Chapter 13
For two more days, they trudged across the frozen ground, the temperature dropping drastically as they ascended across the smaller mountain ridges. Aelis led them in an almost completely straight, northwesterly line; Kherron found it remarkable both that she remained on such a direct course, without ever seeming to double-check or reorient her position, and that he felt absolutely nothing when it dawned on him they traveled in the exact opposite direction he’d been pulled to travel before his time in the realm of purple mists.
The first day, Aelis’ rather unfriendly silence had softened into something much more akin to begrudging acceptance, the difference between the two quite staggering. Eventually, when she calmed enough to manage looking him in the eye again, Kherron felt himself truly wanting to apologize for his outburst. The fact that Paden hardly ever left their side, though, made this a little less possible and a little more uncomfortable.
There was nothing wrong with the man, truly; he was quiet and observant, offering to help with any task requiring extra hands, which wasn’t much through their light, fast-paced traveling. But the healer’s presence greatly lessened the opportunities Kherron might have had to speak with Aelis in the way he truly wanted, which required as much privacy as the sacred pool in the underground cavern had given them, albeit far less reverent gravity. Even still, he did not know why Paden still traveled with them. While Aelis had not told the man he could not join them, neither she nor Kherron had explicitly invited him to accompany them to whatever clanning Aelis intended. Somehow, the healer’s infinite patience with the tension growing between Kherron and the bear-woman made Kherron wonder even more as to the purpose of Paden’s decision to go with them. It would have been one thing if the healer were wholly oblivious to such quivering expectation between two people, as a child had no awareness of the dangers in approaching a lit stove, only of their own intensifying curiosity; but Paden did in fact seem entirely aware of what had occurred between his traveling companions and what might yet still take place—though he might not have understood all the details—and his decision to ignore it and continue anyways seemed more puzzling to Kherron than the former option. And a little more dangerous. The healer still had not revealed his intentions in joining them further, only that he would eventually return to the military force that had so uncharacteristically endeavored to retrieve a man who seemed now to be far more than a simple healer marching beneath the banner of whatever sovereign he served.
That first day did bring other surprises. As deeply entrenched as they were in these mountains, they saw but little direct light, the sun itself curving toward the shorter days of impending winter and disappearing quite early behind the peaks before them. This did not, Kherron bemoaned, help the already startling chill that began when the sun disappeared rather early behind the rise of mountains and lasted until the sun had lifted itself clear into its highest point once again. And even then, the brief hours of warmth helped only marginally. He had not done so once since leaving the Iron Pit, but Kherron now found himself longing for gloves; he’d never in his life expected to wish for their protection against the icy numbness of idle hands in this weather and not the searing heat of the forge.
Just as the brilliance of what served for quite the early sunset behind towering mountaintops spilled into a valley the unlikely group had entered, Aelis stopped quite suddenly and raised a hand. Kherron glanced back at Paden just a few yards behind him, but the man merely shrugged. Neither of them could see what had caught Aelis attention through the trees, but she did not turn to either warn them back or beckon them forward.
Hesitantly, Kherron continued toward her, stepping as lightly as he could and grateful for the cold, sodden ground dampening the sound of it. When he stopped beside the bear-woman, she did not turn to look at him, merely raising her hand in a slow, discreet gesture to point ahead of them. Though she did not seem in the least bit alarmed, Kherron found his own senses on high alert, which must have been the cause of him overlooking completely what had made her stop in the first place.
Aelis stepped toward him, placing her hand on his back and nearly pressing herself entirely against his side. She leaned toward him in an attempt, Kherron realized, to place their line of vision on the same path and pointed again, this time fully extending her arm. While she stood only as high as the middle of Kherron’s chest, he found himself dipping his head to follow the line of her raised hand, as if he meant to hear her whisper something in his ear.
Then he saw it. Where the trees of the forest broke briefly, the valley opened into a small clearing of brown grasses, damp and heavy with snow nearly melted where the last beams of sunlight fell over the mountaintop. At the far end of the field stood three deer, long necks bent to the ground as they grazed on the brown grass soon be the season’s last readily available food. The minute he caught sight of them, the largest dear—a doe with huge brown eyes—lifted her head, turned it slightly, and stared right at him.
Kherron felt the weight of the animal’s glance nearly as much as he felt the gentle pressure of Aelis’ hand on his back, and he knew the doe saw them both. The other two deer beside her were smaller, thinner, shorter on spindly legs and still sporting the last, fading traces of a fawn’s white spotting. One of them looked up briefly to follow its mother’s gaze, then returned to grazing. The other seemed entirely too intent on feeding itself, taking two calm steps away from the others, muzzle working in the brown grass; its short tail twitched.
