by C. Greenwood
He rolled onto his back and panted for breath, squinting against the light streaming down into his face. The sun had risen, he realized faintly. The long night was past and a new day had arrived.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Eydis
Eydis looked at Orrick, covered to his armpits with mud, and found herself unexpectedly laughing. After a moment, he joined in. It was the uneasy laughter of two people who had narrowly escaped death and were amazed at finding themselves still alive.
Eydis’s throat continued to burn slightly from the green mist she had inhaled earlier, but she felt no other ill effects. Orrick looked unharmed too beyond his mud-streaked appearance and signs of exhaustion.
As their laughter died down and they recovered their breaths, Eydis’s ears picked up a new noise. The sound of loose pebbles tumbling down the near hill. Someone was approaching from below.
Orrick must have heard it as well, for he rolled to his feet and waited tensely, his hand falling to the hilt of his sword.
Eydis eyed the near rise. After a moment, the intruder came into view, cresting the hill. She didn’t recognize the hooded stranger, who walked with a faint limp and carried a tall walking stick in one hand.
The stranger paused a short way off as if to contemplate the pair of them from a safe distance. That was when Eydis realized there was something familiar in his lean build and height, in the set of his narrow shoulders. She stared as if at a ghost.
“Geveral, can that be you?” she asked, amazed.
In answer, the newcomer threw back the hood of his cloak, revealing his familiar dryad features and flowing dark hair.
He looked as stunned as Eydis felt. “I was passing on the path below and heard a cry,” he explained into the silence. “I thought some fellow traveler must be in trouble and came to offer my help. I had no idea of meeting you here.”
Eydis hardly heard the explanation. She pointed an accusatory finger. “You can’t be here. It isn’t possible,” she protested. “You’re dead.”
Geveral smiled gently at her disbelief. “I’ll admit I probably look near enough to death as makes little difference. But the throbbing of my wounds says I’m fully alive.”
Eydis took in the blood-encrusted rip down the fleshy part of his cheek and the many other cuts and bruises marring what had once been a flawless face. His eyes too were different. Weary and somehow aged. More striking than these changes was a forked marking he now wore on his forehead, a strange pattern that glowed with an eerie blue light.
All this Eydis took in at a glance and dismissed. The only thing she could focus on right now was the miracle of seeing him living and breathing before her eyes.
Still unprepared to believe it, she said, “The wizard told me you died in the mountains. How can you have survived the beast he sent to destroy you?”
Geveral looked puzzled. “I saw nothing of any wizard. Only the terrible griffon that attacked again after you and I were separated.”
Quickly, Eydis related to him her encounter with the wizard in the granite tower and the wizard’s prediction of death for Geveral and the rest of their party.
At this, a shadow passed over Geveral’s face. “Your wizard was mostly successful in his attempts to destroy us,” he said.
A sinking feeling grew in Eydis’s stomach. She sensed, even before he spoke it, the news he was about to give.
“The adherents and dwarf children did not survive the mountain crossing,” he said heavily. “The griffon came out of nowhere and I—”
He broke off abruptly, as if searching for the right words, before finishing weakly, “I failed to protect them. I defeated the griffon but to no purpose, for every life was lost save two.”
His words struck Eydis like a blow as she remembered the adherents and dwarf children she had barely had the chance to know. She thought of all they had gone through to escape the attack at the Asincourt seclusionary. Everything had been risked to save them. It seemed particularly cruel that they had escaped one violent calamity only to lose their lives to another.
She could draw comfort from only one thing.
“You said two lives were spared,” she told Geveral. “Yours and who else’s?”
“The boy Keir. The one you said might ultimately prove vital to our cause. He alone survived. For a time.”
Eydis couldn’t bring herself to ask what he meant by that last, for she felt she could hardly handle more ill news.
That was when her gaze was captured by a gleam of gold at Geveral’s side. There was a shiny object tucked into his belt.
She caught her breath, hardly trusting her eyes. “The scepter! How did you come by it?”
“You know this object?” Geveral asked in apparent confusion, drawing forth the scepter.
Orrick stepped forward and took it at once from his hands, looking as amazed as Eydis felt.
Eydis explained briefly to Geveral how the Tears of the Mother she had brought from Asincourt had been transformed into this scepter and how the enemy had stolen it from her at Castidon.
As she spoke, she came to an abrupt realization. The adherents and children were not the only things she had carried away from the fallen seclusionary. Maybe their rescue had not even been the true object of her journey to Asincourt. The oracle had instructed her to save the seclusionary’s inhabitants, but could it be that the real purpose of fate in sending her to Asincourt had been to rescue the Tears of the Mother? To secure the scepter from falling into the hands of Rathnakar?
If so, it was at least some comfort to think she had not failed in her entire mission, though she had certainly failed the innocents in her charge. This possibility also begged the question of whether the oracle had known all along how things would turn out. And whether, knowing, she had chosen not to disclose the truth to Eydis for reasons of her own.
It was all too much to take in.
