Sora's Quest

  Now they had entered the thick of the forest. Giant, moss-covered trees exploded from the ground, so tall that Sora lost sight of the canopy overhead. Their roots were so vast and wide, it wasn't clear where one tree ended and another began. Vines sprawled across every surface, falling like curtains from the sky. Vibrant flowers speckled the landscape, some larger than her head, blooming bright purples and yellows. She had seen more species of frogs than she could count, and almost as many birds.

  She trained a few hours with her new weapons each morning, when it was easiest to see.

  “Good, sweetness,” Dorian murmured. Then he started speeding up his attacks, mock-jabbing at her ribs, her face, her legs. Sora practiced blocking, using the top and bottom of the staff, trying to think three-dimensionally. It was very different from how she imagined a sword. She had two ends to work with, not just one.

  “Excellent; now jump!” Dorian instructed, and went low for her legs. Sora gave a tired, halfhearted leap in the air. The staff passed under her—barely.

  She stumbled when she landed, staggering to one side. She clumsily dodged another blow and caught herself on a tree, her shoulders aching and her hands numb; her feet had been rubbed raw by her leather boots. Her arms were covered in bruises and her nails chipped down to the pink.

  "Give me a moment," she panted, taking deep breaths, trying to suppress the stitch in her side. With a dirty sleeve, she wiped the sweat from her eyes. This was, without a doubt, the most physically challenging activity she had ever experienced: dancing across the tree-roots, trying not to slip on the damp wood. Yet despite her bruises, her staff remained in pristine condition. It was neither chipped nor dented. Dorian had gone through several different poles by this point, carving a new one each night.

  Sora gazed at her staff in admiration. Apparently the salesman in Mayville hadn't been exaggerating. Witch wood—it made a difference. She wondered if it could even be chipped by a sword.

  Sora groaned; she could feel the pulled muscles only too well in her calves and arms. Quick as lightning, she brought up her staff and heard a sharp crack! She smiled in grim satisfaction. Dorian's blow was deflected.

  “And she shows potential!” the thief cried, grinning at her fiercely. Sora flushed, trying not to look too pleased with herself. She could hear Burn applauding in the background. The two other members of their camp were lingering near the horses, tending to the beast's hooves. Crash didn't spare her a glance.

  Then Dorian swooped down. He picked up her daggers and tossed them to her. “Let's finish with a bit of knife-fighting, shall we?” He dropped his makeshift staff and pulled out his knives, his weapon of choice. Sora sighed and picked up her daggers reluctantly. She liked the staff because it had a longer range. Knife-fighting was a bit riskier.

  “Can we find more even ground?” she asked, wiping sweat from her eyes. Daggers required more concentration and she didn't want to watch her feet.

  Dorian nodded and pointed off to their left, through the trees. “There's a circle of grass that way. Let's move over there. We'll be back in a few minutes,” he called over his shoulder. Burn waved a distracted hand, busy repacking his saddlebags.

  Sora followed her instructor through a brief stretch of ferns, pushing through the hanging vines. When she reached the small circle of grass, she found that the ground was soft and spongy, definitely not what she had hoped for. She sighed, then leveled her daggers in front of her, readying herself for the fight.

  Dorian lashed out unexpectedly. She barely dodged his blow, leaping out of range. She gasped. “What are you trying to do? Stab me?” she laughed, taking a few steps back and shaking out her arms.

  Dorian remained quiet. His eyes glinted in the pale morning light.

  The smile faded from her lips and she looked at him uneasily. He had the same empty, solemn expression he had back at the river, when he had watched her almost drown. Sora frowned. She hadn't thought about the incident for a week or more; they had been too busy struggling against the difficult terrain of the swamp.

  Dorian lunged forward again, swiping at her with both knives in a butterfly pattern. She jumped back nimbly, deflecting one blade out of pure instinct. He backed her around the clearing.

