by Karen MacRae
Sy hardly looked at the girl during the meal and gave her the merest nod when she complimented him on his cooking. While Spider entertained her with stories of their adventures and made her laugh at some of the scrapes he’d got himself into, Sy sat alone, seemingly mesmerised by the patterns the fire made on the cliff face which curved around one side of the camp. Anna had thought Spider pompous and smarmy. This evening, she found him a charming companion. Sy remained an enigma. She was frightened of his potential for violence but confused by his aura which seemed more suited to a defender than an attacker. She was also worried about what he’d experienced when she’d nearly destroyed his aura and whether he knew she’d done it. The edge of fear in his aura when he looked at her suggested he did.
The two men refused Anna’s offer to help keep watch, Sy throwing a horrified look at Spider when he hesitated to say no. Anna knew it would be an uncomfortable journey without resolving the trust issue, but hadn’t a clue how to address it without confessing she was an Aura Shaper and that could only make things worse. They didn’t know she only really knew how to Shape auras to Heal or that mama had taught her gifts should only be used for good. She was no threat to these men, but history and myth told them otherwise.
Spider took the first watch, smiling as Sy started to snore almost before his head hit the ground, confident his partner had his back. He noticed the girl was unsettled for a while, but her breathing was now slow and even in sleep. She looked like a small bundle of discarded clothing, there was so little to her. Her black hair gleamed in the firelight, the glow from the embers painting it shades of deep red and orange. Her face was in profile to him. It was a pretty face. Some might call it beautiful. He wondered why she took such pains to hide it.
His watch went without incident, but he warned Sy to take extra care before he made his way over to his own bedroll. His gift was warning him that the rest of the night was not likely to pass peaceably. Nonetheless, he fell asleep almost instantly, his body sufficiently well-trained to take whatever sleep it could, when it could. He left the big man cradling his axe.
Sy was uncomfortable, unsure whether the attack would come from outside the camp or from the tiny woman-child who slept before him.
His cry of “Ware! Weapons!” woke the others in an instant.
Anna grabbed her new dagger and jumped to her feet, not sure what to do or how she might be able to help. The moonlight and low fire were enough to reveal Sy fighting three men, the axe in his hands a blur as he wheeled it about his body. Spider had jumped up at the same time as her, expertly blocking a knife being thrust at his chest. He turned the weapon with his hands and rammed it into its owner’s chest. He was moving before the body fell. Three men rushed him, trying to engage him before he could raise the two short swords he’d drawn from his belt. They were too slow. Spider’s arms moved with a speed and confidence Anna had never seen before.
Just then, she noticed two shadows sidling their way around the camp, using the forest for cover. “The horses!” she yelled.
“Bit busy! Sy?”
The big man began to move towards the horses, axe whirring, his opponents moving with him. One lost his footing and got too close. Sy showed no hesitation. The man was down before Anna could blink, the axe sunk deep in his chest, his aura gone. Sy wrenched at his weapon, but it was caught in a mesh shirt. The surviving attacker closed in, thinking his opponent disarmed, but Sy abandoned his axe and drew a knife from his belt. He jumped back from the attacker and crouched low, the knife out in front. His face was a mask of concentration, his aura an impenetrable fortress of stone despite its still-depleted scale.
Anna felt useless. Spider and Sy were fighting for their lives and she was doing nothing. She saw Spider’s knife find an opponent’s throat, slashing through muscle and sinew as if butter. Blood spurted over his arm and chest and he didn’t even blink. He was utterly determined and controlled, his aura afire with all the colours of the spectrum.
One of the free men came towards her, his blade drawn, his back to the horses. She raised her dagger and copied Sy’s stance. She didn’t know what to do, but she’d do her best not to go down without a fight. She screamed in the robber’s face, full of false bravado.
Suddenly, Blue charged, his front legs smashing into the man’s back and skull like hammers on ripe gourds. The robber fell, blood and brain matter oozing from his head.
