Page 102 of Warrior of the Wild
As I scrub and scrub with the bar of soap, one spot won’t come out. Blood from the cut on my arm, I think. I need something rougher to take to it.
About an arm’s length away, I find a good-sized rock with a rough surface. I reach for it. The top shimmers in the sunlight, a bright metal vein glinting along it. I take the rock to my garment and scrub roughly. It does the trick, the spot coming right out. With the water running downhill, the soap doesn’t build up; it washes downstream with everything else, so my clothes are free of soap in no time.
I climb from the pool, wring out my clothes, and find a nearby tree branch to drape them across to dry.
When that’s done, I take the rock I found with me. Soren will want it for his clothes, I’m sure.
I start for the tree where I deposited my pack and armor, the rock in hand, when a force bats it from my palm.
I look up, but Soren still has his back to me a ways off. My head spins in a circle, looking for some intruder. I find nothing.
“Did you see anything?” I shout.
“Rasmira, I promise I kept my back to you while you were bathing. I didn’t see anything.”
My cheeks blush. “No, I mean, did you see someone or something?”
“No, why?” He turns toward me.
I look down at the ground, thinking perhaps someone threw something at my hand, but there’s nothing but more rocks.
“I’m not sure yet,” I say. I have to take a step backward to retrieve the rock. Gripping it more firmly, I head for my pack once more.
But I can’t.
At first, I think it’s the god’s power that Soren and I keep running into along the mountain, but how could it be? I just walked this way fully clad in my armor. I would have felt it before.
Is there something different about this rock in my hand? Why can’t I take it with me? Is it important to Peruxolo? Does he want it to stay near the stream? And if so, why?
Maybe all I need is a running start.
I take a few steps back, dig in my heels, and bound toward the tree. There’s pressure against my hands—I almost lose the rock, but then something gives. I hear a crash in front of me, my head snapping up to see my armor no longer propped against the tree but on the ground.
“How did you do that?” Soren asks.
I take another step forward. Though there’s extra pressure, the rock moves with me. And my armor—
The sheets skid away from me, never letting me grow closer to them.
All I can do for some time is look back and forth between the rock in my hands and my armor. I step all the way up to my pack, my armor now ten feet away to the side.
“Do you recognize this metal?” I ask, holding up the rock for Soren to see.
“It’s brighter than iron,” he says.
“And it clearly has a negative reaction with iron.”
“Like a lodestone?” Soren asks.
“Yes, exactly like a lodestone, but different than the ones found in my village. This one is so much stronger.”
“It’s an interesting discovery, but why do you—” He cuts himself off, as he clearly comes to the same realization I’ve already had.
“This is why we haven’t been able to take certain paths up the mountain,” I say. “It’s coated in whatever makes up this new lodestone, and it won’t let our armor come anywhere near it. And Peruxolo’s lair? I’ll bet this metal rims the whole thing. It’s why I wasn’t able to enter. I could throw a rock inside because it must have not contained any iron within it. And Peruxolo’s armor? It must be made out of this lodestone, too. That’s why he was able to fling me around and why my ax couldn’t touch him. He’s bigger than me and must be wearing even more of the metal than the amount of iron I wear.
“He doesn’t have power over metal,” I say. “He’s only using a lodestone against our iron.”
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