This is it. I’m finished. The Angel either doesn’t care or can’t hear me. Her breath shuddered with a sudden urge to laugh. Well, if he can smell me I don’t blame him for leaving me here.
She closed her eyes against nausea and heat and the throbbing pain in her temples… and then the ground beneath her began to tilt. Opening her eyes again, she saw that her senses were lying. She fought to keep them open, but they refused to obey her will. As they closed and the vertigo returned she gave up and let herself spin away into darkness.
CHAPTER 6
Cool liquid slid over her cheeks and into her mouth. Rielle frowned, the hot skin of her face pulling as she did. Is this another illusion? Do I care? I’ll take any water, real or imaginary. After all, if it’s not real it won’t do me any more harm.
Her parched throat resisted her attempt to swallow. The liquid trickled around her tongue and was sucked into her lungs with her next breath. She choked. Coughed. The flow of water stopped. Her eyes were open, yet she could only see the crazy night sky… and the outline of a head, cast in shadow.
Enough detail, though, to know this was not Valhan.
The stranger spoke. His voice was that of a young man. The word was unfamiliar, yet she understood. “Drink.” Her ears registered it and an echo whispered in her mind. Is this another Angel?
“Drink,” the voice said again, using her native tongue.
Trying to, she replied in her thoughts. A hand lifted her head. Something hard pressed against her lips and the split opened. She winced at the sting. But cool, wonderful water spilled into her mouth and she forgot the pain. She held it there, letting her tongue swim and soften in it before forcing her stiff throat to swallow.
Again the water came, then again. When it did not flow once more she let out a wordless protest. Is that all? I need more than that!
“Later. Drink too quickly and you will be ill,” the stranger told her in his strange language that echoed meaning into her mind. The hand slid out from under her head. “Rest. I will take you to my people.”
She saw an image of covered carts, their sides made of wood rather than fabric, drawn by huge, strange animals. People lived in them. Ordinary people. The man was amused that she might think he was some kind of magical being. She understood that he was relieved that she had woken. Her state of dehydration concerned him, but with quick treatment among his people she should recover before they had to move on. Though where they would leave her would have to be decided. Not in this unpopulated world…
The flow of information faded and she drifted for a while until the buzz of many voices–inside and outside her head–roused her again. She opened her eyes to find herself inside a room with a curved ceiling. More water, strangely flavoured, was given to her, this time by a woman of her mother’s age with skin as brown as a Fyrian’s but a broader face and narrow chin. Strange to think that the Angels can age, too…
When she woke again she felt more alert. Alone this time, she looked around the dim room. The bed filled the space between three walls and was large enough for two people. A heavy curtain blocked the rest of the room from view. A framework of wooden arches joined by panels of wood made up the walls and ceiling. To her left, the wall was flat, with a design painted over the surface that she suspected would prove boldly coloured when the room was better lit.
As she began to wonder what was behind the curtains they twitched open. The same woman she remembered seeing before appeared, wrinkles around the eyes deepening as she smiled. To Rielle’s amusement, her host was wearing trousers under a short-sleeved shift that came to her thighs. She had never seen women wearing trousers before. Both had been stitched with elaborate patterns.
The room extended beyond the curtain as far again as the depth of the bed. As the woman stepped through she drew the cloth together again behind her. A point of light floated in with her. Rielle recalled that the young man believed his people were ordinary mortals. Did they have permission from the Angels to use magic? He hadn’t known what Angels were, so perhaps he and all his people didn’t know they shouldn’t. But how could they not know about Angels and be living in an Angels’ world?
Unless it wasn’t the Angels’ world.
“Welcome,” the woman said in the strange language the young man had spoken, with the same echo occurring in Rielle’s mind. She placed a hand on her chest. “I am Ankari. You are among the Travellers.”
Travellers. Merchants. A nation of merchants. I come from a family of merchants, too, Rielle thought, nodding to show she understood, so we have something in common.
Then realisation and astonishment overtook that thought. I am reading her mind! How is that possible?