Anna’s stomach heaved at the sight and smell and she looked away, up into Blue’s soulful eyes. Her breath escaped in a rush of thanks to her rescuer then an abrupt end to a defiant yell made her turn sharply to her right to see Spider pulling a blade from his third opponent. Between them, Sy was grappling on the ground, twisting an enemy’s neck in his arms. Another stood behind him, a dagger poised to plunge into his exposed back. Spider ran towards his friend, frantically drawing a throwing knife. He wasn’t going to make it.
Anna screamed, “No!” and pushed wildly at the man’s aura. He fell in a crumpled heap, his body untouched, his hand still clutching his knife. His aura was completely gone. The crystal push had killed him. She’d killed him.
She was standing in shock, her arm still out, her hand pointing towards Sy, when the dead man’s one remaining compatriot grabbed her from behind, trapping her forgotten dagger behind her back. His knife scraped at her throat.
“Stop!” he yelled, his hot, fetid breath blowing on her cheek. Silence descended.
Spider helped Sy up and the two men stood facing Anna and her captor. Still, auraless bodies scattered the camp.
“Nothing to stop,” Spider said calmly. “Looks like you’re on your own.”
“Put values in bag and tack horse. You follow, she die.”
“You’re a long way from home,” Spider said conversationally.
“No talk. Do!”
The man pressed the knife more firmly against Anna’s neck. She felt blood trickle from the spot where the blade’s edge cut in deepest. She couldn’t wait for Spider or Sy to rescue her. She would have to Shape or be carried away by this criminal. He was so close, she didn’t need to see much of his aura to know it was a greasy, russet brown with the black tinges of injury and ill-health in multiple places.
She watched Spider and Sy slowly gather belongings and start packing a saddle bag while she tried to work out what to do. She didn’t want to kill anyone else so she decided to try reversing energy from the crystal around her neck. She reasoned that the first thing to hit the blackmailer would be Blue’s depression, if it worked. She had no idea what it might do to the outlaw, but it was bound to be distracting. She gripped the handle of her dagger nervously then focused on the crystal, visualising its contents racing into her enemy like a swooping falcon.
Almost immediately, the man screamed in agony. His knife stabbed blade-first into the soil before her feet and he slumped to the ground, his aura gone.
“Sweet light!” Anna cried. She slumped to her knees in horror, the crystal dagger discarded by her side, her eyes pinned on the handle just before her, watching its vibrations gradually slow to a stop. She dragged her eyes to her unwitting victim. His face was a twisted mask of torture. Blood dripped from every orifice. She closed her eyes and wept.
Spider and Sy had stopped in surprise at the man’s sudden collapse. Spider looked in turn at the two men the girl had killed. He opened his mouth, but Sy broke the silence first.
“Told you.”
Anna waited for their reaction, for their hatred. Instead, they began to drag the dead bodies deeper into the forest, out of eyesight. Sy came back to build up the fire then disappeared with a pan. Anna’s mind sought an explanation for the man’s death, resorting to logic to block out the reality of committing murder. She realised she’d sent blood poisoning and numerous women’s blood-related diseases into a man with multiple wounds. She had sent them in so fast, so unnaturally, that his veins must have exploded. The other man she could find no explanation for. She thought she must have replicated the attack on Sy. Why then had this
man died when Sy hadn’t? But then, she hadn’t bothered to look at the knifeman’s aura before she’d pushed it. Had it been weak already? She berated herself for her monstrosity, for going against everything her mother had stood for. She’d forgotten she had saved both Sy and herself from almost certain death.
Spider chose that moment to return. “Migraine?” he asked, his voice even.
“No. I’m fine. Not that I deserve to be.”
“Let’s sit by the fire and have a mug of caffe together. I think we need to talk about what just happened.”
This time there was distinct waver of both his voice and his aura. He was scared. Of her.
