Godfire

by Cara Witter

  With Erich no doubt leading them.

  “Come on,” Kenton said, heading toward the field. “This way.”

  Sayvil strapped one of two leather packs to her back and carried the other to Kenton. He took it from her, and then led them all through the wheat field, the long strands of grass closing behind them to cover their tracks.

  At the end of the field, they entered a densely wooded area, and walking became more difficult. Daniella struggled to keep her footing, stumbling over roots and stones and gods only knew what else, especially as the thick, leafy branches above blocked the moonlight. She supposed she could have asked Sayvil to direct some to light their path, but when the light faded again she’d only be more night blind. Besides, the magic was likely a gift from Arkista herself. Not something Daniella should be asking to use as an ordinary lantern.

  Sayvil held a branch back for Daniella to pass, and as she did, Daniella spoke in a low voice. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  An owl hooted nearby as if in response, and Daniella all but jumped out of her skin.

  Sayvil looked over at Kenton, and then back. “East, at the moment.”

  That wasn’t a huge surprise. Peldenar was at the tip of a peninsula—any other direction this close to the city and they’d be skirting a coastline.

  She didn’t offer any futher information, and Daniella doubted any would be forthcoming. As the brush grew even thicker, creeper vines catching at her feet and legs, Daniella heard the gurgle of water nearby.

  “We can’t stop until we’re at least a day from Peldenar.” Kenton said, then paused. “A full day.” A ray of natural moonlight caught him across the face, so Daniella could clearly see him glaring back at them, as if daring any of them to argue.

  Daniella saw her own exhaustion mirrored on all their faces—Kenton included. But Perchaya reached out to steady Daniella as she stepped over a particularly large root, and they all continued forward without comment.

  By noon, however, they were all dragging. When Daniella nearly stumbled right into a thick briar bush, Perchaya called ahead to Kenton. “We need to stop,” she said.

  Kenton looked back as if he found them all wanting, but he nodded. If it hadn’t been for his superior expression, Daniella might have been grateful.

  With the sun high in the sky, Kenton led them into a valley, backtracking slightly until they found a copse of whitebark trees with a high, thick canopy that would keep them hidden.

  It wasn’t until she sat back against one of the peeling white tree trunks that she realized exactly how much her body ached. The muscles all along her lower half cried out at the slightest movement. Daniella had never walked so far—not even close. She was beyond grateful for the leather shoes Sayvil had insisted Kenton get for Daniella before she climbed into the casket. She shuddered to think of trying to wear her slippers on this march. The clothes they’d gotten her—a plain wool skirt and light blouse—had been clean and in good condition when she’d first put them on. Now they were stained with dirt and sweat, torn in places where the fabric had caught on splinters of the coffin or branches on the long walk.

  Sayvil squatted beside her, grimacing as she moved. “I’ll make a drink that should help with the soreness,” she said. “For all of us.”

  Kenton grunted—likely a noise which passed as an astute comment as far as he was concerned—and set his pack on the ground before moving ahead a bit, presumably to scout the area.

  Daniella, for her part, never wanted to move again. She pulled the cloak tighter around herself, despite the day’s warmth, and leaned her head back against the trunk. Sayvil headed off into the brush for a few minutes, then returned.

  “Here,” she said, handing Daniella a dirty tin cup, one of the few pieces of well-used cookware that had dangled from her pack. In the cup was water with some crushed green herbs floating on the top. Daniella, not only in pain but tremendously thirsty, drank without question, and Sayvil busied herself making more for Perchaya and herself.

  Kenton looked up at the sky through the trees. “There’s an outpost not far from here. If we’re going to wear out after half a day’s walk, I’m going to see if I can get us some horses.”

  Perchaya stood from her spot in the shade. “I’ll come with you.” She looked just as exhausted as the rest of them. Daniella didn’t think Kenton’s assessment of their pace was particularly fair, given that none of them had a moment’s sleep the night before, and rather uncomfortable sleep in a single room at the inn—or a jail cell, in Perchaya’s case—the night before that.

