by Alex Raizman
“It’s a flimsy hope, my lord,” Armin said carefully. As tired as de’Monchy looked right then, Armin still felt the need to point out that they didn’t know what the Vacuity Engine even did. It could be a dead end.
The Duke laughed hollowly. “This entire resistance is built upon flimsy hopes secured to beams of impossible dreams with desperation and anger serving as brick and mortar, Master Armin. We should hardly start discrediting it now.”
Armin wanted to argue with that. He wanted to go and find Tythel and Eupheme. Tellias too, I suppose. But the Duke was right. Priorities had to be focused on the good of the Resistance as a whole.
Armin just wished he didn’t hate it so much.
Chapter 16
Tythel had nearly fallen asleep in the sun when she heard the crunch of footsteps on the grass approaching. She stretched and tilted her head back to see Tellias walking out of the mouth of the cave, blinking blearily in the sun. “Good morning,” Tythel said. Her voice still had a slight rasp from yesterday, like she was coming off a bad cold or had spent the night before screaming.
“Morning,” Tellias said, in the cautious tones of someone who had not been awake long enough to be certain of much else besides the fact that it was, in fact, morning. He settled into the grass next to her with a rough motion that was as much a fall as it was sitting. “Flath,” he muttered. “I’m not at my best first thing in the morning.”
Tythel rolled over on her side. “Give it a couple more months,” she said, stretching again, enjoying the languid feel of lounging in the grass with the sun beating down on her. “This war will make a morning person out of even the most hardened curmudgeon.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Tellias said. He glanced at her, stretched on the grass, and his cheeks begin to redden. Tythel blinked in confusion, wondering what had embarrassed him. I suppose he sees his failure to be alert a personal failure, she thought. Tellias looked away, over to the flowing river in front of them. “I suppose you’re more used to sleeping in caves though.”
“I had a bed,” Tythel said in a tone of gentle reprimand. “My father knew how poorly human skin fares when sleeping on stone.” She tilted her head in thought. “Although I suppose the adjustment has been made easier in some ways. My skin is tougher now.”
“That can’t be all of it,” Tellias said. “It’s not just about skin. It’s also about aches and general discomfort.” He grabbed a small, flat stone and considered it for a moment. “I suppose it’s probably from growing up so damn pampered. I’ve slept on the softest mattresses of Shal’ah, with bedding of the finest silks of the Southern Isles. No adjustment in between.”
Tythel tilted her head again, blinking. “You sound almost bitter about that,” she commented, hoping she was reading the furrow of his brow correctly.
“It’s a stupid thing to be angry about. My childhood wanted for nothing. It just left me ill prepared to deal with the ravages of war – even the smallest ones.” Tellias stood up and tossed the stone at the water in a low, underhanded throw.
When it hit the surface of the water, it bounced. Tythel sat up in wide-eyed amazement. “How did you do that?” she asked, clapping her hands with sudden delight. “I didn’t think you were a lumcaster!”
“I’m…what?” Tellias laughed in sudden understanding. “Light and shadow, I never even thought about that. It’s called skipping stones. Children make a game of it. If you toss the right kind of stone just right, it will bounce on the water. One point per bounce, five if it skips at least once and makes it across.”
“That’s amazing!” Tythel said. “Can you teach me?”
“Of course,” Tellias said, motioning for her to stand up. She hopped up in an excited leap. “You want a stone that’s smooth. Flat stones are better, but smooth is what’s most important.”
Tythel glanced around and spotted a small boulder, worn smooth by water, about the size of her head. She lifted it with one hand and held it up for Tellias’ inspection. “Like this?”
“Erm,” Tellias said, giving the rock proper consideration. “Perhaps something smaller would be better? Large rocks just make an almighty splash.”
Tythel nodded, then gave Tellias a sly look. Before he could respond, she heaved, tossing the stone into the river. True to Tellias’ expectations, it tossed up a considerable plume of water before sinking to the bottom.
Tellias smiled. “Thus proving my hypothesis,” he said, chuckling as he did. He picked another stone off the ground and held it up for Tythel. “About this size.”
After a bit of searching, they’d collected six stones of varying size and shape. Tellias held one up. “Now. You hold it between your thumb and index finger, like this, and then you throw it from the side. Flick it as you do, and it’ll skip on the water.” He demonstrated the motion a couple times, then tossed the stone. It skipped four times before sinking.
Tythel stood the way Tellias had and tossed her own projectile. It hit the river and sunk with a gentle splash. “Damn,” she muttered.