They sat by the fire and waited for Sy. He fussed about, putting the water on to boil, adding torn caffe leaves, filling their mugs. He started across to hand the mug to Anna but changed his mind and left it on a rock for her to collect then joined Spider, handing him a steaming mug. The friends sat away from her, careful to be out of reach. She tried to calm her mind, but she’d just killed two men and she hadn’t even been touching the first one. “Light help me,” she whispered under her breath. “I’m a monster.”
Spider’s first question was unexpected, distracting her from her self-disgust. “How does it work?” he asked, his voice tense, his question abrupt.
“I don’t know. A lot of this is new to me.”
“What did you do to me?” Sy asked.
“I don’t know. I just lashed out. I thought I was going to die. You collapsed and I ran. When you turned up later, your aura was… shrunk, I suppose.”
“Shrunk?”
“It’s normally like a solid stone wall, your aura. Like a fortress. It’d shrunk to a tiny fraction of its normal width.”
“But I’m fine now?”
“It’s not quite back to normal, but it looks good. It’s growing all the time.”
“So if you take someone’s aura, they die?” Spider asked.
“It seems so.”
“How did you kill these two men?”
“The first one was like Sy. Pure instinct. I just pushed. It took his whole aura. I don’t know why it didn’t just knock him out like Sy. The second one was different. I reversed the energy from the crystal. As far as I can tell, they store what they’ve been used for. My current crystal has a load of stuff from helping my mother, then Blue’s depression, then what I did to Sy, then Spider’s blood poisoning and a bit more helping Blue. I hoped I could use some of it to distract the man and get free. It happened faster than I expected…” Anna took a deep breath. “I think his veins exploded.”
Sy made a strange gesture with his hands and said a few words under his breath in his own language.
Spider’s face was nearly as white as his teeth. “Aurovian crystal?” he asked.
“Yes. I guess that part of the myths is true. I use it to store and direct energy. It lasts a long time for normal stuff. Years sometimes. Healing Sy used a whole crystal in one go. I don’t know why. Maybe it takes more energy to restore an aura than it does to Heal one.”
He was silent for a minute, possibly thinking through other parts of the myths. And the reasons why Shapers had been hounded out of existence.
“The herbs. A cover?” he asked.
“Yes and no. They really do heal. They’re amazing. But, I Shaped too.”
“You passed out.”
“Yes. The head pain is crippling if I try to do too much.”
“But not this time.”
“No. And before you ask, I don’t know why not. Maybe because I kil… maybe because hurting uses less energy than Healing?”
“Why are you here?” Sy asked.
“Because Blue was the only decent horse in town.” Anna laughed, hysteria bubbling to the surface. Tears streamed down her face, unlocked by Sy’s simple question. “My mother died and I decided to go to Ionantis, tell them what I can do, face the consequences, then I couldn’t find a horse and the only other horse had bad joints and wouldn’t last the journey even if I tried to Heal it and Blue was so sad and mad, but had such a glorious aura and I didn’t want to leave him and then Jaxom thought I’d stolen him and told me about Kai so I thought I’d try and help Blue and then you two showed up and I nearly killed Sy and then Blue kept trying to go after you and I thought it’s not such a big detour to Sienna and I might be able to buy a new horse there and get back on track to Ionantis and then those men attacked us and I didn’t know what to do and then Blue saved me and then that man was going to stab Sy and then that other man put a knife to my throat and… and… I didn’t mean to kill anyone.” Her voice trailed off as she ran out of breath. She cried quietly, waiting for their condemnation.
Blue shoved his big nose right into her lap and snorted. He pushed at the girl, making her rock backwards. She threw her arms around his big head and wept.
CHAPTER 7
T he two men began a whispered conversation. Sy shook his head and spoke urgently. Spider shook his head and spoke urgently. Both shook their heads and sat quietly, deep in contemplation. Finally, they just sat and stared at the weeping girl. She was wrapped up completely in grief, dismay and confusion and didn’t notice a thing.
The day was beginning, early sunshine lightening the gloom. The two friends packed up camp, dowsing the fire and tacking up the horses. Anna only noticed when Spider gingerly removed her hands from Blue’s head so he could put the horse’s bridle on.
