She wrung out and replaced the cloth on his forehead before settling into her own bedroll nearby. “Wake me in an hour?”
Rhysabeth-Dane nodded, and continued reading.
Chapter 14
Carlo startled awake, the twitch of his arm sending the shield leaned against his desk thudding to the dirt floor. Cursing softly, he shook the debris free of the symbol that had helped reinvigorate the southern garrisons, and had helped push the lines of the frontier further south than they had been in generations.
“What is it?” he growled, his step back from the desk sending the spindly chair sprawling in a swirl of dust behind him.
The Novice that peered into his office wheezed thinly. “Dhwa-” he croaked, choking on his words in the grimy heat. He shook his head, doubling over, resting one hand on a knee, the other against the doorframe. “Follow.”
“What is this?” the Commander asked as they reached the doorway, shielding his eyes from the shifting glare of the polished plate some of the Dwarven contingent wore.
“Reinforcements from our friends to the north,” Martin called from behind the third rank of dwarves. “Sent on the authority of Bertus the Bold.”
The sea of armored dwarves clanked and parted, allowing Martin and Alma to walk through to greet Carlo.
“Alma?” Carlo squinted studying the girl’s face.
“Yes, how did…”
“I know Kevon, and knew your father. Come with me.”
One of the Common-speaking dwarves shouted a string of commands to the rest of the host, who split into groups and sought the shade of nearby buildings. He followed Carlo and the others to the Commander’s office.
“Bertus could not come himself, then?” Carlo asked, closing the door once the dwarf and his other guests were far enough inside the cramped room.
“He’s taken a smaller group of dwarves through Eastport, to try and follow Kevon,” Martin explained.
“What trouble has your brother gotten himself into now?” Carlo asked Alma.
“People saw him use magic, and weapons,” she whispered. “They had to flee. He used magic to send Bertus to us.”
“And you collected an army of dwarves along the way?”
“Bertus has dealt with them before, it seems. They helped us get here quickly…”
“On foot? In full armor?” Carlo interrupted Martin. “I don’t see how that…”
“There are things we won’t be able to tell you,” Alma began.
“Your family and their accursed secrets!” Carlo roared. He picked up the fallen chair and sat at his desk. “So. What exactly can you tell me?”
* * *
“I’ll have to see Prince Alacrit right away,” Carlo shook his head. “Convince him to not turn on the boy.” He looked at the Dwarven translator. “Your forces will have no issue as support here, and reinforcements as needed?”
“Ye’ll have a hard time keeping the Stoneguard from the fighting, but the rest will do whatever there is need fer,” he answered. “Our King has ordered fer the words of Bertus, and those he trusts, te be as they were his.”
“Your Stoneguard can bloody their axes at camp three,” Carlo grunted. “We’ve been taking casualties there almost daily. Who knows, by the time we find Kevon, they may well finish the push across the wastes for us.”
“I will inform the others before we leave.” The dwarf bowed and ducked out of the room.
“We?”
“The dwarves are determined that we shall not fail, since they learned of Kevon,” Martin offered. “Some legend they’re all riled up about.”
“Let’s hope that Alacrit feels the same,” Carlo sighed. “And hoping is one of my least favorite things to do.”
Chapter 15
“The tea tasted better.”
Kevon coughed and retched, somehow managing to keep the foul-tasting potion from coming back up.
“This will fix part of what the tea did to you,” Mirsa scolded. “You should be feeling better by noon.”
“Good.” Kevon struggled to his feet, fumbling with his swordbelt, wondering at the red ribbon tied near the base of his sword’s guard.
“You need to rest!” Mirsa stepped between Kevon and the shelter’s exit.
“I’m sure that Holten and his followers are resting today.”
“If we can wait until you recover, we’ll be able to move faster.”
“And if we find an elf that knows more about plants around here, I’ll recover faster.” He sighed. “I don’t like feeling half dead any more than you like looking at it. We’re moving.”
