Chapter 27

The royal road was a pleasant change from the uneven forest tracts Elara had traveled for days. Conveniently, her guiding stream flowed into the river running next to the road, guiding her south. The even road surface allowed her to pick up her pace.

Hunger and a need to hunt was the reason she had crafted an attack with her magic. She felt she had changed since her encounter with Terrill. When she felt his hunger for more than food, the sense of danger from him, she had vowed not to be a victim again. Her actions stemmed from that vow. She had spent the night beneath a well sheltered pine tree and prayed. Her goddess had embraced her, affirming her decision and actions.

Knowing she had acted to protect herself and other innocents, she wanted to face her trials and destiny. She knew she had weapons now. She wanted to find her path to Malachi, to face him, and conquer her fears, even if she failed in her quest. Her goddess had set her on this path, and she needed to trust in her grace and power.

Remembering the strange shoes from Finn’s world, she paused long enough to weave the moonbeams and thicken the moccasins on her feet, adding rubber soles and cushioning. Afterward, she began jogging as she had seen Finn do.

It was strange, she thought as she ran. Finn was her compulsion from the spell. She sensed that to be true. But she also thought of him frequently. Was that the spell as well? She knew him to be principled, honest, and caring. He had taken in a stranger and promised to help her. He kept his word.

He had kissed her, that once when she first arrived, but that was to protect them from the people chasing him. She had forgiven that un-wanted kiss. As she ran, she remembered that kiss. Had she enjoyed it, or did the spell make her enjoy it? Their later kiss, shortly before returning to her world, had not been un-wanted.

She remembered waking and sneaking into his bed. The sense of reassuring comfort she had felt was a warm memory. How could the spell cause that?

She ran on, trying to disentangle her true emotions from the feelings a geas might engender. If only she could trust her feelings.

“This makes no sense,” Finn said as he looked down at the river from the bridge in the heart of Dun Brosnacha.

“What?” Yara asked from behind him.

“The magic is gone. I see nothing in the water.”

“At least that means you don’t need to tempt the seas,” Thorne said.

He might have been trying to lighten the mood, but Finn was not having it. “What could have stripped the magic? Are there any unusual creatures or features along this stretch of river, Master Thorne?”

The older ranger shook his head. “No. The dryads avoid men, so don’t visit the trees closer to the city very often. The valley is wide here, so a lot of land is used for farming, to feed the city people.”

Finn looked at the bridge, wondering if he could see more from its central arch. He began walking, examining the stone blocks as he walked higher. Each piece of the gray-blue stone was expertly carved and fitted to form an uninterrupted flow of near seamless stone. It looked and felt sturdy. Intricate designs were etched into the railings and pillars in the shape of vines and flowers that seemed to dance in the afternoon sun. The roadbed of the bridge was worn smooth from its history of use. No bump or crack appeared to impede wheel or foot.

Finn reached the highest point and turned to look upriver. He saw no sign of magic following the waters between the bridge and the bend over three miles west along its course. He felt lost. Additionally, he was so certain the flow of power in the water would lead him to what he thought he needed.

Yara and Thorne joined him at the balustrade but said nothing.

“Conservation of energy,” Finn said softly.

“What’s that?” Yara asked.

“There is a physical law concerning the conservation of energy within a system; it cannot be destroyed. If the power I was following is no longer in the river, it went somewhere. I just need to find out where that is.”

He looked westward again, back up the river valley they had spent five days journeying through.

“Thorne, will you be able to spot the place we last saw the river from if we are on the opposite bank?”

“Aye,” the master ranger said.

“Then that is where we must go.”

Elara slowed at the first sign of smoke. She was not familiar with this part of the Realm but thought she should be coming upon a village soon. She had been moving at a steady jog most of the day, taking short breaks of walking when her legs grew weary. Feeling the strain of her journey, she hoped for an inn to stay in, and had been pushing herself.

Coming over a small rise, she looked down at a town in ruin. Smoke rose in thin threads from the smoldering remains of once-proud homes, their thatched roofs now little more than a tangled mass of blackened twigs and ash.

