“Excellent,” TEL said, kneeling down and easily lifting Isa. “I might suggest that you fetch the sword, as I have been commanded not to touch that particular item.” He walked off, humming to himself.
Siris shook his head, walking out into the river and retrieving the Infinity Blade. He summoned his shield to him, then—after a moment of hesitation—ran off to get the horse and their supplies.
“I can’t answer that question,” TEL said happily. “I have been instructed not to speak on the immortality of the Deathless or how they obtained their status.”
“Well what can you tell me?” Siris asked with exasperation.
“Many things!” TEL said. He walked beside Siris, still carrying Isa. She was unconscious, but TEL seemed to be capable of carrying her with a much smoother gait than Siris could manage, so he tried not to worry too much.
The foothills of the mountains still rose on either side of them, the sky blurry with a haze that occasionally dropped a fine misting rain. The stream at the center of the valley had grown in size until it was now truly a river, though they didn’t travel directly along it. He hoped that following a harder trail might divert them from trouble.
“Indeed,” TEL continued. “My knowledge is wide and varied. I can explain why the sky is blue, for example. Or I can list the ingredients in lentil soup. I can tell you what time it is in Loher’s Depths right at this moment. I can explain why—”
“What’s a ‘Cue Eye Pee’?” Siris cut in. “The deadmind at the God King’s palace spoke of something like that when it attuned me to one of these rings. You mentioned it again, when talking about those daerils.”
“Q.I.P.,” TEL said. “Quantum Identity Pattern. The individual quantum signature inherent in every sentient being, as related to his or her ancestors. It is similar to, but completely separate from, a person’s physical DNA.”
“Their what?”
“I believe,” TEL said, “that you lack the proper scientific understanding for this conversation to proceed with specific details. A simpler explanation is in order. Your Q.I.P. is what you might call your soul. Yours is individual to you, but is separate from your physical form.”
“And it’s related to my ancestors?”
“Indeed,” TEL said. “A person’s descendants will have a Q.I.P.—a soul—that manifests their parentage.”
“So this sword drains souls,” Siris said. “And it needs to drain enough of them from my . . . my bloodline, is it? From my bloodline before its powers manifest.”
“That is an extremely simplified way of explaining it,” TEL said, sounding displeased. “It speaks nothing of Q.I.P. alignment—indeed, it speaks nothing of science at all! But for an ignorant peasant, it will do.”
“The God King was hunting my family,” Siris said, mostly to himself. “He wanted my bloodline specifically. He baited us, created the idea of Sacrifices so that we’d come to him and die by his sword. But what is it about my family that is special?”
“I’m afraid I cannot answer that question, as it would conflict with my orders.”
“I didn’t mean it for you,” Siris said, though he was interested to hear that TEL had been ordered not to speak of Siris’s family specifically. It confirmed a growing suspicion he had that TEL had been sent by the God King to spy on Siris.
Every step I go, I’m surrounded by people who would betray me if given half a chance. That made him worry again about Isa. He checked the horizon; the sun was nearly down. Time to set up camp.
He chose the location as best he could. He found a place where some fallen leaves made the ground soft. He spread out Isa’s coat—which he’d fetched from the river—to catch a few last rays of sunlight and hopefully dry off.
TEL set her down in a nook beside some rocks. Siris dealt with the horse—the thing only managed to get one good bite in—and brought back the saddle blanket for Isa. He knelt beside her, touching her hand. It was clammy and frigid. “She’s so cold.”
“Indeed,” TEL said, settling down his rock body. He leaned back against some of the bamboo, and the grain of the wood spread across the stones of his shoulders. His body collapsed, the stones becoming chunks of wood, and the puppetlike wooden version of TEL broke from the center of one, cracking out of it like a chicken from an egg.
“Flesh bodies are notoriously poor at dealing with extremes in temperature,” TEL said, shaking his head as if at the shame of it. “She will need warmth for the night, or she will likely not survive.”
Siris looked at the unconscious Isa. Maybe if he held her . . .
“A fire would be preferable,” TEL added, “particularly with this dampness.” The golem sounded amused.
“Right. Of course.” Siris could make a fire, couldn’t he? He gathered some wood, but everything was sodden to its innards. He dug in the saddlebags—they were crafted in a way to keep the water out—and came up with some tinder and straw.
An hour of frustration later, he still didn’t have any fire. He could get something started, but the wood around him was just too wet, and the occasional drizzle didn’t help either, though he’d created shelter as best he could by draping a blanket on some bamboo stalks over the fire.
He knelt in frustration over the makeshift firepit, feeling completely useless. TEL sat to the side, silent and motionless, like a wooden statue. TEL didn’t seem to mind the rain—and had explained, regretfully, that he had no skill in fire building. It wasn’t “part of his designated parameters,” whatever that meant. Neither was fighting, which explained why a creature that could craft a body for itself out of stone had cowered before those daerils.
“I’ve been a fool,” Siris said.
“For what purpose?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Siris said. “I thought, all those years practicing, that only one thing would matter in my life. Fighting the God King. That was everything. Now, here I am, as helpless as a three-year-old when practically anyone else from Drem’s Maw would have been able to start this fire.”
“That may be true,” TEL said. “However, I doubt seriously that anyone else from your town would have been able to perform the Patterns of True Swordsmanship.”
So he knows what it was I did, Siris thought. He kept that in the back of his mind—along with a healthy distrust of this creature—but didn’t have time to focus on either right now. Was Isa’s breathing more shallow?
He would find a way out of this. There had to be a way. He fished in his pocket, pulling out a handful of rings. He held one of them up, one of the very first he had found. It generated blasts of fire. Like most of the others, it had stopped working soon after he killed the God King.
“TEL, can you tell me why this ring stopped functioning?”
“I would guess,” TEL said, “that it was set for local power, and something disrupted the source of energy.”
“Can I set it to work out here?”
“It depends on the ring,” TEL said. “If you wanted to make it function, you would probably need a similar source of energy to what it creates. Then it could draw on
that and transport it to you.”
Siris turned the ring over in his fingers, and—for the first time—noticed something on the inside. A piece was designed to come off, a tiny shard. About half the size of his smallest fingernail, it reminded him of the disc that was paired with the ring that summoned the sword.
Draw on a similar type of energy, he thought, and transport it to you. They were actually very similar, this ring and the transportation one.
“I need something hot,” Siris said.
“Might I note,” TEL said, “if we had something hot, would that not solve our problem in and of itself?”
Siris looked down at the metal disc, then grasped it in his hand. He took a deep breath, putting the ring on his other hand.
TEL stood up. “Oh, oh dear. No, no, no. That is a bad idea, BAD. You don’t have enough heat inside of you to start a fire. I’m sorry. Ninety-eight-point-six, across a hundred and eighty pounds of flesh. Oh, you’ll get a burst of flame, but you’ll be dead at the end of it. Please, do not, do not, do not—”
“Fine,” Siris said, holding up a hand to TEL. “I won’t. But I’ve got to find something warm to use.”
He looked right at the horse.
“Still not hot enough,” TEL noted.
That was almost a pity. But what . . . The steam vents, Siris thought. Isa said they were all around out here. Had he smelled some on the march here from the river?
Dared he leave Isa with this thing? “I command you not to harm her,” he said to TEL.
“I wouldn’t have anyway.”
“Stay here. Watch over her.”
“As you command.”
He almost ordered the thing away. But what good would that do? If it went to report, Siris would be discovered. If it remained here, he might find a way to control it.
Siris turned back the way they’d gone, and started jogging. It was a difficult run. They’d walked some four hours since the river. He’d noticed the scent somewhere about halfway through that time.