Mystic: A Book of Underrealm (11 page)

Xain cast his gale whenever the natural wind died, while Loren and Gem often took to the oars. But their efforts only worsened another problem: They were desperately low on food. Brimlad had stored enough provisions for himself and more, certainly, but held his passengers responsible for providing their foodstuffs. There had been no chance for that in their escape, so they rationed carefully and slept hungry each night.

“How long will it take us to reach Wellmont?” Loren asked Xain on the first day of their journey, shortly after Dawn rose pink behind them.

“Three weeks about.” Xain had turned away from the sun, and deep shadows filled every pocket of his face. Loren thought he looked gaunter, but it could have been her imagination.

“And how much food do you think we have?”

“If we barely keep ourselves from starving? Mayhap two weeks,” Xain said with no emotion. Loren shivered.

On the third day, they stopped at a small fishing village nestled against the river. There they spent the last of Annis’s coin on foodstuffs, but in their haste did not bargain as well as they might have and barely bought enough to fill their bellies for three weeks. Still, this improved their mood—until two days after their purchase, when they woke to find the fish spoiled and rotten.

“Curse those fishermen and their families for six generations,” spat Brimlad. “When I return this way, I shall flay them all myself.”

“I am sure you shall,” said Xain. “But we cannot do so now, and I find the rest of our voyage more pressing.”

“I have some fishing line, but it is ill used and not likely to do us much good. Still, we can try.”

Loren knew something of fishing, which she had done often with Chet beneath the boughs of the Birchwood, so this duty fell to her. All day, she would sit at the boat’s rear, dangling a bone hook in the water behind them, fixed with a scrap of meat. The first day she caught but one fish and on the second none at all.

Days fell, and the passengers grew ever hungrier. They turned to conversation in hopes of distraction. In particular, Xain held intense, whispered councils with Loren, in which he again spoke of the magestones and urged her towards his mission.

“Surely you cannot deny my need for justice. If nothing else, help me rescue my son. I would need little to do it. A few of the stones would suffice.”

“I have told you, they are not mine to give.”

“But Annis listens to you,” the wizard insisted, frustration growing in his voice. “And if you will not help me, neither will she.”

Loren thought hard. “How can I know, wizard, that if we give you the magestones you will not use them to strike down your foes? I hear your anger and pain when you speak of Drystan and the Grand Magister. Can you swear an oath that you will bring them to no fatal harm?”

Xain glared at her. “What are they to you? I have told you how they wronged me, and even the children have told you of that clan’s ill repute.”

“Yes. And yet what have I seen for myself?”

“Do you trust nothing but your eyes?”

“Why should I? And even if I did not, why should I raise my hand against them when it is easier to avoid them altogether?”

Xain surrendered with a frustrated growl, as he always did, and left Loren alone on the boat for two entire days, avoiding her eyes whenever they found themselves sharing the deck.

Loren did not know whether the wizard talked to Gem, but soon the boy came to speak to her as well. He tried to make it seem natural, sitting beside her in silence a while before broaching conversation. But Loren could feel his tension and saw him fidget with his hands and feet as they watched the far-off riverbank coasting by. From somewhere far ahead, they heard shouts from a trading vessel sailing downstream.

“I have meant to ask you something ever since we found that force of sellswords with the Mystic,” he said at last.

Loren felt a qualm of anxiety. The mercenaries, Jordel had said, most likely made for Wellmont—the very city that was now their destination. With any luck, she hoped they could reach Wellmont and leave it again before the mercenaries found it, but still this made her uneasy.
 

But she said nothing to Gem and instead showed him an open hand. “Ask me, then. But know that if your question angers me, I will not hesitate to pitch you into the water.”
 

Gem scooted away from Loren. “You know I cannot swim!”

She snickered and gave him a playful shove. “I jest, little master. What do you want to know?”

“You cannot think to go through your life without harming another.”

Loren glanced at him, unsure what to say.
 

“That is not a question.”

“Mayhap not, but you know what I mean.”

