There was nothing quiet or gentle about him at all anymore. Now that he thought about it, Darien reminded him of a banked fire burning low, awaiting only the smallest draft of air to ignite.
The sun was starting to sink toward the horizon in front of them when Darien suddenly drew his horse up and announced that it was time to make camp for the night.
Naia looked confused, staring down in aversion at the waist-deep grass beneath her mare and protesting, “If we press on ahead, we could make it to the shrine before full dark. It’s not much further.”
But Darien was already unloading his horse’s saddlebags. “Not tonight. I’ve something for Kyel to do first.”
Kyel waited for him to elaborate on that, but the man didn’t say a word more. Finished with unloading the last of his bags, he hobbled his horse and turned it loose to graze. Kyel decided he’d better stop watching and offer to help before Darien said anything. Soon he found himself set to the task of wading through the tall grass in search of wood while the mage finished setting up their campsite.
Finding wood enough for a fire in the middle of a prairie was almost downright impossible, Kyel soon discovered. He tromped through the grass over uneven footing, his boots sinking through the topsoil into burrows that had been abandoned by whatever animal had originally dug them. He spread his hands out at his sides, letting the blades of grass trail against his palms as he moved through it. At last, after about a twenty-minute search, he found a small dead tree fallen over and hidden completely in the grass. He would have never even seen it if he hadn’t tripped over it first. The wood was decayed and brittle, so he didn’t have too hard a time snapping off enough branches to make a few armloads of wood, which he hauled back to the campsite.
As soon as he had the wood brought in, he found himself set to clearing a space for the fire, building the fire, and then cooking the supper, as well. After which, he got to clean everything up while the priestess lounged on a bed of grass and Darien occupied himself by sliding a whetstone along the edges of his blade in long, slow strokes. By the time Kyel had cleaned out the last pan and stuffed it back into his pack, he’d had just about enough. He had half a mind to tell Darien exactly where he could shove this whole acolyte business; it was starting to feel more like slavery than any apprenticeship he’d ever heard of.
He was just about to cast his tired body down beside the fire when the Sentinel finally resheathed his blade and stood up, walking away from the camp and beckoning for him to follow. Kyel didn’t even bother suppressing his groan as he trudged off after him. Darien led him a distance away from the camp, up the rise of a low hill, where he stopped and turned, waiting for Kyel to shuffle up the slope behind him. The moon was rising over the line of mountains in the east, its disk a murky yellow-orange.
“It’s time for your next lesson,” Darien said softly.
Kyel felt cold fingers of dread march up his back at the sound of Darien’s voice. There was a dourness in his tone that made Kyel think that he wasn’t going to like what his master had in mind.
“The first step of acolacy is learning how to sense the presence of the field,” Darien explained. “You managed that quickly. Let’s see how well you do with the second step: learning how to read its strength and direction.”
Kyel was taken aback, especially after Darien’s warning to him earlier that day. “Can you do that? I thought you said this was a vortex.”
Darien shook his head. “I can’t. But for you, this vortex provides a great opportunity for learning.”
“If you say so,” Kyel muttered hesitantly. He didn’t like the sound of it. He also didn’t like the way Darien seemed to be deliberately avoiding his eyes. Instead, he appeared to be looking out at the moonrise, as if studying it for some portent or sign.
Darien said, “You’ll need to reach out from deep inside your mind and get a sense of the magnitude and direction of the field. In a vortex, the field lines run almost parallel and become compressed together till they overlap. It’s called the Principle of Superposition. The strength of the field increases the further you go in. There’s a trick about it. You’ll have to ease your mind along the direction of the current. If you go against it, you’ll know right off.”
Kyel swallowed. “That doesn’t sound very reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
Kyel could only nod. Taking a deep breath, he did what Darien had told him, tentatively reaching out toward the field with his mind. Immediately, he felt a stabbing jolt in his head that crackled down the fibers of his nerves like a liquid slap of lightning. With a cry he brought his hands up and hugged his head. The pain was gone, but the memory of it still jolted through his body.
“That bloody hurts!”
Darien shook his head, folding his arms. “Then you went about it the wrong way. Try again.”
Kyel brought his hands down and stared up at him incredulously. “You’re not serious. I can’t do that again!”
“You’ll do it till you get it right. Now. Try again.”
Kyel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Darien was staring down at him impassively, arms folded against his chest. There was no hint of sympathy or even compassion in his face. He just stood there, waiting expectantly.
Feeling at a complete loss, Kyel tried to do what the man wanted. This time he used a slightly different approach when he reached out from within, using the most delicate touch he could. He actually felt the field for an instant, a tremendous, wildly surging energy that seized his control and wrenched it sharply away.
This time, the pain was exquisite.
Kyel screamed, doubling over. Clutching his head, he fell to the grass and flopped onto his back, gasping. The pain took longer to go away this time. His head throbbed with the pulse of every heartbeat, and his body shook in quivering spasms. At last, the grip of the pressure in his head eased away enough for him to relax back into the soft grass. He lay there, trembling, staring up at the stars as the Sentinel lowered himself down beside him and placed a steadying hand on his arm.
