“Yes, sir. Apparently, she finds his stories more endearing than his squadron mates do.”
“I guess so.”
Pimples finished his kiss and sprinted out of the water with his knees and head high. He seemed to float up into his cockpit, barely using his hands to make the jump. Cas scrambled up into her own. The third tree had been moved. She flipped the switch, and the power crystal flared to life.
“We’re coming for you, Tolemek,” she murmured.
Another roar sounded in the distance. She hoped they would be in time.
Chapter 12
As dawn brightened the mountains behind them, Sardelle caught the scent of a campfire. Or maybe a hearth? She, Therrik, and Bhrava Saruth had not run into any other people since leaving the mining outpost, and she had started to long for company. She especially longed for a bath. After being pummeled with those rocks, she was the dirtiest member of their little group, outdoing even Therrik, who was often on his knees, squinting and poking at dirt. She had to take his word for it that they were still on the trail, since they had not encountered any more buttons.
Wouldn’t you be concerned if we had? Two is already alarming. Either he’s being very rough on his clothing, or she’s tearing his jacket off every night, also roughly.
Sardelle stumbled. Jaxi!
What? It hadn’t crossed your mind?
Why would it? I’ve been more worried that she’s dragging him along on a leash and torturing him every night.
I suppose torture could account for missing buttons.
Sardelle rubbed her face, exasperated with Jaxi for putting new ideas in her head. But surely Ridge having sex with the enemy sorceress was the last thing she needed to worry about. She was more concerned that Eversong wanted to use him for some nefarious purpose and was forcing him to trail along with her until they reached the capital. Maybe she was sifting through his brain for military secrets. Or maybe she thought Angulus or someone else would pay a ransom for Ridge. Sardelle certainly would if it meant getting him back, though she preferred her current plan of thrusting Therrik and his hateful sword at her.
Hoping to get her mind off thoughts of what Ridge might be enduring, she stretched ahead with her senses, trying to tell if they approached a nomadic camp or a village.
A village, Jaxi said. And I’m sorry I made the joke about the buttons. You’re right. I don’t think women who try to burn his flier down with fireballs appeal to him.
Certainly not.
Bhrava Saruth? Sardelle called out with her mind. She could sense him a couple of miles in the distance. Are you still hunting? You may want to stay away a little longer. We’re going into a village.
A village? With potential worshippers?
Uhm. We’re just planning to pass through. I don’t think there will be time to get them used to the idea of a friendly dragon.
A divine dragon.
That too.
Bhrava Saruth did not comment again, and she hoped she hadn’t bothered him by brushing off his hopes and dreams, such as they were. Once she had Ridge back safe, she would go with him to remote villages and try to explain him if he wished.
That should prove interesting, Jaxi said. High priestess.
I said I’d try to explain him, not recruit for him.
I don’t think there’s an explanation for him that makes sense.
The trail they were on turned into a dirt road. Therrik stepped out onto it, looked in both directions, and sighed. The village lay to the left, no more than thirty houses and barns. The road traversed a clearing in the opposite direction before heading back up into tree-laden foothills. Hoofmarks, horse droppings, and wagon wheel ruts adorned the area around Therrik’s feet, and Sardelle guessed his problem. Tracking would be harder on such a trafficked surface.
“It’s all right,” she said, stopping at the edge of the road. “We can check in the town. If anybody’s seen them—” She stopped, not wanting to admit that she and Jaxi could sift through people’s thoughts if necessary. “Ridge is memorable. Unless she has him chained in the back of a wagon, people will have seen him.”
“No, he’s been walking along with her. I can’t see any sign that he’s been forcibly coerced.” Therrik scratched his head. “This is the woman who was helping bomb the capital, right?”
“We believe so.”
Her mind boggled at the idea that some other sorceress might have pulled Ridge from the river and be wandering the wilderness with him. Who else could set magical traps to crush people following them?
