Forgotten Songs

avian woke to the sound of steel.

His hand found the sword beside him before his eyes had fully opened. For a moment he lay still on the cold cave floor, listening through the heaviness in his limbs.

Steel rang again.

Not the frantic collision of battle. No shouting followed it, no scream, no sudden rush of feet through the dark. The blows came with space between them: a measured ring, the dull scrape of boots over earth, then Karneth’s voice carrying faintly through the ivy at the cave mouth.

“Again!”

Navian let his hand fall from the sword.

Morning had entered quietly around him. Pale light slipped through the vines and lay in broken strips across the stone, touching abandoned blankets, packs, boots, the blackened remains of the night’s fire. Most of the others were already gone. Lunara’s bedroll had been folded beside her pack with the sort of precision Navian had always envied, while Gaz’s blanket lay half twisted beneath itself as though he had escaped it in a hurry.

Just like when we were kids.

He smiled.

Here and there remained smaller evidence of the previous day: a strip of blood-stiffened cloth, a cracked buckle, a bowl stained faintly green from one of the ranger's salves. He rose with a groan. Everything in him objected from a different place. Oesora’s Light had closed the worst of his wounds, but healing did not erase the memory of being struck, and his body remembered several things his skin no longer showed.

He picked his way among the bedding, buckled on his sword, and stepped through the ivy into the washed-blue morning.

The night’s rain had left the Downs gleaming. Dew silvered the grass, and beyond the clearing the hills rolled south beneath a pale sky, broad and green until they met the distant Ironspines. No smoke marked the horizon. Nothing moved upon the ridges. The wind carried wet earth and pine, and for once there was nothing in it that asked them to run.

The clearing had been awake for some time.

Karneth and Jaeshu had been at it long enough for the grass beneath them to show the punishment. The dwarf pressed forward in broad, disciplined cuts, less wild than the day before, while Jaeshu yielded ground by inches, turning each blow aside rather than trying to answer it.

Karneth swung high. Jaeshu caught the haft between his blades and shoved it away, but his retreat afterward came slower than the last.

The dwarf noticed.

He lowered his axe slightly. “What’s this?”

Jaeshu breathed through his mouth, waiting.

Karneth’s grin widened. “All that pipeweed finally catchin’ up with ya, Jae?”

“I’m fighting a damned dwarf before breakfast.”

Karneth looked upward and raised his voice toward the trees. “Care to join us in some training, elf?”

Av’elyth’s voice drifted down from somewhere overhead, dry and plain.

“That would only make you better and me worse.”

The dwarf barked a laugh and came at Jaeshu again.

Jaeshu slipped the first swing, turned the second, and began circling toward Karneth’s right when a bowstring snapped somewhere above them.

An arrow cut through the space between the two men.

Both moved on instinct. Jaeshu twisted away. Karneth lurched back half a step, one axe crossing his body as the shaft buried itself in the earth where neither man had been a heartbeat before.

They looked up.

Lunara sat comfortably along a thick branch at the edge of the clearing, bow still raised.

“There.”

Karneth stared at the arrow, then at her. “There what?”

“Your weak side.”

“My—”

“You keep opening the same angle when Jaeshu moves right.” Lunara pointed with the bow. “If that had been coming at you instead of between you, you’d have taken it in the ribs.”

Karneth looked personally offended. “I was watchin’ him.”

“Exactly.”

Jaeshu glanced toward the arrow. “She’s right.”

Lunara studied the dwarf for another moment. “Maybe you should use a shield.”

Karneth went completely still.

From beneath the edge of his hood, Jaeshu looked up at her. The warning in his expression came too late.

Lunara frowned. “What?”

The dwarf’s eyes narrowed. “A shield.”

“Yes?”

Karneth slowly lowered both axes. “Lass.”

Her certainty began to falter. “What?”

“Do you know what clan I hail from?”

“No.”

“Clearly.”

Jaeshu looked away, though not quickly enough to hide the beginning of a smile.

Karneth pointed one axe at Lunara with grave, wounded dignity. “There are insults a dwarf can forgive. There are insults he can settle with fists and ale and laugh about afterward.”

“Oh my God...”

