We rode along a narrow trail between wet bushes and low rocky outcrops, where the horse could no longer move quickly and slowed its pace more and more often. Behind me, Roxy guided the horse with steady confidence and from time to time lifted her head toward the funnel, which now looked closer and noticeably wider. From how often she narrowed her eyes and how tightly she held the reins, it was obvious that she did not like what was growing above the hills at all.
Then the trail suddenly narrowed. To the right rose a stony slope, to the left began a damp ravine with dark sticky soil, and the horse immediately grew uneasy, because the path ahead had become too cramped and uneven. Roxy clicked her tongue softly, pulled on the reins, and made it stop beneath a crooked tree whose roots clung so tightly to the slope that I could not help wondering whether they held on there out of sheer stubbornness.
"We go on foot from here."
Roxy jumped down first, quickly looked around, and led the horse closer to the trunk. Then she wrapped the reins around a thick root, checked the knot, and ran her palm over the animal's wet neck so it would not startle more than necessary. The horse snorted, shifted from one leg to the other, but stayed where it was, even though the air around us had already become too uneasy even for me.
"It will not run off?" I asked, jumping down to the ground as well.
"If it does, that means it is smarter than we are," Roxy muttered, and immediately started forward along the trail. "Come on. I want to see this before it grows into something even worse."
I threw one last glance at the horse and hurried after her. Now we were moving without it, faster and more quietly, making our way between wet stones, bushes, and roots jutting from the earth, while the funnel ahead slowly turned and gathered more and more gray light into itself.
When we finally came out from behind the last outcrop, the funnel was already hanging directly above us. In the time it had taken us to ride here, it had grown noticeably larger, and now its lower part stretched downward in a heavy twisting column, while its upper part disappeared into the dark mass of cloud. Even the air beneath it felt different, because every gust of wind was no longer passing by, but being drawn inward, toward the very center.
Roxy tilted her head in question and leaned forward slightly, trying to make out what exactly was happening inside that spinning gray depth. I lifted my gaze higher as well, and for a single instant it seemed to me that something flickered there. Some kind of shadow, or a thin strip of light, or a movement that should not have been hiding inside an ordinary weather funnel.
I blinked, and there was nothing there anymore. Above us only rain, clouds, and ragged gray currents were spinning once again, pulled into one enormous rotating mass. But the feeling remained, and it made me uneasy, because I did not like how quickly that something vanished, as though it had realized it was being watched.
"What is that?" I asked, without taking my eyes off the funnel.
Roxy was looking somewhere deeper, into the place where the gray currents twisted most tightly and from time to time flashed with a pale light.
"I do not know yet," she said quietly. "But I will find out. It looks like a magical anomaly."
That no longer sounded like a joke at all. I noticed a faint light beginning to gather around the white wood of her staff, but at that same moment a cry suddenly came from somewhere off to the side, beyond the wet stones and bushes.
"Ow!"
Roxy froze at once. I turned sharply toward the sound, and for a second even the funnel above our heads faded into the background, because the voice had come from very close by.
A man stepped out from behind the wet stones. At first I saw only a dark silhouette emerging from behind the ledge. Then the rain shifted a little with the wind, and the details became clearer.
Light hair, soaked by the rain, clung to his temples and neck, but it did not spoil him at all, only made his appearance seem even more deliberately composed, as though even a downpour could not ruin the image he had intended. A dark cloak lay across his shoulders, and beneath it I could see blue fabric and parts of light armor.
The man looked at me first, then at Roxy, then raised his eyes to the funnel above us and gave a quiet whistle.
"Oh. Now that is a sight," he said in a soft and cheerful tone. "Please forgive my intrusion. It seems I arrived at exactly the most interesting moment."
Roxy immediately shifted her staff a little higher.
I stayed silent and looked at him more carefully. There was something about him, something like a man who was used to stepping into other people's scenes.
He spread his hands, making a show of peaceful intentions, and with a faint smile turned his gaze from us back to the funnel.
"And what exactly are you doing here?" he said.
Roxy narrowed her eyes even more and looked at him in the way of someone who had already decided in advance that this type could not be trusted even in small matters.
"As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you the same thing," she answered. "We came to find out what this is, so the village does not suffer because of it."
The man tilted his head slightly, as though he had heard an answer that pleased him more than it should have. His gaze slid toward the hills, to where houses, fields, and people still lay beyond them, people who did not even suspect that something abnormal was already gathering above them.
"How noble," he said. "So you are here out of good intentions!"
"And you are probably here for bad ones, since you still have not answered."
For a moment, it seemed to me that he smiled even wider.
"Oh, quite right. Where are my manners?"
He placed a hand on his chest, then with evident pleasure swept his cloak aside and gave a theatrical bow, not losing his ridiculous elegance even here, under the rain and beneath the roaring funnel.
"Brynn," he said, straightening up. "Of House Valkrein."
