“I don’t know why we have to be doing this in the dark,” the woman said. “We’re going to kill ourselves out here just looking for them.”
Kris’s hand found its way into Nolan’s, though her eyes were trained towards the road.
“Try not to make a sound,” Rhea breathed. “Don’t move. Trust me.”
The crunching footsteps passed them and faded for a few moments. Nolan kept his breathing shallow. His heart sounded too loud in his ears. In another minute the footsteps returned.
“We did the spell wrong,” a nasal-voiced man said.
“No we didn’t. They just changed direction,” the woman answered. She sounded like she was in her thirties or so, and cranky. “Pollo, give me your hand.” There was a pause. “They went that way.”
“Into the woods?”
Nolan’s pulse jumped again. He and Kris both turned, but Rhea shook her head urgently at them. She put a finger to her lips. Kris narrowed her eyes. Nolan squeezed Kris’s hand.
“Into the thorny, freezing, stinking, woods.” The woman sighed impatiently. “Wonderful. We’re using light then.”
“They said—”
“Admes, Tobin said they drained her less than a week ago. She’s lucky she’s not dead by now. We have three mages and a magni. There’s no point in breaking our necks out here.” She sighed. “Pollo, can you stay with the horses? Admes, Laci, come with me.”
Footsteps crunched nearer. One light hovered overhead, casting eerie shadows over the ground. Branches started cracking. Someone stumbled and swore. The light went out.
“Gods curse it, go ahead and make your own lights,” the magni woman snapped.
Two lower, dimmer lights hovered a few feet off the ground. The three crashed nearer, and a man in his early twenties, Admes, came into view first. The mage woman that held the second light had wandered farther away from Nolan, so he couldn’t see her clearly, though he saw her light wobble back and forth in front of him. The magni woman, a thirtyish woman with pinched features and a nose that was turning red, followed close behind Admes. Both of them squinted in all directions. Admes was no more than forty feet away from Nolan, but his gaze slid right past Nolan’s face.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “Tracks.”
Rhea’s breath hissed.
The woman frowned at the ground and nodded. “They must be close.”
Nolan’s stomach felt like a leaden knot in his gut. His heart drummed in his ears and his knuckles started to grind into Kris’s. The Rusamites walked slowly, muttering over the banked fire. Rhea, her eyes slightly unfocused, kept her hands raised. It was an illusion spell, Nolan guessed, or some kind of trick of the light she was able to pull off, to keep them hidden like this. He’d read about those kind of spells, but never seen them performed in real life. It was as good a spell as he’d ever seen, to let them be so hidden with Admes and the magni woman just a few feet away, but it wouldn’t stop the Rusamites from running straight into them.
Nolan could feel Kris’s shallow breathing pressing into his arm. Very slowly, she reached back to the gelding’s packs, where the quiver of arrows Berrin bought was hanging. Nolan wished he’d learned to shoot. He wasn’t even sure where the bow was right now.
“They can’t have gone far,” the woman muttered, her eyes on the ground. She was now so close that in the odd glow from Admes’s hands, Nolan could make out a few freckles on the magni’s nose and cheeks.
And then she and Admes both caught fire, hit by an explosion that knocked them both onto their backs.
Kris jumped. Star spooked and yanked away from Nolan’s grip. Nolan stared between Rhea’s outstretched hands and the shrieking Rusamites, where the magni woman was reaching desperately for Admes’s hand. Nolan’s hand found his knife and he leapt before he’d even thought about what he was doing. He landed hard on the mage’s chest with his knife buried beneath him. The mage stared up at him in horrified surprise, but his eyes emptied quickly. Beside them, the magni woman had reached Admes’s hand. The flames on her faded just as Nolan felt one of his pant-legs catch fire. He jumped away from the burning mage, batting at the flames.
From the road, the mage with the horses was screaming. Branches started breaking, and both he and the third mage, Laci, arrived at the scene with one sparkling hand raised and wide, frightened eyes. White lightening from Pollo crackled past Nolan’s shoulder. Something exploded behind him.