“And then there’s tellin’ a dwarf to carry a shield. I have two axes!”

“What’s wrong with defending yourself?”

Karneth made a sound somewhere between outrage and physical pain.

Jaeshu finally spoke. “You’ve wounded him, girl.”

Lunara looked between them. “Are dwarves seriously offended by the idea of shields?”

Karneth drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. “Not just dwarves.” He struck one axe against his chest. “The Dwarven Clan of Taarn Castali!”

Lunara sighed, drew, and loosed without bothering to stand. The arrow struck the haft of Karneth’s lowered axe and stuck there. He stared at it, then kicked the shaft hard enough to snap it.

“Come, Ranger! It’s not breakfast yet!” Karneth raised both axes. “And worry not—no shields here!”

Jaeshu shook his head, smiling, and raised his swords again.

For several breaths the three of them found something that had not been there the day before. Jaeshu drew Karneth without forgetting Lunara. Karneth held his ground when instinct told him to charge. Lunara waited rather than loosing merely because a shot presented itself. It lasted only a few exchanges before Jaeshu stepped too deep and Karneth turned too late, but when the rhythm broke, they simply reset and tried again.

Near the cave mouth, Gaz and Oesora had made quieter use of the morning. They sat beside a fallen tree with a thick tome open across the wizard’s knees, faintly luminous script wandering over its pages. Several loose sheets had been tucked beneath one corner against the breeze. Beyond them came the measured ring of steel, the scrape of boots, and Karneth’s occasional complaint.

Gaz held one hand above the book. A sphere of purple fire gathered over his palm, no larger than an apple, its surface turning slowly upon itself. Violet light bled along its edges where the heat disturbed the air.

Oesora leaned closer. “You always make it round?”

“Not invariably. A sphere is simply efficient. Stable, easily directed, reasonably predictable.”

“And meant to be thrown.”

“Generally.”

She studied the spell another moment. “May I?”

“Of course.”

Light gathered faintly along Oesora’s fingers as she touched the edge of Gaz’s spell. The fire resisted her at first, stubbornly preserving the shape it knew, but she did not force it. She drew at its edges instead, little tugs at a time, coaxing the sphere wider and thinner until the concentrated flame flattened between them. Soon a small shimmering plane hovered above Gaz’s palm, indigo and violet moving through it in slow ripples.

Oesora tilted her head, pleased. “There.”

Gaz stared at the spell, then at her. “You... made a shield.”

“Mm.” She shrugged.

He returned his attention to the thin plane of flame. “I have been conjuring that spell for nearly twenty years.”

Oesora shrugged again. The wizard marveled.

“And at no point did it occur to me that I might simply not throw it at people.”

“You do seem rather committed to throwing things, Gaz.”

Gaz turned his wrist. The barrier followed, wavering but holding as he moved it left and right. “It loses density.”

“It has to. You’re asking the same amount of magic to occupy more space.”

“It would not withstand the same force.”

“Probably. But it only has to stop something once.” Oesora touched the edge of the spell. The fiery plane bowed beneath her fingers, then returned to shape when she withdrew them. “You always seem to meet force with more force. A barrier can move. Give a little. Turn something away instead of trying to stop all of it.”

Gaz pressed experimentally against the center. The little arcane wall yielded, then settled again.

“That is considerably more efficient.”

“The Light usually is.”

He gave her a sidelong look.

Oesora lowered her eyes innocently.

Gaz smiled and let the spell disappear. “Very well, Oesora. Your turn.”

Some of her confidence vanished. “My turn for what?”

“To misuse your magic.”

“I don’t think that is what we were doing.”

Gaz turned the tome toward her and tapped a diagram near the bottom of the page, several narrowing lines converging upon a single marked point. “The principle is concentration. Your Light naturally spreads because you ask it to surround, mend, reinforce. Offensive work requires the opposite instinct. Choose one point and prevent the energy from dispersing.”

Warm white Light gathered above the priestess's palm.

“Like this?”

“Narrow it.”

The glow contracted and brightened.

“Not harder,” Gaz said. “Smaller.”

Oesora frowned. The Light drew inward again, its edges sharpening.

“Good. Now give it direction.”

