Page 41 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

41.

Now, the despised guards on the other side of the wall, Arana Braveblade walked to the far edge of the garden, the spot from which if you stood tipatoe you could see the village and—thrillingly—Fraeland, to the East of Central Realm. The wind bathed her skin, the sun graced her hair and shimmered it golden before the broodclouds returned.

She had spent hours here in the garden, avoiding Thamann Hotaks and his minions—and most everyone else in the castle. She would tend the herbs, practice spells and look through the foul air that hung like a stale cloak about the village in hopes of catching a glimpse of those lands.

And dream of her escape and reunion with her brother and the other villagers Hotaks had kidnapped, each because of his or her special talent that he jealously coveted.

Was Nathon still alive? His skill at steel shearing was unparalleled. But he also had a way of speaking his own mind—to his detriment.

And the others?

A faint rain had arisen and it whispered, “Wait no longer, wait no longer!”

She stuffed the herbs she needed into a pouch and crushed them together. This velvet bag she slipped into the forbidden pocket of her blouse, just over her heart.

She recited the incantation—and in uttering these particular words, committed a death-by-steel offense.

Would it work?

Yes!

Shimmering and humming, a Blue Strayer appeared before her, resembling the sleigh in which she and Nathon would gleefully ride down the hillsides in the snow when the family went to the mountains for the LowSun holiday.

The Old Times.

The Happy Times.

She inhaled deeply and climbed inside. She felt an odd sense that it was grateful for being conjured. She wondered if it was aware of existing in the OffState tired of its condition and impatiently awaiting materialization. Or did it sleep, dreamless like the dead, until brought to life?

Whatever was the case, the Strayer now closed the sides tightly around her, as if a hug of gratitude. Did she hear a voice?

Some said Strayers had a heart and soul.

And could be more intelligent than many people.

She bent to the ground and retrieved what she’d hidden here one stormy night, when even the guards were sheltering. She gripped the sword’s hilt and lifted it, still in the scabbard, and slipped the weapon into the Strayer beside her.

She now looked to the horizon.

To the place where she could be herself, out from under the heel of Thamann Hotaks.

There would be no need to be a Somewhat Person any longer.

She leaned forward and whispered, “ Mym Vayantos! ”

Take me away!

The Strayer rose slightly off the ground, as if studying the wall, and then with no warning surmounted it like a horse taking a jump.

Arana Braveblade inhaled a deep breath as they plummeted straight down, toward the cluster of buildings that was the village, growing bigger and bigger with every passing fraction.

—

All right, hold on, Fiona Lavelle thought, gazing down at the passage in her notebook, which was twice the thickness as when she’d bought it, because of the ink and coffee and soda stains—a few ketchup blotches too.

The pages were filled with her handwritten prose—and also many angry and frustrated and exasperated cross-outs. One thing about writing by hand, and not on a computer: your limitations stared you in the face; they weren’t banished into the ozone like bits and bytes when you deleted on Word.

Lavelle had loved what one of her professors had told the class: Ernest Hemingway said there were no great writers, only great rewriters.

While she didn’t care much for the American novelist, she knew that was true, though she also guessed that some people didn’t have to revise quite as much as others.

The way she had to.

The wind bathing skin?

How can wind bathe anything?

And: Gripping a sword hilt?

No.

You know better. The hilt is the handle plus the guard plus any ornamentation.

You grip the handle .

And you have the rain speaking.

If you get it wrong, you’re going to hear about it!

Then her thoughts slipped from her fantasy world to return to the present.

Arana Braveblade could, with the right spells, and the right tweaking of her plot, resurrect the Blue Strayer.

But could she save Big Blue, her beloved Camaro?

She guessed that was impossible, with damage that bad, lying in the bottom of a gulley filled with torrenting water.

She guessed her set of wheels was—to use a very un-Braveblade word—toast.

A burial by river.

Then she perked up. Hm, interesting idea. Like the Viking’s burial by sea. She jotted the words in her Idea notebook. Someone would be honored in a burial by river. Arana would lead the group in a heartfold she herself would write.

She now lifted her coldtorch—a Braveblade term, which translated here and now into a reading halogen attached to a USB battery pack—and shone it around her new home. It was a dingy cave that had once been the entrance to the shaft of the Good Luck and Fortune Mine, which closed in 1875. By then, according to the Olechu County website, it had been shut down after producing “untold” tons of silver and a slight bit of gold, though the big gold veins were farther south. The Good Luck was one of a dozen mines in and around Copper Peak. There had been some talk of turning them into tourist attractions but in reality this had no appeal whatsoever. It was nothing more than a thirty-by-thirty-foot damp chamber with a black and spooky shaft disappearing down into the heart of the earth. The shaft was grated off with chain-link.

Beside Fiona were two gym bags and a backpack, containing dry clothing and quick-mart provisions of the sort that Arana Braveblade, who lived in in the year 2243 A.E. in EverWorld, could not have imagined: jerky, cheese sticks, salt-and-vinegar potato chips, dried salami, saltines, Coke, Sprite.

Oh, and Hershey bars.

Some beer too. Which Arana did partake in, though it was forbidden by Thamann Hotaks for women to drink alcohol (even though he plied female visitors to his wing of the castle with tea he had secretly laced with Willing Nectar).

She had some first aid equipment too and she now sprayed some more Dermoplast on the cut on her forearm. The bleeding had stopped but the wound was open enough so that there was a brief sear of pain before the anesthetic part of the spray took hold.

She gasped briefly.

Feeling a chill, she opened one of the gym bags and pulled on another sweatshirt. UCLA.

This was not a school that meant anything to her—the institution itself, the team. But at the thought that she might just jump on an airplane and go visit the place—to attend a lecture or enroll in a course—she began to cry.

Possibility…

And then she froze.

A sound.

Which might be the grit of a footfall. She quickly extinguished the reading lamp, plunging the entire front of the mine into near darkness.

Please no…

For a moment, she was weak. For a moment she was the old Fiona Lavelle.

Then she thought: No way.

It was Arana Braveblade who picked up the five-pound rock. And rose.

One edge was jagged. It would easily cut flesh and crack open a skull.

She kneaded it in her hand.

As if she were gripping the handle of a Rendingsword.

Yes, definitely steps, getting closer.

Then she paused.

She took the reading light in her left hand and with the rock in the other she stepped a few feet closer to the entrance.

The light would blind him.

Could she actually strike him?

Fiona couldn’t.

But her hero could.

All in a day’s work for Arana Braveblade.

And so she could too.

Then she started at the sound of a man’s voice.

“Fiona? Hello. It’s all right. I’m a friendly.”

Something about that word, friendly , made her more comfortable than if he’d said “a friend,” because that would have been a lie. She had no friends here.

She was silent.

“I have a flashlight. I’m going to turn it on. But I won’t shine it in your face, just at my feet. I don’t want to fall, and my eyes aren’t accustomed to the dark. I don’t think you have a gun. Do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What kind is it?”

A pause. “All right I don’t have a gun. But I do have a big fucking rock.”

“I’m not a threat. I’m coming in now. Don’t hit me.”

A light came on and the beam swept across the floor and grew brighter as he approached.

Then he was inside. While he kept the beam at his feet, as promised, she turned the reading light on and hit him full in the face.

He was a handsome, athletic blond man in his thirties, with blue—now quickly blinking—eyes. Though his face was unthreatening, there was something ominous about his clothing—all dark. She gripped the rock more tightly.

“Fiona, my name is Colter Shaw.” He swung the beam over her nest—the bags and backpack and notebook and pens, the food and drinks. “I’m here to rescue you, though I have a feeling you don’t really need rescuing, now, do you?”