  “You should rest,” Kenton said quietly to Perchaya, as if he hadn’t just been complaining about Daniella and Sayvil needing the same.

  Perchaya shook her head at him. “I’ll be fine.” She reached into the pack on the ground, pulled out a pair of riding gloves, and slipped them on.

  Daniella expected Kenton to argue, but his eyes softened as he looked at her, and he nodded. He reached into that same pack and handed Sayvil some hard bread and cheese. “We’ll be back in a few hours. Stay hidden.” The two of them trekked off without further discussion.

  Daniella leaned back against her tree trunk, drinking deeply from the concoction Sayvil had given her. The drink did help somewhat; the quivering muscles relaxed, the ache dulled.

  Sayvil split the bread and cheese between them. Daniella shouldn’t have been surprised at how hungry she was—she hadn’t eaten anything in what felt like an age—but she would have guessed she was too tired even to make the effort.

  No, apparently there was no such thing as too tired to eat. Daniella devoured her share of the crusty bread and cheese and couldn’t help but hope Kenton was bringing something more palatable back from the outpost, in addition to horses.

  Even if he was going to steal the lot of it.

  Sayvil ate her bread more slowly, eyeing Daniella.

  “I don’t think my father is watching you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Daniella said.

  Sayvil tried to shrug it off, but she still frowned. “Kenton was right. If your father is a blood mage, he’s undoubtedly taken your blood from you at some point. It could have been when you were too young to remember.”

  Daniella shivered. According to Erich there were many things she didn’t remember, and not just from when she was very young. “I don’t know exactly what I am,” she said. “But one of the mages who worked with my father said I couldn’t be controlled.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. He said . . .” This next part wouldn’t put Sayvil at ease, but Daniella felt Sayvil deserved to know the truth, since she seemed insistent about protecting her. “He said that I’m a weapon.”

  A look of alarm crossed Sayvil’s face, and Daniella waited for her to pull a weapon of her own or head off into the woods after Kenton and Perchaya. But instead she just sat very, very still. “Are you certain?”

  “No,” Daniella said. “But that’s what I heard.”

  Sayvil nodded. “If you were being controlled by Diamis, I imagine you would have strangled me by now, or broken both my legs and carried me back to Peldenar. So for my part, I’m inclined to believe you.”

  Daniella didn’t miss the implication. Sayvil was inclined. Kenton wasn’t.

  “I don’t care what he thinks of me,” Daniella said. But she did, insofar as it meant she wouldn’t be abandoned in the woods to fend for herself.

  “I can try to protect you. But you’re probably going to need to share that with Kenton. I gather you two have a history?”

  Daniella winced. “Yes. Though I wish we didn’t.”

  “Well, expecting you to kill us all at Diamis’ bidding probably isn’t helping his opinion of you any.”

  Daniella leaned sullenly back against the tree trunk, wishing more than anything that she had a softer place to lie. She must have managed some sleep, though, because she came
to hours later, cramped and sticky with sweat, in time to see Perchaya and Kenton return with four horses and some meat and potatoes—still warm, in cheesecloth wrapping—for a late afternoon meal. Perchaya also handed Daniella a pair of men’s linen trousers and some leather cording for a belt. She appeared to have donned similar clothes under her skirt.

  “Sorry,” she said with a little smile. “They didn’t have much selection. But I figured this would make riding easier.”

  Daniella’s eyes widened at the sudden realization that without trousers, she would have been forced to ride her horse with her skirt hitched up around her thighs, displaying her undergarments for all the world to see. She hoped that under less stressful and exhausting conditions, the thought wouldn’t have taken quite so long to occur to her. “Thank you,” she said. “I really—thank you.”

  Perchaya’s smile widened, but she didn’t say anything else, just squeezed Daniella’s arm lightly.

