by R S Penney
“You're also welcome to part ways with us, Sebastian,” Desa said. “I will not keep you against your will.”
“I think I'll stay.”
Of course he would. Well, at least the young man seemed more agreeable than he had before Glad Meadows. Perhaps fearing for his life had taught him some manners. At least she wouldn't have to deal with his sneers. For a little while.
Sleep came fitfully that night; Desa did not feel comfortable drifting off with Miri just a few feet away. Every noise woke her, and each time, she expected to find Miri with a knife to her throat. What was that woman up to?
There were many possibilities, of course, but the one Desa feared most involved Miri working for Bendarian. That bastard had sent assassins after her before. None had tried to ingratiate themselves with her, but there was a first time for everything.
The next day brought very little change in scenery. Just open road and grassy fields with the odd tree here and there. Desa had tried to persuade Miri that it would be best for her to move on and find opportunities elsewhere, but the woman was determined to stay with them a while longer.
They began their ride with Desa and Tommy on Midnight while Sebastian and Miri took Tommy's old brown gelding. But that poor beast lacked Midnight's strength, and he required frequent stops. More than once, they had to dismount and walk for an hour to let the poor creature recover.
Eventually, Miri suggested that Tommy's horse would have an easier time carrying the women, as they were both smaller and lighter. Desa didn't like that one bit – Midnight was her steed – but she could hardly argue the point when she had been the one to insist that speed was of the essence. So, she rode the gelding while Midnight gave her sidelong glances and snorted at the strangers on his back.
On any other day, having a lovely woman's arms wrapped around her would leave Desa feeling content, but she did not trust Miri. Every time the woman squirmed behind her, Desa flinched at the fear that she might find a knife in her back.
“So,” Miri asked, tightening her grip on Desa's belly. “Why is it you're so keen to find this Morley?”
Sitting in the saddle with the reins in hand, Desa shut her eyes and tried to remain calm. “He's a murderer,” she answered. “And a servant of a much more dangerous man. It is that man I hunt.”
“Who might that man be?”
Desa chose not to answer – the less Miri knew about her business, the better – but Sebastian took the opportunity to fill the silence in the most unhelpful way possible. Why oh why did she tell these boys her secret? “His name is Radharal Bendarian,” Sebastian said. “He's a Field Binder of Aladar.”
“Like you,” Miri said.
Desa blew air through puckered lips. Her patience was growing thinner and thinner by the second. “Yes, like me,” she answered. “That's why I'm the one who must stop him. I'm the only one who can.”
“So, witches take responsibility for other witches? Huh?” Miri poked Desa between the shoulder blades. “Well, now, bless my soul! What exactly do you call a man witch? A warlock?”
Sebastian laughed with just a bit too much enthusiasm. He leaned in close, brought his lips to Tommy's ear and murmured, “Would you like to be a warlock, my love?” That was followed by a fit of giggles.
Desa felt heat in her face and sweat on her brow. Hard as it was, she forced herself to remain quiet. She was beginning to suspect that Sebastian might have told Miri a great deal about her in their time together. Perhaps this was an attempt to provoke her.
“Well?” Sebastian prodded after a moment. “You didn't answer, my love.”
Tommy growled and shook his head, which produced another outburst of laughter from Sebastian. Desa sighed. It was going to be a long journey, that was for sure.
Tommy knew they were close to Ofalla when he spotted the first farmhouse. It was nothing special – just a small house of gray stone with a gabled roof – but the sight of it soothed his troubled mind. It had been four days since their flight from Glad Meadows, and in all that time, he had not seen another human soul outside of their small party. He was beginning to worry that they had reached the edge of the world.
Two tall apple trees grew in front of the farmhouse, and he could hear the mooing of cows who grazed in the field. A shaggy mare stood just outside a barn of whitewashed wood, munching on some grass.
Shading his eyes with one hand, Tommy squinted as he stared down the road. “We must be getting close now,” he said. “I hope we get there by nightfall; I could use some rest in a decent bed.”
Next to him, Desa sat her horse with the reins in hand, smiling fondly as she shook her head. “You won't be sleeping in a bed tonight,” she informed him. “Or tomorrow, for that matter. We still have a long way to go.”
Tommy felt his mouth drop open, then lowered his eyes and grumbled to himself. “But the farm!” he insisted when he worked up the nerve to speak. “How can there be...I mean who lives this far away from the city?”
Miri was behind Desa with her arms around the other woman's waist, and she gave him a look that called him an idiot. “Ain't you never been more than two steps outside of your little town, Lommy?”
“It's Tommy.”
He knew for a fact that Miri heard him, but she ignored his protests as she always did. “Well, Lommy,” she went on. “Big cities like Ofalla have villages surrounding them on all sides. We'll pass through a few of those.”
“Maybe we could find an inn?” Sebastian suggested.
Desa wrinkled her nose at that, but she kept her gaze focused straight ahead as if she expected to find trouble behind the next hill. “We don't have enough money for that,” she said. “If we find an inn, we'll stop for a hot meal, but we're sleeping rough tonight.”
