Chapter 5
Torver’s open mouth is dry. This can’t be real.
But whether it’s a lying spy or a truthful harbinger of doom—Lavellin isn’t a hallucination. It stands before him, resolute and dripping blood.
“That…that can’t be true—” The words catch in his throat, choking him like a hand might. “And if it was….why would you—you’re betraying your own people—”
His thoughts swirl as he tries to make sense of the warning. This—Rath. It shouldn’t be here. Its people shouldn’t…
He blinks heavily, drunk with the blood spooling out of him. He wants to do something drastic, but his head is swimming, wounds burning. Bassen pushes him protectively behind her, relegating him, as ever, to the backseat of his circumstances.
“The sort of bare-faced lie a spy would come up with when caught,” Bassen scoffs. “How exactly can your king wake the Beast? King Dunmail gave his life to put it to sleep and the Meddera’s laws keep it that way! Obedience keeps the Beast asleep.”
Torver swallows the metallic taste in his mouth.
“And anyway,” she continues. “If that’s even true, why are we the first people you’re telling? That farmer you saw definitely reported the sighting because there’s Enforcers looking for you—go and tell them, if it’s really true!”
“They would kill me!”
“Pah! As if you’re not the danger. There’s a whole border wall to keep us safe from you! So why would I believe you’re here to warn us out of the kindness of your tiny Rath heart?”
Lavellin runs a hand over its pointed ear at her words, muttering something in a language that Torver can’t understand.
“Because I am,” Lavellin says, switching back to their tongue.
“I don’t even know where I’m going! I’ve been wandering, hoping to run into people who can help!
It took me three days after that farmer ran from me—this land is so empty, do people not travel?
I—” It throws up its hands. “I just couldn’t stand by!
Once I left, I could never go back and I had to warn your people. ”
And despite any remaining sense Torver has, something in the taut lines of its face, its sincerity, softens him.
Bassen’s eyes roll as she turns to Torver.
“It’s clearly saying the first thing that it can think of to get us to trust it. We’ve got enough to be dealing with…” She trails off, but he knows what she was going to say.
With you. With your issues. Worthless man the magic didn’t choose. Stupid, stupid boy.
Lavellin draws his eye, running its hand over its blood-wet hair, its broad body rendered a tattered mess. For a second, he relives the feeling when its arms were around him, how it had shielded him.
It could have just gotten up, kept running.
But it didn’t.
Torver’s mind whirrs, fighting through the fog of his blood loss.
“It saved me,” he says finally. “I think… I believe it.”
Bassen looks at him. Long and searching. Her eyes are pupil-dark in the low light of the forest.
She exhales noisily.
“Fine,” she says gruffly. “But this doesn’t mean I have to trust it.”
Before he gets a chance to thank her, Bassen gestures brusquely.
“This way,” she orders, pointing Lavellin west, the direction they’d come from. “We need to get out of the Dodwood. The Enforcers are still in here somewhere…”
Despite her acidic tone, Lavellin’s shoulders drop, the planes of its face rearranging into overwhelming relief. She waves it on and it obeys, walking ahead.
Bassen holds Torver up as he limps and he can practically feel her hackles still up.
Lavellin’s green robes move ahead of them in between the boughs, and even though its injuries are far worse than his, it moves over the moss and branches cervine and nimble.
He, meanwhile, is blood-slick and ready to pass out.
Bassen mutters low, “I can’t believe that you believe it, Torv. This is why I’m the smart one.”
Torver grunts through the effort of hauling his body. “Yeah, but it knows it shouldn’t be here, and it came anyway. Betraying the secrets of its own people. It must be…moral?”
“Rath weren’t so moral when the Beast roamed the land, were they?” she growls. “They were perfectly happy to sit back while that went on. It’s no wonder the first Meddera outlawed all contact.”
This is news to Torver and for a second, he resents the sheltered nature of his upbringing, how his mother had kept him from the schoolhouse.
“Are you really going on those old legends rather than what’s in front of us? It protected me, it came to warn us…” Words leave his mouth but he’s barely aware of saying them. He wonders absently if he’s going into shock. “How can you even know if the legends are true?”
