He'd been attacking full-out, because that was the way they'd always sparred. And he hadn't expected to hit Jermayan, because he never expected anything when he fought.
But if the strike had gone home edge-first, instead of with the flat…
Elven blades were meant to cut through Elven armor.
He could have hurt Jermayan.
Badly.
Kellen stepped back, the sword falling from his hands to the ground. "I'm sorry," he said miserably. "I didn't think. I could have hurt you."
"So you could have," Jermayan said quietly, and though his voice was calm and steady, his face invisible behind the helmet's guard, Kellen had the sense that the Elven Knight was as shaken as he. "It was my error, Knight-Mage. I will not make it again. And so I think that in future combat, it will be better if we fight with padded blades, lest we do the enemy's work for him."
"Jermayan—" He felt horrible. "I didn't mean—I didn't want—"
Jermayan sheathed his sword and pulled off his helm, then managed a wan smile. "Of course you didn't. Do you think me foolish as a babe unweaned, not to know this? It was my fault, to have urged this upon you without forethought myself, and for my folly I shall have a set of bruises to match yours. And—" he added meaningfully, "—think you. You did turn your blade in time, though in the heat of combat, and with what, barely a scant two days' true training? You acted with discipline and care. And now, that is sufficient for the morning. We should prepare to ride.
There will be another lesson at midday. In which you will learn not to drop your sword when you are surprised."
THIS time they followed the route that Kellen chose, with a midday stop to rest Valdien and the mule and for Kellen to practice again, both his attack and defense. Before they began, Jermayan made sure that both blades were padded, with a layer of tough wadding made from a spare undertunic over each edge and the point, then well wrapped in a thin layer of leather—and for the first time, he carried his shield. Kellen discovered that Elven shields were meant to be worn high on the arm, so that the Knight could still wield his sword two-handed if he chose.
"At home, there would be practice-sheaths to protect the blades—and our armor—but alas, I did not think to bring them," Jermayan said. "It did not occur to me they would be needed."
"Well, I expect you thought I'd barely figure out how to keep from cutting myself on my own sword," Kellen offered.
"True enough," the Elven Knight agreed, to Kellen's chagrin. "But we shall contrive."
There was, of course, no need at all for Jermayan to wrap his own blade as well as Kellen's, but Kellen supposed it had something to do with Elven notions of propriety and fair-dealing. As it was, he felt bad about the sacrifice of the undertunic. He just hoped they weren't going to need it later.
Though he tried his hardest, Kellen didn't manage to land another blow on the Elven Knight, but for the first time, a bout with Jermayan didn't leave him feeling afterward as if he'd run ten miles uphill in his armor, and Jermayan actually seemed to approve of his progress. Kellen was feeling pretty good about things as they went on again.
The feeling didn't last. He'd started feeling unaccountably nervous as they rode along… twitchy, really, as if something were watching them, but though he kept looking around, he never managed to spot anything.
They were riding through a forest, one that was suffering less from the effects of the drought than other places in Elven lands, as it grew along the banks of a river Jermayan said was called Angarussa the Undying, which even now ran strongly, though far lower in its bed than it should have been.
"It runs above caves, doesn't it?" Kellen asked suddenly.
"The Caverns of Halacira are very near here, yes," Jermayan said, puzzled. "The Undying goes down into them and runs underground for some distance."
"I have to look for something," Kellen said. "Stop." He'd seen the Angarussa last night in his dream, and something… wasn't right here.
Shalkan halted, and Kellen dismounted. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he headed toward the sound of the river, trying to feel the same sensation he had last night in his dream. It was frustrating, like trying to listen for music you weren't even sure was there at all, made worse because he knew he wasn't going to like what he found, and didn't actually want to find it.
He walked toward the river, not looking so much as listening, until he reached the spot. Or perhaps it wasn't listening, it was feeling. The way he felt the Wild Magic.
Here.
He looked down, and discovered he was standing directly over a patch of low-growing flowers. They looked like tinyl lilies.
"Jermayan?" Kellen called.
The Elven Knight quickly joined him.
"What are those?" Kellen asked, pointing downward.
Jermayan stared at the ground. "They look like starflowers," he said. But he didn't sound at all sure, and his voice was shaken. He stepped quickly backward, off the patch of flowers.
