It was near impossible to know where Valen’s Illum Hearth would direct their portal. Sil would take any place if it was out of the blasted caves.
She stumbled out and turned on her heels. They were following. She swung at the first head that poked through the gateway and smashed it right in the eyes. Vergil kicked it back.
Limbs were already crowding through, grabbing for the edges of the portal to drag themselves through.
With what last dregs of illum she could draw in, she forced a barrier in their wake. They pounded on it so hard that she feared it wouldn’t last the heartbeat. Bellows, howls and cries as if of demons echoed into the night as the portal fizzed out and dispersed. Arms fell twitching in the mud.
Sil spat a glob of blood and blew her nose in her hand. Her teeth chattered with the adrenaline rush of their hair-thin escape. They had survived.
It was difficult to accept.
“Where are we?” she mumbled to herself as she looked around. Her sprite had been left behind and she lacked the reserves to make another.
Nighttime in the outside world. Her eyes, used only with the underground dark for only the Goddess knew how long, started picking up details in the vague light.
Vergil was lifting Tallah back up on his shoulder from where he had discarded her against some wooden fencing.
Vague, dark shapes resolved into a tight cluster of hovels.
The jagged curve of Valen’s mountains loomed black against an overcast sky.
Slow, icy drizzle, mixed in with early Winter sleet, greeted their arrival. Dogs barked madly somewhere, rattling their chains. The howls of Anna’s monsters echoed and were swallowed by the night.
“What’s this now?”
“Who’s there?”
“Ammie, get my crossbow! Keep Georgie in bed.”
A cacophony of voices echoed from the small cottages. Yellow light flared through cracks in wooden shutters.
A gang of burly men dressed in furs rushed out, armed and ready for a fight. They brandished crossbows and hand-held oil lamps, only to be met by a soaking wet, blood stained, shivering healer that barely held herself propped up on her staff. She couldn’t imagine what she’d do against five armed men, but Vergil tensed for another fight.
“S-sorry. We didn’t mean to wake anyone up,” she stammered, trying to march her wits into line.
A farmer, barely taller than her chest, lifted his lamp to her face, blinding her with its light.
“Adventurers,” he announced, and there was a groan of dismay from the rest of the men.
They turned and fanned out in a circle around them, checking the surroundings.
“What did you bring down on us, girl?” the leader asked and pointed his crossbow straight at Sil’s chest.
“Nothing. We-we-we came by portal.” She stamped down on an arm still squirming at her feet. “It’s closed now. Nothing else came through.”
The man peered past her at Vergil, but she moved with the light. With her free hand she gestured for the boy to stay calm and not aggravate the heavily armed men. His growls bode ill.
A long quiet settled among the men flanking them.
“Bog, ye stand guard. Yer going out at first light with the goats anyway,” the leader called out. One of the men groaned and the others, satisfied that nothing came out of the dark at them, reluctantly returned to their homes.
“Come with me,” the leader addressed Sil and turned on his heels.
She obeyed and gestured Vergil to follow.
The man led them to a small barn at the back of his homestead, where he drew aside the heavy wooden beam barring the double doors.
“I gather that your friend there needs a healer’s ministrations.” The white-haired man beckoned them to enter and set his lamp down on a short three-legged stool. “Will you be needing I fetch Buzz, our healer?”
Sil was at a momentary loss for words. After the greeting, hospitality was the last thing she expected.
“N-no. No, I think I’ll manage,” she said, panic rising that someone might get a good look at them. She kept herself between the light and Tallah, shielding her in the cast shadow. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t be mentioning it. We’s good people here, if a bit gruff.” His scowl melted into a gap-toothed grin. “Not the first group to stumble into our little corner of the world. Make yerselves comfortable. Don’t mind Cricket. She’s friendly enough.”
He walked out and down a muddy path, back to his cottage. “Knock if ye need anything,” he called back. “The missus will come round in the morning wi’ some cheese and bread.”
Vergil sat the sorceress down against a ballot of hay and backed away from her, mumbling with each step. He went out into the sleet rather than stay nearby. Sil could hear him talking to himself in his odd language but didn’t have the energy to determine if that was something to worry about.
She sat down heavily on the hay and breathed out a long sigh of weariness. A goat peered around the wall to a stall, thoughtfully chewing.
