by Edun, Terah
If he could talk, Sara had a feeling he’d be saying, “I’m a warhorse, not a mountain goat, you idiot.”
They came close to a few tumbles, the earth sliding out from underneath Danger’s hooves and the gelding almost pulling her down the slope with him. But they regained their footing and made it to the base. When they did he gave the loudest snort she’d ever heard.
“Good boy,” she cooed to him softly. “You were a good, agile boy.”
She reached a hand up toward his nose. Danger tossed his head away from her, refusing to let her pet him.
“Fine,” said Sara. “You’re welcome to be mad at me too. But make no mistake, you’re coming.”
With that, she turned around and pulled on the reins. Danger didn’t bother trying to throw his weight off and unbalance her. They’d had that fight before. He’d lost his pride and his access to his favorite carrots for the rest of the day. That had ended that stubborn streak right then.
As they walked forward, weaving around laughing men and women who wouldn’t even look at her, Sara stiffened her back. This was worse than Sandrin had ever been. There her family name had commanded respect. When that respect was lost, then indifference reigned. No one avoided her for being her in the capital, only for being the daughter of the most decorated and most reviled commander in imperial history. The exclusion from friends and acquaintances alike had ate at her but she realized that none of it was personal. More spite and comments than outright hatred. But here...here it was different. She was finally a fighter. One of the comrades. Or at least she was supposed to be.
But, in an unlikely turn of events, her comrades despised her. Her shoulders didn’t droop, but her confidence was surely shaken. It was hard not to be after two and a half days of cold shoulders and outright hostility. She knew part of it was her fault. She kept herself aloof from everyone. With good reason, she was on a mission. Not here to socialize. Still it hurt. Sara kept moving forward. Never stopping. She walked and walked the area surrounding the hilltop. For close to an hour she searched for Ezekiel, looking for him amongst the metal smiths, then the camp followers and even at the temporary training yard set-up. And then, with her ears burning, her eyes dangerously wet, and her back aching from the stiff arch, she kept walking. She walked until she left the voices behind and had cleared the perimeter of the guards set for watch.
She walked until she saw no one to her left or above, although the lake and its denizens was visible off to her right. If they didn’t want her here, then she would find somewhere else. Somewhere quiet. She wasn’t leaving. Oh no, not that. Just going to the farthest edge of perimeter where she could be away but still be seen.
Walking alongside the lake until she had gone at least half a mile from the nearest splashing group of mercenaries in the shallow water, she tied Danger’s reins to a log and sat on the white stone beach with a sigh. Nothing about her week was going right. She’d lost her mother, her only friend, and still had no clue where Mercenary Hillan was or what it was exactly that the Red Lions wanted from her father’s file. Resting her head on her folded arms, she brushed her hands through her long black curls and felt tiredness overwhelm her. She’d been going for four days and a half days with practically no rest. Starting from the time she’d entered into Cormar’s service until now, when she couldn’t sleep from the bitter cold and fear of other mercenaries raiding her possessions out of spite, it was a harsh way to live. And totally unexpected.
She hadn’t been living a pampered lifestyle in Sandrin these past few months. After they’d lost their villa, she and her mother had lived in a one-room hovel in the dark part of the city. But that was part of the problem. She had gotten used to it because it was all they had. But these last six months had been a complete change in her life. Before her father had died and before their mansion had been repossessed by the imperial courts in light of her father’s actions and all of his land stripped from them, she and her mother had lived lives of comfortable opulence. The villa just outside the city had seven bedrooms, servants’ quarters, and a small garrison for his father’s men. They had fluffy beds, good clothes, and enough food to eat.
Since they were on their own, with her mother unable to work and Sara banned from gaining an honest day’s pay as a fighter, they had slowly lost everything, even their health. It was kind of hard to maintain a dedicated fighter’s dexterity and ability if you were starving for anything but thin soup and some bread. Sara’s weight had dropped drastically from the prime of a topnotch fighter to an underweight woman without the muscle of a sword mistress. The only reason her weakened state didn’t affect her sword play was because she’d practiced all her life and could use her battle magic to boost her strength.
She threw her head back with a sigh. “Now I’m heading off to a war that I’ve spent my whole life preparing for and I feel like I’m lost at sea.”
“Don’t we all,” said a voice from behind her. A stranger.
Sara whirled in a crouch.
Out of the shadow of the dense forest came a man. He wore a simple tunic and pants and was unarmed.
That didn’t stop Sara from quickly drawing her sword from its sheath and grabbing the knife at her waist. Her face tightened and her emotions dulled as she faced him with both weapons raised.
“Who are you?” she shouted. There was no way in hell a mercenary would walk about unarmed. Even on this leisurely day. They all had their weapons within reach. Even the ones lollygagging in the water had left weighted batons in the sand nearby.
He raised his hands slowly. “Not someone who wants to harm you.”
Sara narrowed her eyes as she said, “I think you need to be worried about me harming you.”
He gave a slow smile and kept coming forward. “Do tell.”
“Stop where you are,” said Sara with alarm in her voice. He was close enough that she could now tell he wasn’t a man. He was a mage.
