Some Comments

Blogging is obviously not my strong point. As you can see I have several posts all in a row then, nothing for months. As this is ostensibly my writing blog I have been posting snippets of my stories on here. Completely unedited, simply copied from the rough draft of my writing. That said I did this for 2 reasons. First: I just wanted to get my story out there to the admiring public, of which I seem to have none. (Though one helpful man +'d one of my posts a while back, which was heartwarming.) The second reason was that I had no plans of editing in the near future, and it was likely the story would change in big ways when I did go through and edit and put pieces together so that what I wrote later and what I wrote first matched. I just didn't want the fixed up version to be released yet. Which in a hopefully illuminating, though seeming more confusing even as I write this, brings me back to the first point. I wanted to get people interested in my writing. 

As I said before my blogging is rather sporadic, and I have two blogs I am juggling. I will not delete this one, in fact I may continue posting my writings on it in the future, but I do not plan to continue with this blog on a regular basis. For anyone who does happen upon this post and would like to read one of my stories, I suggest Mage for Hire. A short story in two posts, because the other one long and as yet unfinished. 

From now on, to those who are curious, I will be posting to my other, main blog Japan and Knitting. It will probably be renamed at such a time as this post is read, but there you have it. Also I now have a twitter account, so feel free to follow me there. It will probably be updated more frequently than this, though considerably less verbose. Koori-chan's Twitter

Feeling Down

My story still progresses, but I`ve been reading up on some things about publishing and self publishing today. The more I read the more hopeless it seems. I`m not too far off from finishing my manuscript, in the basic outline I had. In fact I just solved, with the help of a writing buddy to bounce ideas off of, the one major hole in my story. This particular section has just been started as far as the writing of it goes, but from the very beginning I had only the general idea of what would happen before and after that point. When it came time to write it I panicked a little. Then I spent several hours in Mister Donuts with coffee and my writing buddy and came away with a good idea and an education in the workings of golems that had noting to do with a story either of us is writing.

Still my lack of potential audience bothers me. Mine is not a romance story, but neither is it suited to the younger children that tend to like the adventure stories without the dopey, angsty romances that it seems the entirety of YA has become. Again it is not really dark or real enough to be passed off as an adult fantasy either. Those combined don`t mean it will be a bad story, but it means if I ever get to the point that I can start looking for an agnet or submit my story to someone for editing, I have a very small chance of actually finding someone who will take me on.

The Return of my NaNo Writing

Wow reading back through this has been rreally interesting. Shula goes on a bit of a rant in the last part of this post and it wasn`t until just now that I noticed she sounded very similar (language-wise) to someone I know when that person gets angry. I don`t really remember what mood I was in while writing that section, but I doubt it was a good one from the sound of it. Thern there`s a pretty nice scene where you get to see how Seok and Shula might have been before the memory loss, also another one of those to come in the next post before chapter 10, so look forward to it.

Chapter 9 Part 2

In Which the Fourth Piece is Accounted For
 

The woman left the room on silent feet, sliding the door shut behind her. She had told them that she would be back with something they could eat soon. After she left, a gong was rung twice, followed by a bell, rung three times, to signify the end of the prayer service for the night.

           

Cain, Larkin, and Zija waited in the snow hare room, so called for the carvings of the animals that decorated the top of the walls where they met the roof, and the scroll painting set in an alcove in the wall next to a lamp and a stick of incense. The room was one of several in the main temple building, set just off of the sanctuary that was used for welcoming guests and as a waiting room for families who had brought their loved ones to Lord Death’s temple for their funeral. Cain had chosen this room on a whim, expecting it to be not in use.

           

The arrogant initiate had brought the men a tray of cut bread and cheese to eat, with a pot of hot tea, as there was little else to be found in the kitchens at this late hour. He did not say anything as he set the tray down, glancing up only once, then scowling when his eyes caught sight of Zija’s blood red hair hanging loose down almost to his shoulders. He left the room and slid the door closed with a slam. “Well, hell,” Zija sighed, running his fingers through his only obvious watu feature. “I didn’t think about that when we came to the border. I’d forgotten everyone up north knows about the hair thing. I could get away with it down south.”

           

“Might as well get used to it,” Cain commented. “You and the girl both’ll be getting that kind of treatment around here I don’t doubt.”

           

“I kinda figured they’d treat me a hell of a lot better than that, the way those brown robes go bowing and scraping to you, since I’m with you.”

           

“Yeah, well, since we all know you don’t care about politics, I won’t explain any more than saying the war has been shit to the humans near the border in the last few years. I imagine even my status won’t win you any favors while we’re here.”

