“My lady,” Zirkander said, throwing Sardelle a salute as he ran up. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
“It has been agony being parted.” Sardelle lowered her arm—and presumably the barrier.
“Got your brains collected, Tee? This seems a particularly fine time to depart.”
“Did you not miss me terribly as well, Zirkander?” Tolemek stuffed his case back into his pack and slung both over his shoulder.
“You’re grumpy, gloomy, and have hair one could hide knives in. What’s not to miss?” Zirkander touched Sardelle on the shoulder as he passed but didn’t slow down for long. Still paralleling the main trail, he led the way.
An arrow sped through the trees, landing in a trunk a few feet from Duck’s head. That spurred him into motion, as well, and he sprinted after Zirkander.
Cas jogged up to Tolemek, making sure he didn’t need help with his gear before continuing on.
“I’m not gloomy, am I?” He adjusted his pack on his shoulders and nodded that they could go.
“Pensive is the word that comes to my mind.”
“Cogitative?”
“If you want to be cogitative, I won’t argue with it.” Cas spotted one of the natives running through the brush, but the man seemed to be heading for the pirate gathering instead of her team, so she didn’t fire. She already felt bad for shooting people who might have been doing nothing more than defending their village.
The sounds of the fighting faded, and Zirkander slowed down and veered to the left, probably hoping to pick up the trail again. The jungle hadn’t been quite as dense around the village, but it had grown wilder again, and he and Duck had been forced to trade pistols for machetes.
“Tolemek?” Zirkander sliced a few vines away from his face and ducked a branch a foot thick. “Any idea why pirates have been following us into the jungle? There might be a bounty on my head, but I have a hard time believing it’s high enough to warrant the kind of risk those fellows back there are enduring.”
Cas chewed on the side of her cheek, trying to decide if any suspicion lurked in his voice. He didn’t think Tolemek had something to do with the appearance of those pirates, did he?
“I don’t know for certain,” Tolemek said, “but my guess is that they’re treasure hunters.”
Treasure? Cas took a wide step around a tree that had a large snake draped across the lowest branch. What kind of treasure could be out here?
“Hunting for a treasure more impressive than my head?” Zirkander asked.
“That wouldn’t take much,” Tolemek muttered, then he raised his voice to add, “A group of pirates stopped me outside of our lodgings the night before we left. They seemed to think that the appearance of your father signified treasure in the area.”
Zirkander paused, his machete raised for a stroke that he didn’t make. “That would be the kind of information that would be useful to relay to your expedition leader.” His jaw tightened in a rare sign of irritation.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Is he going to be in danger from them?” Zirkander finished the stroke with his machete, cleaving a branch with more force than usual. “Damn it, I should have dragged him along, whether he wanted to come or not.”
“That didn’t go well with the flier,” Sardelle murmured.
“If something happens to him, after I was the one to bring him here…”
“The pirates followed us,” Cas said. “Maybe that means they think we’re the more promising target.”
“I hope so.” Zirkander lowered his machete. “Sardelle, can you tell if they’re still following us? The pirates? Or the natives?”
“They’re still fighting back there. The villagers are focused on the pirates.” Her voice held a strange note, as if she was confused.
“That’s a good thing, right?” Zirkander pushed past a clump of fronds, each one as tall as he, and muttered a, “Hah. There’s the trail.” They had come out on the other side of the village.
“Maybe,” Sardelle said. “I believe those people came back because of us, because we were disturbing their dead.”
“Oh.”
“At least they didn’t seem as addled as the ones from this morning,” Cas said. “That must mean that not everybody out here is being affected by this… whatever it is.” She looked at Tolemek. Had he discovered anything yet?
“Or they could be infected and simply aren’t displaying symptoms yet,” he said.
“See, Tee, that’s gloomy thinking there,” Zirkander said.
“Pensively gloomy,” Cas said at Tolemek’s frown.
“Do you now believe it’s a disease?” Zirkander asked. “Not some psychedelic berries they licked?”
