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Thadred
Sairydwen inched after him, using the heels of her hands to balance against the edge of the cliff face.
Thadred leaned against the cliff as much as he could, limping one step at a time. He forced himself to move at twice his usual speed, the screams of the mule still ringing in his ears.
“Do you think it will chase us?” Thadred asked. “Or do you think it will be fine just eating a few Kadra’han and their horses?”
“It wasn’t eating,” Sair said. “That was a male. He was guarding his territory.”
Thadred glanced back at her. “Okay...so what does that mean for us?”
Sair shook her head. “He might be content just to kill the other horses, but I doubt it. If the Kadra’han don’t kill him, he’ll want to make sure we’re all taken down.”
“That smart?”
“Yes.”
“How smart?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can it count?” Thadred jerked his head toward the top of the gorge.
“I’m more concerned with him following our scent.” Sair cast a glance over her shoulder. “Kelpies can be relentless in pursuit.”
Thadred groaned and continued on. “How far is the Haven from here?”
“I don’t know,” Sair said.
“Do you at least know which direction it’s in?”
“No.”
Thadred rolled his eyes. “So we’re doomed?”
Sair shook her head quickly. “It is not that simple.”
“Explain, witch,” Thadred clipped.
“Don’t call me a witch!”
Thadred snorted. “What are you going to do? Put a spell on me?”
Sair’s nostrils flared. “If you—”
“Think of it as payback for landing me lost in a cursed forest with a moody sorceress who can’t use magic.” Thadred probably shouldn’t have been upsetting her, but he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, especially after he’d rescued her.
For a moment, he thought Sair would argue, then she went on. “The Cursewood moves, but it moves around the Haven. We could arrive in the Haven as soon as we cross the river or in three days. It all depends.”
Thadred swore, glaring at the sky. “We won’t last three days.”
Sair had no response to that.
They continued down the edge of the cliff face. Thadred wracked his brain, thinking. Would Dain and Amira be able to find them in this madness? Would it even be possible?
“There might be a way,” Sair said quietly, so quietly that Thadred almost didn’t hear it over the roar of the river.
“What?”
“We could call for help.”
Thadred blinked back at her. “Seriously? No one will hear us except maybe the kelpie.”
“I didn’t mean with voices.” Sair looked him dead in the eye. There was a coldness to her words and a hint of something vaguely threatening.
“You can’t use magic right now.” He nodded to the dull grey manacle still dangling off her wrist, held awkwardly in front of her.
“No,” she agreed. “But you can.”
“Think I would have noticed by now if I could.”
“Not necessarily,” Sair replied shortly. “But you have magic.” She cocked her head. “I have felt it.”
Thadred refocused his efforts on getting down the side of the cliff. “Right.”
“You do. How do you think you survived the fall on your horse?”
“Just now?”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Look, I’m not a sorcerer,” Thadred clipped. “Maybe my Kadra’han curse kept me alive, but it’s nothing special.”
“I can sense the damage that was done to your hip,” Sair said quietly. “There’s significant scar tissue on many of your internal organs, too. Only a powerful sorcerer could have survived that.”
“I can’t even sense ka,” Thadred said. “I told you.”
“If you have a sword,” Sair said, “and you refuse to look at it, are you any less armed?”
Thadred rolled his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you can call for help.”
“Call who?”
“My people,” Sair explained. “They can help us.”
Thadred considered that for a moment. Calling on her people was probably better than a bloody death by kelpie. That didn’t change that she and her kind wanted to murder Dain. “So, they can imprison me and kill my cousin?” Thadred grunted back, edging around a particularly tricky boulder.
Sair huffed. “I was never taking you prisoner.”
“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Thadred skidded as a stone gave way and he scrambled to catch his balance again.
“Careful,” Sair said.
Thadred glared at her.
“We can free you from your curse,” Sair said. She offered those words again like an olive branch, like a hand stretching across the divide, but for once it was Thadred who knew more about this aspect of magic.
