“I have a question for you, Trav. What are you?” Najila fixed him with a direct yellow gaze, and Trav felt his bowels quiver. Being in the presence of so much power was having an effect on him, like his bones were vibrating.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play coy. You killed or at least badly wounded another Rakshasa. That would not be possible for most humans, even one that had sold their soul for dark magic. In fact, you are taking all of this rather well, waking up in a strange place and being threatened.” She smiled at him, pulling her lips back so he could see her fangs. “I must admit, I am beginning to be glad of Rahim’s request. Look at us right now, speaking like this. You are an interesting one, human.”
“I see.” Trav kept his face blank of expression just in case Najila could read it. She was unlike any Kin Trav had met so far, and his hackles felt like they were trying to crawl up to the top of his head.
Najila carefully retrieved up a carved toothpick from the wooden table with her claws, and picked her teeth as she studied Trav. “The way I first met you was memorable, actually. Yesterday I was teaching Rahim something in the forest, and after a burst of strange magic, you fell out of the air onto the ground. You were a bloody mess!” She chuckled.
“You almost killed him,” stated Rahim.
“Yes, well, that is generally what you do when strangers pop out of thin air.” Najila shrugged.
Trav blinked and decided to ask a question. While his situation was strange and dangerous, he hadn’t survived up until now to be completely cowed by anyone or anything. Besides, he needed information. “Exile?”
“We will get to that.” Najila waved dismissively and clicked her claws after setting her hand back on the table. “I’ll tell you about us in a moment. Right now I want to know about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Don’t play coy, human. I am not asking your favorite color. Why did you have Rakshasa blood all over you, and had obviously been in combat? How did you appear out of nowhere? Where do you come from? Why do you have such strange magic power leaking out of you?”
In his previous life, after being confronted and threatened by someone so much more powerful, Trav’s instinct might have been to back down or try to be friendly. On Asgard, things were different. He deliberately took a bite of the meat on his plate, and looked Najila in the eyes as much as he dared. His focus was actually just an inch below and to the left of each fierce pupil, in case she would react to eye contact with violence, but he knew he’d made his point.
Najila growled. “You are trying my patience. Explain to me why I shouldn’t just rip your legs off to teach you some manners.”
“Because you let me know you’d be upset if I burned down your cabin, and I could easily do that as you killed me.” Trav willed Hex into his hand, and casually set it down next to his plate.
The Kin woman growled as Rahim got up and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Mother, I think this way is not working well.”
Trav’s eyebrows climbed as Najila sighed, seemed to deflate, and leaned back in her chair with more relaxed posture. “I believe you are correct. It makes sense that I could not deal with him like a normal human since he is not a normal human.”
“Huh?” Trav was having a hard time following this sudden change.
As Rahim sat back down, he said, “Mother was acting tough. She truly is powerful, Trav, but she is also a scholar. If she were less thoughtful, she would not be here, and I would be dead.”
The Kin woman grunted, and Rahim smiled. “She saved my life, and gave up everything.”
Najila sighed and drank a cup of water before twisting her face into an inhuman scowl. “I wish you had been easier to deal with, like if you’d been bluffing about my house.”
“You could tell I wasn’t?” Trav wasn’t entirely surprised, since he’d met Kin that could sense lies.
“Yes. You were gathering magic.”
“Oh.”
Najila tapped a claw on the table, her head cocked to one side. “If I tell you about us in good faith, will you tell us about yourself?”
“I...think.”
“Don’t misunderstand, human—Trav. You are likely very powerful for a human, but I can still destroy you without much effort. Of course, I wasn’t lying when I told you I wanted to avoid ruining my home. It took a long time to build this shack.”
Rahim shook his head. “I’d rather live here than back at the capital, Mother.”
“Yes, me too, but it would be nice if the food were better.” She fixed Trav with a steely eye. “The first thing you need to realize, is that I know more about you than you probably assume. First, I know you can use rune magic.”
Trav thought he hid his surprise well, but Najila grinned at him. She used a spoon to draw a quick, economic rune equation on the table that disappeared as a small dot of blue magic rose into the air above where it had been, soundlessly exploding into multicolored light.
“You are more than you seem, and I want to know what is hidden. So this is our deal. I am going to tell you the truth of my situation. Then you are going to tell me about who you are. My son has warned me that you are a person important to my future, but what I’m about to tell you is very sensitive. If you refuse to play by my rules then, I will be forced to kill you, and this time I’m serious.”
“Mother—” began Rahim.
Najila shook her head. “Son, you know this is necessary. I respect your gift, but you said this human will help me, right? If it will protect our secrets and our lives, I will accept inconveniencing myself, even though this human interests me.”
Rahim reluctantly nodded.
“Now, Trav, are you listening closely?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Do you know of Kyvendi, Trav? The Asgardian country run by Rakshasa?”
“Yes.” Trav nodded.
“Rahim and I are Kyvendi Nobles. I am daughter of the king’s sister.” Najila paused for a moment, then slowly nodded. “You likely already knew something about this. Interesting.”
