Kinked

Page 20

When he finally came up to another tree line, the change was so abrupt it surprised him. He stopped before breaking out of the underbrush, and Aryal brushed his back before she stopped too.
They had come upon a meadow with long, coarse grasses that looked tall enough to come up to their chests. That meadow could disguise a lot. He glanced at the sky that was beginning to lighten in one direction. Okay, he was calling that direction east. Dawn was not that far away. It was still too dark to see much beyond what was close in front of them, but he guessed that, as long as they had hiked, they had reached the other side of the forest and were now probably a few miles away from the coast.
“I don’t think we’re going to get any better place to stop before we reach the coast,” he said. “And I don’t want to get there without having had some rest first.”
“We should camp here,” she said. “And take watches. That way we’ll both get some sleep.”
“Works for me.”
Aryal lost a coin toss, which meant Quentin could rest first. He ate a protein bar quickly to stave off the worst of any hunger pains. It didn’t have enough calories to satisfy him, especially after the expenditure of energy over the last two days, but it would be enough to let him take a nap.
He stretched out underneath a tree to catch any shade it might give after the sun came up, and he used his pack as a pillow. Aryal stood nearby, leaning back against another tree with her arms crossed and one booted heel hiked up on the trunk. She didn’t face either the meadow or the forest, but positioned herself at an angle so that she could look easily in either direction.
She looked comfortable, capable, and alert enough to stand guard all day.
He watched her surreptitiously from under lowered eyelids as she tore open a protein bar and took a bite. She had tied her hair back with a piece of leather, but a few fine strands fell forward on the clean line of her forehead. The T-shirt she had worn underneath her sweater was a plain white cotton tank top. It hugged the long slim line of her torso, highlighting her high, slight br**sts and the twin peaks of her ni**les.
His body clenched with hunger. He thought of how her br**sts felt in his hands, the softness giving way under his touch, how her nipple tasted in his mouth.
Unbidden, what she had said yesterday played through his mind again.
If you do anything to actively try to hurt any of the people I care about—that’s when I will come after you, and I won’t stop until I hurt you bad, or you end up dead, or maybe even both those things. That’s my bottom line.
It really was quite simple.
From everything he had heard, harpies rarely gave anybody a second chance at anything. If you got on their shit list, you usually stayed there forever. She really might not care about his smuggling past, but he also realized what a huge concession she had made when she let go of her investigation. There wouldn’t be any more chances after that.
If she ever found out what he had done to Dragos and Pia last year, he had no doubt what would happen. It would be open war again, and this time the hostilities between them wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead.
That was the thought that finally leashed the unfettered, wild part of him.
He turned his head away from her. Only then was he able to get some sleep.
She woke him after a couple of hours, and without a word they exchanged positions. Dawn had broken, bringing humid warmth. He felt sweaty and dirty, and he wished they were near running water again.
Aryal curled on her side and threw part of her jacket over her face. After that she didn’t move. Quentin rummaged in his pack for the last of his food. He had one more can of beef stew, which he would be heartily glad to see the last of, and three protein bars left. He ate all of it except a final protein bar. He wanted to eat that too, but instead he tucked it away. The promise of new, different food was close, but it wasn’t with them yet.
The sun rose higher and so did the heat. The area was quiet except for the occasional drone of insects and trill of birdsong. No unexplained shadows, no anomalies, at least not any within sight.
He hadn’t had the chance to think much about the four missing Elves—too much had been going on, and Aryal had consumed most of his attention—but now he did so with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t know two of the names that Ferion had given him: Cemalla and Aralorn, the one female, the other male.
He did know the other two Elves, Linwe and Caerreth. Linwe was a firecracker, a young Elf who had recently dyed the tips of her spiky brown hair blue. She had laughing brown eyes and a propensity to teasing—or at least she had before the tragedy at Lirithriel Wood.
Quentin was quite fond of her. They were not related, either by blood or by marriage, but he still considered her part of his larger family group. Caerreth was a shy young male, bookish and remarkably insensitive to his surroundings. Quentin had met him before on his visits to Lirithriel.
All four of them, Ferion had told him, were younger and less experienced. They were the ones who Ferion could spare. Quentin shook his head. The longer time passed without any explanation for their absence, the higher his concern spiked. He was antsy to get to the coast and start investigating, to see if they could find any sign of the Elves there.
He judged the time by the sun’s position in the sky. When he estimated a couple of hours had passed, he said to Aryal, “Time to wake up, sunshine.”
Her sleep-roughened voice sounded from underneath the jacket. “You need to stop calling me that. I don’t know anyone less filled with sunshine than me.”
“I like the irony,” he told her.
She rolled to a sitting position, her hair all over the place. She raked it back with both hands and groped for the leather tie that had come loose in her sleep.
“Why don’t you cut your hair short if it annoys you?” he asked curiously. He stifled the odd, foolish twinge of regret at his own words. Her hair was another thing about her that was simply beautiful, the long black strands thick, luxurious and gleaming, but more often than not she seemed impatient with it.
It had been wonderful to sink his hands into that soft black mass, to imprison her by clenching a fist into it, and pull her head back and kiss her. He pushed the thought away. Like an irritating gnat, it refused to be swatted and hovered at the back of his consciousness.
“Getting a haircut takes time,” she said. She dragged her pack open and wolfed down breakfast. He noted, with a little amusement, that she didn’t tuck any of the protein bars aside for later but kept eating until the last of her food was gone. Then she looked around with a disgruntled expression. “First item of business is we’ve got to secure more food one way or another.”
“The coast should be just four or five miles away now,” he said. “We’re bound to start seeing some dwellings soon. At the very least, we should be able to find some wayfarer bread.”