“No, you can’t. Stop saying it.” Thadred didn’t even need to consider it. Sair and the Istovari might be powerful. They might have the generations of knowledge that he and Amira had been deprived, but they couldn’t break a Kadra’han’s curse.
“They can be broken,” Sair insisted. “Every curse can.”
“I know that,” Thadred snapped back. “But a Kadra’han’s curse is placed on the Kadra’han by themselves. Only they can break it.”
Sair frowned at him. “What makes you say that?”
Thadred hesitated. He didn’t want to reveal that Amira had freed herself from her curse. Not just yet. That was more information than Sair needed. “I don’t know. Just...something I must have heard somewhere.”
Sair considered it for a moment. “Either you were taught more of magic than you’ve let on or the princess has taught you.”
“Princess? Oh, you mean Amira.” He waved a hand dismissively. “She and I don’t really get along, truth be told.”
Sair was quiet for several moments, but that might have been because she was trying to find a way along the narrow ledge without falling to her death. “What’s she like? The princess.”
Thadred laughed. “She could cut Dain’s heart out and he’d thank her for it.”
Sair didn’t seem to know what he meant. “I don’t understand.”
“She’s a monster in some ways,” Thadred said. “But a woman, too. Even a little girl at times. One moment, she looks ready to bite our heads off and the next, she’s crying in Dain’s arms. I haven’t really figured her out yet.”
“Has any man ever really figured out a woman?” Sair asked. Her tone was flat, factual. Not teasing at all. Thadred was a little relieved by that.
“Fair enough,” he admitted.
The two of them reached a narrow outcrop that doubled over their heads, leading into a narrow, sheltered pocket over the river.
Thadred heaved a great sigh and sat down, groaning as he did. His entire side ached and a dozen other places on his body throbbed sore.
“I’m too old for this,” he muttered to himself. Twenty-seven and already he was too old to be dashing about the forests and rescuing damsels.
“How do you think I feel?” Sair clipped back. She eased down beside him, wincing as she did. She cradled her hands in her lap, staring down at the bloody wounds in her palms. She twitched a few of her fingers and winced. “I think he severed some of the tendons,” she said, her voice almost a whimper, but not quite. “I can’t move my pointer finger.”
“Not fun, is it? Being a cripple.” Maybe he should have been more gracious. Dain would have been. Hell. Dain would have had the woman weeping on his shoulder by now.
Sair looked out across the gorge and the pounding water below. “We should get home in time for my sisters to heal me.”
“If not?”
“Then it won’t matter. We’ll be dead.” Sair rested her head against the back of the cave.
“Delightful.” Thadred closed his eyes.
“They would come and find us,” she said. “If you would help me summon them.”
“No,” Thadred countered.
“Why not?”
“I want nothing to do with magic.” Thadred folded his arms tight across his chest. “Summon them yourself.”
“I can’t,” Sair replied, raising her wrist with the tenebrous steel cuff.
Thadred grabbed her wrist and studied the shackle. He tried prying the pin loose, but couldn’t get his nails under it. He tilted it left and right, but couldn’t see a spot where he could rip it off. Huffing, he dropped her wrist.
“That blocks your magic?”
“It prevents me tapping into my own ka, yes,” Sair answered. “Much the way your ring did.”
Thadred glanced at her sideways, deciding not to comment on that last part. “How does it block your ka, exactly?”
“Tenebrous steel absorbs ka,” Sair explained. “That’s why it seems to disintegrate spells when you have large amounts of it. But it doesn’t, not really. It just soaks them up.”
“Huh.” Thadred folded his arms across his chest. “I’m still not using the magic for you.”
From what Sair had said so far, acknowledging he was part Istovari and learning magic came with...he wasn’t sure he understood it correctly, but Sair had made it sound like the Istovari would own him and expect his loyalty. Thadred had finally gotten away from the woman who had dictated most of his life and he had no desire to replace Vesha with the northern sorceresses.
He wanted nothing with strings attached, especially strings tied to the clan that had cursed and now wanted to murder Dain.
How much should he tell this woman? How much was safe to tell her? Could he reveal that Amira suppressed the cythraul? That things weren’t as hopeless as they seemed?