Rhysabeth-Dane packed away the potion-making equipment, cleaning the instruments more thoroughly than Mirsa herself might have. By the time the dwarf was done, the rest of the camp had been struck, and everyone else was done with breakfast.
“Ahem,” Mirsa chuckled. “You wanted to move?”
Kevon opened his eyes and pushed off of the tree he’d been leaning against.
“We just need to keep heading inland. Getting close… I can feel it.”
I’m feeling it too, Mirsa thought, reaching down to take Rhysabeth-Dane’s hand. The sensation flickered at the edge of her mind, but would not take solid enough form for her to examine properly. “Like in the Dwarven Hold, but different…” She looked at Rhysabeth-Dane, who only shrugged and shook her head.
Shortly before noon, Kevon led them out of the undergrowth onto a wide path that they could see winding down a valley to a sandy cove.
Yusa muttered under his breath, then chuckled and shook his head in the direction of the shore.
Not five minutes further up the path, they made contact with the elves.
The soft, unfamiliar speech startled everyone but Alanna, who had just spotted the trio, and had a palmed blade ready to throw.
Kevon struggled to focus his eyes on the Elven noble before them, her inhuman perfection distorting in pulses against his heartbeat. He heard Mirsa’s tongue stumbling over a few lisping phrases before the Mage admitted, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know the entire greeting ritual…” The greenery on the lead elf’s tunic seemed to Kevon to rustle as though growing from the garment, rather than simply having been embroidered on it. I really should be more concerned about those two, he thought, glancing to the noble’s escorts, lean, stern hunters whose casual half-drawn bows represented possibly the greatest threat to life and limb they’d faced in recent times.
“How strange,” Kevon commented, as his gaze shifted back to the lead elf’s face, and her piercing light yellowish-brown eyes. “No shadows.” He sighed and slumped to the unshaded ground before the trio of elves.
The lead elf placed a hand on the shoulder of one of her escorts, and whispered something in her native tongue.
Without hesitation, the hunter was in motion, headed up the path, bow slung and arrow re-quivered.
Mirsa’s mind worked frantically to grasp at the fragment of speech she’d heard. “Elder?” she whispered.
* * *
Mirsa felt the elves approaching well before they reached the door. The other inhabitants of the city poked at the corners of her awareness, almost like another Mage thinking of an unconcealed spell across a room would, but she could feel the newcomer bending the caged Light around them as he moved. The effect was less powerful than the waves of hammered energy she’d felt in the Dwarven Hold, but more focused, purposeful. Her eyes locked on the door just before the knock announced their arrival.
Relaniel entered first, but her companion swept around her to where Kevon lay unconscious on the bed in the center of the room.
“He hasn’t moved since we got here,” Mirsa commented as their noble escort reached her side. She watched the newcomer lean over Kevon, throwing no shadow, as several of the locals here did not. “He bends the Light…”
“Aelion Lithtaure,” Relaniel commented, watching the Elder herself. “One of his names, means ‘bender of light’, in rough translation.” She took a seat between Mirsa and Alanna. “Our healer, our
seer, the Hand of M’lani.”
“M’lani…” Alanna muttered, thinking back to the stories another lifetime ago. “She’s supposed to be…”
“She is the matron of my people, much as L’drom is to the little one there,” Relaniel said, looking to Rhysabeth-Dane. “I realize that truths quickly become stories in the world of Men, and that they have no claim to any one of the creators.”
“Fascinating!” the Dwarven librarian made shushing motions at herself as everyone but Kevon turned her direction at her outburst. She stopped her scrawling notes for a moment. “Would I be able to speak with you about my personal research later?” she whispered across Mirsa to the elf.
Relaniel nodded once, a faint smile playing across her lips.
“There is much wrong with this man,” Aelion announced. “Poison, fatigue, and other severe damage to his body and spirit that I cannot fathom the enduring of. He should be dead. Many times over.” He ran his hand over Kevon’s forehead. “Yet there is something… keeping him here. Drawing him here. What little energy he has left points…”
Aelion turned to address the others directly. “I’ll do what I can to heal him. Even so, it will not be quick, and may not be complete.” The elf waited for signs of acceptance from all present before continuing. “Then I will begin. You may, or may not want to observe.”
