We were nearly out of supplies again as we neared the border of the desert. “We could stop outside this town and you could buy some more food. Then we can sneak across the border in the night,” Silden said, pointing at the map. Looking down where he pointed, I could see the town was named Owassus. It was larger than the last place we had stopped, less of a gathering place for farmers and more like a proper township. But of all the towns bordering the desert, it was the most remote.
Once again, a list of supplies was made up for me. This time, remembering the things that had made me seem so suspicious to the previous shop clerk, I made sure to summon water to wash up more thoroughly the night before, and washed and brushed my hair and tied it back into twin braids, my hair being too short for a single long one. I also washed the clothes I planned to wear the evening before and let them dry. When I made my walk into town, I carried only a little more money than I would need to buy the supplies, and even if I looked a little disheveled, I was still presentable.
I walked through as though I had every right to be there and smiled politely at people I passed, but still had the paranoid impression that I was garnering more attention than I wanted. At one point I heard a brief whispered conversation and turned to see a little boy running off across the street behind me. I paused, wondering if I should just turn around and leave town, but then decided that it couldn’t have anything to do with me and continued on to the store. Everything seemed to go smoothly while I was shopping, and I did not get any strange looks from the clerk as I recited my shopping list, aside from a brief comment that travelers didn’t come through often, as remote as Owassus was.
I spotted some foot coverings, very similar to leather moccasins, made from a slightly stretchy material. Shoes weren’t on the list, but I decided I had to have a pair for myself, and also felt the need to get some for the others as well. They weren’t as expensive as proper shoes or boots, but they would provide better protection. Besides, even if the others were used to walking in their bare feet, I wasn’t sure how they’d fare with the temperature extremes of a desert. As I admired the material, the shop clerk said, “That’s a local commodity. They make it from Dunslyth skin.”
“Dunslyth,” I said, aware that he was just trying to make the sale because he wasn’t aware that I was already sold. “What kind of creature is that?”
“Desert snake. They tend to live close to the borders of the desert, so they’re easy to hunt.”
“I see.” I ran my fingers over the stitching of the strangely smooth material, wondering how many snakes they had to kill to make this many shoes.
I was feeling extraordinarily proud of how well everything was going until I stepped out of the store to find a pair of soldiers waiting for me. They were wearing matching blue and grey tabards over their armor, with a pattern of a wolf’s long body stretched across the blue side. “Miss, would you come with us?” one of them spoke, stepping forward. I smiled nervously at them, wondering if I should just drop the supplies and run. Maybe cast a spell to get them off my trail? I weighed my options. We needed the supplies, and I couldn’t risk leading anyone back to the others.
But maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to escape from them with all my supplies at a later point?
I nodded, and plastered the most confused smile I could manage on my face. “Sure. What seems to be the problem?” I asked.
I was led to a building that was just outside of town, on what looked to be a small military compound that had training grounds, a couple of barracks, and a large communal building. Inside the back of the communal building, which seemed to lead to a cafeteria on one side and a row of offices on the other, there was a wide room with a table and chairs, some chests for storage, and a few small holding cells with bars. The soldiers placed the items I had been buying on the table, then had me sit in one of the chairs. Then they stood by the door and waited.
After several minutes, a woman arrived – a tall woman with brown hair that was greying in streaks. She did not wear the same tabard, but did wear armor that was in good working order, well kept if not entirely new looking anymore. She approached, sparing a casual glance at the supplies in front of me before taking a seat across from me at the table.
The silence stretched for a long moment. I stared at her evenly – I had no intention of talking first. Finally, a smile spread across her face. “That’s a lot of foot coverings for one person traveling alone.”
My eyes flitted over to the pile of supplies, the shoes settled on top. All different sizes. I did my best to not give anything away in my expression, but I could feel my jaw clench despite myself.
“There’s a Hunter that insists that a woman of your description is traveling with a group of escaped slaves. That she’s dangerous. He’s requested the help of the border guard in finding and detaining any suspicious individuals.” She eyed me carefully, as though to determine whether I seemed dangerous enough.
“And you take orders from Hunters?” I said, hazarding a hope that Hunters and soldiers might have jurisdiction issues.
The smile never left her face. “Not typically,” she said.
Remembering something that Silden had said before about Hunters, I asked, “And it’s just the one, working alone? How do you know he hasn’t gone rogue?”
“From what we’ve been told by his Guild, he’s not performing an official duty. They have decided that the individual he’s looking for is not worth chasing, no matter how many slaves she has in tow. A strange decision that they refuse to explain.”
I frowned, glad to know that we were being allowed to escape but frustrated that I had been caught anyway. “Then why detain anyone? I’m not the one you’re looking for, but apparently if I was, you have no reason to keep me here.”
She shrugged. “He’s been a long time friend of the border guard, and apparently someone higher up owes him a personal favor.” She paused, as though she expected me to say something more, but when I didn’t she went on. “We’ve just sent word to him that we’ve detained someone matching his description, and he is coming to confirm your identity. If you truly aren’t the individual he’s looking for, he’ll take one look at you and tell us to release you. You won’t be here longer than a day or two, and then you can go safely on your way.”
