Chapter Fourteen Beer, Bread, and Cheese #2
Terandis held out his hand to grasp Shuahn’s. “Do you think I would do well?”
“Yes,” Shuahn said. “Come to my bridge anytime. Do you want to come with us?”
“I can’t,” Terandis said. “I can’t tear out of here on an adventure without telling Filandior, and I can’t stay on my legs that long. Ah, Saeldian.”
“I seem to be late,” Saeldian said. “My apologies for delaying us. Good morning, Saer Terandis.”
“There you are, finally,” Terandis said. “I wanted to get a look at the person Kell was so furious over that Shuahn dragged him off to sort out his feelings.”
He what? Oh no. Kell wanted to protest, but that would just make it worse. But Saeldian didn’t miss a beat. They smiled, and it made them look like the most arrogant scoundrel the world had ever seen—one who fancied themself a magnificent bastard but landed well short of the mark.
“Oh. Well, that’s me.” Saeldian bowed, every flourish perfect. “What do you think?”
The smile fell. “I think I understand.”
“I am pretty infuriating,” Saeldian agreed, and gave Kell a smirk. Ass!
But Kell was clamping down on the urge to argue. Saeldian had spotted the matchmaking gleam in Terandis’s eye and figured out how to snuff it out instantly.
Saeldian always had Kell’s back in a pinch.
“Well, Kell. I’m going to get back to Filandior. Be careful, and good luck. Come back swiftly.”
Terandis did something with the hoops attached to his chair wheels and leaned so he balanced on one rim and spun in place. Mounted on the back of his chair was a hand crossbow and a quiver of bolts.
As he rolled away, Saeldian let the facade fall.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It seemed the most expedient,” Saeldian said. “Saying he had the wrong idea would only make him more sure of it.”
Verandil scoffed. “You didn’t have to fall on your sword quite that thoroughly. You’re really good, though. Have you ever been in plays?”
“Acting doesn’t pay as well.”
“If you want to get to Hearthaven’s Repose, it’s time we get on,” Shuahn interrupted. “Verandil, are you coming with us?”
“I have to sing the borders. Brewmistress asked me last night.”
“Begone, then. You’re distracting.”
Verandil kissed Jubilee on the forehead before he trotted off after Terandis.
“Finally,” Shuahn grumped. “Listen to me now. We will move through places that can take you away. Remember this. Stay in sight. Stay on the path. Avert your eyes from whatever you see, but behave with courtesy. And this, most important: Do not dwell in memory.”
She set off, half hopping. Every time she planted her knotted staff on the ground, it pulsed with power that bothered the seedlings nearby. She didn’t look back to make sure everyone had followed along.
Kell grabbed his pack and hurried to keep up behind Jubilee and Lorzok. He checked for Saeldian, who shooed him along with a sweeping hand. The smell of yeast and fermenting grain vanished between one step and the next, and then they were in the truewild.
The forest had changed; instead of the towering cedars and that lush green world that flourished at their feet, the trees here curled their boughs around heavy air with moss swaying from their knuckles like unbound hair.
Water spread over the ground lay still as a mirror.
Off in the distance, someone wept. Kell looked in that direction before he remembered not to.
“Kell.”
Saeldian’s voice behind him snapped his focus back to the path, narrower now. Lorzok was still in sight, but ahead. Kell hurried to catch up.
“Did you hear that?”
Lorzok glanced back. “Hear what?”
“Someone was crying out there,” Kell said.
“He didn’t hear it,” Saeldian said, “and neither did you.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t hear anything that was your business to wonder about,” Saeldian said. “Wish them peace and move on.”
That was cold. Kell understood why Saeldian was rejecting the cry. They were right to do it. But how could they have heard it and not felt that loss?
Because they had never felt loss like that.
Saeldian had never felt anything but a mild kindness or minor annoyance for anyone. Only Kell had been their friend. He hadn’t seen it then, but now he understood it—Saeldian had never felt deeply for anyone. They didn’t hate anyone. They didn’t love anyone. It was like they couldn’t.
Why had Kell not seen that before?
“Will it help you move faster if you talk?” Saeldian asked.
“Do you want to pass me?”
“If I did, you’d go chasing after some distressed beauty or another and then I’d have to tell your father we let you get eaten by a…I don’t even know what dwells in the shadowed truewild.”
“I wasn’t going to go chasing after that sound,” Kell grumbled. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”
“Old tricks become old because they work. They’re too far ahead again.”
Lorzok wasn’t much more than a moving shape glimpsed between swaying locks of moss. How had he gotten away from them?
