“Can you manage on your own?” asked Laurel. She didn’t wait for him to answer and slipped her arm through Hal’s before he could answer. He was grateful for it. His body felt weak, and wasn’t sure he trusted himself not to pass out if he pushed himself too hard.
“Thank you,” he said.
Laurel led him outside, and Hal found himself standing in a grassy valley on a clear summer day. Rugged mountains rose high on three sides, and a dusty path barely wide enough for a single person or horse ran to the south, where a long slope slowly gave way to desert sands far off in the distance.
The valley reminded Hal of a potted plant set onto an outdoor ledge overlooking a sandy beach, except the desert went on as far as the eye could see, never giving way to the ocean. Laurel slowly walked him away from the edge of the hilltop, back across the grass.
“My brother and I were given the valley by Maxim Cedric himself,” said Laurel. “As a reward for Willum’s faithful service.”
There was a mocking tone in her voice that told Hal that there was more at play than her words suggested. Laurel led him to the back of the house. A thinning trail wound its way across the hills toward a thin gap in between two mountains directly to the north.
A winding stream ran down into the valley from one of the white capped mountains to the east. It pooled behind the house in a modestly sized pond. Hal noticed several large gardens within watering distance of the pond, along with a patch of apple trees. Cacti sprouted from the dirt here and there, and a few tiny animals darted about in the undergrowth at the edge of the cultivated yard.
“Most of this was already here when my brother and I arrived,” said Laurel. “We hired help to build our house, but the fruit trees, the gardens, all of that was just waiting for someone to tend to it.”
Hal furrowed his brow.
“And… This was all given to you?” he asked. “It seems like a prime location for a larger farm. I’m surprised there wasn’t already a settlement here.”
“Oh, there have been,” said Laurel. “Many over the years. I brought you out here to show you where the dragon roosts, remember?”
Hal nodded, feeling his emotions surge at the idea of seeing the dragon again. His palms suddenly clammed up, his fear clashing with the anger boiling in his heart. He remembered how he’d felt inside the dragon’s claw, like a mouse waiting to be crushed by a cat’s paw.
“Where is it?” asked Hal.
Laurel nodded to the mountains north of them.
“It has a nest atop one of the peaks, within range of the path that used to connect the Fool’s Valley to Ostreach,” she said. “Well, it still does. It’s just been decades since anyone has dared to cross the mountain pass without being attacked.”
“Ostreach…” Hal remembered looking at an old map of the Collected Provinces from back before Krestia had split off from the other six. Roth actually had several in his library, though some of the details conflicted between them.
Krestia had been across the mountains, and when the lords there had revolted, only a small pass through the desert known as the Sand Way had served to connect it to the rest of the country. The Sand Way had been a road running along a river, and when the desert storms had intensified during the Traitor’s War, it had dried up completely. As far as Hal knew, nobody had crossed the Sand Way since then. Roth and most other scholars shared the opinion that Krestia had most likely turned into an uninhabitable desert in the ensuing years.
It’s been here this entire time. A province separated from the rest, growing on its own.
“This must all be a lot for you,” said Laurel. “But don’t worry! You can stay with me until you’re back on your feet and thinking clearly again.”
“Thanks,” said Hal. “But… I should really be on my way, as soon as I’m able.”
Laurel frowned at him.
“To where?” she asked. “The only nearby town is Lorne, and it’s tricky to get from there to the rest of the cradle, with the mountains in the way.”
“I don’t care about that,” said Hal. “I just need supplies.”
A plan was slowly crystalizing in his mind, forged by the pain and anger that burned in his chest. He would kill the dragon and its rider, or he would die trying. And if he could get to a town, perhaps find someone familiar with pistols who could sell him some more bullets and gunpowder, he might even stand a chance.
One well aimed shot into the dragon’s mouth, and then another into the chest of the man in the golden helm. It was doable, assuming he could find the time to reload. Or at least, he wanted to believe that it was.
“And how are you going to get these supplies, Hal?” asked Laurel. “With money from the Collected Provinces?”
There was a teasing tone to her voice that hurt Hal more than he thought she realized, but it also brought about a sudden realization. His wallet was still in the hidden inner pocket of his shirt. He fumbled for it, pulling it out and holding it between two fingers.
“In fact, I do,” he said. He pulled out a single bill and passed it to her.
The Collected Provinces had switched off using precious metals for currency more than fifty years earlier. Instead, money was printed on cloth and then painted with a unique pattern of glitterdust by the Treasury Office. It was always possible that an aspiring counterfeiter might manage to fake a bill or two, but the effort required to do it on a large scale was incredibly prohibitive.
“This…” Laurel’s eyes went wide as she examined the note. “I… can’t believe it.”
“Do you still doubt my story?” asked Hal. “Read the words along the bottom of the bill.”
Collected we stand, as one we prosper.
Laurel shook her head slowly. Her cheeks reddened slightly and she bit her lower lip. Hal had seen that exact expression on his sister’s face many times before, and he had to glance away from her to hold the tide of emotion in check.
“I’m sorry!” announced Laurel. “Wow. I don’t even really know what to say.”