Torver feels the motion of her shaking head against his shoulder, her chin brushing painfully against him.
“Why would the Meddera lie?” she asks. “For hundreds of years? They’re not legends, Torver, they’re historical facts.”
Lavellin pauses ahead but Bassen angrily waves it on, pointing it in the right direction.
“Historical facts,” he repeats with great effort.
“Yes, historical facts,” she intones, not without irritation. “This land was a monarchy ruled by kings, until the old gods created a bloodthirsty dragon to punish the people for forgetting them. For using magic to improve their lot, instead of worship.”
“Here we go,” he mutters, staring blankly ahead where Lavellin walks in the directions that Bassen points. She shoots him a glare and continues her recitation.
“Centuries ago, when magic was new, the Last King exchanged his life for the safety of his people from the Beast,” Bassen makes a dramatic sweep of her arm, her voice rising and falling with the flow of the story.
“In thanks and remembrance, the People’s Kingdom was founded to honour Dunmail’s sacrifice, and as a reminder that this is how we must live.
Controlling our magic, living with our consequences. ”
The story not quite drilled into him by rote in the same way, Torver can only join her for the ending and their voices unite as one.
“A kingdom for the people. No gods, no kings.”
He feels rebelliously proud that he doesn’t have the whole thing memorised like she does. Like he’s meant to.
“We don’t have to fully trust it, but what if its warning is true? My instinct is to give it the benefit of the doubt,” Torver mumbles, gritting his teeth against the stinging of his wounds. “After all, if it tries anything…you can kill it, can’t you?”
This thought seems to both trouble and soothe her. As it does him.
“I suppose I can.” Her dark eyes are half-lidded when she looks at her feet.
They walk for a time longer, Lavellin occasionally turning back to check they are there.
Bassen waves it on each time until they reach the edge of the forest, where it waits for them to catch up.
Breaking the treeline, Torver can see the wagon and the horses still where they left them a little way away.
Helping him the final distance to the wagon, Bassen casts an appraising eye over his body. Her visible wince is concerning and Torver wonders just how bad he looks.
“Before we even think about going back to the Wen,” she seems to push the concern from her voice, but her smile is too wide. “We need to get you fixed up, don’t we? We’ll stop by the first settlement we see and find someone with healing magic… The state of you, Torv.”
She shakes her head at that last part, like it escaped her lips without permission.
Torver’s whole body hurts—he must have clenched his every muscle during the attack, and after it, he had carried Lavellin through the woods. He leans against the wagon, still bleeding in places, and watches Bassen approach the mares. Their heads fly up in alarm, ears pinned.
“And what of me?” Lavellin asks, coming to stand at his side.
He starts, his hand jerking uselessly in front of him. He hadn’t heard it approach, its feet impossibly light on the ground.
It seems to have startled Bassen too because her brow furrows and she snaps, “Don’t sneak up on us like that.”
It makes an apologetic expression which ruptures a clotted bite on its brow and asks, “Am I coming with you?”
“You’re awfully keen for an illegal insurgent,” Bassen says. “Aren’t you concerned we might turn you in?”
It seems to consider this for a moment before it replies, blood trickling down the side of its face, “It’s simpler to put my trust in you.”
Bassen grimaces. “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t know where it’s been.”
Torver tries to call off the dogs with a trembling hand to her shoulder. “We’ll take you with us, Lavellin.”
“Away from the Dodwood, at least,” Bassen adds quickly, giving him a firm look. “Then we’ll see.”
Lavellin looks uneasy, but nods.
“Thank you.”
Lavellin stands with Torver. He slumps against a tree, watching as Bassen struggles to re-harness the horses. They flinch away from her, nostrils flared. Animals so rarely like her.
Torver, grimacing, makes a move to go and help when Bassen fails for the third time to sling a leather strap around one of the mare’s necks.
He’s surprised when Lavellin beats him to it.
“Here,” it says, pressing a soothing palm to the mare’s sweating shoulder. The animal calms instantly and Bassen stomps away, thankless.
Lavellin handles the leather harnesses with expert ease and it doesn’t take long before they’re prepared to set off again.
