The Nightblade Epic Volume Two: A Book of Underrealm, page 42
That took Loren aback, and she frowned. “Of course not. Why would I?”
Niya grinned. “I am sure I will give you reason. But no, it is only something I was made to promise by the person who taught me.”
Loren allowed herself a tiny smile at that. She supposed such a tradition was no evil thing. “Then I give you my word, and easily.”
The Mystic led her to a nearby tree and produced a hunting knife from her belt. “You must hold the knife by whichever end is lightest. The weight on the other end will give your throw power. Here.”
She placed the blade into Loren’s hand, and Loren felt the weight of it. “I would hold this one by the hilt.” But my dagger, I would hold by the blade, she thought. Her fingers wrapped around Niya’s knife.
“Just so, but you must hold it differently,” said Niya. She pried Loren’s fingers apart—Loren did not miss the heat of the woman’s skin upon her own—and adjusted the grip. “Hold it with only your thumb and the first two fingers—three, if the knife is larger. The hardest part is ensuring that the knife does not spin in the air, so that the blade strikes your target, and not the hilt. Do your best, but do not be surprised if it does not work.”
Loren drew back and threw. The blade wobbled slightly, but it sped true, and the first finger’s breadth of it sank into the bark of the tree. Niya drew back, eyes wide with astonishment.
“It comes to you naturally. And to think, in Ammon you doubted my skills as a teacher.”
An urge gripped her, and Loren obeyed it without thinking. She looked the Mystic in the eyes and smiled. “Mayhap in Ammon I was distracted from the lesson.”
Niya’s smile turned feral. “And what, I wonder, distracted you?”
They paused like that for a moment. Then Loren shook her head and took a step back. “I should not have said that. I did not mean to be untoward.”
“I know what you meant, girl. I have told you before, I know when a woman is enjoying herself.” Niya went to the tree and removed her knife before walking off. Without looking back, she called over her shoulder, “You have talent, but you need practice to turn that into skill. Use your hunting knife.”
Loren watched her go until she felt someone’s gaze upon her. She turned quickly, expecting to find Chet. But it was only Gem, watching her with a curious expression.
“It seems I have some ability when it comes to throwing knives,” said Loren.
“I have always wanted to learn to do it,” said Gem. “Mayhap you can teach me.”
Loren arched an eyebrow. “Me? Niya should instruct you. She is a master at it.”
Gem looked the way the Mystic had gone. “I suppose so, but she is … an intimidating woman. I do not think she likes me, and would rather learn from you in any case.”
“It would be my honor—only let me practice a bit myself, so that I know better how to instruct you.”
She threw the knife for an hour before she went to sleep that night. When she stood her watch in the early morning hours, she practiced with her dagger instead of the hunting knife, for no one was awake to see it. Not every throw was as true as her first, but she found herself getting better and better at it. She kept practicing as the days passed, and very soon she could easily land her throw within a hand’s breadth of the spot she aimed for.
It was good to have the distraction, for the road was otherwise monotonous. It gave her something to do when they stopped to eat, or to make camp for the night. Though the road was far easier than the one they had taken to Dahab, it was not well traveled, and they would sometimes go two or more days without seeing someone passing by. When they did, they avoided speaking, or giving any greeting more than a nod.
The landscape they traveled was fair enough, Loren supposed, but she preferred the drier, taller trees of the Birchwood to the jungled land they rode through now. The vegetation always seemed damp, and the trees were knotted with great vines that clutched their trunks as if to strangle them. When they did come upon clear, green lands, it felt as if the air grew lighter, and they drank it in with deep breaths. But always the road took them back into the jungle again, where they would spend days at a time beneath a canopy of leaves so thick that they never saw the sun.
They came often upon smaller side roads that led off deeper into the jungle. Many were marked on their maps, and ran in the same direction they traveled. But when Shiun suggested they use those roads, Niya shook her head.
“It is no use trying to use back ways and lesser-known paths,” she said. “Now more than ever we require speed. If we can reach Yewamba fast enough, Hewal will not have enough time to warn Damaris of our coming.”
“Could he not remain in bird form, and fly there in only a few days?” said Loren.
“I do not think he is strong enough for that,” said Weath. “To hold a shape other than their own, a weremage must keep their concentration, and the greater their change, the harder it becomes. Changing his form so that he looked like another person would be one thing. That requires only the smallest use of power, and many weremages learn to hold such a transformation even as they sleep. But it would be a powerful weremage indeed who could maintain the form of a bird, or any beast, for days on end. And if Hewal were so strong in his magic, he would likely have turned into something far more fearsome than a bear when last we fought him.”
“How do you know these things?” said Gem, eyes alight with curiosity. “I thought you were an alchemist.”
“Weremagic and alchemy are mirrors of each other,” said Weath. “Indeed, they can sense each other, so that I can tell when a spell of either branch is used near me, unless the wizard has learned to conceal it.”
“Can they do so?” said Annis, arching an eyebrow. “I have never heard of this.”
“Magic has many secrets,” said Weath, shrugging. “The children of merchants rarely learn them unless they are wizards themselves, for what would be the purpose? As for your question—yes, a wizard may conceal their spells after much practice—and the smaller the spell, the easier to hide it.”
