Arbiter (The Arbiter Chronicles Book 1) (5 page)

When Cathel came in the early morning and knocked on her door, she was ready.

Sleep had come surprisingly easily to her that night. It almost worried her, knowing that she was so used to strange events that she could fall asleep at a time like this. She knew that she was walking into great danger, but that thought was something that seemed almost distant to her, like a post-it note she had put up on her wall somewhere. It didn’t seem real, or if it did, it seemed so common place that she simply didn’t care anymore. She had spent so much of her life looking over her shoulder for the Reaper. There was only so long a person could spend being afraid to die
.

So when Cathel arrived, she didn’t say anything. She simply rose from bed, slipped into the traveling clothes Varra had set out for her, tied her hair back into a ponytail, and slung her pack over her shoulder like someone who was resigned to their fate.

Maybe the man she had met on her way into the Twilight Realm had been right. Maybe she had given up.

Cathel wasn’t dressed in the coat she had seen him in yesterday, instead opting to wear simple traveling clothes that were almost identical to hers. He wore a sword at his waist, one of his hands resting lightly on the hilt. It surprised her how comfortable he looked with the weapon. It always seemed to her that mages wouldn’t carry swords, or maybe that was just the popular depiction of them in her world.

“A sword?” she asked, as she closed the door of her borrowed room behind her.

“I’m not going into the Edgelands weaponless,” said Cathel.

“I know that,” said Rae, deciding not to mention the fact that she didn’t have a weapon, and didn’t know what she would do with one if she did. He held something else in his hands as he stood in front of her—a small bundle wrapped tightly in blue cloth, with glittering gold lettering scrawled across it. The words were written in a language she didn't understand. It took her a moment for her to recognize them as words. As she watched, he held out the cloth bundle to her. She took it in both hands, testing its weight. It was surprisingly heavy.

“Keep that in your pack,” he said. “Don't unwrap it until I say so.”

“What is it?” asked Rae, curious in spite of herself as she slipped the bundle into her pack.

“Iron.”

She tested her pack's weight. It was heavier now with the added metal, but it wasn't unbearable. “Iron?” she repeated.

“Iron talismans, with magic woven into them. They repel the Ivali. The cloth keeps them from sensing it. Don't remove it unless you absolutely have to.” He walked off, heading towards the tapestry. Rae hurried to catch up.

“Wouldn't it be better just to wear them then?” she asked as she drew up beside him.

“Would you wander into someone's house waving a weapon around if you wanted them on your side?”

She imagined herself wandering into a potential ally's house waving around a machine gun and cringed at the thought. The image made things painfully clear. She didn't ask again.

They passed through the tapestry portal, appearing on the lowest floor of the Tower. Rae gestured at Cathel's sword. “Are you any good?”

“I can hold my own,” said Cathel. He stepped forward, opening the Tower's grand entrance doors by resting his hand on them. “I studied the sword for some time. I did some traveling, a while back. Knowing how to use a weapon seemed like a good idea.”

“Think you could teach me?” she asked. “I’m not carrying a weapon.”

“Maybe,” said Cathel. “But there’s no point in teaching you how to use a sword if we only have one between us. I can cut you a practice one later tonight, but if you want to learn to fight very fast, what I should be doing is teaching you magic.”

Rae considered that briefly, pulling her traveling cloak around herself and folding her arms as they left the Tower behind them. It was still early morning. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the horizon was still gray. Cathel didn’t look back at the Tower as they left it, lending credence to Varra’s claim that he would rather be anywhere, literally anywhere, then the Tower right now. She glanced at Cathel, wondering if he had even bothered to tell Varra goodbye, before deciding that it wasn’t her place to ask. It wasn't like she was his mother.

“Magic?” asked Rae, starting up the conversation again as they followed a path through the woods.

“Your first try wasn’t exactly spectacular, I’ll admit.” Cathel shrugged off her sudden glare. “But it showed potential. I’d be a lot more comfortable not being the only mage on this ill-fated expedition.”

“Are you good enough to teach?” asked Rae.

Cathel shrugged again. “I'm no master. But it’s not like that means much.” She caught the edge in voice again as he spoke. “…I can teach you some. All you really need are the basic spells anyway. Once you develop a Series, you’d need to find someone with the same Series as you to teach you more.”

There was that word again. “Series?”

“Yes, Series,” Cathel paused as the path forked, and the two of them took the path to the right. He turned towards her. “Well, Miss Miller. Welcome to the Edgelands. We’ll be spending a lot of time here, so get comfortable.”

Rae looked around. She couldn’t detect any noticeable difference from the woods they had just been walking through to the woods they were walking through now. “It looks exactly the same,” she said, turning towards him.

“It’s a gradual transition,” replied Cathel. “We’re in the Borderlands now, known areas of the Edgelands. I’ve been as far as…maybe about two hours from here. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.”

“Are we going anywhere in particular?” asked Rae. “Or just wandering around aimlessly?”

“I have a map,” said Cathel, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to her and she opened it, staring down at it. It was a hand-drawn map, the sort that she would have imagined had been torn out of an old book, except the copy Cathel had given her was completely clean and looked brand new, almost as if it had been photocopied. She wondered at that, but decided she had bigger things to worry about than the fact that her ancient map didn’t look ancient enough.

“I thought nobody goes out here.”

“Nobody does, as a general rule. Once in a while, someone will go into the Edgelands and come back alive. One of the people who did that drew this map. It’s been corroborated by some of the Ivali that venture into the Borderlands but…”

Rae raised an eyebrow.“Can’t trust them?”

Cathel nodded. “Not as far as I could throw them. For the little ones, though, that would be pretty far.”