“Toward what?”

Gaz looked around. “Nothing alive, presuma—”

Oesora turned her palm.

The Light snapped into a brilliant white bolt and struck the open book.

Oesora gasped.

“Oh—!”

Several pages blackened at once. Gaz jerked the tome away as a small flame began crawling along the parchment. He caught the burning corner beneath his sleeve and smothered it.

When he lifted the cloth away, several pages had curled inward, their edges thoroughly scorched. Oesora stared at the damage in horror.

Gaz began laughing.

Her expression somehow became worse. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because that was my fault.”

“I burned your book.”

“No, no. You did precisely what I asked. You concentrated the spell, gave it direction, and released it.”

“It went in the wrong direction.”

Gaz examined the ruined corner. “Yes. That portion requires refinement.”

Oesora still looked miserable.

“This is why offensive magic is generally learned very slowly,” he said, “and very far from anything one intends to keep.”

Her eyes returned to the burned pages. “I could have hurt you.”

“Nonsense. I have this now.”

Gaz raised two fingers. Between them appeared the tiny purple barrier she had shown him, scarcely larger than a playing card.

Oesora almost laughed, but embarrassment held it back. “I suppose you’re safe from bees.”

The wizard chuckled and snapped his wrist, dissolving the shield into violet sparks.

“Did you ever become accustomed to that?” she asked.

“To nearly setting books on fire?”

She looked at him.

Gaz’s smile softened. “No. Although I did learn that eyebrows require approximately fourteen weeks to return.”

That pulled a quieter laugh from her. Gaz settled the book on his knees again and carefully separated the damaged pages.

“Again,” he said. “Perhaps less power this time. More control.”

Oesora lifted her hand, then stopped.

Something moved beneath the brush at the far edge of the clearing.

“Oh...”

Gaz followed her attention.

A small raccoon had emerged beneath the trees. It sat back on its haunches, tiny forepaws busily turning something over in the grass, its dark mask making its bright eyes seem larger still.

Oesora’s voice rose into a delighted whisper. “Gaz! Look at him!”

They watched the creature dart toward a nearby bush, only to stop short at the edge of it. It went perfectly still and stared back at them, its small body tense among the leaves. Then, without warning, it sprang away, bounced into the deeper foliage and vanished.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

The amusement faded from his face.

Oesora glanced at him.

The wizard lowered his eyes to the book and reached for his staff.

“Let us continue.”

High above the clearing, Av’elyth watched from the branch of an old tree.

She had been there long enough for the bark beneath one boot to grow damp with morning mist, though no one below seemed particularly concerned by her absence. Her attention moved from one person to the next, studying their improvements.

The ranger, humility.

Their archer, rhythm.

The dwarf, patience, thankfully.

That wizard, restraint.

The elf’s gaze shifted.

And the priestess...

Oesora pointed at something in the distance and laughed.

Av’elyth rolled her eyes.

A branch shifted above Navian, shaking loose a few leaves.

He looked up as the rogue dropped from the tree and landed softly in the grass. She crossed the clearing toward him while the others carried on.

Av’elyth stopped beside him. For several seconds she looked at the sky and seemed perfectly content to say nothing at all.

Navian waited.

She placed one hand against his shoulder.

“Back at the tavern…”

Her eyes remained somewhere near his collar rather than his face.

“Thank you.”

Navian gave a small nod.

Av’elyth removed her hand and walked away.

He watched her disappear into the darkness of the cave beneath the hanging ivy, then turned back toward the clearing.

By the time the sun had risen clear of the eastern hills, practice had begun to spend itself. The blows came farther apart. Lunara lowered her bow more often than she raised it, Karneth’s laughter had shortened into the breath of a tired man pretending he was not tired, and Jaeshu finally stepped away with both swords hanging loose at his sides.

Navian left the cave wall. “Anyone else starving?”

Karneth rested the head of one axe against the ground. “Aye. Finally, some sense.”

“Breakfast it is.”

The dwarf’s face brightened immediately, and Navian could almost see the feast assembling behind his eyes: hot bread, thick cuts of meat, spiced ham, enough ale to make the hour irrelevant.