Therrik grunted and headed for the village. Sardelle hesitated, then followed him more closely than she had been, concerned it would look odd if they strolled into town at the same time, but with ten meters separating them. She had been staying back, not trusting Kasandral not to misbehave, but they hadn’t had trouble since the canyon. There had been two more traps, but they hadn’t posed a problem. Bhrava Saruth had insisted Sardelle remain well back while he went forward and triggered them.
Kasandral may not be the only problem here, Jaxi said.
What? The village appeared innocuous enough. Despite the early hour, men already worked out in fields, readying the land for whatever crops could thrive in the short mountain springs and summers. Behind the houses, women and children tended gardens and fed livestock.
There’s a man working in that smithy who has dragon blood. Jaxi offered a mental shrug. It may mean nothing, but he may be able to sense that I’m not an ordinary sword, and if Bhrava Saruth comes close...
I’ll ask him to keep hunting deer and wait until the next village to seek friends.
Followers.
“Mama,” a boy cried from the garden behind a house. “Another soldier.”
Sardelle sucked in a breath. Another?
She quickened her pace, forgetting her wariness of Therrik. She passed him and led the way into the village, almost crashing into a chubby freckled woman who stepped out of the house the boy had been working behind. She wore an apron dusted by floury handprints.
“Hello,” Sardelle blurted, almost clasping her hands in her eagerness to ask about Ridge.
The woman smiled, but Sardelle restrained herself nonetheless. When she had been a girl, growing up in a village not dissimilar to this, strangers had always been regarded with wariness, thanks to bandits that had occasionally worked the roads.
“Can I help you?” She looked past Sardelle to Therrik.
He was nearly as dirty as she, but his uniform made it clear he wasn’t the average stranger—or a bandit.
“Colonel Vann Therrik, ma’am,” he said, his voice less gruff and surly than usual. Or at least than it usually was when he spoke to Sardelle.
“Did you crash too?” the woman asked.
“No. We’re looking for—”
“General Zirkander!” a boy cried from the doorway of the house, the same boy who had been in the garden. He moved quickly. “He was fighting the dragon. Did you see the dragon?”
“Uhm.” Sardelle’s first thought was that they had spotted Bhrava Saruth somehow, but maybe Morishtomaric had been here before his final battle. “Was Ridge—General Zirkander here, by chance?”
“He came in the day before yesterday.”
“We don’t actually know that he fought the dragon,” the woman said, making a shushing motion to the boy. “He’d been injured. He seemed nice, but a little confused. Like he didn’t know about the dragon, and everybody knows about the dragon around here. We just assumed everyone in the country had heard.”
Sardelle had clasped her hands together, almost leaping in excitement at this verification that Ridge was alive, but the talk of an injury and confusion worried her. What did that mean?
Interesting, Jaxi said at the same time as Therrik spoke.
“We didn’t crash, ma’am,” he said. “The king sent us to find Zirkander and take him home.”
What’s interesting, Jaxi?
Ridge was here with a woman, but she doesn’t look anything like
the sorceress we fought in the fortress.
Sardelle went from clasping her hands to wringing them. But the traps... are we dealing with another magic user?
“Home? Are you a pilot too?” the woman asked.
“Did you bring a flier?” the boy blurted, apparently forgetting his shushing.
“No.” A hint of irritation entered Therrik’s voice, but perhaps not so much that a stranger would notice it. “I’m an elite forcers officer and a tracker. I’ve been following him since locating his crash site.”
It’s hard to tell, Jaxi said. I’m browsing through the woman’s surface thoughts when she thinks of him—them. Maybe it was a disguise. Eversong has certainly been able to hide her presence from us.
“He’s not here now, is he?” Sardelle asked. Could they be that lucky?
“They left yesterday morning, him and the woman he was with.”
Even though Sardelle knew about “the woman,” her hackles went up. “Heading east? Toward the capital?”
“We sent them on to Aspen Creek. There’s a retired colonel there with a rickety old flier. My husband thought he might lend it to the general to get him home.”
