We ran the remainder of the day and most of the night and only stopped when we were all too exhausted to continue. When we finally stopped, we were deep in the forest, and it was still dark. We huddled together under the blanket I had brought, not daring to produce any light or use any magic for fear the glow would be seen. Lyre stayed awake first, still too keyed up to really sleep, and woke Silden a few hours later to take a turn at keeping an eye out and listening.
The dawn was cold and grey, the light of the sun having difficulty finding us through the trees but still bringing a relieving visibility. Silden stood and stretched as we started to wake, and began walking out to see if there were any nearby sign of habitation such as trails or roads, but he found nothing.
My feet were hurt and bleeding and I had a number of small scrapes from running through the underbrush and the trees of the forest. In fact, we all had small lacerations and scrapes across our faces and arms and legs. I closed my eyes to focus on healing, not wanting to walk on sore feet all day – and found that I couldn’t. Worried, I turned and placed a hand on Lyre’s arm – he frowned for a moment until the small cuts across his skin knit closed, and then he smiled gratefully at me. I sighed with relief, glad that I hadn’t lost my power at least, and performed the healing for both Larina and Silden as well.
But when I tried to heal myself again, the spell failed to take hold. Larina stared at me the entire time, her blue eyes full of worry as she realized what was happening. “You can’t heal yourself,” she said, which caused Lyre’s head to snap around as he focused on me, his eyes darting over me as he looked at each visible wound I had.
I shook my head and shrugged, allowing the glow to drop as I stopped concentrating on the spell. “I guess not.” A thoughtful look crossed her face, and Larina stood and walked for a bit, searching through the underbrush. Lyre reached out to run a finger along one of the larger cuts on my forearm, wiping away some of the clotting blood and causing fresh beads of crimson to bloom. “I’ll be okay,” I told him, almost feeling annoyed, but the deep concern on his face softened that feeling. He took one of the rags from the crate and summoned some fresh water to wet it, then set about cleaning my cuts as best as he could. I sat quietly through his ministrations.
After a few moments, Larina came back with a few plants, and using two stones that she had also found and a bit of summoned water, began to grind the plants into a paste. I watched her curiously. When she was done, she pushed Lyre gently out of the way and began rubbing the green paste across each visible cut and all over the bottoms of my feet. Whatever it was, there was no sting when it touched the open wounds – first there was a warming sensation, and then a cooling sensation. Most notably it almost immediately helped how sore my feet were. “There are some people that can focus their magic on making these things work faster,” she said as she worked, Lyre hovering over her to watch, “Nothing as effective as your magic, and I don’t even know that spell anyway. But the paste should still help with the pain.”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling at her. She smiled back and patted my knee, then shifted over to begin sifting through the crate, tossing clothes out at Lyre and Silden. She was shorter and slighter than me, so she had difficulty finding any clothes that would fit her. I gave her the blue tunic I had found before and my black leggings. I folded some of the ripped up fabric of old shirts to wrap around my feet and pulled my socks over them to hold them in place. As I worked on that, Lyre and Silden dressed. They both wore brown breeches, though Silden’s were a little short on him and looked more like capris. Larina had tossed Lyre a faded yellow shirt that was quite billowy and had buttons at the sleeves and near the collar, and Silden was wearing a faded green tunic that was almost too tight across his shoulders. Once we had rummaged for everything we wanted from the crate, Lyre tossed the robes into it and, speaking softly, set the entire crate on fire.
As we sat near the flames for warmth, Silden revealed what was in the bag he had grabbed from Wrasker’s cabin – a map and money. “Are any of the coins going to be useful in the Empire?” I asked curiously as Silden stowed the coin bag back into the larger bag he had brought.
“The Empire has different money, but the metal will surely still have value. Gold is gold, no matter it’s shape,” Silden said as he laid out the map. After studying it for a moment, he pointed. “We left the ship here, and entered this forest. I don’t know how far we’ve come, but we haven’t exited the woods yet.” He drew his finger across the map, a distance that made my heart sink. “The nearest border of the Empire is here.”
Lyre and Larina both leaned over to study the map as well. I could see some of the symbols and guess at the geological meaning of them – mountains, forests, cities. But I still had trouble reading all of the text. “We could cross the desert,” Larina suggested, drawing a line a bit south of where Silden had slid his finger across the map. “It’s not inhabited.”
