Chapter 6: A pause to rest her feet

Wirrin stayed in the cave for five days. The rain had started in the late afternoon. So she sat by the statue on her rug, reading by the light of a little lamp she’d found in Alina’s pack.

Even when the rain stopped, she stayed in the cave another day and a half, before getting too close to running out of food. But nothing happened. By the time the rain stopped, Wirrin had to admit to herself that she was staying mostly to see if something else happened.

Mkaer, Fiend of the Mountains, didn’t speak again. It didn’t offer her great power when she put a hand to the statue, which the siblings’ notes said it should. It didn’t do anything.

Thankfully, the notebook had more than just inaccurate instructions for how to deal with Mkaer’s statue. It was full of notes about all of the Fiends, though much less detailed than the notes about Mkaer. It did give Wirrin an idea about where she wanted to go next.

It was quite annoying, really.

She’d spent months in the library at Esbolva, and looking for books in the markets, over her life. She’d found some information in that time, but nothing like this. It wasn’t just the libraries, of course. It was family collections and expensive booksellers too.

Money could get you anywhere, Wirrin supposed.

The only other thing Wirrin considered trying from the notes was wiping blood on the statue. She was interested to find that the siblings’ bodies, now completely frozen, had no blood left in them.

She considered using her own blood, of course, but she was deep in the mountains in mid-autumn. And she wasn’t convinced it would help anything. What the notebook was missing, what Wirrin figured she needed and would be vanishingly difficult to find, was information on how to be a mage.

Only the Church would have that, of course.

On the second day after the rain had cleared, Wirrin finally got up to leave Mkaer’s room. She wasn’t leaving the temple yet, she figured. The whole mountain was a temple to the Fiend.

She only had one meal worth of food left, after breakfast. Nothing was going to happen. There was no reason to stay here any longer. She took the smallsword and scabbard from Leran’s body and left everything else that remained of the siblings with Mkaer. She hadn’t found any more money.

It was bright outside, despite the thin clouds. She had to shield her eyes against the blue-white shine of the mountains glistening in the sun. She should have expected that, after five days in a cave.

Wirrin went much faster without anyone else to consider the safety of. It wasn’t exactly that she was careless, rather she had a very good sense for what was probably safe and what wasn’t.

Not to mention that she took fewer breaks for herself than she had taken for the siblings. Even after six weeks in the mountains, she hadn’t trusted them to know how weary they were. But Wirrin had been doing this sort of thing for nearly twenty years. She knew what she was doing.

In mid-afternoon, she spotted a little herd of mountain goats and shot one. That was enough for the rest of the trip down the mountain, which only took her two more days.

Wirrin blamed it on the lateness in the year, but she didn’t take her time getting back to Tellan. She didn’t stop to appreciate the views or draw anything on her cured hides. She just walked.

Where it had taken six weeks to reach Mkaer’s mountain, it took her two weeks and a day to get back. The extra day was spent stashing the smallsword up the road from Tellan, so she could pick it up on her way north.

She passed the Church again on her way back into Tellan and resisted the urge to try to use magic. She should, by all rights, be able to. And with stories she’d heard from before the Gods’ War, it would be the perfect magic to destroy a stone building.

But she certainly didn’t want to draw any attention, did she?

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So she ploddingly climbed the stairs up to the top of Tellan and pushed open the door to Willamette’s, where the fire was crackling merrily and Arin was sat behind the bar reading a different book.

‘I see your blasphemy still hasn’t gotten you killed,’ Arin smiled, slowly getting up. ‘I’ll get you some tea.’

‘It was a near thing,’ Wirrin said. ‘Nearly killed by an avalanche.’

Arin rubbed under her left eye and smiled wider. ‘A near thing’s good for nothing, my dear.’

Wirrin had a scar under her right eye from where an avalanche had gotten her when she was fourteen. It hadn’t been much of an avalanche, and she’d been able to get herself out without any real trouble. But a stone had hit her just below the eye and she still had a scar.

She sat down near the fireplace as Arin swung the kettle over the flames.

‘You rest your young bones and I’ll put on water for a bath,’ Arin said, groaning a little as she straightened from the fire. ‘You’re not sleeping in one of my beds in that state.’

A bath sounded like exactly what Wirrin needed right now. She’d bathed as much as was achievable while she was in the mountains, of course, but that was nothing to a tub full of hot water.

