17. Harper
17
HARPER
W hen dawn broke, giant cliffs soared on both sides and a carpet of evergreens marched across the valley mouth, herding them into a narrowing valley. After the open plains, it felt oppressive and dark to fall under their shadow. Harper craned her neck up until it hurt, yet she could not see the sky, so tall and thick were the trees there as they entered.
Her faelight hung next to Aedon’s, bobbing beside them as they travelled. It was a pale imitation of his, but the first she had managed to conjure. She was proud of it, steadily fuelling it with a small trickle of magic, much like feeding a fire. Their horses plodded along, exhausted, and eventually, Aedon bade them to stop as they came upon a small stream crossing the trail.
“We’ll stop here. There’s water and plenty of shelter.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes. “We’d best not dally too long. We can’t afford to sleep all day.”
Fatigued, Harper sat against a tree, cradled in its roots, and was asleep almost immediately.
After a few hours, Brand chivvied them all to their feet. With barely a word, they mounted the horses and continued. Harper could have fallen asleep against Aedon’s warm back as she clung to him in the saddle, but after a while, the trees thinned, and a welcome breeze blew. Mountains passed on either side, soaring out of sight, and the ground slowly rose as they delved deeper into the mountains.
By the following week, they took winding tracks up through forested foothills, where breaks in the trees now showed the plains far below them, just visible through the foothills. Aedon told Harper that they were truly in dwarf country now, and Pelenor was far behind them. The countryside looked much the same to her.
That night, they stopped in a small clearing beneath a rocky overhang, surrounded by the dark trees. The valley was narrow, the trees unnervingly quiet. A small waterfall rushed nearby—the only sound—collecting in a small pool before it continued its journey down the mountains. Harper gratefully drank. It was the freshest water she had ever tasted; sweet and cold.
“That’s melt water from the glaciers far above us,” Ragnar said. “Soon, it will not flow, for all will freeze. We are lucky the first storms of winter run late this year; otherwise, some of the passes would already be closed to us.”
Harper nodded, regarding Ragnar curiously. The dwarf seemed nervous and tense to be in his homelands once more, not enthused as she might have expected, but she dared not pry as to why. He had already been uncharacteristically snappy with Erika that morning and disappeared to sleep as soon as they had eaten their evening meal, not even staying awake for his customary game of chatura or to carve his latest game piece.
Erika and Brand slunk off for their customary evening sparring session, leaving Aedon and Harper alone around the fire. Aedon grinned at her. She answered with a small smile of her own, one tighter and more guarded. He stood and stretched. “Come on. Time to practice.” Aedon had had her hone her magic skills daily in their travel, no matter how tired the pair of them were.
It seemed he too distanced himself from revisiting the intimacy Brand had disturbed all those days ago. A part of her wanted it—wanted the distraction of him, of anything to wipe thoughts of the spymaster she was supposed to hate from her mind. The handsome elven thief was an easier choice, after all—though perhaps no less foolish. A part of her was relieved not to have the choice before her at all.
Again, he laid out an array of rocks, twigs, and small objects of varying sizes before her, and as usual, she did her best to lift them. A few lifted easily, wobbling in the air a few feet above the ground. Others remained stubbornly frozen. Some flew through the air a few feet before they tumbled to the ground as they lost momentum.
She stopped when it felt as though all her energy and concentration had been leached from her. “Why does this make me so tired?” She groaned. Aedon seemed to not even break a sweat when he did significant magic. Aedon grinned as he sent leaves and pinecones tumbling around her. Scowling, Harper batted them from the air.
He laughed and released his hold on the objects, all of them tumbling to the ground. “I keep telling you. Magic is a muscle. Think how tired you are after walking or spending a day in the saddle. This is the same. It takes strength to perform magic. Why do you think you cannot move mountains? If it were as easy as that, all mountains would be upon their heads!”
Harper snorted at the ridiculous thought. “How long does it take to be able to do, well, interesting things with magic?”
