Trial by Flame

Chapter 50

He woke to a strong mix of smells—some woody, some spicy, all overwhelmingly herbal, yet strangely comforting. The sources were easy to find as the world cleared: hanging flowers and leaves on a wooden rack in the corner, dried resins and peeled barks scattering a flat plate underneath. Crystals, potion bottles, and aged papers lay in the corner across from them.

Judging by the fabric surrounding all four sides of his vision, he was in a tent, seemingly some sort of healer's. Shaded light filtered through the reddish cloth, indicating daytime. It felt like his body was pumped with a sedative.

But drugs couldn't stop him from waking. Trelisti winced through the strained motions and crawled to the edge of the tent, then pushed the curtain and peered out.

There was more green than he expected to see, matched with natural stone walls towering high on either side. He was inside of the canyon, by the looks of it—he saw a sliver of sky past the marbled orange and white above, and below, chunks of stone covered in plant life and loose pebbles. Uneven protrusions followed the walls like an enormous staircase, and at the end was a small waterfall, pouring from rock to rock to form shallow pools. At the very bottom, it spilled into a stream, where he spotted a smiling Avalon splashing water at two laughing children.

A wave of relief rolled over him. Seeing her face so at ease, playing with those kids like nothing was wrong...that wasn't the face of tragedy. And that was as reassuring as it got.

As if she could sense his gaze, her eyes flicked up to the tent, stilling when they landed on him. In a moment, he saw the peace break.

Her smile flattened into shock-parted lips, hand frozen in front before dropping to her side. In that instant, there was a line strung between them, and he saw the worry surfacing in her eyes, the distraction shrinking away. For that second, he thought that maybe she was a good actress, and she'd been hiding all of that beneath a smile.

Until one of the kids splashed her again, and whatever expression she'd had before disappeared under laughter and sunlit beads. She looked so at home in the water, with the bottom of her skirt soaked and clinging to her ankles.

"Pukuro inte! Qet na ett?"

It took Trelisti a moment to realize the words were directed at him, coming from the voice of an older woman on his right side. She had dark, wrinkled skin and braids in the front of her hair on both sides, the rest clipped with a bone at the top of her head. Heavily patterned, colorful cloth was wrapped around her waist and shoulders, and beads jangled from her neck and wrist. She looked frustrated when Trelisti didn't reply.

Another voice seemed to answer her, recognizably in Old Fehri, with a tone gentle and rich in a way he could only describe as familial. From behind the tent came a man dressed more simply than she, bare of a shirt or any decorations save for a string and wood-carved necklace. His bottom half was covered by animal skins, tattered sandals between his feet and the rocks, and his head was fully shaved. He had an eerie resemblance to Tellik, but looked older, perhaps the elven equivalent of ten or twenty human years. It was hard to tell.

"I apologize for the confusion," said the man, extending an arm. It might've been the start of a handshake, but was more likely to help him up, as Trelisti struggled to stand on his own. "I'm Ti'mano, and this is Orjma, your healer. I'm afraid she doesn't speak Common, so I'm in charge of introductions."

It bothered him to accept the help, but Trelisti didn't want to seem rude, so he took his hand and wobbled to his feet.

"Ti'fana Fehr. I'm Trelisti," he responded, putting the pieces together as he spoke. Ti'mano's accent was so thick it took a moment for the words to make sense, repeated a few times in his head. "I'm not quite sure how to say it in Old Fehri, but please give her my gratitude. And the same to you."

"Ah—there's no need. A friend of my nephew's is a friend of mine," he replied warmly. He gave a slight glance over his shoulder before continuing. "Regardless of how the rest may view him, Tellik is family. And families don't turn their backs on each other."

He didn't have the full context, but he knew enough to fill the holes. Tellik had left his homelands for more reason than to become a merchant. There was a pressure here that he was trying to escape, and while some of it was no doubt related to his husband, there was more than that. A high standard even as far as Korja went, an inferiority that he couldn't stand to bear. Trelisti had suspicions from the moment he'd first been told the story, and any minute now, he expected the confirmation.

"Does that mean that we're in the Qorasi camp?" he asked, leaning into the question. Perhaps he should've spent more energy on formalities, but he had bigger concerns. "Where's Tellik?"

"Speaking to his father. It's best to let them be, for now," answered Ti'mano. That sentence was heavier than the others, before switching to a lighter, slightly confused tone. "And I'd hope as much—it would be odd for his family to be anywhere else, wouldn't it?"

And there lay the answer, flat and plain and placed right in front of him. Tellik had never explicitly hidden it, but it still felt strange to confirm, knowing he'd always tiptoed over it in conversation.

"It would." Trelisti faked a smile, ignoring the ache in his chest, the splintering in his arm. The pains were coming back with each second he grew more awake, yet he barely felt them over the discovery.

Tellik wasn't just any Korja, nor a regular merchant-escaped-Khae.

Tellik was a Qorasi—the only tribe whose members had the potential to summon a fa'ih.