CHAPTER 21
The Name
Thanking their host again, they let themselves be herded back into the night. Elaina cast a gentle glow around them—what a joy to use the pillars again!—brightening the moonlight so they needed no lantern. She could still feel her wounds, but whatever the old man had done made them dim and easy to ignore. Once they were on the road again, Elaina spoke, as much to break the strained silence between them as anything else. A'lan didn't seem troubled by silence, but it was making her jumpy.
Theirs was a peculiar sort of relationship—formerly enemies, captive and captor, but now saved and savior and traveling companions besides. Plus the awkward fact that he had hauled her along in a saddle for two days while she bounced around like a sack of potatoes in nothing but the coat he put her in. She was extremely glad the caster had mended the chafing from that along with everything else. Only a Creator could heal disease or great injury as if it never occurred. Casters did very well on superficial damage, however, and Zulor had smoothed her horrible scars. The horrible scars on the skin, at any rate.
"A strange old fellow, was he not?"
"Indeed. How he knew half what he did, I've no idea." A'lan replied. "I don't see him bringing us harm. He melted the chains." Elaina nodded. He was an odd man, yet she had not felt he was lying to them, or manipulating them at all. A very strange man indeed. What had he called A’lan?
"He called you Cade and so did—" she stumbled at this, it came to her lips before she had thought about it, but there was nothing for it but to continue, "so did E'dan. Is that an Antralian word?" He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. His hand had not left the hilt of his sword since they lost sight of Master Zulor's.
"You could say that. It is an Antralian name. My name."
"What!" Elaina cried, astonished.
"The name my parets gave me was Cade A'lan Gidedrian. The Drethlords called my brother and I by our second names, trying to break our ties to the past. To remake us as different people, with different names." He explained. Even as he spoke, his head was constantly turning, scanning the night for a threat. And his voice did not change when he talked about his brother.
"Well, they failed then. You freed me and disobeyed them. Now you're free too." For a moment, he left off glaring at the vegetation to look at her. It was an empty look, one that made her feel like shrinking into a corner. Is it because I have seen slivers of his past, or would those eyes darken anyone’s spirit? Truth, but I have never met anyone so utterly foreign.
"No. I am not the boy they captured fourteen years ago. And I may have freed you, but I am not free. I doubt I will ever be free." He murmured into the night. Elaina did not argue. Fourteen years he had been a captive. Five weeks had been enough to teach her suspicion, hatred, and despair. Fourteen years!
"Shall I call you Cade, then?" she said at last. After a considering moment, he nodded his agreement. The lights of the town were twinkling ahead of them when he asked,
"Do you wish do try the web," he paused with a frown, "I cannot call you Wielder. What may I call you?"
"Elaina, just Elaina."
"Very well, Elaina." Her name sounded strange on his tongue. "Do you wish to try the web now, or do you need to wait? I don't know what he did to you, but you seem well as you ever were."
"Oh, yes. I am well. There is hardly a mark on me. My skin is whole again." She tried to smile, not wanting to think about the marks that went deeper. One glance was enough to convince her that her companion knew exactly what she was thinking. Her smile faded and she finished shortly, "I'm well enough for this."
Stopping in the middle of the road, she began casting. The wind swirled around her for a brief moment. Not past, but around her in a tight circle. Searching the Winds indeed. A'lan—Cade—had taken to prowling around her, staring off into the dark. His cloak had not moved a hair in that last breeze. Someone was seeking her with that unnatural gust of Air.
The column grew, no thicker than the trunk of a birch tree, she cast it high into the night. It pierced the sky, a spire of Air and Fire stretching toward the stars. When it was as high as she could push it, she let it fall into the controlled tangle she'd seen in Zulor's home, concentrating as hard as she could.
Unlike the caster’s, it did not simply slide out, it collapsed into itself and shot out over the ground in every direction like ripples in a pond. Waves of Fire and Air spilled over each other, surging, gushing off into the night. Slowly the ripples smoothed, and the form sank into the dirt, stretching into hair-thin filaments before finally disappearing. The wind stopped tugging at her coat. It was gone.
Cade still studied the darkness, a weapon walking, seeking only a target. Elaina recalled the Linking, seeing him standing there. He had been important, before. With the crown on that old man's head, the great halls and fine horses—he may have been royalty. Before Landon, that might have impressed her more. And before Keravel.
Sensing her attention, Cade turned and dark eyes met hers, but she could read nothing in them, nothing at all. It was like locking eyes with a jungle cat, all power and deadly grace, but not a hint of its intentions. It made her shiver, but at least the web was cast.
It had been difficult enough, her legs buckled beneath her when she took a step. Only with Cade's arm under hers was she able to get back into town, looking not much different than when they left, only now she was merely tired and not bleeding.
