Wet trees bordered the road leading into the dark, and in that null black ahead, his mind drifted to the abandoned life he had spent in this land. Droevinka had not changed, nor had the people who lived here. Nor his distaste for this place.
"It is time we spoke more candidly," Chane said calmly, as if commenting on the weather.
"Pardon?"
"You were talking in your sleep again."
Welstiel heard nothing from the forest, not an owl or even a squirrel skittering through a tree. He and Chane were alone. He had no response-or not one he was willing to share. Communing with his dream patron took up more and more of his dormant hours, leaving him drained during their night travel, yet revealing less of use concerning what he sought or how to find it.
"Why are we heading east?" Chane asked, reining in his horse. "I have followed you without question, but you said Magiere would turn north, and that was many days back. So why are we heading deeper into Droevinka?"
Welstiel had no intention of discussing his plans, yet Chane had proved useful. Welstiel reined in his horse.
"I believe she has gone to her home village, searching for her past," he said. "Then she will continue on the path I spoke of."
"Her past?"
"She has only recently discovered her nature and little beyond that. I believe she seeks to find out why she exists… perhaps even her unknown parentage."
"Then she doesn't know who sired her?" Chane asked. "And will she find those answers?"
"No."
A half-truth, but the best answer to give. Chane's curiosity had to be diverted, and Welstiel needed to retain control. Chane took something from his cloak pocket and turned it slowly in his gloved hand. Soft glimmers of light escaped his fingers.
"What is that?" Welstiel asked.
Chane opened his hand, revealing a small crystal that produced a dim glow. His voice became strangely soft.
"A simple cold lamp crystal… made by the sages."
Welstiel urged his mount onward, and he heard Chane following behind.
There had been three mugs at the inn outside Bela, with their remnants of tea and mint, and then there was the young sage called Wynn. How distraught she'd been when she had learned Chane was one of the Noble Dead. And Chane, for a sadistic monster, showed a penchant for the companionship of sages.
Perhaps there was already something that Chane found diverting.
Magiere ducked her head and stepped through the low doorway of Aunt Bieja's hut. She felt a chilling familiarity. So little had changed.
The one room was dimly lit by a small fire crackling in the stone pit set into the right sod-and-timber wall. Over the flames hung a blackened pot on an iron swing arm. The rough table and stools before the hearth were exactly as she remembered, though in place of the candle was a small tin lantern with a cracked glass. Below the front window was the same low bench, but now accompanied by an old spinning wheel, its wood dark with years of use. Pots and cooking implements hung on the far wall beyond the fire. Canvas curtains were nailed to rafters as a partition for Aunt Bieja's bed. In youth, Magiere had always slept on a mat near the fire.
"Looks much the same," she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else.
"Well, you don't… you and that sword. " Aunt Bieja patted Magiere's cheek before heading for the shelves across the room. "I'd part with a copper chit or two just to see old Yoan falter again at the sight of you."
She chuckled and pulled out two squat candles, lit them from the lantern, and set them on ledges in the wall to spread more light.
Chap, Wynn, and Leesil stepped around Magiere and into the tiny room. Leesil's hand slipped briefly across her back as he passed. She longed to be home again, but her home in Miiska, not here.
Adryan had called her coshmarul, an old-tongue word for an unseen spirit that sat upon the sleeping and unaware to crush the life from them. The hut's dark walls were suddenly too close for Magiere, this one room smaller than she remembered. Chemestuk was the coshmarul of her childhood, and it had been waiting for her to come back within its reach.
She'd been perhaps five or six years old when the pain began.
Aunt Bieja had told her of Adryan's hopes concerning her mother, before Magelia had been taken to the keep. When she was a child, Magiere wondered at the burn upon Adryan's face that few would speak of. Never knowing her mother, and not yet old enough to understand why the villagers shunned her, it was easy then to imagine Magelia as someone much like her aunt. Only taller and more graceful.
Late one day, Magiere had wandered from the field, in which Aunt Bieja settled to hoeing, and clambered toward the village graveyard. She'd snatched up wildflowers along the way, for mothers always liked flowers. Most children shied away from the graveyard, but Magiere had no fear of the dead, as yet. Why should she, when her mother was called "the best of people" and she was dead?
It had taken a while to reach her mother's marker under a tall tree. All its lower branches had been pruned away, and the higher ones spread wide in a roof overhead. It was like sitting in her mother's house. A quiet place away from everyone who shouted or made ugly faces at her.
Magiere heard the scrape of footsteps as someone walked nearby with big feet. At first, he lingered out of sight, beyond the clearing's edge. She glimpsed a muslin shirt, gray breeches, and brown boots as the man strolled beyond the trees. Maybe someone else was visiting his dead mother's house, and that was a good thing to do. The boots stopped, and a hand parted the branches. Magiere scooted closer to her mother's marker at the sight of the visitor's scars.
Adryan stepped halfway through the branches and then paused to watch her. Magiere tried to ignore him, tucking more flowers around her mother's marker.
"Come looking for your mother, little thing?" Adryan asked, one hand gripping the branch he'd pulled aside.
It was a friendly question, and why not? Adryan, even with his frightening scars, would have married her mother. Magiere smiled a little at him, for it wasn't often that anyone but Aunt Bieja spoke with her instead of at her.
"I know where she is," Magiere replied, as if the question were just a teasing one. "She's right here, in her house."
The skin around Adryan's eyes wrinkled like his scars.
"No, you haven't found her… yet," he said, and his words sharpened like those of the other villagers. "I can send you to her. That's where you belong."
He took another step out of the trees.
The branch slid through his grip, and green needles tore away to litter the ground. His other hand hung at his side, and something in it glinted once in the fading daylight.
Magiere couldn't breathe. She stared at his hand. Not the one with the strange glint, but the other… slowly stripping the branch bare as bone.
"Magiere, where are you?"
When her aunt's voice called out her name, Magiere gasped in a breath and looked back the way she'd come, but Aunt Bieja was still too far off. She turned back, and Adryan was gone.
The bare branch quivered in the air. There was no house anymore with her mother waiting in welcome…
A squeeze on Magiere's upper arm startled her from memory. Leesil's fingers circled her arm, and concern marred his tanned features. He leaned close enough that she heard his quick breath in her ear.
"What is it?" he whispered.
Magiere shook her head, tried to smile, but this only made Leesil frown in suspicion.
Wynn dropped her pack by the table and inhaled deeply as she examined the cooking pot.
"Are… this… esoni tjeto… are these shoshovitzi?"
Her jumbled speech with its mixed-in Belaskian broke the moment, to Magiere's relief.
There were few of her thoughts that she could explain to Leesil while others were present. When she looked away from him, she found Aunt Bieja watching the two of them. Magiere's discomfort rekindled.