With a grunt, Lorraii spat on the ground at the immortal’s feet, itching now to unleash the life-force of this despicable creature the way she had the last.
Scoffing, the amarach stretched his dull-grey wings. “I will not fight you, apostate. Not now. When the time comes and you join us at the end, you will know true vengeance. And it will not be at your own hand.” Then his gaze lifted briefly, and Lorraii knew what was coming.
The rune just above her breastbone seared her flesh when she summoned it, joined in an instant by those communing with the Sky Metal. Screaming in rage, she hurled the dagger at the immortal before her just as the muted cast of the cloud-darkened day brightened with a flash of brilliant white. The amarach disappeared, and her grating shriek seemed swallowed by the marginally less desolate landscape. She heard the thud of the dagger piercing the earth, and everything fell silent again.
Seething, with little direction for her boiling fury, the Ouroke screamed again and kicked at the loose, dry dirt beneath her. Her visitor had appeared only to provoke her, to inflame the open wound that would not close until an expanse of extinguished immortals sprawled unendingly at her feet. Whatever ancient laws bound him had prevented him from touching her, at least for now. But she would remember that pallid face and the uncharacteristic mediocrity of this particular creature’s countenance. Whenever she returned to give the immortals what they were owed, she would seek this one out first.
It took far longer to calm herself than she would have liked; the lack of appropriately satisfying target for her fists or her blades dug under her skin and made her want to tear at it herself. But finally, the tattooed woman managed a deep, shuddering breath, wiping the spittle of enraged cursing from her lips and chin. Then she retrieved the Sky Metal dagger from the dust and returned it to the loop in her vest. She needed a task—something to focus her.
As if someone had spoken the thought aloud, the image of the cave in the northern Bladeshales flashed within her mind, no doubt just as hidden and perhaps untouched, though she could not be certain. It had been so very long since fate had taken her that way, and while she had not returned there since her very first kill, she could not help now but remember fondly the trophy she’d taken—the first indulgent item in her adult life she had ever truly considered her own.
Amassing and maintaining material possessions had always been anathema to the Ouroke, and she had broken this precept from the very beginning, immediately turning against it the moment her first rune had inducted her as a true Ouroke warrior. And even on the day she was openly named Ruxii’s scion, she did not forswear that first reminder of her victory. Now seemed a perfect time, having just liberated herself from the second imbecile of a man bent on using her for his own gains, to return to what she’d been so unwilling to sever from her life. Lorraii was a proud woman, yes, but that did not stifle her fondness for the tangible reminders of how far she had come. She would go northwest into the Bladeshales, just beyond Shatterback Pass, to retrieve from that lone, isolated cave the hulking bear’s pelt she had worn her first winter as a warrior.
Chapter 11
They spent one more night in the hollow before Kherron and his companions came to the agreement that they could not remain there any longer. Paden assured them the military force they’d escaped would still be searching for their abducted healer, and it would only be a matter of time before their skilled trackers picked up the group’s trail. Kherron could not help but wonder why the man seemed so intent on putting farther distance between himself and the men with whom he’d marched and camped and served whatever lord commanded them. The healer acted more as if he’d staged his own capture, seeking freedom behind that ruse and fulfillment of a desire he’d sought long before the bear-woman and the Blood of the Veil forced his healer’s services at knifepoint. The man seemed genuinely content in their presence; awed by the seemingly faded symbols on the walls of the hollow, Aelis’ unnaturally quick healing, and Kherron’s abilities to invoke unimaginable responses from the world around them, Paden also appeared completely at peace with these things. He did not question any of them beyond commenting on their remarkable significance.
As for Kherron, he found himself with a burgeoning urge to roam this new world around him, to see and feel and root himself in the things he’d been denied his entire life—namely freedom and open air and any course of his own choosing. After the inordinately large number of things he’d learned of himself and successfully managed of his abilities in such a small amount of time in Aelis’ presence, he felt himself expanding with new possibilities, itching to discover them in all of their imaginable forms. He did not wish to wait any longer for someone else to decide his fate.
