The Crystal Keeper BoxSet

by Laurisa White Reyes

  Brommel crossed the room to the foot of the stairs and made his way up to the second floor where his room and bed waited for him. He moved slowly, as if his feet were made of lead. What would he say to her?

  When he reached her door, he raised his knuckles but then hesitated. He thought again of her eyes, how they read him, how they knew him. He shook the image out of his head and chided himself for being stupid. She was going back, and that’s all there was to it.

  He tightened his fist and knocked at her door.

  14

  Gorelian trackers were diminutive creatures barely the height of a man’s knee, with pale skin and large bulbous eyes protruding from over-sized, oddly-shaped heads. They wore simple tunics which allowed freedom of movement as the creatures traveled on all fours to keep their noses close to the ground. Gorelians were known for their keen senses and ability to track a single target for hundreds of miles through all kinds of terrain and weather. Dim-witted and vicious, they were easy to manipulate, pleased with a freshly killed meal as payment for their services.

  Erland had waited one whole day before letting one of Arik’s creatures loose, accompanied by several of his swiftest, most dependable messengers. After receiving notice that Ivanore’s first stop had been identified, Erland set out with a second Gorelian and a full company of Vatéz soldiers, each man carrying two weeks’ worth of provisions. There was no telling how far from Auseret the true heir of Imaness would lead them or how long they would be traveling, and it was vital that Erland’s men be in top form when they arrived at their final destination, wherever that may be.

  Progress was slower than Erland would have liked, though he did not want to move so fast that they actually caught up to their quarry. No, they must keep enough distance between them so that Ivanore would not suspect she was being followed. No need to worry about her seeing them in vision, as Gorelians possessed a rare immunity to such powers. Magic had no effect on them. And while Erland was skeptical of it, Arik promised that a Gorelian’s immunity extended to anyone within close proximity to it.

  “Keep your men close,” Arik had advised. Should one man wander off, kill him. Otherwise my sister will discover your treachery.”

  My treachery. The words made Erland grind his teeth. Is that what Arik called loyalty to the Vatéz?

  They arrived on the outskirts of Durvett at mid-day. Erland had been there many times, both by ship and on foot. Though not as populated as other port towns like Nauvet-Carum, the place buzzed with men hauling crates from boats to the marketplaces, women mending nets, children running through the streets. Of course Ivanore would have stopped here first to collect supplies for her journey. She possessed no money, so Erland guessed she either stole what she needed, which he doubted since it was out of her character, or some sympathetic soul provided it.

  “Wait here,” Erland commanded his men once they had reached the village. He did not want to alarm the residents by marching his army through the middle of their town. Being visible was enough. He dismounted his horse and followed the Gorelian alone through the crowd to a ramshackle hut not far off shore. A few villagers glanced warily in his direction, but no one dared approach him.

  He knocked on the door.

  When it opened, he was greeted by a gray-haired man with reproachful eyes. “What do you want?” the man barked, but as he took in the visitor, recognition dawned on his face. His crochety expression was replaced not with the fear Erland expected but with defiance.

  Erland pressed his palm against the door and pushed it open. He looked behind the man into the cabin’s interior: dirt floor, simple furnishings, a worn fishing net draped over a chair. A woman, likely the man’s wife, stood beside the hearth, stirring a pot over a small flame.

  On seeing Erland and the creature beside him, the woman gasped and dropped her mixing spoon on the floor with a clatter.

  “The Gods will have their revenge on us today!” she cried, wringing her hands in her apron.

  “Hush, woman!” snapped the man over his shoulder, but the woman continued to whine in a language Erland did not recognize.

  The Gorelian sniffed at the old man’s feet, and then cut an accusing look at Erland. Ivanore’s scent was still on him. This was the man Erland had come for.

  “You’re looking for her, aren’t you?” said the man, correctly guessing the reason for Erland’s visit. “She ain’t here. She’s long gone. You can ask me all the questions you want, but I don’t know nothing. Don’t even know what direction she went.”

