by Shelley Cass
“You are one brave, crazy Nymph!” the burly General called Sumantra cried. “Listen to them down there! This will inspire hope if nothing else does!”
Asha gave a smile that showed all of her bloodied, sharp teeth. “Perhaps before I return to Glaidin’s march I can tour the City with you, and help you strengthen your defences with magic.”
Sumantra looked keenly interested as they walked along the Wall, not even noticing all of the soldiers and citizens clapping him on the back and celebrating around him. “And how exactly will your magic be able to aid us?”
Asha settled back into Friendly’s arms. “I will help to strengthen your traps so that next time they won’t be pulled from where they are tied. I will make water rise from deep below the earth to create more natural wells. Then the crops beyond the gates will be safer and homes all over the City will have more water against the fires. And anything else you can think of when you see the extent of this one little Nymph’s power.”
Sumantra had grown uncharacteristically excited. “Tomorrow will be a very enjoyable new day.”
Chapter Eighty Three
Noal
After seven days of preparations and meetings with Durna and Aeron I had even started dreaming of attending conferences. Discussing carts and weapons, tools and canvas marquees, food rations, armour, healer materials, numbers coming, and numbers staying.
I was glad of the relative break offered as the Three of us were at last free to join the Krall men, who had already been volunteering their physical labour for days.
Kiana had stayed with us all at first, showing herself to be truly content and capable in the valley fields after having been raised in a major harvest village. However she had been quickly sought out by the owner of a smithy inside the City, who had heard of her talents in the forge. Her face had lit up and she had immediately disappeared with him, rolling her sleeves up in anticipation.
Dalin’s motivation for the outdoors had waned a little then, though I had spent the day happily in the fields, helping to load bundles of harvested goods into carts – and watching for the moment that Maeve would appear at the gates.
“I think you’ve earned your break,” Dalin informed me as he wiped his brow and we both caught sight of Maeve.
“I quite like working in the fields,” I grinned at him, dusting my hands.
“Personally I’d prefer to find myself work in a smithy tomorrow,” he told me.
“Yes. Fields are rather convenient for me. Not so for you,” I told him as Maeve approached, and I could make out a coy smile on her delicate lips.
“You and Maeve have been seeing a great deal of each other,” Dalin commented wryly, alluding to how he’d fallen asleep at Kiana’s table the night before, waiting for us to finish conversing.
“She’s swapped to make our room her final duty, so she can stay a little longer to talk,” I informed him happily. “We talk about everything now. Last night she talked about the machinations of the Jenran City and how a piping system runs through the entire mountain to carry water to every pool and fountain. Apparently at the top of the main mountain the peak has been flattened into a magical, water holding basin by the Unicorns.”
“I bet you don’t care what she talks to you about,” Dalin laughed, and waved at Maeve as she drew closer before he moved off.
And he was right. I kept her talking just to hear her light voice and to keep her with me.
But we had both also shared much about ourselves that was more intimate than even some of my most open conversations had been with Dalin or Kiana. And as she’d come to know my deepest emotions over my past, Maeve had held my hand and I had for once focused more on the person beside me rather than the memories themselves.
Maeve had also described her own past, and that she too had been orphaned at a young age when her parents had been taken from the farming fields by Griffins. Maeve had herself been left on the edge of life as she had received scratches on her arms that had become infected with the filth of the Griffins.
While she had been recovering, Maeve had befriended the head healer of Jenra, Lady Amarantha, who had already established strong charities and mentoring systems for victims of Griffin attacks. With Lady Amarantha’s help, Maeve had been given her indoor job and in return she had often volunteered her time to help in Amarantha’s wards.
“I did not wish to scare away the Raiden.” Maeve’s face was like sunshine as she reached me at last. I couldn’t help but reach for her hand.
“If you hadn’t, I would have,” I told her warmly. “When we talk time already melts away too quickly before you have to leave me. I can’t afford to share you.”
We both left unsaid the painful fact that we had only seven more days before I would have to be the one to leave for good.
Chapter Eighty Four
Dalin
I watched Kiana send sparks flying into the air as she wielded a mighty hammer with unbelievable strength and precision, somehow creating a delicate curve in the metal she worked upon, rather than a dent before she set down her tools.
“It’s definitely not the quality I would like usually, but it’ll do for the amount of time that we’ve got to make so many,” she was saying now to a smithy as she scrutinised the helm she had just finished.
He appeared every bit as impressed as every other blacksmith she’d worked with after word of her talent had spread.
In contrast, I was leaning my chin on the handle of a scratchy broom, after having been relegated to an out of the way corner. I was quite inept as a farmer – only being useful for heavy labour. And I was even less useful in a forge.
While Kiana set her tools away, the burly blacksmiths who had watched her work appreciatively for most of the day seemed almost wistful for her to be going. But nobody minded too much when I leaned my broom in a corner and left the shop with her as well.
“I’m tired,” I yawned at her as we moved towards where we had said we would meet Noal after another of his walks outside.
