Chapter Eight

Sailing down the coast on The Thorn, Wynn couldn’t arrange another private moment with Osha until they neared the port of Oléron. It didn’t happen the way she expected.

Early one evening, after Chane rose from dormancy and went up on deck, Wynn was alone with Shade in their cabin. She took time to herself to jot notes in a journal, though she no longer recorded anything too critical. The dangerous, important things she dictated to Shade or shared by showing the dog her recalled memories. Shade, as a majay-hì and more, locked those secrets away inside herself beyond anyone’s reach.

Wynn stuffed the journal away in her pack and stood up to stretch. “Come, Shade.”

Out in the passage, she led the way to the stairs and up on deck to check on her other companions. Pausing in the aftcastle doorway, she was surprised to find Chane and Nikolas sitting side by side on two barrels, with mugs of tea beside each of them. They were intently perusing a text that Chane had brought along, likely one that Kyne had forced on him for his studies.

“No,” Nikolas said, pointing at the current page. “This symbol is quite different. If you break down the strokes of its construction according to the methods of the Begaine Syllabary, the Numanese word here is ‘confusion.’”

“Why not use the previous symbol?” Chane asked.

“Because that one reads ‘puzzlement.’ Strokes and marks in a symbol for a word are meant for sounding out that particular word . . . and the term meanings are not what the syllabary is about.”

Wynn’s gaze fixed on Chane’s red-brown hair hanging forward to almost block one eye. Seeing him slightly hunched over that book swept her back to when she’d first met him.

She’d been helping Domin Tilswith, her mentor at the time, in starting a tiny new guild branch in Bela. The branch was the first of its kind in the Farlands of the eastern continent. They’d been given an old decommissioned barracks no longer used by the city guard. Chane often came at night to drink mint tea and pore over historical texts brought over half the world to that place. Sometimes he’d seemed starved for intelligent or at least educated companionship, and Wynn had been secretly flattered by a handsome young nobleman spending so many evenings with her.

At that time Wynn had no idea who—what—Chane Andraso was.

Vneshené Zomrelé . . . “Noble Dead” . . . vämpír . . . vampire . . . undead.

That felt like a lifetime ago, though their pasts could never be erased. Not his for his victims and enemies; not hers for what she had done since returning to the guild.

Neither Nikolas nor Chane appeared to have noticed her.

Though the young sage still had dark circles under his eyes, for once, while assisting Chane, he didn’t look so bleak and lost.

Chane might be an undead, once a predator of the living. He could wield a sword as if it were part of his hand, and he dabbled in minor conjury of the elements as well, but at his core he was a scholar. No matter what he did—had done—Wynn knew this, and she could never forget it.

Then she noticed that Osha was nowhere to be seen. She pulled back, forcing Shade to retreat down the steps. At Shade’s huffing grumble, Wynn didn’t stop to explain. She headed down to the lower passage and the farther door of Osha and Nikolas’s shared cabin. After a brief hesitation, she knocked.

“Osha?”

“Here,” he called in an’Cróan Elvish.

She cracked the door, peeked inside, and asked, “Are you all right?”

Osha was sitting on the cabin floor with his legs folded and his back against the left-side bunk. Tonight his white-blond hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck with a leather thong. The effect made his tan elven face appear more triangular than usual. But he didn’t look at her at first.

On the floor before him was a candle. By the way its wick smoked, sending a thin trail curling into the air, it had just been snuffed. Osha finally looked up, as if he had been watching that candle, and he nodded to her.

“Yes,” he finally answered. “The young sage looked better tonight, so I left him on his own . . . allowing some privacy for both of us.”

“Oh, of course,” Wynn said, backing out.

“Not privacy from you,” he added.

It was short, startling, direct, and so unlike the Osha she remembered.

Still uncertain, she stepped in, holding the door until Shade followed and flopped on the cabin floor near the right-side bunk.

“Sit,” Osha told her, gesturing to the other bunk across the room by Shade.

Wynn tensed slightly as she settled there facing Osha. This small cabin again reminded her of when she and he had sailed down the eastern coast of the far continent and away from his people’s lands. They’d often sat upon the floor to talk. It had seemed so normal then, unlike now.

For a silent moment, Osha stared at the trail of smoke from the candle’s wick. He suddenly thrust out one finger, appearing to split the trail in two and dissipate it. He sat there, hand still held out with his finger extended as the smoke finally thinned and was gone.