The ground rippled away from Nolan’s feet with raw power. Tree limbs, rocks, and brush flew in all directions. Nolan stumbled and fell. A black stone crashed into Laci’s face. She dropped with a sickening sound of breaking bone. Nolan tackled the other mage, only to find that part of a tree branch was already buried in the man’s side. He fell limply, cradling the branch in his stomach with a bloody hand. Nolan gritted his teeth and slit the man’s throat—almost a mercy stroke at that point, he thought.
When he looked over his shoulder, Kris was kneeling over the magni woman with a shocked expression, her hand wrapped around an arrow in the magni woman’s chest. Rhea, a thin, triumphant smile on her face, sank shakily to the ground.
“We won,” she said simply.
Nolan looked down at his bloody hands and shirt, his scorched pants, and the smoking, shattered trees around them. The shoulder caught by Pollo’s lightening was throbbing. Worst of all was Laci’s caved-in skull.
“I guess we did. You’re both all right?”
Kris nodded woodenly, swallowing hard. “Did you know any of them?”
Rhea shook her head. “No. I’ve seen her before,” she jerked her head at Laci, “but they must have been from another Block.”
Kris nodded, staring at the magni woman. “I recognized Admes, but I didn’t know his name.”
Nolan cupped a handful of snow and rinsed his hands off with it. “You know there was nothing else we could have done. They would have—”
“I know.”
“Don’t worry about her, Nolan. Kris isn’t sentimental about magni.” Rhea said. She chuckled and ran her fingers through her hair. “I didn’t know I could do magic like that.”
Kris finally broke eye contact with the dead woman. “Only when no one’s tapping it away from you.”
“Do you have anything left?” Nolan asked. “Can we bury them?”
“Or burn them at least?” Kris agreed. “We shouldn’t leave them out like this.”
Rhea raised her eyebrows. “After what they would have done to us?”
Kris scowled. “No one should be left like this. If we can help it.”
“And we already have a body trail behind us.”
Rhea shrugged. “All right. All right. I’ll dig out a hole.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That night dragged on forever. After they moved the bodies together and covered them up, they awkwardly gathered up what was left of their campsite. The cook-pot had melted, and the last of their bread had been crushed into the dirt. The tent had blown over, and had a few tears in it, but it was still in one piece.
More serious by far was the problem that both the horses had bolted, and were nowhere to be seen. None of them liked the idea of staying by the gravesite waiting for more Rusamites to notice the missing men and women, but with almost all of their supplies still on the horses, and no way to even carry what was left of their supplies with the one bag they had left, the girls eventually agreed to let Nolan look for the horses.
Nolan spent over an hour hiking up and down the mountain, tracking hoof prints by the light of the star-jar, until he finally found Star and the gelding shivering by a small cave. Star’s saddle had twisted around under her stomach, and the leather had torn on the side. Nolan followed the tear gingerly with his fingers, past the leather and back to her flank. His fingers came away damp with blood. He held the star-jar up again, and saw that she’d sliced her side open with a jagged cut that ran from her ribs to her hip. Nolan didn’t think it was lethal, but if she’d been in his father’s stable she would have gotten stitches. Ev
en if he could have persuaded her to let him try out here, Nolan didn’t even have a needle.
The gelding wasn’t bleeding as badly as Star, but his left foreleg was too warm. He limped as Nolan took his broken lead and led him forward, and limped all the way back up the dark, branch-ridden, rocky slope to Kris and Rhea.
Both mages looked tired and cold when Nolan finally reached them again, but Nolan doubted they were as tired as he felt. His legs, back, and feet all ached, and his shoulder burned.
“You found them,” Kris said, relief and surprise mixed equally in her voice.
“But they’re hurt, aren’t they?” Rhea frowned at the gelding’s awkward steps.
“He’s lame. She sliced her side open somewhere.” Nolan passed the gelding’s lead to Rhea and rubbed his face tiredly. A few stray hairs prickled his hand. “I can’t help them much without better light. Can you…?”
