Into the Fold

by Chase Blackwood

  “May I?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Dan said.

  Laurent only nodded as he continued to eat. Adel smiled and made room for her. She squeezed onto the bench between Aeden and Adel.

  “What are we talking about?” she asked.

  Dan looked at Laurent. Laurent raised an eyebrow, but strangely, remained silent. Adel looked up and knitted his eyebrows in worry.

  “Caine.”

  “Why’re you talking about Caine,” she asked, a subtle frown sculpting her features.

  Adel shook his head and pointed to the other side of the room.

  Dan and Laurent looked over in unison. Caine had just entered the dining hall. Adel looked from Caine to Aeden. Aeden’s face was sharp as a dagger.

  Without hesitation Aeden was up and halfway across the dining space before Adel could shout.

  “Aeden, wait.”

  Aeden didn’t listen. He didn’t notice Thea look from Adel to him to Caine. He didn’t see Rafe stand up. He didn’t hear Dan and Laurent bet on probable outcomes.

  “Caine!” Aeden shouted.

  Caine froze. There was a moment of shock on his face, which quickly passed. He glanced briefly at Rafe then settled his eyes on Aeden.

  “The coward of Quietus Pillars,” Caine said aloud, as if performing for the small crowd of seated students.

  Caine continued, “You want to know who let Janto die?” he gestured grandly to Aeden. “Here he is.”

  Adel had now managed to step to Aeden’s side. He placed a hand on his shoulder. He whispered into his ear. He attempted to calm him. To hold him back. Aeden wasn’t listening.

  Faro had now stood and moved closer, watching closely as Caine talked of his brother, Janto’s, passing.

  “He’s standing here for all of you to see,” Caine said, pointing at Aeden.

  Thea had remained seated, but watched with interest and a hint of concern. She tried to catch Rafe’s attention and warn him away. She had noticed Aeden’s grey eyes turn dark. She tensed in her chair.

  “Stop, your, lies,” Aeden said slowly and forcefully.

  But Caine ignored Aeden’s changing mood. He ignored the warning signs of impending danger. He only heeded his manipulated feelings of dissatisfaction, fear, and insecurity. Caine felt emboldened with the presence of others. He felt secure in the presence of an avauncen student.

  “My lies?” Caine yelled, “What of your lies? What of how you cowered before the Tree of Forgotten Children, allowing Kallon to attempt to crawl to his death? What of you hiding while harpies attacked from the sky and I was forced to fight them off? What of Janto’s death? Kallon’s death?”

  Aeden’s face turned red. He had drawn his sword without thought. His mind was empty save for his anger. It fueled him. It filled him with energy and menace. It hummed beneath his skin. It narrowed his vision and claimed his mind.

  He took a rapid step forward. Caine had no time to react. Oria had only just gotten out of her seat. Her eyes had a chance to widen in shock. Thea’s face fell into a mask of resigned disappointment as she launched herself from her chair. Adel lost his grip on Aeden as a profound look of sadness claimed him.

  Yet, before Aeden had a chance to cut Caine down, something unexpected happened.

  Rafe had leapt forward. He had slipped into Aeden’s space without his awareness. Rafe snapped a kick forward. It landed sharply in Aeden’s ribs. It had been so quick, and so unexpected, as to catch Aeden completely off guard.

  Aeden felt a sharp pain lance up his side. A single thought bubbled to the surface, he’d broken something. He lost his footing and tumbled sideways to the ground. Just as he moved his sword, defensively before him, Rafe uttered a binding. His eyes held a faraway look. The air shimmered before Aeden. It crystalized and took shape as the surrounding moisture rapidly accumulated.

  Aeden was momentarily mesmerized, as was everyone else. The moisture turned to ice, and carried the shape of a spear. One moment it seemed to hover impossibly in the air. The next it was hurled toward Aeden.

  With a flick of his wrist, Aeden slashed at the projectile. He cut it in half, but not before part of it had pierced his skin.

  “That’s for the Trials of Ansuz,” Rafe whispered.