Wynn again saw the burn scars on his hand and wrists.

From where he left off in his tale, she might have made guesses about where those scars had come from—and she didn’t want to guess. She wanted the rest of his story, but she couldn’t quite find the way to ask.

“You wish to hear more,” he said bluntly.

He was not at all like the Osha that she had known, but that part of him was still in there somewhere—it had to be. She nodded.

A flash of something passed across Osha’s features. Had it been sadness, perhaps the thought that she was here only to learn his secrets? Then it was gone, as if he didn’t care what brought her to him.

“There I was,” he said, “standing before the portal of the Burning Ones. . . .”

• • •

The white metal doors separated, swinging outward to grind across the cavern’s level stone. A wall of heated air rushed out to strike Osha’s face and body as the cavern’s temperature rose sharply under a stench like burnt coal.

He choked as hot air filled his lungs.

From the last and only time he had been here, he had known this was coming. He stood there, waiting for his body to adjust. After a few more breaths, drawing hot air was still painful but bearable, and he looked through the open doors, raising his torch high.

Beyond stretched a wide passage, and the deeper he looked, the darker it became. There were glistening points of light on its craggy walls, likely from minerals in the stone, for the heat was too much for any moisture. Slipping his blade back into the sheath up his sleeve, he still lingered. Should he strip off his cloak and leave it behind? No, that might be taken below as a sign of disrespect for the covenant between the Anmaglâhk and the Chein’âs. He should be fully and properly attired as a member of the caste.

With his free hand, Osha pushed the cloak over his shoulders to let it hang down his back. There was no more reason to delay, and he stepped through the open portal into the tunnel, working his way down the uneven passage until it narrowed suddenly at the top of a carved stone stairway.

A red-orange glow from below dimly illuminated the stairwell’s close walls. There was a small bracket in the wall, and Osha placed the torch inside it. Light from below increased slightly, as did the heat in the air, as he descended. He continued on, down and down, losing track of the passing time.

When it seemed the descent might never end, he stepped down onto a landing and looked through a rough, door-sized opening in the rock to his right. Out there, the orange-red light brightened, making the opening look like the mouth of a hearth in a dark room.

Osha stepped through and halted at the sight he had seen only once before.

A wide plateau ran in a gradual slant away from the entrance now behind him. At its distant edge, red light erupted out of a massive fissure in the mountain’s belly, like a gash wider than a river hidden somewhere below from where that light came. Smoke drifted up in glowing red air from deep in the earth.

The heat was almost unbearable.

In slow, heavy steps, he struggled forward until he was halfway to the plateau’s edge. There he stopped and reached inside his vestment to draw out the small, dark stone that he could not read. He knew what to do, though he could not bring himself to do it.

What would come of this?

Even for the loss of his jeóin, his mentor, the great Sgäilsheilleache, he still believed in his calling among the Anmaglâhk. It was all he had left. So why had the Chein’âs summoned him—among all anmaglâhk—a second time?

Since the stone would alert those who would come, what if he simply left without casting it over the precipice? He had a life of service awaiting him. With the rift among his caste and his doubts about Most Aged Father, should he turn back to do whatever he could to help?

Brot’ân’duivé had forced him into so many breaches of his caste’s and his people’s ways. His teacher, Sgäilsheilleache, would not have approved but neither would he have denied such a summons.

Now sweating in the heat, Osha drew a shallow breath as he swung his arm back. He cast the stone and watched as it arced out and over the precipice’s edge to fall from sight. Then he froze in waiting, though it did not take as long as he expected.

A soft scraping, like metal on stone, reached his ears before he saw anything.

The plateau’s edge looked almost black against the red-orange glare of the chasm below . . . and a part of that dark jagged line appeared to bulge suddenly.

From where Osha stood, at first the bulge seemed no more than a rippling smudge backlit by burning light. Small and blacker than the stone, it crawled over onto the plateau from out of the depths.

Osha made out its legs and arms as it crept forward on all fours . . . no, on threes, as it dragged something behind itself. That object, or bundle, crackled softly like cloth pulled over rough stone, though he also heard something like clicks and scrapes of metal. The closer the figure came, the more Osha was certain that the bundle was made of some strange fuzzy material as dark as the figure itself . . . and thin curls of smoke or vapor rose from the material.