“I am surprised to hear you call them alchemy and weremagic,” said Loren. “Xain insisted the branches had different names. He called himself an elementalist.”
“He is a noble,” chuckled Weath. “I am a farmer’s daughter from Dorsea. I never cared for the frivolities that the Academy tried to force upon the students.”
Loren looked at her again, raising a brow in surprise. She had met few enough Dorseans, other than the taciturn villagers they had met for one terrible night as they fled east across that kingdom. They had been reserved and easily offended, much like the people in tales Loren had heard of Dorseans all her life. But Weath was kind and generous to the point of fault, and always the one to calm tensions among the party. She was curious if Weath knew that Loren was from Selvan, and for the first time she found herself wondering if Dorseans grew up with tales of Selvan’s people as well.
The days passed quickly, if quietly, for the jungle sometimes made them nervous to speak too much. It was as though the verdant growth itself was listening to them, and was none too pleased by what it heard. The wildlife was as colorful as the vegetation. They learned from Uzo that they must not touch any of the brightly-colored frogs, for some of them had poison in their skin. Most snakes, too, were venomous. In fact it seemed that so many animals in this place were venomous that Loren wondered what people ate.
But while the creatures around them bore little resemblance to the animals of her home, they were often breathtaking in their beauty. Uzo, however, hardly spared them a second glance. Loren soon realized that to him, these were as commonplace as starlings in the Birchwood. She wondered if he had ever been to one of the southern forests, and if so, whether the squirrels and rabbits were as wondrous to him as these animals were to her.
“I think we are upon the right road,” said Gem, when nearly a week of travel had passed. Some of the others gave him odd looks. He grinned at them from his seat beside Loren. “The sky itself has stopped hampering our journey. Why else would it spare us its storms, except as a sign that we are going where we are meant to go?”
That drew a chuckle from most of them. Even Uzo smiled, though he often seemed annoyed by Gem’s antics and never-ending optimism. “This journey has taught me that Elves are real. I suppose I can believe in your signs and portents as well.”
Gem did not stop beaming at that for the rest of the day.
But though the mood of most of the party had risen considerably, Chet’s only grew worse the farther they rode. He would not acknowledge Niya at all unless absolutely necessary, and then he would say only one or two words at a time. He was curt with the rest of them as well, and would often make snide remarks. When asked to help gather firewood, or hunt, he would sometimes mutter, “We would not need to do so if we were riding in the right direction.” When they made camp each night, he made a point of sleeping out of Loren’s reach within their tent.
For the first several days she bore it silently, for she thought his ill mood might fade after a time. Gem kept trying to entice him into conversation, though Chet never seemed willing. Then, on the tenth day of their ride, Gem asked curiously why Chet and Loren and Shiun did not keep their bows strung while they rode.
“Because we know how bows work,” snapped Chet. “And we do not want to break ours. If you wish to learn about archery, find an instructor.”
Gem balked. Loren fixed Chet with a steely glare, and then looked over her shoulder at the boy. “Gem, ride with Annis for a while. I must ask Shiun a question about the road ahead. Chet, come with me.”
Chet had gone sullen. He could no doubt sense her anger, and must have known this was no ride for pleasure. “She is not far ahead,” he said lamely.
“Come,” she said, and nudged Midnight into a canter. She heard the hoofbeats of his horse behind her a moment later.
When they were out of sight of the others, she turned from the road down a side path. It led up a hill, and Loren slowed to a walk. He followed behind her silently, for which she was grateful—if he had made some snide remark about their course, she might have struck him. The path soon took them up to a crest that looked over flatlands to the north, running to a great lake in the far distance. She stopped and turned Midnight so that they faced each other.
“You must stop undermining this mission.”
“It is a fool’s errand. It is not safe, Loren.”
“Of course it is not safe,” she said angrily. “Where is safety to be found in this time? Nowhere in Underrealm, that is for certain.”
“So your intent, then, is to seek danger? How does that seem a wise course?”
“My intent is to help stop this war. Unless the High King and those who serve her stop the Necromancer—”
“Then let the High King stop them,” said Chet. “You have done enough.”
“Nothing is enough until the danger has passed,” said Loren, shaking her head. “The threat only grows.”
“And so does the threat to you,” said Chet. “I could bear it when you entered Enalyn’s service, for if you were determined to join in this battle, it seemed better to have the power of the Seat at your back. I thought you would be safer in Ammon, far from all the battles that have yet been fought. But this … this is not just foolish, it is foolhardy beyond reckoning.”
“You thought,” said Loren, rolling her eyes. “When will you learn that your thoughts are your own? They are not mine. I never planned to seek safety.”
“Why did you even leave the forest, then?” said Chet, shouting now. He nudged his horse forwards so that they were within arm’s reach of each other. “You said you left because of your parents. They are gone now, Loren. You can do anything you want to—”
“Of course I can do anything I want!” she cried. “I always could, without any need for your permission. And this is the life I choose.”
