Sylvara Thornwhisper's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Fennel bound the hunter's wrists with a strip of harness leather and tied a second loop from the wrists to his own belt. The knot sat between them like a leash. Sylvara watched from the tavern step. The road west ran straight and open. Anyone on it would see three travelers and a bound man, and any bound man could shout. "He can't walk the road like that," she said. "One rider comes past, one farmer, and he calls for help. Word runs faster than we do." Fennel showed his teeth. "Gag him." "He'll work a gag loose in an hour. And a gagged man on a leash brings its own trouble." She looked at the hunter. He watched her back, patient. He knew what she knew. He only had to survive to the next stranger. Lavinia trotted out from behind the tavern, her odd rose fur catching the last light. A pale bloom sat behind her ear. She led them off the road, down a slope of wet grass, to a stone-rimmed pool she seemed to already know. Koi moved under the surface in slow bands of orange and white and blue. On a flat rock at the far edge sat a frog the size of a hound, pink as a tongue, blinking at them. "Why here," Sylvara said. "Because the frog owes me a favor," Lavinia said, "and the fish keep secrets." Sylvara knelt at the water. She had almost no magic left, but the pool held its own. She pulled the fox's rose from her collar and dipped the stem. The petals darkened. She spoke the hunter's name into the water, then the shape of what she needed: sleep, and silence, until the tower. The frog opened its mouth. A single clear note came out, low and wet. The koi turned as one. The hunter's knees gave. Fennel caught him under the arms before his head hit stone. "How long," Fennel said. "Two days. Maybe three." Lavinia's tail flicked. "He won't speak. He won't wake to shout. He'll walk if you lead him, and he'll stop if you stop." Sylvara pressed her palm to the hunter's cheek. His breath was even. His eyes were open, but nothing sat behind them. She felt the cost land in her own chest, a hollow under the ribs where her flight-magic used to live. She had spent almost all of it. "He rides," Fennel said, and lifted the man across his shoulders like a sack. Sylvara stood. The tower was still a day west. She had a silent prisoner, a fox with a curse on her sight, a child who could stop a charge with a hum, and a beast who would carry a grown man without a word. She had less magic than when she left home. She stepped back onto the road.