Unbonded (First of the Blade Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Not familiar with olar,” Imogen said, looking up as the barkeep brought her a tray and set it in front of her. She flashed him a smile, then started eating.

  “Not many see them,” the man at the nearby table said. He looked over to Bug. “And if he claims that he has seen vithan—”

  “You don’t know what I’ve seen. I’ve traveled farther than you have ever even thought possible,” Bug said. He took another bite and glanced over to Imogen. “The olar won’t bother you unless you travel at night and go in the trees. You gotta keep yourself covered, you see. They’ve got poor eyesight, but they got other ways of navigating. Smell, partly, and they can use that to hunt for their prey. Someone like you might be a bit more dangerous than they would care to deal with, so I doubt you have to worry much. Unless you walk into one of their clutches.” He shook his head. “If you find it, you turn back. You don’t want to be there when they wake up. I have seen people who wandered through, thinking them harmless, and they were skinned before they could even scream.”

  “There you go again, Bug,” the man nearby said, slapping his hand down on the table. “Telling stories, and now you’re trying to scare this lovely stranger.” He winked at Imogen, then grabbed his ale and took another drink. “There is nothing to fear about the olar. Besides, they don’t taste all that bad.”

  Imogen looked over at Bug. “So if it’s not these creatures, then what is it?” she asked, trying to make it sound as if she believed everything he had to say.

  “Told you, didn’t I? The earth itself coming alive. The fog swallowing people. I’ve heard from men out of the marshes, good men—”

  The man at the table nearby grunted and started to laugh. “Good men? What good men come out of the marshes?”

  “Ones better than you,” Bug said. “Anyway, last time I was there, I heard that there were stories of those who traveled into the marsh and got lost.” He shook his head. “Mind you, no marsh man ever got lost. Can’t do that when you have to navigate the fingers of swamp the way they do. Can’t go wandering into fog like that and suddenly disappear.”

  “So now we have to be afraid of fog?” The man smacked the table again and turned to Imogen. “Don’t let him scare you. Besides, if you need someone to keep you safe as you travel east, I’d be more than happy to accompany you.”

  “She’d be better off taking a dog than an idiot like you,” Bug said. “At least the dog might smell the shit before stepping in it. You would just go traipsing through it, not even aware of what you were going to find.”

  The man jumped to his feet. The barkeep rushed over, clasped a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed, causing the man to wince slightly.

  “They’re just stories, Donovan,” the barkeep said. “No need to get worked up about it. Bug isn’t hurting you anyway. He’s just telling the stranger here what he’s heard. She asked for the stories.” The way he said it and the look he gave Imogen told her just how suspicious he was of her: he questioned why she was heading that way.

  And she wasn’t exactly sure she had the answer.

  If sorcery was to blame, it would explain some of the tales Bug mentioned. She had certainly seen sorcery that enchanted stone or dirt to come alive and attack. That could be more than stories. But the fog swallowing someone? The dead coming back to life?

  That wasn’t the kind of magic she had ever heard of—or seen.

  Donovan turned away from Bug, shrugging, and he glanced at Imogen. “The offer of a guide is there for you, if you want it.” He grinned at her, then chuckled.

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. There was no point in beginning an argument with somebody like that. She knew better, much like she knew that someone like him often thought he needed to prove himself.

  When he turned away, she looked at Bug. “Where do the stories say all of this is focused?” she asked.

  “They don’t really talk about that,” he said. “Not much there, anyway. At least, nothing you want to go after.” He winked at her, then picked up a hunk of meat and started chewing on it. “Probably more dangerous than anything.” He talked through his food, revealing some yellowed teeth. “Not quite to the marshes, but far enough north that other travelers aren’t hearing about it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Does the road lead through there?”

  “Leads well enough. Well, it had. These days I think it’s overgrown.” He glanced over to Donovan and shook his head. “Not that someone like that cares much about the truth. If there’s nothing to be concerned about, why would the road be overgrown the way it is?” He turned back to Imogen. “Not saying I have the answers, just that I recognize the questions that need to be asked.”

  He concentrated on his food again, chewing steadily, and Imogen left him alone.

  Everything he’d said pointed to sorcery. That was what she and Timo were hoping to find, though she had started to tell herself that they wouldn’t come across anything. They had been traveling long enough now that she had begun to believe that there wasn’t going to be anything here.

  But now there were rumors. Rumors with some meat to them.

  Imogen picked at the food on her tray. She would have to talk to her brother when he returned. She knew what he would choose. He would chase those rumors because he would want to know if there was any truth to them. He would choose to head farther east, toward the marsh, and to find out if there was anything to the stories of the sorcerer.

  The problem for Imogen was that she wasn’t sure he should.

  Chapter Four

  Ever since leaving Helophen, Imogen had been on the lookout for any signs of enchantments or creatures or sorcery, but she had seen and felt nothing. There had been signs of a traveler along the road, and she kept thinking back to Bug and wondering if he was venturing toward the marsh again. He hadn’t said it, but she suspected he was one of the traders that the barkeep had mentioned.

