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.
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