She only looked partially relieved to hear this. Mostly, she looked resigned to her fate.
“Everyone get a good night’s sleep,” Xiaolang ordered as he rose from the table. “We’ll get an early start in the morning.”
~~~
Despite what Xiaolang had said about getting an early start, we didn’t really. I mean, we could have, but everyone knew very well that I just don’t function in the mornings. Not until I’ve had breakfast and about a half hour to properly wake up, that is. Everyone undertook to delay Xiaolang, to give me enough time to wake up until he finally gave up on the early start time.
They didn’t want me navigating the earth path half-asleep. I couldn’t imagine why….
Regardless, it was mid-morning before we reached the Watchman Pool. I brought us up near the front entrance. This building seemed to have weathered the onslaught of time a bit better than the others I’d seen, although the base of it was still choked with weeds. Prickly weeds with thorns, I might add. None of us went anywhere near those thorny things until Chatta burned a path clean for us.
The door was rusted shut, though. I undertook to make a new doorway for us in a different place instead of fighting corroded hinges. This building was a little different in layout from the other one we had been in—the door opened straight to the pool. There were other doorways around the edges of the pool, which I assumed lead to other rooms. None of us felt the particular need to investigate further and just settled inside. The general, silent consensus was that we’d take advantage of being lazy a bit while we could.
Chatta went straight to the pool’s edge and started peering into it intently. As I can’t use a scrying pool at all, I chose to sit next to her and just look over her shoulder. She was scanning through the land so fast that I really couldn’t tell where she was looking. Nothing looked familiar to me. She stopped abruptly and backtracked at a slower pace.
“There,” she pointed a finger at the pool, “do you see it?”
Indeed I did. It was a Star Order building…made of emerald. It was rather an obvious sign of Lonjaroden’s passing in my opinion. “Can you see how old it is?”
“About two days,” she said slowly, peering at it in concentration. “Maybe less. Its further south than the sapphire building we found.”
“So he was still heading south then…” I looked around to tell Xiaolang, only to find him standing right behind Chatta, leaning over her to see into the pool as well.
“Can you keep searching further south?” he asked her.
She nodded, eyes never leaving the pool, and kept searching. It took a few minutes before she found something else and skidded to a stop, freezing the image in place. “There. Do you see that prison?”
“The bars are brass,” Xiaolang murmured. “How old?”
“A day, no more.”
“He gets caught quite often,” I noted to no one in particular.
“If he weren’t an Elemental Mage with some control, he’d probably be dead by now,” Xiaolang finished the thought grimly. “Keep searching, Chatta. I’d feel better if we could spot those two.”
She went back to searching, hunched intently over the pool. After several dizzying moments of flying through the area she shook her head and leaned back. “I’m sorry, I don’t see anyone within fifty miles of the area.”
Xiaolang looked pensive. “Garth, is it possible for an Elemental Mage to use the earth transport technique that you do?”
“No,” I responded immediately. “I tried teaching Jenna how to do it over the winter and she couldn’t work it at all.”
“Earth isn’t one of her elements,” Chatta pointed out. “She was the weakest in earth.”
“True,” I conceded slowly. “Assuming this was a Mage with an emphasis in earth magic…it might be possible. But I still don’t think he’d be able to manage it.”
“Then how is he disappearing from our view?” Xiaolang directed this question to the both of us. “Glamour?”
I exchanged a glance with Chatta. I certainly couldn’t think of any other way to do it.
“That’s the only possibility I can think of…” she frowned and added, “Although he might just be in a building or a cave right now. I can’t search inside of buildings.”
Xiaolang hummed to himself, mind whirling at high speeds. “For now, let’s go to the area that we’re sure he was at. When we arrive, we’ll do another scrying to see if we can’t find him. He might appear from wherever he’s taken shelter by then.”
It sounded like a viable plan to me.
With a wave of the hand, Xiaolang gestured for all of us to mount back up. I almost offered to take us back into the earth path until I realized this was not an area that we had been in before. I needed to search this area as we went after Lonjaroden, or risk missing someone else.
I felt briefly irritated at this delay until I reminded myself that Lonjaroden and the boy that was with him were on foot. And they had to hide most of the time to avoid getting caught. We’d be able to catch up to them quickly enough.
~~~
Really, where were they hiding? I let my weary head rest on my chest for a minute, while I rubbed my eyes and waited for some inspiration to hit me. I tried to think where I might be, remembering that it wasn’t that long ago I myself was in their same situation.
We’d been on the road for three days searching for the Mage and his young Wizard companion, and so far we hadn’t caught even a glimpse of them. We knew that we were on the right track simply because of all the prisons and Star Order buildings we ran across that had been tampered with. Some of the buildings were quite striking looking, now made out of exotic stones and metals.
These two were certainly alive and well. We asked the people of the towns we traveled through about the Mage and Wizard, and they usually confirmed that they had been there, although some people were still nervous about talking to us. The fear associated with speaking about anything even remotely connected with magic in Chahir was difficult to overcome after two hundred years. What I found most interesting was that several of the older women would speak in fond terms concerning our two wayward youth, “Our boys can’t be caught by those Priests,” they would scoff, “and even if they do manage to catch them, they will just slip through their fingers like warm butter.” No matter which town or village we asked about them, the response was always similar to this. These two had an amazing way of inspiring true loyalty from the people they came into contact with.
