“A deer would probably be enough,” Vivian said, “but I haven’t seen one nearby. The only things with suitable skin to do the job are you, me, and our foes.”
Olvir wrinkled his nose. “I’m all for being practical, but…”
“But. Besides, we don’t have time, even if I was willing to make the rest of this trip in part of an undead bearskin. I don’t think I actually left enough whole on the wizard.”
“Now that you mention it, no.” He picked up his sword from where it had fallen beside the Twisted, cleaned the blade, and sheathed it again. “The skin wouldn’t be undead.”
“I really doubt either of us can be sure of that.”
“Horrifyingly, a good point.”
“I do my best.”
“I’m usually very glad of it. Back on the horse, then?”
“Oh, don’t mention horses. I’d give my left hand for a good steady-paced gelding right now,” Vivian said.
“Your Order needs to give better lessons in bargaining,” Olvir joked as they started making their way toward the river again.
Vivian laughed. She didn’t have to force it, which rendered the whole fucking mess better and worse at once.
It was still easy to talk to him. That was the heart of the matter. He made her laugh, he made her think, he made her feel able to say whatever came to her mind—except on one topic. That subject meant every laugh came with a shadow of pain.
Possibility wasn’t certainty. But Vivian couldn’t let herself dwell on that either.No fear,Ulamir had said before.No hope. Only you and the stone.
Vivian strode down the trail beside Olvir and tried for that balance.
* * *
Olvir approached the riverbank with his sword drawn, and Vivian had Ulamir out and ready, but no shape came from beneath the trees to confront them. A few shining birds took off from the treetops, and an emerald-green squirrel with three tails ran a short distance away and stared at them reprovingly. That was all.
“If I had a hawk,” Vivian said, “or was a better aim with a stone…”
She didn’t sound too disappointed, though. Olvir didn’t feel much desire to hunt the little creature himself, as good as the notion of fresh meat sounded in the abstract. It was the first thing with a face they’d seen since they’d left the mountains. Given a couple of days, he was sure sentiment would have surrendered to hunger—it did easily with rabbits and deer—but when an animal was novel, he’d rather admire than hunt.
“Besides,” he said aloud, “I don’t know that what lives here is still safe for us to eat. Or ever was, come to think of that. It was the elder peoples who dwelled here, and at least the stonekin are harder to poison than we are.”
“And waterfolk can eat fish that’d make us turn purple and stop breathing,” Vivian replied. “We can’t afford to take chances, either. Not while we’re going toward the center.”
Her expression hardened as she spoke the last sentence. Olvir had a rough idea of her thoughts, a better one of her sorrow.
Ulamir spoke to her, though Olvir couldn’t hear the words themselves. The essence of what Vivian sent back was a resigned shrug.
“It’s too bad,” he said aloud. “Not about the little green beast—I don’t have the heart to kill that right now—but if there are creatures like it, there are probably nuts and fruit.”
In fact, silver apples, or silver fruit that resembled apples, grew on the white trees. Olvir’s mouth literally watered when he saw them. He remembered the crispest, ripest apple he’d ever bitten into, on an afternoon in high fall after a long session of sparring. Nothing but his mission could have kept him from stretching up and taking a few of the shining silver globes that hung close above his head.
He satisfied himself with washing in the river. That didn’t give him complete satisfaction either, since Olvir felt both horribly exposed without his armor, damaged as it was, and guilty about getting undead geisbar blood in the clear water. He still couldn’t deny the physical relief of getting that blood off his skin. It eased his spirit slightly, too, taking him a step further away from the darkness where the wizard had sent him.
Poram, he hoped, would understand, especially since they were at least trying to save His creation.
Not much human blood went into the water. Olvir was going to have some livid bruises on his arms and neck in a few hours, Vivian’s right side was already going dark red, but nothing had broken their bones, and very little had pierced their skin. The exception was Olvir’s chest, where his armor had twisted to cut him.
“It looks,” Vivian said, inspecting the wounds with a gentle thoroughness that would have been arousing if Olvir hadn’t been one large mass of aches, “as if somebody took a cheese grater to you.”
“Do you know how that looks?”
“I admit that I’m guessing. But it’s a reasonably educated guess.”
