With a crack and a flash of light, the boat suddenly lurched forward, throwing Rena into the bottom. If she hadn't been holding on to the side with both hands, she'd have been thrown overboard.
Just as Myre was.
Rena let go with one hand and snatched for the slave's clothing as the girl tumbled past her and over the side; too late. The last she saw of Myre was the girl's face floating above the water, vanishing behind the curtain of rain, as the boat accelerated with twice the speed of a running horse.
"Stop!" Rena shouted to her brother. "We've lost Myre!"
He shook his head regretfully, hands still held over his head, face creased with concentration. "I can't!" he shouted back. "Once I let this thing loose, it goes until it runs out by itself!"
Rena looked back; Myre was out of sight, and the elven riders mere dots on the riverbank—a moment later, they vanished, too, in the gray sheets of water pouring from the heavens. The boat was still picking up speed.
They were on their own, and her heart contracted with fear.
The boat didn't slacken speed until they had passed out of the storm and were well into some of the untamed lands held by no elven overlord. By then, Lorryn's face was gray with exhaustion, and Rena's hands ached with the effort of holding on to the sides. The river was full of debris, and Lorryn had been forced to make several abrupt corrections to their course to avoid hitting any of it, corrections that would have thrown her out of the boat to be left behind like Myre.
Finally, when the spell at last ran out, Lorryn used the slackening momentum, took the rudder and brought them in to the southern bank of the river, they both pitched their packs into the underbrush and clambered clumsily over the side onto the low bank. Lorryn pushed the boat away with a branch and let the river take it again; they stared after it until it disappeared.
"With any luck, they won't be able to guess where we put ashore even when they find it," Lorryn said, shouldering his pack. "That should give us some time, I hope."
Rena shrugged into her own pack, wishing it held something dry and warm to wear. She was so cold now that she had stopped shivering; the cold went all the way down to her bones. She couldn't have shivered now if she wanted to; fear and chill held her in a kind of choked silence and stillness. "Now where do we go?" she asked timidly, trying not to sound as if she was accusing Lorryn of anything. "We lost Myre."
He sighed, and stared off into the forest. "Well, she said the dragons weren't far. Didn't she say they were south of here?"
Rena didn't remember anything of the kind, but it hardly mattered. One direction was as good as another, as long as they went away from those who were hunting them. She made a gesture of hopeless bafflement. "Can you—do you know if there's anyone around here? Anyone who might come after us?"
She was so afraid—so very afraid. Enemies behind them, the unknown all about them, and their guide lost beyond hope of finding again—what could they do?
"Any elves, you mean? I don't think it's safe to use elven magic, but there's that human trick of listening for thoughts that I can try." He closed his eyes, and his face took on that "listening" look. "I can't sense anything but the minds of animals. We should be safe enough for a while. Maybe safe enough to find some shelter, build a fire, get dry."
Dry and warm. Dared she hope that they might escape after all? Right now, simply being dry and warm sounded like paradise. "You had better lead," she told him. "You've hunted, you know what to look out for. And you're the one with the weapons."
At that reminder, he checked his bow, found it useless, and drew his knife instead. He looked as if he was about to say something else, frowned as if he thought better of it, and led the way into the underbrush.
There's no one within range of Lorryn's mind. For now, we're safe, she told her pounding heart, her sinking spirit. We can escape. We can!
Rena followed behind him, wishing she weren't carrying a huge weight of water along with the pack, wishing this were all a nightmare. As fear ebbed, other discomforts began. Her stomach ached with hunger, and her shoulders hurt where the pack-straps cut into them. Right now, marriage to Lord Gildor didn't seem like such a bad thing after all…
They might have come out of the storm, but the day was still overcast, and every tree dripped water down onto the deer path Lorryn had found. She had thought she couldn't be any colder or more miserable, but every time another branch sent a load of cold drops down the back of her neck, she discovered she was only beginning to learn what misery meant. Her boots didn't quite fit, despite all the stockings she wore, and she was getting a blister on one heel. She could hardly feel her fingers.
She kept her eyes on her feet and the path in front of her, as her legs began to ache, joining her aching shoulders. And a headache began as well.
She was so wet, so cold. If only she dared use a little magic—
Well, why not?
My magics are so small… I can at least make myself a little warmer, a little drier. Surely no one will notice that.
She narrowed her concentration, and insinuated her magics into her clothing, working from the skin out, and the feet up, driving the water out of the fabric, fiber by fiber. It was something like flower-sculpting, after all; just shoving the water away from where she didn't want it, slowly and patiently. When it reached the surface of her clothing, she let it bead up and run off.
