by Rich Wulf
Her eyes opened instantly. She released Tristam and rolled away across the grass, blushing furiously. The artificer sat up and straightened his baggy coat with a lopsided grin, his dark brown eyes meeting hers, then quickly darting away.
“Guess it was cold last night,” he said. “People in their sleep will naturally move toward one another for warmth.”
“Is that what you call that?” she asked with a small smile.
Tristam blushed and shrugged uncomfortably. “It won’t happen again,” he said.
“Too bad,” she answered, rising and stretching with languid care as she studied the surrounding plains. “So we’re headed to Karrnath?”
“What?” Tristam blinked, realizing he’d been staring at her. “Oh. Karrnath.” He coughed and stood, stumbling as he patted the dust from his coat. “Yeah, we need to head north and a little west. Fort Bones or Vulyar are probably our best bets. If we’re lucky we’ll meet a halfling caravan along the way and trade for some ponies or something. I don’t have a lot of money, but I could probably trade a few potions to pay them.”
“Xain, you’re an idiot. Do you need her to make it any more obvious?” whispered a mocking voice from the high grass.
Tristam whirled about, wand and sword appearing in either hand. He lowered the weapons almost instantly and laughed.
“Did someone say something?” Seren asked.
“Only an annoying halfling,” Tristam said, laughing.
Gerith Snowshale stepped out of the grass and offered them an elegant bow.
“Gerith!” Seren cried happily. She ran over to the little scout, dropping to her knees and grabbing him in a hug. “Are you all right? Is everyone else all right?”
“They’re all fine,” Gerith said. “I’m doing great.” The halfling winked at Tristam over her shoulder. Tristam sighed.
“Where is the Karia Naille?” Seren asked.
“En route to Karrnath,” Gerith said. “Dalan sent me to find you two.”
“Dalan’s alive?” Tristam said. His voice was neutral.
“Aye,” Gerith said, “and as bossy as ever. Tristam, you need to get back to the ship so he has someone else to yell at besides me.”
“I have a lot to talk to him about,” Tristam said.
“Then it’s settled,” Gerith said happily. “I’ll fly Blizzard back and let them know I found you. We should be back soon!”
“Be safe, Gerith,” Seren said.
“You too, Seren,” Gerith said. “Take care of my winsome damsel, Tristam. My story will be terrible without its heroine. I’ll just let you two get back to what you were doing.”
Tristam made an irritated shooing motion with his sword. Gerith snickered and disappeared into grass again. Blizzard exploded from the plain seconds later, carrying his master aloft with a proud cry.
“You know I was thinking,” Seren said. “That ring you used to save us—didn’t you tell me that Orren Thardis made it for you?”
Tristam looked at the golden ring on his finger. “Yeah,” he said, frowning. “I’m trying not to think about it.”
“Is it possible that Marth could be using that ring to track us?” she asked. “The way you used your enchantments to track me?”
“It’s possible,” Tristam said. “Just unlikely. He made the ring years ago, when we were still friends and he had no reason to spy on me.”
“You didn’t want to spy on me,” Seren said. “You wanted to keep me safe. Would Marth have done the same thing?”
Tristam frowned. “He would,” he said. “But those sorts of enchantments only work over short range. Marth wouldn’t be able to use it to follow us from Black Pit to Talenta.”
“But he would know if you were nearby,” she said. “Like he did last night, when you were on his ship.”
Tristam nodded gravely. “I should probably get rid of it,” he said, clenching his fist around the ring. He looked up at Seren, noticing she was staring at him with faint amusement. “What are you looking at?” he asked.
She nodded at his sword. “You know if you actually knew how to use that thing you might have done a little better against Marth,” she said. “He was prepared for your magic, but wasn’t ready for steel.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, hurt. He stuffed the ring in his coat pocket. “I’m a good swordsman. I once ranked among the most skilled duelists in the Lhazaar Principalities.”
Seren gave him a bored look.
