And it was working! First her feet inside her boots, then her legs, then her torso, and finally her arms, were dry, warm—she turned her attention to her pack, shoving the water ahead of a kind of barrier she created at her back. The pack got lighter and lighter as she squeezed the water out, and before too long, it was actually bearable to carry the lightened weight of it!
“Rena? Are you working magic?” Lorryn said, breaking her concentration.
She hesitated a moment. “Just a little,” she replied, meekly. “I was so cold and wet—I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” Her eyes opened wide with alarm. “They haven’t felt it, have they? I—”
“It’s all right,” Lorryn said quickly, pushing aside a heavy branch with his free hand. “I wasn’t sure you were working magic, it was that faint; I just felt it, and thought it might be them, looking for us. It stopped when I asked you about it.”
“You broke my concentration, so it must have been me you sensed,” she said with relief. “Oh, good. I was just so cold and wet, and I didn’t think it would do any harm to drive the water out of my clothes. You ought to do the same.”
“I can’t,” he said, in a very small voice.
She wasn’t certain she heard him right. “You can’t?” she replied, with astonishment. “But—you made the boat practically fly! And I’ve seen you do so many other things! How can you—”
‘They don’t teach boys to do small magics—or the ones they call ‘small’ magics,” he told her ruefully. “I’ll tell you what, though—when you’re soaking wet, those magics don’t seem small. I’d give anything for a pair of dry socks.”
She laughed; and was astonished to hear her own laughter. “Well, in that case, you can give me something to eat and find a place to rest, and I’ll see you get dry socks and dry everything else!”
He turned back to look at her, surprise warring in his face with amusement. “In that case, let me say that you are the most useful escape companion that anyone could ever ask for. Better even than a fully armed warrior—who would be just as helpless as me, and probably a lot more cross!”
Unspoken were other thoughts, which she knew he had even though he was too tactful to say anything. Like Myre, he’d been certain that she would be more of a hindrance than a help; a rock tied about his neck and slowing him down.
She didn’t mind now, though that would have hurt earlier. Now he knew better.
And so do I. And at that realization, her heart and spirits began to rise, just a little.
Lorryn found shelter under the wreck of a huge fallen tree. Tiny magics dried his clothing and pack, his bow and bowstring. Tiny magics dried the heaps of sodden leaves she piled up, so that they formed a warming cushion against the damp air and earth. Tiny magics kept the insects away, while Lorryn concentrated on searching the woods for hunters, both elven and animal.
Every exercise of her magics made her feel better. She was not as useless as Father had always claimed she was! She could think of solutions to some of their problems! Maybe she couldn’t make a boat speed down the river at a breakneck pace, but she could keep Lorryn from catching cold and maybe getting so sick, he wouldn’t be able to move! Elves didn’t get ill, at least not very often, but humans did all the time, so Lorryn probably would.
She held a bit of bread in her hand and nibbled it slowly. This was slave-bread, heavy and dark, and not the white bread eaten by the masters. Myre had said that was all to the good; she claimed that the slave-bread would make better field rations, that it was more nourishing, and that it would fill the stomach better. Maybe she was right; it certainly hadn’t taken much of it to satisfy the ache in Rena’s stomach, and she was finishing the piece Lorryn had broken off for her more out of sense of duty than out of hunger.
The thought of her former slave made her wince with guilt. Oh, Ancestors. Poor Myre. I hope they didn’t catch her. I hope if they did, she has the wit to claim we coerced her into following him. Surely Myre, so clever, so resourceful, could come up with a way to explain herself! Hadn’t she gotten herself out of every other predicament?
And surely, with two renegades to chase, her father’s men would never bother with a mere slave… surely, surely…
Lorryn opened his eyes. “I can’t find anything out here except a pair of alicorns,” he said, finally. ‘They’re young ones, so they shouldn’t give us any trouble as long as we stay downwind of them.”
“Alicorns?” she replied, her spirit shrinking a little again, despite her earlier burst of confidence. The stories she’d heard about how fierce the one-horned creatures were had given her nightmares, and the little tableau in the Portal-room in Lord Lyon’s manor had only reinforced those stories. “Aren’t they supposed to be able to pick up the least little bit of scent?”
“But they’re downwind of us,” he assured her, and yawned hugely. “And I—”
He yawned again, and Rena saw with concern how exhausted and strained he looked. Had he slept any more than she had? Probably not.
Probably not for days.
“Lorryn, we’re safe enough here for the moment, aren’t we?” she asked, and at his cautious nod, continued. “Well, why don’t you rest? You did all that magic—then we’ve been walking for leagues.”
He looked as if he would have liked to object, but a third yawn overcame him. “I can’t argue. We’re warm and dry, and there’s no place better to shelter than what we’ve got at the moment.”
“So rest,” she urged. “I can watch for trouble. I’ll wake you at the least little hint of it”
“I’ll just lean back and relax for a little,” he said, putting his pack behind him and suiting his actions to his words. “I won’t sleep, I’ll just rest a little.”
He closed his eyes, and as Rena had suspected, in a moment he was sound asleep.
She smiled, and shook her head. How could he have thought he could go on without a rest?
Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s getting one now.
She looked over their primitive shelter and took a mental inventory of the materials at hand. If he slept right up until nightfall, could she improvise a better shelter out of sticks and leaves? She’d done things with flowers before—why not with leaves?
Experimentally, she took a leaf and sculpted it, retaining its water-resistant qualities while she spun it out into something a bit flatter and bigger. She took a second leaf, did the same, then tried to see if she could make the two join together.
To her delight, she could!
I can make a whole canopy of this leaf stuff, then get ordinary leaves to stick to the outside so that this will look like a place that’s been covered with vines! she decided, enthusiastically. It will probably all wilt in a day or two, but by then, we’ll be gone!
She gathered more leaves and began making her green fabric of them, fitting leaf to leaf to make a waterproof seal, keeping her concentration narrowed in a way she had never been able to achieve when she was just flower-sculpting. She had so much of her mind fixed to the task in her hands, in fact, that she ignored everything else.
Right up until the moment that a twig snapped and she looked up into the mad orange eyes of a white alicorn.
It snorted at her, close enough for her to smell its hot breath. She froze, holding her own breath.
The long, spiral horn rising from the middle of its forehead kept catching her attention as the alicorn watched her. It gleamed softly, a mother-of-pearl shaft that started out as thick as her own slender wrist and tapered to a wickedly sharp point. The eyes, an odd burnt-orange color, like bittersweet berries, were huge, the pupils dilated. The head was fundamentally the same shape as that of a graceful, dainty horse, but the eyes took up most of the space where brains should have been. An overlong, supple neck led down to muscular shoulders; the forelegs ended in something that was part cloven hoof, and part claw. The hindquarters were as powerful as the forequarters, with feet that were more hoof-like. A long, flowing mane, tiny chin-tuft, and tufted tail completed the beast, with one small detail—
Which the alicorn displayed as it lifted its lip to sniff her scent. Inch-long fangs graced that dainty mouth, giving the true picture of the beast’s nature.
It was a killer. They all were. That was why the elves had given up the task of making them into beasts of burden or war-steeds.