Chet went stock still. He stared at her for a long while as she sat there, her shoulders heaving, barely restraining the urge to throw him from his saddle and pummel his foolish head. And in the silence, Loren saw the dawning realization in his eyes. It was the look of a man who had been speaking to someone in a mask, only to have the mask ripped away and the person beneath look nothing like he thought.
“It is,” he said, his voice suddenly small. “It is what you choose.”
And suddenly Loren felt that she, too, saw someone entirely new to her. In her eyes, Chet again became the young boy who had made her promise to dance with him, the boy who had followed her with doe’s eyes around their village. She did not know what she had seen him as only a moment before. That image of him was wiped away so completely that it was as though it had never existed, and now he was little more than a child again.
Of course he is a child, she thought. You both are, if you would only be honest with yourself. But pride kept her from giving voice to the thought.
“Do you enjoy this, Loren?”
Her fury had burned a bit lower in the long silence, but she was still angry as she shrugged. “I—of course I do not enjoy it. I do not enjoy danger, or the deaths of those I love. Jordel died, and Albern, and Mag with Sten by her side. Yet that is why I can do nothing else. That is why I must go on—because they cannot. You have told me often of your plans, or at least your desires, to run away from all this. You say you want to hide away in some forgotten corner of Underrealm and let this great war pass us by, like hiding in a hollow tree against a raging storm. I can never do that, Chet.”
“I thought you wanted to, once,” said Chet. “I thought we both wanted to run away together.”
“Because that was better than the life my parents deigned to give me. But now I could not live with myself. I could not abandon the nine kingdoms or the people I love. And that is because of my parents, Chet. That is what they would do—run away, look after themselves, never giving a thought to anyone else. I have roamed too far and seen too much, and I love too many. A merchant’s child, a city urchin, a fallen wizard, and yes, even you, you great idiot. I love you all, and more besides, and all of you will suffer if darkness is allowed to win.”
Chet looked at her a moment longer before turning away. “I cannot live my life for others. Not anymore. I want to live in safety, as long as I can, and I want you to be safe. That is all I want, Loren. I do not care for Underrealm, but only for you. The nine kingdoms mean nothing to me. Not next to a pair of green eyes.”
“That is some bard’s sentiment, Chet,” said Loren. “It is not anything useful.”
He did not answer, or even look at her. Slowly he turned his horse and rode back towards the others, leaving her alone on the hilltop.
THEY REACHED FELDEMAR’S WESTERN LANDS three days later. Annis told them they were close. Loren had often consulted with her during the journey, huddling together over their map, and she had pointed out the place where she thought Yewamba must be located. As she had said, there was nothing marked there. The closest thing was a small town nearby, a place called Sarafu. It was little more than a village, but it was one of the areas from which much coin and many soldiers had vanished.
“If there is a road to Yewamba, we may find a sign of it in Sarafu,” said Annis. “At the very least, the area around it will be our best hope to start looking.”
They could not ride into the town, for it would not do for the Yerrins to learn that a party matching their description had come there. Instead they set up camp in the jungle an hour’s walk away. They sent Uzo and Shiun into the place to buy supplies and ask after information. Hewal had never met either of them, other than during their brief fight south of Ammon. Loren hoped he would not recognize either of them by their description, if he heard any word about two strangers arriving to the town.
The Mystics returned with no information that would help. They had not asked after the fortress by name, of course, but no one in town seemed to have heard of any military movements, and they had spied no Yerrin activity at all. If the family Yerrin was indeed operating in Sarafu, they did so in secret.
They began their search the day after they arrived, splitting the party in two. Loren led Chet and Weath riding north along the foot of the mountains, while Niya took Uzo and Shiun south. They followed roads when there were roads to follow, and dove off into the countryside when there were not. Gem and Annis remained at the camp, looking after their possessions.
Once again, Loren found herself at the foot of the Greatrock Mountains. These were the northern reaches of the same range, after it turned northwest and cut across Dorsea. Here they formed Feldemar’s western border, just as they formed Selvan’s in the south. As they had ridden west, she had feared that the sight of the mountains might call to mind painful memories of Jordel. But these peaks were so different from the ones they had traveled together that she could hardly believe they were the same range. In the south, the peaks were tall but gentle, peaked with snow atop the grey and brown of rock and soil. In Feldemar, the jungle ran straight up the sides of the mountains to the very top, even now, in winter, and their silhouette was like a row of upraised knife blades against the sky.
The first long day’s search revealed nothing, and they returned to camp defeated. Niya came back shortly after Loren, and from the slump of her shoulders Loren thought she could tell how successful they had been. But she rose from her place by the fire and went to them, regardless.
“Did you see anything?”
“Nothing,” said Niya, shaking her head. “We will ride farther tomorrow.”
“As will we.”
And so they did. Loren led the others galloping north on the best road they could find, passing in a rush the landscape that they had searched in detail the day before. When they reached lands they had not yet searched, they slowed once more to renew their hunt. But that day proved just as fruitless as the first, and their heads hung still lower by the time they had returned to the camp. This time Niya came back first. She, too, had been unsuccessful.
They were a morose party that night. As they sat eating a meager meal around the fire, they rarely looked at each other. Niya spit a bit of gristle into the flames, and the sound was so loud that Annis jumped.
