His fingers closed on some odd-shaped nodules, and he pulled them up. The twisted, grayish tendrils fit Wren’s description. He uprooted all he could find, put them in his pouch and went to find Sarai.
The breeze rustled the tree branches and he sniffed the cloy needleleaf scent. Beneath the boughs of a scalebark a pair of chattering bluefeathers began diving at him. As he dodged their attacks, he heard the piping of baby birds. The parents kept swooping at him until he moved away.
Bannor felt a kinship with the bluefeathers. They only wanted to keep invaders away from their family. Like them, the enemy’s size wouldn’t deter him. He’d fight back until he died or the invaders gave up.
Shortly, he found his mate kneeling in the hard soil of the terrace overlooking the flats. Emaciated needlewoods grew in the desiccated ground. Rocks crusted with cracked mud thrust up like warts. Wren had sent Sarai here for minerals that should be found in fallow ground like this.
Sarai didn’t notice him. Even dressed in ill-fitting clothes she made his throat tighten. He stood mesmerized by the motions of her lithe body, the way her pale skin glistened in the sunlight.
He cringed, watching as Sarai plunged her slender hand into the hard dirt. He heard a sound as if a blunt knife were being twisted in a melon. She thrust in to the shoulder, probing beneath the ground as if she were searching the bottom of a barrel.
His stomach tightened. She’d held him with those hands only a bell ago.
She pulled out after a moment, leaving an opening. No dirt clung to her arm. Thinking back to her smile when she bit him, Bannor imagined blood welling out of the ground. He shuddered.
Sarai moved a few paces and lunged again the same way an angler might grab for a fish in a stream. The vibration made him wince.
He walked closer. “Doesn’t that hurt, Little Star?”
She focused on him and grinned like a child caught playing a secret game. “Not at all, my One. Stone is my element now. I’m learning what that means—ahhh…” Sarai bit her lip in concentration, hair falling across her face. The ground vibrated. She pulled out her catch. Several bluish lumps sparkled in her palm. “Success! You bring me luck, my One.”
She wrapped the minerals in a piece of cloth, hopped up, and came over. With effort, he held still as Sarai put her arms around him. He felt heat coming through their clothes. He paused before returning her hug.
Sarai’s gaze met his. “Do I frighten you, my One?”
He hesitated. She’d sensed his tension.
She went on. “Think of how I feel. Your power can split the world asunder.” Her glowing eyes searched his face. “I love you. I know you love me too much to let me come to harm.”
Sarai’s tone and her expression made his face feel hot. He bowed his head and hugged her tighter. He nuzzled her silky hair and breathed in the flowery scent. “I’m sorry.” They were the only words he could find.
She shoved him back. “There is more to it, my One.” Her features hardened. “Some of your unease is you don’t like the idea of me being able to be independent. You want your elfin flower to rely on you.” She held his face. “No.” She kissed him and shook her head. “No. No. No. I’ve managed to see to my own needs for four centuries. I want to be loved, Bannor, not coddled. Protecting me is fine. It’s natural to guard your beloved, but I’d rather you give me a weapon and let me defend myself.”
Her lips tightened. “If you’d let me have my bow and sword when we went into town, those ruffians would have been face down in the street rather than carting me off.” She stepped back and folded her arms.
He clenched his hands. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. He saw the depth of her anger over the capture and his part in it. She’d held it in until now. They shouldn’t be fighting now. He couldn’t deal with his own emotions, much less hers. Instinct made him want to yell back—to defend his position, his ego—something that would no doubt sound stupid and immature, especially to an elf four hundred summers his senior. Could he help how he felt? A woman shouldn’t have to carry a blade.
He started to say something and she put hand across his mouth. She stared at him for a long moment, violet eyes unblinking. The corners of her mouth curved into a smile. “Just say you love me.”
He swallowed. His whole body tingled. “Ur muv ooh.”
