She was floating. Rose wasn’t a strong swimmer even before the chair. People always said that everyone floated, but she’d always found that where she floated was about four inches below where the air was, so this was never useful information for her. But now she could tell she was doing it. It took her a moment to make sense of it. She was floating in …. water, presumably. Above her was stone lit by a warm glow. She blinked several times, slowly. Her ears were under the water, so she heard very little. Her breathing. The beating of her heart. A faint tinkling of the water moving. She ached, but not as much as she’d expected. This whole thing seemed like Emrys’ doing. She wanted to move, but at the same time, she was comfortable and calm and once she got up, it would all start again. She allowed herself a few long breaths. An indulgence that even her teacher would have approved of. Sage. Why couldn’t she remember it before? Had he really taken her memories?
The smell of cooking is what did it. She still didn’t want to rouse, but her stomach was a different story. Whatever was roasting smelled great. Root vegetables, maybe? Rose let one of her hands seek downward and found that the floor was only a few inches below her. Bending broke the spell of whatever had her floating and she made a splash as she sat up.
They were in a cave of some sort. There was a low fire smoldering and Emrys seemed to be managing sticks that had roots of some sort. They were sticking up out of the ground but seemed in there solidly. Emrys was clean, at least, and wearing some sort of robe through which Rose could see a bloody bandage around his middle where the beast had bit him. He grinned when he heard her moving, as if he’d been expecting it. “Good morning, my friend.” He gestured to a lumpy rock near the fire, but Rose took her time getting there. She was still wet and feeling stiff. She noticed that her chair was near the fire, but at the moment she was pleased not to be in it. She inspected herself, instead.
Her hands were tender, but fine, despite what she was sure was a battering they had taken getting around the dwarven village and the road. She hadn’t really been wounded in the same way as her friends, though she did spy a bandage on her own right thigh. She worried over it for a bit. She didn’t exactly have no feeling there, but she had the next closest thing to it and she had been warned by several physicians to take care of wounds there carefully, because she’d never feel something like infection setting it until it was too late. It seemed to have been tended to, though. Her face was clean. All of her was clean. She was in a new set of clothes, in fact. Casting about, she saw a few wooden pegs in the wall nearest the fire with clothing, hers included, hanging to dry. Eventually she scooted herself toward the fire and up onto the rock that Emrys had indicated and started the very pleasant process of using the fire’s heat to dry herself off. The water hadn’t been cold, but neither had it seemed warm. It hadn’t seemed like anything. This, however, was divine. Eventually she made herself speak. “I’m sorry.”
Emrys seemed tense. It was clear that he had been crying. Not recently, but his eyes were still tender and pink. “It wasn’t -”
“Yes it was!” Rose choked. She wouldn’t start sobbing this soon after waking up. But Decima had – fucking selfish woman. Rose chided herself. She was not selfish, she died for you you stupid fucking child.
Emrys, for his part, had not been doing nothing all these weeks. He’d clearly been learning about Rose because he waited just long enough, somehow. And then he handed Rose a stick with a dark root on it. “ I have roasted these roots for us, which the spirits swear to me are a very common food here. They smell something like turnips.”
Rose took it without much enthusiasm saying, “Yams, I think.” She started absently peeling it to give herself something to do. “Never seen them purple before.” She took a small bite and for a moment forgot entirely about how sorry she was feeling for herself, because it was probably the best yam she’d ever had. “Fuck, that’s good!”
Emrys smiled at this. “I will save you time by answering as many questions as I can at once. We ran. I don’t know what happened to Decima, but she was still fighting the last I could hear. I have …. I have some small hope.” His breath caught. Couldn’t have been that long, then. Fresh concern. His hope was mostly imaginary, but if it kept him going… “Once I could tell that we were safe I had a spirit find us this cave and open a path. There is a tiny hole to allow for air, but we are safe. Unless I die suddenly, but I will try not to allow this.” The faintest of smiles. “At any rate, I called up my friend there,” he indicated the water, which was …. was it moving? Yes, it was definitely curling in on itself now. Oh, gods. “She kept you safe and clean and as comfortable as possible. I wasn’t sure what sort of damage you had done to yourself. I have never seen you strain yourself so hard and honestly, I didn’t even think you were aware you were doing it. I was very worried.” He sighed. “But that is done and now, I am worried for Decima as well. But I will not insult her brave choice by saying it was your fault. She is her own woman, and she made her own choice. We would not have gotten away without her and we would not now be in a position to go after the man and try to save your sister.”
She looked away. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have made it out of there without you.”
Emrys was quiet. All he said was, “Yes,” but he said it like it was embarrassing.
They ate. She wasn’t sure if that was hunger talking or if they were really just the best of all possible yams, but Rose chose to believe the latter. “Any idea where we are in relation to this temple?”
