Tanwyn slowly turned around.
Cole looked at him, excitement surging through her. "Baerghast came to tell King Thijs about dark creatures that they were digging up in the mountains," she said. "It's where the king went and why he couldn't be at Bastian's party. The creatures were killing people and he needed to oversee whatever they were doing there."
"I know the mountains where he was," Tanwyn said, new hope surging into his voice. "Meegan got one of his guards to let it slip. It's around two day's travel from here, northwest."
Cole smiled. "I can't believe we know where it is," she said, looking back to her mother. But when she saw the dark expression on her mother's face, she paused. "What's the matter?"
"Thijs is digging for it?" her mother said, eyes shaking with fear. "He could already have the stone. If he harnessed its power, even the Eldritch will struggle to keep him from taking over not only the human realm, but the Eldritch realm as well."
Cole glanced to Tanwyn. "We would have heard something if he had found something like that, wouldn't we?" she asked. "Surely your aunt would know if he was wielding magic? News would travel, right?"
Tanwyn nodded. "If he was using magic, the Eldritch council would know. If he found it, it would only have been very recently. But he is already heading back to the city, so I don't think he must have found it yet."
"The monsters keep it well protected," her mother said.
Cole bit her lip. "If they're attacking even Thijs, then how will we get in there?"
Tanwyn bunched his fists. "We'll have to hope that they don't hate Eldritch as much as they do humans. Perhaps they will sense that we share something with the stone."
Cole frowned. "Except that not a single one of us actually has active magic."
"We may not be able to use our magic anymore, but it will never leave our veins," Tanwyn said. "And your mother has the strongest bloodline magic in the Eldritch realm."
Unspoken was the assumption that so would Cole. But despite what Tanwyn might think, she knew very well that there was nothing at all about her that held any sort of magic. She was as ordinary as they came. If she had magic in her blood, she would have been able to save her father. She would have been able to save herself when she was dying in the mines, forced to work and go insane in the pitch black.
Now that they had a purpose and a destination, Cole lead the way to the small nomad camp that sat just outside the city limits. She knew the people well, as they were treated about as well as the miners were... which was like trash. They had often shared fires with the miners on late nights, offering trinkets and stories for food or items from the city. Cole had passed their run-down camps on her way to the mines, and she knew where they would be set up for the night.
When they reached the lake, it was full daylight. The camp looked miserable in the force of the sun, and Cole wondered if wood and cloth could melt in the heat. A fine layer of dust covered every inch of the cloth covered tents hammered into the ground around the lake. At this time of the year, the lake's shores were expanded as the water dried up and retreated into the center. The nomads lived along the cracked shores, digging in deep for the small squiggly creatures that had escaped the summer sun in the damp depths, or fishing for turtles or fish in the deep center of the lake.
Cole approached the tent that was painted with a swirling pattern of red and blue. It looked almost like an eye, but the nomads had once told her that it meant "giver" in their language. It was the symbol of their trader, a man who wandered from town to city, selling wares and bringing back money and new goods to the village. In the dead of the dry season, he normally stayed at the camp, and thankfully that still held true.
Knocking on the wooden post before pushing away the fabric flap, Cole announced her arrival to the trader within. He glanced up at her from behind a low desk that covered his lap and was filled with shining trinkets. His bright blue eyes narrowed as Tanwyn and her mother followed her inside.
"Who are these people?" he asked.
"Relatives," Cole said, not wanting to explain Tanwyn's situation. He was basically related to her now anyway. If he died, she died.
"I assume you are coming to trade," the man said, looking back down at his glittering treasures of gold and jewels. His skin, baked by the sun into a deep brown except for the inside of his deep wrinkles which were still pale, blended in the dark fabric of his tent. He looked like a pair of bright eyes, glowing in the darkness and taking in every single movement that happened in his domain.
Cole breathed in deep. "Well... not exactly. We can't pay you now, but in a few days we could return--"
The man didn't even glance up. "I don't give away my items unless you are one of the nomadics. Return when you have something of value."
Cole bit her lip, wondering how she could convince him to make one acception. Once they had the magic stone, they'd be able to pay him beyond the price of what he lent them. Yet, she couldn't outright tell him that otherwise he could become a target for Thijs soldiers... or he might find them first for a hefty reward.
"I've this golden ring," Tanwyn says. "It only has a Sparkstone in the setting, but you'd easily be able to replace it with something more befitting the band."
Cole turned to see Tanwyn offering his now empty magic ring. It looked innocent enough without the glowing, and it would much too expensive to trade for the few supplies they needed.
But it was all they had.
And the trader was very interested.
