Page 47 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

twenty-three

Oryn

T hey fled Ested, leaving the villagers to puzzle over the beheaded demondread.

Oryn still puzzled over it as the sun climbed to its peak.

They rarely drifted far from Covwood and when they did, they preferred to hunt for unsuspecting souls in quiet, secluded places.

What one was doing in a village on the Misthol Road, he couldn’t fathom.

Perhaps the High Lord of Valbelle was onto something. Perhaps Cedric would send word if he survived Covwood, but even if something was stirring, it seemed too unlikely to be mere coincidence they would find a demondread in a stable yard in Ested, reaching for the Silverbow.

He shuddered to think of the shell that would have been left behind. To slit her throat would have been a mercy and that hum would leave the world. All day he rode at her knee, letting it sing in his ears.

He’d lost control of his gifts again when he’d healed her.

Instead of the threads of air, water, and spirit he tried to draw, his gifts surged, and suddenly they were spilling out of him, wrapping around her in a spiral of godsong that glowed to his eye like an exploding star.

Air wound through her loose hair, tousling it on the breeze.

The sheen of cold sweat on her brow vanished in a spray of water droplets.

His tiny, thready gift of spirit, good for little beside setting wards around their camp and twining with his other gifts for healing, wound around her in shimmering bands.

It crawled over her skin like vines, sprouting tiny, iridescent flowers only he and Colm could see.

They were his gifts, but as before, they were not wieldings of his making.

Colm’s eyes had gone wide as saucers as he cleaned the beast’s black blood from his blade.

Oryn watched in silent wonder as Nimala wove a crown of shimmering silver flowers to rest on her brow.

It was so unimaginably breathtaking, he hesitated to silence the godsongs.

Wherever Enya Ryerson was, they seemed to revel in.

His companions watched the Misthol Road like they expected another demondread to drop out of the clear blue sky. She rode clutching that horse head carving, her face ashen and gray.

“What happens if one…?” Her voice trailed off.

“It tears away part of your soul,” he said.

Her frown deepened. “But what does that actually do?”

Oryn gave a reluctant sigh. “There is a man in Drozia who suffered the demondread’s caress.

There is nothing left of him but his body.

He must be told when to eat, when to sleep, when to move.

If his family did not shepherd him through the days, he would stand in one place until he starved to death or collapsed from exhaustion. ”

She shuddered. “Is it not kinder to…end it?”

Oryn had always thought so, but he was suddenly uncertain he could have done it back in Ested. That hum…would it still sing even after the demondread’s caress?

She seemed to read something of his hesitation and huffed. “Bade?”

“We’ll run you through, if need be,” Aiden said brightly.

Oryn’s gifts stirred behind the damper, but to his surprise, the girl laughed. The sound eased something between his shoulder blades.

When they made camp off the road, he tossed her the pillow he’d stolen from the Goat and crammed into his saddle bags.

She blinked in surprise. “Thanks.”

“Find a stick and start going through the water forms.”

She clutched the pillow to her chest like a shield, her face lighting with excitement. “You’ll teach me?”

“We’ll see,” he answered, but he’d already decided he would. If he could help it, he would not leave her defenseless for another creature of Covwood.

She stomped around until she found a scraggly stick and started her forms, pink creeping into her cheeks with four pairs of eyes studying her every move.

Oryn looked to Bade in question. The blademaster wore a look of bored disinterest, but he seemed to weigh and measure the girl, not that it meant anything.

Bade weighed and measured everyone and everything.

“What do you think?” Oryn asked.

He spat. “I think she’s your problem, Brydove.”

Oryn sighed. Bade was the better teacher.

He had been a blademaster long before Oryn was even in his cradle, but he supposed teaching the girl enough not to succumb to the first sword swung her way did not require the greatest swordsman in Elaria.

Second best would do. Oryn had carried the blademaster’s mark for only fifty years, but he could teach her.

He pushed himself up and stalked toward her.

She dropped from the Storm Surge form she was holding and pushed a loose curl back. “You’re going to teach me now?” There was an eagerness in her voice he had not heard before. Mosphaera seemed to… purr .

Oryn halted abruptly and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Let’s see what you know first.”

Whoever Neigel Marwar was, he was thorough.