Would Sair stab him in the back as soon as the chance came? He’d rescued her for the sake of having a guide—at least that was what he told himself. Then he remembered how it had felt to see her weeping and bloodied in front of Fain and he wasn’t sure even he believed that. He would have taken her place in an instant if he’d been able.
Thadred remembered Sair had a man and found himself getting angry again. Why had he let her go into Lashera alone and unprotected? She’d had a child with this Rhisiart fellow and cared for him enough to name that child after him. So where was he?
On that line of loved ones lost in the forest—where were Dain and Amira? They were still somewhere in this forest. How was he supposed to get to them?
The whole point in coming to Hylendale had been to get an audience with the sorceresses, but if what Sair said was true and they just wanted Dain dead...
Thadred inhaled a long breath. He didn’t know enough about these women to take such a big risk with Sair. What if she was just trying to trick him into helping her eliminate the threat she saw in Dain?
But what if this was a chance? What if Thadred could get into the Haven, as Sair and Amira called it, and persuade the sorceresses to help?
Then again, who was he fooling? Thadred had hardly ever been able to persuade anyone of anything in his life.
“Just try,” Sair urged him. “Why don’t you want to use magic?” she pressed. “Why wouldn’t you want to use a power you already have?”
Thadred wasn’t sure of the answer to that.
“I’m afraid, Thadred,” Sair said.
The knight shot her a quick glance. Her eyes were large and she bit her lower lip. He might have thought she was being coy if she had been anyone else, but no. She was telling the truth—about her fear, at least. There was real and honest fear in her eyes.
“I’m afraid of the kelpie,” Sair said, her voice so soft it was barely audible over the rushing of the water. “I don’t want the Kadra’han to find me when they have the time to do as they please. I don’t want to die not knowing if my son is safe from them. I’m afraid.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears and she blinked quickly.
Thadred didn’t know what to say. He’d had women rage at him, sob at him, coax, and seduce. He’d seen enough acts to know real emotion when he saw it. And Sair might very well be manipulating him, but her fear was real.
“I can’t do this, Thadred.” There was his name again. Hearing his name from her lips felt...significant. Almost like a promise of its own. “I need your help,” Sair pleaded.
Thadred exhaled a long sigh. He had nothing to lose at this point. “What do you want me to do?”
Sair’s eyes lit up. “Sit across from me,” she urged. She shuffled to sit cross legged in front of him.
Thadred groaned and moved to copy her. Between her wounded hands and his bad leg, it took both of them quite a bit of time, but they eventually dragged themselves into position.
“Close your eyes,” Sair urged, excitement hard to mistake in her tone.
Thadred let off a huff and did as the sorceress told him.
“Rest your hands on your knees,” Sair said. “Yes, good.” Her tone took on a calm, soothing lilt. “Now breathe. In and out. In and out.”
Thadred’s eyes snapped open. “Yes, I know how breathing works.”
“Just focus on my words.” Sair was unfazed. “You agreed.”
“Fine.” Thadred clenched his eyes shut.
“A few more times. Deep, slow breaths. Feel the air come into your lungs and fill your chest. Good.”
Thadred arched one eyebrow, but kept his eyes closed.
“Now reach up and press your hands together in front of you, palms touching.”
Thadred did as she said, feeling like an idiot.
“Good. Now lock your fingers together with your right thumb under your left. You’re left-handed?”
“Yes.”
“Then left thumb under. No...” Sair prodded his fingers to readjust them. “Now keep breathing.”
Thadred kept inhaling and exhaling long breaths out his nose, though his mouth tightened in annoyance. They should be doing something productive, not—
“Relax,” Sair said. “You say you can’t see ka, but it’s all around you. It wants to be seen by you.”
Thadred had no response for that.
“Focus on the beat of your heart there in your chest. Most of your ka is pooled in your chest and in your skull. I want you to feel the top of your head. Any sensations or awareness of anything that is coming from the top of your scalp. Now slide that awareness down the back of your head. Imagine that you are able to sense the energies pooled at the back of your head.”