“You have to throw with your whole body. It’s not just a toss of the arm, you want to pull it from the ground. Move your shoulders and your hips when you. Like this.” Tellias showed her the motion a few times. Tythel watched intently, but found it oddly distracting. Tellias was well muscled from years of sword practice, and his thin shirt clung to his chest and arms in the most interesting ways.
“Tythel?” Tellias said after a moment.
Tythel started, realizing he’d stopped the demonstration and was giving her an expectant look. It was Tythel’s turn to blush. I was admiring his form – I mean his technique, she chided herself, wondering why she’d gotten so distracted watching his motions, and why her heart was beating so rapidly. She’d experienced this before, watching Armin and the other soldiers on the practice field, but had put that to the rush of battle – even if simulated. Now that there was no such distraction, she found the sensation of distracted hypnosis to be more perplexing.
“Sorry,” she muttered, grabbing a stone and trying the throw again. Between the distraction and embarrassment, she dramatically overcompensated, hurtling the stone across the river with enough force it missed the river entirely. Distantly she could hear it clatter against the canyon wall.
Tellias barked with laughter. “Perhaps pull a bit less from the ground this time,” he said.
Still blushing, Tythel attempted another throw. This one didn’t go across the river. It didn’t even go to the river. She was so focused on releasing at the right time, she ended up throwing it almost perfectly horizontal to the river’s flow.
Tellias held a hand to his mouth to suppress the laughter. Tythel kicked a rock in frustration. This one, of course, flew perfectly into the water. She shot Tellias a glare. “I do only have one working eye, my depth perception…” she started to say in frantic justification.
It was too late. Tellias was shaking with the effort of holding in his laughter and had to let a few chortles out to get it under control. “Maybe it would be better if I showed you a different way. Go ahead and get ready, like you’re going to throw.”
Tythel sighed and did so, her back to Tellias. He stepped up behind her, putting his hands on her wrists. “Like this,” he said, helping her move in the exact right way, walking her through the motion. Tythel found it incredibly distracting, and her next throw went so wild Tellias had to duck. Fortunately, that sent him into another burst of laughter, and this time Tythel couldn’t help from laughing with him.
“Sounds like you two are having fun,” Eupheme said as she walked out of the cave where they’d made camp for the night.
“For once, I am,” Tythel replied honestly, throwing the last stone at the river. It splashed with a resounding thunk, not even skipping a second.. “Even though I am terrible at skipping stones.”
“The score is thirty-seven to zero,” Tellias said.
“I still think hitting the wall on the other side of the canyon should be worth something,” Tyt
hel muttered, turning her attention to Eupheme. “How’s your arm?”
Eupheme held it up. The improvised splint was now wrapped in a dark cloth that seemed to absorb the sunlight. It’s not cloth, Tythel realized with a start. It’s darkness. “This should give me some use of it,” Eupheme explained. “Though I have to be careful for a bit or I’ll hurt it worse.”
“I didn’t think the shadow could heal,” Tellias said, sounding as impressed as Tythel felt.
Eupheme smirked. “You thought right. Healing is the domain of Lumcasters. For us Umbrists, we can bind, and we can remove the pain. That’s why I have to be careful – I won’t realize I’m hurting it.”
“That still sounds like…well, I’ll be honest Eupheme, I can think of a few times I would have liked to just have the pain stop,” Tythel said, trying her best not to sound cross, but remembering being impaled on the sword. Or the burning in her throat. Or cracking her ribs. Or losing her eye. How am I not dead? Tythel wondered as she stopped the tally of injuries before it became truly depressing.
“I can’t maintain it on someone else,” Eupheme said with an apologetic shrug. “Not without special materials. If we can get a Priestess of the Shadow to infuse silk, I can work with that. Otherwise, I’m limited to using it personally, and I need it to be night, and I need an hour.” She flashed them a grin. “On the positive side, there’s absolutely no risk of it turning me into a mutant.”
“It’s definitely better than light in that way,” Tythel agreed.
“Which reminds me,” Tellias said. Tythel had to fully move her head to see him, since he was standing on her blindside. “Have you considered using the light to regrow your eye?”
“No,” Tythel said, unable to keep the bitter note out of her voice. “I was too close to a lumwell for too long. If I attempted to use light to regrow, the risk of mutation…it’s too high, I absorbed too much. It’ll eventually be safe, but by then the eye will be fully healed. From what Armin explained, the healed spot will be my new ‘default’ state.”
Tellias winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to-”
Tythel shook her head and forced herself to smile. From Tellias’ reaction, it looked more like a grimace, and Tythel stopped before she disturbed him with her expression. “It’s alright. I had a great time this morning, I’m not going to let this ruin it.”
Tellias flashed her a smile of his own.