Trav cursed inwardly as he realized he hadn’t reacted at all.
Najila drummed the tips of her claws on the wooden table, touching it just hard enough to make noise. “And yet I am fairly sure you were not sent here, and your appearance was random. Well, after I tell you our story, you can tell us yours...or die. It will be your choice.”
Her son nodded gravely and said, “She is telling the truth. Please listen.”
“We are in exile. The Church wanted to execute Rahim because of his abilities. When he was young and still very honest as children often are, he spoke the wrong truths to the wrong people and became a liability. The rot runs deep, so the Church was able to influence several nobles to push for his execution, supposedly because he sullied the image of all Rakshasas by being weak.” She scoffed. “Rahim’s magic power may be lower than usual now, and he has spent his time on reading instead of clawing his cousins, but he is not weak.”
“Tell him where we are, Mother.”
Najila lifted a finger at him. “Rahim and I had to flee in the middle of the night without any time to pack, even though we were supposedly legally banished. Now we are living in the wilds of Demona, far enough away from Kyvendi to be out of mind, and far enough from any significant Demona cities that nobody should bother us.”
“So you built all of this by yourself?” asked Trav.
“Yes. I’d never done it before, but I’d read books on the subject, so here we are.”
“Why didn’t you ask for exile, or I guess asylum with another country? You are a noble, right?”
Najila laughed. “If another country sheltered me it could have led to a war. There are two reasons why Kyvendi assassins have not come for us. One is that we are in another country, but the other is that I am not weak, and I know secrets that the Crown wants kept. If they come for me, they’d better kill me.” She snarled, and the sound made the air tremble. Then she met Trav’s eyes, her predatory eyes
unblinking. “Your turn.”
Trav swallowed. Before he began speaking, Najila said in a warning tone of voice, “You’d best include the fact you are Restless.”
The Rakshasa woman chuckled as Trav sputtered, completely losing his cool. Her eyes glittered as she said, “Human, as I said, you should always assume I know more than you think I do.”
Trav felt like he was riding a razor’s edge. He was going to need to give this Kin some truth, but there was no way he was going to tell her everything. In that moment, he made a split-second decision to tell her that he was from another world, became Restless, and that he had a gift to know hidden things. He wasn’t sure what kind of power Najila’s son had, but this explanation should sound plausible given Rahim’s ability.
There was no way he was going to tell the truth about the Oracle, or his identity as the bearer of Odin’s mantle, or more importantly, that his valkyries were out there, and they were coming for him.
He could feel Narnaste and the others through the bond. If his calculations based on maps he’d seen were correct, they were all in Demona now, and working their way toward him. They would arrive in about a week, and he would hopefully be completely healed by then. He just needed to survive until they got there.
Trav wasn’t sure if Najila had the same ability to sense lies as Narnaste, but he was not going to take chances. It was time to dance around the truth.
“I was not born on Asgard,” Trav began. “But right after I got here, I was captured and made a slave—”
Chapter 9
Trav stared at the tip of his fishing pole and mentally checked the general position of his valkyries again. They were definitely still alive, and he couldn’t feel any mortal danger, but they also hadn’t moved in days and he was beginning to wonder what was happening. Despite the fact that they were Kin, they were his allies and he had come to terms with the fact he cared about them.
He suddenly felt a bite. Trav snapped out of his brooding and set the hook before pulling in a fish. The little lake he was fishing at had a surprising number of pan fish, which he knew by now were actually fairly delicious after being cooked with Najila’s mystery herbs that she seemed to scrounge from the surrounding forest.
Life could be strange. Still, suddenly finding himself on Asgard, becoming a slave, and even receiving Odin’s mantle all paled in comparison to playing house with a Rakshasa and her son.
Trav shook his head as he reeled in his fish and dispatched it before putting it on a line with all the others. He figured he had enough now and began walking back to the Rakshasa’s cabin. After two weeks, he knew the path well.
Before he reached the building, he heard a distant banging and his newly exercised magical senses perked up. He felt the movement of magical energies, something that seemed to happen every other day. Every time he’d noticed it before, it had always been too late to investigate, but this was a good opportunity. Trav placed his fish on an outdoor table outside where Rahim would clean them, and walked to the other side of the cabin.
Behind the building was a simple shed, but this was not where the banging was coming from. Trav passed the shed before heading down some stone steps. These handmade stairs had been carved out of a cliff by Najila using magic and brute strength.
The Rakshasa woman was very proud of her house. Trav had learned about the various ways she’d made everything within the first week, actually even the first few days. Sometimes he ruefully wondered if the real reason she’d saved his life and kept him alive was to show off her house.
Her pride made sense in a way. She’d been someone important back in her country, before being banished. It’s possible she’d never done a day of manual work in her life. But everything in the wilderness—her cabin, the drying racks, the water well, all of it was hers in a way she might not have experienced before.
Of course, building a life in the middle of the untamed forest would be a lot harder for a human who had no magic, couldn’t chase down game on foot, and didn’t have the strength to easily break sticks the size of a man’s arm. Kin had some natural advantages. And on top of Najila being Rakshasa, an extremely powerful species of Kin, she was also ruling class, and she knew at least a few forms of magic.