Roxy only shifted her staff a little and looked at him even more carefully, trying to decide what irritated her more, the fact that he had appeared at all or the delight with which he had turned a simple introduction into a little performance.
Brynn let his gaze slide over her face, pause on the staff, then returned to her eyes and smiled gently.
"And who might this beautiful and profoundly distrustful madonna standing before me be?"
Roxy did not even blink.
"No one. That is my name."
Brynn laughed quietly, then more freely, clearly taking far more pleasure in this than he should have.
"Oh, that is wonderful," he said. "It has been a long time since I have been welcomed so warmly."
"You will survive."
Brynn slowly looked around, lingering on the hills and the wet trail, then turned back to Roxy once more. His smile widened again, openly pleased now, as though some small realization had just fallen into place in his mind.
"As I recall, there is only one village nearby. Buena, correct?"
Though he said it carelessly, he was looking straight at Roxy the entire time, not letting her go for even a moment. Then he tilted his head slightly, and in his eyes that lively, keen interest flashed again, the very thing that had bothered me from the start.
"It is not so often that one meets mages in villages," he continued. "Especially without a reason."
It was not a direct question, but a careful jab delivered with a smile, testing exactly how Roxy would react to it.
"You do not often meet people like you here either," Roxy replied. "Especially without a reason."
Her gaze slid over his cloak, over the fine protection beneath it, over that face that was far too well kept, and then she looked straight into his eyes again, making it perfectly clear that his pretty performance had not impressed her in the slightest.
"Ha!"
It seemed that instead of irritation, he had once again found amusement, and by now that was irritating me too.
"Of course, of course..."
He said it almost placatingly, then suddenly slapped a palm to his forehead, as though he had truly just remembered something. The gesture was too lively and too deliberate, but in his case even such a small thing looked like part of yet another little performance.
"Ah, what a pity. I completely forgot to mention this when I introduced myself."
He looked at Roxy again and smiled softly.
"Madonna Roxy, the thing is..."
I tensed immediately. Roxy had never told him her name. Not once. Not directly, not in passing. He could not have learned it from our conversation, which meant that he had either known it beforehand or discovered it by some other method that I did not even want to try guessing.
Brynn held the pause, savoring every beat of that little scene, and then finished:
"...that I am a knight of the Church."
The smile vanished from his face at once. His mouth opened wider, his head slowly tilted aside, and in the place of the man from before, some strange emptiness remained for an instant. In another situation it would have looked ridiculous, even comical, but here, beneath the rumble of the funnel and the rain, a chill ran through me. There was no warmth left in that face, no playfulness, no ordinary human liveliness. Only a dreadful emptiness that made real fear settle in.
"Ha!"
Roxy suddenly laughed.
"What unexpected news. Well, imagine that."
Her laugh came out lazy, and that made it sound even more caustic. She did not even lower her staff, only tipped it slightly toward Brynn and added with the same calm smile:
"And here I was thinking you were simply a very pushy clown with good posture."
For a moment, I felt a little better. Roxy stood there so confidently, so familiarly sharp and calm, that beside her even that dreadful emptiness on Brynn's face stopped seeming like something completely abnormal.
Then she turned her head a little toward me. The smile remained in place, and her voice did not change either.
"Rudy, be a dear and go back to the horse... Then go straight home too."
"...Huh? What?"
I stared at her, not immediately understanding what exactly I had heard. The words sounded casual, but that was exactly what hit the hardest. Roxy was not asking. She was sending me away.
"But..."
"But you wanted to stay, help, watch, and make a very serious face in general," Roxy said calmly, not even letting me finish. "And then, of course, say that you cannot simply leave at a moment like this. So now you are going to turn around, go to the horse, and ride home."
I opened my mouth, about to argue again, but immediately realized that she was no longer looking at me. All her attention had gone back to Brynn, and the staff in her hand shifted a little forward. As far as she was concerned, the conversation with me was over.
"Since you are here for me," Roxy said in the same calm tone, "you will let the child go."
Brynn looked at me, then back at her. The earlier emptiness was gone from his face. It snapped shut as quickly as it had appeared, and in its place the pleasant smile returned.
"Of course," he replied. "I am not that badly brought up."
Roxy turned her head ever so slightly in my direction. Her lips barely moved, and her voice became so quiet and quick that from the outside it could have passed for nothing more than an exhale.
"Rudy, you idiot! I am already holding a spell in my head that is going to burn my brains out, and you are not letting me use it. Move!"
A cold feeling spread unpleasantly inside me. Until that moment I had still been trying to cling to the thought that somehow everything could be settled with words, but now it was clear that for her the conversation had ended long ago, and that something entirely different was about to begin.
Rustle.
I sprang from the spot and bolted aside so abruptly that my boot slipped at once on the wet grass. I had to steady myself on the move, almost blindly leaping over stones and protruding roots while the rain lashed my face and stole my breath. I did not look back. Not because I did not want to, but because I already knew that the moment I turned around, my legs would slow on their own.
An instant.
Behind my back, an explosion thundered.