by Kyle West
“It was my task to follow you and make sure you stayed on track, and I was to only intervene when you needed it. I lost track of you in the Ruins, but picked up your trail on the river, just in time to save you from those thugs. The same for the Forest of Mazes.”
“You were the girl the Watchers told us about,” I said. “You were there one month ago. Somehow. For some reason.”
Shara nodded to confirm this. “Not just me. There were four other Hunters, of which I was the sole survivor in the Forest of Mazes. I could only cross by ingesting so much Aether that the monsters believed me to be one of their own. Even so...I barely survived. The Watchers healed me, such as they could, but I decided I couldn’t continue my journey. I returned to Colonia, and had scarcely been there a week when you and Isaru came.”
“You were trying to find Hyperborea then.”
Shara nodded. “You have guessed correctly. And I was instructed to come again, following your trail and making sure nothing went wrong. Valance and I believed you would have better luck, and for the most part...this has proven true.”
“And then you planned to kill us once the Prophecy was secured,” Isaru said.
Shara said nothing, though I wasn’t sure why. She could have easily lied and said that wasn’t the plan, but her silence said everything.
“What now, then?” I asked. “You’ve shown your hand, but you still need our help to reach the city. You can’t kill us until then.”
“No,” Shara said. “And I probably wouldn’t be able to in Hyperborea, either, assuming we make it that far. Plans...can change.”
“What does this mean about my parents?” I asked. I felt anger welling up again. Anger that was almost impossible to control. “If you planned on not honoring the deal, how do I know that they aren’t already dead? Why should I continue doing your dirty work?”
“Because they aren’t dead.”
“And why should I believe you?”
“Because I know that as long you believe there is a chance they are still alive, you will keep doing what we tell you to do. Even if I can’t show you that they are. Is killing me right now worth the risk, supposing you even could? I don’t need hypermail or a hypersword to best you both in battle. With Aether, I am unstoppable. Your parents are still...needed...by the Covenant. The Covenant is interested in you too, Shanti, and your parents are the key to learning more.”
I wondered just how much she had heard Isaru and me talking. Did she know about my true identity? Nothing really pointed to the fact – at least, not yet – so when she was following us, it had to be from a distance.
“Are they being taken care of, as I asked?”
“They are imprisoned,” Shara said, simply. “They are treated no better and no worse than any other enemy of the Covenant.”
“Then Isaru and I are not the only ones not holding up our end of the bargain. That was part of the deal.”
Unlike Valance, though, I didn’t have a minion to babysit him to make sure he followed through. My mother had believed she was near death when I had seen her, and thinking of both of my parents’ pitiful state was just too much.
The only thing I could do was find the Prophecy and make sure it was returned. Something I would hate doing, and Isaru even more so...Isaru who saw the Prophecy as the rightful possession of the Elekai.
I just saw it as the freedom of my parents.
“We could fight,” Shara said, “or we could come to another agreement. You mentioned it a few days ago, but it may be prudent to join forces...at least for the time being.”
“No,” Isa said. “She is just going to kill us all.”
“I have no reason to kill any of you,” Shara said. “What’s done is done. You complicate the equation, yes, but so long as you remain with us, you will be spared. After the Prophecy is in Colonia, none of this will matter.”
“You are not coming with us,” I said. “If you hadn’t tried to kill Isa, then yes, maybe. As it stands...you must leave. If you don’t, and if we ever see you again...we will kill you.”
That last part had been hard to say, because there was some part of me that still believed the old Shara was there, beyond all the mind-warping caused by Aether. Even as she looked at me, her glowing eyes reminded me of a snake’s.
“That isn’t an option,” Shara said. “I am coming with you. You can hate every minute of it, but it will do nothing to stop me. And trying to kill me would be foolish. I would kill everyone here. No, we will do things my way, or not at all. We need to work together in order to secure the Prophecy. If I don’t return to Colonia alive, well, I think you know what happens to your parents.”
I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t know if Isa would be safe, but I would do everything in my power to make sure she was. That was all I could do. If we killed Shara now, that meant my parents would die, too. If we kept her alive, then there was a chance they could still be saved.
I didn’t like the odds, but Shara was right. Even if there was a chance they were still alive, I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.
“I’m sorry, Isa,” I said, weakly. “This isn’t what I want, and I promise to protect you every moment. We have no choice.”
Isa said nothing. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and look at her. In a way, she had saved herself by coming with us. In another way, that would mean having to live every moment of her life in fear of being killed by someone who, in essence, was nothing more than an emotionless monster.
Even laid out as it was, I couldn’t help but feel like I was betraying her. Isaru said nothing, but I could see he didn’t approve. What did he want me to do? Perhaps he would choose Isa over my parents, but if there was a chance I could keep both alive, then I was going to do it.
“I know this arrangement will be...difficult,” Shara said. “I will do what I can to make it more bearable. I will make my own fire, and travel within sight, but not sound, of the rest of the group. I will not speak unless there is great need, or if someone asks me a question.”
