Candor rediscovered her dislike for bushwhacking. It seemed at every step, some vine or branch blocked her way. Finally, she took to leading and swatting the various foliage out of their way as Thorn guided her steps. Her iron sword worked best for this clearing work. The air was muggier underneath the treetops, and soon the trio was soaked in sweat.
“We’re going to need to harvest water soon.” Letti said softly from behind Thorn. They had argued at length about the order of march, with Thorn originally taking point. His large frame hindered by the aggressive flora, however, Candor had volunteered to take the lead. Thorn had wanted Letti in the center so that she did not somehow find herself abducted in the rear—"what?” Letti squeaked—but Candor had reasoned that Thorn would need to guide her and to do so without speaking above a low murmur would require his presence between the girls. Letti was taking care of watching the rear, ensuring both that no foul creature attacked them, and that she was not kidnapped unawares.
“What,” Candor hissed over her shoulder after hacking through a particularly vicious vine, “would you do if we weren’t here?”
“I’d probably risk the residue.” Thorn responded calmly.
Pausing to comb her hair back from her face, Candor turned to look at the big man. He returned her stare. “I can’t die.” He said simply.
“So, you can’t be hurt?” Letti asked, taking a temporary break from staring into the depths of the forest.
“No,” Thorn chuckled grimly. “I can definitely hurt. But take the Hatch for example. Normal people who grow up there can’t leave because the majikal radiation has changed their materiel and they require that exposure to stay alive. I can visit, leave, my skin will curl off my body, and then it will grow back. I can’t die.”
“Neat.” Candor whistled.
“Hardly.” Thorn growled. “It means I can lose things I care about over and over and I have no recourse. But, to answer your original question, I’d either risk walking along side the Way until it appeared safe to return to its top, or I might have just walked along the top.”
Candor snorted. “You did not seem so keen when we first laid eyes on that explosion.”
“It did look like an explosion, didn’t it?” Thorn looked thoughtful. Candor rolled her eyes. He did not rise to her jabs.
“Let’s continue.”
And so they went, swinging and slashing and cursing, Letti on her toes in the rear, and Thorn lost deep in his thoughts, trying to puzzle an impossible riddle.
“No, go to the valley.” Thorn broke Candor from her reverie. She had taken to reciting scraps of poetry and songs to keep herself from going crazy.
“Isn’t that where running water is likely to be, and thus the beings we are trying to avoid?” Candor swatted a bug. The air here felt almost tropical, a curious change from the mountains in the north of the range.
“Yes, but I don’t want to harvest water so close to the Way.” Thorn avoided Candor’s questions, elaborating. “Majik leaves traces, imprints in the way of things. Because it is taking something out of time, manipulating it, and replacing it in time, its use creates an absence, a vacuum of space that attracts those attuned to it. Those who have been affected by majik can feel it, particularly those who were created or warped by majik.”
“Ah.” Candor appreciated the explanation. “So, we are going to risk the stream to avoid risking the trace.”
“Precisely.” Thorn gestured for her to continue.
At Thorn’s direction, Candor cleared a zig zag trail down the side of the mountain— “it’s better for your knees this way” –and soon Candor heard the first soft rushes of a mountain ravine.
“I can hear it. It’s close.” Candor said softly over her shoulder.
Thorn frowned, though he did not say anything. He could hear nothing but the soft rustling that seemed to accompany any trek in the forest. He detested moving through forests.
A few switchbacks later, the stream appeared. Several lengths across, it was larger than any of the creeks they had yet come upon. Candor was pleased to see that the land around the rushing water bore no sign of the marsh that had accompanied their first water source.
“Can we wash quickly?” Letti asked breathlessly.
Reluctantly, Thorn acquiesced, but required each of them to go one at a time, with the other two standing sentries on either shore.
Letti bathed first, Candor second, and as Thorn waded into the water, Candor slid to the far shore and paced quietly. Out of curiosity, she watched Thorn out of her periphery.