When the figure was no more than a stone’s throw away, the chasm’s glare cleared from Osha’s sight, and he saw it, a Chein’âs . . . a Burning One. It was as small as a naked child of six or seven years; Osha could not tell whether it was male or female, and it was covered in leathery ebony-toned skin. It finally halted its crawl and squatted on spindly legs folded up with knobby knees against its chest. Only one hand was visible—the other was still behind its back and clutching whatever long bundle it dragged. Thin digits on that one visible hand curled near its flat cheek, and each ended in a shimmering claw blacker than its flesh.

The little one’s oversized head was featureless except for a tightly shut slit of a mouth, vertical cuts for small nostrils, and glowing fire-coal eyes. Where there should have been ears were only two small depressions on the sides of its bald skull.

Osha was not shocked. He had seen one of them before, though the sight of one now unsettled him, and then . . .

More scraping on stone carried across the plateau. The one sat unmoving, watching him with unblinking eyes like glowing metal overheated in a forge. The new scraping sound came from off beyond it.

A second—then a third—small figure crawled up over the precipice’s edge.

The last time Osha had come here, only one had appeared to deliver his weapons and tools. He retreated a step as he watched the other two approach, and then the first one scuttled even closer and jerked its bundle out into plain sight.

That burden was long and narrow, made of some dark, fibrous cloth, and thin trails of smoke rose from it.

The two new ones rounded to either side. Each bore a similar but much smaller bundle, small enough to clutch in one clawed hand. Both of those wads of dark cloth smoldered as well.

Without warning, the first one snatched the cloth of its bundle and jerked upward.

A long, shimmering object tumbled out, clanked, and clattered across the stone before sliding to a stop at Osha’s feet. All he could do was stare as his mind went blank.

It was a sword, though not like any he had heard described or seen carried by the few humans he had ever met. He did see that the handle was bare and no more than a narrow strut of metal, and that metal . . .

All of the blade and strut was silvery white, like his stilettos and tools, like Chein’âs metal.

The blade was as broad as three of his fingers. Nearly straight, its last third swept back a little in a shallow arc. The back of that third looked sharpened like the leading edge. Where the top third joined the lower part, a slightly curved barb swept forward from the blade’s back toward its tip.

The end strut, perhaps needing leather and wood for a hilt, was twice as long as the width of his hand. It curved just a little downward, as much as the slight upward turn at the blade’s end. Two more protrusions extended where the hilt strut met the blade’s base. The top one curved forward, while the bottom one swept slightly back toward the hilt strut.

Osha did not know how long he stared. Anmaglâhk did not wield such large, clumsy, human weapons. They struck swiftly in silence from the shadows by arrow, narrow blade, or garrote, though he himself had never killed anyone.

Unlike many of his people, Osha had no aversion to the sight of that sword. He had spent too much time with humans—with Magiere and Léshil—to be repelled by the mere sight of a foreign weapon. Still, what did it mean?

The Chein’âs had gifted strange weapons, ones made of silver-white metal, to Magiere and Léshil. It was unheard of for any but the Anmaglâhk to receive such gifts. Was this blade to be delivered to one of them? It did not look much like Magiere’s falchion.

Why would the Burning Ones summon him to carry such a thing away?

Looking up, he shook his head in confusion. “What am I to do? Who is this for?”

That must be the answer. He was so unimportant among his caste that using him as a bearer would cost the caste nothing. But to whom should he deliver this sword?

To his puzzlement, none of the three before him made a sound or gesture.

The one to the right of the first opened its smoking piece of cloth. It flung a cluster of tiny silver-white objects that pinged and skipped across the stone floor at him. Before he even looked to where any of those stopped, the third Chein’âs—to the left of the first—flung a single, slightly larger object, though it was not nearly so large as the sword blade.

That last object clattered and rolled in among the other five small ones.

Osha could not help retreating another step.

The five smaller objects were arrowheads, but not the teardrop points used by the Anmaglâhk or even the military archers who most often served aboard the people’s largest vessels. These points were long and diamond-shaped, with harsh angles and thick at the centers.

Osha remembered one of his earliest teachers while he was a mere acolyte. The teacher had shown him and others one such point made of steel, brought back from human lands.

Those were armor-piercing points . . . arrowheads for war.

Osha tried to swallow under a rising panic, but his mouth had dried out.

The final object was again made of shining white metal: a piece shaped like half or maybe more of the circumference of a round tube . . . but its length was slightly curved toward the solid side.

