Chapter 42: Secrets of the Dead

“Excuse me,” Miro said, after almost having fallen out of the saddle, “Did you say that was Sierra’s power?”

Peteri was still looking up and ahead, while Nydra had trouble keeping her eyes on Miro, something painful eating away at her expression.

“Who is Sierra in all of this?” Hima asked, sounding as if she was only invested in having the complete picture rather than out of any genuine concern.

“Sierra,” Miro said, and then his voice caught again. He had said her name out loud twice now, for the first time in years, since Bondook refused to speak of her. It felt strange, the taste of a warm memory on his tongue, a mother who wasn’t his mother but the closest thing that he’d ever had. “Sierra had been my guardian. She raised me with Bondook until she passed away years ago.”

“Yes,” Nydra said, “And before she’d been your guardian, she was a member of the King’s Finest. She’d fought with us.”

“Oooh,” Miro said absently, though by the end of that sound it had turned into a groan that emanated from the depths of his stomach.

“Maybe we should stop and give Miro a moment?” Peteri suggested.

“Sounds like … a great idea.” Miro could hardly breathe, let alone talk, and he started getting off the horse before Hima even stopped it. Fortunately, Nydra hopped off hers and rushed to help him before he dropped on his head.

“Easy does it, there,” Nydra said gently as her hands guided him down. Miro took a few shaky steps to get off the road and then deflated into a sitting position on a small patch of grass.

“So she was … one of you guys?” he asked, staring at the rocky road, seeing vividly every crack and bump and speck of colour but only being distantly aware of his fellow travelling companions, paying no attention to where they were or what they were doing. “She … fought with my father.”

Miro heard Hima’s voice, it could have been a whisper or she could have been shouting, it was hard to tell as everything came at him in a sort of hiss. “How many other things are you still keeping from him?” He heard only as incoherent mumbling Nydra’s answer before it was cut off. “Or does that all come down to your orders, too?”

He could hear Hima’s footsteps recede on the rocky path, while Nydra instead came closer and sat beside him on the grass. Why did she always seem so tall? Miro knew he was taller by an inch or so, but she seemed to loom over him, always; and especially now that they were sitting here side by side, it wasn’t just she who felt big, but it was him that felt small. A hand fell on his shoulder and for once it wasn’t gauntleted, Nydra’s actual warm fingers pressing into him, steadying him.

“I’m sorry, lad. There was just so much to say it felt like too much too soon. And it didn’t sound like Sierra let on that she was a mage.”

“No,” Miro whispered, “No she never told me.”

“Oh she was a fantastic mage with an uncommon power – you’ve already seen what it can do, but trained for years like she did, it was so useful in our campaign against the northern usurper. At her strongest, she could even make people do what she wanted. Short of that, she could look at a person and figure out if they were friend or foe, suss out their real name.”

“Yeah. I just found that out, used it on some random soldier named Rucien At’hal.” Not a regular mage power. Not a magus-specific power. The power of another type of mage; living within him alongside his fire powers. Which could only mean, despite the debuff, that there could be no disputing now that he had taken after his father. “I don’t understand though, of all the powers for me to develop, why Sierra’s? And why do I feel like I’ve had them almost as long as my fire powers?”

Nydra’s hand gave him a cautious pat on the shoulder and then slid off as the swordswoman put her palms together in front of her and stared at them with a sigh.

“I might …” she started, and Miro thought that he had never heard her so hesitant, “I might know something about how a magus expands their powers.”

He looked over at her, as she picked some dirt from her fingernails and chewed on her lip. Hima had turned around at this point, crossed the road again and stood over them.

“Oh, is that right?” the icewinder asked, sounding angry, but there was also a shakiness in her voice.

“The thing about magus powers,” Nydra said, “And what your father hated most about his training, is that additional powers can either be given by or taken away from mages who naturally possess them. So the only way you would have Sierra’s powers, is if she’d given them to you herself.”

So it had been a gift; a gift that he’d spent years squandering.

“I just wish she had a chance to train me or at least explain it all to me,” he said, his voice weak. “She died though soon after I got them.”

He did notice, out of the corner of his eye, how Peteri shifted at that moment, and perhaps Miro would have noticed how it was the first shiver of discomfort he’d seen move through the otherwise stolid old archer, but he had been looking far too much within his own self to pay too much attention to it, and he forgot it soon afterwards.

Nydra breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. Miro understood now that in Sierra’s loss, Nydra too had lost a friend. Within their group, Sierra’s death was no longer a private pain for him. “It’s possible that she had known that she was dying and made sure to pass her powers onto you before it happened.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s not like they ever told me much when I was growing up. And Bondook didn’t say anything at all once Sierra passed.”

“Ah Bondook,” Nydra said wistfully, “I hadn’t seen that grumpy bastard since before you were born.”

“Don’t tell me Bondook was one of your King’s Finest, too.” Miro thought that this kind of revelation would likely destroy whatever was left of him.

“No, goodness, no,” Nydra said with a laugh, but he had been a decent soldier in his prime.” This piece of information though did come close to testing Miros’ abilities to handle the truth. “He’d wanted to retire early, settle down on the farm, but Sierra was chosen for our little band and they spent a lot of time apart because of it.”

Miro did want to hear more. He was dying to hear more. To start piecing together this history that all the adults in his life had kept from him for varying reasons, some because they were dead, others because they’d thought it was for his own good. But had it really been? Now that the shock was starting to pass, he could feel the heat rising from within his body. Was that the warmth of his own fury, or did it come from his fiery powers, or an entangled combination of both that was bursting to get out?

Nydra was still smiling. Her shoulders had loosened, she thought it was over, or else hoped that it would be over, but for Miro, the storm of thoughts had only just formed into impenetrable dark clouds that crackled with the lightning of his anger.