“We have a friend to find, Anna. We can talk later.”
It was a reprieve. For now at least.
Without conscious thought, Spider and Sy positioned themselves to come to the other’s aid should the evil Shaper attack one or the other. Anna momentarily surfaced from her despondency to wonder if she could attack more than one person at once. She giggled at the absurdity: as if she would attack her companions.
Spider turned. “Something funny?” he asked tersely.
Her answer was lost in the wind as Spider picked up the pace and Blue responded, cantering towards the distant mountains. Anna’s backside felt both numb and on fire when they finally stopped for a rest. The occasional local horseback ride had not prepared her for such hard going. She dismounted clumsily and stood stiffly where she landed, not willing to move her buttocks any more than necessary.
“Walk it off,” Spider suggested. “It’ll help.”
Anna winced with every step, but the tightness in her muscles seemed to be easing as she slowly made her way back to the stream. She saw Sy was filling water skins while Blue and the other two horses drank nearby. She murmured her thanks as Spider passed her a trail bar for lunch then looked up at him in amazement when the burst of berries mixed with rich, creamy caffe overwhelmed her senses.
Spider smiled at the girl’s quiet appreciation. “I told you – Sy’s a wizard in the kitchen.”
Anna nodded happily then pointed towards the horses. “What’re their names?”
“Estrell and Rojoch,” he answered, pointing first towards his black gelding and then at Sy’s huge mount. “Star and Red in Standard,” he added.
He saw the surprise in Anna’s face and looked at her questioningly. “Who named them?” she asked.
“I did, why?”
“Because Estrell has a completely black coat but has a deep blue aura with a bright yellow patch just above his withers, like a star, and Rojoch has no red in his coat whatsoever, but he has a rich red aura.”
“I wouldn’t know. I can’t see auras.”
“But perhaps you can sense them?”
Sy overheard them. “Makes sense.”
Spider looked shocked at Sy’s contribution. “What do you mean?” he challenged.
“You’re good with people. You can usually tell when they’re lying, when they mean no good. When they intend to move right or left. When they intend to draw a blade.”
“It’s my gift. Instinct. No one ever said anything about auras.”
“How would they know?” Sy asked.
Spider considered the question. “I suppose t
hey wouldn’t,” he acknowledged. “None of our teachers could see auras.”
“Our teachers?” Anna asked, looking at Sy.
“We trained at the same school. Different years, but the same school. My gift is Health. I’m never ill and I’m talented at things that keep me that way, like defence, cooking and finding water.” He frowned. “At least, I’m never ill as long as I don’t run into a Shaper.”
“Perhaps your gift saved you. Perhaps you would’ve died if you’d been anyone else,” Spider speculated.
“I didn’t know,” Anna muttered. “It’s not exactly something I’ve practised.”
“I’ve got a feeling you’ll get plenty of opportunity before we get to Sienna.”
“Why?” she asked, confused.
“Because this forest seems to be teeming with gangs of outlaws. One of which will soon come across us if we don’t keep moving,” said Sy, strapping full water skins back onto Rojoch.
Spider saw Anna wince at the thought of getting back in the saddle. “Why don’t you Heal yourself?”
“I can’t. I can’t see my own aura.”
Spider and Sy exchanged a glance. “Interesting,” Spider commented and then wheeled Estrell away, making her rush to catch up.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of pain. Anna’s buttocks and inner thighs were screaming at her to stop. Spider was relentless, insisting on getting through this stretch as soon as possible. When they finally stopped, Anna swore she would never get on a horse again. Spider and Sy just laughed, promising her it would get easier.
Sy was soon putting together another tasty dinner. Anna’s belly growled in anticipation, but her mind was apprehensive. The conversation had become less stilted during their lunch stop, but there was much more to discuss. Spider was swilling the dregs of a mug of caffe around, staring into the fire as he waited for the chef to dish up. She could see the disturbed pattern in his aura: he was unsure what to do or say. She decided to break the ice.
