In Thy Name

Chapter 18 - Shadow

Sareb opened his eyes to darkness, but it wasn't the silent, still darkness of his cave. There was rustling, and the ground under him was soft and moist. Where was he?

Then it all came rushing back. The fight the night before, and the flight through the air to the mountaintop. Stormwind and Frostarrow injured. The mysterious girl in black. The market of Dalaïda—the hostile baker woman, and the thugs. The hike through the mountains to Dalaïda the day before. Teshem. Teshem, gone.

A void inside himself, as though part of his own self were gone. He wanted to rage and scream at the emptiness, the unfairness of it. He'd been able to forget for a few candlelengths, but now he felt it even more than before, the gaping hole in his life. All the mountains and lakes in the world, all the far-off places he had never seen, the whole journey ahead with the Tainian siblings, wherever they were going, could not fill this hole.

But. Their quest was the only thing of Teshem that he had left. If Teshem had died, he had died to help them, and so Sareb couldn't but continue on with them.

He sat up, so that Stormwind would not have to lash him with her tongue to wake him, drew his capewrap around his knees, and stared into the fire until the others began to stir.

***

As soon as the darkness began to relent, Stormwind goaded them to clean up the camp and move out. "Soldiers from Dalaïda could be searching for us even now," she hissed. "We have to go."

She wanted to fly, for the sake of time, but Sareb and Frostarrow talked her out of it. Shapechanging would get in the way of her ribs healing, and that would slow them down more in the long run. And they'd be easier to spot in the air than hidden in the forest. That convinced her in the end.

As they were covering up the signs of their camp, a figure draped in black glided out of the gray woods. Sareb jumped—but it was just the girl from the night before.

Stormwind and Frostarrow each spared her a glance, Stormwind's terse and frowning, Frostarrow's more lingering and pensive.

Behind the girl hopped Djusra, and as Sareb stared, the bird inclined her head affectionately, while the girl stroked her neck.

"Acolyte of the Sibyl." Stormwind bowed slightly. "Have you come to help us?"

In spite of Stormwind's quiet voice, barely above a whisper, the girl clapped her hands over her ears.

Frostarrow stepped close to Stormwind. "Maybe she's never heard speech before."

"Then how do they communicate? Writing?" Stormwind patted her hips. "I don't have anything to write on."

"They wouldn't be able to see writing in the darkness of the castle."

They both stared at the girl. Slowly she lowered her hands and began petting Djusra again.

"We have to get moving," Stormwind said. "We'll sort this out later."

They finished cleaning up the camp, and when Stormwind led the way into the woods, the girl trailed behind them.

They descended the mountain slope at a measured pace, moving as quickly as they could while still being cautious. "Step on bare rock as much as possible," Stormwind instructed Sareb. "And try not to bend or break so much as a fern. If you have to brush past a plant, move it aside gently and then put it back."

Hiding their tracks. He nodded. The Masunyi often did the same sort of thing. Fortunately the slope was fairly rocky, with gray rocks and boulders jutting out of the ground and jumbled together in huge piles among the straight dark trunks of the needleleaf trees. Frostarrow advised Sareb that stepping on the dried needles that covered the ground between the rocks wasn't deadly either, as long as he stepped lightly with just his toes.