"Are starflowers supposed to be… black?" Kellen asked, when Jermayan said nothing more.
"No," Jermayan said with certainty. "Starflowers are—or ought to be— white. Silvery white. And they glow at night. They should be beautiful."
Idalia had said to look for things that were "just plain bad," and the more that Kellen looked at the spreading patch of sooty black flowers, the more he was sure they fit into that category. He didn't know what real starflowers looked like, but these looked wrong. He stepped back carefully out of the flowers.
"What should we do about them? I don't want to just leave them here." He didn't know why, but he knew he couldn't leave those so-called flowers there. They felt—obscene. Or poisonous. Or both.
"Let me," Shalkan said. "If this doesn't work, we can dig them up and bury them."
The unicorn approached the patch of black flowers and knelt so that he could touch them with his horn. As he did, the flowers curled up and withered, the effect spreading swiftly until in a few moments there was nothing but bare earth where the patch of flowers had been.
Shalkan rose to his feet again and shook his head strongly, as though he were shaking something nasty from his horn.
"I suppose this means we're on the right track," he commented blandly to no one in particular.
Chapter Twenty-One
Beyond the Elven Lands
BY THE END of their third day on the road the travelers had left the borders of the lands claimed by the Elves and were well into the mountains. It was no longer difficult to find water—these lands were not suffering under a magical drought—and the water barrels the mule carried were now empty, to save weight.
But even without drought to afflict it, it was a hard land, one of rocks and hidden springs, near-barren hills covered with sparse grass and scrubby bushes. The small party spent as much time going down as up, often having to detour out of their way in order to find a path that Valdien and the mule could follow. Even a few days and a few miles had made a difference in the weather, and now Kellen was glad of the protection his armor offered in more ways than one, for the days were chilly and the nights decidedly cold.
Kellen's lessons continued—morning, noon, and night—and with every exercise, he became more comfortable with both sword and armor, more confident of his skill, and above all, his endurance, coordination, and strength increased almost with every new lesson. Jermayan was a matchless teacher, patient and firm, and most of all certain of Kellen's excellence.
In addition to the disciplines of combat, Kellen had learned many other things as well—how to care for his sword and armor, how to get into and out of his armor easily, how to cope with the dozens of small chores of life on the road. He realized now how many of those Idalia had handled on their flight from the Wildwood, but now he was learning to take care of them himself.
He was also learning how to care for and even saddle Valdien as well as Shalken—not because Jermayan intended ever to leave that particular task to him, but because, as the Elven Knight constantly reminded him, they could never foresee what disaster might He ahead. It might come to pass in the future that Jermayan wouldn't be able to take care of Valdien himself, either due to injury, or… for some other reason.
Though Valdien blatantly preferred Jermayan's attentions to Kellen's, and made no secret of it, the pack mule was more than willing to become a friend to anyone who fed her and brushed her and cleaned her hooves. Lily, for all the high-flown poetry of her name, was a very tolerant and down-to-earth sort (though Kellen supposed that went with being a mule), patiently enduring Kellen's rather clumsy (at first) attempts at hostlery. But by the time they were out of Elven lands, he could see to her needs as well as Jermayan could, and nearly as fast.
He'd been a little surprised in the beginning to find an Elven Knight so expert at such homely tasks, but as Shalkan reminded him, Jermayan hadn't always been an Elven Knight. He'd begun as an apprentice, doing even more lowly tasks. And even in a city as beautiful as Sentarshadeen, garbage had to be hauled away and manure composted for the gardens Kellen had admired so much.
Maybe so, Kellen agreed. But it was still hard to imagine the stately and graceful Elves doing any of those things, even though he'd seen Morusil pulling weeds and Iletel up to his elbows in mud—or potter's clay, anyway.
Though—at least when Jermayan managed to get past his guard and land an especially stinging blow—it was nice to imagine there'd once been a time when Jermayan had been getting hit that hard on a regular basis.
TO Kellen's secret relief—if you could call it relief, to see such disquieting things—they saw enough signs of the Barrier's influence along their way to assure them that they were definitely on the right track. One day it had been strange tall structures of mud, as if wasps had built giant nests upon the ground. Jermayan told Kellen that these were termite hills, and that the nest-builders were creatures that rightly belonged to the deserts of the far south.