Shadow Herald — Chapter Six
As Navaeli and Evain crept toward the deep woods, crickets serenaded the summer with a final farewell. Gadlin stood as a distant and shadowy lump of houses, dotted with candlelight and the torches of knights on their nightly patrols. The clomp of boots on the path and the calm clank of plate armor scared vigilance into Navaeli. The two of them crouched in the undergrowth whenever a light neared, silent as shadows.
There was a comfort in darkness — the safety of concealment.
As they walked, Navaeli leaned her maps one by one against her arm, squinting down at each before folding them into her bag. Gadlin was barely a blip on their papery landscapes. More often than not, an unlabeled blip at that. With a scribble of charcoal pencil, that was easily fixed.
~She wanted to remember this little town. It wasn’t likely that she could return again, but who knew? Her future was murky at best.
“I cannot believe that you are helping your sister leave with me,” Navaeli muttered ahead to Evain.
~“Crislie is going to leave whether I help her or not.” In a patch of starlight, Navaeli saw him struggle not to roll his eyes. “I’m glad that she’s finally setting off for her own happiness, instead of making herself and Ma miserable. She’d rebel against me too if I stood in her way. Luckily for her, I don’t like fights, and I don’t like trouble.” He chuckled. “Besides, you look like you need protection.”
“I don’t know if she’ll afford that much.”
“Tell that to any kid who ever picked on us in the schoolyard. They’ll tell you about the bruises they earned. Now, how’s your ankle?” Evain asked above the rustle of the leaves.
“Fine,” Navaeli replied, putting away the last map. Fine was all she could say, lying through her teeth. Resting for the last week, her limp lessened little by little, as did its aching. But it still twinged each time she put weight on it.
His gaze narrowed at her, unconvinced. “Maybe Crislie should carry you once we meet up with her. You’re going to cause yourself harm, going on like this,” Evain scolded her, huffing as he adjusted the extra bag of food he was carrying for his sister. “I’d feel better if you would stay for a few more days rather than strain yourself.”
“I need to keep moving.”
“So you’ve said. This goddess of yours certainly has plans, doesn’t she?”
Navaeli shrugged. She and Silamir had a few disagreements, to put it mildly, and the goddess was not wont to lose. Their ultimate destination flickered in her mind’s eye again. A spired temple of dark obsidian, devoid of life, and of any real meaning to her. But Silamir’s cool presence made itself clear in an occasional tap on her shoulder, as if to count down each hour wasted.
A sigh sounded from Evain’s direction. “The more I know about you — and I still know very little — the more concerned I get.”
“Really, it will be fine. I am nothing to fuss over,” Navaeli admitted. “You remind me of a friend I have. I wish I had more ways to thank you and your sister.”
Evain scoffed and parted a branch for her. “Da taught me to help the injured, and you, my mysterious friend, were injured. If you wander down this way again, stop by and say hello. Bring me news of how Crislie’s doing. Or better yet, bring her with for the visit. Consider that your way to thank me. Alright?”
“Perhaps.”
By the time they arrived at the river’s edge, the sun had vanished over the horizon. Starlight silhouetted a single long-haired figure.
“Hey!” Crislie called out in a terrible attempt at a whisper, her voice easily carrying the ten feet between them. “You’re late!”
The girl had prepared well. Tonight, she wore plain skirts, a sunset orange tunic lashed with a pale beltsash, and a thin leather doublet to keep her warm. A homemade satchel brimming with travel supplies was slung sensibly over one shoulder. The excitement shining in her eyes was anything but sensible, however.
Navaeli slumped as the weight of what she’d agreed to hit her. “Not very late.”
“Well, I’m prepared, and you’re prepared, and we have places to be,” Crislie said, shifting from foot to foot. “Are we going, or what?”
If Navaeli were to describe Crislie in a single word, it would have to be ‘irrepressible.’ This was going to be a long journey.
Evain gave his sister yet another bag and a long hug, whispering a couple last-minute warnings and reminders to her before letting go. Crislie gently pushed him away. “All right, all right, I’ll be careful. Don’t let anyone kick your arse while I’m gone.”
“I’m not the one we need to worry about.” He glanced, briefly, at Navaeli. “Write to me when you’re back in civilization, don’t get eaten by wild drakons, and have a fun adventure.”
“I’ll be fine! Gods!”
Evain smiled wryly and shook his head. As he set off back to town, sneaking into the tame leaves from whence he came, he gave them a last wave goodbye.
At a loss for further reply, Navaeli waved back. She hoped he saw it. Farewells often left a faint tearing sensation in her chest, especially when lingered on.
Best to keep moving.
