Chapter 17
Marley’s ears still rang with the echoes of desperation in Jayf’s voice as he haphazardly gathered Jayf’s bedroll. He tucked the gear in with his own, then asked Kestrel to bring around the horses.
Something terrible happened in Windy Cove was all the trembling dragonkin said before he disappeared on the Dragon Paths, just before dawn. That and a plea for haste and caution as they followed.
They saddled the horses, and Marley pondered how to distract Kestrel from worrying about their friend. He decided now was as good a time as any and asked. “Are you able to control your abilities?”
Her face looked drawn and confused. “I don’t even know what they are, let alone how to use or control them,” she confessed.
He pulled a pouch from his belt. Inside jingled the last of his runes. Marley reached in and, after rummaging around for a few moments, displayed a handful of gems and polished stones inscribed with assorted runes. His stores were indeed running short, he thought, searching through the bits of scribed essence. Finally settling on two almost identical stones, Marley affixed each one to a thin strip of leather. He tied one to each horse harness and spoke a quiet word beneath his breath.
Kestrel gaped and asked, “What do they do?”
“They will help speed us along without damaging the horses.”
“Won’t the runes be traceable?”
“Mount up and I will give you your first lesson in essence-weaving.”
Kestrel grimaced as she swung up onto the saddle. “That’s right, you once taught at the Academy.”
“So I did. I also ran a Finder’s Shop in Cape Silver a few years back and can make my way around a bakeshop.”
An incredulous look flitted across her face. “The bakeshop was as a customer, right?”
“Do you really want to waste this time inquiring about my previous vocations, hawkling?” Marley asked as they emerged from the living tunnel of Ironwood and Sugarfern trees.
“How did we…” Kestrel’s voice trailed off with a shake of her head. And she glanced over at him, a thoughtful look on her face. “Never mind, you are right,” she said seriously. “How is rune casting different from say, Tavir?”
“Runes use the Tavir as do most weaving. Tavir is the web of energy left by Alhwone to nourish all essence, keeping it in harmony.”
“Then why bother with the runes? They seem a waste.”
“They usually aren’t used as I have used them… as of late. If a rune is to be used without drawing on outside Tavir and therefore untraceable, the rune must be formed, scribed, carved, branded or in some way transferred onto or into the right material.”
“So even if the horses no longer travel with you, as long as they wear the rune, it will give them extra speed?”
“It will, as long as you don’t run them into the ground. It is but a minor rune.”
“What about Jayf, Doesn’t he broadcast his signature when he runs the Paths?”
“Nah, Elementals, like Jayf, use talents not powered by Tavir but by the elements to which they were born,” he said, scratching his beard with one hand and pulling up on the reins with his other.
“Let’s water the horses at that little spring over there.” He nodded toward a spring pooled in a large granite strewn basin. “Traveling with the rune enhancement requires extra care be taken with food and water, even if we are light on their backs.
Marley knelt beside the pool, splashing water on his face. As he wiped his eyes and forehead, he felt Kestrel watching him. He knew her curiosity warred with her perceived manners, so he turned around with hands on his hips and water dripped off his nose.
“You’re piercing me with those eyes, girl. Better to ask and get an answer than to continue to ride with a fool’s trio.”
Kestrel’s brow rose and she blushed, but held her gaze steady. “I am sorry, I made you uncomfortable, mother always said.” She stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. “She said the same thing about the fool’s trio. Now I know where she got that saying from. It’s just that, well, I was wondering what happened to your third eye.”
Amazed it took her so long to ask, Marley glanced up at where the sun stood in the sky trying to gauge the time, and said, “If you give me an oatcake, we can eat as we ride and I will tell you about my missing eye.”
“Do you know anything about the Vortryl race?” He asked after they mounted and Kestrel handed him an oatcake and took one for herself. Relieved that she ate, he devoured his own, for she’d eaten as little as he the night before, and had nothing but water that morning.
“Come to think of it, you are the only Vortryl I have ever seen. Even among the Clans of the Plains.”
“It is just so. They are the chosen of En’Kur and his place of deep-dwelling is in the Vort Mountains and the lesser dwelling in the Thakhammer Mountains of Rhoaddyn. Rare is the Vortryl that will forsake hearth and home to make a life in this forlorn bedlam.”
“And yet here you are,” Kestrel said, shoving the last of her oatcake into her mouth.
“Ah, indeed, here I am.” He took a quick pull on his flagon of ale and offered it to Kestrel. She shook her head instead, drinking water from her flask.
The rune enchanted gait of the horses made it easy for Stonebender to talk as he guided the horse next to the girl’s through a narrow gorge. “The high and the low of it is the Atheryl gate guardian, Ymarii, holds my En’Kur-Mata, my stone eye. She holds it as a token for a debt owed. I go to repay that debt.”
