Unshaven, ragged, clad in stolen clothes, Donovan emerged from the trees alone. Puffing from exertion, he replaced his dagger in its sheath with his left hand; his right arm remained in a sling. He made a cursory check for blood, saw none, and then stomped across the muddy courtyard to the squat inn. He entered the kitchen from the back, knocking the muck from his boots.
“Where’d your little friends go?” asked the man within. He leaned back on his chair and sipped tepid beer, watching Donovan over the bottle. A river sailor, he knew both the temperaments of the Dragon and the value of keeping his mouth shut.
“The two lovebirds decided to return home,” Donovan grumbled. A thin trickle of blood wormed down the side of his neck, mingling with sweat.
“Oh? I can see the pier from here. Nobody’s gone that way.”
“Perhaps they wanted to walk the long way and enjoy the weather,” the Redeemer offered.
Two evil men locked eyes, neither willing to budge.
“Is the vessel ready?” Donovan asked at last.
“Nearly,” the sailor said. “I’ve been listening to the radio while I waited for you to…talk things out.”
The sailor flipped on a tinny radio. He motioned Donovan closer as if to lay an arm about his shoulders.
As though the Redeemer would grant him such an easy opportunity.
The radio sang:
By wave be blessed
Maiden reborn
All praise to her healing waters
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The faithful rewarded
Sing forth her hymns
Her reign returned
While the tune played, Donovan let his good hand drop to the satchel at his hip. It was heavy, somehow, beyond the weight of the goods within: two glowing stones and a diary.
The first orb, stolen from Lumia, hummed like electricity in his mind.
The second, still stained with blood, swirled and bubbled in place – solid, cut stone somehow dancing like a stream.
“What did the girl steal for you?” the sailor asked, watching his hand.
“Mind your business.”
“And now the Stormmother returns, fast on your heels…”
The sailor thought himself safe, four paces away and facing his adversary.
Donovan drew and hurled the dagger into the man’s gut in a well-practiced motion. As the sailor grunted, he rushed forward and tackled the man to the dirt floors.
As they fell, Donovan drove his weight into the haft of the dagger, forcing it deeper.
“I told you to mind your business!”
The stolen gemstone throbbed against his hip, quickening with excitement as blood flowed. Was blood not the first water? Did it not always return to the sea?
“This is the reward of faith.”
To his credit, the sailor managed to slug Donovan with the frantic strength of a dying man. With only one arm, Donovan could not block, and his head rang with the blow.
Damn this rotted arm and damn the guardian of that place!
Snarling, Donovan gripped the dagger tight.
“Let’s see if your Goddess will heal this!”
He split the man open with a savage yank, and the sailor stilled.
Donovan lurched to his feet, touched at his throbbing eye socket, and wiped sweat from his brow. Too many years in Lumia left him unsuited for the oppressive heat of this latitude. He had become weak, and he wasted what energy he had on fools.
The radio blissfully sang on.
How little people yearned for little gods.
It could not be a coincidence that she rose on his very heels. There was no coincidence; merely the ignorance of tiny minds.
His own mind needed to expand if he was to defeat the Stormmother herself.
There was so much more he needed to know.
Then, as he cleaned his dagger, a stroke of inspiration.
Donovan possessed stones infused with the essence of the realms divine. Shortcuts to the tree of knowledge. Yet he could not return lest the terrible guardian complete what she started with his arm.
But what law mandated that he had to walk the path?
Surely there are fools enough with the greed to leap forth…if I show them the way.
And then he could simply collect what fell as they burned.
“Thanks for the boat,” he murmured to the smuggler’s corpse.
Donovan struck for the Plateau.