by Kim Wedlock
"Too right you are. So?"
"...Thank you?"
"No, 'so' how much longer is this gonna take?"
"It'll take as long as it takes," Rathen replied shortly. "Longer if you keep stopping us."
A dramatic offence grasped the horde, and even Aria shot him a glare of disapproval. "And after all we done for you! Fine, we'll let you on your way and we won't interfere no more if we see some suspinachus people following your tracks."
"No!" Aria hurried forwards and immediately the ditchlings' expressions became amicable. "We're sorry, we don't mean it like that. I for one like it when you come to visit, and I'm grateful for you checking up on me. I don't know who is following us, and definitely not why, but I think it's very important that they don't. So please keep getting rid of them for us, if it isn't too much trouble."
The boy, who still had yet to introduce himself, smiled broadly and nodded. "For you." But when he shot an openly mistrustful glance to the others behind her, she gave him the same look of disapproval she had given her father. His pale cheeks turned pink, but he didn't lower himself to an apology. "Come on you lot," he said, though they were already turning around and preparing to move out, "let's leave 'em be." He gave Aria another hug despite Rathen's close watch, informed her that 'Nug says hi', then turned around and dashed off into the forest with the others on silent, muddy feet, leaving the adults blinking after them while Aria waved cheerfully.
Still bristling at the brazen creatures' expectations, Rathen was the first to shake off the surprise and place his hand on Aria's shoulder. She beamed up at him. "Well done, little one."
"Yes, quite. Now we should leave." Garon stepped away and began gathering his blankets. "Where there are ditchlings, there are harpies."
"We've neither seen nor heard from them since we got back," Petra reminded him, following his lead.
"Even so, the ditchlings have apparently been watching us throughout, but only once Rathen returned did they bother to approach us. They sensed his magic the moment we first met them in Wrenroot, and it could very well be the same for harpies." He gathered the remaining bags and followed Rathen towards the horses. "I presume these are for us?"
"They are," Rathen replied, already lifting the little girl up into the saddle of the mottled grey whose nose she'd been stroking, and once they'd strapped down their belongings, they mounted - Eyila with a little trouble, as it turned out that she'd never actually seen a horse up close before - and steered their horses away from the grove beneath the old chestnut and off into the tighter beechwood.
"Daddy," Aria began thoughtfully, stroking the horse's mane in front of him.
"Yes, little one?"
She peered up and around at him. "Where have you all been?"
"But can you really trust someone who just appears and disappears like that? Who walks through any attempt at restraint? What could we do against her if she's setting you up? Who knows what she's up to, or who she's working with, or to what end?"
"I understand your concern, Taliel, and I intend to exercise caution, but it's...how can I explain this?" Salus sat up from the blankets, eyes filled with tumbling, glowing thoughts. "She's provided me with a solution I could only dream of. One that could truly protect the whole of Turunda from any outside threats, from invasion or influence."
"Well, it sounds to me like nonsense."
"Nonsense perhaps to anyone without the ability to achieve it." He smiled placatingly at her frown. "I mean that it was beyond even Erran's comprehension, and he's one of our strongest mages."
Taliel sighed and rolled onto her elbow, the thin summer sheet draping perfectly about her torso. "I just don't want you to be led by the nose. I understand your passion to protect the country, all of us here are led by the same thing. But...I don't understand how you intend to achieve it. You've been working on surveillance spells, they could be incredibly valuable--"
"And I'm not giving up on them--"
"But you would have to achieve those and so much more before you could ever do something like move the country, if you could even do it at all! Why can this elf not do it herself? Why is she baiting you to do it?"