At least while she was concentrating on that, it was easier to ignore her aching legs and shoulders.
And it was working! First her feet inside her boots, then her legs, then her torso, and finally her arms, were dry, warm—she turned her attention to her pack, shoving the water ahead of a kind of barrier she created at her back. The pack got lighter and lighter as she squeezed the water out, and before too long, it was actually bearable to carry the lightened weight of it!
"Rena? Are you working magic?" Lorryn said, breaking her concentration.
She hesitated a moment. "Just a little," she replied, meekly. "I was so cold and wet—I haven't done anything wrong, have I?" Her eyes opened wide with alarm. "They haven't felt it, have they? I—"
"It's all right," Lorryn said quickly, pushing aside a heavy branch with his free hand. "I wasn't sure you were working magic, it was that faint; I just felt it, and thought it might be them, looking for us. It stopped when I asked you about it."
"You broke my concentration, so it must have been me you sensed," she said with relief. "Oh, good. I was just so cold and wet, and I didn't think it would do any harm to drive the water out of my clothes. You ought to do the same."
"I can't," he said, in a very small voice.
She wasn't certain she heard him right. "You can't?" she replied, with astonishment. "But—you made the boat practically fly! And I've seen you do so many other things! How can you—"
'They don't teach boys to do small magics—or the ones they call 'small' magics," he told her ruefully. "I'll tell you what, though—when you're soaking wet, those magics don't seem small. I'd give anything for a pair of dry socks."
She laughed; and was astonished to hear her own laughter. "Well, in that case, you can give me something to eat and find a place to rest, and I'll see you get dry socks and dry everything else!"
He turned back to look at her, surprise warring in his face with amusement. "In that case, let me say that you are the most useful escape companion that anyone could ever ask for. Better even than a fully armed warrior—who would be just as helpless as me, and probably a lot more cross!"
Unspoken were other thoughts, which she knew he had even though he was too tactful to say anything. Like Myre, he'd been certain that she would be more of a hindrance than a help; a rock tied about his neck and slowing him down.
She didn't mind now, though that would have hurt earlier. Now he knew better.
And so do I. And at that realization, her heart and spirits began to rise, just a little.
Lorryn found shelter under the wreck of a huge fallen tree. Tiny magics dried his clothing and pack, his bow and bowstring. Tiny magics dried the heaps of sodden leaves she piled up, so that they formed a warming cushion against the damp air and earth. Tiny magics kept the insects away, while Lorryn concentrated on searching the woods for hunters, both elven and animal.
Every exercise of her magics made her feel better. She was not as useless as Father had always claimed she was! She could think of solutions to some of their problems! Maybe she couldn't make a boat speed down the river at a breakneck pace, but she could keep Lorryn from catching cold and maybe getting so sick, he wouldn't be able to move! Elves didn't get ill, at least not very often, but humans did all the time, so Lorryn probably would.
She held a bit of bread in her hand and nibbled it slowly. This was slave-bread, heavy and dark, and not the white bread eaten by the masters. Myre had said that was all to the good; she claimed that the slave-bread would make better field rations, that it was more nourishing, and that it would fill the stomach better. Maybe she was right; it certainly hadn't taken much of it to satisfy the ache in Rena's stomach, and she was finishing the piece Lorryn had broken off for her more out of sense of duty than out of hunger.
The thought of her former slave made her wince with guilt. Oh, Ancestors. Poor Myre. I hope they didn't catch her. I hope if they did, she has the wit to claim we coerced her into following him. Surely Myre, so clever, so resourceful, could come up with a way to explain herself! Hadn't she gotten herself out of every other predicament?
And surely, with two renegades to chase, her father's men would never bother with a mere slave… surely, surely…
Lorryn opened his eyes. "I can't find anything out here except a pair of alicorns," he said, finally. 'They're young ones, so they shouldn't give us any trouble as long as we stay downwind of them."
"Alicorns?" she replied, her spirit shrinking a little again, despite her earlier burst of confidence. The stories she'd heard about how fierce the one-horned creatures were had given her nightmares, and the little tableau in the Portal-room in Lord Lyon's manor had only reinforced those stories. "Aren't they supposed to be able to pick up the least little bit of scent?"
"But they're downwind of us," he assured her, and yawned hugely. "And I—"
He yawned again, and Rena saw with concern how exhausted and strained he looked. Had he slept any more than she had? Probably not.
Probably not for days.