He didn’t know how long the healing took, but when he opened his eyes again, Mikel was scraping his skillet out over the embers of the fire. Not that his eyes stayed open long. The spell had drained him so that he was snoring moments later.
***
Sal woke before dawn the next morning, the grey half-light seeping through the pane glass windows of the hearth-lit cabin. But if he thought to sneak away before the old man woke, he was sadly disappointed. Mikel was already up and about, bustling around the cabin as if he’d been at it for hours.
“Morning,” Sal said groggily, though more from an excess of sleep than from a lack thereof.
“Aye, mornin’ back to ye, milord mage,” Mikel returned, not slowing a bit. “Are ye ready to set yer feet to the dusty trail?”
“Yeah, I feel great, thanks. But what are you doing?”
“What’s it look like to ye? I’m packin’ me things up. Even by wagon, it’s two weeks to a half-month ride to Scholar’s Ford, dependin’ on how hard ye push yer horses, and if we aim to get there afore I die, we needs be headin’ out. I ain’t got many years left, don’tcha know.”
That got Sal up. “Whoa, wait a second. You know what’s going on out there. It’s dangerous. I can’t let you go risking your life on my account.”
The old man waved him off. “Bah! I’ve been in and outta trouble with the Highest most o’ me life. In fact, I kinda been missin’ it, stuck out here in the boonies as I am. Semi-retired, I guess ye could call me. Truth be known, I could really use a break from these ol’ walls here—get the blood flowin’, don’tcha know. Why, I can remember the first time I found meself on his royal Highestness’s own bad side...”
Mikel chattered away, never ceasing in his business. One pack was no sooner full of cooking supplies that he began filling another with spare clothing, still spieling out his yarn. It was clear before he even started that Sal was going to get nowhere trying to convince the old codger to stay home.
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” he sighed, his comment lost in Mikel’s torrential chitchat. So join him he did. In an hour, they were loaded in a rickety horse-drawn flatbed and bouncing along the deep ruts of a well-worn trail. The sun was just breaking the horizon as they left out, Mikel’s cabin vanishing into the dense foliage of the Veylin woods.
It turned out to be a beautiful morning. The air was pleasantly cool and humid. The song of myriad forest animals rose with the thick morning mist, greeting the new day. Free of the musty cabin, the smoky hearth, the dusty firs, and other trappings of civilization, Sal found that he could smell honeysuckle in the air, strong and vibrant.
Honeysuckle, of all things! Strange that he should smell such a familiar scent in this world so far removed from his own, but there it was—along with pine, and alfalfa, and many other scents that seemed to speak to him from his childhood, scents he’d long forgotten. After years of military life—of boats and desks and deserts—it never occurred to him how that kind of life could weed out such “unnecessary” memories. He closed his eyes and took it all in, and for a time he could almost pretend he was a kid again.
He could see himself, sitting on the front porch of his granny’s house, a scant fifteen miles from home, but seeming a world away. He had his feet propped up and his eyes shut, just soaking in the first Saturday of summer break, the last summer before high school. He didn’t know it yet, but it was gonna be a summer to remember. Cane poles leaned against the wall where his cousin Ben has set them out the night before. They almost begged him to take them down to Abbey Creek and haul in a mess of crappie.
About that time, Buckwild came running around the end of the porch, his floppy jowls partially hiding the rabbit he’d killed. Dangit, he was gonna have to get after that mutt before Granny found out. He wouldn’t do it just then, though. He might disturb her while she was working on lunch—or “dinner”, as she called the mid-afternoon meal, which was followed promptly five hours later by “supper”.
Jimmy always thought the way she talked was hilarious, and found himself translating his own words into Granny words, just for kicks. “Lunch and dinner” became “dinner and supper”. “I think” became “I reckon”. Kids were “young’uns” or “chilluns”. The plural (or singular, for that matter) of “you” was “y’all”—well, unless you were from Tulsa like Aunt Linda, then it was “you-uns”. He’d adopted “y’all” at an early age, and it suited him just fine.