Therrik expelled a noisy grunt and leveled a flat stare at Sardelle. “You and the king have had me tracking him through the mountains for days, when he’s already found his own way home?”
“Yes, but—” Sardelle glanced at the woman, smiled and held up a finger, then gripped Therrik’s arm and pulled him back a few paces. “This woman he’s with, it must be the sorceress.”
“She doesn’t seem to be impeding him.”
“She might want him to take her home, to the capital, where she could have free rein of the military installation as Ridge’s... guest.” Sardelle grimaced, thinking of the way she had been allowed access to the fort, as Ridge’s guest. Not easily, but he’d had enough sway to get that letter drawn up for her. Jaxi’s words about buttons drifted back to her. What if the sorceress wasn’t so much torturing him as she was seducing him?
“Guest.” Therrik grunted. “What, afraid she’ll take your spot at his side?”
“Of course not,” Sardelle said, though she had been thinking that exact thing. “But if she did, she could have access to all of your military installations.”
“Much as you had?” Therrik scowled at her, as if still affronted by this.
Sardelle kept her voice calm when she responded, though it made her sad and disgruntled that Therrik still saw her as an outsider, someone who annoyed him. “I’m Iskandian. And loyal to this country. She is not.”
Jaxi, this other woman she looks like—
I’m thinking she might be able to shape change, Jaxi said with enthusiasm, like a dragon. I’d heard that some powerful sorcerers in the old days could, but I was never certain.
Yes, perhaps we can discuss it with her later. What does the woman look like now?
Oh, she’s gorgeous. Young, thick blonde hair, perfect body, eyes that aren’t quite as innocent as they appear...
Sardelle rocked back on her heels, suddenly finding the seduction scenario plausible. But Ridge wouldn’t let himself be seduced, surely. Not when he was—when they were together.
Depends on just how confused he is, Jaxi said.
“An enemy sorceress controlling Zirkander could cause all manner of trouble,” Therrik said.
Controlling? Was that more likely than seduction?
“I’m sure there are numerous military secrets floating around in his mouthy, dense head,” Therrik went on, “especially since he’s one of Angulus’s favorites now.” A quick sneer crossed his face. “And if she was walking around with Zirkander, she’d have access to other high-ranking officers. He could even take her to the castle to get to Angulus, I imagine. And whatever fancy diplomats are at the castle this week.”
Sardelle lifted her fist to her mouth, remembering her meeting with Angulus. “Not diplomats. The council heads. The king said they would all be here this week, presumably to discuss the escalation of matters with the Cofah.” She lowered her fist and met his hard eyes. “If she or someone else attacked while they’re there...”
“She could wipe out the majority of our government leaders with one wave of her hand.” Therrik grumbled something else under his breath, something about using Kasandral on everyone in the world with magical blood.
Sardelle chose to ignore the comment. It was possible she hadn’t heard him correctly.
Sure, it is. The blacksmith is coming.
The aproned woman had been waiting quietly while Sardelle and Therrik spoke, but a second person walked up the street now to join her. A muscular man in his thirties, he looked curiously at Therrik, frowned at Sardelle, then scanned the trees beyond the gardens behind the houses.
“Which way to this Aspen Creek?” Therrik asked, raising his voice so the townswoman would hear. “And how far?”
Yes, they needed to know the distance. If Ridge and the sorceress were walking or riding on horseback, and Bhrava Saruth could fly Sardelle and Therrik, maybe they could catch up. Flying hadn’t been an option when they had been tracking, but now that they knew where they had gone, they might be able to reach the next village in less than an hour. So long as Bhrava Saruth was willing to—
A chittering noise came from the grass, and Sardelle almost groaned aloud. Even though Bhrava Saruth hadn’t shape-changed again since they’d dealt with the traps, she recognized that sound.
“Thirty miles,” the woman replied to Therrik. “Follow that road for twenty, then head west on the paved highway.”
The blacksmith jumped when the furry ferret raced out of the grass and ran to Sardelle. It leaped up, and she reflexively caught the animal. He scurried up her arm to rest on her shoulder.