“See that it stays that way,” I said. “And when you take your drug...do it away from the camp. Or better yet, throw it out.”
“You know that’s something I cannot do.”
Doing so would be as good as killing her, but before death, she would go mad and likely kill the rest of us in the process. From what I knew of Aether withdrawals, they were a violent ordeal, and not only for the one who was in withdrawal.
“If we are to continue with this madness, then let’s get on with it,” Isaru said.
He turned to help Isa up, who was still sprawled on the ground. When she got up, she looked at him but refused to even look at me.
Well, I probably deserved that, for choosing a monster over her. Already, this was far from what I had in mind, but I was grateful that Isa was alive. Had I just been more adamant yesterday, she would be dead now, and at least this way, I could keep an eye on her.
If I was going to keep an eye on Isa, though, I had to keep two on Shara.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
GETTING MOVING AFTER THE CONFRONTATION with Shara was awkward, to say the least. Good as her word, she hung back far on the trail, and it took all of my willpower not to check every ten seconds to make sure she was still there. Which, of course, she always was.
No one really spoke. Even if something came to mind, I didn’t say it. I wasn’t going to pretend everything was normal when Shara had as good as admitted that she had planned to kill us all, and had come within seconds of finishing Isa. Even now, supposing we found the Prophecy, that could still be her plan.
I tried to look at the positives. It was another sword arm, and Shara was good – or better – than either Isaru or me on that score. Aether made her fight like something else, giving her strength and speed that Isaru or me had trouble matching in the one time we did have to fight her. Unfortunately, it also made her our biggest threat when I thought that was going to be crawlers.
The scenery of the forest passed with little change
. The hills east of Northold gradually flattened until there was nothing but the trees themselves. Judging by their thickness, it would have been difficult to travel east without the road, which really was more of a trail at this point. There was nothing out this way that I could see – no signs of other holds or houses, or any place people might have lived.
Isaru broke the silence to ask Isa about the Invi. I didn’t think she was even going to respond at first, but she surprised me when she answered quietly. It bugged me, though, because something in her voice said she was speaking only to Isaru.
“No one knows where they are. They move around a lot, and it’s impossible to try and find them. If we do come across them...it can only be by chance.”
Isaru nodded, but it didn’t seem as if he liked that answer.
By afternoon the road became rougher, and was even overgrown at points. Something told me that before long, it would be completely gone. By evening, we were still heading east, but without the aid of the trail.
We set up camp in a clearing laden with pine needles. We set up our usual fire while Shara set up hers on the other side. I kept a close eye on her, but she was asleep shortly after eating her dinner. Apparently, she’d found time to shoot some small creature with that crossbow of hers. Probably the biggest case of overkill in history.
By the time night fell, though, it was harder to see her. As I sat on a log next to the fire and took first watch, I paid attention to her campsite far more than I did my surroundings. The night grew very chilly, so I threw more logs onto the flame and warmed my hands. The new cloak, which I wore over my old one, helped a lot.
I woke Isaru by the time my shift was over and went to sleep. It seemed only a few minutes later that I awoke to the sun’s golden rays slanting through the green-tinted trees. The red hues bathed the forest meadow, causing the xen showing through the pine needles to shimmer with a reddish sheen.
My first sight was of Isaru, sitting on the log I had vacated, looking into the trees at nothing in particular. Not too far away, Shara lay sleeping around her own fire, burning to coals, now. I hadn’t seen her wake to stoke it, so that was something she must have done under Isaru’s watch. Seeing her lying there made it seem as if she really was the person I once knew. She looked exactly the same, having washed the black paint off her face by now. That face seemed harder, now, but otherwise she looked the same.
Isa slept beside our fire, as far from Shara as possible. She seemed peaceful, though that probably wasn’t going to last for long. I closed my eyes again, wishing for a few extra minutes of sleep. Having to deal with Shara was the last thing I wanted to do, but she was here to stay.
If this was how I felt, I couldn’t imagine what could be going through Isa’s mind.
I stood up and rubbed my eyes. I ran my fingers through my hair, wresting out a stick that had somehow gotten caught in there. I snapped it in half and threw it in the fire.
Isa was awake shortly after, followed closely by Shara, both of whom started to pack their blankets. They were mirror images of one another, going through similar motions, but I was smart enough to keep that thought to myself.
Once done packing, Shara set off into the woods, which made me nervous, but I supposed she was still human like the rest of us. Isa stared hard at the ground as if she found it the most interesting thing in the world, poking it with a stick. Isaru said nothing, contenting himself with sitting on his log while chewing some venison jerky.
“She’s been gone awhile,” I said.
Isaru looked at me, eyebrows lifted, while Isa momentarily stopped fiddling with the stick. She went back to it though, as if realizing, by stopping, she had acknowledged my existence.
She surprised me, then, when she did speak. “I say we move on.” She snapped her stick against the ground, an action which only seemed to add finality to what she’d said. “She, most of all, should know that we don’t have all day to sit here.”
“I agree,” Isaru said. “I wonder if she’s testing us, somehow.”
“We wait,” I said.
