Company of Strangers, #1

by Melissa McShane

  “How does your god give you spells you cannot use?” Kalanath said.

  “First, he is an avatar of God, not God Herself, and second, they are not spells, they are blessings. I realize the distinction is meaningless to you.” Perrin sounded more irritated than Sienne had ever heard him, and Kalanath, hearing a rebuke, scowled back at him. “We grow as priests of Averran in many ways, not least of which is being given the opportunity to stretch our minds and our understanding. I will study it as we go and attempt to interpret it, and then when it is given me again, I will know how to use it.”

  “Then let’s finish breaking camp, and before we move on, you can invoke that scrying blessing,” Alaric said.

  They were mostly done already. Sienne put out the fire by first kicking dirt over it and then soaking it with a couple of gallons of water. It made a muddy mess that satisfied her. She prodded it gently with her toe, having padded her boots with her spare socks to make them fit better. No spark remained.

  Alaric and Dianthe were finishing loading Button and tightening a few straps. “All right,” Alaric said, “let’s see what’s out there.”

  “You said you believed there were others following us?” Perrin said. “This blessing will reveal the presence of other sapient minds. It will exclude any animals, which means if there are dangerous creatures out there, we will not know of them unless we encounter them personally. Is that acceptable?”

  “We can deal with beasts,” Alaric said.

  Perrin nodded. He took a long, thin branch from what was left of their firewood and drew an awkward circle in the mud where the fire had been. Tossing the branch to the side, he removed a bundle of papers from his vest—the papers with scorched sigils on them. He had stitched them together at one corner and daubed color that had the matte brightness of pastels on the opposite corners, two red, three green, and one violet. The paper he tore from the bundle had no color. Perrin put away the bundle and gripped the loose blessing in both hands, bowing his head over it. His lips moved soundlessly, making Sienne wish she dared enhance her ears and listen.

  A blue glow radiated from within the circle, growing gradually brighter until it was painful to look at. The sigil on the paper burst into flame, consuming the paper in an instant and licking at Perrin’s fingers. Perrin didn’t react as if he’d been burned, just transferred his attention to the blue glow. Sienne squinted at it. It didn’t seem to be doing anything but glowing. It flickered twice, and then it was gone.

  At the center of the circle, five sapphire dots glowed in the mud, grouped tightly together. The rest of the circle was empty. “No one but us,” Perrin said.

  “How wide is the scope?” Dianthe asked.

  “Two miles, possibly two and a half.”

  “That’s definitive,” Alaric said. “Anyone following us would likely be closer. At least, anything that’s an immediate danger.”

  “I did see a light,” Sienne said.

  “No doubt, but it was likely a wisp,” Dianthe said. “Those are harmful in large numbers, so we should watch out for them as long as we’re in the forest.”

  “Let’s march,” Alaric said, slapping Button’s rump.

  8

  Sienne’s various aches increased for the first mile, then gradually subsided. She already felt stronger, more capable of walking the long miles, and she was able to look around and appreciate her surroundings as she had not the previous day. True summer was not yet advanced enough to have burned the forest pale, and the oak leaves were a verdant, glossy green that smelled fresh and wet. They slogged through the undergrowth, which was dewy and shed showers of droplets wherever they trod. Squirrels skipped away from their procession, waving their furry tails like banners that dipped and swayed as they disappeared up tree trunks. Sienne followed the path of one with her eyes as it ran across a branch that hung low over her head. Its scampering movements reminded her of the voles that lived in the field where she used to ride her horse, how they would dart into their holes at a human’s approach. She felt no anger or sorrow at the memory.

  Around mid-morning, they left the forest behind for wide, grassy fields, the blades tall and tipped with white tassels. It was easier going than the forest had been, but without the shade of the trees, Sienne was soon sweaty and exhausted. She drank deeply from her waterskin and thought about summoning water not just to refill it, but to drench her head against the terrible heat.

