Chapter Eleven
In the morning, Kaelen expects me to ride with him again, but Elianna rescues me when she sees the obvious stiffness of my gait.
“She’ll ride with me. I have things I need to teach her,” she says, taking my arm.
When Kaelen strides off toward River, I groan. “How can it hurt so much more after sleep than it did when I got down off the horse?”
Elianna, dressed in a subdued dark-blue gown, smacks her forehead with one hand. “I knew I was forgetting something last night. I’ll give you an ointment to soothe the sore muscles. Apply it now. It will still help you.”
“I hope so,” I mutter darkly, wincing with each step. “Or I’m never riding a horse again.”
After applying the ointment and washing my face, I pause, considering, but finally dig in the scraps of parchment in my small bag until I find adventure and twine it into my braid. That’s how I plan to view today. With courage and confidence.
Plus, “adventure” sounds so much better than “mission to almost certain death.”
For a moment, I wrap my fingers around my wooden snow leopard and slowly inhale, then exhale. I can do this.
I can.
After that, I join Elianna on the wagon seat. She hands me a hunk of bread with cheese and a flask of hot, sugared tea. The sweet warmth makes me wonder how my fellow library servants are doing. They would be so happy to have sugar. If I ever go back to Pyrrh, I’ll have to bring them some.
As we drive along in silence, the thought of the library leads me to dreamily contemplate the fantastical idea of a home with my very own library.
Maybe it could have a hidden passageway to a secret room where I keep my very favorite books and scrolls.
It would have reading nooks with comfortable chairs and pillows, where I could spend hours and hours lost in words, only emerging once in a while for all the sugared tea and cakes I could ever want.
My smile fades when I realize how much a part of this happy daydream merely involves regular access to food. Even my dreams have shrunk to fit the cramped confines of the life chosen for me by others—others who view my mind as a problem to be managed, rather than a part of who I am.
Before I can sink into further gloomy consideration, we round a stand of trees to get a peek at the shore, and the Brazen River sparkles before our eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, standing to get a better look. The horses jolt forward, and I have to grab the top of the wagon frame to steady myself. The river is a massive swath of deep blue moving water, and I see a flock of ducks waddling self-importantly on the shore.
“Do you see—”
I’m interrupted by shouts. Elianna urges the horses forward to break through the trees, and we see the rest of our party on foot, engaged in a full-on battle with a group of Zhagarn.
Behind them, what’s left of the ferry is in flames.
Kaelen shouts something I can’t quite make out.
Bern leaps on his horse and gallops back in our direction, wheeling around and drawing his sword when he reaches us.
“They were too busy torturing the ferryman to notice us until we were almost on top of them,” he says grimly, out of breath and panting out the words. “There are only fifteen of them, though.”
“Only fifteen? Only?” I stand to see better, but Elianna yanks me back down.
“Don’t make a target of yourself,” she hisses before she ignores her own advice, stands, and starts hurling her dangerous balls of energy at the enemy.
But they’re fighting too closely to our people, and she can’t hit the Zhagarn without possibly striking one of our own, so she gives up seconds later.
“Bern! We’re safe here. Go help them! Fifteen against five is …” I trail off when I see the last Zhagarn fall, impaled by Kaelen’s sword.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Soli, but fifteen against these five is a losing day for the fifteen,” Bern says, his breath evening out.
He’s right. Chitai is calmly replacing her daggers in their sheaths while Andras wipes his swords off on a dead enemy’s coat. Trick holds daggers in both hands, both of them bloody. Neville’s stomping around and looking down at each body, probably to ensure they’re really dead.
Kaelen is staring at me.
“We’re fine,” I call out, and I see the tension in his muscles relax slightly.
“We need Elianna!” he calls back. “This man is still alive.”
“Watch the wagon,” Elianna tells Bern. “Soli, I need you.” She reaches into the wagon and pulls out her valise, jumps down, and races toward the others. I follow her, carefully making my way around the bodies I’m trying hard not to look at.
When I reach the group around Elianna and her patient, Kaelen glances over his shoulder at me and nods. Whether it’s a nod of approval or acknowledgment, I don’t have time to think or care about, because Elianna is already snapping rapid-fire orders at me.
“Soli! Good. Hold pressure on this chest wound while I see what I’ve got in my bag that might help. I didn’t have time to pack carefully before we left in such a hurry, so I’m not sure what herbs and potions need replenishment.”
