(Chapter 4: An Auspicious Beginning, cont.)

  It took another four days on the road for Ean to realize the truth: travel was hell, and this was his punishment for trying to kill the Prince. He wasn’t accustomed to riding all day. His back and shoulders ached. His neck twinged anytime he turned too quickly. Even worse, his legs were becoming ever-so-slightly bowlegged. He could feel it when he shadow-danced, not that he had much time to practice. They traveled all day, only stopping at noon to let the horses graze. He could usually sneak in a dance or two, but then they were back in the saddle until dusk. Much of the evening was spent setting up camp—tending to the horses, clearing the brush, raising tents, cooking dinner, and a dozen other chores until it was time to sleep. Or time to take the night watch. Ean practiced a couple dances before bed, and another in the morning if he got up early enough, but once the sun rose, it was the same list of chores, in reverse, to pack up. At Haven, Ean practiced at least four hours day, with the seventh off for stretching and meditating. He wondered how rusty he was going to be when the journey finally ended.

  It was a sobering thought. If he was ill-practiced at the dances, something that came easily to him, then he had no chance at the trials, no chance to catch the arrow. Familiar fear rose up; he pushed it down and turned his attention to the group in front of him.

  If travel was hell, then the boredom that came with it was torture. The others had no problem amusing themselves. Leo, Chadwick, and Asali talked about politics, art, war, history, and languages. Flora chimed in occasionally. She had the schooling to add to their conversations, but her interests veered toward court gossip and current fashions. It was a frivolous sort of chit-chat. Chadwick was happy to share in the latest rumors, but Leo didn’t say much. Neither did Asali. Ean couldn’t tell if she avoided gossip on principle, or if she was annoyed with Flora’s constant requests take a short rest. If Asali had her way, they’d be pushing harder.

  Flora apologized every time she asked to stop, and she did it so profusely that Chadwick and Leo went to extremes to assuage her guilt. Only Roarke retained his equanimity. When Flora tried apologizing to him, he patted her on the shoulder and said, “If you need a break, you need a break.”

  Not counting Ean himself, Roarke was the quietest of the group, but today he’d joined the conversation on romance literature. He was surprisingly passionate about the subject. He’d been locked in a debate with Chadwick for the past hour and it was starting to get ugly.

  “Prospherus was a self-aggrandizing imbecile,” Chadwick said, his finger pointed at Roarke.

  “At least his pieces were original,” Roarke returned. “Morgana stole all of her work.”

  Chadwick spluttered over a response.

  Ean pulled on the reins, slowing his horse to fall out of earshot. Up ahead, Asali moved into a distant scouting position to avoid the argument. Both Leo and Flora had dropped out of the debate some time ago. They were riding next to each other. Ean watched Flora point out a flowering tree, leaning well into the Prince’s space, half-out of her saddle. She risked falling right into his lap. Leo must have thought so too because he reached out to steady her. She smiled and rested a hand on his arm. Blatant flirting, yet another complaint to add to the list.

  Ean rolled out his neck, then his shoulders. He hadn’t been able to practice at lunch today. They’d only taken a short break because the clouds were threatening rain again. He glanced up at the sky and frowned. The clouds that were rolling over each other weren’t gray anymore. They were turning a sickly greenish color. Ean wasn’t an outdoorsman, but he knew that was a bad sign. The wind picked up with a sudden howl. Up ahead, the debate stopped.

  Chadwick glanced at the sky and gave an urgent shout. “We need to move!” He kicked his horse into a gallop.

  Ean didn’t need any encouragement, nor did his horse. It bolted after the party without prodding. Chadwick took the lead from Asali. He turned back to shout again, something about caves up ahead, but a gust of wind stole the words from his mouth. A hundred paces down the road, a splatter of rain landed on Ean’s head. Two more hit his hand. In the distance, thunder rumbled.

  The rain began falling in earnest, colder than the drizzle that had soaked them the first few days of their journey. Ean pulled up the hood of his cloak and cursed the gods he didn’t believe in. Another rumble of thunder sounded behind them, closer this time. He turned his curses into a hasty prayer.

  Chadwick kept them on the road for several hundred paces, then he slowed his horse and turned into the woods. There was a narrow path between the trees, not much more than a deer trail. The party followed him, forced into a single file line. The rain fell harder. It pinged off Ean’s cloak and skin, stinging in its intensity, then took on a whitish hue as it solidified into hail. The wind pushed through the trees, making them double over with its ferocity. A few smaller branches cracked and were torn away. In the lead, Chadwick seemed to drop out of sight. It took Ean a moment to realize that the ground sloped down into a rocky ravine. It was calmer inside, the walls of the ravine cut the wind by half, but the hail was still falling. And it was still growing, now the size of small pebbles. The narrow canyon floor rose up, towards a taller line of ridge. Ean could see a dark shadow underneath the ledge of protruding rock, a large cavern. It wasn’t particularly deep, but it was wide enough to fit the party and the horses.

  Roarke quickly put the group to work stringing their tent tarps together, creating a wall across the mouth of the cave. Chadwick risked a trip outside to gather what firewood he could find. By the time he returned, the hail had doubled in size. It struck against the rock with a fierce tempo, a never-ending drumroll. The wind screamed as it rushed overhead, a few tails of it catching the lip of the rock walls and swooping into the ravine. It battered the tarps, but then died out. The horses snorted and shifted their stance. Roarke rechecked their tethers.