He took a deep pull of the late-morning air, filling his nose with the smell of honeysuckle, mixed with the spice scent of Granny’s peach cobbler that she’d set on the window sill to cool. He knew better than to sneak a taste, but since when did knowing better mean anything? Wouldn’t be the first switchin’ he ever got, probably wouldn’t be the last. Maybe instead of fishing, he could talk Ben into swimming. It would sure be hot enough today. At ten o’ clock, the weatherman was already saying it was ninety degrees. Jimmy figured they’d have Abbey Creek all to themselves for at least an hour before Rebecca Lynn Collier and her sister came down, dragging about half the town with them. Even at fifteen, the brash, raven-haired beauty had all the boys wrapped around her little finger. And the way Becky filled out a two-piece...
A sharp jolt shook the wagon, unsympathetically jerking his mind back to the present and nearly dumping him onto the narrow floorboard in the process. Mikel snickered lightly at the city boy, unable to keep his seat in a wooden cart. The jolt brought Sal back to reality, and it was just as well. He hadn’t thought about Becky in years, but now that he was so far from home, those memories called to him. He wondered what Granny might be doing now, if she had heard that her boy was lost in the jungles of Laos, if she feared he’d never return...
No, you ain’t goin’ there, he thought, forcibly returning his mind to the task at hand, namely to get to Bastion and find his friends. No use daydreaming of home until he’d at least accomplished that much. For now, home was lost to him, and there was no guarantee that he’d ever find a way back. But Lord willing, a trip to Bastion would at least render some answers.
For the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon, the wagon bumped along the ill-used path, rattling Sal’s teeth in his head. He could swear the wheels sought out the deepest ruts in the road. The meandering path straightened only sporadically, and even those stretches were riddled with potholes, so most of the time the wagon moved along at a walk. For almost twelve hours, Sal’s backside tried to convince him that it would be easier—and less painful—to walk the entire way to Scholar’s Ford. Sal was just about to give in to his rear’s demands when they finally reached the highroad. Mikel reined in a few hundred feet from the straight, hard-packed stretch of road.
“We’ll camp here,” Mikel said, pulling off the path into a small clearing that was well hidden from the highroad. “Me next campsite’d take us well after sundown t’ reach, so I’d just as soon not press me luck. Many are the brigands on the highroad these days, and trouble’s best uninvited, if ye catch me meaning.”
“Hey, it’s your world, boss,” he said in his best Shawshank voice, quoting the movie line before catching the irony of the statement. It was enough to set him to laughing.
“What in blazes’ gotten into ye, I wonder?” Mikel muttered quizzically.
“Nothing,” Sal said, still chuckling. “An old movie quote that seemed appropriate. You know, a ‘movie’? Mov... ah, never mind. Just hand me that rucksack.”
Chapter 16
Nestor, one with the soil and rock he was joined with, sped through the earth toward the last known location of the rebel camp. Sensing the mass of magical auras just ahead, he surged upward, emerging from the ground like a redmeat fish swimming upstream to spawn. His booted feet made a muffled thump as he fell back to the now-solid forest floor. The sound was echoed by a chorus of similar thumps as his party of granites followed suit.
“Fan out,” he ordered. “Remember, this was a battle site, so look sharp.” His lieutenants went about passing his orders alo
ng without so much as a hint of salute. Nestor grunted his appreciation. After more than a hundred years in service to the Highest—much of that time in a position of authority—it was well known that he would not suffer time being wasted on a salute. They could “snap to” for another high ranking officer all they wanted, but the Chief General of the Granite Guard cared nothing for such formality. He only wanted results.
He cast his eyes across the open field where Caravan stood only two short days ago. He didn’t wonder what the field might look like to natural or translucent eyes, as other granites might. He wasn’t distracted by the absence of light, nor did he obsess over the colors lost to him—the green of the grass, the yellow of the sun above and the buttercups below, the red-brown of the blood-laden soil. He’d long ago come to terms with Granite’s “blessing” of magical sight. The lack of natural vision was a fact of life for a granite, one that drove most to apathy, to insensate logic. It might well have done the same thing to Nestor, had it not been for a certain token of the Highest’s esteem...
