Page 34 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

seventeen

Enya

A soft knock roused Enya before dawn. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she opened the door just a crack to peer into the inn’s hallway. Oryn’s broad form was silhouetted by the faint moonlight that streamed in from a window, glinting off his silver hair.

“You just open the door for anyone?” He growled.

Enya huffed. “I figured the gargoyle next door would take care of anyone else.”

He’d had dinner sent to her room the night before and trailed her too and from the bathing chamber as if danger lurked in the privy.

For a moment, she thought he might try to follow her inside, but he folded his arms and leaned against the wall, glowering at anyone who walked by as he waited for her to emerge.

If that was what he intended to do all the way to Drozia, it was best he’d taken her belt knife.

He pushed into her room, making her leap back or be run over, and shut the door behind him with a soft thud.

“Some people might consider it rude to burst in on a lady,” she hissed.

He slid a breakfast tray onto the table. “If I meet a lady, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Eat.”

Enya gaped at him, unable to string a sentence together in her outrage. Acutely aware that she was bare beneath the long tails of her shirt, she grabbed the blanket from the narrow bed and wrapped it around herself like a cloak as pink flooded her cheeks. Oryn didn’t seem to notice.

“I presume your horse is the ill tempered mare that bites?”

Enya sniffed, but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Good girl. “Arawelo doesn’t put up with manhandling either.”

Oryn grunted and set a jar of dark powder beside the tray.

“What’s this?”

“Dye. Your hair might as well be a banner.”

She should have thought to do something about her hair, and that he had irked her.

“Easier if it was shorter.”

“Absolutely not!” She snapped. Her hands came up to cover the length of her braid as the demi-elf produced a set of shears from inside his cloak.

He sighed and jerked his chin toward the washbasin. “Dampen your hair and comb it through.”

“Fine.”

“The others are waiting.”

“Then get out,” she gritted.

With a shake of his silver head, he retreated through the doorway.

She listened to his boots fade down the hall, surprised he wasn’t lording over her door.

When she emerged in the stable yard with damp, dull brown hair piled atop her head, Arawelo stood saddled beside the massive black warhorse, her ears pinned back in warning.

The stallion pointedly ignored her as she snapped her teeth in his direction.

The sight of Kez tugged at something in Enya’s chest. Home. He looks like home. The gray whickered a greeting.

She stroked his nose and silently secured her saddlebags under Oryn’s stare.

She slung her bow and quiver behind her back.

He eyed them as if he thought of confiscating those too, but he turned the stallion toward the street and started on.

His companions wordlessly followed and Arawelo fell into step beside Kez.

“Sleep well, Miss Ansel?” Aiden asked jovially as they plodded toward the gates.

“Fine. ”

“I hope so, seeing as that’s the last inn we’ll see for a while. We prefer to sleep rough.”

Of course you do. He gave her a roguish wink that may have once set her heart stuttering, but it only irked her now.

A long line of wagons waited at the gates to go out, held up by the crimson clad men checking papers.

Enya swallowed and glanced around at the demi-elves.

Bade wore the same scowl she’d seen before, perhaps the only expression he ever wore, but the split lip she'd dealt him was gone without a trace.

A whispered argument broke out between Oryn and Colm.

The man with the golden topknot finally conceded.

“Aiden, give her one of yours,” Oryn ordered.

Sighing, the young demi-elf fished into his breast pocket and produced a neatly folded square of parchment. Enya gaped. “Am I to pass as a man now?”

“Just act like it belongs to you. We’ll see to it,” Oryn said.

She was on the point of asking what exactly he intended to do, but Oryn silenced her with a sharp look.

When they reached the guard towers flanking the high stone wall, Enya handed over a set of papers belonging to a brown haired boy named Linus.

She watched the guard’s brows knit together, and then smooth.

He handed the papers back with a glassy look to his eyes and barked, “Next!”

“What did you do?” Enya hissed at Oryn as they stepped out onto the Queen’s Road.

“Later,” he growled, eyeing the wagons waiting to enter Trowbridge.

She bit her tongue until they were a good half mile from the wall. “How is it that I passed for Linus?” She demanded.

“None of your concern,” he answered.

“Did you…did you do something to that guard?“ She hissed.

“It is none of your concern.” There was a bite in his tone that made Enya bristle.

“There will be no lasting harm,” Colm assured her.

“Lasting harm?” She spluttered. “Did you…did you…” Enya trailed off. She had seen the wonder of Oryn’s healing first-hand and heard wild tales of what wielders were capable of, but speaking them aloud seemed ridiculous.

