by Heath Pfaff
Haley was struck silent by the whole sight. It seemed surreal. Everything since she'd entered that damned gray corridor with Xandrith and Kassa was a tangled mess of confusing memories, and here she was now in the home of a stranger, another Eight, looking on as her friend fought for what could be the last few minutes of his life.
"Will he be alright?" Haley asked quietly as the woman began to wash her hands in a basin of water she'd prepared earlier for the task.
The woman shrugged, looking as though she lifted the world on her shoulders as she did so. "I can't say for certain one way or the other. It was a miracle he lived to make it to my hut, and it will be another miracle if he lives until morning. His wounds were terrible, but luckily his heart wasn't pierced, nor his lungs. I don't even know how he managed that. Whoever did this to him certainly wanted to kill him." She began to clean the tools she'd used on Crow.
"I don't suppose you plan on telling me how you and your friend ended up out in the middle of these woods in that condition? There haven't been any humans in these parts in a long while, not with them things living in the Reach. It's not safe. Even I've considered packing up and leaving."
It was Haley's turn to shrug. She didn't know what to tell the woman. How much would she believe? How much should she know? How much did Haley owe her? Without her Crow would probably be dead already, or close to it. She'd at least given him a chance. "We came with a group looking for something in Yillan Reach, but things went bad. Crow was hurt trying to protect me. We managed to escape the Reach, but Crow's wounds overcame him. That's when you found us."
"Those things in the city attacked you? It was foolish to go in there. Stupid to go anywhere near that place. What happened to the others? Were you pursued, girl?" Despite her age, the dark haired woman had sharp, alert brown eyes. She was strong too, she'd dragged Merrick back through the woods to her hut on a makeshift skid almost entirely by herself. Her hut was small and obviously built on her own, but it was tidy and well kept. She had a large collection of medical supplies, and it seemed to Haley that she had practiced medicine from her home at some point. That was a strange business for an Eight to be involved in. Most people avoided those shunned by the Mages as though they were plague carriers.
"I'm not sure what happened to the others." Haley answered truthfully. "Things became chaotic so quickly that I couldn't keep track of anything that was happening. Our leader was lost along the passages we took in, and we were waiting for him when things went wrong. I don't believe we were pursued. Crow took us out through a different route." That last bit was the truth as far as Haley knew. Merrick had gotten them out of Yillan Reach almost instantly and Haley wasn't sure how he'd done it. It had to have been some aspect of his abilities, and when the haze had cleared they'd been beyond the wall along the path upon which they'd first approached the Reach.
There was a moment of silence as the intelligent, aged brown eyes considered Haley carefully. "It's not easy to lie to me, and I don't think you're doing so now, but your story doesn't fit together neatly. You're leaving things out, and my guess is that it has something to do with those bonesteel weapons you both are carrying. Cursed blades like that don't show up often, and two people carrying them and traveling together makes me think your story is more complicated than you're letting on."
Haley impulsively covered her axe with her hand, hiding the distinct styling of the hilt. "I've told you what I know. Crow knows the rest. When he wakes up, he can better explain the situation."
"If he wakes up, child. If he wakes up. Your friend is strong, but he's also closer to death than most will ever come without dying." She paused for a second before going on, letting her words sink in. "What's your name?"
Haley bit back the desire to cry. Xandrith was gone, Crow might die, and she felt incredibly alone and helpless. Even the damned axe had gone silent. "My name is Haley." She said, making her voice as confident and even as she could.
The woman nodded. "Haley, I'm Tilda and this is my home and business." She held up her hands, showing off her hands. "You know what these mean?"
Haley gave a single nod of her head. "Yes. They mean that the order of Mage's has cast you out. I have a friend who’s an Eight."
Tilda's eyes widened a bit in surprise. "Do you? There aren't many of us around. What is this friend's name?"
Haley froze. Should she share Xan's identity with a random stranger? Could that cause trouble for the assassin? A sharp pain shot through her chest, a pressure of anxiety and distress digging in like a dagger. Was Xandrith even still alive? He'd never returned from the gray paths.
"His name was Xandrith." Haley said finally, deciding that it couldn't do any damage to give a name.
"Xandrith Dalt?" The woman asked, and when Haley's jaw dropped slightly she shook her head. "Well, if you're involved with him it's no wonder there has been trouble for you. Don't look so surprised. After I was cast out of the tower I made many friends. Many of those same friends have crossed paths with Xandrith since his journey began. News travels fast amongst us, even now that the world is coming to an end. Many of my contacts no longer reply to the messages I send, but some do. Was it Xandrith who led you back into Yillan Reach? He was going after the …" As she was speaking her throat seemed to stop up and she gave a choked cough. "He was after something there?" She added more quietly after a minute.
Haley hadn’t seen that reaction herself, but she'd heard Xandrith talk about. Tilda was still under the influence of the Order's binding spells. She couldn't discuss Order business, or their secrets. There were some few people who could undo the magic that created that binding, but it was a difficult process and not many were willing to perform the procedure. If an error was made the person having the procedure done would die.
