The Sartious Mage (The Rhythm of Rivalry) (24 page)

“It’s actually a beautiful language,” she said.

I waved my hands. “Sorry, go on.”

“I’m rambling anyway.” Lisanda lowered her head and found a group of thin sticks scattered around us. I was so lost in her words, I’d forgotten to look. She squatted over them to start collecting. I bent down to help.

“What’s the worst of everything you have to do?” I asked.

She answered quickly, without a thought. “That I have to practice everything, no matter how good at it I already am.” She stopped, putting her hand on the curve of her hip as she thought. “Actually the most aggravating are the courting lessons Jessend and I have been taking since we were ten, absolutely pointless at this point.”

“Courting lessons? Like how judgment is found for crimes?” It sounded interesting to me.

We each stood. She had a somewhat shameful smile.

“Courting men. Winning their favor.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “What could they possibly teach you about that?”

“After six years? Nothing new. Jessend and I used to have fun with the lessons when we were younger. Now, it’s just demeaning.”

“I have to admit I’m curious about these classes.”

“It’s more boring than you’d imagine. There’s a lot of focus on the way we greet each other, the curtsy I’m supposed to give to show a particular meaning, the subjects I should and shouldn’t talk about, how to understand looks and reciprocate them.”

She stopped, and I realized we were locked in an awkward stare. My smile quickly flattened, as did hers. We each turned away.

“I see,” I muttered. “They don’t teach you anything specific to say or do to win men’s hearts? A special phrase, so to speak?”

“Of course,” she said flippantly.

“Show me.” I turned with a wide grin. “Try to win my favor. I want to see an example.”

“I won’t.” Although her tone was reluctant, I found a grin she was trying to hide behind her wavy dark hair.

“What’s the point of all these lessons then, if you can’t do it?”

Lisanda gasped. Her foot must’ve been caught on something, for she stumbled into me and nearly fell. I dropped the sticks I’d collected to catch her.

She clung on tightly to my torso and arms, very slowly standing upright again. She kept a hand on my arm for balance.

“Thank you.” Lisanda’s voice was as sweet as sugar. She stood close to me, looking up into my eyes with her two front teeth nervously biting the side of her lip.

“It’s nothing,” I managed. My breath had been stolen from me by her touch, and the way she looked at me made my heart want to climb through my throat after it.

Lisanda slid her hand up my arm and then around my waist, pulling her hip next to me and nestling against my body. She ducked under my arm so that it rested around her shoulder. On reflex, I held on to her.

“It’s getting cold.” She gave a slight shiver. “Do you mind if we walk like this?”

My heart thumped so wildly I couldn’t utter any words, only a strange squeak. I quickly concealed it by clearing my throat and trying again. “You’re that cold?” The sun was barely visible through the trees in the fog, but its warmth was still there.

“Not anymore,” she said softly. “My blood warms when I’m next to you.”

The line was too unlike her, too sudden and strange. That’s when I knew she was just playing. I’d asked to see her attempt at courting a man, and that’s all this was. She slipped away from me, reverting back to a casual stroll as if nothing had happened.

“Something like that,” Lisanda said, completely deadpan.

I was still waiting for my heart to calm back to normal. All I could do was nod.

She brushed back her hair to look at me from the corner of her eye. “Any good?” She had a confident smile as if she already knew the answer.

I heard some sort of thumping sound. At first I thought it was my heart, but then my wits returned and I realized it was the noise of a galloping horse in the distance. Lisanda and I both spun to our side to find three men on horses speeding toward us.

“What’s this?” Lisanda whispered urgently.

“Bad,” was all I could answer.

My first reaction was to grab Lisanda by the hand and run, but I took a moment to first look at their clothing. They had no markings. They weren’t guards.

One of them whistled as he got closer. I heard more horse hooves beating against the ground behind me. Then I noticed more coming from a third direction, completely surrounding us. It happened so quickly, I was still without a plan.

There looked to be around ten of them in total. Lisanda seemed to be just as nervous as me.

“Shit on a grave! It really is Lisanda Takary,” one of them said with a slap to his thigh.

That expression—he was from Waywen up north. I figured they all were.

A familiar voice spoke next. “I told you.” I looked at him and recognized him as the one who’d discovered us when Sannil was still with our group.

It all came together. He’d recognized Lisanda and told these men. Then they’d set out searching for us. But what were they doing in the forest in the first place? Whatever it was, I had a terrible feeling. They had a hungry look in their eyes like they’d found treasure.

I quickly investigated their belts. Two had wands, three had swords, and five had quivers with a bow slung over their shoulder…five archers. I had no chance of running with Lisanda from two mages and five archers on horseback. Whatever they wanted with us was bound to happen, but what would men from Waywen want with a princess of Goldram?

One of them jumped off his horse and came toward us. “But you said there were four of them.”

“Aye, an older gentleman and a young lady are missing,” the first man to find us answered.

“Were any of them nobility?” the man on foot asked.

“None that I knew from my time in the Takary Palace.”

The man on foot stood right in front of me, a curious glare in his eyes. He seemed to be the one in charge of this group. “Then they don’t matter,” he said. Quick as a blink he drew his sword and pointed it at my face. “What about him?” he asked.

“Never heard anything about a blue-eyed, brown-haired young man with Lisanda Takary,” the first man answered.

“Then he doesn’t matter, either,” the one in charge uttered.

I was just about to reach for my wand when a scream from Lisanda stopped me.

“Wait! We’re to be married.” She grabbed my hand.

