16: TRAVEL INCONVENIENCES
(Kihrin’s story)
I grabbed Thurvishar’s elbow and pulled him into a full sprint down the tunnel. Behind us came a vicious electrical whine while the sand kraken screamed. I didn’t know what effect the chaos storm had taken, and truthfully, I didn’t want to know; I just wanted to be outside the area of effect.
After my sides started to cramp and I was out of breath and gasping, I finally slowed down. I hadn’t been running my fastest, mind you; Thurvishar was lagging behind.
Teraeth held up a hand. “That should be enough.”
“Do you think we’ve escaped it?” Janel asked.
“I think if we were going to be caught in the storm, we would have by now.”
Janel leaned her back against the tunnel wall and slowly slid downward. She pulled out her morgage waterskin, took a drink, and grimaced.
I also drank and immediately knew why she’d made the face. I mean, it was technically water, but its cleanliness was debatable.1
“We might as well stop here.” Teraeth sat down. “Sleep for a while if we can. Who knows how long we’ll have to walk until this tunnel ends? But if we meet any more sand kraken, I’m going to see if they’re any good to eat.”
My laughter was strained. If we met up with any more sand kraken, we were all going to die.
“This is … not ideal,” Thurvishar said.
Janel smiled. “I do love your gift for understatement.”
But Thurvishar hadn’t just been making a commentary about our current predicament. Thurvishar was looking down at his long robes, dark gray rather than his usual House D’Lorus black. A darker color stained the cloth at his waist.
“You’re bleeding,” I said.
“I’d quite brilliantly tucked a dagger into my belt, you see.” Thurvishar explained. “So when the kraken grabbed me…” He looked pale. “In hindsight, that may have been a tactical error.”
“Oh hell. Teraeth, help me remove his robes.” I scrambled over to Thurvishar’s side to see how bad the damage was.
Pretty bad. While the dagger hadn’t created a deep stab wound, the edge had sliced down efficiently. Thurvishar had bled the entire fight since, easy enough to ignore with everyone fighting for their lives. If he’d been smaller, he’d probably have bled out long before he’d turned all the sand into glass. It was a wonder he hadn’t gone into shock.
Teraeth grabbed my wrist as I started to bring my hand near the wound. “You said healing does the opposite here.”
I met his eyes. “I was wrong. That’s not what happened earlier. And he’s going to die if I don’t heal him, so let’s go with the option that gives him a chance. You two should be prepared to run.”
I slipped my vision past the First Veil and looked over Thurvishar. The Veil didn’t look like what I expected; instead of the normal rainbow auras, chaotic eddies filled the world, flickering ugly fractal whirlpools. The chaos grew stronger in one direction, and I knew—absolutely knew—that if I followed it back to its source, Vol Karoth waited at its center. The farther from that monster, the less the effect. I paused a moment, waiting until the eddies around me weakened before I lowered my hand to Thurvishar’s side.
My mother had briefly tutored me while I’d been with the D’Mons, but I’d learned far more during my stay on the Black Brotherhood–controlled island of Ynisthana. Tyentso had enthusiastically endorsed being able to put one’s injured companions back together—or oneself—if the need arose. And wouldn’t you know it? Turns out I have a talent for healing.
I relinked the cut arteries and veins, pulled out a bacterial infection that had already begun to spread, and finally gave Thurvishar the energy he’d need to finish restocking his blood supplies. I felt pleased with myself. Miya would have been proud.
Except her name wasn’t Miya. It was Khaeriel. I tore my thoughts away from my mother.
By the end, Thurvishar regarded me with those blacker-than-black eyes, weak but smiling. “I can’t even fault your technique. Thank you.”
I smiled at him. “You’re welcome. You should sleep, though. You need to recover your strength.”
Thurvishar nodded. “I doubt I’ll be able to, given the bedding accommodations, but I’ll try.”
“Ha. I think you’ll find your body disagrees with you on that—” I broke off as I caught the scent of roasting meat.
I looked behind me to see Janel had heated the stone floor, using the hot surface to cook. I felt a moment of panic, but Janel had either been lucky or she’d worked with small enough sections to avoid the chaos effects. Maybe Teraeth had helped, because he was the one actually roasting the bits of pack animal, carefully flipping the meat to cook both sides.
“Fortunately, these don’t need much seasoning, but I’m afraid we’ll need to eat them Kirpis style.” He wrapped a piece of meat in cloth salvaged from a silk robe and handed it to Thurvishar.
“What’s Kirpis style?” I asked.
“Just imagine it tastes good.”2
“I’m just glad you’re here, Teraeth,” Janel said. “I’ve never cooked anything in my life. I’d have probably burned it all to char.”
That earned her one of Teraeth’s rare bright smiles, the sort with the power to make clouds part and the sun shine after a month of storms. I didn’t look away in time when Teraeth caught me staring. For just a moment, our eyes met.
“Catch.” Teraeth tossed me a piece, still piping hot.
I bounced the roast meat between my hands until it cooled, and then tucked in. No spices. No seasoning. It was the most delicious meal I’d ever tasted. No imagining required.
I suspected that had more to do with my hunger than the meat quality.
We ate all the meat Teraeth had butchered. There seemed little point in letting it spoil when we had no way to preserve it. Well, no way that wasn’t risky.
We just had to hope we’d escape the Blight before we all starved to death.
“I think I know why Thurvishar’s spell backfired,” I said after we’d finished our dinner and sat around, cross-legged in the dim red tunnel light.