"Yes, he was." Haley said, not yet willing to confirm too many details. She let her eyes slide into the magic spectrum. She'd seen many mages through that particular spectrum, but she'd never bothered to study the magic that created their binding before. The spell was complex, woven through the flesh and etched directly into the bone. Haley was no expert with magic. She'd failed to grasp some of the most basic skills that her mentors had tried to teach her, but she did have a skill that others seemed unable to mimic.
It took her a moment to find what she was looking for. At the base of the spell that bound Tilda was a knot of magic, a loop that fed energy from Tilda's own severed magic back into the binding that held her tongue in check. The spell itself was incomprehensible to Haley, but that knot of magic seemed easy enough. It was really so very fragile, this complex spell. The strands were precise, carefully woven, and weaved in just such a way that the whole thing held together.
"Haley, what are you looking at?" Tilda asked, noticing that the young woman's attention had drifted elsewhere."
Haley held a finger to her lips. "Just a moment." She said, and then she did what only she could do. She reached into the magic binding Tilda and pulled the strands of magic apart. The first few times she'd done this she'd just let the magic bound back to the source, but this time she pulled the strands so that the excess energy from the magic drifted back into the air and dissipated. Tilda's eyes went wide, and her skin went pale. For a moment a deep horror passed through Haley. What if she'd killed the woman by tampering with her magic?
The color raced back into Tilda's cheeks though, and a smile touched her lips as she felt the binding that had been restraining her all of her life lift from her body. She laughed, and it wasn't the laughter of an old woman, but the joyous titter of girl experiencing the joy of running through a warm summer rain for the first time. She beamed at Haley, her face awash with a mixture of exultation and relief.
"How did you do that?" Tilda asked. "Do you know how long I've been under that spell?"
Haley shrugged. "It's something I can do. I'm not very good with magic, but for some reason I can break …" Her words trailed off as a memory flooded back into her mind, a piece of the puzzle that had been missing since the incident at the
Reach. That was what she'd been talking to Crow about when Kassa attacked them. She'd been talking about breaking the bond to the hostile intelligence that lived within the cursed weapons. Haley had thought it was possible to break that part of the spell without rendering the weapons useless. Crow had been skeptical, but she'd been on the verge of trying when suddenly Kassa had attacked them. That was why her axe wasn't talking with her.
Tilda seemed to have noticed Haley's sudden distraction. "Are you alright?" She asked. "Can I get you some water? Perhaps you should rest. I'd really like to understand how you did what you've just done. There are very few people who can do that, and none who can do it without some very serious side effects."
Haley shook her head. "I just remembered what happened in the city. I think the attack was my fault, but there’s something I need to do now." Haley reached down to the axe at her hip and withdrew it from its place. The black blade seemed to shake in her hand, as if quivering in fear at what it knew was about to happen. It was time for Haley to be free.
***
It took them two terrible weeks to repair all the damage from the bandit attack and to get the broken carts working, but that time did little to help Xandrith's relationship with the other members of the caravan. He made an effort to help keep their camp hidden and protected, and they were grateful for all he'd done for them, but his strange appearance and distant demeanor didn't go far to ingratiate him with the others. The children were constantly curious, and their parents spent every waking hour warning them away from the frightening stranger who had saved their camp twice over. To them he seemed more monster than man. Some few of the folks would occasionally start up a conversation with the assassin, but they seemed to be doing so more out of an obligation to treat him with hospitality than any sincere interest in spending time with him. That didn't really bother Xan, he was used to being alone.
The time he had to himself was spent lost in his own thoughts and worries, and he had plenty of those to occupy the hours of waiting and idly riding a horseless carriage up into the mountains. Just counting the amount of time he was losing as he helped the caravan made sleeping difficult and his legs restless. He couldn't make himself leave, though. Whether they wanted him around or not, the caravan needed someone to teach them how to maintain a low profile. Even with their unusual abilities, the mechanna were not adept at protecting themselves. Plus, walking now would only add to the lost time. The caravan moved quickly when it was functional.
The mechanna's strange carts pulled themselves, powered by a system of magic beyond Xan's understanding. The engines that ran the constructions were silent, pulling their energy from steel barrels full of even more strange magic. The whole set of mechanna constructs was complex beyond reasoning, but in the end it didn't matter. The carts pulled themselves, and only a few of the men understood how to drive the things. Xan had long since stopped worrying about the how of the whole situation and settled into the luxury of traveling without the need to keep a horse, or wear out one's own boots.
Between his repaired shoulder and the magical carts, Xan was growing quite fond of mechanna ingenuity. He could almost put the memories of the Reach behind him, almost. Some visions would never fade entirely. Of course Kassa was the first such vision to jump to mind. At least the first time she’d been lost to him a part of her had lingered, that empty shell. As painful as the constant reminder had been, as torturous as it had been to give her detailed commands and see them followed without question, now she wasn’t even physically near him. She’d always been on his side before, even if it was just out of dark, magical obligation. Now she’d kill him given half a chance, or what was left of her would.