We almost botched that so bad, Sil thought as she studied her friend. It had been such a close contest of skill and power between Tallah and Anna. The black gem in her hand buzzed like an annoyed wasp when she studied it. Ultimately, it went into the bottom of her stained and ruined satchel.
Before she could deal with Tallah’s afflictions, she needed to handle herself first. The illum siphon that kept Vergil upright had almost sucked her dry. She blew her bloodied nose against the hem of her skirt and then dug in the small pouch she had belted to her calf. That had survived unmolested at least.
She pulled out one of her last remaining bags of powdered dried ink-nettle and inhaled a lungful. It cleared her dizziness and opened her up to more power. It would keep her going for a few hours more and the boy would stay possessed. If she dropped dead so would he, but that didn’t bear thinking about just now.
A shudder tightened her shoulders when she thought back on how she had almost convinced Tallah to leave the wretch as they found him, starved and nearly dead in the gibbet. Without him, they would’ve been cut to ribbons thrice over.
So bloody close. So bloody stupid…
Tallah, at some point in the battle with Anna, had taken off her silver mask. Now she held a death’s grip on it, fingers locked rigidly as Sil tried to pry it away.
No stir.
Sil knelt by her and cupped her face with both hands. Tallah’s grey eyes were bloodshot and trembling slightly. Pink lines of scarring crowded around the left socket, along with crusts of dried blood. Anna had almost claimed that one. The healing draught had saved it, for now.
One sure way to get someone out of that kind of stupor, at least without something pungent enough on hand.
Sil held Tallah’s head up by her chin and struck her as hard as she could. Vergil cracked open the door and peered in.
“Ow.”
Tallah’s lips moved, and she blinked in response. For good measure, Sil slapped her again.
“Ow!”
Tallah’s eyes snapped angrily on Sil’s, turning sudden razor-sharp focus onto her.
“Oh goody, you’re still with us.” Sil allowed acid to drip into her words, though she couldn’t mask the relief she felt.
Tallah blinked again and looked around. “I can’t see out my left eye,” she immediately complained as she frowned at their surroundings and tried to rub feeling back into her face. “Where are we?”
“Don’t paw at it,” Sil ordered, and swatted her hand away. “Lie back. Sit still. What’s your name?”
She got glared at. “Tallah Amni,” came the rote answer. “You’re Silestra Adana. I can feel and move all my fingers and toes. We should be in Valen’s vicinity, continent of Vas. I'm still half-blind.”
Sil nodded and was satisfied.
Now…. Now she could focus. Not relax, not yet, but focus. Anna’s dying domain was hundreds of meters beneath them. The rational side of her doubted that the mindless hordes could find their way out of the labyrinthine depths of the dying Sanctum, let alone out of the tunnels leading to it.
To work would take her mind off the inevitable but what if.
With Tallah conscious again, she willed herself to stop expecting eyes peering out of every shadowy nook, allowed the smell of hay and goat to cover the stench of blood, and turned her attention to her ministrations.
Her satchel was ruined. Most of her draughts were lost, her precious vials shattered, and the stowed herbs polluted beyond use. Her tools, encased in small ebony boxes, had survived, along with some of the medicine stowed in sturdier, very expensive bottles.
She donned a monocle and inspected the blinded eye.
“Can’t promise you won’t need to visit Aliana when we get back, but we’ll see in the morning,” she commented.
Tallah frowned at her.
“It wasn’t a bad joke,” Sil lied.
She made a compress from a clean cloth drenched in a foul-smelling tincture and applied it over the stricken eye. The sorceress obeyed her instructions without question while Sil relieved her of her tattered coat, trousers, and leather armour.
“Where are we?” Tallah asked again as she was made to lift her arms.
Sil had to drag, pull and cuss at the ruined vest of armoured carapace that the sorceress wore on her back. It had begrudgingly survived the mauling of the chimeras, but their claws had dug through in too many places. Drying blood held it stuck fast to Tallah’s back.
“I’ll tell you soon. I need to check your ghosts,” she said as she got to Tallah’s bare skin.
“They’re both berating my thoughtless actions. I’d dare say they’re fine.”
Sil pressed Tallah’s head forward, chin to her chest, so she could have a better look at her back and the scars there.
“If it’s all the same to you, mighty sorceress, I’d rather I checked.”
Months of work, pain and horror to gain a sorceress’s soul. Sil would accept no risk to the other two, regardless of their host’s protesting.