“I have not failed to defend myself, or others, when necessary. Even Xain forgets that I planted an arrow in my father’s leg to save his life. But that does not mean that I will kill anyone. Death is a judgment and not mine to make.”

“But why? Can you not see that you are the only one clinging to your rules, and with them you place yourself at an unfair advantage?”

Loren shrugged. “What of it? Where stems this insistence of yours that I play by the rules
you
deem fit? A poor choice is mine to make.”

“I do not ask for some idle debate. Do you mean to end up dead by some stranger’s blade? Because that is the only outcome I see for you, as foolish as you have comported yourself since we met.”

Before Loren could reply, soft footsteps whispered on the wood. Annis came to sit beside them, settling on her left while Gem remained on the right. A quick glance over her shoulder showed Xain at the ship’s other end, and though he did not face them Loren saw the wizard’s careful eye on their exchange. Mayhap she was right to suspect the question did not come from Gem.

She refused to play his game. “Have you given much thought to your course after Wellmont?”
 

“I had not finished.”

“I have, for I said all I mean to. Now, where will you go once we leave the city?”

“Somewhere with an endless supply of food that requires no coin,” quipped Annis.
 

Loren laughed, and even Gem smirked, but their humor was dampened as their stomachs gurgled in concert like a choir of minstrels.

“Casting aside all jest,” said Loren, turning to Annis, “what will you do after Wellmont? Have you even decided?”

Annis shrugged. “Well, I have told you I mean to go to Calentin.”

“Of course. But what then?”

Annis looked perplexed. “There I will hide until I am but a distant memory to my mother, and all my family. What else could I do?”

Loren stared at her. “You mean to just . . . remain there? And do what?”

“Well . . . live, I suppose. I still hold hope that we can fetch a good price for our . . . cargo.” She gave a meaningful look and patted her cloak. “I could purchase a simple house far from prying eyes. I could raise my own food or buy enough to stay comfortable. Mayhap even find some handsome young nobleman to marry.” Her eyes darted to Gem, and she giggled.
 

The boy still stared out at the river, oblivious. “Marriage,” he scoffed. “The useless binding of oneself to another for all your life when you have known them for but a sliver of it. If I made it rich, I would buy a house, certainly, and am sure I would keep many lovers there to please me. But to promise myself to just one?” He grunted a laugh.

Annis’ cheeks grew darker. “You speak very plainly of such things, for a young child,” she said, irritation clear in her voice.
 

Gem’s face darkened. Beneath the streets of Cabrus he had spoken of Auntie, and of the way she treated her children. Loren thought she knew something of the anger she saw in him now. She interrupted the conversation with a sigh, leaning back on her hands.

“I cannot envision myself in a life of idle luxury. Not yet. I would go mad sitting about a house all day. There is too much I wish to do, too much in the world waiting to be seen.”

Gem snorted. “Aye. You want the life of an infamous thief for reasons I will never understand. But how do you mean to reach it?”

Loren looked at Gem in confusion. “Why, what do you mean? Just that.”

“He
means,”
Annis said, her voice ringing with authority, “how do you mean to get there? Will you simply stroll into the next great city you see hoping to liberate the wealthy of their gold? Do you really believe that would work? Do you think a great thief springs fully formed into the world without years of training and brushes with danger?”

“Well, they must start somewhere,” said Loren, annoyed.

“Aye, and that is the point,” said Gem. “Where will you start? Where will you go next? I do not mean so simple an answer as fleeing from Annis’s mother, or escaping the Mystic’s grasp.
Where
will you go?”

“Anywhere I please,” she said, her annoyance growing. “I am bound to no one.”

Gem sighed, shaking his head.
 

Annis rose beside Loren and primly dusted her filthy skirts, seemingly unaware of the gesture’s futility. “It is as I thought. You have no more direction than a wandering chick fresh from the nest. You would be better off following me to Calentin, at least to start.”

Annis strode towards the ship’s bow, and when Loren turned to Gem she found the boy had risen to follow. She sat alone, leaning with her elbows on her knees, staring out at the water. And at last she caught a glimpse of the truth: Loren had no idea in the world where she wanted to go—nor how to find out.

