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“Dasen, wake up!” delivered him from the nightmare. Tethina yelled and shook him back to consciousness.
“Alright, I’m awake!” he called.
Tethina stopped, looked at him to confirm that he was awake, and dropped back onto the floor of the shelter. “It’s about time," she moaned. "I don’t know what kind of a dream you were having, but you almost kicked me in the face with all the flailing.”
Dasen tried to remember the dream, but Tethina’s assault had dispersed it so that all he remembered was a feeling of futility and tremendous dread. “I can’t even remember what it was. Sorry.” He suddenly remembered what had happened the night before and added, “How are you feeling?”
“I feel like I fought a bear and lost.” That was about the only thing they hadn’t done the previous day, Dasen thought as he put his hand on her forehead. It felt normal. “What’s the prognosis, doctor?”
Dasen snatched his hand back at the sight of Tethina's cold eyes – he also remembered how they had left things and obviously, so did she. “You fainted last night. You had a fever.”
“I remember.” Tethina managed to sound ominous even as she spoke through a yawn. “There should be a bag of water around here somewhere. Can you find it? I’m really thirsty.”
“It’s almost gone.” Dasen held up the bag.
She took it anyway. Dasen could only smack his dry lips as she finished it. She made a face then handed the bag back to him. “That was awful. We’re going to need some more. I’m really weak. Do you think you can manage? The stream is easy to find.”
Dasen nodded. “I suppose, but what is the plan? We need to get to the forest masters. The bandits could already be moving my father and Rynn.”
“Not today,” Tethina mumbled. “I can barely move.” Her words slurred as she fell back toward sleep. Then she roused herself and finished, “There’s a path outside the shelter. It’ll take you right to the st. . . .” The final word faded as her eyes drifted closed.
Just great! Dasen thought. Who knows where the bandits are or what they’re doing? And here we are stuck on the wrong side of the river. And Tethina is worthless. She can’t stay awake long enough to give me directions, so how many days will it be until she can walk? And what will we do until then? Apparently water is close by, but what will we do about food? If the bandits don’t get us, we’ll by-the-Order starve. He took a deep breath to calm his spiraling sense of dread.
Well, a voice told him, isn’t that what you wanted, a wife like any other, a woman dependent on you? He snorted at the irony. It was just his luck to get exactly what he wanted at the very moment it would kill him. With the thought, he watched his sleeping wife. She had a blanket pulled up over her shoulders despite the heat that was already building inside the shelter. She lay on her side with fine auburn hair splayed across her face. He watched what he could see, her lips, the freckles scattered across her nose, her sharp chin and thought about their kiss, the way her body had felt pressed against his, the way her lips had felt on his, her tongue.
He felt himself getting uncomfortable and decided that he best get out of the shelter before Tethina woke up and saw him staring. So, with great effort, he rose and literally stumbled from the shelter.
From one knee – his other was still far too sore to kneel on – he laboriously and agonizingly rose bit by bit to standing. Every inch of his body bemoaned the effort. He could not ever remember being so sore. His back and neck stabbed at him from spending the night against the angled wall of rock. His head pounded. His knee was stiff, sore, and swollen. And every muscle ached beyond anything he had ever felt. All told, he wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and go back to sleep. He could not imagine walking, let alone trekking back through the forest that surrounded him.
The sun overhead showed how tired he had been. It stood well above the trees in a perfect blue sky that did not betray any of the previous day’s misery. Somehow, the beautiful day seemed wrong. It felt like nature itself should be acknowledging the hardships they had faced. Dasen drew a deep breath and tried not to think about his father, Rynn, or the harrowing events that had brought him here.
To keep his mind from those traps, he scanned his surroundings. The clearing was a half-circle about twenty feet in diameter. A small pit ringed with rocks was in its center. A crude hammock – a piece of tarp tied between two trees – hung to the side. The shelter stood behind him, but it was otherwise empty. The backdrop to the scene was fifteen feet of sheer rock in one direction and the tangled forest in the other. It was an imposing location, and he marveled at how Tethina had managed to find it, build a shelter on it, and return to it again and again. For a man to do something like this would be strange, for a girl it was sheerest lunacy. The absurdity of it boggled him almost as much as the fact that he was now joined to that girl.
He spotted the head of the trail Tethina had mentioned very near the place where he had emerged the night before. He stumbled toward it, cursing silently with each ill-formed step. Muscles stiffened to the point of near immobility, he looked like a poorly made, grunting mannequin lumbering through the clearing. He wondered for a second if he could have used the trail the night before but was relieved to see that it cut in the opposite direction, heading west and south.
He did find his walking stick from the previous night and, with much effort, retrieved it. With the stick to support his knee, he started down the trail and found that, unlike the previous day, this trail was a good one. It was somewhat rough where the rains had washed it out, but it was wider and largely clear of obstructions so that he could at least see what he was tripping over. As he walked, he kept his eyes open for some of the white trees – higg trees Tethina had called them – that they had found the day before, and it was only a few hundred yards before a clump of them appeared beside the trail. Dasen practically ran to the first of them and cut away a large piece of bark with the small knife he had found in the shelter. He cut off a corner and started chewing. The flavor was horrific, but he forced himself to swallow the acrid juice and felt almost instant relief for his body’s myriad complaints.