The bodies of the fallen lay scattered among the wreckage, their lives snuffed out instantly. The raiding party had been swift and ruthless, leaving no sign of mercy being shown to the occupants of the town. Elara heard no sounds of fighting or survivors. She watched carefully as she moved closer.

The bodies were men and a few teen-aged boys. An old woman was lying at the well near the center of the town, her head a bloody sight with her skirts ripped from her body. Elara knew what she had suffered. Hot tears stained her cheeks as she moved to cover the corpse. She sobbed as she forced herself to search for any sign of survivors.

A trampled pasture told her the raiders had come from the east, closer to the coast. She could not tell whether they left the same way or not. Embers still smoldered, making her think the raid had begun near dawn. The village was only a dozen houses, a mill, and a small inn or store. One larger stone structure appeared to be a warehouse or stables of a merchant company. It was now broken and burned. She looked inside, surprised to see mostly intact wagons, charred, but still usable to her eye. The raiders had not wanted loot.

She continued searching but found only the dead. The only women she spotted were old and frail. A sense of dread filled her. She thought back to the cells she had shared with similar village women short months before. She fought the terror of those memories. The raiders were gone or had journeyed further south along the road. She needed to see if she could catch them. Slim hope for the captives was better than no hope at all. If she could catch them, she would fight. She was not going to be a victim again.

The narrow game trail leading from the pasture’s edge to the river appeared dry, despite the heavy dew on the thigh-high grass that led to the trees near the river. Finn shook his head and climbed over the short stonewall fence to complete this task. Thorne had suggested various paths as they slowly ascended the southern bank of the river above Dun Brosnacha, but he declined to accompany Finn through the brush and trees to observe the watercourse.

Yara had remained dry as well, choosing to manifest a stool and sit on the paved royal road they traversed. Thorne had warned her that the road would turn south soon, heading towards the low gap in the southern valley wall. However, for now, she was relishing her relative ease on this section of the journey.

Finn had ventured into the wilderness three times since leaving the city yesterday. Traversing through dense brush, forests, fields, and pastures, all in pursuit of spying on the water and verifying that the magical energy hadn’t reached this far in its flow. Initially, his plan was to march upriver, positioning himself opposite the last point they had observed from the north bank. However, Thorne suggested checking along the way to save time. Finn made the trek to the bank approximately an hour outside the city, then again at lunchtime, and finally in the mid-afternoon. Dusk prevented him from checking closer to the inn last night, so he planned to do so this morning at first light. He hoped for a light dew or that the water would dry quickly this morning, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

His leather pants protected him for the sharp blades of grass and mostly repelled the water, but he knew they would be well dampened by the time he returned to the group. He hoped they would be ready to travel when he got back. Rather than dwell on the discomfort before him, he pulled out the slab of bread and cheese he had received from the inn keep before leaving the warm comfort of their overnight accommodations.

Careful not to drop his breakfast, he bit into the still-warm bread, enjoying the nutty aroma and gentle crumble on his tongue. The cheese was close to cheddar. His meal was filling and surprisingly tasteful. His palate seemed to have adjusted to his current circumstances.

He glanced back at the inn as he reached the trees. The path opened slightly. It seemed that the local wildlife had kept the brush trimmed back under the towering bows. He was grateful for that. As he continued his walk, he tried to imagine the river from above. He must be getting close to the point where they had last seen magic. He thought the river had serpentined down the valley with regularity.

They had last spotted it from an overlook on the North bank, where the water cut close to a sheer cliff with the road rising to cling to the rock wall. It was an impressive feat of engineering, that section of roadway. He had noted from that vantage spot that the bend in the river turned almost ninety degrees and appeared to cover most of the width of the valley before being guided east once more by a smaller bluff.

If his mental map was correct, he should be close to the smaller bluff that sent the river back to the north before continuing downstream. He broke through a line of brush and spotted the broad river flowing onward. No sign of magic.

