Page 57 of Silverbow
“Where is she?” Oryn asked as he sat up in his blanket roll.
Colm scrubbed a hand down his face, trying to clear his head.Gods above.“I don’t know. I think somewhere in Greenridge Forest.”
Oryn
Oryn battled Mosphaera for control of his air gift as they raced west. The strain was becoming so unbearable, he was snapping at nothing, and his companions had fallen into silence around him. They were near enough to Trowbridge they would make it by morning, but Colm insisted on making camp after dark fell, arguing they might miss her along the road.
Oryn gave in, but what little remained of the leash on his temper frayed when a farmer with an empty wagon cart lumbered to where they camped beside the Queen’s Road. “Mind if I join your camp?”
He did, but Colm welcomed the man, even as Oryn shot him a warning look.
“Any news from the east?” The farmer asked, settling down to his pipe at their fire.
Colm shook his head. “How about the west?”
“So much news it’s hard to tell it all. You know about the bounty?”
“The girl? Of course, everyone does,” Aiden answered.
The man puffed on his pipe. “The new one? Out of Innesh?” Oryn exchanged a look with his companions. “Take that as a no.” The man leaned back on his elbows and took a long puff of his pipe. A cloud of smoke obscured his features. The man was taking his bloody time with it.
“Not sure what good it’ll do. All they have is a folktale,” he muttered.
“A new folktale, eh? It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good one of those.”
Oryn thanked the stars for Colm’s never ending patience and easy way with people.
“Even longer since we’ve had a Silverbow.”
The damper slipped away and his gifts pulsed at his fingertips. The faint glow of their essence, brilliant silver spirit, luminescent white air, and glowing blue water, lingered there for those who could see them. Colm eyed him askance.
“There’s a Silverbow in Innesh?”
The man shrugged. “They aren’t saying that. Well, some are. Innesh’s Arrow, they’re calling them. They don’t really know, no one saw the archer. Five thousand gold marks to anyone who provides information leading to their capture.”
“What for?”
He chuckled darkly. “Put an arrow through the eye of a black blooded witch, I’m told.”
Oryn blinked. That was almost as much of a shock as hearing the mention of a Silverbow, but the witches didn’t often venture so far from Covwood, and they rarely got caught. “There was a witch in Innesh?”
The farmer waved a hand. “Wouldn’t have made it long anyway, tied to a pyre as she was. Seems whoever this Arrow is had a problem with the king’s justice. Took out a dozen men, I heard, and the folk rose up.”
“Now there’s a tale we hadn’t heard,” Colm said jovially, but there were lines of worry bracketing his mouth.
“Bunch of hogwash if you ask me,” the farmer growled. “Some Westerland propaganda. Stirring up trouble with the king.”
“I’m sure it’ll be put right,” Colm said.
Not if it really was the Silverbow. Not if Oryn had anything to say about it.What do the gods want with her? How did she even end up in Innesh?Unanswered questions kept him from dozing as he listened to the soft snores all around him, hoping Colm would find her again in the dream.
They set out east in the watery gray before dawn and he sidled Kiawa up next to Colm’s mare, Lanta. “Any news?”
A muscle in Colm’s jaw ticked. “Her dreams are…difficult.”
“Difficult how?”
“She rarely appears in the valley and when she does, it’s such a jumble of nightmares, I can’t get through to her.”