Though his hair bore flecks of silver, his body was not that of a man approaching midlife. His dark skin was smooth, his muscles roped from years of life without rest. Veins lined his arms, crossing various scars. Across his back ran two ridges, parallel with the ground, as if he had taken two hacking blows with a sword. Candor shivered. The most vivid of his healed wounds still snaked up his inner forearms.
Candor turned from her observations as she detected a small squeak. Tightening her grip on the soft leather of her indigo sword, Candor walked a few paces forward, careful to place her feet on the tufts of moss that lined the shore.
Heart pounding, Candor brushed some climbing ferns aside, and peered through the large tree trunks.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Upwards of thirty tiny heads turned to face her. Their wings pumping, the pixies’ faces showed nothing but irritation. They were unsurprised to see her, Candor realized. She stepped back, and the small, flying creatures trailed after her.
They were, Candor realized belatedly, herding some sort of large flying insect. A few of them held tiny crooks that they used to rap the backs of the large, red beetles.
“Thorn,” she called softly over her shoulder. A large splashing, accompanied by his usual curse preceded Thorn’s arrival at her side.
“Well met Faerie.” Pronouncing it fay-ar-ee, Thorn touched the side of his temple with two fingers, then his mouth, then his sternum. Candor did the same.
“You’ll have to forgive her.” Thorn addressed the hovering group, “this is the first time she’s encountered Fae.”
The pixie raised an eyebrow at Thorn, questioning this statement.
Recovering her voice, Candor also murmured “Well met Faerie,” using Thorn’s pronunciation.
The shuffling sound of their beating wings intensified, and what appeared to be a small male, floated forward. Hair black as night, he stopped a handsbreadth from Candor’s face, ogling her.
His own face was impossibly fine, narrow with a nose that tipped up at the end. Candor could have sworn she had seen his face before. His eyes, a startingly cerulean, bore into hers as if searching desperately for something.
Uttering a string of words, too fast and too foreign for Candor to understand, the pixie’s voice triggered a flash of near-images in Candor’s mind. He was inquiring where she was from and how she ended up here. Candor had no words for the Fae. She felt her lips moving, as if the words were somehow inside her, but she did not understand their meaning entirely.
Apparently unsatisfied, the pixie floated to hover in front of Thorn. He spoke quietly, and Thorn listened attentively. Candor, despite her hearing, could not understand the tiny creature. Somehow, Candor understood he was making the same inquiry after her heritage, though once again, she would not have been able to repeat what he asked. Candor frowned. Her mind felt bruised; she knew she should be able to understand this speech, but its boundaries eluded her.
Thorn responded in kind, though his pronunciation was not nearly as fluid as the pixie’s. Candor could not follow his meaning. Curious.
“They are going to dine with us.” Thorn announced. “As soon as I clothe myself.”
Candor nodded, for once at a loss for words. As Thorn left, another pixie turned to Candor.
“You’re travelling south.” The Fae’s voice sounded like the wind off the edge of a cliff.
Candor nodded. “We’re trying to reach the sea.”
“No.” The small Fae opened her bright green eyes wide, “but that’s close.”
Candor did not respond. Something about these creatures felt both familiar and uncomfortable all at once. She felt as if she knew this tiny person flying in front of her, while also as wary as if she were facing a snake. She did not enjoy the sensation.
Finally, Thorn and Letti splashed through the narrow part of the stream and met Candor and their guests.
“Please.” Thorn gestured to a small garden of rocks nearby. The three travelers sat as the pixies alighted on the adjoining outcroppings.
“Thorn, Letti, and Candor.” Thorn introduced himself and the girls to the Fae. A few of them returned the favor, though Candor noted that many did not.
“They choose to speak in our tongue only.” The male, whose name was Arodor, Aro, he insisted, explained. “They have tried the human tongue too often, and too often have humans failed us.”
Candor and Letti nearly apologized, but Thorn held up his hand. “Peace, Aro. These are not the generation before.”
“They are human.” Aro replied simply. “They hold the same weakness as any man or woman, as you did.”
Thorn grimaced.
“You’re famous.” Candor muttered.
“Infamous more like.” Thorn muttered back.
“She does not know.” Aro gazed at Candor. “I shall not tell you. Woden Thorn, Serpent of Kotemor has at least earned the right to tell his own story, if nothing more.”