Aelis herself seemed the least enthusiastic to leave, though she’d been the one to tell them their time in the hollow had ended. She grumbled and fidgeted, slumping against the wall of the hollow and scowling while the men gathered what little provisions they had in the first place. Kherron shouldered his pack more out of habit than anything; he had an acute feeling he would not need anything contained within it for quite some time, if not ever again.
Finally, Aelis kicked herself away from where she’d leaned against the inside wall and trudged out into the crisp morning air of a new day, the corners of her mouth turned down with whatever displeasure plagued her. Paden stepped after her quickly, having nothing more to his name as an abducted healer than the cloak and clothes he wore and the long steel needle he kept in a deep pocket of his tunic with the length of twine. Kherron followed last, trailing his hand along the rough inner wall and the occasional lichen growth upon it.
He stopped when a sharp tingle bit at his fingertips, holding him back as if the wall itself had grown jaws and gently held him there within them. Some unknown whisper tickled at the back of his mind, though he could not this time discern what he took to be either the stone’s request of him or its supplication in answer. The intent behind such a sensation ran deeper than Kherron’s capacity to understand it, and after a moment of confusion and mild surprise, he dropped his hand from the wall and the copper images depicted in the stone. Whatever the hollow had meant to share or ask of him in that moment was lost on him, but he found himself making a silent promise to return when his confidence as a Blood of the Veil was hale enough to try again.
The cold swept in around him when he stepped completely from the hollow, despite the clear blue sky and the sun lighting it through the treetops. His boots crunched upon the hoarfrost formed in the night, and he took a deep, cleansing breath of the sharp air. The sense of freedom and endless possibility returned to him, very much like the first time he’d left a sacred pool and wandered into the natural, snow-packed clime of this region—only stronger now, because he’d managed a few things between now and then. Turning slowly toward Aelis, he only realized he’d been grinning when the woman’s inexplicable glare wiped the expression from his features.
For a few silent, strained moments, the group stood beneath the trees and stared at one another. After having fulfilled their immediate needs for rest, food, Aelis’ recovery, and escape from Paden’s army—which still struck Kherron as an odd thing for all three of them to have accepted—it seemed none of them had thought much more beyond just that.
Paden cleared his throat, pulling Kherron from the sight of the red-haired woman with her arms folded in defiance. She stared off into the distance and refused to meet his gaze, as if he’d done something to offend her. “I take it the two of you haven’t yet discussed what happens next,” the healer said, his voice low and wary.
Kherron raised his brows. “The last plan resulted in us... finding you,” he said, hoping the man would not take insult to the euphemism of his abduction. Paden merely gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We hadn’t really thought to look much further than that.” The healer nodded at his reply, as if he’d expected such an admission, then looked to Aelis next.
The woman seemed to harden herself even further under both men’s scrutiny. Kherron had a
nticipated her taking the lead again in this next decision, yet her and Paden’s roles in this seemed to be reversed; he would have expected the healer, given the circumstances of their meeting, to respond with as much reluctant animosity as she so clearly harbored instead. A few more moments passed them by, the silent morning pierced by a few cold-weather birdcalls.
“So what is your decision, Kherron?” Aelis voice rose in a low growl, but she did not look at him.
“My decision in what?” he blurted, surprised and confused by the woman’s sudden gruffness. It contrasted in the extreme with what he’d learned of her and what she had shown him within the cavern beneath the hollow, and he did not understand the cause of such a jarring transformation of her mood.
Rolling her eyes to stare at the sky, she let out a quick, exaggerated huff. “In where you choose to go next.”