The river whispered below her, but it spoke no answer.

fourteen

TWO WEEKS INTO THEIR VOYAGE, everyone onboard had grown irritable with hunger. Loren spent the longest stretches of her days curled up on a coil of rope Brimlad kept near the ship’s bow, trying to avoid speaking to anyone to keep herself from anger. The captain himself yelled as often as he spoke. Gem and Annis were insufferable with their bickering. Xain stayed silent for the most part and rarely could he muster the strength to bolster the ship’s small sails with a plume of wind. Loren feared to dip her fishing line in the water, for the disappointment of an empty day made the occasional reward of a finger-long fish seem less than worth it.

And then on the sixteenth day, they spotted the sail approaching behind them.

Gem spied it first. Loren noticed the boat had grown curiously quiet, and looking up she saw the boy standing at the boat’s rear rail, unmoving as his eyes stayed fixed behind them. She almost looked away again, relieved at the silence, but something in his posture—a tense, fearful sense of anticipation—captured her attention.

“Gem,” she called out. “What is it?”

“A cloud pursues us. Only I do not think it is a cloud.”

Brimlad whirled on the spot, shoving the tiller into Xain’s hand and going to Gem.
 
Loren rose from the deck to join them. Annis remained where she was by the railing, barely raising her head to see.

“Who cares if there is a cloud?” she said. “I would welcome a little rain, if only to relieve this unbearable heat.”

“Remove your cloak, then,” snapped Gem.
 

Loren slapped him lightly on the back of his head. Her gaze searched the horizon, where the river curled and twisted like a long, shimmering snake. They had sailed around a long bend in its course and found that they had only moved a league as the crow flies, though they had sailed at least three times that long. But following the blue waters farther and farther back, Loren at last spied what Gem had seen. A small white shape hovered above the horizon, tilting slightly back and forth. Fuzzy and indistinct to Loren’s eye. Indeed, like a cloud.

But Brimlad sucked in a sharp breath and in a grim voice said, “’Tis no cloud. That is a sail. And by the looks, a mighty ship indeed.” He spat over the railing, a gob of thick brown phlegm sinking into the water.

A thrill of fear ran through Loren. “Whose ship? Have we anything to fear?”

“I would wager so,” said Brimlad. “Few enough ships could move fast enough to catch us at our pace. At no village have we stopped nor lain ashore overnight. And no port we have passed has held any ship like that one. That means they are from Redbrook and have been sailing day and night to catch us.”

“But how could they possibly have caught up?” Loren was annoyed to hear her own panic. Spots danced at the edge of her vision. She was nearly starved—they all were. “No matter how fast they have sailed, we had a strong lead. And Xain’s magic to help us besides.”

“My little skiff will pull her weight, that is sure, but there are mightier ships what inhabit these waters,” said Brimlad. “And I would wager they have some kind of witchery aboard, same as us.”

That roused Xain at last. With his hand on the tiller he rose and looked towards the sail. “Will they catch us before we reach Wellmont?”
 

“I would say it will be a near thing,” said Brimlad. “Except that I fear it will not. They need a wizard to catch us, and theirs is likely better fed than you. They have caught sight of us at last, and the gap can only narrow. We have a day, mayhap two, before they are close enough to take us.”

“And what then?” said Gem.

Xain looked at him with hooded eyes. “Then they will capture the girl and kill the rest of us. If we are lucky, they will be quick.”

Annis rose slowly and walked towards them with leaded feet. “Not if I commanded them to leave you. I have angered my mother, certainly, but my words must still carry her weight.”
 

“Even a young lass like you cannot be fool enough to believe that,” the captain growled.

Annis raised her chin, nostrils flaring above her quivering lips. “Very well, then.” Her voice almost broke. “Put me ashore. I will wait for them here. They will not pursue you once they have claimed me, and you will be safe.”

Brimlad’s lips twisted, and he looked to Xain with a shrug. “She might have something there. I think it is our skins if we do anything different.”

“We cannot!” cried Loren. “You would abandon this girl back to the clutches of her mother? Captain, you cannot know what fate you consign her to.”