Page 43 of Shadow Master
Tents had been erected, and a couple of these fomorians had helped me settle Hyde in one. I’d watched as one of the men slathered Hyde’s wounds with herbs and bandaged them. Hyde was asleep now, his breathing regular, his skin a healthy color. Whatever they’d slicked over his skin was working, and the knot of terror in my gut eased. He was going to make it.
He was going to live.
Right now, I needed to be vigilant and figure out what this group’s agenda was.
A fire crackled, and the men sat around it, staring into the flames reflectively. No one spoke, so there was no eavesdropping to figure out what this group was about.
Harmon sat beside me, and Athos lay to my left, his eyes closed. But if he was asleep, I was a fluffy duckling.
The hound was feigning, listening, ready to act if need be.
Yeah, we had to be on our guard until we got a better measure of these people.
“The little weasel, Valmik, got away,” Harmon said in his gravelly voice.
“I know.”
“You think we should be worried?”
“Always.”
These fomorians smell different, Athos said.They smell … stronger.
Yeah, my hunch that he was awake was right. “The other fomorians mentioned something about breeding the fomorian out of them … that the bolg had no fomorian in them.”
“But if they aren’t fomorian, then what are they?” Harmon asked.
The leader with the kind brown eyes chose that moment to stride back into camp. He was alone. The men he’d taken with him hadn’t returned with him.
“There’s only one way to find out ...” I caught the fomorian’s eye. “Hey, I need to speak to you.”
He said something to his companions and then walked over to us. He sat on the ground opposite us.
“I have questions.”
“And so do I,” he said. His brown eyes hardened. Ah, this was the leader. “You will answer mine first. How did you do that thing with the shadows, and how can you understand us?”
I guess he had trust issues too. If answering his questions was the only way to get answers for mine, then so be it.
“Where I come from, there are creatures able to do inexplicable things. They’re called weavers. I have certain abilities, one of which involves shadows and … I guess healing. Honestly, I’m still learning about them. As for understanding you …” I peeled up the sleeve of my feytech armor. “One of your kind gave me this.”
He stared at the symbol. “You’ve been here before?”
“No. First time here. One of your kind came into the mist. We met. He saved me, and he gave me this. The next time I saw him, he took my mate.” My jaw hardened. “I came to get him back.”
“One of us?”
My scalp prickled as my brain made connections. My body tensed. “They were smaller in stature like you … not like the fomorians that captured us.”
He sighed. “The League of Salvation. They’re a growing movement, and rumor has it they’ve been sneaking into the mist over the past few months. They’ve been tracking and watching the fir bolg.”
That name again. “The fir bolg … Those are the larger fomorians?”
“They don’t believe they’re fomorians. In fact, rumor has it that they’re building a pure-bred fir bolg army.”
“It’s not a rumor. I heard them talking. They said the bolg army was headed this way. That they’d be here in a week and would attack the mists.”
“Damn.” Brown eyes ran a hand over his face. “It seems our efforts have been in vain.” He sighed. “We’re part of the militia, and we’ve been attacking small fomorian camps close to the mist for the past few weeks. We suspected an attack, and we’ve been ordered to thin their forces.”
