by E. A. Copen
The elven healer verified we were alone in the hut before she closed the curtains and put her back to them. “Show me.”
“I…” I snapped my mouth closed and turned away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play with me, girl. I know you’ve got magicite growing out of you. It’s why the healing magic hurts. The more magic that touches you, the faster they grow. So, let’s see it.”
I put a hand over my stomach and slid to the far end of the bench, away from her. “It’s not like you think. I’m not like the heretics. I take antigen potions to keep the growth in check. I’m not dangerous.”
She sighed. “I didn’t say you were. Go on, then. Off with the shirt. Let me see.”
Isn’t this why I came here? Maybe she knows how to help. Slowly, I lifted my shirt. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for her eyes to widen, or for her to gasp in surprise.
She didn’t do either of those things. She simply bent over me, examining the area carefully. “How long has it been like this?”
“It happened five years ago.”
“Five years.” She clicked her tongue.
“Can you help me?” My voice sounded small, almost child-like in my own ears.
“You mean can I cure you?” She leaned back with a sigh. “The magicite is complicated. Once it gets into your bloodstream, there’s often little even we can do. Your friend was lucky the tainted blood was simply sitting in her stomach. She had digested none of it yet. Your situation is different, I’m afraid. The magicite has taken root in the soft tissue, but it hasn’t spread. That’s nothing short of miraculous. Antigen potions, you were saying?”
“Can the crystals be removed?” I’d thought about trying to cut them out myself in the past, but I was too worried I’d pass out from blood loss. I needed someone who knew what they were doing.
She shook her head. “It’s unlikely we’d be able to remove it all. You know that, despite the antigen, the crystal is growing? It will eventually kill you.”
I rolled my shirt down. “I know.”
“I’m sorry.” The healer sat down on the bench next to me. “I wish I had a better answer for you, but even we can’t fix everything.”
My heart sank into my stomach. I squeezed my eyes closed and turned away. “How long until it kills me?”
“It’s impossible to say. The more magic and magicite you’re exposed to, the faster the crystals will grow. Eventually, they’ll move into your non-vital organs. Then they’ll attack the vital organs, growing in your lungs and around your heart. The crystals will infect your blood and travel to your brain. They could affect your vision. You could hear voices. See things.”
“I’ll go crazy like the heretics,” I said.
She nodded and rose from the bench, smoothing her hands over her collar. “But there is another option.” The healer lifted a plain white box from a shelf on the wall and opened it. Inside were two vials of liquid, one red and one clear. “I cannot cure you, but I can provide you with the power to decide your own fate. The clear vial brings on sleep. The red one ensures you will never wake. You will slip away peacefully, pain-free. Once you take them, there is no coming back, so you must be sure.”
I took the red vial and lifted it, looking at my distorted reflection in the glass. It wasn’t the first time I had thought of ending things. If death were unavoidable, wouldn’t it be better if I could choose when and how it happened? How many years had I struggled against the inevitable, grasping at reasons to live? Even this hunt was more of the same.
But I had just found Ash, and I wanted some time to get to know him before I made my decision. There was more to learn about the creature in my sword trying to communicate with me, and a dragon waiting to be slain. They were simple reasons to live, but as good a reason as any.
I carefully placed the red vial back in the box. “I’m not ready.”
She nodded. “I didn’t expect you would be. But when the time comes, seek us out. Ask for me by name. I am Feylin. I will make sure you have what you need without question.” She closed the box and put it back on the shelf.
“I appreciate it, but why offer it to me? I’m a human. You barely know me.”
“It is true the erimor is normally only reserved for our people, for warriors who fought bravely and the dishonored. However, you are not just any human. I’m told you carry the Gwǽtach mhor. That affords you some standing. Whether the destiny of the Gwǽtach will lead you to great good or evil, it doesn’t matter. I am a healer. My responsibility is to care, to provide peace and a pain-free existence however I can. Human, elf, or beast makes no difference to me. My oath supersedes my race.”
