It was a step back, a relapse into someone-something she was before. She grew angry again, her ire slowly flaring. She recognized elements of her old self, the volatile temper and its aftermath. The violence was still there, the child made into beast, a creature of stark instincts. She wasn’t that animal anymore. In fact, she hated that animal. It took years to tame it and break its conditioning. But why was it returning? Why was she relapsing into someone she abandoned years before?
Palanthas, she realized. Her city, her den. She was returning home, and that meant facing a legion of fears and bad memories. She was going back to face the monsters, a child at the mercy of the merciless. That alone spurred her heart to racing faster.
Sutler.
Ladonna shifted uncomfortably on the rock. Palanthas was stripping away her crafted veneer, exposing the frightened little thing beneath.
Stop this! Ladonna chastised herself. What am I afraid of? That I’ll become that child again? I am a wizard of the black robes, the most feared of practitioners, the strongest of spellcasters.
She forced herself to dispel the storm of emotions that welled within her. She was no longer that defenseless child, that urchin thief. A gulf of fifteen years separated who she was then from herself at that moment. It had been fifteen years of magical preparation and dedication, fifteen years of training to survive and surpass one life-altering test for a lifetime of power and mystical prowess. She commanded fire, ice, shadow, wind, earth, and even death itself. She communed with those things that could not be seen, and how they feared her.
A smile crept across Ladonna’s lips. Oh how she would have loved to have possessed those powers as a child, to have protected herself and provided for the brothers and sisters she made on the streets of Palanthas. She could think of a few men and women who would have benefited from her more punishing magics. The lessons she could have taught men such as Sutler …
Sutler.
Her bones still ached from his touch.
Ladonna rose from the rocks and slowly made her way back to the others. Palanthas wasn’t a reunion to be feared, she told herself. Palanthas was an opportunity to fulfill the wishes of a vindictive street urchin who never had the strength to fight back. She was returning home a conqueror, and as all conquerors are wont to do, she was looking forward to the settling of old scores.
Par-Salian continued watching her, even after she’d vanished into the night.
Should I go after her? he wondered. When he was a young man, he’d once courted a woman who flew into tantrums and stormed off. She wanted to be chased and mollified. She wanted the attention regardless of the cost. Par-Salian hesitated. Ladonna was nothing like the women he’d bedded, albeit all those years before. The near two decades of study and consideration had softened his ardor, and the years had dulled the adventure and romantic zeal from his blood. He questioned himself and his decisions more. In fact, Highmage Astathan’s recent interest in him made him uncomfortable. He knew that the White Robes held some expectations for him, and that frightened him.
What if I fail?
What if I’m not up to the task?
Like tonight, he thought miserably. He had been asked to lead the small expedition and maintain their cohesion. Yet here they were, on their first night alone, and already he could see the schisms forming. Worse, perhaps, nobody wanted to tell him why. Tythonnia was hunting and stewing in her anger, and Ladonna was off somewhere in the darkness, alone with her thoughts. He wanted to help her, to make things better, but her gaze spoke clearly enough. She wanted to be alone. She didn’t need his help. She didn’t need his leadership. She was perfectly fine without him.
And that troubled him.
Still, Par-Salian couldn’t leave her alone. The Heartlund countryside wasn’t dangerous aside from the occasional brigand or wandering pack of goblins, but still, the danger was there.
“Cas mata,” Par-Salian muttered as his fingers danced and intertwined. He closed his eyes and felt the magic spark along his bones and raise the hair on his arms. A shiver ran its fingers up the nape of his neck, and he opened his cat-slit eyes. The world had become a monotone of green shades, but the horizon of darkness had been pushed back much further than he expected, thanks to the many stars. Off in the distance, he could see Ladonna walking blindly ahead. She must have been several hundred feet away, and in danger of vanishing into the mist that marked the edge of his sight, the mist that seemed to obliterate the world itself.
Par-Salian stepped forward and matched her progress step for step. He would not intrude, but neither would he leave her alone.
It was only in the deepest recesses of his thoughts that he wondered why he was eager to watch over Ladonna and not Tythonnia. Perhaps it was because the Red Robe was familiar with the wilderness, but the answer came after too much searching; it felt too much like a justification. Par-Salian did not dwell upon that, however, and continued following Ladonna. She needed him more than Tythonnia, he reasoned to himself. He was going to help her.
From the sanctuary of the tall grass, he watched them. The spell of his devising narrowing the distance between Ladonna, Par-Salian, and himself in sight and in sound. He heard them as clearly as his ears heard his own voice, saw them as clearly as his eyes saw his own hand. Despite the mile between them and the shadows of night, he might as well have been standing next to them.
The Journeyman made himself more comfortable and watched Par-Salian keep Ladonna within sight. He observed Ladonna seated upon a rock, talking to herself. He saw Par-Salian maintain a distant vigil, his gaze scanning for danger but returning more often to study Ladonna. Did he know he was holding his breath when he looked at her?
Probably not.
He understood that, the Journeyman did. He knew the history of the two and the events to unfold and shape their lives. But it was Tythonnia’s role that remained intriguing … that and the event that would obliterate almost all knowledge of Berthal’s fate.
CHAPTER 6
The wide, open plains that spread out to the horizon’s sunlit fringes gave way to blankets of bruised clouds. Rain fell in heavy sheets, like a play with a never-ending series of curtains, and the temperature evaporated at the storm’s touch. The three renegades rode the wet days with barely a word; they rarely spoke to one another, each somehow inconvenienced by the others’ presence.
Par-Salian had given up his attempts at banter, much to the relief of the other two. Tythonnia tried her best to teach them the necessary wilderness survival skills, while Ladonna did her best to prove she was equally capable using magic. Tythonnia searched for dry wood for the night, and Ladonna used magic to ignite wet wood. Tythonnia hunted for food to extend their provisions, and Ladonna killed larger game with her spells.
The two women were in fierce competition, and when Par-Salian refused to take sides, he paid for it with their silence and scornful stares.
That drove the three into a deeper, more uncomfortable quiet.
The rain fell harder as they approached a branch of the Vingaard River; they were less than a day’s travel from the river, but they were already well into the fertile delta called the Plains of Solamnia. Here lay the crop and cattle belt of the region, where farmers drove herds to Solanthus to the south and Palanthas to the northwest. A necklace of three mountain ranges surrounded the plains, with the Vingaard Mountains to the northwest; Dargaard to the east; and Garnet to the south, below Solanthus itself. It created a basin where the mighty Vingaard River branched and forked into smaller tributaries. All told, it afforded for rich fields and easier flooding.