"Evidently, Denek is not the only elf out there - who knows just how many are hiding? But after finding not a trace of them for centuries, something has happened to cause two to appear in the space of just as many months. And look at what Turunda is going through! Magic, invasions, foreign spies - even the Order has been affected by outside influence! They would never have rebelled if others hadn't done it first!" A fire burned in his mind, and his blue eyes, usually touched only by fury or by passion, were alight and coloured in the greatest shade of confidence. "The elves are still here, holed up somewhere out of sight and fearing for Turunda's safety, the safety of their home just as much as it is ours, but if they come out and try something like this themselves, every effort they've made to conceal their existence will be undone, and there has to be a reason that elves have kept themselves hidden for all this time!"
"But--"
"I have magic, Taliel - Denek helped me to awaken it, it's clearly important - pivotal, perhaps. But what if I killed him too soon? Liogan could well only be here to see his task through! You know it makes sense."
"It--"
"You--"
"Salus." She sat up and grasped his hand, the covers slipping from her bare skin, and gripped him with an insistent stare. "Stop. I understand. You've clearly thought this through. But perhaps you should focus on these surveillance spells before you try anything else. Assuming it is possible, it will take time, and we will need more immediate preventions and remedies in the mean time." She smiled to soften the blow of her poignant reminder, which he returned, subdued.
"Yes," he sighed, dropping back to the covers, "I know, you're right of course. I haven't given up on them - but establishing the observation and feedback points are easy, I managed that days ago. But creating the link between them, keeping the image complete and stable as it moves from one to the other is...it's..." he clutched his fists in aggravation, as if he could catch the elusive words. He shortly gave up with a half-barked snarl. "It's exasperating! After conjuring that fire, this should be easy! But it just... Erran said that it was fury or survival instincts that fuelled it, that it was from my very core, that the elf in me overrode the need for signs and just made it happen. But if that's the case, what would fuel this? What would make this happen? Because not even desperation is working..."
Taliel lay back down and shuffled up beside him, draping a slender arm over his chest and kissing his unshaven cheek. "Perhaps," she began softly, resting her head upon his chest, "you're under-thinking it. What you did to Denek was to save your life, it was immediate, but it was also simple. I don't know anything about magic, but I would think that fire would spring from the basic instinct to inflict pain in order to repel the attacker. But a spell with the requirements of sustained observation and relaying that information to another specific location, that would take more thought, wouldn't it? After all, anyone can make fire and light a candle, but not just anyone can make...spectacles."
"...Hmm..." Taliel looked up at the crease of thought in his brow. "That's a good point. This isn't a base need for survival, it's much, much more... It's not 'pain', it's sustained 'observe and relay'... You know, you might be on to something..." He pulled her close and squeezed her. They both felt his heart begin to race. "Taliel...I have to tell you...these last few weeks...they've been challenging, physically, mentally...but...I haven't been struggling as much as I should have been. I..."
"Hush, Salus, you don't have to say it."
"Yes, I do. I need you to know how...important you are to me. More important than I thought anyone could be. To anyone. Your advice, your thoughts...your presence...you have no idea."
Her fingers pressed against his lips. "Salus. You don't need to say it."
He kissed them, then she withdrew. "No. But...I suppose I need to know that you're not just doing this because you think it's an
order. I'm your superior but this--"
This time, her lips pressed against his. He pulled her close again, enjoying her warmth, and felt his anxiety begin to melt. The single, blissful moment lasted forever.
"Quiet your mind," she said softly as they finally parted. "Don't create issues to fret about. Yes, you are my superior, and yes, I do believe that offering you my company is important to the Arana and to Turunda. But that is not why I am here with you."
"...Why, then?"
She grinned. "Because."
"...Because? That's all you're going to give me?"
"It is. Because I can already see by your smile that it's enough." She kissed him again, but this time it was all too brief. "I had better leave."
"Must you?"
"I must. Orders." She slipped out of the bed, brushed by the shaft of morning light that broke through the curtains, and began gathering her clothes from various locations about the room. "Your orders, in fact."
"Curses! What have I done to myself?"
Taliel flashed him a grin. He watched her as she moved, tracing her curves with his eyes. As she reached up high, he appreciated her narrow, limber waist and humble chest; reaching low, her firm rear and sleek legs, their strength belied by their slenderness. He smiled, until at last they too were covered.
