A Home in the Hills
Page 25
Scourgey whined softly.
She knew.
And she with uneven steps, bearing him upon her back, she bore him inland, toward the heart of Luukessia.
Home.
30
He slept through much of it.
Luukessia passed him by, the hills disappearing under Scourgey’s feet, the overgrown meadows vanishing behind like they were squares in an enormous patchwork blanket.
She moved quickly. Even when he fell into the dark place, he had a sense of it, could feel the thrumming of her feet below. His time was short, shrinking away with every second—she had to run.
When Jasen woke, though, she slowed. How she knew he was awake, Jasen did not know, for he did not move, could not. Perhaps now the veil was so thin there was a bridge between them. Perhaps the same way she could detect death, she could feel Jasen in other ways too.
Those waking moments were like a fever dream. The world was washed out, over-bright, so very blurred … he could smell wildflowers, but they were heady, their pungence overpowering.
And death. Always the smell of death.
What had Scourgey bathed in?
But no. This was not Scourgey.
This rot was his own. It came from within him, festering and foul.
Just a little farther though. Just a little more.
He drifted.
Scourgey sped.
And Luukessia fell away behind them.
*
He woke under the evening sun.
It was cooler now.
And the air … it smelled different too. It had something … wrong in it—there was no other way Jasen could think to describe it.
Scourgey whined, low in her throat.
Jasen raised his head.
At first he could not make head or tail of what he was seeing. Everything was grey-white. For a confusing moment he thought it was rock. Then, as his vision came slowly back to focus, he wondered—was this snow? But this was the height of summer. The mountains had no caps upon them this time of year. Luukessia could not get so cold as to be covered in ice.
He turned, puzzled …
And then he saw it—the outline of a village, layered under the stuff.
This was not snow at all.
It was ash.
He was back at Terreas.
Scourgey waited beside the wall. She whined again, rousing Jasen higher from the dark place he had fallen into.
As Huanatha had predicted, the destruction that the scourge detected had indeed not come past the wall at all. The grasses here at the very edge of the village, where the boundary lay, were barely touched by it, only a light dust settled on their blades. And beyond the wall, where Scourgey stood with Jasen lying upon her back—it was nearly pristine. As though no mountain had ever erupted here.
“You knew,” Jasen wheezed.
Scourgey whined.
“Can you … cross it now?”
She seemed unsure. Still, she tested, raising a paw onto the wall, just the one at first—then she added another, and stepped in—
She flinched, at the feel of the grass carpeted in ash.
But she was across.
They both were.
He was home.
But then … was this home? It had been once. Now, though, coated in a layer of ash that grew closer to the village proper—and half of it buried under dark rock, magma that had spilled out in a great tide and solidified … this was not the Terreas he had known.
This was a Terreas as destroyed as him.
His stomach dropped at that.
But then—how stupid. What had he expected to see? Had he really thought Terreas would be as it once was, when he came here? He’d seen the mountain erupt with his own eyes. He’d seen the lava stream out of it, smothering Terreas in an instant.
Of course this was the village he was coming back to.
He sighed. “Well … I guess let’s just … walk.”
Scourgey began a slow clamber up the hill.
Jasen surveyed it sadly. The lava flow had come down over the very central portion of the village. It had frozen almost into waves where it rebounded, coursing up in another great flow like a stream, and eaten up even more of the village.
All the fields were gone, all the ones they’d used to grow food. So were the stables, where Shilara had borrowed Milo for their last fateful excursion.
The assembly hall was gone too.
Shilara’s home sat upon the edge of the village. That remained, coated in a greyish-white layer of solidified ash, like plaque on a tooth. Only—it was not all there, Jasen saw, rounding it with Scourgey. A rock had plowed through the front, collapsing it. From the back, it could pass for whole. But it definitely was not inhabitable now.
Of course, there was no one to inhabit it. There was no one here but him.
What a stupid, pointless exercise this had been. He should have stayed upon the rowboat, and just drifted into the blackness in Alixa’s arms.
He resting his head against Scourgey’s uneven spine.
Damn this. Damn it all.
She whined—asking him, through the bridge, where she should go.
“I don’t know.”