Thorn flashed Candor a warning look, and she bit back her questions.
“Here.” Aro and Mela, the female who had not believed Candor’s destination, opened their small satchels and from them pulled an impossibly large bunch of grapes.
Staggering slightly under the weight, they each offered their gifts to Thorn, who thanked them graciously and offered them dried peach. Slightly amused at their gift, the pixies each grabbed a morsel with their tiny hands and began to chew.
“How…” Candor began to ask, then remembered to be quiet.
“We have expanded the space within our carriers. The space within them is not the space that we inhabit; this keeps food fresh for us.”
Like the interlude, Candor thought but did not comment. Instead, she nodded politely and took the grapes Thorn handed her.
“You remind me of someone.” Letti spoke. She frowned. “You almost resemble Candor.” She smiled.
Aro gazed at Letti for a few moments, before returning to his peach without saying anything at all.
“What news of the humans?” Mela finally asked. “Any more wars and destruction?”
“There are always wars and destruction these days.” Thorn replied heavily. “The tribes in the south have been hacking away at each other for the last few centuries with little to no territory change as far as I can tell. Rejad remains as radiating as ever. I’ve not seen the elves since the fall, and Durevin has conscripts and mercenaries all over the center of Icaria.” Thorn sat back. “So, all in all, nothing new.”
Aro and Mela did not seem surprised. “Pity.” Mela purred, though her eyes betrayed her sorrow. “I thought they might have learned something by now.”
“They didn’t learn the first time, why would a second peace be any different?” Aro asked sharply. “Peace can only last for so long when wielded by one man.”
Something tickled in Candor’s memory, but she could not place it.
“Have you seen the Way?” Thorn asked with forced calmness. “There’s a break in it.”
“A break?” Aro fluttered his wings. “We do not venture near the Great Stone Way anymore. It is too heavy a reminder of what once was. But there could be no break in it.”
“There is.” Candor added quietly. “It looks like an explosion of some sort.”
The pixies rustled their incandescent wings altogether. Candor did not find it a reassuring sound.
“This cannot be true.” Aro declared. “Nothing can break the Way. That was a Fae promise.”
“I know,” said Thorn, grim. “That would take majik of a Fae sort; no human could cause that damage. No witch is that powerful.”
“If there is a break, this is true what you say. A Fae would have had to break it. But no Fae could survive that. Nothing short of pure sacrifice could change the Way, and even then, it is unlikely.” Aro thought. “We will examine it. Perhaps if you return this way in time, we will have an answer.”
Thorn thanked them, though this conversation did not seem to have reassured him. Indeed, as they made their farewells—again offering the temple, mouth, and sternum touch—Thorn’s countenance clouded, and Candor watched him recede deep within himself.
“Thorn. Thorn.” Candor poked the big man, then ducked when he swung around. “We still need to get water.”
Thorn grunted. They returned to the stream.
“I don’t like this.” Thorn finally said. “That’s an unknown I’ve never seen, and I’ve seen near to everything.”
Candor and Letti exchanged dark looks. Neither one had learned how to extract their large companion from the gloomy place where his mind wandered.
“I hope the ghosteaters have some answers.” Thorn said, nearly to himself.
“Aren’t they cut off from the rest of Icaria?” Letti asked.
Thorn nodded. “Most are. But sometimes scouts go out, and I would rather engage with them for news than venture into Ome Chaer.”
“The port city.” Candor’s eyes lit up. “Why is it either or? Why can’t we visit both?”
“Ome Chaer is the oldest human city in Icaria. It was built as a maze so that intruders could not escape once they ventured in. It has only expanded in the millennia that have passed. It is dirty, full of people, some of whom I know, and generally unwelcoming to outsiders.” Thorn paused. “Like every city in Icaria. I hate cities.”
“So, you’ve said.” Candor suppressed her laughter. “I think you just hate people.”
Thorn raised an eyebrow at her as if to say, so?
“Fair enough.” Candor chuckled. “How far to the first stop?”