He pushed that thought far from his mind. No time to dwell on such trivialities, not while there was a job to be done.
His eyes took in the scene, picking out the different residual auras that cluttered the area. Many auras were the result of simple cantrips, enchanted objects, the leavings of a typical village. These he dismissed immediately. Some auras, on the other hand, were more interesting. One in particular showed some sort of blending of auras, Ruby and Sapphire to be precise. Interesting, true, but nothing that would tell him where the rebel village had escaped to.
As he worked, he systematically tuned out those auras that seemed to have no direct relation to the battle, auras so weak that they could never belong to an aggressive spell. He stripped away aura after aura, until finally his experienced eyes saw only the ones he needed.
An ice wall, perhaps twelve feet thick, maybe fifteen, no telling how tall... and backed with glass? Beyond the shattered ruins of the shield was a strip of cooled magma. He could see the half-vaporized remains of human bone lodged in the cooled volcanic glass, and perhaps the odd sword here and there. Further...
What’s this? he thought. He saw the faint shimmer of violet ascending from a sloppy multicolored mess of auras. In and of itself, the aura didn’t mean anything to him. But barely six feet from the ground, the aura just... vanished.
“Jaeda,” he said casually.
“Yes sir,” came a voice over his right shoulder. Nestor turned to see the young woman approaching. She was tall, firmly built but not bulky. Definitely a lady in every sense of the word. And one of the few he’d ever encountered that had no trace of the typical bitterness that afflicted most granites. He raised his fingers to the crystal pendant that swung from its chain around his neck, touched it ever so briefly, then dropped his hand before the temptation could overtake him.
“Jaeda, what do you make of this?” he asked, indicating the partial aura. He knew her answer before she spoke it, but he wanted confirmation. In the few years he’d known her, he’d come to rely on her candor, her intuitiveness. She came highly recommended by the Spire, having never done any real field work but making great advances in the study of alternative Granite abilities, and passing these on to her students, who went on to become some of his most effective Guards. He was glad that she had been in Veylin on Spire business when he was recruiting for this detail. Her insight had proven time and again to be a great asset, and he expected even greater things on this mission. Even considering her questionable family ties, she’d never given him any reason to doubt her loyalty. He trusted her implicitly. Well, as much as he trusted anyone under his command.
“Amethyst aura,” she stated obviously. “By the looks of it, the remains of a lifting spell. Levitation. And it’s been erased.”
“I suspected as much,” Nestor replied with a nod. He scratched his chin, weighing his options. “Your brother ever demonstrate an ability like that?”
“Of course, Chief General. Dozens of times. As you know, amethysts have the ability to sense and channel energies. Auric residue is a form of energy, so it’s quite easy for an amethyst to displace the aura; to erase it, as it were, so that it would be virtually invisible even to the trained eye.”
“Do you think that Gaelen was a part of this rebel group?”
“Hard to say. He joined the Resistance after I’d left for Bastion,” she said without missing a beat. “I suppose it’s possible that he was here, but I doubt it. I don’t recognize his signature in any of these amethyst auras.”
“Thank you,” he said, deflated. Had Jaeda’s traitorous brother been with this group, she might have been able to pinpoint his location, and thus the location of the rebels. He moved to dismiss her, but stopped. “On second thought...”
“Of course, Chief General,” she said quickly, although Nestor could sense the slightest twinge of reluctance in her voice. He hated when justice came down to calling on someone to betray their own kin, as it inevitably caused a conflict of interest. But such conflicts ultimately served to make the whole stronger. For the glory of the Highest, of course. He had no doubt that should he call upon her, the conflict would be a short one. She was as devoted to the Highest as he, of that there was no question. He just hated himself having to bring such a loyal subject to that point.