His home was not there anymore; it had been burned down before he left for Wayforth … for Aiger Cliffs, for Necromancer Isle, and Nonthen, and Tarratam. Besides, his sweeping assessment, through a blear of white spots, told him that the place where he had once lived was now buried under a three-foot-thick layer of solidified magma.
Scourgey whined again.
“I … don’t know,” he wheezed. Just that was enough to sap his strength further still.
She whined again. Then she plodded on.
He lay there against her, his eyes closed.
The dark pressed in, nearing …
Breathing was hard. So hard. Shallow breaths were all he could manage.
His hand slipped from around Scourgey’s neck.
He was going.
This was it.
His eyes drooped closed …
The darkness closed in around him—
Scourgey whined.
She was far away—so far.
Just let me sleep, Jasen thought.
Scourgey whined again, more insistent this time. The noise cut through the blackness encroaching on all sides, banishing it—at least a little farther away.
But it was still close.
He opened one eye.
The ground before him was ashen.
Scourgey whined.
Jasen blinked.
Let me rest …
She whined—and now she bucked him.
It was a small jerk of her body. This far gone, it brought no pain to him—but it did jolt him, scaring the darkness away a little more again—and he opened his eyes, both of them, swimming with white dots, to see—
He stared.
This was the Weltan house. It was remarkably whole, all things considered—or rather, the back half of it was, where the mossy rock rested beside the vineyard. Most of it had been devoured by black magma.
Yet this place was not what gave Jasen pause.
It was the rock.
For there, under it, where the ash had not entirely been able to snow … there rose a single flower, its petals pointed like a child’s drawing of a star, all bluish-white.
He stared at it. Squinted. Surely not?
Scourgey whined again. She eased him closer.
He looked down upon it, hanging over her side.
That was a flower.
“Put me down,” he wheezed.
Scourgey lowered.
Jasen clambered off—fell, really. It did not matter though: he was off.
Resting against the mossy rock, he stared into those white-blue petals like they were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. They swam, blotted out by the white spots that clouded his vision—so much of it was gone—but he did his very best to focus on it, on this flower—this little piece of life that flourished.
And it would. In
the same way as Terreas had eked out survival even when the scourge overran the lands of Luukessia … in the same way as the people from Nonthen drew together, dug out the survivors and fought to keep them alive another day … in the same way Tarratam would return to its former glory, even if it were decades from now … life went on.
Alixa went on.
Longwell went on.
And the Emerald Fields, they went on too, with a new line of Luukessians.
And perhaps … it was thanks to him. Not entirely—but he had a small part in it. A big small part, maybe.
This was the legacy Longwell spoke of, the lineage that went on after Jasen passed. A chain that bound them all together, from the first of the Luukessians …
To him, here, now.
And to Alixa … on her way across the sea.
Safe.
He closed his eyes …
The veil slipped. And here, here, at last—was the Terreas he had known. A Terreas filled with smiling faces, bustling, not a hint of the ash or magma spilled over it. It was a whole place, alive, and he was whole again too. He did not lay prone, with a scourge at his side, in the ash and dust spewed out from a mountain, but stood tall, among a field of people, all moving, all smiling at him, all reaching out for his hands and welcoming him, saying they were so proud of him, so grateful for what he had done …
And then—them. The throng parted, its mad swirl about Jasen paused … and there was Pityr, smiling. There was Shilara, a flask of whiskey in her hand, a sparkle in her eye. There was his aunt and his uncle and his cousins, and his grandparents, and their parents and grandparents too … all a part of the same great chain as he was, links in their own way …
And at the very forefront were his mother and his father.
Jasen stepped forward to meet them.
His mother smiled, a beautiful smile. “Oh, Jasen. You don’t know how proud I am of you.”
Adem squeezed his shoulder. “You did wonderfully, son.”
And they wrapped him into an embrace that was so warm, so gloriously, beautifully warm …
“I’ve missed you,” he said, breathing in their scent—a flowery perfume from his mother that he had somehow forgotten, but it came back to him now in a rush—a bookish sort of smell from his father, the slightly musty smell of the assembly hall, its odor impossible to purge even with those pungent candles in their sconces …
He was home.
At long, long last … he was home.
And he realized, then, as he was swept up among the flow of his ancestors, these souls who had watched over him as they watched over his parents before him, and theirs, one final truth:
Luukessia would return someday.