Arin was still out when the kettle started to boil, so Wirrin let herself behind the bar to get two cups ready for tea. It was still steeping when Arin got back and lowered herself carefully into the chair across from Wirrin.

‘Anything interesting, then? Other than avalanches?’ the old innkeeper asked.

Wirrin shrugged. ‘It didn’t feel very interesting,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to be interesting when you’ve got people to take care of.’

‘Oh?’ Arin looked over. ‘People can be interesting.’

‘Rich people.’

Arin chuckled.

‘Truth is they weren’t that bad,’ Wirrin said, eyes glistening in the firelight. ‘A little annoying, sure, but who isn’t? They just… they were so sure they’d find something interesting. Never even told me what it was.’

Arin nodded and reached over to pat Wirrin on the shoulder. ‘The avalanche?’

Wirrin nodded back and kept on staring into the fire.

‘Other than some quest, what were they like?’ Arin asked, after a minute.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have liked them,’ Wirrin smiled. ‘Heretics. I mentioned in passing that I was from Ettovica and they were sure I was old enough to have fought in the five-hundred-year riots.’

Arin smiled. ‘And had you been old enough, I’m sure you would have.’

‘Probably.’ Wirrin sipped her tea. ‘They got really annoyed by all the shrines on the road, too.’

‘Just like you used to.’

‘Bunch of idiots, though,’ Wirrin said. ‘It wasn’t the first avalanche we’d seen, or the first one they caused by being too noisy. But they just wouldn’t listen.’

Arin nodded sadly. ‘Just like you used to.’

Wirrin finally relented with a choked little chuckle. ‘Alright, alright. They were just like me, but richer and with higher expectations.’

Arin smiled. ‘There you are. Have a bath and drink some tea. I’ll make something up before you go off to bed.’

Wirrin left the last of her wild-caught food in Arin’s cold-room and went to bathe and sip her tea. The hot water was wonderous. Arin had this ingenious, double-walled tub that never got too hot in any one spot.

Wirrin let herself relax into the water, the warm copper of the tub smooth against her back. When she thought about it, she was pretty annoyed with the siblings. She was mostly playing it up because Arin was a gossip and she’d rather people think she was upset about her clients dying than not. But they had reminded her of herself a bit.

More driven, though. Wirrin had never been driven to any particular goal. She just did her utmost to avoid monotony. Maybe it would be nice to have a goal.

She closed her eyes and slid under the water, her tea waiting on the little table beside the tub. She rubbed at her hair, which was getting longer than she liked. And at her face, which felt dry and cold.

Eventually she had to surface to breathe. She relaxed against the tub again and sipped her tea. She was in there long enough for her fingers to start pruning before she actually bothered washing herself with Arin’s soft soap.

Wearing one of the clean sets of clothes she’d left here, Wirrin emerged back into the main room of the inn to find Arin still sitting by the fire. A big bowl of fried meat and vegetables sat between her and where Wirrin had been sitting. A little bowl before each place.

If nothing else could be said for the old innkeeper, Arin was a phenomenal cook. Especially if, like Wirrin, you’d been eating almost nothing but salted meat for over two months.

Wirrin was half way into her second little bowl of the perfectly spiced stir-fry when Arin asked: ‘you staying the winter this year?’

Wirrin shook her head as she chewed. ‘Headed north,’ she said.

That voice like a living mountain rumbled in her mind for the first time in nearly a month. ‘We ought to go south, to find Finaer.’

Wirrin tried to think back. ‘You should have mentioned that sooner.’

There was no response, no way to know if she’d gotten the thought across.

‘You have anywhere in mind?’ Arin asked, eating much slower.

Wirrin shook her head again. ‘Just north, where it’s warmer. Might go up to the desert again.’

Arin smiled mildly, the way she did. ‘That sounds pleasant. A bit too hot for my blood.’

Wirrin shrugged. ‘At least it’s not Ogesiv.’

‘I could swear you’ve spent a winter in the Snowy Mountains before.’

‘No need to do it again, then, I’d say.’

Arin smiled. ‘You planning to stay a bit first?’

‘Only a couple of days,’ Wirrin said. ‘Warm my feet and resupply.’

‘Well don’t pay me this time.’ Arin glared. ‘You’re still paid up to stay for more than a year, you know?’

Wirrin grinned. ‘I’ll forget.’

‘Not this time, you won’t.’