“The ghosteaters should be just under fifty span to the south.” Thorn wrinkled his nose. “And I suppose it is worth sharing their owned name. They don’t particularly care for being called ghosteaters.”
“Then why do you?” Letti asked.
“It’s apt.” Thorn shouldered his pack, water safely secure. “They are the Ankori. They sleep on their dead.”
And with that, Thorn snatched Candor’s iron sword and began slashing at the brambles that punctuated the hill on the far side of the stream.
“So much for following the river.” Letti murmured, but she seemed pleased enough to be moving away from an expected monster watering hole.
“There didn’t seem to be that many pixies.” Candor observed, forgetting to keep her voice low.
Thorn made a shushing motion, before answering. “Many if not most pixies were caught and killed during one of the Fae genocides in the last century.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s time to educate you on new magic.” He pronounced the word distastefully, as if it left an unpleasant flavor in his mouth.
“During the years of the mad king’s father, majik began to consolidate power among very few users. Witches were the only ones licensed to use it, and if the witch and his or her nun were tempted to power in any way, their cult following was very hard to disperse. This, as you know, led to many upstart religions fostered around these figures.” Thorn snapped a large branch. “Since the witches were all registered with the king in Durevin, this system offered a heavy advantage to the crown, should anything go awry, or should he become corrupt. Three young witches did not like this balance of power and set out to discover a way to return some of this power to the people. They stumbled upon what is now known as ‘new magic.’” Thorn said the words so bitterly, Candor was almost surprised he didn’t spit.
“One thing you should know about Fae. They don’t bury their dead. Death is not something to mourn, because they do not believe the spirit is deceased. Their spirit returns to majik, from whence it came. Their bodies they entrust to roots of trees, or beaches, wherever the Fae enjoyed during its life. There are no death rituals with the Fae.” Thorn continued.
“So, these witches bargained with the Fae for their dead, and discovered that, because they were so profoundly majikal, that energy left residual power in their corpses. The witches distilled the cadavers, selling their dust and organs to the humans that they might challenge the witches if ever they needed to.” Thorn fell silent for a moment, as if deciding how much more he should explain.
“What did the death dust do?” Candor asked, feeling sick to her stomach. This was not the story she had expected.
“It depended on how you used it.” Thorn sighed. “Ground pixie wings would offer thieves the ability to fly, various organs if prepared correctly would offer good health, curing, or at least allaying, even the deadliest of diseases. Muscles offered inhuman strength; you can infer the rest.
“The problem became, as the witches should have foreseen, that the humans developed an insatiable desire for this power. Two of the witches decided that the best way to fix this problem was to stop selling new magic altogether. One of the three witches did not like this plan; he had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. He liked being courted, he liked being flattered, and he really liked his wealth.” Thorn’s scowl rivaled a bear.
“He sold the secrets of new magic to as many humans as would pay for it. The humans, running out of naturally occurring Fae corpses, took to creating their own. The smaller Fae were hit particularly hard. The pixies, the fairies, the gnomes, even the dwarves.” Thorn shook his head and stomped on a briar patch. “There were two great genocides. The first occurred after the elves had fled the mad king and his bloody battlefields, and the second about fifty years later, when the nobles of Durevin decided they needed to strengthen their various fighting forces in the center lands.”
Thorn shook his head and mopped his brow. “There are so few left. Fae don’t breed at the same pace as humans. Fae don’t die unless they are killed by something. They don’t need to reproduce as quickly.”
Candor realized she was gripping the amethyst pommel of her sword so hard the silver inlay made a mark upon her hand. She released it.
“That’s horrible.” Letti whispered. “Can we do anything to help them rebuild?”
Thorn snorted. “Kill or banish all the humans.”
“That seems extreme,” said Candor. “And unrealistic. Is there actually anything we could help them with?”
Thorn sighed, deflated. “Not unless there’s peace in the land, and an enforced moratorium on killing and harvesting Fae.” His big shoulders seemed to stoop. “The Hatch was another failure of new magic. It left the land ruined and wrecked and doomed all its proximate inhabitants.” Thorn shook his head once more and fell silent.
Neither girl asked another question. They sensed Thorn would not answer.
