Chapter 23.

  Trading Tales.

  Reina and Theodren rode for several silent hours as morning passed to noon, and noon to night. Theodren fashioned a sling that more easily held Theviana to Reina’s or with adjustment, His chest. After Careful testing, Theodren found that so long as Reina was nearby, the Acher in the child’s soul would not consume her spring of Vitae, and the closer she was to Theodren, the stronger her Vitae became. It was a delicate balancing act between the two, but one Theodren was determined to master. At least until she stabilized.

  Theodren turned the horses nose toward a copse of trees far enough removed from the road to allow for privacy at best and concealment at worst. He wasn’t yet sure of what became of Hardwright or if he had managed to bring reinforcements to the town, but he would not risk their backs on complacency. He scanned for any larger than average Vitae among the trees but found nothing besides the run of the mill woodland creatures he expected.

  Sliding from his horse, the stiffness he had prepared to feel was gone before he even had the chance to groan about it. Pleased, he tied first his horse and then Reina’s, to nearby trees. Looking up at her, He saw no hint of the flippant and sarcastic woman he remembered from before the church. She had used a strange power. Archer, the Tree called it. He had watched her drain the life from the Mayor until he collapsed almost into dust. Theodren shuddered. He could not drain Vitae from living things. He had tried and failed to replenish his reserves from the plants surrounding his church during the weeks he spent exhausting himself healing the townsfolk. He quickly learned that it wasn’t his to take.

  Memories of the guardsmen he killed flashed through his mind as he cleared a suitable space for a fire and bedrolls. Their Vitae had rushed to him the moment their grip on this world was broken. He had observed the way Vitae either dissipated or was consumed from prey to predator while watching the drama of a field mouse and hawk beside the road into town. After death, Vitae would start to dissipate from its host before long unless something came along to eat it. He had watched the hawk swallow the mouse, pieces at a time, absorbing the rodent’s Vitae into the bird's own mass of life.

  Thankfully, unlike the bird of prey, Theodren had not needed to eat those men to take their Vitae. It had just rushed to him, like drowning men to a raft. He pondered how he could better use it in the future as he turned back to the horses. Reina had slid from the horse with Theviana, and found her way to a boulder set beside the empty ring of stones He had planned to start a campfire in. She was silent and unmoving, as if she herself was a stone that had stood in that spot since time began.

  He sighed. She could not continue like this. While the quiet was nice, He had seen soldiers go mute and sullen, when faced with a trauma they could not rationalize. like wooden carvings of the people they used to be.

  Theodren piled the campfire with brush, twigs, and larger branches he had wrenched from a dead tree. The fire would burn warm, but not so brightly that they would be spotted from the road. Pulling his flint and steel from the pouch on his belt, he chuckled at the mundane means of fire he had resorted to since losing his Thread. The fire turned from spark to flame in short order, reflecting light in Reina’s face, but not her eyes.

  Theviana stirred in her arms, little hands reached out from the bundle of cloth toward Reina’s face as the child started to cry. “She’s hungry…” Reina croaked, voice stiff and broken from crying and lack of use. Theodren waited for her to say more. “She’s hungry and I killed the woman who feeds her.” Though her words were monotone, silent tears began falling from her eyes. Theodren gently pulled the babe from her arms without resistance, sitting down next to her, he coaxed the vineling out from his sleeve, summoning the peach Yggdrazil had grown for the child from Retribution’s reaching limb.

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  Theviana took to it without hesitation, suckling a milky white nectar and Theodren’s own Vitae from the fruit. Theodren cooed and comforted the child in his arms as the sounds of her suckling filled the still air. Reina stared at him with hurt in her eyes as she watched Theodren nurture life in a way that she never could.

  “It’s not your fault.” He said, surprising her. She looked at him, confused.

  “I saw the way Hardwright used his Thread on you.” She stiffened. “He tried it on me too.” Her eyebrows shot up to her hair. “and you fought it?” She whispered. Theodren nodded. “It felt like all I wanted to do in the world was just give up. Just let him do my thinking for me. Just lay down and give up because he knew better.” The memory of the Cardinal’s Thread, like sticky fingers on his thoughts, sent a shiver up his spine. He locked his eyes, steady and unyielding, with Reina’s own. “Whatever you were doing there with him, I know you didn’t want to kill them.” Tears fell faster down her face as she shook in her seat, trying her best to contain herself. “I just wanted to be a priestess.” she sobbed. “I wanted to be good! I wanted people to like me! I wanted him to notice me!” Theodren got the sense that she wasn’t talking about Hardwright, but he let her continue without interruption. “Now I’m a monster! I sucked the life out of that man like a leech and I could hear his soul!”

  That piqued Theodren’s interest. Theodren saw people's souls as pools of abstract colors of emotion. To hear a soul was not something that he had even considered. Reina pulled her knees in closer to herself, hugging them against her chest. “It was like whispers of the worst part of himself. Like he was proud of it.” She looked up from the fire at him. “He didn’t care how many people died, so long as you weren’t around for people to compare him to you.” Theodren raised an eyebrow at this. He had never cared for authority. To him it was all a petty popularity contest and he wanted no part. That the Mayor even considered him some sort of rival both irritated and surprised him.

  Theodren returned to the thought of her new found power. “How did you do that?” he asked. Reina grew silent again at the question. Clearly afraid and unsettled with her blasphemy. Theodren waited for her to answer. As the seconds passed to minutes and none came, He sighed, stretching out his legs by the fire. One hand holding Theviana, and the other propping himself up as he leaned back.

  “My Thread broke when Theviana was born.” His eyes became lost in the cherry red glow of the fire as he told the story. He told her about the birth. He told her about Yggdrazil and his Vitae. He told her everything as the truth fell from his lips for the first time since Yggdrazil came crashing into his life. As his tale concluded, it felt like a great weight had lifted from his shoulders. He wasn’t sure if he entirely trusted the slender woman beside him, but by now she would have already suspected what he told her.

  He looked up at her to see that her eyes, red from crying, had gone dry. She wrenched her gaze from the fire as she stared into his eyes, searching for lies or half truths. After a moment and a nod to herself she began her own story.

  She told him everything. From her meteoric rise through the Academy, to her selection by Hardwright, and finally, she told him about Nihila. Theodren sat patiently as she spoke. He had expected that she had made some kind of contact with Death, but to know her name now. He shivered. Theodren listened in rapt attention as she described her deal with the dark God. The parallels to his own deal with Yggdrazil were glaring in the extreme.

  Now two gods had their hands in Theviana’s soul, and Theodren was not eager to see how it would play out.

  “And now I’m here, with a child that’s not mine and a man I don’t know, going Weaver know’s where, all because I got good grades at the academy.” Some of the old life seemed to return to Reina as her story and its weight left her chest. She gave the large man a side eyed glance. “So what now, Big Bear?”

  Theodren gave an exasperated sigh but didn’t rebuke the nickname. He handed the sleeping bundle of Theviana to Reina before climbing to his feet with a grunt. When He got to the horses, he threw Reina a bag of salted pork before turning to the task of unsaddling and brushing the horses. “We eat, we sleep, and in the morning, I’m going hunting.” He offered. Reina pulled a slice of hard pork from the bag with a look of distaste. With a loud ‘Snap!’ she bit off a chunk of the tough meat, chewing judiciously before swallowing with great effort. “Yes, hunting would be good.