“You mean the way you knew why Thurvishar’s spell backfired last time?” Teraeth reminded me.
“You can’t expect someone to explain that correctly on the first try,” I said. “Anyway, whenever I look past the First Veil, the whole region seems … corrupted. Chaos clusters float all over. Here’s my theory: the larger the spell, the greater the chance you’ll hit a cluster. And a gate covers a pretty large area.” I purposefully didn’t mention what I’d done to Rol’amar or how closely it resembled what Vol Karoth himself did to the people and objects around him.
I was trying desperately not to think about that.
“So is a human body.” Janel cleared her throat. “I haven’t intentionally been using my strength, but … wouldn’t I have run into a cluster too?”
“Really? That’s your idea of unintentional?” Teraeth raised an eyebrow at her.
Janel ignored him.
“Not necessarily, Janel,” Thurvishar’s sleepy voice said. “You have a strong aura without talismans, which may provide a buffer. If your sense of self protected you, that might explain why. It’s the same reason we’re taught not to target armor at the Academy or why someone looking to kill a sorcerer will often use daggers instead of swords. Daggers are small enough to be protected by their wielder’s aura.”
I glanced over at Teraeth. I’d always assumed he used daggers because they were easier to hide. Then I poked a finger at Thurvishar. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
Thurvishar chuckled, which turned into a groan. “You’re still talking. Besides, one of you might be wrong.”
“Sorry, Thurvy,” Janel said.
The glare he cast in her direction was so adorably irate I had to fight not to burst out laughing.
“If that’s true,” Janel said, “we’ll probably be fine as long as we only cast magic while looking past the First Veil, only affect a small area at a time, or only use it on our own bodies.”
“That still takes far too many risks,” Teraeth said. “We should perform magic as little as possible.”
“Obviously,” she snapped.
Teraeth’s eyes narrowed. “What is going on with you?”
“Oh, so we are going to talk about you second-guessing or contradicting everything I do or say? I assumed we were skipping that conversation.”
“Wanting you to be more careful is not contradicting everything you do or say,” Teraeth said. “You’re being reckless even by your standards.”
“Maybe I just don’t appreciate you treating me like a child.” Her voice rose at the end before she shook her head and gave the prostrate wizard a guilty glance when he sighed. “Sorry, Thurvishar.”
Teraeth blinked at her, then stood. “I’m treating you like a child. Right.” He turned to me. “I’m going to stretch my legs.” He stalked off into the darkness.
“Let me know if you find a babysitter out there,” she called out after him.
The silence felt tense and awkward after Teraeth left.
“You realize he treats everyone like that, right?” I finally said. “I mean, far be it from me to take Teraeth’s side, but he’s not singling you out.”
Janel scowled. “It feels like he is.”
I studied her for a minute. “Is this really about Teraeth?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Of course it is.”
I raised an eyebrow and waited.
Janel exhaled, a deep shuddering breath. “Okay, fine. Maybe it isn’t. I just can’t believe I let him use me like that. He turned me into bait, made me the lure so he could steal your cooperation, which you never would have done otherwise. I let him make me a fool. And then he took Qown—”
The he Janel meant wasn’t Teraeth. He was Relos Var.
“You know what Relos Var said to me, right after I’d smashed the control crystal and freed Vol Karoth?” I chuckled darkly. “He said, ‘Don’t feel so bad. A lot of very smart people fell for it.’ Implying I wasn’t one of those ‘very smart people.’ The jerk.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it easier to accept. He turned me into a game piece, something to be used and discarded. I’ll never forgive him.”
“More than fair,” I said. “He turned me into Vol Karoth, so, you know … I’m the last person who’ll suggest you should. But … do you want to talk about Qown?”
Janel stared at the far wall, although I doubted she focused on it. “I just don’t understand. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t…”
“I think Qown tried to tell us,” I said. “We just didn’t … we didn’t understand the message. You once told me Var had groomed you, but he was really grooming Qown. Relos Var is the leader of Qown’s religion, after all. And even the stories Qown told us didn’t paint Var in a bad light. He was always so nice to Qown. Always brought Qown his favorite foods. Relos Var opened up to him, entrusted secrets to him, made him feel special. Who wouldn’t have responded to that? I would have.”3
“I just wonder if some enchantment—” Janel clenched her fists in her lap and then slowly released them, finger by finger. “I don’t want to believe Qown left of his own free will. I want him to be under some spell.” She shook her head. “I know that wasn’t what happened. Qown thinks he’s doing the right thing. Somehow.”
“Hey, I don’t want to believe my mother massacred every D’Mon she could get her hands on, but…” I made a face. “I am so sorry. I know what Qown meant to you.”
“Means,” Janel corrected. “He means a lot to me. Qown’s my best friend, Kihrin. He sacrificed so much for me, never asking anything in return. Did I take him for granted? If I had just been there for him…”
I moved over, sitting down next to Janel, and put my arm around her. I wouldn’t have under most circumstances, but she came from a culture a lot more comfortable with physical contact than my own.
Janel turned her face into my chest and held me tight.
The tunnel light’s faint red glow reflected against Thurvishar’s eyes, and I knew the wizard wasn’t yet asleep. He watched us both without comment or movement.
Down the tunnel, out of sight, I felt Teraeth’s presence. I knew he’d stopped and turned around. That Teraeth watched us from the dark.
I held her close and tried not to let it bother me.