“By my reckoning, we are halfway through the Borderlands, Immaculatus Sampson. To turn back to Woodedge would take as long as continuing on through. And we may yet run into the Border Rangers who can help.”
“Then we must march on,” Sampson choked on a sob. “I shall have faith, and pray to the gods that they may look upon us with mercy.”
The walk was much more subdued that day. Not just due to the absence of Sophia, but the feeling of a jinx or a curse, and the ever-present threat of the Sidhe hanging over them made for an uncomfortable march. As the day wore on the silence became oppressive, the various bad moods of distress and anxiety hanging over them like storm clouds.
The only person who seemed to not be labouring under a thundercloud was Terrell, but he had nobody to banter with and his every attempt at conversation fell flat. Kane wasn’t sure if he was just talking to keep himself awake, but he made a particular point of walking along beside Cahaya and talking to her, describing the things he could see but she could not. She nodded seriously as she listened, and once or twice Kane thought he saw a smile cross her face, so he left them to it. If it kept both of their minds off kidnap and death and fear then so much the better.
True to his word, Terrell made it through to the evening, and didn’t shirk any of his duties about the camp, performing them all with his usual vigour. Kane could only stare at him as he brought back what was surely an unnecessary amount of firewood, and unloaded the heavy panniers from the pony with no visible effort.
Their well-earned repast was not spoiled by the noxious smell of Elixir, although Kane’s enjoyment of his food was short-lived as Sampson burst into tears over the small pot which he had pulled out without thinking. He took comfort in Terrell’s energy and strength, for if that was due to abstaining from the Elixir then surely it couldn’t be all bad.
If Sophia’s disappearance and the theft of the Elixir had not been mystery enough, matters were further complicated the next day by the other woman under Kane’s protection.
Cahaya had been riding along contentedly enough, listening to Terrell talk. In between his observations about the weather and the forest, he had begun to talk to her about the Citadel, its vaulted halls and winding passageways. Kane found himself joining in, adding detail where Terrell had missed it, and even Eder chimed in with a sentence or two. It was shaping up into an enjoyable afternoon, when the pony was bitten by a horsefly.
It reared up in pain, and Cahaya, blind and caught off balance by the suddenness of the motion, was thrown to the ground behind it. She screamed, a hoarse yodel of a sound, in a voice rusty from lack of use.
Terrell was immediately at her side, solicitous for her health, as Eder was left to catch the reins of the distressed beast. Cahaya did not seem to be severely injured, but stunned, dishevelled and likely bruised from the fall. Her neat linen wimple had slipped out of place, leaving her chestnut-brown curls free to tumble about her face, which was set into a confused frown.
“Are you all right, Miss Cahaya? Are you injured anywhere?”
“No,” she said hesitantly, her voice rasping and rough. She gasped in shock at the sound of her own voice. “I can hear myself! Can you hear me?”
“Well I can,” Terrell replied, gently. “But you’re a little croaky so I’m not sure if anyone else can. I thought you were a mute?”
“I… I was,” she said, her brows knitted. “I haven’t been able to speak for months. After… after I was rescued, I found I couldn’t say a word. Nothing would come out.”
“Why now?” Kane wondered aloud, and Cahaya turned her head towards him.
“I don’t know,” she said, and even through her gravelly, disused voice she sounded scared.
“All part of the healing process, I should imagine,” Davena broke the worried silence in her usual matter-of-fact way. “I’ve seen it before, something terrible happens and the patient goes mute from sheer shock, only to recover their voice not too long afterwards. I’ve never heard of it lasting quite so long but there’s a lot I’ve never heard of and you do appear to be evidence that it’s possible.”
Cahaya opened her mouth to speak, but ended up coughing instead.
“There there, dear, don’t strain yourself, otherwise you’ll lose your voice again after it’s only just returned. I’m sure I have a tincture of honey for sore throats somewhere in my supplies, you shall have a dose of that thrice a day and see if that doesn’t help.”
“Have you got something for bruises, too?” Cahaya asked, sheepishly.
“Of course I have. I’ve been healing Child Guard for thirty years, I’d be a poor nurse indeed if I didn’t have something for bumps and bruises. Now, do you think you can get to your feet?”
Cahaya took Terrell’s offered hand and allowed herself to be pulled to a standing position. Once upright, she rearranged her wimple hastily, covering the mass of curls which had emerged from under it. She winced as she dusted herself off and shook dirt from her skirts, but otherwise she stood straight and upright, with no visible signs of harm.
“I should like to walk rather than ride for a little, if I may,” she addressed the request to Kane once she had tidied herself. “I will try not to slow your progress overmuch.”
“Of course,” Kane had only ridden horseback a few times, in basic training, but he remembered vividly the pain of climbing back into the saddle with a bruised backside, and had every sympathy for Cahaya’s current state.
After Davena had found her tincture and Cahaya had taken the medicine, they set off again. Cahaya walked beside Terrell, holding onto his arm to steady herself at uneven patches on the road. Terrell’s face was slightly pink, and every time Cahaya stumbled and clung tighter to him, he got noticeably more so. After a few hours, she seemed to consider the fall thoroughly walked off, and gingerly settled back in the saddle, padded with blankets.
