It had been seven days since we had been found and the first eight camps appeared. Now we could see twenty-two. Each one was marked by a small red dot on the map, the number of how many we assumed to be in each camp marked in quill pen beside it. The camps kept coming, and still no Ovailia.
Joclyn had been trapped in the T?uha for almost two weeks...three months for her. For three months, Edmund had been torturing her. I had healed her after every attack, but the injuries still kept coming. Last night they plagued her over and over until, in the end, I had to restart her heart, my magic manually pumping it in an attempt to keep her alive. Futile, that’s how it felt.
My only hope for her now was Ryland.
I scanned my eyes over the paper, trying to find a rhyme or reason to the pattern, but once again finding nothing. That didn’t necessarily mean anything though. It could simply mean that the Trpaslíks did not follow instructions, which was common. I snatched a strawberry out of one of the bowls that held down the massive paper, moving around to the other side of the table, hoping another angle would help.
“One new camp last night,” I said as Dramin walked in, his energy slow and lagging from having just woken up. He came up beside me, and I pointed to the newest red dot, the ink on the number six still drying.
“One is better than ten,” he chuckled, his reference to yesterday’s surge making me cringe.
Yes, one was better than ten, and after they had come so steadily, it only left me worrying about what was coming. I stretched my hands out to hover above the map, trying another view, but nothing jumped out at me.
“Do we have a plan yet?” Dramin asked, but I only laughed humorlessly at him.
At this point, if Joclyn didn’t wake, it would be me against upwards of a hundred Trpaslíks with a little help from Thom. While I had defeated that number before, it was not without grave injury, something that would take time to recover from, and I had been alone at the time. There were many other considerations when I had to protect the people around me. With the impending assault my father had planned, I doubted I had any time on my hands for either healing or complicated strategy.
“Does all this happen before or after Joclyn wakes?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“It might,” I prompted, careful to keep my voice light. “When does she wake?”
“Soon.” Dramin grunted a bit and sat down beside me, his hands already wrapped around a full mug of Black Water. I stared at the water as if it had offended me. We had given Joclyn the water for the past four days and nothing had happened. No waking, no more sights. She stayed still every time, laid out on the wide couch that had been placed in one of my side rooms years ago, now used only to supplement Joclyn’s nutrition.
I sat down heavily next to Dramin, my eyes still focused on the poison in his hands.
“Do you suppose,” I began, careful to keep my voice level and innocent, I didn’t need a commanding tone to set Dramin on his guard, “myslíte si, ?e we could give her another sight, she might wake? We could pour the water over my skin first.”
I cringed internally as I spoke, the pain from my last burn still strong in my veins. Most of the time it was just a dull hum of an ache, but sometimes it would flare up in agony. When I had been given the sight about Joclyn eight hundred years ago, I had experienced the painful surges of the Black Water for centuries; shadows of the pain still plagued me when something would rub against the scars, namely fabric. There was no reason to expect anything less this time around. I was mad to even suggest it.
“I’m not sure what that much Black Water inside of anyone other than a Drak would do,” Dramin said simply, but his words set me on high alert.
“Uvnit??” My voice must have sounded much deeper than I thought because Dramin chuckled, his dark green eyes and youthful face turning toward me.
“Yes, Ilyan, inside. Why do you think it still burns? It will burn until your magic has changed it enough to let it flow comfortably through your veins. But even then, it is still Black Water. It’s just more you than Imdalind at that point.”
I stared at him wide eyed. I had never heard this before. I was raised to be King, raised with all the knowledge of our kind so as to be able to lead them. But this? I had never heard this before.
“I just entrusted you with our only secret, Ilyan. You better keep it that way.” Dramin smiled at me, but it was sad, his eyes were shaded by something... Regret? I couldn’t see Dramin ever regretting anything, but then, he had just released a secret the Drak had seen fit to keep from everyone since the beginning of time.