by B. T. Narro
“Drycer and his party searched for civilization—those who’d already settled in Ovira. The first few months were very difficult, as they came to realize no other humans were there. Diymas used to be in nearly every forest back then, so it was just a matter of time before Drycer came upon them. A small group with Drycer traveled through the forest in southern Nymre when they discovered blocks of sartious energy encasing vines with plump berries and other edibles. Although it was strange, people needed to eat. A mage broke the blocks, and they started picking. Before they’d even seen one diyma, they were surrounded by hundreds. The creatures used sartious energy in an attempt to communicate. Eventually this small group came to realize the diymas were responsible for the blocks of SE and this was their food; they were saving it. The party left with no berries, but they still had their lives. When Drycer described the event to others, four men both brave and stupid decided they could take the edibles from the sartious casings and fight their way out if needed. When they didn’t return, a search party went out for them. Their bodies were found encased in SE at the edge of the forest—on display.”
“How were they killed?” Eizle asked. “Diymas are so small.”
“They weren’t killed before being put in blocks of SE,” Shara said. “It was the SE that killed them.”
“No sartious mage is that powerful.”
“These creatures—especially in numbers—far exceed the power of any one sartious mage.” Shara turned her horse toward an oddly shaped rock coming out of the ground so high that it towered above the trees. “That fat mossy thing should do.”
We dismounted, and I handed her the four silver she’d requested earlier. Then I thought of something else. “Here, see if you can trade these for any of the supplies you want.” I tried to give her my extra pair of shoes.
“You need those!” she complained. “In fact, I was going to buy some for myself.”
“I haven’t needed them, you haven’t needed them, and I won’t need them. Eizle, do you have an extra pair shoes?” I asked him, already knowing the answer.
“No.”
“You really should keep them,” Shara argued. “And they were a gift from me.”
“They weren’t a gift.”
She sighed in defeat. “I’ll trade them if that’s what you wish. Now, are you sure?” Her question was asked so slowly, it made me think again. No, it wasn’t worth the money I’d save to see the disappointment on her face.
“I changed my mind.”
She grinned. “You’ll thank yourself for that later.” With a hand cupped over her eyes, she peered through the tops of the trees for a glimpse at the sky. “I should be able to make it there before nightfall, but it’ll be dark when I get back.”
“We’ll be here,” I said.
I wondered what Eizle and I would do while we waited if he wouldn’t answer my questions, but I became distracted by Shara staring at me.
“Um, I think I...I,” Shara stuttered, “also changed my mind. It might actually be safer for both of you in Antilith if you stay close to me and let me do all the talking. And I mean all of it.”
“We’re fine here,” Eizle answered for us. “The town is a snake nest, and I’m just a mouse in there.”
But my mind went to a hot meal, a bath, and a bed. We had the dalion, after all. I’d be getting two more once we got to Glaine. Might as well enjoy the nights we could. “We should go, Eizle. Do we have time to retire at an inn, Shara?”
“Hmm, if we’re lucky to meet the right innkeeper. Could take a while to fairith.”
Eizle surprised me by getting on his mount. “Go on. I’m going to keep riding north.”
“Wait.” I grabbed the leg of his pants. “We’ll stay.”
“If you wish.” He jumped off.
Shara slipped her arms around me for a hug. My arms came over her back to press her into me.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” she murmured in my ear.
“What could happen to two pyforial mages?” My voice was playful, but I was serious. We would be fine.
This seemed to convince her to finally go. I joked to Eizle when she left, “I don’t know when she started feeling responsible for me, but I still haven’t gotten used to it.”
“You don’t see the game you’re playing?”
“What game?”
He laughed. It was the same laugh as when we were kids! A deep chuckle. I was overjoyed to hear it, and I felt a smile burst out. “What’s funny?”
“You’re playing the only game men and women can play when both don’t even realize they’re playing.”
He was still laughing, so I joined in. “You’re making no sense, Eizle.”
“She likes you.”
“She what…” My mouth had never flattened so quickly. “No, she doesn’t.”
“So I see your father didn’t teach you as much about women as you thought he would.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Eizle was more knowledgeable about everything when we were younger, including girls. But he was different now. I was different now. I’d kissed girls. Well, two of them. But I knew when they had feelings for me.
He wasn’t right about Shara. She showed fondness because of our partnership, just like I was fond of her for the same reason.
She was pretty though…
Why hadn’t I felt any of the usual sparks with Shara? That part of me was closed off, I supposed, numb after everything I’d seen, beginning with my father’s smoldering chest and my house burning to the ground. What I yearned for was money and justice.
But as I thought of Shara having feelings for me, of her actually kissing me back if I leaned toward her lips, all of my need for money and justice came apart like props falling over in the middle of a play. Shara was the only thing left.
I pulled everything back together in an instant. The world I’d been involved in was everything. This war—the red priest’s terrible fire game—had become my life.
We set out looking for food, and soon I realized I should be taking this time to speak with my old friend without Shara there. Maybe he would feel more comfortable.
