The Obsidian Druid (The Age of Aikana Book One) by Caroline Barnard-Smith

Author:Caroline Barnard-Smith [Barnard-Smith, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Night Trident Press
Published: 2024-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty

Vanth woke with a start and cursed loudly. She had fallen asleep with her chin resting on her chest and now her neck ached, her back cold against damp stone. Quickly gathering her senses, she sat up, ignoring the pain that shot through her protesting body, and reached for the familiar, soothing weight of her daggers as she searched for the satyr in the gloom.

“Sorry I woke you,” he said from the other side of the cell. He held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I’m not trying to escape, I’m simply stretching the muscles in my legs.”

“You’ve changed back,” Vanth said, squinting at him. “You’re not a satyr anymore, you’re a plain-faced man. Do you still possess a satyr’s strength?”

“No,” Rakon replied, a touch indignantly, “but before you stabbed me, this body was far from weak. I shouldn’t have reverted to my former self at all. You did something to me, disturbed the glamour somehow.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Vanth stood, trying her weight gingerly on her injured leg. “Let’s get out of this rat-hole.”

“A splendid idea.”

Rakon rose with a long, low wheeze, standing as awkwardly as Vanth. He cringed as he inspected the dagger wound in his thigh. The skin around it was dark and swollen. “A fine pair we make.”

“It feels early,” Vanth said, ignoring him. “If our luck holds, we may be able to exit the citadel before the Salt Swords are awake. Of course, you no longer being a towering goat-man makes that easier.”

Rakon scowled at her but did not argue.

She stole a pair of mud-streaked boots as they fled the citadel, placed in a corridor by some fastidious Salt Sword who had surely planned to polish them before the morning bell. Now they’d have to eat their breakfast in their socks. She thrust them at Rakon and waited impatiently for him to pull them on, though the boots did little to deter the suspicious glances of Armoria’s early-risers as they stole through the city streets. Rakon’s clothes were torn and bloodied, and while Vanth still wore her Salt Sword’s leathers, her night spent sleeping against the wall in the Pit of Thorns had done nothing for her hair which stood up from the back of her head in a matted tangle. When the third person turned to stare at them—a middle-aged woman holding a basket of grey mushrooms—Vanth bared her teeth and growled until she uttered a small shriek and moved away.

“You have little tolerance for people,” Rakon observed.

“It depends on the person.”

Vanth practically marched the satyr to the Bard’s Quarter and on into Midnight Lane, where she swept him before Gulpe’s shop, eager to get them both off the street as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the door to the Eternal Library of Thetia was firmly locked.

“Gulpe, come out, you old stumpcrab!”

Vanth knocked until her knuckles—already bruised after her fight with Rakon—began to sing with pain. Finally, she heard Gulpe shuffling towards the door. When he opened it he was confused and sleepy.

“Vanth? What

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