It was late afternoon now, and even though I was straining my senses to the limit, I couldn’t detect anyone magical within twenty miles of me. “They have to be using some sort of glamour,” I growled in exasperation to Chatta. “I’m sure I would have found them by now otherwise, we have to be within range.”
She nodded in agreement, frustration clearly showing in her face. “And from what we’ve been able to piece together about them, they seem to lay low during the day. I can’t do an accurate scrying at night, not on such a wide spread scale. I won’t be able to see anything; I could be looking right at them and totally miss it.”
“What if you had access to a permanent pool?” I ventured, looking at her with a small glimmer of hope elevating my sagging spirits. That would certainly be large enough to let her see more details at night.
“Maybe…” she chewed on her bottom lip, lost in thought.
“Xiaolang,” I called ahead loud enough to reach to the front of the group, waiting for him to turn around before continuing my question, “Is there a Watchman’s Pool near here?”
“Not for another hundred or so miles,” he replied, after briefly scanning his well-worn map. “Why?”
“Chatta thinks that she might be able to do a better search for them at night with a permanent pool,” I explained.
Xiaolang’s eyes immediately went to her. “I’ll have Garth take us there by earth path, if you think it’ll help.”
“I know I can’t do it with a small pool,” she responded with a helpless shrug.
“But I think I can get more details with a larger one. I’m just worried about missing them in the dark because I’m searching such a large area. Perhaps that is why they seem to be traveling at night.”
He nodded, taking this in, weighing all of our options for a long moment. “Still, I think we’ll take the chance. It can’t be any worse than what we are doing now. Searching this way isn’t getting us anywhere at all. Garth, take us down.”
I nodded and formed the bubble around the team and dropped us into the earth. It was very easy to find the pool in question, as it was the only magical building within my range. I simply went east as Xiaolang dictated from his map until I felt it, bringing us up near the building. From that point on, I was decidedly useless; finesse and fine control are not my strong suits. We all spread out and tried to get comfortable, while Chatta stared intently into the pool. She was so still and intent on her search, that I had to look closely once in a while to make sure she was still breathing.
Of course, poor Chatta had the hard job of the search this time. She couldn’t assume anything about the pair’s movements, as they could have doubled back or anything during the time we weren’t tracking them. So she had to search in a slow spiral pattern that, while effective, ate up time.
This particular Watchman Building had a small river running next to it. Feeling the need for a good bath, I built a couple of stone partitions along the river bank, one for the women and the other for us men. After three days on the road, we all were a little worse for wear, and wanted a dip in that water as quickly as possible, despite it being decidedly chilly. (I suspected it was probably from a mountain run off, considering the temperature.)
It was at this point that I discovered something interesting I hadn’t noticed before. Shield and Hazard are not to be trusted around water. They thought it was great sport to try to douse their teammates and splash any unsuspecting soul passing nearby. I wisely kept a watchful eye on them, positioning Night’s large frame to best advantage between me and them, using him like a shield. Shad foolishly took both of them on at once, and got completely soaked for his trouble. When we finally dragged our chilly, prune-skinned bodies out of the water, sunset was almost on us. I released the walls of the partition I made. As the stone slid obediently back into the earth, the water resumed its course naturally again. We all retreated back into the building, getting warm and something to eat foremost on our minds. Xiaolang started cooking dinner, while Chatta went to the pool and resumed her scrying for our elusive boys.
I was sitting on my bedroll, trying to comb out the wet, tangled mass at the back of my head that looked more like an angry animal than hair. Aletha sat down next to me, intently inspecting the ends of my hair, a slight frown fixed on her face. Bemused by her expression, I asked, “Yes, Aletha? Are you on to something?”
“I know that you can’t really cut your hair, because it would reduce your magic, but what about a trim?” She reached out and picked up a handful, offering it up for my inspection. “It’s starting to look a little ragged around the edges.”
I hadn’t ever thought about it, and didn’t really care one way or the other. And I suspect it didn’t really bother her that much, either, but neither one of us had anything better to do at the moment. So I shrugged my shoulders and nodded my consent. “If you want to trim it, go right ahead.”
“Don’t move,” she ordered with a quick smile, getting up to go rummage through her pack. It took only a few moments to locate her scissors and a comb in the chaos of her gear, and then she was back.
I sat still as per her orders, resting on my heels so that she had a more comfortable height to work from. It had been a good two years since I’d last had a haircut, and my hair had grown well past the middle of my back. The odd thing was, with every snip of the scissors, I could actually feel a little bit of power drain away from me. When Chatta had first explained to me that magic was in every cell of my body, I thought she was just exaggerating. Now I realize she was serious. With every pinch of hair that was cut away, I felt the loss of a little power along with it. The amount was minuscule, of course, in comparison to the total power that I could wield. But it was enough for me to actually feel it. It gave me a new insight into the power that was one with my body.