  “Dorian?” she asked quietly. “What are you doing?” The change had come over him so suddenly, she couldn't tell if he was testing her or if he had somehow become another person. It felt like he was trying to push her deeper into the woods. She wanted to head back to camp, suddenly unnerved, but she couldn't tell from which direction they had come.

  He lunged at her again, using moves that he hadn't taught her, combining dagger swipes with kicks and punches. Sora dodged desperately, her knives forgotten. She threw herself to one side, tumbling across the wet ground, then tried to roll back to her feet. She slipped in the grass and went down. Dorian was directly behind her, and he plunged the dagger into the ground, an inch from her arm. She rolled again, scrambling to her feet. When she looked into Dorian's face, he stared back at her blankly, stoically, like a sleepwalker.

  He lifted his knives again. Sora screamed.

  She kept screaming as she deflected two more blows with the flat of her blade. His knife caught her shoulder, ripping through her shirt with ease, puncturing flesh, although she had no idea how deep. Her adrenaline pounded and she couldn't feel the wound.

  Instinct took over. Sora threw herself on the Wolfy, trying to dislodge his knives. She clawed at his face, kicking him in the ribs. He grabbed her easily and threw her off, picking up his knives from the ground. Sora scuttled backwards on her hands and legs, like a crab.

  “Dorian!” she screamed. “Dorian, it's me! What's gotten into you?” But her companion did not reply.

  She finally regained her footing at the edge of the clearing. She paused, watching Dorian come at her. He charged across the muddy ground, his boots sucking and slipping.

  At that moment, a black shadow shot across the grass, fast as a wildcat. Crash threw himself on the Wolfy, slamming Dorian face-first into the ground. The thief howled, an inhuman sound, and turned on Crash, the daggers forgotten. The two men wrestled, rolling back and forth. Sora tried to avoid the chaos, but they tumbled directly into her legs. She leapt backwards, out of the way, into the forest...except suddenly, there was no more ground. She put her foot down—on air.

  “Aaah!” With a short, sharp yelp, Sora pitched backwards, falling down a steep slope. The two men spilled after her, carried by the momentum of their fight. She grabbed at a bush, but uprooted it. Grass whipped her face, thorns tore at her clothes. When she landed at the base of the steep slope, she found herself staring up at the overcast sky, dazed, the trees and foliage slowly spinning around her. She imagined that the clouds were so low, she could reach up and touch them.

  Crash and Dorian landed a second later. The assassin, on top, smashed the air from the Wolfy's lungs. Then he grabbed the thief, heaving him effortlessly off the ground, and slammed him into a tree. The assassin's knife was out, the blade shoved against Dorian's stomach, his other hand tight on his throat.

  “You fool!” Crash yelled. “You fool of a thief!”

  Dorian blinked, his eyes slowly refocusing. Sora sat up and watched, her lips dry and parted. Speechless.

  “W-what?” Dorian started.

  Crash shoved him back against the tree again. “You idiot. You could have killed her!”

  “Wait!” another voice broke through the panic. Burn skidded down the steep slope, far more balanced and controlled than when Sora fell. He reached them a moment later, sinking into the soft earth. “Hold your blade, Crash! Dorian didn't know! He wasn't in control!”

  “And what about next time?” Crash snapped. “We might as well be traveling with Volcrian in our midst. Dorian's a danger to all of us. I say kill him and be done with it.”

  “You are quick to use a blade,” Burn said steadily. Then he nodded to Dorian. “Let the man speak.”

  Sora didn't know what was going on. She watched as Crash
let go of Dorian. The Wolfy slid back to the ground, shaking. When he looked at her, his eyes were full of fear.

  “I-I don't know what happened,” he said. “I blacked out. I can't remember anything.”

  “Dorian,” Burn said slowly, steadily. “Did you bleed a lot from that cut on your hip? Could Volcrian have gotten hold of it?”

  “I think it's obvious that he has,” Crash grunted.

  Wordlessly, Dorian raised his shirt, inspecting the thin strip of pink flesh. It was almost completely healed. When he looked up again, there was more than just fear in his eyes. There was despair. “What do we do?” he asked quietly.