He sheathed the sword sheepishly. “Very well, that’s a lie,” he said. “I’ve never had any training. Is it that obvious?”
She grinned and kept walking. “Only when you start fighting,” she said. “You have the opening stances down pretty well, but once a fight starts you just flail around or fall back on using your wand.”
Tristam flipped the ivory wand in his hand and nodded. “I never really had time to learn to fight,” he said. “I never thought it was necessary. I’d rather just intimidate the other guy into backing down, or throw out a handful of sleeping powder or a lightning bolt to get it over with.” He tucked the wand back into his belt and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I guess I’m just not much of a warrior.”
“Not wanting to fight isn’t a weakness, Tristam,” Seren said, stepping closer to him, “but you may want to learn.”
“I don’t think I could ask Zed or Eraina,” he said, “and Omax doesn’t really use weapons.”
“Then ask me,” she said.
“You know how to use a sword?” he asked, looking at her with surprise.
Seren nodded and grinned. “My dad was a soldier,” she said. “He showed me a few things in case I ever needed to protect myself. It wasn’t anything much, just enough to get by. I practiced on my own, sparring with the local boys. I think I was hoping to impress Dad when he came back home.” She trailed off, biting her lip as she stared into the distance again.
Tristam watched her quietly for a long time. She turned away, wiping something from her cheek.
“My parents served on a merchant vessel,” Tristam said, standing next to her and staring in the distance at whatever she was pretending to look at. “Of course, for a Lhazaarite, the term ‘merchant vessel’ is used pretty loosely. That applies especially if you’re on board the ship we’ve been hired to make an unscheduled trade with.”
“Your parents were pirates?” she asked, looking at him with an interested grin.
“Pirate is such an ugly word,” Tristam said, though he beamed to see her smile. “Ten years ago, my father’s ship was hired to do some scouting for the Aundairian Royal Navy. She sank in a coastal skirmish with the Valenar, in a battle so minor nobody even cared enough to name it. I left home as soon as I was old enough, hoping I might find that mom and dad had survived and were out there waiting for me.” He shrugged into his coat.
“Did you ever find anything?” she asked.
“Unfortunately,” he said. “I found the gallows where the elves hanged them. If Ashrem hadn’t found me soon after, I really don’t know what I would have done. I was alone with no way back home. I was lucky to survive as long as I did.”
“That’s terrible,” Seren said softly.
“It doesn’t bother me anymore,” he said with a sad smile. “I accepted their deaths a long time ago. It hurts to be alone, Seren, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I know you lost your father, Seren, so I just wanted to tell you that … so that you’d know that you aren’t alone.” He ran one hand through his unkempt brown hair. “That all sounded good in my head, but it’s kind of stupid now that I say it out loud.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It really was.”
Tristam blinked.
Seren laughed. “I’m teasing you,” she said. “If you think you’re still alone, you’re blind, Tristam. Now give it to me.”
“Excuse me?” Tristam asked.
She sighed. “Your sword,” she pointed at the blade sheathed at his hip. “I’ll show you a few things.”
“Oh,” he said, emba
rrassed. He drew the weapon and flipped it elegantly in one hand, laying it across his arm with the hilt pointed toward Seren.
“So debonair,” she said with a giggle. She took the weapon and stepped away, sweeping it in a fluid arc to one side. Tristam sat down, leaning back on his palms as he watched her.
“Your problem is you’re too uptight. You need to hold the sword a little more gently, so you can maintain flexibility.” Seren glided through several mock swings, parrying and thrusting against an invisible foe.
“Don’t I already do that?” Tristam asked. “I thought I was pretty relaxed.”
Seren laughed. “No, not really,” she said, and she lifted the sword in a one handed stance, holding it at an angle above her head. “You fight like a lumberjack, hewing wildly. That’s fine if you’re fighting a tree, but if your focus is too narrow, you won’t be free to adapt to an opponent’s movements.”
“Lumberjack?” Tristam asked, hurt.
