Cursed: Traitor's Trail

Chapter 21 part 1

Aya studied the man in front of her. He looked serious. His eyes met hers earnestly, but behind the direct gaze, his face hardened and his mouth turned downward in a firmness she read with ease.
He wasn't going to let her go, which meant he wouldn't like what she was going to say. Or rather, what she was going to do. Before she had decided how to reply, a commotion broke out from the busier section of the camp.
From a line of Magi working to dismantle one of the traveling shelters, a group stepped back. Confusion and surprise written on their faces as the gray haired form of Hamor pushed forward violently through the mass. Fury shook his wizened features; his eyes were wild with anger, yet glossed and unfocused.
"How dare you bring that back here?" he demanded, gesturing stiffly in her direction.
Aya raised her brows. She supposed there hadn't been time to share the discovery of the traitor fully, or her part in aiding the Magi's safety, so she shouldn't be surprised that he still saw her as such a threat. But the imagined danger she might pose did not warrant such fierce emotions. Logic did not seem to apply in this situation, however, and it would be easy to spare the debate and answer Jaob's question about her intentions at the same time.
"It hardly matters old man," she tried to begin, to draw his attention so she could mollify the situation. Her words though, had no effect. They didn't even draw a glance from Jaob or Bane, who stood right next to her. It felt like one of the nightmares she had been having since her banishment; the one where she had ceased to exist but was somehow still trapped in the mortal plane.
Apprehension tickled her spine as she glanced at her hand. It remained un-gloved since her magic use in the wasteland, and it looked substantial.
But no, the problem was not that she wasn't present, it was the old Magi. His behavior set off some internal instinct in Jaob and Bane, so that they didn't dare take their gazes away from him.
Jaob's hand drifted toward his sword, slowly and deliberately.
"Are you certain you want to push this issue, Hamor? After your defiance at New Hope? Now you wish to insult and dishonor me? Are you asking for a challenge?"
Aya stepped back, physically repulsed by the idea. A challenge was serious in Sheathra, used only when necessary to change the order of leadership, or restore lost honor, and always fought to the death. Sometimes of both participants.
It wasn't hard to guess who the winner of this contest would be. Jaob stood young and fit. Still in his prime. Hamor was weakened and bent with age, though his current mood seemed to negate the infirmity.
Regardless, it would still be akin to an execution of a man whose only crime was trying to protect his people.
Bane, too, seemed to sense the inequity. His hand did not stray to his weapon, but he did step forward menacingly, aiming to place himself in front of Jaob. Did he hope to scare the old man off before a challenge could be issued?
Almost like setting tiles on a game board, a second man from the group of Magi moved forward to counter Bane. A menacing looking man.
Aya allowed her surprise to pass into dread. Unlike Hamor, this man did present a significant threat. Weapons lined his body, tucked into sheaths wherever space appeared for them. She drifted back, looking for his name, certain they had been introduced. It came at last, floating from somewhere in Melak's portion of her mind. Lon.
Jaob took a step backwards at the man's appearance, a shocked look on his face. Had Lon been one of Hamor's supporters? She didn't remember, but if so, it seemed it was news to Jaob.
Why would the man interfere at all in a challenge? It was unheard of, and against every custom not only of the clans, but the whole of Sheathra.
Even Bane raised dark brows at the audacity. He did not retreat his step, but he hesitated, unsure of what to do next.
She sensed something deeply wrong with what she witnessed, but in the tension before certain battle she had a hard time placing it. She allowed her eyes to close searching internally for what niggled at her memory. The situation might be fitting for Hamor, who made his impulsiveness and emotional decisions clear before, but the interference, or any aggression against Jaob, was unusual for Lon. At least, that is what she remembered from Melak's point of view once she let her mind wander there. Lon had always been one of Jaob's strongest supporters.
Odd. What would make the man turn on his own intentions so quickly? Did she inspire such hatred among people? She studied him.
He moved forward in an unmistakably aggressive manner, his face contorted with anger.
Something about his movements bothered her. She hadn't noticed with Hamor, he was old and many things could be accounted to the stiffness of his limbs. But Lon seemed to have lost the warriors grace. His movements short and choppy.
It reminded her of the calculated way the lizard worked its tail into the cricket enclosure. Suddenly, a new thought occurred to her. One that explained the situation, but had dire repercussions. If Brissa controlled the lizard and the termites, as Aya suspected, and even the scorpion that stung Melak, then what stopped her from claiming control of people?
She shuddered. Her own power was terrible, but a power like that was a thousand times worse.
Lon and Hamor had approached far enough that neither Jaob nor Bane had any choice but to draw their own swords.
"Wait!" Aya yelled. "I do not think they intend to attack you."
"It looks as though that is exactly what they intend," Jaob argued from his defensive stance.
"No, I mean I don't think they control their own actions."
As she spoke, Hamor made his first move, swinging a wicked looking blade in Jaob's direction with surprising vigor.
Where had he acquired it? She hadn't even seen a weapon a moment ago.
Jaob blocked the thrust easily, but the old man wasn't finished. Worse, Lon began to attack as well, and a crowd of curious and horrified Magi gathered, effectively blocking Aya's smaller frame from view of the battle.
She considered enlisting others to help prevent the combatants from damaging each other, but that would be as much taboo as participating. Besides, no one paid attention to her, and it did not look like they were about to.
She needed to prove the little traitor was at work again. That would get their attention. She looked around the half packed camp. No sign remained of the girl, or of Kierra, who supposedly watched her.
