Chapter 7 #4
Kai admitted that Dahin would never have the patience to document the evidence in that treatise if he didn’t think it was true. But there had to be something he had intentionally left out. “Why did you drag us all the way to Ancartre if you wanted to come here alone?”
“I didn’t know about the anchor stones. I thought I’d have to fly all the way up here in an ascension raft and I—” He stopped speaking as if he had hit a wall.
Or thought of a very good reason he couldn’t finish that sentence the way he had meant to.
“I didn’t want to go alone,” he finished, and winced, as if well aware how inadequate it was.
“You went to the Summer Halls, a stinking flooded death well, alone, and stayed there for months, diving in putrid water—”
“I know, I remember!” Dahin snapped. He took a deep breath and clearly decided to take a different approach. “I don’t want to lie to you—”
“But you did,” Kai interposed. “I thanked you, thanked you, for trusting us!”
“—we’ve been friends forever. You helped raise me during the war, when Tahren was busy…”
Yes, I did, Kai thought bitterly. I helped raise you and I helped raise Bashat, and look how that turned out.
At least Ziede’s daughter Tanis had never tried to kill him.
Though she was only five decades old now, there was plenty of time for that later, he supposed.
He said, “If you don’t want to answer my questions, then I don’t want to talk. ”
Dahin made a sulky humph noise, which did not help the situation one bit. Kai nudged his beast into a faster walk, and Dahin didn’t try to follow him.
They reached the higher ground and stopped briefly to rest the beasts and themselves.
A small spring poured down in multiple rivulets over a wide stretch of rocky ground.
It was surrounded by short grasses with tiny white and yellow flowers and small bushes that looked related to the woody silver sage from the Saredi grasslands but probably weren’t.
While Dahin watered the animals, or stood by while the animals watered themselves, Kai looked for tracks.
Rain was apparently infrequent here but the ground near the springs was damp.
Kai found plenty of signs of hoofprints from riding animals and human boot prints.
So the two work groups had stopped here the same way they apparently did whenever they went up toward this area, before they discovered the tor.
Kai wasn’t sure what the tracks told him, except that Veile and the drovers were telling the truth, and nothing odd had happened to the scholars until after this point in their journey.
He looked up to see Ramad pacing thoughtfully around on the far side of the stream, examining the tracks over there.
Kai should check that area himself, but Ramad had no reason to lie about what he found.
All his reasons for lying were about other things, not the lost scholars.
Kai sat down on a rock, facing into the chill wind, and reminded himself it would be two more days at least before Sura could return with Ziede and Tahren.
Dahin was chewing something from one of the supply bags the drovers had packed onto their beasts and pretending he needed to study the map.
Arnsterath eyed Kai from across the stream, then started to pick her way over toward him.
Kai considered waiting until she was a few paces away and then getting up and moving, but he was too tired for petty games.
She stopped and said, “Are the anchor stones supposed to do this to demons?”
Kai didn’t have to ask what she meant. He said, “Probably.” He had felt sick since the raft reached the first anchor stone, but the others hadn’t shown any sign of lingering discomfort. He had seen Dahin hide illnesses before, and he wasn’t showing any of the signs of it.
Kai had had some water and some of the hard flatbread from the supply bag on his saddle and it hadn’t helped much. This body was also obviously unaccustomed to riding and his muscles ached. It was enough discomfort to be annoying but not enough that it would be helpful toward powering an intention.
Arnsterath grimaced faintly and looked away.
Kai decided he might as well make the effort, and asked, “Where did your body come from?”
She turned to him, her brow furrowed, apparently honestly taken aback by the question.
It was such a funny reaction, Kai laughed.
Though something in the tone of it made Dahin and Ramad look up, startled.
Kai said, “What, do we not talk about that, we foresworn Saredi demons who take our mortal bodies by force? At least my first was an expositor.” He lifted his brows.
“Oh, this one isn’t your first either, is it. ”
She bared her teeth and said, “It was just someone on the road. Injured, dying. I admit it. Are you happy now?”
“I’m delighted,” Kai told her honestly. “We’re hypocrites together.”
Offended, she countered, “What is your friend Dahin trying to do?”
Kai shrugged. “Ask him. I have no idea.”
She watched him for a moment and then smiled, that thin-lipped arrogant smile he couldn’t remember seeing on Arn-Nefa’s face.
Though maybe he had just been too young and naive to notice it then.
She said, “I want to prove myself to this Arike Prince-heir Bashat. He seems interested in what I can do.”
If she was hoping for a reaction, Kai didn’t give her one.
It was a very bad idea, but Kai was beginning to think if Bashat was going to ask for trouble like this, maybe he should just get what he wanted.
“Good luck with that,” he told her. He pushed to his feet and called to Dahin and Ramad, “Let’s go. ”