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  Holding one finger in front of his lips, he hoped that Karen would understand that he wanted her to be quiet. Then he pointed toward the bushes as he sent a faint pulse of aythar in that direction. It illuminated the world for him, and his magesight was temporarily able to register the large bear that was slowly working its way toward them.

  Matthew was no woodsman, but he had learned enough woodcraft to know that bears didn’t approach humans without a purpose. Ordinarily they found an excuse to leave an area if they sensed humans nearby. He and Karen had been talking loudly enough that it must know they were there. That meant it was approaching them deliberately. It was probably hungry and trying to decide whether they would make an easy meal.

  ***

  Karen stopped, pursing her lips when she saw Matthew holding one finger in front of his mouth. She had been frustrated to discover that they couldn’t communicate properly. If she’d still had her PM it wouldn’t have been a problem. It could have detected whatever language he was using and been able to translate for them. Or if I were normal I wouldn’t have been able to lose it in the first place, she thought in frustration. Most people didn’t carry external PM’s anymore. It was just one more reminder that she was a freak.

  Then she heard a faint rustling. It was low enough that she hadn’t paid any attention to it before, but now that she was paying attention, she could tell it was being caused by the movement of something. She turned her back on the wounded stranger and scanned the rocks and brush around them. Matthew must have great hearing, she thought.

  And then she saw it. A surge of adrenaline shot through her as the dark head appeared some thirty feet away. She had been careless. Where was her bag? She had a can of bear spray inside it. Turning she looked back at the litter, only to find the stranger standing.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in surprise.

  Matthew pointed, “Bear.”

  Another word they had in common. She nodded, “Yes, a bear. How are you standing?” She ignored the mystery of the stranger being on his feet while her eyes searched for her bag. There it was, lying on the ground on the other side of the litter.

  She heard the bear again, louder now. It was close and no longer making any attempt to disguise its approach. Karen started to step around the stranger, but he put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to stop.

  Drawing his sword, he handed it to her carefully. He said something as her hand reflexively closed over the hilt, but again, she couldn’t understand, and then he stepped around her, heading in the direction of their ursine visitor.

  “What are you doing?” Karen hissed, her eyes wide.

  Matthew walked directly toward the bear. His stride was relaxed, almost casual, even though the beast was now less than ten feet away. There was nothing but open space between them now. Raising his arms and holding them wide he barked a command at the massive creature.

  Karen knew confidence and a bold posture could sometimes force a bear to move away, but this one appeared to be having none of it. It charged forward, but her strange companion never flinched as the grizzly rushed toward him. “He’s fucking crazy,” she muttered, preparing to scramble for her bag.

  The bear growled, baring fangs that looked big enough to be daggers as it swiped at the young man with one paw.

  Matthew batted the paw away, as though he was brushing off an attack from a small child. Then he flicked his hand toward the bear.

  Karen felt, or saw, something. A flash of light, or heat, washed over her, followed by a wave of vertigo. Whatever it was seemed to strike the bear, and she saw its head jerk from some sort of impact. It reared up on its hind legs, enraged, but then Matthew said something, and it fell backward, losing its balance. Again, she felt something, though her eyes seemed to argue with her other perceptions.

  Matthew yelled at the bear again, waving his arms menacingly as it hastily got back on its feet. The grizzly turned and retreated rapidly without stopping to look back. Matthew watched it go, making sure it had truly left before he turned around and walked back to Karen.

  She was holding the bear spray now, and she stared at him with her mouth agape. “What the hell were you thinking? That thing might have killed you! It should have killed you!”

  He still couldn’t understand her words, but he caught the gist she was sure, because he responded by shrugging his shoulders apologetically.

  Karen found the gesture irritating. “Why did you give me this?” she demanded, holding the sword up. “Nobody uses a sword to fight bears, and if you thought they could, you should have kept it!”

  The young man tilted his head slightly, obviously trying to puzzle out what she was saying, but eventually he replied, “Sword, you, safe.”

  Three words she could understand in one sentence, not that she agreed with any of them, of course. “No,” she declared before pointing to his forehead, “stupid.”

  He stared back at her with a smug, almost indifferent expression, which only made her madder. The idiot had nearly gotten himself killed, and he obviously thought he had saved her. Karen glanced down at the bear spray in her hand and suppressed the urge to pull the pin and spray him with it.

  She pushed that aside as another thought occurred to her, “What’s with your leg anyway?” When Matthew’s expression grew more puzzled she pointed at it, “Your leg, this, your leg—how are you walking?”

  His face lit up with comprehension. After a long pause he pointed at himself, “Wizard.”

  Karen let the air out of her chest in a long sigh before pointing at him. “Nutjob,” she corrected acerbically.

  The young man paused and then nodded, “Yes, wizard, nutjob.” He seemed to think they were communicating.

  She couldn’t help but smile at that, “At least we agree on something. Come on nutjob, we aren’t going to get out of this wilderness if we just stand around all day.”

