The group topped a rise and Blayre peered between Dove's gray ears at the lush mountain scene before them. The light wind picked up the mare's mane in wisps of white. The grass before them blew in waves of soft green speckled with magenta wildflowers.
"There's no smell like a mountain smell." Fletcher said, voice filled with content as he breathed deeply. "Well, except for the ocean maybe." He amended.
"If you like fish and algae." Ainslee said, scrunching her nose.
"Yes, the mountains are a bit - fresher than the ocean." Caval offered, reining in his piebald.
Blayre had always loved the mountains, it was the people she associated them with that soured them in her mind. Well, that and the winter. But it had been years since she had been forced to spend an entire winter at Blumore. Not since she had begun training in the capital.
"Where to?" She asked Caval, who squinted at the valley below them and the lilac mountains surrounding them, the growing shadows of afternoon blanketing part of the valley in darkness.
He had one of the maps, she knew, in his pack, but up to this point he had led them all by memory.
The journey would take three more days at least. Fletcher and Ainslee had obtained an additional map from Lord Darach. A bit more detailed than Caval's old book - at least to get them to the villages, with a halfway house stationed in between where they would leave behind their horses and continue across more difficult mountain terrain on foot. Darach didn't know about the additional plans they had for traveling to the caverns, and she doubted from her childhood experiences, that he thought them as more than an old legend meant for inspiring dreams - or fear - into children.
The briefest thought of her father inundated Blayre with conflicting emotion. She had too many of those lately. She felt that she couldn't break that promise she had made to him the day before, but she also had a burning desire to meet the woman who was her mother.
The woman who she had never been able to call mother. Who apparently she never would be able to call mother, if what her father told her was true. Suddenly it was all so overwhelming and she wished she could rewind time and go back to believing that her mother had thought about her all these years. Had wanted to know Blayre.
A soothing tendril of magic touched her, when they began moving again, and Blayre realized that Caval had dropped back to ride beside her, while Ainslee and Fletcher continued to banter back and forth about where the best geographical location was to live.
He was quiet as he said, "I know what the answer will probably be, but do you want to talk?"
She gave him a small smile, "Mind-reading again?"
He laughed.
"I know I should talk about it - about both things. That it will make me feel better. But I think that perhaps I just don't want to feel better quite yet."
"Sometimes we need time to grieve." He said. After a pause, he continued, "I think I can understand a little of how you feel. I never knew my father. And it would be a lie if I said that I didn't want to know who he was. It would be a lie to say that I never resented my mother for not knowing him or being able to tell me those details."
Blayre gave him a sympathetic smile. "I do wonder too - about my mother."
"I - very possibly - overheard your conversation with your father," Caval said, only slightly sheepish.
"Very possibly, eh?"
"I have good hearing," the sorcerer flashed Blayre one of his winning smiles.
"Good hearing on top of mind reading? I'm surely doomed." Laughed Blayre.
Caval's face turned serious again, "Truly though, I understand what you may be feeling, or thinking in relation to the situation with your, biological mother. I don't know the whole story, but it sounds like you and I may come from similar situations of parentage."
"I do wonder about her," Blayre admitted. "And Twelve Hells, I am upset that my father has never shared anything about her with me. Even if it was her choice. And if it was her choice, then why?" Dove snorted and shook her head as they picked their way along the trail, sensing the tense shift in her rider's demeanor.
"Sometimes," Said Caval, tilting his head up to gaze at the canopy of treetops overhead. "Sometimes I think we are better off not knowing. It allows us to imagine something much better, and gives us hope to cling on to."
****
The halfway house was a fair-sized log cabin, typically used to house Lord Darach and his traveling companions on his trips to the mountain villages. It was spacious, and maintained by a capable man named Marc and his wife Selena. The four horses were brought to a stable toward the back of the structure to be fed and watered, and their riders were brought inside where the motherly Selena served them a savory dish of roast pheasant, and fresh asparagus. Blayre just about moaned at the garlic and herb taste of the meal as it hit her tongue.
"I'm so glad to get a break from camp food. Selena, you are wonderful cook." Said Ainslee as she snagged a still-warm wheat-roll from the basket in front of them.
Selena smiled warmly, "I'm happy you've come along. The asparagus in the garden was ready for harvesting and there's still enough to feed an army."
Blayre highly doubted there was that much, but smiled anyway, thanking the woman for the meal.
****
Later that evening, as darkness settled, Blayre Sensed Caval outside, and suspected that he was intentionally drawing her out of the cabin with the tendril of magic that had gently prodded at her until she stood and followed it out like a rope used to lead through caves and dark spaces.
