Kherron considered the healer’s words and what he thought Paden was suggesting. “I don’t know. Torrahs has some power. I saw him conjure fire, and he seems to have an interesting collection of... allies. Beyond that, I have no idea who we’ll find at his side in that place.” But he knew who did. Slowly, he turned his head away from the healer to peer down at the Ouroke, who stood on the edge of a flat rock a few feet below them, staring down at the river and the expanse of the mountain range stretching seemingly forever. “Lorraii,” he called.
The woman looked up, her brows creased as if she’d been deeply pondering the landscape ahead of them, then flicked her gaze up to meet his.
“Does the old man have any protection there with him? Soldiers or mercenaries?”
“He had me.”
The scowl blistering her face was not aimed at Kherron, he knew, but at the topic of this new conversation elicited without warning—the first time he’d asked her to reveal any information about where they were headed. Even still, he didn’t appreciate her attempt to write off his question with her self-absorption. He tilted his head and raised his brows, which seemed enough of a clue for the woman to understand he wanted a real answer.
Her eyes closed briefly, and then she turned back to gaze out over the sprawling pass again. “That poor excuse for a fortress is filled with old, physically incapable men and green boys with scrawny arms.” She paused and let out a deep sigh. “The Wanderer has a measure of power the others envy, but they’ve been... practicing.” She spat the word as if it were the punchline to a humorless joke. “Incantations and summoning attacks. What I saw of their attempts was unimpressive, but they were trying to break glass with a feather.”
Kherron had no idea what that meant, but so far, it seemed those hiding away at Deeprock Spire wouldn’t present much of a physical challenge in the way of defending themselves—as long as Torrahs wasn’t allowed to employ the largest strengths behind his abilities. “Anything else?” he prompted.
“They had two bonded amarach in a tower when I left.”
This surprised him. He glanced at Paden before realizing the man focused intently on the woman standing just below them; how much the healer knew of amarach was entirely unclear, though the news didn’t seem to have any effect on the man. Perhaps he had no idea. Most people didn’t.
The thought of immortal beings at Torrahs’ command brought a new level of wary uncertainty to the prospect of entering Deeprock Spire, but Kherron had learned enough from Zerod Ophad and Mirahl to know that binding did not always mean imprisonment. Those two had quite clearly loved each other very much, beyond the constructs of time between an old man and a bonded amarach who looked less than half his age but was, in reality, unfathomably older. Mirahl had broken whatever immortal law had kept her within this world, banished from returning to her people, to bring Dehlyn to him one final time at the very start of his harrowing journey. It had cost her dearly, but it had proved so many things to Kherron that would have been otherwise impossible for him to accept. Many amarach did not want him to succeed, but there were those he could name allies.
“Are they sympathetic to his cause?” he asked, unsure how much the woman understood of bonded amarach or the factions of the immortal beings for and against Torrahs’ intentions with Dehlyn.
The woman shrugged. “Is anyone?”
“Lorraii...”
Her head bobbed side to side in reluctant acknowledgment; she knew she pushed the limits of his patience with her quipping remarks. “They’re bonded,” she finally said, turning her head again to look up at him “so they must do what their humans command of them. But they do not do it willingly, no.”
Kherron nodded. “Did you hear Paden’s question?”
The woman’s eyelids fluttered, as if she used all the willpower she’d ever possessed to contain her irritation and still failed in completely doing so. Her lips pressed together. “The Brotherhood has been perfecting a magic I’ve never seen before, and it grows stronger.” She let out a deep sigh. “And still, their targets have only been bound, physically and by immortal law. Defenseless. Unable or unwilling to fight back. Perhaps both. I imagine only the Wanderer has enough resolve to stand against an approaching army. The others may have gained some confidence, but they will scatter like so many startled mice.” She eyed the men staring down at her from the rocky ledge above, then rolled her eyes, apparently exasperated by their silence. “So an army couldn’t hurt.”
“There you have it,” Kherron told the healer, and this time, the man did meet his gaze.