“I heard from Armin,” Eupheme said. “He said that Duke de’Monchy wants us to meet him at the rendezvous point. No help’s coming for us, we’re too spread out. Armin and a few others are going to hunt down the lead you gave, your highness. He’s also cutting off songs for the next week. We don’t want to risk the Alohym overhearing.”
“Wait, what?” Tythel asked, feeling her blood run cold. “Armin is leading an expedition into the wastes of Dor’nah?”
Tellias frowned at Tythel. “It was your suggestion,” he said hesitantly.
“I expected to be going when I made the suggestion!” Tythel was shouting, but she couldn’t help herself. “It’s…flath it, that place is overrun with creations of draconic necromancy. Grejax reigned there for nearly a millennium and had all that time to permeate the land with his power. There’s no way to know what’s waiting for them in there. All for what, the possibility of treasure? I said it was only possible! I didn’t even get to find the maps, or write what I knew!”
“There’s no way to be sure there’s not a hoard there,” Tellias said, his tone as placating as possible. He looked more startled than anything else. Of course he is, Tythel thought, her nictitating membranes blinking in rapid anger. He doesn’t know you gave the suggestion just to keep their hands away from Karjon’s hoard.
“Sing back to him,” Tythel said to Eupheme, ignoring Tellias. “Tell him to call it off. Tell him to-”
Eupheme cut her off with quick, hard gesture before Tythel could go any further. “He cut off all songs. There’s no way to get messages right now. And before you say it, we’ll never catch up to them in time.”
Tythel took a deep breath to steady her anger. “There’s nothing you can do?”
Eupheme shook her head. “I’m sorry, your highness.”
Tythel sighed. “Damnit. And on top of that, we can’t even go to the rendezvous.”
“What?” Tellias and Eupheme asked in near perfect unison.
“Remember that flying Alohym from the fight?”
Tellias grimaced. “How can I forget?”
“Well,” Tythel said, “I could hear it during the fight, as high up as it was. It was coming after me. It called me a monster. It said I wouldn’t escape. Called me a mongrel fahik. Which, incidentally, I’ve never heard before. Do either of you know what it means?”
Tellias coughed and looked down awkwardly. “It’s a portmanteau of fahid and phik, two words in the Alohym’s tongue. Fahid means flesh or meat. Phik means pit or hole. Put together, they’re an insult specifically geared towards women.”
Tythel cocked her head. “How is that an insult? ‘Meat-hole?’ I don’t understand how that could be used as an insult.”
Tellias looked at Eupheme, who gave him a smile. “Yes, please, Baron Tellias, explain to the princess how meat-hole could be an insult to a woman.”
“Well,” Tellias said with another cough. “It, erm, is used to imply a woman is…liberal. With her favors.”
Tythel cocked her head to the other side. “I don’t understand…Oh, wait! I understand.” Then her eyes widened as she properly comprehended it. “Never mind, moving back to the original topic, let us never discuss this again.”
“No promises,” Eupheme muttered.
“Anyway,” Tythel said, dragging the word out to give herself time to recover from the embarrassment. “The point is that it…it was personally interested in killing me. I think it’s going to keep trying to find me. If we lead it back to the resistance, I don’t think they could shoot it out of the sky. I think we need to lure it away.”
Tythel took a deep breath. “And I think I know exactly where we can lead it. Where we might have a chance to beat it.”
“Where?” Tellias asked.
“We need to lure it back to my father’s valley,” Tythel said, wishing she had another answer – any other answer – to that question.
Chapter 17
“I’m sorry, but what?” Tellias asked, furrowing his forehead. “You want to lure a creature we couldn’t even hit as far away from the resistance as possible? So it has us isolated?”
“Not just anywhere,” Tythel said, eyes narrowing in frustration. “My father’s valley. He wove an illusion over the whole thing. Form the air, you can’t see any life in the valley itself. It’s completely hidden.”
“So…we lure the Alohym to a place where it will lose track of us and then fly back to rejoin its allies and attack the resistance?” Tellias asked, tapping his chin. “I’m not sure I see the cunning nature to this plan.”
Tythel let out an exasperated breath. “Tellias, listen. We need some edge on this thing. It’s faster than any of us, and better armed, and we can’t fight back effectively since it’s in the air. If we get under the illusion, it’ll have to land. We’ll have negated one of its biggest advantages.”
“She’s not entirely wrong, Tellias,” Eupheme added.
“Oh, that does sound much better. It will only be faster than us and better armed.” Tythel couldn’t read Tellias’ expression, but the sarcasm was more than clear in his voice.
“And outnumbered,” Tythel said. “Three on one is better odd when we can properly surround it.”