Rhea shook her head. “Even if I had the extra magic, I wouldn’t know how to use it on a horse. Anna just taught me a little about helping people heal themselves.”
“We need to keep some magic back, too,” Kris said. “We can’t afford to have both of us burned out.”
Nolan nodded wearily, a pang of guilt twisting his gut. If he hadn’t stolen Star, she would be in a warm stall and perfectly healthy right now, not dripping blood onto the snow in the middle of nowhere. The horses hadn’t done anything to deserve being caught in the crossfire of his and Kris’s fights. His eyes lingered involuntarily on the patch of bare ground where the Rusamites were buried.
“How are you feeling?” Nolan asked. “They’ll be better off with just the packs if—”
“I can walk,” Kris said.
“Maybe we can change horses at the next town.” Though Nolan didn’t know who would take two injured horses in trade.
“Maybe.” Kris resettled her gloves on her hands, glanced at the burial site, and cleared her throat. “We should move on. Someone’s bound to notice those four missing soon. Or find their horses.” She picked up the bow and the quiver of arrows and handed them to Nolan. “Take these. Don’t put them down again.”
Nolan shouldered the quiver, wincing and promising himself that now he’d learn to use the new weapon.
They crunched back through the brush to the mountain path, then up the mountain slope into the night, with Rhea in the lead and Kris carrying the star-jar between them. It was a painfully slow, bleak night.
Nolan couldn’t believe he’d just been through his second—or even his third, counting the mob in Tevesque—fight that was something like a battle. He’d killed three people. All people who would have hurt him or Kris in a heartbeat, but Admes had only been following orders, and even the magni with him hadn’t sounded too eager. He knew they hadn’t had a choice, but it was very strange to be on the side that attacked first. And again, to be the one who walked away, leaving corpses behind.
His father would be horrified. If he ever saw his father again.
“How far to the north are these caves of yours?” Rhea asked after a few hours.
“We have to cross out of Ostmonton and through the eastern branch of Ustengard, but that’s not very wide, just some mines.” Nolan pictured Yohanna’s map and thought through the math. “Another hundred and fifty miles or so, and then this range meets the Twilight Mountains.”
“And how far after that to the caves?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a long time since anyone’s found them. No one’s mapped it.”
“The magic in them probably wouldn’t let anyone map the caves even if they tried,” Kris commented. “But that probably means the magni won’t be able to track us once we’re passed Ustengard. Or if they try, they’ll get lost.”
“So that’s something.”
“But we might all get lost too,” Rhea said levelly.
Kris raised her head slightly. “Yes. We might.”
“So it could all be for nothing.”
They walked a few more steps. “It could be,” Nolan said. “But it’s our best chance.”
“Best chance, maybe. It doesn’t sound like a good chance to me.”
Nolan felt his temper suddenly spark. “Well we can’t change that. We just have to try.”
No one answered for a few moments. They crested a rise in the path and, finally, saw the first touches of sunlight on the opposite hillside.
“We can’t find the sorceress—or whatever she was—to have her reverse this, if she even could,” Nolan continued. “No one knows where she lives. And I don’t know anything else that might have enough power to do or undo a spell like this. If you have a better idea, let me know. But if you don’t this is our best—our only—chance to fix things.”
“It could kill you.”
“We have to try.”
Rhea finally looked back over her shoulder, frowning. “Why do we have to all die going after a fool’s errand?”
There was a heavy pause broken only by the horses’ uneven footfalls and a birdcall.
“You don’t need to come with us, Rhea,” Kris said finally. “No one’s looking for you, still. And there’s no reason three of us should go. We only have two sets of the snowshoes anyway.”
“So let you go freeze to death alone?”
“There are two of us,” Nolan pointed out sharply.
“In a pair then. It’s still pointless.”
“What would you rather we do, Rhea?” Kris asked. “Just let everyone still in Rusam—and the other worlds—all die?”
“Kris…” Rhea stole another look over her shoulder. “They might all die anyway.”