Marley quieted for a few moments, listening. He hadn’t seen Zeph since before entering the Vale of Spirits. As he scanned the terrain, he realized the wind, not just Zeph, hung silent and wondered what it took to silence the wind.
He looked back at Kestrel, still waiting for him to finish his answer, so he continued. “Without the eye, my place in the Vortryl Clans is moot. My connection with my homeland is severed. I am anathema to my people when they should call me an Elder.” Stonebender tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice and it surprised him that putting words to it again, even now, tore from his heart so much emotion.
“So after you repay this debt and get your eye back, how does it,” she paused, confusion stamped on her face as she searched for the right words. “How do you put it back?”
Marley chuckled as he thought about what she must have been imagining. “Nay youngster, this eye is not made of flesh and blood. En’Kur bestows it upon each Vortryl youth when they complete the Koma Aldri En’Kur Cycle. That is much like the Horse Clan’s Recerca only longer and, well… they are both purposeful quests.”
He glanced over at Kestrel, fearing he lost her with all the meandering he did, but she seemed genuinely interested, so he finished. “The Elemental Earth Guardian presses a polished bit of the bone of the earth into the forehead and fuses them by elemental power and the singular essence of the Vortryl. Seen from a short distance, they would seem to have three eyes, but up close, the… the beauty of the -eye- is as unique as each individual. It is a connection between the Vortryl and the earth of his home and, to a lesser extent, the entire world, reaching down to the very essence of both.”
Soon clumps of Sunburst Locust and thickets of Shakerwood replaced the stands of Ironwood and groves of Sugarfern as the country changed from meadows and woodlands to bluffs and gullies. But he saw no sign of the passage of horses or warriors.
After riding in silence for a while, the girl turned to him once again. A thoughtful look creased her brow, and she finally blurted out. “That still did not answer my question. Can the eye be put back and will you go back to your mountain clans?”
“Of a truth, I do not know if it can be put back. Ymarii is an Elemental Guardian, albeit a different element, and it was she that removed it. Still,” he paused, absently scratching his beard. “I don’t think I could go back to the isolation. It has been long and long that I have lived as a part of a larger world community and to go back to such a willfully disengaged society is not something I can relish.”
Marley noticed that the temperature had dropped and the salty tang of the ocean lay heavy on the air. “We’ll see Windy Cove before sunset, Hawkling. We should stop for a small while and give the horses a breather and our legs a rest.”
“What do you think we will find when we get there?” Kestrel asked, as she dismounted.
Marley swung himself out of the saddle. He bent to run his hands along his horse’s legs, then checking each of the hooves. Kestrel fished around in the designated food bag and pulled out a couple of withered apples, handing them to Marley.
He had been going to cook the apples in the morning porridge, but with their hurried departure that morning, the meal comprised a drink of cold water and whatever they could chew on as they rode. Still, the horses would now benefit from their haste, and he palmed an apple for each of the horses before checking the legs and hooves of Kestrel’s horse.
Kestrel stood gazing at Marley as he moved about the horses. He knew she was waiting for an answer, but he loathed the idea of letting even the smallest breath of speculation onto the wind. Too often, his mere speculation seemed to hold the power and portent of the prophetic.
In the end, with a shrug of his shoulders, he said, “We will see, what we will see.”
The caves and tunnels riddling the cliffs above Windy Cove ran for miles along the coast and deeper than any, but the most adventurous ever found. A bolt-hole deep in the rugged woodlands was one such secreted place and it was from here Jayf appeared. He took a deep breath and coughed, the smell of ash, smoke, and death still sharp in the air.
He’d found Thysl in Glyf’s care as the mid-day sun fell victim to a marauding thunderhead. And with Glyf’s help, Jayf moved the injured dragonkin and what stores they might need into the old tunnels. The tunnels he and Thysl explored as children.
Now he waited for Marley and Kestrel. He knew Marley’s essence signature well enough to feel his approach within a handful of leagues. The runesmith was close.
Jayf walked out from beneath the canopy of trees and down the hill to the merchant road leading into the port city. He did not have long to wait before two riders approached from the north. To the west, the sun burnished the sky, a golden rose. Jayf waved his arms so that they might see him in the dimming light.
The two horses slowed to a walk, stopping as they neared. Plainstrider swung his head around and gently knocked against Jayf’s topknot. He grinned at the horses and riders, glad to see they made such good time without incident.
Both slid off their saddles, relief apparent as they stretched out cramped muscles. And Marley asked.
“How bad is it, my friend?”
Jayf shook his head. “It could not get much worse. Come, let us get off the road. Thysl and Glyf are close.”
“Glyf is here? What about Hefldeep?”
“She is still alive… I think. I will talk while we travel. There is an animal pen close by and the horses can recuperate and be safe.”