Apostate's Pilgrimage: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 3) by L.W. Jacobs

Author:L.W. Jacobs [Jacobs, L.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-04-26T22:00:00+00:00

37

News comes on the current—swiftly downstream and slowly up. Even the richest Councilor cannot learn faster than the Ein flows.

—Sewto Talweth, A Captain’s Tract

The Wandering Argot was not nearly so grand as its name: a tarred and patched rectangle of wooden barge, forty paces long and twenty wide with a weathered stack of room on the prow. The deck stank of Yati cured pork at the moment, sweet and smoky, but the wood had a deeper smell, of salt and brine and spice and all the thousand things it had hauled in its long career. Of river life, in other words.

Ella breathed deep. Ralhen’s ship had not smelled nearly so strong, but still it reminded her of her old life, of mornings spent on the back rail watching the world slide by, reading books and dreaming about what was out there. She knew some of that now, had experienced some of the wonders, witnessed sights strange enough even Markels and LeTwi would marvel. She’d had that wonder tempered by cruelty too, by a knowledge of how dangerous the world was. In fact the more she learned of its mysteries, the more dangerous it seemed: Broken, shamans, arch-revenants, waystones—even her own resonance was a danger to her.

Ella sighed, remembering again the face that had stared back at her from the bowl of water that morning, as she held it still aboard the rolling vessel. Her face, and yet not. A face somewhere between her and her mother. A face she didn’t want to be hers, with its sagging skin and spreading lines and faded spots where once there had only been smooth complexion.

How long had she been stuck in Credelen’s super-slowed time? How many months or years of her life had passed as time stopped and the air turned to clay in her lungs? Would she have choked or died of old age first, if that barrel stave hadn’t speared Credelen?

She shuddered, not wanting to think about it. Everyone died, but she did not want to die alone, did not want to die now, when she had finally found a person and a calling she loved. But if she hadn’t used her resonance, hadn’t distracted Credelen even for that half-second, who knew if any of them would have survived?

So she had to keep using it, at least as long as they were up against shamans and gods. But she wouldn’t kill herself doing it. She had a plan.

An arm circled her waist. “Deep thoughts this morning?” Tai asked, following her gaze out to the rocky western shoreline, Seinjial peaks rising in the distance.

“Deep enough,” she said, leaning into him. “Is that… real food I smell?”

“Real enough,” he said, waving a bowl. “Millet porridge with goat’s fat, a little crunchy but a lot better than wintergrass soup.”

She laughed. “Anything is better than wintergrass soup. They serving it up top?”

He nodded and glanced at her. “You sure you’re fine?”

“Never better,” she said, offering him a smile. Wondering if he still saw her smiling, or the old woman that was taking her place.

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