Decima Cordia, former prefect of the 44th Thessali Legion was the first thing that Rose could focus on when she woke. She was standing with her blade out casting her eyes about trying to look at Rose and the darkness around their little campsite at the same time. They’d been on the road for six days and seen only seven other living beings since Opal’s hut. None of them were over fifty summers or under fifteen. All of them were dirty and all but one lived in one farmhouse.
That had been yesterday and as Rose started to draw her focus back into the real world and away from her nightmare, she realized that it must have been that farmhouse that caused the dream. Being there among the dirty human family and their goat that lived indoors had reminded her too much of home. Still, if she never heard her sister speak in Opal’s voice again, that would be just dandy.
“It’s all right,” she managed to get out after a moment. “No trouble. Not real trouble, anyway. Just my stupid head.” She looked about the camp a bit. Emrys was still snoring, softly rolled in in the thick blanket that Opal had forced him to take. Was he always such a deep sleeper, or was he more comfortable now that Decima was with them? He’d stopped making so many caves for camping now, though he’d done one once during a nasty storm. Then again, it was also warmer at night. Maybe he just wanted to spare his magic. At least he’d gotten over some of his fear of Opal in time to have a rowdy argument with her about spirits before they left. Rose figured it would come to blows, but they both seemed pretty happy with the outcome and he’d been scribbling little notes about it ever since. Rose understood none of it.
Decima crouched down by her. Her soft face, a sharp contrast to the rest of her which was hard as stone, reflected firelight. “Nightmares are caused by the black moon. Did you know?” She reached out and pointed at a dark blobby spot in the sky. Rose knew about the black moon, of course. It was impossible to miss in the country on clear nights, though she’d always assumed that city folk couldn’t see it because of the torches. “It sheds no light that we can see, but its rays can be felt while we slumber. It’s because of the bugs that live up there.”
That part Rose had not heard. “Come off it, there’s no bugs that live up there.”
“There are. At the Collegium we have a huge glass that catches images. There’s little tunnels up there. That’s where the bugs live.”
“Wait. So you saw holes and just assumed there were bugs?”
Decima frowned. “Well – not me. But the scholars there seemed very certain.” Decima, on the other hand, was clearly less certain now. “Anyway, now that you’re up, you need to make? Time for your watch and I’d rather you went as far away as possible. I can carry you over to the hole I used. It’s nice and deep.”
“Why not.” Rose had hated this the first time she’d been asked, but Decima was right, it was simpler than having to get herself situated in the chair only to get back out of it and then back in again and then out by the fire. Made no sense. So Rose let Decima raise her up and walk her to the hill. The Thessalani woman might not be large or powerfully built, but she was stronger than she looked. She might have been the strongest person Rose had ever met. She could probably have carried her IN the chair. Possibly with Emrys in there, too. Those corded arms growing fresh muscles that Rose had never even seen before. And after two days, true to the witch’s word, her leg was good as new. Maybe better, for all Rose knew. But still she did exercise every morning as if she were afraid it would come off. So much exercise. Rose had thought that her teacher had been strict, but if Decima was any indication, then the Thessalin Legion made him look like a pushover.
By the time Rose was settled in by the fire and Decima was asleep – which, Rose swore, took almost no time at all – she had shaken off the worst of the dream. The night was actually nice. The sky was dark. The black moon – Rose couldn’t help but notice it now that Decima had pointed it out – floated in the sky. It was opposite the sky from the silver moon, which was a bare crescent, the rest of it having been eaten. It would be back whole again soon enough, as it always was. The sun moon was high in the sky as well, yellow and sleepy looking. And of course, beyond them both, in the firmament of the sky, the stars twinkled and shone: the homes of the countless and nameless gods. Those thousand gods of the north, those benevolent gods of the east, the slow gods of the west and, of course, the infamous mad gods of the south. Rose wasn’t ever sure if she thought that was meant to be literal. What would their houses be like? Why could we see their lights, but not their doors? Why did we never see those lights go out as one of them shuttered the windows so he could bone the Missus (or the Mister). She’d never thought about such things as a kid, but her sister had asked about it once while they were laying in a field in the late spring. The fireflies had just stopped flashing – for whatever reason fireflies flashed – and the moon had been all eaten and the sun moon was still not up and the night sky had been as dark as it was ever going to get and the stars lit the sky like the fires of thousands of distant shepherds.