Her coat was stiff with dried blood and short enough to draw looks when they finally entered the Merry Maiden, even without her bare feet. The musician was gone, but a few patrons still sat about nursing their ale or wine and gambling over dice and cards. Elaina flushed at the attention, especially with half her legs showing—exposed to the knee with the white lace hem of her camisole peeking out. She clutched the coat closer around her.
Cade ignored the anxious Master Balgor, half-carrying Elaina down the hall. The innkeeper stopped when it was clear he would get neither a word nor a look from him. He began wringing his hands and opened his mouth once or twice, but he did not speak to Cade—Elaina glanced up quickly and knew why.
No one approaches a man wearing an expression like that. Truth, but he is a dangerous sort of person. The look on his face would have sent her scurrying away just as the poor innkeeper did, if she could have scurried.
He kicked open the door to their room when he got to it, now using both hands to keep Elaina upright. She had forgotten how tiring it was, using the pillars. If she hadn't been so exhausted she would have felt the nausea that went with over-exertion. As it was she didn't even have time to think about what she was going to wear to sleep in, or where exactly Cade was going to sleep. Her eyes simply locked onto the narrow, lumpy bed shoved into the corner of the room like it was her only salvation. She was asleep before Cade lowered her onto it.
Shaking his head, Cade tossed the saddlebags he onto the floor. He had shoved a clean, whole camisole and a dress for her into the bags, but that they would just have to wait until she could stay conscious long enough to change clothes. Those filthy things she wore could not be comfortable, certainly not the coat on bare skin, but she slept just fine.
With a last long look at the Wielder—Elaina—he wrapped himself in his coat and laid down on the floor in front of the door, saddlebags his pillow. Sometimes people got ideas when they saw weakness, but they would lose those ideas quickly if they came through this door. And if they did not, he would see to it they lost whatever might be necessary to convince them.
Elaina woke up to find she was still sprawled awkwardly across the coverlet of the scratchy old bed. There was a slightly rumpled dress and a pristine white camisole folded loosely and thrown across her knees, and Cade was rummaging about in the saddlebags. He must have thrown them on her—that was why she was suddenly so very wide awake, not at all like her usual. Then those airy thoughts sank in.
"I have CLOTHES?" she cried, sitting bolt upright. Cade looked over his shoulder at her.
"Of course." His rai
sed eyebrows asked if she'd really been thinking about riding to truth-knew-where in a filthy wool coat that hardly hid her legs and a blood-stained camisole cut down the front. Elaina flushed.
"Well, you could have given them to me earlier!" she said stiffly, laying them out across her knees and examining her arms. There were no scars from her most recent wounds, and the old ones had faded. The thin white lines and ridges that remained would be there forever.
"Yes." Cade acknowledged, "but I thought it would be best if you were conscious, so that eliminates much of our time together. I also assumed you would want to wait until you were healed. Forgive me." There was no mockery in his tone, but Elaina blushed a deeper red.
"Oh. I see." He had a point.
For a second he did not respond, then, "I will wait for you in the common room. Please don't linger."
As he wished, they were gone from Beradon before the sleepy inn noticed the slice of rosy dawn on the horizon. Cade sold the third horse to pay for the room and then some, so it was just the two of them and their mounts. It was a quiet ride in a quiet country—the antithesis of what her travel had been before, chained or otherwise.
Elaina could not help but examine her companion right along with the scenery. As much time as they had spent together, she had no concept of him as a man. All she knew was that he was expressionless, silent, and positively lethal. They would always be able to find each other through the Link, and he had sworn some oath, but it didn't seem to require much of him. He had once had a brother, and a sister, if her hazy memories were correct, but the Drethlords killed them both. That was all.
After half a day's uneasy ride with their shadows disappearing under them, she asked,
"Where are we going?" Elaina hated asking, hated relying on anyone—especially him, but to ride along and pretend she knew was ridiculous when they both knew she didn't.
"Hennelea. There I will put you on a ship to the Brethren. The Brothers who do not approve of what Keravel has done are ready to support you in Vinyam, from what I understand." That was as far as she could get from Hurndrith on this side of the ocean. Elaina narrowed her eyes at his straight, unsuspecting back. Put me on a ship, will he? Pack me off like a child, will he?
"And where will you go?" she asked, tone betraying some of her sharpness. Only silence answered her. Elaina glowered at him. Just because I never would have survived the last two or three days by myself, never would have gotten away at all without him, does not give him the right to act like Keravel!
A faint blush stole across her cheeks before she could snap at him. That was hardly what he was doing. He was difficult, to be sure, but he freed her. In fact, he had never hurt her, save that first day at Split Creek. And then she may have bit his brother, to be fair. Even when she'd clawed him that day with the knife—Elaina had seen the scars from her fingernails—even then he hadn't hurt her.
Torn between guilt and annoyance, Elaina resolved to keep her mouth shut no matter how demanding and rude he might be. If he wanted to try to save her skin and get her to Monren, she wasn't going to interfere. Not yet, anyway.