Even with the mares’ magic-induced calm, a tension is thick in the air.
Bassen eyes Torver with concern as he hauls himself into the back of the wagon.
Lavellin climbs up after him. Bassen’s eyes narrow and she releases a long breath from her nose, almost like a growl, before mounting the front of the wagon, settling in the driving seat.
She clicks her tongue, the vehicle reluctantly jolts, and they are finally leaving the ordeal of the Dodwood behind. Torver lays down on top of the blankets and fabrics he’d put there in case he needed to conceal himself on the journey. Before he can stop it, a moan escapes his lips.
Lavellin lays down next to him and he bristles. His eyes catch on its pointed ears.
“I can help you, if you’re in pain.” Lavellin’s voice is like a cloying velvet that makes him shudder.
“I’d question how, but I think my brain is turning to mush,” he grinds out.
At rest, his wounds burn, overtaking him with a heat so sharp that he barely has the brainpower to be suspicious of their new passenger.
“You’re pale.” Lavellin’s eyes roam his face. “You may be going into shock. This is why it’s better to turn your pain off and feel it later when you’ve calmed down.”
Before he can say anything, a jolt shoots through him as Lavellin takes his hand in its own. His instinct is to pull his hand away, but he doesn’t.
The contact is softening his pain, taking away the sharp edges of it. Torver releases a held breath.
“How are you doing that?” he croaks into its face that is both fine-boned and entirely too close to his.
“You people are really deficient down here, aren’t you?” Lavellin marvels softly. “How on earth do you manage on only one magic each? I would simply pass away.”
Bassen clears her throat above them.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” she says. “We might escape execution if we’re caught with a dead Rath instead of a live one.”
Lavellin’s head tilts.
“Rath? Is that what you call us?” It almost laughs, like it’s either unaware of the awkwardness and tension in the air, or trying to ignore it.
“Your name? Yeah,” Torver supplies when Bassen doesn’t respond. The agony of his wounds subdued, he’s beginning to regain a little mental clarity. He rationalises that he should probably keep it from bothering Bassen, who is more than likely to turf it from the wagon in a fit of rage.
Lavellin’s chuckle is like birdsong and Torver’s face feels hot, ever so aware that his hand is loosely gripped by his ostensible enemy.
“I mean, I guess it’s not wrong…” Lavellin shrugs conversationally.
“The Rath is the name of the castle where the King and all of the courtiers reside. The rest of the population live around the Rath in slate dwellings—the castle is the cultural and residential centre of the kingdom. Most of the other land is too wild to be inhabited most of the year.”
Its eyes bore holes into him like it can buy his unwavering trust in exchange for cultural tidbits. Though it’s a conscious effort for Torver’s interest not to show on his face.
“If you’re not Rath, then what do you call yourselves?” he asks after a moment of picturing a land with winters so wild that the people huddle around a grand castle.
Lavellin shrugs. “I don’t think your language has a word for it.”
“Well, what’s the word in your language, then?”
“Fae.”
“Fae…” Torver tries the word and it fits in his mouth, the flat vowels of his accent making it hum in his chest.
Up in the driver’s seat, Bassen is less impressed.
“Whatever the word,” she says firmly, “I’m not letting us get executed on your account. So if we find a healer, is there a way you can…get rid of your ears?”
Even through the haze, Torver is mortified. “Bassen, you can’t just ask that.”
Lavellin laughs. “If you have string, maybe I can fold the points down and tie them in place. That way I can hide them underneath my hair?”
Bassen nods and turns back to the horses.
Torver shifts his first finger slightly against Lavellin’s hand, the intimacy of the position making his skin crawl.
His fingertip lands in something gummy. He looks down, lip curling, to see his finger lodged in a bite wound the size of a coin on the side of Lavellin’s hand.
The Rath doesn’t react, just sways easily with the rock of the wagon, and curves its other arm up to rest its hand beneath its head. It gazes up into the sky, the blood in its coppery hair drying brown.
As if it can feel his eyes on it, Lavellin squeezes his hand and Torver inwardly recoils.