"Look after yourself while I'm gone," she said as she turned around to face him, fully clothed and perfectly collected. "Don't you dare just run off to the office every morning, leaving your stomach to rumble until the sun sets. Eat. Keep up your strength."
He smiled from the bed. "Is that an order?"
"As a matter of fact, it is." She leaned across the sheets and kissed him, and he pulled her in closer before she could begin to leave. Only as his heart began to race did he release her, knowing that if he didn't do it then, he wouldn't do it at all.
She smiled softly as she walked gracefully towards the door. "Breakfast."
He nodded. "Breakfast."
And then she was gone.
He stared at the door, lost in thought for what felt like an age, though it couldn't have been longer than a minute before he finally found the mind to leave behind the night's bliss and turn towards the day's matters. But it didn't come as a trial; he was clothed and out of the door in no time, cutting across the wooded estate gardens from his comparatively small private home towards the grand Arana House, where his office waited on the third and uppermost floor. He caught a servant in the foyer along his way with a request to send something up. Because he was in a good mood. His thoughts were clear, his ambitions were plain, and he was filled with a crisp, focused determination to seize them. It was remarkable what a good night's sleep could do, and even more when Taliel exhausted him into it. It was the first he'd had in days, and that morning, that bright, fresh morning, he knew that whatever lay ahead of him would be no trouble. Anything that was thrown his way, he could handle.
Even the spell gave him a spark of hope rather than a punch of dread, because Taliel was surely right: in trying to approach it from another angle while Erran and his apprentice worked on it conventionally, he had been under-thinking it, drawing too much from that single moment in Dolunokh which, even after five weeks, he understood so little about. He was only one-quarter elf, descended by Denek's reckoning from one of his grandmothers, so he couldn't attempt to base his efforts on the use of solely elven magic. He wasn't so rich-blooded. But that didn't matter. He was still capable of so much more than the common mage - more than most of the Order - and that meant that it was an avenue worth exploring. But one that needed more thought. More tact. Intense emotion or desperation alone wouldn't be enough. Not for surveillance spells...nor for...
Yes, it was true, his efforts on those spells had waned with the distraction Liogan had provided, but while he didn't trust the she-elf as blindly as everyone else seemed to think he did - how could he, when she was as good as incorporeal? - his mind was readily open to her suggestion all the same. Whatever her true motives, if he could move Turunda out of harm's way...think of what he could prevent. His whole being was driven by a devotion to protect his people, a devotion so strong no one else could comprehend it, let alone share in it. If they could, more would surely have already been done to safeguard the country. Perhaps war wouldn't have touched them at all.
The door to his office rose ahead of him, and today it wasn't a prison he approached, but a seat of command and achievement. And he threw the door open gladly.
"Punctures would help."
Salus all but leapt out of his skin, and in a heartbeat his fingers rose to create the signs of the freezing spell he'd finally grasped. But he gave up just as quickly. He knew it would have no effect.
Liogan stepped forwards, clearly visible in the bright morning sun, her storm of black curls a deep shade of blue where the light struck them and her skin an unquestionable silver. Her lips were puckered and eyebrows high in approval as she watched him slouch in defeat, drop his hands and close the door behind him. "You have fast reflexes. And more impressive still is that those reflexes already encompass magic. You've only been training it for, what, a month?"
"Seven weeks." He stepped inside and approached his desk, outwardly ignoring her while keeping her at all times in his sharply trained peripherals.
"Oh," she smiled, chuckling in amusement as she followed him with her usual leisure, "I see what you're doing." She perched upon the corner of his desk as he took his seat and peered down at him knowingly. "But I know you're interested."
"In your information," he replied flatly with tactful distrust, looking over reports though he didn't truly see them, "not your games."
"Fair enough. Then I say again: punctures." Her grin broadened as he looked up impatiently and waved a careless hand. "If there were already breaks in the land you could push on."