He had no idea what it was at first. It looked a little like the white metal handle for an Anmaglâhk short bow, once the bow’s arms were removed to be tucked away in hiding. But this object was longer, open on one side, and slightly curved along its length. Bow arms would never stay in place once inserted into it.

Unlike the sword, everything else before Osha was similar to the tools of the Anmaglâhk, but different in ways that made the pieces unsuited to guardians of the people. The true weapons of an anmaglâhk would not be lying beside a sword, so whom were these objects for?

He raised his eyes to the first Chein’âs as he pointed at the sword. “Where do I take this? Who is this for?”

None of them answered, and he began to wonder whether they even understood his words.

The first one rushed at him.

Osha back-stepped twice, but that one halted at the sword. It scooped the metal with its claws and flipped the blade outward. The sword clattered to Osha’s feet again, and the Chein’âs pointed at the blade . . . and then at him.

Fear and revulsion rose in Osha. He could not believe what he guessed.

The first Chein’âs let out a hiss like water striking hot stone. It pointed at Osha’s left arm and then at his right.

“What do you want?” he rasped, fighting to breathe the heated air.

It curled its clawed fingers above its opposing arm, as if drawing something down and off that forearm. It whipped that hand outward, as if casting that something aside.

Osha touched his right hand to his left forearm. All he felt there was a sheathed stiletto beneath his sleeve. The agitated Chein’âs mimed the same movement again, and Osha shifted one foot back and set himself.

“No. I am Anmaglâhk! I have my gifts—from your people—to prove this!”

At his angry shout, all three rushed him.

Osha faltered, unable to strike at them . . . unable to commit another sacrilege. One of them latched its hand—its claws—around his left forearm, and he screamed.

Smoke rose from his sleeve beneath that searing grip.

Osha struck back as the other two leaped at him. His fist hit the first one, and a jar shot up his arm as if he had struck stone. He heard his flesh sear an instant before he felt it.

Their clawed hands burned him through his clothing as he fought to throw them off. It was like fighting children made of black metal, and everywhere they tore at his clothing, smoke rose with more burning pain . . . until they pinned him down.

Out of his frayed and charred sleeves, they tore off his stilettos, sheathes and all. The pain left him half-blind, half-conscious, and in spasms. He felt them digging for his bone knife and garrote. And then they were gone from atop him, and he tried to roll on his side as he clutched at the plateau’s rough stone.

He could barely see while clinging to consciousness. All that he spotted was one of their shadowlike forms far off, as if it now stood at the precipice’s edge. That one began tossing things over the edge, and Osha screamed from deep loss more than pain.

His body felt as if he had been burned all over, and he lost sight of everything as the world turned black.

Sometime later he opened his eyes slowly. He did not know how long he had simply lain there in the heat. When he raised his head, he still lay on his side, and one of them remained.

The Chein’âs again squatted off beyond reach and pointed at the sword.

Still shuddering, Osha tried to push himself up.

The Chein’âs let out a screech that echoed across the plateau like metal upon stone.

It rushed to the five arrowheads and the other white metal object, snatched them up, and threw them; they fell right beside the blade. The small creature bolted away along the plateau and leaped over the edge.

Osha’s sight blurred with tears.

It was not enough that he had been cast out, no longer Anmaglâhk. The Burning Ones had forced upon him something so vile, so human, in the eyes of his people that he would be shunned . . . cast out, should they ever learn of it.

He collapsed on his back. If he lay there long enough in the heat, perhaps he would simply die—and that would be better. He closed his eyes, slipping away in the dark, waiting for the pain to end.

Get up.

Osha twitched in unconsciousness. At first he did not know whether he had truly awoken again . . . until burning pain on his skin and a breath of searing air confirmed it.

Get up . . . now!

He stiffened at that voice and opened his eyes, but all he saw above him was darkness broken only by the chasm’s flickering light as it wavered upon the slanted rough stone of the wall behind him. Even that was too hazy in his half-conscious suffering.

We serve . . . even with our deaths. So why waste yourself this way?

Who was there? Who was speaking to him?

Searching for that voice, Osha rolled his head toward the far precipice. The plateau was little more than a blurred black plane that ended in red sky, like sometimes seen before a dawn . . . or at dusk.

Look at me . . . and listen!

Osha struggled to twist the other way, and it hurt him all over. He barely made out the opening he had come through to reach the plateau. Everything around that black pit in the stone was blurred with dim red light. But something—someone—stood in the darker shadows beyond the opening.