Kane spent the walk staring at the back of Cahaya’s head as though he could bore a hole in and find out why she had suddenly recovered the power of speech. Was it something to do with the strange air of the Borderlands, or the Sidhe song which echoed around the forests every night? And what of the mysterious kidnap of Sophia? He was no Ranger, but there had been no trace of her or her captors around the camp, and to judge by the violence of the entry into her tent there ought to have been some sign of struggle or fight, even if the Sidhe had used magic to subdue her. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman to submit to any kind of hex lightly. The theft of the Elixir was almost obvious by comparison.
By the time they made camp for the night he had given himself a headache with wondering and worrying and speculating, and it came as a welcome relief to take a load off his feet and sit by the campfire.
Cahaya’s voice, though still husky and quiet, had recovered significantly since she had found herself able to use it again. Davena’s tincture had worked wonders, it seemed.
“Thank you all for your patience,” she said, in the quiet cool of the evening. “I understand it must be frustrating for you to travel at such a slow pace.”
“There would be little point us rushing to Auris without you,” Kane replied. “You are the whole purpose of our mission, after all.”
“I apologise,” she said meekly. “I am sure Child Guard such as yourself have much more important things to be doing than escorting someone like me.”
“The Child Guard do not send out men lightly, Miss. I am sure you are far more important than you think.” Kane forbore from mentioning they were newly-commissioned and without this mission would likely still be novices doing precious little of value in the Citadel.
“All I did was survive,” she said. “I survived when everyone else did not, and according to Professor Sophia that makes me worthy of study.”
“If I may, Miss Cahaya,” Kane asked, in spite of a warning cough from Sampson. “What was it that happened to you?”
Cahaya took a deep, measured breath, and when she spoke her voice was even quieter than before.
“The Sidhe at
tacked my village,” she said.
Kane heard Eder gasp.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he could think of to say.
“One of them cursed me with blindness,” she continued. “And other magics were worked on me which Professor Sophia said could eventually be of use to the Academy in studying how to better fight the Sidhe.”
“How did you escape?” Eder asked breathlessly.
“I was rescued,” Cahaya said. “The Border Rangers of the Child Guard saw my village burning and they came to drive off the Sidhe. I owe my life to them.”
“I am sure your family were judged fairly by the Sister and the Brother,” Sampson said. “And that their killers are in the hells with the rest of their foul kind.”
“I had no family,” Cahaya said, awkwardly. “I was found as an orphan, nearly full-grown, wandering by the village in search of food, with only my name and no recollection of where I had come from. One of the elders took me in and fed me, schooled me, clothed me.”
“Then I am sure this elder is in the Gardens of the Sister for his charity towards you,” Sampson said slightly huffily, not wishing to be thwarted in his theological point.
“I should like to think so,” Cahaya said. “Elder Jarlath was a kind man.”
Something twinged at the back of Kane’s head, but he dismissed it as the aches of an overworked mind.
It was only as he was drifting off to sleep, after an uneventful watch with Eder, that he realised he’d heard the elder’s name before, in a dream, and by the time he woke up the recollection had drifted away like fog.
12. The Deal
“The bonds of love are the most pleasant of chains.”
Aurian proverb
It wasn’t long before the strange side-effects returned with a vengeance.
Two long days of marching after Cahaya’s voice had returned, they came across something to break up the monotony of the bare earth of the Borderlands, in the form of a large lake, wide enough that its far bank could not easily be seen. A thin distributary river snaked out and away across the road, which had been raised and fortified where they met to produce a shallow ford for them to cross. It was late enough in the day for Kane to call a halt to the march and they set up camp by the lake in the evening sun with almost unseemly haste.
The water was checked and was found to be so clear that Kane could almost see all the way to the bottom, and was happy to pronounce it free of any lurking creatures or unburied skeletons. After that, it became something of a free-for-all.
Terrell was the first in, kicking his boots into the rushes and stripping off his surcoat and shirt as he waded straight in. Kane followed suit gladly, feeling the cool water surround his throbbing feet with a profound sense of relief. He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of the fresh, cool air, only to choke on a faceful of water as Terrell took the opportunity to kick up a massive splash and soak him from head to toe.
Even before he’d finished coughing, Kane began to laugh, chasing Terrell into deeper water to get his own back. It was deep enough that his feet didn’t touch the bottom, but if he looked down he could see he was nowhere near out of his depth. Submerged up to the neck, he revelled in the cold leeching the heat of the day from his skin, washing the sweat and dust of days away.
Davena and Cahaya had taken off their boots and were paddling in the shallows, the Immaculata guiding her charge carefully over the round, smooth pebbles. Sampson was responsibly filling their waterskins as far away from Kane and Terrell’s horsing around as was possible, lest his dignity be lost with a careless splash.
Eder was loitering nearby, unlacing his boots slowly, not fully committed to the idea of getting in the water yet. He hesitated for a moment before taking off his surcoat and undershirt, and tentatively waded in.
Kane swam over with leisurely strokes, before planting his feet amidst the smooth pebbles and rearing up with a great spray that drenched Eder entirely. There was a moment of shock, Eder’s mouth a perfect circle of surprise, before he forged into the water, all tentativeness forgotten in the joy of play.