***
Bannor and Sarai returned to the campsite where Wren hunched over some noxious-smelling concoction she cooked over the fire in a metal cup. From time to time she would add pinches of substances from various packets she took from the pack. Irodee sat on the log nearby, eying Wren’s operation the way a criminal might regard the building of a gallows. The Myrmigyne brushed her tresses nervously as if it would be the last time she ever saw her hair.
“Find the Azurite and Traba root?” Wren asked.
Bannor answered by putting the ingredients next to Wren’s knee.
The savant flashed him a smile. “Good!” She pulped the roots in a bowl with her dagger and measured a quantity into the bubbling mixture. Sarai’s contribution she powdered and put aside.
Bannor knelt by Wren. “Will you tell us what this will do?”
She kept intent on the grayish soup. “Isn’t the suspense killing you?”
“Irodee thinks Wren is what the suspense is going to kill.”
She chuckled. “Touch her hair, and she thinks I’m planning to shear her bald.”
Sarai sat by the Myrmigyne. “Are you?”
Irodee leaned forward.
Wren peered at Irodee with a wide smile. “Would I do something like that?”
“Irodee thinks maybe.”
Shaking her head, Wren continued her alchemical preparations. The three of them watched in silence as the forest shadows grew longer. Occasionally, Bannor watched the south for evidence of the orc scouts.
He pointed to discernible shapes moving near the edge of the flats. Whatever Wren’s plan turned out to be, it would have to work. Apparently, Rankorhaaz had whipped some courage into the orcs.
By himself, Bannor had challenged a dozen orcs and survived. Their chances wouldn’t be good against five score or more. They’d be overborne despite superior skills or magical power.
Sarai stared at the distant figures.
The Myrmigyne let out a breath. “Maybe not have time.”
Sarai narrowed her eyes. With deliberate slowness, she thrust her fingers into dirt until her hand became completely submerged. “Need to keep them scared a little longer.”
Bannor’s neck prickled as he saw beads of sweat forming on her brow.
Sarai’s eyes glowed brighter. “Something scary.” Her hand twisted as if she gripped something. She stamped her foot and tore her hand free. A bulge in the dirt shot south like a wave snapped down the length of a cord.
A rumble vibrated in the distance. Irodee stood. The resonance continued, growing in volume.
Wren stopped working, brow furrowed. “What’s going on?”
Sarai’s tone sounded flat. “I tickled the flats.”
In the distance, plumes erupted into the sky. The dirt beneath their feet rippled and the trees swayed. Bannor could feel the air trembling.
“Isn’t that enough tickling?” Bannor raised his voice over the tremor.
Sarai patted the dirt and made hushing noises with a finger over her lips. Her skin gleamed, and he saw pulsations of blue light around her feet.
The rumbling dwindled to a distant mutter.
“That’s impressive,” Wren remarked. “Are you all right?”
Sarai’s jaw set. “Fine.”
Bannor saw strain in her features. A gray cast had come over her skin. She met his gaze, daring him to say anything about it.
He didn’t.
Irodee peered in the direction of the orcs. “Orcs gone.”
“I’m not surprised.” He glanced at Sarai. “It must have been ten times as bad in the center of it out on the flats.”
Sarai’s expression stayed impassive. “Maybe even worse.” She to
ok a breath, and her eyes fluttered. Wiping the perspiration off her brow she looked at him as if asking for forgiveness.
Little Star, what did you do?
“It’s good having an elemental on our side.” Wren went back to work. “Just as well if the vermin fell in a fissure. That’s what I would have done.”
Sarai became interested in another part of the clearing.
His chest tightened. Maybe his betrothed hadn’t changed. Perhaps he was simply being forced to acknowledge the wild part of her nature. One didn’t survive for four hundred summers without some hardness.
Did it matter if his little flower had petals of steel?
After the tremor, they saw considerably less activity in the hills. Bannor figured it would give them another day to prepare.
Wren finished her work, the results of which were three separate solutions. She then performed some kind of ritual magic on each container. Afterward each potion glowed an eerie blue.
