by AC Cobble
“What your husband did to you is like what the king is doing to—“
“Rew, that’s a little much, don’t you think?” snapped Anne. Shaking her head, the empath adjusted her shawl and said, “I suffered a great deal in this place, taking the pain of hundreds. I like to think it was worth it, but I don’t know. That pain clung to me. I eventually found peace in Eastwatch. There was still pain and suffering, but there was also life, friendships. The people there, the wilderness, the quiet, helped me swallow the hurt and process it. I could have been happy there for a long time, the rest of my life, I think, but some things are more important than my happiness. What kind of person would I be if I’d stayed there and hadn’t done what I could?”
Mother Solomon slammed the cabinet door shut with the wine bottle inside and stalked back to her desk. She threw herself into her chair and gave the party one last good glare. Then, she asked, “All right. How do we do this?”
Rew raised his hand and drawled, “If you’re not going to drink that wine…”
They cut along a low mountain range east of the Arcanum. Beyond, they would head north into a broad, flat plain. The land on the foothills of the mountains was open, dry, and cold near the tail of winter. They had exceptional visibility down below, but they were vulnerable. The elevation provided a little comfort, but with winter-bare branches on the thin trees that dotted the slope, they weren’t invisible.
For two days, they would be parallel to the road that led from the Arcanum. Rew considered ascending higher into the mountains, but it was more difficult travel there and might add a week to their journey.
So they walked along cautiously, hoping that their hunters had already given up. Several times an hour, Rew or one of the others would raise his spyglass to their eye and look up and down the road which led from the Arcanum. Occasionally, they spotted movement or thought they might have, and everyone scrambled for cover. They would stand sideways behind the thickest tree trunk they could find, crouch behind boulders, or simply lie flat on the ground so they didn’t present a profile.
Odds were, any travelers on the road would have nothing to do with them, but the king’s soldiers had been in the area, and they would avoid those men if they could. They couldn’t risk word getting back to Vaisius Morden that they were still around. Cinda wasn’t ready to face the king, and after the explosion at the Arcanum, Rew was certain his instincts ten years before had been correct. He didn’t have the strength to stand up to his father either. Vaisius Morden was simply too powerful.
But his minions would be another story. Rew could cross steel with the soldiers if necessary, and even the king’s spellcasters would have trouble facing the ranger individually. They were talented, but mortal men like all others, and the ranger didn’t plan to give them the chance of a fair fight. Worst case, if they saw a group too large to contend with, the party would run.
As long as they didn’t encounter a group led by a spellcaster with the ability to portal, Rew thought their chances were good. The only portal stones nearby had been within the Arcanum, and the king had destroyed those. They were days away from major cities or fortresses, so as long as they were vigilant and did not allow any of the king’s forces to get close to them, Rew wasn’t overly worried. They could fight, or they could flee. The king didn’t have anyone who could track him through the mountainous terrain, and there would be few in the kingdom with the speed and stamina their small party had developed after months of constant travel.
Ang and Vurcell had promised him the other rangers would support him. If forced to track him, they would make sure they didn’t find him. Rew hadn’t been certain about the other rangers, but he was sure of the twins. They’d reached out through their enchanted mirror and gotten in contact with the contingent of rangers in Mordenhold. The twins claimed the king’s rangers had been eager to help and were already at work spreading rumors—the truth—about what was happening. The rangers were organizing at a rallying point in Mordenhold because, according to the twins, they wanted to do more than talk.
Rew had discouraged it, but the twins had minds of their own, as did the other rangers. Vurcell had curtly explained they were going to fight, so didn’t Rew want to make the best use of their assistance? It was implied that if he didn’t, the rangers were going to end up dying fruitlessly. It was an unfair argument, but Ang had added that life was not fair.
“We all know the histories, Rew,” Vurcell had said. “We know what failure means. This is our kingdom, and it’s our fight as well.”
Rew had grunted and left it at that. He didn’t plan to call upon the rangers, but he appreciated the twins’ confidence. And, as Cinda reminded him before they left, it was sheer arrogance to believe they could do this alone. Looking past Rew, she’d instructed Ang and Vurcell to carry on and claimed that Rew would be in touch.
“Give us a week, and we’ll be ready,” the twins had told her. “Rew knows how to reach us through the old ways, if you can convince him to do it.”
So, with the rangers at work behind them, they hiked, and they hid.
“You shouldn’t have told everyone we’re going to Iyre,” groused Anne, two days from the Arcanum where they were turning around the tail of the mountain and facing the vast plain north of it. “They’ll be waiting for us. We could have told them we were going to Carff again, you know. It would have accomplished the same thing.”
“I know,” said Rew with a grin. “It’s part of the plan.”
Anne raised an eyebrow.
“We can’t portal, and we can’t use the portal stones safely, so what other way do we have to be sure we catch one of the princes? They can cross the continent in the span of a breath, Anne. We won’t win this chasing after them. We’ve got to force them to wait or get them to come to us. I figured having them wait was better, for now. By telling everyone we’re going to Iyre, we make sure Heindaw will be there when we arrive. Anything else and his allies will think he’s frightened of us and is fleeing.”