Outside of Elven communities, their wayfarer bread was a rare, prized commodity, but within Elven communities, it was a staple of almost every home. Vegetarian, delicate and flavored with honey, the bread was famous for its delicious flavor, healing properties and long shelf life.
However, Aryal didn’t seem impressed. She made a face. “I suppose it’s calories and will do in a pinch,” she said.
“I don’t know why I keep finding this hard to believe, but you actually are contrary in just about every conceivable way,” Quentin told her. When she rose to her feet, indicating she was done with her meal, he scooped up his backpack and shouldered it. “Everybody loves those wafers. Everybody except you.”
She flipped him off, the action casual, even companionable, as she strapped on her pack and grumbled, “I have a sweet tooth. They’re not bad. But I need a lot of calories, and I’m getting really hungry for fresh protein.”
He ran his gaze down her lean, racy frame. She flew with power and speed, and that took a lot of energy. He was feeling the need for fresh protein too. “We’ll get some today, one way or another.” He turned his attention to trekking through the meadow. “I’m not inclined to fight my way through that long grass. I think we should give up the stealthy approach and take the path. We’re leaving a scent trail anyway, and if your anomaly from last night was sentient, something has already become aware of our presence.”
“The direct approach.” She shrugged. “That works for me.” They moved along the tree line until they found the path. It was wider as it cut through the meadow grass, as if this portion had seen more traffic. Aryal said, “Let’s get somewhere, already.”
She sounded impatient, as if her self-imposed grounding was starting to wear on her, and she took off down the path at a jog. Quentin grinned as he followed her down the corridor created by the long grass. The sun beat down on their heads, and the wind caused the grass to ripple in long silvery green waves much like the surface of an ocean.
They could see farther ahead of them now that it was daylight, to a distant patch of white-capped water. He caught glimpses of that blue land or island, and he wondered what was over there.
After jogging for a couple of miles, they reached a slight incline. As they ran upward, they left the grassy meadow-land behind, and when they reached the top, the coast lay spread out in front of them, closer than ever.
The path cut a zigzag down a long steep hill. A few houses with terraced gardens populated the hillside. A cluster of more buildings dotted the area at the bottom, where a dirt road angled toward the city by the sea. Every line of the city in silhouette, every building, was gracious and elegant. The sight pulled at something inside of him.
For the first time since clearing the forest, he turned to look behind them. The cliffs that held the passageway rose higher to a mountain range that covered the horizon.
“What happened to their horses?” he said suddenly. “Gaeleval enthralled the Numenlaurians. They crossed to the other passageway in the Bohemian Forest. Then they made their way across that Other land to the entrance to Lirithriel Wood, and they were all on foot. There wasn’t a single horse anywhere in that army, and Elves love their horses. So where were they? Where are they?”
Aryal gave him a quick look, and her face shadowed. She said nothing.
Abruptly he turned away, rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ground, while a hard, hurting knot ached in his chest. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew the answer as well as she did.
The enthralled Elves had been zombielike, devoid of will and intention. They had been in wretched condition, poorly dressed and often without shoes. They hadn’t had the capacity to look after themselves, let alone look after any other living creature. If any of their horses had been put to pasture when the Elves had been enthralled, the horses could have had a good chance of survival. If they had been stabled, they would have starved to death.
The city they looked down upon was more beautiful than many of the great cities on Earth, and it was worse than lifeless in the aftermath of a holocaust.
He shut down his feelings and turned professional. “Pia told me that she talked to Gaeleval in a dream the night before Dragos killed him.”
“Did she?” Aryal sounded thoughtful. “Did she say what they said to each other?”
He looked over the idyllic coastal scene without really seeing it. “Did you know he wielded something called a God Machine? That was how he enthralled so many Elves and did the kind of damage that he did. It amplified his Power.”
“I know.” She sounded cautious, as if the God Machine might be some kind of taboo subject, but Quentin had heard some of the old Elven stories and had already known of the Deus Machinae.
“In her dream, Pia asked Gaeleval how he had gotten the Machine,” he said. “Camthalion, the Numenlaurian lord, had held his Machine for a very long time, ever since Numenlaur closed itself off from the rest of the world. Apparently it drove him mad. He summoned Gaeleval to the palace, where Gaeleval claimed he found everyone dead. Palace attendants, Camthalion’s children and their mother. They had been kneeling in the throne room, and their throats had been slit. Camthalion had poured oil over his head and set himself on fire.”
“That’s pretty f**king crazy,” she said softly.
He gave her a sharp look. “Maybe it happened the way Gaeleval said it did, and maybe it didn’t. Maybe Gaeleval was the one who killed them. Whatever the real story is, I think there’s going to be some ugly shit down there.”
She took a deep breath. “I understand.” They both fell silent. After a moment, she tapped his shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “Come on. My mouth is burning up, it’s so dry. We need to find water. Let’s get down to those houses and see if there’s anything to eat and drink.”
He nodded and turned back around.
The path was steep enough that it made jogging a bad idea, so they descended at a slower pace. The first house they came to was a surprise. It was set into the hill, and they didn’t see it until the path turned and took them right by it. The front of the house faced the sea and was painted white, and flower beds were planted in front of it.
The door stood open.
Quentin had his sword in his hand before he was fully conscious of drawing it. Aryal drew hers more slowly. She whispered, “It might have been open all this time.”
“It also might not have,” he said.
They were going to harvest what they needed from the homes they found, but they were also going to take only what they needed and treat the property with respect. The thought that someone else might have come and looted through the belongings of a Numenlaurian victim caused anger to torch along the corners of his mind.
He strode for the door and pushed it open with one flattened hand, while his sharp gaze noted every detail and he expanded his magic sense. There had been no recent Power expenditure.