Chapter 13 #3
“I’m not going to leave you to Vrathgar’s mothering. I’m better at it.” My face flushed. God, I didn’t want to be his mother. But…
“You’re right,” he said. “They’ll understand. You can make friends later. You don’t need to push yourself right now.” He started to speak again, stopped.
I sat there, feeling stupid.
A call sounded out, up ahead. He grimaced. “Alright—" he started to stand, and suddenly Tyralk was lunging over to us, Vrathgar behind him, scolding and helping pull him up.
“I’m fine—"
Tyralk slapped his back in a hug. “Just take the help, you idiot. It’s a long way to the stones.”
My blood went cold. “The stones?” I said, and they blinked. I must have been using that power again, not thinking about it. “I…we’re going to reach the stones?”
Vrathgar glanced at Khal, nodded. “Yes. We’ll reach the kael by sundown.” He hesitated, like he too sensed the discomfort. “That’s why they're pushing so hard, to camp with the children and the old ones.”
“It’s warmer,” Khal said. He was avoiding my gaze again. I looked at Tyralk, who shrugged.
“It is warmer,” he muttered.
The whole group was moving again, mother’s voices haranguing children, people calling to each other.
“The stones,” I repeated.
“Nothing is going to happen,” Khal said. “I promised you.”
Vrathgar clasped my shoulder, an unexpected, clumsy comfort. “You can listen to him. Khal is good at politics, yeah?” He pulled our pack off the ground onto his back. “He’s not alone, and you’re not alone, alright?”
Someone whooped farther behind us, and this time I got the feeling that the young women were calling to Vrathgar, who studiously ignored it. I stretched the magic long enough to hear "—if you’re looking for things to carry—"
Tyralk’s crutch fell into rhythm next to us, and each time he sensed Khal flagging, he complained, too loud, and gave us a reason to slow down.
The sun had set when the stones loomed ahead of us, one grand one looming larger in the center.
“Are we going inside?”
Khal shook his head. “The inside of these is small, barely a room. They’re more of a campground than an inn. We make our shelters around them, and we gather at the center for ceremony.” His breathing had grown more labored over the last hours.
“Ceremony.”
Children ran, laughing and shrieking, into the ring ahead.
“The celebration of a child, a coming of age, an alliance.”
Gernaz and another of his brothers helped build our lean-to. Another clasp of his arm, a forehead touching his.
“You have many people who care for you,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I want to be stronger for them, but I…” he trailed off.
“It’s nice to know. That they care,” I finished softly.
He nodded.
I started unstrapping the bedroll from his pack that Krashal had left. I was marshaling the words to ask if we could share it when a voice echoed outside our tent. “Khal?” One of the orcs in his band. “You need to come to the center. You’re being summoned.”
The twilight painted the stones in purple, and the elders I’d seen before, along with so many others, gathered within that massive ring.
Drazha was her former bedecked self, and her eyes snagged on Khal as we approached, but she didn’t speak.
The older woman from before, her brow creased, stood at the edge of the clearing next to an outer stone. Beside her was Sephar.
“Cousin. Thank you for coming.” This man, Khal’s enemy and his kin, spoke in Orcish. He bowed a little to the chieftains. “I’m sorry to take up your time when so many have waited to do so. But since this is a matter concerning the integrity of the enclave, I wanted to be prompt.”
Drazha’s eyes were ice. “Out with it, whelp.” No love was lost between the chieftain and her nephew.
His smile didn’t waver. He addressed the wider crowd.
“It’s been a long time since the warriors of the Drashik were involved in wife-stealing.
Forced marriage has been outlawed for us for some time.
We are not the Gol Droth. But my cousin has told the assembly, not a seven-day ago, that when he went to the backwards humans to form pacts with them, they acted beyond our laws. ”
The crowd murmured. Khal was rigid beside me.
“The humans still sell their wombed children for chattel, and my dear cousin didn’t check if he was making an alliance with a willing bride, or indulging in kidnapping.
” The murmur spread. Sephar smiled. “Now, the council has ruled rightly, and my cousin has acted as best he could, as a bumbler who had stumbled into crime. No one argues that the lass should be punished for his error. Rowena has earned a place among us, through the valor of a champion: she’s earned the right to be wed to a warrior.
But no one would be cruel enough to say it has to be the same warrior who carried her away. ”
Horror writhed in my gut.
Sephar spread his arms. “The stolen sorceress has seen the way into our sanctum. She must become one of us. She must pass through the stones. But I want to offer a more compassionate option to saddling her to her kidnapper.” He held out a hand towards me, and Common rolled off his tongue. “She can marry me.”