He looked upriver, spying the bluff he had remembered. From this angle, it appeared the river narrowed behind the mound of rock and soil before turning north and sweeping back across the valley. A small trail tracked along the river, a path for travelers or wildlife, he suspected.

He glanced at the sun still rising behind him. Turn back and get the ranger and priestess, or check out the bluff now? It looked to be only a mile or so upriver. Thinking of Thorne and Yara’s words of caution, he turned back. If they wanted him to be careful, they would need to accompany him either along the path he had already travelled, or down some other way to that bluff. Before turning back, he pulled out his phone and snapped pictures up and down the river. He might not be able to automatically geotag the photos, but he was building a rough outline of its path through the valley.

Elara’s heart raced as she crouched low behind the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak tree, her breath coming in shallow, nervous gasps. The moon cast a silvery glow through the dense canopy of leaves above, illuminating the clearing below where the vile raiders had set up camp.

The sight before her was one that filled Elara with a white-hot fury and an unyielding determination to protect those who could not defend themselves. The women and girls from the village were now chained together in a pitiful display of subjugation, their eyes downcast and their bodies bruised and bloodied. Only two young men were with the captives. All were huddled together for comfort and support, their silent sobs mingling with the night air.

The raiders, fewer than Elara had anticipated, were a gruesome sight to behold. Their faces were etched with cruelty and malice as they reveled in their new-found possessions, their laughter a discordant symphony of violence and depravity. They seemed oblivious to the fact that they were not alone, that there was someone watching them from the shadows.

The fire crackled and popped, casting dancing shadows upon the rough, uneven ground as the raiders gathered around it. They spoke in hushed tones, their words a mix of crude jokes and boasts about their conquest. The captives flinched at each coarse remark; their fear palpable even from a distance.

Elara moved, drifting silently between trees to get ahead of the raiding party. She wanted to fight them, rescue the captives, and kill the violent men, but knew she might fail. Instead, she planned on getting in front of them and continuing her run to the next town. Forewarned, they could set a trap for the evil party.

A flicker in the darkness was her only warning. They had a guard out in front of their party. Elara froze, standing with her back against the bole of a huge hickory tree. The man was careless, she saw. He had a small fire set before his bedroll spread at the side of the road.

Maybe it was not carelessness. Anyone traveling north would assume he was a lone traveler. Elara watched, noting his frequent glances back up the road before resuming his watch to the south. She could imagine him wanting to join his companions. Almost as if something heard her thought, another light flickered to the north. She waited until another raider materialized from the dark, dragging one of the captives behind him.

The first raider’s eyes flickered back up the road as the second figure approached, and he greeted his companion with a gruff nod before resuming his watch to the south once more. Elara could sense the relief that washed over him at having company, the unspoken promise of safety in numbers.

The second raider, seemingly satisfied with the acknowledgement, turned his attention to the captive boy. His eyes narrowed as he took in the young face, a sneer curling his lip as he assessed the worth of his new prize. With a swift, brutal movement, he backhanded the boy across the face, sending him stumbling forward and leaving a bright red mark upon his cheek.

The boy’s sobs rang out through the quiet night, a plaintive reminder of the pain and suffering that had been inflicted upon them all. The second raider chuckled cruelly, the sound carrying clearly in the stillness of the forest, as he taunted the boy with threats and promises of what was to come.

Elara’s heart clenched at the sight of the young boy’s fear and pain, her resolve hardening as she vowed to put an end to this nightmare even as the second man reached for his belt.

“Goddess, guide me,” she prayed softly. She could take out these sentries, reducing the raiding party before they struck again, but at the risk of warning the group when they were found dead or missing in the morning. As she sat watching, a sense of fury filled her. She took it as an answer to her prayer.

Elara crept closer, sliding north to be behind them. She did not know how far she could strike from, but decided a dozen paces was close enough. Learning from her encounter with Terrill, she imagined a pebble sized stone and concentrated on flinging it from her to the second raider’s head.

“Crack!”

Immediately, she shifted her focus and manifested again toward the first man.