If anyone knew about Peyton and I taking a stroll that evening, no one said a thing. We hadn’t stayed in a place large enough for us to make the attempt again, and we didn’t openly discuss it. I had long suspected that the compass spell needed our presence to work, so that meant that once we found our fourth person, we might all be able to escape together. That option gave me some peace of mind.
The routine for the next couple of days remained the same as it had been the entire trip so far. In the morning, we would cast the compass spell. We would spend the day traveling, listening to Raella’s history lessons, and then find an inn to stop in for the evening. Sometimes we trained a bit with our weapons. Sometimes Chase and Zolambi spent entire evenings trying to get me to tap into my magical ability. There had been no luck with that so far.
They would also cast the compass spell again before we settled down to relax, and discuss our route for the next day. “She must be crossing the desert,” Zolambi said as her course began to take us further south.
Greyjon frowned, studying a map that he had laid out on one of the common room tables of the inn we were staying at. “That’s a dangerous route. She must be incredibly powerful already to have survived this far.”
“Or she has powerful companions. It’s not an unusual route to take for certain slaves. I crossed the mountains myself, but it was summer and the passes weren’t snowed in. The border further north is more heavily patrolled though.” Zolambi absently rubbed at the rough skin of his scar. “If she does cross the desert, she’ll make it to the ravine. There’s a small walled town called Watter close to there. That will be our last inhabited stop, I think.”
“And if she does arrive with escaped slaves in tow?” Raella asked. “We weren’t planning on having many extra people with us.”
“Well, we can’t leave them behind, Raella,” Chase said with some exasperation.
Zolambi nodded. “We can travel back to Watter. They’ve got an organization that helps take in escaped slaves, and acclimate them to the Empire. Most of the border towns do.”
Raella stared at the map, and pointed to a town even further south. “Then certainly Veinwell will have that as well. Then we don’t have to make the trek back. We’ll be looping to the southeast after we find her anyway.”
I looked curiously at the map, seeing what was to the southeast of where we were going. I spotted the familiar name of Glyss along the southern border of the Empire, and remembered that Raella had mentioned that the ruler there had helped open up a friendly relationship with the dwarves. Unfortunately, the map didn’t extend beyond the current borders of the Empire, so I couldn’t see any specifics about the dwarven lands.
We traveled within sight of the mountains that Zolambi had mentioned and then began to take a more southerly course. The Elves called them the Elder mountains, and they terminated just above the desert, trailing off into the human kingdom that bordered there. Zolambi explained that further north, the range became truly massive in scale. Even though it was still autumn, I could see that the mountains were covered in snow. The grasslands gave way to the sparser vegetation of the desert, and the weather was a bit warmer than where we had started.
Watter was a small town, just as Zolambi had described, and not even large enough to merit walls. The inn had only two rooms, so we split them by gender. Lexie groaned about this. “Raella is going to drone all night,” she muttered angrily as she poked at her dinner. “I just know it.”
“Maybe we’ll ask Chase for some pointers on casting as soon as we get to the room,” Peyton suggested.
Lexie didn’t look fully convinced. She was already powerful magically, and picked up on spells easily. As soon as she was shown something, she seemed to understand how to do it. But she completely lacked fine control – if she summoned flames, it was always in a large burst. She couldn’t control the temperature of summoned water, and when she tried to move items through the air, they wobbled and on occasion slammed toward their destination with too much force. “I think Raella believes that’s a lost cause,” the girl said morosely.
Peyton shrugged. “We could say that we want to try to help Lucas again.” I felt the same swirling nervousness in my gut that I always felt when my lack of magical ability was mentioned.
Glancing up, I could see that they were both giving me sympathetic looks. I sighed. “Sure, I can be your excuse,” I said, feeling like there wasn’t much point to trying. I caught Peyton looking between Lexie and me, the hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her lips as we both pouted at our particular weaknesses.