All the complaints, that was, except the rumbling hole in his middle. Chewing the bark made him think of real food, and his stomach released spasms of displeasure that momentarily overwhelmed his other pains. For a man who has nothing, time can either feed him or starve him. One of Ipid’s favorite phrases strengthened Dasen's resolve at the same time it gave him a pang of worry for his father and Rynn. It also reminded him of the events that had brought him here, and he felt fear bubble inside him. Could the raiders be looking for him? Were they out there in the trees right now searching? Would they suddenly appear, waving swords and firing arrows?
Heart suddenly hammering he watched the trees but saw nothing that could substantiate his worries. You have to keep going, he told himself. If they come there’s nothing you can do. But if you stand here paralyzed, they’ve already won. Just forget about them. You can only fight one battle at a time and survival is the one that needs fighting now.
Taking another deep breath, he scanned the trees one last time and forced his mind to his father’s advice. He continued walking and watched for the few edible berries or plants he might recognize as he walked. Yet his mind turned inevitably to his father and friend. Surely they are safe, he told himself. Despite what they had done in the village, the raiders would need Ipid and Rynn alive to collect the ransom. Tomorrow, he and Tethina could leave for the village. If they could get across the river, they might reach Potter’s Place in another day or two. From there, they could send word to the forest masters in Rycroft. Then they’d find transport to Gurney Bluff and wait out the ordeal there. That meant only a few days before he set his father’s rescue in motion. The information they had gathered at the village would be invaluable to the forest masters, and if they could not handle the situation, Chancellor
Kavich would surely use every resource in the Kingdoms to rescue one of his closest advisors and friends. All they had to do was get to a town. The rabbit who mourns his friend may find himself in the same pot. Another of his father's nuggets explained the situation best.
The walk to the stream was not long, and Dasen was there before he knew it. He had not seen any plants that he knew were edible, but the serenity of the forest had given him a sense of calm that made everything seem more tolerable. The section of the forest through which he walked was composed primarily of great evergreens that lined the path with walls of needles to give it a perfect sense of isolation. Those trees limited the vegetation around them, making the forest seem less overgrown than it had on the other side of the river. At the same time, they housed countless birds and squirrels whose calls and chatter filled the forest with welcome sounds while a slight breeze perfumed the air with the scents of pine sap and wild flowers. It was a journey the likes of which he had never enjoyed. Other than the trail, he felt like the first person ever to set foot in this area, and he was soon so enraptured that he almost walked into the stream before he realized that he had found it.
The babble of water saved his boots but also made him realize how unbearable his thirst had become. He eased himself stiffly to the ground then labored to find a way to reach the water while on only one knee. Eventually, he got himself to the water and drank deeply. He shoveled handful after handful into his mouth and finally dunked his entire head into the ice-cold torrent. The water felt wonderful. Fast moving and crystal clear, Dasen had never seen such beautiful water. Even the flavor was amazing, crisp and almost sweet. He could not get enough of it, and he drank until his stomach was sloshing then filled the water bag so he could barely replace the cork that acted as a stopper.
Having filled one need, Dasen’s mind returned to food. He studied the stream and wondered if there were fish in it. The stream appeared to be sufficiently deep, but he knew absolutely nothing about fishing. There was little chance he could catch anything even if there were fish to catch. Still, the idea tantalized him.
He stood by the stream for several minutes developing then dismissing ways to spear or catch a fish. Wouldn’t it be nice, he thought, if one of them got lost and jumped onto the bank? He laughed at the thought but allowed his mind to linger on it. He pictured a huge fish jumping into his hands and willed the impossible act to occur. He saw every aspect of the fish, thought about how it would taste, felt the rumbling hole in his middle that it would fill. The idea was wonderful. His hunger and the fish that would relieve it were the only things he could think of. He wanted it more than anything, dug deep, and begged for it to happen.
Runes flashed before his eyes. He did not understand them or how they had made their way into his mind, but they were there just the same, and he had no apparent control over their progress. He studied them and realized that they were familiar, but it was not until they were almost gone that he placed them.
Dasen’s eyes snapped open and searched for the ball of fire he expected to see erupt from the trees. Something cold and wet hit him instead. It smashed into his shins and almost sent him to his knees. Stunned and fearful, he looked at his feet and saw an enormous trout flopping by the side of the stream, edging itself toward the water as he gawked in surprise. He did not try to explain the fish’s appearance. He grabbed the creature and threw it with both hands into the trees just before it reached its sanctuary. The fish thumped hard into a nearby tree and hit the ground twitching.
Dasen looked around still expecting to see a ball of fire explode from the trees, but nothing happened. He was confused. Had he formed the runes? Had he somehow made the fish jump from the water? He dismissed the idea as ridiculous. There was no way that he could make a fish jump from the water. The runes were a figment of his imagination, a resilient fantasy from the previous day’s trauma. They had never existed and neither had the ball of fire. The bandits had set a trap in the road. The old man, if he had been there at all, had simply sprung the trap. That was the only logical explanation, and there must be a logical explanation – sometimes the Order seemed mysterious, but by definition it could always be explained. Just as there was a logical explanation for what had just happened. Maybe fish did that all the time. Maybe the Order had deemed that he and Tethina needed food. It was impossible to know something as complex as the Order, but Its will was indisputable. That being the case, he said a prayer of thanks and retrieved his prize.
Dasen left the stream behind a moment later. He was already planning the meal he would make and failed to see the dozen other fish up and down the stream flopping onto the banks or the dark shape that eventually appeared to claim them.