"Push on with what? What could possibly be strong enough to break the ground so deep? A giant shoe horn? And what could possibly be strong enough to use it? Is there a race of colossal stendjur in the mountains I can coerce into helping me? Are they by chance the mountains themselves, hiding in plain sight all these years?"
She frowned in disappointment. "Now who's treating this as a joke?"
"You offered me nothing but cryptic statements yesterday, and you offer me little more now."
"All right," she slipped soundlessly from the polished walnut desk and stared soberly down the bridge of her elegant nose. "You want me to be straight? Strain the magic. Those rifts ripping their way through this beautiful land weren't formed naturally, it was magic, and that magic is folding into the elements themselves. If you concentrate on it, you can force it to your whim, and you can direct that destruction on towards the next."
"What?!" He erupted from his seat, stark incredulity sharpening his features, and stared at her in such open horror any would think she'd told him to disband the Arana, obliterate the military, open the borders and invite Skilan in for tea. She merely blinked at him. "You can't--that--those chasms have taken hundreds of innocent lives, and you expect me to make them worse?!"
"No," she replied calmly, "I suggested that you take control of and steer the magic. I don't recall saying 'crack open the land in every major city, bonus points for trapping children and elderly'. But," she sighed dramatically, "perhaps this is impossible for you after all."
His lip curled venomously, but he suppressed his bristling offence. "How could such a thing be achieved?"
"Ooh I don't know." She tapped her silver chin with a finger as slender as a pheasant feather quill and peered up at the ceiling, ignoring his stare. "It will take unorthodox magic, certainly, but it needn't be complicated." She pursed her lips, then nodded in decision.
The world turned upside down. His eyes burned beneath a blinding light, his skin prickled beneath a sudden warmth, damp earth assaulted his nostrils, but above all else his stomach lurched like a butter churn. He was grateful it was empty.
Salus raised a hand against the unobscured sun as another warm and stra
ngely peaceful breeze wrapped itself around him even as panic pierced his heart. Frantically, he stumbled backwards and stared in shock at the expanse of black that lay at his feet. The abyssal rend stretched eternally into the depths of the earth, whole buildings and trees lodged deep in its shadows, its ends well beyond sight.
"Your village of Halen," Liogan said coldly as she surveyed the area. Her equally unaffected lavender eyes turned onto him, and he did his best to regain his composure. She gestured out towards the rift. "The magic - can you feel it? Good. Then you can do it. Look closer."
"What am I looking for?"
"Anything more than its presence."
Confused and alarmed, he dared to open his mind and lean his consciousness forwards as Erran had taught him to do, closer and closer to the crumbling edge. But nothing stood out. There didn't seem to be any more or less magic in that black, empty space than there was around it. And while he found that that surprised him, he didn't really know why he had expected otherwise. Mages had done this, all for the sake of chaos, and left places saturated by rampaging magic to maximise the damage and prolong Turunda's suffering - and perhaps even to tap into later when their plans came to fruition.
Plans he absolutely had to stop.
He steeled himself and took a half step closer, dropping the sixth sense deeper into the earth. Carefully, he descended.
Liogan watched him closely, observing every twitch and furrow in his expression as they came. His frown soon creased harshly in recognition.
"Turquoise..."
Her eyebrows rose. "Turquoise? I'd have said carmine myself, but each to their own."
"And...ripples?"
The world turned again, his stomach lurched, and bile rose in his throat. He doubled over, fighting his body back under control, while Liogan waited patiently on the edge of the desk with a shadow of amusement on her lips. "And now," she continued once he'd straightened, rising to wander and nose around the room, "you've had a look at the magic. Ripples mean a surface, and a surface can be manipulated, yes?"
"Yes," he coughed, "but--" A map rustled and unrolled itself across the desk while a quill came suddenly to life, inking itself and trailing its fine nib across the parchment. He looked back around to Liogan as she opened the doors of the cabinet behind him. "Why are you helping me?"