The savant stirred the grayish goop, the glow reflecting in her eyes. “My father Vanidaar is a scholar. Alchemy is one of his hobbies. About five summers back, I was going through a bout of hair envy, and he heard me grumbling about my never being able to grow my hair out.” She let a few drops the thick fluid drip off the stick. “He taught me how to make this.” Wren fixed Irodee with her eyes. “Undiluted, the magic will make your hair ten times longer.”
“Wren does want to cut Irodee’s hair!”
“Who else has that much hair? Ten times my hair is four paces. With yours it’d be twenty! We can cut more than we need and leave you with extra if you want it.”
Bannor frowned. “How does it help? We need two hundred paces.”
Sarai brightened. “We take sections, braid them, and tie them all together. Those other potions are to make it viable as rope.”
Wren nodded. “Give the elf a gold crown.”
“Irodee still doesn’t like it.”
“Hey, Irodee, trust me.”
The Myrmigyne folded her arms. “Always trusting you. If Irodee loses her hair, Wren will too.”
“Deal.”
She didn’t seem convinced. “All right, what Irodee do?”
“Sit here. Bannor get the blankets and lay them out to keep the hair clean. Sarai, don’t let the potion touch anywhere but her scalp.”
They worked around Irodee. The big woman looked anything but comfortable. Bannor didn’t envy her. They applied the solution to Irodee’s hair, painting it on her scalp and down the length. Wren then chanted strange words. Her hands gleamed as she made passes over Irodee’s hair.
“Ow! Itches! Wren not say would itch!”
“Don’t touch it!”
Irodee’s black tresses writhed like snakes, spilling down her back and tumbling onto the blankets in a jumble.
“Hurts, Wren!” She clenched her hands as the metamorphosis continued.
Bannor coiled the growing lengths to prevent tangling. The hair felt silky smooth. He could see why Irodee was so protective of it.
“Only for a little bit more.”
“Wren owe Irodee for this!”
“Oh, hush, it doesn’t hurt that much!”
“Maybe on Wren’s dinky hair!”
The savant snorted.
Irodee might have exaggerated some for Wren’s benefit, but Bannor could see it wasn’t a pleasurable experience.
When the magic ended a quarter bell later, the Myrmigyne looked pale and appeared thinner, as if the magic had drawn substance from her body to feed the growth.
Irodee winced and ran a hand over her scalp. “Is done?”
“Done,” Wren agreed. “Where do we cut?”
The Myrmigyne stood. Bannor steadied her when she swayed. Feeling her weight, he realized how gargantuan she was. He could barely reach the crown of her head. Irodee twisted to view the trailer of hair lying on the blankets.
“Here.” She pointed below her hip.
Wren used her magic sword to trim the hair with a few swift cuts.
Irodee caressed her locks as if verifying they were really still all there.
“Some braiding, applied potion and magic and we’ll have our rope.” She patted Irodee on the shoulder. “Then comes your part, Bannor. Moving Irodee will be much tougher than Sarai.”
Bannor stared at the Myrmigyne. “I’ve been thinking about it.” He frowned. “We simply have to find the will to do it.”
* * *
Immortals live for gambles, intrigue, manipulation and the hunt.
This goes for those claiming to be of the ‘light’, and we arbitrarily labeled the ‘dark’.
Let none fool you, from the greatest of us to the least we are all caught up in the cosmic game; the higher the stakes the better. Fragile mortals have always been our favored tokens and champions. Perhaps it is their flexibility, unpredictable nature, and vulnerability that make them so attractive. I find their creativity intriguing and have always found their meglocentricities a great source of amusement.
—From the Dedriad, ‘musings of an immortal’.
Chapter Eleven
« ^ »
Bannor’s fingers felt numb from the constant motion of intermingling strands of human hair. He knelt next to Sarai, their knees and hips touching. The elf’s nimble fingers worked much faster than his calloused, thickened ones.
Limbs swayed overhead, and needlebeaks hummed and flashed through the foliage. Irodee and Wren worked across the clearing beneath a ponderous scalebark. Its thick boughs reached upward to embrace the sky.
Wren had shown everyone how to braid the hair and to link the segments so they became one solid cord. The savant figured working together it would take four bells to complete the rope. In half that time his fingers felt like dead hunks of meat.
