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Shea clicked his tongue and his horse surged ahead. Rain followed, watching him struggle to keep the black horse from cantering. She looked behind and saw Whiskey and Aeraldor disappear behind the thick tree trunks.
They continued silently at a brisk trot, Shea doing his best to keep Ahearn from cantering. The thin undergrowth allowed for easy traveling. The great trees of Ellwood stood around them like pillars holding up the heavens, and birds trilled in the treetops.
Shea’s horse continued to act strangely, and finally Rain had to break the silence.
“Is he frightened or does he just want a good run?” she nudged Pan to go a little faster and catch up to Shea.
“I’ve never seen him like this. He doesn’t get scared easily, but that’s got to be what’s happening.”
Rain looked behind her but saw nothing. “Remember the last time he got scared? Highgate.”
“The wolves, you mean? But there aren’t any following us.” He shook his head. “Let’s just stay alert.”
Night passed uneventfully under the towering trees, people and horses alert and watchful. When they came upon the fork in the road, they took the path to the right as Aeraldor had instructed.
Rain had tried to sleep during the day before they left, to no avail. She had known she needed the energy to stay awake that night, but excitement had kept her restless. She fought the feeling of exhaustion that now threatened to overtake her, but as dawn’s light began seeping between the trees, she was nearly asleep in her saddle.
As she forced her eyes open, she saw Shea looking over at her.
“We can stop if you need to,” he said, slowing his horse to a walk. “It’s nearly morning, anyway, and we shouldn’t travel in daylight.”
“Don’t stop just for me,” she said while trying unsuccessfully to fight back a yawn.
But as soon as they came across a stream, Shea suggested they set up camp beside it in a small clearing. Shea took the packs off the horses to give them a break and let them take a drink from the stream, filling the waterskins as well. Rain found a reasonably flat spot of earth to sleep on and wanted to curl up and fall asleep immediately.
“I can take today’s watch,” Shea said as he pulled food out of a saddlebag and sat down.
“But you need sleep, too.”
“I’m fine. You look tired enough. You should eat something first, though,” he said as she unrolled her blanket.
“As long as you do, too.”
She accepted a freshly baked sweet bun, compliments of Rowena. They both started eating; Rain on her blanket, Shea leaning against a nearby tree.
“Thank you for coming with me,” she said. “Strangely enough, I think I feel safer with you than with some elven guard I don’t know.”
“You don’t exactly know me, either,” he said. His expression was unreadable.
“Perhaps. But I know enough.” She smiled, thinking of the night she met him on the road from Willshire. “When I first saw you, I thought you were some bigot from the city, just trying to impress me.”
Shea’s mouth twitched into a lopsided smile. “Oh, really? Well, I thought you were some foolish country girl, out for a midnight ride without regard to your surroundings.”
“I certainly wasn’t. I was running for my life.”
“What, you want an apology for saving you from that craeton?” His smile widened.
She returned the grin. “Of course not. I already thanked you.”
They were quiet for a minute, surrounded by the sounds of the forest waking up. Rain finished her food and curled up in her blanket.
“Goodnight,” she said quietly, rolling over so her back faced Shea. She shut her eyes, Shea’s tall frame still in her mind.
***
Two eyes, black voids sucking in the light around them, stared at her. They were the menacing, piercing eyes of a predator.
Fear startled her awake, and the vision vanished when she opened her eyes. The fear lingered, though, and she still felt a pair of eyes watching her.
She looked around and saw it was nearly afternoon, sunlight filtering through clouds and treetops. Her right arm was tingly and sore from sleeping at a strange angle. She turned to face the camp and sat up to see Shea’s back to her.
“Shea.”
He turned to face her, looking a little worse for wear. “Good, you’re awake.”
“I think something’s watching us,” she said as she unwrapped herself from her blanket and began rolling it up.
“Why do you say that?”
She thought about telling him about her dream, but didn’t want to worry him further if it was nothing to fret about. “I… just feel uneasy. Let’s be careful.”
Shea started preparing the horses. “Fine with me. We should get moving, anyway.”
When Rain gave Pan some light grooming and a handful of oats, she noticed he was nervous again, but calmed after she began brushing him. Even the horses were still skittish, she realized. Pan did look like he was well rested, and she was glad Shea had thought to take off their saddles and bridles while they slept.
“I can stand watch next time, you don’t need to stay awake for me. You need sleep, too.”
“It’s not a problem. Tomorrow we can switch off, though.” As he brushed his horse, the stallion flicked his dark black tail restlessly.