The girl knew all of the basic sword forms and most of the advanced.

She executed each with drilled precision, but the motions held the start and stop of a student who knew the steps, but had never danced the dance.

There were a few forms he called that she didn’t know, but when he drew his own blade and showed her, she nodded and called it by another name.

She was good, but she was too small, which was likely why this Master of Arms hadn’t let her run off with a sword.

A sword would invite a challenge, one she would likely lose.

“Defense is your only real hope,” he called as she finished the wind-over-water series of forms.

She lowered the stick and scowled. “Then how will I win?”

“The point is to live.” Oryn jerked his chin to Aiden.

The fire wielder had volunteered to help with far too much enthusiasm.

The young demi-elf swaggered forward with a matching stick in hand and a gleam in his gray eyes.

Aiden flowed into his fighting stance with deadly grace.

The girl moved too, gracefully for a human, and when she nodded, he started to strike slowly, lazily, as Oryn called out defensive forms.

“Cyclone of the Deep.” Her stick whirled to meet Aiden’s and knocked it away.

“Dandelion in the Wind.” She dropped back and dodged his strike.

“Under the Archway.” She ducked the swing that came lazily her way .

“Flamefall’s Faint.” Oryn realized as soon as he’d called it that she hadn’t known that name.

Aiden’s stick landed against her half-healed ribs with a sharp crack that lit her face in surprise.

“First lesson,” he growled. “Don’t rely on me to save your ass.”

Bade chuckled from his place by the fire. He was fairly certain he’d taught the same lesson early in his own instruction with a far bloodier outcome.

If looks could kill, Oryn would have collapsed into the dirt when those emerald eyes flashed at him. But they didn’t and she brought her stick back up waving Aiden on, so he kept calling forms until he saw her arm start to shudder and called for them to stop.

Enya

Enya’s arm ached and her ribs smarted where Aiden’s stick had landed not once, but three times before they were done.

She blushed, frustrated, when Oryn called her a slow learner, and he did not offer to heal the welts that rose on her side.

He said they would help her remember to guard her left.

Perhaps they would, but they throbbed in the saddle.

Oryn was a merciless tutor, nothing like Marwar at all.

Or perhaps, Aiden was a merciless sparring partner, nothing like Liam at all.

Still, Enya looked forward to her lessons.

Every morning before breakfast, she stood in balance forms until she shook, and every evening when they made camp, she sparred.

With each passing day, Aiden let his stick fall a little harder, and before long, Enya nursed welts everywhere but her face.

She eagerly cast her stick aside one evening when Colm patted the dirt at his side. She sat cross-legged, peering up at him. “Have you found them?”

He gave a slow nod. “I found the dreams of Griff and Alys Ashill. And I found the dreams of your stablemaster and his son.”

Enya’s heart skipped two beats.

“I cannot find Neigel Marwar’s dream.”

“What does that mean?” She asked breathlessly.

“It could mean he is not dreaming. It could mean I simply cannot find him. Or it could mean, he is no longer able to dream. ”

Enya swallowed the jagged knot of emotion in her throat. “The dead do not dream?”

“Their dreams are beyond our reach,” he said solemnly. “But your father remains among the living.”

Enya tried to blink away the pressure that built behind her eyes. “Thank you.”

Colm gave her knee a squeeze that reminded her of Griff and she wiped away the tear that slid down her cheek.

She was secretly glad for the reprieve the next time they rode into a village and stopped at an inn, even if she would have go without the dream ward.

It was a middling place, not as hard as the Spoke, not as soft as the Goat, but the food smelled like something from Mistress Alys’s kitchen and the bath soothed her welts and aching muscles.

Merchants clustered around tables, complaining about the price of everything from grain to silk.

Their guards sat on long benches, mingling with knights that wore house sigils Enya did not recognize.

There was to be a great tourney in the capitol for Sun Day, she overheard, with ten thousand gold marks the prize.

She laughed at the sum. It seemed she was worth exactly as much as a joust. She supposed she should be flattered.

The serving woman brought platters laden with roast beef and the first pea shoots and radishes of the season.

It was good, better than their usual camp fare of unseasoned meat roasted on a spit, though she didn’t much like peas or radishes and Aiden reached across with a grin to take what she didn’t finish off her plate.