I felt lighter in more ways than one by the time she was finished. She pulled the hair back into the clip before standing up. “There, you’re done.”
“Thanks.” I smiled up at her.
“Don’t mention it.”
I turned to sweep up the remains of my freshly shorn locks, intending to clean them off of my bedroll, only to discover that Didi had already darted in behind me, and was rapidly gathering up every strand of hair that he could put his hands on. “Didi, what are you doing?” I asked with an appraising expression on my face.
He paused momentarily, arms full of hair, and gave me an imploring look. “Di?”
I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to do with the hair, but it was obvious that it was important to him. “You really want it?”
He nodded hopefully, never breaking eye contact with me.
There was no harm in it, as far as I could see. Or so I hoped. “Alright then, go ahead.”
Beaming like a giddy child, he chattered happily and quickly gathered up the rest of the hair. I watched in confusion and more than a little amusement as he retreated to a remote corner and carefully started laying out small pieces of hair in front of him. Maybe he thought he could weave it all together into one strand? I would think the pieces were far too short to work with, but I wasn’t about to put anything past a meuritta, not when it was about string.
Chatta refused to move away from the pool, afraid she would miss something, so I brought a plate of food to her. As I sat next to her at the pool’s edge, she ate without taking her eyes off of the images in the pool. “So what did Didi want with your hair?”
Did nothing ever escape her notice? “I have no idea. Do you?”
“Not at all.” She allowed a quick glance at him, took another big bite from her plate, and turned her eyes back to the pool. “Knowing him, we’ll probably find out tomorrow morning, early.”
Probably. I sighed mentally. That did seem to be the preferred time that Didi enjoyed revealing his mischief.
Time passed slowly and without event, as one by one, the team padded off quietly to retire for the night. Chatta finally narrowed her search area down to one village, as she detected there was a patch near the center that she couldn’t clearly make out. We both agreed that a glamour of some sort was probably being used. I sat down next to her position, and took over watching the area for her so she could rest her eyes.
Still, even with us switching places every few hours, there was absolutely no sign of the two boys.
It was nearly daybreak, and I was sound asleep when Chatta’s shriek jarred me into the waking world.
In sheer instinct, I was half out of my bedroll with my hand on my bon’a’lon. What? What was wrong? Did something happen?
“Didi! YOU INFERNAL CREATURE!”
Oh no. Now what did he do?
Resigned to being awake (although I could have used another two hours of sleep) I put the bon’a’lon back on the belt and got to my feet. “Chatta, what—”
The love of my life spun about on her heels, eyebrows slammed together in a dark expression of epic fury. As she moved, a braided lock of white swung in her hair, catching my eye. The intricate weave of the braid meant it was Tonkowacon, so it no doubt meant something, but I didn’t recognize it.
Chatta picked up the braid and waved at it me an aggravated manner. “Why did you give him your hair?”
I blinked at the question and took a closer look at the braid. Huh, she’s right. That is my hair braided in with hers. So he had made a rope out of it, eh? “Um. I didn’t think he’d do another braid, not considering how the last attempts turned out.”
“I kept mine in to spare Trev’s feelings, remember?” she asked me in an acid sweet tone.
Oops. I’d actually forgotten that. No wonder Didi thought he had tacit permission to do another braid on her. “Ahh…sorry? What does that braid mean, anyway?”
She blew out a breath. “No, it’s not your fault, we both knew he’d do something with it. It’s an engagement braid.”
An engagement braid. I fixed the sheepish meuritta with a narrow look. Didi, already crouched defensively on the floor in front of Chatta, nearly went prostrate at my expression. “Didi, I understand the supportive gesture, but do you realize how much trouble that will cause if Chatta’s father sees it first? I haven’t gotten permission to marry her yet!”
Didi’s ears went flat in dejection and he let out a soft wail. “Diiii.”
Chatta waved the braid at him. “Take it out.”
With a large sigh, he hopped up onto her shoulder, wrapped his tail around her shoulders for purchase, and started unraveling the braid. Fortunately, it looked like the sort that was easy to undo. I guess it would need to be—after all, an engagement braid would only be needed until the marriage ceremony. Then it would need to be replaced by a different braid.
Xiaolang poked his head cautiously around the doorway. “Is it safe to come in?”
“Debatable,” I answered dryly. “Who’s cooking breakfast?”
“Shad.”
Odd, I don’t feel as hungry now…
“Garth, I see them!”
I spun on my heels to see the image she was pointing to in the pool. “You see them?”
“Yes,” she confirmed impatiently. “We need to move now, before I lose them again.”
I stared at the image still in the pool. It was a tall man and small boy with flaxen hair traveling in a very cautious manner toward the village. I couldn’t see much detail, as the image was that of a bird’s eye view. That didn’t concern me at the moment. I just wanted to make sure I recognized enough landmarks to get us there. When I was certain I had it fixed in my mind, I climbed to my feet and started shoving everything into my pack, slinging it onto Night’s back in one quick motion. I had been tracking these two four full days now, and I was not going to let them get away from me.
Advent Mage Compendium (Advent Mage Cycle Book 5) Page 6