For several hours after that conversation, Anne did not speak to him.
The next day, having skirted around the mountain range and away from the roads, Rew felt comfortable descending onto the plains. They walked there, on the edge of the vast savannah, keeping close to the edge of the forest which bordered the western fringe. Out in the grasslands, there was nowhere to run or to hide. There were other dangers as well that he would avoid if they could.
To their left, the forest offered sanctuary, but travel through it would take them twice as long. Unlike the wilderness he’d called home the last decade, the western forest was second growth. It was thick with vegetation near its boundary. Thatches of blackberry brambles wove between slender pines, and ferns sprouted in profusions hiding the way ahead. Thin streams trickled in narrow rivulets off the plains and poured into the forest, disappearing in the green expanse.
“Are there rangers who monitor this area?” wondered Cinda, walking beside Rew and studying the wall of forest in the distance.
“There are, though they’d rarely travel the border of the wood,” he said with a nod. “Strange men, out here. They keep to themselves. Care more for what’s out in the forest than the people of Vaeldon. At least, they did. I thought they did.”
Had the rangers not cared about the people of Vaeldon, or had they cared too much and had run away? He grimaced. Had he cared too much or too little when he’d gone to Eastwatch ten years prior?
“What about out there, on the plains?” asked the necromancer, interrupting his thoughts and gesturing to the open on their right side. “Any rangers out there?”
Rew shook his head. “There are some people who live on the plains but no rangers. The beasts that live there, well, they stay in the grasslands. They aren’t the same sort of threat to men as those which lurk in the wilderness. No Dark Kind out there on the plains. Nowhere for them to hide.”
“Mmm hmm,” replied Cinda.
Rew snorted, hearing the sarcasm in her voice. “I wasn’t hiding
in the wilderness. Not exactly. I spent as much time in Eastwatch as I did the wood. Someone has to watch the wild places in the world. The beasts are dangerous, but you’ve seen what Dark Kind can do when they gather.”
“What would these western rangers do if they did find Dark Kind? There’s no cities around here to call for reinforcements, are there?”
“There is one big city northeast of here—Olsoth. It has a portal stone connecting to Mordenhold. If they needed to, within a week, the rangers could get word to the king’s forces. That’s quicker, actually, than I could manage from the east. None of the cities in the Eastern Territory have a portal stone, so I’d have to rely on help from Yarrow or Falvar. Spinesend, if it was serious, though it’d be two weeks there and two weeks back.”
“Should we avoid Olsoth, then?” wondered Cinda. “If someone could portal directly to Mordenhold…”
“We’ll avoid it if we can,” agreed Rew. “The plains… Sometimes, they are difficult to travel. There are things we don’t want to meet out there, like in any of the wild regions.”
“What sort of things, Ranger?” demanded Raif from behind them.
Rew waved a hand dismissively. “Odds are, with a party this small, we won’t have to worry about it. I think we can easily avoid Olsoth and everything else.”
“What are you not telling us?” pressed Cinda.
Rew smirked. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did tell you.”
Behind them, the nameless woman barked a guffaw, and both of the nobles looked back at her in surprise. It’d been a day since the woman had said anything.
She grinned at them and claimed, “He’s right. You wouldn’t believe it.”
Rew lengthened his stride, and the rest hurried after him, muttering under their breath. He looked over the plains, thinking of what was out there and deciding the children had enough to stew over. They would be safe going this way, just along the edge of the plains. Probably.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The hiking was easy for seasoned travelers, and when they paused, Rew scavenged firewood from the forest and allowed them a small campfire, though buried deep in the turf to hide it. Hot food and warmth were worth the small risk anyone might see them. The fuel was dry, so the smoke was minimal, and night was coming soon to hide the rising plume of gray. They were several days from anywhere, and he thought it unlikely even the king would be able to locate them in such a desolate region.
While Anne cooked their supper, the nameless woman removed her bronze armor and began tending to it. The bronze plate and chain glistened with a light sheen of oil, and she worked a cloth over it with the familiarity of having done it hundreds of times before. Rew opened his mouth and then closed it. He wanted to question her, plumb her secrets, but he knew all he would find were lies. She’d shown her colors. She was in league with Heindaw. Was she escorting them into a trap for the prince? That was Heindaw’s way, though it seemed an elaborate plan even for the prince, when the nameless woman could have simply slit their throats on dozens of nights since she’d joined them.
Closer to the fire, Raif and Zaine sat together, the nobleman telling the thief an amusing story about a time in Baron Worgon’s court. Their knees touched, and Raif leaned in while Zaine lay back, propped on her elbows. Friends, but Raif would have preferred more, and now his pride wouldn’t allow him to stop trying. Zaine wasn’t going to be interested no matter how hard the young fighter tried, which Rew suspected even Raif realized by now, but she enjoyed the attention, and the nobleman was a stubborn as a stump. Shaking his head, Rew looked away. He supposed he’d pursued plenty of foolish things in his own youth.
Cinda was on the other side of the fire flipping pages in the book Lucia had given her. She was reading by the light of her funeral fire, the pale glow bathing the open book but not extending past it. With nothing else useful to be doing, Rew crawled over to her.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked in a low voice he hoped didn’t carry to the others.