Yet there was more. Geveral told the story of how he had come by the scepter. Of how he and Keir had flown from the mountains on some mysterious quest known only to Keir and the voices in his head. Of how Keir had died destroying the shadow monster they had encountered and, afterward, Geveral had discovered the scepter amongst their ashes.
While he delivered his sad tale, Eydis noticed a sudden chill coming into the air. The sky darkened, the sun dipping behind gray clouds that seemed to come from nowhere. Without warning, a light drizzle began to fall.
Eydis shuddered at the unexpected rain, for it had been warm and sunny only moments before.
Geveral paused in speaking, as he noticed her shivering.
“Sorry about that,” he said, glancing upward as if only just becoming aware of the change in the weather. “I didn’t realize I was doing it.”
The dryad turned his face to the sky then and stood silent and motionless, as though carrying on some inner work that demanded his full attention.
Overhead, the sprinkles ceased to fall. Another cool wind stirred, driving the clouds away as suddenly as they had come. The warm sunlight reemerged.
Eydis knew weather work when she saw it.
“You have changed,” she observed to Geveral. “Grown stronger in your ability.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” he said.
“I’m not. Didn’t I always say you were destined to be a great weather mage?”
“You did,” he admitted. “But I hardly believed you. Until I met Janya.”
Then he told how he had been befriended by a mage who had helped him better understand him power. How some inexplicable experience involving a lightning strike had marked his forehead with the blue forked pattern and had magnified his strength.
“When I parted ways with Janya, he told me traveling in this direction would lead me where I needed to go,” he finished. “I thought he meant this path would take me to the mountains, where I meant to find and rescue you. But now I see I was always meant to meet you along the way.”
Eydis said, “And now we three catalysts are united in time to deliver the scepter
to the oracle.”
It felt like a confirmation of all she had foreseen and predicted, that the three of them should again be together just when things had begun to look grimmest.
She took hold of the scepter. To her surprise, Orrick didn’t release it into her hand but continued holding it firmly in his own grip.
The barbarian had a strange look in his eyes, as though forming a plan. “What if we don’t deliver this scepter to your oracle?” he suggested. “What if we take it instead to the White Lady? She desired it once, and it might not be too late to resurrect my bargain with her.”
“What bargain?” asked Eydis, puzzled. “Exactly what does she have that we need?”
He hesitated, then appeared to come to a decision. “I never told you this. But before Castidon, when I went to your oracle for help, she planted a magical tracing mark in my head. Her price for removing the mark was that I bring her the scepter. Later, the White Lady offered me a similar deal. The scepter in exchange for the removal of my tracing mark.”
Eydis was startled. “The oracle did this against your wishes?”
“Yes. She threatened to use the mark to locate me and give up my whereabouts to my enemies unless I cooperated.”
Eydis frowned, trying to take in the information. She said, “Even so, we can’t hand the scepter over to some unpredictable ghost whose allegiances we can only guess at. She might take the thing to the enemy. No, it will be safer in Silverwood Grove. But don’t worry. I’m certain the oracle will reward you by removing the mark, as promised, now you have proven you are to be trusted.”
Orrick scowled. She couldn’t entirely blame him. Despite the easiness of her words, it was hard to be comfortable with what the oracle had done to him. After everything the catalysts had been through together, it was disturbing that the oracle, who should have been an ally to them all, had trapped Orrick in such a scheming manner. And yet, if the scepter was truly the potential key to Rathnakar’s freedom, she couldn’t fault the oracle for doing what she thought necessary to protect it. Besides, it hadn’t been so long ago that Eydis herself had first forced Orrick into aiding her cause.
Orrick said now, “I will never again set foot in your oracle’s temple. I don’t trust her not to lay some worse spell upon me than the one she already has.”
“But that could mean living with the tracing mark unlifted forever,” Eydis protested.
“Then so I will,” he said, his tone leaving no room to doubt his determination. “If you and the dryad are determined to carry the prize to your mistress, you must do it without me.”
He released his hold on the scepter, leaving it in Eydis’s hands.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A short time later, the three companions sat in the shadow of a great boulder and ate a meal of dried beef and oatcakes. Orrick had lost the pack containing their supplies in the mud pit, but luckily, Geveral had food enough to share.
The meal was a silent one. Tension had hung in the air ever since Orrick’s announcement that he wouldn’t support them in taking the scepter to the oracle.
As if the disagreement wasn’t enough, Eydis was privately struggling with a difficult decision. She knew it was her responsibility as mistress of masks to keep the Betrayer of Blood attached to her cause. The fate of Lythnia and all Earth Realm hung in the balance, and who knew but that Orrick would prove necessary in the coming battle against Rathnakar?
But at the same time, she had come to see Orrick as more than an ally. He was something like a friend. And that meant she had another duty too, a more personal one. When she had first met Orrick on the Isle of Bones, she had persuaded him to join in her quest by promising the information he so fiercely wanted in return for his service. He had upheld his end of that bargain, fighting alongside her at Asincourt and beyond. He had been true to his word, and now it was time she was true to hers.
After they finished eating, she took Orrick aside.
“I swore something to you once,” she reminded him. “I said I would tell you where to find the man you sought, the one who can prove you innocent of the betrayal of the Endguard fortress. You have kept your promise to me, and now I must do as much for you.”
