by T. A. White
“How did they get here?” Trenton asked.
“They’re expected to make their way here on their own,” Shea said.
Trenton snorted. “That explains why there are so few of you.”
Yes, it did. It didn’t used to be that way. Back in the old days, the pathfinders sent out criers to all the villagers and would escort any who’d like to make the attempt to the Keep. The only part they had to traverse themselves was the little mist, which had been significantly weaker back then.
That practice had ended before Shea was born. Probably even before her mother was born.
Now, the applicants had to find a way to get from their villages all the way to the Keep. It meant few even made the attempt and of those that did, even fewer actually survived to walk through the Keep’s gates. The bonus was that those who did were stronger for the experience.
Reece arrived then, another pathfinder at his side. Shea stared harder. She was familiar. Peyton, she thought her name was.
“My name is Reece. This is Peyton. We’ll be your guides for this little excursion,” Reece said, his face somber as he looked over the recruits. “Do what we say and don’t forget your training and you’ll survive the next few hours.”
There were uneasy glances exchanged among the students.
“He’s sure got a way of putting people at ease,” Trenton muttered.
Shea looked down, smothering her smile as Reece went through the list of rules that Shea still knew by heart.
Follow where the lead goes.
Don’t try to pet the wildlife.
Don’t go off on your own.
And above all, walk softly.
Short, simple, sweet. Yet, somehow, someone always managed to screw it up. She wondered if things had changed since she’d had to conduct these little training excursions.
Reece stopped speaking and the group arranged itself in a line. He gave a nod to Shea in greeting.
She filled in the back, Trenton and Wilhelm at her side. She took the rope, sliding her wrist through the loop when it reached her, before handing the end to the other two men.
“Are we going through the mist?” Braden asked, his face puzzled.
Shea nodded.
“Great, I needed to check up on the rear party,” Trenton said.
“We’re not coming out the other side,” she explained.
Both of them looked at her, their faces filled with curiosity.
“Shea!” Dane exclaimed from a few feet away.
Shea turned and found herself wrapped in a hug before Dane stepped back and clapped her on the shoulder. “You’re coming too?”
“Uh, yeah.” She took in his outfit and the long tube strapped across his back. It was the same weapon he’d had in the mist—something people typically called a whomper.
Dane looked relaxed, standing with an easy confidence. Over his shoulder, she noticed Peyton had drifted close, her eyes pinned on the back of Dane’s head with a hawk-like intensity.
“Just like old times then.” He thought about it and then lifted his shoulder. “Well, maybe better. If I’d known you were going, I would have told Witt to come to.”
Shea couldn’t help her smile. “That would have been nice.”
“Next time,” he said with a grin.
Before she could respond, Peyton whacked him on the back of the head. “You’re late.”
“Ow, Peyton. I’m only a few minutes late,” he said, rubbing the spot and glaring at the woman.
She rolled her eyes. “Stop exercising your jaw and get ready.”
Shea ducked her head and tried to keep herself from smiling. She was mostly unsuccessful.
“I’ll be right there,” Dane said.
Peyton gave him a hard look before moving off, reluctance in the line of her body.
“She’s always so strict,” Dane grumbled.
Shea pressed her lips together and lifted an eyebrow. “Is she? You two seem quite close.”
Dane shrugged. “She helped me when I arrived. When she discovered how good I am with the boomer, she got me the whomper. We’ve been working together ever since.”
Shea’s face was thoughtful. “You seem happy.”
Dane frowned and then nodded. “I am. I still miss home, but I doubt I would have been welcomed back. Not with what they tried to do.”
“Ah, you heard about that,” Shea said. She hadn’t been sure. He’d left before that had been revealed.
His face was grim. “Yeah. One of the village men I got out was in cahoots with Paul and the old guard. He explained what happened. Evidently, he thought he wouldn’t get swept up in the capture. Stupid idiot.”
“What happened to the rest of the men you escaped with?” Trenton asked.
“They brought us here to be questioned more in-depth. The others found places in the Outside. I’m the only one who elected to remain at the Keep. Haven’t seen them in a while.”
“The Outside?” Braden asked, his eyes sharpening.
Shea answered for Dane. “There’s a city just to the North of us on the other side of the mist. It’s where those who cannot pass the test but still want to be close to the pathfinders live.”
Both Trenton and Braden looked at her with something akin to dismay. To the Trateri whose entire culture revolved around family and clan, exiling someone to a different city would seem horrifying.
“Barbaric, isn’t it?” Dane asked, understanding on his face.
Agreement registered in both Braden and Trenton’s expressions.
“These people certainly have their oddities,” Dane said with a sigh.
Shea couldn’t argue with that, even if she did understand the reasoning behind such an act. She might not agree with it, but she understood it. She didn’t bother explaining that to the men she was with. There were some secrets that just weren’t meant to be shared.
“Dane, get a move on,” Peyton yelled.
“I’m coming, woman!” Dane shouted back. To Shea, he said, “I’ll catch up with you later, once we’re through.”