  Erland thought of Arik’s instructions. Track Ivanore. Find out where she received help along the way and punish them.

  “I’m not here to ask questions,” he said to the man. The woman backed herself into a corner as if trying to make herself less visible. But the man remained where he stood, his eyes bearing down on Erland with growing animosity. Then the man spat in his face.

  It wasn’t the first time a villager had defied Erland’s authority, but it made no difference to him. Not anymore.

  Erland swiftly drew his dagger and swiped it across the man’s throat. Blood spurted from the fresh wound, some spraying across Erland’s uniform. The woman screamed, then crumpled to the ground wailing at the top of her voice. The old man’s eyes went wide as he futilely pressed his hands to his neck, but seconds later, the light in them flickered and faded. His knees bent, and his body collapsed at Erland’s feet, a crimson pool spreading across the floor.

  One man for the entire village, thought Erland. The guilty had been punished. If he played his hand right, Arik’s lust for vengeance would hopefully be sated.

  Erland wiped his dagger clean on the dead man’s tunic and replaced it in its sheath. Then he and the Gorelian stepped out of the house and shut the door, muffling the woman’s weeping. As he made his way back to his men, he felt the villagers’ eyes on his back like weights, their hatred as tangible as the earth itself. If only they understood, Erland thought as he mounted his horse and signaled his men to move forward. If only they knew how their lives were spared today.

  15

  Ivanore could not stop thinking about Bastien. She did not wonder what would happen to him. She knew. If only she knew when it would happen and why. She could not ask him to come with her. How could she expect him to leave his family, his people, to follow her to who knew where? Yet it ate at her. Surely something could be done to protect him, to protect his village.

  These thoughts swirled in her mind as she continued her journey north. She did her best to avoid any settlements she came across despite the fact that her bread was gone in three days. How much further she had to go, she wasn’t certain. In her visions, she had seen Jayson standing in the middle of a field ripe with wheat. He held a hand over the stalks, brushing their tips with his palm. And she had seen the word Ashlin. She had sensed that she would find Jayson outside of Hestoria, beyond its northern border. So she continued in that direction, following the sun during the day, the stars at night. She slept as little as possible, snatching a few hours rest when she could, but always she kept walking, walking.

  On the seventh day out of Auseret, with her bread long gone, the weakness took hold of her. She had filled her water skin the previous night, but the liquid did nothing to satisfy her hunger. She stumbled forward, grabbing onto the trunk of a tree to break her fall, its rough bark scraping her skin. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else. They no longer obeyed her commands. She needed to keep going, she told herself. It couldn’t be far now. But her knees buckled, and she dropped to the ground, sobbing.

  Clutching the damp earth in her fists, Ivanore let her tears fall in torrents. Her cloak was torn and did little to keep out the cold. Her shoes too now were nothing more than scraps upon her feet. What if she died, she wondered? What if she starved to death right here on this spot? She thought of her boys, Kelvin and Marcus, back home on Imaness. Kelvin would be six years old now, and Marcus five. They would have forgotten her. And if Zyll had kept his promise, they would know nothi
ng of their true identities. Ivanore trusted that Zyll would watch over them, that they would be cared for and protected. But still, she missed them terribly. Ached for them. Once she had found Jayson, they could finally leave Hestoria and go home to their sons, together. They could be a family again.

  But if she died here, Jayson would never know she had never made it home. He would never know about Marcus. The boys would grow up and never know who they really were.

  Ivanore felt spent. She even lacked enough energy to cry another tear. She lay down in the dirt, resting her head on her arm. Tired. She was so tired. If only she could close her eyes, just for a moment…

  A sound. In the trees.

  Ivanore’s eyes flew open, her heart quickened by the sudden invasion into her private misery. Something, or someone, was out there.

