We travel the twelve miles to the Prince's tavern in less than an hour. Riding a horse feels nothing like my father's memories. The power and rhythm of the beast makes my heart soar and fly above the ground. It is like being swept up by the wind and once I find my balance and confidence, the whoosh of exhilaration is unlike anything I've ever experienced.
By the time we arrive at the tavern, I am windswept, breathless and my shoulder burns. The strain of holding the reins has ripped the old arrow wound, and it bleeds again.
"Are you staying up there all night?" Tug asks, as a stable boy appears to tend to the horses. My hands feel locked on the reins, my aching muscles clench around the beast's belly. I lift my leg awkwardly over one side and fall. Tug catches me. I let out a yelp as one of his hands presses against my arm. Without a word, he stands me on my feet and leaves me to stagger behind him and Brin to the backdoor.
I follow them into a room lit by a large fire and lanterns on every table. The Prince sits by the hearth with a book. The blind man snoozes in an adjacent chair. As we enter, Prince Jakut rises, shoulders relaxed, expression satisfied, but I notice the tight grip on his closed book.
"Brin, Ule," Tug says introducing the men. The Prince nods but Brin only stares, behaving one hundred percent like the loutish thug he is.
"I am pleased you have accepted my offer," the Prince says. He searches me out beyond my captors. I let our eyes meet, allowing him to think I am relieved and grateful and enchanted—after all I have been at the whim of two brutal mercenaries and now a Prince has saved me! Then I hastily drop my gaze as though remembering my place.
He sets his book on the mantlepiece and crosses the empty dining room. I attempt a curtsey, though with one hand down my parka to staunch my reopened wound, it is clumsy.
"What's wrong with your arm?" he asks.
"It's nothing," I say, still short of breath and buoyed up from the ride. "Just a scratch."
"May I?"
He reaches out, guiding my outer parka over my head. Days of sweat, grime and smoke cling to my skin but he doesn't flinch at the stink. I try to hide the way my muscles tighten. He is so conceited he believes he can help me undress! If my memories were a forest of devastation, and I relied on an old, blind man to tell me who I was, I would not be so arrogant.
Beneath my furs, my shirt and hand are bloody. The cloth around my neck is also stained with blood.
"This is an arrow wound?" the Prince asks.
Tug moves to join us. "It is from when we caught her," he says.
"And what is this?" he asks, touching the rag at my neck.
"A warning," Tug says.
"We will be riding through the night. Deadran will tend to both wounds immediately."
I frown while the blind man rouses and the Prince calls the innkeeper. Prince Jakut, or Ule as we are all supposed to call him, seems irritated over Tug's neglect of my person. Obviously he's concerned arrow-wounds and knife-wounds could lead to questions about my true identity. But some tiny part of me wonders if he finds violence towards a vulnerable girl distasteful. Even if the girl is an outlawed shadow weaver.
Maybe I have overplayed the weak feminine angle. Though it is not like I have fainted or cried. Still, I do not want him to think I am so delicate he is worrying about my health, and having me watched all the time.
The innkeeper leads the old man and me to a cellar room with one narrow bed and a washbasin. The innkeeper's wife hurries in with a pot of hot water, and a basket filled with ointment bottles, cotton gauze and wraps.
"That will be all, thank you," the blind man says. After they leave and we are alone in the cellar room, he instructs me to take off my blouse. I glance at the closed door before slipping my injured arm out of the sleeve of my shirt.
"I am Deadran." The old man dips a cotton pad into warm water and dabs the knife cut. It stings, forcing me to suck through my teeth. Then he cleans the arrow wound. "We will bandage both up, and you must ride with me tonight. "
He reaches for the basket and sorts nimbly through phial bottles, identifying some by touch, others by scent. "This is it. Let us put a little honey on to help fight any infection." He smears sweet smelling goo over the wounds, presses wads of cotton over the paste, and wraps my arm and neck with gauze.
Once he has finished, his eyes turn towards the lantern. He seems to drift to sleep for a moment. I slip my arm back into the sleeve of my shirt. The cuts tingle. I fasten the buttons on my shirt.