Smiling wanly, Cinda responded just as quietly. “Perhaps. I wish Ambrose had survived long enough for me to discuss this with him. The man didn’t have the raw talent to ever become powerful, but he was intelligent enough and had a bit of experience. He would have made more sense of this than I can.”
“Intelligent except that he locked himself in a crypt—”
“To escape a worse fate,” interrupted Cinda. “Ambrose knew what we were attempting, and he knew the consequences of failure. He was driven by cowardice, true, but I’m not so sure he was a fool. We will all die, Ranger, one day. We can’t avoid that fate, and Ambrose knew it. He made the choice to pass quickly into the darkness, to avoid the threat of the king claiming his soul. Perhaps he understood that a few more years of life wasn’t worth the risk of an eternity of imprisonment.”
“That’s only a wise choice if you ignore the peril to everyone else,” muttered Rew, struggling to put force behind his words.
Cinda grinned. “Ambrose wasn’t a hero. He was practical. I’m not suggesting we all follow in his path, but he did teach me one thing. There is much in this world to be afraid of, but I cannot be afraid of death. I cannot be afraid of dying and do what is needed.”
Rew grimaced.
“You always knew what I would have to become for us to challenge the king,” said Cinda, leaning close so no one else could hear them. “It’s why you were so hesitant for us to take this path, wasn’t it? You knew what it’d do to me.”
Rew nodded, looking into the campfire instead of the white-green mockery that Cinda’s funeral fire cast.
“It’s all right, Ranger. In a way, I’m already dead. My old life is over, done. Like in death itself, there is no going back to that life. It’s easier to think of it that way. I’ve already died, so that fear no longer clutches at my soul.”
Shaking his head, Rew finally turned to the girl. “Cinda…”
“Anything useful in there?” asked Zaine suddenly before plopping down next to Cinda. “I haven’t done a lot of reading myself, but I’ve always wondered what’s in books. Must be something important to spend so many hours writing all of it down.”
Grinning, Cinda closed the book and declared, “Well, they wasted their time with this one. It’s a philosophical musing on the nature of high magic rather than any instruction on how to cast high magic. Like a treatise on being a thief and how theft is a vital part of a city’s economy, but they never tell you how to pick a lock or scale a wall. No wonder you so rarely hear of an arcanist doing something useful.”
“Aye, arcanists!” barked Zaine, acting as if she was throwing an imaginary book into the fire. She pursed her lips and then said, “Perhaps I should write a book one day when all of this is over. Can’t be that hard, can it, once I learn to read?”
Cinda coughed, her funeral fire flicking out and giggles bubbling from her lips.
“Maybe you could do the writing, and I could… ah…”
“Dictate?”
Zaine frowned at Cinda. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
“Unless you two plan to start writing your book tonight, I could use some help preparing the potatoes,” called Anne from where she was chopping wild onions and garlic Rew had foraged from the forest.
Cinda and Zaine both rose to their feet. Whispering to Cinda, Zaine asked, “If we overthrow the king, do you think she’ll stop ordering us around?”
Smirking, Cinda replied, “I hope not.”
The two girls went to help the empath finish supper, and Rew flipped open the blank leather cover of the book Cinda had been reading. He winced. He’d turned to a random page in the middle of the book. Inscribed on the thin, ancient paper in spidery script were specific instructions on issuing commands to a soul which you had bound. In the seconds Rew glanced at it, it appeared the book was a practical discussion of how to animate corpses and control them. He closed the book and his eyes. After a moment, he got up and joined the others at the fire.
Chapter Fourteen<
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For three more days, they hiked on the outskirts of the empty plains that bridged the territory between the Western and Northern Provinces. Wind whistled over the grasses, biting through their clothes, but while it wasn’t the most pleasant journey, it was easy. There were few dangers from the forest, as the barren landscape and poor soil which made it difficult for people to settle along the edge also made it difficult for the monsters of the world to survive, and they stayed well clear of the heart of the plain.
“There’s nothing out there at all, is there?” asked Raif one afternoon, holding his hand above his eyes, staring out at the open grasslands.
“There are giant herds of wild cattle,” said Rew. He scratched his beard. “Horses as well, I imagine, though I never much cared for them. A few settlements that are tiny even compared to Eastwatch. But you’re right. There’s little else.”
“You’re forgetting the land wyrms,” mentioned the nameless woman from behind them.
It was the first time that day she’d spoken. Rew was content with her silence, at least until he figured a way to question her and believe the answers.
“What’d you say?” asked Raif.
“Ah, yes, the land wyrms,” agreed Rew, not bothering to look toward the woman. “I don’t suspect we’ll see one of those. There aren’t many left.”
Raif laughed then stopped. He glanced between Rew and the nameless woman. “What’s a land wyrm?”
“Giant… ah, wyrms,” responded the ranger. “They crawl beneath the surface of the grasslands hunting the cattle. They sense the vibrations the animals make when they move as a herd. It’s why there’s little risk to us. There aren’t enough of us to set off any tremors the wyrms could detect from afar.”
