Chapter 13

Me-la-ni

“Know what?”

Se-le-ni turned to look at me.

“How to find them.”

Hamid stared at me, and even Na-sh-dara stopped ignoring me for a moment.

“How?”, Ka-ma-la asked.

I cleared my throat, wondering how to say what I had just realised.

“They are traced”, I said.

Se-le-ni cocked her head.

“Traced?”, Joshua asked, confounded.

I nodded.

“Se-le-ni cut Bo-lo-to, her sword is imprinted in him. We should be able to follow it.”

Ka-ma-la gasped.

“That’s risky.”

Hamid peered at me and then broke out in a wide smile.

“I like it.”

“But what if they realise we’re after them? They might discover we’re tracing them through the imprint.”, Na-sh-dara commented.

“Dahh.. Don’t be such a downer”, Hamid chided.

“She’s right”, Ka-ma-la interrupted. “They might know we’re coming for them.”

She turned to me.

“It’s too risky.”

I had suspected she would say that, and in any normal circumstance, I would have agreed with her. Every touch of someone else’s weapon left a trace that the magicians could follow, but it was rarely used. If Bo-lo-to realised what we were doing, he could trace the connection back to us. I had only ever heard of one such occasion when the imprint had been used, but the tale of what happened to the magician was still told to this day, even though it had happened long before I was born. He could hurt us far worse than he ever could in a battle.

“What else?”, I asked. “We don’t know how long it will take to find them, and we can’t lose more time. Who knows how fast the Masters will gather and what they will do once they have? We risk another war like the last one.”

Joshua turned to me.

“Will you be able to sense him?”

I shook my head.

“No, we won’t know if he’s understood before it’s too late.”

“We can’t…”

Ka-ma-la covered her mouth, peering uneasily into the distance. Hamid smiled gleefully.

“Let’s do it. Let’s hunt them down.”

Se-le-ni glanced at me. She nodded. We would all fall if Bo-lo-to caught us. Joshua turned to Hamid and Na-sh-dara.

“Would you be able to do it?”

“Of course!”, Hamid replied without hesitation.

He turned to Na-sh-dara. She glanced at him, then took a deep breath, and to my surprise, nodded.

“You’re all fools.”

Ka-ma-la stood up, her ageing body towering over us as we sat on the ground.

“But if that is the decision, I will be there with you.”

Hamid gave a cry of joy, and it was at that moment that the Seed began to sing within me.