by J. C.
"Enough!" he said, and grabbed her wrists to stop her. "It's not my blood. I'm all right. "
Magiere closed her eyes and leaned forward until her head thumped against his shoulder. It didn't take long for her pull away again. "Adryan?" she asked weakly.
"Still alive, " Leesil answered. "But there's another body across the clearing. Did you... kill him?"
Magiere jerked her arms out. Leesil was startled how easily she broke his grip. She ran across the clearing, and he followed. When she couldn't bring herself to touch the prone figure, Leesil put his hand near the man's nose and mouth and detected shallow breathing. He gave Magiere a quick nod of assurance.
"Leave him, " she said. "Let him wander home on his own. "
Leesil picked up his scarf and cloak from where they'd fallen. Magiere sat down and leaned tiredly against the tree, dragging the falchion to her from where it lay nearby.
"If this ever happens to me again, " she said, "stay away from me. "
"I can face you, " he answered, "any way you—"
"I can't, " she cut in. "I couldn't face hurting you again. And I don't want to even think about what you saw in me tonight. "
"I've told you more than once, I'm not that easy to kill... and I can face you, any way you are. "
Leesil crawled over to kneel before her. Now that she was safe—from herself, as much as anything else—his fear faded to be replaced by anger.
"What I can't face is why you came here, " he said. "Where's your mother's grave? What did you do?"
Magiere looked out through the ruined graveyard, markers shattered, broken, and uprooted.
"I couldn't find it, " she whispered.
At first Leesil wasn't certain of her answer. But if she'd done what he'd feared, vision or not, he believed he would have seen its aftermath in her face.
"I have to know if it was Welstiel, " she said.
"Not like that. " He shook his head. "Whatever happened, you don't want to feel your mother die in your hands. And you don't even know where she died. What were you going to do, wander the entire keep?"
Magiere's gaze was still distant. There were clear paths through the grime and blood on her face, and Leesil realized she was silently crying.
"You saw what was in that chamber, " she said, and turned away from him as if hiding in shame. "What am I?"
Leesil knew it wasn't a question she expected him to answer. He shifted closer and grasped her arms, turning her toward him. Using his scarf, he tried to wipe some of the blood from her lips. When he'd done as much as he could, he leaned in and kissed her softly on the mouth.
He sat back and looked in her astonished eyes.
* * * *
Chap watched from the thicker forest beyond the graveyard as Leesil led Magiere away. Panting in the darkness, he hung his head in relief and licked the remnants of blood from his jowls.
He had nearly run out to Magiere and given himself away when the scarred man appeared. So fixed upon Magiere and her opponent, he had not even sensed the approach of the others. When the two skulking peasants tried to hold Magiere against the tree, he rushed in from behind to seize the one holding her sword arm by his leg. Grinding flesh in his jaws, he dragged that one screaming into the woods. He released the man to hobble away only when he was certain the peasant would flee rather than return to the fight.
Chap then ran through the trees around the clearing, trying to find an avenue to strike Magiere's opponent without being seen by her. His evasion of Wynn's questions had already stretched everyone's patience. If Magiere saw him in this place, or anywhere near her mother's grave, she would expect an explanation.
Leesil arrived, and Chap pulled back as the fight ended, but he kept Magiere and Leesil in sight.
Neither of them should be here... in this place, on this path. The further Magiere pressed on into her past, the less likely it was that Chap could ever stop her. As she and Leesil left the graveyard together, Chap circled back once again to a marker left lying in the woods.
It was strange how mortals clung to the dead. To remember them was one thing; to hold on to them like a possession was another. For Magiere it presented a temptation he could not allow. Seeing her mother die as if by her own hands could strip Magiere of hope. And then, even Leesil's presence might not be enough to keep her from falling into darkness.
So Chap had raced ahead of Magiere to the graveyard and found what she had sought. He did not understand the spoken language of this land, but its written markings and symbols were similar enough to those of Belaski. Speaking furtive wishes to the grass, he asked the blades to grow and creep. They filled in and covered the hole left at the grave's head, and he dragged Magelia's uprooted marker into the forest.