“I should temper your expectations, Karneth.”

“Let me dream.”

Navian smiled.

Gaz closed the scorched tome across his knees. Beside him, Oesora looked over the clearing. Lunara’s hair clung damply at her temples. Karneth’s tunic was dark with sweat. Jaeshu stood a little apart from them, chest still rising heavily from the morning’s work.

Her attention dropped to the book between herself and Gaz.

“I think we’ve contributed considerably less sweat to the morning.”

Gaz followed her glance. He considered Lunara, Karneth, Jaeshu, then the tome resting comfortably across his lap.

“And, unless I’ve overlooked something, no blood at all.”

Navian passed them with rope and a pair of satchels in hand. He glanced over his shoulder as he headed toward the hills.

“Let’s go find our dwarf the grand breakfast he deserves.”

Oesora rose, brushed the grass from her robes, and handed Gaz his staff. He tucked the book beneath one arm and followed her after Navian.

“And none of those puny berries Lune likes!” Karneth shouted after them. “I’m not a damned bird!”

Lunara bent, picked up a stone, and threw it without hesitation.

Karneth ducked.

Jaeshu, meanwhile, had already sheathed one sword, then the other. He unbuckled them from his waist and let the weapons fall beside his bow and quiver at the cave entrance. For a moment he simply stood there, shoulders sagging.

Karneth grinned. “All that pipeweed.”

The ranger gave no reaction at all.

He walked into the cave, mercifully out of the sun, and lay down.

Beyond the cave, the Downs opened into long green rises, gentle enough that the horizon seemed always one hill farther away. A narrow stream wandered through the low ground, clear over pale stones, and small tracks gathered thickly along its banks where animals had come down in the night to drink. Wind moved through the grass in long passes. After so many roads measured by what might be following them, there was something almost strange in being able to walk without hurrying.

For a while, they did just that.

Navian kept slightly ahead, watching the ground for tracks and the ridges for movement. Gaz followed the stream, occasionally slowing for a plant, stone, or curious pattern in the earth before remembering he was supposed to be looking for food. Oesora moved between them, quiet without seeming withdrawn, sunlight catching the pink ends of her hair whenever the wind lifted it from her shoulders.

Gaz eventually broke the silence.

“Priestesses do not generally wander the countryside without purpose.”

Oesora looked over at him. She crossed a narrow cut in the stream and waited on the opposite bank until they joined her.

“No,” she said. “I had somewhere I meant to go.”

Navian slowed enough to hear without turning.

“My home was in Revmont. Far northeast of here.” Oesora looked across the hills, though in that direction there was only morning haze. “It was small. Fields, woods, houses built too near one another because being near one another made people feel safer. We thought being far from everything important might protect us.”

Some of the softness left her voice.

“The creatures came at night. Only a few in the beginning. Livestock disappeared. Someone heard scratching at a shutter. Small things.”

Gaz’s attention settled wholly on her. “Until they stopped being small.”

Oesora nodded. “We held after that. For a while.” Her hand drifted through the tops of the grass as she walked. “People speak as though enduring things is somehow brave. In my experience, sometimes bravery is simply fear that has learned to stand still.”

Neither brother answered. Gaz glanced ahead at Navian, who was already looking at him.

“There was a woman in town named Marla. Orath took her daughter and she would visit us - to stave off the loneliness, I presume. She would sing me to sleep often.” A faint smile came and went. “Most beautiful voice. I was secretly jealous that her daughter had been allowed to hear those lullabies every night.”

A breeze passed over the grass.

“I’ve forgotten what she sounds like now...”

Oesora caught one blade between her fingers and let it slide slowly free.

“I’ve tried so hard. But time is... quite the enemy of memory.”

Gaz looked down at the stream.

“There came a point when defending turned into waiting, and then waiting became watching. And I watched my family... become...”

The young priestess stopped herself from trying to describe something she never could. Her fingers closed around another blade of grass.

“So I ran.”

A few steps passed.

“Coward...”

Gaz gave her several more before he spoke. “You said your surname was Ria?”

Some of the distance returned to her expression, though not all of it. “Yes. The Church of Ria places the faith before the person. Ria-Crystal. Ria-Meygen. Ria-Oesora.”