One of Anna’s bone spears had gone straight through Tallah’s shoulder. It was a hair’s breadth away from ripping through the sutured pattern of soul thread on her back.
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The twin bindings were still pristine, albeit blood-spattered, two octagons of crisscrossing, multicoloured threads that had been painstakingly sewn through the skin of her back. The left one, that contained Bianca, was still raw and healing. The right, Christina, had almost finished incorporating into Tallah’s flesh, so much so that it mostly resembled a pattern of old scars by now. Maybe damage would no longer impact its use, but they weren’t ready to test that theory.
“It was close,” she said, tracing a finger over the bindings. So delicate and so risk laden. “Carapace did its work.”
The sorceress shuddered at the touch and giggled. It sounded forced.
Her lower wound, which had gone through her abdomen, had missed Bianca’s suture entirely. Sil allowed herself a breath of relief.
“You threw out a lot of power in there. Did you expose yourself?”
“I did not expose myself, no. We were careful.”
“Not careful enough.”
Soft, pink scar tissue covered the entry and exit holes, and a line of pink went across her torso. Sil whistled through her teeth as she traced the path of the healed cut. Anna had tried to eviscerate Tallah in battle, with the cruel efficiency of a war surgeon. The scarring was bunched across her belly and stomach, a mess of lines that must’ve hurt terribly when fresh.
“Bianca did what she could. Kept my innards where they should be.”
“I can see that. You’re lucky she’s not as headstrong as you.”
Too close a call by any reasoning.
The healing potion had done all it could in the caves. Barely sufficient.
“To answer your question, we’re somewhere in the Right Arse Cheek of Nowhere, as far as I can tell,” she said. “Some small village in… I have no idea. It’s dark. High in the hills, I think.”
“Anyone get a look at us when we transferred in?” Tallah continued, switching hands on her compress.
“A bit, but the weather’s shite and they only had oil lamps. We scared some farmers out of bed. Not that I think they’d recognise you, way out wherever this is. I kept you out of lamplight.”
She applied an ointment to reduce the scarring. A thorough inspection and a wash with a damp cloth revealed a tapestry of more angry swelters and freshly healed cuts. Tallah looked to have gone through one end of a meat grinder and out the other.
“Drink this.” She proffered a small bottle with a greyish green liquid sloshing inside. Tallah stuck out her tongue. “Yes, you need to. No, I don’t care that you don’t want to. I don’t know what your old friend stuck you with, so drink up.”
Tallah’s colour almost matched the liquid as she downed the vile thing and grimaced afterwards. Sil took away her compress and inspected the eye again, pressing with her fingers around it.
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“See anything out of it?” She moved her finger in front of Tallah’s face while keeping the good eye covered up.
“I see the vague outline of a rude gesture.”
“Good. You won’t have to regrow the eye, but it will need some tending.” She bandaged a soaked eye patch over it. “Twice in a day. I’m amazed you’re not completely blind yet.”
Few things annoyed a healer more than an illum burnout. The magical, self-inflicted damage produced when the sorceress pushed herself this hard was damn near impossible to heal with any sort of reliability. Tallah’s eyesight only kept getting worse with each excess as if to spite Sil’s efforts, alchemy, and even healing prayers.
“How’s your illum flow?” This time Tallah asked, noticing Vergil pacing outside. He was arguing with himself. It sounded like he was losing.
“Steady. Got a few bags of ink-nettle left so I think I’m good until we get to Valen with the bucket-head over there.”
Tallah tried to get up, but Sil pressed her firmly back down.
“I’m not done with you. Chin up. I want to look at your limiters.”
“Give me the illum link then,” Tallah insisted while Sil stashed away her supplies.
“Don’t be stupid.”
She checked on the silver choker around Tallah's neck, applied ointments where the skin had blistered, and then checked on the three bands on each arm.
“You’ve managed to crack every single one. I just remade all of them. Why do I keep bothering?”
“They’re still in one piece,” Tallah insisted. “You need to strengthen them even more.”
“There’s no alloy strong enough to deal with your unicorn stubbornness. Do you know how long it took me to make these? Do you know how hard it is to get good-quality electrum?” She sighed and sat opposite her friend. “Just get us our clothes.”
“If it makes you feel any better, these are… were your best yet. They’ve worked well. I managed to aim the devourer this time.”
Tallah chuckled as she tried to open a Rend. She had her arm raised and made a grimace as her brow furrowed in something that looked like agony.
“What’s the matter?” Sil asked.
