What is it now?
When he treks back into camp, he finds Tuk and Ilapara frowning at the Asazi, whose worried look is instantly sobering to Salo. His annoyance swiftly turns into burgeoning dread. “What is it? What’s going on here?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Ilapara says as she glares at the Asazi. “Something’s clearly spooked her, but she won’t tell us what.”
“You need to let me fly you to the city immediately,” Alinata says to Salo. “We don’t have much time.”
He exchanges baffled glances with the others. “Explain yourself.”
She appears to bite back an impatient reply. “Look, there was a disruption in the Void tailing you from the south before I joined you. I was keeping track of it, but it disappeared a while back, so I assumed it had given up chase. But whoever it is must have found a way to mask their advance from me. I can feel them now, and they’re close.”
A tremor of fear runs through Salo. “What disruption? What are you talking about?”
“People have been chasing you since you left Seresa,” she explains. “You encountered one of them, but there were others. Two groups turned back after you crossed into the Tuanu borderlands; I dealt with a third, and a fourth chose to keep up at a distance. Now they are coming. If I don’t get you out of here right now, we’ll have a fight on our hands.”
Ilapara searches the surrounding jungles with a grim expression. “The Dark Sun has only one disciple who can move through the Void, and you’re acquainted with her, Salo.”
“The Maidservant,” he whispers and shivers at the name.
Tuk had also started roaming the trees with his eyes; now they snap to Salo. “You mean the same witch who—”
“Yes. She’s the one. And now she’s here for me.”
Tuk glowers at Alinata. “Is there a reason you didn’t mention this sooner?”
“I told you; I thought she’d given up chase,” Alinata says. “It’s virtually impossible to move through the Void without leaving a signature, and hers stopped approaching over a day ago.”
“Or maybe your powers of observation just aren’t as good as you think.” Tuk shakes his head with his hands on his waist. “Honestly, Alinata. It was highly irresponsible of you not to warn us sooner.”
“If not downright malicious,” Ilapara adds with a dark look.
“There’s no time for this.” Alinata walks toward Salo and grabs hold of his forearm. “I can fly you to the city. She won’t chase us there. She wouldn’t risk drawing the ire of the high mystics.”
“What about the others, Alinata?”
Her grip tightens. “I’m not a mystic. I can only take one other person with me into my Voidspace.”
“Absolutely not.” Salo jerks his hand free of her. “Out of the question.”
From the corner of his eye he sees Tuk and Ilapara sharing a look, a silent conversation seeming to pass between them. On whatever is said, it seems they agree.
“You should go, Salo,” Tuk says, his eyes somber. “We can take care of ourselves.”
Salo clenches his fists and almost lashes out in an outburst, but he bites his words so that they are almost a whisper. “Is your opinion of me so low that you’d think I’d abandon you in the face of danger, to a witch who killed dozens of my people, no less, one of whom I loved like a brother? Have I so badly represented myself to you?”
Ilapara grimaces like the words have cut her somewhere unseen, but she remains adamant. “We’re only looking out for you, Salo. That’s how this is supposed to work, isn’t it? If we’re your guardians on this pilgrimage, then your safety must be our main concern.”
“And yours must be mine,” Salo says. “I can’t let you risk your lives for me if I’m not willing to do the same for you. Maybe I’m a coward, but I’m not without honor. We will face this witch together.”
Tuk regards him warily, but his eyes betray him by lightening just the slightest bit. A begrudging dimple shows on one cheek, and he nods. “All right, Salo. I follow your lead.”
Ilapara frowns like she’s conflicted, but she relents. “As do I, I guess. Even though I think you should take the Asazi’s offer and get the devil out of here.”
“That’s not happening, Ilapara,” Salo says, and next to him, Alinata opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off. “This is my pilgrimage. If you can’t respect my decision, you are free to leave. Your choice.”
She tries to stare him down, but a staring contest with someone in reflective spectacles is an exercise in futility. “Fine,” she says. “How do we proceed, then?”
“How far away is she?”
Alinata closes her eyes briefly before she says, “We have an hour at best, and I sense she’s not alone.”
“If she wields Black magic, she could be bringing fell creatures from the underworld,” Tuk says.
Alinata shakes her head. “That’s not it. I mean, yes, that, too, but I can only sense what she moves through the Void, and the size of her signature tells me she’s bringing others with her. A squad of men, perhaps, and something bulky . . .” A thought seems to strike the Asazi. “Another group was in pursuit just before I joined you, but they were intercepted by a Tuanu patrol. Men wearing red skulls on their faces riding the largest kerit bears I’ve ever seen. She must have intervened.”
“Red skulls?” Ilapara fails to restrain her alarm. “They could be reavers. The Dark Sun’s personal cadre of elite raiders and assassins.”
Tuk shoots the Asazi another moody glare. “You really should have said something, Alinata.”
“I had no reason to suspect I was being duped by Black magic,” she says rather defensively. “And the last thing I wanted was to worry you for no reason. It was a mistake; I see that now.”
“What’s done is done.” Salo walks toward Mukuni’s saddle, where he sets his bow and quiver down and reaches for his staff. His mind is already racing with ways to counter what he thinks they’re all about to face, how to best deploy the weapons in his arsenal.
“When the so-called Maidservant attacked my kraal and killed my people,” he says, “I was weak, defenseless, and unprepared.” With a gesture he summons essence into his shards. Red sparks activate around the tip of his staff. “This time things will be different. This time she will find that I am ready for her.”
He begins by carving up a little kingdom for himself.
While the others stand guard rather nervously, watching the surrounding trees for any sign of movement, Salo sits down on a log by the dying fire Ilapara lit and commands his talisman to perform a continuous scan of everything in a two-hundred-yard radius. Such a feat demands more raw essence than the talisman has in its stores, so he feeds essence into it directly from his shards.
The talisman doesn’t produce a mirage; instead, he closes his eyes so that he interfaces with it telepathically. Soon it offers him a circular domain in which he has near-perfect information and spatial awareness, even though his eyes are closed.
For minutes on end, with his focus lensed through his staff, he devises parameters for his lightning-barrier spell. The tessellated hexagons worked well on the waterbird, so he uses them as the building blocks for larger barriers.