The Vaetra Chronicles: Book 01 - Vaetra Unveiled (5 page)

I had an uncomfortable thought and grimaced. "About how far west?"

"About as far again as we've already traveled, beyond that little village west of here," she answered. She looked over at me and cocked her head. "Is there something I should know?"

I thought for a moment about what she had described. The little village Sulana referred to was named Dunver. I decided that an experienced tracker losing the trail west of the village was no coincidence. "There's an old healer living back in that area," I said, "and she has some skill with Wards."

Agent Delano sat back in her saddle thoughtfully. "Well, that would explain a lot," she murmured, "but not everything. What do you know about these Wards," she asked.

"Not much, really. She keeps a Ward around her cottage that deflects unwanted visitors, which includes just about everyone. A few years ago, I helped her lay in wood for winter, and she gave me something that let me go through with no problem."

"Do you still have the means to go through the Ward?" she asked.

"No. She gave me a trinket to carry that let me pass. I gave it back to her when I was finished."

Agent Delano nodded. "What can you tell me about her?"

"Well, she's getting to be fairly old now. I don't know how much longer she'll be able to live back up there all by herself. She used to travel around to the nearby towns, healing folk for trade and the occasional coin. She had a strict rule that people needed to call for her when they wanted help, but one day someone brought a sick child up to her home instead. Her husband caught the illness and never recovered. She became reclusive after her husband died."

Agent Delano listened to my story and then grimaced. "Wonderful. An angry healer with warding skills."

"Oh, she's not so bad now," I reassured her. "She seems to know when someone really needs her help. A friend of mine fractured an arm badly, and she came out to treat him when it started going septic. That was the autumn I helped with her firewood in thanks. However, she does still have a strict policy against visitors to her home, and the Wards ensure it's never ignored again."

We rode in silence for a few moments. Our swift ride through the cold morning air had given me a chill, so the sun warming my back was welcome.

I finally turned to her. "So,
Agent
Delano, how is it that you are in the business of tracking down thieves?"

"Finally getting back to that, are you?" She looked at me intently, her blue eyes locked on mine. "This isn't something I'd like widely known," she confided, "but we are agents of the Archives."

I was stunned for a moment, unable to respond at first with more than "Huh. Really? Wow." Agent Delano laughed at my feeble response.

I didn't know much about the Archives. Just that it was a refuge and a school for sorcerers. Their members tended to move secretly, and in all my years of working with the Imperial Guard, I'd never run across any Archives agents. Not that I knew of, anyway.

An unpleasant thought entered my head. I narrowed my eyes at her and spoke hesitantly. "Uh...you aren't going to have to kill me now or something, are you?"

She laughed again. "No, don't worry. We aren't murderers. Believe me, I wouldn't have told you, except Captain Pollard vouched for you, and you are going to see some things on this trip that would require some kind of explanation. Sometimes the truth is the simplest explanation," she added with a shrug.

"Well, thanks for telling me," I replied. "How do our thieves fit into all this?"

She thought for a moment, obviously deciding how much she was willing to tell me. "They stole a dangerous artifact from one of our people who was holding it for safe-keeping. My team was deployed to intercept them and get it back."

"How were you able to find them?" I asked with surprise.

"Well...that's one of the odd things you'll see on this trip," she responded cryptically.

I pushed my curiosity aside. Getting answers is often about the timing of the question. She'd apparently said as much as she would on the subject, for now at least.

"Okay. How about the Wards? Do you have a way to get past them?" I asked.

"Wards are most effective when they are unexpected," she answered. "Now that I know what we are dealing with, I think we can push through, depending upon how she formed the Ward."

"There's more than one way?" I asked. I knew almost nothing about the workings of magic. Most of the populace distrusted magic and its practitioners. I had encountered those who used magic enough times to learn to respect it and them, but I had never indulged my curiosity about the subject. Showing an interest in magic was...unpopular.

"Yes. Some Wards are like a bubble," she said. "They are strong around the edges of the effect, but drop to almost nothing inside the affected area. Others are radiant, like light given off by a lantern. They are strongest at their center and the effect eventually trails off to nothing over a distance."

"You seem to know a lot about this. Are you a sorceress?" I asked her quietly. I was used to speaking of magic in hushed tones, and I wasn't sure she would be comfortable admitting that she could use it.

She waved my caution aside, "I have some ability with magic, or vaetra as we call it. I've studied it, but my skills are limited. For me it's just a tool that helps me get my job done, rather than a vocation in itself."

Her comment surprised me. I had never considered that there might be a middle ground. It seemed to me that everyone who had the ability to use magic focused on developing their skill to the exclusion of just about everything else.

"Is there a difference between magic and this 'vaetra' you mentioned?" I asked.

She snorted. "There is to us, but most people don't understand the distinction. Magic is what the man on the street corner does when he pulls a coin from behind your ear. It's just slight-of-hand tricks. Vaetra is a living force that only a sorcerer can transform into a physical effect. To call a sorcerer a 'magician' is an insult."

We both fell silent when we heard the jingle of harnesses and rattle of wagon wheels approaching. The wagon appeared through the trees around a curve in the road with the driver urging his pair of draft horses to pick up their speed. The wagon was heavily loaded with hay.

"Make way, please," he shouted out to us as he approached. "Need to stay in the middle of the road."

The five of us eased our horses to the sides of the road so the wagon could pass between us. "You're running a bit late," I called to him as he got closer.