Tallah grunted and shut her good eye tight, her grimace darkening.
“It hurts. Give me a moment.”
Sil had never experienced illum burnout. Healing magic was too efficient for that, and she’d never needed to use her other abilities extensively enough to crack under the strain. Tallah’s pyromancy was a different matter altogether.
“You don’t need to do it right away. We can wait. It won’t be dawn for a couple hours more.”
Even in the meagre, flickering lamp light, Sil could see the tears in Tallah’s eye as she pushed through the pain and forced open a small black portal that hung in the air. Normally it should have been as tall as Sil. Now it barely fit a hand through.
“See?” She breathed a sigh of relief and dropped her arm on her lap. “I’m fine.” The tremor in her voice separated the truth from her lie.
Sil slapped her across the back of the head.
“Stop. Using. That stupid devourer. It’ll kill you one of these days and it won’t be a pretty sight for anyone. I’ll have to scrape you off whatever you splatter against.”
Tallah just cackled and pursed her lips in mockery and Sil had to relent in the face of overwhelming disregard for her concerns. She dipped her arm up to her shoulder into the portal and rummaged about. After some choice muttered curses, she pulled out two bundles of clothes.
She took off her wet and fouled white outfit and looked at it mournfully before tucking it into a bag. She donned a much more modest grey woollen robe, with matching woollen travel trousers underneath, and sturdy boots. She needed the Goddess’s own patience to find them both while groping blindly in the Rend, and then some more to pull them out through the narrow opening.
“Can I get dressed now?” Tallah asked. Despite her bravado, she shivered in the chill of small hours. Never a good sign on a pyromancer.
“Blue lips complement well your red hair,” Sil said, but threw her the remaining bundle.
With a sigh, Tallah took out the low cut dark blue dress.
“I hate this dress so bloody much,” she whined to no one as she drew it on with some difficulty. She looked like a bandaged scarecrow wearing something too short and too wide at the hips.
“Blame your entire caste for that,” Sil commented. She pulled out a wide-brimmed hat from the portal and passed it over. “No proper sorceress would wear sensible clothes, right?”
“Anna didn’t wear any at all. I’d follow her example in a heartbeat if Christina wouldn’t gag every time we passed a mirror.”
They shared a chuckle at that, tension bleeding out of them while the dark outside drifted into the diffuse light of morning. High, dense clouds put up a vain fight against the coming of the day.
Sil tucked away the ruined clothes, mask included, and, with a voice echoing somewhere outside, called Vergil back in.
“What do we do about him?”
Tallah shrugged. “Nothing. We’ll say he got cursed by something and we need to get him to the Sisters.” She looked him over. Aside from some scratches, the boy was in no worse condition than when they’d found him. “Not that it’s far from the truth, anyway. I doubt anyone here speaks whatever language this thing keeps spouting off.”
It was true. He had been wearing the helmet for hours and rambled without pause. Nothing he said had made even a lick of sense to either of them.
“And what about the actual person under the helmet? What do we do about him? Do I report him when we get back?”
“Succumbed to starvation. Half-eaten by a ratman. It doesn’t matter because I’m not giving him back to the Guild.”
Sil nodded. She took out a crumpled scroll from her satchel and made some notes in it.
“Fine then. You ready?”
“As I can be,” the sorceress confirmed as she drew herself up to her full height. She unbalanced with the effort.
Sil pulled her close by the waist and held her up, her staff held between them. She lifted it and thrust the butt of it hard into the ground. A flash of light travelled from it to them, up their bodies, and fizzed out into the air.
Vergil made a confused noise as the afterglow dissipated.
Tallah slipped easily into Tianna’s skin. Red hair turned raven black, silver eyes midnight blue, and her dress fit properly now. It took a moment for her to stabilise in her form.
Sil almost failed to. She was tired and weary and struggled to stabilise into her tall aelir persona. Jumping species was always confusing and disorientating, but it had been a long time since she had difficulties keeping the shape coherent.
“Breathe, Sil. Nice and slow,” Tallah whispered, keeping an arm around her middle. “You’ve done this a thousand times already. Let it happen.”
She did and she had. Heartbeats later she felt herself settling into the disguise as she exhaled slowly.
Tallah readjusted her dress and had a few experimental turns to make sure she wouldn’t trip over her own feet. Sil rubbed her palms for warmth and scratched a few choice places.
