Page 118 of Of Empires and Dust
Something about the smell was familiar, yet she couldn’t put her finger on it.
A low growl was followed by snapping branches, rustling leaves, and thumping feet. Then there was silence as Ella slipped in and out of consciousness, her head spinning.
She didn’t know how long she lay there in the dirt before she could drag herself over to a tree trunk. White blood still oozed from the deep gashes on her left arm, her leg much the same. The strip the hawk had torn from her shoulder throbbed, her head thumped, and her nose felt as though it had been broken for a third time. It would have been easier for her to list which parts of her body weren’t in pain than the other way around.
She grunted, straightening her back against the tree trunk and lifting herself more upright, then proceeded to tear stripsfrom her shirt with a claw to bandage her wounds. There were too many questions to which she had no answers: could wounds become infected in Níthianelle? Would blood loss kill here? Were the plants and flowers here the same as the living world? Did they have the same healing properties? Would her wounds in this world take shape in the other?
The thought of that last one sent a shiver down her spine. She pushed it into a dark corner of her mind and sealed it off. Thinking on it would do her no good. Her mam had always taught her to focus on the things she could control instead of dwelling on the things she couldn’t.
“Stop the bleeding. Fix the wounds you can. Deal with everything else as it comes.”Ella remembered her mother saying those words after Joran Brock had fallen from a horse and broken his femur. Everyone had said it was a miracle Joran had even survived, let alone that he’d walked again.“If you’re too busy worrying about something that might happen, you’re more likely to miss something that is happening. Fear and panic, Ella, those are the real killers.”
Ella grunted as she pulled a strip of linen tight around the wounds on her arm, white blood flowing.
She sat there for what felt like an hour, but which could have been either half or double that time, until a familiar scent touched the air, followed by a familiar voice.
“I told you to run.” Tamzin stepped from the shadow-obscured forest, her vibrant blue eyes glistening in the white light, her pupils thinned to slits.
“I did run. It didn’t work.”
“Well, you’re alive.” Tamzin knelt before Ella, examining her make-shift bandages.
“No thanks to you.”
“You’re a big girl. You don’t need me here to hold your hand. Can you walk?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Let’s find out.” Tamzin wrapped an arm around Ella’s back and hauled her to her feet, receiving many a grunt and groan for her efforts.
A pain jolted through Ella’s calf when she put weight on her left foot.
“That’ll do,” Tamzin said, standing back and watching Ella. “Wounds heal faster here, so long as they aren’t mortal. If we start moving now, you’ll be right in a few hours.”
“Infection?”
Tamzin shook her head. She turned around, leaving Ella to lean against a nearby tree. The woman knelt by talon marks in the ground, noting the white blood clinging to the soil. She lifted her head. “The other one?”
“I’m not sure. I couldn’t see… I thought he was going to kill me, but then something else came and chased him off, I think. How did you know there were two?”
“Well,” Tamzin said, rubbing the earth, “besides the imprint of talons in the soil, the one I found in a pool of his own blood back there was too young. Vethnir would never send an eyas out on a hunt alone. Particularly not on a hunt for a Fragment. They’d have known there’d be others prowling.”
“An eyas? The older man said that. What does it mean?”
Tamzin rose. “It’s what Clan Vethnir names their young. The unfledged nestlings.”
“Vethnir,” Ella repeated. “The hawk.”
“Hmm.”
“Why try to kill me? They don’t even know who I am. What would that gain for them?”
“It’s not what they would gain but what others would lose. Like I said, our people are broken into many factions. Some are simply fighting to survive, others cling to the old ways, and some seek a better future. The likelihood is they were searching tosee if you were a child of Vethnir. When they saw you weren’t, well…”
“But we’re not the same bloodline and you haven’t tried to kill me. Why?”
“Doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to.” Tamzin smiled. “Amatkai wants to build a future where we stand together. Vethnir does not.” Tamzin rested a hand on Ella’s shoulder. “Don’t dwell on the boy. Far younger souls have died in this war, and younger still will continue to do so. Vethnir hunters are no easy prey no matter their age. Come. We must make good pace today. There are not many things that would scare away a Vethnir hunter, and I didn’t find any bodies on my way here. Which means the hunter and whatever scared him off are likely both still out here.”
Chapter 28
