The stone roadbed was still slick with moss and neither human nor horse had solid footing. That was something he could fix.
With a quick focus on his own flames, he sent embers to dry the moss and clear the ground.
His horse seemed to approve of the freshly dried path and allowed him to lead their small caravan to the far side.
Together, they progressed onward and downward.
Chapter 13
Towering pines gave way to broad-leaf trees and lush shrubs as the mountains descended into foothills, and small woodland creeks converged into a wide river, luring Zuke and Quarie ever closer to the shore. The chill mountain air grew balmier, and Quarie threw back her borrowed cloak and basked in warm sunshine during the days. She watched as the stone and gravel trail grew wider and straighter, with paving and bridges to smooth the way. They rolled through more towns, now several a day.
“How long before we reach the coast, do you think?”
He shrugged. “Two days, maybe three. Do you recognize anything? Place names? Landmarks?”
She shook her head. They had chosen their course based on her description of her home. But she had never traveled far from the cove until she escaped to the Waki. After that, she had been a passenger on their trek to the Segra, remaining well out of sight the whole way. “My parents stayed close to the water, always. We had few visitors, and most of those came by boat. I wonder…”
She let her words trail off. Not for the first time recently, the thought occurred to her that her parents had been in hiding. Their cove was isolated, far from any towns. Until Raksha arrived, she had met very few other humans. It had been thrilling to be surrounded by so many people, and she was more than old enough to feel attracted to the men among them. Especially to a man of obvious charisma and authority, like Raksha. He reminded her of her father, a little, except younger and far more exciting. In her innocence she hadn't recognized the man's cruel streak until it was too late.
“No worries.” Zuke said curtly. “I have a feeling we are headed the right direction.”
Later that day, she saw her first palm tree. The sight filled her with longing. It grew next to the remains of an old house with a tumble-down garden wall.
“That should make a decent site for the night.” Zuke pulled the cart off the road and up to the old dwelling.
Behind it, they found a barn with part of its roof still intact, and he hitched his horse inside and gave him a scoop of feed. The house was made of stone with a woven thatched roof that had collapsed long ago.
Quarie explored what appeared to be an old kitchen garden while Zuke pitched the tent. It was choked with weeds and brambles. One corner had been overtaken by mint, and she happily gathered several large branches of the sweet leaves for tea. She also found a few late season tomatoes, a few berries from an untended and overgrown bush, and, among the sprawl of an enormous vine, she found a couple of small squash. The fresh fruits and vegetables would be a welcome addition to their supper.
She carried her haul back toward the house and their tent wrapped in her cloak. As she approached the wall, she paused, hearing voices. Plural. Zuke was talking to someone.
Her heart raced and her fingers went icy cold. Carefully, she set her bundle on the ground and tiptoed along the wall until she found a small crack to peer through.
She saw Zuke's profile as he squatted in front of a campfire. Something about the smoke was wrong. Instead of drifting upward like normal, it curled into a ball, looking almost like a head. Zuke appeared to be conversing with it.
A woman's voice carried softly over the evening air. She couldn't hear every word, but she heard enough.
“…will be handsomely rewarded. Follow my signs to the cove. We have been waiting a long time for your arrival. Finally, we will be able to complete what Raksha began…”
She couldn't hear Zuke's response, just see the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. It was obviously Silvari, bidding Zuke to turn her over to Zabewah. Silvari was leading Zuke and Quarie to the water. Raksha's sister was responsible for clearing their way so that the journey would be uneventful and calm. It all made sense now.
There had been no chase. Not a single member of Mulavi's band of mercenaries had bothered to hunt them down or attempt to capture them. Why should they bother, when Quarie would walk straight into the arms of her enemy of her own free will.
She had trusted Zuke. She liked him. They had shared meals together, shared laughter. They had sheltered together from the elements for weeks. The thought made her sad. Unbearably sad. And angry.
She couldn't trust him. She could trust no one.
Rain began to fall not long after they had finished an unusually quiet dinner. Zuke seemed distracted, which suited Quarie just fine. As the first drops sizzled on their campfire, she cleaned up the remains of their food. She set some of the vegetables and the grain and some of the other easy-to-carry foods to one side, along with a few other essentials.
The wind smelled strongly of the ocean, and the falling drizzle sang lightly all around her as she worked. The sound was mournful and bittersweet. Occasionally, she glanced at Zuke as he went about his evening's routine, arranging the tent and his belongings. As the coals from their campfire died back, he took his journals into the dry interior where she knew he would light candles or his small brazier and read or write new notes, possibly about her.
The water didn't bother her. The air felt balmy and sweet and when the drops began to fall fast enough to run into her eyes, she simply asked them to move. They did.
Cautiously, she tried again to adjust the storm.
Again, it obeyed. She sat in the deepening dark playing with bands of rain. She altered the shape of their droplets, from fine mist to fat rivulets that splashed into the dirt. She shifted the clouds, creating breaks where stars shone through and piled the water together causing a concentrated downpour. The playtime in the water gave her an idea.