  Rafe nodded ever so slightly to Caine before turning to Thea. Aeden looked up from the frozen spear, tearing his eyes from the swelling stain of blood to Thea. Her eyes were cold as the magic that had cut him down.

  “You’re a fool,” she said, “I can’t believe I ever loved you.”

  And with that she left.

  Aeden watched her walk away and felt the cold seep into his veins. He felt the pain throb at his side. He felt his heart unravel before him. He felt the darkness of the world surround him.

  PART FIVE

  Bryn Yawr Bound

  Chapter 77

  “History is riddled with secrets. Some need uncovering. Others are best left untold.” Protectorate Menon of Q’Bala

  Peter rubbed his head. It felt strangely empty, like a shell that had forgotten it was a shell. His thoughts were clear. The persistent headaches he’d experienced since his encounter with the Tree of Forgotten Children were but a memory. The storm that had raged against the shores of his being had settled. The threads of thought he was experiencing, were nothing more than gentle waves lapping upon the sands of consciousness.

  He watched Thea for a moment as she carefully worked her way down the myriad stairs. The stairs wrapped about the single column of stone, ever downward from the Temple of the Sages of Umbra. It was a pillar of stone in a forest of stone columns. Some were jagged and broken. Others were tall and thin, like fingers piercing upward from the very ground.

  Thea herself moved with a certain sense of graceful determination. Peter hadn’t heard what the sages had told her. It must have been time sensitive. For whatever they had said, had caused Thea to quickly pack and for them to rapidly depart.

  As for Peter, the sages had only told him the following, each relaying a single sentence:

  Fear the gods as broken men fallen from grace and fear the chimera as broken men ravaged by all that is evil

  Find your brothers in the Forest of Screaming Mara.

  You are the indissoluble agent of reconciliation, stay true to your nature, and embrace the path of your father, Odilo of Somerset.

  Peter wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Initially he’d been overwhelmed. The weight of change was upon him. Peter had been thrust into a world on the cusp of chaos. Yet, as insignificant as he felt, he had a part to play. The sages had alluded as much.

  His mind swam in circles. It lingered on every word. It repeated them in a desperate attempt to remember. He’d whisper the words before bed and recite them back to himself in the morning. Yet, that wasn’t enough. Questions swelled from the repetitions. They were tall and foreboding and demanded a response.

  Peter was desperate for answers. He was desperate to ask Thea. Yet, he knew he couldn’t. She was still contemplating whatever the sages had told her. Her gait was fixed, steady, and purposeful. Greater than that, and more importantly, they were still in danger. They were still at the edges of the Quietus Pillars. They were still within the realm of the Hounds of Ansuz.

  So, Peter was forced to ponder on the sages’ words in silence. He thought on their disfigured appearance. He wondered at the strangeness of the Fold. Most of all, he thought on his father.

  He had few memories of his early childhood, only stories. He’d grown up under the care of a verder named Orin. Orin had told Peter very little about where he’d come from and had treated Peter as his own. He’d cared for him, fed and sheltered him, and most importantly taught Peter the skills of a true woodsman. Skills that later allowed Peter to join the coveted ranks of the Ranged Guard.

  It wasn’t until Peter’s thirteenth birthday that he’d learned he’d been a bastard born to Rulph of Tines. Yet, perhaps Rulph had never been his father. What had Thea said upon the ship from Petra’s Landing to Galdor?
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br />   “A commoner had impregnated Rulph’s wife, who then bore him a baby boy. A child Rulph didn’t care for. The commoner was imprisoned and tortured only to be saved by the new Deacon of Somerset, who convinced Rulph to send the child away…”

  Peter had been that child. Peter had been saved and sent to live with Orin the verder, and his true father had been Odilo, a man he had never met. A man the sages had told him to emulate.

  Chapter 78

  “Endurance is the mind refusing to quit.” Chant of the Ranged Guard

  The journey through the Quietus Pillars had been cold, dark, and unnerving. The pillars of stone had formed looming shadows, hinting at peril and deceit. The damp floor had been cast in a perennial shade and besmirched by the broken bones of the dead.