When they set off at a trot, the forest seemed hushed. Only a couple of birds chirped once in a while and no animals came out in the open. Even the faint breeze didn’t make a sound as it wound its way through the light undergrowth.
“The woods seem unusually quiet,” Rain said to break the silence. She glanced behind her again, looking for whatever was giving her goosebumps. She hadn’t seen a dreamwalker in the vision, but that didn’t mean she should disregard it.
Shea was silent for a moment. “I wonder if it’s the Soulblight. Maybe more animals have been affected than we think.”
“I don’t know… the forest seemed pretty lively a few hours ago.”
Shea glanced behind them. “If it’s not the Soulblight, then maybe we really are being followed.”
Rain quickened Pan’s pace to a fast trot. “Let’s go a bit faster, then. Maybe we can gain some ground.” Shea murmured his agreement and increased his own horse’s speed to catch up with her.
Eventually, the terrain they rode over became rocky and full of roots. The wide trees surrounding them became interspersed with thinner, though still quite thick, fir and pine trees. They slowed their horses to a walk to keep them from tripping.
After turning a corner in the path, Rain heard a faint, deep growl coming from behind them.
“Did you hear that?”
Shea stopped his horse and listened to the woods around them. After a moment, he shook his head. “Nothing unusual.”
“I swear I heard a growl.”
A muffled snarl erupted from the undergrowth behind them. Before either of them could react, a large black wolf appeared, lunging for Shea’s leg. It looked exactly like the ones in Highgate, with eyes like dark voids slicing through the daylight.
Shea yelled in pain and Ahearn reared, but the wolf held on. Shea clung to his frantic horse.
Pan stomped and snorted, making it hard for Rain to control him. As best she could while dealing with her horse, she nocked an arrow and shot the wolf.
The arrow punctured the animal’s flesh at the neck. It cried in pain and briefly released Shea’s leg. Before it could attack again, she shot a second arrow, hitting its muzzle. It fell to the ground, howling and writhing, and after a few moments it went still.
Shea finally calmed Ahearn down and took shuddering breaths. Rain hopped off Pan and hurried to help Shea down from his own horse. She guided him to a fallen log and he took off his left boot, lifting the torn pant leg.
Ghastly cuts from the wolf’s teeth were bleeding freely. Scars from the bite a week earlier were ripped open.
Shea cursed, ripping the end of his pant leg off to staunch the blood. “It’s as if,” he grimaced, “it knew where my weakest spot was. It hurts more than the last time, and not just from the new gashes.”
“It looks horrible,” Rain said as Shea shifted the cloth over the wound and flinched. “Will a simple bandage be enough? Do we need to go back to Belmaeron for the healers?”
He shook his head. “This mission is too important to waste time. It’ll have to do.”
From what Rain knew about wounds, working at an inn, she knew he needed more than a bandage to continue on traveling. They didn’t even have painkilling herbs.
“Let me… try something. Take the cloth off the wound.”
Shea frowned. He kept his hand where it was. “It needs pressure.”
“If I can create a wooden log out of thin air, why couldn’t I try healing you?”
His eyes widened. “No.”
“What? Why? It can’t hurt.”
“How do you know? It hurts like hell already.”
“What’s wrong?” Rain asked, exasperated. “You let the elves heal you.”
“They knew what they were doing. I’m not willing to be a test subject. What if you end up turning my leg into a wooden log?”
“I wouldn’t do that!” she asserted. But Shea stood his ground, only staring at her. “Fine. But don’t complain about the pain.” She went over to Pan to take the bandages out of the saddlebag, and took her time of it.
When she came back with the bandages, Shea still didn’t move his torn pant leg from the wound.
“Come on, at least let me dress the wound. I know how to do that.” She stared him down, and he finally averted his eyes, moving the bloodied cloth away.
Rain worked gingerly, afraid that every touch hurt him. Shea was quiet, refusing to show any pain.
“You’re afraid of my magic,” she said as she finished tying off the bandage. Shea was silent. She shook her head. In a burst of anger, she said, “Would you rather I practice on myself first?” She picked up a sharp rock from the ground, but before she could cut her palm, Shea grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t be an idiot. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
She turned her angry eyes on his. “I’m almost certain I could heal it away in a second.”
“I don’t care,” he said quietly, and they sat there for a moment, looking at each other, Shea firmly holding her wrist as she tried unsuccessfully to bring the rock down on her hand. When Shea finally realized he didn’t have to restrain her anymore, he let her go. She dropped the rock.
Shea cleared his throat nervously and started putting his left boot back on. “We should be on our way.”
Rain nodded her agreement. As she quietly put the remaining bandages away and helped Shea onto his horse, she couldn’t decide if she was more attracted to or frustrated about his gallantry.