“This way,” she muttered aside to Crislie, tilting her head at the woods across the river. “My goddess has an errand for me before we start the journey to Talimour. There is a fey I must meet, another Herald, and Silamir needs something from her.”
“Huh! A fey?”
Navaeli nodded. Before Crislie could stall them with more questions or chatter, she hiked up the legs of her sirwal and walked straight into the riverbed. Frigid water sloshed above her ankles. Navigating the slippery rocks made her ankle twinge.
When she glanced back, she found Crislie hesitating at the river’s edge, wetting only the toes of her boots. But after meeting Navaeli’s gaze, the girl gathered herself up and plunged in. She cut through the water with an upbeat haste, as one walking over live coals might, were they determined not to betray their pain.
To her credit, Crislie remained silent as they ducked into the sea of trees on the other side. Relatively. Navaeli did overhear her muttering about the wet and the cold under her breath.
At first, the deep woods hardly looked different from Gadlin’s side of the river. But as one delved further out, the untamed vegetation became more of a hazard, with thorns and burs and snarls revealed through the iridescent flicker of starflies. Trees swayed in a breeze that carried a metallic whiff of frost and iron from the Kavian mountains up north. Bats and nocturnal songbirds alike flitted through the branches, doing their nightly hunting.
But it wasn’t long before Crislie lost the will to keep quiet. “So, are we going to find an actual road to travel on?” she called out. It was hard to tell over her stomping, but her voice sounded high and uneasy. “Or do you plan on walking straight through the forest?”
Navaeli shrugged, not knowing if her fellow traveler could see the motion. “Knights guard the highways.”
“But, don’t fey wander here? In the open wood?”
That sputtered question made Navaeli want to laugh. “Some courts do,” she replied. But the magics of dead gods stirred here even centuries after the Immortal Reckoning, and there were worse things to encounter under the twisting canopy.
Beady-eyed mosses, flowers seething with incurable poisons, wild boars, direwolves and wyvern hunting giant deer, plants that crept along the ground when they thought you weren’t looking . . .
And the rare knight errant, seeking fierce beasts to slay.
“Feyrie courts are easy to avoid,” Navaeli said. “Most are happy to avoid us in turn.”
Crislie wasn’t satisfied by the sparse answer. “Are you friends with them? Is that why you can walk here unarmed?”
Navaeli glanced up through the steadily thickening branches to get a glimpse of the stars. They were bound northeast, right on course. “If by ‘friends’ you mean that we equally desire distance from the shining paladins of Gardhe, then you would be correct. Do you fear the fey?”
“No,” the girl said, stubborn. Yet, the strain in her voice made Navaeli wonder. “I’ve just heard stories, is all.”
“You have ‘heard stories’ enough to make you fret, and yet still you follow me? Do you understand what self-preservation is?”
“A property of jams and jellies?” Crislie joked with a nervous laugh.
Navaeli merely stifled a groan and shook her head, a gesture she was certain would be lost in the gloom. “Crislie,” she murmured, glancing over at her silhouette, “if you wish, you may turn back. I will not stop you from going home.”
Only the animal ambiance and the rustlings of their movement came in reply — at first. “I’m already this far. Might as well keep going,” Crislie eventually decided.
“Very well, then.”
It was a few tense hours before Navaeli arrived at her first destination. A craggy bluff of uneven stone as tall as the trees rose before them, looming judgmentally above the earth. A dark sheen rippled across the rock. It came from the ivy that dripped down the cliffs, leaves tinted silver by starlight.
“I don’t see a cave here,” Crislie whispered into her ear.
Navaeli shrugged past her bafflement, taking a closer look at the vines. Fey who couldn’t conceal themselves never lasted long in Gadhi. With grim certainty, she dragged a hand through the ivy, feeling the rough rock behind it. She came upon a point where the rock fell away. There, she parted the curtain of greenery to show Crislie the shy mouth of the cave.
Blots of bitter fungus colored the inside with an off-white glow. The rock inside was strewn with dry leaves and a few cracked acorns, mere specks against looming stalactites and stalagmites. Mist drifted out through the toothy gaps.
As Navaeli peered around and took her first step into the gloom, Crislie poked her head through the ivy. “This doesn’t feel right. You sure you’ll be safe in there, all by yourself with a stranger?”
“It is safer than it looks. Wait out here, please,” she replied.
Crislie nodded, though she frowned mightily as she did. “If you say so. I got a whittling knife in my bag. When I hear screaming, I’m running in to save you.”
“Duly noted.” A smile touched Navaeli’s lips and slipped away. “I shall not be long.”
With that, the ivy curtained shut behind her.