  When Alaric called a stop for a noon meal, Sienne was more than ready to sit on the lumpy ground, cushioned by matted grass she tromped down in a circle, and eat salted meat and drink more delicious, chilled water. Cooling the contents of her waterskin was something to do against the monotony of the walk. She caught Alaric looking at her and smiled pleasantly. He had the look of someone contemplating a problem, and she had no intention of giving him the opportunity to patronize her or coddle her. She could keep up as well as anyone.

  “I see now why the ruin we seek might yet contain a fortune,” Perrin said. “No casual traveler would come this way, with neither inn nor tavern to provide shelter and sustenance. I mean no criticism, simply a comment on human nature.”

  “We take advantage of that every time we go out,” Dianthe said. “That, and the fact that humanity’s no longer clawing for survival. It’s only been maybe sixty years that anyone could make a living as a scrapper. Sixty years out of four hundred…there are too many ruins for them all to be cleaned out already.”

  “How long have you been at it?” Perrin untied his hair and pushed it back from his face, retying it more securely.

  “Alaric and I have been partners for eight years. Scrappers for six.” Dianthe glanced at Kalanath, who had not sat, but remained standing, leaning on his staff. “What about you, Kalanath?”

  “Two years,” the young man said. “It was not on purpose.”

  It was the most he’d ever said about himself. “How so?” Sienne asked.

  He scuffed the ground with his toe. His ankle boots were surprisingly clean for someone who’d walked as hard as anyone. “I do not come to Fioretti to fight,” he said. “Only to work. I took work as a porter with scrapper teams. With a team of chaitani—it is not a word you have. It means, lovers of comfort. They travel with many horses, not light as we do, and many servants. But this does not protect them from attack. Werebears. I fought for my life and theirs, and they noticed.” He smiled one of his rare smiles. “It is a truth that scrapper fighters make more money than porters. So I became a scrapper.”

  “Your skills are certainly legendary in Fioretti,” Alaric said.

  Kalanath shrugged. “When I am the only of my kind, I am legendary. There are many like me in Chirantan, in Omeira’s capital city.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope we don’t need your skills,” Dianthe said, rising. “I prefer the jobs where I don’t have to fight.”

  “As you say,” Kalanath said.

  An hour or so after their noon rest stop, Sienne saw a dark smudge on the distant horizon. Another forest. She tried not to walk faster, to outpace the long-legged Alaric in her desire for the cool shade. Half an hour’s walk brought them beneath its canopy, and Sienne sighed with pleasure. This one was denser than the last, with less undergrowth, and Sienne thought they were making good time.

  She noticed the quiet about the same time Dianthe said, “Wait. Something’s wrong.”

  Alaric halted and signaled the others to do the same. “What is it?”

  “Don’t know. But the birds have stopped singing.”

  Alaric drew his sword and held it loosely in one hand, a feat that impressed Sienne. “Everyone be on your guard. We may have a problem.”

  “Not humans,” Sienne said. “Wouldn’t we see humans?”

  “No. Wild creatures. This is their home, and we’re trespassers, which means some of them might take violent exception to our presence.”

  Sienne’s heart beat faster. She fingered the outline of her spellbook under her vest. Alaric saw the movement, and h
is eyes narrowed. “You won’t need that. Stay in the middle and you’ll be safe.”

  Sienne nodded, but didn’t stop touching the book. Alaric might be confident in his ability to kill or at least maim anything that attacked them, but Sienne didn’t like the idea of waiting helplessly to be protected. Though she had no idea what she might do. She only knew one offensive spell, and it was a weak one, not fire nor ice nor even stone. She would have to think creatively, because if Alaric was wrong, she might need to defend herself or the others.

  They moved more slowly now, watching carefully in all directions. Sienne, for her part, looked up as best she could, noticing that the others seemed not to be aware of this potential avenue for danger. There were no more squirrels. The birds, as Dianthe had pointed out, had stopped singing. Even the wind had died down, and the leaves were still. It felt as if the world were holding its breath.

