Chapter 24 Valenna
Chapter twenty-four
Valenna
Rib-cracking pressure, unbearable pain. Valenna couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even struggle. Lights popped in her vision as the snake constricted, and then, suddenly—release.
Sliding free of the snake’s coils, Valenna lay in the dirt and dragged in aching, wheezing breaths. Her ribs throbbed like fingers uncurling from a tight fist. Coughing, she pushed up to her knees and stared at the endless tangle of limp scales.
Unless a hero had appeared out of the trees and rescued them, Evander must have killed the serpent.
Oh, Roz. Where was he? Valenna stumbled to her feet, and her gaze fell on Evander a few paces away, trapped under the serpent’s head. He wasn’t struggling; he was just lying calmly, staring at the waving canopy. Thinking he was dead, Valenna let out a strangled shriek.
But then he turned his head.
“There you are,” he said, his voice compressed. “I’ve been searching for you.”
“You’ve been searching for me?” she cried. “I wasn’t the one who got carried away by my wretched pet.”
She slid to her knees beside him. “Are you alright?”
“Just contemplating existence,” he rasped, “while being slowly crushed to death.”
Valenna hefted her shoulder against the snake’s body, but it hardly budged. Evander grit his teeth and tried to push it, and Valenna gasped and grabbed his wrists.
“Stop! You’ll strain yourself.”
“Val,” he said, “if the hellish nonsense I’ve been through today hasn’t killed me yet, this isn’t going to do it.”
Valenna cast around for a fallen bough, found one sturdy enough to serve, wedged it under the snake’s jaw, and doubled over it. Her feet lifted off the ground, and the head raised enough for Evander to roll free.
Valenna dropped the bough and bent over him.
“You’re lucky I came after you.” Her tone was angry, but her hands were gentle as she ran them over his body, feeling for fractures.
“I’ve never been so furious at anyone in my life.
To Roz with your oath! You would have let that thing eat you!
I could kill you! I could really …” Her voice hitched, and she bit down on the tirade. Evander, as usual, was unperturbed.
“I tried to find you, the second Hera dropped me. I swear.”
“Well, you would have had a bloody difficult time doing that from the digestive system of a giant snake, you absolute idiot!”
He struggled to his knees. “I need to find Hera before Raska finds me.”
“Why?”
“Raska fears Hera. She won’t take me when Hera is with me.”
“But why does Raska want you? I don’t understand.”
His eyes were bleary, his complexion too pale. She pulled his arm around her shoulders and helped him stand. “We need to get you more wyvern bone powder quickly. You’re bleeding inside your head, I can tell. Your eyes don’t look right.”
He wavered, blinking rapidly. “I have a friend nearby. We can catch our breath there,” he said.
“A friend?” Valenna asked. “Here?”
But Evander was so near collapsing, she decided not to press it. Dozens of questions battered around in her mind, but she tamped them down. Shelter first, explanations later. Still, Valenna couldn’t shake the sense that she was standing on a frozen lake, and the ice had begun to crack.
It felt like hours before they came upon the hut. It was little more than a heap of stones with a thatched roof and a wooden door. A small, mossy patch of sun-dappled forest floor stretched before it, broken by a shallow stream burbling over smooth, brown rocks.
Beside the hut grew an unruly garden. Hera stood among the pumpkin vines, half her big body crushing the fence as she munched a cabbage. She glanced at Evander and Valenna as they entered the clearing and huffed a diffident greeting, then pulled a mouthful of carrots from the soil.
The hut door opened, and a tall man dressed in an oversized, ill-fitting robe bustled out. He was lanky and leathery, with no hair on his head, and an overabundance of hair everywhere else. He resembled a hedge someone had given up trimming.
“Welcome! Welcome! Oh, I’m so pleased you made it, Evandaine!” he cried.
Valenna jumped away from Evander like he was a venomous spider. “Evandaine? That’s impossible!”
Evander smiled sheepishly at her and conveniently collapsed.
“Oh, dear,” the man said. He moved to help Evander, but Valenna stood frozen, her jaw slack, staring at him in blank stupefaction.
Evander didn’t get up. He seemed only half-conscious, and Valenna’s instincts took over. She grabbed his arm, not as gently as she normally would, and shook him. “Where is your wyvern bone powder, Vander?”
Of course, he didn’t have any on him, but Valenna was reeling with shock and exhaustion, and she madly expected him to produce a tin of it from his pants pocket.
With a belligerent grunt, he stumbled to his feet and staggered into the hut. Frustrated and confused, Valenna followed him through the rickety door.
The interior was dark, the ceiling low. To Valenna’s right, a rough cot woven of branches extended the full length of the tiny space, with a bookshelf at its head and another at its foot.