           

Larkin’s brows furrowed as he sat cross legged at the low table and followed the others in eating the simple fare they had been given. “You don’t suppose that looking for The Three’s codex will take us any farther north will it?”

           
“I don’t like those wanted posters any more than you do, and I sure as shit want to know how the hell the emperor found out I already had a piece, but I don’t want to think of all the ways The Three will bury me in shit if I don’t go after those pieces I know to look for.”
           

Zija questioned, “And are there any that you know of in watu land? I’m out if you’re crossing the border, I’ll head back to Saigo and clean out the gambling dens there like I did back in Central. They’re so convinced that watu can’t get in their precious city that the guards don’t do shit to look for people just walking in the gates.”

           

Cain watched Zija stuff a piece of bread topped with cheese into his mouth. His forehead furrowed as the other man chewed his food. “I know you’re a half blood, but why can’t you go back? Unless you’ve made some shit faced move to make Mfalme put a price on your head too.”

           

Zija’s eyes went blank as he finished chewing his food, and he looked down at the tabletop. Larkin knew Cain had asked too much. Whatever had happened in Zija’s past was none of Cain’s concern any more than what he had done three years ago had anything to do with his friends. Zija swallowed and answered simply, “I’ve got my reasons.” He did not raise his eyes from the tabletop.

           

The conversation died then, each man lost in his own thoughts about the past and what the near future would bring them, and more specifically where. If Cain was determined to continue north Zija had already made it clear that he would not go, and before Shula had arrived in that somehow both mysterious and wild way she had about her, Larkin would have bet that Seok would follow Cain anywhere. Now he was not so sure.

           

As for himself, Larkin contemplated going north or staying behind the border. Three years ago when Zija had found him, nearly dead and covered in blood, he had taken him in, paid the fees the surgeon and doctor charged to heal him and let him stay in the apartment above the flower shop that he was living in with no complaint. It was Cain who had asked them to come on this ludicrous journey with him. Searching for something that no one was supposed to know existed, that had been hidden in no one knew how many pieces, over one thousand years ago.

           

If it had not been Cain, who, despite his gambling, foul mouth and attitude, was always serious when it came to matters regarding the temple or gods, Larkin would have refused outright at the absurdity of the suggestion. He fingered the silver cuffs on his ears. They matched the ring he wore around his pinky finger, save for the two symbols carved into each one. He had reasons to believe in magic, not matter absurdity of the stories that were told in different places throughout the world. Lisa had always believed in magic, and until that day, he had laughed at her childishness. After though, when he had woken up in the bed in Zija’s apartment, he had been a changed man. Not only emotionally, as he felt as if his heart had withered into a blackened husk, but physically as well. He had discovered just how true some of the stories about the magic of the gods and mage-kind that Lisa had liked so well could be.

           

Larkin was jerked out of his reminiscences when Ziji stood and stretched.  Pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket, he shuffled them quickly. “Anyone wanna play?”  He dealt out the cards and as soon as they had started the gong to ring the end of the temple ceremony rang. Soon another acolyte came in and offered to escort them to chambers where they could sleep, and Cain asked if their presence had been announced to the high priest. The young man in brown assured them that he had been informed and asked if he could provide them with anything.

           

Cain was given his own room to sleep in. It was small and furnished only with the folded up floor mattress in a corner and a small writing desk with a cushion placed in front of it in the opposite corner, but it was a right of his station to have the privacy of his own room. The other two were shown to the acolytes’ dormitory, a long room with the same folded mattresses that could be found in every temple in the country lining the walls at precise intervals, marking the personal space of every man in the room.

           

The men were led to the end farthest from the door, where their saddle bags and provisions had been left by someone. The acolytes, all dressed in matching brown robes, prepared for the night, carefully ignoring Zija and Larkin at the far end of the room. They were separated from the rest of the room by several mattresses, folded and waiting for more travelers or acolytes to arrive at the temple. Soon enough all the men in the dormitory had unfolded their mattresses across the floor, leaving only a small path for walking between the feet of the acolytes down the center of the narrow space. The lamps were all put out and the room coated with darkness.

Seok’s belongings were piled next to the others’ in the dormitory, but he and Shula stayed awake far into the night in the infirmary. She had been told to move into another room, lined with beds, much like the dormitory was with mattresses until the morning when they could decide if she was in a condition to join the women in the initiate’s dormitory. Her fever during the day and the steady rocking of the horse’s stride had put her to sleep in the saddle. They spoke of the past and of the three people Shula had been speaking to in the inn in Saigo, and of their plans for the future in low voices so the white and red clothed dedicate watching the infirmary, and the two other patients, young men with a bad case of the flu, would not overhear them.