  Sienne became aware of patterns in the branches. They were like clouds that way, making pictures that changed as her position did. Only these were angular patterns, not soft and fluid like cloud pictures: stairs leading to nowhere, chairs without backs and tables missing legs, rooftops with cut-off chimneys. And faces, odd ones with too-short noses and too-long chins. It was funny how the human mind tended to turn any loose grouping of two dots and a line into eyes and mouth.

  The eyes blinked. Then they dove.

  Sienne screamed a warning and flung herself flat on the ground, scraping her cheek against the ground beneath the scrub grass. The thing landed on her back and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back painfully. It was about three feet tall and made of splintered wood, with leaves woven into its limbs and around the short stump it had for a head. Its claws tangled in her hair.

  More of the creatures dropped out of the branches, leaping to attack. Sienne rolled over, groping for her spellbook. The thing let go with one hand and raised it to strike at her face, chittering viciously at her.

  Silver flashed, and the thing shattered into a dozen pieces. Alaric stepped past Sienne, not offering to help her up. He thrust his massive sword and spitted two of the creatures at once. They squealed, but otherwise seemed not to notice, crawling up the blade they were impaled on and reaching for him. Alaric swung and sent them flying into a nearby tree.

  They were everywhere, Sienne saw, at least twenty of them, swarming toward their little group screaming in high-pitched voices like rabid squirrels. Dianthe had her slim sword out and was slashing valiantly at them. Kalanath spun his staff and flicked creature after creature out of the way. Neither of them seemed to be making progress. Kalanath’s victims, in particular, shrugged off his blows. Perrin had his riffle of blessings out and snatched one free, holding it high and once more muttering under his breath. A dome of faint gray light sprang up around him, encircling all of them but Dianthe, trapped outside with her back to the dome.

  “What are you doing?” Alaric shouted. He pounded on the dome, which gave slightly. Outside, two of the splinter creatures flung themselves at him and were repulsed by the gray light.

  “I…she was too far away,” Perrin stammered. “I didn’t know. My apologies.”

  Alaric swore violently and swung his sword at the protective dome, again and again. Finally the light parted around his sword’s blade, and he dove out, followed by Kalanath. Sienne gripped her spellbook with both hands and exchanged despairing looks with Perrin. She had to help. There must be something she could do.

  She watched the other three fighting. Alaric’s sword appeared to be doing the most damage; any creatures he sliced in half stayed down. Dianthe was chipping away at them, her smaller sword not capable of cutting them in two. Kalanath was mostly successful in batting the creatures away, or toward Alaric or Dianthe. They didn’t have any vital organs that Sienne could tell, had no weaknesses except being extremely brittle—

  Sienne gasped and shoved through the protective dome where Alaric had sliced it open. The gray light seemed to have driven the splinter creatures mad, because half of them flung themselves at it, scrabbling with their sharp clawed hands and peeling away thin, translucent strips of gray. The other half surrounded Alaric, Dianthe, and Kalanath. Sienne willed her spellbook open. Break. She’d never used it on anything so big, but it would work, she was certain.

  She ran to where she had a clear view of the splinter creatures, braced herself, and read off the sweet syllables of the transform, not rushing though she desperately wanted to. She knew it took practically no time to cast, but it felt like forever as she stood there defenseless, watching her companions fight for their lives. As she read, she felt power building in the back of her throat, felt the words pushing themselves out of her, until the final sounds emerged as a shout that cracked like a whip across the space between.

  Seven of the splinter creatures shattered, spraying shards of dry wood in every direction. Sienne heard Dianthe cry in pain and drop her sword, but she was already turning toward the dome to repeat the spell. Again, the creatures exploded, and this time Sienne was close enough to feel a fine spray of wooden splinters on her face and arms that stung like sand whipped by a windstorm. She wiped her face and raised the spellbook to try again, but the remaining creatures fled, diving into the branches and disappearing. Only the rustle of leaves moved by their passage showed where they’d gone.