***
After a few minutes, they saw a sharp drop looming ahead of them in the late afternoon sun. The path curved to the right before they were led straight off the cliff that led to the Hollow. Thick, dark woods stretched on to the horizon far below them. Shea turned and gave his horse a light kick in the side and he started trotting quickly down the path. It was set about ten or twenty paces from the drop off, and a few of the giant trees grew between the path and the cliff. Rain urged Pan forward through the trees to follow them.
They traveled along the path through the night, the cliff almost always in view, and made camp when the first light of day shone through the treetops. Rain helped him off Ahearn’s saddle and insisted on taking first watch, making sure to mention to Shea that he was still injured and needed his rest. He didn’t need much persuasion, though, for after changing his wound’s bandage, he ate a few mouthfuls of a sweet bun and a strip of dried meat and soon fell asleep.
Shea tossed and turned through the morning, and so Rain let him sleep through his turn at watch. When she started feeling sleepy, she practiced with her magic, creating small things like flowers so she didn’t waste her energy.
She woke Shea up a bit after noon. “Time to get moving again.”
He groaned and sat up slowly. His face was sweaty, and he looked rather sickly. Before he could protest, Rain kneeled beside him and put her hand to his forehead. The skin was hot.
“Shea, you have a fever.”
He grimaced as he moved his left leg. “The bite hurts like hell.” He rubbed his face, the sweat making his hair stick up. “I could probably remember the herb my mother used for fever, maybe there’s some around here…”
“Shea, we don’t have time to sit here and nurse you back to health. You know that, you said it yourself yesterday.”
He looked at her, and after a moment, realized what she was saying. “No. No, Rain, no magic.” He started to stand up.
“Sit,” Rain said with such forcefulness that she surprised even herself. She stood up and gathered her own blanket, rolling it up to create an extra pillow for Shea. “Lie back.” When he stubbornly stared at her, she said, “You know we have to try this. There’s no guarantee I can even make anything happen, but you simply can’t ride a horse for hours on end in your state, and we don’t have time to find herbs that you knew ten years ago.”
Shea lay down reluctantly, sighing in what could only be exhaustion. She couldn’t imagine that he’d had a restful sleep.
Rain sat beside his leg, the bandage bared to the elements because of the day before, when Shea ripped off the bottom of the pant leg in his haste to stop the bleeding. She silently chided him for not thinking things through.
Shea lifted his head to see what she was doing. “Don’t be nervous,” she said, “just close your eyes and think happy thoughts. It won’t hurt.” Rain wasn’t sure that was true, but didn’t want him protesting any further.
“Fine.” Shea rested his head again and took a deep breath, in and out. “Just don’t give me a wooden leg.” A flicker of a smile crossed his face.
Rain shook her head at his nervous joke and gently rested her palms on the bandage, closing her own eyes. She’d considered how to do this all day, and settled on one thing to try first. She willed the wound beneath her hands to heal, picturing it healed in her mind.
Nothing seemed to happen. Perhaps one of the colors of magic was solely for healing, she thought, and willed herself to be filled with specifically healing energy. After a minute or so, she felt her hands warm and opened her eyes. Yellow tendrils of magic swirled around her hands. Shea sighed and visibly relaxed.
Smiling at her success, she pictured in her mind the wound beneath the bandage. She imagined the muscle weaving back together, the skin fixing itself, the wound gone. The tendrils of magic circled the bandage and seemed to go underneath it, healing the wound.
When she was finished, she moved over to sit by Shea’s head, and put a hand to his forehead again. He opened his eyes. He still felt a bit warm to her touch.
“How do you feel?”
He smiled gratefully. “The pain is gone. I can’t believe it.” She saw a tear escape from his eye and then realized how much pain he really had been holding in.
For good measure, she did the same healing technique on his forehead, this time imagining him without a fever, at a normal temperature. The heat disappeared under her hand, and she released the magic, taking her hand from his face. She realized she felt a bit more tired than she was five minutes ago.
“That’s incredible,” he said. “I could feel the heat leaving my body. The magic of the elves worked quickly, but not that fast.” He sat up, and suddenly hugged her fiercely.
Surprised as she was, it took her a minute, but she put her arms around him and hugged him back.
“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “For doubting you.”
“It’s alright,” she said, and pulled out of the hug, smiling at him. “I’m glad it worked.” Her thoughts drifted, and her smile disappeared. “I’m not so sure you should be thanking me yet. If you’re sick from the bite, and the wolf clearly had the Soulblight…” Rain’s thoughts ran wildly through her head. What if he had caught it?