           

Even had she overheard, she could not have understood the language they spoke, but with one look at Shula’s hair and the flash of metal glinting on Seok’s head in the lamplight, she had decided she wanted nothing to do with the watu visitors. Whether they were sealed or not, they were still watu, and even though it was just not done to turn anyone away from death’s holy place, she thought that perhaps instead of searching for continued life from the infirmary in Death’s temple, the watu should have just gone on to seek the god himself. The next morning found Seok asleep on one of the empty infirmary beds, and Shula covered in the sweat that signified her fever breaking in the night.

           

The nurse who attended the patients come morning and brought food for Shula and Seok was the same one who had taken their horses to the stable the night before. As she had the night before, she did not speak or seen concerned with anything other than the duties set in front of her eyes. She made the flu-ridden men in the other beds drink a foul smelling medicine and unwrapped the bandage on Shula’s wrist, cleaned and checked the wound and carefully re-bound the arm with a clean linen strip.

           

Shula watched the girl as she worked. Though her eyes never strayed from the task her hands were preforming, the girl was not watching the movements of her deft fingers. Finally Shula could take it no more. When the girl tied a neat knot in the bandage around Shula’s right wrist, her left hand came around and slapped the girl on the face so hard that her head snapped to the side. “If you want to die so badly, then Death’s temple is the place to do it,” she snapped.

           

Then two young men in the other beds turned to watch the spectacle. The girl did not answer Shula’s words, though her face shifted slowly into a stunned expression, as if she was waking up from a dream, her eyes cleared. “What do you mean?”

           

“You’re eyes are dead already, if you want to enter the god’s house so badly that you can’t even live while you’re alive then just go kill yourself and get it over with!” The girl’s eyes widened.

           

“You don’t know anything!” she snarled back at Shula. “You don’t know how it feels!”

           
“I don’t know what happened to you personally maybe, but sure as shit do know exactly how crappy it feels to have everything taken away from me, to have the people I love ripped away from me right in front of my eyes, to have my home denied me. No I don’t know what crappy little problems your ass has seen, but shitty things happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
           

The girl looked ready to spit in Shula’s face. “You watu bitch,” she growled, “It was your kind that…”

           

Shula interrupted her. “I’m not gonna tell you to get over it, and get back to normal like the heads up their own asses priests here at the temple probably told you to do. Feel however you want about it, get pissed at the watu or whoever, be sad, whatever the hell you want; but, don’t try to pretend like nothing’s changed! Be changed, because things sure as hell do change after bad shit happens. Don’t go around acting like you’re already dead though. If you wanna die, go kill yourself, if not then you’d better get that stick out of your ass and act like your piss poor excuse of a life is worth enough to you that you aren’t going to end it!”

Seok had woken up, and was watching as Shula’s face grew red in anger and her voice got louder, ending her monologue in a yell. The girl standing in front of Shula had her back to Seok, so he could not see what her reaction was. He wondered what she would do, if it was Mincu she would have already launched herself at the red head and they would be rolling on the floor, nails and teeth both involved in the fight, and fire and lightening too, most likely, Niru, the only other girl he knew well was just as likely to break down crying as she was to attack or turn and march away in offended silence.

           

He was not expecting what she did do however. “Thank you,” the girl whispered, the sincerity of the words ringing in both his and Shula’s ears. The girl took a deep breath and dry-eyes stepped away from Shula’s bedside. Going to a cupboard in the corner she got out a small broom and went back to her morning chores in the same silence she had surrounded herself in before. Shula nodded, satisfied to see that instead of the unfocused eyes of a corpse, the girl now had a fire burning in the depths of hers.

           

Seok lay back down and tucked his hands under his head, shifting to get comfortable. “You know, Benki,” he said, “I was thinking about what you said about my personality changing, and was about to say you’ve changed a lot too. You’ve calmed down a lot, you know? But maybe you haven’t changed all that much after all, just mellowed out a little.”

           

“Is the rock for brains over there saying I’m too soft for him now?” Her voice was edging toward angry again.

           

“Nope, I’ve always liked it when you acted girly.”

           

“Maybe you should’ve stuck with Niru then!” Shula said, her voice filled with fire, for all that it was soft enough that the men with the flu three beds down could not hear them.”

