“Maybe.” If Ravi was even real, and not just a manifestation of the forest’s magic. “Do you believe in all of that? Their goddess and the temple and everything?”
She looked baffled, as if it had never occurred to her to question it. But of course it hadn’t, if she’d grown up with it. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Novikke shrugged. “You’re not Varai.”
She was quiet for a moment. “If you’d lived in Kuda Varai, you’d understand. I have felt her presence.”
Novikke thought of the presence she’d felt in the forest when that black fog had overtaken them. The unmistakably hostile presence that had threatened to take her away like it had the other soldiers. She suppressed a shudder.
“She’s the patron goddess of Varai,” Novikke said. “Do you think she cares about humans?”
Zara rubbed her arm absently, shrinking. Novikke softened. Maybe that had come out more harshly than she’d intended.
“I meant nothing by it,” Novikke said.
“Officially, she is the goddess of the Varai, and only Varai,” Zara said softly. “But they say that Ravi cares for all living things. That includes you and I, doesn’t it?” She gave Novikke a challenging glance.
“I wouldn’t know,” Novikke said. She really didn’t.
Zara leaned around the corner to watch the elves, frowning with concern.
“Is it true, what he’s saying?” she asked Novikke quietly, looking frightened.
Novikke sighed. “Yes.” She peered around the corner again. The mood in the entryway had gone from violent to somber.
“If you’d been above ground recently, you’d have seen it for yourself,” Aruna said. “Trees and animals are dying. It’s real. It’s spreading. If we don’t do something about it quickly, it will be too late.”
“I’ve been to the heart. I’ve seen no sign of this,” Avan said.
“Then it hasn’t reached the city yet, but it will. If you take me to the heart—”
“I would die before I took someone outside the priesthood there. You disrespect me greatly by even asking.”
“What is that—the heart?” Novikke murmured to Zara, trying to be quiet, but Avan heard anyway and scowled back at her. Zara only gave a tight-lipped shrug.
“This is nonsense,” Avan said. “The forest can’t be killed. The Goddess protects it. You speak of impossibilities.”
“It’s not impossible, I’ve seen it,” Aruna said through his teeth. “It’s happening, whether you like it or not, and we need to do something about it. I had thought that the Second High Priestess would be more concerned about the impending death of everything she knows and loves.”
“A Second High Priestess is concerned with liars and heretics and turncoats, especially when they lurk within her own family, but she is never concerned with the health of her blessed immortal goddess.”
Kashava had gone quiet while they argued. Her sword was back in its sheath, her expression troubled. “What if it’s true, Avan?”
“I believe he thinks he’s telling the truth,” Avan said. “But what he’s telling us is impossible.”
Aruna caught Novikke’s eye and gave a soft sigh.
This was why he’d wanted to bring help. He’d known it wouldn’t be this simple. They were going to have to take things into their own hands.
There was a knock at the door. Aruna pulled up his hood and stood out of sight of the doorway as Avan answered it. Her shoulders slumped when she saw whoever was on the other side. Peering over her shoulder, Novikke saw silver armor.
“Can I help you, watchman?” she said, loud enough for them all to hear. Aruna turned and silently rushed to Novikke’s side. No one stopped him. His shadow spell enveloped him.
“Forgive the intrusion, Second Priestess…” said the man at the door as Aruna pulled Novikke toward the back door. She felt his spell creeping over her skin.
“Wait,” Zara whispered. She rushed inside the kitchen and came back with something in her hand. She pressed it into Novikke’s palm. A paring knife. Small enough to hide, but sharp enough to harm. The girl’s eyes flicked nervously in the direction of the shadow that was Aruna, but she gave Novikke a small nod.
Novikke nodded back in thanks. Shrouded in shadow, she and Aruna left out the back door.
Chapter 7
They emerged onto the dark street. When Aruna drew his sword and broke into a run, still camouflaged, Novikke hurried to keep up, still gripping his hand.
He stopped short as they rounded the corner. Two city guards waited at the end of the street, swords drawn. They were mere dark shapes in the low light, but she could make out that they were turned the other way.
Aruna turned sharply and guided them into an alley. She felt the spell over her flicker as his concentration wavered, leaving her plainly visible for an instant before it slid back into place.
They peered around the corner, watching the street that Avan’s front door was on. A few guards stood in front of her house. Novikke heard Avan’s protest as they pushed inside to search the house.
Then she saw the trio of figures standing farther back, watching everything. It was the men who’d stopped them before, a few tunnels back. They must have recognized Aruna and followed them.
She heard Aruna’s sharp exhalation—as loud an exclamation of frustration as he was willing to give. He silently ushered her back down the alley and around another corner.
