Chapter 31
“ Y ou awaken.”
The voice was calm, masculine, and deep. The even tones drew me from slumber, causing me to blink my eyelids open.
“Where am I?” I groaned.
My head swam with dizziness and confusion. Above me, dark green trees swayed. Beneath me was hard earth, softened by a blanket. I found that I ached, as though I’d taken a tumble off a ravine.
“The Wastelands,” the speaker answered, and clarified no further.
The Wastelands was not a place I’d heard of. Why had Braisley sent me here? Memories were returning. Braisley had sent me to someone she claimed might be able to locate Moonswept, the Scraggen’s keep. Why would this person reside in the Wastelands?
I’d yet to see him. His voice had come from my left. I rolled my head in that direction, feeling some sort of pillow beneath my neck, cushioning the stiff vertebrae.
“Who—who are you?” I whispered.
I already knew .
Not who he was, but what he was.
A Simathe.
One of the dread immortal warriors my mother had feared visited my bed at night.
There could be no mistaking his identity. Rare as the sighting of one of the immortals was on our islands, tales and stories abounded among the Sanlyn as they did amongst the rest of Aerisia’s folk. Details might conflict to some degree, but all spoke of ageless men with bronze skin, hair blacker than the deepest hour of night, and pupil-less eyes so deep and so dark that they sucked the light into themselves. He might have been garbed in the plain, sturdy leather and fabrics of a traveler, but the massive broadsword behind his back proved him a warrior. As did the daggers in his boot, at his hip, and sheathed on his wrist…
So many weapons. I stopped counting.
“I have a name,” he replied. “You would not know it. I am the tirlantha. The First.”
Struggling to overcome the shock of finding myself in the presence of one of the mysterious, powerful warriors, it took several moments for the information to pierce my confused brain.
“The…First?” I echoed. “Surely not the first of…all Simathe?”
Little did I know of the immortal ones’ history, save they’d been created eons ago by a Scraggen, a witch-woman. Could Braisley have possibly sent me to the very first Simathe ever created?
He gazed at me without blinking, without confirming, without denying. When I realized he’d given me all the information he intended, I released a shaky breath and pushed myself up to my elbows, then to a seated position.
“I am Lorna,” I said. “From the Jeweled Isles.”
“Sanlyn,” the Simathe nodded.
“Aye. ”
Again, he watched me in unblinking silence. He was seated on an upended stump. Beside me, a fire crackled, warding off the chill. Beneath me was a thick, rough blanket, laid over bare ground, strewn with gravel. Over me was a cloak that had fallen to my lap when I sat up. Despite the warrior’s fearsome appearance and silent ways, he’d clearly taken care of me while I slept.
To initiate a conversation, I plucked gently at the cloak and said, “I thank you for this.”
The immortal warrior-lord nodded. I’d heard his folk were taciturn, unwilling to speak unless necessary. When it was necessary, they spoke in the fewest number of words possible. Realizing this conversation might not flow so well as it had with Braisley, despite her chilly demeanor, I girded up my courage and said,
“Braisley sent me to you. She believed you might be able to assist me in a search.”
The dark warrior nodded again. His deep stare seemed to assess me, to read more about me than I knew about myself.
“I sensed her magic,” he replied at last.
I pondered that statement a moment, then reached into my bag, unwrapped the perpetually frozen snowflake, and showed it to the Simathe. His pupil-less eyes flickered down to it then up to my face.
“Ah,” he said, and I took it to mean he was satisfied that this was what he had detected.
I put the snowflake away, feeling the weight of the warrior-lord’s gaze. I was also aware that he was doubtless waiting for me to tell him my tale and explain why I was here. I could not expect one of the immortals to linger all day with me, tending me like a mother hen minding her chicks.
“I am in need of help,” I said, and launched into my tale. I told him how a dragon had rescued my father from a storm off the coast of our island, how the dragon had saved his life and demanded mine in return. I told him how I’d been kept by the dragon in an underground cave, how the dragon had turned out to be a Warkin prince, and how he’d been cursed by a Scraggen.
Some things I did not tell the immortal Simathe.
I was embarrassed to confess how the Warkin had visited my bed in the deep hours of the night. Nor did I confess how I’d wakened him with a kiss—a kiss that led to disaster. I also did not tell him how my heart clung to this Dragonkind, despite the differences between us, despite the odds of a Sanlyn and a Warkin falling in love. I kept these parts silent. I needn’t have said them anyway. The Simathe had probably lived for thousands of years. He was no fool, nor was he fooled by anything.