Over the last few days, he’d grown a surprising and not unsettling appreciation for all the time Torrahs must have spent with the Ouroke woman; getting a straight answer from her was like drawing clean water from a mud puddle. She was coarse, ungrateful, unwilling, and acted like every breath from her companions was a veritable insult upon her person. Despite all this, he and the tattooed woman both knew she understood her predicament; she was his hired sword, so to speak, and her retainer was her own life. Even still, Kherron found the prospect of treating her like nothing more than a tool, moving by his own hand and responding to his will, particularly distasteful. She had not chosen to become this thing that could not exist without a master, though she likely had done nothing in her role as either her father Ruxii’s scion or the last Ouroke on this earth to redeem herself from the burdens of her purpose and the countless acts she’d committed. But she was still a person—a living being with emotions and necessities and pride—and however much it taxed his patience, he chose to entreat with her as such. Perhaps it would eventually have some effect on her sour disposition; perhaps it would not. Either way, it made him feel better.
“I think it’s time I return now,” Paden told him, raising his brows and nodding, as if they’d made this decision together.
“If that’s what you want, of course,” Kherron said. “You’ve always been free to leave.”
The healer let out a slow hum of consideration. “Yes, but now I have a reason for it. If an army can aid you in any way, Kherron, I’d like to offer you the use of mine. After what I’ve seen...” His brows drew together above the hint of a smile. “Well, I don’t understand the half of it. But I do believe if any man has the power to change the course of this world falling apart, it’s you.”
Kherron tipped his head back and regarded the man with a confused curiosity. “Well, thank you. But I don’t think an army is going to believe anything you tell them enough to shift a campaign entirely and head east. No matter how many soldiers you’ve healed.”
“They will if that is their Lord’s command.”
With a brief glance at Lorraii, Kherron found the woman staring once more out over the cliffs and the rising peaks of the mountain pass before them, though he was sure she still listened to them. And he felt like he’d missed something crucial in his own conversation.
Paden seemed to read his incomprehension as if Kherron had voiced it aloud. “For so long, I was told my interest in the fantastic was nothing more than a waste of my time,” the healer said, then gazed up at the sky darkened with slowly approaching storm clouds. “Beyond helping you, this is a wonderful opportunity to present my father with a plate of his own ignorance and force him to eat it himself.”
“Your father.”
The healer grinned. “Is Lord Rattegar. I try not to dwell on that misfortune, Kherron. And as often as I can, I wish to keep that fact a secret. I was sent on that impossible campaign by an order I could not disobey, but I don’t have the slightest taste for warfare.” The man shook his head; some unshared memory seemed to bring him a bitter amusement. “I am a healer. And I left the strategic operations to my commander. Evar is both a dear friend and a loyal soldier, and he will turn Lord Rattegar’s forces toward any end I deem appropriate.”
Kherron pressed his lips together just to reassure himself his mouth hadn’t dropped open in surprise. He knew next to nothing about the Lords of Marohd and the Dorynvhine; their names mea
nt very little and he had of course never seen or heard anything of them during his isolated life in the Iron Pit. He did, however, recognize the name from what felt like eons ago, when the elderly siblings at Gileath Junction, Mattheus and Nina, had argued with their cousin Sid and crippled friend Cor about the uselessness of what Nina had called Lord Rattegar’s hopeless war. And he did know enough to recognize that abducting a Lord’s son from the military force upon which he and Aelis had stumbled—at knifepoint, no less—and spiriting the man away with his own terrified and uncontrolled use of the gateway would be enough, under any governing body, to bring a swift and vengeful punishment down upon his own head. And all the while, Paden had deliberately chosen to say nothing of it.
The healer let out a bark of laughter, which spilled over the cliff and echoed throughout the range. “As far as I’m concerned, Kherron, you’ve done nothing wrong. No one will be coming for you. You have my word.” He held out a hand. “And you have my army.”