Dabbed with the Wren’s alchemical solutions the hair strands swelled and hardened as he worked. From testing, he guessed this rope would be nearly identical to the fine silken cords made by the elves. Mentally comparing the texture of the two products he suspected that Wren’s hair rope was less of a new idea and more of an obscure art.
“My One, have you thought on how you will move the monolith?”
“Monolith?” The word shook him out the daze of constant repetition. “Oh, Irodee.” He shook his head. “Agonizing over it won’t make it easier.”
Sarai deepened her voice in a mock impression of his. “ ‘We simply have to find the will to do it.’ ” She patted him on the knee. “To lift her? My One, there isn’t that much will in the whole kingdom.” She shook her head. “I wish we could break away from this blonde she-thief.”
“Thief?” He turned to his betrothed. “What do you mean?”
“Come now. Haven’t you put it together?”
He frowned.
Sarai rubbed his cheek with the back of her hand and made a clucking sound. “She’s expert with a dagger, runs like the wind, even wears her sword for quiet running. I’ve seen that black leather carapace before. She showed us the rogue’s skill for rope-making. Watch her hands. I’ve done ropes before. She’s still twice as fast as me. She’s a guilder certain, a master from her knowledge and confidence.”
“So, what if she is?”
“Bannor, if we can’t trust her, be damned what and who she knows.”
“Sarai, a person’s past is behind them. She’s been secretive with us, but trustworthy so far. We’re safer with her counsel than without it.”
Her jaw tightened. “Keep your eyes open. A guild master can steal your soul and you won’t even know it’s missing.”
The tone in her voice made the back of his neck prickle. He studied Wren. Blonde hair wreathing her face, the savant leaned over her work, fingers flashing over the braiding.
There’s only one way to resolve the question.
He walked over to Wren. “Can I ask you a question?”
She looked up. Her fingers never slowed. “No, but you’ll ask anyway. So go ahead.”
Irodee smiled and gave Wren a push on the shoul
der.
Bannor glanced at Irodee, but locked eyes with Wren. “Sarai thinks you’re a guilder, maybe even a master.”
She sighed. “Sarai’s a smart lady, Bannor, hang onto her. Never argue with centuries of experience.”
“You don’t deny it?”
“Ishtar’s eyes, no, fifteen summers in the guild. Ever hear the story of the Malicent gem?”
“The Ivaneth bards sing it every spring at the faires.”
Wren grinned. “The lady thief in Arabella’s song, Ardwren, that’s me. Last job I did in Corwin for Mistress Whitelock.” She rubbed her cheek against the shoulder of her hauberk. “Earned this armor for the job. Used to be Whitelock’s.” She regarded Sarai who was eying them. Wren grinned. “Don’t worry, I won’t steal your soul. I’m retired.”
Before her last words, Bannor had resolved to push further but the last part answered his questions. “Thanks for not being evasive.” He narrowed his eyes. “For once.”
“We aim to please.”
He knelt next to Sarai and went back to work. She gave him that arched eyebrow expression he’d come to associate with ‘I told you so’.
He sighed.
***
Only a sliver of light tinged the horizon between the rocky teeth of the western mountains, casting tangerine hues on the undersides of distant clouds. The breeze had picked up and felt cooler. It carried with it a familiar scent.
“Storm,” Bannor murmured.
They sat around the campfire where Wren finished the joining and checking of the completed rope. Her attention shifted to him.
Irodee sniffed, her dark eyes intent on the sky. After a moment she said, “Bannor right, think perhaps hit late tomorrow.”
“We are going to be well south by then. It’s to our advantage. Rankorhaaz hates water.”
Sarai paused in the act of rubbing Wren’s skin balm into her hands. She gestured to the sky. “Why? What is water to him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe his mother tried to drown him.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt him, but getting wet makes him crazy.”
Flexing his numb fingers, Bannor scanned the south where they knew the orcs waited. “Orcs aren’t afraid of water. The threat of losing us in the storm may push them to make a move.”
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