Camp
What came next was being taken prisoner.
He wouldn’t claim to be an expert, but it was easily the nicest experience he’d had being taken prisoner.
The Souna gave him enough time to extract himself from the tangle of plants—though, embarrassingly, the plants detached themselves the moment Math commanded it, as if they’d been waiting patiently for him to just ask.
No one accused him of being a traitor. The Souna even gave him a new coat—a Rokasmaa soldier’s, of course—and a waterskin.
Still, the plains riders also made it very clear that if he tried to ride off, they’d shoot him so full of arrows they wouldn’t need extra wood for his pyre.
Kai’s connection to these people was even more obvious now that Math had a whole troupe for comparison. She was a more petite version, but the resemblance was undeniable.
Their leader was a grim-faced woman named Oltaxath, who clearly would’ve preferred they’d left the crash site hours ago.
“What did you promise her?” Math asked quietly.
“Them,” Kai corrected.
“What?”
“Their language doesn’t use gendered pronouns.” She rubbed her arms through the wool sleeves of her coat.
“Fine. Them. You’re changing the subject,” Math said. “What did you promise them?”
“One of Oltaxath’s parents is ill. They promised to protect us—and even escort us to our destination—if we can heal them.”
“I can’t promise I can do that.” Math wasn’t a fool—he kept his voice to a whisper.
Kai seemed genuinely surprised for a moment, then shook her head. “It matters not. These are not…” She paused, scanning the crowd. Most were on horseback; the rest were looting the parts of the train not yet on fire.
Math wondered how many aboard the train had survived. It was entirely possible those not killed by the Parnathi had been finished off by the Souna—a bitter kind of joke.
“These are not my people,” Kai said at last. “They might resemble them, but too much time has passed for that to be true. I speak the language—though apparently with a terrible accent—but I do not understand their ways. They are a hard people, used to violence. If we are to get out of this, we must make ourselves too valuable to kill.”
“Is our bond the reason I can understand them?”
“Yes.” Her lips quirked. “Did you think I speak your language?”
A Souna rode over, leading two horses—one black, one dun—both already saddled. “For you to ride,” the man explained.
No one asked Math if he was okay with the bargain.
He wanted to protest, but there were at least forty people in this band, all of them armed—mostly with halberds and spears, though some carried the wicked-looking bows they had used to such deadly effect earlier.
None of them looked like they would take kindly to being told “no.”
The leader rode back to them. “You can ride, can’t you?” The question was for Math; Kai’s skills were assumed.
“I can,” Math said. He almost pointed out that he was an Idallik—of course he could ride—but he was not sure how the Souna leader would react. Kai hadn’t mentioned his affiliation when describing their abilities.
The horse sniffed at Math as he approached, decided he had no treats for her, and lost interest. She was calm and made no trouble when he climbed up.
Nothing about the horse kit was strange, except for the saddle, which had a much higher pommel and cantle than he was used to.
Kai examined her horse with a pensive, resigned expression before pulling herself into the saddle as well.
Apparently, the assumption about her riding skills had not been entirely wrong—though she didn’t seem as confident as usual.
“When was the last time you rode a horse?” he asked.
She tossed him a tight smile. “I am told it has been at least fourteen hundred years. Shall we ride?”
They headed south and west, toward Mount Topalawon, near the Jokokala border.
It was exactly where Kaiataris had wanted to go. From the occasional flashes of smug amusement he felt from her, she had figured that out as well.
The camp was a hectic, chaotic place, with people preparing food, mending clothing, sharpening weapons, and practicing fighting.
Children laughed and played. Dogs trailed their owners, often butting heads—sometimes playfully, sometimes not—with the large hunting cats that lounged throughout the camp.
Some of the Souna even kept hunting eagles.
All eyes were on him as their party entered the camp. They might have stared at Kai as well, but if they did, it was with far less hostility than the glares reserved for him.
They’d hardly walked twenty feet when Oltaxath grabbed a woman’s arm, whispered something, and pointed at Kai. The woman’s eyes widened, and she rushed off.
In the meantime, they were taken to a small, single-room dwelling—a cross between a tent and a hut—constructed by stretching leather over a wooden frame. It stood apart from the other dwellings, far enough to make the isolation unmistakable.
They were very sick, Oltaxath had said.
As Math dismounted, he hoped he hadn’t just volunteered to expose himself to something deadly. He’d never tested his self-healing against an infectious disease.
Inside the hut, it was too dark to see. Math spelled up a light, though it was little brighter than a candle.
A pile of stuffed fur pillows rested on a thickly woven rug in the center of the room. A man lay there, barely aware of his surroundings. His hair was white, his complexion pale with illness. He was far too thin—except for his grotesquely distended stomach.
The odor was unbearable—a mix of bodily waste that suggested the hut had not been cleaned in a long time, and even then, poorly.
Math immediately turned on Oltaxath. “Haven’t you been feeding them?”
Oltaxath bared her teeth. “They’re my parent, Dulbach,” she spat. “Anything they eat comes back up. They can only stomach gentle broths. So yes, I’m feeding them. And yes, they’re still starving to death.”
Kai kneeled beside the dying man. “How long have they been like this?”
“Not long.” Oltaxath stared anywhere but at her father. “They were fine a month ago. It happened fast.”
“And they didn’t eat anything poisonous? Didn’t encounter anyone else who was sick first?” Math asked.
“No! Nothing like that.”
“Then why keep them like this?” Math gestured to the tiny, cramped hut.
The leader gave him a contemptuous, narrow-eyed stare.
