On one of Wil’s visits, bearing with him a load of supplies for Oleja, she had started to explain some parts of her tale to him. He’d been trying to pry details from her for over a week, and though she often gave him little, something she said on this occasion piqued his interest. She couldn’t recall what words, exactly, she had shared, but a mention of eclipsers—earthborn, to him—caught his attention immediately. Though love for earthborn was no common stance in Ahwan any more than it was elsewhere, Wil held a special hatred for them, and he and Oleja bonded quickly over that commonality. Wil introduced Oleja to others who shared their sentiments, and from this group a plan formed in Oleja’s mind, a plan that—unfortunate as it was—she needed help with. The inner workings of Ahwan were beyond her. And so, she turned to her new friends.
They met almost daily in the cave to plan. Oleja confided in them about her captivity, and from them gathered information. As the weeks went by, the plan took shape, and now they readied it for execution.
Soon, Oleja would return to her people.
A sound outside the cave reached her ears, and Oleja turned as two shapes blotted out the light that filtered in through the opening. Seconds later, both figures stepped into the firelight—Brashen Collastar and Cyrah Radson, the two other members of her group.
Brashen stood taller—or would have, if the ceiling in the cave did not sink so low that it forced him to nearly double over. At full height, he rose more than half a head above Oleja. He had a pale complexion, accented by shadows that flickered on his face in the firelight. Adorning the pale-white skin of his arms, commanding as much attention as the sun in the sky, wound black designs depicting a wide array of images—mostly animals and plants and mountains. When first Oleja laid eyes on the designs, her head spun with a thousand confused questions. Just as she thought she understood the differences in skin tone, this boy showed up at her door bearing pictures on his. “Tattoos,” he had explained, and after reassuring Oleja that they did not form there naturally, Oleja put the matter out of her mind; enough in Ahwan confused her as it was.
Brashen ran a hand through short, curly brown hair that matched a stubble beard and took a seat by the fire next to Wil. He gave the other boy a warm smile as he settled in, then leaned in to plant a quick kiss on Wil’s lips.
“Good day at work?” he asked Wil.
“Par for the job. I do have a new rudder design to show you later, though,” said Wil in response. He placed a hand on Brashen’s back.
Cyrah took her seat as well. She stood nowhere near as tall as Brashen, only reaching just past Oleja’s chin when they stood next to one another. Height aside, she and Oleja looked quite similar—Cyrah shared her tanned brown complexion and straight black hair, though the other girl’s fell loose rather than held back in a braid like Oleja’s, the ends reaching just below her collarbone. Strong eyebrows drew attention to her deep brown eyes as if pointing one’s gaze there, but more attention-catching still were the multiple pendants and bracelets she wore, gold in color and shining bright in the light of the fire. Oleja thought it odd at first that someone would use metals to adorn their body for any reason besides defense, but after encountering more of the people of Ahwan she found such customs appeared to be the norm.
Oleja cracked her knuckles and the chatter filling the small room died out. All three faces turned towards her.
“How is the plan looking?” asked Brashen.
“Good. I think everything is set,” said Oleja. “I will go to see the king tomorrow.”
“So, you’re going through with that option, then?” asked Cyrah.
Oleja nodded. “Seems like the smartest route.”
Wil shrugged. “Didn’t I say so?”
Oleja cast a look in his direction. “Watch it.” She shifted her attention back to Cyrah. “Yes, from what you all have said, talking to the king directly seems like the best option. It also comes out to be the most powerful one. Stealing the necessary stuff or gathering people ourselves would work, but the more power we get, the better.”
The concept of a “king” was still an odd one to Oleja, but so was everything else in Ahwan. Supplying that information gave Wil, Brashen, and Cyrah a role to serve in her work; Oleja could form plans on her own no problem—she had been doing it all her life—but she knew little about the things in Ahwan, or the world beyond the canyon as a whole. The three served as consultants for Oleja to work on her plans with, proposing alternative, more efficient routes to her ideas. And they shared additional useful information as they worked.
For example, apparently knowledge of the eclipser camp where Oleja had spent her life was widespread in the city, and it even had a name. “Itsoh,” people called it, and it loomed like a storm cloud on the eastern horizon—even all the way in Ahwan.
“What are you going to say to him?” asked Brashen. “The king, I mean.”
“I’m going to make him an offer,” said Oleja. “I’ll tell him that I can lead an assault on Itsoh if he supplies the fighters and weaponry, leaving his—what did you call them? Generals? Leaving his generals here with the remainder of the city’s force to keep up the defenses. When I tell him I have familiarity with the camp, he will see that I have a tactical advantage leading the strike. Wiping Itsoh off the map is good for the city, it keeps everyone safer.”
The wind howled in the cave entrance. The fire sputtered a few times. Tor’s ears twitched and he flicked his tail across the packed dirt floor. Wil, Brashen, and Cyrah sat in silence, thinking; Oleja’s words hung in the air, filling the room alongside the shards of the breeze that made it inside.
“And what if he doesn’t agree?” asked Cyrah. “What if he can’t spare the troops, or he advises against such a forward assault? Attacking Itsoh outright is a bold plan.”