  “Wait,” Sora said, holding up her hand. “What happened? What does Volcrian have to do with this?”

  Crash turned to her, surprise registering on his face, if only for a moment. Then he let out a short breath. “I forget that you don't know these things,” he muttered.

  Burn cut in. “Volcrian has somehow gotten his hands on Dorian's blood,” he explained. “He's worked a spell with it. He's...uh...influencing Dorian's behavior, you could say.” Burn frowned. “Not sure of all the details, I'm not a mage myself. But my guess is that he didn't have enough of Dorian's blood to work the full spell. It looks like his influence is only minor.”

  Sora nodded slowly. It was the first she had ever heard of this—and more than a little worrisome. She looked at Dorian, catching his eye, but the Wolfy thief glanced away quickly. She wondered if he was ashamed of what he had done.

  “We've been trying to avoid this from happening again,” Crash murmured.

  “Again?” Sora asked, surprised.

  None of the men would meet her gaze this time. Burn finally said, “We had a fourth companion very briefly, about a year ago. Volcrian got hold of his blood. Needless to say, he didn't last long.”

  “We had to kill him,” Dorian said.

  Sora shuddered. It hadn't occurred to her that more people might have been involved with Crash's party. She wondered what kind of men would fall into league with him. Cutthroats and kidnappers, she was certain.

  “Twice this has happened around me,” Sora said slowly. “Do you think that Volcrian is...targeting me? Through Dorian?” She hated to ask, and the words almost caught in her throat. The men looked at her, and she read the truth in their eyes. “It's the Cat's Eye, isn't it? He knows about it.”

  “If he didn't before, he does now,” Dorian confirmed. “Using this spell, who knows what he has seen through my eyes?”

  Sora paled. “So he is following us into the swamp?”

  “The only way he can,” Crash confirmed. “By invading Dorian's thoughts.”

  A brief silence fell. Sora winced, touching her sore shoulder, pulling back her bloody hand. It was disturbing to think about. Dorian hadn't just been playing rough—he had been earnestly trying to kill her. She had escaped by pure luck. If she had been just a little clumsier, he could have stabbed her through the heart, or pierced a lung, or cut the artery under her arm. She would have bled to death....

  She looked back at Dorian, unable to hide her distrust.

  He watched her with large, regretful eyes. “Sorry, sweetness,” he murmured.

  “My Cat's Eye,” Sora said suddenly, realization dawning. “Maybe it can counteract the spell somehow. Like that monster in the forest, remember?”

  “You're not going anywhere near him.” Crash glared at the thief. “It's too dangerous. He's out of control.”

  “Careful, Crash,” Dorian sneered. “You almost sound concerned.”

  The assassin stepped up to the thief, intimidating him with his presence, pushing him back. “I have reason to be,” he said darkly.

  Sora saw the fear in Dorian's face. The smaller man backed away.

  “Enough!” Burn yelled, forcing himself between them. “Sora's suggestion might be our only option. We can't fight amongst ourselves. That is exactly what Volcrian wants!”

  Sora watched the men, shaken by the confrontation between Crash to Dorian. She was unsure of what to say.

  Burn spoke again. “Before we do anything, we have to get back to the horses. Sora, are you all right to stand?”

  “Of course,” she said, climbing to her feet and running a careful hand over her cut shoulder. She caught Burn's worried look. “It's not deep,” she reassured him. It had already stopped bleeding. She glanced around the trees, searching for the best way back up the hill,. Then she paused and frowned.

  “What is that?” she asked, pointing to an odd structure in the branches. It hung a few yards away amidst a thick tangle of bramble, obscured by leaves. She stepped boldly up to the nest of bushes, grabbed hold of a stick and pulled. After a short struggle, she dislodged it from the tree.