“Thank you for the offer,” I said, standing. “I suppose this means you won’t be able to do much for my arm, huh?”
She shook her head gravely. “Not unless you want to advance the infection. You must avoid magic, child. Not just having it used upon you, but being near it. And steer clear of rifts as well. There is no telling how your infection will react to a rift.”
“Trust me, I don’t have any plans to go near a rift anytime soon.” With the healer’s help, I bandaged my arm again and left the tent.
Rather than immediately rejoin Dex, I wandered away from the main body of the camp. Leseran or one of his people was likely shadowing me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be alone, or at least as close to it as I could get.
I found my way to the top of a small knoll just behind two huts. I was close enough to the revelry that the music and voices were a dull murmur. The hill rolled into a thick forest which rose into the side of a mountain. Veins of something a silvery blue marked the exposed granite. As the sun sank, it struck the silver, and the mountains shimmered as if they were alive.
I sat and hugged my knees to my chest, watching the world go about its business. Thoughts floated around in my head, too ephemeral to hold. I wondered about dying, entertaining thoughts of an afterlife. There were still people who believed in that sort of thing, though I wasn’t one of them. It must’ve been comforting to have no fear of death. For as often as I put my life on the line, I’d never truly beaten that. In the moment, when I was battling heretics, or dire bears, or trolls, I didn’t really think about it. I was too busy surviving to die.
But death was coming for me sooner than he had any right to.
I thought about everything I had done up until that moment, how much time I’d wasted on meaningless things. In the grand scheme of it all, waking every day to fight for a little coin felt stupid. There had to be more to life than that. Here I was dying, and I hadn’t even had time to make my mark on the world.
I can change all of that now that Ash is back. My dreams are all dead, but his aren’t. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to imagine the world Ash had described, a kingdom carved out of wild land. A new city, built brick by brick to be the seat of an empire with spires that challenged cruel magic to tear it down. A city and an empire where the strong protected the weak, the wrongdoers were brought to justice, and no one went to bed cold and hungry. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? I could fight for that. I could live for that.
“There you are!”
I turned my head as Dex plopped down cross-legged next to me. He was carrying my sword, and he seemed to have found his hat somehow. “Your hat…”
“I come bearing gifts from the Telmara,” he said, and held my sword out to me. “A group of scouts went back to the heretic stronghold to make sure it was cleared out. They were kind enough to retrieve my hat for me. As for your sword, apparently, it’s yours, free and clear.”
I took the sword from him. “I’m surprised they let you walk around camp armed. They seem pretty suspicious of us.”
“I’m useless with a sword, and that’s probably pretty obvious. But you should’ve seen Leseran’s face when he realized you’d wandered off. He’s still looking for you. Lucky I found you first, eh? What are you doing out here, anyway? Any luck getting the arm treated?”
I p
ut a hand over the gauze wrapped around my arm. “Turns out the magic was too much trouble. It’ll heal on its own.”
“That’s how it is, isn’t it? Magic. Pain in the ass.” He leaned back lazily, and we sat there in amicable silence for a long time. “Can I ask you a personal question? Why did you join this hunt?”
I shrugged and let the sword lay across my lap. “It’s been a long time since Ash and I have seen each other. I wanted to catch up.”
“I feel like it’s more than that, this thing between you and Ash. More complicated than a couple of childhood friends catching up and bonding over dead dragons.”
“Maybe it is.” I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of the wind on my face. “I think I was in love with him once, but now… Now I don’t know. He and I have been apart for so long, we’ve both changed. That change isn’t necessarily good either. We used to tell each other everything, but now there’s something I can’t tell him, and I get the feeling he isn’t telling me everything either.”