Tommy felt it when Sebastian shifted in Midnight's saddle, and the stallion snorted in protest. He didn't seem to like it when one of his riders squirmed. Or maybe it was just this particular rider that he didn't like. Midnight was as friendly as an excited puppy when Lommy approached him, but he glared daggers at Sebastian.
Tommy felt a spike of alarm.
Did...Did he just think of himself as Lommy? May the Almighty have mercy on his soul, that damnable woman was actually training him to answer to that ridiculous name! He liked Miri just fine – most of the time, anyway – but he was beginning to understand why Desa found her so vexing.
Sebastian leaned toward Desa, and Tommy cringed at the thought of what he might say. “What do you mean 'we don't have enough money?'” Sebastian began. “You seemed to have plenty in Sorla.”
She gave him a cool stare beneath the brim of her hat. “I spent years traveling alone and living off the money I made hunting fugitives,” she said. “Which was always enough to get me to the next town. Now, there are four of us.”
Sebastian muttered but he made no further protest.
Tommy was glad for that small mercy. When his love had returned to him, all he could think about was how happy he was. Happy and relieved. But now Sebastian had resumed his habit of challenging Desa at every opportunity. Now, Tommy could remember why he had been willing to watch the man he loved walk out of his life. A year ago, he would have never imagined that Sebastian could be capable of such ignorant hatred. In fact, he almost wished that Sebastian had stayed behind in Glad Meadows. It was so confusing. Why couldn't his fool brain just make up its mind?
The afternoon grew warm as they continued their southward journey, passing one farmhouse after another. Every now and then, they saw a man tending to his cows or a woman hanging laundry on a line. No one paid them any mind. Perhaps these people had grown used to the sight of travelers.
Tommy kept his mind busy by enjoying the scenery: the lush green grass, the clear blue sky full of puffy clouds, the occasional field of wildflowers. Only, it seemed to him, after a while, that the scenery was losing some of its luster. As the day wore on, the grass seemed less green. Maybe it was just his imagination.
The others were talking, but he paid them no mind. H
is thoughts were focused on sorting out his feelings for Sebastian, and the harder he tried to avoid that task, the more urgent it became. Perhaps he should try to meditate
One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five.
It wasn't working.
Tommy held the reins in a tight grip, anxiety clawing at him as he frowned down at the pommel of his saddle. “You said there would be towns,” he muttered. “I thought we'd have seen one by now.”
When he shot a glance in her direction, Desa offered a reassuring smile. “We will,” she promised him. “We're still a good ways out. Towns tend to spring up around cities. Less so in the countryside.”
He nodded.
When his mind refused to quiet down, he went back to looking at the scenery, but that did nothing to soothe him. The grass had changed, and now he knew it wasn't just his imagination. Something had taken the colour from every blade. Not all of it, but enough for him to notice. It wasn't just that the grass was turning brown the way it sometimes did in a prolonged drought. No, it was more of a gray. There was still a hint of green, but not much. More like a memory of green.
Come to think of it, the dirt beneath Midnight's hooves wasn't quite so brown. The sky was still a vibrant blue – so, they had that – but something was wrong here. When he looked at the trees, he didn't see green leaves but gray ones that hung limp from each and every branch.
Tommy lifted his hands up and flexed his fingers. His skin still retained its pinkish hue, and his clothes were also unaffected. Trousers as brown as the day his mother made them and scuffed booths with black visible beneath: he looked perfectly normal. As did all of his companions. The horses were fine too.
But the land...
The land was fading.
He looked toward Desa for some indication that this was all perfectly normal and found her riding with a hand pressed to her stomach. She was grimacing, and she looked about ready to empty her belly.
Tommy felt his lip quiver, then steeled himself and sucked in a breath of air. That too felt wrong, somehow. It was almost imperceptible, but the day's heat seemed to have faded. It wasn't cold; it was just...nothing. The air felt stale and motionless. There was no breeze. “What's going on?” Tommy mumbled.
“Something is very wrong,” Desa said. “We need to stop.”
Chapter 7
Ignoring the churning of her stomach – the Ether was out of sorts, somehow – Desa dropped from her horse and landed in a crouch. She straightened, reached up and pulled the brim of her hat down low over her eyes.
Grass and road alike had faded to a dark, somber gray, both so muted that she could hardly tell one from the other. The sky overhead was normal, but the landscape had died. Or worse. She wasn't sure that she had a word for this.
Desa paced a short ways up the road, then knelt and grabbed a tuft of grass that had sprouted from the dirt. The stuff was dry and rough as if something had sucked the life out of it. “By the eyes of Vengeance...”
She turned back to the others.
Her three companions stood side by side between the horses, all watching her with fearful expressions, hoping that she would have some answer for all this. Sebastian was the first to step forward. “Should we...Should we go back?”
Desa strode toward him, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. “No, we must go forward,” she insisted. “This is Bendarian's doing, I'm sure of it. I can feel a wrongness in the Ether.”
“But...But how?” Tommy stammered.
Crossing her arms with a sigh, Desa felt her mouth tighten. Her head sank as she tried to put it all together. “I wish I knew,” she said. “When I began pursuing him, it was because he had begun conducting experiments with the Ether.”
“Experiments?” Miri asked.
