7. Sunlight’s Spell #2
Imalroc coughed and inwardly cursed the nervous sound. “I was curious what you’d do. Can we just leave it?”
“Alright,” Rerdas said faintly.
“What do these wusterwicks and fireroots look like, anyway?”
An uncertain smile slipped across Rerdas’s face.
“Wusterroot and firewicks. Wusterroot should be easy to find. It grows in the shade at the base of trees. Everywhere around here. For the firewicks, we’ll need to find water.
They’re easy to spot once we’ve got the right creek or stream.
Bright red and orange, spiky-looking plants. ”
“Why do you know so much about plants?” Imalroc asked.
“My father taught me first, and then my aunt.”
“A landed nobleman wandered around the forest, pointing out plants?”
Rerdas gave him a sharp look, which he supposed was somewhat deserved. “My father expected me to know and care for the land I came from. And my aunt expects me to know how to care for other people using that knowledge. We didn’t live like city nobility in Kirinoll.”
“Didn’t mean to offend.” He was more curious than truly chagrined.
Rerdas sighed. “Sorry. I don’t want you to think I’m like Melgreth Hize, or that sort. I was never raised that way.”
Imalroc ground his teeth together at the mention of his former handler. He didn’t want Melgreth Hize to exist even in conversation.
They lapsed into a chilly silence. The rambling path twisted through the undergrowth and led deeper into the forest. Rerdas ducked off it frequently, squatting to inspect various trees and the plants that hunkered in their shadows.
He turned at one point and held out a stubby sprig with thick leaves and reddish veins. “Found it! This is wusterroot.” He held it out to Imalroc.
Imalroc picked the sprig up between thumb and forefinger. “What an extraordinary, striking, astounding little piece of—”
Rerdas snorted. “I should’ve left you with the custard puffs.” He cut a small bundle of sprigs to stow in his pack.
They ventured away from the path when it narrowed to a wispy deer trail.
Imalroc’s boots sank into loamy ground. A feathery carpet of ferns spread out in front of him, and green moss clung to the dark trees.
Even the light seemed green and thick, sunlight unable to pierce through the shield of shifting leaves.
It made him feel strangely sheltered. Hidden from the rest of the terrible world.
A bird called through the branches ahead. Rerdas reached and caught Imalroc’s forearm, pulling him down behind a fat tree stump.
Imalroc’s pulse hammered through his fragile peace. “What is it?” he hissed, reaching for his sword.
“Shhh, you’ll scare it off,” Rerdas whispered, not looking at him.
Imalroc followed the huntmaster’s gaze to the wall of trees beyond the ferns. The birds took flight in a rush. Something small and bright darted out from amid the greenery.
He poked his head up to get a better look, and the animal froze, staring directly at him.
It was some kind of fox. Its dark fur made a soft ruff around a clever little face, and dappled gold spotted its back.
Dark eyes regarded Imalroc, enormous ears perked toward him.
And then it turned, and with a twitch of its tail, slipped further into the green temple of the trees.
“A kerrtail!” Rerdas wore a delighted smile. “That’s good luck in the North felds!”
Imalroc shifted, just enough so that Rerdas’s warm hand let go of his arm. He couldn’t have the huntmaster smiling like that and touching him at the same time—that was unfair. “How did you know it was coming?”
“I wasn’t certain. But the quitalens called warnings, and when they took off, I knew something must be close. Just observe. The forest tells you what you need to know.”
Imalroc wrenched his gaze away from Rerdas’s face and down to his boots. What he saw there made him grin. “Well, oh lofty, observant master of the forest,” he began, “I think you’re sitting in a bunch of wusterroot.”
Rerdas blinked down at the familiar leaves and blushed. “Oh,” he said, and then laughed, and Imalroc had to look away from him entirely.
They wandered on through the peace and cold of the forest. Imalroc drifted a little further away, trying to expel the tingling beneath his skin with every breath. He tried not to think of Draal.
Rerdas called to him. “Hear that?” He raised a finger to his ear.
It took him a moment, but Imalroc caught a faint, far-off burbling. “Water?”
Rerdas nodded and plunged away into the trees.
They cut through dense stands and over damp soil, stopping twice to collect more wusterroot, before they found a narrow, swift-moving stream.
They followed it until Imalroc’s leg ached and the sun began its downward tumble.
Light broke through the forest ahead, and the stream widened, leading them into a broad, sunlit clearing.
They hadn’t found any firewicks, but Rerdas stopped suddenly. “This is as good a place as any for a rest.” He tilted his head at Imalroc. “How’s your leg?”
