The Goblets Immortal by Beth Overmyer (highly recommended books txt) 📗

Her spine stiffened. “Oh? You think I don’t know?” Her grip on the sword’s haft tightened, and Aidan quickly Dismissed it before she could cut herself…or him, for that matter. She jumped as the blade disappeared.

It might be wise to head her off with the truth before she could get any jumpier. The girl would get to the truth sooner or later; she seemed to have a knack for that. Aidan knew he would do well to offer at least some of it freely. “It was a little girl with…. What?” Her expression had gone from cross to confused and then smoothed over again.

“Go on.”

Aidan shook his head. “I recognized her, but I can’t figure out from where. I don’t know any children, but….” Why was he rambling? Perhaps Slaíne’s mood, or whatever it was, was contagious.

“What was the dream about?” Slaíne asked. “Was she in it?”

Aidan sighed. He knew whom she meant. “Yes, Meraude was in the dream. But something was different this time.”

Slaíne narrowed her eyes at this news. “What seemed different?”

How to put this without seeming completely out of his right mind? “She seemed, I don’t know, younger.”

“I thought the Seeing Pool only showed the present and the future. Yer certain you was seeing the past?”

Aidan frowned. “I don’t know what I was seeing.” The thought that he’d been talking to someone from the past hadn’t occurred to him. Could it be?

“And you said she was with a child.”

Aidan nodded. “The child – Larkin – said she had been taken from her parents, and…. What now?”

Slaíne had gotten to her feet, agitated all of a sudden. “Sir, what you saw…if you were seeing her with a child…Meraude, she killed the parents, and she killed the children. All of them.”

“Whoa, Slaíne, slow down. You’re babbling.”

She shot him a dark look. “Oh, try and keep up. The Blest. She killed all the Blest. And she hated children. And parents. And everyone. Still does, far as I know.”

So, there were other things that Slaíne had neglected to tell him. When would she ever learn to trust him? Probably not until he stopped keeping secrets of his own, he knew. But now was not the time. “Walk with me.”

“Where? Why?”

“I’m close to finding water.” Aidan turned and took a few steps back to the edge of the clearing, pausing when he sensed she was not following him. “What?”

“How can you think of water at a time like this?”

Aidan stared at her. “Because I’m dying of thirst. Come.”

Slaíne hesitated a moment longer, but at last relented and tramped after him. “Where is this supposed water?”

Aidan smiled to himself. “I thought it was scandalous, thinking of water at a time like this.”

Slaíne snorted. “I didn’t say scandalous. And besides, my throat’s as dry as paper.”

He motioned for her to be quiet for a moment, so that he might listen to the natural life and concentrate on Pulls. He heard gentle keening directly ahead by several paces. Water had no Pull. Aidan always supposed it was too changing to act as much of an anchor anyway. It had never bothered him before, as he had always been familiar with the areas he traveled. Water had always been plentiful. What he stumbled into now was swamp water. He sighed.

“This ain’t drinkable.” Slaíne’s voice was thick, and if he didn’t know her as well as he did, he might think she was on the verge of tears. “Stagnant. We’d get sorely sick if….”

Aidan held up a hand to stay her comments. This would take concentration. “Kneel now.”

Slaíne snorted. “Are we going to pray over it?”

“No,” Aidan said, fighting a smile, “just do as I say. Cup your hands and….”

Slaíne beat him to the punch, and scooped up a handful of water. “All right. Now what?”

Aidan closed his eyes and concentrated. He felt for Pulls in the water, Pulls so small that he would never notice them unless he was specifically looking for them. And he had to work quickly before it all leaked out of her hands. There! A few dozen potentially harmful things, he was fairly certain. He Dismissed them all, just to be on the safe side. He looked up at Slaine, who was staring at him, a question on her face. “Drink it.”

She hesitated. “You just stared at it real hard and now it’s safe to drink, is it?”

Now Aidan did laugh, though he was really in no laughing mood. It must seem rather absurd to her. “Just drink it. I got rid of anything that wasn’t water.”

Slaíne gave him a disbelieving look but didn’t need any more prompting. She gulped down what was in her hands and didn’t hesitate to scoop up another handful, staring at him expectantly.

Aidan was thirsty himself, but humored her by Dismissing the harmful elements from that handful. He half-expected her to scoop up another palmful of the water, but she instead wiped her mouth clean and got to her feet. So he cleansed the water for himself, not two but five handfuls. That strange drink he’d lifted from the nymphs had left a funny taste in his mouth…going down and coming back up. He grimaced at the memory, and hoped Slaíne did not think of it anymore.

Now that water had been taken care of for the moment, the next concern was finding something to transport it in. He could not simply Dismiss it handfuls at a time; it had no Pull and was tied to whatever vessel it was in. This meant he could Dismiss a wineskin full of liquid, but not the pond itself. Too large. Too unstable a vessel.

“If only I knew where we were.”

“Do it matter?” Slaíne asked, and Aidan could tell she was saying it just to irritate him, though he could not imagine why she meant to provoke him.

Aidan ignored the intent behind her words and took them at their literal value. “If we don’t want to wander around and die from