A few yaks headed toward Kherron and his party, grunting in loud, excited voices to herald their curious approach. The man in the stable paused to look up at the source of such excitement from his animals. He froze, and the shovel’s handle fell from his grasp.
Kherron pressed gently on Aelis’ back and silently asked her to wait. She seemed to recognize his reasoning and agree with it; a massive brown bear in their midst, no matter how seemingly docile at the moment, would not go very far in ensuring this farmer felt comfortable enough to efficiently welcome his strange visitors. Aelis snorted, but she stopped where she was and sat back on her haunches to wait.
Now, as the foursome on two legs moved forward across the valley toward the buildings, the yaks approached faster, lifting their heads and sending waves through their thick, shaggy wool with each step. Kherron couldn’t help but smile when the first to approach him nudged his shoulder with her cold snout, looking at him with kind brown eyes. He pet her head and scratched around her ears, then moved on.
The animals made the group’s passage across the valley particularly slow, but they were gentle, curious, seemingly excited by the presence of these new visitors. He did notice they avoided Lorraii entirely, which would have made him laugh had he not already been chuckling under the shuffling, prodding attentions of the grazing beasts.
By the time they made it to the low building with the smoking chimney and the three-sided shelter, the man hadn’t moved an inch. He gawked at them, his dark eyes wide within a particularly round face, and when Kherron’s party stopped before him, he glanced mostly from Kherron to Paden and back again. Only briefly did the yak farmer look at Lorraii before seeming either entirely uninterested or far too threatened by her presence to dare another attempt at staring. Kherron was about to give the man some type of greeting, feeling a little foolish for not really knowing how to introduce his companions or himself when they’d arrived in such a way, but the man beat him to it.
“You bring bear with you.” His accent was thick, making his words nearly indistinguishable. He did not say it in condemnation but with an air of disbelief, as if he could not decide whether he should be cowering in terror or laughing in wonderment.
“Yes,” Kherron replied, smiling at the man’s valiant composure, given the circumstances. “She is safe.”
The man raised a slack finger toward the center of the valley’s field. “That clear.”
Kherron briefly turned back to see Aelis’ bear had lowered herself to her belly, where she could have been sleeping if it weren’t for the twitch of her ears and the alert glisten of her deep brown eyes. The yaks milled around her now, unaffected by the otherwise daunting omnivore in their midst.
“My akbou very smart,” the farmer added. “They know danger. They know friend.”
“Your yaks gave us a warm welcome,” Paden added with a smile.
The man glanced at him and smirked. “Hm. Yaks.” Then he returned his gaze to Kherron. “Why you here?”
“My friend is looking for safe passage west toward the edge of Shatterback Pass,” Kherron replied, gesturing with an open hand toward Paden. “To depart as soon as possible. His... party is waiting for him there.” He didn’t think it would make a good impression to tell this man they wanted him to return Lord Rattegar’s abducted son to his massive military force on the other side of this mountain range, whether or not the yak farmer knew of such governances.
“I leave that way for trading in two day.” The man nodded at Paden. “You come with me then.”
The healer—Kherron still could not fathom thinking of the man as anything else—reached beneath the collar of his tunic and brought forth a silver chain strung through a large, round pendant wrought of gold and silver. Kherron of course didn’t recognize the emblem, but the metalwork was quite stunning and had obviously been crafted by skilled hands. “I’d like to buy passage with this,” Paden told the farmer, offering the pendant in such a way that was both respectful of the man’s decision and promising of Paden’s own wealth. Kherron couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed before. “If there is any way you might bring me through the pass any faster, it would be very much appreciated. And I can pay you more when we arrive.”
The farmer did actually accept the gift, then studied it with a wary satisfaction before tucking it into the folds of his draping woolen clothes with a nod. “I strap fastest akbou to wagon. In two day.”
“Is there no way you might leave with my friend tonight?” Kherron asked.
A surprised, high-pitched bark escaped the farmer, and his eyes squinted into near slits as he laughed. “I have large work. Many thing to prepare. Rebuild house for akbou.” He motioned toward the far wall of the makeshift stable, where a number of the slats looked as if they’d been kicked and splintered. “And all wood need chopped before I go. Must keep woman warm while I not here.” He offered them a knowing smirk.
Beside the stable, Kherron saw the massive pile of felled trees, the branches already hacked away and the trunks cut into thirds. “Would you leave with my friend sooner if I chopped your wood for you?”
The farmer eyed him with amusement. “You big, yes. But wood take all day tomorrow. You not do this much faster than me.”
Kherron gave the man a slow, acquiescing nod, not particularly wanting to do this with any apparent flair. But he glanced at the trunks that would become firewood and the splintered slats of the stable, then graciously asked them for their assistance. The valley echoed with the rolling thunk of splitting wood, as if so many trees were crashing down around them at the same time. A few of the yaks grunted in surprise, and the farmer’s head whipped toward the sound.