He was sitting on a grassy patch and looked up when she approached, patting the ground beside him. The blades of grass were silvery under the starlight that broke through patches in the tree line around them, soft gray clouds that looked more like puffs of smoke moving slowly over the night sky, and the distant snow capped mountain peaks - peaks that towered so high they put this smaller mountain to shame.
"It's beautiful out here." Caval mused as Blayre settled herself on the ground beside him, stretching out her legs with a sigh of content and leaning back on the palms of her hands, fingers facing outward entwined in the grass.
"It is," She agreed, staring up and up and up into the expanse of sky above them. "I can appreciate it more now. Now that it no longer feels as though I am tethered here."
Caval's dark eyes were like the night sky - a pool of darkness lit by twinkling stars as he peered down at her. "Freedom and choice, give us a different perspective on things." He said wisely, and Blayre didn't miss the allusion. To whatever choice he had made to join this rebellion.
The rebellion was still so murky in her mind, and while she was starving to know more, she knew perhaps, that once she tasted a little bit of what it was - there might not ever be any turning back.
"What are you thinking about?" Caval asked, searching her eyes with his own.
"You mean you really aren't reading my mind?" Blayre laughed.
The sorcerer smirked, leaning back on his own palms, the dark sleeve of his tunic tickling against her wrist, feather light. She removed her hands then, adjusting herself and leaning all the way back so she was laying on her back, face fully upturned toward the sky above. She closed her eyes and felt, rather than saw Caval recline all the way, joining her star gazing.
"I'm not. So tell me," he urged.
Blayre opened her eyes and found that he was looking at her, not at the sky above as if he was trying to search her mind. As if he could see through her eyes to her soul.
She cleared her throat, shifting herself into a more comfortable position. "Im thinking about a lot of things," She admitted. "I want -" She paused, searching for the right way to frame it. "I want to know more about this group of people that your are joined with. I want to know everything. Though perhaps not all at once." She kept her words cryptic, in case anyone in the cabin was hovering within ear-shot.
"I will be happy to tell you all that I know - when you are ready." Caval said. He touched her with the barest of gestures, his pinky entwining with her own. Blayre felt herself heat at the touch. A sudden image of Rory flooding her mind. Rory sitting under that tree, that night when they had fled. His red curls falling over his brow.
Stop. Go away. Blayre told the image in her mind. She swallowed, guilty. That touch - Fletcher and Ainslee might touch her in the same way, but for some reason from Caval it had felt so much more intimate. Everything about Caval felt that way - like he had known her for years and decades and eons or more.
But the feelings she still held for Rory were still too raw. Too recent. And just because she had decided to sever the thing that tied them together, didn't mean that the feelings had disappeared.
Stop it, Blumore. He touched your hand. You're getting way ahead of yourself here.
"I would like that. If you could tell me. Whenever we have the opportunity. I want to learn, and to make the right choice."
"Your wish is my command." Said Caval. And they remained there in silence for several more minutes, ensconced by the chirping of crickets and the twinkling flashes of fireflies, before she followed him back into the cabin and bid the sorcerer - her friend - goodnight.
****
Blayre awoke suddenly in the middle of the night, nose itching like crazy, and feeling as though something was terribly amiss. A static charge was buzzing through her and all around her and she slipped off her cot, deciding not to wake the others in the room as she slipped on her pants and then boots, tucking in her shirt before exiting through the door.
One hand feeling along the grains of the wood-paneled wall of the cabin, Blayre made her way outside, where the magic sensation began to grow, the pressure building like a teapot ready to whistle.
She cursed, stumbling on a rock. It had been so nice to sleep under a roof, in a dry bed and her damned sense had to wake her up.
Inconvenient.
And as she groggily followed after the magical trail leading away from the cabin and to the woods beyond, she was taken back to an evening months prior when she had climbed a stairway to follow her Sense to Rory's room.
Curiosity killed the cat. Except that so far it hadn't.
Blayre moved silently through the woods, a wolf stalking its prey, the magic feeling stronger and stronger ahead of her, heightening from a static buzz to an electric thrumming. A twig cracked underfoot and Blayre cursed internally. She froze, doing her best to control her breathing.
This had been a stupid idea. In her sleepy mind, she hadn't bothered to wake any of her companions, and was seriously regretting the decision as she moved forward again, quiet as a wraith.
It was not until her mouth and nose were smothered by a strong smelling cloth that she noticed the person behind her. And then she was falling, falling, falling...