“Hey!” Kell shouted. “Wait!”
“I don’t think he heard you,” said Saeldian.
“Lorzok!” Kell shouted again as Lorzok went around a bend and disappeared from sight.
Not far. Not too far. But far enough. Kell ran with Saeldian on his heels till they went around the bend and Kell had to leap fast to hop onto the fallen log that forded dark, still water, clear enough to see pale stones—
Too fast. He slipped a little and had to swallow his heart as he danced his way back to balance and those weren’t stones, those were faces, upturned. Kell could see their still, closed mouths and eyelids through the gentle floating fronds of their hair.
That one looked like Ikariel.
It couldn’t be. She died at Essanderon’s Rest. He’d seen her running; he’d seen her fall.
But then her eyes opened, and her mouth said Kell, her face crumpling with relief, with hope, with bone-deep terror.
She reached up with one hand, and waves warped the sight of her, but her hand was so close to the surface. He could reach her, if he just—
He lurched upright. Saeldian took their hand out of the collar of his jerkin and put it on his back. “Whatever you see, it’s not real. Walk.”
“But it’s Ikariel.”
“Walk,” Saeldian repeated. “We’re way behind, and if we get too far—”
Behind them, a heavy splash of water and the smell of rotten mushrooms seized Kell’s heart.
Saeldian never faltered. “Walk.”
“The Eaters. I can smell them.”
“It’s not real,” Saeldian repeated. “Unless the Eaters smell like torched sugar.”
Kell stepped off the log. “You can’t smell that? It’s awful.”
“No. Run!” Saeldian shouted.
Kell stumbled as he tried to run. Saeldian caught him. “Think of Lorzok. You can find him. You always can. Where is he?”
“Are you sure it’s not them?” He was choking on it.
That smell stopped his nose and coated his tongue, and now he could smell blood and terrified sweat, and Saeldian shouted, right next to his ear, and a streak of purple hung in the air where their spell bolts had fired, knocking something back.
And on the edges of that purple burned into his vision, it rushed toward them.
Saeldian flung something in its direction, and the air filled with moths, fluttering and bumbling.
“Come on.” They yanked Kell along, leaving the cloud of moths behind. “Find Lorzok. You know him. Where is he?”
“I have to hold still.”
“Do you think we have time for that?” Saeldian yelled. “That spell’s not going to hold that thing forever.”
“I can’t do it on the run!” Kell dug his heels in. “It’ll only take a moment, but I need a moment.”
“Fine.” Saeldian stepped around Kell and faced the way they’d come. “Take your minute. But be faster than that.”
Right. Lorzok. Kell’s breath shuddered too hard to be calming, and the rotten mushrooms and blood smell tainted the air.
Don’t think about that. Think about Lorzok, who is looking for you, who is worried.
They were all worried, but Kell’s glad big-hearted friend, who had everything to give anyone who needed kindness, who was kind and strong and subtly funny, was looking for him and Saeldian right now.
From behind him, an outraged scream of pain, and another. It was close, it was too close.
“I’ve got it,” Saeldian said, and a moment later, it screamed again.
The smell hurt his eyes. He closed them even though his eyelids scraped as they sank shut, and the smell pulsed like puffs of breath, then there was another screech as Saeldian struck it with another bolt.
Had it been a minute? No. Lorzok. Kell reached for the feeling of him. Lorzok felt like warm comfort. The kindness of fixing tea and listening. And the feeling of him warmed his senses in that direction. He wasn’t far. He was coming.
Kell grabbed his crossbow, turned around, and saw Ikariel, half burnt and the rest bruised, rushing at Saeldian with a scream that made him want to scream too. The sound cut straight into his mind, and it hurt so badly. He wanted to run, but his feet wouldn’t move. There was nowhere to go.
If he put his hands up, Ikariel would know he was sorry. If he dropped the crossbow, she would stop this.
No. That wasn’t Ikariel.
Saeldian stepped aside and stabbed at it. Ikariel—no, not Ikariel, not with that smell, not with those rows of teeth and claws. Kell shook his head, trying to make room for doubt. He raised the crossbow again and fired a bolt straight at Ikariel’s heart. “Tough luck!”
She clutched at it with one hand and howled so Kell’s own heart turned to ice. Saeldian couldn’t do this alone; he had to do something—
It burned when he drew in a deep breath, but he sang, “Second daughter’s hands can never bring the wedding banns before her sister’s fortune, Eldest Astrid said, spin the bobbins, wind the skeins up—”