The man gave himself a few seconds to truly take in the impossibility of what he saw—the shattered fencing, now entirely repaired; the previously daunting pile of soon-to-be firewood, now split open into so many halved logs that would last any man a month or more of constantly burning fires. When he finally regarded Kherron again with wide eyes beneath a frown of uncomprehending surprise, Kherron briefly wondered if he’d taken it too far. Then the man’s tight lips burst into a wide grin filled with incredibly straight but slightly stained teeth. “Morin!” he called, turning his head toward what had to be the main house without taking his gaze from Kherron. The man repeated the call, followed by a string of words in a language none of his visitors understood. Then he thrust a dark, immensely calloused hand toward Kherron. “My name Miehel.”
Kherron grasped the man’s hand and shook it. “Kherron.”
“I grow akbou, yes,” Miehel added, “and I make good translation for living. You need man for language in mountains sometime, you come break my wood like this again.”
Kherron couldn’t hold back his own smile. “I’ll remember that.”
The thin door to the main house bumped open, and a woman with long black hair and a face as round as Miehel’s stood in the doorway. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of their visitors, but she said nothing, wiping her hands on a rag.
“Morin,” the man told her, “these men friends. Good pay for wagon out to igani. I take one of them tonight.”
Kherron knew the farmer had spoken in their own language for their benefit and not that of the woman who might have been either his wife or his sister. The woman named Morin offered the strangers a surprised smile, then said something to Miehel he did not understand. The man pointed toward the firewood chopped and halved in mere seconds, and when she saw it, she did not seem so much shocked as entirely satisfied with the work done. “Leaving tonight,” she said with a broad smile, nodding at the gathered group before her.
THE LIGHT HAD ALL BUT completely left the sky when Miehel hoisted himself up onto the side of his wagon and made himself comfortable behind the reins. Paden loaded the last of the small, hide-covered parcels Morin had given him, which were apparently a hastily assembled finale to the things the yak farmer was meant to take with him for trade. Then the healer rounded the wagon to speak one last time in this valley with Kherron an
d Kayu while Miehel and his wife said their own private goodbyes.
“I’m not entirely sure what to say.” Paden extended his hand toward Kherron with a wry smile. “I have enjoyed every step of the journey with you. And I mean to join you with my men at the end of it.”
Kherron grasped the man’s hand and shook it firmly, thinking how odd Paden’s reverence and gratitude might seem to anyone who knew they’d met first as captive and desperate captor. “I can’t thank you enough. I’m sure Aelis would tell you the same, if she could.”
Paden’s smile widened, and he nodded toward the edge of the woods. “I think she has.”
Kherron turned briefly to the side to see the huge, rounded form of Aelis’ bear protruding from the tree line, sitting once more on her haunches so it was impossible to think she did anything now but watch and wait. “When you and I see each other again, she’ll be able to tell you what she really thinks.”
“I actually have missed that.” The men chuckled, and Paden turned toward Kayu. “Wonderful to have met you.” When he extended his hand, the Nateru almost flinched, his arms lifting at his sides as if he meant to ruffle the feathers he’d forgotten he did not have in this form. But then he seemed to remember himself.
“Likewise.” They shook, and Paden gave a final nod.
He did not turn to address or say goodbye to Lorraii, who sat on the low stoop of the farthest building, her arms draped over her bent knees, watching them in silence. Kherron hadn’t expected there to be any farewells between them; the Ouroke had done nothing to warrant well wishes or any particular kindness from the healer. He didn’t think she’d want them, anyway.
The two yaks hitched to the wagon shuffled their feet, looking a little surprised to be harnessed at this hour, but they didn’t complain. Kherron stepped through the darkness, feeling more than a little responsible for the safety of his unlikely friend and the man who’d quite literally dropped everything to take Paden where he needed to go. Where no one could see him, he asked the forest for a sizeable branch, which was delivered swiftly and silently from within the trees to his open hand. One final request, and the end of the branch burst with blazing yellow light. Miehel turned to him from the seat of the wagon with wide eyes, and Kherron lifted the flaming branch toward the yak farmer.
“This will light your way and your other fires until you return safely to your home.”
The man’s brows flickered briefly together, but he accepted the gift, quite obviously torn between writing Kherron off as a madman—for who would say such a thing was possible?—and believing him completely after what Kherron had accomplished with his firewood and broken stable. Then he glanced at the impossibly lit torch and handed it warily over to Paden sitting beside him. The healer took it solemnly but looked as if he fought not to laugh. “I do not understand,” the farmer told Kherron, “but very good tricks.” Then he broke into a wide grin, which Kherron found contagious.
Miehel clicked his tongue and said something to the yaks in his own language. The beasts seemed almost to glance at each other in companionable bewilderment before slowly making their way across the field of their home toward the narrow dirt road leading west. He watched them until the yellow glow of the torch in Paden’s hand flickered and faded amongst the trees.
“Come now,” Morin said from behind him. “I have food. If no one eat, I waste my time.”
Kherron turned to her and smiled. “Thank you. Food would be wonderful.” When he caught Kayu’s gaze, the Nateru looked more than a little wary of stepping inside the woman’s home of dried mud and logs; the uncertainty in his eyes reminded Kherron very much of the same apparent discomfort Siobhas the cat-man had failed to conceal when they’d traveled together. But Kayu nodded anyways and stepped toward them to follow Morin inside.