  For a bit they all ate in silence, aside from Perchaya’s comments about the outpost, and the few people they had seen there, none of whom seemed to have recognized them. Perchaya pulled off her gloves to eat, no doubt because of the lack of flatware, and Daniella noted a ring on her finger she’d seen earlier, but now in the daylight she could see more clearly. It was a silver band affixed with Drimmish runes that looked familiar, but she couldn’t immediately place. They didn’t match the ones in the passageways at the castle, at any rate.

  “Well,” started Sayvil, after silence had hung over the group for several moments, “now that we’re settled down for long enough to have an actual conversation, I think it’s time we talk about what comes next.” She looked back and forth between Kenton and Perchaya, her gray-eyed gaze inscrutable.

  Kenton shot a wary look at Daniella, as if she might be a spy, taking down his words, ready to report to her father. Which was ridiculous.

  “If I was looking to turn you in,” Daniella said, “I would have done it last night when you were all still in the city. I helped you as much as you helped me, if you remember. And I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about my father’s plans, only that bad things were happening in that castle, and I’m a part of them, and I don’t want to be.”

  “You’re a liability,” Kenton said. “That’s what you are. You can take the horse, but we can’t keep traveling with you.”

  Sayvil’s fingers toyed with the end of her long black braid, which was threaded through with a few gray hairs. “We can’t send her away. If Diamis finds her, it could be just as much a problem as if he finds me.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Kenton said.

  Sayvil looked to Daniella, waiting.

  Waiting for Daniella to tell him what she’d told her, obviously. Daniella sighed. “My father needs me for something. I heard his mage Lukos talking at the castle. I don’t know the details, but he said that I can’t be controlled—not by blood magic. And”—she choked back both her pride and her fear— “That I’m a weapon.” She made eye contact with Perchaya. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Sayvil turned her meaningful look on Kenton. “You don’t send a weapon back to Diamis. And you don’t send away a woman who needs your protection.” She cocked her head. “Do you?”

  Kenton glowered at Sayvil, but he didn’t immediately deny it.

  Perchaya watched Kenton carefully, observing his reaction. She certainly seemed attuned to his every mood. Daniella felt sorry for her and couldn’t imagine what she could see in him. Then again, Daniella had loved Erich, so she was hardly one to judge.

  “I don’t want to travel with Diamis’ arsenal, either,” Kenton said. “Particularly when I’m not certain what might cause his weapon to strike.”

  “If he could strike with me,” Daniella said, “do you think you would have gotten this far?”

  Kenton didn’t snap back with an answer for that, but he also didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging she might have a point.

  “How did you hear this, exactly?” Perchaya asked.

  Daniella frowned. They had trusted her enough to take her with them. She owed them something. “There’s a . . . secret room, off my father’s study. A hidden chamber.” Kenton’s hard expression grew harder, if it were possible, but she continued. “I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I heard some things I wasn’t meant to.”

  She told them what she remembered from the chamber, beginning with the conversation through the dead boy. Only Sayvil looked at all surprised at the hideous use of blood magic, although Perchaya appeared properly repulsed. Kenton betrayed no emotion whatsoever, only listened intently.

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell them the things Erich had said in her bedroom—that her father had locked her away until she went mad. That she had killed people. Lots of people. Not under Kenton’s cold, accusing gaze. Not under Perchaya’s concerned one.

  “And that’s everything.” Kenton said flatly, when Daniella had finished.

  She glared right back at him. “I’ve told you more than I needed to, out of good faith. The least you could do is extend the same to me.”

  “Good faith is earned by more than telling partial truths.”

  Daniella flushed. “Apparently it’s earned purely on your ridiculous whims.”

  “All right,” Perchaya said. “I don’t think anyone—”

  “I don’t think anyone here has a right to be judgmental about lies,” Sayvil said. “Or do you go around confessing to everyone that you’re a Drim? I didn’t go advertising my powers in the market square.”

  Kenton rolled his eyes. “If you did, it might have been easier to find you.”

  “If she did,” Daniella said, “she might have been dead.”

  Sayvil sighed and sat back against her tree.

  “Did you never wonder about your powers?” Daniella asked. “Did you never question where they came from?”