  There was a sharp snap of a twig as if someone had inadvertently stepped on it, followed by a brief rustling of leaves. But it was the sudden, complete silence that followed that frightened her the most. As if whoever, or whatever, was out there did not want to be heard or seen.

  Ivanore sat up, her aching body protesting. She peered through the trees, scanning left and right, in front of and behind her. She saw nothing. Oh, if only she had her husband’s Agoran senses and could smell what was out there. But she was only human.

  No, she was more than that. She was the Seer, after all. Ivanore tried to reach out into the night, tried to focus on the presence in the woods, but her mind came up blank. It was if there was an empty hole where something, anything should have been.

  Fear swarmed over Ivanore, and for a fleeting moment, she could have sworn she met something eye to eye, some strange creature lurking deep in the bush immune to her seeing. Ivanore blinked, and the creature was gone, if it had ever been there at all. No, she chided herself, it must be her imagination playing games with her mind.

  She took hold of the tree trunk and hoisted herself to her feet. Would she stay here, lying on the ground and wait for some wild beast to devour her? Could she abandon her quest so easily and leave her sons without a mother, her husband without a wife?

  She would press on. She would force her body to comply, despite the hunger and the pain, she would compel her feet to keep moving forward. One step at a time. Ashlin couldn’t be far now. As she gazed up through the branches of the trees and noted the low position of the sun, she sensed that before the end of the next day she would find what she was looking for—or she would die trying to find it.

  Ivanore gathered her cloak around her, trying futilely to stave off the cold. Her breath came in curls of white, and the air bit into her skin like ice. She raised her hand, red and stiff, to her lips and blew warm air into them. Then she turned north and began to walk. Only once she had traveled for several minutes did she dare look back over her shoulder in one last attempt to spot what had made the unwelcome sounds. But in truth she didn’t want to see it now, and she was relieved to find the glen behind her empty.

  She moved on through the night, the full moon overhead lighting her way like a beacon. After her earlier scare, she didn’t feel sleepy at all. Instead, she felt determined and anxious. She played the vision of Jayson over and over in her head, though she noticed that something about it had changed. The farther she travelled, the more disconsolate he appeared. He stood in the field as before, but now it was bare. No crops at all. And Jayson’s expression was almost desperate, full of fear and longing all at once. To look at him made Ivanore feel a deep sadness. When before he would sweep his hand over the wheat, seemingly at peace with the world, now he held out his hands, pleading.

  Next came the blood. Where it had come from, Ivanore could not tell. She had stopped her trek some time before sunrise to rest. As she sat beside a tree and rested her head against it, she fell asleep. In her dream, she once again saw Jayson. This time, his face was bruised, his hair matted with blood.

  Not far from where he stood, flames erupted, tall and menacing. Ivanore could almost feel the heat. As if the world had stopped turning and time itself had slowed to a crawl, Jayson fell to his knees, his jaw erupting in a silent scream.

  Ivanore jolted awake. Her heart threatened to explode out of her chest as she gasped for breath. She felt suffocated, the horror of what she had witnessed threatening to extinguish her very soul. Only once before had she felt such agony—in the vision that had compelled her to leave Imaness to search for Jayson in Hestoria. It had been his pain that had drawn her here. And now once again, he was in danger.

  But the visions hadn’t begun this way. They had changed, had worsened the closer to him she came. She had realized years earlier that her very presence had resulted in Jayson’s torture she had seen in vision. She had brought it upon him herself, or at least she had set the events into motion.

  Could that be happening again?

  Ivanore’s stomach clenched, and had she eaten anything in days, she would have emptied its contents on the ground. She shivered violently, and a pain bloomed from deep inside her skull.

  She had to go back. She had to end this journey now before what she had seen in her mind’s eye was set in stone. Surely, if she changed course now, things would be as they were, Jayson at peace in his field of wheat.

  She began to run. Out. Out of the forest. So many trees.

  She stumbled, crying, weeping at the thought that she could never see Jayson again. She could never endanger him.