“I still can’t feel it,” Thadred countered. “You say my ring was the problem, but it’s made no difference.
Sair cleared her throat. “Just imagine that you can. Now imagine you’re pulling that energy from your head down to your chest.”
Thadred imagined it. He saw the energy as a ball of blue light, crackling like veins of lightning as he pulled it down and focused it on his chest.
He focused on the sensation of his skull and his spine, drawing and directing an imaginary force down the shape of his back and into the beating organ behind his ribs. His chest tightened and he tensed, flinching.
“Breathe,” Sair reminded him. “Don’t forget to breathe.”
Thadred almost made a retort at that, but realized he had indeed forgotten to draw a breath.
“Keep focus on your chest,” she said. “Be aware of what you feel behind your sternum. Imagine you can feel your heart expand and contract.”
Thadred kept his eyes closed and imagined all the little capillaries and the massive arteries, his heart with all its intricacies and foibles. It thrummed deep and steady, a pulse that he felt deep in his core.
He could feel it pulsing through all the sinews and muscles and organs that sustained his life. Constant, thrumming, rhythmic, deep as the center of his body, but even deeper than that.
It pulsed in time with something primordial and old. A rhythm that had been played long before his heart had begun thrumming in his mother’s womb.
It was odd. Strange. Ancient. It spoke.
Not in words, not quite that, but in a knowing. A state of being.
It was the beginning and the end. Eternity and ephemerality. Transformation and preservation. Life and death.
Life?
Thadred held onto it, whatever it was.
He kept breathing in and out, focused on that sense of life within his own body.
He could feel that life tangled around the shattered bones and wrongly healed joints in his hip, stitched through where his organs had been ruptured. Like old sutures, they remained in everything that had been broken, like a child’s desperate efforts to patch a favorite doll.
“Good,” Sair said. Her voice was far away or seemed to be. “Now think of where you are. Not just the cave. Your place.”
Thadred didn’t know what she meant and yet he did. He could feel himself in the fabric of eternity, in the endless flow of birth, death, and rebirth. A world of constant change that was somehow unchanging.
The Cursewood pressed around him like smoke, toxic and threatening, brooding like a snake about to strike. This place wasn’t even under a curse, it was a curse.
The life within it was twisted, perverted. It made him think of rotten corpses and poisoned wells.
“It’s too tainted here,” Thadred said.
“No,” Sair whispered, as if she could sense him withdrawing. Maybe she did. “Your ka is yours alone. The Cursewood can’t hurt you. Push it back.”
“How?”
“How would you push it back in the natural?”
Thadred inhaled and was a little surprised when he didn’t cough on the Cursewood’s smog. He focused on the noxious cloud around him and imagined waving it away like he would a smoke cloud.
Except, unlike a smoke cloud, the Cursewood’s blight didn’t swirl and puff around him.
The Cursewood snapped back. For one instant, Thadred’s head cleared of the Cursewood’s poison, it shoved away from him. The curse scuttled away like a million cockroaches.
Thadred heaved a deep breath and almost laughed. He could do this after all.
No sooner had he allowed himself a chuckle than the curse slammed back into him. It hit like a punch to the gut.
Thadred pitched forward, narrowly missed knocking into Sair, and sprawled on the ground.
Cursing and spitting, he pushed himself onto his elbows.
Sair watched him silently, her bloodied hands held lightly in her lap. “That should be enough for them to find us,” she said.
Thadred glared at her. “You could have warned me it would feel like getting a right hook to the sternum.”
Sair shrugged. “You were already skeptical you could use magic. I decided you didn’t need anything else to hold you back.”
“That wasn’t magic.”
“No? Then what was it?”
Thadred had no answer for that. “Did it work?”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Sair replied. “You didn’t channel a lot, but you should have created enough of a disturbance in the Cursewood for the mothers to establish a link.”
Thadred blinked at her. “I understood about two of those words.”
Sair blinked back t him. “It should work, but we won’t know for some time.”
“Wonderful.” Thadred offered her a caustic smile.