Chap stepped into the ruin of the graveyard, markers toppled and broken all around from a conflict of festering old hates and anguish. When he passed Magelia's grave again, all signs of its presence or the missing marker obscured, he paused on instinct and sniffed the earth.
It was undisturbed, but this he already knew. Magiere had not found her mother's true resting place. He sniffed again, scent filling his head, as if this were the way to sense what was missing beneath the odor of damp loam, grass, and slivers of old wood caught in the earth. Even the dead carried a lingering essence of the life once held.
There was nothing.
Chap stared down at the earth. Whatever had been done here had happened so long ago, there was no trace of how or when.
But Magelia's bones were gone.
* * * *
Magiere lay in the corner of her aunt's hut, curled in the unfolded bedroll. While Leesil had tried to clean them both up at the village well, she asked him to tell her aunt whatever he thought was necessary to explain this night. When they'd returned to the hut, Aunt Bieja put Wynn into her own bed, and Leesil had settled Magiere in the comer to rest.
Tomorrow, they would move on to Keonsk, though Leesil was reluctant. They would leave early, before word of what happened in the graveyard spread through the village.
She half heard Leesil's low voice as he sat at the hearth-side table talking with her aunt, but her fatigue-fogged thoughts drifted elsewhere.
She'd been so lost in rage but remembered Leesil's face.
The night had been brilliant in her sight, but his luminous hair had burned her eyes like the sun. Confusion rose as she reached out her hands, ready to tear him.
And then doubt... followed by strange longing.
He spoke, and at first she heard only one word. "Magiere. "
She remembered. This was her name.
The eyes that watched her were like amber stones she wanted, would hide away, and keep to herself.
That face, those eyes... had a name. Both were framed in her sight by her own hands, blood appearing to run from his flesh down her fingers. She could taste it in her mouth. It made her choke with despair.
"No... Leesil. Not again. "
Terror followed.
Until he leaned close, kissed her tainted mouth, and she looked in shock at Leesil's face to find no revulsion there. The same face that had called her back from hunger.
As Magiere lay in the bed, a scratch came at the hut door. She was vaguely aware of Leesil speaking in sharp tones as he let Chap in. The dog looked about, walked over to her, and sniffed her head. When Magiere rolled to look at him through half-open eyes, her thoughts ran in a blur, and for no reason, an odd memory surfaced.
She walked south on the coastal road of Belaski. They were just approaching Miiska for the first time. Its north-end market was filled with people out for the day buying and selling the necessities of life. In the air was the smell of baked goods and smoked fish and other simple things.
Magiere looked up again into Chap's crystal blue eyes. "No, not yet. We go on. "
The dog wrinkled his jowls and trotted over to drop beside the bed where Wynn slept.
The room darkened, and only the low fire spread a red glow through the room. The blankets lifted as Leesil cra
wled under them. He lay close to her. Magiere slid her fingers into his hair, letting her palm come to rest against his tan cheek. "I want to remember your face, " she whispered. "It keeps me from the dark. "
Chapter 7
They awoke before dawn at Aunt Bieja's urging, and gathered their belongings to leave before anyone saw them. Magiere was quiet the whole while, and said only a few words when she bade her aunt good-bye. She watched Bieja with worry as the elder woman exchanged token packets of herbs with Wynn. Leesil lingered back by his own pony.
The night before, it had surprised Leesil how little Magiere's aunt reacted to what he'd told her of the keep and the graveyard, though he'd said nothing of why he'd gone after Magiere. Aunt Bieja wasn't blind to the changes in her niece and remained sadly silent through Leesil's tale, only nodding now and then.
As they prepared to mount up, Bieja came to him last.
"Mind yourself, " Bieja told him quietly, away from the others. "Between instinct and knowledge"—she nodded toward Magiere and then Wynn—"you'll need wisdom to balance things out. "
To be taken so quickly into the gruff good graces of Magiere's one and only relative brought a lump up in Leesil's throat.
