Page 14 of Homeward for a Spell

“But what about the pom-poms?”

“Those are trees.”

“Well, if you’re going to draw trees they really should look more like—”

Remy interrupts their bickering with the speech he gave Sage days ago. “There’ve been only three accounts of the Swallow’s existence that I could find, unearthed from the corners of the kingdom through my client’s resources and my own talents. The first is centuries old—the story of a priest who went on a pilgrimage to the Graywood with his scribe companion. They’d been traveling the kingdom together with the purpose of researching and recording Harrow’s forgotten gods and devils in one collected tome, chasing whispers and legends as they went. They were searching the valley of the Kald Mountains for a temple, rumored by Northlanders to be newly built on a riverbank to guard the grave of a great creature at the river’s bottom. They came across what appeared to be a shallow creek, unrecorded on any map of the kingdom. In those days, much of the Northlands was uncharted. It still is. The priest and the scribe found a temple along its shore, but they’d been warned by the Northlander who pointed them toward the temple not to approach directly. With deadly solemnity, the keepers practiced what they saw as their divine mission to protect the grave. The water was dark with plant matter and sediment, shaded by thick trees overhead, but it was just a narrow thing you could practically straddle with a boot on each bank. When the scribe tried to peer in to see the bottom, she slipped on the mossy rocks and vanished into the water at once. The priest waited, expecting her to climb out seconds later, but she never did. So he ran alongside the riverbank, bursting through the brush, hoping she’d been swept downstream and could be fished out. No dice.

“Weeks later, the priest stumbled out of the forest clutching the scribe’s scrolls, weakened near to death by hunger and the elements. He was given shelter at Briarwall—then just a fledgling military outpost, meant to be warding against monsters that might stray from the woods—until he recovered and returned home to an isolated monastery, where he now lived alone. The scrolls ended up in the monastery cellars, concluding with the priest’s bitter notes, as he’d decided in his grief that the gods of the past were best left alone.

“The second account is from a young soldier posted at Briarwall. After the priest told his story to her company, she took a small squadron into the woods to explore this uncharted canal and, if possible, to scout for artifacts—bones and tokens and such that sometimes remain at the graves of great creatures and spirits, with potent magical properties of their own. The soldiers suspected that the temple was built to guard more than a gravesite, but rather some powerful cache that was left behind. They had no orders to do so, no sanction from Harrow’s ruler at the time, and so there’s no record of the mission in the Golden Court; their notes were found collecting dust in Briarwall’s archive of military logs. One member of the company was a strong swimmer, born on one of the Upper Islands. When they found the stream, they tied an unbreakable rope around his waist, intending for him to dive to the bottom. They weren’t expecting him to go more than a few body lengths, but a current seized the rope and nearly tore it from their hands, with half a dozen soldiers holding on, and a second was knocked in after the swimmer. By the time the rest of the squadron caught their footing and pulled out the rope, the knot had slipped loose, and they never found either of their lost companions.”

“The third account is from Shearwater.” Sage picks up the tale, naming the large port city on the east coast of Harrow, and the main point of travel between their kingdom and Perpignan. “Not on a scroll, but in a song, and just months ago. A sailor who came to the city from a remote village in the Graywood was drinking with a bard-for-hire, and shared an old ballad from home before he shipped out again. Supposedly a cautionary rhyme for children, which the bard turned into a tavern song about a secluded people living in the mountains long before the rest of Harrow was settled, in a village built around a temple. Legend had it that the death of a great creature had caused a rare earthquake that shifted the land, forming a canal between two larger rivers. Though it looked small and shallow, it was as wide and fast-flowing as what we now call the Willowthorn, only flipped sideways at the confluence, so that the bottom plunged hundreds of feet deep all at once. The rocks on the banks were slick with moss and spray, and if you slipped, a lightning-quick current dragged you under in a blink, perhaps to be spat out where the Halhazy poured into the Serpentine Sea miles and miles away. If you emerged at all. But centuries later, the legends were little more than story, and the people kept losing children and livestock to the stream, which is why they gave it the name: It swallowed anyone who fell in, and none climbed out again. The people lost faith and moved the whole village to protect themselves, rather than the grave. The temple keepers would not abandon their post, so they remained alone on the edge of the Swallow, guarding a long-forgotten grave. Nobody knows who the sailor was, but the bard’s song was noticed and recorded—”

“By me,” Remy finishes with a self-satisfied grin, “who brought it to our current client. It was the last piece of the puzzle we needed for them to commission the adventure.”