Instantly, Kherron thought of the deer he’d seen as he’d traveled east on the Watcher’s Road, a few days before he’d come upon Gileath Junction and the four aged traders who ran the nearly abandoned depot. There was, of course, no way to know whether these were the same three with which he’d shared the road for the majority of that day; perhaps the nearly grown fawn with its face hidden by the tall grass did indeed boast the patch of white hair around its eye, though it never looked up to confirm such a possibility. Kherron realized quite fully how unlikely it was that the three silent, observant traveling companions of his from so long ago had made it this far in as much time as he, traversing flatlands and hills, valleys and mountain passes, not to mention a crossing of the Sylthurst River. But the intensity of the doe’s gaze upon him felt remarkably familiar, and Kherron’s very existence had become a compilation of stark unlikelihood in nearly every facet.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Aelis dip her head in a nod toward the doe across the field. He should have been more surprised when the animal nodded in turn, lowering her slender neck to return the subtle gesture and all the while focusing intently on the newcomers.
Then Kherron felt Aelis’ other hand settle lightly against his chest. He turned his head to look at her, intensely aware of her body pressed against his thigh and hip, of how close her upturned face was to his as he gazed down at her. He felt the warmth radiating from her—or perhaps it was the flush of surprise and something more rising in his own cheeks—and the dark, earthy scent of her washed over him. He was close enough to bury his face in the wild tangles of her red hair, but her small, expectant smile, her brown eyes alight with understanding, made him content enough just to share that gaze with her.
A brief moment of anticipation left him vividly imagining the warm, solid feel of her waist beneath his hand, the way she would turn toward him when he wrapped his arm around her to pull her closer. His hand lifted to do just that, and then the crack of broken branches underfoot shattered the moment.
Paden approached to join them, presumably to see for himself whatever had at first caught their attention. Aelis slid her hands from Kherron’s chest and back, blinked, then looked away and brushed past him, keeping within the tree line to skirt around the field and lead them onward to whatever destination she had in mind.
Kherron took a deep breath and let it out slowly, Aelis’ sudden departure leaving him as stunned and disappointed as if someone had at once stripped the clothes from his body and left him to stand there naked in
the chilly air. Swallowing, he glanced once more at the deer, who had turned to now slowly make their way across the opposite end of the clearing, faces bent once more to their search for food.
The healer watched the animals, then let out a short, surprised hum. “I had expected something else,” he said, pressing his lips together beneath a frown of disappointed expectation. When Kherron glanced at him, the man only raised his eyebrows and offered a little shrug. “Sorry.”
After a moment, Kherron found himself smirking at the healer, who smiled back in shared acknowledgement of the seemingly private moment Paden had so unwittingly interrupted. Rubbing his face, Kherron glanced at the sky, where the sun had now set completely behind the rising summits, and said, “Don’t be.” Then they turned to follow the red-haired woman leading them through the mountains, who did not stop to wait for them and did not turn back.
THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER Kherron had finally managed to dip below the half-lucid state of uncooperative sleep, the sun finally lifted above the peaks behind them in nearly the direction from which they’d come. Paden snorted and groaned into waking, which jerked Kherron out of his fragile sleep and brought him jolting upright where he lay. The sunrise nearly blinded him, the fire had all but died, and he blinked away from the glaring brightness of morning to see Aelis standing before both men, one eyebrow raised, her arms folded beneath the heavy bearskin cloak. Her unruly locks twisted and curled around her face, bits of twigs and damp leaves clinging to it everywhere. Kherron envied her the cloak itself consisting of far more than his poor, woolen excuse for proper mountain attire; the woman seemed completely rested.
Aelis said nothing, but Kherron and Paden both silently gathered what little belongings they had—namely Kherron’s pack and the waterskin—and responded to her silent command to continue with her along whatever unknown path she tread. While he felt truly awful for the lack of sleep, he couldn’t help but stop beside Aelis before they started on their way again, reaching out to pluck a number of leaves from the tangle of her red hair. She gazed impatiently up at him while he did this, and the simple fact that she did not slap his hand away and storm off encouraged him to continue. When he pulled one alarmingly long twig from the back of her head and raised it between them as proof, he pressed his lips tightly together to keep from laughing at the absurdity. Aelis glanced briefly down at the stick between his fingers, then back up at him to offer a slow, unapologetic smile, as if she’d expected it to be there and took pride in its presence. She rested a hand briefly on Kherron’s chest—the urge to grasp it with his own and hold it there was nearly overwhelming—before turning again to trudge on across the frost-covered ground.
He tossed the stick and followed her, hearing Paden grunt behind him in an attempt to prepare for another day of travel on foot.
MUCH OF THAT DAY PASSED like the day before it, though they did not come across any more deer. After so long spent in silence and not truly knowing their companions’ thoughts, the healer took it upon himself to fill that tedious void with stories conjured from his childhood of the games played with other youth during the long, snowy winter months of his home.
The man was a passable storyteller. Had Kherron not ever set foot in these mountains and seen snow or felt such cold for himself, he thought he would have still been able to imagine it all quite vividly the way Paden put it. The man described the frozen ponds at the forest’s edge, on which he and a close friend had lured younger, hapless playmates to watch them slide and fumble across the ice, nearly following suit themselves in fits of laughter; the fun there, he’d said, had lain in both the hilarity of the scene and the thrilling prospect of danger should the ice break beneath them, though the ponds were shallow and not so wide to threaten more than a heart-stopping dunk and perhaps an ague afterward. The man had apparently been quite the trickster in his youth, taking every opportunity at hand to torture the stablemaster by pilfering and hiding tack, grain, and tools in places not meant to be searched. Paden burst into laughter himself when he regaled them of the adventures he and this close friend undertook by slipping atop the new carriage purchased just before the snows came that year—horses still harnessed to the shaft—and whisking themselves wildly cross the slippery grounds until nearly launching the thing into a snowdrift.
