At first, the adrenaline kept her going. She wasn’t used to her magic, and she was pushing herself as hard as she could to avoid leaving tracks that could be followed. When she felt like the bottoms of her feet were burning and like she was nauseated, she stopped drawing on magic and walked.
But, after a while, the adrenaline wore off. She felt like she hurt all over, and tiredness hit her like a wave. Somehow, she could not even see the sun peaking over the far horizon. She made herself remember the horrible dream her mother had given her. She gave up whatever life she had left to give me the knowledge and the motivation to escape the Ieshans. They will wake up, magic refreshed, and find me gone. Many of them know bird forms that can fly long distances. I have to find energy to go more than a few hours. The desert is wide open; they will be able to see me if I do not get a long way off. She then made it a goal to keep walking until she reached the mountains, or at least some of the trees by them.
Yet, as she walked and walked, and the light broke over the horizon, even motivating herself by thinking about her mother wore off. She began to pep talk herself. I shall not have to sit through another lesson. I will never see Ulric again, so he cannot possibly beat me. No more of this being the grandmother of some important prophecy figure and last of the Ieshan royal bloodline. I do not have to try to force myself to find ways to love Nerric. Step by step, she came up with reasons why she should be glad she was escaping and trying to reach into a well of strength she had never tested so thoroughly to keep going away from the castle behind her.
The hazy golden light spread from the mountains beyond across the sage-brush covered and brown landscape dotted with conifers. She realized she had walked enough that the castle was no longer visible behind her, but not enough that she was anywhere near the base of the mountains and the somewhat thicker foliage on them.
She kept walking. She had to be strong. There were only a few hours to get to a suitable hiding space. Genya would wake up and realize she was gone. If Genya was kind, and not just worried about Rosalea, or worse, compelled by mind magic to raise an alarm, a couple hours after that would pass. Then Ulric would wake and be ready to have her learn more magic practice or want to plan what to do when Nashota returned, and it had to be confessed that she was a Uryan… she shook her head and decided she didn’t care what either Ulric or Nashota thought. It wouldn’t matter that she had her father’s magic as long as she could get away. When he woke, they would start looking for her. Hopefully they would start near the castle, thinking she had just snuck out again, and then they would be forced to fan out around it.
But some of the hunters fly. They become birds of prey and fly, she reminded herself. She looked at the mountains, and, in a self-conscious manner, reached up and touched her hair. I have to find cover before they start flying to look for me. If I am caught, I might not even remember it afterwards.
Such grimness of thoughts and beliefs fueled her despite how her feet blistered, and her limbs began to ache with the simple effort of continuing to move over the arid dirt on her way to the green mountains. She stared outward at the horizon - the mountains seemed so much closer than they actually were. Everything was so flat, and they were so tall, it seemed as if they would be imminently reachable. She reminded herself that when she climbed up into the green, her footsteps would begin to somewhat disappear. She just had to get that far.
But, they always seemed just beyond her reach, slowly getting bigger and bigger, until she began to believe she didn't understand how big they were at all, and that she would never reach them. To entertain herself, she tried to remember what her geography lessons were, to try to distract herself from how much this prolonged hike felt terrible on her body, and all she could remember was that the warlike Uryans were supposed to live on and over those mountains.
And yet, she was filled with doubt... if not about the Uryans' existence so close to their sworn enemy, then in Ulric's words. With the knowledge that her past had been covered up intentionally, and written falsely in the history, or at least, what had happened to Lindir had been dressed up, Rosalea suddenly doubted everything Ulric had ever said to her and had ever taught her. What better way to make her not repeat her mother's mistakes than to lie to her about the Uryans? What better way to make her afraid to leave than to believe that the worst lurked just out of sight in high mountain passes? Yet, he told the story of the fall of Ninevah so painfully well with his first person perspective, she could not bring herself to entirely doubt him. No, there had once been three Ieshan castles, and Rosalea was sure that it was fact that Uryans were the reason there were only two.
Still, the doubt gnawed at her, and she didn't know what to believe or what to trust. It grew into a feeling of paranoia: a crushing pressure settled over her heart and lungs, stealing her breath. She was on her own, and she couldn't trust anything she had ever learned! For several moments, she felt as if she could be totally lost in that fear of what she did not know. Would it be better to go back then to face what could be in the future? What if she ran into Uryans and the worst happened?
After a moment though, she took a deep breath in, and then out, and finally tell herself, This is actually very simple. I shall believe what I see and hear. What my experience tells me, and what makes sense to what I learned, that is true. Everything else could still be false until I can prove it either way.
The trickiest part of that was being careful that she did not take anything for granted. Actually, the trickiest part of that was that it would take a long time before she could settle on what she really believed. The whole world had to be regarded with an openness of mind she had never had to cultivate before... and the feeling of uncertainty it left in the pit of her chest made her feel like it was going to be a terrible amount of work to accomplish just that.
Still... it didn't help her know what she would do if she really did encounter a Uryan war party.