“Bendarian claimed that we had only scratched the surface of Field Binding's true potential. He believed that we could Infuse the Ether directly into a human body, and he was cast out of the order for his refusal to relent on this point. Any skilled Field Binder can tell you that living tissue will not accept an Infusion, but Bendarian insisted on trying anyway. His experiments resulted in the deaths of thirteen people.”
Tommy swallowed visibly.
Sebastian was deathly pale as he stood with one hand inside his coat pocket, staring down at his boots. “But you said that he was Infusing people,” he mumbled. “Why would doing that change the land?”
“I don't know.”
She scanned her surroundings and found a small farmhouse just a short way up the road. It couldn't be more than a quarter mile distant, and it too was gray. She had to know more about this phenomenon.
Desa stood in the road with her arms hanging limp, her eyes downcast as she took those first few steps forward. “We need to know more,” she said. “So, let's see if anyone survived...whatever this was.”
Ordinarily, she would have gone alone, but there were two people in this party she didn't trust, and she had no inclination to leave the horses in their care. Midnight would resist any underhanded attempt to steal him, but Tommy's gelding might not.
On the other hand, she wasn't thrilled about going into a dangerous situation with Miri at her side. The woman might decide to pull a knife at the worst possible time. And while she trusted Tommy, the young man was susceptible to Sebastian's influence. That left her with one option.
They all went in together.
The house was a small, squat building with a gabled roof and a window on either side of the door. It was pleasant, homey. Or rather, it would have been if not for whatever had destroyed everything within a square mile.
There should have been noise; a farm was never this deathly quiet. She should have heard the lowing of cows or the braying of sheep. Or even just a goodwife chastising her husband! Instead, all she heard was silence.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Desa drew in a breath and then nodded. “As I suspected,” she said, turning back to the others. “They're either dead themselves or gone. I pray it is the latter, but we cannot be certain until we search the grounds.”
Tommy watched her with a gaping mouth, blinking slowly. “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Kincaid,” he began, “but shouldn't we be gone ourselves. What if whatever this was is...What if it's catching?”
“I suspect you would have caught it already if that were the case.”
“But-”
With an exasperated sigh, Desa looked up toward the heavens and rolled her eyes. “If you would rather wait with the horses, that will be acceptable,” she said. “But I must search the house.”
Gray grass crunched beneath her boots as she stepped off the road. The sound of it only served to intensify her uneasiness. The air was so painfully still it was a miracle she could even breathe it.
“Hello!” Desa called out.
No one answered.
Briefly, she considered drawing her pistol but thought better of it. She didn't want to frighten anyone who might have survived this tragedy. If indeed anyone had survived. So, she crept through the grass as quietly as she could.
When she neared the door, Desa knocked. The wood sounded hollow somehow, but it resisted her repeated blows. She waited several moments for someone to answer, but no one did. Finally, she decided to try the door.
At first, she was pleased to find it unlocked, but the implications of that became all too clear before she could thank Mercy for good luck. If the door was unlocked, it likely meant that the family had been present to witness whatever had caused this catastrophe.
Thrusting out her fist, she triggered the Light-Source in her ring and breathed out a sigh of relief when it projected a cone of radiance into the small house. Field Binding still worked in spite of what Bendarian had done to the Ether. She let the ring go dark. There was no sense in wasting energy when natural light was so abundant.
Desa stepped through the door with a hand on the grip of her pistol, scanning left and right for any sign of trouble. “Hello?” she shouted, moving deeper into the house. �
�Is anyone here?”
She saw a wooden rocking chair next to the fireplace and a small table with four chairs: all gray. There was no sign of life. This place felt more like a tomb than a house; so, if the family had been present when their world turned gray, what had happened to them? She would have imagined that they would be as dead as the grass outside, but that would mean corpses. And she saw none.
In the back of the house, she found a kitchen where copper pots hung from a bar above the stove, though they looked more silver without their colour. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her.
Bracing her hands on the windowsill, Desa leaned forward to peer into the backyard. “I wonder if you have any ammunition to spare,” she muttered, her eyebrows rising. “Mercy knows I need it.”
She began a search of the house, opening drawers and cupboards. Stealing from the dead left her with an unsavory feeling, but there was no telling what kind of trouble she would find over the next hill, and she wanted more than eight bullets.
Climbing the stairs with one hand on the wall, Desa cringed at every creak of the floorboards. “The Goddess smiles upon me,” she whispered, reciting a prayer her mother had taught her. “I shall not fear.”
On the second floor, she found a single room with four beds underneath a triangular roof and a square window on the wall that provided enough light to see. Once, it would have saddened her to see people living like this. No running water, no antibiotics. And no electricity either – she couldn't even begin to describe how hard it had been to get used to that – but the people she had met on her journeys seemed content with their simple life.
There were no bodies in any of those beds. For all Desa could tell, this house had been abandoned years ago. It sickened her to realize that she would have been relieved to find corpses. Desa went to a chest of drawers.
Pulling one open, she began rummaging inside, casting aside plaid shirts and folded-up socks. Clearly, these were the husband's garments. Her fingers closed around a small wooden box, and she was fairly certain of what she would find inside.