What we are is not found in what we are given. What we are called is not why we serve.

Osha could not make out who was there. What little light breached the opening exposed a form of sharper shape than the blurred stone of the chasm wall.

We serve without question . . . or acknowledgment . . . or reward. We serve in whatever way comes to us.

Osha struggled to his hands and knees. That voice was too painfully familiar, though he should not—could not—have truly heard it after so long.

What he could make out through the opening appeared to be a man. There was a hint of a cowl or hood, almost colorless, and perhaps a cloak with its corners tied up across the waist over a tunic. All of that attire was the same colorless tone down to leggings and high felt boots . . . perhaps of forest gray.

Do not forget what little I was able to teach you. Honor me in that . . . not in memory or mourning . . . or a worthless death.

Osha pushed up, somehow climbing to his feet amid the pain, and squinted at the shadowed figure.

“Jeóin . . . Teacher?” he tried to say, though it came out a hoarse whisper.

The figure did not move or speak again. Perhaps the too-dark pit of its cowl shifted, as if looking beyond him.

Osha teetered as he turned enough to peer at what still lay upon the stone. Even the sword, the arrowheads, and the split tube were blurred in his sight, and when he looked back . . .

No one was there beyond the opening.

Osha rushed over, stumbling, and looked up the steps leading back to the white metal portal.

“Sgäilsheilleache!” His scream tore his throat, though it did not stop him. “Please . . . Sgäilsheilleache . . . come back.”

The only answer he received was the echo of his own torment, and he crumpled upon the first step. When he had no tears left, he crawled back out upon the plateau. On his knees, he stared at what had been given to him in place of what had been taken from him.

He had to accept it all. He might no longer be Anmaglâhk, but he could not disrespect the covenants. He could not shame his lost teacher.

Spreading out his tattered and charred cloak, he fumbled to place all of the objects upon it . . . even that hiltless sword. He could not tie it all together and was forced to gather it all in his arms. That only made his flesh sting as he crawled up the stone steps out of the searing depths. . . .

• • •

Wynn sat on the bunk. She ached inside as she watched Osha, who only stared at the dead wick of the candle that no longer sent a trace of smoke into the cabin’s air.

“I have told no one but you,” he whispered, expressionless.

Wynn began to shudder, and the room became a watery blur before her eyes. But she would not cry, not let one tear fall. Nothing she felt could match what he had been through.

Most Aged Father, Brot’an, and then the Chein’âs . . .

What had they done to the Osha she had once known?

She slipped off the bunk’s edge and knelt on the floor before him, though the dead candle was in her way, and she didn’t know whether she should—could—move it to reach him. Only then did Osha blink once and look up at her.

“I can’t imagine what . . .” she started, and looked at his hands, cupped one in the other in his lap; the sheen of burn scars was visible below the sleeve cuffs. “I can’t imagine,” she repeated.

“No, you cannot.”

“What . . . what then?”

“I made my way to the shore. . . . I am uncertain how. . . .”

• • •

Osha remembered waking to the sound of waves crashing and the sight of the ship’s master standing over him, her wide eyes filled with fright and worry.

“Be careful,” she said, looking aside at someone else. “He has been burned.”

Osha almost cried out as two of the ship’s crew gripped and lifted him. As they stepped into the water to place him in a skiff, he must have fallen unconscious again. When he next awoke, he lay on his stomach upon a bunk aboard the ship. For all that he could tell, he was naked, covered only by a thin blanket. But he could feel cold, soaked cloths wrapped around his forearms and draped across his back. Nearby on the floor lay the wrapped bundle of what had once been his cloak and what was held within it.

He did not want to see or think about it.

Days passed, each the same, and the ship arrived at the enclave where he had first boarded it.

The crew found clothes for him from among their own people—in various shades of brown. He managed to dress himself, as he would not let anyone do so for him. He did not want them staring at his burns.

It had been so long since he had worn anything but the forest gray of an anmaglâhk. When he looked down at himself in those strange yet familiar clothes of his people, he did not feel like himself; he did not feel like anyone at all. And then he gathered the hated bundle to go up on deck.

“Take me ashore,” he said.

Two of the crew immediately prepped the skiff.

Once ashore, Osha walked to the very back of the settlement, near the edge of the tree line, as he thought of that shadowy figure . . . the one he had thought had been . . .