“When I was younger, there was this girl, Jesse,” Dex said, clasping his hands over his chest. “She was beautiful, talented, smart… Everything. I thought she was the one. Best of all, she didn’t know where I’d come from or what I was. See, we’d met at some academy function. When she went back to her school and I to mine, we kept in touch. Eventually, letters turned into meetings, turned into midnight rendezvous. You know the story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl, girl falls for him. They kiss and make plans to live happily ever after.”
I fell onto my back, looking up at the sky, and mimicked his hand placement over my chest. “Why do I get the feeling it didn’t end so well?”
“Spoiler alert: I’m still a bachelor. Anyway, I proposed, and she accepted… Until she found out the truth. There are only so many situations where one can get away with wearing a cowboy hat.” He lifted his hat and waved it at me.
I rolled over onto my stomach and propped up my chin, raising an eyebrow. “You really didn’t think she’d notice the ears?”
Dex shrugged. “I thought I would explain it to her, and she’d be more accepting than she turned out to be. Point is, I learned the hard way that secrets are the antithesis of love. Real love is honest, but it isn’t blind. If you feel like something is off, that usually means it is. Whatever it is he’s hiding, it’s going to come out one day and bite you both in the ass. That’s just my two cents, anyway.”
I grunted. “Great. What’s the world coming to? I’m taking relationship advice from a perpetual bachelor. And here I thought you were trying to get into my pants yourself.”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good love story, even if it’s not my own.” He winked and sat up. “On a more serious note, I get bad vibes from that guy. Maybe I’m feeling some of what you’re feeling. Ash is… unusual. There are too many things about him I don’t know.”
“Then why did you sign up for the hunt?” I asked.
His face sobered. He clasped his arms around his knees and looked out at the sun setting behind the mountains. “Because I want to be famous. A hunt like this, it’ll go a long way to spreading my name around. Especially if I’m lucky enough to get the killing blow.”
I laughed. “Why would you want that?”
“Because if you’re famous, nobody forgets you.” The way he said it, he sounded almost sad.
In a strange way, I understood. We only had a limited number of years to leave our mark on the world. Dex didn’t want to fade away, just another guild leader in another city. I wanted to do something that mattered. We both had our own reasons for being on that hunt.
Dex stretched and stood. “Well, I think we’ve let Leseran sweat long enough. It’s time we got back before his head explodes.” He offered me a hand.
I took it and he pulled me to my feet, but didn’t let go.
“Ember, I…” Dex looked down and realized he was still holding my hand. He let it go and cleared his throat before rubbing the back of his head. “I just wanted to thank you for listening and putting up with me. I know I can be a sarcastic ass sometimes. I can’t talk about half this stuff with anyone and it’s been… Well, it’s been nice to get some of it out in the open, you know? With someone who isn’t going to judge me.”
“What right do I have to judge you? We’re all human, Dex.”
“Half,” he corrected with a wink, and stepped back. “Also, it’d be awesome if you didn’t tell everyone back at camp about my shitty family, sad upbringing, and failed romance. I have a reputation to maintain.”
I rolled my eyes and started up the hill. “Of course, Dex. Anything for you.”
Chapter Fifteen
The hut had only two beds, and Zia was in one of them, fast asleep. Dex insisted I take the last one and positioned himself by the door, propped up by a pillow. He lowered his hat over his face, but I got the feeling he wasn’t fully asleep.
I thought I would have a lot of trouble falling asleep, considering my strange surroundings and everything that had happened over the last few days, but I was out almost as soon as I put my head down.
At first, I drifted in a dreamless sleep. I had the distinct feeling that I was floating down a relaxing stream, or maybe in the clouds. My body was present, but weightless and unreachable beyond a veil of foggy sleep.
I woke when someone put a gentle hand on my shoulder. It was still dark, and the night quiet, but I could just barely make out Ash’s outline in the night.
I sat up. “Ash? What are you—”
He put a finger to his lips and offered me a hand.
I glanced over at where Zia slept. The bed was empty. Dex was no longer at his post by the door. “Where are they?”