The knowledge filled him like the summer sun, white light shining from above as he lay beside the mossy rock where all of this had begun, Niamh the scourge at his side, company to the very last.
And as he finally faded into the white … he smiled.
Alixa Will Return in
Ashes of Luukessia
Volume Four
Coming in 2018/2019!
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading! If you want to know immediately when future books become available, take sixty seconds and sign up for my NEW RELEASE EMAIL ALERTS by CLICKING HERE. I don’t sell your information and I only send out emails when I have a new book out. The reason you should sign up for this is because I don’t always set release dates, and even if you’re following me on Facebook (robertJcrane (Author)) or Twitter (@robertJcrane), it’s easy to miss my book announcements because … well, because social media is an imprecise thing.
Come join the discussion on my website: http://www.robertjcrane.com!
Cheers,
Robert J. Crane
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editorial/Literary Janitorial duties performed by Sarah Barbour and Nick Bowman. Final proofing was handled by the Jeff Bryan. Any errors you see in the text, however, are the result of me rejecting changes.
The cover was once more designed with exceeding skill by Karri Klawiter of artbykarri.com.
Thanks again to my co-author, an amazing life-saver who makes my life easier in pretty much every way in which his life intersects mine.
The formatting was provided by nickbowman-editing.com.
Once more, thanks to my parents, my in-laws, my kids and my wife, for helping me keep things together.
Other Works by Robert J. Crane
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Avenger: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Two
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Thy Father’s Shadow: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 4.5
Master: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Five
Fated in Darkness: The Sanctuary Series, Volume 5.5
Warlord: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Six
Heretic: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Seven
Legend: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Eight
Ghosts of Sanctuary: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Nine
Call of the Hero: The Sanctuary Series, Volune Ten* (Coming Late 2018!)
A Haven in Ash: Ashes of Luukessia, Volume One (with Michael Winstone)
A Respite From Storms: Ashes of Luukessia, Volume Two (with Michael Winstone)
A Home in the Hills: Ashes of Luukessia, Volume Three* (with Michael Winstone—Coming Mid to Late 2018!)
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Untouched: The Girl in the Box, Book 2
Soulless: The Girl in the Box, Book 3
Family: The Girl in the Box, Book 4
Omega: The Girl in the Box, Book 5
Broken: The Girl in the Box, Book 6
Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book 7
Legacy: The Girl in the Box, Book 8
Destiny: The Girl in the Box, Book 9
Power: The Girl in the Box, Book 10
Limitless: Out of the Box, Book 1
In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2
Ruthless: Out of the Box, Book 3
Grounded: Out of the Box, Book 4
Tormented: Out of the Box, Book 5
Vengeful: Out of the Box, Book 6
Sea Change: Out of the Box, Book 7
Painkiller: Out of the Box, Book 8
Masks: Out of the Box, Book 9
Prisoners: Out of the Box, Book 10
Unyielding: Out of the Box, Book 11
Hollow: Out of the Box, Book 12
Toxicity: Out of the Box, Book 13
Small Things: Out of the Box, Book 14
Hunters: Out of the Box, Book 15
Badder: Out of the Box, Book 16
Nemesis: Out of the Box, Book 17
Apex: Out of the Box, Book 18
Time: Out of the Box, Book 19
Driven: Out of the Box, Book 20
Remember: Out of the Box, Book 21
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Flashback: Out of the Box, Book 23* (Coming November 2018!)
Walk Through Fire: Out of the Box, Book 24* (Coming in 2019!)
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Depths: Southern Watch, Book 2
Corrupted: Southern Watch, Book 3
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The City of Lies: The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 3
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We Aimless Few: The Mira Brand Adventures, Book 6* (Coming in 2018!)
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(with Lauren Harper)
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No One Will Believe You: Liars and Vampires, Book 1
Someone Should Save Her: Liars and Vampires, Book 2
You Can’t Go Home Again: Liars and Vampires, Book 3
In the Dark: Liars and Vampires, Book 4
Her Lying Days Are Done: Liars and Vampires, Book 5* (Coming September 18th, 2018!)
Heir of the Dog: Liars and Vampires, Book 6* (Coming October 16th, 2018!)
Hit You Where You Live: Liars and Vampires, Book 7* (Coming November 16th, 2018!)
* Forthcoming, Subject to Change