“For good reason,” Lyre said ominously. But then he sighed, rubbing a hand against the side of his head. “But we could avoid capture by humans, as long as we were wary of the danger.”
“And what danger is there in the desert?” I asked. We could all summon fresh water, so we wouldn’t die of dehydration at least.
“Large beasts, that hunt other large beasts, and get hunted by even larger beasts,” Silden said absently, tapping his finger on the expanse that Larina had gestured to. “But because of that, no people, no roads, no trade routes. If we get past the soldiers that guard the perimeter, no one would know we’re there. And they only have soldiers there to keep the monsters in, not to keep people out.”
“Wrasker bought each of us based on our offensive capabilities,” Larina said. “With the spells the three of us know, surely we’d be safe.”
They both looked to Lyre. He was staring at the map, a frown creasing his brow. He glanced up at me. “As strong as we are, we’d still have to be careful. There’s also the problem of the ravine.” He pointed at a feature on the map that cut through the desert close to the Empire side.
“It’s a very wide natural feature, created by the Edlun River. It starts high in the steep mountains here,” Lyre pointed and traced a winding line down until it reached the desert, ”Forms deep cliffs through here, and then opens out into valleys and plains south of the desert. The mountains would be almost impossible to cross. The cliffs of the ravine would be especially hard… we may be able to manage hiking down into the canyons and out across the other side. But travel too far south…” Lyre traced down near the southern end of the desert. “The valley leading out of the canyons are very lush farm lands. We’d start running into humans again.”
As we sat in silence, Lyre nudged at the pack he had given me, and when I handed it over he pulled out some jerky. He shared it around. We sat, chewing on the tough meat in silence as we stared at the map. “We need to be moving. The hunter could still be alive and after us,” Silden said after awhile, standing and brushing off the pants he was wearing. He stretched his legs out for a bit, frowning. “I’ve never worn pants before,” he said. “Feels kind of restricting.”
“Only slaves wear robes. Cassandra was right to bring these – we’d stand out too easily without them, even at a distance,” Larina said. “I suppose I could have improvised a dress of some sort for myself though,” she added as she waved a hand, her voice taking on the echoey quality as she snuffed out the flames. The fabric was ashes now, the remainders of the wooden crate a charred skeleton.
“Would you have really wanted to hang on to it though?” I asked. Lyre and Silden each took one rapier. They didn’t have belts, so some of the remaining fabric was used to improvise something like a belt to hold their weapons in place.
She grimaced, and kicked at the ashes contemplatively. “No. Not at all.”
And then we continued moving.
We kept going at a clipped pace and reached the edge of the forest by that evening. Although we hadn’t discussed it much more, we did seem to unanimously decide the desert was best, and so had looped generally toward the southern edge of the forest. Once there, we paused to study the map before exiting the haven of the woods. There was some concern over whether we should travel on the road or not before we even reached one. Lyre thought it best to avoid the roads, but Larina pointed out that we ran the risk of crossing someone’s farmland, and that some humans disliked trespassers on their property. Still, their hair was cut short and the tips of their ears were easy to see, so running into anyone on the road could be disastrous. We spent the next couple of days cutting through fields and forests and avoiding houses and villages, but stayed close enough to the road so that we didn’t lose our course.
Midweek our rations were starting to run out, as Lyre had only intended to pack enough food to feed one person. We had wondered for a bit if we should steal something from a nearby farm, when Larina pointed out that I was human. “You could take the coins and buy provisions in the next village.”
Lyre was shaking his head, ready to protest, but before he could speak, I said, “It makes sense, and it’d be easier and less risky than being caught stealing.” Silden was already pulling out the bag of coins to plop down into my hands. It was heavier than I was expecting. I frowned. “What should I get?” I asked.
Larina composed a short list for me, and when I expressed some uncertainty about what price I should expect, she gave me a good ballpark figure to run with. “We should have kept the robes,” Lyre grumbled. “Then one of us could go with you at least.”