The blacksmith’s eyes grew rounder than saucers.
“A pet,” Sardelle said, though she worried the man already sensed that the ferret was more than that.
A pet? High priestess, really.
“We should probably go now,” Sardelle murmured to Therrik, who was glowering distastefully at Bhrava Saruth.
Is there no one here who needs my healing assistance? the dragon-turned-ferret asked. That man glaring at us looks particularly dyspeptic. Perhaps he has colitis.
I don’t think that’s his problem. Sardelle took a step back.
The blacksmith whispered something to the woman, his expression quite agitated.
“Therrik,” Sardelle said, “my pet and I will wait for you up the road a ways.” She would have preferred to heal people and get to know the villagers, so they would consider her an ally rather than a suspicious stranger, but they didn’t have time for that, and she didn’t know if it would be possible under any circumstances.
Therrik turned his frown on her—he didn’t seem to grasp what was going on—and started to speak.
“Colonel,” the blacksmith said, gripping the aproned woman’s arm. “Be careful. We believe that you’re traveling with a witch and her familiar.”
Familiar! Bhrava Saruth stood up on his hind legs and hissed in the man’s direction. That’s even worse than being called a pet.
Stop reacting, please. Sardelle wanted to defend herself, but nothing could be gained by doing so. She turned her back on the village and headed up the road.
“A witch and her familiar,” Therrik said dryly. “Imagine that.”
Sardelle ignored the urge to scowl over her shoulder at him.
“She could be controlling you,” the blacksmith blurted, sounding confused that Therrik wasn’t taking his admonition seriously.
“Probably not. She only bothers controlling men more handsome than I.” Damn that bastard—Therrik truly sounded delighted.
“I’m getting my rifle,” the blacksmith told the woman and jogged away.
This is intolerable, Bhrava Saruth announced. I will not allow my high priestess to be denigrated so. He sprang from her shoulder, heading back toward Therrik and the woman.
Bhrava Saruth, Sardelle cried in his min
d, having an image of him running up and biting the blacksmith on the ankles. Stop. Don’t bother them. Please.
Ankle biting wasn’t what the dragon had in mind. Once he reached Therrik, he turned into his usual form, his very large, very intimidating dragon form. He towered over the villagers and flexed his wings, spreading them so that they stretched over the buildings to either side of the road. He glared down at the woman, who was gaping up at him, too shocked to move.
I am not a familiar, he announced, speaking into everyone’s minds in the area. I am the god, Bhrava Saruth, and that is my high priestess. You will treat her with respect.
Therrik growled and backed away from the dragon, his hand going to Kasandral’s scabbard.
He won’t hurt anyone, Therrik, Sardelle rushed to speak into his mind. Come join me, please. Let’s leave. Ridge and the sorceress are our priority, remember?
Screams came from down the street. Several of the people out in the fields grabbed shovels and axes and raced toward the town.
Sardelle wanted to cover her face with her hands. How had this gone so badly so quickly?
Bhrava Saruth, Sardelle said. Nothing can be gained from this. Please, let’s go. Why wouldn’t either of these males listen to her?
They will learn to respect my high priestess. Moving more quickly than a cat and far more quickly than his size would have implied possible, he sprang down the street. He caught the blacksmith by the back of his shirt before the man could lunge into his shop.
Someone else had managed to find a rifle. A shot rang out.
Sardelle paused in her retreat. Bhrava Saruth ought to be able to protect himself, but if Therrik was standing nearby when people were shooting, he might be in danger. She might not be able to wrap a shield around him when he carried Kasandral, but she could make a barrier in front of him.
Except that Therrik wasn’t standing still, waiting to see what happened. He’d yanked Kasandral from his scabbard and was running toward Bhrava Saruth. Meanwhile, the dragon had lifted the smith up to the roof of a two-story building and dropped him there, perhaps intending to have a chat with him when he couldn’t easily escape.