Kherron blinked at her, wholly at a loss as to why she now responded with such vehemence. “I thought...” He cleared his throat and shot an uncomfortable glance toward Paden, but the man seemed to have found an inordinate new interest in examining his own fingernails. “I thought you might have more to show me. That we’d... go on together.” His face burned hot once the words left him; they sounded childish and desperate, as if he had no other aim but to once more blindly follow another stranger set in his path who knew far more about himself than seemed natural. But he’d felt something growing between him and the red-haired woman, some new bond nurtured by their short time spent beside the sacred pool and the oak tree underground. He felt foolish now for having set so much stock in it, though he hadn’t realized it before becoming the sudden target for Aelis’ bitterness.
She finally let herself meet his gaze, and her eyes narrowed in a way that sent a shock of unexplained fear through Kherron’s belly. “That depends on whether or not you intend to finish what you started.”
“What?” His newfound optimism deflated almost entirely at her implication. Her sharp words had dredged up into the present the memory of what he’d abandoned for his liberation from the realm of purple mists and endless dying.
Aelis took a deep breath, as if she fought not to scream at him. “You can’t expect me to believe you wandered without a purpose before our paths crossed.”
“I did,” Kherron replied, holding her brown-eyed gaze and clenching his fists, silently daring her to push it further and hoping she would not.
“I mean before,” she shot back, meeting him with the same level of intensity and seemingly undeterred by the defensiveness of his understanding. “Before you freed yourself from the void.”
Kherron clenched his jaw. “That’s finished,” he hissed through his teeth. He knew Aelis referred to his forsaken vow to Dehlyn, to the burden of his being named the one to end the immortal war. But he’d put that behind him when he’d quite literally broken that bond and freed himself into a new life.
“It is not,” Aelis replied, her words sharp and clipped. “Just because you’re no longer enslaved does not mean you are relieved of all duty.”
Before he could gauge the level of his anger, Kherron had closed the distance between them, towering over the slender woman in the bearskin cloak. “You have no idea what you’re saying,” he growled, alarmed by the strength of his irritation and unable to control it. “I gave everything I had to leave that place, including what bound me to her. What drove me toward her. I made my choice, and I’ve washed my hands of the whole thing.” He sounded so sure to his own ears, so full of conviction, as if he’d already laid plans for what he was to do next with his life that did not include amarach and prophecies and ancient designs. The red-haired woman glared up into his face, her arms folded across her chest. The image of her silent defiance spurred him on further.
“And when did it become your duty,” he added, “to tell me what I have and have not decided? You can’t imagine what I’ve been through. What I’ve failed to do. You may know more of what I am than anyone else, but I hardly think you’re a successful example of personal judgment.” He gestured to her, from head to toe, with one sweep of his hand. “You can’t bear to hold a conversation without closing yourself off, and you are not the one to decide anything for me. However long you’ve been away, it was long enough to delude you.”
He regretted his words the minute they’d left his mouth, but he could have done nothing to stop them. In the silence left by his final statement, the trees around them groaned and creaked, though no wind blew through the forest beside the hollow. Kherron swallowed and pushed out a sigh, forcing himself to calm because he did not wish to wield his strengthening abilities out of turn and hurt her. This he seemed to have already done with his outburst.
Aelis blinked furiously, though she did not break their gaze. Her cheeks flushed nearly the same color as her hair, her eyes dark pools amidst the rising color. “You sound just like Geyr,” she muttered.
While Kherron could not tell whether or not she’d meant for him to hear it, he bristled at the mention of this unknown person. Whoever Geyr was, the man seemed irrevocably burned into Aelis memory; though he was not present in body, the woman carried the weight of his person in spirit, in every thought, voiced and unvoiced alike. It reminded Kherron very much of the way he’d carried Dehlyn, and it turned his stomach. He opened his mouth to speak, feeling the sudden need to apologize, but she did not give him the chance.
“It may be finished for you, Blood of the Veil,” she said and took a deep breath. “But so many others do not have the luxury of changing their fate. I’ll show you.” She dropped her folded arms and trudged past him, the hem of her bearskin cloak brushing against his thigh.