“I feel fine, Rain. You even cured the fever.” He bent to his wound and started unwrapping the bandage. The skin beneath it was completely healed, scars and all.
“Aeraldor mentioned other symptoms,” Rain said. “We don’t know that I healed anything more than your skin and the fever.”
“We’ll watch out for them, then.” He stood up, stretching. “I feel fantastic, in fact.” He grinned his familiar contagious grin, but Rain couldn’t muster more than a weak smile.
***
After they set off at a walk through the forest, Shea asked to see the map, and stopped to study it. Rain waited, gazing at the majestic trees surrounding them. There was a dark shape high in the tree she stood next to, and Rain squinted to try and see it better. A dark beak emerged from the branches, illustrating the silhouette of a bird she knew they should be wary of.
“Shea,” she whispered, “a raven is watching us.”
A loud, hoarse squawk sounded from the tree, and the raven swooped down from its high perch. It seemed to be flying right for her, and she ducked. It flew past her, but Shea shouted and she looked over her shoulder. The raven had snatched the map from his fingers, and shot up into the air. She quickly got out her bow and nocked an arrow, but by the time she aimed, the bird had disappeared over the nearby cliff edge. She slowly let down the string of her bow.
She looked at Shea and they shared a distraught look. “What now?” Shea wondered aloud. He walked his horse closer to the drop off and looked over the edge. “It would be impossible to chase it.”
“Do you know the map well enough for us to go on without it?” she asked.
“I know we should follow this path until a certain point, but it continues around the cliff in a great circle. We have to branch off of it at some point, but I’m not sure I remember the exact path.” He sighed deeply and ran a hand through his dark hair.
“Let’s just keep moving. If seeing a raven means a Wingmaster might be near, I want to get as far away from here as possible.”
Shea nodded in agreement and they started up again, increasing their traveling speed to a fast trot.
***
They made steady progress for the next two days, relying on Shea’s memory and instincts. There had been no sign of more animals controlled by Demonmasters or Wingmasters, and they gradually transitioned to traveling during the day, as it seemed they had escaped the danger.
However, clouds had slowly moved in at the end of the first day, and it was harder to tell exactly what direction they traveled in. They needed to keep in mind which direction was west, for the Dark Wood was west of the Hollow, and they would soon have to leave the path encircling the cliffs.
They stopped at midday for a short rest. Rain stood leaning against a tree, holding her waterskin. She took a swig of it, savoring the taste. They had found another stream, this one wider than the last, flowing over the cliff and down into the depths of the Hollow. Its water was clear and delicious. She stoppered the waterskin and secured it to her saddlebags.
“How long do you think the clouds will be around?” she asked Shea as he brushed and fed Ahearn.
He glanced up at the sky. “They look like they might hang around for a while, to me.”
“Let’s hope they’re gone by tomorrow.”
“They won’t be.” He said with a finality that was impossible to trust. No one could predict the weather, especially Shea, who didn’t practice any magic. He turned his back to her as he worked. His remarks had recently become pessimistic, which put them both in a bad mood. His fever didn’t return, and he seemed in good health, but he still seemed a little odd.
She relaxed deeper against the tree, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. A feeling washed over her, like she was recalling a memory. Something seemed familiar about this place. She opened her eyes and shook her head to see if she could get rid of the feeling, but it didn’t subside. Was it the scent in the air or the kinds of trees that surrounded them? She hadn’t been here before, as far as she could remember.
She recalled something Aeraldor had said. The moon elves resided on the western edge of Ellwood. If she was a moon elf—or, rather, since she was one—perhaps some part of her remembered these woods. She was never told, and never asked, where she was born, but maybe this was a place from her past. She looked toward their right and suddenly felt the urge to go in that direction.
She mounted her horse and Shea followed. She turned Pan away from the path and the drop off, towards a deeper part of the forest, where her instincts seemed to lure her. “Shea, let’s go this way.”
“I don’t think it’s time yet to turn off the path. We should go farther south.”
She followed his advice for a while, but the nagging sensation increased and as they went further away from the place she felt like turning, it felt like she was leaving something important behind.
“Shea, I really think we should turn off the path now.”
“It’s not time yet!” he said loudly, and she turned Pan around, feeling hurt. She ignored his protests and continued following her strange new inner guidance. He cursed behind her and Rain fought back a smile, knowing that he would have to go whichever way she chose, since he was just there for protection. Something was wrong with him. She would have told him it was her instincts pulling her this way, and without this foul mood he probably would have followed her with enthusiasm, but she felt that he would stay moody, no matter what she said.