A new fear entered Aya's thoughts. Kierra. Surely the girl wasn't using her power in front of the healer without interference. Which only meant one thing, Kierra had somehow been incapacitated.
Aya bit her lip. She hadn't gotten along with the woman, but Kierra left a weapon for her at New Hope. It was a silly thing to base a friendship on, given that Kierra was the first to accuse her of being the traitor, but, sadly, the act was one of the few kind ones she experienced lately and she put a lot of value into it. The thought that something may have befallen the woman worried Aya.
A look around reaffirmed everyone was too busy with the spectacle of the battle to be much help.
It is up to me then; which was only fitting she supposed, since everyone blamed her for all the girl's misdeeds. She needed to find the child. First she scanned the camp. It was Sheathra; there were not many good hiding places on the steppes. She eyed the tents that were still standing, the last to be folded for the day's journey. It was too much to hope that Brissa had taken shelter in one of them. Yet, to assume she was not there would be a costly mistake.
Aya sprinted away from the crowd unnoticed and raced to the tents. She didn't bother calling out greetings, but threw open tent flaps as she passed, scanning the interior briefly before moving on to the next. It didn't take long to confirm them as empty; which only left the entire range of the steppes open to the possibility.
Aya pinched the bridge of her nose and flinched as her naked hand filled her vision once more. Good thing her power could not be set off by touching her own skin. She had forgotten already to mind what she handled.
It sparked an idea, though, a foolish one no doubt. Searching the perimeter of the camp for footprints would be time-consuming. She did not know if Bane and Jaob heard her when she proposed that their attackers were being controlled, but, either way, her window for preventing unnecessary death was small.
She looked at her hand critically. Would she be able to track someone-specifically the girl-without passing out, or into the memory world for too long to be useful? It stood to reason that if Brissa's trail only held a fleeting moment of memory that her power would only take hold for a moment, until the memory ran out. Of course, there was no guarantee it would only hold a moment's memory, possibly it might suck her into a replay of the path's history from the beginning of time.
But what else was she to do? She had to take some risk, or stand by as always and do nothing. And that was not even an option any longer, not in Aya's mind. She was tired of leaving her fate for others to decide.
But where, she wondered, to start? She could hardly wander the camp touching random footprints in hopes of having a vision.
Silence descended when the battle began, no one dared to speak, and the Magi seemed to hold their breath. It left the area abandoned except for the gathering at the northern edge where Bane and herself had arrived.
She studied the set up. Even with many structures already dismantled and folded, she could see that the layout was similar to that of New Hope. Old comforts were difficult to let go of in times of crisis.
The unmarried women's tent was one of the last she had searched, back slightly from the others to afford a bit of privacy, but close enough to be protected. Since the healing tent had to be left behind in New Hope, the unmarried women's tent was likely where both Brissa and Kierra spent the night.
Aya worked her way back toward it, this time with caution. She looked at the ground nearby critically.
The main trail from the entrance formed a confusing mess. Magi had been going to and from the tent so often that individual footprints weren't distinguishable at all. To the sides, though, where people misstepped, or perhaps moved on purpose, several lone footpaths could be distinguished.
She judged them quickly. Brissa was young, not yet a woman, and small. So Aya looked for the smallest tracks she could find. When she picked a likely set, she prepared herself. Here it goes. She hoped that the Magi wouldn't find her laying in this spot, unconscious, and long after she could do any good. She crouched, holding her breath, and placed her naked hand in the center of the defined print.
Nothing happened. Not even the slightest twinge of a tingle.
Had she broken her power? She struggled with a slight disappointment that her tracking plan wouldn't work, and the elation that she might be free from her curse. But then it occurred to her that the trail she chose might be her own, her power may not bother to show her a memory of something she already knew and participated in.
She decided to try another print, this trail coming from the west. This time, her power swept her up immediately. She had enough time to sigh inwardly-she should have known losing the curse was too good to be true-before the vision overwhelmed her.
She found herself looking upward, as if part of the footprint itself. An odd angle to identify anything. Above her, a pair of feminine legs passed. She had a bundle strapped to her chest. It took Aya a moment to recognize it as the infant. This was not Brissa then, but one of the others. She thought the young mother was married, though. A second set of legs entered her view, the head above these familiar in its blondness. Kierra murmured something to the mother, and gently patted her on the back. A noise from within the tent drew the healer's attention, and she looked backward, a slight hint of concern on her face. Then, the mother moved on and Kierra returned through the entrance flap. From the quality of the light Aya judged the small event to have happened early that morning, shortly after dawn.
She came back to herself as rapidly as she left, immensely relieved that the dust had not held her for longer. She looked around, trying to judge how much time had passed.
The camp still looked abandoned, with the Magi gathered in one spot. No cries of mourning filled the air, so the battle remained undecided.
She forced herself back into action. There was one more set of prints that were possibly the girl's. These set off eastward. Quickly, she laid her hand on them and welcomed the tingling rush as it came.
The light this time remained much the same as the present, meaning this particular trail was fresh. She stared upward again when the bottom of a sandal blocked her view for the briefest instant and then moved forward. She strained her 'vision' as far as she could and made out the back of a small form running east and out of the camp. Excitement found her. This must be Brissa; she would find the girl to the east. A harsh curse, followed by Kierra's legs running after the girl confirmed her suspicions.
She did it. She nearly grinned as she felt her mind returning to itself. At last, her power was doing something remotely useful. She pushed aside the familiar wave of weakness that rushed in as soon as she returned to herself, and stood. She ran to the edge of the camp, much the same as she saw the girl and the healer do.