“Alwyn, I’m Iefyr, the healer traveling with you,” she said. She, too, was out of his range of vision. “I can help you go back to sleep if you’d like, but Krujha said maybe you wouldn’t want to be sedated too long. Do you want to go back to sleep?”
Sleep. He thought of the dream he’d just had—how sure he’d been that the man and woman he’d seen were his parents. He didn’t know how he’d gone from the cottage by the waterfall to the orphanage where his first true memories were formed; but if those dreams were memories themselves, and not figments of his imagination, he thought maybe he did know after all. But he didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to dream it. For all he knew, none of it was real—it would be easier that way.
“Alwyn?” the woman’s voice came again, pulling him back into reality. He shook his head, which sent another wave of pain coursing through him. He bit back a groan. “Alright. Let me try to reduce some of your pain, at least.”
“Wait,” he croaked, some of the fog in his thoughts clearing. How had he ended up here? The last thing he remembered was the fire on the mountain, but now it looked like they were somewhere entirely different. “Krujha. What happened? Our mission?”
Krujha’s face entered his field of vision, peering down at him with a small, almost sad smile.
“You did it,” Krujha replied softly, and all the tension drained from Alwyn’s body in relief. He thought he remembered as much; but his head still felt stuffed with cotton, and he wasn’t sure anymore what was a memory and what had been a dream.“Zesh is dead, and so is the druid. Some rebels got away, but they’ve mostly scattered. What happens to them isn’t our concern anymore, alright? Just try to rest.”
Alwyn nodded, closing his eyes. Yes, he’d done it. No one could say that he had failed by any measure, and now he could rest.
A small hand pressed onto his shoulder, and a cool wave of magic washed over him, dulling some of the pain. He didn’t quite drift back off to sleep, but he didn’t feel entirely awake, either. As he dozed, he was vaguely aware of Krujha and Iefyr speaking to each other, the rhythmic sound of horse hooves on a dirt path, and the faint jostle of the cart. For a while he lingered there, in that quiet space between sleep and wakefulness, aware of the world, but letting it pass him by as a silent observer.
At some point, he must have drifted off entirely; when he blinked his eyes open again, the sun had sunk low enough that it was in his field of vision, making him wince and turn his face away. Now that he felt more aware, he turned his head to the side to get a better look at his surroundings: he was in a narrow wooden cart that looked like it had originally been a hand-pulled wagon for transporting produce, which had somehow been modified to attach a horse. He craned his neck to see Krujha atop the horse drawing the cart, and an elf woman—Iefyr—on a smaller horse beside him. The woman was dark-haired and slender, with nothing Alwyn could see that indicated she might be part of the Order, or a spy from the Library.
They were traveling through a rocky grassland, which gave little indication as to where they were, since so much of the wildlands was the same. But they had been further north before, which was more forested—and hadn’t Krujha said they were going back to Aefraya? This did look like the stretch of wildlands closer to the Aefrayan border, but it was impossible to say for sure.
She noticed him stirring and turned back to get a better look at him. “Oh, the sun must be right in your eyes, isn’t it?”
Krujha glanced back at that, grimacing. Alwyn nodded, and they paused so Krujha could pull a hat with a wide brim out from one of his bags. It was far too large to sit correctly on Alwyn’s head, but it blocked out the sun entirely, so he tolerated it.
“Krujha,” he said, as the orc was stepping away to mount his horse again. “Will you tell me what happened? I don’t really remember much.”
Krujha hesitated. “Are you sure you want to talk now? If you’re tired, you can keep resting.”
Alwyn resisted the urge to shake his head. “No, I’m awake.”
Krujha climbed onto his horse, and for a moment Alwyn thought the orc was ignoring him. But as they set back on the road, Krujha spoke again.
“The man with me was our contact I told you about, Brugo. That morning he told me one of the guards from the last camp recognized me, and I should escape before it was too late. I came to get you, but you weren’t in your tent. Brugo promised that he’d help me get to you if I helped him with his plan with the elves. He had a contact with them, too, and they were just waiting for the right time to start their plan. I still don’t know exactly what it was, to be honest, but they destroyed the camp by the end.”
Krujha chuckled, then fell silent. Alwyn nearly started dozing off before he spoke again.
“We saw the fire on top of the hill, and I was sure it had to be you. It was a miracle neither of our horses broke their legs with how fast we took the path up there,” he continued, his voice less jovial now. “I saw you, and—I don’t really know how I knew it was something with your magic. I guess I could just tell it wasn’t a normal fire, and you had talked about fire with your magic before, so... But I could tell something was wrong.”
“You saved me,” Alwyn said softly. He wasn’t sure if it was even loud enough for Krujha to hear.
“I did my best,” Krujha replied, just as quietly. “Then it stopped, and you passed out. I knew I had to get you down the mountain somehow, to find someone who could help heal you. Brugo went on ahead back to the camp, and I found a safe place for us to hide until the rebels stopped coming to see what had happened. Took out a good amount of them, but my crossbow bolts were all busted by the end. We were lucky, and eventually, I could bring you back down to the camp. Brugo found a healer, and Iefyr and I have been watching over you since then. I didn’t stick around to see what happened, but Brugo sent a messenger to Drol Kuggradh, so...”
“How long ago?” Alwyn asked. It felt as though it had just been that morning, but judging from where they were, it had to have been at least a day or two.
“It’s been a few days,” Krujha admitted, confirming his thoughts. “Almost a week, actually. There were a few times you seemed like you might wake up on your own, but Iefyr helped you stay asleep through the worst of it. We’ll be reaching Aefraya in a few more days, and she trained under a master healer there, who she says can help with the rest of your burns.”
“He’s very skilled,” Iefyr added, speaking up for the first time. “I healed the immediate wounds, but he should be able to help with the—well, the scarring.”
Alwyn closed his eyes, feeling his heart sink. He hadn’t considered how badly he might be scarred yet. His face felt warm, but his hands were bandaged up tight, throbbing in time with his pulse when he thought too much about it.
But that was why they were going all the way back to Aefraya, instead of going back to Drol Kuggradh. He suspected maybe Krujha was avoiding going back to the orc city on purpose, knowing he had disobeyed Gorza’s orders. Alwyn had onlybriefly considered Krujha coming to Aefraya with him—would it be better if he kept Krujha from meeting Tessarion at all? Somehow, he thought it would be best not to mention the orc when recounting the mission, but neither could he see a way of glossing over Krujha’s role in it either.
He tried to push the worries out of his mind. No use dwelling on any of it now.
As the sun sank low on the horizon, Krujha and Iefyr set up camp, just under a rocky outcropping to provide some shelter from the wind. Alwyn watched them from his cart with a vague sense of guilt at not being able to help; he couldn’t think of a time he’d ever been so helpless. Krujha helped him settle into a more comfortable position and fed him, which made him feel even more useless.
He felt wide-awake now, having slept on and off throughout the day. While Iefyr had helped keep his pain from becoming overwhelming, he was far from comfortable. She ducked into her tent after she ate, telling Alwyn to wake her if he needed help, while Krujha remained sitting beside him. For a while, they sat in silence with only the soft sound of the campfire crackling, and Alwyn occasionally shifting restlessly.
“Should I get Iefyr for you?” Krujha asked.