When I don’t move, she pins me with a hard stare. “Either help me or get out of the way. I need your hand right here.”
Neville is on the man’s other side, tying a tourniquet around his leg.
I flinch when I see what’s left of that leg below the knee.
It looks like the minced pork the cook uses to make sausage.
My stomach roils at the thought, but I force down the instinct to run away or retch or hide in the wagon.
Instead, I put my hand right there. Elianna nods and digs in her valise.
“Good news,” she mutters, retrieving a vial of red-gold liquid. “This still has a bit of magic in it.”
I don’t understand what she means, since she can just add magic right now or even perform magic directly on the man, can’t she? But the Sorcerers’ Guild jealously guards their secrets, so I’ve never been able to find much to read about them. I realize I have no idea what Elianna can actually do.
The man’s face is a horror that will surely haunt the edges of my nightmares for a long time.
His scalp is halfway torn from his head and hanging down by a flap over his ear.
I see other bloody wounds all over the front of his body, and from the pool of blood spreading beneath him, there are more to be found on his back.
I can’t reconcile the fresh, clean scent of the river and the sounds of the little family of ducks with the terrible sight on the ground in front of me.
Somehow, unbelievably, he’s conscious. I almost wish he’d faint, if only to escape what must be unendurable pain, but he keeps trying to talk.
“Shh,” Elianna soothes him. “Quiet. There’s no need to talk now. We’re here to help you. Just try to be still.”
With that, she pours a measure of the potion directly into the bloody wounds.
Within seconds, the bleeding stops. A few moments after that, the edges of the wounds seal themselves together right in front of us.
I can’t help but gasp. I’ve never witnessed magical healing before, and I know I’ll never forget the sight of Elianna, her golden eyes burning with power, performing a miracle on this injured and possibly dying man.
When she stands, carefully placing her vial back into her valise, she looks at Kaelen. “We need to go. We have no way of knowing if more are on their way.”
“What about him? We can’t leave him here,” I protest.
“Yes. We can,” she says, spinning to walk back to the wagon. I can barely make out her quiet words when she passes me. “Our only job is to save Altarra. I shouldn’t have even bothered with him.”
A chill shivers down my spine at the dispassion in her voice.
“You can really leave him to die?” I call after her.
She stops but doesn’t turn. “You can still ask that, after Lil? I’ve gone past counting the life debts I owe. If we go on at this rate, you’ll soon be able to say the same.”
I wrap my arms around myself, huddling against the ice traveling through me at the thought. I don’t want to say the same. I don’t want to owe life debts.
“I’ll be fine,” the ferryman rasps out between coughs. “I’m Reland Wyle. Thank her for me, and thank Artemisen, may she be restored.”
Kaelen, hand on the hilt of his sword, continually scans our surroundings but spares a glance for the rapidly recovering man. “Did they say anything? Were they on their way to Pallanhold?”
Wyle shakes his head and groans, putting a hand to his chest. “They were on their way to the Spires.”
The Spires is a mountain range that forms the border between Pyrrh and the Sorcerers’ Guild Deeded Territory to the east. What can they hope to accomplish there? The sorcerers’ magical shields will fry them in their boots before they can step one foot onto the territory.
“They were fighting among themselves, in between taking turns to torture me,” Wyle says grimly. “I guess they didn’t mind that I overheard, since I was meant to die where I lay bleeding.”
“Fighting about what?” Kaelen demands.
“Fighting about which direction to go to find the ones carrying the … something. I thought one of them said ‘the pain,’ but I don’t know how that would make sense.”
Andras makes a hissing sound. “Was it the Bane? Could they have said the Bane?”
Wyle’s forehead furrows, and then he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that was it. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, ferryman,” Andras says, leaping back onto his horse. “It means we must leave. Now. Do you have kin nearby?”
The man nods, and Sergeant Neville and Bern help him to the wagon. I catch up with Kaelen, who’s leading River toward the road.
“Why were the Zhagarn traveling with no Fell?”
“I don’t know. It makes no sense.”
“What does that mean, the Bane?”
Kaelen shakes his head. “I don’t know that, either. But it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s related to the amulet.”
When we reach the wagon, Kaelen confronts the Sylvan. “What is the Bane?”
“It’s the amulet, of course.” Andras’s face is so hard, it could be carved from obsidian. “The Zhagarn called it the Bane one hundred years ago, when I carried it away from Artemisen’s crystal prison.”