Chapter 46: The Black Vein

Their daily progress on horseback wasn’t much greater than when than it was when they were on foot, but it was far more tolerable, and it allowed Nydra to find time for an additional training session for Miro; made necessary, as she claimed, by the number of times he had flirted with death during their battle with the rebel soldiers. At this point, Miro’s body accepted that from now on, at least some part of it would always be in pain. Anytime he felt like complaining though, Nydra reminded him that had he been in the army, she’d be pushing him twice as hard and three times as long and would ask him rhetorically if he preferred to test out that kind of regiment for a couple of days instead.

Unfortunately, though Nydra had let horses into their lives, her reluctance to stay overnight anywhere but the great outdoors continued. With no shortage of caves and cervices in the Lowlands, the nightly shelter that they found here did at least provide more coverage against the elements than it had out on the arid plains. Every day in the Lowlands they had woken up with the skies threatening to break ,and every day ended with the rain never having come. At the end of their third day of travelling entirely by horse, they set up shelter in the yawing maw of a cave, where Nydra and Miro’s sparring led them down a short slope to a creek. Even Miro would readily admit though that “sparring” would have been a generous term to describe the exercise of him continuously backing away from Nydra’s attacks until she took mercy on him.

Nydra had Miro up against the creek, testing his stance since he could no longer move his foot without stepping into the water, swinging at him almost lazily when compared to how she handled the rebel soldiers back in the mountain pass town. He appreciated that she did it with a straight face, concentrating as if it actually required any effort on her part, with no hint of a condescending smirk to be found. Still, with his back to the creek, parrying blow after blow after blow, Miro noticed something – the slightest consistency in her movements that he could, however briefly, exploit. That is, if his body actually managed to pull off what he was intending to do, as the communication channels between his brain and limbs have not always been without their hiccups.

The next time Nydra swung at him, Miro used his wooden sword not just to brush hers aside, narrowly keeping it from touching his body, but also swung his own arm slightly upwards, making Nydra’s sword slide along with it, and making her move a hair’s breadth forward out of position. Miro caught the briefest look of pleasant surprise on Nydra’s face before he found her giving him a swift shove to the chest that sent him flying backwards into the frigid creek water.

Miro let out a startled yelp, and saw from his new seat waist-deep in the creek that it attracted a raised head from both Peteri and Hima. He was presented with an extended gauntlet, and the following advice from Nydra: “I’ll give you that one, lad, but if you’re going to do something unexpected, you have to be prepared for your opponent to do the same. Now come on, that water must be cracking cold.”

Now she was smiling, a great beaming smile that made him feel somewhat better about his wet behind, and as he offered his own hand back, he saw something unusual at the bottom of the creek. “Maybe we can call it a day,” the swordswoman said, “Get you all dried up and – is something the matter?”

“No,” Miro said, still staring at the long black streak in the water, “You go on ahead, I’ll catch up in a second.”

“Alright, see you up there,” Nydra said, taking her hand back and departing. At first Miro thought that what he was looking at was something long buried just below the bottom of the creek, faintly hoping that it was his turn to uncover a great mythical sword just for himself, perhaps something made out of fire rock, for a fire mage, but as he followed it, he found that it was far too long and irregular to be a weapon.

Now it more resembled the vein of some kind of mineral, perhaps even the fire rock that he initially suspected. He followed it about fifty feet up the creek until it emerged from the water and onto the rock that formed the creek’s bank. Here its texture looked more moss-like – the tiniest black fuzz growing on its surface. Miro was already shivering from being soaked, yet he found that if he stared at the strange black streak too long, it awakened in him an even deeper cold. He thought he should maybe abandon this, forget that he ever saw anything, even as his legs followed the course of the black vein and took him further up the slope, nearer to their camp.

“What do you have there, lad?” Nydra called.

“I don’t know. Probably nothing,” Miro answered, still tracing the line up the hill and towards the far side of the looming rock formation that housed their cave. “You might want to take a look at this anyway.”

“Huh,” Hima said, coming over with the others.

“What?” Miro asked.

“Never thought I’d catch you smelling like a fresh mountain spring.” He looked up, and found her staring at him mirthlessly from inside her hood as if waiting for his reaction. “So, what’re we looking at?” she asked, glancing down.