Orrick grew alert, doubtless realizing he was about to receive the reward he had been waiting for.
Eydis hesitated even now. For in giving up the information he needed, she knew she was surrendering her only hold over him. No more would she, the oracle, or anyone else have the leverage to keep him involved in their cause.
But she owed him.
So before she could change her mind, she said, “The fellow you seek, this Arik the One-Eyed, is in a place of ash and fire. I don’t know its name, for I glimpsed him there only briefly in a vision. But I saw a one-eyed dwarf smashing his axe against a rock as if it were his enemy. The ground trembled around him and the air was thick with soot.”
Comprehension dawned in Orrick’s face. “You describe the Lostlands,” he said excitedly. “The fire and soot can only be from the volcanoes of that place.”
“There is more,” she said. “The dwarf was not alone but accompanied by a gray-skinned, dark-haired woman. A fearsome creature with glowing eyes and the fangs of a beast, she wielded a staff with light shooting from it like a weapon.”
“A vampire queen,” Orrick decided, as if he had encountered such creatures a thousand times before. “If Arik the One-Eyed is in such company,” he continued, “then I have an idea exactly where in the Lostlands he may be found.”
Learning the location of the one-eyed dwarf seemed to give Orrick new energy as Geveral packed away the remains of their meal and they moved out. There was no real path to follow in this place, but Orrick had apparently regained his bearings for he led them confidently on up the increasingly rocky slope.
As the day wore on, Eydis grew warm, toiling beneath the glaring sun. But when at last they reached the high point, they were rewarded by a cooling breeze sweeping over the rocks and a sweeping view of the green valley below. A river snaked through the vale and more hills rose in the distance. Nestled between the rises was a settlement too large to call a village and too small to name a city.
“Arneroche,” Orrick said as they gazed down on the settlement.
Although Eydis had never laid eyes on Arneroche before, she knew it vaguely as the last town of the wetlands. At the other side of these hills began the rangelands and the way to the oracle. Curious, she surveyed the little town spread out before her. The walls of the thatch-roofed homes were constructed of the same lichen-covered rock that dominated the landscape, blending them naturally with the surrounding hills. The town was without fences and open to the surrounding fields, where cattle grazed freely in the tall grass, encircled by the slopes.
Orrick broke into her thoughts. “I said I would get you to Arneroche,” he reminded her. “And now that I have, this is where we part ways.”
“I wish you would change your mind,” Geveral told the barbarian. “You’re a good companion, and we could use one of your strength and skill on our way to Silverwood Grove.”
Eydis thought Orrick looked at the young dryad with a little more respect than he once had.
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” he said to Geveral. “But now is the time for our paths to part. You two are determined to save the world, while I must find Arik the One-Eyed and save myself.”
“You still don’t believe in our quest?” Eydis asked. “Even after all you have seen? The undead army, the magic scepter, the many signs of Rathnakar’s rising?”
“I believe Earth Realm is full of unexplained things,” he answered easily. “If you had lived most of your life in Kroad, so near the Lostlands and the unnatural creatures that inhabit them, you wouldn’t find terrible happenings remarkable. Not every disaster demands a quest.”
While Eydis fumed silently, he added, “Besides, you are near the rangelands and your oracle of the grove now. You’re not likely to meet more danger while covering the remaining distance.”
Eydis bit back a retort. First he implied she and Geveral were a pair of wide-eyed younglings questing at shadows. Then he hinted they were afraid to proceed without him. Yet she could argue with none of this because she was about to say good-bye to a friend she might never see again. It was no time to quarrel.
“Geveral was right that you have been a strong and steady companion,” she conceded. “You have served Earth Realm well, even if you don’t believe it. And you have a right to look to your own affairs now. I wish you every success in finding your one-eyed acquaintance and clearing your name.”
At that, they parted, Orrick choosing a northeasterly path that led away from Arneroche. As Eydis began descending with Geveral down into the valley, she tried not to dwell on her sense of foreboding. Or the voice in the back of her head that said it was a mistake for the catalysts to separate.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There was no real path down the rocky hill, making their progress slow. Even as she kept a wary eye out for any more mud pits, Eydis noticed Geveral struggling slightly on the uneven terrain. He hadn’t spoken much of the attack that had marred his face or the accident that left him limping and leaning on a walking stick. But it was plain he wasn’t quite recovered. The distance he had been forced to walk on his bad leg to get this far had already taken a toll.
So he wouldn’t feel awkward about the injury, she feigned weariness herself and asked to stop often for rests. During one of these stops, at midday, they ate more of the dried beef and oatcakes Geveral had brought. He and Eydis both had insisted on dividing the provisions equally with Orrick before he departed, leaving little left. Certainly not enough to last two people as far as Silverwood Grove. But Eydis told herself they would be in Arneroche soon and could resupply there.
By the time they returned to their downward climb, heavy gray clouds had rolled in, darkening the sky and making the hour seem later than it was.
“Is this your doing?” Eydis asked Geveral, as a rising breeze swirled her hair and dried the sweat on her skin.