“For a girl who put arrows in a few men in Innesh, you sure are squeamish. Or is it just the wielding part you take issue with?“ Aiden asked with a broad grin. “Afraid of a little magic, Silverbow? ”

Enya swallowed and drew herself up. “I think I ought to know what I travel with.”

“Men who take you to sanctuary,” Oryn sighed. “And it will be a very long ride for us all Ansel if you plan to question everything we do between here and Drozia.”

“Careful, Ansel,” Aiden warned tauntingly. “Wag your tongue too much, and you might find yourself as mindless as that guard.”

Enya’s heart took off at a gallop, her mouth suddenly too dry. Mindless?

“Aiden!” Colm hissed.

Her horror must have been plain to them. Aiden barked a laugh and even Bade chuckled. Colm sighed with exasperation.

“You controlled his mind?” She hissed at Oryn.

“I didn’t. Colm did.”

Enya whirled in her saddle to stare at the kindly faced man who grimaced.

“It was only a small trick,” he winced. “I simply suggested there was nothing unusual in what he saw. There’s no lasting harm. He’ll have no memory of it.”

Enya’s jaw hung open.

“It is not something I would normally do.” He darted an accusatory look at Oryn. “But it was better than the alternatives.”

“The alternatives?”

“A number of options,” Oryn answered. “All with a great deal more lasting harm.”

“That’s…that’s barbaric,” she spluttered.

“No,” he answered tightly. “Barbaric would have been to rip the air from their lungs, boil their blood, or grind their bones to dust. I suppose we could have also brought the guard towers down on their heads.”

Enya stared in horror.

“I do not do what I do lightly,” Colm said quickly. “Rest assured, I would not use my gift to alter your mind.”

“Wish you would,” Bade grumbled. "Would be a lot quieter."

Enya’s insides knotted. “How is it no one has collared you?”

“We mastered our gifts long before your king invented his collars. They can be…silenced when needed,” Colm answered.

Enya swallowed, still reeling at what Oryn revealed them to be capable of. “Is that something you can teach me? ”

“No. And you don’t need it,” Oryn answered. “The godsung gifts are not sensed in the same way the pure godsongs are.”

“But you can sense it.”

“That seems to be an anomaly.”

An anomaly. A curiosity in the roll.

She was still mulling that over when they stopped for the night to make camp off the side of the road.

Her new companions moved with practiced efficiency, stringing a picket line and seeing to their horses.

Bade left his horse, a gray called Cle, to Aiden and stalked off into the grassland with his bow.

Colm threw a log down from a bundle he carried behind his saddle. Enya let out a yelp and leapt back when it burst into flame. She clutched her blanket roll to her chest, looking between the three demi-elves. Aiden gave her a sweeping bow, eyes dancing with delighted amusement.

“Fire wielder, at your service, Lady Silverbow.” He threw his blanket roll down beside Enya’s. She toed hers with a boot, widening the space between them. Aiden snorted. “How do you like sleeping rough, my lady?”

“It’s better than not sleeping at all,” she grumbled.

Colm, fussing over a teapot and a waterskin, looked up. “If your dreams trouble you, that is something I can help with.”

“Are you a Dreamwalker?” She asked. It seemed campfire stories were coming to life all around her.

“My spirit gift allows me to do many things,” he said, and Enya shuddered, remembering the glassy eyed look worn by that guard. “Dream wards are simple wieldings. They fade with the dawn.”

Enya pushed a loose strand of too dark hair behind her ear. “I’m fine.”

Colm nodded and turned back to the tea.

As the soft snores of the demi-elves filled the night around her, she found sleep came easier.

But in that sleep lurked things she tried to avoid.

Brigands chasing her through Greenridge Forest. A cottage burning by the sea.

The scar faced man with a cudgel, swinging for her.

The lash of the wagon driver’s whip. The face of the woman in Innesh.

The twang of a crossbow. Pain exploding as the bolt ripped through her chest.

Enya sat up, gasping, hand scrambling for the place the shaft had been. She found only her shirt, crumpled beneath her fingers. It was just a dream. Around her, four faces peered at her from where they sat upright in their blanket rolls.

“S-sorry,” she stuttered .

They turned and scanned the night before settling back one by one. She lay awake for what felt like hours, listening as their breaths sank back into the deeper rhythms of sleep.

***

Enya scrubbed her eyes with her hands just before dawn to find Oryn and Colm already sitting around a crackling breakfast fire. She stalked from the camp.