Part of Oleja could not help but agree with Cyrah—leading an army to Itsoh to destroy the camp had never been her intent. Letting her own people out and leading them in their fight to freedom marked the last stage of her old plan, but she had never wanted to get help from outsiders. In fact, she outright opposed the idea when Pahlo suggested it. But at the time, she took precautions for a plan dependent on the success of crucial, sensitive steps. A failure of one meant the failure of the whole, the collapse of the plot altogether.
But when she came to Ahwan, and when she saw how many people resided there, she began to understand something she hadn’t previously; gathering an army—not a small strike force, but an army—made it more difficult to fail. If one member of the force failed, either turning to flee or getting caught on the wrong end of an eclipser blade, it didn’t mean the end of it all. There would be too many others to be deterred by such a small loss. An army could do what Oleja alone could not: overwhelm the eclipsers entirely. Even the full population of her village couldn’t pull that off.
Part of Oleja knew Cyrah was right, but the other part knew that her options were few. She’d spent too long running in the wrong direction, running away from her village and the eclipsers who kept her people prisoner. Coming to Ahwan had been a gamble, but maybe it hadn’t been in vain. Maybe the city could do more than serve as a quick place to rest as she initially planned.
She came to Ahwan for refuge, but perhaps fate led her to the city for another reason.
Oleja met Cyrah’s questioning gaze.
“Bold, yes. But the king will agree. I’ll make sure of it.”
Chapter Four
Only the faintest light of dawn came in through Oleja’s east-facing window when she awoke. Cold air snapped at her exposed skin just as soon as she cast the heavy blanket aside. She strapped on her prosthetic, dressed, and ate a quick meal—still warm, left on the shelf beside the door by Maloia alongside a bit of food for Tor—then pulled on a thick cloak and grabbed her crutches before stepping out into the chill of the morning.
Tor padded along beside her as she followed the brick pathway cut through the cliffside. A fire burned in a brazier off to the side in an alcove ringed with empty benches, and she
stopped for a moment to warm herself in its heat.
Maloia assured Oleja that the temperatures in the area got warmer—colder too, but Oleja preferred to keep her mind in the warmth of optimism. The fluctuations came alongside the change of seasons, which meant more here than just a shift in sunlight cycles or rainfall patterns. Leaving the desert behind, she never expected to miss the heat, but soon after coming to the mountain city she learned that a life spent in the desert left her sensitive to colder days.
She leaned less on the crutches and tugged her cloak tighter around herself as she moved away from the fire. Cut from fabric the same shade of deep green as the pine trees, the garment kept her warm in the cold mornings. A clasp of brass kept it bound at her neck, and a cowl shrouded her face from the stiff mountain wind.
Fog settled over the city on the valley floor. Rays of sunlight cut through the mist, illuminating the pointed peaks of the taller buildings that rose up like stones amidst a frothing current. The world smelled damp and fresh like dewdrops clinging to the needles of a great pine. Others began to stir as Oleja descended into the valley.
She went slow, using her crutches only when necessary. Her leg ached in the grip of the prosthetic, but she bore the pain and continued down the stairs and long, winding path.
Down on the valley floor, she took a moment to breathe and then continued on, turning her course east. When she reached another cliff, she followed the valley southwards instead until she rounded a bend and turned east once more. The buildings of the city gave way to a swath of trees. Their thick trunks lined the cobbled path, and their boughs hung over the way as if closing it within a tunnel. Shafts of light came down from between them, golden and lazy, turning the stones underfoot into a mosaic of light and shadow.
Oleja’s path took on an incline, heading uphill now as she wound past a waterfall—one of many in the valley, though the sight never dulled. They reminded her of Ude every time. Up she went, and then once the ground leveled off again, she took a bridge that spanned the river and continued up towards one of the many peaks that rimmed the valley in which Ahwan lay.
Tor kept along at her side, falling in step behind her when she struggled, gently nudging her on as if in encouragement. Though she walked often, both to see the sights that the city and foreign terrain had to offer, and also to practice on her new leg, she tried to keep to even ground most of the time, and she had never gone quite so far from her room. The stairs, more than anything, tested her limits. They brought back memories of the ruined city and of being chased to the top of the tower by Honn, the eclipser who hunted her across the desert. She pushed past her limits then; she would do the same now.
Every step sent a flash of pain through her leg as the hard wood of her prosthetic grated on her sore wound. Though the pain only worsened, she refused to use her crutches except to catch herself when she lost her balance. Once the king sent his soldiers with her, she would have to make the long march back to Itsoh and her village. She could show no weakness to the force under her command, no more than she could show any now before the king.
At a crossroads, Oleja found herself between two peaks. One branch of the path continued ahead in the gully between the two to where a clump of buildings rested within a patch of trees and greenery. Finer buildings made up this section of the city, removed from the bulk of the busyness as if standing alone as its own separate tiny village. People milled about wearing fair clothes, toting baskets of goods or leading animals this way and that.