"You don't have to stay here, " he said. "We have our place in Miiska. "
Bieja's expression darkened like the Droevinkan sky. "This is my home, for better or worse. "
"Think about it, please, " he said.
Placing his foot in the stirrup, he swung up into the saddle and look down at her. The elder woman's face, for all its stoutness and darker color, wasn't far different from Magiere's.
"I'll think about it, " she answered.
"Think hard, " he said, and handed her a folded scrap of paper. "Or we'll be back to cause you more trouble. "
Bieja frowned in puzzlement and took the parchment.
While the others had slumbered that morning, Leesil had torn a spare page from the back of Wynn's journal. He wrote a brief letter of introduction to Karlin and Caleb back in Miiska—with six silver sovereigns wrapped in it for Bieja's traveling money. He hoped she would heed his wish.
"If you change your mind, " he said, "travel to Miiska and ask for Karlin or Caleb, and show them this letter. Either should recognize my scrawl, and it tells them you're Magiere's aunt. They'll get you settled at the Sea Lion. And this isn't charity. Caleb could use the help. "
Aunt Bieja looked once more at the letter. She tucked it into her apron pocket, and her brown eyes grew warm as she patted his leg.
'Take care of my niece, " she said.
And the next part of their journey began.
* * * *
Three days later, Leesil felt little relief upon reaching the Vudrask River once again. His thoughts mixed upon themselves with all that had happened in Magiere's village, from the morbid discovery in the keep's hidden chamber to the chilling realization of Magiere's loneliness as a child. She had been shunned and despised for sixteen years, yet for all the cruelty, she'd had one person in those days who truly loved her and was willing to let her go her own way. It made him wonder if his parents had loved him, and if they had ever considered letting him choose his own path.
Part of him wished he and Magiere shared such thoughts more easily. In spite of their newfound closeness, they'd spent so many years avoiding any discussion of their pasts. Habit was quite hard to break.
When they reached a village along the Vudrask, it was late in the afternoon. They bought passage on another barge, east to Ke"onsk, the capital city of Droevinka. Cloak over his arm and charcoal scarf covering his ears, Leesil stood on the bank of the river. Its wide gray water flowed under an afternoon breeze that rushed across his face.
Down by the docks, Magiere haggled with two men from a passing caravan, trying to sell the ponies. Her cheeks glowed white under the overcast sky. When the sun peeked through the clouds, red glints surfaced in her black hair. Both men slowed their heated barter to stare. Even Leesil caught his breath, but not for the same reason.
Magiere didn't look like a creature of this world. She was too beautiful, her contrasts too severe. She frowned at the men as Leesil approached.
"I paid four silver sovereigns apiece for those ponies, " she said, "and they're offering five for the lot. "
Leesil looked at the men with lined faces and calculating eyes and wondered if they were brothers. "We're not in the trade... just looking for a fair price. "
"If she paid too much for the beasts, " one of them replied, "it is not our loss to bear. "
Leesil glanced at Magiere. They had money to spare from the necklace Wynn sold off in Bela, but her stingy nature would not let this go.
The price settled at seven silver sovereigns for the ponies and the mule. Magiere wasn't satisfied, but the barge was leaving. Leesil pulled her away as he took the men's final offer. Once the barge left the shore, he settled with Magiere under their blanket. She was still annoyed.
"I'm not a miser, " she said, though he'd made no such claim. "That was robbery. " She wrapped her hands around his leg beneath the blanket.
Wynn sat cross-legged on Leesil's other side. The young sage looked physically healthier for two nights indoors and eating Bieja's lentil stew. Her mood was another matter, though she wasn't half as withdrawn as Chap. The talking hide was laid out before him, but Chap showed little interest in conversation. After days on that troublesome pony, the barge's flat deck was such a relief to Leesil's backside that he didn't care. There was little reason to think Chap would be any less secretive than always.
And Leesil's mother waited—or so he hoped.
This urgent desire made him understand Magiere's desperation to discover her past even more. It also made him anxious to head north and trace what had happened to Nein'a. But the better part of him would still leave no stone unturned for Magiere's sake, and so they continued east, deeper into Droevinka.