Hester had asked her what they were, so she told them. “They’re the lights from the houses of the nameless gods, of course.” Everyone knew that. But Hester hadn’t accepted that, as she so often had not. “Why do we have to milk the cow? Why do we eat what comes out of the chickens but not what comes out of the pigs? If those are the lights of their houses, why do they never go out?” It hadn’t been that clever a question, because their own lights were out at that point. They’d let the fire die down in the hearth on purpose and shuttered the windows against the candles so they could see better.
Rose had tried to answer, of course, because she’d been fifteen and Hester had been seven and that’s what you did, but her answers had sucked. And Hester had noticed that her answers had sucked. And eventually she’d been forced to say, “Fuck if I know, kid.” Hester had giggled about her curse. It was funny till she’d repeated it in front of their mother the next day and Rose had taken a hell of a beating.
Rose thought maybe she heard something in the darkness a ways out from their small campfire. This happened several times each night lately. It was never anything. Once it had been a mountain rat, but most nights it was Rose’s imagination creating something from nothing. She had the sort of mind that got bored with a quiet night with a crackling fire and her own morbid memories to fill her time. But she drew her focus anyway and sent cones of light out from her eyes and into the night, more because she needed the practice than anything.
Which is why it was so deeply weird when what she saw was the terrified and shocked face of someone leaning against a large rock – a shape that she had previously thought was just part of the rock. He was a human man wearing roughs with some padding around the shoulders. There was a sort of orangish mask that was designed to cover the face hanging around his upper chest. In the moment that the two of them looked at one another – rather she looked at him, he was only seeing a bright light – he reached for it and pulled it up over his face. It was the sort of action one takes when they aren’t thinking.
Rose, for her part, was thinking. “Attack!” She yelled at the top of her voice and then did something deeply stupid. She knew, without thinking, that the moment she lost the cones of light from her eyes, she would no longer be able to see this man clearly. Even now he was recovering and reaching for a cudgel. But he would still be able to see her. Right now she was just a bright light source. He probably assumed she was a bullseye lantern or something. So she needed to blast him now while she could see him. But first principles were that this was impossible. Her talent took focus. As long as she could retain her concentration, she could keep the lights up. And blasting him would also require all her focus. She’d have to open her third eye for fuck’s sake.
Fuck it. She tried anyway. She kept focusing on the lights, thought a quick prayer to the Easties because no time for the West, and also began to draw the attention of her third eye into the center of his face, until it started to come into focus as a purple blob. The eye started to creep open. Then there was a terrible pain that shook her whole being. The cones of light became a lavender that pushed faintly upon the sand around the man, but he seemed unaffected. The pain moved from her body and snapped in place in her face, settling into her eyes and everything went black. She was so dizzy that she could no longer tell if she was sitting up by the fire or laying face down in the grit. The world spun and if she could see the sky, she was sure the stars would have been spinning to match. She guessed those benevolent gods really did sleep sometimes.
There was a jerking at the left hip, what the hell was that? Was someone pulling on her leg? She tasted stone and grit and sand. There was noise all around her, but none of it settled into her mind. Cries or screams or words or a thunderstorm. It was all the same. It sounded like being underwater while someone else tried to get out of the bath.
Rose knew she needed to get her shit together. She was in real danger here. She’d taken a gamble with her strain and it came up rabbit eyes. But her life had been nothing but learning to focus for the last year at least. She could hear the smug gravely voice of her teacher as if he were there, which was how she could tell that he wasn’t there. All she could hear from the actual world was mush. “Your training will be over when you do not need me anymore. You must be enough.” He was right. Everyone else was asleep and that man by the rock probably wasn’t alone. Get up. Get the fuck up, Rose.
One deep breath was almost enough, but as she took it something landed on her lower body, she estimated under the knee but it was hard to tell, and while that didn’t hurt it did slow her down. But the second breath did it. She pushed down some of the strain. It still sucked. She still hurt. But it was now a physical problem, not a mental problem. The world came into focus and drew the double vision into single vision. What had landed on her had been a dwarf. A rougher and browner dwarf. He wasn’t dressed as completely as the human had been, but he was dressed to help him blend. He had been carrying a club – thicker than the cudgel, but it was laying on the ground now as he tried to get himself upright. Rose wasn’t sure why he was laying on her, maybe he’d tripped? But there was no sense in taking chances. She drew together what focus she had and released a blast. It hit him squarely. The violet light was a little muddled. Clearly her third eye – which was not really even an eye – was still muddled with blood. But it worked. It slammed into his jaw and took him down. If he’d been human it probably would have broken his jaw, but even Rose, having grown up as a farm girl in the middle of nowhere, knew that dwarf bones didn’t break like human bones.