Navaeli set down the corridor with all the courage she could muster. Wherever she went, the cave dripped, and the winds brought smoke as well as mist. She almost regretted asking Crislie to stay behind. If not for the girl’s defiant cheer, then at least because her intimidating figure might block the worst of the wind.
It was hard not to think about how gliding through this tight, slimy space felt like being swallowed alive by a drakon.
As she walked, Navaeli tried to prepare herself. She knew of the Romne. Romne worshippers were difficult to find in Gadhi, but they existed. She had heard plenty in passing of the two gods of the seasons. Frail twins, sleeping deep under Rhimn’s earth, dreaming of distant futures and whispering them to rare priests who took up the task of tending to their holy grounds.
Still, she couldn’t fathom their intentions. They were as shapeless as the autumn breeze in her mind and just as unwelcoming as the heated gusts howling through this corridor.
The tunnel yielded to a surprisingly cozy and well-furnished cavern. A wooden bow was mounted to one wall and a white-tipped walking cane leaned near it. Navaeli squinted against the fire clawing at the edge of a blackened bowl, set in the center of a stone table — the source of the cinder. The source of the steam turned out to be a bubbling hot spring, dark-depthed but inviting.
A bent old woman washed her face in the water, perhaps preparing herself for bed. Blanched hair fell over her shoulders. She absently pulled a few damp strands behind sharp, sagging ears. Underneath her tattered gray robes, wrinkles spiderwebbed her body, lending her an impressive sense of age.
Two crows perched on the elder’s shoulder, one small and white, the other black and wizened. Both turned to stare at Navaeli. They were placid, but bright-eyed as they whispered to their master. Navaeli’s nerves tensed as the elder turned toward her as well. A cruel battle scar gashed across her empty, sunken eye sockets. Her stony smile was bemused, but not surprised.
Being in the same room as her made Navaeli feel as if she were in an empty field during a thunderstorm.
That was the fear a Herald was supposed to invoke.
After a moment of stillness, Navaeli fumbled to find her tongue. “Greetings,” she spoke, clasping her hands tightly together. “You are Ainzel the Elder, she who weathers each season until the final arrow, and most remarkably, the Summer Herald?”
The old woman stood up, wringing the water out of her robes. Her voice was as dry as dust. “As if I could be anyone else. And who are you to intrude upon us?”
“Navaeli.”
Ainzel chuckled as she eased herself onto a rough stool. “Only Navaeli, you say?”
“You could address me as Navaeli of Nowhere. Or as the Shadow Herald,” Navaeli added, shifting on her heels. Was she supposed to sit as well? After a pause, she remained standing. “I disturbed you not of my own will, but by the request of another god.”
The crows on Ainzel’s shoulders stirred their wings and snapped their beaks, staring at her with an uncomfortably intelligent interest.
“Oh, we are quite aware. The Romne have gifted many visions to me,” the wizened fey said, licking her cracked lips. “Not all have come to pass. The future is much as capricious as the gods themselves. Yet, I have heard your voice, and the voice of the Cycle through you. It has been too long since the Romne last spoke with her! Her kind was better known in the age before Heralds, they say.”
Navaeli couldn’t help but perk up. Normally, she was loath to pry, but anything that had to do with the demanding voice of her goddess was entirely her business. “Interesting. Do they know of other, older magics? For instance, would you or they be willing to tell me if there’s a way to . . . to release oneself from Heraldry?”
Immediately, discontent stirred in her mind, a cold and phantom breath on her neck. A warning. Silamir was listening.
Ainzel considered the question a moment and shook her head. “Only death will part a Herald from their duty. Anything else is speculation. And as much as we appreciate a scholarly debate, we both know that there is other business to attend to. Silamir sent you here for something, did she not?”
“Yes,” Navaeli replied with a slouch, smothering the hope that had sparked alight inside of her. “She did.”
With a sense of purpose, the black crow swooped from the elder Herald’s shoulder and pulled some trinket from the shallows of the hot spring. It returned proudly.
“The Romne have been keeping this safe,” Ainzel said, showing off the damp object as the crow handed it over. Navaeli leaned in to look at it. It was a palm-sized stone, dark as the space between the stars. “They wondered when — or whether — any Cycle goddess would ever have need of it. And your goddess still understands what we need in return?”
“Of course,” breathed an eager voice in Navaeli’s mind. “I will always be eager to aid my kin of the old ages.”
She conveyed the whisper with a nod.
“Good. While we will see our full payment later, for the moment, all we ask is a small fee. A task of delivery. That much, and no more.”
A small fee? A delivery? Navaeli swallowed dryly, not wanting the burden of another responsibility on her shoulders. And yet, what else was there for her to do but accept? “I see,” she muttered. “What am I delivering? And to who?”