At the bottom of the stairs, Trav glanced up and looked at the cabin from this lower vantage point. He was closer to the lake now, and it was easy to see that that the cabin had been built at the top of a cliff. Trav suspected that the view of the lake was why Najila had chosen the site to build on.
Where he was standing at the base of the cliff, at the bottom of the steps, was a workshop hollowed out of solid stone. A week earlier when Trav had asked Najila why she hadn’t just built her house like she had the workshop, she’d said she originally had. Her shop was her first attempt at a house, but it’d leaked.
The large door to the underground space was open, and Trav could see new, complex eddies of magic swirling through the air. He’d been spending time and energy lately to refine his magical sight, and what he was witnessing now was fascinating. The sound of hammer blows continued as he walked in, almost in a trance.
As he wandered forward, the ringing sound stopped and Najila’s voice pulled him out of his daze. “If I were ever unsure before that you were not a normal human, now I would know.”
Trav’s mind snapped back into focus, and he cursed himself for losing his wariness. Despite his living conditions being surprisingly comfortable, and Najila claiming he was not a prisoner, she was still Kin, and Rakshasa to boot. The way he’d lost himself in curiosity about magic for a moment made him think about Odin’s mantle. Was the old god’s will taking over? Would letting his mind wander while studying magic truly be a thing Trav would do?
Out loud, he kept his face blank and asked, “What do you mean?”
She mutely pointed at a table to one side of the stony room and Trav noticed little metal boxes. Most were closed, but a handful were open and he caught the telltale red glint of emberstone. He blinked. “You found me with my dagger.” He patted the weapon where it rode in an improvised sheath attached to his belt.
“That is a worked weapon, enchanted, like what I’m trying to do here.” She gestured to the workbench in front of her, complete with some metal components and another small piece of emberstone. “Once enchanted items are made, they’re shielded to a degree. Your dagger is very simple, but the red stone has still been shielded. But any human walking into this cave right now should have felt sick immediately.”
Trav shrugged. “Well, you already know I’m Restless.” He moved closer. “What are you doing?”
Najila grimaced. “This work is how I remain useful, and maintain a connection to my past.”
Trav glanced around, taking in all the tools on the walls, the half-finished projects, and various weapons lying in pieces. “Your craft enchanted items,” he stated, not asking a question.
“Yes.”
“Using emberstone…” Trav shook his head as he walked through the room. Using the crimson stone as a power source, at least with tools and weapons, had never occurred to him before. Odin had never encountered much of it, but Trav knew the substance was practically bursting with magic. He ambled over to a table near Najila’s workbench and raised his eyebrows after using his different forms of sight on it. “I see, she used the emberstone as a battery…” he said under his breath.
“What?”
Speaking louder, Trav asked, “How do you mate the emberstone to the device it’s paired with? They aren’t part of a whole, and likely aren’t permanently joined, right? Runes shouldn’t work that way. You need a single surface, or a single whole.”
Najila shook her head, her eyes unreadable. “There is part of me, the part that is Rakshasa raised in Kyvendi that can’t believe I am having this conversation. Years ago, I admit that I would have tried to destroy you out of a sense of duty. But now, knowing how offended my teachers would be by a human that can walk among the red stone, who knows its secret name, and who can ask inte
lligent questions about enchanting—I am amused.”
Trav resisted taking a step back. The Rakshasa hadn’t tried to hurt him since he’d been in her care, but after a very brief, very informal spar two days ago, he knew with absolute certainty that he’d be helpless in a real fight against her. He tried to keep up his strong front. “May I please know the trick?” He tried to make his tone humble without sounding weak.
Finally, the Kin shrugged, and pointed at a magnifying glass. “Take a look.”
First Trav studied a sharp, metal tool that Najila had likely been hitting with a hammer to sharpen, a scribe. Then Trav bent down and studied what she’d been working on. He immediately spotted her fine rune work, which was simple but well done. Then he stood up with a gasp. “It can’t be that simple, can it?” He searched his borrowed memories as best he could, and felt a ripple, like a disquiet in his mantle.
He might have stumbled on something new that Odin had truly never known.
“Probably. You need to build part of your glyph on or in the object you are enchanting, then part on the red stone. They have to match up perfectly when you mate the pieces together, but this is what magically makes the parts into a whole.”
Trav slowly nodded, immediately understanding the theory and the significance. He’d always known that emberstone had a lot of magic power and could be used to power enchantments, or even rune equations, but what he’d seen Najila working on—some sort of lighting tool—was being created to basically be used forever. The way she was building the device made it clear that it would never need another power source and she expected it to function indefinitely.
“Emberstone really has that amount of power?” he wondered, but then remembered his escape from the mine. There’d been enough power in the walls to level the mine with explosives too, right?
“Yes, and it has a limited ability to regenerate lost magic.” She gave him a strange look. “You know what it is, right? What it really is?”
Trav answered honestly and didn’t feel embarrassed about it. “No.”
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