Daughters of Mara - Book 1: Revelations

Chapter 10

After five long days of painstaking tracking, steadily eastward, Koko found a campsite next to a river—or rather, what was once a river. It was barely more than a creek now.

"They stopped here," she said while carefully examining the area. "Probably the same day of the capture. There's a large blue sage stronghold upriver. I'm assuming that's where they went."

"Will you be able to get them out?" Valen asked hopefully.

"I don't know. Maybe." She knew he was probably thinking about that wanted sign in Makapu. There was a good chance now that she'd be recognized. Entering that facility would be incredibly reckless; it would be virtually impossible to get all three of them out together. And that was a big problem.

Saph should be her first priority. She wanted Saph to be her first priority. For the first time in a long while, her personal feelings clashed with her sense of duty. It seemed far more likely now that Zenya was the Avatar, and it made more logical sense to put her first. Her head believed those things; her heart did not.

"They must've drugged Zenya..." Valen murmured. "It's the only explanation. There hasn't been a single sign of her bending."

Koko refrained from verbally speculating that she might be badly injured—or worse. Instead, she voiced the theory she'd been stewing on all morning; the tracks she was seeing now seemed to support it. "They might have a plague carrier with them."

"What? Why would they do that? It would affect the blue sages, too."

"I've seen it before. They capture them and use them like a weapon. Look, here–" Buried under some dead leaves was a pile of metal chains. "This...is odd." She stood up and scratched the back of her neck, confused. "The ground isn't soft enough for me to know how many of them there were, but there were only two hounds, so there couldn't be more than two, maybe three adults in total."

"And are there tracks leading out of camp? Or did the hounds go into the river? It doesn't look deep enough for them to swim..."

Koko was barely listening to him, too busy trying to make heads or tails of what she was seeing. There was evidence of three separate sets of tracks leading away. "The hounds went in the river. It must've been higher then. I don't know why it's so low. But..."

Someone had gone southwest and she began to carefully follow the subtle evidence of faint boot imprints, broken twigs, and displaced leaves. It was a much greater challenge than identifying the deep tracks of eel hound feet.

Valen followed silently as they made their way through the forest until Koko spotted movement up ahead. She put her hand up in warning and crouched down behind a bush. Something...wasn't right.

"Can you sense any people up ahead?" she asked as softly as she could, right in his ear. Being so close to him was...uncomfortable. But practically necessitated such things.

"No."

The movement ahead was vaguely rhythmic, like something hanging from a tree branch and swaying in the breeze. Koko crept closer to investigate, but the stench hit her first.

"Spirits... "

"What?" Valen whispered. "What do you—" He coughed and gagged. "What is that smell??"

She knew exactly what it was and was filled with a moment of horrified panic that made her throw caution to the wind and fling herself forward. Please, please don't be her... Spirits, please...

But the bloated, rotting corpse was unfamiliar—a woman, she was sure, but not Saph. Not Zenya, either.

Valen's heavy footsteps behind her stopped suddenly and he started retching. Koko herself wasn't entirely unaffected, but she was more desensitized to this kind of brutality. Even so, her stomach churned as she climbed partway up the tree to cut the vines that held the unfortunate woman. It wouldn't be right to leave her like that.