           

“No,” Seok held his hands up in surrender, and mock panic at the thought of attaching himself to Niru. “She’s too much! You’re definitely a better mixture. I can’t see why the hell Gali picked her honestly.”  Seok smirked when he herd Shula snort, her anger disappearing.

Sorry About Slowing Down

Here's the beginning of chapter 9 of the still unnamed Tengarra Story, sorry I haven't posted it sooner for those people who do choose to read my writing.

Chapter 9 Part 1

In Which the Fourth Piece is Accounted For

           

The gates at Lord Death’s northernmost temple were known for never having been closed. The priests and acolytes were known for never denying entrance to a person in need of shelter or healing, no matter their species. It was the only place where the war between the species was said to not be fought. That was untrue, of course. The war may not have been a physical presence on those in the temple, but since actual fighting had broken out no watu had attempted to enter the temple, and the permanent residents of the temple grounds had their own opinions of the watu and the war.

            

Cain had pulled out the sash of the high priest and donned it once more over his simple grey robes. As they rode their horses through the gates into the wide courtyard of Lord Death’s main temple a somber bell was rung to call the priests into their nightly prayers. As the temple’s residents hurried out of buildings toward the sanctuary for the dusk service they noticed the party’s entrance and two people hurried over to help.

           

Bowing low in front of Cain’s horse one of the brown robed apprentices said, “My Lord High Priest, I’m afraid that our own High Priest Michel is leading the service tonight and will be unavailable to speak with you until after his duties for the gods are done.”

            

Cain dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to the acolyte. We’ll be staying for a while so we’ll need rooms, and the girl is injured so you’ll have to have somebody show her and the boy where the infirmary is.”

            

The acolyte nodded, “Yes of course, Lord Priest.” He turned and snapped out some orders to the waiting initiate girl while handing her the reins of Cain’s horse. By this time the others had dismounted. The initiate girl was a tiny slip of a thing, swimming in her brown robes. She did not look at all cowed by the older acolyte. She moved to take the reins of the other horses and headed toward the stables, not even looking twice at Shula’s dress covered in dried blood. The acolyte turned toward Cain once more, “My Lord High Priest, if you would care to follow me, I can show you to where you can wait comfortably until the High Priest Michel is…”

            

Cain interrupted him. “I’ve been here before I know my way around. Get the girl to the damn infirmary then get some food for the rest of us sent to the snow hare room.” The acolyte did not look happy to be interrupted or told off like that by someone younger than he was himself, but in a place like this the high priest was the highest form of command, save for the gods themselves. Even the king was beneath the high priests in the chain of command when inside the temple grounds.

            

Gesturing imperiously for Seok and Shula to follow him, the man headed toward a long, low building connected directly to the temple’s northern most wall. They walked past the main hall where the sanctuary was and the shrine to Lord Death would be housed, as well as the hall where the treasures of the temple would be kept. Shula’s walk was unsteady, dizzy. Seok kept a hand on her arm to support her should she fall. He had tried to put her arm around his shoulder so he could take her weight without actually carrying her, but she had shoved him away.

            

The young man picked up a lamp from a stand beside the door to the infirmary and lit it with the flint that sat beside it. “I doubt there will be a doctor on duty during the ceremony, but you’ll get a dedicated to look at whatever’s wrong with her at least,” the acolyte told them.

            

“Regular cock rooster isn’t he?” Shula muttered to Seok in the language of the gods. The different tongue caught the attention of the acolyte, who had yet to so much as look at the people he was leading. In the light provided by the lamp he held he could see Shula’s blood covered condition, as well as the shocking orange of her hair. His eyes widened, then he turned abruptly back toward the building. Slipping off his sandals befire he crossed through the doorway. “This way. Take off your shoes.” His voice was clipped and he walked stiffly, placing his sock covered feet down with enough force that they made a solid thud against the wooden floor with each step.

            

Seok squatted down to untie his boot lacings and Shula flopped onto the ground next to him, careful not to use her injured hand to catch herself. “I feel like shit,” she mumbled, still using the language of the gods, she had not spoken a word of the human’s tongue that day. “You unite my boots for me. I’ve only got one hand.”

            

“Are you still cold?” Seok asked her, choosing not to comment on the command she had given, only starting on her shoes when he had finished untying his own.

            

“My left hand feels numb, it’s so cold. What the hell was on that arrow?”

            

“Left? It was the right that got hit.” Seok’s voice was concerned. “Do you think it had poison on it?”

            

“I should have let you beat the bastard that shot me to death instead of making you stop.” Shula’s head fell forward and she groaned, “It hurts...”