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  Ean hunkered down with the others beside the small fire. A few conversations stuttered and then stopped. Silence stretched; restlessness followed. Ean pulled out his journal and scrawled out a list of his complaints about the journey so far. He started with the weather. Whose idea had it been to leave during the rainy season?

  The hail gradually turned back to rain and then petered out over the evening. When Ean woke in the morning, it was to the sound of a downpour. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled to the edge of the cave. The clouds were dark, so dark it was hard to judge the hour, although it had to be past dawn. The rain fell with such an intensity that the world seemed to blur.

  The others rose and worried themselves with bits of chores until there was nothing to do but sit and make small talk. There wasn’t enough room to shadow-dance, so Ean picked up his journal again and tried to find the right descriptor for the rain. Deluge. Tempest. Cascade. Mother Nature was mopping her floors. The water barrel of heaven had been overturned. The gods were having a pissing contest.

  Asali turned to the east and said a few prayers. Leo murmured the words with her, though at points their phrasing didn’t match—the difference between Standard and Southern Deists. Flora mended a tear in her cloak. Roarke spread out his bedroll and slept. Chadwick rubbed the talisman that hung around his neck.

  Ean squinted. It appeared to be a family pendant. While most couples in Eastmere marked their commitment with rings, couples in the Peninsula wore matching pendants around their necks, a mutually agreed upon symbol, a flower or an animal, sometimes a word. Any children that resulted from the pairing were given the same pendants. When Ean was younger, he and his mother had traveled with a family from Suyon. Their pendants were small golden harps. He couldn’t tell what Chadwick’s symbol was, but as Chadwick was an infamous bachelor, it had to be his family’s pendant. That meant Chadwick wasn’t as much of a bastard as he pretended to be. Ean wondered why he kept his birth a secret. It was enough of a mystery to keep him lazily entertained for a few hours, at least until the rain died down and he was sent out with the others to gather more firewood.

  Traveling with a Fire Mage meant even wet logs caught flame. They cooked an evening meal and then stayed close to the fire to chase away the evening chill. Flora amused herself by making the flames flare up and down, her face back in that poised look. Every now and again her eyes would slip to Leo, like she was checking to see if he was watching. Chadwick and Roarke returned to their debate about romance literature. Ean closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. If he couldn’t shadow-dance, at least he could meditate for the evening.

  It was easier than he thought. The rain and the crackling fire provided a soothing backdrop to quiet his mind. He slipped into the liminal space of meditation and drifted there until Chadwick’s outraged voice broke his focus.

  “Morgana may have been influenced by the tragedies, but she did not steal from them.”

  Roarke snorted. “A Night’s Lament is clearly a retelling of the King and the Sparrow.”

  Irritation prickled over Ean’s skin. He clenched his jaw over a sharp retort and tried to re-center himself.

  “You’ve lost your mind!” Chadwick accused. “It’s a completely different story.”

  “An exiled lover? A blind oracle? A lost heir? Sound familiar?”

  “The banished lover and lost heir are well-used archetypes. You’re just jealous that Morgana used them to greater effect than Prospherus ever did.”

  They were both wrong. Infuriatingly wrong. Ean could list a dozen fallacies in their debate. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

  “Morgana built on Prospherus’s work and got all of his praise,” Roarke insisted.

  “What a load of horse shit! Morgana was writing at the same time Prospherus was.”

  “Prospherus published first. Morgana had plenty of time to revise her manuscripts to reflect what was selling well.”

  Ean felt the bite of his fingernails in his palms. He let out a breath and tried to relax the tension thrumming through his body.

  “You’re absolutely mad!” Chadwick exclaimed.

  “At least I’m not blind. I can tell when a story’s been stolen.”

  “It’s an original! A masterpiece!”

  “It’s theft, and you know it!”

  Ean’s eyes snapped open. “By the dying stars,” he swore, the words blurting from his mouth.

  The group jerked around to look at him, startled at his outburst. Ean was startled too; he hadn’t intended to say anything, but he couldn’t let this go on any further. He jabbed a finger at Roarke and Chadwick.

  “The both of you are absolute idiots.”

  Roarke’s eyes narrowed.

  Chadwick bristled. “Listen here—”

  Ean spoke over him. “Both Morgana and Prospherus were inspired by the Ballad of Cephus, a cantata comprising of three arias, which details the life and death of Queen Althaea. Prospherus was more heavily influenced by the first two, and Morgana by the last. Neither is original.”

  The group stared at him, shock and confusion written on their faces. They didn’t expect a shadow-walker to be so well-read, but Ean liked literature; the epic verses, that is. They had weight to them, unlike the saccharine drivel that passed as romance these days.

  He stood up, not quite done with the lecture. “And if you want quality romance, you should listen to Wagoner’s collection of ballads, preferably performed by a full choir. Any love story that’s been written in the past century borrows from them.” He turned, before they could reply, and made his way to the back of the cavern. A little distance would be helpful.

  He settled down, shut his eyes, and released his thoughts into the air around him. His mind slowly emptied. He slipped back into meditation—

  And then the singing started.

  His eyes squinted open and he growled his displeasure. They were singing the Epic of Demos, an over-worked monstrosity of a ballad that was written for one purpose: to provide a false sense of righteous vigor. The melody was repetitive, the lyrics trite, and the rhymes formulaic. His mother used to say—

  But he didn’t want to think about her, not when he was already so miserable. He picked up his journal once more and added the music to his list of complaints.