He stopped and waited. Looking at her calmly.
“What do you want?” she said with unease. There was a good twenty feet between them and she could see without dipping into her enhanced physical sight that he wore no insignia on his breast or patch on his shoulder. Leaving no way for her to tell if he belonged to any of the mercenary guilds or military companies.
He could be a Kade mage for all she knew, but Sara doubted that. The Kade mages were warlocks, all eight of them. Each one had the power to devastate armies. She knew one of them even had the power to create earthquakes. He didn’t feel that powerful. Even as she sent out feelers and dipping into her mage sight, she sensed nothing unusual about his gifts.
Nothing remarkable showed up when she looked at him through a mage’s eyes, either. She couldn’t even see what type of mage he was because his aura was dark and cloudy. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. Clearly the sign of a weak-willed mage if he couldn’t use his gifts to project one color that shone above all. He didn’t have enough power.
“So are we going to just stand here and stare at each other all day?” he asked in a bored tone.
“Would you rather I pierced you in the heart and left you for dead?”
He laughed. “No, I would not.”
She tilted her head. “What’s a mage doing out here all alone? With no insignia and no guards?”
“What’s a pretty sword mistress doing loitering by the lake all alone?” he countered.
She didn’t answer for a second. Realizing he had left out the fact that she was mage. She wasn’t shielding, but she didn’t have to. The magic of battle mages was often undetectable to regular mages, even if they were looking. She knew it was because her gifts were different from a normal mage’s. As a battle mage, her magic was intrinsically tied to her body in order to increase functions like her eyesight or strength. It wasn’t something that affected the world around it so much, and therefore was almost a hidden gift.
A hidden gift that was rather useful on the battlefield or in a fight.
She kept her stance loose, ready to twist
away or attack at any minute. But for a minute she would humor him. It wasn’t like anyone else was speaking to her anyway.
“I want to be here,” she said with a raise of her chin. “It’s peaceful and was quiet.”
He took an exaggerated look around. “It is that. Lonely, as well.” His voice hinted at mockery.
She raked her eyes up and down his form. “You’re one to talk. Wandering through the forest without anyone else. Sneaking up on people who don’t want to be found.”
Sara gestured at the crowd of woman and men in the distance. Their shouts of laughter could be heard up and down the lakeshore. “If I want people, I have them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What if you want friends?”
She smiled sharply. “Then I wouldn’t approach strangers.”
He put his hands in his pockets and smiled. As he did, it was as if the clouds of the sky dissipated a little more reveal parts of his face in shadow. For the first time she saw a hint of alabaster skin and dirty blond hair curving around a sharp cheekbone.
“Everyone’s a stranger...until you get to know them. Besides, considering who you are, I’d take what I could get, Fairchild.”
“How do you know my name?” she snarled.
He stayed half-hidden in the shadows. She couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t test his intent.
“I know a lot of things,” he said smoothly. “But more importantly, I know a lost woman when I see one. A woman with the strength of ten men and the broken heart of one.”
She blinked at the unease rioting through her.
How does he know that? And me so well?
“You don’t know that,” she said as she started to walk closer. “I’m going to take you back to camp and they’re going to have some questions for you.”
He laughed. “Kitling, I’d be more worried about where I will take you.”
Sara froze in her tracks. That nickname was one she hadn’t heard in over a year. It was the name her father called her whenever she got in trouble. It was their secret and no one else used it. Certainly not a man she had never met.
Disbelief crossed in her eyes as she wonder how he could know it. She had only one explanation.
“Are you a geist?” she said, using the old language word for “ghost.”
“I’m no ghost,” said the man in front of her as the shadow surrounding him suddenly moved and she realized that it was a natural shadow that cloaked him. When the darkness fell back from his form, she was met with the strangest eyes she’d ever seen.
Sara knew she didn’t know him. Those eyes, that face, and that voice would have forever been imprinted on her mind if she had. Vivid, purple eyes framed by long lashes.
“What are you, then?” she whispered as she stared.
He smiled sadly. “A mirage.”
Then a voice called out from behind her. “Sara!”
Sara didn’t flinch and didn’t turn around. She recognized its owner. As Ezekiel came running toward her, she kept her wary gaze on the man in front of her. She didn’t know who he was or what he wanted, but he might be insane.
“Why don’t you tell me your name?” commanded Sara.
But he didn’t answer. Instead, before her eyes his body faded away in a wave of light like a whirlpool in the middle of the ocean that opened and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Sara stared, flummoxed. Unsure if she should move and scout the area or stand her ground in case he had just dropped a sight and sound shield around him. But she knew what a sight and sound shield looked like, knew what the gathering of magic for that particular spell felt like, and what he had just done had been neither.
He had just...vanished.
Finally, Ezekiel’s panting breaths stopped beside her.
“What are you looking at?” said Ezekiel with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.
He leaned over so far that the arrows in his quiver slipped out over his head and tumbled down to the ground. Ezekiel grumbled and gathered them back up.
As he did, Sara answered his question. “A mirage.”