Clear roads paralleled both riverbanks, and a stout oxen team on the south bank pulled them at a steady pace until dusk. Although they'd planned to sleep aboard the barge, at nightfall the vessel docked at another waterside settlement large enough to be a small town.
The trees nearby were too faded for this wet land, lacking the typical dark green, yet full winter was still a ways off. Between the clusters of huts spreading along the river to both sides of the landing, taller wooden buildings stuck up at the village's center and near the river. Along the road out the town's west end was a stable with a smithy. Just shy of this was one large, well-lit building.
"Is that an inn or common house?" Leesil asked one bargemen, and then he added to Wynn. "Perhaps we don't have to sleep outside again. "
Wynn sat up expectantly and chattered to Chap in Elvish. The young bargeman looked at Leesil hesitantly.
"This is Pudurlatsat, a regular stop, " he replied. "It's a strange place. Townsfolk will bring out any cargo in the morning. "
"What do mean by strange?" Magiere asked. "If there's trade here, we should try to resupply. "
The bargeman shook his head with a shrug. "Suit yourself, but this place is too dull for my taste, even when we land at midday. "
Leesil raised an eyebrow, looking to both Magiere and Wynn.
"I prefer to sleep inside if possible, " Wynn answered.
Magiere folded the blanket and picked up her falchion. "We'll see what they have to offer. There wasn't an opportunity to gather stores while we stayed with my aunt. "
Leesil strapped on his punching blades and fastened his cloak so the weapons wouldn't attract attention. He didn't expect to need them, but the past few days had him on edge. He looked the place over as they walked up the dock and toward the sloping path to town.
Street lighting was scant as they approached the center of town. Oil pots hung from tripods at the four corners, where the dock path crossed the main road running through town. Wynn was a step ahead of Leesil, cold lamp crystal in hand to the light their way.
Chap growled softly and moved out ahead of her.
A
tall wolfhound limped around the corner to peer at them from beside a tripod lamp. It didn't growl in return.
Leesil saw the animal's gaunt build and dull eyes coated in a film of age. He stepped up next to Chap, ready to grab the dog. Chap reacted to other canines in varied ways, sometimes friendly and at other times attacking without warning. Leesil never knew what to expect. Chap sniffed toward the newcomer and offered a soft whine.
"I think we should go back to the barge, " Wynn said.
A trickle of fatigue washed over Leesil. He couldn't fathom why, and shrugged it off as he stepped onward past the wolfhound. "Let's at least check for an inn. "
Once in the town's midway, Leesil made out signs above one shop for a leatherworker and another for a woodwright. There were a few people about, closing up for the day and going off to their homes or elsewhere. Most appeared to be old or middle-aged, moving slowly with a tired gait. He was about to head for the well-lit building they'd seen upon docking, when he realized Magiere was no longer beside him. She'd stepped beyond the intersection and stood looking down the main road the other way.
"What?" he asked, joining her, then noticed her worried expression.
"I'm... it's nothing, " she answered. "It's a bit dreary compared to Miiska. "
"You figure that out all by yourself?" he chided. "What tipped you off?"
She didn't even snap at him. As she turned around to head up the road, Leesil sighed and followed, waving Wynn on ahead of him.
Several villagers paused as they passed, but no one gave them much notice. The most distinct expression Leesil caught was a weary curiosity from a man with a burlap sack over his shoulder. He looked back once, for the man moved too slowly for his age, as if walking were an effort. The villager trudged along with his head down. The buildings around them gave way to small huts and cottages, and ahead Leesil caught the charred scent of the smithy.
"What can we do for you?" a voiced called from his left.
Leesil slipped his hand down to one blade strapped on his thigh. Magiere turned toward the voice as Chap circled back.
From a side path stepped a short, compact man in a leather hauberk wearing a sword sheathed on his hip. In the glow of Wynn's crystal, his eyes were light brown and alert, but his sand-colored hair showed hints of gray. Beside him was a petite young woman so pretty that Leesil blinked.