  She had to find her way back to Auseret, but her mind was a jumble. The sun had not yet risen, and the moon was low. Every tree looked alike, every shadow like some evil spirit bent on destroying her.

  “Please,” she pleaded with no one. “Please send me back.”

  She kept running, dodging tree branches that seemed to reach out to tear at her clothes. She felt their stings against her cheeks and hands, felt the warmth of her own blood on her skin.

  Time had no meaning as she took her flight. She ran for a minute, an hour, an eternity. Ahead of her, to the East, the sky began to lighten. She turned South. At least she thought so. She was all turned around now, but she couldn’t stop. Not here. Not yet.

  Suddenly, she stumbled through the trees into a clearing. The abrupt change of the ground’s texture surprised her, and she bolted forward onto her hands and knees. Unlike the soft soil of the forest, the earth here was packed solid. A road. She looked up and saw more trees on the other side of it.

  Pain tormented her, and her lungs burned for breath. As though completely unaware of her, the sun peeked its morning eye through the forest, casting beams of gentle light through the trees.

  Ivanore lifted her eyes to take it in, and then she saw it. Right in front of her as if it had reeled her in like a fish on a hook. She gasped when she saw it, and tears sprang to her eyes, both tears of joy and tears of dread. For there at the side of the road was a wooden post stuck firmly in the ground, and nailed to it was a sign that read in the ancient tongue: Dastene Al Ashlin.

  Welcome to Ashlin.

  16

  The weather had taken a turn. A little late in the season, but the air was finally blowing colder, heralding winter. Jayson hoped they’d have enough time to harvest and the wheat once it grew.

  He stood on the porch of the big house, hands clasping the railing. He loved how the wind swayed through wheat fields, a sea of gold shifting and dancing like the surface of the sea. So, he looked forward to glimpsing the first green sprouts in a few days’ time.

  In the northern corner of the farm, several dozen men were busy on one of the ditches. He would call them in soon. They needed a few hours of daylight to set up for the ceremony, which was to begin at sundown. After that, there would be music and dancing well into the night.

  He could smell the delicious scent of the pigs roasting on spits behind the cabins and the sweet fragrance of freshly baked cakes and pies, enough to feed an army of guests, and that’s what they would have, surely. Every Guardian and his family would be on hand tonight, every man, woman and child who had come to hi
m for protection from the Vatéz.

  “It’s hard to believe the day has arrived,” said Teak, joining Jayson on the porch and lighting his pipe. Smoke bloomed from it and dissipated into the air. “Dianis won’t let me anywhere near her. Claims it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

  “So it is,” replied Jayson. He recalled his own wedding, a secretive and rushed affair with only the minister on hand as witness. But that hadn’t mattered. He and Ivanore were so deeply in love they wouldn’t have cared if they were the only souls in all the world.

  “Some of the men are out back setting up the tables. I’ll go give them a hand,” said Jayson.

  “I’ll come too,” said Teak.

  Jayson paused. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

  “I have time. No point in donning my wedding robe until just before. Besides, I think I should put this nervous energy to good use somehow.”

  “You’ll have need of it later, my friend.” Jayson laughed as he patted Teak’s shoulder. Together they left the porch and made their way toward the cabins where dozens of Guardians were busy making preparations. Jayson was wrangled into setting up a canopy over the serving tables while Teak brought out chairs from families’ homes and set them up in rows.

  They had never had a wedding on Ashlin. This would be a first and hopefully not the last. When Jayson had taken over the farm after Captain Dawes’ death, he had wondered how he would run it. Dawes had used indentured servants, men who owed him years of their lives due to financial debt. They were little more than slaves, unhappy and resentful—and not to be trusted. Jayson had decided to avoid using any man’s labor against his will, but he didn’t have enough money to hire a full contingent of farmers.

  So, when Gerard asked if the Guardians could live there and work the land in exchange for the peace and safety Ashlin would provide, it seemed the perfect arrangement. And it had been.