Wirrin stopped under a stand of trees for the night. It must not have rained recently, the fallen leaves and branches were nice and dry. She still had some travel food to go with her rice, but if she was headed directly north, she would have to spend a few days crossing what she thought of as the proper desert, where hunting would be difficult.
With the sense of hers, she could feel birds roosting and hopping around in the treetops as she arrived. They were hard to see in the dimness, but she had no trouble shooting a medium-sized bird out of the canopy.
Wirrin set up at the edge of the stand of trees, plucking the buzzard and bundling the feathers into her pack out of habit. One of the many crafts Wirrin had gotten the hang of during her extended stints in the wilderness was making her own arrows.
She cut the bird into pieces, seasoned it with too much chilli, and stared vaguely at vastness of the night sky as she ate and sweated in the cold. One of the few things Wirrin liked better about the desert than the mountains was the unobstructed view of the stars.
The desert was as flat as Wirrin remembered it. A seemingly endless stretch of yellowing savannah with the odd stand of trees, watering hole, and scrub to break up the monotony.
From Hekaulseg to the woodland a couple more days north, the ground was loose and the hunting was good. Smaller herds of mostly gazelle and various antelope, or various antelope that weren’t white, and the odd group of camels were the norm. Most of the larger grazing animals were found to the northeast or much further north, past the proper desert.
Wirrin caught herself a grouse for lunch and sat down at a respectful distance from a watering hole where some gazelle and antelope were staring daggers at some spotted dogs. Everyone was drinking more or less peacefully, though.
Some of the dogs, long-legged and spotted with big ears, came over to investigate when Wirrin started cooking. She sacrificed nearly half her lunch to make friends as she sat there with her boots off, letting her feet air out.
Though the air was cool and there was a very pleasant breeze dragging fluffy clouds across the sky, Wirrin’s boots were made for snow and her feet were getting sweaty. She’d meant to stop in Hekaulseg for thinner boots, but she hadn’t felt much like staying, what with all the attention from Ketla and the Church.
After travelling more than a week with Ketla, Wirrin was looking forward to her solitude on the way to finding Ulvaer. Solitude other than the spotted dogs who trailed her for a couple of hours after lunch, presumably making sure she didn’t have any more food to share with them.
‘It’s all very flat, isn’t it?’ Mkaer mumbled up into Wirrin’s mind.
‘And dry,’ Naertral burbled.
Wirrin shrugged to herself in the advancing afternoon. ‘Gak tegalk.’
‘What is the use of people for you, Wirrin?’ Naertral burbled. ‘You interrogate us, we ought to interrogate you.’
Wirrin smiled out at the scrub and grass. ‘Is this relationship mutual?’
Mkaer laughed like a mountain blasting apart. ‘Sin eticra, san eticra.’
Wirrin snorted. ‘Gak auktektegalktok.’
‘Gak tegalktok,’ Naertral burbled.
‘Gak tegalk vol gosya,’ Wirrin said.
‘You’re disgusting,’ Naertral burbled.
Wirrin chuckled.
‘We get it, you’re not as good at speaking Kolgya,’ Mkaer rumbled.
‘Nesalan’s interesting, isn’t it?’ Wirrin said. ‘That includes the people, by and large. Not much more to it than that.’
‘I thought you were some sort of revolutionary,’ Naertral hissed.
‘Some sort, perhaps.’ Wirrin shrugged. ‘They’re related, I’m sure.’
‘So you come to look for Kolg because they’re interesting, and likely to join your revolution?’ Mkaer rumbled.
Wirrin shrugged again. And sighed, for good measure. ‘Shyolg, they’re called now,’ she thought. ‘The people who travel, and stay away from the towns.’
‘The shyolg will join your revolution, then?’ Mkaer rumbled.
‘Am I doing a revolution?’ Wirrin asked. ‘I’m just doing something interesting, surely? If I’d found enough revolutionaries among the Tovant, I would have told them where Naertral was, not the Sovtanen.’