“Try again,” he urged softly.
Kyel shook his head. He couldn’t do that again. He blinked back tears as he stared up into Darien’s face imploringly. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The mage just gazed down at him, the look in his eyes as hard and desolate as the black slopes of the mountains they had left behind. Slowly, he rose to his feet, turning his back on Kyel. Then he walked away, his black cloak swaying from his shoulders while the emblem of the Silver Star glistened in the moonlight. Kyel lay back and watched him go, feeling hurt and more than a little bit betrayed. He could still sense the weight of Darien’s disappointment lingering in the air long after the man had gone.
He had no desire to return to their camp, at least not anytime soon. He didn’t even want to get up. His joints ached, and it wasn’t just from the ride. So he lay there in the soft and scratchy grass, looking up through the tall blades at the wash of starlight above in the heavens. The stars were so many, their glows seemed to combine and run together until it almost looked like someone had come along and spilt a pitcher of cream across the sky. It had been a long time since he had even seen the stars. In the pass, the only light that ever came from the sky had been that strange, flickering fire in the clouds.
He lay there for a long time, perhaps an hour. Perhaps longer; he had no way to be sure. Around him, the night was cooling steadily and the ground was growing hard. There was a rock digging into his back that he hadn’t even noticed before. Kyel sat up, yawning, and used his hands to push himself the rest of the way to his feet. Looking around, he felt a moment’s disorientation as he tried to remember the way back to the campsite. The fire had burned out; he couldn’t even see the glow of the coals. But at last he made out the shadow of his horse grazing in the distance under the light of the moon.
Kyel walked toward the horse, figuring the beast wouldn’t have strayed too far away from the others. As he walked down the gentle slope of the hill,
his eyes picked out the shadows of their camp. But when he got to it, Kyel looked down at the site in dismay.
Both Darien and the priestess were gone. They had taken their things. Kyel’s pack and bedroll were still there next to the ashes of the fire that had been smothered with dirt. But the two people he had traveled there with had disappeared as surely as if the prairie had just opened up and swallowed them.
Confused, Kyel tossed himself down on his bedroll. Had Darien decided to abandon him, just because he hadn’t been able to handle the turbulent power of the vortex? Or maybe it was because he had given up after only trying twice. Whatever the reason, the man was gone.
Kyel’s hand went to a foot-long piece of wood lying next to him on his blanket and picked it up, wanting to throw something. He moved his arm back to toss it. Just as he did, he noticed that there were words carved into the bark. Blinking, he held it up before his face, staring down at the letters that had been scratched there deeply, apparently with a knife, then rubbed over with charcoal to darken them.
Follow the field.
Kyel almost choked on the sudden, drenching anger that flooded through him. He brought his hand back and howled in rage as he threw the piece of wood away from him with all his strength. His horse looked up from its grazing, snorting as if offended by his action.
He couldn’t believe Darien was doing this to him. The man had said he wouldn’t go easy on him, but this was downright cruel. He had half a mind to just pile his things on his horse and ride back to Wolden. From there, he could just follow the Great Northern Road all the way back to Coventry, back to home. He had been doing the man a favor when he had agreed to accept Darien’s offer. If this was the way he was going to be treated, then he might as well just forget it. It wasn’t worth it.
Growling, he surged to his feet and went to collect his horse. The moon was full and bright, so it wasn’t hard at all to see as he saddled the animal and loaded it up with his things. He pulled himself up into the saddle and, with one last contemptuous glance back at the campsite, set his mount heading east, back across the prairie toward the road.
“You did it to yourself, Darien,” he muttered.
He had gone perhaps half a league before he pulled back on the reins and stopped his horse. Cursing the mage silently, he wheeled the animal around and sent it at a gallop back to the campsite, where he climbed down and led the beast forward. He had given the Sentinel his vow, and the mark it had left on his wrist was a visible reminder of it that was probably going to haunt him to his grave. Kyel had never gone back on his word in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now. He didn’t even know if he could.
He thought about just heading west, the direction the priestess had been leading them. Naia had said the shrine was only a short distance from here. Maybe he could find it on his own, without having to open his mind up to the fierce energy of the vortex. Or maybe he would get turned around in the dark and find himself hopelessly lost. Grudgingly, he decided that strategy wasn’t going to work.
Closing his eyes, he tried to brace himself for the pain. Then he groped outward with his mind.
The lightning-like strike in his head was immediate, and intense. It almost took him to his knees. In the back of his mind he could hear Darien’s voice coming back to torment him, Try again.
“No,” Kyel groaned, shaking his head even as he forced his will outward again into the rushing torrent of the field. This time, he actually got a sense of the direction of the current, right before the searing backlash of power drove into his mind like a molten dagger.
Sobbing outright, Kyel staggered forward, clenching the reins of his horse in one hand, the other hand clutched around the back of his head, gripping his hair in a fist. His vision was so streaked with tears that he could hardly see. He felt his way ahead with his feet, stumbling as he tripped over something in the grass.
