The Ritual (17 page)

Did he look after me? Did he curse me? I didn’t know, but I regretted my decision before I was even halfway up the wall. I dared not look back down though, not even when I reached my window and swung back in, and once I was inside I was immediately distracted by the dishevelled mop of black hair on my pillow.

“Godsdamnit, Shani, I told you to get rid of him before I got back,” I snapped, striding over and yanking at her foot through the blanket.

“Hmm? What?” she said sleepily, lifting her head and rubbing her eyes.

“What’s
he
still doing here?” I snarled, taking out my sexual frustration – especially annoying since it was self-inflicted – on the two of them. Mior had woken up as well, and raised an amused eyebrow at me.

“Oh, um, sorry, we fell asleep,” Shani said, stifling a yawn.

“Of course you did. I’d like to as well, so
out
.” My eyes were on Mior as I jerked my thumb at the door and he nodded affably, unperturbed. He looked at me for a moment, as if waiting for something, but when I continued to glare at him as I reached for my washcloth he shrugged, tossed the covers back and stepped out of bed, and my hand froze in mid-motion.

He was, of course, stark naked. I could have realised that, had I been thinking straight, in which case I would have turned around to give him some privacy. Now it was too late and I couldn’t look away, my eyes drifting past his wide shoulders, his lean chest, his sculpted abdomen, his shapely legs and – last but definitely not least – his well-hung masculinity.
Zash will look exactly like that
, it flashed through my head, and yet again I lamented my self-denial.

“Like what you see?” Mior drawled, startling me from my scrutiny and dragging my gaze away from his cock. His eyes were mocking, his mouth curled into a sarcastic smile, and right at that moment he looked so much like Zash that even I could barely tell the difference. He knew it too, was ful
ly aware who I was thinking of; his eyes told me as much.

In self defence I resorted to insult. “Yeah,” I sneered. “Is it glamoured?”

It did not have the intended effect; Mior just grinned. “One hundred percent authentic and natural, sweetheart,” he stated as he picked up his clothes. “Just ask your sister.”

“Oh, fuck off, Mior,” I muttered, dropping down at the table and starting to scrub at my face. I heard him open and close the door, then heard the door to the room he shared with Zash. There were a few heartbeats of silence before they both laughed, the sound crystal clear through the thin walls of the inn, and I knew they were laughing at me. I looked at Shani, but rather than the sympathy I had expected she gave me one icy glare, then yanked the covers over her head.

In a last spurt of frustrated fury I yanked off my boot, threw it against their wall as hard as I could, then dropped my head in my hands, suddenly feeling very, very alone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

With my recovery a tested fact, we started planning for the next item on our list, which was the wind sprite feather. Mior had heard that these were extremely fragile, so as with the dragon flame we needed a magical container to keep it safe.

A visit to Tizar’s midnight market allowed us to fence Count Mohander’s jewellery and replace our damaged clothing, but the container was so expensive that Zash and I had to burgle a few more places in order to obtain enough coin for it. The burglaries went well enough, but Zash didn’t repeat his demonstration of how seductive he could be, instead settling on bland congeniality. It was an impersonal if courteous approach, which was exactly what I needed if I wanted to be able to resist him, but I hated it nonetheless.

Once we had the container and enough supplies there was no need to remain in Tizar, so we left before we could get caught and made our way southeast, towards the Whistling Plains. The Plains were the only known habitat of wind sprites – magical creatures, humanoid, but only about two feet in length, which were said to move so fast that you could barely see them.

Our first night out from Tizar became our strategy session. The landscape was grassy and undulating, interspersed only sporadically with shrubs or copses, but we found a small spring with a wealth of wild sage bushes vying for its nurturing water, and set up camp next to it. The spring water was sweet, and the sage made a nice addition to the hare Mior had caught earlier in the day. Zash spitted it on a branch and occasionally poked it with a stick, and as we settled down with a mug of tea Mior gave his brother an expectant look. “So, any ideas on how we get one of these feathers then?”

Zash raked his hair out of his eyes before saying, “Quite frankly, I don’t have a clue. Any suggestions?”

“Mior, you said they’re fast. Any idea how intelligent they are?” I asked.

“I don’t think they’re too bright, but I’m not really sure,” Mior replied. “All I was told is that they’re fast and playful.”

“Playful how?” Shani asked.

“Apparently they seek out travellers and pelt them with stones, pull their hair or steal things if they’re light and not attached to anything.”

“Throwing stones and pulling hair? That sounds nasty rather than playful to me,” I commented.

Mior shrugged. “That’s what I’ve heard from one person. There aren’t many people who know much, to be honest. The Whistling Plains are too far out of everyone’s way to attract many travellers.”