Kherron turned to gaze after her, grateful she had not berated him too harshly for his criticism and disconcerted by that same fact. Only then, as he watched her march across the frozen ground, did he catch sight of Paden and remember the healer’s presence. “Where are we going?” he asked her.
“To a clanning,” she called without looking back.
Feeling more foolish for her dismissal than if she had raged against him, he finally met Paden’s gaze. The man raised his brows and shrugged in concession, wordlessly affirming he held neither stake nor judgement in this conversation he so clearly did not understand. Kherron gave the man a small, self-conscious nod, then headed after the bear-woman with the flaming hair. Paden turned to join him, and they left the hollow behind them in silence.
Kherron quickly found himself grateful for the cold air and the occasional wind rolling down the mountain ridges to the north. Aelis set a fast, steady pace, and while soon sweat built beneath his woolen cloak, its cooling in the crisp air kept him from what would otherwise have been an uncomfortable trek. They headed northeast, and Kherron came to realize after a few hours that they could only be deeply entrenched in some mountain range he had never planned on traversing. Sharp peaks rose in all directions—rocky cliff faces and steeply dropping crags above the sloping forest. He only oriented himself and their course by the arc of the sun rising to his right. But he knew, if they traveled any closer to those towering escarpments, they would lose much of that direct sunlight, and he would have more than a difficult time in pinpointing his own location. Until he either left these mountains or came to know them as well as Aelis seemed to, he could not part ways with her.
That was, of course, a poor excuse for remaining in her company. He tried to convince himself of it, but in truth, he knew he could find his way anywhere if he truly wished it. The forces with which he communed as a Blood of the Veil would, no doubt, ensure he wanted for nothing when it came to basic necessities and protecting himself. He had proven that much already. And while he’d been frustrated and angry at Aelis for bluntly reminding him of the rest of the world—moving and living and very much at the whim of ancient forces teetering on the precipice of destruction—he did not wish to leave her. Not yet. She knew too much of the world he wished to explore, and, if he faced the truth of it, he liked her—when she was not bitter and dismissive and thrashing behi
nd whatever hardened wall she’d built around herself. And he had nowhere else to go—no other plan.
They covered more ground before nightfall than Kherron could have ever expected, and Aelis did not let them stop for more than a few minutes until the sun had all but disappeared behind the snow-covered peaks looming before them. When she did finally stop for the night, with only the grey-blue light of dusk hanging in the sky, it was an abruptly unpredicted affair. She hadn’t slowed her pace toward this clanning she’d mentioned but merely stopped beside an outcropping of large boulders—covered in moss and sitting at jagged angles, as if they’d broken from the mountainside and tumbled to their final resting place in pieces. Then she gathered twigs and branches from the forest floor, of course not bothering to look for dry kindling or strip the fallen wood dry. They had Kherron instead.
It took him a moment to realize what she was doing, then he and Paden shared a silent glance and set to helping her. They had a sizeable arrangements of impossible-to-light wood in a matter of minutes, which, of course, Kherron managed to set ablaze with a glance of acknowledgement and a silent thank you to the timber and the flames.
The ground here beside the boulders was not soft or comfortable. Pebbles and larger stones dotted the area, and Kherron found himself having to dig out these wayward lumps from the earth before he could ever be comfortable with sleeping here. It made him wonder if Aelis had merely conceded to make camp here for the night with their last bit of daylight, or if she’d chosen this place with spiteful intent. She seemed unaffected by the rocky ground, her bearskin cloak quite obviously thick enough to cushion her where she sat. Kherron very much wished, for the first time, that he had a bedroll with him; it was far too cold out here without the shelter of the hollow—and even beside the crackling fire—to remove his woolen cloak and use that. But again, he had never anticipated being this far north, or in the mountains, where the hoarfrost covered everything always but for the brief few ours when the sun hung directly overhead.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 12