  Timo had been quiet, though that wasn’t much of a surprise. She had waited nearly an hour for him to return to the tavern the previous night, and she still didn’t have a clear answer as to what he had been doing. He’d claimed he had been searching for any evidence of sorcery around the village, but if that was what he had been doing, he should have taken her with him.

  She had told him a little of the stories she’d heard in the tavern, though not much, because she knew it would only force him to push harder and potentially lead him to a single-minded goal of violence. She wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that, only that she had come to understand her brother in a way she had not before, and she recognized that his attitude toward sorcery was different than her own.

  Her imagination wandered as they traveled. The oak trees that towered on either side of Imogen became sentries that guarded the forested lands. Or perhaps they were soldiers that attempted to keep her from leaving the only place she’d known for the last few years. Her heart remained heavy with her departure, heading away from friends toward a future she had wanted to avoid—and one she had come to question.

  She pushed those thoughts out of her mind, trying to ignore them as much as she tried to ignore everything these days since she’d become unbonded.

  A dampness hung in the air, mixed with a bit of a chill that came from this part of the world. So different than her homeland, though it was a homeland she had not visited in many years. She had come to appreciate this land for what it offered, but it was still foreign to her, a place she didn’t quite belong to.

  “Do you intend to remain silent the entire time we travel?” Timo muttered.

  Imogen looked over to her brother. “What’s there for me to say?”

  “If you didn’t want to leave, you didn’t have to,” he said. “I can find Dheleus well enough on my own. The Toral gave me all I needed.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, tearing her gaze away from where she pictured the village in the distance. It was there behind her, more imagined now than anything else, though she could almost feel it. She had no idea whe
n they’d find the comfort of a bed again.

  “You could’ve remained. I can do this myself.”

  Imogen stared through the trees. They shifted from sentries to attackers coming toward her, one after another, to drag her to her fate. It was all too easy to imagine such a thing, and all too easy to envision a sorcerer standing among the trees, hands raised as they forced the trees to start dancing toward her.

  What could she say to her brother? That she didn’t trust him not to die? Or that she worried he’d lose even more of himself in the process?

  “It was time for me to go,” she said. The words were soft, and they disappeared quickly into the forest. She couldn’t have stayed any longer. In that, Gaspar was right. Not with Timo’s need for her help.

  “You care about them, though, don’t you?”

  “They were my friends.”

  “They could’ve come with you, if they mattered so much to you.”

  “They mattered,” she said.

  Imogen reached into her pocket, her finger trailing along the small, circular stone object she kept there. The marker was an enchantment, something she had never imagined that she would agree to use. It gave her the ability to reach out to her friends, to speak to them across the great distance, but it was something she hesitated in doing. She had done so once already not long ago, though that had been out of a great need and not simply from loneliness. Loneliness, she could withstand.

  “I would never have thought that the great Imogen could feel fear,” Timo taunted.

  “It’s not fear,” she retorted.

  He started to laugh, and she shot him a hard look. If only he knew that the real reason she was here was because of him.

  Timo shrugged. “Everyone is afraid of something.”

  “This is nothing,” she said.

  She wasn’t about to tell her brother that it was the friendships she’d made outside of the Leier lands that mattered more to her than almost any others. How could he understand? He saw her as someone who had gone off on a bond quest that she should not have been capable of completing, though his was much the same. In that, they were not so different.

  But she was now unbonded. Timo might be as well, though neither of them truly knew if the Sul’toral L’aran had died during the attack.

  Silence stretched between them for a long time.

  “I miss the openness,” Timo finally said.

  “Were you like this when you traveled with the others?”

  He frowned. “I didn’t have the need to prod them into speaking. We’d traveled together for the better part of several years.”

  Perhaps she’d been wrong about Timo’s quietness—and his darkness. Her brother struggled for a different reason. While Imogen was disappointed in leaving people she had come to call friends, her brother had lost friends. At least she could still speak to those she cared about, perhaps even call them for help if it came down to it. Timo could not. His friends were gone. Slaughtered by the sorcerers they had hunted.

  She hadn’t acknowledged it nearly enough.

  “I’m sorry, Timo.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “We all knew it was a possibility.”

  “Still.”

  She couldn’t imagine all that he had lost. Knowing Timo…

  Though she didn’t know him. Not anymore.

  She had gone off on her bond quest thinking she would accomplish some impossible goal, though she had done it because she had thought she had no other choice.

  They fell into a steady silence again, neither of them talking as they navigated the road.

  After a while, he looked over to her. It seemed as if he had made some decision. “It won’t be far from here. The Toral said—”

  “What if he told you something to push you into a trap?”