Kherron took the man’s hand, trying to blink back both his shock and his gratitude, and they shook. So many of the healer’s stories, his mannerisms and surety, were revealed in their entirety at this realization. Knowing his suspicion of the secrets Paden had been keeping from them since the moment they slipped into his tent hadn’t gone unfounded made Kherron feel a little better, despite the fact that he also now felt duped by his own ignorance—again. “I have a lot to be grateful for,” he said, and Paden laughed again before releasing his hand.
The exaggerated snort Lorraii offered with a theatrical roll of her eyes wasn’t lost on him, but he didn’t really care what she thought of the odd and so very unlikely friendship he’d formed with this healer revealed to be a Lord’s son. Her opinions—as far as this was concerned—held very little sway. He chose to ignore her and focus instead on the wonders of fully knowing the truth about anybody.
A flutter of grey wings cut through the equally grey sky muted by coming storm clouds, and then Kayu stood with them at the cliff’s edge. Even Paden had become accustomed enough to the bird-man’s shifting presence that he no longer stared in wide-eyed fascination when wings and hollow bones grew to arms and torso and beak shrank into a rounded nose in a fraction of a second. Their Nateru companion stared out over the sprawling pass, his head cocked severely in birdlike consideration. Kherron had noticed the man’s movements growing jerkier, more fluttery, with each passing day of their travels, and he’d started to wonder just how much longer the bird-man had within this brokenness of the world before he could no longer be anything but a bird.
“The healer has made a decision,” he said to Kayu, who turned toward him slowly, then blinked at Paden. “He wants to return to his army.”
“They haven’t made it remotely this far,” Kayu replied. “Still a day or two west of this range’s first pass.”
“That far west?” Kherron asked. They’d entered what Kayu had referred to as Shatterback Pass four days ago, though the Nateru seemed not to have enjoyed the name he made sure to mention had been given to this unrelenting rise of rocky peaks by man.
Paden offered a wry chuckle. “I imagine they’re not moving very quickly in any direction. That will change once I return to them.”
Kherron raised his brows. “I can’t just let you go on your own.” The temperatures had dropped palpably in the last few days, and the healer had nothing on him but a pair of suturing needles; Kherron had been providing all of them—except for Aelis—with food since he’d realized his odd ability to do so.
“And I can’t let you waste precious time by escorting me in the opposite direction of your goals,” the healer replied. It hit Kherron then, with those words, just how much Paden truly did believe in what this novice and even still highly inexperienced Blood of the Veil had set out to do.
“There’s a small farm in the valley on the other side of the river,” Kayu offered. “Yaks.”
“Yaks?” Paden laughed.
“Someone there may be able to escort you, if not take you all the way back by wagon. It’s not very far from the main road through the pass,” the bird-man replied.
“There’s a main road through the pass,” Kherron repeated, wondering why the Nateru couldn’t have told them this simple truth before they’d spent so much time climbing over freezing rock and exerting themselves on a journey through this landscape that left little room for ease of travel.
Kayu blinked at him. “The healer’s army has remained beside the main road through the Dorynvhine, as I’ve come to learn most large military forces do during similar campaigns. You and Aelis did not.”
Kherron had to acknowledge the truth of it; they’d fled from the military encampment with their abducted healer in tow, and he’d never bothered to note in which direction. Aelis had led their party through thick woods without manmade landmarks and most likely without very much passage by man at all when she’d taken him toward the clanning. Now, they’d been on a nearly direct southeast route since that day of darkening, fractured power that had erupted without warning and split the clanning into so much scattered confusion. Most likely, trying to return to any type of road would have cost them time he didn’t have, and moving along well-known paths always meant those traveling were far more easily discovered. “Point taken.”
“We could be at the farm before sunset,” the bird-man added. “Provided you don’t feel it necessary to stop for every conversation.”