No, it could not have been Sgäilsheilleache. His jeóin would have been ashamed of all the breaches into which his student had been forced, of the Chein’âs casting him out . . . of their taking his gifts as an anmaglâhk to force a human weapon upon him.

His sorrow suddenly smothered under anger.

“Valhachkasej’ú . . . Brot’ân’duivé!”

Osha cursed the greimasg’äh by name in the foulest way of his people. Dropping his bundle of burdens, he ran into the forest and searched for any open space among the trees. He tried to think—imagine—how to call to the clhuassas, the listener, so it might take him away. . . .

Everywhere among the thinned coastal trees, there seemed no place like the one in which the twisted greimasg’äh had first called the sacred one. Osha panted in pain as his clothes rubbed his burns.

Then a sharper rustle rose in the branches above him. It was too loud for the shore breeze.

Before he halted or even looked up, a large black feather flipped and rolled down into the scrawny grass before him.

It looked to be that of a raven . . . a very large one. Osha tilted his head back.

Something peered down at him with round and glassy black eyes in a black face.

Between the leaves hid something—someone—larger than a mere bird. He would have been no more than half Osha’s height if he stood upon the ground instead of squatting on a thick, low branch.

The séyilf—a Windblown one—gazed fixedly down at Osha as he flexed his folded black wings just once.

Though he was slight-boned and narrow of torso, if he had opened those wings fully, they would have spanned five times his height. From his pinion feathers to the downy covering on his body and face, he was a shiny shade of black.

The only séyilf that Osha had ever seen was at Magiere’s trial before the people’s clan council of elders. He had never heard of a black one.

Instead of hair, larger feathers combed back from the top of the séyilf’s head. The same were visible on the bottom edge of his forearms and the sides of his lower legs. He pushed farther out of the leaves above and cocked his head like a raven.

As Osha continued looking up, all the anger, sorrow . . . everything washed out of him. He knew the Windblown did not speak as he did, but he had to know what it was doing here. They were responsible for carrying message stones to and from the mountain of the Chein’âs. How was unknown, and beyond this, they were seldom seen. The Windblown, like the Burning Ones, were protected in alliance with the an’Cróan.

Before Osha could think of a way to pose a question, the male began plucking more of his feathers. He dropped each one, and, five in all, they fluttered to the ground before Osha. The séyilf pointed to the feathers and then out and north along the coast.

Osha looked down at the shining black feathers, and when he looked up, the séyilf was gone.

Five feathers . . . and five white metal arrowheads . . . for war.

The meaning was clear.

Osha began to pant again, as if he could not catch his breath, until he went numb. He watched as one feather rolled twice under the coastal breeze . . . and he waited.

Let them all blow away, and he would not have to look at them again. But not another one moved.

Osha gathered the feathers and slowly returned to retrieve the bundle of his other “gifts.” He returned to the enclave to find that there was already another, larger vessel anchored offshore, and when he asked about it, he was told that it was bound for Ghoivne Ajhâjhe—Edge of the Deep—his people’s only true port and city far to the north.

• • •

A hesitant knock came outside the cabin door.

Wynn started slightly, still on her knees facing Osha over the dead candle.

“Wynn . . . are you in there?”

At Chane’s voice outside, she stood up—having no wish for him to walk in and find her kneeling before Osha.

“Yes, we are here,” she called.

The door cracked open halfway, and Chane peered around its edge. He glanced from Shade to Wynn and then back to her before his eyes found Osha.

“We near Oléron and should gather our things. I could not find you in our cabin, so . . .”

He trailed off, and Wynn watched his expression darken. But her thoughts were churning with everything she’d heard. Osha suddenly rose, snatching up the candle, and he tucked it away in a small satchel.

Ignoring Chane, Wynn asked softly, “Are you all right?”

Osha nodded once without looking at her, but she didn’t believe him.

“You should get packed,” she said for lack of anything better.

Lying near the bunk’s other end, on the floor, was the long and narrow canvas-wrapped bundle. She had already seen his bow and his black-feathered arrows, though she didn’t know what had become of the tube of Chein’âs metal that he’d mentioned. But there could only be one thing left in that canvas.

The sword.

She wondered where he’d gotten the bow that she’d seen him use with shocking skill . . . a skill he’d never displayed in those early times she’d been with him. But she’d never seen him nock an arrow with a white metal head.

“I am packed,” Osha answered, though he’d not moved from where he sat.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 590