The white crow moved next. With a confident calm, it fluttered over and stuck its head into the water. The surface hissed and steamed. A rough twine bracelet dangled from its beak as it returned. The bracelet was tiny, as if fit for a child, strung along with thick wooden beads and a singular acorn. Despite being pulled from a hot spring, frost sparkled in its whorls.
“In the summer heat that hazes my dreams,” Ainzel said, “I have heard whispers of more than just your arrival. You may, along your path, meet one who possesses so much and yet nothing, and has much to learn. If they take our gift, then we will take them under our wing.”
Navaeli stared at the bracelet and raised an eyebrow. “That is a rather vague description to go by. How do you expect me to tell if I’ve met the right person or not?”
“They will make the delivery effortless, if you ever do meet.”
“Have I already met them?”
~“Your recipient is not the girl waiting for you outside. We have learned of her in our dreams as well, and she has a far different role to play,” Ainzel firmly clarified. Was it Navaeli’s imagination, or did the room raise a few degrees? “Do not offer it to her.”
All Navaeli could do was shiver and stand, bewildered, as the stone and the bracelet were pressed into her palm by withered hands. Unsure of what else she should do, she smothered them in the hidden pocket of her poncho alongside Talon. Both trinkets radiated an uncomfortable chill. “Thank you,” she replied, voice flat as a crushed leaf. “Before I leave, is there anything else that you could tell me about my goddess? Perhaps—”
Ainzel snipped her sentence short with a sharp shake of her head. “Tonight’s business is concluded, young Herald, and if you want to make that delivery, then you have no more time to linger. Our paths will cross again, but for now, you have stayed your welcome.”
With nothing more than a hesitant nod, Navaeli took off down the corridor once more, all too aware of the new weight in her pocket and the ambient dripping of the fungus. At once, she was relieved to have completed yet another one of Silamir’s endless demands, to have one less reason for the goddess to nag and intrude upon her person. Yet, a sense of frustration smoldered within her. Inevitably, Navaeli had been given a new task, and the cycle of confusion and vexation would begin anew . . .
. . . Until she gave in to Silamir.
The light of the mushrooms gave way to a faint rippling of starlight from beyond ivy. Crislie’s voice trickled through the curtain.
“Just forest noises,” she muttered. “That’s all. I’m tough. I eat spooky forests for breakfast, even if I’m all by myself and it’s not really breakfast time. This’ll give me a story to tell. Yeah. Evain’ll love it. No fey is gonna—”
“Crislie?” Navaeli interrupted, poking her head out from behind the leaves.
“Aieee!” Crislie shrieked, and startled from her standing place. In her fright, she tripped over her feet. The terror that had taken her melted away as she stared up at Navaeli. “Oh. Oh, it’s just you. Absent gods, Navaeli, don’t do that to me!”
“Sorry,” she replied, biting back a chuckle.
As if the scare had never taken place, Crislie sprang up and brushed the dirt off her clothes. “So, how’d it go? Did the fey cast any glamours or curses on you?”
“Well enough, I suppose, and no.” Stepping out into the open, Navaeli exposed the bracelet and the stone to dim starlight. “For what it is worth, I was given these.”
“Neat. What do they do?”
“I have not the faintest idea.” Before Crislie could say anything else, Navaeli pocketed the trinkets and held up a finger for silence. “Now give me a moment. Please? If she is still paying attention to me, then I wish to consult Silamir.”
“Oh?” chimed Silamir. “I thought you wanted to be rid of me.”
“Yes,” Navaeli hissed under her breath, turning away from Crislie. “I mean, no! My apologies. I do not desire to trade condescension with you tonight, please. I only want to know where you’ll have me go after Talimour, so I may plan my ventures accordingly.”
“Have I not told you enough times?”
“Tell me again, so that I may be certain.” There would be misery in her future if she forgot.
“Find your way to the World’s Wound in the northeast, which you should easily know from your maps. Bring Talon and the stone to the shrine at its center. Do as you will along the way. Visit the florist, drop off the girl, it matters little. Just do it in haste.”
“How gracious of you.”
Phantom nails caressed Navaeli’s cheek, a touch that was light, but sharp. “Who is trading condescension tonight, pray tell? I can read your tone. Remember this, if nothing else — you speak to a goddess.”
The nails vanished. Navaeli waited, biting her tongue until she was certain that Silamir had taken her leave. When she turned around, Crislie stood there with a wet-eyed concern, like a baby deer. Her arms were folded tightly together.
“Come,” Navaeli murmured, starting off. “We need to find a place to rest for the night.”
