Spellbreakers (17 page)

It kept raining.

****

The seventh night of their journey in the Kalevan
forest Daria and Leal sat huddled inside a huge old hollow oak that had fallen
sideways among smaller trees not a stone-throw away from the road. The rotting
wood barely kept the worst of the rain off, but it was at least a shelter from
the wind. They had failed once more to light a fire. There was nothing dry
enough to serve as kindling, or maybe they were just not skilled enough. They
had eaten some of their cold provisions, stale bread and some gamey smoked meat
they had bought in Nevraan, dried fruit, a small piece of cheese.

Leal was more tired than she’d ever been in her life.
After a day spent trudging wet brambles, under beating rain, wet through and
through and dead tired, even the little shelter offered by the tree with the
piled bags and saddles at one end of it was as homey as her room in Castel
Argell, yet she longed with all her being for a hot meal and really dry feet.
All her clothes were wet. Even her quilted blanket was damp all over and
definitely sopping at the foot end. Everything was muddy and musty despite the
thick oiled canvas and leather of the saddlebags, and the heavy greasy wool
cloaks that they wore over all while riding in the rain.

She ate the last of her cheese almost half asleep
already, and then lay down where she was with her cheek on her musty saddle
rug, listening to the rain and praying. She prayed to the world in general, not
to any particular god. She prayed the age-old weary prayer of the wild-camper.
Please,
please, don’t let the blanket become even wetter. Keep the rain off me tonight.
Please.

It was the only important thing right then. Tomorrow
she’d have to get up and ride out in the rain again, to go and find this hero
under the ice, but that was all tomorrow and abstract and far away. Now all she
wanted were sleep and shelter.

After a minute Daria lay down beside her, right close,
to share the heat.
She piled her
blanket on top of Leal’s and hugged her. Leal snuggled closer into the curve of
Daria’s body and sighed. Even in that rainy misery, or maybe especially then
and there, there was an enormous comfort in the closeness of her friend.

“Tomorrow we must find shelter and rest properly,
Leal. We cannot go on like this much longer. It’s killing you. There is no
point dying on the way of sheer misery. It won’t get you any closer to
Dalarna.”

Leal wanted to protest that it was all stuff, that if
Daria could go on, she would go on, too, but she must admit that the prospect
of a place out of the rain, a quiet safe place where to get their things dry
once more, was the most beautiful thing she could imagine.

“But what shelter? There is nothing out here.”

“Nonsense.
People
live out here.
Hunters and the like.
There must be
caves and huts and things. We’ll find something, and we’ll take a day out of
the rain. You’ll be a new woman after that.”

Leal did not contradict her. She’d give anything for
such a day.

But, as it often happened, right when they had almost
given up, the wind turned again. Sometime during the night Leal woke up, not
because of any noise, but because of the blessed silence. The rain had stopped.
Drops pattered heavily from the trees for a while; then everything went
perfectly quiet. The noise of the rain had been driving her to distraction
every night for a week as she tried to sleep in some rickety shelter, or under
their little screen of oiled canvas. She could almost feel each of those
raindrops making their way into her cold clothes, into their dwindling
provisions, into the fur of their poor horses out there. But now, silence.

She took a long sigh of relief and slept.

****

The day after, the sun shone again on a washed world
full of extraordinarily brilliant colors. It felt almost like a miracle.

It was like being born again.

Leal crawled out of their little shelter, smeared with
blackish streaks of rotting wood, and smiled beatifically up to the shining
sky. She stretched herself in all directions and then laughed.

“Oh gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.”

Daria watched her with approval and cut out slices of
meat, bread, and cheese for breakfast.

“We can still stay here today,” she said, chewing on a
piece of tough smoky meat. “We can dry our stuff and even wash a few things.
There’s water a plenty.”

That was true. There were small streams everywhere in
these hills, fortunately, and with all this rain they ran fast and deep.

“No,” said Leal decidedly. “We must make as much
progress as we can while the weather holds. We are getting closer to the end of
summer every day. It will only get worse. There’s not a day to be lost, Daria.”

Daria sighed. She wiggled her toes in the sunshine,
not relishing the moment when she’d need to put on her wet socks, but Leal was
right. They had made good time so far, and they had had a smooth enough ride,
even considering the last abysmal week, but the road would only get harder.

She was not sure how far they were from Nevraan at
this point. In the rain every mile felt a league long, but with some luck they
might have made one hundred leagues from Nevraan, and that meant that somewhere
in the next range of hills or thereabout they would pass the elusive borders of
the Elverlaen, with all the dangers involved. And if Dalarna was all it was
famed to be, with its glaciers and eternal snows, they would need to leave the
horses behind at some point. The thought made Daria want to weep with
apprehension. Where could they leave them? They needed a safe place, someone
trustworthy. They’d need the horses again on the way back, and Daria had come
to like her tall gelding and the plucky chestnut mare. They were brave, tough,
uncomplaining beasts, utterly reliable.

She sighed again.

No point fretting about it now. She pulled her sodden
socks over her feet, and somehow managed to get into her boots; then she started
packing. Practical things first, that was her way.

****

It was good that they started the morning in such
blissful happiness. They needed a mood boost to get through the day, because
before midday the road vanished.

The weeds and brambles encroaching on the ever
narrower lane grew bigger and bolder and stronger, and the paler path they had
been following all morning slowly dwindled to nothing, as if the forest had
swallowed it.

“Damn,” said Daria. “I am not even sure if this is the
right thing we’ve been following in the last hour. It is so uncertain that we
might have missed any number of turns.”