The woman stopped on her way to glance at Lorraii sitting on the stoop of the next small building over. She leaned back conspiratorially toward Kherron. “That one hungry?”
Kherron didn’t have to consider the Ouroke but for a moment before the tattooed woman’s angry gaze locked onto his above a perturbed scowl. He sighed. “I have no idea.”
Morin playfully smacked the back of her hand against Kherron’s chest and nodded. “I have daughter like that. You don’t ask. Just bring food and leave. She will eat.”
Holding back his laughter, Kherron nodded at her sage advice and followed the woman into her home, Kayu’s steps entirely silent behind him.
Chapter 23
Despite the fact that the man had promised to bring him the support of his father’s army, Kherron found himself missing Paden’s company. The man had been a remarkably steady, stable companion, filled with curiosity and wonderment and a pleasant willingness to continue whatever their party happened to be doing at the time. Now, Kherron and his companions traveled in silence brimming with tension and the expectation of the unknown. He did not feel he could speak lightheartedly with any of those who now journeyed at his side—a stoic Kayu, intent on keeping his thoughts and emotions entirely to himself unless completely necessary; a brooding Lorraii, who of course had never had much to say to Kherron and most likely desired to speak with him even less now; and Aelis, who was in fact relegated to her bear form only and who could not speak even if she wished. Paden had brought an invaluable levity to the group, at least as far as Kherron was concerned, and now he was surrounded by three sulking companions and heavy silence. He himself had started his own journey this way, both with Siobhas toward Hephorai and after he’d left Zerod Ophad’s gracious hospitality to set out east once more. In some way, he’d hoped to have evolved out of that moodiness; in fact, he had, but the others apparently did not share his taste for optimism.
With Paden gone, though, they moved almost twice as quickly and with far fewer pauses for rest or food. It occurred to Kherron that the healer had indeed been the only one among their party without some form of otherworldly ability—the normal one, if such a term really meant anything anymore. And Paden himself had been fit and hale enough to march with Lord Rattegar’s military forces, to camp in tents, to tend to the wounded. Kherron had now completely entered the realm of the seemingly impossible, traveling beside two Nateru who had lost their many skins and a grudging Ouroke warrior whose runes were useless without a master to wield them. And he himself was a Blood of the Veil. He mourned the last ties he’d had to the natural world he’d known, to the undiscovered mundaneness under which most free men lived their entire lives. But that grief was short, silent, and quickly released. Kherron did not expect he’d ever want to return to the life that had once led him here, and even if he did desire it, it was impossible. The void had changed him too much—he’d changed himself too much—and he could not un-see what he’d come to know in such a seemingly short time.
THREE DAYS AFTER THEY left the yak farm and Morin’s hospitality, he found Lorraii standing up ahead, frozen in some form of hesitation he didn’t understand. She turned her head slowly from side to side, then spun around, gazing at the trees and the mountains around them, her eyes wide in confusion. This was a particularly startling and seldom-seen expression on her, and Kherron took it upon himself to discover why it was there in the first place.
“What is it?” he asked, calling to her from a few yards away so as not to alarm her with his sudden appearance. She obviously had not noticed his approach. Kayu had flown ahead as his bird to be sure they still headed exactly where they wanted to go, and Aelis of course still ambled behind them; he had not seen her all day, but he did occasionally hear her ruffling through some bush or snapping dead twigs beneath her massive paws.
The tattooed woman took another sweeping, critical glance at her surroundings. “I did not come this way,” she said.
“We didn’t exactly take the most direct route after you... found us.” He had to be careful with his words. She did in fact answer to him now, by whatever his powers as a Blood of the Veil had done to bind her to him, but that fact had done little to suppress the strength of her rage,
when it showed itself.
Her dark eyes flickered to meet his, and she scowled. “I did not come this far.” When he did not immediately respond, her frown deepened. “From the Amneas. This is two weeks or more still west from where I was when... when the world trembled, and my runes...” Her hand absently went to the base of her neck. “And then I met you in my path.”
“You weren’t completely coherent when that happened,” Kherron replied, still not yet understanding what bothered her so much. “You might have traveled like that farther than you thought—”
“I move quickly, boy,” she hissed, “but not beyond my fastest pace and not when I was that... ill.” The final word came out of her as if it pained her very tongue to speak it. “Can you reason away how I ended up twice the distance west in half the time?”
Kherron took a deep breath, reminding himself that this woman most likely had very little experience in speaking in anything but this sharpened tone—especially when she was this disturbed by such a discovery. “I cannot,” he said. “But I wouldn’t let myself be surprised by every inexplicable thing that comes our way, if I were you.” Lorraii’s eyes narrowed; that seemed to be as high a level of reproach as he could manage without pushing her over the edge. Apparently, it was enough. “And we need to keep going.” He continued past her without another word, hoping Kayu would return to join them again soon so he did not have to walk alone with the burn of her vicious glare upon his back.
Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3) Page 24