‘Are you not Sovtanen?’ Mkaer rumbled.
‘I’ve only spent more time there because that’s where I was raised,’ Wirrin said. ‘I am Sovtanen, but… people know what they need more than I do, right? Better for them to have the power to free themselves than for me to do it for them.’
‘But they do need to be freed?’ Naertral shushed. ‘Or else you might have left me alone.’
‘Despite all the time I’ve spent in Tolveya, I never found anyone who… suited me, I suppose,’ Wirrin said. ‘This Heran and his family aren’t the first people I’ve met who were like that.’
‘Is wealth not the will of the people?’ Naertral chuckled like a pond full of frogs.
Stolen story; please report.
‘Not sufficiently,’ Wirrin said.
‘You will find the same problem in Tolseyat, I expect,’ Mkaer rumbled.
‘I certainly will. And in Ahepvalt.’
‘Is that why you wanted to find Ulvaer first?’ Naertral burbled.
‘It’s a contributing factor,’ Wirrin said. ‘But it’s on the way, isn’t it? From here I can simply go back to the Boclas, barge up to Ahepvalt, then take a ship across to Keredin, barge down to Pavatok, walk past the Tertic lake and into the swamp. And then probably die of diseases before I ever find Gnaer.’
Naertral did its pond full of frogs chuckle again.
Wirrin stopped for the night near a watering hole that stank of death, decay, urine, and chalk. She had been upwind of it as she walked, and hadn’t noticed the smell until it was getting too dark to find somewhere else.
In the past, Wirrin might have just kept walking into the night to get away from the smell, and to find herself some clean water. But wasn’t she supposed to be a mage? If Naertral and Vonaer could make entire rivers and lakes, couldn’t she clean a little watering hole?
Wirrin’s sense of the ground told her that this watering hole had not been formed by a spring. While she hadn’t experienced any rain since her stint in Mkaer’s cave nearly two months ago, that certainly didn’t mean there hadn’t been any up here.
Trying to concentrate on her sense of the ground, Wirrin took a deep breath. That was a mistake. The smell was nearly overwhelming, clogging up her nose and throat. She choked and took shallow breaths.
‘Ulvaer’s perfume,’ Mkaer rumbled.
Wirrin ignored the Fiend of the Mountains and tried to focus through shallow breaths and a taste like rotting chalk. Slow, dispersed water that Wirrin figured must be the water table was not so far below the ground. It was close enough that Wirrin could feel the roots of the nearby trees breaking into it and the roots of the grassland tickling across the surface.
It was an effort not to take another deep breath as Wirrin reached her power into the ground and peeled open the water table. Nausea built in her throat like she was about to vomit as the old, stinking water of the pond filtered back through the sand and dirt and rocks to be replaced by clean and, importantly, non-stinking water.
Rather than the pounding migraine of the swamp, Wirrin felt light-headed when she drew her attention back to the world around her. Sparkles rushed behind her eyes and she was a little wobbly, but a few deep breaths of the much more pleasant air and she was back to feeling like herself.
Except that she was hungry.
Since most animals with a sense of smell had sought water elsewhere, Wirrin had to dig into her travel food more than she liked for dinner. She figured worst case she would end up eating dried chilli and rice at some point in the proper desert. The alternative was small birds and rodents chewing on the nearby trees. Hardly worth the effort.
It was quite dark by the time Wirrin had finished eating too much rice with dried meat and vegetables. The moon was thin in the sky, on its way to empty in a few days. Some bigger birds were returning, cautiously, to the stand of trees near the watering hole. At least it had worked.
Wirrin was woken by some more spotted dogs sniffing around her little campsite. They danced away when she sat up, and gave her space when she got up to go to the toilet and have a stretch.
She was fairly sure they were a different pack to the ones she’d fed the day before, but they seemed essentially unconcerned by her. They just kept an eye on her as she went about her morning business.