  The nights were worse than the days. Thea and Peter huddled in silence as harpies screeched and flapped their leathery wings. They hid and remained still as the creatures hunted. Sleep was as elusive as the slivers of daylight.

  During these dark hours, insects slithered and crawled over broken carcasses. They clicked their mandibles and tapped their hardened bodies against stone. Each noise seemed to echo resoundingly in the quiet spaces of obscurity and death. In the strange stillness, the sounds had coalesced into a menacing cacophony of promised demise.

  Each night, inevitably, these crawling threats would find the huddled twosome. They would slip under pant legs or fall onto them from above. Peter’s instinct was to thrash about and rid himself of the unseen menace. But he didn’t. He knew that movement would invite something larger, something worse. So, he cringed and gripped Thea harder as she gripped him, in an attempt to tolerate the slithering torture of night.

  The days had become a respite from the long darkness. Although they were hardly better. They were long and challenging. The terrain was uneven and broken, as if a Thoon had taken a mighty hammer to the ground, shattering it asunder.

  Faint whispers of light created uneven shadows and textures. Peter and Thea tripped and stumbled. They’d inwardly curse and pause, waiting for death to swoop down from above. Only, it never did.

  The challenges reminded Peter of his time in the Bodigan Army. Thoughts would come and go, but held little sway. There was no energy for excessive thinking. There was only the objective. There was only the placement of one foot after the other.

  The singular goal at that point was to leave the Quietus Pillars.

  Three days after departing the temple, their goal was achieved. The stone formations fell away and gave birth to a field of green.

  Grasses swayed enticingly, without the sharp note of hidden danger that marked the Aria Plains. These grasses resided farther to the west, within the shadowed ring of mountains that encircled the Fold. The plains were soft and yielding, flat and beautiful.

  Peter couldn’t have been more grateful. Even Thea had allowed her expression to change. Her posture had sharpened. The lines on her face had slowly eased and fallen away. The colors, greens and blues and yellows, replaced the dark grey that had become their temporary Gehenna. Even the air tasted different. It held the subtle flavors of earth, grass, and life.

  It was beside a massive tree that Thea stopped. Peter looked up, startled, torn from the mindless routine of marching. The sun had just begun to dip behind the mountains, casting a startling array of golden light across the sky in sharp lines of luminescence.

  “We’ll make camp here,” Thea said, her voice sounding thin. “No fire tonight.”

  Peter only nodded. She had spoken in a bare whisper, as if testing the strength of her voice, as if still fearful of the Hounds of Ansuz.

  Her hair was in disarray. Her face was pinched and tired. Her eyes were hard and determined.

  Peter dragged some fallen branches closer to the wide trunk. He stripped them and leaned them against the tree. He moved quickly as he tied them to the trunk and strung up blankets, to form a barricade against the wind.

  Thea fetched several leafy boughs and laid them inside the newly created space.

  Without word, Peter and Thea settled within the confines of their makeshift shelter. They thought their thoughts and drifted to sleep.

  The following day Peter awoke to find himself alone. Nightmares had marked his sleep, as slithering and crawling things had trampled upon his dreams.

  Peter remained still as he took a moment to find his bearings. He allowed for his eyes to adjust as he strained his ears for sound. Light filtered into the tent, highlighting a bed of branches, free of insects. Birds chirped and a breeze rustled the plains.

  A rush of thoughts fell upon him in a waterfall of recollection. Fractured images of the Quietus Pillars and disfigured memories of the Sages of Umbra, accosted his mind. The sages’ words echoed against his skull as a backdrop of sound before images of jagged stone and scattered bones.

  He took in a breath. The air was sweet with the smells of morning dew and greenery. Peter stretched and stumbled out of the tent and into Thea.

  “Good,” she said, “I was coming to wake you. It’s time.”

  Peter nodded and moved without thought.

  His movements were practiced and mechanical as he tore down the shelter. He packed the blankets into his bag, and ensured to grab some bread before cinching it closed. The bread had been a gift from the sages. He took a bite to satiate his rumbling stomach. It tasted hollow in his mouth.

  Peter strapped the bag onto his back, noticing Thea had already began her march. She was moving briskly, heading north. She had set a steady pace that would have made Captain Jakob proud.