  “Of course I did,” Sayvil said. “I suppose I always thought it was a fluke of nature, or some freak result of mixing too many herbs without taking the proper precautions.”

  “There are three others out there somewhere suffering from similar flukes of nature.” Kenton’s lips twitched into a smile, an expression more closely resembling good humor than Daniella thought him capable of. “And, aside from escaping capture by Diamis, our first task is to find them.”

  Sayvil shrugged. “Well, I haven’t the first idea where they are.”

  Kenton leaned forward, looking earnest for the first time in the conversation. “You’re supposed to feel it. The call toward the others, and toward your jewel. Think about it. Where do you wish you were right now? Where do you want to go?”

  “Home to my husband,” Sayvil said. She paused. “But also . . . east, into Foroclae. I came to Peldenar to help the resistance, so that my husband wouldn’t run off down here and get himself killed. But when I arrived, I couldn’t help but feel that I hadn’t gone far enough.”

  Kenton nodded. “That’s exactly it. You want to go east, then that’s where we’ll go.”

  “And you expect to simply run into them?” Daniella asked. “The other bearers?”

  “We’ve put out the call. They’re supposed to be able to find each other.” Kenton looked at Daniella. “And it’s probably better if we don’t get too specific with our plans at the moment.”

  For the gods’ sakes. She’d already displayed her loyalty to them by going along with Kenton’s rather uncomfortable plan. She wasn’t sure what else she could do to prove to him that she had no interest in betraying them.

  “We’ll go,” Sayvil said. “But Daniella is coming with us.”

  Kenton looked at Daniella like she was a stain needing to be scrubbed out. “Even if you’re right,” he said, “even if Diamis isn’t using you to watch us, you’re still a liability.”

  “I could also be an asset,” Daniella said. “You don’t know
where you’re going, so you can’t possibly know who or what you’re going to need.”

  That was a gamble, but when Kenton didn’t argue, Daniella couldn’t help but feel like she’d won, even if the victory was small. “Fine, Princess,” he said. “You can stay with us for now. But only because I want to keep an eye on you. If you’re some kind of weapon, you can bet you’re wrapped up in his plans to free Maldorath.” He glared at her. “I’d hate to send you back only to realize I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  Both Sayvil and Perchaya stared at Kenton in alarm, but Perchaya cut in before Sayvil could speak. “So we go to Foroclae,” she said.

  “First off this gods-forsaken peninsula,” Kenton said. “We’ll resupply in the town of Bothran, on the border. I’m just glad we’re moving away from Peldenar. I don’t want to walk back into Diamis’ stronghold for a good long while. Not until all the pieces are in place.”

  Daniella swallowed. The Banishment Chronicle talked of the gathering of the godstones at the Chamber of Binding, though they never spoke of where it was.

  But Daniella had been in it, twice, right in the center of Peldenar castle. Which meant that if Kenton did manage to gather the bearers and find all four of the stones, that was exactly where he’d be leading them. Back into her father’s castle, into the chamber itself. And Daniella was sure as all hells not going back there.

  “If this works at all, it will be a miracle,” Sayvil said, “so if any of you are the praying sort, you might want to try.”

  “The gods are done with miracles,” Kenton said in return. “Now they expect us to make our own.”

  Thirty-one

  It started raining later that night, when they had stopped to sleep in another copse of trees. The thick overhang of leaves protected them from most of the downpour, but not from the cold and misery attendant to lying outside in a fierce springtime storm. Daniella wrapped herself inside her cloak; it served better as protection from the wind than it had as a cushion for the hard-packed ground.

  As out of place as she felt here, Daniella couldn’t imagine where else she could wish to be. She’d be out of place anywhere. She could never go home again, and it wasn’t as if she had ever truly fit there. Whatever that meant would become of her, so be it. She leaned against a tree and drifted in and out of sleep until she found herself jerked awake by the sound of Kenton and Perchaya packing up their makeshift camp. The storm continued unabated, leaving the daytime sky only a few shades lighter than the night had been.