She carefully circled around, riding among the weeds
in an ever growing loop looking for signs of the path ahead, or anywhere,
really.

Leal took a deep sigh and stared around
apprehensively. The forest was closing on them from every side. The road had
been the only stripe of light between the trees, which might explain why the
weeds grew so happily on it. Here the forest floor was more or less covered in
tangled brambles all around though. The forest did seem lighter here, but
perhaps it was just an impression due to the change of the weather.

“Maybe here,” called Daria from far off to the right,
north and a little east of where Leal was standing. “There’s something that
might be a beaten track here.”

Leal spurred her mare through the undergrowth, making
for Daria’s voice.

There
was
a track. It might be nothing more
than a path made by deer or boars, but it was open enough to let a rider
through, at a careful slow walk.

“It seems to be going a lot more north than the road,
and even east. That can’t be right,” said Leal uncertainly, looking at the sky,
trying to get a bearing on the sun through the trees.

“Well, the road has made turns before now, and in any
case it’s still more or less the right direction for us. I don’t see anything
else. We can’t even ride in this mess without a path. I’d say let’s chance it.
What’s the worst that could happen? We’d get into some lonely place without
people or inns. What else is new?”

Leal smiled. Daria’s spirit was as buoyant as ever,
something that was always comforting. She turned in the saddle once or twice,
scanning the forest for any sign of other paths, milestones, anything that
might indicate a human presence. There was nothing.

“All right,” she said, “let’s try this.”

They spurred and walked off on the narrow path.

It grew a bit wider after a mile or so, and they were
filled with new confidence. They sped up somewhat and rode on for perhaps two
hours. Then the path came to a curious little, mossy dell where a stream formed
a small, clear pond between the trees, and there the track ended.

At this point they were perfectly sure of being lost.
Lost for good in the dark forests of Kaleva!

“I would have thought it could not be so difficult,
following the main trade road to the Elverlaen,” said Daria with the first
cracks of alarm and frustration in her voice.
“But no, no,
no.
Is
anybody
trading with those elvers at all?”

Leal had no idea. Even Dee had known very little about
the elvers. They mostly kept to themselves apparently, inhabiting the
north-western corner of the wide forested land between the mouth of the Narrows
and the great western sea. They had no proper kings, although they had been
known to name Warlords to lead their nation at times of great need. Their
territory did not even have clear borders, or at least not very clear to
humans. But these were little more than mere rumors in the south, where elvers
had never been seen and were seldom even spoken of, and then only among the
wisest. In Nevraan they had been told that anything north and west of the river
Venta’a was
definitely
Elverlaen. And Dalarna was again north of that.
If they followed the road, they would find an ancient bridge over the river.
They might start by finding the river.

“Let’s go west. North and west,” said Leal. “We need
to find the Venta’a. It’s supposed to be a big stream, so we can’t really
mistake it. It is the only sure landmark at this point. How far can we be?”

“No idea. We might be anything from really close to
fifty miles off. I don’t know.”

“Well, staying here wondering will serve us nothing.
North and west is where we need to go, whether or not we find a path that goes
there.”

Daria bit her lower lip thoughtfully, but she nodded.

“Yes, I think it’s the best thing.
Gods,
what a bloody mess.”

They set out again, on foot, leading their horses
through lush ferns and spindly, starved, but viciously spiky brambles. It was
hard to walk in any given direction for long, because the forest was encumbered
with dead wood everywhere, not at all like the well groomed hunting grounds of
the Val d’Eran. Only steering by the westering sun they managed to keep more or
less on course.

After perhaps two or three hours of this horribly slow
progress they suddenly came upon another path. It ran nice and true beside a
small rippling stream, nothing more than a brook, but the amount of lush water
plants around suggested that it was a steady stream, not a freak burn fed by
the recent rains.

“I’ll be damned twice if this does not go straight to
your river,” said Daria with a triumphant whoop.

They mounted their tired horses again and spurred
along the path.

It was growing late in the afternoon, but they might
still make a few good miles on this path, and compensate for the delay in the
forest.

They rode on and on. The brook became wider. The track
was green with short, well-trodden grass.

For once Leal was riding ahead, and she suddenly
laughed.

“You are laughing,” said Daria from behind. “Have you
found that bloody river?”

“No, but he might tell us where it is.”

“Who’s he?” asked Daria, catching up.

They both reined in their horses and stared at the
wide clearing ahead.

Chapter Ten

There was a lovely meadow by the clear running stream,
full of different greens. There was an enclosed pasture with a little herd of
sheep, a few goats,
a
small cow. There was a garden
encircled by tall hurdles, with herbs, vegetables, and fruit-trees spilling out
over the top. And in the middle of all this was the strangest little cottage
they had ever seen, a tall, gnarled sort of building, with carved beams
sticking out of the tiered roof at odd angles, and carved wooden doors and
shutters. In front of the cottage, sitting on a little stool, a very small man
was carving a piece of wood.

Leal and Daria looked at each other, shrugged and rode
up to the little gate in the fence that enclosed house and garden.

“Good evening, sir,” said Leal dismounting and walking
the last few steps. Seen up close the piece of wood he was carving turned out
to be an incredibly intricate ladle.

“Good evening to you, young sirs,” said the man very
placidly, in the lingua franca of Nevraan. There was something quaint about his
face, his eyes a bit too big,
his
nose a bit too
small. It was not an altogether unpleasant face, just very odd. He had small,
strong, blunt hands, and wore curious leather shoes with pointy tips curled
upwards