“I get that wool’s cheap and all, but whoever designated initiate healers to wear it exclusively needs a beating.”
“Are you dears all right in there?” An old woman’s craggy head popped in through the half-opened door.
The crowing of a cockerel sounded moments later, almost embarrassed at being late to wake.
Their host was dressed in a simple white woollen dress with a sheepskin vest and walked in carrying a small wooden tray. It held, covered in melting sprinkles of snow, some fresh, steaming bread and a ball of white cheese.
“Simeon was telling me one of you was in a bad way. You need I fetch in Buzz, our healer?” she asked. She kept a pleasant smile while she blew out the spent lamp and packed it away up on a tool shelf.
“Uh, no ma’am, thank you,” Sil replied with a slight bow to the woman. “Thank you so much for allowing us to stay the night here. We did not know where we were, or what time it was. We did not mean to startle people out of bed.”
The woman blew a raspberry and roared with laughter.
“Now don’t you sweet little thing be worrying yourself over that. We look out for one another up in these hills. You never know how many friends you need when the drays come howling.”
She noticed Vergil in more clear light now.
“Is that young man there… er, all right?” she asked in a low voice. “Should I bring him a coat? The poor lad’s basically naked.”
In the morning light, Vergil’s conjured armour was translucent, like cloudy plates of interlocking glass. It left very little of him to the whims of imagination.
“Not exactly, no. He ran into some kind of curse while we were exploring an ancient ruin underground.” Tallah replied. “We aim to get him to the Sisters of Mercy in Valen.”
“Aw, the poor dear. Them’s ugly things, curses,” she muttered, wiping her hands on her apron. “Ah, but me manners. I’s Ammie. Don’t know if Simeon mentioned me.”
“No ma’am,” Sil replied and took the woman’s calloused hand in hers. “My name is Silestra, and my partner here is Tianna. The naked one is Vergil. We were just out on our first sortie for the Guild.” She smiled at the woman with an earnestness that made their host blush. “If you don’t mind, could you tell us where we are?”
Sil gave her a sunburst smile that only ever worked on an aelir’s ageless face. It had its intended effect as the woman’s eyes focused solely on her.
“Well dear, you’re in Cliff’s Edge. Valen is about two days away, northward me thinks, by cart.”
“Ohhh,” Sil mused, “we’re somewhere out in the Ruffle then? I was afraid we’d be farther off from the city proper. Any chance there is some transport going there?”
“There is, yes. It should come round these parts by noon but, with the snow and rain, it may be a tad late.”
Tallah was watching Vergil who, in turn, had stopped talking and was looking transfixed at their conversation. Nothing had stopped his incessant blathering since they’d put the helmet on him. The older woman seemed to fascinate him.
“Oh, thank the Goddess’s mercy. I was afraid we’d have to walk all way back. Is it a coach?”
“A cart, actually.” Ammie smiled at her with the simple patience of country folk. “We’re too far away and high in the hills for such luxuries as a coach. But you can talk to Amus when he comes round, and he’ll give you a ride on his cheese delivery. I’ll talk to ‘im and let you folk know when he’s about.”
“Thank you so much again, miss Ammie.” Sil kept her smile warm, despite the bone-deep weariness she felt. “Allow us to repay for your hospitality.” She reached for her satchel, but Ammie’s tough hands pressed on hers.
“None of that. You just tell people down in the city there’s good folk up here; they ought to buy our cheese.” She winked at them and made to leave, stopping just shy of the door. “Though you could help by splitting some logs for the fire. If that’s not too much trouble?”
She hadn’t even finished speaking that Vergil was already running down the path to a pyramid of logs stacked behind one of the houses. He picked up a wood handled axe leaning against the pile and began quartering logs with a fury. His enthusiasm left the three women watching him speechless for a time.
“That is not your wood, is it?” Tallah pointed to a different house. “Your tracks lead to that one.” There was an identical pyramid of logs next to the fresh path.
“Aye, that be Miriam’s lot. All the same, she’ll be happy for the help. I’ll bring him a coat and some trousers.” Ammie nodded her farewells and headed off, leaving the two in the barn’s doorway watching Vergil working.
They shrugged, pulled the door closed against the cold, and sat on the hay, eating their breakfast. Cricket finally came out of her stall and stared at them with an animal’s mindless interest.
“Tallah?”
“Yes?”
“Can you please shoo the goat away? It’s chewing on my dress.”