“It doesn’t get us anywhere to speculate about their behaviour,” Zash said. “I want ideas on how to catch them.”

“That’s what I was trying to get at,” I snapped. “I wondered if we could use illusions to lure them, like we did with the dragon.”

“Doesn’t sound like they need luring,” Shani said. “Could we catch them with a net?”

“If they’re as fast as I’ve heard they are, I doubt it,” Mior replied.

“So what other options do we have?” I asked.

“Magic?” Zash said, looking at his brother.

“That might be possible. We could try to catch them with a binding ward maybe,” Mior conceded, cocking his head at Shani. “What do you think?”

She tapped her lips with a finger. “Well, we can aim them wherever we want at least, and you managed to catch that hare with one. I can’t really think of anything else that might work other than trying to put them to sleep.”

Mior shook his head. “They’re magical creatures. Totally immune to sleep spells.”

Shani shrugged. “So binding wards it is then.”

“
And how does that work?” I asked.

“A binding ward is a floating ward rather than a barrier one, which is fixed,” Mior said. “So rather than placing it somewhere where it stops someone from moving past it, I can aim it at something that’s moving, like that hare, and capture it with it.”

I nodded. “So how fast can you do that, and how well can you aim? Wind sprites are fast, right?”

“Well… honestly? I don’t know,” Mior admitted.

“I reckon you need to practice, both of you,” Zash said, picking up a stone from the edge of the spring about the size of the palm of his hand. He hefted it, and Mior stood up and moved aside a little.

“Go on, throw it,” he said.

Zash tossed it up two times, then suddenly hurled it towards Mior, though he aimed it to the right of him. Mior reacted quickly and cast his ward at it, but he was not quick enough, and the stone sailed past him.

“Do you want to give it a go as well?” Zash asked Shani, picking up another stone, and she nodded and stood up too. Her effort failed as well, and Zash sighed as they both sat down again. “Not a very heartening effort,” he said, picking up his stick to poke the hare again.

“Come on, they only tried once!” I said. “Unless you can think of a better way of doing this, all they need to do is practice.”

He was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I think it’s our best option, so yes, you’ll need to practice.”

“No time like the present,” Mior said laconically. “That hare will be a while yet, right?” At Zash’s nod he stood back up and began searching around our campsite. “Let’s find stuff to throw then; you two can chuck it at us.”

And with that the matter was settled and our days lapsed back into routine. We travelled from daybreak to around late afternoon, at which point we would set up camp, and Shani and Mior spent the remainder of the day in training, until they were too tired to keep it up anymore. In addition to Zash and I throwing stones, pine cones and other small items at them, they both also tried to catch any small animal we happened to come across, including birds. It meant we ate well, since Mior especially seemed to have a good aim, and our travel rations remained untouched.

It took us around two weeks to travel to the Whistling Plains. The landscape remained the same throughout – open, grassy hills with the odd village scattered around. The people made their living from herding goats and sheep, or some had painstakingly ploughed over a small field to plant vegetables, and they all greeted us with detached curiosity rather than ignoring us like we were used to. On this side of the Whitecaps and outside the towns Arlis was little more than a name, and it seemed that half-elves had a lot more freedom. No one batted an eyelid at our full purses, and none of the inns refused us entry, though only a few of the villages we encountered were big enough to even have an inn.

The weather turned warmer, both because summer was approaching and because we were travelling south, and Shani and I removed the detachable sleeves from our tunics. On hot days the men dispensed with a shirt altogether and tantalised me with the view of their muscular torsos, which were slowly burnishing to a muted bronze. Zash often caught me looking but showed no reaction, and I did not bother to hide my interest. By now it was hardly a secret that I was attracted to him but determined not to give in to it, and he made no further effort to change my mind.

Then, mid-morning on a simmering day, we knew we had reached the edge of the Whistling Plains. From where we stood the landscape sloped sharply for around twenty yards, after which it vanished into the hazy distance in a set of level terraces which gradually dropped lower and lower, like a giant shallow staircase. The terraces were dotted with strange-looking stone columns, wide at the top and tapering to a narrow base, and eroded into round, horizontal bands by the ever-present wind. Even with the bright sunlight and with the gently waving brownish green sedge grass that covered the ground it was an eerie landscape, and we could hear the whistling noise the wind made around the pillars, which gave the Plains their name.

We had to travel along the edge for a while before we found a path down into the depths, and once we were on the Plains proper we picked the nearest pillar and camped in its shade, settling down to discuss further tactics.