The female granite tugged at the fingers of her gauntlet, pulling the glove off with a rasp of leather upon skin. Free of the encumbrance, Jaeda knelt down and thrust her hand into the ground. Her wielding was instantaneous. She paused for a moment, her hand one with the earth, her glowing brown eyes taking on a faraway look, before shaking her head. “Nothing,” she said dispassionately. “He’s either not touching the ground with any exposed skin, or not close enough to feel his aura without him actually wielding. I’m sorry, Chief General.”
“No apologies are necessary, my dear. You may continue your search. See if you can find any trace of them bottomside.”
“Yes sir,” she said as she wielded, melting into the earth.
Nestor watched the young granite disappear into the ground with a ripple, then turned his attention back to the violet aura with an intensity that promised to pull the very information he wanted right out of the air.
***
Reit stretched as he stood from his perch near the breakfast kettle that Delana had left for him. Though she’d labored into the small hours of the morning, she was up with the sun, organizing people for today’s transport. He could just picture her, enlisting Menkal and his sapphires in scouting paths with the least turbulence, or mobilizing Jaren and his emeralds to service the fatigue of her amethysts. If anyone in camp could sympathize with Delana, it was Jaren. They were working themselves to near exhaustion trying to keep the amethysts energized and aloft. They used what few pegasi they had at their disposal to shoulder some of the burden of the lift, but it simply was not enough. Reit just sighed and shook his head, for lack of profanity befitting their situation. At this rate, I’ll be down to Rubies and Sapphires by week’s end.
As taxing as the lift was on the Greens and Violets, it was working. Caravan’s outriders had found no sign of pursuit so far, though Reit warned them not to wander far from camp. All it would take was one careless move and it would be “game over.” He snickered as he thought of Sal’s otherworldly slang, one of the few phrases that odd young man used that Reit had actually understood, in fact. He’d ceased worrying over the fair haired stranger long ago, instead simply wishing him well and praying the Crafter’s Hand over him. He was too busy worrying about “what is” to waste time on “what might be”. Let tomorrow worry about itself, he thought, as Delana had said a hundred times before. Good advice, no matter that he wasn’t Plainsfolk.
A panicked mooing came from over head, and Reit looked up in time to see a group of cattle float by, followed by two men on horseback, and finally a mage in a flowing violet robe. To Reit’s amusement, it seemed the horsemen were faring worse than their blindfolded mounts. Reit could d
o little else but wave as they passed overhead, and duck whatever curses they happened to hurl down at him.
It seemed that Delana was setting her amethysts to work earlier each day. Before long, Reit expected to wake to a cold breakfast and an empty clearing, his wagon being the last to go. He watched the mage lift the cattle over the village and toward the mountains to the east, where the village was due to be reassembled by nightfall. Seeing those massive beasts suspended in mid-air did queer things to the stomach. He decided that he’d forgo the lift today in favor of Keth’s form of travel. That too was distasteful to him, but he’d rather travel in blackness than hung on a cloud high in the air.
“The Icebreaks,” Reit whispered to himself as his eyes fell on the snow-capped peaks more than a full day’s ride to the northeast. Keth had scouted the area the day before, and he reported that he could sense no active magic of any kind for miles around. Reit hoped the boy was right.
Before the attack on Caravan, Reit had made a list of a number of possible rendezvous sites, places where Caravan could reassemble in relative safety. Now that it had actually happened, only the Aedenlee Foothills at the southeastern tip of the Icebreaks seemed to make sense to him. He knew that he was taking a terrible risk, bringing Caravan so close to the cursed forest, but there was little else he could do that would guarantee the same protection that Aeden’s Lost Garden might provide, should it become necessary to seek shelter among its storied trees.
For thousands of years—perhaps since before the Rending itself—nightmarish tales have circulated around that vast expanse of forest. Tales abound of the outlandish creatures that make their residence there, the abyssal ruins of a once great civilization, and the dragons rumored to rule the skies above. The forest was shrouded in such myth as to terrify the most intrepid explorer. Many a man lived out their lives on the streets of Aeden’s Runoff, and on the banks of the river after which it was named, without ever so much as dipping a toe in the swift flowing water for fear that some evil taint might seep through the skin and into the bones.
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