“Well, maybe instead of any of it, we go to bed early. Tonight will really be our last night in a decent bed,” Peyton noted. We sat for a moment in silence as we considered that. We hadn’t known what to expect when we initially left the University, and I think the paved roads and inns had been a nice surprise. Now we were going to travel out into actual wilderness.
With a sigh, Lexie stood up. “You’re right. I’m going to see if I can pretend to be asleep before Raella gets to the room. Goodnight Lucas, night Peyton.” She quickly walked off to where the rooms were. I considered excusing myself as well, but Peyton beat me to it. She had already been done eating at that point and had just been sitting with us companionably, studying the décor of the room.
She stood and said goodnight, and followed the girl back to their shared room. I pushed the remainder of the food around on my plate, wondering if I’d actually be able to sleep tonight.
The next morning, Raella made arrangements for the wagon with our supplies to be taken to Veinwell, where we planned to go after our trek into the ravine. We traveled alongside the wagon most of the day. It was being driven by the innkeeper’s son, who seemed to be happy to get out of Watter for a time. In the middle of the afternoon, we said goodbye to the boy and left the road. I glanced back several times as the wagon grew smaller in the distance, heading further south as we began to make our way west and away from any signs of civilization.
That evening as we stopped to make camp, we called up the compass spell. The image was larger every day, especially as we had gotten closer to the mountains and the ravine that was south of them. It was easier to see what she looked like now, even though we didn’t know anything specific about her still.
Colors were hard to make out, because the image was made of light, so I had no idea if she had brown hair or blonde hair – but it came down to about her shoulders and was slightly curly. She looked disheveled and tired. She was dressed in the same breeches she had worn the entire time, and a tank top underneath a billowy shirt that looked like it belonged to a pirate. Another shirt was wrapped around her head with the sleeves pulled around her neck to hold it in place, probably to protect from the sun. She also carried a pack loosely over her back.
At the moment, she was in the process of testing an improvised crutch, walking back and forth on the ground with it. I could hear Chase gasp lightly from behind me when she saw what she was doing, and could see the frowns on everyone else’s faces. “So she’s been injured,” Raella noted impassively.
They kept the image up for several minutes longer than usual as we observed her. I could see where the pants had a rip high on her thigh, and that was the leg that she seemed to have trouble putting weight on. After testing the crutch, she set it aside and sat down to rest. Then she cupped her hands and brought them up to her face, appearing to drink from them. I paused, confused at what she was doing because she didn’t have any sort of canteen, until I realized that she must have summoned water directly into her hands. I couldn’t see the glow of magic because she was just represented here as a glowing form of light itself.
“Oh, she has learned to cast!” Chase said, sounding excited.
Even without any direct instruction, she had managed to learn to use her magic. I felt even more worthless for a moment, and a little embarrassed. What was I doing so wrong?
The bedrolls weren’t as comfortable as a modern sleeping bag, but were still better than sleeping on the ground. Zolambi, Chase and Greyjon each took a turn at watch. I offered to help at one point, but was told to rest instead. In the morning, the compass spell revealed that the other Grace was moving again. We continued our own journey, leaving the mountains behind.
The next day of travel wasn’t so bad either. We had eased into traveling through the previous days, thanks to the frequent stops and the wagon. A full day of riding still left me sore and a bit stiff, but I wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had initially worried. The increased exercise likely helped as well. That evening when we stopped, Greyjon provided some instruction with the staves again. He tossed them to us, as he traditionally did, and as usual, Lexie missed catching hers. She grumbled about it as she chased after the stick, which had rolled away a few feet. “Statistically, you’d think you’d catch it once by accident,” I said.
She used her staff and a gust of air to trip me before I was technically ready to start sparring. “No magic in these lessons,” Greyjon said, doing his best to hide a smile. “Though that is a good combination to keep in mind if you ever get into an actual fight.”
The day after that we reached the ravine. We traveled along it for awhile as we attempted to find a way down, eventually finding a trail of sorts. “It reminds me of the Grand Canyon,” Lexie said, marveling at the scale of it.