“You know you can trust me,” I said. “We already know each other’s biggest secret.”
“You’re scaring away the animals.”
So that failed.
I tried again hours later, once we’d caught a skunk and started a fire. It was night by then, the crickets coming to life. “I want to help you with whatever you’re doing in Glaine.”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me, but I’m your friend. I’ve never had anyone else in my life like you, not in Cessri and not in Lanhine.”
His forehead glimmered from the fire. Beneath his tilted head, his eyes were black, hidden in shadow. “It was the same for me until I met Kayren. Then I had two people I could trust with anything.”
“Anything?” I’m sure he knew what I was asking.
“Yes, she found out.”
I remembered the face of anger he’d worn last time he’d mentioned Kayren. “Did she report you?”
“She would never.”
So this rage wasn’t directed at her. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“You can’t let Shara know. You trust her, but she’s nightfall to me—I can see what I can see, yet I know there’s much more I can’t see.”
“She won’t hear any of this.”
He pushed out his hand, prodding the fire with a sharp jab of py. It was ten times the effort of using a stick, at least for me. “I did go to prison, and it was for using py.”
I held back a gasp. “What happened?”
I lifted three rocks with py and turned one at a time. It was somewhat for practice but more to hide how uncomfortable I suddenly felt sitting next to him.
“Swenn.”
Of course. The rocks fell. “He was always jealous.”
“Extremely.”
I couldn’t bring myself to ask how Eizle was free. Pyforial mages
were imprisoned for life. No exceptions. Could the red priest and his army have broken him out? Would that mean he was working with them?
I floated the rocks again. “What are you really going to do in Glaine?” The king was there…
He slowly looked up, about to speak, when he caught sight of something and jumped to his feet. I hopped up. A wave of diymas was closing in, at least twenty wide. I grabbed a stick and pushed it into the fire until it was lit. As I brought the flame out, the dark line of small creatures was illuminated, the silver in their eyes shining. While their bodies resembled half-sized men, they seemed more closely related to trees than humans. Their skin was like gray wood, their hair like rows of bark, stiffly raised from their small, triangular heads. With gaping eyes, yet petite noses and mouths, they didn’t look as dangerous as I knew they were, even with the silver gleam of their irises.
The moment the light was on them, their line shattered apart like glass breaking. They scattered, crawling up trees with the speed of monkeys, instantly gone into the darkness.
“Oh gods,” I whispered.
Eizle cursed and grabbed my arm. “Put light over there.” He pointed behind us. I turned and held the stick out. Twenty, maybe thirty diymas were right there. I could’ve kicked dirt into their faces. Eizle and I stumbled backward.
“What do you want?” I demanded, my voice shaky.
No response.
Eizle checked behind us and cursed again. I looked to find the others had returned. We were surrounded.
“Don’t attack them unless they attack us,” I said.
One diyma emerged from the line. He walked on all fours, his fingers and toes like twisted bark. Jutting out of his shoulders and elbows was flesh disguised as sharp sticks. He rose to his feet, bowlegged yet easily balanced. With a wave of his gnarled hand, three orbs of green sartious energy spiraled between us.
“What does he want?” Eizle asked.
I shook my head.
With both stick-like arms, the diyma gestured with quick yet controlled motions, as if he was dancing. A ribbon of sartious energy appeared under one of the three orbs, like the diyma was selecting it. The other two spiraled in place while this orb rose. The ribbon bent, now cupped beneath the orb of energy and rising with it. Then both lowered back to the level of the two orbs. The ribbon moved to the middle orb this time, then both rose just like the first. By the time the diyma moved the third, I realized what he was saying. He’d seen me lifting the rocks.
“Yes. We’re pyforial mages.” I didn’t know if he understood a word. At the sound of me talking, he let the SE dissipate. I lifted three rocks with py, moving one up and down at a time.
The diyma made another ribbon of emerald green energy, this one in the shape of a smile with two dots above it for eyes.
I smiled back at him, pointing to my open mouth and trying not to let my fear show. Eizle mimicked me.
The diyma approached, then lifted his arm toward my chest. I stepped back in reflex, but he followed with each step until I stopped. He waited with his hand in the air. I hesitantly reached out, and he didn’t pull back. We touched, the feeling of his skin just like the bark of a young tree. I didn’t try to shake, for I couldn’t get my fingers comfortably around his hand—it was too unlike any human’s. But I did squeeze the joints that I came into contact with. It felt like I was holding onto tree roots.
The little diyma started walking. I knew to follow him when I noticed shooting strands of SE arcing over my shoulders in his direction.
“Come on,” I told Eizle, who hadn’t moved. “It looks like they want our help with something.”
We started for our horses, but a group of four diymas pushed out their gnarled hands as we neared our animals. They made an arc of sartious energy over the horses’ backs while diymas behind us tugged on our shirts.
“What is it?” Eizle asked.
