River of Souls (River of Souls 0.50)

The only answer was bright laughter, a brief flutter of lips against Adele’s throat, and then the hand pulled Adele close until lips met warm lips.

* * *

Next morning, he woke to an ordinary world.

The sky stretched out gray and endless above. Nearby, the fire burned low. Asa smelled wood smoke, roasting mutton, and a sour sweat-scent he knew was his own. He stirred, flexed his arms, and felt an ache throughout his body.

“So you did not die.”

A woman bent over him. He could only tell her sex by her voice. She was dressed in thick wool clothing that obscured her body, and the fur-lined hood was drawn close around her face, but the voice was clearly a woman’s, high and sweet. She spoke his own language, with an accent that he now recognized as the mountain dialect.

“Can you talk?” she asked.

He nodded. Swallowed to wet his throat. “Yes, I—”

“Stop. Drink a cup of tea first. You’ll find it easier.”

She motioned to someone behind her. A man appeared with a tin mug. It was tea, scalding hot and flavored with spices and butter. Asa nearly choked.

“Drink,” the woman repeated.

He drank. The tea lit a flame inside his belly. The stiffness eased, and he could almost think about eating.

“Do you need to piss?” the woman asked.

He shook his head.

“All dried out. I thought so. Naran, more tea.”

The man returned to fetch Asa’s mug. Asa peered at him. No, this was a second man, though he looked much like the first one. Brothers?

The woman’s eyes narrowed in laughter, as if she could read his thoughts. “They are brothers, yes, and one cousin. Not mine, of course. That would be ill luck.” Something in her expression, the warmth of her voice, gave another meaning to the word luck, but Asa had no strength to be overly curious. He drank his tea and listened as the woman explained more.

Her name was Zayaa. She and her companions had come into the mountains early to trap wolves and lynxes for their pelts. It was by chance and Lir’s grace they had discovered him in his inadequate shelter. Asa listened and drank more tea. At her command, the cousin brought a bowl of beef broth. Asa drank that, too.

But after the tea and the broth, Zayaa motioned the others away. The men withdrew from the camp, and Zayaa bent over Asa once more.

“Your hands,” she said.

He stared down at his hands. He hardly recognized them—swollen and cracked, the fingers black with frostbite. The palms, though—the palms were stained red.

Like blood. With a shudder, he recalled the lynx crouched over the hare.

Zayaa was studying him with a grave expression. “What did you kill?”

“My horse,” he whispered.

It did not occur to him to ask how she knew.

Zayaa said nothing. He wanted to explain about the bandits, but she turned away and called for her men to return.

* * *

They cared for him three more days. Asa slept and ate. He drank whatever Naran gave him. Zayaa ordered the men to strip Asa, then examined his body with impersonal thoroughness. Bruised ribs. Various festering scrapes. Frostbite in three fingers, she reported. The feet too had suffered.

While her men tended to chores, Zayaa used her magic to heal the worst. She managed to save all three fingers. His ribs no longer ached with each breath. When he could finally stand on his own, his feet felt stiff, but she told him that would ease in time.

His hands were another matter. To his eyes, they appeared normal. To be sure, they were tender from the frostbite, and chapped from the cold, but still familiar and ordinary.