"I have lived a long life without Rhag," he says, suddenly breaking the silence, "and now I find at the end of it I am confronted with two mysteries."
Rhag is the name for the Carucan path to the Gods. The faithful, like my mother, walk the path through prayer, worship and once or twice in a lifetime, the spiritual cleansing.
"To be reunited with the Prince," he continues, "is a blessing I had not hoped for. But you..." He shakes his head. "All those days Prince Jakut went to the Pit, searching for the impossible. And when all seemed lost, you found him."
A true miracle! I pick up my inner parka. It will be chilly riding through the night so I will need both layers.
"I have no business with Rhag," I tell him, annoyed he considers my capture and the "slaughter" of my family an answer to the Prince's prayers.
Though I have to admit, finding a mature shadow weaver, whose eyes have settled, is a conundrum. A mature shadow weaver means any physical proof of the mind-reading talent has gone. This is why poachers and hunters don't bother with us. I push my bandaged arm into my inner parka, grunting at the tight, painful fit.
"Stop," Deadran says. "I will lend you a cloak."
"Thank you."
"Prince Jakut," he continues, "is nineteen, but he has known great loss from the youngest of ages. His mother died in childbirth with a sister. He was only four. She was not in her grave when his father packed him off to his uncle in Lyndonia, accompanied by an already elderly tutor whom the boy had never met."
"You?" So Tug was right! I try to hide the interest in my voice, but the more I know about the Prince, the better armed I am to deal with him.
"Indeed," Deadran nods. "He lost everything he knew in one sweep of fate. Only to lose it all again at eight years old when his father summoned him back to the Royal Court, and I was dismissed."
"You have not seen the Prince for eleven years?"
"Eleven years," Deadran echoes.
"And yet of all those he could choose," I say, "he has called on you." If someone wanted to hide their true nature and intent from a shadow weaver, what better way than erasing their memories and surrounding themselves with people who only knew them as a child? Has the Prince so much to hide, he has risked hiding it even from himself? What does he really want from me?
"It is difficult for a young Prince, purposefully isolated by his overbearing father, to make trustworthy friends. With the attempt on his life, he cannot put his faith in anyone from the Royal Court until King Alixter returns from fighting on the Etean front. Jakut's enemies are powerful and daring enough to have infiltrated his own escort."
Deadran hopes to elicit my sympathy for the Prince by weaving connections between us. We have both lost beloved parents, (at least he thinks mine are dead), both been snatched from our homes and brought into strange and dangerous worlds. "Why are you telling me all this?"
"Before we arrive at the fort in Lyndonia, if you are to blend in as part of the Prince's new escort, you will need to know much about court life, the history and traditions of Caruca, politics and hierarchy."
How a scrawny, sixteen-year-old outlaw is expected to blend in as part of the Prince's replacement escort I have no idea. Perhaps they will pass me off as a serving boy.
"This will be the Prince's test?"
Deadran nods. "The first part."
"And the second?"
"Your ability to uncover useful information without being suspected."
I turn from Deadran and, careful not to strain my wound, pull my looser outer parka over my head. If men in the court are as wary and skilled at blocking their minds as Tug, it could take days or weeks to glean useful information. Even an open mind, easy to search through, can take hours of combing to uncover anything significant. And I am not practiced. I shunned entering my parents' minds for years. In the three decades since the Uru Ana were banished from Caruca, I expect the tales of what we are capable have become highly exaggerated.
"My life has been long and mostly blessed," Deadran says. "As a young man I had many Uru Ana friends. I am ashamed of what Caruca has done to your people. And I am sorry for the danger we are putting you in. But I will do everything I can to help you. I am sure if you serve the Prince well, he in turn, will help you."
How honorable. And if I fail to do as he wishes, he will denounce me and see me hanged.
"I have known few men other than my father, and they have all been cruel," I say. "I thank you for your kindness."
Hello! Just a quick reminder. The next chapter will be posted on Tuesday April 14. Happy Easter and hope to see you then!