“Oh dear,” Kiana remarked sympathetically, wiping at the sweat and smudges upon her brow. “Holding up that broom was a challenge.”
“Simply dreadful,” I agreed.
“There’s Noal,” she commented, her sharp eyes picking him out from the crowd.
“Does he look sorrowful again today?” I asked.
She nodded. “Poor mite.”
Noal hardly even greeted us as he dolefully clutched a vibrant flower that Maeve had surely picked for him.
“Well …” I said. “Perhaps we should head back up the mountain to wash away the grime of a hard day’s work before dinner.”
Kiana raised an eyebrow at my almost grime free appearance.
Noal managed to smile. “You don’t really look like you’ve had a hard day this time.”
I grinned. “I think my broom gave me a splinter. Perhaps you should carry me up the mountain in case it’s serious.”
Kiana tapped her chin. “I could always try flying you both up there …” she offered. “But I haven't tested how much weight I can really carry yet.”
“You’re too kind,” Noal declined politely. “But I would rather carry a thousand heavy Dalins up twenty mountains than be dropped mid-flight.”
“Heavy?” I asked, wounded.
Noal laughed. “I meant muscular.”
“Kiana!” we all glanced up to see Thorin fighting through the crowd, his expression betraying true exhaustion after he and some of the others had been recruited to spend the last few days giving Aeron’s soldiers insight into Krall fighting tactics. His hair stuck to his forehead and his shirt clung to his body.
“Kiana,” he panted again when he reached us. “I'm meant to tell you that Lady Amarantha has some maps for you from her Council member husband …” he took a breath. “She’s just finished a healer training session in a courtyard near the market place. I passed her on the way in.”
“My thanks,” Kiana clapped him on his shoulder, and it was my turn to feel a little dol
eful as she immediately left us to flit her way through the crowds.
“Gods I’m tired,” Thorin grimaced as she left.
“Now you actually look like you did a hard day’s work,” Noal replied.
“Noal, you may have to carry him up the mountain instead of me,” I commented as Thorin almost sagged on the spot.
“It’ll be a heroic effort to carry that big lug,” Noal considered the idea.
Thorin tiredly jerked his head towards one of the ever rising and falling carriages being pulled up and down the walls of the mountain. “Or we could catch a ride on the cable systems.”
I squinted upwards. “Those things are for transporting heavy goods like cattle,” I said. “I am not a cow.”
“Definitely not a cow,” Thorin reassured me. “But look at the cables running in between those used for raising and lowering big goods,” he persisted, pointing out another set of cables with a smaller carriage attached.
“They’re usually used for smaller goods, or by the elderly, the sick, or any injured soldiers. They carry people up to where they need to go so that they don’t have to climb,” Thorin continued. “And the way I see it, it’s not so embarrassing if we use those things, seeing as we aren't used to climbing mountains every day.”
Noal and I were quiet for a moment.
“That’s not embarrassing at all,” Noal agreed.
“We’re very official people,” I agreed further. “We don’t have time to walk for ourselves!”
We were already making our way across to the now overly appealing cable system for the elderly or infirm.
“In fact I am very upset to only be finding out about this marvel four days before we leave,” Noal complained as the wiry looking master who manned the elevator waved us in beside a carriage load of bleating sheep.
“Well this is nice,” Thorin stated smugly.
“Thank the Gods my legs aren't climbing,” I agreed, and we all reached our rooms in a much more timely manner than usual.
However I was disappointed that, when I left our room for Noal and Maeve to have their time as the sun set that night, I found Kiana still wasn’t back.
Chapter Eighty Five
Dalin
A strange sensation, a tingling, ticklish feeling, seemed to be flowing into my fingertips and then into the veins along my arm.
My mind woke to the sensation, but I didn’t open my eyes for a moment as I let the simultaneously serene and energised feeling ebb from my shoulder and into my chest.
A fresh breeze brought the scent of flowers with it – such a sweet smell, and I registered that it was close. So I turned my head towards it and then opened my eyes.
Kiana, stunning beyond all words, was leaning over me. Her half smile played across her lips and her hand had covered mine, but now she entwined our fingers together so that I felt suddenly very dazed. Almost breathless.
Starlight filled the room, its silvery beams illuminating her wings and making the blood red stone upon her throat seem dazzling while her eyes were exotic and wild again.
Kiana squeezed my fingers and the prickling, tingling warmth of her magic danced further across my chest and into my other arm, twirling its way past my elbow.
It at once felt as if my arms were stronger, somehow more incredible than the rest of my average anatomy, and my eyes widened.
Kiana straightened, drawing me up to stand beside her before she spoke, and I tried to shake myself out of complete mesmerism.
“I’ve had an idea,” she said softly, “that I was hoping you might agree to try.”
Right then I would do anything she ever asked of me.
“I remember what a shock it was for you when my magic touched your vision last time. I swore to get your permission before trying something like this again,” she continued.