Seren sighed, lowering the blade. “Don’t pout, Tristam,” she said with a laugh. “I’m trying to help you. If you take criticisms personally, you aren’t going to learn anything.”
“Well then maybe you should stop making fun of me,” he replied with a crooked smile. He lurched to his feet and moved close to her.
Seren looked into his eyes with a challenging grin, but it vanished as her gaze moved past him, fixing on something far away. Tristam looked at her in concern, then followed her eyes. A plume of column smoke rose in the distance, scarring the flawless sapphire sky. They exchanged worried glances.
“Seventh Moon,” he said. “That must be where she crashed.”
“Do you think anyone survived?” she asked.
“Probably,” he said. “Soarwood is naturally quite buoyant in the air. With a decent pilot, an airship can float to a crash, the same way ours did.”
“But what about the rogue elemental?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it want to destroy the ship?”
“At first,” Tristam said, “but it would ultimately want to return home to its own world. Even if it remained, elementals aren’t invincible. The Moon’s crew would eventually defeat it.”
“So there are likely survivors,” she said.
“Definitely,” Tristam answered, still studying the smoke.
“So we should avoid the wreck,” Seren said.
“We should,” he said, but his eyes still stared at the distant plume.
“But you don’t want to,” Seren said.
“I know it’s dangerous,” Tristam said, “but I want to know how Orren Thardis survived the Day of Mourning and became the monster that he is. I want to know who those soldiers are that work for him. I want to know how he brought back Ashrem’s flagship. I want to know how much he knows about the Legacy. We still really don’t know anything, Seren.”
“We might not learn anything,” she said.
“But if we don’t investigate, we’ll never know.” He was quiet for a long time. “At the very least, I have to see how many of those soldiers survived. I didn’t want to blow the Moon’s containment and release that elemental. I … I probably killed a lot of people. Whoever those men are, whatever brought them under Marth’s command … they didn’t deserve to die, Seren. I have to know what I’ve done.”
“You feel sorry for Marth’s soldiers?” Seren asked. “Those are the same men who murdered Jamus, Kiris, and the Ghost Talons. They tried to kill us, too.”
Tristam nodded. “And if things had turned out differently, I might have been one of them,” he said.
Seren’s smiled sadly. She clearly didn’t agree, but she understood. “Very well, then,” she said, handing him back his sword. “We’ll check it out, but you’ll follow me, got it? You aren’t very sneaky.”
“Lumberjack, I know,” he said, nodding, sliding the blade into its scabbard with a crack. “I’ll do what you say, Seren.”
“And promise me that if you see Marth you won’t do anything stupid,” she said, “until you’re powerful enough to face him. His magic is still much stronger than yours.”
Tristam looked crestfallen but mumbled his agreement.
She nodded pertly and set off toward the distant plume, gesturing for him to follow. They stepped over a small rise and saw the wreckage of Seventh Moon sprawled in a shallow valley before them. A long gouge split the earth, carved by the ship’s violent landing. The airship looked to be in relatively good condition considering the chaos she had endured. Two of the four struts that once held her elemental ring in place were now shattered. One lay in two pieces in the gouged earth. The other was nowhere to be seen. The ship lay half buried in the ground, her hull covered with ragged burns. A few dozen soldiers in Cyran armor patrolled the valley, sorting debris or laying bodies on a burning pyre. Seren kneeled in the grass and Tristam nearly collapsed beside her, staring at the pyre.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Seren said.
“Then who should I blame?” he said bitterly.
“Marth,” she said. “He started this.”
“Did he?” Tristam asked. “Do we really know that?”
Seren shrugged. “Let’s go see what we can find out,” she said, crawling away through the tall grass.
Tristam looked around awkwardly and followed, moving with less grace than she. Seren looked over her shoulder with an irritated frown.
“You’re jingling,” she whispered. “Stop it.”
“Jingling?” he asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“What in Khyber do you have in your pockets?” she said.
“Some flasks, mostly potions, and a few focusing crystals,” he said, looking away sheepishly.