That night, they made camp in a small cluster of dark pink flowers, a small piece of flattish ground off the backside of a ridge. Both Candor and Letti were pleased to see it was naturally occurring.
Thorn showed the girls how to string the snakeskin so it ran taught between two trees down to the ground. He then directed Candor to set a fire pit about a hundred lengths away. She dug through the ground with her hands, careful to avoid brambles. Her hands had always been calloused, and several rotations of consistent sparring with a large partner had maintained them, if not hardened them. Lining the pit with rocks, Candor then added dried leaves—difficult to find in the damp forest—and branches, which she balanced against each other into a small cone. Complete, Candor returned to Letti and Thorn, who had begun the evening’s combat training.
“Why is it so far away?” Candor asked.
“If we are to be visited tonight, we will need light to fight. This way, they do not come for our sleep site, but rather our beacon.” Thorn did not look up from Letti’s quick jabs.
Candor nodded, impressed. She was going to have to start thinking like a survivor too if she were actually going to endure any wandering alone.
Finished with Letti for the moment, Thorn rounded on Candor. “Have you trained with your left hand?”
Candor nodded. “Though not since we’ve been travelling.”
“Tonight, you will.” Thorn swung his broadsword, and they began.
An hour or so later, Candor flopped onto the ground, its green growth flattened by the constant movement of their feet. She took a long swig of water. Her left forearm burned in a pleasurable sort of way. Candor liked the feeling that she had worked hard. Methodically, she wiped her blade before replacing it.
“You don’t have to do that with that sword.” Thorn did not look up from his own weapon.
“What?” Candor sat up, intrigued. “You’ve seen a blade like this before?”
“I have.” Thorn sheathed his broadsword with a click. “It was red, with gold inlay on the pommel.” He moved to the fire, leaving Candor to wonder exactly who had trained this man in useful communication skills.
Candor took first watch that night. Leaning against her back, she studied the fire in the distance, listening for any movement in the forest. She was pleased that the deep, prey fear that had beset her during their early days in the Black Teeth did not visit her. Perhaps, she thought mildly, I am growing.
Exchanging her vigil with Letti, Candor loosened her boots, but did not remove them, and curled up next to Thorn under their shelter. Letti trooped quietly to the fire and added a few more pieces of wood, before returning to her post. She listened to Thorn snore quietly and smiled. As the days had passed, the memories of her parents and the village had faded, leaving small ghosts who only seemed to visit in the dead of night. Letti held a heavy guilt close to her chest; she did not distrust Candor’s word about Lola’s voice. Lola and Mo were uncommon; they did not experience life the same way that the other villagers did. She knew that if Candor said Lola had spoken to her, Lola had cast her voice into her daughter’s mind. No, it wasn’t a guilt for action, it was a guilt over the wrong action. Deep in her heart of hearts, in the small moments when she picked up the sword that Candor or Thorn had twisted from her, she thought of revenge. She worked towards it, without acknowledging that it was her end goal. She shivered in spite of herself; the forest around her seemed to grow cold.
No, Letti realized with a start, the forest was growing cold. Flakes of ice danced through the air, and leaves crusted with a brilliant frost, silver in the small light of the fire.
The fire sputtered quietly but continued to burn haphazardly.
Shivering, Letti scurried toward Candor and Thorn, waking both with a sharp shake. Leaning close to their ears, Letti breathed, “The world is freezing.”
Thorn’s eyes bulged, and he leapt to his feet, disentangling himself from the blankets. He motioned to the girls to begin unstringing the snakeskin. They did so, vision unclear in the small shadows of the distant fire.
A short shuffling broke the silence that had fallen. Though no snow had arrived with the pervasive cold, the ground grew hard, and the trunks iced, each tuft of moss looking like the sugared beignets of the girls’ childhood. Letti’s teeth chattered, and she squeezed her jaw closed to keep them from sounding in the dark.
The shifting sound of frozen branches startled the trio from their work, and Thorn swore under his breath. Candor threw her indigo sword over her shoulder and continued unstringing the small shelter, fingers thick with cold.