“What is it?” I asked huskily. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”
She smiled again as my body seemed to lose touch with mortality. “I want to see what it would be like to fly with someone else. Properly. Not just carrying them in a short burst.”
I swallowed hard.
“I want to know if your body can adapt and survive just as mine can. If my magic can help you to do that.”
“I am glad to be the one you want to try this with,” I told her, my gaze held firmly transfixed by her wild, bright eyes.
“You’re sure?” she almost whispered.
“I trust you,” I answered firmly.
Kiana lifted her free hand to rest it against my chest. “Then don’t fight my magic,” she warned as the wondrous, weightless, bursting feeling erupted to spread rapidly through my core, down my spine and along every nerve ending.
It felt as if the power of the Gods was being poured into my ungainly body until everything about me had been heightened and enhanced.
The stars seemed brighter. The sound of the breeze in the trees of the valleys far, far below became suddenly clear. The scent of the sea became stronger.
I gasped as I felt the pupils of my eyes readjust themselves to suit a creature of flight, and winced as I felt my lungs change too, but Kiana’s steadying hand kept me calm and I peered up to find her smiling widely.
“It worked,” she whispered contentedly. The red jewel at her throat glittered.
I shook my head dizzily, disappointed. “I have no wings.”
“But look,” she breathed. “I am your wings.”
I followed Kiana’s eyes and gasped again as I saw that together we had lifted from the floor.
My heart pounded with elation. I had never felt so indestructible and free.
“Show me the wonders you have found outside,” I said with longing.
She tightened her hold on my fingers again. “Don’t let go,” she warned, and she guided me across the room – my body somehow floating along beside hers towards the balcony.
I wanted to see the mountains from above. To gaze down on the bobbing yellow flowers of the valleys. To fly above the crashing waves. I wasn’t even nervous as we flew together to hover above the railing of the balcony, and looked beyond and below the great mountain. Then with a gentle push, we were floating slowly away from the security of the stone walls, gracefully treading the air as if it were water.
The cool wind didn’t sear my face or lash at my eyes. I felt no paralysing fear. And we were synchronised as we dipped and soared and somersaulted, our bodies entwining over the monstrous height as if we had been doing it for all of our lives.
“Is this how you felt when you first got your earth stone?” I asked Kiana.
“This is how I feel every time I use my magic to fly. It is as if I am made whole,” she replied. “It is good to have someone to understand that with me.”
I listened but couldn’t understand when a cloud of birds swirled about Kiana, chattering so that she laughed.
“They’re picking out what they seem to think are your faults,” she told me.
“And what are my faults?” I asked.
“No feathers,” she said with amusement. “A flat mouth. You wouldn’t be able to provide me with the grubs or worms that they could.”
“I see,” I replied. “Tell them that they aren't the ones you’re holding hands with.”
“They have no hands,” she pointed out with mirth.
I smiled. “Exactly.”
And when we started drifting easily back toward the mountain, I still hardly felt ready to let her go.
Chapter Eighty Six
Kiana
The sharp cry of the hammer gripped in my warm hands beat the tune of every smithy. The taut feeling of the muscles burning between my shoulder blades, along my neck and through my triceps, was a nostalgic familiarity.
My cheeks radiated with the hotness of the fires and the metals heating. I gritted my teeth and made another strike against the sword on the anvil, sending sparks dancing, and all around me there was the song of the smithys’ hammers and the hissing of glowing blades as they were plunged into water.
Steam
rose from our bodies as well as our creations while we followed the rhythmical routine of our toil, and I felt incredible peace in the mindlessness and precision.
Until I saw Dalin day dreaming out of the corner of my vision.
He had come to find me after having spent his time training with the Krall and Jenran soldiers. His narrow chin rested on top of his hands as he leaned over an unused work bench and gazed at the flurry of action about the shop. And his green eyes seemed to flash as the fires flared in the dance of the blacksmiths to the song of their tools. He watched as they instinctively wove and dipped around each other.
I would miss those green eyes.
I would miss Dalin.
And all of my men.
When I finished at the smithy Dalin was still waiting, and we walked together quietly for some time, in no rush to return to our rooms.
“What do you want most in the world, right now, apart from our Quest to be successful?” I asked him after a while.
I waited while he was thoughtfully silent, before he reached for my hand.
“To have you all to myself,” he said in a candid tone. “Like last night.”
I regarded him for a moment before I pulled him to a stop beside a wide window in the walkway that overlooked the valleys. Nobody was about as the sun began to set and people returned home.
“Very well,” I said. “Then that is what you shall have.”
His eyes widened and a smile played about the edges of his lips as I let the magic that swirled within me now spread outward to flow through him.
It wasn’t uncomfortable. Not like I was losing or completely giving myself over, but simply like expanding my living being and awareness. As if I was pouring a second self, my shadow, into another so that I could share for a time.
The shapes of the green in his eyes sharpened and we both stepped up onto the wide window sill together as my wings flickered into sight at my back.