            

The acolyte leading them had stopped, and was waiting impatiently in the hall. Seok pulled Shula to her feet by her good hand, which did not feel at all cold, but rather too warm against his healthy skin. Leading her by the hand, Seok followed the acolyte down the hallway. They passed two doors before the man stopped. He paused to knock softly on the door before sliding it open to reveal a well lit room with an old woman wearing the white shirt and loose crimson split skirt of temple dedicates under a blue apron kneeling before the low writing desk placed in the far corner of the room.

            

The woman stood as Seok entered, pulling Shula behind him. “Oh, my,” she murmured with only one glance at Shula. “Sit her down in that chair there, young man, and tell me what happened,” the grey haired woman commanded Seok.

            

“Healer,” the acolyte’s stiff voice said from outside the door. He had not entered the room. “That girl, she’s...”

            

“I can see she’s got watu hair just fine for myself, acolyte,” the woman snapped. She knew as well as anyone living near the border that the easiest way to tell a human from a watu was their hair. Humans only had black ranging to brown hair. Watu hair came in all shades of red and orange. “Lord Death does not take sides in the war, and neither should one who professes to follow him.” She lifted Shula’s bandaged hand and pursed her lips as the girl flinched at the pain caused by the movement. Without looking away from Shula’s wrist as she began to unwrap the bandage she said. “Return to your duties acolyte.”

            

When he had slid the door closed the old woman addressed Seok, “Do you speak the common tongue boy or are you watu as well?”

            

“I’m not a watu,” he answered, “but I speak any language you want to talk to me in.”

            

The woman nodded. “Take that bucket by the door and go get some water from the well behind this building. She’s got a high fever and will need cooling down.”

            

“Is it from the hole in her arm?” Seok asked.

            

“That’s a nice thing to call it,” Shula muttered, looking down at the brown stains on the bandage the old woman was trying to pluck away from the wound. The blood had dried to the linen and Shula flinched when the cloth pulled at the wound. Her flinch pulled the bandage off the wound the rest of the way, taking with it the scab that had covered the hole. As soon as she had pulled away, Shula’s wrist started bleeding again.

            

“Hold still!” the woman admonished. “If you speak the watu language, boy, tell her to hold still or I could end up hurting her, then get going and fetch that water!”

            

“She understands you fine, the fever’s just confusing her so she hasn’t been speaking the human language since this morning.” Seok grabbed the bucket and hurried out the door. When he came back the woman had Shula laying down on a bed in the corner of the room and was pressing a poultice of some kind of herbs onto the girl’s wrist. Shula was biting the base of her left hand thumb in order not to scream at the pain in her wrist at the hands of the old woman, blood coated her lips where they met skin and she could not stop the moan when the woman shifter her grip to wrap a new bandage around Shula’s arm.

            

The woman looked up from her ministrations when she finished tying the bandage and commented on the new wounds on Shula’s other hand. Gesturing for Seok to come over, she dipped out a bowl of the water Seok had just brought in and handed him a dry rag and told him to keep it cool and bathe Shula’s forehead with it. “If the fever was from infection in the wound then I would probably have to take her arm off. It’s a nasty looking thing, and she’s luck she can still move her hand and fingers, but it’s not at all infected. The fever can’t be from anything except for poison,” she explained to Seok when he asked.

First After NaNo Post!

Well, as you can see from the edited header here, I managed to write those last 8,000 words on the 30th! How the hell did I do that? I would really like to know myself!

Chapter 8 End

In Which a Life is Threatened

When morning arrived, Larkin’s horse still had not. Shula still lay wrapped in Zija’s bed roll and with the men standing watch in turns during the night, only one had to make do without even the small comfort the padded blanket provided. She slept through Larkin checking her wrist, and explaining to a concerned Seok that he did not know if it would get infected as he did not know what newly infected wounds looked like, as well as the men breaking camp and tying their bags back onto the saddles.

            

Larkin, though he was no doctor, could recognize a fever. When he had picked up Shula’s wounded wrist that morning her skin had felt as if it were on fire. Putting the back of his hand to her forehead, he felt for her temperature there too. It was cooler than her wrist, making his concern about Cain’s suggestion of poison and Seok’s questions about infection grow. He knew that the flesh near a festering wound was fevered, but poison could do the same thing and either would also give the victim a fever as their body tried to fight the affront to its system.