“Hey! Stop!” someone shouted, and they broke into a run. They rounded another corner, only to run into another pair of guards on the next street. Two more appeared behind them, blocking their exit. The other people on the street gasped and ran out of the way, then hovered nearby to watch.
Aruna dropped Novikke’s hand, letting the spell fall away. He glanced at her as he raised his sword. Her heart was in her throat. If they arrested him, she was dead.
“Just stay back,” he said to her.
She tucked her knife against her wrist and backed against the wall.
“Put down the sword,” one of the guards said. All of them closed in. None of them were looking at Novikke.
Aruna darted forward, slashing the sword up toward one of the guards. They’d been expecting him to surrender, and didn’t react quickly enough. The guard moved to block, but Aruna’s sword speared past it, stabbing through the man’s shoulder.
As Aruna moved to block a blow from the other guard in front of him, the two behind him stepped in to strike him from behind. Novikke leapt forward and drove her knife into the closest one’s back just before her sword could come down on Aruna.
Novikke’s target shrieked. The kitchen knife stuck in her shoulder. The woman spun and her blade arced toward Novikke, who shielded her face with her arms. Pain sliced across her forearm and her chest, and she fell against the wall. Her sleeve and her collar grew wet. She braced herself against the wall, preparing for another blow, but the guard had turned back to Aruna.
He’d killed the first two, but now the third and fourth were on either side of him. There was a flurry of twisting movement that was difficult to follow in the dark. She heard Aruna shout in pain, and then a figure fell, and then another.
Aruna dropped to his knees, gasping. He’d been hit. He raised the sword and stabbed it into the chest of the only guard that was still trying to get up—healing himself with the sword’s enchantment. The fallen guard gasped, then stilled.
It was brutal. The ugly, metallic smell of blood permeated the air. It was even worse than it had been in the forest. Bloodshed here, in the middle of the city, felt all the more grotesquely out of place.
Novikke’s vision was spotting, and she grew light-headed. She looked down, and blood was coating her clothes. She clamped a hand over the cut on her arm. There wasn’t much she could do about the one on her chest.
Everything was quiet again except for the murmurs of onlookers. Aruna’s eyes went to her arms.
He ran to her, and she felt the tingle of a spell being cast over her as both their bodies fad
ed to shadow. “I told you to stay back,” he whispered, his voice harsh with panic.
Novikke couldn’t think straight. Her mind was blank with fear. There was so much blood. Too much. “I…”
He put an arm around her. “Come on.”
Several of the onlookers, finally pulled out of their shocked silence, shouted for them to stop. Novikke and Aruna kept walking. Several people followed at a safe distance, not wanting to fight the people who’d just killed four armed guards. Aruna picked up his pace, pulling Novikke with him.
A pulse of black encroached on her vision. Blood dripped over her hand.
“Aruna—” she began, her voice shaking.
“Don’t,” Aruna said sharply.
Several people were keeping close on their tail, despite the shadow spell. Around the next corner Aruna ducked into an alley and then pulled her behind a large barrel. They stayed perfectly still as their pursuers ran past. No one spotted them.
Aruna cautiously emerged from the hiding place and looked down one way and then the other, deciding where to go next. There was nowhere to hide. There were people watching everywhere. Novikke could hear shouting on the streets all around them.
Novikke’s head was spinning. “Aruna, I—”
“Psst,” someone hissed.
They both looked toward the sound. Zara had appeared at the end of the alley, ducking against a wall. Her wide eyes were not quite focused on them.
“Come. This way,” she whispered, then fled around the corner.
Aruna hesitated, then followed Zara with Novikke in tow. She was relying on him to hold her up by that point. Blood continued to drip down her arms, leaving drops on the ground. She was overcome with weakness. Her legs dragged beneath her.
Zara had waited for them around the corner. When she saw them following, she hurried down another few side streets, somehow never coming into range of the people searching for them.
They rounded a corner, and someone was waiting there for them. Novikke flinched, then realized it was only Avan’s wife.
Avan’s ill-tempered wife, who hated them.
Aruna jerked to a stop, raising his sword with one arm and holding Novikke with the other. “Kashava, if you—”
“Quiet,” she hissed, scowling. “Unless you want them to find you.” She opened a narrow back door of the building beside them and gestured for them to go inside.
Aruna paused, his sword hovering in front of him, before relenting and slipping through the door. Novikke tripped on the step inside, and Aruna caught her. The sensation of falling continued even after his arms were wrapped around her.
“Novikke,” she heard him say, “you’re going to be all right.”
She tried desperately to hold on to him, to stay conscious, to warn him she was about to pass out—but all she could do was fall as darkness closed around her.
◆◆◆
She awoke again with a weak jerk, remembering what had happened in a panicked rush. The first thing she did was reach out, even before she’d opened her eyes.
“Novikke?”