Tolemek hesitated. “I only have guesses now. But I gathered samples to examine later.”
Duck’s lip curled at the word samples.
“Uh oh.” Zirkander stopped.
Cas hustled to slip past Duck and Sardelle so she could see. “New problem?”
“Just that we’ve reached the end of the trail.” Zirkander pointed at a reed-clogged pool that lay ahead of them. The path stopped, rather than going around it. “This must be where they collect their water. No need to explore inland farther.” He raised a hand to his eyes, sheltering them from afternoon sun beaming down through a rare gap in the canopy. “The ground rises on the other side. Maybe we’re getting close to the mountain.”
“I would settle for a place where I can make some slides and take a look at them,” Tolemek said. “Preferably not near this pond. I see an alligator over there. And those reeds might be hiding some creature that likes to eat scientists.”
Cas poked him in the side. “That’s even gloomier.”
“I told you.” Zirkander winked back at her. “All right, who’s going to lead at breaking the trail this time? Sardelle, isn’t it Jaxi’s turn?”
“You want me to use her as a machete?”
“I was thinking she could add her fiery flare to clearing the way, burn a nice path for us. Or is that also demeaning?”
“You’ll find out if your pack doubles in weight soon.” Sardelle squeezed his hand and walked past him, pulling out her sword. The sleek blade pulsed a few times, then a beam shot out, incinerating a toadstool next to Zirkander’s muddy boot.
“That accuracy is fairly impressive,” Zirkander said without batting an eye, “but I’d like to see a further demonstration. With the trail.”
“Sometimes I feel left out,” Cas admitted to Tolemek, “because I can’t hear any of this interplay with the sword.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Consider it a boon.”
* * *
Tolemek scowled at the slide and fiddled with the knobs, trying to coax more magnification out of the sturdy but limited field microscope. He had seen evidence of the swelling in the brain tissue that Sardelle had mentioned, but he couldn’t detect anything foreign in the samples he had taken. Not with his eyes, anyway. He sensed… Maybe it was his imagination, but he sensed something was there, something too small for his microscope to reveal.
“Sardelle?” he called, lifting his head.
To his surprise, Zirkander, Sardelle, and Duck had already packed and were leaning against trees, waiting. The last Tolemek had noticed, they had been eating breakfast, with Duck still snoozing. He didn’t even see Cas. Had she gone ahead to start cutting a trail?
“Yes?” Sardelle asked.
“Are you all waiting on me?” Tolemek was sitting on a rock with his microscope set up on another rock. He hadn’t started packing yet.
“Nah,” Zirkander said. “We’re waiting on Cas. She’s climbing a tree to see if there’s any sign that those pirates made it through and are still following us.”
“So you wouldn’t have waited if it was just me?” Tolemek asked dryly. It would have been somewhat alarming to look up from his microscope and find the rest of the group gone.
“I wouldn’t leave anyone,” Zirkander said. “I might have taken Sardelle’s sword a
nd seen how many chunks of your hair I could cut off before you noticed, but I wouldn’t have left.”
“Don’t give Jaxi any ideas.”
Sardelle walked over and crouched beside Tolemek. “Did you find something?”
“No, but I have this niggling sense that something’s there.” Tolemek was still struggling to accept the idea that he had latent magical power, but had to admit that his senses—what he had always considered intuition—rarely failed him, especially in regard to science. “I thought my examination might reveal some type of bacteria we’re not familiar with, but I’m wondering if this might be some non-bacterial pathogen, something too small for my microscope to detect.”
“A virus,” Sardelle said.
“Yes.” He lifted his brows. “I thought you might be able to see more than the microscope can.”
“That would be a useful skill.”
“Oh,” he said, assuming her comment meant she didn’t possess it.