After a time, she was not even able to be philosophical with herself to try to distract her mind from the pains growing with the long walk, and as it got terribly hot with the rising sun, she found all she could do was just plod along. She sometimes reached behind herself to dig out a little food or the canteen from her pack. This really was the worst experience she had ever had; why was freedom so much unpleasant work?
When she got so tired she felt she must rest, she made her way to a rocky outcropping of sandstone. After inspecting it, she felt that she could probably put her sleeping pallet at the base of it, as close as she could get to the stone, and lay down. She rolled out her sleeping pad and just laid down on it. She covered herself with a cloak, which she smeared thoroughly into the dirt to get it as close to the color of the earth around her as she could. She checked her hair one last time, to make sure it was all hidden beneath the cloak, and closed her eyes. Within moments, she was sound asleep.
She slept much longer than she expected, not waking until the chill of night reminded her she had slept on and not in her sleeping skin. It was the first time she could remember not dreaming about fire, but she was too tired to wonder why; she could only just acknowledge the lack of it. She sat with her eyes squinched shut, and she was fully tempted to just crawl into her sleeping skins and to resume sleeping. However, within a few heartbeats, the paranoia settled over her. I am lucky that they did not find me already; I slept through the whole day. She wondered how many animals could see in the dark or follow scents really well, and paranoia settled once more on her like a vice. She felt stiff, sore, and miserable as she rolled up her things and stowed them in her pack once more, but she told herself that it could not matter.
She flexed her fingers and her toes in her boots and sighed. All right, I have to move. Pain now ensures freedom later. She wondered if Lindir had been able to shapeshift when she had fled the castle. It would be really handy right now if she could not only blend in with the animals, but move at their superior pace.
I think my magic has recovered some. So I can make sure I do not leave footprints as I walk for a little while, and I can protect my feet a small bit from the blisters. After that… For now, she did not think about that.
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Her magic lasted her maybe fifteen minutes, and then she was back to walking in the evening air. She kept the hood of her cloak up, so she would blend in better with the evening landscape, and she ate her dried goods as she walked.
Time began to slide by in a monotonous routine. She would walk until exhausted, sleep wherever looked at least half hidden - whether it was day or night - until she had no idea how many days had passed or how much she had slept. At last though, she reached the juniper trees of the base of the mountain and began to feel successful... even a little optimistic.
I think my mother's worst mistake was that she tried to stay in one place with Gaiden. If I can keep moving, then I will not make her mistakes. If I can get away and stay away long enough, Nashota will become acting King, and slowly they will stop caring about me... I hope. Or at least presume me dead. She stretched, popping her back and shoulders. Sleeping on the ground is horrible. She dragged her pack to herself and realized that she had used her dried foods until they were almost gone in the long walk. She did not worry about water. She imagined she could do what Nerric showed her and get it from the air if strictly necessary. Or, if not that, then all this dew around her right now could be used to fill her water skin. She yawned and took out her brush. She felt horribly dirty and her hair, rubbing against her cloak and the pack, was matted.
Her hair was long, the pride of Genya, and Rosalea was very fond of it. It reached all the way to her thighs. But as she worked the brush through it; she realized that she could not keep it. It was much too hard to manage by herself in the middle of nowhere without being able to keep it clean. She could not bear to cut it all off, but she cut it to just below her shoulders. She dutifully unknotted it, braided it one last time, and then bound it at the end, at the base of her skull, and just above and below where she was about to cut it. Then she took her hunting knife out and sawed through the silver strands.
The cut wasn't even, and it hurt a little, but when it was done, she stowed the long coil of hair in her pack; it would be silly to leave it behind as a glaring sign she had been here. When she dared have a fire, she would burn it. She looked back the way she had come, as if she could see the castle out there on the flat red-brown landscape, but she couldn't. She didn't know when exactly she would be brave enough to have a fire, and as she looked up at the sky, she remembered once more from her mother's memory that the Ieshans who had found her had flown. Smoke curling up into the air would draw anyone... she had to get a lot further away.
She saved a portion of the dried food even though she was still hungry. Her magic hurt to use, but it was now time to try to blunder through all that theory of magic stuff that Ulric had forced her to learn to attempt to find ways to feed herself. Lately, my magic works poorly and hurts when I try to use it, she mused to herself, and remembered something about mages requiring daily meditation to "organize" magic. She pursed her lips, trying to think through what that might mean. It seems probable that it is similar to what I had to do the very first day I connected with my magic and organized it within myself.
It took her only a moment or two to close her eyes and distance herself from the physical world. She was soon enough, within her mental world, overlooking the magical pool that represented the core of her being and the river flowing out from it through her body. The magic was frazzled looking. When she had finished sorting it before, it had all been very orderly feeling, the edges around each outflow of magic from her core, were polished. She took a little time to smooth it all out. It did not take her terribly long, and afterwards, she did feel better.
It didn’t help that she was still hungry, and she felt that tiredness was dragging at every part of her. No matter how hard she slept when she finally let herself sleep, exhaustion did not seem inclined to leave her.