Wirrin was still hungry, and she had enjoyed making friends with the dogs yesterday, so she shot one of the antelope drinking at the watering hole. As she carefully skinned and butchered the antelope, she tossed bits and pieces out to the dogs, who seemed quite happy to pace around and be fed at a respectful distance.
Out of the same habit that led to a bundle of feathers in her pack, Wirrin ground the brains with some white ash and smeared it over the skin, which she left out in the sun while she cooked herself breakfast and fed the dogs.
Despite how patient and respectful the growing pack of spotted dogs was being, Wirrin paced herself tossing them pieces of the antelope. As she treated the hide, cooked, and ate, she made sure she didn’t run out of meat to toss them. Only once she’d packed up her little camp did she chuck the hind legs to the dogs.
As with the pack from the previous day, the spotted dogs followed her for a little while after breakfast. They ran around and tussled and played with each other, they seemed to make a game of see who could get closest to Wirrin before she turned and looked. They were very cute, with their long legs and round ears.
Wirrin smiled to herself as she felt them running around and creeping after her in their little game, until she turned suddenly and they yipped and danced away. Around mid-morning, the pack peeled away to follow a heard of gazelle.
As noon rolled overhead, the edges of the woodland came into view over the horizon. Wirrin was hot and sweaty in the sun, despite the cool breeze, so she decided to delay lunch. She’d had quite a large breakfast anyway.
It took about two hours to reach the woodland and consistent shade, but Wirrin decided to keep going. Her first sight of big cats, a pride of lions who had a similar idea, lounging in the shade of the loose woods, was followed swiftly by a more worrying sighting of a leopard settled to wait in a tree. Wirrin felt it, first, but she liked to think she would have spotted it early enough to not walk under that tree.
Deeper in the woods, small animals were going about their business, or sleeping in hollows and burrows, waiting for evening. The trees weren’t nearly as close together as most forests Wirrin had been in. The dirt was still sandy, if much more solid than outside the woods.
Wirrin was just considering shooting a bird or two and stopping early under the trees when she felt something on the edge of her sense through the ground. While she didn’t know exactly how far the sense extended, it wasn’t too far to keep going.
‘Odd,’ Wirrin said, mostly to herself. ‘They should be at Fauvat Faulget by now.’
‘Is that where the gathering is?’ Naertral burbled. ‘It used to be at Hekaulget.’
‘Most of the shyolg keep away from the towns,’ Wirrin said. ‘So they don’t have to deal with the Thaulgtok.’
Mkaer chuckled like melting snow rushing down the slopes. ‘I like that.’
‘Was the first word Yolget taught me,’ Wirrin said. ‘Endeared me greatly.’
‘It would.’ Naertral chuckled like a pond full of frogs.
Wirrin shot herself a couple of birds on the way. It was always good manners to share, after all.
On the far edge of the woodland, where the trees spread out and the going was easy, was a small clan of shyolg. About twenty carts and wagons sat in a loose semicircle around a large watering hole, camels and goats grazed on the green grass while a small family of elephants played in the water with some quiet, excited children and teenagers.
Adults lounged around a few cooking fires or kept an eye on the grazing animals or played with the elephants themselves. A couple of huge barrels on carts sat by the watering hole, pump hoses rolled up and damp from recent use.
Very like a spotted dog, a teenaged girl did her utmost to sneak up on Wirrin as she wandered out of the tree line. If not for the stifled giggles as the girl got close, she would have had quite a good chance of sneaking up on Wirrin before Wirrin could feel her footsteps through the sand.
As it was, the girl was just reaching out a hand to touch Wirrin’s arm when Wirrin turned around. The girl jumped back and clasped her hands behind her back like she hadn’t been doing anything. She was lanky, with henna-orange corkscrew curls a little past her ears, a wide, flat nose, and deeply curious, monolidded brown eyes.
Wirrin would have guessed the girl was about fifteen, given how tall she was. But the still-red scars tracing from under her lips and along her jawbones put her at no older than fourteen and likely not much past thirteen.
‘I may be an idiot,’ Wirrin thought.