Not So Different

“Sirona?” She shifted and looked up at Druid’s call. “We can leave now.”

She rubbed her eyes and drew back from him sharply, realizing that she’d fallen asleep against him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Calm down,” Druid said, passing a hand over her head with a little wave of light. “You’re rather exhausted. Do you feel a bit more rested now?”

Strangely, she did. As if she’d gotten a full night’s sleep.

“Yes, thank you. Are we still very far?”

Druid tucked the fire crystals into his cloak and hummed, “Not too far from the nearest port city. My home, Dalan, is just south of that.”

Sirona nodded, glad to hear that they wouldn’t be in the mountains for much longer. She wasn’t sure if she could handle any more surprise snowfalls or slips.

The rest of the path through the mountains seemed to be a normal road leading down the slopes without the use of magic. When they reached the valley, she took a deep heaving breath.

She had never liked heights. The land of Gunning was relatively flat, so she never had to worry too much about heights before, but Berth seemed to be made of mountains. She supposed she would have to start getting a little brave when it came to heights if she was going to keep traveling with Druid.

Within a few hours, she heard the hustle of a town and her heart swelled with relief. To the west, the ocean sparkled into the distance. The harbor was filled with boats of various sizes. It reminded her of one of Gunning’s ports.

The stab of grief that went through her was twisted as she looked at the people in the town. She’d expected them to be very different from the people of Conna. From the coloring of Druid’s hands, she expected them to be mostly darker, but their complexions spanned the same range of color as any town in Conna.

The only difference she could see was their clothing and some of their mannerisms.

Several people turned to look at them strangely. She thought it was because of Druid’s clothing, but she quickly realized that they were looking at her strangely. She dropped her gaze to the tattered, plain dress she wore. The blue had turned a bit grey from the dirt and their travels, but she noticed very few people wore any shade of blue.

The color of choice seemed to be various shades of red. She wondered why. In Conna, red was only reserved for only certain uses and seen as an unlucky color.

Was it the exact opposite on this side of the river? How far from Conna was she? She could believe that the Tara River wasn’t nearly as wide as people believed. Perhaps the curse of the river hadn’t been in existence for as long as the priests proclaimed if the people on this side looked so much like the people on the other side.

Even the language was the same.

“Druid,” a woman called coming up to him with a nod of her head. Druid greeted her and spoke to her, but Sirona’s attention drifted around the marketplace. Something was stirring in the air, something important that she had to pay attention to, but she didn’t know what it could be. She didn’t know anyone in the market. The people were whispering about her, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying across the distance.

Stranger still was that Druid didn’t remove his hood and no one seemed to think it was strange. She didn’t know of any culture that wouldn’t think not seeing someone’s face while they spoke wasn’t strange, but maybe Druid wasn’t the average citizen.

Maybe he was a priest of some sort and hiding his face was just part of the religion. She couldn’t be sure and she didn’t want to hazard asking about it. It was best to try and learn as much as she could without drawing attention to how much she didn’t know.

Something pricked at the back of her mind, setting her edge as if danger was imminent.

A wild neighing filled the air as wood cracked and snapped from further down the market’s main road. She turned towards the sound.

“Stop that horse!” Someone cried. “It’s worth a mint!”

She heard it growing closer and building speed as it grew closer. A runaway horse could hurt people and destroy a lot of property. She’d seen horses in Gunning tear through market stalls and trample grown men when they were frightened.

It was best to try and calm it rather than capture it before someone got hurt. Whoever was trying to tame it or cart it away wasn’t very good at their job.

Sirona rushed into the horse’s path, lifting her hands to gain its attention as it came into view over the hill. Its eyes were as dark as its glossy black coat. It was larger than any horse she’d ever seen and muscular like a war stallion. She swore the air around it shivered with darkness, but she blinked it away thinking it was just a trick of the light.

“By Arawn, get out of the way!”

“Easy there,” Sirona cooed at the horse. It neighed, slowing down in front of her. As it came to a stop, she smiled glad that at least her charm with horses had come with her across the Tara River. “Easy. It’s okay.”

The horse neighed at her, lowering its head as she reached for it. She tugged the snapped rope from around its neck and felt it relax a little more. That was good.

“There. Isn’t that better? No need to make such a fuss.” She threw the rope aside, “Better, right? What idiots tried to hold you with a little rope, hm?”

Someone nearby gasped as Druid turned around. Druid hummed, intrigued as Sirona spoke softly to it, stroking its mane as if it wasn’t a magical harbinger of death. Her inner light seemed to grow brighter as she spoke to the horse. Its light grew darker as it relaxed and nuzzled her.

“Aren’t you beautiful?” Sirona whispered, stroking its head. “Such a beautiful black coat. Back home, you would have been a prized war stallion, you know?”

Her horse in Gunning had once been a war stallion, the same horse her father had ridden into battle in his youth. It had the same rich black coat as this horse, though that horse didn’t have the same spirit as this one.

Druid hummed and turned to the poachers who were coming down the road.

“So glad you caught our horse—”

The horse turned, baring sharp vicious teeth. Sirona gasped at the glow that bloomed in the horse’s eyes as shadows began to tremble around it and circle its feet.

“It is illegal in Berth to trap tenebrus horses,” Druid said and nodded towards the other side of the market, “I don’t imagine you’ll want to explain what you were doing with an aggravated one in the market to the knights, hm?”

The poachers paled and they turned to escape. Sirona frowned and turned back down the way. She didn’t see anyone dressed as a knight, but she didn’t doubt that Druid hadn’t made an empty threat.

The horse neighed and nudged her gently before turning and galloping towards the forest through the spaces between the stalls.

“It is a rare thing to be able to calm a tenebrus horse,” Druid said, “Soon enough, you’ll have a title of your own.”

She frowned and looked around to find people staring at her in awe in shock. Heat filled her face.

“I didn’t do much special.”

“Nonsense, a tenebrus horse is just as likely to eat someone as it is to trample a poacher. They must have subdued it with magic.”

Sirona shuddered, “Did you say eat?”

“Yes.”

Fire-breathing bears and man-eating horses. Was there anything in Berth that made sense?

“Queen Fedelm is very strict about the magical poaching laws. Berth has grown to take in a lot of places that still want to keep their ways of doing things.”

“Why?”

“Selling magical animals of any sort to unsuspecting people is dangerous and depletes the bounty of the forest. It is part practicality and part self-interest. People come to the forests of Arawn to hunt magical creatures from all over the continent.”

“The forests of Arawn?”

Druid nodded and Sirona felt her blood growing cold as she noticed a group of men in long, flowing red-brown robes walking in a procession just ahead. She turned away trying to keep herself from panicking when she saw a man walking towards a polished set of stairs framed with ornate columns. The man’s robes were the same dark blue as the Herald of Anu’s robes had been.

She saw his leering face in her mind’s eyes and froze in place, barely keeping the scream behind her teeth. Her body grew tense and her hands twitched for a weapon as the man walked up the steps.

“Sirona?”