Relaniel fidgeted and stood along with Mirsa. “I’ve seldom seen this, very few have, and never outsiders!” she whispered to the Mage. “It is the highest honor.”
Alanna stood and exited, scowling. Rhysabeth-Dane peered over toward Kevon, but returned to studying one of her texts.
The healer moved between Kevon and the window, stepping in front of the rays of light that barely touched his sleeping form. The rays shone on unobstructed by the elf’s intervening body, and Aelion stretched his hand out to rest on Kevon’s chest.
Outlines of what should have been shadows around the Elder glowed to double their brightness. The reverse shadows thrown by the two lit torches in the room flared out and away from Kevon, while the intensified rays from the window crept up further on the blankets covering him.
Aelion closed his eyes and spoke in low tones. Undeniably Elven words floated to Mirsa’s ears, but flickers of images reminiscent of spoken magic fluttered at the corners of her awareness.
The anti-shadows brightened further. The ambient light in the room did not lessen, but grew flat in comparison to the living brilliance. Wavering torch-fueled images writhed, stretching and curving in exaggerated horseshoe arcs that pulsated toward where the Elder’s hand rested on Kevon. The fluttering mismatched rhythms of the lights steadied, and fell into a regular ‘one-two… one-two’ pattern, and Mirsa felt her own pulse matching the light, and Kevon’s heartbeat.
The light flowed slowly into Kevon, and his color improved a shade, as the rhythm slowed and grew more stable. The extra light dimmed away by degrees as Aelion’s speech drifted into silence.
“This is all I can do for today,” the elf announced. “When he is well enough to consider moving, we will see if performing the ceremony on the grand dais would help speed his recovery.”
Aelion nodded to Relaniel, and circled around to the door. “Until tomorrow.”
Chapter 16
Bertus rushed to the ship’s railing, throwing his arms around it to stop himself as a swell pitched him forward. His heart leapt as he spotted the thin ribbon of land ahead. His chest and arms ached from the impact, and the strains of the previous weeks.
“We’re almost there,” he called over his shoulder to Britger.
“My friends say yer not there yet, and not going te be fer a while,” the dwarf chortled, pointing to the two Stoneguard that stood nearby, padded clubs at the ready.
Grunting, Bertus pushed off from the railing, turning and taking three short steps toward the middle of the deck, getting enough space between himself and the edge that he felt comfortable maneuvering. He caught the club that the Dwarf-King’s nephew threw him, and twirled it a few times to limber his wrist. The Stone-Oak shaft was heavier than any sword he’d used, but lighter than the hammers the dwarves were accustomed to. Early on in the voyage, he’d used that to his advantage, turning the lack of a complete follow-through into a half-second respite to evade the next attack, or launch one of his own. After the first week of sparring sessions, his Stoneguard mentors had adjusted the speed and responsiveness of their attacks. Mercifully, they’d also begun wrapping the ends of the weapons with thick cloth to spare the inconvenience of broken bones.
Bertus charged the pair of dwarves, veering toward the one on his left as he approached. The Stoneguard on the right took a step back and brought his club up in a defensive position, waiting to see what would happen next.
Swing for the knee… There it is… Bertus thought as the dwarf moved to attack. These little guys don’t like it that I’m taller than them, do they?
Bertus leapt over the attack, lashing out with his right foot and smashing the unsuspecting defender in the face as he drubbed the other dwarf a glancing blow on the side of the head and shoulder. He pivoted on his left foot as he landed, his right tracing an arc on the deck behind him until he’d turned back to face the two dwarves. Setting his left hand down for an instant to steady himself, he grinned.
“Ye’ll only get te do that once,” Britger-Stoun called from his perch on the upper deck.
