Mandollel cuts the bandages and removes them carefully. Rworg has bled through them completely, the bed sticky under him. His breathing is shallow and stops at times completely.

  Finna fidgets next to me. “Hurry, hurry!”

  “We don’t want to open up the wounds. He’s stable for now,” Mandollel says.

  Stable doesn’t look that good to me either, but I place a hand on Finna’s shoulder to calm her down. Or myself. She twitches and her hand moves up, but she lowers it back down.

  I offer the water skin to Mandollel. He takes it and dribbles some liquid on one of the wounds. “It might actually have been better to rip the wounds open to…” he trails off as Finna growls next to me. “This will probably be just as effective. Now we just need to see if it actually works.”

  Rworg makes a noise. He takes a breath in, maybe ever so slightly less pained. The liquid seems to evaporate from his bare chest, or maybe it’s absorbed into his skin. The skin below is pink, hairless, whole. Mandollel traces the new flesh with his finger, feeling it. “Hmm,” he says and makes an appreciative face. “This is stronger than what you usually see. Ambrosia isn’t usually this concentrated.”

  Finna pushes her head under Mandollel’s arm to look. “So he will be ok?”

  “Let me work and he just might be,” he says.

  Tension leaves my body and leaves me limp. I fall to sit on a large cushion at the other end of the tent. My eyes droop, my head lolls and I lean back to rest it against the fabric of the tent. “I think I’m going to take a nap now,” I mumble.

  If they answer something, I don’t hear it anymore.

  “Don’t fuss, elf!” Rworg bellows.

  I wake up, feeling as if I’ve slept for a week or a minute. Everything’s fuzzy at first, but it’s easy to make out Rworg, a dark, huge shape in the middle of the tent. He’s standing shirtless, last remnants of bandages hanging around his torso. They are brown and stiff from blood, but the skin under them is fresh and taut. His chest is remarkably hairless and lumpy, every muscle clearly visible and moving as he pushes Mandollel away.

  “Stop swinging around,” Mandollel says. “You’ll still have to be careful. There have to be some internal injuries left.”

  Finna stands to the side, smiling. That’s rare. “You know he will say he’s fine, no matter what. But this time, you have to listen to the Peacock. We went to a lot of trouble to get you up, so if you rupture your spleen trying to show off, I’m going to stab you.”

  “His spleen’s actually fine,” Mandollel says.

  “You heard the elf. I’m fine! We can go.”

  Mandollel closes his eyes and breathes in and out through his nose, pressing a thumb and a forefinger on his eyelids. “You’re absolutely not, but we have to go, nevertheless. We’ve far overstayed our welcome and every moment risks interference. Not to mention gives more time for the Kertharian forces to push into Velonea before we stop them.”

  “As we will,” Rworg says. His Ws carry at least three Vs each.

  “We won’t, if you get yourself killed before we’ve even crossed the border,” Finna says. “Are you really ok? Really-really?”

  Rworg starts to answer, but Mandollel pokes him in the ribs lightly. He breathes out and his face goes pale, jaw tenses. “There’s your answer. We have to move carefully for a while. I made him drink the rest of the liquid, but it will still take a while for him to be in full strength.”

  Finna swallows. “You made him drink it?”

  Mandollel fixes her with a stare. “Yes. That’s the way to use ambrosia on internal wounds.”

  “What’s going on?” Rworg asks.

  I’d like to laugh, but Mandollel is right. We really should be going. We’ve caused a huge racket and there’s no telling if there will be more Kertharians heading to this camp site or if someone will be checking in. It has to be nearly morning already. “Let’s at least get away from the camp. We can’t be here if someone comes to investigate.”

  There’s not much to pack. The most difficult decision is where to put Rworg’s massive sword. Mandollel forbids Rworg from carrying it, but it’s so large that carrying it even together with Finna is difficult. Mandollel tries to strap it on my back to balance the weight, but the tip of the blade hangs so low, it scrapes against the ground and I nearly cut my leg on the blade while stumbling on a root. Dawn is breaking and we’re trying to move fast, heading east, toward the border and Kerthar. Away from the camp and all the explosions.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Rworg keeps making faces every time the tip of the sword touches to the ground and his hands twitch toward me and it constantly.

  “Fine, I’ll take it,” Mandollel finally says and signals for us to stop. We help him strap it to his back. I wonder why he tried to get someone else to carry it in the first place. Maybe the sword just doesn’t suit his style, because he seems to be able to carry it lightly enough, skipping ahead on the path like he hadn’t a massive slab of metal tied to his back.

  It’s starting to dawn on me: he’s what I hope to be one day. An actual adventurer. He’s so fast and strong and skilled. Elves were never like him in any of the stories Lille or Gran told, so maybe it’s just how he himself is. Rworg is astoundingly strong too, and his sense of honor is like from the stories Ral said were stupid. He really tries to do the right thing. Like save me.

  I realize I haven’t even thanked him yet, so I walk slower to let Rworg catch up on me.