“It’s okay,” said Hal. “I’m not sure I would have believed you without proof, either, had our roles been reversed.”
“Unfortunately,” said Laurel, flicking the bill with a finger, “I don’t think your money is going to have much worth here. Maybe you could get a few coppers for it from a collector, assuming they believed your story, but you’d have to head into one of the cities for that.”
“I thought you said there was a town nearby?” asked Hal.
“Lorne is…” Laurel frowned. “Well, you’ll see. It’s not much.”
The two of them were walking alongside the stream. Hal was impressed by the extent of the gardens in the valley. They were almost as large as the gardens in his family’s estate, which struck him as odd, given it was just Laurel in the homestead.
“You mentioned your brother a couple of times,” said Hal. “Is he going to be alright with me being here?”
Laurel blinked, and for an instant, her expression flickered with worry. She slowly shook her head.
“Willum has been away for… a few months now,” she said.
“Away?” asked Hal.
“He’s not dead!” She crossed her arms, her lips pursing together. “He left for the capital to attempt to get back into Maxim Cedric’s favor during the summer hunt. I just… haven’t heard from him, since he left.”
“So, he’s missing?” asked Hal. He saw the effect his words had on Laurel and immediately wished he could take them back.
“He isn’t missing!” she said. “And I… do plan on heading to the capital to check in with him. It’s just that resources have been tight. It’s difficult to profit off a small homestead when it’s just you, you know?”
“Right,” said Hal. “Of course.”
He left it at that, seeing no point in digging into her problems while she was doing such a good job of stepping tenderly around his.
CHAPTER 7
Hal helped Laurel gather fruits and vegetables from her gardens for their dinne
r. There was a wide variety of crops, from small desert apples, to soft spine cactus which Laurel used a knife to slice into thick slices, to a collection of carrots, turnips, radishes, and other tubers.
It was a little hard for Hal to keep his attention on the work. He kept glancing up at where she’d pointed out the dragon’s roost, an odd mixture of hatred and fear tugging at his heart. He saw Laurel watching him and knew that she sensed what was on his mind, but she didn’t say anything about it.
Eventually, she invited him to bathe in the water of the valley’s pond. She cautioned him about how cold it was, but the chill was far more intense than Hal was expecting, especially against his injuries. He took his time scrubbing, only then realizing how dirty he was.
Laurel was back in the homestead, dicing vegetables over the cooking pot when he returned. Hal had managed to ignore the fact that she was wearing pants for most of the day, but it still nagged at him. He glanced away as Laurel bend down to pick up a potato, and she frowned at him when she saw the look on his face.
“What is it?” asked Laurel.
Hal hesitated, wondering if it even made sense to mention.
“I’m just surprised,” he said. “Women don’t typically wear pants where I’m from.”
Laurel gave him a strange look.
“Women don’t wear pants?” she asked, in a teasing tone. “Do they just walk around naked from the waist down?”
“What? No!”
“Are you asking me to take my pants off, Halrin?” she teased.
“No!” Hal let out an exasperated sigh and waved his hands. “I meant that they typically wear dresses. At least, outside of… the privacy of the bedroom.”
“…Oh,” said Laurel.
Neither of them said anything for a moment that stretched on far too long.
Nice. And now I’ve made things weird.
“Well, it’s different here,” said Laurel.
“Right,” said Hal, nodding even as he continued to avert his gaze.
“And I don’t own many dresses,” said Laurel. “I mean, I did. But I had to sell the nicer ones when Willum and I first came here.”
“It’s okay,” said Hal. “I’ll manage.”
He forced himself to look at her again, keeping an innocent smile on his face. It felt like casually examining a woman nude out of the baths, but he committed himself to getting used to it, even if it took a while.
Laurel finished cutting the vegetables she intended on cooking for dinner and turned her attention to rekindling the fire in the hearth. The fire poker didn’t seem to do much in the way of waking the coals, and she let out an annoyed sigh after a few seconds.
“Can you use your ruby to help me out, Hal?” she asked.
Hal frowned at her.
“Uh… what?” he asked.
“A basic fire spell should get it going again,” said Laurel. “You can do that, right?”
He could only stare at her. Slowly, he turned her words over in his head, expecting to find some secondary meaning. Or at least hoping to identify another aspect of cultural drift, a shift in the meaning of the words she was using.
“A spell?” asked Hal. “Like… magic?”
“Gem magic,” said Laurel. She tapped a finger against her lips. “Let me guess. They didn’t have that in your homeland, either?”
“Magic isn’t real,” said Hal. “It’s just a thing of stories and legends.”
Though I guess the same was true for dragons, before I encountered one…
“Magic is very much real,” said Laurel. “I can’t believe that you’d wear a gemstone, a ruby even, and not have any knowledge of it! Do you realize how valuable that is?”
Hal took the gemstone on the end of his necklace in between his thumb and forefinger and examined it more closely. Knowing that it was valuable made him think first of selling it, but there was no way he could do that. It was the last gift Lilith had given him, the only thing he had left to remember her by. And if it really was something that could be useful to him…
“How does the magic work?” asked Hal.
Laurel wiped her hands off on the back of her tight pants and walked over to him. She drew near enough to take the gemstone from him without pulling it from his neck.
