quickly stopped and went to her side.
“What did he say?” Novikke said, hardly wanting to ask.
Neiryn gave the most dramatic, long-suffering eye roll Novikke had ever seen. “I asked him what he hopes to find in Vondh Rav. He said that he knows of something there that might help us, but he can’t tell us specifically what it is. He can’t tell us because it’s not for non-Varai to know, he says. Goddess-damned idiot…”
Novikke gave Aruna a look. He gave her a stubborn look back.
“We all agreed we’d help you fix this,” she wrote.
“There are some things I can’t talk about.”
“Then how are we supposed to help you?”
“Do what I ask without asking questions?”
He gave her an unhopeful look when she looked up from reading. She frowned.
“Don’t you trust us?” she wrote.
His lips pressed into a line. He just pointed to the word “can’t” again.
“Maybe you should find some other Varai to help you, then,” she wrote. Aruna took the pencil from her to reply.
“I don’t know if they will approve of this idea. We might have to…” He hesitated. “…do some things without their permission. By force or stealth.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It might be. That’s why I need help.”
“How are non-Varai going to get into Vondh Rav unnoticed?”
“I can get you in. That’s not a problem.”
She was less impressed with this idea the longer they discussed it. But Aruna was looking at her with a hopeless desperation that she couldn’t stand. “You’re asking a lot.”
“I know.”
Neiryn was discussing it with Kadaki, who had sat up but still looked faint. Kadaki frowned after hearing what Aruna wanted of them.
Neiryn looked up at Novikke. “The only way non-Varai go to Vondh Rav is as prisoners, to be slaves or to die,” Neiryn said. “There is no chance in all the hells that I’m going there, and you shouldn’t, either.”
Aruna raised the book to write something else. When he’d finished, he handed it to Novikke. She read it aloud.
“We have no other ideas. I have to do something. If you won’t come with me, I’ll go alone.”
He waited a moment, watching them hopefully. His eyes lingered on Novikke for a long while. When she didn’t answer, he turned to leave.
She watched him walk away, and her heart sank deeper with each step he took. She sighed, then went to catch his arm before he could get too far.
>
“I’ll go,” she wrote, and gave him back the book. He read it, and the lines on his face smoothed with relief.
“Kadaki,” Novikke said, “if you stay here and study the ruin, do you think you’ll be able to figure out a way to slow whatever is happening to the forest?”
She looked uncertain. “I plan to try.”
“Then you two stay here and try to find something you can do, and we’ll come back for you when we’re finished with…” She shook her head, hardly believing she was agreeing to this. “…with whatever it is we’re doing,” she finished. She was proud of herself for hearing only a trace of annoyance in her voice.
“Wait,” Kadaki said. She searched several of her many pockets before pulling out a palm-sized metal disk. It was covered in enchanting runes.
“Give me a minute,” she said, then pulled a steel stylus out of a pocket and started carving another rune on top of the thing. After a few minutes and a lot of scowling and frustrated prodding at it, she handed it to Novikke.
“What is it?” Novikke asked.
“The same spell I used to bring us here from the village. I’ve set it so that it’ll bring you back to me when you’re finished. It won’t work if you get too far away or if you try to bring too many people, so don’t go wandering to the other end of the forest. It should be strong enough to transport you and Aruna.”
“Should be?”
Kadaki shrugged. “I did my best.”
Novikke tucked the device into her pocket. “Well, I’m already going to Vondh Rav. I might as well add ‘hastily-constructed enchantments’ to the list of foolish risks I’m taking today.”
Neiryn shook his head at her. “Novikke, don’t do this.”
“We’ll be all right,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Stay here and be careful. Watch out for shades.”
Chapter 4
As they walked through the forest, the deteriorating state of Kuda Varai grew even more apparent.
Every so often, they passed another dead tree or wilting bush or dry patch of grass. The death was rapidly spreading outward from the ruins.
A few miles down the path, they found a dead animal. It was a behemoth of a thing, wolf-shaped but three times as big as any wolf Novikke had seen, with needle-like teeth and fur so dark that it drank and consumed light. She realized it was the same kind of creature Aruna had fought when she’d first entered the forest.
But this one had no visible wounds. It was like it had just lain down and died. It was not only the trees that were dying. It was everything in the forest.
A horrible thought came to Novikke. She tapped Aruna’s arm urgently and gestured for the book.
“Will that happen to you?” she wrote.
He stared at the wolf, dead-eyed. He gave her a slow shrug, as if he’d already resigned himself to the possibility.
It was not the only corpse they encountered. Every once in a while, a rank smell would reach them, and they would know there was something dead nearby. A few times, Novikke saw tiny birds lying upside down on the ground, fallen from the trees where they’d been perched.