“Same process probably made it. A river and thousands of years,” I said, staring down at the river far below.
“I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon,” Peyton said thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll never get to see it.”
“Well, it’s kind of like this,” Lexie waved an arm to gesture at the view. Peyton chuckled. After a few moments, Lexie added, “I’ve never seen the pyramids. I always wanted to go.”
“Well, they’re not like this,” Peyton said. “But maybe this world has something similar to offer.”
We made camp when we reached the bottom. When we checked that evening, the other Grace was already sleeping. “She stopped early tonight,” Raella noted. The image was almost to scale, I realized. We were close. “Tomorrow we’ll travel further south along the river.”
We stayed in the gorge the entire next day, stopping often to check our course. She was close now. We’d be meeting her soon. Raella didn’t want to travel too far south if we could help it, and casting the spell again and again seemed to be taking its toll on them. We stopped earlier in the evening after finding a place that provided a reasonable path up toward the desert side of the gorge, and we camped for the night.
The next morning, we woke early to the echoey sounds of barking, and people screaming and shouting from somewhere above. I wasn’t sure if we were close – the canyons could have been amplifying the sounds for all I knew. And we couldn’t see what was going on towards the top of the canyons. We hastily packed our items and began to follow what passed for a precarious trail up. It took us several minutes to be halfway up – we were going fast enough, but it felt dreadfully slow hearing the shouts from above.
At one point as we neared the top, Lexie gasped and waved her hands, pointing toward a cliff face slightly south of us. We all turned to look, could just barely make out figures along the edge of the cliff. There were five individuals, four of which glowed from magic use. What looked to be several darting balls of fire weaved around the figures.
We reached the top of the cliffs, and Greyjon quickly mounted his horse, racing ahead to reach the figures – Peyton was immediately behind him, followed quickly by Chase and Zolambi. Raella lingered near Lexie and I, waiting as we mounted our own horses, not being as quick or practiced as our other companions.
As we approached, I watched a pair of figures and a smaller figure, what looked to be a dog, move dangerously close to the edge. I gasped as they tangled and then tumbled over the side of the cliff, and could hear Lexie scream something from not far behind me. I stopped my approach and moved to where I could see what happened to them, Lexie following my lead. Initially, the figures drifted apart in the fall, but then one of the people reached out and grabbed the other. The glow of magic sprang up around them, and their fall slowed dramatically as the dog hit the cliff face below them. They drifted off toward the river far below.
“Oh. That’s a really useful spell,” Lexie said thoughtfully, watching until they were out of sight in the water. I glanced up to see that Raella was staring down as well, watching them drift away. Her mouth was pursed as though she had tasted something sour. Our eyes met, then she gestured with her head and led the way toward where our group had joined the fray.
The fireballs were flaming dogs. A lot of them were dead – some frozen in ice, or disemboweled. By the time I arrived, the remainders of the pack were already yipping as they ran away. One of the strangers, an elven man with very pale features, was standing near the edge of the cliff, staring at the river below. He bent to pick up a discarded pack that was laying on the ground near him, and turned to face us. Raella quickly looked at each of the three figures, her brow furrowing deeper at every set of pointed ears she saw.
A tall, burly elf with brown hair was giving Greyjon and Peyton appraising looks. “Thank you for your help, strangers,” he said as Raella climbed down from her horse. Greyjon nodded in acknowledgement to him, wiping his sword off before sheathing it. Frowning at the gore on her own blade, Peyton followed his example.
“Was it a human woman that went over the cliff? A human that can cast,” Raella said bluntly, ignoring the thanks.
The pale elf frowned at her sharply. “Yes,” he said. He was looking at our group carefully, and I could see that he recognized that Peyton, Lexie and I were all human. “Her name is Cassandra.”
Cassandra. After all our time here, we finally had a name for our lost Grace.
mehryment 