The Demigod Proving (28 page)

Empty. Not a single person walked along the street length. Only the cowl of a priest lay in its center, not four feet from him.

Wincing at how much it hurt to use his legs, and paying no heed to the blood running down his face and palms, he again applied Ichor to his legs and headed for the hill of sacrifice.

Although he’d lost the trail of the priest, the Master needed warning, and Wrend would provide it.

Chapter 33: A minor inconvenience

It would take an army of paladins to kill me.

-Leenda

Leenda left Krack in the foothills and headed down the slope toward the city, hoping she could escape notice.

She’d given some thought to the problem of how to convince Wrend of his identity, and concluded that her best option was to get Rashel to talk with him. Most of the serving girls agreed that Rashel was his mother; they practically had the same nose and eyes, and had developed a relationship over the years. Certainly Rashel knew the origin of Wrend’s soul, and if she confirmed to him what Leenda had already told him, he might believe it.

So, Leenda went to the tents of the serving girls because she needed to blend in. A proper dress would accomplish that. The yellow one had driven her nearly insane, and besides had become a mess of dirty old rags.

She snuck through the city of tents, dirt streets, and sagebrush, her only worry the paladins left behind as guards. But even many of them seemed gone, probably to the Strengthening with all of the people. She had double cause to bless the Strengthening, because it also meant a black dress, and she looked stunning in black. It complimented her red hair.

She slipped into a cozy tent with a bunk on each side, a small dresser in the back, and the vague scent of cinnamon perfume in the air. A mirror atop the dresser reflected the crack of light from the tent flap. At the foot of each bed, dresses hung on hangers dangling from a free-standing rack.

Leenda chose the black dress that would fit her best. From the lower drawer in the dresser, she withdrew a pair of white undershorts and a shirt. It was cool in the tent, and as she changed, goose bumps riddled her arms and rear.

She pulled the dress on, relishing the fresh cloth—which led to a grunt of disdain at how human tendencies had taken hold of her. It was puberty. Until she’d started to develop into a woman, she hadn’t cared much at all for human things.

She considered herself in the half-mirror. The dress fit too loosely around the bust, but otherwise looked nice. Her hair had become a tangled mess, and so she grabbed a brush from a table and began to straighten her locks out. As long as she had red hair, she would stand out. With Thew she could’ve changed the color over time, as new hair grew, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d purposefully made it red many years before; it was the color of her draegon fur. To change it now would be like leaving the rest of her draegon self behind; and so even if it made her noticeable, she would keep it.

She continued to brush it, enjoying its sheen. Someone would recognize her unless she did something about it, so she retrieved a black bonnet from a drawer and tucked as much hair beneath it as she could. She pulled the front brim low over her face. It covered everything except for a little red around her temples. She searched for a scarf to wear under the bonnet, to hide the rest of the red, but found nothing.

Satisfied, she headed out of the tent to find Rashel. She would be at the Strengthening, in the back of the crowd with the other mothers. Leenda would pull her aside and talk with her. Hopefully, in the crowd, no one would notice her.

Dressed as a proper serving girl, she walked through the city of tents openly. Here and there, paladins passed around her. Most ignored her. A few looked at her with curiosity. Just as her confidence in her disguise had peaked, a handful of patrolling paladins approached her.

“Girl,” the tallest one said. “Halt.”

It spoke in a raspy voice born of vocal chords that had started to decay even despite the best salts the world had to offer.

She tried to ignore it, and go around the group, but five of the paladins fanned out, to fill the width of the street. On each side ahead and behind her, gray canvas tents blocked her way. She could only move forward or backward on the dirt street.

Each paladin in front of her carried a sheathed sword and held a burnished halberd and shield. Athanaric’s emblem, a human silhouette standing over an altar, decorated the front of the shield as well as the chest of the red and black livery over each suit of studded leather armor. The paladins wore puffy black pants tucked into knee-high boots and kept their skin covered, wearing tight gloves and a leather mask that revealed only their eyes and lips. Beneath the masks and gloves, they would have linen wrapped around their skin, to help preserve it against the elements and wear.

They looked at her with unblinking eyes. That had always disturbed her. She could handle their leathery skin, patchy baldness, or varying states of decay—but they never blinked. Their unnatural spasms—how their bodies trembled with barely-contained enthusiasm—also didn’t bother her because she understood why they were like that: all dogs possessed a certain amount of barely-contained excitement, and these were simply dogs in human bodies. She just couldn’t figure out why they never blinked.

“Girl,” the same paladin said. “Why aren’t you at the Strengthening?” He had to be an old paladin; it took years for them to learn how to speak in complete sentences.

She kept her face down. “I’m on my way there, right now.”

The leader stepped close and leaned down, so he could look into her face. She tried to avert it, wishing that she’d found a scarf, but he came within a few feet of her, so she could smell the salt inside of him and couldn’t look away without being too obvious. Other nearby paladins watched the exchange with the interest of a dog watching another eating a steak. That was another problem with paladins: they enjoyed their work. Dogs!

