Sworn To Transfer

forward again in their original arrangement, Meres called back to Alexandra at the end of the group, “Alexandra, it might be good if you could contact your friends.” Ciardis couldn’t see him, but she definitely heard the biting wit in his tone. He sounded angry.

“They’re too far off,” she said. “What about yours?”

“The animals in this forest are too frightened to come out of their hiding places and too angry to help a group of humans anyway,” he said, hacking viciously at vines with his sword.

They reached the river they’d crossed before, although this time they were much farther upstream.

“Vana, could you scry for the Panen warriors? If we could head in the direction of a roving group of Alexandra’s people then we’d be safe.” Meres asked.

“In rushing water?”

“It’s water, isn’t it?”

“Could you be any more of an idiot?”

“I could if I tried.”

Vana gritted her teeth. “Try not to.”

Alexandra had ranged upstream during the conversation. She came hurrying back.

“We need to do something, and fast. They’re coming.”

“Damn wendigos,” cursed Meres.

“Wen-what-digos?” said Ciardis her voice rising at the end.

“Wendigos,” answered Terris from beside her where she held her hand. They’d clasped hands awhile back. It made it difficult to walk fast but they’d stopped walked at the rushing water minutes ago. Ciardis could tell that Terris was frightened – her hands were clammy. Which was strange. Like Meres Kinsight, Terris had a bond with creatures; she was able to speak the mundane and the magical ones alike. Not many animals or kith would frighten her.

“They’re flesh-eating kith that developed a taste for humans hundreds of years ago during the Initiate Wars,” Terris continued.

“Meres, you can thank your ancestors for these bloody monstrosities,” Alexandra said.

“Now, now, Alexandra.” Meres tutted. “Your people allow them to live here. Wasn’t there some kind of treaty between the two? Aren’t these wendigos supposed to be peaceful?”

“Do they sound peaceful?”

“All right, Ciardis, I’m going to need your help. If I’m going to get anything out of this water. We’re going to have to work together,” Vana said.

Ciardis disengaged from Terris and reached for Vana’s hand. But Meres raised his hand and said sharply, “Hold up, Vana. I hear something.”

They waited a moment and then they all heard it. Bells.

“Good ears,” Vana said.

“Do you think it’s them?”

This time, Alexandra answered. “Yes, it’s them. My people are coming.”

Meres whistled. “Great, now where are those damn wendigos when you need them?”

“Enough,” said Vana.

Meres gave her a flat look, his hand gripping his sword, but he said nothing further.

Alexandra laughed while twirling her knives. “Probably backed off as soon as they heard the approach.” She flashed a sinister smile. “Happy to leave you out here if you’d prefer.”

This time Ciardis saw the creature first. It came out of the trees in a blur of movement and went straight for the most defenseless: Terris, who stood off to the side. It almost looked human—a wrinkly, hunchbacked, nude human. But the creature, upright on two legs with claws as long as knives and serrated rows of teeth in its jaw, was the stuff of nightmares.

What was worse was that it immediately latched its teeth onto Terris’s shoulder. Her scream rent the air and blood blossomed down her chest. Meres Kinsight leaped over Vana and brought his sword crashing down on the creature’s back.

It was cleaved in half. Ciardis noted numbly, That’s one sharp sword. And then another wendigo came out of the bushes. Vana and Alexandra worked together, Alexandra throwing her knives and Vana calling in liquid fire. The weapons hit the creature in the shoulder and the chest respectively, but it wasn’t enough. It had slowed down but it was still coming.

“Fire doesn’t work on wendigos!” shouted Alexandra as she hurriedly dodged a swipe of the creature’s claws.

Meres had crouched down over Terris, desperately trying to stem the blood flowing from her shoulder. He would be of no help against the wendigo. Alexandra’s magic wasn’t really helping here, and Ciardis hadn’t the slightest clue what Vana could and couldn’t do.

The wendigo, ugly as sin, was turning back for another run at Vana and Alexandra. Ciardis stood in between the creature and its two intended victims. She gripped her knife tightly in her hand, knowing it wouldn’t make much difference in the scheme of things. Then a spear—tipped with silver—came sailing overhead. It hit the wendigo dead on, piercing it through the heart and pinning it to the tree trunk behind it. The creature died instantly.

Ciardis turned around and saw warriors on horseback riding their way. They looked a lot like Alexandra – perhaps more of the Panen people that lived in the forest. Ignoring them for the moment, she rushed to Terris’s side, fearing the worst. Meres said, “She’ll live, but she needs a healer.”

He whistled sharply to get the rider’s attention. It was the kind of whistle that would pierce through the noise of an angry crowd brawling in the streets. It definitely caught the rider’s notice. They bundled Terris up and had the others ride double.

By the time they reached their community, Terris was unconscious from blood loss and her brown skin was uncharacteristically pale. Ciardis feared for her friend’s life.

Dismounting quickly, the entire riding party rushed to follow the man carrying Terris into the healer’s compound. That compound was one of the few on the ground and had lights all around it. As steady crimson drops of blood dripped from Terris’s shoulder, Ciardis sent up a string of prayers to all the gods she’d ever believed in.

Please don’t let her die.

They took her through a carved wooden door and into a second room off to the side. Healers bustled in and out of the room assessing her injury, cleaning out the wound, healing the flesh, administering medicine, and bandaging the shoulder. Ciardis saw that it was black with the poison of the wendigo’s digestive system. They had to draw it out with magic, letting the poison leech out of her shoulder and drip down into a bowl below Terris’s bed until the water inside the bowl was as black as tar.

The healers tried to clear the room, growing more impatient by the minute. Ciardis ignored them and planted herself firmly at the head of Terris’s bed. Out of their way and with fingers lingering on Terris’s forehead, she poured what magic she had into her friend. Her magic pulse would not stop beating, not on Ciardis’s watch. The healers would tell her later that she had helped. The continuous recharge of Terris’s magic allowed the young mage to burn off fever. But after a while Ciardis slipped so far into her trance state that even the sharp smell of vinegar under her nose didn’t awaken her.

As they left, one of the healers lit sticks of bitter weed sitting in wooden incense burners to cleanse the room. The smell of the bitter weed was enough revive Ciardis from the tired slump she’d adopted while watching over Terris. She wrinkled her nose and shot up from her crouched position by the bed. Bitter weed was the foulest smelling thing she’d ever come across. Unfortunately her legs were so tired from the crouch she had adopted that they had locked in place and she fell backward. She expected a hard, cold floor to meet her head, but was surprised when instead she fell back into a warm robe and a hard body. There was no mistaking it: She had fallen into a person. She wasn’t sure what was worse—falling to the floor in humiliation or almost crushing another person while she was at it.

Straightening up, she turned to apologize and noticed with confusion that the rest of the room was empty.

“Your friends have been sent to their beds,” said the man who stood behind her.