She looked around. Her vision was still not working as well as she’d like. She could see the blurry fire she’d been sitting by, not moved very much, but it was also visible across camp. So good. Seeing double with distance. The tent – one of the many upgrades that came from camping with an experienced campaigner like Decima – was a blurry mess to her. She heard a voice near her and her ears were working much better than her eyes. “You okay?” came Decima’s voice, not rich at the moment, but forceful and direct.
“I’m fine, but not much use right now. Did they get Emrys?”
Decima’s voice was changing direction already, facing away. All she said was, “see for yourself.” Great. Really helpful. Rose rubbed at her eyes, but it wasn’t the eyes so much as the bits between them and her mind that were worn thin and she’d just have to wait for them to come back. Meantime she still had her ears and nose and …. what other senses were there? Taste? She hoped that wouldn’t come in handy.
She looked about. She was close to the blurry shape of the chair. She hadn’t been in it on watch, but it was still only a few feet away. Her talent was still alive and well, but she didn’t want to push her luck again if her life didn’t depend on it. No sense in winning if she wound up blind – or worse. She’d run out of sleeve tricks, so it was time for cushion tricks. Hauling herself into the seat was basically so practiced a move by now that she could do it even with iffy eyes. As she spun, she saw a movement coming toward her. The details weren’t too clear, but she could see the absurd orange color from that face wrap. Drawing forth trick number 2 from beneath her cushion, she hurled then in his direction. The projectiles came up short, landing on the ground between them.
Which was, of course, exactly where caltrops were supposed to go. Some people, if they knew to expect them, could power through. This guy wasn’t that sort of person. He was the sort of person that went down in an orange and brown mess immediately. Rose couldn’t make him out too well, but he clearly had fallen to his knees with a shout of surprise and then let out an even worse yell when his knees hit the ground (and presumably the caltrops now on it). The orange scarf was close now. Close enough that she reached back and gave the left hand hold on her chair a twist. With a swift motion she drew the baton inside from its sheath and brought it crashing down on the would-be-bandit. The first time she hit he grunted. The second time he made no sound save a thump. She hit him a third time just to be sure, but she aimed it at the ribs. She wasn’t a monster. She silently thanked Evan, the guy who had added that baton to the grip for her. “Told you so, Evan.”
<adhab lilmanzil>
At least Emrys and his wispy voice was nearby. The second fire seemed to be, inexplicably, getting closer to the first. As it drew closer Rose knew for sure that her eyes were fucked, because it was like five feet tall and walking. But sure as hell it walked right into the fire and settled down into it like it was getting ready for nappy time. “Are you well, Rose?” The voice was much closer now and with the fire doubled in brightness she could mostly make out Emrys checking her over.
“More or less, but I can’t see well, what’s going on?”
“Your vocalization roused us. Obviously Decima was faster to action than I was, but I managed a rudimentary summoning while she was busy beating up on the dwarf that beat you in the leg. My fire elemental friend dispatched one of the men and now Decima is, from the look of it, engaging their archer. I will attempt to summon an – “ He broke off as if he’d been slapped as a series of grunts came from up ahead.
“What?! What is it?”
“I do not know. I can’t see, it’s too dark. I don’t know which of them is standing. I saw … one of them is rather suddenly missing their …” He suddenly sounded much less confident. “Missing their head I think.”
Moments later, after Rose’s eyes had come mostly back into working order, Decima’s face came into focus walking into their firelight. She was bloody and looked hollow. She looked like she’d taken a beating. But she had her head in the traditional place atop her neck.
She also had another head. She was carrying it by the braided hair. It was a ghastly white and the expression was entirely slack. “Southern gods!” Rose was feeling rather pissed off that her eyes had chosen that moment to start working again. As she registered their faces and expressions, she cast the head aside. It seemed that she had mostly forgotten that she was holding it. It wasn’t until she came closer and started to wobble a bit that Rose could see the arrow sticking out of her chest.
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