Lorraii’s low chuckle filled the silence after the Nateru’s glib remark, and Kherron made yet one more decision to ignore her flippant responses as well as Kayu’s apparent irritation. He really had no idea what the man experienced through all this; despite his apparent slide into what hinted at permanence as his grey jay, drawing ever nearer, Kayu had remained silent on the subject of this change, whether or not it was out of an unwillingness to speak of himself or a terrified acknowledgement that he did not fully understand what was happening to him. Either way, they all were aware that time was running out—at least for the world as they knew it.
“I think we can manage it,” he said, satisfied by his success in masking the surprise from his voice. With a nod, the Nateru took his bird’s form once more and fluttered off ahead of them down into the valley.
Amidst the Ouroke’s continued chuckling as she shook her head and descended the other side of this rise, Kherron met Paden’s gaze. The healer merely raised his brows and gave the barest hint of a shrug. It should not have surprised either of them that the bird-man might come to respond to them in this way; nothing now could be expected to remain as stable as it had been for longer than either of them had lived.
They headed back down the other side of the mountain toward the valley below and whatever farm awaited them there. Kherron couldn’t help but wonder just how they would be received by the people who lived there—this odd band of travelers on two feet and sometimes wings, not to mention the fact that, though she’d still mostly kept her distance the last few days, Aelis’ bear lumbered after them on four. Perhaps the owner would be open to receiving traveling parties, but it didn’t seem entirely probable that a very wide variety of people filtered through these mountains on a regular basis.
THEY DID TECHNICALLY reach the small settlement before sunset. The sun’s waning light still filled the sky, but within the deep valley, it had disappeared behind the closest mountain hours ago, casting everything in a cold, lingering shadow.
Kayu had led them to a narrow bend in that churning white snake of a river which had seemed so volatile even from the top of the mountain. The riverbed was particularly shallow, leaving them conveniently with enough exposed rock to tread across from one bank to the other without soaking themselves through in the bitter cold. Kherron had found himself harboring a secret smile when he noticed that, with each careful step upon the next slick stone rising from the river, the water itself retreated and pooled away from his boots, as if anticipating his desire to remain as dry and warm as he could. He had no doubt now that, if it had come to that,
he would have managed an agreement with the fiercer parts of the river in order to get his party safely across. As a verified Blood of the Veil, he had the right and the means to do so, but he still did not wish to make it an excuse or overuse his communion with the natural world. Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary.
The forest had of course reappeared and thickened again once they’d descended back under the tree line. It hadn’t snowed again for a few days, but it felt like it had, the frozen ground crunching beneath their boots. Fortunately, the wind held far less power among the massive pines than it had over the top of the mountain, so they only had to fight through the cold alone and not an uphill climb on top of buffeting gusts.
The trees ended abruptly, depositing them into a wide, sprawling basin of mostly brown grass studded with massive beasts. The yaks were huge, lumbering creatures, their shaggy brown wool harboring a reddish tinge even under the mountain’s shadow. A few of them turned their heads toward the new party, seemingly unconcerned even by the hulking brown bear who emerged from the forest at Kherron’s side, and regarded them with matching impassivity. Kherron reached out and buried his fingers in Aelis’ fur, finding a comfort he hadn’t known he’d been missing until she’d finally decided to show herself amongst their party and travel beside him instead of behind. Her thick hide shuddered at his touch, but he rather thought it was from her own enjoyment of the contact and not in irritation. Knowing her as well as he did, even after such a short time, he recognized she did not do anything she did not want to do, and she did not pull away from him.
The valley was ringed nearly all around by mountains and forest, making this place a haven of solitude and self-sustainment. To the south, a small dirt road did indeed wind its way through the valley floor to disappear behind the neighboring peaks. Across the field rose a collection of short, squat buildings of stone and chinked log, a welcoming rise of smoke lifting from one of the unseen chimneys. Set a little farther away from these was a wide stable of sorts—one long wall over which extended a broad roof of wood and clay and straw. And one man stood alone there, draped in thick woolen garments and apparently mucking out the stable with a broad, flat wooden shovel, the contents of which he effortlessly deposited into a wooden cart just outside.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 23