“I think they’re saying to leave the horses. They’ll watch them.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
Eizle spoke loudly to address the creatures. “I want my horse.”
His words did nothing.
“Let’s go,” I told him as I went for my bag near the fire. Diymas stopped me, arcing SE over it just like the horses. “Guess that’s not coming with me?” I asked them.
No response.
Eizle didn’t even try for his. Good thing my money pouch was in my pocket, as I wasn’t sure I could leave without it.
With diymas on every side of us, we walked. The forest was too dark for us to see past them, but their silver eyes must’ve picked up shapes amid the darkness easier than ours, for they moved quickly. It was a struggle to keep up as my feet caught on stones and roots. Eizle fell once, and soon I did as well. My heart beat louder in my ears the farther we walked from our horses.
Soon the line of them ahead of us spread out, and I could see we’d come to a ledge. Below us was a lake that looked satin and silver like their eyes. It stretched thirty yards where trees gathered by its edge. Campfires were spread throughout the trees, glowing like little suns. So there were people there, but what did the diymas want us to do with them?
They pulled us back from the ledge. A picture formed before us of a snake, the green sartious energy undulating to show it was slithering. Its mouth opened wide, fangs appearing. A little creature resembling a diyma had his back to the giant snake as it approached then struck with a vicious bite. All the SE came apart, disappearing into the air like steam.
“So it’s an army from the south,” I said, figuring the snake represented their sigil. “Could be the same one that attacked Lanhine and Cessri.”
“They’re probably planning to burn Antilith. Not sure what we can do about that.”
Whatever this army had done in the forest, the diymas didn’t like it. Now how would I explain that there was nothing Eizle and I could do?
I shook my head and waved my arms, hoping they knew this meant I was saying no. All around us, green shields of SE appeared in the air. Swords came next, swinging up and down beside the shields.
“They want to fight,” I realized. “And they probably want us to stand with them.”
Eizle’s voice was loud and irritated. “More like die with them. What do they expect us to do?”
“I’d like to know that as well.”
He rubbed his eyes with one hand, his head sinking to his chest. “No, there’s no way.”
We tried shaking our heads, waving our hands, saying “no” and “sorry.” It did nothing, and soon the diymas were leading us down a path that twisted around the lake. They brought us close to the campfires, and I could hear someone giving orders.
With too many trees in my way, I edged forward for a glimpse of our enemies. “I’m going to scout it.”
The sounds of crickets fell into the background as I listened to the commander speak. “This is the last city that needs to burn. After this, we ride home for our next orders.” He was standing on a rock by one of the fires, a tall man in a red robe. From the long staff in his hand, I knew I was looking at the red priest. The same one who’d cut Callyn’s throat. The same one responsible for the destruction of Lanhine and Cessri and possibly Aunt Nann.
“What about Glaine?” one of his men asked.
“If burning Quince’s cities doesn’t put enough pressure on him to start up the sacrifices again, then this war is truly just beginning. But the gods will see that justice is served. They will see that all of the heathens are smote until they believe.”
“Until they believe! Until they believe!” A chant broke out. It gave me time to change positions without fear of being heard. I came around for a better glimpse at how many there were.
Silhouettes pressed together the closer they were to the fire, where their shadows were shed and I could make out their red uniforms. Everyone had come together around the red priest on his rock.
He raised his hand for silence. “The gods hear your enthusiasm, but
the diymas do as well. The godless creatures have already died in vain protecting what they believe to be their land when it really belongs to our gods. But we must not provoke them. Our battle is not with them but with those who have the capacity to defile. The gods support us. They will not see to the destruction of our land while we fight. But the moment we stop—the moment we give in to those who do not believe, then we have abandoned our gods, and they will abandon us. Storms, drought, death can come in many ways. We must fight until they believe.”
“Until they believe,” the audience chimed, quieter this time.
“My priest,” a man called out, pushing through the ranks. “The siege team is ready for your order.”
“Are they well-hidden?”
“Yes, my priest. The western forest has deep ravines.”
“How many are guarding Antilith?”
“Not enough. King Quince sent much of his army south. When they didn’t see us going around Talmor Desert, they must’ve thought we turned back.”
Damn. Antilith would’ve been safe if my king had his army watching Talmor Desert instead of just its edges. I needed to get Shara out of there before the attack. She could be anywhere. She might even be on her way back right now, walking to our camp. I won’t be able to find her. Think of another way.
“Good,” the red priest told his scout. “Go back and tell them to shift to the edge of the forest. Wait for the first fireball from my staff. I’ll hurl it into the air when we’re ready. My team will ambush the guards from the southeast and draw them away so the catapults can be set up. The city will burn from south to north, understand?”
I’d crept back and was too far away to hear anything else. Eizle was alone now! Had the diymas left us?
“Where did they go?”
“Look at the trees.” He pointed up. The branches were filled by something, their shadows revealing little of what they were. “They scampered up there the moment you left. I’ve never seen anything climb like that. How many soldiers are there?”