The morning wore on, and the sun rose, radiating a strong heat that was a strange contrast to the cool air. A slight breeze blew from the north, adding to the chill.
Isaru shifted from his position leaning on the tree, clearly ready to make an executive decision, when the sound of rustling bushes drew our attention. Shara appeared from between the trees. Tied to her pack were two rabbits and two squirrels.
“There won’t be much hunting in the Waste,” she said, her voice seeming deeper than even usual. Apparently, her side trip hadn’t just been for hunting, but to take Aether. “And I needed something for myself.” Then, tersely: “Thank you for waiting.”
I knew she didn’t mean that, but it was good that she at least recognized that gratefulness was a human quality. It was more than I had hoped.
“We need to get moving,” Isaru said. “Isa, I believe you were leading us today?”
That was a conversation I hadn’t been part of. I tried not to let my ire show, but just because Shara was here didn’t mean I couldn’t be a part of making plans.
“It will be another day before we reach the Waste, and it should be easy travel until then. Between here and there is the Northern Plain. Not much grows there besides xen so we should make good progress. Even so, it’s important to enter the Waste from the right spot, otherwise we’re likely to end up in bogland that’s impossible to cross. Worse, quicksand is common, too. It can be dangerous, but it’s more of a hindrance than anything else. There’s a stretch of dryland that should take us most of the way west. The drylands form a sort of web, but there are pockets of swampland that we’ll need to avoid, if at all possible.”
“You’ve been there before?” Isaru asked.
“A long time ago. With my father. Contrary to what Shara has said, there can be good hunting in the Waste, if one knows where to look.”
“We should not tarry any longer,” Shara said, with authority. “Carry on.”
Isa’s gaze was like ice, but she didn’t protest. She hefted her pack and her bow and headed off into the trees. The rest of us followed.
IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE we left the last of the trees behind and were out onto the open, xen-covered plains. Isa was as good as her word: there was little else but the xen, which stretched without breaking until the far horizon. It was almost as if we were walking across a pink sea. At various points, thin stalks would grow from the ground, or the xen would grow slightly thicker, but other than that, there wasn’t much. A stark silence hung over the land, and besides the sharp wind biting at my ears, there was no sound.
Isa led us with a purpose that said she knew exactly where she was going, even if the only thing we had to do was go east. Shara hung behind us at a good distance, and it was hard not to feel like we were being stalked by her. I kept telling myself that if she were going to kill us, she would have done so already. For some reason, that thought didn’t bring much comfort.
By midday, there were small changes in the terrain, patches of xen that were dimmer than that which surrounded it. I thought I was imagining it at first, but the patches became bigger, even interlacing with one another at times.
“Why is it doing that?” I asked.
No one answered me, though. I guessed no one else knew the answer, either.
An hour later, the ground became spongier, giving more to our footfalls. Water squished out of the xen with every step. The land was still flat and wide, but in the distance the horizon was more gray than pink, a sign that perhaps the plains were ending and the Waste beginning.
As the sun sank in the western sky, the wind grew unexpectedly cold, cutting like a knife through my cloak.
Isa came to a stop on a wide patch of xen, an island of pink in an otherwise sea of boggy gray.
“We’ll stop here,” she said.
“No wood for a fire,” Isaru said, glumly.
“No, not here,” Isa said. “There are trees in the Waste, but they are few.”
“How do we eat, then?” I asked.
The venison had been cooked previously, but after this long, I didn’t trust it to not make us sick without being cooked again. However, Isaru had some just this morning and seemed no worse for it.
“A little further north we might possibly find trees, though that’s not a guarantee,” Isa said. “I chose this spot because it’s dry and it’s almost sundown.”
It might be too risky to move on when we had only two hours of daylight left and end up in a worse spot than we were now. Then again, eating deer jerky for dinner wasn’t too inviting, either, and we still had a lot of provisions to go through.
Behind us, Shara brooded off in the distance, seeming to not care about being left out of the conversation.
After a moment, Isaru waved her over. She came, reluctantly, while Isa visibly tensed.
“What do you think?” Isaru asked her. “Stay here, or try to find somewhere with firewood?”
“Why do you ask me?”
“You must have an opinion.”
“What is my opinion worth? If I say move on, it doesn’t change whether or not we’ll find food or firewood to the north. Isa knows these lands better than I do. Let her decide.”
Isa scowled; she didn’t like even being supported by Shara, but then again, Shara did have a point. Isa knew this place better than any of us, and it was close to sunset.
“There might be a better spot,” Isa said. “It’s just...this is where my father and I camped on our last outing up here. North, the land just gets rougher, and we’d be walking well into the night to find a good spot with plenty of firewood. It’s dangerous to travel in the Waste at night.”
“Dangerous, how?” I asked.
“Remember what I said about it shifting from bogland to drylands? Well, it does that very quickly, and you can find yourself stuck with no place to go.”
“If there’s a bog, there’s peat, right?" Isaru asked. “Perhaps we could burn that.”
“No, because none of this land was bog until recently.”