  “Folke,” he says.

  “Without you I’d be dead. I know it. It was my fault. I was supposed to get the mages.”

  “Folke,” he says again. “We don’t count favors. I save you, you save me. That’s what we do. It doesn’t make us even—it makes us comrades.” He raises his hand to slap me on the shoulder. I’m bracing for the impact, but he winces and lowers his arm. “Understand?” he asks instead.

  I guess. I want to understand, but I can’t help thinking that I wouldn’t have needed to save him if he didn’t get hurt because of me. I fidget with the button on my tunic. I missed the mage while I concentrated on running away from the two soldiers.

  “It’s fine, you will. Come, the elf is in a hurry.”

  “Of course I’m in a hurry,” Mandollel calls from ahead. He’s standing with one foot up on a rock, peering into the sunrise shining through the trees. The light filters through his hair, making it shine golden. “We can’t tarry, especially as we have to move slow for Rworg.”

  “Well, why do you spend time posing, then,” Finna says. “There’s no one but us and a squirrel around.”

  “But the light was so good,” Mandollel says. “It’s a reflex. Anyway, keep up. Rworg, tell me if you need to rest.”

  Rworg harrumphs and lengthens his stride.

  Air is surprisingly hot and arid. I didn’t have time to notice it on any of the previous times I was in the forest, as it was either night or I was so out of it. It’s like the breeze carries hints of the smell in the Kertharian tents and scents of nature I don’t recognize. I smell at the air, pressing the scents into my memory.

  “We’re over the border,” Rworg says. “This is my homeland, or the edge of it. I come from farther east, from the true deserts.”

  I would like to ask him of his people, what he feels about effectively going to war against them, sending them into the future. I’m not sure what it tells of him that he was ready to kill them all, according to Lictor’s original plan. Instead, I decide to ask about the mission. No one has explained anything to me properly. All the Rides were spent on just cutting through Lictor’s web of manipulation and everyone promised things would be explained later.

  Well, it’s later now. “Now that we have time, can someone finally explain what we’re actually doing?”

  They all stop.

  “You haven’t been told?” Finna asks. “Wait, you have? Or haven’t? Stupid Rides.”

  I grin at the familiar confusion and annoyance on her face. “Well, I know the general idea, but I have no idea on how to use the device or where we are going or what’s going to happen when we get there.” Corum mentioned a set path of coordinates, but it was about as vague as anything could be. Mandollel seems to know where we’re going, but I want to know too.

  “Very well, I’ll explain as we walk,” Mandollel says. “We’ll travel until noon, so we have ample time.”

  We keep up a steady pace. Not too fast, but constant. Never stopping for more than a quick break.

  Mandollel talks as he walks, leading the way. “The device is a funnel. An intricate tangle of magical engineering built to channel mana to a central element and focus the resulting effect.”

  “The effect was supposed to be fire,” Finna adds in.

  “Originally, I think it was. They borrowed the Time Gem from us, said it was needed as a focus. Lictor said.” Mandollel wrinkles his face as he says it. He must have been as fooled by him as anyone else. Of course he was. Lictor was a Janitor. “We didn’t know the device would work without the Gem or of the plan to shift the Kertharians into the future.”

  This part I know better than any of them, but I let him speak. I died over and over again to find out all this, to get the Gem back from Lictor. “Yes, but what does it mean in practice? How does the device work? Why do we have to carry it around the forest?”

  “It won’t be all forest,” Finna says.

  “Yeeees, but why?”

  “Shhh, you two,” Mandollel says. “The device needs to be calibrated, the effect anchored precisely or it would spread. Blanket areas that it’s not supposed to, leave out areas that it should.” He circles his hands around, slender fingers drawing shapes expanding and moving in the air. “Show him the stakes,” he adds to Finna.

  Finna stops and lowers her backpack to the ground. She pulls out two metal rods that taper into sharp points. I lean to look closer as she holds it up for me. Their entire surface is criss-crossed with runes, etched into the metal as if by a needle. She drops it into my hand and I’m surprised by how heavy it is. It’s cast iron, yet the surface has been smoothed for the runes. Unlike the golden runes on Lictor’s cloak, these aren’t made of anything . They are just surprisingly deep gashes in the metal, so small I have to press my face up to it to make them out properly.

  Finna pulls out two more and closes her backpack. “You can actually carry them. I have enough heavy stuff in my bag even without those. Check the order.”

  If she was carrying both the device and these, it’s true. I turn the rod in my hand. “Order?”

  “The stakes need to be used in certain order. They are each to be used in one very precise location,” Mandollel says. “The ends have the numbers pressed into them.”

  I turn the rod around once more and true enough, according to the number, it’s the third one. “They’ve really finessed the plan, haven’t they?”

  “They had infinite time, but only one chance of actually trying to make it work. I believe this plan has been finessed quite a bit more thoroughly than we can even hope to understand,” Mandollel says.