“Have you thought about it?” Rhea asked over breakfast later. They’d reached another village in late morning, and stopped at the local tavern. The tavern owner had glowered at them all when he saw the injured horses, and called for a younger man who arrived with a rope twitch, hot water, and a needle and thread for Star.
“Thought about what?” Kris asked without opening her eyes. Her head was lying in her arms, but to Nolan’s relief she didn’t look sickly anymore, only exhausted.
For his part, Nolan felt like the skin over his cheekbones had slid down past his chin.
“About where to go from here.”
“We told you,” Kris said. “North. Through Ostmonton and Ustengard, to the Twilight Mountains.” She opened one eye. “It’s okay if you don’t want to come.”
“I don’t want you to go either,” Rhea said.
“I have to.”
“I do, at least,” Nolan corrected her. “It was my wish that did this, not yours.”
Kris put her head back down on the table. “And I’m staying with you.”
Rhea raised her eyebrows slightly, trading a look between Nolan and the back of Kris’s head.
“Kris, we could do this,” she said, leaning in closer to them both. “If we keep going, keep moving for a little while longer—”
“The magni are chasing me, remember?”
“And we fought them off. We can do it again. Kris—I never knew how much power I really had. And once yours comes back…it would take ten of them—or even more—to take us on.”
It was Nolan’s turn to raise his eyebrows, amazed that this girl was taking the Rusamites’ deaths so lightly. “You can’t keep running and fighting forever.”
“We wouldn’t have to do it forever.”
Kris sat up again, frowning and rubbing her face. “And then what?”
“Whatever we want,” Rhea said with a small laugh. “Isn’t that what you were always telling me—how much we needed more say in our lives?”
“Our world gone. Our families dead. Dead Rusamites all around us—they’re bound to pick up on that here sooner or later. What kind of life do you think there is for us here?”
“No life at all if you want to throw it away up on a mountain somewhere. We just need to get somewhere far away, Kris, once the magni give up on us. There aren’t enough of them here to organize like they could in Rusam.”
“Beca
use the rest are all still in Rusam,” Nolan pointed out harshly. “Trapped in that jar.”
Kris shook her head. “You don’t need to come, Rhea, I told you. But this is my choice. Our choice.”
Rhea shook her head, her mouth tight. “I’ll stay with you through Ustengard then. You’ll need all the help you can get through that border crossing.”
Nolan sighed and dropped his head onto one fist, letting his shoulder muscles relax slightly. He’d never really expected Rhea to stay with them the whole way anyway. “Thank you.”
Kris frowned at Rhea, her brow furrowed. “Yes, thank you.”
With Rhea’s help translating, they were able to trade the gelding for a donkey named Nila, but no one was interested in taking the freshly-sutured Star. Nolan half-wished he could find her a home and save her more time climbing up and down the mountains, but he would have been sorry to say good-bye. Nila was a jennet with bland eyes and a heavy coat of gray fur that was going white around her muzzle—a better trade than Nolan thought they’d get in such an isolated village. She carried the gelding’s packs with no trouble, and Star flinchingly carried Kris for a half-day at a time.
Nolan carried the bow with him constantly now, grateful that Berrin had bought more than one string for him, as he didn’t dare unstring it. If Rusamites caught up with them again, he didn’t want to have to wait for them to be on top of him before he could fight back. The arrows could do him much more good than the knife, if he could use them.
And if it wasn’t the magni behind them that he needed to prepare for, there were still the Ustengardians ahead of them. Rhea warned that crossing the northern Ostmontian border was not as easy as crossing through other countries. Even though Ustengard only held a narrow strip of land north of Ostmonton, the land held gold deposits that had been fought over for centuries, and the mines and passes into them were guarded by soldiers year-round. Foreigners were strictly forbidden. Or so she’d heard.
What Nolan knew was that refugees from Ustengard had been trickling into Suria for two years, since the new king, Lejik, took power. With the backing of the Ustengard army, he’d spent the last two years driving out witches, priests, and anyone who threatened the absolute authority of King Lejik, along with their families. The Ustengard army was famous for its strength and infamous for its brutality. Rhea’s warnings were well founded.
Star Thief Page 21