“Splendid.” Imalroc chided himself for whatever small discomfort Rerdas must have glimpsed. He didn’t want to go back to Manolia yet.
“Well, I’d like a rest.” Rerdas tugged a spare cloak out of the travel sack and spread it out over the grass, dropping onto it and patting one corner in invitation. Imalroc tossed the Draalish sword into the grass and sat, stretching out his legs. He had to admit it was good to be off his feet.
“The season is turning.” Rerdas sighed. “It almost feels like spring.”
“Because of the spring?” Imalroc gestured toward the water and kept a straight face.
Rerdas flung a blade of grass at him. “Ha. Very funny.”
“Thank you, I thought so.”
The huntmaster leaned back on his palms. “You’re in a good mood.”
He was. A very good mood. Imalroc shrugged. “Etiana told me how much onyx I earned from Navona.” He nodded toward the pack at Rerdas’s side. “Have you got anything to eat in there?”
Rerdas dug into the sack and laid out the supplies he’d brought.
He unfolded lumpy wax-paper packets to reveal cold chicken and thin-sliced tomatoes pressed in crusty bread, a small smoked trout with little coin crackers and cheese, a bowl of walnut-stuffed dates and another bowl of pickles wrapped in ham, and a pear tart with a golden crust. He fished back in the sack and emerged with a corked bottle.
Imalroc stared at him.
“What?” Rerdas asked. His cheeks pinked. “I thought you liked all this.”
Imalroc looked down at the little array of everything he’d mentioned enjoying at Manolia. “It… looks good.” He shoved a date in his mouth before anything else could come out.
The food was delicious, but Imalroc felt disoriented with every bite. He uncorked the dark bottle and gulped down a lake’s worth of blackberry wine. That’d definitely help.
“Where is your estate from here?” Imalroc blurted.
“Much further north. But it’s not mine anymore. I suppose I could get it back if... if we had the onyx for it. And if I wanted it.”
“You don’t want your family home?”
“No.”
The finality in Rerdas’s voice was surprising. “Why not? Couldn’t you hide there, instead of in the east?”
“It’d be harder to hide Aunt Uralta there. Too many people know our family. Too many questions. Besides, I don’t want to live among the people who let my father die.”
Imalroc’s eyebrows rose.
Rerdas mirrored the expression. “You disagree with my reasoning?”
“Not exactly. It’s just strange to me. This is your home.” He made a sweeping motion to encompass the forest. “You leave it behind easily.”
“There was nothing left to leave. And I don’t think home is any one place. Do you?”
“I... don’t know.” His home was a memory from so long ago that it was hardly real. If he stood on the land where he had once lived, he was not sure he would feel any peace or comfort. “It’s a nice place, is all.”
“The land is lovely. But the house… The house I lived in wasn’t always the happiest, even before my father passed. I prefer the Kirinoll house.”
“You don’t speak much about your mother,” Imalroc observed.
Rerdas shrugged. It looked like a studied motion, an imitation of disinterest. “I never knew her as I knew my father. He raised me. She was gone before I—Anyway, all I remember of her now is her foresting boots, and a fearsome old oil painting my father hid away once she was gone.”
“How did she die?”
Rerdas wouldn’t look at him. “She didn’t die,” he said lightly.
“She left.” Another shrug. “Being stuck alone in a drafty house in the woods with a child as her only daily company was not to her liking.” He looked suddenly at Imalroc, that same worried line cutting down his forehead.
“She wasn’t a bad person, you understand, just…
Aunt Uralta said she struggled. She was lonely. Everyone struggles.”
A hundred more questions poured into Imalroc’s mind, but something stilled his tongue.
He’d constructed too many masks himself not to recognize one when he saw it.
He could ask whatever he liked, but he had a feeling that the questions would hurt the man sitting in front of him, trying so hard to look accepting.
So all he said was, “Life is ugly. It’s difficult to be happy in it.” Fuck, that wasn’t comforting, or a gentle diversion at all. Someone else should be sitting in the meadow talking about things like this. He couldn’t safely navigate through it.
But Rerdas relaxed, and the sad smile he offered was not forced. “It is. And it’s also… I don’t know. It’s not all misery, either. I might never have lived with Aunt Uralta. And she’s the wisest person I know. She’s taught me so much.”
It had to be the wine that set his mouth loose. With a perfectly solemn expression, he said, “But she does sleep quite a bit, though.”
There was an excruciating silence.
Rerdas dissolved into wheezing laughter. “You didn’t. That is an absurdly poor joke. Don’t make me fight you for her honor.” He brandished a blade of grass. “Tremble in fear at the prospect.”
Imalroc grinned. “Oh, I’m trembling.”