The paladin straightened and stepped back.

“This is her. The girl with red hair.”

She bound her Thew and Flux to her body.
The guards lowered their halberds. They moved forward to flank her on both sides.

“You must come with us,” the leader said.

She stepped back. Goat guts—she should’ve been more careful.

“I need to get to the Strengthening,” she said.

A shorter guard stepped directly toward her as she backed up. It pointed its halberd at her.

“No. You come with us. Or you die.”

“I don’t think so.”

The shorter guard lunged at her with his halberd. She jumped to the side, dodging the thrust with pure reflex. But the other paladins fell upon her from the two sides, and she had to resort to Flux and Thew.

Her discernment leapt to the forefront of her mind. She became more aware of ripples of Flux flowing out of her arms, legs, and body, crossing over the Thew emanating from her stomach—the remnants of her last meal still digesting. Several feet out from her body, the waves slowed, reversed, and returned to her, filling her soul like water rising in a glass.

She applied Thew to her legs in a burst as she jumped backward, also applying a trickle of Flux to her torso, in the center of her balance. A wind born of steel and wood touched her face as halberds missed her. She landed a dozen feet back, stumbling and nearly falling, yet maintaining her feet as she cut off the flow of Flux.

The paladins paused. They stared at her as if not understanding how their halberds hadn’t skewered her. The tall one, in particular, gaped with obvious surprise. Behind them, other paladins had arrived and congregated in the street, lowering their halberds and pressing forward. There were a dozen of them, packed in tightly.

From behind her, other paladins approached.

Now steady on her feet and wishing she’d thought to bring a weapon, Leenda raised her eyebrows at the tall guard.

“It’s my duty to attend the Strengthening.”

“Kill her,” the tall one said.

He rushed forward. The others followed, filling the street in front of Leenda with the promise of a pointy death.

She waited until the last moment, coiling her body in preparation for a leap and taking the opportunity to consider what to do, how to react to this opposition. She never even considered abandoning her purpose: she needed to find Rashel.

As the first halberd neared her—followed closely by a pair of unblinking eyes—she applied Thew and Flux as she jumped. But this time she didn’t jump back. She leapt forward and up, twisting her body and reaching for the halberd. Her palm closed over the shaft, and she used her momentum to tear it out of the paladin’s hands.

She soared over the heads of the paladins. They became a blur of masks below the fluttering hem of her black dress. She pushed herself with Flux, simultaneously harvesting it and applying it to carry herself higher and further. Several of the guards jumped and jabbed at her, but she flew too high and too fast, and in just a moment landed with a grunt on the ground beyond them.

Again, everything paused. The dozens of paladins she’d jumped over gaped in shock. Leenda stood there for a moment, tightening her grip on the halberd, threatening the paladins with her eyes, wishing she hadn’t donned the now-awkward dress.

Paladins weren’t known for fear. Only for dedication and fervor. And besides, most of them stood half again as tall and wide as her, and they outnumbered her more than thirty-to-one. So, of course, they roared and surged forward.

She considered engaging them, cutting them down, but decided that she had to find Rashel, not kill guards—although the world
would
be better with fewer of them. She turned and ran, darting between the tents and leaping over the ropes that secured them to the ground.

Before ten seconds had passed, paladins were everywhere, charging from every direction. They swarmed, trying to cut off her route. She dodged right or left, or rounded corners at top speed as she ducked under this halberd or jumped over that helmet. The guards shouted out her position as she leapt over them or tents. They tried to surround her, cut off her route as they forced her to take detours.

The dress hindered her movement and caught more than one halberd’s tip. It snagged on ropes and tent corners, and once the haft of her halberd became tangled in it. By the time she’d become completely lost, the dress already hung in tatters. Unfortunately, she needed to be rid of it. It figured that the dress she liked wouldn’t even last five minutes, but she’d worn the ungodly yellow one for over a week.

In the confusion, she found herself cornered against the side of an extremely large tent—probably Athanaric’s. Five paladins approached her with caution. Somehow, the tall guard who’d ordered her death stood at their back. He pointed at Leenda with his sword.

“There she is. Hold steady. Kill her.”

Two of the paladins advanced, halberds lowered toward her chest. She had a moment and would need freedom of movement, and so with a grunt ripped the skirt of her dress away, leaving her legs covered only in the white undershorts. Horizontal frills edged in blue ran up her thighs and hips in layers, and she found herself blushing.

Stupid human body and customs. She’d lived her entire life as a draegon naked, and now that she had to work in her underwear, she was embarrassed. Ridiculous.

In a fit of rage, she flung the skirt toward the guards. It furled, spun with a flutter, and fell short by ten feet. But it caught the paladins off guard. They faltered. She seized the instant and jumped forward and up, applying Ichor. As she passed over their heads she twirled the halberd. The haft’s end connected with a thump to one guard’s face, and a heartbeat later the opposite end—the hooked side of the blade—tore into the mask of the other guard with a sharp crunch. His mask and head split open as she pulled the hook free.