The desperation and horror of what the Drayid had become was something Xan doubted would ever be completely cleansed from his mind either, and he had no right to expect freedom from that burden. The Drayid were gone forever, and that was Xan's responsibility. He had burned them away like dry wood in a fire. They had agreed to let him do so of course, but that didn't change the fact that he had wiped them from existence. He had resolved the terrible mess that humanity had created, but in doing so he'd condemned an entire race of people to oblivion. Xan would keep the Drayid’s story with him for the rest of his days while what remained of the rest of humanity wouldn’t remember anything. Of course, Xan might not be carrying their story around long anyway.
A man with a similar look about him to Lottan approached Xan, climbing onto the roof of the moving cart via a ladder that led to the top seats from inside. This was Lottan's younger brother, apparently the greater mechanna genius of the two. Xandrith had first met him in the aftermath of the attack by the orc's band of mercenaries. His name was Gryn, and he was the man primarily responsible for the design and upkeep of the carts. He'd been the one to turn Xan's scrap metal into the parts needed to repair the cart.
"How is your brother?" Xandrith asked as the man approached him. Gryn had a mechanna right hand, a thing of gears and intricate metal workings that seemed almost as agile as a human limb. He'd lost the hand working his art, as so many of the mechanna did. Their power sources were sometimes unstable when first built and many mechanna lost limbs or eyes to the process. Gryn had told Xandrith that their techniques were improving and the work was getting less dangerous though.
Gryn shook his head, looking as tired on the outside as Xan felt on the inside. "He's going to lose most of his right leg and part of his left. Probably both of his arms. We don't have the equipment to perform the amputations here so he has to wait until we reach Forge Haven. Hopefully he’ll survive long enough."
Xandrith had only recently learned of Forge Haven. It was a mechanna city allegedly built inside a mountain. The ground was said to be layered in great steel slabs, and the rock walls were reinforced with strange metals that only the mechanna knew how to create. Lottan and the members of his caravan believed it was a last sanctuary for humanity, a place the trolls couldn't find. If they did find it, the trolls wouldn't be able to get inside. Xan didn't know if he believed any place was safe, but it was nice that these people had something to lay their hope on.
Xandrith nodded numbly. "How much further to Forge Haven?" He asked. It felt as though he'd been with the caravan forever, though it had only been a couple of weeks since he'd joined with them. They were already well into the mountain trails, far further into the depths of the mountains than he'd ever gone before. He'd generally thought of those jagged lines of rock as a thin layer of impassable stone, a natural wall. They divided his world from the alien places beyond, but the mountains were not a thin band. They stretched on and on for miles.
If Xandrith looked back behind him all he could see were mountains now, and if he looked in the direction the caravan was heading, mountains on to the horizon. He was lost in an endless temple of jagged, frozen rock. The wind was growing colder as they progressed. It was as though they were heading into the grip of winter.
"We have another day and a half on the carts. Assuming nothing breaks down, we should be there by nightfall tomorrow. What will you do once we reach the Forge? Are you planning on staying with us?" Gryn's question wasn't spoken with undertones of any kind, but Xandrith still felt as though what he was really being asked was, ‘How soon will you be leaving?’ Perhaps he was just reading too much into it, but he felt his welcome was wearing thin.
"I will provision and leave quickly. I have business higher in the mountains." Xan's answer was lacking any firm conviction. He didn't know where he was going after Forge Haven. In theory he knew what he was looking for, but he didn't really know how he was supposed to find it. Perhaps when he could still have seen the lines of magic he'd have been able to follow them to his final goal. Now he was magically burnt out though, so he didn't even know how to start his search.
"Higher in the mountains?" Gryn didn't seem convinced. "Trast, there isn't anything higher in the mountains. It gets colder the higher you go, and eventually it gets so cold that the air goes thin and frigid. Humans can't live u
p there for long. I don't know what you think you're looking for, but you aren't going to find it in the mountains. There isn't anything up there but frozen rock and the Unth."
Xan's attention peaked. "The what?" He'd never heard that term before.
"The Unth, Sky Dwellers, some people call them. I'm not sure what they are, really. They're a bit like were-creatures, but they don't have a human form. They're more reasoning than were-creatures. The Forge occasionally has dealings with them, but they mostly keep to themselves. They're very territorial. They don't let anyone up into their lands.”
"The Unth." Xandrith repeated their name. "Do you know if there are any of them at the Forge now?" If there was truly someone living in the peaks, maybe they would know how to find what Xan was looking for.
Gryn shrugged. "I doubt it. I'd say we see them maybe once every ten years, if that. They don't stay long, and they don't talk much. Usually they only approach us to make sure we're keeping clear of their boundaries."
Xan nodded slowly. "Is there any way to contact them?"
A suspicious look was settling on to Gryn's face. "I don't think you want to get involved with them, and you'd be better off not pushing their good nature. They haven't caused the Forge any trouble, and we go out of our way to make sure we return the favor. If you're thinking about starting some kind of trouble..."