Emrys chewed for a bit. He even took an extra bite to give himself time to think. Then finally, he nodded his head. “A bit, yes. I have been thinking about the whole thing. Your man will want to perform his … ritual,” he said, avoiding the word sacrifice, “at night. I am guessing he will want to do it in two nights. The moon will be gone from the sky and the stars of death will be right overhead. As good a time as any. And at night. That is when such magic works best. The spirits here don’t seem to be aware of such a place, but I also have noticed that they are getting a little sparse. The scouts I have sent out are avoiding certain paths. My guess is that the place they will not or cannot go is where we will need to go. Which is good, because it gives us a path, but also -” he hesitated, looking a bit embarrassed.
“But also you won’t have much firepower if there aren’t any spirits there.” His look confirmed it. Ahh well. She’d been willing to do it alone when she started. “Hey, look. You never promised to take me inside.”
“I most certainly did. I promised to protect you in exchange for access to the dwarves’ sepulcher. And even if I had not, you must know by now that I would not let you go in alone.” He almost seemed hurt.
Rose couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah, okay, fine, but what now? No spirits, right?”
Erys looked awkward. “Well … one. I can bind a spirit to myself before we go in. I will anchor it, but I won’t be able to summon any more. It will just be what that spirit can provide. So we had better find a good one. Also, I will be fairly limited in my reach. I am used to working magic through my necklace, but it was left on Decima’s arm. I do not know that there is anything here that I understand well enough to use as a channel for my magic.”
Rose nodded and finished her yam and then another. She was hungry, but not thirsty, and she tried very hard not to think about why that might be. Instead she said, “I think I figured out what the beasts were doing. Their talent. They were sort of hopping back a second or so in time without moving. So it looked to us like they were vanishing and then popping up somewhere else, but that’s because we didn’t see a few seconds ago when they started moving. They get to try again. I’m pretty sure I can do it if I practice.”
Emrys frowned. “Is that safe? You pushed yourself quite thoroughly.”
Rose shrugged. “I’m fine, I think. But also …. it could be huge. I mean, I have been so worried that once we get there, I’d make the wrong choice. That I’d miss or say the wrong thing, but if I had that sort of power, I could have a second chance! It could be the thing that saves my sister.” She looked at him for a reaction.
“I assume that is Hester?”
Rose’s jaw fell open. “Holy shit, how -”
“You talked quite a bit on the way here. You weren’t really awake, but you weren’t really asleep either. Or, maybe only part of you was. At any rate, I think I have pieced together what you realized about the hostage back in the village. Though, I admit, I have no idea how that happened.”
Rose didn’t either. “I know my informant saw my mom with him. Only thing I can think is maybe she talked him into a trade. It’s the sort of thing my mother would do.”
Emrys frowned. “She sounds like a lovely woman.”
“That’s why I need practice. You think you can summon some spirits for me to practice on?”
The frown deepened. “Rose, I have come to think of you as a friend, but you must understand that these spirits are like …. in many ways they are like children. I cannot conjure them just so that you can practice …” he gestured wildly, seemingly unable to conjure the right words.
“No, not like that. I mean, yes, I could do that, but I was thinking something less lethal. Maybe target practice or maybe I can dodge them. They don’t have to try to hurt me for it to work.”
“Oh.” Emrys seemed like a weight had been lifted from him. “I never …. I’m sorry, I suppose I never considered that. These past few weeks have been very difficult for me and I have, it seems, forgotten that not every interaction needs to be violent. I have shamed myself.”
“Don’t sweat it. Happens to the best of us.” Rose rotated herself a bit to get some heat and dryness on her bottom. She couldn’t feel the heat anywhere below the hips, but somehow she could tell when she had gooseflesh there. Weirdest feeling. But the heat would relax the muscles and make cramps and phantom pain less likely. She took the time to give herself some light massage. “So, any idea what time it is?”
“Just past midnight, I think. Now that you’re awake, I’m going to take a nap. We should get moving at sunrise, no?”
Rose had been hoping to get moving sooner, but Emrys probably hadn’t rested at all since he saved her life. Least she could do. “Sounds good. I’ll keep an eye on your … umm …. friends?”
But what she really did was work on the new talent she had seen. She tossed a burned piece of yam-end at a spot on the wall and whenever she missed she would push herself. Again. There was something there, but she didn’t manage even a single success by the time Emrys woke up, around an hour after sunrise. The fire wasn’t burning any lower by then and she was starting to wonder just how many elementals he’d pulled together. But it was less of a concern once they elementals were dismissed and the camp was broken down they found themselves back on the road. Rose was already dealing with a bit of strain just from the failed attempts, but that was how she knew she was getting close.
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