Then, speaking as if to a small child, she explained, “Demons cause sickness. Everyone knows this. As the victim grows more ill, the demons search for new hosts. If there is no one nearby—no new victims. I would be a poor leader if I risked my people.”
Demons. Math clenched down on the urge to scoff. Depending on what was wrong with the man, isolating him might well have been the right call. That the chieftain had done it out of superstition did not negate the benefit.
“Math, come here, please,” Kai called to him.
Math turned away from the Souna leader and kneeled beside Kai, trying with all his power to ignore the urine-stained rug.
“We need to discuss this,” she whispered, switching to Ginren. “This man’s sickness is a concern.”
“Any ideas?” he asked. “I’m not exactly a member of the Mending section, but there are several diseases that could cause this—”
She shook her head. “It is cancer.”
“Are you sure—” He didn’t know much about her background, her training.
“Yes.”
Math drummed his fingertips against his thighs as he thought it over.
The old man—Dulbach—was conscious, his gaze drifting repeatedly to Math and Kai.
Math had to fight not to shudder. Not because the man was thin or frail, but because of his eyes.
He was not looking at them, but through them, staring at something only he could see.
Math had only ever seen that look in the eyes of the dying.
Math fought the urge to gag. The air tasted like rot and piss.
“Kai, I can try, but I don’t know if anything I do will help.”
“Just the opposite,” she whispered. “I promised your aid without understanding our challenge. You have told me your healing does not discriminate. It regenerates all—which would only cause the tumor to grow. I fear your aid would worsen matters considerably.”
Math closed his eyes for a moment and tucked his chin. “Great. Just fantastic. I’m looking forward to telling that leader we can’t do a thing to help their father. I suppose we can at least take the pain away.”
“If I had enough time, I could cure it.” She lowered her head, her expression twisted.
“How much time would you need?” That was not a consideration in the kind of spellcasting he was used to. Either one could do a thing, or one could not. Waiting accomplished nothing.
The room was silent, save for the too-loud sound of the old man’s breathing—an ugly contrast to the children playing outside. Kai stayed quiet, her gaze fixed on the floor, as if weighing what to say.
“I am not like you,” she whispered. She raised her head again, as if realizing what she had just said. “Obviously, I mean. But ordered magic is not…”
He waited.
“We do not draw upon our source with the ease you do yours,” Kai said at last. “Even at its height, it is a stream to your river. But as the Chaos solstice nears, even that stream begins to dry. This is not an unclimbable obstacle, however. The source may be weak, but since I am shunting the result into a kind of holding tank, even a small trickle will fill a pond—given time.”
“How long?”
She considered. “A week?”
Math grimaced. A week was forever with the Queens and the Kaliri doing only the Tri-Mother knew what back home. “And there isn’t anything you can do to go faster? Or would you risk a magical overflow like I almost did last night?”
Kai’s expression turned appalled for a moment, then she laughed. “No, I fear that is not at all what befalls a graven wizard who grows too greedy. We do not burn, we—” She paused, searching for the word.
“Freeze?”
“In a sense. We suffer enervation. If we are fortunate, it manifests only as malaise or paralysis. If not”—her tone remained composed—“it may begin as calcification, petrification, or the necrosis of flesh. I am told the first free-willed undead came into being when an enervated wizard attempted to survive the feedback rotting the flesh from his bones.”
Math stared at her, but she wasn’t joking.
“A week,” she repeated. “And even then, there is no guarantee. His body may fail regardless, even should the cancer be removed. And that assumes this is sickness alone, not some magical side effect of the encroaching Chaos.”
“That’s possible?” he asked, utterly appalled.
She shrugged. “I know not. Cancer exists even when Chaos is not gaining power. That said—remember what I said of wild, unsustainable growth. This would certainly fit a theme, but it is not so unnatural that I can say with certainty it must have an equally unnatural cause.”
He nodded. That was probably as good as he was going to get.
A week. Damn it. Did they have any choice? Despite Oltaxath saying they’d be released even if they failed, Math suspected their chances would worsen considerably if she found out they were unwilling to try simply because it was inconvenient.
“What do you need?”
She winced. “Therein lies the second difficulty. I require a surface large enough to surround his entire body, with a margin of several feet. It must be flat and capable of holding a precise mark—the more permanent, the better. But out here in the grasslands…”
“What about leather?” he asked. “Would that be permanent enough?”
She hedged. “It would require a large and perfect piece, and I doubt these people have recently skinned an elephant.”
He smiled, stood back up again, and offered her a hand to do likewise. “You let me worry about that. This, I can handle.”
Oltaxath had already left the tent, so Math went looking for her.
“The good news is that it’s not demons,” Math told her.
“The bad news?” Oltaxath evidently wasn’t an optimist.
“Even if we can cure them, there’s a chance they’ll still die. Their body has suffered a great deal of damage. It’s like a battle wound. Stopping the bleeding doesn’t guarantee survival.”
Oltaxath turned her head, a moment of allowed grief before she toughened herself. “I thank you for your honesty.”
“We’re going to need supplies for this. And you need to clean up their hut.
Take everything out but your parent and the shelter itself.
Then I need enough light-colored leather to cover the entire floor and a marking tool for it.
” He raised a finger. “The leather doesn’t have to be one piece, but the larger the pieces, the faster we’ll work. ”
Oltaxath shook her head, and Math frowned, thinking the woman was about to refuse. Instead, she said, “Easy. It will be done. Will we wait until morning?”
“No, we don’t dare. We’re doing this tonight.” He corrected himself. “Or at least, that’s when we’ll start.”