“The more you train, the faster it will be,” replied Aedon, but he would not say any more than that. He suddenly stood. “Come. I’ll show you something else since we’re here.”
Curious, she followed him from the clearing along the cliff until they came upon the waterfall. Somewhere in the distance, the muffled sounds of weapons clanging filtered through the trees—Brand and Erika.
“Water is easier to manipulate, for it loves to move. Want to see what a little magic can do?” Aedon asked, eyes twinkling at her mischievously. She nodded. He reached out and pulled her toward him, her back to his front. Her breath caught as he encircled her in his arms—and she let him, her pulse skittering. What was this dangerous line they danced on? What was this precipice she dangled over?
Harper had not wanted to admit that she found him attractive, but it had been so very long since her dalliances with Alric, the tanner’s son. As much as she had never desired the commitment of being Alric’s wife—or anyone else’s—there were other parts of his company she missed. Aedon’s magic rushed through her, winding with hers, and then the waterfall no longer cascaded down the rocks. Jets of water arced from the sheet, twining and twirling through the air, until it cocooned them. Ribbons of water raced around them like a spider’s web, catching the starlight, the full moon’s glare, and the last light of the dying day.
“Can you feel it?” Aedon whispered, his breath caressing the side of her neck. It grazed her ear, awakening something deep in her core.
“Yes,” she breathed. It was an intoxicating rush that consumed her blood. She felt his want for the water to be free. She added her will to his own, her slivers of magic to his, and the water twisted and turned even more, until it seemed they were alone, standing in a bubble in the middle of a waterfall rushing around them.
Aedon’s fingers stroked her arm as he turned her to face him. He dipped his head toward hers. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Want and warning warred within her—the need for some escape, some release, and the risk of complicating everything. Her breath hitched as his arms tightened, but before she could decide, his lips met hers.
His kiss was fire, racing through her body as her eyes slipped shut. She opened her mouth to him, sliding her hands up his chest. Around them, the rushing of the water continued, or was it the sound of blood in her own ears? She could not tell. His sweet tongue gently teased hers, and she yielded to it with a moan.
More .
But in her mind, it was not Aedon who stood before her, but the spymaster she pictured, fighting herself with want and disgust at how fallible she was to his dark charm. His hands planed up her back. Tangling one in her hair, he caressed the nape of her neck with an idle thumb and deepened their kiss, making her moan in anticipation. And yet… no. It was not Dimitrius, but Aedon before her.
Harper stilled and pulled away. She could not—this wasn’t what she wanted. The thought crushed her. She did not want the charming elven rogue, tempting as he was, easier though it would be to fall for his ready smiles and smooth words. She could not fight that she wanted precisely who she was not supposed to—someone she ought never to see again, for her own safety.
“Harper?” Aedon’s magic dissipated and water crashed to the ground around them, drenching their cloak hems. All that desire crashed with the illusion of their magic, but the drenching of disappointment and bitter shame shattered into cold shards of fear that shredded into her, for inhuman shrieking echoed off the cliffs. Chattering in a harsh tongue jarred her ears, magnified as it came at them from all directions.
Harper opened her mouth, but Aedon swore in a tongue she did not know and shouted, “Goblins!”
He grasped her hand and broke into a run, pulling her behind him. They sprinted to camp, just as the first missiles struck the rocks above their heads. Ragnar was already up, brandishing the axe he usually kept belted at his waist. He turned to them, raising it with a snarl, but halted when he saw them.
“We cannot outrun the filth,” he said, his teeth bared.
A moment later, Brand and Erika burst into the clearing, faces flushed.
Illuminated by the fire’s light and the moon’s gleam, shapes raced down the cliff face. Harper blinked. There was no way anything could run down a sheer cliff face, but there they remained. Glints of armour and tangled limbs, churning over one another. No trace of pleasure remained within her. Nor shame. Only terror. Claws, teeth, and death raced for them.