“Once is all I needed,” Bertus laughed. “Now they know I can do it, they’ll be watching for it.”
The two Stoneguard stepped further apart, shaking off their injured pride, moving to not quite opposite sides of Bertus before they started closing in.
Bertus dodged and parried the attacks for a good ten seconds, landing a solid strike on each of his opponents before he let anything slip through his guard. A sudden blow to the ribs, then three more hits in quick succession toppled him to the deck.
“What’re they saying?” Bertus asked, sitting up to lean against a crate, and touching his split lip to see the blood on his fingers.
“That on land, ye’d not have lasted half as long,” the scarred dwarf said, descending the stairs to stand by Bertus. “I must agree that they are not at their best here at sea.” He smirked a moment longer. “They like ye though, they’re not holding back.”
Bertus shook his head, pain exploding at each change of direction. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“We should prepare te go ashore,” Britger motioned to the East, where silhouettes of sails and circling gulls thickened. “The sooner we find yer friends, the sooner we can get back te the Hold.”
* * *
Bertus checked his pack, counted the coins in his purse before he got ready to leave his cabin to go ashore. He had enough water for two days, enough to eat for four, and more than enough money to spend to find out where his friends had gone from here, if anyone knew.
He steadied himself on the handle of the cabin door as the ship rolled a few degrees more than it had been, then opened it and emerged into the noonday heat.
Britger-Stoun was helping the crew pull the gangplank back onto the deck, and the others were coiling the mooring lines.
“Shouldn’t we be…”
“I didn’t make it halfway te the shore,” Britger chortled. “A deckhand from another ship seen two dwarves, and some men a while back. Said they were headed te the South. So we sail south.”
Bertus nodded, touched his lip, winced, and returned to his cabin.
Chapter 17
“Don’t these accursed dwarves ever sleep?” Carlo whispered to Martin, as they passed out of earshot, walking on the outskirts of the camp.
“Some of them,” Martin reassured the commander. “The regulars, I’ve seen asleep, for certain. I think the Stoneguard sleep in shifts every few days, when no one else is watching.” He shrugged. “I could be mistaken.”
“They don’t shirk, I’ll give them that much,” Carlo admitted. “Makes all of this easier on us.”
The first few ni
ghts had been near chaos as the soldiers, civilians, and dwarves had been unfamiliar with each other’s habits, and the workings of such a diverse group. By the end of the first week, the routine was formalized. The five soldiers under Carlo’s watch scrambled to care for the horses and establish a perimeter. The three Dwarven regulars set up tents and started fires for cooking. Martin, Alma, and the Dwarven translator prepared the evening meal, and cleaned up, usually with the help of the Dwarven soldiers.
“Tell me more about this book they were so concerned about,” Carlo turned to Martin, once they were far enough from camp.
“I only know what Bertus told us, that it’s ancient, cryptic, likely powerful.” Martin admitted. “They were seeking elves that could read older script.”
Carlo nodded. “They’ll be sailing for the Glimmering Isle, then. With a sizeable head start.”
“They were fleeing Eastport, when they sent Bertus,” Martin offered. “Perhaps they did not sail there straightaway.”
“Mmm.” Carlo grunted. “Perhaps. “We’ll see when we find them.”
“There’s a stream up ahead,” Martin pointed toward where the faint gurgling could just be heard, and then patted a pouch on his belt. “I have an extra line, if you’re interested.”
“Another time,” Carlo sighed. “The men get unpredictable about this time of evening, when there is no clear task ahead of them, and soldiers from an unfamiliar faction sharing camp.”
“I’d wondered,” Martin laughed. “The dwarves have been acting different since we met up on the frontier.” He scratched his head. “Except for the Stoneguard. Nothing seems to bother them.”
“Good luck,” Carlo said, turning back toward camp. “I’ll send a detail if you’re not back before dark.”
Martin walked toward the stream until Carlo was well out of sight, then turned aside and slipped deeper into the forest.
Blademage Adept (The Blademage Saga Book 3) Page 7