As they got farther away from the ruins, the patches of dead things became few and far between, and eventually stopped showing up at all, but the speed at which the forest’s demise had already begun was alarming.
Novikke’s eyes drifted to Aruna’s back as they walked. They didn’t talk, and the silence felt heavy and uncomfortable. She was reminded of the first time he’d led her through the forest. He was the same now as he had been then. Distant and unhappy.
When a dark cloud rolled across the sky and covered the moons, she sighed. It seemed only appropriate for a storm to fall upon them now, on top of all their other troubles.
A drop of rain hit her nose, and then another struck her forehead. She pulled up her hood. Aruna stopped, peering up at the sky. The drizzle became a shower. They darted off the path into the narrow shelter below a pine tree. Then the shower became a downpour. Rain slipped through the branches of the tree. Novikke pulled her cloak close around her, but she was already getting wet.
Aruna said something short under his breath. They waited, and when the rain didn’t show any signs of letting up, he gave up and ran down the path again, waving for her to follow.
They jogged down the path for what seemed like ages, rain pelting down on them all the way, and then the shape of a building broke through the mist in front of them.
It was a decrepit log cabin, much like the houses back at Rameka. The door was warped from water damage and years of disuse, and stuck in the door frame. Aruna jammed a shoulder against it, and it fell open. They squeezed through the opening into the cool but dry room beyond. As he heaved the door shut behind them, the sound of the rain faded to a soft drumming.
It was a dark, dusty echo of Shadri’s house. The shuttered windows had kept out animals and overgrowth, leaving the place remarkably intact except for the fact that it was empty. Whoever had lived here before had taken their furniture with them.
Aruna was pulling off his cloak and jacket and laying them out to dry. Novikke did the same, then dug the notebook out of her pocket.
“How did you know this was here?” she asked.
He glanced down at the book as he pulled a blanket from his pack. He took the pencil in one hand while he shook out the blanket with the other. “Been this way before.” He paused, then added, “Been most ways before.”
He stripped off more damp clothes. He pulled his shirt over his head, and Novikke’s eyes dropped to the thick scar on his back. The kind of scar that shouldn’t exist, because a wound bad enough to create it was bad enough to kill.
His pants came off next. Novikke forced herself to look away before he noticed her staring.
She was still wearing the bandages around her middle. There hadn’t been time to take them off yet. She reached under her shirt to unravel them.
Thanks to extensive healing from Kadaki, the wound already looked old. She had a scar very similar to Aruna’s. A messy, pink line above her navel. She wondered what she’d tell people if anyone asked about it. Not the truth, in any case.
Aruna sat on the worn wood floor under the blanket. Novikke gave him an expectant look, and he jerked his chin toward the pack. She went to it, and found a second blanket inside.
She pulled off her rain-soaked pants and sat down a few feet from him, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. She picked up the notebook and thought about writing a few different things before she settled on, “What are we looking for in Vondh Rav?”
He just looked at her, making no move to write.
She glared at him.
He glared back.
She picked up the pencil again. “Am I being taken there to be a mortal sacrifice for the forest?” she wrote, mostly sarcastically, but similarly macabre things had occurred to her.
He scoffed, looking like he couldn’t decide whether to take offense or apologize. He took the notebook.
“We’re looking for Ravi.”
She looked up at him. “Ravi?” she repeated, dumbfounded.
He nodded. He hesitated, then wrote more, propping his head on his hand. “There is a temple in Vondh Rav. The heart of the forest is there.”
“Heart?”
“The place where it was born. The source of the magic that gives it life. Ravi.” He glanced up at her guardedly, silently conveying the weight of this information. The description was vague enough that Novikke wanted to ask more questions about it. She resisted the urge.
“We’re going to ask her for help?” Novikke wrote.
He nodded.
She laughed faintly at the suggestion. She’d rather thought he’d had something more corporeal in mind.
“How does one speak to a god?” she asked.
“She does not speak. But she conveys her will and power to her priests.”
“So we’ll find a priest of Ravi, and they’ll be able to help us stop this thing that’s happening?”
H
e shrugged, not looking particularly optimistic. “I don’t know about these kinds of things,” he admitted. “But they will be able to help us if anyone can. If they can’t or won’t, I will go into the temple myself and attempt to speak to Ravi.”
“But you don’t think the rest of your people will be on board with this plan?”
He laughed ruefully, covering his face with a hand. “They will not appreciate a brother-killer trying to tell them that they should give him access to the most sacred place in Kuda Varai. They certainly won’t take my word on what they should do, and I don’t think we have the time it would take to convince them. We have to act quickly.”
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation Page 4