“I’m not a gem mage,” she said. “I really don’t know much beyond the basics. Gemstones convert emotions into magical essence, which they slowly store up over time. With that essence, it’s possible to cast spells.”
Hal still felt skeptical, and it must have shown on his face. Laurel scowled at him.
“I’m being serious!” she continued. “I’ve seen it before. My brother walked the Ruby Path. He even learned how to enter a Ruby Trance.”
“I’m… not doubting you,” said Hal, though he wasn’t sure if he meant it. “How would I go about using this to cast a spell, then?”
“I’m not sure,” said Laurel. “Willum once told me that it was a bit like meditating. You have to focus, but I don’t know how, exactly. And it takes a great deal of stored essence to cast even a basic spell.”
“How much?”
“Well, the gem knights in the capital often conserve their essence, only ever using their gemstones in sanctioned magic duels, or when fighting in battles,” said Laurel. “So at least a few days’ worth for a basic spell. Probably more for more advanced stuff.”
Laurel was still standing close to Hal, and he almost bumped his forehead against hers as he leaned in closer to get a better look at the gemstone. Could magic really lie within such a small stone?
“I’ll give it a try,” he said. “I’ll see if I can make some fire to light the hearth.”
“It doesn’t make fire, exactly,” said Laurel. “It’s more like… it lets you control it. Or expand it.”
Control fire? What of the fire that the dragon used to kill my family? Could this tiny stone have stopped that?
Hal walked over to the hearth and dropped to a knee in front of it. He held the gemstone in between his fingers and took a deep breath. He had no idea how to proceed with the casting of the spell, but he held a hand out over what was left of the coals and attempted to will them into spreading their heat onto the fresh log Laurel had tossed on.
A minute or two went by, but nothing happened. Hal wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, and he wasn’t sure what to try next. Eventually, Laurel grew impatient. She tried again with the fire poker and managed to get the blaze going.
“Do you know anyone who could teach me to use it?” asked Hal.
Laurel furrowed her brow.
“Of course,” she said. “Anyone from the Temple who saw that you had a gemstone and were willing to learn would likely recommend you for admittance to the Matron’s Tower up north. The Temple of Lyris is always looking for new gem mages.”
Hal nodded, but the last thing he was interested in doing was joining a religion. The very idea of it would have been ridiculous back in the Collected Provinces. Gods and creation myths were held in about as much respect as children’s fables.
“What if I wanted to learn from someone nearby?” asked Hal. “On a shorter timescale?”
Laurel gave him a serious look.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “My brother thought the same thing when he first came. All of you boys running around pretending you’re invincible.”
Hal didn’t say anything, sensing that she would tell him if he waited long enough. His intuition paid off.
“There’s a woman named Cadrian in Lorne,” said Laurel. “I can introduce you to her. She’s a bit… eccentric, but I’ve seen her cast spells with her ruby.”
Hal smiled, feeling the plan in his head picking up momentum.
“Thanks,” he said.
CHAPTER 8
Laurel was quiet as she tended to the cook pot, and it left Hal a chance to be alone with his thoughts. It wasn’t something he enjoyed, and soon enough, he was seeing the deaths of his friends and family all over again.
It hurt in th
e way that he’d never known something could. He would never again hear Lilith chastising him for being late, or having bad manners at the dinner table. No more challenging Mauve to races on the estate’s lawn, or practicing Kye Lornis on the polished wood floor of the great hall on lazy afternoons. And his father…
My father died thinking that I hated him. Why did I have to let the argument get so heated?
Hal was in the depths of his misery when he heard the soft sounds of music. Laurel had brought her flute out again, and was playing it while watching over the stew. She seemed to sense Hal’s eyes on her and suddenly glanced over her shoulder.
“Oh!” she said, reading his expression. “Sorry! Is this bothering you? I can stop.”
Hal shook his head.
“No,” he said. “The opposite, actually. I can’t get what happened out of my mind. At least not when things are quiet.”
Laurel nodded sagely.
“Then I think I have the perfect solution!” She disappeared into the small storage pantry on the side of the sitting room for a moment. When she returned, she held a bottle of wine in her hands. “You drank wine in the Collected Provinces, didn’t you?”
“Of course we did,” said Hal. “But I’m not sure if it would be the best thing for me tonight.”
“And just why not?” asked Laurel. “Are you afraid your eyes might bulge out over the sight of me in pants if you get too drunk?”
She made a mocking face and spun in a circle, offering an exaggerated curtsey at the end. Hal shook his head, but he couldn’t help but smile at the amusement he saw on her face, as though she was trying desperately to keep from bursting out into laughter at her joke.
“You are kind of a pain,” he said, halfheartedly. “Has anyone ever told you that before?”
“A few times,” said Laurel, grinning wickedly. “I’m just teasing you.”
Hal rolled his eyes, but she was already on to the next thing, pouring them each a generous goblet of wine.
They drank as they waited for the stew to cook. Laurel explained how she and Willum had figured out how to brew their own “wine”, though it was really more of a hard cider. Hal nodded along through the conversation, still feeling a bit stuck on his thoughts from before.
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