  Once again, Peter fell into the pattern of marching. One foot in front of the other. It was as familiar as breathing. He watched the grasslands bend to the wind. He tracked the occasional tree. He watched as the sun rose over the mountains and cast its light upon the Fold.

  As the sun rose, so too did his temperament. Questions bubbled to the surface.

  “What did the sages tell you?” Peter asked, as he increased his pace and fell into step beside Thea.

  Thea looked up, almost startled at his voice. She studied him for a moment, before looking back at the terrain, watching her step.

  “They told me to retrieve something I’d hidden away,” she replied carefully.

  Peter waited for more. Thea remained silent.

  “In the Fold?”

  Thea nodded.

  “Buried within Bryn Yawr,” she said.

  Peter glanced at Thea and noticed the tight lines about her eyes.

  “Is that near the Forest of Screaming Mara?” Peter asked.

  Thea paused.

  “How do you know of that place?” she questioned.

  Her face had become a careful mask of inscrutability.

  “The sages told me I’d find my brothers there.”

  Thea nodded slowly. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Brothers?”

  Peter shrugged. He’d still been trying to figure out what that meant himself. He had no other family that he’d been aware of. Up until recently, he’d assumed Lord Rulf of the hamlet of Tines was his father.

  “That forest is not so easy to find,” she said, “and for good reason.”

  A subtle frown claimed her forehead and she stopped talking.

  Thea and Peter continued walking. The longer they walked the thinner the silence grew between them, becoming a chasm sheet of brittle proportions.

  Peter wanted to know more. He wanted to know what the sages had meant. He wanted to know where they were going. But he knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. More than anything, he wanted to hear someone’s voice.

  “What happened after you visited the Sages of Umbra the first time?”

  A half-smile claimed Thea’s lips. Thea took in a slow and steady breath as she glanced briefly at Peter. She noticed his curiosity. It was hard to miss.

  “That was a difficult time,” a grimace gave way to a half smile. It was a smile of sadness. “I suppose you’d like to hear that story.”

  Peter nodded eag
erly.

  Thea let out a sharp laugh, as if she’d been holding her breath for far too long. Despite the outburst, there was lingering emotion there. Peter couldn’t tell if it was regret or shame.

  “Very well. But don’t go searching for a happy ending.”

  Chapter 79

  “No one’s achieved greatness without heartbreak.” Canton of Sawol

  The journey north had been nearly as difficult as the journey south. It had been challenging because we knew what to expect, as much as because of who we had lost, and what we had been told. The sages had imparted their wisdom. They had tended to our wounds, dressing Adel’s hand, stitching Aeden’s cuts, and giving Oria medicines.

  Despite the challenges, I only remember parts of the journey.

  The Quietus Pillars I recall because Caine had remained silent. He had turned so white I thought he’d grown sick. As for the Aria Plains, I remember those because of my initial painful introduction, I’d retained a learned and lingering fear of the razor grass. We avoided the Tree of Forgotten Children by a wide margin and had followed the Lufian River to the bridge crossing. From there it was a simple path up the mountain.

  The weather grew colder as we climbed. The ten thousand steps felt steeper because of the chill. The thousand dancing rainbows at the Bridge of Antiquity were dulled by the clouds overhead. The obsidian stones of the river floor soaked in the light like a hungry manticore and seemed to mirror our collective mood.

  At the halfway point is when the freezing rain began. It soaked through our clothing and bit into our bones. I shivered as I walked, but we didn’t stop. The only thing keeping us warm was movement.

  Three quarters of the way up, it had begun to snow. We slowly dried, for which I was thankful. Instead, we fell into a routine of movement. From afar, as we trudged along, we looked like a group of chimera.

  The sight of Andir was most welcome, but with it, came a tinge of regret. Oria had grown uncomfortably close to Aeden. It’s funny what memories linger. It wasn’t the cold or the distance, or hunger I remember most. It was the way she’d cling to his arm as if her very life depended on it. Who was she fooling? Her health had clearly improved. It was silly. It was aggravating.