A clay oven stood against the wall to the left, and a small table with two handmade chairs filled the center of the space.
Against the far wall was a little counter strewn with vegetables, sliced bread, and a few chipped dishes.
With every passing second, Evander’s cheeks washed ashen, his movements growing clumsy. He sat heavily on the cot, planted his elbows on his knees, and rested his head in his hands.
“Evander!” Valenna’s voice came out shrill. “Where is your wyvern bone powder? Tell me! You need it! Is it in your room? I can go back and get it!”
He sank sideways. “I just need to rest for a moment.”
“Stay awake!” Valenna cried, kneeling and gripping his arms. “Don’t fall asleep. If you fall asleep, you might not wake again. Vander, where is your medicine? A few sips of it and you’ll feel better!”
He sat up, his head hanging and his hair tangling over his eyes. He squeezed her hand and said in a husky voice, “Val … I’m out.”
All the blood drained from Valenna’s face, and her fingers, clutching Evander’s sleeve, went slack. She sat back on her heels and stared at him, her mouth agape. He looked at her, almost apologetically. His pupils were tiny black pinpricks in a halo of ivy green.
“I’m sorry, Val,” he said. “I should have told you, but I hoped …”
“No, you must have more. What about the tin I gave you?”
“Out.”
The hermit bustled in, his long robe dragging on the dirt floor. “Good news!” he announced. “I’ve got fresh purple potatoes for supper, some lovely radishes, and something else … I can’t remember what I was so excited about. It wasn’t the potatoes. There was another thing …”
Valenna ignored him. “It’s alright. I’ll go back to Silvanlight and buy more wyvern bone from the apothecary. Stay here and try to …”
“There isn’t any in Silvanlight,” Evander interrupted. “There isn’t any anywhere.”
Valenna let out an unhinged little laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. Surely there’s more somewhere.”
Evander shook his head and said, “Wyverns are extinct. There is no more wyvern bone powder in Allagesh.”
Valenna was not accustomed to helplessness. She had the warrior’s instinct to act and to do. Evander’s words struck ice-cold terror in her veins. No more wyvern bone powder meant … it meant …
“You must be mistaken,” she said. “You didn’t look hard enough. If you ask at other towns … or send letters to larger apothecaries …”
“Val,” Evander said firmly, his breath coming rapid and rasping. “There is no more wyvern bone powder in Allagesh. Trust me.”
“Then look harder,” she insisted. “Look outside Allagesh.”
“Wyvern bone powder!” the hermit cried, holding up his pointer finger in a gesture of discovery. “I have a little bit of that.”
Valenna spun around so fast, she lost her balance. “We need it!”
“I’ve just got a pinch. Enough for one cup of tea …”
As the hermit put a kettle onto the stove, Valenna found a clean cloth and wetted it with water from a pitcher on the table.
She busied herself with scrubbing aggressively at Evander’s gory face, neck, and arms, trying to tamp down her strangling panic.
Plum-colored vines crawled over her legs and entwined her waist. She glanced over her shoulder at the hermit preparing tea with agonizing care.
“Can you hurry?” she demanded.
Evander laughed. “You can’t rush … good tea …Val.”
“You can when it is literally a matter of life and death!”
The hermit smiled kindly as he placed a hand-painted ceramic teacup on the table. “Nearly done, my dear. I’m Torsten Oakwhistle. Physician and wizard.”
“I’m Valenna.”
“And you and Evandaine are …” He glanced between them.
“Confused,” she replied tersely.
“Ah.” Torsten mixed a pinch of white powder into the teacup and handed it to Valenna. Her hands trembled as she took it, and some of the tea sloshed out, burning her. She let out a string of curses, and poison ivy covered the window, darkening the room.
“I’m alright, Val,” Evander soothed.
“Don’t lie to me, it’s insulting. Now sit up and drink this.”
His eyelids drooped.
“VANDER!” she shouted, shaking him. “Drink it, or I’ll drown you with it!”
Evander took the cup and swallowed the contents like he was tossing back a glass of whiskey, then he set the teacup on the bookshelf and wiped his brow with his forearm.
Gradually, the color returned to his cheeks.
Valenna waited—silent, tense, her finger tapping a nervous rhythm on her knee.
With a tight smile, Torsten left, claiming he needed to get Hera out of his garden before she ate his crop.
A moment later, Valenna heard him through the wall, scolding, and Hera’s feet crunching on vines.
“Alright, now that you’re out of imminent danger, explain why he calls you Evandaine,” she said.
Evander leaned against the wall and drew up one of his legs, resting his arm on his knee, and said with a sudden accent he’d never had before, “Because that used to be my name.”