“So Oesora is acceptable?”

“I’ve grown used to it.”

“What about Ria?”

She gave a quiet laugh and hopped across a shallow patch of mud. “If you wish.”

Navian glanced back, amused, then faced the trail again.

“And your parents?”

Oesora stopped smiling. The question seemed to grow larger in the silence than it had sounded aloud.

Navian waited. Only the warm breeze through the leaves answered. The grass whispered around their legs as they walked. Neither brother tried to fill the silence. After a while, Gaz returned only to what she had already chosen to tell them.

“So the tavern was not chance, then. You were already traveling south.”

“Yes.” Oesora stepped around a shelf of exposed stone. “After Ria, I followed rumors. Mostly hope. A safe haven here. A town still standing there. My gift for mending was useful wherever I went, and people were usually willing to spare a meal or a bed in return.”

She walked a little farther before adding, “But Orath moves faster than rumors. So I helped where I could. And when it was time to run, I ran again.”

Her eyes lifted to Navian.

“And then I found you.”

Navian met her green eyes for only a moment. His attention dropped to the faint glow along his sword before returning to the hills ahead.

After another stretch of walking, Oesora turned to Gaz. “You and Navian are brothers?”

“We are.”

“You don’t seem like men who have traveled together long.”

Gaz gave a small smile. “We have not.”

From ahead, Navian made a sound that might have been agreement.

“We grew up together,” Gaz said. “But then we became adults and performed that peculiar trick by which people who have shared nearly everything begin living lives that contain almost—”

Oesora squinted at him.

Gaz cleared his throat. “He chose the sword and the Light. I chose the arcane and the elements. Neither of us chose a life that kept us particularly near home.”

“You make it sound... deliberate.”

“Some of it was.”

Navian looked back.

Gaz met his eyes without accusation. “Nothing hostile. Merely easier. The distance was needed. Our upbringing was not... exactly...”

Oesora kept walking. She waited a moment, then looked at him.

“For once,” Navian said, “our scholar is out of euphemisms.”

Gaz gave the smallest exhale.

“Our home was not... a home.”

They walked several paces before Navian answered from the front.

“We stopped being familiar. Never stopped being brothers.”

Oesora looked from one to the other.

“And Lunara?”

At their sister’s name, Gaz’s expression softened. “Our sister had the good sense not to follow either of us. Lune found her own way.”

“Usually toward animals." Navian smiled faintly. "Too many animals.”

Gaz laughed under his breath. “And archery.”

Oesora smiled. “She is very good.”

“She is,” Gaz said, with no attempt to hide the pride in it. “Certainly better than our oldest brother.”

Navian rubbed two fingers across his forehead.

They crested another low rise. Below them, the stream widened briefly before bending away through a stand of hazel. Near the water, grass moved against the direction of the wind.

A rabbit broke from cover.

Then another.

Navian drew his sword and moved. The first fell cleanly. The second turned at the strike and nearly reached the brush before Gaz lifted one hand. A brief knot of force closed around it, holding it scarcely longer than a heartbeat. Navian crossed the remaining distance and ended it before the animal could struggle.

He cleaned the blade in the grass. “And there’s breakfast.”

Oesora had already moved toward the stream. She knelt among the low plants along the bank, separating useful roots from those not yet grown enough to take and gathering small berries into a fold of cloth. She left more behind than she collected, and when she finished, she pressed the disturbed earth gently back into place with her fingertips.

Gaz waded into the water and filled a small vessel. He held it toward the light, studied its clarity, then murmured a brief working over it before sealing it for the return.

For a long while, there was nothing to say.

When they gathered again, Navian carried the rabbits over one shoulder. Oesora had enough roots and berries to add something to whatever meal they managed, and Gaz secured the water at his side.

Navian looked toward the distant rise concealing the cave. “That should be enough for now.”

Oesora brushed the earth from her hands as she joined them.

“Speaking of, when we get back,” she said, “which one of you cooks?”

Navian raised his eyebrows and looked at Gaz.

Gaz looked at Navian and blinked.

Oesora watched them both.

“Oh no...”

The brothers laughed.

They turned for home.