He held out his hand and Tanwyn dropped the ring into it. The man squinted at the band, turning it around and around, pressing it down on the table's edge and fitting it between his teeth. He looked back up at them as he slid the ring into his collection on his desk.
"Do I need to be worried about where you got this?" the man asked.
Tanwyn's jaw jumped as he took a slow breath in. "It's mine."
The man raised one eyebrow, and that was all he needed to do to get his point across.
Tanwyn shifted his weight. "It was from a better time in my life. It belongs to me and I am free to sell it."
The man took his time looking Tanwyn up and down, his eyes pausing on the silk under all the soilage and the long hair that wouldn't belong to a farmer or a miner. The hidden splendor of what Tanwyn once looked like must have been enough for the man, for he slowly nodded his head and folded his hands in front of him.
"What did you want to get from me?" he said.
Cole rattled off the food and water rations they need to get to the mines and explore them. The old man held up one finger and disappeared into the dim depths of his tent. He reappeared a moment later with bound packages of fabric and string that contained dried meat and berries, and multiple empty water leathers. He dumped them in front of Cole and then dove back into his tent to find and bring back three large sacks for them to carry everything in.
"You can fill up the leathers at the lake," the man said, sitting back down at his desk. "The food should last you almost two weeks if you are careful."
"Do you have medicinal herbs too? And bandages?" Cole asked, glancing back at Tanwyn.
The man narrowed his eyes but pulled out a wooden box much like the one Meegan had in the safe house. Cole took it and dumped it into her sack along with her portion of the rations. Now she wouldn't have to worry about Tanwyn's arm rotting off and taking hers with it.
Tanwyn stepped forward. "We'll need something to protect ourselves. Where we are going will be dangerous."
The man shook his head in one sharp motion. "I do not sell weapons here. We conform to the king's ban on weapons being held by nomads."
Tanwyn rolled his eyes. "Ridiculous," he muttered.
Cole stepped forward, hoping to make peace between the two. "We're not asking as people of Soma," she said. "We're asking as friends."
The man's mouth twisted, but he slowly reached under his desk to pull out a small dagger in a leather sheath. It was nothing at all fancy, and in fact looked as if it had been handmade in a hurry. But when Cole pulled it from the sheath, it was sharp and sturdy.
"One more request," Tanwyn said.
The old man looked ready to toss them from his tent, but they all knew that the ring was far more expensive than anything he had given them thus far. "Well, out with it."
"I need paper and something to write with."
The man handed over a small skein of soft hide and a thin branch of charcoal, which Tanwyn used to quickly sketch out a series of seemingly random wiggling lines across the page. He placed a few dots and circles above some lines and put smaller lines through others. After reaching some arbitrary finish, he looked up and handed the skein back to the man.
"Please have someone deliver this to the last fencepost in The Copper Kettle's courtyard," Tanwyn said. "There will be a rock under the fencepost. Just place it under that and leave."
"I will." The man pushed back from his desk, getting up to bow and wave his hand toward the tent flap. "But you should leave now. I have nothing more than what I've given you."
"Thank you," Cole said. She knew that possessing weapons was bad enough for a nomad, but giving them to convicts was even worse. He was risking his life by even giving them the small blade.
The man merely waved his hand again toward the tent flap, and then sat back down to ignore them as they trundled out of his tent and back into the sweltering heat.
No one talked as they trudged out to the edge of the lake and filled their water leathers. Cole and Tanwyn donned three each, leaving her mother to only carry one. They were heavy and unwieldy, and both Tanwyn and Cole knew without having to speak that her mother would not be able to handle the weight of more than one for too long. Even so, Cole bit her tongue at the pain that burst in her shoulder as Tanwyn tentatively placed the strap of one leather over his injured shoulder.
"That thing better heal soon," Cole muttered at him as they walked back toward the main road leading away from the city.
"I didn't ask you to bind yourself to me," Tanwyn returned, and somehow he seemed genuinely upset. Cole wanted to ask him what was bothering him so much, but she knew she'd never get an answer.
"What was that thing that you gave the man? The note."
"A code for Meegan. The innkeeper will get it to her once its delivered to his establishment."
"What did it say?"
"It told her where we're going," Tanwyn said. "She'll send news to us once we are there. Thijs should be back in the city by now. Anything could have happened."
Cole pressed her eyes closed for a brief moment as she tried not to think about what the palace would be like now that the faeries had allegedly attacked him in his own home. There had been spies in his staff and his own son had almost been murdered. Soma had been living hell before, but now Cole was afraid he would plunge it even further into the fiery depths so that no one would survive.