“There is—was—a small branch of our healing school that studied microbiology, but we had even more primitive microscopes back then, so it was difficult to garner more than a very basic understanding of disease theory. In order to help people, we healers enhance the power of a person’s immune system by channeling our energy into their bodies. This allows them to fight off diseases and to heal wounds at a much greater speed than usual, and it’s often possible to cure someone who might have otherwise succumbed to a potent virus.”
“So if we were to capture one of these crazy people, you could cure him?” Zirkander asked from his tree. He and Duck were playing some game that involved bumping hands and making finger gestures.
“Possibly,” Sardelle said. “There are cases of diseases being too potent or too far along. In the end, sorcerers aren’t gods, or even dragons.”
“I wonder,” Tolemek said, his eyes losing focus as he considered the symptom list he had put together so far. “No, probably not. A human would either succumb to a virus or fight it off eventually, right?”
“Are you thinking of your sister?”
“Are you reading my mind again?”
“Just guessing this time.” Sardelle smiled gently. “Did she show symptoms similar to the people we’ve seen?”
“Just in her spurts of… wildness.” He resisted the temptation to use the word “craziness.” Tylie had been lucid and normal for much of the time. But she had always complained about the voices, and sometimes, she had snapped in front of him, going from normal to wild, harming others, harming herself. He sighed. “Her eyes were never dilated though. And she’s had this… whatever this is for years.”
“We’ll figure it out. I suspect the answers are somewhere on this mountain.” She waved toward the way ahead. Though the dense foliage continued to smother the landscape, blocking the view of the volcano, they had started climbing as soon as they had left the pool the day before, and Tolemek believed they had risen several hundred feet from sea level. If they ever found a break in the jungle—or climbed a particularly high tree—they might be able to see the sea in the distance.
Cas strolled into view from the direction Sardelle had been pointing. She smiled at Tolemek, the expression warming him and driving away some of the malaise that had him down. Or gloominess, as Zirkander would call it. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t been a dolt that night in town, that he had spent it with Cas instead of wandering the streets and bumping into treasure-hunting pirates. They had laid next to each other during their nights in the jungle, when one of them wasn’t on watch, but even after dark, the air remained muggy and sticky, not conducive to snuggling—or even wanting to be touched. He was actually starting to miss Iskandia’s gray winter skies.
“I brought you something,” Cas said, her eyes bright as she strolled toward him, her hand behind her back.
“Is it a rifle, pistol, or other weapon?” Tolemek asked.
“That would usually be a safe guess,” Zirkander told Sardelle as she rejoined him. She swatted him on the chest.
“Not this time.” Cas withdrew her arm and revealed a vibrant red flower, its rounded petals forming a bulbous body almost as large as her hand. The tip reminded him of a belly button.
Belly? Tolemek stood, his gaze riveted. “That’s the blood belly. From the mural.”
“I thought so.” Cas handed it to him.
“Huh,” Duck said. “Usually boys bring girls flowers, not the other way around.”
“There’s a pond over in that direction,” Cas said, ignoring him, “and they were growing all around it.”
The warmth in his chest grew, gratitude toward Cas for keeping an eye out for him and for being with him on this journey. He touched a hand to her cheek, the other coming to rest on her hip, and leaned down to kiss her. He knew he shouldn’t—not with the others looking on—but he needed her to know how much he appreciated her help, how much he appreciated her.
To his delight, Cas did not stiffen or pull away. She stepped closer to him, rising on her tiptoes to return the kiss, smiling as their lips touched. Maybe she wanted to alleviate his gloominess, or maybe she was simply glad they had found a clue. Either way, the sweetness of her touch made him lament once again that he had wasted their private night together.
“Is that allowed?” Duck asked. “During the mission?”
“I think so,” Zirkander said. “We can call this a rest break.”
“He’s smooshing his flower.”
Though Tolemek did not want the moment to end, the commentary stole some of the romance. He stepped back, letting his hand linger to brush his fingers across Cas’s dirt-smudged cheek. The grime did nothing to diminish her appeal.
“Thank you,” he murmured, holding her gaze.