Each of them turned to the man on the horse who clearly had the most knowledge of Goldram nobility.

He scratched his head. “She’s supposed to be marrying Varth Farro, last I heard.”

“So she’s lying,” the man in charge stated simply.

“I’m not!” Lisanda’s tone was desperate. “Tell them, Jek!”

“It’s true. She ran from the wedding before marrying Varth Farro so that we could be together.” The lies flowed out of me so naturally I was shocked.

The men each exchanged confused glances.

The one in charge still had a sword pointed at me. “Why you? Is your family rich? What’s your last name?”

One of the archers who hadn’t spoken yet pointed at me with an arrow. “Look at his clothes,” he said contemptuously. “They’re lying to us.”

“Look at her clothes, you swine,” the man in charge replied. “She’s dressed just like him. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“We’re trying not to draw attention to ourselves,” Lisanda answered.

The archer grumbled. “I still don’t believe them.”

The man in charge brushed his hand through the air. “We’ll let the commander decide.” He put away his sword and motioned for us to follow with one finger. “Come with us.”

“Who are you?” I asked, not moving a step.

“Allow me to rephrase. Come with us or die.”

Chapter 21: Underground

They roped our wrists and ankles, and plopped us on the back of their saddles. Each was overweight, but they stuck us with two archers who were less heavy than the rest. I’d never seen ten fat men all in a group before. I couldn’t figure out what to make of it.

The place they took us to was surprisingly close, about a twenty-minute ride at an uncomfortable trot.

At first glance it just looked like the side of a small mountain, roughly a third of the height of the one where we’d made camp. This mountain contained nothing but bare stone and patches of dirt.

When the horses stopped and the men started dismounting, I noticed a crevice between two boulders ahead of us that had been hidden until we were right beside it.

They pushed us toward the gap with unnecessary shoves. Passing through, I could see the crevice was man-made. A thin path curved through the boulders, opening to a square grass field where the horses were tied. The portly men led us through the field to a doorway made in the mountain itself.

There was a wide wooden door resting crooked on one hinge. The door itself wasn’t dilapidated, but with one of its edges resting on the ground along with a slanted gap between the top of the door and the mountain above, it was a shoddy sight. To make matters worse, it looked like one man couldn’t move the door on his own. Two of them grabbed the end of it, braced themselves with a few big breaths, and lifted it off the ground, pulling it open with a series of grunts. I noticed then how thick the door was, equal to the width of the rotund men lifting it.

I looked behind me at Lisanda. One of the men had his arm around her. She looked squeamish, her shoulders crunched against his man-breasts. The man clutching her like a valuable prize had a scraggly, graying beard that hung like an animal’s claw, twisting into points.

The man beside me pushed me forward. I turned back ahead to find that those in front of me had disappeared into the mountain.

Following them, the first thing I noticed when I passed through the doorway was the faint but unmistakable stench of excrement. The next was dim, dancing light from lit torches along the walls. It sent a chill down my neck.

We emerged onto a wide, winding staircase that seemed to wrap around itself. As we went down the stairs, I noticed it encircled an enormous caged area that was the center of this cavern within the mountain.

“What is this place?” I asked with nervous wonder.

The man beside me gave me another shove. “Just keep going.”

We passed an open door along the stairs leading away from the center. I took a quick glance. It seemed to be some sort of storage room. There were shelves stocked with cheeses, bags of oats, and far too many other foods to see in my short time passing by.

The stench grew worse as we went farther down the slowly twisting stairs. But something else came into my senses—Sartious Energy, more of it than I’d felt in any other place. As thick as it was, though, I couldn’t see it in the air. That is, until we came to the next torch along the wall and I stared closely at the air around it. There were faint trails of emerald green, floating like dust.

There was another opened door cut into the stone wall on the outer rim of the stairs. Another storage room, I saw when we passed.

Continuing down, I tried to get to the other side of the stairs where the metal fence came up from the center of this cavern. I figured whatever was down there was the source of this SE and the stench, both getting stronger still. But the man beside me grabbed my arm, not letting me through to the other side of the stairs.

“What’s down there?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he answered, leaning toward me to show he meant it.

We reached a third room, and the men in front of us started filing into it. By then the odor was so pungent I could feel it on my tongue when I breathed through my mouth. Lisanda started coughing behind me.

“What a surprise. The Princess doesn’t like the smell of shit.” It was the man with the scraggly beard, still holding her close—too close. He was scrunching her shoulders into him. I didn’t like it, and she didn’t seem to, either. A few others had glanced at them, but no one had said anything. He pointed at me.

“Keep your eyes ahead, boy. Don’t worry about your lady. I’ll keep her safe.” He forced one grunt of laughter.

I was pushed into the room. The rest of them came trudging in after me, creating a half circle around the desk in the center. Behind that desk was another heavyset man, but this one wore a cloth over his nose and mouth to reduce the unpleasantness of the smell. His eyes squinted with contempt as they darted between me, Lisanda, and the other men. With two quick fingers he snatched down the cloth to speak.

“What’s this?” He scowled at all of us at once. It was a skill, really—to make one expression that everyone knew was for them. This guy was clearly the leader.

The scraggly bearded man holding Lisanda like a prize pushed her forward, pinching her behind as he let her go.

Lisanda gave a squeak that was half scream and half gasp while she turned and glared as if to slap him. But he simply smiled back, and her anger melted into fear.

“This little pretty is Lisanda Takary,” said Scraggle Beard—the name I’d chosen for him. He pointed at me next. “But we still don’t know about him.”