She left the water outside the tent, extracting it from her clothes as she entered and shooing it away. Inside was cheery and warm. Brightly colored murals had been painted on the inside surface. Detailed depictions of trees and flowers and stone fortresses and water filled the entire surface of the conical dwelling. Across one swath she recognized the distinctive patterns and wide arching wings of the gulls native to the shores near where she was born. She had always felt safe inside, despite how thin the silk walls were in reality. That is, until this evening when she realized she had been sheltered by her enemy.
Zuke frowned into his cup of tea. He startled as she entered, his eyes registering first surprise, then warmth, followed by something like sadness. Quarie looked away.
“It's really coming down out there, isn't it,” he said.
She shrugged and looked for her bundle of clothing in the pretense of getting ready for the evening.
“Do you know…do you remember…are storms like this common in this area?”
She paused, trying to remember. Memories of gales and high tides flashed through her mind, as did memories of nights spent cozy and safe with her family inside their cliff-side home. “Yes, I suppose. In the autumn, the rains would start. Storms would blow in off the sea and pound the shores. Boats sometimes wrecked and washed up on our beach.”
He glanced up around the walls of the tent. They sagged under the force of the rain, but stayed dry. “We got those too, up in the mountains when I was a boy. Lord Ralein's keep is high in the sierras north of here. Spring and fall we would be hit with rain storms that sent mud washing down into the ravines, sometimes wiping out a road, or a cottage. I slept for several years in a small attic room in one of the towers. The roof leaked.”
Quarie ignored the small part of her that wanted to cry for the little orphan boy, sleeping in a leaky attic, likely up many stairs that would have been painful to climb. She wanted to comfort him. To tell him, again, that she could protect him. But the truth was that she could barely protect herself, and he intended to betray her.
She folded up her spare change of clothes and her cloak and settled into her bedroll still fully dressed. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. Soon enough, Zuke finished his tea, and rustled around, setting himself in to sleep for the night.
As his breathing slowed, she reached out to the rain. The heart of the storm lay far off shore, with only the outer edges raining down on the land. With one last glance at the cheery murals overhead, she beckoned for it to come closer. To pound the shores. To flood the waterways. To cover her tracks as she fled.
Chapter 14
Quarie followed the storm through gale-force winds and sheets of water and thunder and lightning for two days almost without stopping until she reached the shore. Zuke would know exactly where she went—to the water—but would have no way to find her footsteps.
She rested for small stretches in protected hollows beneath bridges or in empty outbuildings as she could, but sleep evaded her. The song of the sea grew louder with every footstep, and its cries for help grew more urgent.
As she left the main roads, the terrain grew more rugged. Bluffs rose along the shore in the distance, and she used those as her guide. The storm made visibility poor, but occasionally she thought she recognized the shape of a boulder, or a bend in the river. The leaning branches of an ancient tree seemed vaguely familiar, and they seemed to be marking her way home.
All the while, the sea called her name.
As she neared a steep canyon fronted by a high bluff, her feet began to move of their own accord. A familiar rock here. A handhold there. The small crevasse carved subtly into steps. The rock turned to sand and the live oaks gave way to palms that bent in the wind.
The storm calmed as she knelt on the beach. On her beach. In the cove she had called home, protected on three sides from the land, and on the fourth by the ocean.
Rocks had crumbled from above in places, tumbling onto the sand. Ledges were striped with bird droppings, evidence that their human inhabitants had long abandoned the place. The remains of a large coconut tree that she used to nap under lay wedged against the cliff side, bleached as driftwood.
The waves raced forward and circled her in their embrace. The water was cold and unsettled from the days of storming, but it tasted like just the right blend of salt and mineral and fish. She scrambled to her feet and raced the whitecaps as they receded, shedding her dress and her cloak and the small bundle of food and supplies as she went and then she dove headlong into the surf.
She had no idea how long she was in the water. Hours, maybe a day, maybe more. She played and frolicked, was caressed and rocked, and welcomed home. While she was under the ocean, she rarely bothered to come up for air. Though the water filled her lungs, she stayed below, breathing like a fish.
Hunger finally drove her back to the shore, and she climbed up to the sheltered cave she had once called home.
Not much remained of her family. The contents had been crushed and washed away by time or by Raksha or by Quarie's own tsunami that she had called to defend herself. Gone were the shelves of scrolls, and the beds and furniture carved from teak. Gone were the hammocks and kitchen utensils, the toys and the tools. The cave was dirty with evidence of the animals who had stayed here since.
In a small crevasse beneath broken bits of driftwood, she found discarded pieces of what had been her mother's clothing. Clearly most of the cloth and furs had been taken long ago, but some pieces had been left for worthless. Quarie knew better. There were tops and leggings made from carefully treated skins of wales and fish and eels. The materials felt dry and rough from their years on land, but they were never meant for the land.
In the small cache, she found a small pot of the oil that they used to treat the skins and keep them supple. It was nearly empty, but there might be enough to revive a piece or two so that she might have water clothes for her next swim.