A hand clasped hers. Aruna’s face appeared above her. She’d been here before. When she’d first met him on the road and Zaiur had knocked her unconscious, she’d awoken to his face above her.
But this time he wasn’t the Serious One frowning down at her. He wore his fear and relief on his face for her to see.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She took inventory of her pains. There was not much—not as much as she’d expected. A dull throbbing in her arm and chest. A dizzy, out-of-sorts feeling.
“Yes,” she said. She blinked up at him. “Are you?”
He bent and kissed her. His hand brushed across her temple and behind her ear as he lifted her face to meet his. She made a small, surprised sound, then raised an arm to drape it haphazardly over him, drawing him closer. Hadn’t they agreed not to do this anymore? Suddenly she didn’t care.
Someone gasped.
Aruna paused, then reluctantly pulled away. Zara sat on her knees beside him, her jaw hanging open. She snapped it shut when Novikke looked over at her. She held a small bottle of something in one hand.
Novikke’s eyes were drawn to Aruna’s rolled up sleeve. A long, deep, bright red cut adorned his forearm. Zaiur’s sword lay beside him. She narrowed her eyes at him. He’d cut himself to heal her.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she said dryly.
He looked at her for a long moment, dark amusement and fondness swimming in his eyes in a way that made her chest feel warm.
Zara motioned for him to offer his arm, and he obeyed. She dripped wound sealer over it. Evidently, however Aruna had behaved while she’d been unconscious had been enough to convince Zara to trust him.
“Don’t try to get up yet,” he said when Novikke propped herself on her elbows. He frowned a little. “I should never have brought you here.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Kashava. She sat atop a wooden box nearby, elbows resting on her knees.
They were in a dark, dusty room that was apparently used for storage. The only light came from Novikke’s mage torch on the ground beside her. There were no windows.
“You wouldn’t have survived that fight without me. There were too many of them,” Novikke said. “You need me.”
Aruna didn’t argue. He just looked at her with that soft, quiet appreciation that made her feel like she was breaking into pieces.
As Zara finished her ministrations on his arm, he ran a finger over the cut to be sure it had closed. Novikke checked her own wounds and found them already sealed as well. Her clothes were soaked with blood. She didn’t want to think about how close she’d come to death. The cut Aruna had taken with Zaiur’s sword had probably been the only thing that kept the blood loss from killing her.
“Where are we?”
“My late uncle’s shop,” Kashava said. “It’s been closed for months. No one will find you here.”
Novikke watched her cautiously. “You came to help us?”
Kashava paused, pressing her lips together. “Only because Zara convinced me to. She has a way of doing that.”
Zara gave her a sly look.
“Then you’re not going to turn us in?” Novikke said.
“Does it look like that’s what I’m going to do?”
“No. That’s why I’m confused.”
“Avan thinks you’re a spy for the Ardanians,” she said, her eyes sharp. “Are you?”
Novikke couldn’t hold back a long-suffering sigh. “No. I’m not a spy. Never have been. Just a courier.”
Kashava straightened, setting her hands on her knees as she turned a fierce gaze on her and Aruna. “Let me be clear. You’re still a traitor as far as I’m concerned. But it’s obvious that you know more about what’s going on than any of us do, and I think we’re going to need both of you in order to deal with it.”
“Then you believe us?” Novikke said, surprised.
“I don’t think you would’ve ever come back here, otherwise. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not,” Aruna said. “Will you help us get inside the temple?”
“I won’t help you break into the temple against Avan’s wishes, no,” she said, arching a disapproving brow. “But if you’re telling the truth, I think we’ll see the evidence for ourselves soon enough, and that will convince her to aid you.”
“It may be too late by then,” Aruna said, frowning.
“You keep saying that, yet we’ve seen no sign of it yet in Vondh Rav.”
Aruna just shook his head, resigned to the fact that they wouldn’t be able to persuade her to betray Avan’s trust.
“When was the last time you slept?” Kashava asked. A good question.
“Too long ago,” Aruna said.
“You need rest.” She jerked her chin toward Novikke. “Her, especially. You’re in no condition to go saving the forest right now. Go sleep, and we’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”
Aruna glanced down
at Novikke, then nodded.
“Should we take them back to the house?” Zara asked Kashava.
“No,” Aruna said. “I think Avan might kill me if I go back there right now.”
“And the watch will be keeping an eye on the house,” Kashava said. “I’ll take you to a safe place.”
◆◆◆
Aruna supported Novikke on the way to the next cavern. She’d passed out again the first time she’d tried to get up. Her legs were heavy as they walked, her limbs weak, and the ground seemed to spin and warp under her. Kashava had generously traded clothes with her, taking her torn and blood-soaked clothes.
Night Elves of Ardani: Book Three: Invocation Page 8