“Too late to fuss about that now,” I said, tucking the list in with the money. I wandered into town – a small village called Feldbern that worked as the central community to the local farms sprawled across the area. It had a general store and a town hall, a blacksmith, a small schoolhouse, and a few homes. A tiny inn sat next to the general store. Once inside the store, I pulled out the list and, knowing just a bit of the alphabet, I attempted to sound out the words awkwardly to the clerk that offered to help me. Frowning and irritated, the clerk held his hand out for the list, and I handed the short scrap of paper over to him. He gathered the items for me as I waited at the counter.
“Traveling through?” he guessed. I wasn’t sure if it was just because he didn’t recognize me or if the provisions were a giveaway, but I nodded. He frowned, looking me up and down, and I realized I probably looked like quite a mess, in dirty clothes and improvised footwraps, my hair disheveled, my face and arms covered in cuts with the green paste staining my skin. He frowned more deeply as I produced the heavy bag of coins to pay. “How did you come by all that?” he said, his voice dripping with disapproval. I realized belatedly that I should have taken just as much as I needed and not the whole bag.
I wondered briefly how I should explain, and settled for hardening my expression and saying, “That’s none of your concern,” as menacingly as I could manage. He grimaced and did not look threatened in the slightest, but asked nothing more.
As he was near to finishing up, I asked, “Do you have any belts?” He did, so I bought two. It was a bit of effort to heft everything and carry it out of town by myself. As I was on my way out, I glanced back to see that the clerk had left the store to stand in the middle of the road and watch me, his arms crossed, his expression still disapproving. I wondered nervously who he would tell about the strange woman buying traveling supplies. Just outside of town, I closed my eyes and took three, steady, calming breaths. Then I hurried back to my companions. When I met up with the others the weight got more evenly redistributed and Lyre and Silden had proper belts to attach their rapiers to.
We moved on from that village quickly. Despite my misgivings, there was no sign that we were being followed. The next several days was a routine of walking, mostly through the evenings, most of the night when we could manage it safely, and through the mornings. We followed the road, but stayed mostly off of it, and looped far around habitations. When there were stretches of woods, we’d travel through for the cover they provided. We had enough provisions at this time to last us until we arrived at the edge of the desert, and then we planned to buy more.
Annoyed at my lack of reading ability at our last stop, Lyre and I started the reading lessons again using the slim red book I had taken from the ship. My grasp of written Blest was stronger every day, and reading even this small tome was helping to expand my vocabulary. There were even some days when Lyre wouldn’t cast the translation spell, and the three of them would take turns having conversations with me to give me practice. One evening we were sitting very close together so he could see the page over my shoulder. Before I could start sounding out the words, Lyre cleared his throat. “We can skip this section,” he said. I frowned and considered the story leading up to this page, and then really studied the section in silence for a moment before feeling my face heat up. I realized it was a very vividly described sex scene.
I remembered suddenly the Captain’s joke about reading lessons and Lyre’s initial discomfort about using the book to teach me and realized that I was learning to read from what basically amounted to porn. In the same instant, I realized exactly how close I was sitting to Lyre and said, “Oh!” I pulled back quickly and flipped the book shut. He stayed very still and continued to stare at it, his face and the tips of his ears turning slightly pink, and I felt my entire body warm with embarrassment. “Why didn’t you just tell me what kind of book it was?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows and looked up at me. “I wasn’t sure we’d get very far into it. Besides, it’s a bit hard to explain.”
“You could have just said it was the Captain’s smut.” I could hear Larina stifling a giggle from where she was supposedly sleeping, and Silden quietly shh’ing her. I ignored them.
Lyre coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like he was cutting off a laugh. “I was quite surprised that was what he gave you to read. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it if you knew.” I sighed and flipped the book back open to where I had left off. “What are you doing?” Lyre asked, a slight frown on his face.
“Reading. Apparently I just got to the good part,” I said. Lyre froze, his eyes wide, his features reddening even more. I read silently for the most part, but a few moments later had to hold the book out to him. “What’s this word?” I asked, my tone dripping with innocence as I pointed to the page with a finger. With context, I could guess, but I wanted to see if he would say it out loud.
Silden chuckled and Larina did not successfully hide her laughter as Lyre turned away and curled up to sleep, completely ignoring my question.
mehryment 