  Sienne found she was breathing as heavily as if she’d run a mile. She closed her book and looked around. Kalanath was leaning heavily on his staff. Perrin had emerged from the dome and was advancing toward Dianthe, who had her hands over her face. Blood streamed from beneath her fingers. Alaric, who had a long, deep gash along his arm, had his other arm around her and was trying to pry her fingers off her face. Sienne ran to them.

  “It’s not bad,” Dianthe was saying. “No, don’t touch it.”

  “Allow me,” Perrin said, gently removing her hands. Sienne gasped. A two-inch splinter had driven into the flesh beside Dianthe’s eye, making a bloody mask of her face. “I will have to remove the splinter before invoking the healing blessing.”

  “Be careful. Her eye—” Alaric said.

  “I will be most gentle.” Perrin reached up. His hand was shaking. Alaric grabbed it before he could touch Dianthe.

  “I’ll do it,” he growled. “Don’t close your eye.”

  Sienne winced as he plucked the splinter out, making the blood flow more freely. “I don’t think there’s anything else in there,” Alaric said.

  “Thank you,” Perrin said. He tore off one of the blessings, one with a green smudge in the corner, and crushed it in his hand, muttering words too low to make out. His hand erupted with fire that burned brightly and then went out, leaving him untouched. Green-tinged light radiated from the wound for about a second, and then vanished. Dianthe blinked several times.

  “I didn’t feel anything,” she said. “The last healing I had hurt like molten iron. What happened?”

  “I know not, save that all avatars grant their blessings differently,” Perrin said. “I think we should get you cleaned up. Alaric, you require healing as well.”

  “Let me—” Sienne began.

  Alaric rounded on her. “That is enough ‘help’ from you,” he shouted. “I told you to stay out of the fight!”

  “But I—you were overwhelmed, I could see that!”

  “We had everything under control. You nearly cost Dianthe her eye! You think blinding her was a good idea? That’s not something an ordinary healing can fix!”

  Sienne involuntarily stepped back from the looming figure. “It was an accident. And she wasn’t blinded!”

  “By sheer good luck. No thanks to you.” Alaric took his waterskin from where it hung at his waist and lifted Dianthe’s chin with his other hand. “Close your eyes.”

  “Alaric, I can do this myself,” Dianthe said, taking the waterskin. “And you’re being unfair. Sienne’s spell routed those splinterfolk.”

  “It was nothing we weren’t already doing.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “That’s
not true. Kalanath couldn’t hurt them, not with only a staff. My sword took too long to finish one off. And Perrin—”

  “I offer my apologies for my carelessness,” Perrin said, sounding not at all as carefree as he usually did. “I did not realize the limits of that blessing. I will be more careful in the future. And you, good sir, if you are to scold Sienne, I believe you should reserve a portion of your bile for me.”

  “I was useless,” Kalanath said. “We were lucky.”

  Alaric swore and strode off toward the trees, sheathing his sword as he went. He kicked the remnants of the splinterfolk bodies, sending them flying. Sienne watched him, her hands shaking with anger and humiliation. Now that the fight was over, she could think of ways she might have used that spell without hurting her companions. If they’d all been behind the protective shield…if she’d warned them what she intended to do…it had been effective, yes, but she’d been careless. Alaric had overreacted, but he was right about that.

  She stuffed her spellbook violently into her vest. Her first battle. She hoped someday she’d be able to forget it.

  “Sienne.” Dianthe stood at her elbow. Most of the blood was gone, and there wasn’t a mark to show where the splinter had gone in. “Let’s go.”

  Sienne nodded and once more took up her now-customary place at the middle of the group. Above, birds sang in the branches, but she couldn’t find it in her to be happy about it. This had been a huge mistake. They weren’t a real scrapper team. They were just five people who happened to have the same goal—maybe not even that, if she was right that Alaric wanted something other than the distance-viewing artifact out of this trip. Well, it didn’t matter. She’d finish the task, cast the fit spell, go in, get out, and get back to Fioretti. And she’d never have to see these people again.