He groped again for the field, taking just a tentative sample before flinching back again away from it. He waited for the slap of pain, and it took him a moment to realize that it hadn’t come. Startled, Kyel blinked the tears out of his eyes. He’d done something different this time, something right. Only, he wasn’t sure what it was he had done. He tried to remember, but it was not something he had consciously thought about. He just hoped that he could repeat it again, when he had to.
But now he knew where he was going, at least. The currents of the vortex were raging in a south-westerly direction, sweeping across the rolling swells of grass. It was a good thing he hadn’t just started walking, hoping to blindly run into them; the flow of the field was slightly different from the direction they had taken in from the road. He would have ended up lost, and would have been lucky to make it back to the campsite just to start out again all over.
Kyel put his foot into the stirrup and pulled himself over the back of his horse. He was too tired to walk, so he let the animal carry him over the open grassland, pausing after a while to check his bearing against the field lines. Again he felt that sharp, searing jolt, though not as painful this time. So he refocused his mind and cringed in the saddle as he tried again.
This time it worked, and he knew now what he had done differently. Instead of just casting his will out across the flow of the field, he had felt along it, going with the current instead of cutting across it. It was just as Darien had said, only Kyel hadn’t really understood what the mage had meant at the time. Trying that strategy again, he almost laughed; it was so easy. He couldn’t believe what he had been putting himself through, just to figure out this trick. He kicked his horse to a lope across the grass, not even bothering to draw back on the reins the next time he reached out and stroked the power of the vortex almost expertly.
He rode for perhaps an hour, following the lines of magic as they bent gradually further toward the south. By the time the shadowy figures of two horses appeared on the horizon in front of him, Kyel had become adept enough at gauging the field that he no longer had to continue groping out to reach it. Instead, he just left his mind open to it, keeping it in a state of constant awareness.
When he reached them, Kyel saw that both Darien and the priestess were sound asleep, their horses grazing a short distance away. Kyel dismounted, making no effort to be quiet as he slung his pack down on the ground beside the sleeping figures and turned his horse loose to graze with the others. Darien didn’t stir, even while Kyel rummaged through his pack and rolled out his bed. It made him so angry; while he had been back there, all alone and sobbing in pain, Darien had been making himself a cozy little camp and falling blissfully asleep.
Kyel had almost come to think of the mage as a friend. How utterly foolish he had been. But, as he closed his eyes and thought about his experience, he remembered something the priestess had said to him, back when they had first started out from the keep: Some people tend to be hardest on those they care about. Kyel scoffed. He glanced over at Darien, wondering if the woman could be right. But the Sentinel’s peaceful face betrayed nothing of his secrets.
When he awoke the next morning, Kyel found that the sun had already risen well above the mountains in the east. The camp was pretty much broken down around him; Darien was just fixing the last bag to his saddle. Naia smiled a warm greeting Kyel’s way as she broke off a bite of biscuit and lifted it under her veil to nibble on it daintily. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, bringing a hand up to rub the sleep out of his eyes. His back was sore, his joints stiff, and he was still very tired. He’d had very little sleep the previous night, and none at all the night before that. He felt as if he could have just gone on sleeping throughout the entire day.
Darien turned and, noticing him awake, started toward him. Kyel looked down, not trusting himself to keep the anger he yet felt from infecting his eyes. Darien lowered himself down and settled beside him in the grass.
“I’m not going to apologize for what I did,” Darien told him gruffly. “And I don’t expect your forgiveness. You made it here. That’s all that matters.”
&nbs
p; Kyel felt his stomach sink like a lead weight. The man had no remorse, harbored no feelings of guilt or shame. More and more, Darien was starting to remind him of Garret Proctor.
Darien seemed to be waiting for Kyel to say something. When he didn’t, the mage stood up and dusted off his clothes. As he started walking away, Kyel heard him say softly, “It took me half a year to learn what you did in two hours last night.”
Kyel had a stinging retort ready on his lips, but decided to leave it alone. Darien’s mentor probably hadn’t dumped him down in the middle of a vortex and left him all alone with a stupid message to follow the field lines. It galled.
Chapter Nineteen
The Catacombs
THE DAY WAS GROWING almost warm as they rode with their backs to the sunrise. Slowly, in the distance, a light gray structure rose in front of them, seeming somehow to grow right out of the horizon. It looked so small and so alone, only a square patch of brightness in a vast expanse of unrelieved green. Darien knew it must be the shrine; he had seen others like it before, scattered in various places throughout the land. This one looked even smaller than most he had seen. As they drew closer, it became apparent that the shrine was no bigger than a small marble house with a gently sloping granite roof.
They rode their horses up right to the front of the building. There were no paths going to or from the shrine. The sea of grass just stopped at the threshold of a broad opening that was as wide as the entire front side. Within, black and gray tile took over where the prairie’s green carpet ended. They dismounted in front of the doorway and, to Darien’s surprise, the priestess led her horse inside. The mare’s shod hooves made a sharp clatter as it moved over the tiles of the floor, slipping a bit as they fought for purchase on the smooth surface.
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