At that moment, something odd happened. She heard a very loud, “No! Do not kill the girl!” It didn’t even take a full heartbeat for her to realize that the voice she just heard in her head was not her own, but someone else’s. That exact phrase was echoed by several other different voices in her head almost all at once.
She stood up instantly and threw her hands up. “I am here! Please do not hurt me!”
“Stay there,” a male voice said firmly. Rosalea nodded, absolutely certain they could see her, even though she could not see them. She was confused and very alarmed. She tried to locate the different animals that had said all the same thing, but was having a hard time sensing anything in her currently alarmed state. Besides, she hadn’t broadened her magical senses since the very first time that she had found them overwhelming, and she simply could not sense them with her eyes alone.
Moments later, five men materialized out of the trees, all of them armed with bows with arrows nocked and pointed at her. She kept her hands in the air. “She must have been a slave. She doesn’t look like an Ieshan.”
It was the man behind her who spoke. She trembled as she heard him coming near her. “Please, I mean no harm,” she said. She was distinctly aware that she may not survive this encounter. She was also aware that perhaps Ulric had lied to her about the Uryans’ ways. He said they destroyed Ninevah and killed a friend he once cared deeply for, but she had never seen any Uryans in person before, nor had there been any direct attacks reported to her in her whole life.
The man in front of her frowned, as a large bear ambled up next to him. Yes, he was definitely Uryan. That must be his liana, his animal companion. He looked from her to the bear and back to her. “Why are you here?” he asked, making a signal with his hand.
The man behind her caught both her arms in a fluid gesture and wrenched them down to the small of her back. She trembled but did not make a sound. As he bound her hands, she looked to the leader. “My name is Rosalea. I came here not to attract your attention, nor to engage anyone here. I was merely passing through, as I have decided to leave the Ieshans.”
The men laughed, as if she had told a great joke somehow. She stared at them with wide eyes, and one of them tilted his head and then came up to her, pushing on her forehead to force her to look up at him. “Hey, she’s got yellow eyes. She must be at least partially Ieshan.” He let go, and another man crowded near, and Rosalea looked at him, so as to avoid being made to look at him.
“She has got them. Is she an Indran?”
“No, they all got markings,” one further back said. “Tattoos on the faces, but there’s not one on her face. She’s all kinds of wrong looking; she must be part Ieshan.”
They all frowned at her. “I am a little under half Ieshan,” Rosalea spoke for herself, drawing on skills cultivated by speaking to councilmen and listening to men of power and interacting with them. “I am also half-Uryan. My father was a man named Gaiden. You can see it in my magic, it is clearly undeveloped.”
The first man who had touched her forehead reached out to her again, and she felt his magic trying to flow through her. She did not resist. He removed his hand, “That is true.”
Her heart was pounding, and she was filled with alarm. The man behind her had finished ensuring the ropes were secure, and now he held her steady by placing a very firm hand on her shoulder, holding it in a grip that was almost painful. “Is it an Ieshan trick?”
The first man was frowning, obviously thinking very hard. She tried to appeal to him: he seemed to be a leader. “I cannot prove anything. All I can tell you is that I am not a spy, and that I mean no harm to you, and hope that you will believe me. If you let me go, I would keep moving because I want to get away from the Ieshans.”
The leader gave a signal to lower weapons, and slowly, the other three complied. “She must have something special about her,” he said to the others, “Or the liana would not insist we spare her.”
“So, then what do we do, Taishan?”
He sighed and looked to the bear next to him. The bear looked at her. “You are called Rosalea by the Ieshans, but Nadia by your mother, yes?”
Rosalea frowned, looking at him. What was he talking about? And then she remembered. That was right, her mother had addressed her as Nadia in the dream. She slowly nodded.
The bear nodded to her. Then he looked to the man called Taishan. “Then it is simple, we take Nadia back to our camp and give her shelter. It is becoming fall now, and she cannot travel alone in the winter and expect to survive in the mountains as she has in the desert.”
Taishan crossed his arms, “I see that you can hear our liana, and they talk to you,” he said, and Rosalea thought he sounded a little annoyed about it. He also said it in a way that was clearly meant to make the others aware that she could talk to their familiars as they could. There were some huffs about it, as if it also annoyed all of them or something. “Vetoka says we take her back and give her shelter.”
The man gripping her shoulder let it go instantly. Even more confusing to Rosalea, he began undoing his work tying her up. She heard his liana, a large boar, praise him for that. This is so weird, she thought as she brought her hands to her front and rubbed over her wrists. “You do not have to give me shelter, I do not want to cause trouble. I really meant to only pass through.”
Taishan shook his head. “What Vetoka says goes, even if you are a mind-controlled Ieshan spy. You shall stay with us through the winter, and we shall see what comes.”
The hand on her shoulder, steering her forward as the Uryan warriors gathered her things, reminded her just a little of Ulric, steering her back to class.