I squashed the panicky feeling that began to stifle my throat. “And what if I don’t have the time to stay in your town a day or two?” I said, lifting my chin and narrowing my eyes. I hoped I sounded more imperious and less scared than I felt. Had he chased us all the way to the border, or had he simply come out here directly and demanded his favor from his friend higher up? I had truly thought we were in the clear, and knowing that he had been out here, just waiting…
“You’ll have very little choice in the matter,” she said, unperturbed. She gestured to the soldiers still standing at the door. They both stepped forward – one began placing my items in a chest, and the other opened one of the cells and then grabbed my arm to direct me into it. “Do you have traveling companions that will be worried for you, stranger? We can let them know you’re being detained.”
I glared at her and shook my head. She glanced again at my supplies as they were being placed into the chest. “Curious,” she noted, and then she left the room.
The soldiers remained to stand guard.
I paced in the cell for several minutes, trying to decide how to handle the situation. I was mad that I had been spotted so easily. Usually I considered myself nondescript – I had shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes and was often mistaken for other people by strangers I’d never met. But then travelers didn’t come through here often at all. One of the reasons we chose Owassus as our last stop before the desert was its remoteness, and apparently that had worked against us. I wondered if the kid I had seen running off before had been the one to get the soldiers.
If I waited too long, Lyre might try to come into town to find me. Even if he had the sense to wait until the cover of dark, how would he know where I had been brought? If the soldiers were on the look out for runaway slaves because of me, that made it even more dangerous for them. I’d have to get out, soon, preferably with our supplies. I walked over to the front of the cell and gripped the bars as I leaned against them, studying the soldiers that had brought me here.
They stood by the door, staring back at me in an almost bored way that said they could stay at their post patiently for hours. I sighed and wracked my brains. The stereotypical escape plan for characters in my situation involved acting sick, but would that really work? Dad had always seen through my acting so instantly when I was a teenager.
(You could put them to sleep) the voice in my head said. I jerked so suddenly I slammed my forehead into the bars with a clunk, surprised to hear it for the first time in weeks. I pulled away, letting a breath out in a pained hiss as I rubbed at my head. Sometimes I wondered if I had simply daydreamed the voices, and had worked to put them out of my mind. I looked up at the guards – both were frowning slightly at my obvious surprise, and one shifted uneasily.
I turned away and closed my eyes. How? I thought.
Once again, similar to when I had learned to heal, it was like I simply knew. I turned around to face the bars again, could see the glow envelope me as I reached for my magic. Both guards moved instantly, surprised but recognizing the light for what it was, one moving to a weapon rack for a bow and the other letting a dagger fly with an underhand toss. They started to shout, and I felt my heart jump into my throat as I thought of who could be listening. By the time I stepped out of the way of the dagger, they had both dropped to the floor in what I knew was a magically induced slumber. I froze, my eyes on the door, trying to quiet my panicked breathing as I listened for any sign that others were coming at the sounds of the shouts.
After a very tense minute, no one else appeared. I forced myself to take three deep breaths.
I wasn’t sure how much time I had. I felt instinctually that this spell was meant to wear off by itself. I didn’t want to cause more noise and risk bringing the entire base down on me, so blasting my way out seemed unwise. I also wanted to collect the supplies. I finally settled for magically summoning the keys on one of the guards over to me. They were attached to his belt and didn’t want to come off, so I pulled harder, and his entire body started to scrape across the floor. I grimaced at the sound of metal against stone, wondering if being dragged across the ground would wake him, or if someone else would hear this noise, but soon enough he was within reach and still sound asleep. I pulled the keys off him and started trying them one by one until I found the one that unlocked my cell.
Once that was done, I gathered the supplies from the chest.
Then I stood, holding everything in my arms as I thought over my next step. The office was set in the center of the base, with the barracks arranged behind and the training grounds out front. I looked at the sleeping guards for a moment. The glow surrounded me again, and I prepared myself to cast my newly learned spell as many times as I needed to.
I opened the door to the holding cells and looked down an empty hall. So far, so good. I walked down the hall, careful of any rooms or doors that I might be visible from, but was lucky to find that all the doors were closed. At the end of the hall was the front room, where a bored looking soldier sat at a desk. I cast the spell at him before he even saw me, and watched him slump into a slumber.
I slipped into the room, staying close to the wall – the cafeteria on the far side was quiet for the moment, though I could hear the sounds of someone moving around out of sight in the kitchen. I stepped toward the front doors and glanced out. The training grounds out front was full of people, some sparring, some walking to whatever business they had next. In fact, some were approaching the building I was in.
I wondered at the limits of the spell. I closed my eyes again, focusing, trying to imagine casting the spell in a wave away from myself, for as far as I could manage. Behind me, I could hear the familiar voice of the woman I had spoken to earlier saying, “What are yo—MAGE!” I opened my eyes and pushed the sleeping spell out as I had imagined, could nearly hear a soft boof! like an audible pressure being released as a wave of light flowed out around me. I could see the woman, glaring as she stepped forward, a hand on the pommel of her sword. Her eyes widened, but before she could say anything or pull her sword, she stumbled and slumped to the ground.
I turned and pushed the door to the building open, and could see that the spell had taken effect more impressively than I could have imagined. The soldiers across the entire training grounds were all fallen over, asleep. I could hear shouting at the edge of what must have been my range, of other soldiers reacting to seeing their brothers in arms falling to the ground around them, but it was silent where I was. I quickly moved away from the base, and just as I stepped around one of the sleeping guards at the gate, I could see him begin to shift, heard groans and confused mutterings from behind me as others also began to groggily wake. I picked up my pace, moving away from the town in as much of a run as I could manage, to where I had planned to meet up with Lyre and the others.
mehryment 