The three of them horsed around for a while, cooling off and having fun, the perils of the Forest seeming distant and small in the slanting evening sun. Kane was a faster and more graceful swimmer than the other two, and he easily circled round the lumbering Terrell to outmanoeuvre him. Eder tried to keep Kane in his sights, but Kane ducked his head neatly underwater and with Terrell floundering about it was easy to lose track of him.
He surfaced right behind Eder, poised to grab him and pull him under.
The first thing he noticed were the scars.
Eder’s back was a mesh of fine, old scars, white and gleaming slightly in the golden light. Some of the highest ones trailed over his shoulder, others snaked around his torso, beneath his arms, holding him in a silver cage.
The second thing Kane noticed was that the temperature, which had been steadily decreasing since he stepped in the water, had suddenly shot back up. He only had a split second to register this as Eder turned, eyes alight with the fun of the game they were playing, and pushed him over. Kane was caught off balance in more ways than one, and reached out desperately, clutching at Eder and pulling him down under the water as well.
Bubbles streamed around them, and for a moment Kane thought the water had boiled, turned to vapour by the heat of his blood. He opened his eyes to see Eder, his mouth half-open in a laugh, face mere inches away from him, their bodies almost flush together as the water lapped around them.
Eder must have seen something in his expression, because he kicked downwards, hauled them both to the surface and then let go of Kane without any further solicitousness, paddling and then wading to the edge of the water without a backwards glance.
He pulled on his undershirt, which clung to his wet body and had to be forcibly tugged down to cover up the network of old wounds criss-crossing his back.
“Looks like food is almost ready,” he called back over his shoulder to Kane and Terrell, without turning around to look at them. “You should get out of the water before you get too cold anyway.”
Kane shook himself like a dog and followed, feeling the heat of the evening settle about him even as the fire within died down somewhat. A tingle of something new and forbidden trickled down his spine.
From then on, there was no going back.
The strange waves of feeling began small, familiar by now, jolts in the pit of his stomach when Eder met his eyes, or when they physically bumped into each other around the camp of an evening. Whatever veil or muffler had been between him and the sensations had dissolved by the evening of the fifth day, and he spent a restless night trying to simultaneously stay as far away from and as close to Eder as possible. Every time he woke they had moved closer together; the smell of Eder’s hair maddening, the rhythm of his breath musical and entrancing. Kane spent close to an hour watching the flutter of Eder’s eyelashes as he dreamed, the gentle smile that bloomed on his face as whatever pleasant dream he was having progressed. He knew he should sleep, rest and recuperate from the long day’s march, but for some reason his heart insisted on hammering as though he were running in a race. He woke up in the morning with his arms around Eder, snuggled comfortably together, breathing in the smell of him, and awkwardly extricated himself before his companion awoke.
The next night, he put them both on separate watches, reasoning if Eder only returned to the tent when he was asleep there would be less to worry about, because he wouldn’t know the intoxicating presence was there to embrace. It didn’t work, and he still awoke much closer than would have been decorous, but it meant he could let some of the more embarrassing effects of Eder’s presence die down in peace of a morning.
For his part, Eder initially seemed much less bothered by abstaining from the Elixir, continuing to join Sampson in prayer no matter how unwelcome he was made to feel. There came a point, though, after a week or so, when Kane noticed Eder becoming much more clumsy when they were in close proximity, and ther
e was a pinkness that rose in his face which couldn’t be attributed to the sun. Eder would always be the first one to turn away, though, leaving Kane standing dumbstruck like an imbecile. Eder made excuses to do camp chores that would take him away from whatever Kane was working on, keeping a distance between them that was at once torturous and merciful.
The distance in the daytime and the separate watches at night meant Kane spent much more time with Terrell, and perhaps inevitably he ended up confessing the whole messy thing, in one tormented rush of words, to his confidante.
“Of course, it’s going to do a fat lot of good talking to me about it,” Terrell said, once Kane had finished baring his soul. “You should talk to Eder.”
“Says you,” Kane shot back with a wry smile. “How are you and Cahaya getting on again?”
Terrell groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “I just can’t find the words; I don’t even know what it is so how can I tell her?”
“I could speak to her for you,” Kane teased. “You know, tell her you need her and can’t breathe without her and worship the ground she walks on and such.”
“Over your dead body,” Terrell said. “That’s the only thing I can think of that’s worse than having to talk to her myself. I don’t need some gossipy rumour being passed on like a note in class.”
“How about suffering in silence forever?”
Terrell’s jaw tightened, and Kane could almost see the thoughts turning in his mind.
“Fine,” he said, eventually. “I’ll do you a deal. I’ll speak to Cahaya, tell her everything, if you do the same with Eder. I’m not going to be alone in making a fool out of myself.”
Kane winced at the choice of words, but spat on his palm and stuck out his hand. “Deal,” he said, and Terrell spat and shook his hand.
“Now to see which of us is man enough to go first,” he grinned.
In the end, there was no need or opportunity for Kane to say anything at all.
The Child Guard Page 13