"Don't I know it!" he replied. "If I don't get this load to Northshore before the road thaws, I'll be up to my hubs in mud," he added as he bounced by.

"Safe journey!" I called after him. He just raised a hand and waved it in acknowledgement, and was nearly unseated when the wagon hit a particularly large rock in the roadway.

Barek snorted and shook his head. "Won't do him much good if he breaks a wheel," he muttered. The rest of us laughed our agreement and continued on our way.

Rounding the curve in the road, we found ourselves at the edge of Dunver.

***

We rode slowly through the village of Dunver. The village proper wasn't much more than a small collection of thatched wood huts and a tiny shop with sundries. The day was far enough along that a few villagers were wandering around taking care of their various duties. They glanced over at us as we passed, occasionally waving or offering a greeting. A man carrying an armload of wood came around the side of one of the huts and stopped short at the site of the giant Winterman in our midst, but he continued on his way when he saw no sign of aggression from our group. A couple of dogs barked at us, but two young children yelled at them and hurried forward to chase the dogs back to their homes.

We were an imposing group. Five well-armed travelers on horseback tend to cause alarm, but most of the villagers looked more curious than concerned. Dunver straddled Riverview Road, the primary western route to Northshore, so the residents routinely saw a wide variety of travelers.

At the far side of the village square where the road continued out of Dunver to the west, Agent Delano spotted a well with a watering trough alongside it. She angled her horse over to the trough. A teenaged boy was busily filling a couple of large buckets from the smaller one that came up from the well.

"Would it be all right if we watered our horses?" she asked the boy.

He sized us up quickly. "Five coppers, ma'am, and you'll have to draw the water yourself."

The sum was outrageous, but Agent Delano didn't blink an eye. She responded flatly. "One copper and I won't have you arrested for attempted theft."

The boy smiled apologetically and shrugged as if to say it was worth a try. "How about two coppers and I'll draw the water for you?"

Agent Delano nodded her head in assent and dismounted to hand the boy the coins. The rest of us followed suit, glad for the opportunity to stretch our legs.

The boy filled the trough with water, and Agent Delano's horse drank first. The horses were not terribly thirsty because we had been riding through the cold morning, but they were ready for a little refreshment after the run we gave them.

I had been through Dunver on many occasions before, so I didn't feel compelled to give our surroundings more than a cursory glance. My attention went to my companions instead.

While Agent Delano worked the water transaction, Barek looked around briefly, took the reins from Talon and Daven, and waited to bring the horses to the trough with relaxed confidence. Talon took up a position just outside our cluster of horses and people, continuously scanning the edges of town. Daven stayed very close to Agent Delano's side and kept a close eye on every movement of the villagers. I nodded to myself in appreciation of the agents' teamwork and professionalism.

We could have saved ourselves the copper and just watered the horses from one of the many streams we'd pass along our journey, but I suspected that Agent Delano was using the coin to buy more than water. The villagers would remember her and appreciate the fact that she had contributed to their meager livelihood. One never knew when that kind of goodwill might come in handy.

The boy offered to top off our waterskins as well. Barek and I accepted, and then we mounted back up.

We left Dunver behind and continued east down Riverview Road. If Agent Delano's team had lost the thief where I was thinking they did, we didn't have far to go.

B
eyond Dunver, the road narrowed and wound its way along a steep hillside and through thick forest down toward the north bank of Teardrop River. Barek dropped behind a few paces and Talon took point position. Daven stayed alongside Sulana and I rode just in front of the two of them.

Before long, the forest opened up and gave us a broad view of the river valley. An osprey glided high over the river, watching for an unsuspecting fish, and an enormous bald eagle glared at us from atop a tall snag. The wide green river flowed to the west with hardly a ripple on its smooth surface.

We came to a fork in the road. The left fork eased down to the river's edge and ended at the planks of the short dock at the Dunver Ferry. Crossing the river on the ferry would take us onto South Riverview Road and through the Valley of Veils, which got its name from the veils of mist that frequently blanketed the area. Eventually, that direction would lead south to Plains End at the western border of Lakewoods Province.

The right fork became North Riverview Road, which continued along the north shore of the river. Talon continued down the right fork as he waved at the ferryman, who had emerged from his dockside hut at the sound of our approaching horses. The ferryman returned the wave and went back inside.

Sulana picked up her pace to ride alongside me. "There's something I've been wondering," she said.

"What's that?"

"Why did you agree to take this job for someone you knew was a criminal?" she asked. "The captain made it sound like you usually operate alongside the law."

"That's true. Normally, I would not have agreed to work for him," I confirmed. She looked over at me and waited for me to continue. I shrugged. "If he had asked me to help him retrieve the item, I'd have said no. But he asked me to help him find his partner."

Sulana thought about that for a moment, a skeptical frown appearing on her face. "Isn't that just semantics? I mean, find the man, find the item. Or so we hope."

"I understand what you're saying. But it wasn't so much what he asked, it was the way he asked it," I explained.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"He seemed afraid of what would happen if he failed to deliver the item to their employer, but he wasn't angry about the lost payment. What I saw was desperation and hope related to finding his partner and frustration at being prevented from doing it himself."

"That does seem unusual," Sulana muttered.

"When I got the note to meet with him, I was hoping for the best, but expected I'd have to tell him to go away. Instead, I found myself wanting to help him find his partner," I concluded.