            

The group had only three horses for five people plus the bags they carried. Zija and Cain stood talking about their route, and how the trek would take longer now that the horses would be carrying two people each. Seok joined the conversation, adding, “Shula needs a real doctor. No offence to Larkin or anything, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing any more than I would. I’ve never seen her sick in my life, any more than I can remember being sick.”

            

“How long have you known her exactly?” Zija asked.

            

“Didn’t you know? That kiss back in the shelter on the mountain was because I remembered that I knew her from before.” Seok shook Shula’s shoulder to wake her.

            

“Ok, you’ve been with Cain for four years. So that makes you what; you guys grew up together or something? Shit!” Zija glanced at Cain who rubbed his fingers together, pantomiming holding money. “Who the hell would randomly go kissing their childhood friends like that?”

            

Shula, now awake and climbing to her feet with her wounded wrist clutched against the blood soaked fabric at her waist put a smirk on over her grimace of pain. “If that’s all that confusing this’ll really throw you off. We’re engaged, Red.”

            

That got everyone’s attention. Zija gaped, swiveling his head to look between the two of them. Cain’s eyebrows rose in speculation, disappearing behind his shaggy blond bangs. Larkin, who had been rolling up the bedroll Shula had just vacated, had stopped to stare, much like Zija, while Seok pretended not to have heard. Zija managed to close his mouth long enough to comment, “When did you get engaged, when you were five?”

            

Shula smiled, “It’s not that odd for children to get engaged is it?”

            

“Now I really wanna know what’s going on here! Your families get you two engaged, and then the brat loses his memory, then who tied him up in that cave?”

            

“Our families didn’t plan it, we decided. If the Bitch had known she’d have had our asses chained up sooner than they were.” Shula’s words contained all the malice she felt for the woman who she termed the bitch, but they were given in a voice that carried none of the energy or fight that Shula usually showed. Her voice was tired.

            

“Priti knew,” Seok said. “He probably did tell her.”

            

“That stick in the mud?” Shula squinted from a ray sunlight that had just crested the trees. “He’s so formal and polite all the time, why would he have anything to do with her?”

            

“You forgot his other name didn’t you? Kama?” Cain watched this continued conversation carefully, though both Larkin and Zija had lost interest. The names Shula and Seok were using were actually words in the language of the gods. Priti meant affection and kama meant lust. He tried to remember why those words sounded familiar, not just as vocabulary, but as if it was something he had read then forgotten until now.

            

“You’re too stubborn to argue with and I don’t have the energy when it’s this cold,” Shula snapped at Seok, who had continued to describe the characteristics of the man who had known about their engagement. Seok reached out and grabbed Shula’s arm. It was radiating heat under his touch. “It’s not cold, you’re sick.”

            

“Whatever,” she replied, “Let’s just get going. I’m tired of standing here doing nothing.” She leaned back on Seok, looking as if she would collapse right there.

            

Because the weight of the riders had to be distributed evenly, Larkin ended up riding on Zija’s horse, because his gelding was the largest and strongest of their mounts. Cain got most of their bags behind and in front of his saddle, and Shula and Seok were to ride together like before, with Shula in the front this time. She was dizzy and reeling where she stood with feet solidly planted on the ground, and  Seok and Larkin both worried that she would fall out of the saddle if Seok did not have his arms firmly around her waist.

            

The party set off, looking rather woebegone riding double and with all their belongings tied to one saddle. Shula said little throughout the day, only complaining once of her arm hurting when the horse stumbled in a hole some animal had dug in the path. Several times she complained of the cold, asking Seok piteously for a blanket, until he broke down and wrapped her in another layer of the scarves she had used when crossing over the mountain. Holding her close, he worried about just how hot her body had become. This kind of heat was just not natural.

            

A sudden thought came to him and he dug Shula’s wounded arm out from among her wrappings. She protested the movement, but did not jerk her hand out of his grip for fear of hurting herself further. Shula whimpered as the young man held her arm up to look at the bandages. Her bracelet had been pushed back almost to her elbow to keep it out of the way of the bandages. Seok pursed his lips while looking at it. This was not good. Whether she wanted it or not, he was going to tell Cain what was really going on. He could not risk Shula dying because of something like that.

            

The group unanimously decided to continue on while dusk approached. At the rate they were going they would reach Lord Death’s Temple within two hours, and they were all looking forward to getting there and having a decent meal, a roof over their heads, and even one of the temple’s cushioned mattresses that they laid on the floor in place of beds seemed better than another night on the ground like the last four they had spent. Shula had fallen asleep, leaning against Seok’s chest when by the time they reached the high outer walls of the temple.