  Chapter 5

  Matthew watched as Karen packed the strange cylinder she was holding back into her bag. When she pointed at the litter and said something to him, he was pretty certain she was asking if he needed to be carried on it again.

  He shook his head, “No, thank you.”

  She shrugged and pointed downhill as she said something else. The words all sounded familiar. Once in a while, one would jump out at him, but he knew they were far from properly understanding one another. He swept his arm outward and gave a slight bow, “Lead the way.”

  He followed her as she picked her way down the steep mountainside. They weren’t on a trail of any sort, so the going was rough, and within minutes his leg began to throb and ache. That was just the worst of it though, pains in his back, neck, and elsewhere all competed for his attention.

  Karen looked at him with concern as his mild limp became a pronounced hobbling gait. She said something, but the only word he understood was ‘crutch’.

  “Good idea,” he told her. They were near the bottom now and the trees were thicker around them. Limping into a stand of small saplings he selected one that was small enough and fairly straight.

  Karen pointed at his sword.

  “No need,” he told her, putting his hand on the tree he had chosen. Concentrating, he sent his aythar out to follow the length of the tree. It took considerably more effort than he expected. He was beginning to worry, for he seemed to be getting weaker, as though his power wasn’t properly replenishing itself.

  Once his aythar encompassed the length that he wanted, he clenched his will, cutting the tree neatly off near the ground and at a point higher up. The smaller branches that were attached to that portion also fell away, leaving him with an ideal walking staff nearly six feet in length.

  Karen’s eyes widened slightly as he pulled it away with little apparent effort. She looked puzzled, but she didn’t say anything.

  They continued onward and when they reached the bottom, where a small but gentle valley lay, Matthew wondered how far it would be before they reached her home. Looking upward he studied the mountain they had desc
ended. To his eyes it looked much like the others that surrounded them on either side. If they traveled too far he might have difficulty finding it again.

  And Desacus won’t wake up until I can get close enough to give him a command. He needed to mark the location. In fact, he wished he had done that before leaving the cave, but it was too late for that.

  Holding up a hand, he motioned to Karen, “Wait a few minutes.”

  She nodded and pointed at her lower abdomen while saying something and then pointing to a stand of tall white-barked trees.

  Matthew got the general idea, she needed a moment of privacy for certain urgent purposes. “Go ahead,” he told her. Then he cast about, looking for what he needed.

  In the mountains it didn’t take him long to find what he sought, a large boulder with a relatively smooth top. The one he found was a little bigger than he’d have liked, with sides that were almost ten feet in height, but with the judicious application of a bit of aythar, he managed to scale it. Once atop the massive stone he used his finger to channel a small line of power and began carving a circle into it.

  Teleportation circles were fairly complicated, but the beauty of them was that they labeled a particular ‘piece’ of space. The fact that he was a stranger to this world, to this dimension, was no problem at all. Once the circle was finished, this spot would have the name, or ‘key’, that he had designated for it. So long as he remembered that key, he could make another circle anywhere that would bring him back to it.

  Etching the circle and symbols into the stone was hard work. His strength was definitely diminished, and growing weaker. How long will I have to rest to recover? he wondered. Back home a few hours were usually all he needed, but apparently in a world without aythar it took much longer. What if I can’t recover here?

  He wasn’t entirely sure if he was still generating his own aythar at all, and if he wasn’t, then he would die when it was exhausted. Aythar was equivalent to life, and it still confused him that the living things in this world seemed to do perfectly well without it. The bear had seemed healthy and Karen could certainly walk and talk without any discernable aythar.

  That wasn’t entirely true. Karen hadn’t had any aythar when he had first seen her, but since he had awoken that morning he had noticed that she had begun to develop a faint trace of it. Possibly it was from being in such close proximity to him, but he wondered if it was temporary or whether she might begin to produce aythar on her own.

  Only time would tell.

  He finished the circle. It wasn’t his best work. Without having a stylus the lines were thicker and cruder than they needed to be, and his weakness made them rougher than they might otherwise have been, but it would serve. Karen stood below, looking up at him curiously. No doubt she was wondering how he had gotten up there since there were few handholds for easy climbing.

  Matthew grinned at her and jumped down, using a small amount of aythar to cushion the shock as he landed.

  They continued their trek, following the stream that ran through the small valley and heading roughly east. As the day wore on Matthew wondered how much farther they had to go before reaching Karen’s home. She couldn’t have traveled very far since she had almost nothing in the way of supplies or camping gear.

  When the sun stood highest in the sky, they stopped in a grassy clearing and took a short break. Matthew was starving, and he knew Karen had to be just as hungry. Neither of them had eaten since the previous day.

  Karen pulled a small strange package from her bag. He had noticed it earlier while examining her with his magesight, and he knew it contained some sort of dried food, but the container itself was made of a material foreign to him. In some ways it resembled glass, transparent and shimmery, but it differed in that it was flexible like leather.

  She poured a small handful into her palm and handed him the remainder still in the small pouch.

  Matthew dipped his head, “Thank you.”