“Safe,” Ash said. “Please, come with me. There’s something I need you to see.”
My mind reached to question the situation. There were too many things that didn’t make sense. How had Ash gotten there? Where were the others? Why had the elves just let him walk through their camp? But when I tried to give the questions form, they faded beyond my grasp.
I put my hand in Ash’s.
We walked hand in hand out of the hut and stepped into a foggy forest.
Ancient tree trunks stretched into the sky, their boughs thick enough to block out the sky. Fog wrapped around them like a blanket, painted on reality in wispy brush strokes. Crickets sang, owls hooted, and fireflies flashed. The forest felt as alive as the two of us, and even aware.
I didn’t question where the elven camp had gone. In the moment, it made perfect sense, as if I expected to wake up there.
I rubbed the chill from my shoulders. “How far are we from the others?”
“Not far. Here.” Ash unclasped his black cloak and wrapped it around my shoulders. “I didn’t realize it was so cold.”
I hugged the cloak closer. “It wasn’t earlier. It rarely gets so chilly this time of year, does it? But you didn’t wake me up to talk about the weather.”
“No,” he said gravely. His face fell, and he took a step away, leaning a forearm against one of the tree trunks.
“What is it, Ash? What’s wrong?”
He lifted his head and an ethereal green light glowed on his face, but Ash wasn’t the source. I followed his gaze and found him looking up at a rift. Somehow, the forest had fallen away, revealing a mountainside. Ice clung to the silver cliffs, reflecting the ghostly light.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of it, and I moved to take a step back. My foot slid on a patch of ice, and I fell.
Ash caught me with a hand on my back at the last second, keeping me from tumbling down the mountainside. He held me at a distance for a long moment, looking down at me. The light of the rift flashed in his eyes, illuminating some dark uncertainty I hadn’t seen before. Silent wind tugged at his hair.
I swallowed, my heart hammering in my chest. “Ash?”
He shifted his grip, pulling me against him. Startled, and now overbalanced, I looked up at him. The uncertainty was gone, replaced by the old
spark of mischief that had once been there. For a moment, he was the Ash I had known before we went after that last bounty, before Old Jim died, before Ash fell into the rift and disappeared for five years. He smiled that old, familiar smile and kissed me softly.
Thunder growled overhead. A thick arm of lightning arced around the rift before shooting out and striking the ground at our feet. Rocks exploded, and the world was suddenly on fire, pushing us apart. I tumbled down the mountainside, gathering scrapes and bruises as I did.
When I finally came to a stop, I groaned and pushed myself up to look for Ash, but he wasn’t at the bottom of the mountain. I looked up, in the rift's direction, and found him walking toward it, one arm up to shield his face from the wind and gathering storm.
“Ash!” I screamed his name as I fought to my feet. “Ash, stop it! Come back!”
The wind rose, howling through the mountain pass. Thunder growled from the rift as if it were a living being. It was too loud for him to have heard me. Yet he paused and turned back, hesitating.
Our eyes connected. His face was a mask of regret. Without words, I understood what he meant to say, even if I couldn’t understand why.
He turned around again, fighting his way toward the rift.
I lowered my head and struck the rocks with a fist, unwilling to watch him leave me alone all over again. As my hand struck the ground it changed, transforming into a shallow pool. I watched as ripples distorted my reflection. Mist curled around me, and the sounds of the forest returned.
Something let out a heavy, snorting breath behind me.
Slowly, I turned to look over my shoulder. My breath caught as I looked at the shadow warrior behind me. Red eyes blazed inside the stag-skull helmet. Talons gripped the hilt of his great sword. With every breath, smoke poured from the nostril holes of the stag skull.
I should have been afraid, as I had been the last two times I had seen it. But this time, I noticed something different. The creature’s massive antlers weren’t bare bone. A white flowering ivy grew over them, the petals wilted and dying. Looking at them filled me with an inexplicable sadness.