  It might have been a scarecrow at one time, but it was missing a head. The pole was perhaps eight feet in length, and another branch had been tied to it crosswise. Old, rotted cloth, what might have been a shirt or a cloak, was draped over it. As she looked closer, Sora could make out a string of bones and teeth around the wooden neck. There was a pile of junk scattered at the roots of the tree: beads, feathers, chips of glass, old teeth and more bones. She couldn't tell if they were animal or human, perhaps both.

  A cold wind gusted past them, slightly moving the damp cloth. The string of bones clinked softly in the breeze. Sora felt a chill run across her skin. She threw the pole down, suddenly loathe to touch it. Her eyes roved over the pile of scraps, tangled in the overgrown brush.

  “What is this?” she asked again.

  “A marker,” Crash answered her. He shared a look with Burn. “Catlin territory.”

  “This must be the border,” Dorian echoed.

  “Catlins?” Sora asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  Dorian sighed and gave her a patient look. “Another one of the five races, dearest....”

  “I know that!” Sora snapped. Catlins had also been mentioned in the stories of Kaelyn the Wanderer. Giant, savage beasts with the bodies of men but the heads of giant cats. They were thought to be the most ferocious and brutal of the races. But no one had told her they still existed. She struggled with that for a moment. “They live here? Truly? Why didn't anyone tell me?” She glanced around at their serious faces, but she already knew the answer. These men never told her anything. “This isn't just some cheap trick?”

  “Far from it. It's a warning,” Burn said. His hand landed on her shoulder, and Sora blinked her eyes, as though shaken from a daydream. “Travelers aren't welcome here. We'd best continue moving. From here on out, we should keep in mind that we are not alone. The Catlins could be anywhere among these trees. Let's try not to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Right,” Dorian agreed. Then he added after a brief pause, “No more snoring, Sora.”

  She turned to him, surprised, the solemn atmosphere broken, and glared. “I don't snore!”

  “Like a bear,” Burn nodded. He grinned at Dorian over her head.

  “What? That's not funny!” Sora exclaimed, though she knew they were only teasing her. Well, maybe. Her maids had certainly never mentioned it. “I'm as quiet as a whisper! Burn is the one who snores!”

  “Nonsense!” Burn rumbled.

  “Quiet,” Crash snapped. All three turned to look at him. “Your voices could wake up the trees, you're so loud. No more meaningless banter. Only speak when necessary.”

  The Wolfies nodded. Sora rolled her eyes, wishing he would quit being so serious. The swamp appeared to be a dead place, deserted; she hadn't seen a sign of life in days, except for giant snails and bright red frogs. The silence of the swamp was deafening; she felt as though she were drowning in it, like someone had put a heavy blanket over her head. Perhaps Catlins had lived here once, but who knew how long ago that was? They might have all died off, or moved territories, or whatever it was that Catlins did. I hope so. The headless scarecrow certainly looked old and forgotten.

  "We should go back for the horses. Staying in one place too long is dangerous on this ground," Crash
said. Then he turned back to the hill and started upward, grabbing onto saplings and vines as he went.

  Back at camp, they packed up swiftly and saddled their horses. Burn discarded a few pots and pans, saying they would clank together and cause too much noise. Dorian followed suit, though they carried very little metal other than their weapons. They muffled their saddles as best as they could with old cloth, then continued on their way.

  * * *

  Volcrian looked at the three muddy pools of blood before him, his nose discerning each one clearly. His great-grandfather's book sat at his side, pages spread wide open, dog-eared and stained with dirt and blood.

  It had taken days to chant the various spells, to enact the strange rituals and drawings that would summon the wraiths. He had lost track of time amidst his chanting, oblivious to day or night, storm or sun. He had done nothing more than drink water. The magical energy had nourished his body, along with the spell.

  Today, he would raise the dead.

  Would they remember their past identities once they were reawakened as wraiths? The thought nagged at the back of his mind, but, thumbing through his great-grandfather's journal, he couldn't find any word he had skipped, any symbol out of sequence. He had chanted countless spells over the last several days, hoping to erase the spirits' memories. They shouldn't remember their human life at all. They would arise as emotionless, thoughtless servants, following his commands.