“I don’t think there’s any point in you two coming with us,” Mior said, idly playing with the tip of Shani’s braid. He was propped up against the rock and she lay on her back in the grass with her head in his lap, both of them looking annoyingly happy and relaxed.

“I agree,” Shani said. “There’s nothing you could do to help us. I’d imagine the more people there are, the fewer wind sprites we’ll see.”

“I thought they were playful? Or nasty, or whatever?” I countered. “Shouldn’t we come along as bait maybe? If they’re busy teasing us then they might be easier to catch.”

Shani and Mior exchanged a look, and Mior shook his head. “That’ll be just as easy with only the two of us, and if you two come along as well I’m sure you’d just get in the way.”

“Right, that’s settled then,” Zash said with finality. “You two go off sprite hunting and we’ll stay at camp.”

“How far do you need to go anyway?” I asked, chagrined. I had barely exchanged two words a day with Zash in the past week, and unlike back in the mountains
, this time I was not looking forward at all to spending entire days alone with him.

“Yeah, how far
do
we need to go?” Shani asked. “We’re on the Whistling Plains now, but I’ve not seen any sprites yet.”

“Further in,” Mior said, pointing towards where the landscape dropped down. “By all accounts they live right in the middle. There’s a little lake there, I think.”

“We should make our base camp further in,” Zash said thoughtfully. “I think the Plains are about three days’ walk across. If we travel inward for another day then that should bring us close enough for you two to go out, do your business and travel back to us within a day, but far enough that we won’t be within their reach to be troubled. Given the fact that you can’t go hunting for more than one or two measures at a time before being exhausted, that should work.”

Much as I would have liked to, I could think of no further arguments against this, so with ill grace I began to gather rocks and clods of earth for that evening’s training session. Shani and Mior had come a long way in two weeks and now managed to catch around four out of every five objects thrown at them, but objects weren’t sprites, and I had no illusions about the amount of days I was likely to spend with no one but Zash for company.

*   *   *   *   *

After a light breakfast the next morning we set off again, and I watched with interest as the plains dipped down further and the stone columns became taller. It looked as if their flattened tops were all on the same level, regardless of what terrace they were on, and I wondered what could have caused a landscape this strange.

Unfortunately there was little else of interest to see, and the incessant whistling began to wear on us, not to mention the wind which whipped in our faces one moment and blew us forward the next. By the time the sun was high in the sky we were all irritable, though we didn’t fully realise it until Shani and Mior nearly came to blows over some trivial matter. They made up again quickly, but it made me aware of the fact that I had been uncommonly annoyed by Zash today, and that his only comments to anyone so far had been sarcastic to the point of scathing. Mior tried to lighten the mood and drown out the noise by singing bawdy songs at the top of his voice, but his repertoire was limited, and when Zash threatened to stuff his shirt down his throat he subsided back into silence. I was glad of it too – if Zash hadn’t threatened him I knew that I would have.

To everyone’s relief we found an extra
thick pillar to camp by. Whether it was simply too big to cause any whistling I did not know, but in its lee the wind dropped to almost nothing, and it was quiet enough that we could hear the other sounds which before had been inaudible – crickets in the grass, the song of a skylark spiralling into the sky in the distance and the rustling of the tall stems as we trod them down to make our camp site. Zash gathered an armful of stones from around the bottom of the pillar and used them to line our campfire, and I had to scout around for half a measure before I found a small copse that yielded enough branches to use as fuel.

Shani and Mior set off early the next morning, but the awkward day I expected to spend in Zash’s company never happened.

“I’m going to have a wander around, see if I can find more fuel for the fire, or maybe some fresh meat,” he announced almost as soon as our siblings were out of earshot, and I frowned at him.

“You’re going to catch something with your bare hands then?” I asked sarcastically.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Mior isn’t the only one who can catch hares,” he replied, his voice bland. “And who knows? I might find a creek and see if I can tickle out some fish.”

I watched with relief as he set off, briskly striding away on the level, parallel with the nearest drop down, and I was left alone, without a worry about whether he would annoy, entice or ignore me.

By the time it got to noon I had changed my mind and would have welcomed just about any attitude he could throw at me, as long as it gave me something to do. I had tried to climb our pillar, but got no further than the point where it started to flare outwards before I lost my grip and tumbled back down. Instead I walked around it about five times, even though there was nothing of interest to be found underneath it.

Next I had meticulously rearranged the ring of stones around our campfire, and getting them to fit against each other better had taken up around a measure of my time. Going around our campsite and flattening every recalcitrant blade of grass took care of another measure, but by then I was so bored that I wanted to scream. In the end I tried to take a nap, but all that it accomplished was to make me feel sweaty and sticky, and my mouth tasted like I’d been chewing sand in my sleep.