The second branch of the path led up the eastern slope of a domed, bare-stone hill to which only a few pines, small shrubs, and patches of tough grass clung. Snaking up the slope wound the cobbled path, making heavy use of stairs as it reached for the peak. Seated atop the rounded pinnacle was an enormous building, more immense than any Oleja had ever seen. She viewed it from the side, as the front door seemed to face due north, but even from her angle it stole her breath. A boxy rectangular shape of stone and wood made up the base, curved upwards and in to form a long peak above which rose five tall towers, each with pointed roofs topped with flags of blue. Four of the towers found homes at each corner of the base of the structure, while the fifth rose from atop the center of a perfectly half-spherical dome seated towards the back of the building. The fifth tower stood taller than the others, with two bridges—one from each of the two towers at the back—stretching out to meet its midsection.
Before her lay the palace of the king of Ahwan.
As Oleja drew her attention back down to the path ahead of her, and to the truly uncalled-for number of stairs between her and the palace, another feature of the landscape caught her eye. The path wound around the hill to her left as it made for the front door to the palace, but its route also steered away from a cliff face that made up the low part of the southwestern side of the hill. Carved into the cliff, in a proportion that took Oleja two glances to wrap her mind around, was the symbol of the city of Ahwan.
Three strokes made up the symbol. The first—the one on the bottom—looked like a coiled, open circle with a tail leading off of it. Above that rose the other two, the left higher than the right, both reaching upwards from the first while bowing out and then back in like two support beams in a mineshaft that threatened to shatter into splinters at any moment. She knew not what the symbol meant, if anything, only that she had seen it a handful of times since arriving in the city.
But never had she seen it like this. On flags and banners and etched into stones alongside other decorative carvings, sure, but this one, cut into the cliff, would have required hundreds of hands working at once to finish it in a single day, and that still did not answer the question of just how they managed to do the work with the surface being so high off the ground.
After tearing her eyes away from the symbol, and after a long breath and a detesting look at the stairs, Oleja started on her final ascent.
Approaching the door, Oleja got a better look at the entryway. Another dozen steps led up onto a raised terrace of stone. Flags and banners adorned the walls. Two guards stood to either side of the staircase, and two more stood at the top, one on each side of an enormous wooden door carved with the same symbol displayed on the cliff. All four guards wore armor of some dark grey metal atop a blue tunic. Helmets clad their heads, the same dark metal with a plume of orange in a line across the crest. Each held a spear, butt on the ground, tip pointed perfectly skyward.
The pair at the bottom of the stairs watched Oleja approach. When she came within a few paces, they struck the ground with their spears and spoke in unison.
“You approach the palace of the king of Ahwan.”
Oleja drew back her hood. “Well I didn’t climb all this way to speak with a dirt-smeared child.”
Neither guard laughed. Oleja shifted all of her weight to her right leg.
“The dog cannot enter the palace walls,” said the guard on the left. Oleja looked down at Tor. He panted happily at her side.
“Why not? He’ll tread nothing more onto the carpets than I will.”
“By order of the king, no wildlife is permitted on the grounds.”
“He stays with me.”
“Then he stays with you outside the palace.”
Oleja rolled her eyes. “I guess you have to wait out here,” she said to Tor, and scratched behind his ears. He gave no sign of comprehension, but when Oleja started walking and he began to follow, a few awkward gestures got him to slow his pace and fall back. He hunkered down beside a shrub and lay on the rock, his paws out in front of him and snout resting atop them. Oleja smiled back to him before turning and heading up the final steps.
The two guards at the top stopped her next. They held their spears crossed over the great wooden door.
“All weapons remain here,” said one.
Oleja raised an eyebrow. Such a long list of formalities just to speak with a man who made decisions.
All she carried with her was the curved knife she’d had since leaving her village, which she removed, she
ath and all, from where it hung at her hip. After her exchange with the other guards, she didn’t figure arguments would get her far. If she had known of the rules before setting out, perhaps she might have stowed the knife in her boot or within the hollow interior of her prosthetic—somewhere concealed. She didn’t expect to meet the need for a knife, but caution should never operate on gambles.
One of the guards took the knife and placed it in a box by the door. The pair moved their spears and grabbed the double door by two large iron handles.
Beyond the doors stretched the largest room Oleja had ever seen.
It extended longer than it did wide by several times over. Light came in through windows set in the high pointed ceiling, between which splayed sprawling murals of water and mountains and the sky. Pillars lined the room on both sides, reaching all the way to the painted ceiling, and between which lay tables rimmed with benches and stools. A few of these held clusters of people, none of whom paid Oleja any mind. Behind the pillars, along the two side walls, wooden doors led off into unknown other chambers, and between the doors were tall boxes of wood with glass doors on their fronts through which Oleja glimpsed countless items of all sorts, though she could see clearly enough that they all looked to be junk. It was as if someone had emptied the raiders’ wagon and more—or perhaps a large section of The Heap back in her village—into these cases, as if here the type of junk she toted around in a bag held some worth beyond its future uses.
Smells of smoke and dust rushed at her as if trying to slip through the doors while they stood open, desperate to escape the confines of the palace.
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