Ezekiel stood while holding half a dozen arrows lopsidedly in his hand. Quite a few of which were poking Sara sharply in the side. She didn’t move away because she was honestly wondering if the painful poke would make her snap awake from a dream or a nightmare.
She felt Ezekiel turn to look at her. Then he did something so annoying that she almost slapped him. Ezekiel whistled with a sharp pitch directly into her ear.
She pushed him away with a yell. “What the hell, Ezekiel?”
Off-balance, he stumbled back and nearly fell. He ended up dropping half the arrows in his arms again.
Sara turned to look behind her but the stranger had well and truly vanished. She felt no other presence aside from herself and Ezekiel. With an irritable sigh, she sheathed her sword and walked a few steps over to apologize.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “You really jolted my concentration.”
“That was kind of the point,” he said irritably. “You’ve been standing on this beach staring at nothing for the past fifteen minutes. When I came up to you, you muttered nonsense. I thought you were in a trance.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, thank you for checking on me, Ezekiel,” he muttered. “You’re welcome, Sara, even though you’ve been throwing a hissy fit for the last day and a half.”
“Are you through?” she said with her arms crossed.
“Are you done being crazy?” he shot back.
“I’m not crazy,” she said. “I saw something.”
“Saw what? A shade?” he said.
“No, a person.”
Ezekiel’s gaze transformed into something close to panicked. “We’re near the battlefront, you know. If you saw a Kade soldier, we need to warn the others.”
Before he could turn and head off, she held up a warning hand. “No. That’s not what I meant. I came out here for the quiet. But after I got here, someone else came. A person I think was a vision...a vision called a mirage.”
Ezekiel shifted uncomfortably. “A mirage? Like the kind of vision that hallucinating people see in the desert?”
She turned and looked over at him. “I don’t know how to explain it. It—he—was a man. Tall and wearing non-descript white clothing.”
“Well, what did he say?”
“Not much,” muttered Sara.
Ezekiel bit his lip. “It might have been another mercenary wandering by.”
Sara shook her head. “He was no Corcoran. I can tell you that right now.”
“Then who was he?”
“I don’t know,” Sara said, “but he had purple eyes.”
Something flooded Ezekiel’s eyes that moment. Something dark.
“What did you say?” he choked out.
“He had purple eyes,” she said defiantly. “Does that mean something to you?”
“It might,” he whispered. “We need to get back to your campsite. I have to show you something.”
Sara shifted uncomfortably.
“What?” said Ezekiel.
“I don’t have a campsite,” she said.
“I do,” Ezekiel said firmly, “and if you’ll have me by your side, so do you.”
She raised her head. “What? We’re not even going to talk about the fight?”
He flashed a grin. “Lucky for you, I have something much more fascinating to discuss. Otherwise I would lay into you on your behavior these last few days.”
He started walking back. Having no choice, she grabbed Danger’s reins and followed him.
“My behavior?” she said, affronted.
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard some stories,” he said. “You’re the talk of all the mercenaries.”
She scoffed. “They put rats in my tents, slashed the holders on my saddle, tried to pick fights with me, refused to aid me in getting dinner, and—”
Ezekiel cut her off as he untied his own horse from a nearby tree limb. “Trust me, that argument is going
nowhere with me or anyone else. There’s too much ‘me’ involved.”
Sara clenched her jaw.
She watched as he tried to jump up on his horse and failed.
“Do you need some help?” she said pointedly.
“Maybe,” Ezekiel admitted.
Sara came up behind him and held out her hands to give him a boost.
“Thanks,” Ezekiel said as he vaulted into the saddle.
She held his horse’s reins for a second, holding him in place. “Why can’t you tell me what you know here?”
“Because,” Ezekiel said as he snapped the reins and his horse broke into a trot as she mounted up, “I need my books!”
Sara watched him gallop off with her jaw dropped. She urged Danger to follow quickly and Danger leapt into the race with joy.
Gaining speed as they ran side-by-side, Sara yelled at Ezekiel, “I can’t believe you brought your books to war.”
The grin on his face as he said, “We need them,” left her shaking her head in disgust.
Chapter 18
Her heart raced as they rode to the hill quickly. When they got to the first and clearest path up to the top that Sara expected Ezekiel to slow and turn his mare for the slow and arduous process of climbing the hill. But Ezekiel didn’t stop. He urged his mare to continue around the far side of the hill at a fast trot as they weaved around soldiers walking about. When they continued south, Sara followed, wondering where he could possibly be going.
When they had gone clear around the front and were approaching the lake again, she yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“There’s a path up ahead,” Ezekiel yelled back, his butt bouncing up and down in the saddle like a sack of potatoes. She winced just watching him. It was her first time back in the saddle in months. So she was shaky. But he looked like he hadn’t ridden anything but a mule since birth.
She waited for this mysterious path to appear as Danger followed along the mare’s right side. Then Ezekiel turned his mare north again, straight into a bunch of trees. But not between them. Sara watched with something akin to anger flaring in her gut. She knew what was seeing immediately. As Ezekiel rode straight through the copse of trees like it wasn’t there, it was clear as day. She had been tricked. As she went through and they emerged riding on the other side, she turned to her left and right to see two mages standing on either side of the pathway.