Kherron found the tales amusing, a relief amidst the last few days filled with a stoicism of which he’d grown weary. Yet he found himself wondering just what type of place it was in which the healer had been raised. He knew full well the Iron Pit was a place more severe in demand and punishment than most, especially in dealing with breaking young boys of their mischievous habits—at least insofar as they could be discerned by the wardens and Pitmasters. But he could not imagine that the son of a farmer, or a trader, or even of a head servant in a larger household would not have escaped with as little reprimand for such actions as Paden’s tales seemed to suggest. Unless, of course, the man had intentionally avoided the true ending to such stories, choosing instead to relive the glory of childish roguery and not its shameful consequences.
In an unexpected attempt at subtlety, Kherron asked after the repercussions of Paden’s misadventure with the carriage, as no doubt the two ruffians who had commandeered it had been caught red-handed. The healer’s smile faltered only a little, and he replied that, while the adults had decided he was to blame for having conceived and executed such a maddening endeavor, his friend had been given the more severe physical punishment—extra duties around the estate that left the poor lad exhausted and without a moment’s rest. But, Paden added, he himself had suffered more in humiliation and shame—without the added physical labor—as his friend’s sentence had been meted out in direct response to the healer’s own failings, and both boys had known it quite distinctly.
“He—” Paden closed his mouth with an audible click, and Kherron turned briefly in their trek to gauge the man’s reaction. The healer caught his gaze and lifted an open hand in concession. “He’s always been a good friend.”
Kherron nodded, turned, and resumed following closely behind Aelis at her quick pace. No, he did not think Paden had ever endured the same punishment as his peers; he rather suspected the healer had had no true peers in his childhood, though the question remained as to how severe the gap had stretched between the man’s station in life and that of the other youths who had shared his childhood. Asking that, however, would have greatly illuminated his suspicions, and while the healer’s continued presence among them remained a mystery, the man had helped them. He’d aided in Aelis’ recovery and had been remarkably optimistic and accepting of the group’s surprisingly inexplicable circumstances, and Kherron did not wish the healer to mistake his curiosity for begrudging Paden’s company.
“What of you, Aelis?” Paden called ahead. Kherron could not help the twinge of discomfort at the sound of her name on the healer’s lips, but he forced himself to push that aside; it had been spoken in nothing more than attempted comradery. “I imagine you have a story or two of childhood mischief that would top my own.”
Neither of them had expected the suddenness of her whirling around to face them, the bearskin cloak whipping against her thighs and nearly billowing with the force of her movement. Her companions stopped in their tracks, the cold air thick with surprise and confused tension. Aelis glared at Paden, as if his simple question had been far too inappropriately personal, and opened her mouth. But the words seemed caught in her throat, something akin to a shame Kherron recognized only too well battling with the anger creasing her brow. Then her eyes flickered to meet Kherron’s own gaze, and a deep blush colored her cheeks, paling even the fierce shade of her hair in comparison. She blinked furiously and whipped around once more, offering only the sight of the heavy cloak upon her tiny frame, and resumed their trek.
With wide eyes, Paden puffed out his cheeks to suppress a heavy exhale of surprise and most likely relief, tipping his head in acknowledgement of whatever struggle had consumed their nearly volatile companion. Kherron could only
raise a shoulder in half a shrug when the healer glanced at him, and they followed the bear-woman again in silence once more, albeit abruptly enforced. He understood completely how easy it was to be struck by another’s unwitting statements; he couldn’t begin to count the times mere strangers had pierced his meager defensives and cut straight the core of his shame, having said nothing more than a sentence or two, repeated by countless acquaintances in the number of weeks before he’d found himself in these mountains and present company. But he could not for the life of him discern what agony had been forced to the forefront of Aelis’ mind by Paden’s simple and unassuming mention of his boyhood impishness. And it seemed highly unlikely she would ever offer an explanation.
When they stopped again to make camp before darkness set upon them, the forest provided them their last meal of the day—another hare and two plump pheasants. Kherron refused to give himself credit for these impossibly easy catches, even within the solitude of his own mind. Aelis scowled at the sight of so many feathers, but Paden took it upon himself to pluck the birds clean and ready them over the fire. Whatever the man’s upbringing, he knew how to handle game, admittedly far better than Kherron himself.
As they ate gathered around the fire, Aelis even deigning to partake of a few morsels herself, Kherron realized he’d grown accustomed to the echoing silence of the cold, frost-covered forest around them when the bear-woman’s voice startled him from that comfort. “We’ll be there tomorrow.”
Licking the grease from his fingers, Kherron looked up to see her staring at the ground, nearly shredding the small piece of pheasant in her hands. She did not raise her head to look at either of her companions, and her jaw worked with an unknown tension. “Good,” he said, immediately wondering how in the world he’d thought that an appropriate response. Aelis seemed to feel completely the opposite.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 14