Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

events in that hidden sepulcher were hazy to my mind when I pictured them, leading me too easily to believe them to interlinked dreams. Yet some pieces of definite sense-memory fell through the cracks. Then there was the frightful question of my missing time: subjective in the slash through my perception as I suddenly found myself flat on my back upon the rocks; and, more alarmingly, objective in the length of time I had been absent from my friends.

I had walked down that hill perhaps twenty minutes; chased the gimlet for five, and spoken with Gundrygia for surely no more than ten minutes more including the time I woke her. Branwen declared I had been gone an hour even before she and Indra set off to search for me—mean that, for almost an hour, I could not account for my own whereabouts.

The thought numbed me into a kind of maddening dread, as you may well imagine, but I suspected this amnesia was linked to whatever magic Gundrygia wove over me. Of course, I had no proof. No proof that she had enchanted me. No proof that she had even existed. I had no proof of anything at all, save for the mysterious taste of woman upon my lips—and, of course, my memory.

Ah! What good was memory to any but his master, Weltyr? He flew away just as soon as you set eyes on him. Memory served no purpose in matters of legal testimony, and in religious testimony it was even less useful without those accompanying miracles sent to us as signs of confirmation.

Rather than dwell on my memories of Gundrygia, therefore, I thought of her words. Of what she had teased me with. Knowledge about myself—knowledge about why she was there.

Pay attention. Pay close attention. Ask questions.

“Rorke.” Valeria drew me from my thoughts, her soft voice gilded with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Just feeling somewhat scattered after falling,” I said, adding truthfully, “and a bit embarrassed I let that little scoundrel make off with my torch for even a temporary span of time.”

“You’ve been off in your own thoughts longer than that, though.” Regarding me carefully, Valeria suggested, “I don’t know what it is, but you’ve seemed—different somehow since the bandits. Pensive, I suppose.”

“I’ll tell you about it when I’ve figured it out.” Owing to a reflexive glance toward the back of Branwen’s golden head, my attention was drawn eastward across the graying sky. I was seeing rather well: dawn was nearly upon us. “How are your eyes? It looks like Weltyr’s shown us his favor and sent a cloudy morning. We should be able to make it to Soot and get a roof over our heads before the sun breaks through, assuming it does. Cascadia is a notoriously overcast region.”

“That’s good…I’m not bothered yet. Frankly, I wouldn’t care if I were bothered. I want to watch the sun rise, oh—Rorke.” Her hand tightened around mine and she insisted, “I’ve never seen a thing like this. I wish I might do it with eyes that weren’t so sensitive.”

“We’ll find a solution,” I swore to her, my heart leaping as my sentence was punctuated by the cry of an early raven.

We were nearing the ground. I had endured a few hikes in my time, but of them all this had been by far the most arduous. The sentiment was likely held by my companions, who stumbled into Soot with me while its markets were still opening. There were therefore not many people to gawk at the paladin and his retinue of fine elves from both above and below Urde’s surface, but in a village the meager size of Soot, all it takes is one or two prying eyes to spread news like wildfire.

The innkeeper, for instance, had no discretion, but probably made his best living by being indiscreet unless paid. We knocked on the front door of his establishment, the tavern entry labeled with the name The Weeping Willow. I recall thinking it a dreary moniker for a place of relief and revelry when at last our knocking was answered, and the man—ruddy and mustached as I suspected all innkeepers were required to be—cracked open the door with a tired, somewhat sour look to see who it was so early.

He saw, all right.

“Cor,” said the man, his eyebrows traveling halfway up his bald head to see my companions. “It’s finally happened. I died in my sleep. You lovely lot must be Selectrices, here to whisk me to Weltyr’s castle in the sky.”

I couldn’t help myself but to laugh, unconvinced he had even noticed me.

“Oh good,” said Branwen, looking tired from the hike and unamused by the innkeeper’s (in my opinion) quite innocently meant appreciation of my companions’ good looks. “You two will get along, sounds like.”

Maintaining an earnest expression, I bowed to the innkeeper and told him, “Good morning, sir. I cannot deny we were sent by Weltyr, but I also cannot promise you these companions of mine will be your guides to the Hall of Valor. We’re but weary travelers in search of a place to stay.”

“Oh, aye, well, you’re in luck when it comes to that. We just had two rooms vacated by another couple of adventurers…not near so comely as this lot. Never in all my days did I expect to see a durrow aboveground! They’re twice as beautiful as I’d imagined.”

Clearing my throat, sympathetic to his distraction but no less tired or in need of rest, I urged him gently, “They are, indeed, and would be all the moreso if given a little time to rest their after the long journey. Two rooms, you said?”

“That’s right, just turned over yesterday. I’ll give ‘em both away and throw in meals for”—his eyes scanned our number and his head buzzed with calculations—“an ounce of silver a head a night, how’s that.”

“We’ll take them,” I said. Even Odile couldn’t complain at that price; at her nod, Indra opened the party’s purse, its weight surely handsome after being filled in the