Jarek the Vexed's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Jarek stood by the bone horse and watched the sky. The light was already going gray. Syrae wanted the manor by nightfall. But the trail the grave-witch left pointed the other way, toward the deep water, where the oldest spirits waited. Those were the ones he needed. He could not reach the deep water and the manor both before dark. The fen was too wide to cross twice. "You're thinking," Syrae said. She had followed him from the last binding, two crossbows loose in her hands. She was the dark elf who held his debt, the one whose bolt had kept the wild spirit off his skin. "Thinking wastes light. We go to the manor." "The relic isn't why I came here," Jarek said. He kept his voice flat, so the caged warlord in his chest would not catch it. "The spirits are that way." He pointed at the deep water. Syrae did not turn her head. "I don't care why you came. You owe me a manor. Tonight." She named the debt plain, then stopped. Jarek looked at the horse. It had risen from the muck, bound to iron, and it did not tire. It could cross deep water. It could carry weight through the manor's flooded halls. He had thought of it as a mount for the hunt. Now he saw another use. "Ride it," he said. Syrae's black eyes moved to him. "To the manor," Jarek said. "You know what the relic looks like. I don't. I searched that place once and found nothing. You'll find it faster than I would. The horse carries you there and back before dark." He held the reins out. "I go the other way, on foot, for the spirits." She studied the horse. Its red eyes burned. Strips of hide hung off bare rib. Most people would not touch it. Syrae stepped close and took the reins from his gauntlet. "You send me alone," she said. "With your dead horse. To do your errand." "You want the relic. I want the spirits. This gets us both by dark." She swung up onto the bone horse. It held her weight without a sound. "If the manor takes me and you run," she said, "I find you. I don't stop moving." She turned the horse toward the far spires and rode. Jarek watched the red eyes shrink into the dusk. Then he turned to the deep water and walked. His iron rods hung at his belt. His salt pouch swung against his hip. He had traded his mount to buy this crossing, and now he had no fast way back. The ground grew softer under his boots. The reeds thickened. Somewhere ahead, in the black water, the old spirits waited, and their names were not on any grave marker he had found yet. He would need them before Syrae returned.