“How many?” she asked.
“Um … a few dozen?” he said. “I guess I never noticed how much noise they make. I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
“Take off your coat and leave it here,” she said.
Tristam stared at her, aghast. “What if I can’t find it again? Some of the things I’m carrying are irreplaceable.”
“Then leave yourself here,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll sneak ahead by myself.”
Seren started off again. Tristam watched her in silence for several seconds. With a pained expression, he shrugged out of his long coat, folded it in a tight bundle, and hid it among the grass before following. He crawled after her for several minutes, stopping to crouch next to her in the shadows beside a large boulder at the outskirts of a small camp. He winced at the pain in his knees. He wasn’t used to crawling around like this. Seren looked back at him curiously, and he offered what he hoped was not an obviously pained smile. She rolled her eyes and turned her attention to the camp. Three soldiers sat in a semi-circle against the boulder, staring into the pathetic little blaze. Two of them nursed small cups. The third occupied himself by continuously scratching at or adjusting a bandage on his right leg.
“I feel a little foolish,” Tristam whispered to Seren.
She looked at him curiously.
“They aren’t even talking,” he said. “We aren’t learning anything. Did we really expect them to be discussing Marth’s master plan or something?”
Seren shrugged. “Sometimes you can learn more from what people don’t say,” she said. She looked at them again.
Tristam studied the soldiers as well. They seemed bored, unconcerned. Many, in the manner of career soldiers, were seizing the opportunity to catch up on sleep. Despite their flagship crashing deep in unfriendly territory, none of them seemed particularly worried. The truth sank in. He backed away from the camp slowly, gesturing for Seren to follow so that he could share his conclusions.
“They’re expecting a rescue,” Tristam whispered as she joined him. “And if Marth can rescue them here, then the Moon is only the beginning of his resources.”
“Who are they?” Seren asked.
“Cyran soldiers,” he said.
“I know they’re Cyrans,” she said, “but Cyre is dead. Where do they come from? How did they organize? How do you just build and equi
p an army without anybody noticing?”
“I don’t think it would be so difficult,” Tristam said. “Most people don’t even want to think about the war or about Cyre in particular. Didn’t Dalan say most of them used to be in a Cyran legion stationed in Karrnath at the end of the war? If someone like Marth wants to take in a bunch of Cyran refugees, no one will miss them. If he wants to buy up surplus military gear to outfit them, most merchants would be glad for the business. People are happier pretending that the Last War never happened and that Cyre never existed. It would be very easy.”
Seren’s eyes widened and she flattened herself in the grass. Tristam tried to follow suit, not even knowing what she had seen. He was too slow. A Cyran soldier who had wandered from the camp now looked nervously toward them, noticing something amiss. Seren’s dagger appeared in her hand.
“Stop him before he calls for help,” she whispered.
Tristam reached for the pouch of sleeping powder in his pocket, and cursed as he realized his coat was still hidden in the grass behind them. He drew his wand, but hesitated.
“Someone is here!” the guard cried. “Come help!”
Tristam stood up instantly, firing a bolt of searing blue lightning from his wand. It was not intended to kill, but burned the air closely enough that the Cyran leapt for cover. Tristam pulled Seren to her feet and ran back toward the place where he had hidden his coat. Two more Cyran soldiers came from that direction, weapons in hand. Tristam drew his sword and charged.
The first soldier parried Tristam’s sword so hard that it flew spinning out of his hands, disappearing in the grass. The Cyran lifted his sword for a killing blow, then keeled over with an anguished shriek as Seren cut his knee from behind. She gave Tristam a disappointed look.
“You said to hold the sword gently!” he said.
“Not that gently,” she said, darting aside as the other guard swung at her.
Tristam ran past the man and snatched up his coat, dusting it off with one hand as he shrugged into it. The Cyran soldier turned to follow, but stopped short as Tristam threw a handful of purple dust in his face. The soldier fell to one knee, then toppled on his side, snoring peacefully.