  She answered with a short phrase that he felt sure meant something along the lines of ‘you’re welcome’. He filed the phrase away in his memory. Having the gift of the loshti was handy; since it meant he never forgot anything. Slowly but surely he was building up a store of phrases as he figured out the meaning behind some of the things she said.

  The food was bizarre, like everything else she showed him. Some of it was obviously dried grains, and he could identify some pieces as being preserved fruit. The really weird part was the brightly colored oval bits. He bit into one cautiously and was shocked to find it contained something very sweet.

  He picked one out and held it out to her, questioning, “What is this?”

  She understood the question easily enough, “Chocolate.”

  Matthew decided he liked chocolate, though it seemed a strange food to pack for a journey into the wilderness. He ate the rest of what she had given him in two quick bites. It wouldn’t be enough to sustain them for long.

  Of even more concern was the fact that her water bottle was empty. He moved closer to her and tapped it before pointing toward the river, “We should refill your bottle.”

  Karen shook her head negatively and said something. Most of it sounded like gibberish, except for the word ‘bad’.

  So, the river isn’t safe to drink. Hopefully we aren’t far from her home.

  ***

  Karen marched along steadily, trying to ignore the empty knot that her stomach had become. She knew she was in no danger of starving to death, yet. It had only been a day since her last good meal, and they had been able to snack on the last of her trail mix a few hours ago, but her belly seemed convinced that she was in mortal danger.

  Hunger, true hunger, was not something most people experienced any more, at least not in the modern world. Stop complaining, she told herself, you can last for several days without food.

  “But will I be able to keep walking all that time,” she wondered aloud. Of even more concern was their lack of water, and she thought longingly of all the water she had left in her pert. If only she had some way to summon it. If only I weren’t a freak.

  Eventually they would become too desperate to ignore the river and the risk of giardia or some other water-borne illness would be the lesser of two evils. The mountain stream was relatively clear, and it certainly looked inviting. She would have had little concern in using the water if she had some way to boil it first.

  But she hadn’t carried her lighter with her, deeming it needless weight when she had thought she’d be able to summon the pert every evening. “An extra ounce or two doesn’t seem like such a waste now, does it?” she chided herself. “Not when you’ll be thirsty and freezing your ass off tonight.”

  She glanced back to look at the young man following her. His limp was less pronounced now, partly because of the staff, but likely also because the long exercise had loosened up his bruised muscles. She still didn’t understand how he was walking. She had been certain the leg was broken.

  She had begun collecting a whole host of unanswered questions regarding him. He seemed good natured, but his apparent lack of caution, particularly regarding bears, was worrisome. She wondered if he had a death wish or whether he was just naturally foolish.

  The way he kept referring to himself as a wizard might have been funny, if they weren’t deep in the mountains with no easy access to food, water, or shelter. The back country was no place for fools. Not that I’m any better, she thought, I hiked out here with only my PM and never once considered what might happen if it was damaged or lost.

  She couldn’t deny that weird things kept happening around him, though. Being thrown together during the rockslide was an amazing coincidence, and surviving it was almost a miracle. Matthew’s odd bravado when he had scared away the bear was also nearly unbelievable, but she knew that quite often the real world was stranger than fiction. The young man had been incredibly lucky.

  Of all those things, what bothered her most was the memory of him reaching into the small stand of saplings and pulling one away
as though it had been made to serve as a staff. It hadn’t looked dead, but that was the only explanation she could come up with. He had gripped it firmly, and it had just snapped off in his hand. All the smaller limbs and the top had fallen away as well.

  There had been something very unnatural about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe it had been anything other than sheer luck.

  And then there was his climbing skill. If he weren’t dressed in those odd clothes she might have thought he was a rock climber. The boulder he had scaled while she was relieving herself earlier was not something just anyone would be able to manage.

  “Too many questions,” she muttered.

  The sun was getting low in the sky, and she felt torn. They needed to cover a lot more ground if they were to get back to civilization before they starved or died of thirst, but she could also tell that the long hike had taken a serious toll on her companion. Whatever the truth of his injuries was, he had taken a battering the day before. He needed rest.

  She made up her mind, and when the next clearing presented itself she held up her hand, “We should camp here.”

  Matthew nodded tiredly and she wondered how much he had really understood.

  “Rest,” she told him. “Let me have the sword, and I’ll try to make a pallet for us to sleep on.” Starting early would give her time to gather green grass and possibly make something less uncomfortable to sleep on than the cold ground.

  He gave her a confused look, and she repeated the key word while pointing at his waist, “Sword.”

  “Ah,” he answered and then unbuckled his belt and handed her the scabbarded weapon.

  She motioned toward a dead log, “Sit down. Rest. I’ll be back soon.”

  After that she headed back in the direction they had come. They had passed a willow tree not long ago. The long draping limbs and soft leaves would probably make good bedding, and covered with some of the river grass it might make for a better night’s sleep. “Unless I’m allergic to the grass,” she muttered.