At the end of my recital, after telling him how the mirror had sent me to Braisley for help, what Braisley had told me, and how the mirror and fairy magic had then sent me to him in the Wastelands, he clasped his hands loosely in front of him, gazing into the scrubby forests in deep contemplation.
Drawing my legs up under me, I attempted to wait patiently and not fidget overmuch. Within, I felt a strong sense that I needed to hurry. Kidron had not conveyed how much time he had before the Scraggen would force him to wed her daughter, but my soul was pierced with the certain notion that saving the dragon prince was on me and I must make haste.
Yet, how did one hasten a Simathe?
While he pondered my tale, I glanced around curiously. Never had I heard of these Wastelands. I noted the ground was rocky, dotted with boulders, and few things grew here beyond the scrubby thicket of trees that passed for a forest. They were a gnarled, hardy pine that defied the harsh conditions. The air was thin and cold— at least to me, accustomed to the thick, humid air of the islands. I could see at once why the region was called the Wastelands. There was an emptiness, a barrenness, even a forlornness to the place. Beyond the circle of trees where we sat, I could see hills looming in the distance, but they were a far cry from the lofty mountaintops of the fairy’s majestic home.
Were I to climb the tallest hill and gaze out across the Wastelands, what would I see? Ravines and clefts? Surely little to no water. The lack of animal, bird, and insect sounds told me there was scant life here. I questioned why even a Simathe would be trekking such a vast lonely place. I didn’t inquire. A Simathe would not tell me his business.
At any rate, the thought had scarcely formed when the Simathe shifted on his stump after sitting there as mute as a statue for quite a span.
“What did Braisley say of the caverns?” he asked.
Caught off guard, I blinked rapidly. I’d laid out my heart and soul before this warrior, and he asked me of the caverns? What had the caverns to do with anything?
I could not be disrespectful, however.
“She said little,” I replied with a confused shrug. “Prince Kidron told me they were the very heart of Aerisia, housing its magic.”
At this, the Simathe’s fathomless gaze pierced mine. Those deep black eyes glittered strangely when compared to the grey sky behind him, warning of mysteries I’d never pierce.
Finally, he said, “The Warkin prince has connections to old and deep magic.”
I was certain there was far, far more to the matter than this. Nevertheless, I switched the subject, asking boldly, “In all of your travels, have you heard of Moonswept, a place that lies east of the sun and west of the moon?”
“Heard, aye. Visited, nay. ”
My heart plummeted. If this Simathe, an ancient wanderer of our world, could not tell me the way Kidron had gone, who could?
“But I know of another who might be able to help,” he said, and my heart leapt in my chest. Hope flared like a beacon in the nighttime sky.
I jumped to my feet, shaking off the Simathe’s blanket and dusting at my trousers.
“Will you take me to this person? I am ready to leave!” I announced.
The Simathe stood too, towering over me. I’d never seen a man so tall, and involuntarily shrank from the fearsome sight he presented with his alien eyes and hair, his prodigious height, and his massive sword.
“We’d not reach her in time to help your prince,” he stated.
“Oh no.” My face, my hopes, fell. Why had he mentioned this woman at all, if we couldn’t reach her in time?
“Enough of the mirror and fairy magic should remain to take you to her,” he said quietly, “You’ll have to enhance it with your magic.”
My head came up. In the sky, a carrion bird wheeled by, seeking food, seeking life from death. Its grim presence seemed a harbinger of doom. I was not dissuaded. My life had been little except doom ever since the dragon had appeared in the storm. If I could bring life from that doom, was I not obligated to do so?
“I don’t know how to use my magic,” I admitted quietly. “I’ve scarcely seen it.”
“Braisley told you of it,” the Simathe reminded me.
“Aye, but…”
I flipped my palm over to study it. The green light had come from my hand. Braisley had studied my hand. What had she called it? A coaxing magic. A persuasive magic. How did one utilize such a skill?
“I lack magic,” the immortal warrior said. “I cannot guide you. This, you must do yourself. ”
“I am trying,” I murmured, gazing hard at my hand, focusing on memories of the strange emerald glow.
“Without knowing where to go?” I glanced up at the question. The Simathe quirked the smallest smile, there and gone so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “That might be helpful.”
I blinked a couple of times, then allowed the tension to slough off my shoulders. “You are right,” I said, permitting a smile. “Knowing where to go, and to whom, might indeed be helpful.”