The Ice Dagger by Stefon Mears

Author:Stefon Mears [Mears, Stefon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thousand Faces Publishing

* * *

Cavan awoke slowly. Every part of him hurt. Even his teeth and tongue ached. The bones in his skull. Everything down to the small bones in his hands and feet, even the little bones of his spine, and all of them.

Every single bit of Cavan ached, and he would swear that he could feel each one of those individual aches, crying out for attention over and above all the others.

Groaning seemed like the best course of action.

Cavan tried it.

Sure enough, he felt a little better for a moment, for having done so. Alas, the lessening of his aches didn’t last.

“Awake then?” Ehren asked.

Ehren sounded entirely too unharmed. As though … as though the explosion hadn’t touched him at all.

Cavan wedged his eyes open.

He could still see. Which meant that Ehren’s blessing from earlier was still in effect. Or perhaps Ehren had renewed it. Either way, Cavan could see the cold, blue-gray stone around him as clearly as though the sun were shining right here in the mine shaft.

He could hear, too. He could hear Amra groaning softly. He could hear the creak of leather that told him either Amra was shifting about on her back, or Qalas was shifting about on his.

Cavan didn’t hear Qalas moan.

No. If Ehren looked so … composed, Cavan had no doubt that Qalas was at least as alive and well as Cavan was, himself.

Sitting up seemed like just about the worst idea since Amra’s strike.

Cavan did it anyway.

He got as many internal protests as he expected. Worse that uneasy feeling in his guts yet remained.

He could see Ehren standing over him, looking concerned. He had a poultice in one hand and his staff in the other, as though not sure which he’d need first.

“What happened?” Cavan said.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Amra said, sitting up. Her voice sounded more angry than hurt now. “I tried cutting through those boards and they blew up.”

“Not quite,” Qalas said, sitting up. He sounded more pained than angry. Cavan took some comfort in having someone to share his pain with. “The exact spot you struck exploded. I can still see the spots in my eyes.”

“Well,” Ehren said. “I can see that Cavan is not the only one attempting foolish experiments.”

“Watch it,” Amra said, standing on shaky legs. She looked a wreck, worst of the three. The left side of her face was bruised, as was much of the skin Cavan could see. Her hair was matted with sweat and caked with mine dust.

Still, she began to stretch her muscles as though this sort of thing happened every day.

Cavan shook his head, and made his way to his feet about the time that Qalas did. Qalas began to stretch as well, so Cavan joined them.

It felt both awful and wonderful at the same time. But as he continued, the wonderful to awful ratio began to slant the right direction.

It helped that Ehren began to feed them blessed oranges. Orange was the fruit of Zatafa, but Ehren had never handed them out this way before.

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