Chapter 50: The Hard Ride North

The desire to rid himself of his cursed debuff had never been so urgent and Miro thought that he would leap at the Healer to shake the desired information out of the elder.

“Who is it, you need to tell me,” Miro asked, nearly shouting, and then heard Nydra clear her throat next to him. “I’m sorry, please, could you tell me?” he amended.

“Yes and no,” Oreksei responded and Miro was once again ready to throttle the Healer’s neck. “There is one who is said to live north of here, in one of the forgotten ancient temples on the shores of the Shattered Sea. She is a member of an order with deep understanding of the old magic – knowledge beyond the reach of any Healer or even mage. If there is anyone who is able to lift this off you, it would be her.”

“I’ve heard of her kind before,” Miro said, remembering Hima’s own suggestion for a possible resolution to his problem. “Would you please be able to tell me how to find her?”

“Therein lies the ‘no’. I know that the temple is about a hundred miles almost directly north of here, but that landscape is a maze of crags and cliffs and inlets. The only way that you would be able to find her is if she thinks you’re worthy enough for her to be found by you.”

“Thank you, Healer … for your help,” Miro said, this time not neglecting the customary bow. “I will seek her out right away.”

“Peteri,” Nydra said, “You ride with him – the horse will have an easier time handling you both than him and me.”

Peteri nodded and was already heading out the door when Nydra asked Oreksei a question with such tenderness, Miro thought he would unravel right there: “Healer, would you be able to stay with her in the meantime?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Oreksei said with what seemed to Miro to be a renewed sense of arrogance, as if prescribing the help of someone else made them such a fantastic Healer.

“What, why not?” Miro demanded.

“Because, young fire mage, I have other patients who would seek my help and I must aid them. I will leave you some medicine to try to ensure that she is still with us when you return, but beyond that, there’s nothing else I could do here.”

“Thank you, Healer,” Nydra said as she stepped forward. “Allow me to take you back to your village.”

“No,” Oreksei said brusquely, “I should attend to a patient in Eight Rocks Hill, take me there instead.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” Nydra said with a nod and took her leave.

Healer Oreksei looked back at Hima again, their brow softening after their stern words for Miro, and the Healer’s hands returned under their clothes and deftly pulled out some ingredients without them so much as looking down, as if their limbs were acting of their own accord. No less than two liquids, a powder and a dried leaf which Oreksei crushed with their fingers went into a new small bottle which they handed to Daimir.

“Here. Dab generously on her lips ever hour until …” they stole one more glance at Hima and then at Miro, “Until the boy returns.” A shudder ran through Miro at those words and he went outside where he was met by Nydra and Peteri.

“Are you going to be okay, lad?” Nydra asked.

“I wish I could say ‘yes’ but no, I am very far from it,” Miro said, knowing if he did anything but joke about it he was likely to burst into tears. “I don’t even understand what I’m supposed to do now. How do I prove to someone with an arcane understanding of magic beyond my comprehension that I’m somehow worthy of an audience with her?”

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If this was going to be one of those ‘pure-of-heart’ things, then Hima was as good as dead.

Peteri, seemingly undeterred by Miro’s rant, was readying their horse. What was the old archer even going to do, where would he even take them?

“Are we meant to just blindly ride north in the hopes that I find a needle in a haystack on the shores of the Shattered Sea? You want to know the extent to which I haven’t the faintest clue about what I’m doing? I don’t know anything about the Shattered Sea – I don’t even know why it’s called that.” He had heard his own voice. He had felt himself stiffen, his fists balled at his sides, the replenished mana dancing as flames through his hands. He knew that he was a hair’s breadth away from stomping his feet. But there was nothing he could do to stop his hammering heart, or his chattering knees.

Nydra clasped his face between her hands. Her gauntlets were off and the warmness of her skin startled him.

“Miro, lad,” Nydra spoke in a voice befitting command, her eyes mere inches away from his. “You’d be surprised how much of life is just picking a direction and then blindly following it, with nothing but trust in yourself and others to get you through the journey.” His cheeks were firmly in her grip, which he realized was a good thing because all he wanted to do was run. “You’ve got your destination, that’s half of it already. Now all you need to do is believe. I know I do. Look at Peteri, he got that horse ready with no hesitation. And Hima? You know what she might say if she were awake right now?”

“I think I can imagine.”

“Good, use that,” Nydra said, gave his head a slight shake, and then let go. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m going to have to be,” Miro said, with all the conviction of a solitary tree in a windstorm.

“That’s a good lad. Peteri, is the horse ready?”

Peteri gently slapped the rump of the dark-chocolate-coloured one. “She’s well fed and had plenty to drink. If we ride smartly, we might make a hundred miles before nightfall tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Miro asked and heard his own voice crack.

“Yes, Miro,” Nydra said patiently, walking over to the horse she would use to give Healer Oreksei a ride and adjusting its saddle, “Only so far a horse can go in a single day before it collapses from exhaustion.”

“I guess my lack of knowledge of the Shattered Sea is eclipsed only by my lack of knowledge of horses.” As he said this, Miro looked up at the sturdy muscular back of the horse he was about to ride, going through in his head each motion that he was inevitably about to muck up.

“Suppose if they were the local village girls you’d have it all figured out,” he heard Nydra say behind him in an imitation of Hima’s grouchy voice.

Miro did not hide his bewilderment as he slowly turned around to find Nydra standing there with an aloof smirk on her face.

“Pretty good, right?” she asked.

“What …” Miro asked, shaking his head.

“‘Vot’ is a city on the coast,” Nydra answered. “I thought I’d inspire you. You know, remind you what you’re fighting for.”

“Somehow, that actually did help.” It was the strangest feeling – wanting nothing more in the world than getting a ribbing directly from Hima.

“Good,” Nydra said, “Just don’t tell her I did that, okay?”

“No, never.”

Feeling a tad lighter in his heart, Miro climbed onto the horse behind Peteri and they set off to the undefined north in a race against the setting sun. It was a race that he had imagined the horse would run faster – countless hours of leaning forward against the wind as the animal sped through the Lowlands towards the Shattered Sea – and was still disappointed to learn that all they’d be left with at the end of such a journey would be a deceased horse.

He knew that they would not be making it to their destination that day but he still peered continuously into the distance trying to wish the coastline into materializing before them.

Miro estimated that they covered almost forty miles before Peteri decided to call it a day and give their hard-working horse a rest. The animal eyed them with a hint of annoyance before dipping its head into a stream to drink while Peteri went ahead and started their fire

“It’s a bit rougher on you when you’re riding hard,” the old archer said when he saw Miro wince as he sat down on a patch of grass. “It’s going to feel worse tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Miro said without lifting his eyes form the ground.

“How are you feeling?”

Miro looked up and found Peteri’s keenly sharp dark eyes staring through him, leaving Miro naked to the world, the impossibility of the task and the costs at stake looming large over him.

“We covered a good distance today,” Peteri continued, seeing Miro struggle with an answer. “With some luck we should be able to find that temple tomorrow.”

“I think we’re going to need significantly more than ‘some’ luck, Peteri.”

Peteri made the faintest of smiles as he poked their fledgling campfire and then said quietly, “Always be prepared to surprise yourself.”