  Timo sniffed. “It won’t matter, so long as I find Dheleus. You don’t need to keep going with me. If this is a useless journey for you…”

  There was a part of Imogen—a large part, if she was honest with herself—that wondered if perhaps he was right. Maybe she needed to return to Yoran and to Gaspar. Maybe it would be better for her. She was sure that he would welcome her, but her brother needed her.

  The path led through the enormous forest as it wound to the east. The people in this land likely had some clever name for the forest, and she had already heard some tales about creatures found within it. Most of Bug’s stories were probably fabrications, much like the ones in every land she had ever visited.

  All but Yoran.

  In that city, she had found that the stories had a kernel of truth to them, and while she had been there, she had uncovered far more than what she had ever intended to bite off.

  There were dangers here, at least according to those within the village. She didn’t know how much stock to put in those rumors but suspected there was enough to it that she had to be careful.

  The fantastical tales were almost impossible to believe, but she had heard stranger ones. And more than that, she had seen things even more horrifying than what Bug had described.

  She found herself patting her pocket, checking to ensure the enchantments she had on her remained tucked away. She carried only a few. One was an enchantment to reach out to Gaspar if she were to need it, though she was determined not to use it. Several were enchantments that would grant her various enhancements in both strength and speed, but any time she had ever tried those, she had found that they disrupted her fighting style. There were still other enchantments she carried, primarily to be used in defensive situations, but for the most part, she doubted she would be able to use them around Timo—he would react poorly to it.

  “You never told me what you did with the ring,” she said.

  Timo glanced over, frowning at her. “What was that?”

  “When you killed the Toral outside of Yoran. What did you do with the ring?”

  “They can’t be destroyed.”

  “I didn’t know that. I’ve never taken a Toral ring.”

  “We were never able to kill any of the Toral either,” he said, his voice soft.

  “You didn’t?” she asked, surprised. She thought that he and the others who had traveled with him had killed Toral before.

  He looked over, irritation flashing in his eyes once again. “By the Blade, Imogen, I thought you would understand what I’ve been doing and the reasons behind it.”

  “It’s not about understanding. It’s just—”

  Timo let out a frustrated breath. “You want to accuse me, but I’ve seen what you have been willing to do.”

  She would have to deal with the consequences of that. She had accepted magic, even sorcery, around her. And not only that, but she had also come to carry enchantments on her.

  All of it went against her training. All of it had changed her.

  But Imogen had changed long before she had gone to Yoran, taken those enchantments, and used the magic around her.

  “Keep your eyes open,” she said, switching the subject. “There were stories in the village.”

  “Those are just rumors,” Timo said. “When I was making my way around the village, I heard other ones. The people are simple, and simple people hear scary stories.”

  Imogen frowned at him, but she didn’t say anything to object. Despite his denials, he still looked around the forest and peered into the darkness, as if he were able to see past the shadows.

  “How long do you intend to search for evidence of Dheleus?” she asked.

  “As long as it takes. You understand that defeating the Sul’toral—”

  “That was not your bond quest. Yours was L’aran, not Dheleus.”

  “Yes. That was my bond quest,” Timo said softly.

  They continued on in silence. They were heading east, but what was strange for her was that they were not following a real sense of anything. The closest lead they had was the rumors that had come out of Helophen.

  From what the barkeep had told Imogen, another village was only a few days
away from last, and she hoped that maybe there would be more rumors there. Eventually, they could track the stories and use them to piece together a puzzle that might guide them to understand where Dheleus had gone. Either that, or they would find the Toral who served him. If there was one thing that she believed Timo understood, it was the way in which the Toral served the Sul’toral and how finding one would lead to another.

  A howl split the sounds of the forest, and Imogen tensed despite herself.

  “That was close,” Timo said.

  “It’s nothing but a wolf,” she replied.

  “Perhaps.”

  She looked over to her brother, and his handed rested on the hilt of his sword. “It’s nothing but a wolf,” she said again. “We can chase one off.”

  “If it’s only a single wolf. What if it’s something else?”

  “What did you encounter when you were traveling?”

  “Many things,” Timo said, shaking his head as he met her gaze. “And many things that I would prefer to forget. But they were things that needed to be learned. Things about the world. I wouldn’t have learned them had I stayed in our homeland.”

  “Neither would I,” Imogen said.

  They walked for a little while longer before the howl came again. This time, it seemed closer. There was something haunting about the sound, almost as if it was meant to carry directly to them, like the wolf was trying to speak to Imogen directly. She cocked her head to the side, listening to the sound, but then it faded and disappeared.

  “Maybe that’s what they heard,” Imogen said. “Bug mentioned—”

  “Bug?” Timo asked.

  Hadn’t he met the man?

  The more time Imogen had spent around Bug, the more reasonable he had seemed. She suspected that was because of her own issues, though perhaps it came from a willingness to listen, understand, and try to find commonality. Bug might have been out of the marshlands, but he had spoken with a certain honesty and confidence that she had found among those who actually knew things.

  “At the tavern in Helophen. He shared stories—”

  “We can’t react based on that,” Timo said.