Firebrand

She shook her head and walked on, leaving Enver in the clearing. If she wanted to feel the sun on her shoulders, she had but to stand in the sun. Doing so, she thought, was safer than communing with forces beyond her ken, forces that might take an interest in her as others already had. She had no desire to invite new ones in.

Estral looked up from her journal as Karigan entered their camp. “Where did you go?”

“A walk.” Karigan tossed a piece of wood onto the campfire, which sent a galaxy of orange sparks hissing up into the branches of trees. She stood there, gazing into the flames. What had she sought when she followed Enver to the clearing? She had been curious, but there was more to it, like an itch she could not satisfy, and an emptiness of sorts. She was about that which was real and in front of her, what she could see and touch, not illusory phantasms of the air.

Enver returned shortly after her. With a sideways glance, she noted Estral looking back and forth between the two of them as if trying to figure out what it meant that they had both returned from the same place in the woods just moments apart. Karigan knew exactly what conclusion she would draw.

Enver halted a few yards from her. “Galadheon, it was not my intention to offend you.”

“I am not offended. I just don’t think that stuff is for me.” She could almost feel Estral dying to ask questions.

Enver took a step closer, and then a second. “The path of spirit is not for all. There have always been warriors who are of the physical world only. To travel the path is to divert their energies from the task at hand.”

Was he calling her a warrior? If so, she liked it.

“And yet,” he continued, “there are warriors who embrace the path, for it sharpens their focus, allows them to surpass ordinary skills. Your Black Shields were once of this nature.”

She turned to him in surprise. “What?”

He nodded. “It is so. The forms you learn as a swordmaster are not only moves you use to combat an opponent, but embodiments of focus, and communion with spirit, a joining of the inner and outer worlds.”

“How in the hells do you know this?”

“While at the castle, I had some conversations with the one called Fastion. He has an interest in history, particularly that of his vocation. Many Black Shield traditions are descended from such thought, not just the swordfighting. Alas, they have lost, through time, their spiritual connection.”

Fastion. Karigan sat hard on a stump. She was going to have to have a talk with Fastion. It made sense, the association between the forms and spirit, though clearly it was not taught as such. At least, not to first order swordmasters.

“There were various schools at one time that emphasized the connection between body and spirit,” Estral said, “but they faded from existence centuries ago.”

Karigan turned to face her. “You know about this, too?”

“Daughter of the Golden Guardian here, if you’ll recall, with access to all the histories.” She shrugged. “I just remember mentions of it, though. Nothing specific. Had I known you were interested, I could have done some research for you.”

“I don’t think I’m interested.” Karigan kind of was, but didn’t want to be.

“Hmm.” Enver gazed at her through the flames and smoke of the fire, then shook his head as though to himself. He strode to his tent.

Hmm, what? she wondered. Then she stood and headed for the tent she shared with Estral. She would forget all this stuff about aithen and aithen’a, spirit and animal guides. There was enough else in the world that was real and troubling to worry about without adding superstition into it.

• • •

The next day, with the sun shining brightly, all talk of spirit was far away and inconsequential. Before they left camp, Karigan pored over a map of the north she had brought along and tried to ascertain where they were so they did not end up blundering into Second Empire. However, because they were following Eletian ways, it was more difficult to pinpoint their specific location.

“Enver,” she said, “can you help me out here?”

He gazed over her shoulder, then peered into the sky as though making some mental calculation. Then he turned round, facing in each direction. She was beginning to get annoyed when finally he returned to her, peered thoughtfully at the map, and pointed.

“We shall be outside the Green Cloak by the end of the day.”

That meant they were indeed getting closer to the Lone Forest and Second Empire territory. The lumber camp Captain Treman had mentioned as a place in which Lord Fiori had expressed interest was not so far off. They would try to find it so she could satisfy Estral’s need to investigate for a sign of her father; then they’d launch into the more perilous part of their journey, following the Eletian ways that passed near the Lone Forest.

As she mounted Condor, she thought that if she were more attuned to the nonphysical world, she’d find that other forces were inevitably leading them to the Lone Forest. Her own inner voice was silently screaming against it.

PYRE OF THE DEAD

Karigan insisted on scouting ahead on foot, while Enver and Estral waited with the horses. She moved carefully through the woods, the ground half-frozen and half-sodden with slushy snowmelt. There were even a few early biters circling over puddles, too dull-witted and slow to be a bother.

The woods she traveled through, here on the northern edge of the Green Cloak, consisted not of evergreens, but the pale gray bark of younger deciduous trees, their fallen leaves decaying underfoot in the mud adding to the earthy, fecund scent of approaching spring. This patch of woods had been logged maybe some fifteen years ago, and it would be decades before the mighty pines and firs once more reigned over the land.