Araphi’s eyes have grown wide as saucers. “A river that no one has survived. We’re not going into it, are we?”

“Certainly you’re not,” Sage assures her.

“And what precisely is at the bottom?”

Sage turns to Remy, eager to hear the answer he hasn’t deigned to share with her.

“More about that once we’re on the road, eh?” Remy looks about the Pearl and the Grit. “Too many ears in here, attached to drunkards though they may be.”

Reluctantly, Sage nods in agreement. “The Client wants this kept as quiet as possible, so we’ll go across the countryside instead of traveling by the Queens’ Road until we get to Briarwall, where we’ll make an excuse for crossing into the Northlands.”

“That’ll be my job,” Remy says.

“And once we’re in, getting us to the Swallow will be my job. Remy pieced together our rough map from landmarks mentioned in the scrolls and records, and even in the lyrics, as well as the position of constellations we might use to chart a course. But it won’t be easy. It’ll grow colder and colder the farther north we go, and the woods will be even less of a picnic. I can’t imagine you’d prefer it to wedding preparations, but…”

“But?”

Sage may well regret offering a spot in her first party—her first real break—to this complete wild card.

But…

If she’s convinced Sage (who is no stranger to a pretty…well, everything) to give her a shot, then the folks they’ll encounter along the road won’t stand a chance against Araphi Clauneck. Or rather, Phi Runesong. Besides, bringing on another party member will annoy Remy—enticing enough by itself—and remind him who’s in charge of this party, as a bonus.

Sage flips the map over and scribbles a quick list of items on the back, then holds it up in front of her. “If you mean it, the party meets back here in three days. Take those days to gather the supplies you’ll need, and to ponder whether you’re really prepared to leave your life behind, at least for a time.”

Araphi half drapes herself across the table as she reaches for the list, and with Sage’s preternaturally sharp skills, she can unbraid Araphi’s scent in an instant. Textured and luxurious, no doubt bottled in one of Ashaway’s most expensive perfumeries: saffron and incense and vanilla, something subtle and smoky and spicy—a dash of tobacco, that’s it—as well as…lemons?

When Araphi’s fingers brush across hers, Sage bolts out of her chair, dropping the list so that Araphi has to fumble to catch it. “Three days,” she says again, then nods to Remy and Araphi and turns on her heel, stiff after hours of sitting. She can feel their eyes burning into her from behind and so refuses to look back. Why start now, when she never has before?

And why the hell does Araphi Clauneck smell like lemons?

By the time Sage reaches the waterfront, her muscles have loosened except for her right knee. It’s been troubling her less these past few days of relative stillness, so she’s confident that by the time they depart, whatever may have been torn will have knit itself back together. Though she might have asked Bramble as a test of their skills, she’s loath to start their adventure by admitting to weakness, when the knee must be all but mended. She could still make for the healing house; she has just enough coin left over from restocking her own supplies to afford it.

But Sage has another destination in mind.

It’s a clearer night than most this time of year, with a cold wind off the water that scrapes across her bones. Sage still pauses to stare out at the Jade Ocean unscrolling from the shoreline beyond the docks, velvet black and diamond-studded in the starlight. She’s not spent much time on the water, unless you count the Willowthorn where it divides the Rookery from the rest of Ashaway. How many days had Sage walked from her parents’ little thatch-roofed house to the banks of the river instead of to school, sneaking off to watch the ferry cross with working folk packed between its rails? She was a small and snake-quick child; she could easily have slipped into the crowd and crossed with them. But even then, she knew that happiness couldn’t be found as near as the far shore, just as she knew her own unhappiness was no fault of her parents, who were fine people, nor even of the Rookery. At least, it wasn’t the fault of the folks who lived therein. No, Sage had been born hungry.

Now that she’s grown, her theory of happiness is more fully formed. She knows it can’t be found in any particular place but moves constantly, like some mythical beast. You could spend a lifetime chasing it, as one infamous ranger devoted his life to finding the last suspected dire babirusa in the Swamplands. Find it he did, and put an arrow through its heart to prove it, and then there were no dire babirusas left to find anywhere. Better to enjoy happiness when you cross its path instead of trying to catch and keep it, then go on your way and hope for another glimpse of it between the trees sometime in the future. This is a lesson Sage has learned well.

“You lost, girl?” a sailor whose breath she can practically taste from here shouts down the near-deserted docks.

Sage’s hand flexes of its own accord, anxious for the daggers strapped to her hip beneath her coat. But she’s not looking for a fight, or to draw the attention of the city guard, so she barks back, “I’m really not. Go about your business and leave me to mine.”