She swam like a fish already, but these garments were meant to protect sensitive human skin from the sand and the salt and to make her limbs sleeker and better able to slip through the waves.
It was dry enough to attempt a small fire. For the first time in weeks, she found herself struggling to make heat. She stripped the water from driftwood and worked it for an eternity attempting to coerce it into smoldering. Her stomach growled angrily. Finally she had enough of a small blaze to prepare her food and set about oiling and mending the garments.
Once her belly was full enough, she snuggled into her cloak and closed her eyes intending to rest. Despite the calming rhythm of the waves, sleep was elusive.
Voices called to her from across the water, and no matter how she tossed and turned, she could not ignore their cries.
Chapter 15
The rocking of the ship made Zuke ill and made balancing a chore. He leaned back against the cabin and used his staff to wedge himself upright. Sitting had already proved to be a poor choice. Water sloshed over the railings of the two-masted caravel. Inside the aft tower was a cabin which would have provided some comfort except that Silvari's captain-friend had made it clear that he didn't care for Zuke. Swinging in a hammock in the hold only made his nausea worse. As did the cargo.
Silvari seemed surprisingly comfortable at sea. She also seemed surprising familiar with the captain. That observation should have bothered him more than it did. It seemed to bother Silvari to stand between Zuke and her new paramour, and she kept shooting Zuke knowing looks that he interpreted as some combination of apology and pity.
He himself felt rather pitiful, dripping wet and doddering about like an old man. The two of them had never had any kind of understanding, and what companionship they had shared in the past had cooled long before Zuke left Zabewah's circles in search of his own answers. Silvari had always enjoyed surrounding herself with admirers and then manipulating them through their jealousy. He had no desire to be manipulated any further.
Before his rendezvous with Silvari, he had left his horse and cart and most of his gear at a town not far away. He paid for several days’ worth of stable, exercise, and boarding, but he had said goodbye to his steed in any case. The chances that he would return seemed small.
His heart had made a small twinge when he first spotted her, in the flesh, waiting near the beach where they had arranged the meeting. That twinge might have been fear. After all, he arrived alone without Quarie. He would not have been surprised to be greeted with a knife in his ribs. And he would have deserved every inch of the blade.
“She escaped,” he had said in as he hobbled to where Silvari stood. Her shadow stretched long over the water. A rowboat waited, and the ship bobbed at anchor nearby.
Silvari had only smiled. She wasn't a delicate beauty. Her features were strong, interesting, and as pointed as the blades she wore openly at her back, hip, and thigh. “You haven't changed, Zuke. You don't even bother with a 'hello' for an old friend.”
“This isn't the first time we've spoken recently,” he said by way of a weak apology.
Her eyes glittered, or maybe it was the reflection of the dying sun behind them. “But you are really here this time, and not just a cloud of smoke.”
As they climbed into the waiting dinghy, he noticed her necklace. Orange and black shells. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the one that he had taken from Mulavi.
If Silvari didn't treat him as a traitor, then Zabewah would. Or Quarie.
On board the ship, he had tried to summon a small fire so he could dry off and get warm and soon found himself facing a handful of drawn blades. Even more were pointed at his back, he supposed.
“Careful, mate,” drawled one of the hands, “Sailors don't take too kindly to fire. And there isn't much point getting dry when the seas are as lively as these.”
“No harm intended,” he willed the fire away and it disappeared without any lingering smoke. He raised his arms in a sign of surrender. Not that raising his arms in anyway stopped him from setting another fire, but the pirates who manned the ship were more accustomed to knife tricks than magic ones.
Silvari stepped in between then men. “He's all right. I've never known him to accidentally set anything on fire.”
Zuke had to restrain himself from quirking his lips. She had seen, firsthand, some of his early experiments with deliberate fires, and the havoc they could cause.
She waived her hands and the sailors reluctantly sheathed their assorted blades and returned to their tasks, casting him suspicious and hostile glances.
“I've been studying the maps, and I think I know where Quarie's cove is.”
Silvari shrugged. “Perhaps later. We only have until midnight tomorrow to reach our destination.”
“What destination is that? Shouldn't we wait for the storm to pass?” he asked her.
She smiled with an intensity that reminded him, uncomfortably, of her father. “The sooner we get there, the better. It is too bad that you were not able to bring the Isyre woman to me. But don't worry. She won't be far behind us. She won't be able to stop herself from following.”
She led him down into the hold and showed him their cargo.
Zuke did not recognize Silvari's man who guarded the hold, but the fission of energy was very familiar. He wore yet another of the shell necklaces, the same kind that had entranced Quarie, and it was activated.
The cargo hold was filled with men and women of various ages and descriptions in chains that seemed altogether unnecessary. Each wore a rapt expression and their bodies floated with an unearthly stillness. There were at least three dozen trapped in the filthy, dank space. And Silvari and her crew had ensnared them all.
The water fought her as she swam. Currents raced in all directions, swirling into chains around her legs and arms, trying to drag her backward. Other currents slipped through her hair and down her back, encouraging and guiding her. Above the surface, the storm raged, and the winds whipped the waves into angry whiteheads.
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