“You’re welcome.” She pressed the flower into his hands.
Tolemek rotated it, examining it from all sides, impressed by its vibrant color. He could see why it would stand out to his sister.
“I’ve seen the marsoothimums here too,” Sardelle said. “If we find the blue flowers, we’ll know we’re in the right area.”
“I’ll watch for them,” Cas said. “They’re at a higher elevation, right? That’s what the colonel’s dad said.”
Sardelle nodded.
“Lieutenant Ahn,” Zirkander said. “While I’m glad that your scouting mission was so fruitful—” he wriggled his eyebrows, “—did you see any pirates, cannibals, or other threats while you were out there?”
“No, sir. I did climb a tree—” Cas wiped her hands on her trousers, grimacing at the sap, “—but I didn’t see any cooking fires or anything that would indicate there were people behind us. I did see a snake larger than I am. It hissed at me, and I left the tree. This place is… Let’s just say that I would like to request a nice, flat desert for our next mission. Or perhaps even a city. With cozy inns. Baths.”
Sardelle shared a wistful smile with Cas.
“I’ll let the king know of your preferences,” Zirkander said. “If he’s still talking to me when we get back.”
Cas grabbed her pack. Figuring the group was ready to press on, Tolemek put away his slides and his microscope.
Tolemek?
The mental call startled him, and he dropped the microscope case. Jaxi? he asked. It didn’t sound like Jaxi, but nobody else had ever spoken into his mind. The voice seemed distant, almost as if the speaker was calling to him from a mountaintop.
Tolemek, are you coming?
He leaned forward, using a rock for support. It couldn’t be. She had never spoken to him.
Tylie? he asked.
Tolie, be careful. Don’t get sick.
He gulped. It was her. He’d had numerous nicknames in his life, but nobody except for his sister had ever called him Tolie. And that had been years ago, when she had been too young to pronounce his whole name. Sick? Tylie, what do you mean?
Nothing except silence answered him. Could she hear him? No, probably not. He had no idea how to send out his thoughts.
Tylie? h
e asked again, hoping she might be monitoring his mind somehow, the way Jaxi sometimes did. But could she know how to do that? When she had never been trained? Tylie? Are you there? Can you hear me?
Silence.
Someone touched his shoulder. Tolemek straightened, reluctantly accepting that his sister wasn’t going to contact him again, not now. Maybe if they got closer, she would be able to.
“Are you all right?” Cas lowered her hand to his forearm, resting it there.
“Did anyone else hear that?” Tolemek met Sardelle’s eyes, assuming she would be the other person who might have heard a telepathic communication. Or if not her, Jaxi.
She shook her head. She wore the same concerned expression as Cas.
Tolemek tried to smooth his features. “I thought I heard—no, I did hear Tylie.”
“Your sister?” Zirkander asked. “I didn’t know she could do that.”
“Neither did I.”
“You haven’t seen her for a while,” Sardelle said. “Those with the gift do often figure some things out for themselves, even without training.” She tilted her head. “What did she say?”
“Don’t get sick.” Tolemek eyed the case with the slides in it.
“Ah.”
“Good advice for all,” Zirkander said. “Let’s go find that third flower, eh?”
Chapter 8
The blue flowers were everywhere. They blossomed on vines that snaked up the trunk of every other tree as the group climbed higher. Cas had seen a few more of the blood bellies and marsoothimums, as well. At first, Tolemek had seemed pleased by the discovery, but he was wearing his pensive—gloomy—expression again, staring at the trail ahead of him instead of admiring the landscape.
Granted, Cas wasn’t admiring the landscape, either. She kept trotting off to the side or up ahead, searching for spots where she might look out behind them. Even though they had stumbled onto a trail and the trees they were walking through had thinned out, she hadn’t spotted anything more malevolent than birds and monkeys.
“Sardelle?” she asked after scampering down a tree and returning to the group. “Can you sense anyone back there? That’s a thing you can do, isn’t it? You have before.”