“This thing,” Miro said, pointing at the black streak with his foot.

“Interesting.” Nydra bent down and touched it with her gloved hand. A bit of fuzzy black residue transferred to her fingers and she had to rub them against a rock for it to come off.

“Have you seen something like this before?” Miro asked.

“Can’t say that I have,” Nydra said.

“First I thought it could be ore, and now maybe a lichen.”

“It’s worse,” Peteri said, and they all turned to look at him. “Take a closer look at what it’s doing.”

Miro looked around and found that the old archer was right – everywhere the vein had snaked, nothing grew within a foot on either side; not a blade of grass, not even moss or lichen, just empty barren rock. Behind them, too, where it dipped into the creek, there was no sign of life anywhere along its shores.

“This is something foul,” Peteri said, while Nydra apprehensively studied her fingers that touched the black stuff.

Miro and Hima both looked in the direction of where the black line curved around the rocks and disappeared out of view. Then they exchanged a look before Miro turned to Nydra and said, “We need to investigate this, right?”

Nydra’s gaze shifted to Miro as if with the realization that it was him that was the life-consuming destructive force that she should have been worrying about.

“Ah lad, and here I thought we could end this evening by you going over to the fire, getting nice and toasty and falling asleep never to remember any of this by morning.”

Peteri gave the swordswoman a parting sympathetic smile and turned to walk back towards their fire.

“You heard what Peteri said,” Miro insisted, “There’s something foul going on here. Don’t you think that’s on us to check out?”

“Do I think someone ought to look into this … thing?” Nydra asked, stabbing her sword into the middle of the black streak. The blade went in by a mere inch but it took Nydra some effort to pull it back out again. “Absolutely. But it does not need to be us. When we return to the capital, the King will dispatch someone to investigate further.”

“You know that will take months,” Hima said quietly.

“Exactly, and we’re right here,” Miro continued. “We already made an exception to save the town from those rebels, and this seems like it could be much more serious than a handful of soldiers.”

“That was different,” Nydra said, scraping the black substance from the tip of her sword with the sole of her boot, “Engaging the usurper’s troops was at least related to our main mission. This’ll be just chasing some side lark, not to mention that we’re still not completely back on course after our previous detour.”

“And what exactly is our rush?” Miro asked. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m nowhere near level ten yet. We walk into the Northlands right now and you’re basically carrying a human-sized sack of turnips on your back.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” Hima added.

“Thank you?” Miro said without turning to her. “At least with this, there’s a possibility of completing a quest, getting some experience points, and having me better prepared for what’s ahead.”

Nydra stood dragging her boot across the ground, leaving black residue on the stones and then, hand on her hip, followed with her eyes the black line as it snaked up the hill.

“Alright,” Nydra said finally, “The foothills of the Deep Scar Mountains can’t be much more than a day’s ride from here. We’ll track it that far, but we’re not following it into that awful place.”

Miro suspected that underneath all that “orders are orders” exterior there was a soul that was dying for an adventure, it just needed a good excuse. There was one thing he was wondering though.

“How are you able to tell we need to track it in the direction of the Mountains and not the other way?” Miro asked.

“It branches,” Nydra said and pointed at the ground, where Miro indeed saw thin protrusions splintering off the main line, all pointing in the opposite direction from the Mountains, “And if all these little ones are flowing in the same direction as the big one, then the source is somewhere in the east.”

“Alright then,” Miro said, his mood not nearly as soggy as his pants, “Let’s go see the Deep Scar Mountains.” They were one of the features he most clearly remembered rom Sierra’s map – a great dark swath of jagged peaks that separated the Kingdom of Sirilia from the haunting blankness at the edge of the map. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he continued, “I can no longer feel anything below my kidneys, so I better go dry off.”

Nydra shook her head and walked ahead, while Hima fell in step beside him.

“You know,” Hima said. “If you wanted to practice your non-spell powers, you could try drying yourself off.”

“Why? Are you volunteering to pick up my charred body parts from around the hillside when it inevitably goes wrong?”

“No, not really.” She cleared her throat and paused. “You agree with me, right? We do need to investigate this?”

“Of course,” Miro said, but then sensed the icewinder was still troubled and remembered the chill he felt when he stared too long at the black substance. “Something doesn’t feel right about it.”

“No,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “There’s nothing right about it at all.”