An unpleasant scuttling sound reached them: the sound live crabs made over wooden tables. Letti’s marrow chilled. It was an unnatural sound. A sound that triggered a revulsive fear, different from the fear of the wolf-men or the things-with-no-name. It was the sound of many legs shuffling at a quick gait, the sound of a large predator disturbing its terrarium.
“Candor, with me.” Thorn whispered. “Letti, the packs.”
Both girls nodded, and Candor slunk from the knot she was undoing to follow Thorn to the near side of the fire. As quickly as she could, Letti stuffed the tarp into Thorn’s bag and turned, snatching her sword. She would not be the only one unarmed to face whatever this fresh terror was.
It was upon her; with a deadened huff, Letti fell back, arm thrust out instinctively, impaling an impossibly large, white-haired spider. It’s many eyes rolled as it felt the tip of Candor’s sword deep inside its body, its large and jagged pincers snapping in one final ecstasy of aggression.
Letti could feel something warm along her abdomen. Using both legs, she wriggled forward as much as she could and used her legs to push the monster off her, prying her sword out at the same time. The warm liquid was blood, bright, white blood, that spilled from the wound in the beast’s abdomen. Without warning, the warm blood grew unbearably hot, scalding Letti’s skin. She screamed. Her tunic and much of her trousers began to shrivel and burn away as the blood worked through her clothes. Her skin bubbled, arching first in angry boils, then when those burst, digging deeper into her body.
“Help!” Letti screamed desperately, thrashing and crying as her vision began to flicker. The last image before her eyes wavered shut was of a dead face of white fir, many eyes impossibly sad.
Candor heard Letti’s scream before she saw her friend. She had heard the puff of air as Letti had heavily exhaled abruptly, but she had assumed Letti had seen the creatures crawling toward the far side of the fire. Without waiting for them to come any closer, Candor and Thorn charged the enormous spiders, chopping legs as they darted around them, dashing closer and retreating to find an opening between the swinging blades. Candor sank deep within herself, and finding Thorn’s back to her own, focused all her efforts on the beasts in front of her. She analyzed their movements, discovering with each stroke how a missing leg affected their motion, their attack, their defense. More often than not, she chopped their front legs and stabbed sharply into their eyes. With a direct blow to the cranium, the spiders died instantly. She had shouted as much to Thorn, who did not seem to be having any issues of his own.
They were not, Candor noted, accustomed to fighting. These were creatures who froze their prey before consuming them. They crept in the dead of night and did not know how to make war. Their dispatching was quick, with flecks of white blood flying through the air.
“Don’t let the blood get on you.” Thorn growled as he thrust his broadsword through the entire body of a white spider, pulling it out just as quickly.
Letti’s scream broke the air, shattering the short peace.
“Help!” Her voice broke, it’s pain and fear driving the word through Candor’s heart like an icicle.
Candor sprinted to Letti’s side, nearly a blur. Thorn was not far behind. Letti lay next to a massive spider, three times the size of any she or Thorn had faced. Its fine hair, where the others had been mostly white with bits of gray, was entirely, pure white. It flickered an eerie silver in the firelight. A large, battered hole ran through its abdomen. White blood coated Letti’s sword. The skin on her abdomen and lower body sizzled and smoked. Candor gagged.
“Come here.” Thorn ordered, his urgency clear. “Candor, I need you to focus more clearly than you ever have before. Sink into this task as if there is nothing else in the world, for there is nothing else in the world. There is nothing but the words I am about to tell you and the intent you must bring for Letti, or she will die. Do you understand me?”
Candor nodded, teary but determined. Thorn grasped her hand and articulated a string of words. Like Thorn’s conversation with the pixie, Candor could understand the meaning of what he said to her, but she did not understand it because she knew the words. Nevertheless, she closed her mind to her well of questions and repeated the phrase back to Thorn. He nodded. “Your focus must be on drawing out this toxin. Draw it all from her body. I will be healing her skin and her organs as you do so. Do not waver, if you waver, even for a moment, this will be locked inside her and no amount of majik will save her.”
Once more Candor nodded.
Thorn, grim, in the fading light of the faraway embers, mouthed “now.”
~.~
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