Karis walks obediently at Ronan’s side through the cobblestoned streets, though his eyes still wander. The high eastern gate rises before them, an old stone archway carved as two trees bowing into each other. The stone boughs are ripe with fruit, and flowering vines crawl up the trunks. At the base of the gate, Karis sees familiar flashes of gold and sky blue.
Five paladins hold watch at the gate, including Dace and Annett, standing with the Marrick guards and looking out along both sides of the road. There’s only one squire with them, and Karis recognizes the dark ponytail and gangly height with a pang of hope—quickly chased away by worry.
Stazie scans the crowds with a pinched look on her tanned face. Even from this distance, she looks tired. She must be worried about him, Karis realizes with a lurch in his stomach. Instinct rises hot in his veins, urging him to wave his arms, catch her attention. But he remembers Ronan’s threat. He doesn’t even want random passersby to get hurt, much less Stazie.
With a lump in his throat, Karis tugs Ronan’s sleeve.
“Don’t try anything,” Ronan says.
Karis shakes his head and points towards the gate, hoping Ronan can read the warning in his expression. He doesn’t know the exact parameters of Ronan’s look-away spell, but Stazie knows him well enough that he thinks she might recognize him anyway, bespelled and disguised as he is. He tugs Ronan’s sleeve again and points south. There’s another exit from the city in that direction.
Ronan pauses and nods towards the gate. “Do you know them?”
Karis nods.
Ronan pats him on the shoulder, tightens his grip, and turns along another alleyway, heading north. Not to the gate ahead, and not to the gate Karis indicated. Karis looks over his shoulder, watching Stazie until she vanishes from sight. Relief eases the tension from his chest when they turn the corner, even though he’s basicallyhelpingRonan kidnap him at this point.
If Ronan really is keeping him alive for some mysterious reason, then Karis will have other opportunities to escape. But he refuses to put anyone else at risk.
***
Ronan never says where they’re going, and Karis can’t ask. A few hours’ journey finds them at a well-worn crossing in the middle of a thick forest, half-orange with the deepening autumn. At the center of the crossroads stands a statue as tall as the trees. Pale stone long smoothed by wind and rain, facing south, with a sword in one hand and a great, snarling wolf poised at his feet. Ka Dravos, god of war and single-minded duty.
Even erosion can’t conceal the tremendous mustache the ancient sculptor gave him. Karis asks silently,Is that accurate?
Vara’s laughter echoes and echoes.
Ronan drags him by the elbow into the forest. Karis still isn’t entirely used to the way Ronan touches him so casually. Outside of combat training, he rarely gets this close to others in the order. His magic sets him apart, as does the way the instructors clearly favor him. Everyone knows him, but nobody gets close.
And before he was forced—sorry, recruited—into the order a year ago, it’s not like he had many friends in town. Even his parents wanted little to do with him.
Ronan, though, has a way of always being present. He feels close even when they’re a room away from each other, even when they’re walking a few feet apart down the road. Like they’re always tied with a short length of rope, wrist to wrist. Karis really shouldn’t be as interested in that closeness as he is.
It’s good that he’s close,he justifies to himself.He’ll be easier to take advantage of.
Just out of sight of the road, they find a freestanding archway. Karis thinks it’s a pair of strange-colored trees at first, before he realizes it’s carved of stone. It looks like a smaller version of the stone gates of Marrick—stone trees curving together until their leaves meet overhead, bound by wild vines.
Ronan leans against one of the pillars. Karis walks away slowly, until he’s sure that Ronan’s allowing him to, and sits at the base of the other. Ronan watches the forest around them, and Karis watches Ronan.
The aging spell wore off an hour ago, and the blond hair on both of them an hour before that. After ten or twenty minutes of waiting, a tingling sensation rises in Karis’s throat. He coughs uncomfortably, holding his chest, but feels better after a moment. His throat clears. He thinks about how far the sun has moved since they left the basement in Marrick, and he calls out hoarsely, “Hey.”
Sure enough, the silencing spell is gone.
Ronan glances over with dark eyes. He looks like a statue himself, motionless in the scant light breaking through the canopy above. Maybe it’s because the hideous fake blond is gone, but his rugged features are even more compelling than usual.
Karis rubs his throat. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels like it should. “You rolled a five on that spell. Was that determining how many hours it would last?”
Ronan’s lips twitch close to a smile. “I’ll give you some free advice, kid. Just because you’ve figured something out, doesn’t mean you need to let everyone know about it.”
“I’m not a kid,” Karis snaps, and regrets it immediately. Just like there’s no way to sound drunker than to say you’re not drunk, there’s no way to sound younger than to say you’re not young. He expects Ronan to laugh at him; it would be well deserved.
But Ronan just says, gesturing upwards, “Do you know which god this archway honors?”
“Maiza?” The answer is obvious, anyway. Lord Maiza is the most popular god in this region of Charain, and his jurisdiction covers fields and orchards, growing things and celebration.
Ronan shakes his head. “The vines are wild, not tame. This was built to honor Edren.”
Startled, Karis gives the pillars a closer look. Age-mottled stone carved into tree and vine. Long uncared-for by the local people, the monument now belongs to the forest itself. Karis barely knows anything of the goddess Ronan named. Just a few lines in a book of foreign gods. They spent a week on the entire book during lessons in the Bright Cathedral. Edren the Wild. Forest witch, ruthless mother, slow devourer of the dead. “Isn’t Edren a god of Lyrisenia?”