She stared at him, curious now. “How little are we talking?”

Cathel held up his thumb and forefinger, holding them apart a few inches. “The littlest I’ve seen are about this little. The biggest…I’d say man-sized. I know there are bigger.”

Rae blinked. “That little?”

Cathel shrugged again. “There’s probably smaller out there too.”

Rae glanced around in the woods, half-expecting a handful of little fairies to come bounding out at any minute. When she saw nothing, she turned back towards Cathel. “Will we see any?”

“Oh, we’ll be neck-deep in them soon, don’t worry,” said Cathel. He paused, looking around.“We’re already being watched.”

“What?” Rae looked around as well, but she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. “Where?”

Cathel pointed at a large tree off to her right. “Dryad,” he said. “Right there. You can see her when she comes out to look. She looks just like a little flicker of light.”

Rae squinted. Sure enough, there was a shimmer of light around the tree trunk, one that disappeared from sight as they walked past it. She turned towards Cathel, who was studying the map intently. “Thinking of asking for directions?”

“From a dryad?” asked Cathel. “I would if I could, but they’re shy things. They spook easily. It takes time to get one to talk to you, and even if you can manage it, they might not be willing to cooperate. I want to gain some ground right now. But I’d like to try later, when we take a break.” He slipped his hands into his pockets, and at her questioning glance, went on. “Dryads know just about everything that comes their way. They talk to each other and pass messages amongst themselves, and where there are trees, there are dryads.”

“Hm,” said Rae. She nodded, impressed in spite of herself. She hadn’t been able to pick out the dryad in the trees, and she had always considered herself to be very observant.

She wondered what other tricks Cathel had up his sleeve.

They walked in silence for a while. Rae spent most of her time trying to catch sight of the Ivali, but eventually gave up, looking towards Cathel. He walked purposefully ahead of him, seeming to know where he was going. It seemed as though some of his earlier anxiety had washed away, now that they were faced with the open road.

For a man walking towards what most people assumed would be his death, he didn’t seem as afraid as Rae thought he would be. Now that they were walking through the Edgelands, she had expected him to be skittish, nervous, jumping at every shadow. Instead, he walked on with purpose and resolution, his eyes occasionally drifting towards the map, but mostly he looked ahead of them. He watched the forest, but not with the anxiety of a man waiting for an enemy, but with the caution and almost…curiosity. There was a sort of nervous energy about him, and part of it definitely stemmed from apprehension, but the other part seemed almost like excitement.

Varra hadn’t shown any of that when Rae asked her about the Edgelands. She had only seemed scared and worried for them. She thought that fear was the norm. Just as most people she had seen in her world would be terrified at the thought of walking near the edge of an active volcano, most people in this world didn’t seem to want anything to do with the Ivali Lands.

But Cathel didn’t seem to fit in with that norm. It wasn't like that bothered her—she definitely wasn’t normal compared to the standards of her world. But it made her wonder why.

She folded her arms and looked away from him as she studied the edges of the path they were walking on. A few minutes into their walk, her thoughts about Cathel and his behavior faded away, quickly replaced by the knowledge of how tired she was getting. She was used to walking. In her own world, she had never owned a car, and as such, walked or took public transportation almost anywhere she went. She had done more walking than most of her peers, and so wasn’t as tired as any of them would have been. But she had never walked constantly for more than a few hours before.

Cathel seemed more experienced with this sort of thing, but he seemed to notice, because once they were an hour away he called for a break, and the two of them settled down on a hillside as he dug in his pack for breakfast.

Rae said nothing as she accepted the roll of bread from him. It was still warm, so she assumed he must have gotten it right before they left. She tore off a piece and began to eat slowly, watching from her seat on the hill as the animals began to come out from their holes, a rabbit hopping around the grassy field below them. It had all the beginnings of a nice late spring day—a clear sky above and a faint breeze running through the air.

Cathel offered her some fruit and a slice of cheese, and she accepted the offerings wordlessly, resting them on the edge of her cloak. She said nothing, but Cathel didn’t seem to be in much of a talking mood either, his eyes fixed darkly on the outline of the Tower rising up through the trees behind them. They had gone far, but not far enough that it was out of sight.

“Sorry about that,” Cathel finally said, resting one arm lightly over his knee. “I know it’s early, and you probably wanted to get some more rest.”

Rae shrugged. “It’s fine. Better early than late. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Cathel nodded once, laying the map out in front of him again. Rae glanced over at it.“Making plans?” she asked.

“Considering them.” He placed his finger on the outline of a road, right off of a circle marked Laria Tower. “We should be around here right now. If we continue to follow the road, it will eventually go out of the Borderlands and deeper into the Edgelands. This man marked a set of ruins over here.” He tapped lightly on a small square further north of their current position, marked with the letter R. “Ivali ruins sounds like a horrible place to spend the night but if they have stone, I can make some sort of shelter. I think we should be able to reach it by sundown.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Rae.

“But there’s something that worries me,” said Cathel.

Rae quirked up an eyebrow. “Besides everything?”

“Mm.” Cathel folded up the map and slipped it back into his pocket. “…The original version of the map had markers on it, where the explorer thought things were too dangerous, or where he encountered dangerous creatures. I know they were there, because I saw them before.”

“But…?” she prompted.

“When I went to copy the map last night, the markers were gone. I think someone is deliberately sabotaging our journey.”

Rae's eyes widened. “What? Who?”

“No clue,” said Cathel. “Do you have any idea who would want us killed out here?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” she said. Rae brushed the crumbs off of her cloak, wrapping her arms around her knees. “But you said he can’t reach us out here.”