She nodded as he loped off, leaving them to prepare themselves for the upcoming journey.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Fallon watched as Shea and the rest disappeared through the Keep’s gate. The smile faded from his face, leaving the inner monster he normally kept trapped inside to peak through.
“You sure you don’t want me to send men with her?” Caden asked from behind him.
Fallon was silent for a long minute, temptation biting at him. After wrestling between what he knew was right, and what his instinct said was necessary, he murmured, “No. It’s a simple trip. She can handle this.”
He just needed to keep reminding himself of that.
It wasn’t the first time she’d gone on a mission and certainly not as dangerous as when she had gotten their scouts out, but Fallon still had to fight with himself every time.
A huge piece of him hated letting her do this. It whispered and tantalized, telling him he needed to keep her safe, that letting her go was dangerous. It tortured him with visions of all that could go wrong, of how he could lose her in a split second.
He was almost used to the feeling by now. It had only grown as his feelings for his telroi had grown.
He’d gladly massacre the world for her, conquer it and turn her into an empress, draw down the moon and stars if that was what she wanted. Too bad her greatest desire wasn’t power or wealth. Those things, he could give her in abundance. No, what Shea wanted most in the world was to feel needed and useful.
This filled a need in her, and for that he’d strangle his protective tendencies, swallow them back, so she could flourish as she was meant to be, not smothered by his shadow. He wouldn’t let anything harm her, not even himself. Their relationship would die a slow death of a million tiny cuts if he continued acting the way he had been.
Oddly enough, it was her parents who had brought him to such a realization. They manag
ed to make their relationship work by playing off each other’s strengths. Neither partner was stronger than the other. They were a unit, acting in each other’s best interests at all times.
It was the type of relationship his parents had. The type he’d like to see him and Shea achieve.
Still, it was difficult.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust in her and her abilities. Of all those he’d known, Shea was probably the best person on the trail he’d ever met. She had an intuitive sense of the world around her, but he knew better than most how unforgiving the wild could be. A single mistake could doom you. It didn’t have to even be a mistake. Nature was the greatest of foes. If it set its mind against you, it was almost impossible to survive.
However, he hadn’t gotten where he was by letting fear guide his hand. Shea needed this. It was in his power to give. He’d find a way to reconcile himself to it. It would just take time.
“Is he ready?” Fallon asked, long after Shea and the others had disappeared.
“Yes.”
Fallon pushed himself away from the edge. “Let’s get this done, then.”
Caden fell into step beside him as they made their way back inside the keep. “You know it’s not the end of the world to get to know your telroi’s father.”
Fallon stalked along in silence, not responding.
Caden didn’t let that deter him. “If she was part of the clans, you would have had to negotiate with her father after having proved your worth.”
“Is there a point to this?” Fallon asked, irritated.
Caden shrugged. “Just saying, look at it as if her father was clan and you needed his blessing.”
“That doesn’t help,” Fallon growled.
Caden was too well trained to let the amusement show on his face, but Fallon saw it nonetheless. It was there around his eyes and the corners of his mouth as they tilted up just slightly.
With a grunt Fallon stalked away, his long legs eating up the ground.
“It’s not like you to care what one man might think,” Caden said, not even breathing hard or appearing to hurry as he kept pace with Fallon.
Except Shea’s father wasn’t just a man. He was part of a powerful group capable of giving Fallon everything he’d been working towards for the better part of his life. Those boomers would give his warriors an overwhelming advantage, make it so nothing and no one could threaten his force.
That, and the fact that Fallon had never had to concern himself with winning over a father. In the clans, he was beloved. Any father would have been overjoyed had he asked for their daughter. If for any reason that had proved a problem, he could have won the right through combat.
That wouldn’t be so easy here. For one, he doubted Shea would be very forgiving if he damaged her father in any way. He knew his telroi. The woman had a heart as vast and loyal and steadfast as the sky. They might be estranged but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t set out to make the person who’d hurt her family pay.
It put Fallon in the uncomfortable position of having to care for someone else’s good opinion. He preferred it when he could just crush his opposition.
He arrived at a small courtyard at the back of the Keep. A garden had been planted in the small beds and an intricate path traveled through the bushes and flower beds. Shea’s people, he had noticed, seemed to be obsessed with growing things. Plants had found a place wherever they could take root. Even on some of the battlements. Fallon wondered if that had something to do with the amount of stone and rock the pathfinders surrounded themselves with.
Shea’s father stood with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes on a rose bush.
“Good luck,” Caden said in a low voice, remaining behind as Fallon crossed the courtyard.
Gravel crunched under his feet, announcing his presence.
Patrick didn’t turn, remaining fixated on the roses. Fallon didn’t speak. If this was one of his men or even an elder from a village he had conquered, he’d know exactly how to act. But this was Shea’s father, and that changed everything and nothing.
“I hear my daughter is taking some of our students out today with my nephew,” Patrick said, lifting his head but still not turning as Fallon reached his side.
Fallon didn’t feel the need to confirm the obvious.
Patrick’s face creased. “I can see why my daughter likes you.”
Fallon tilted his head, examining the man next to him before directing his attention to the plants, fighting impatience.
The man had said he wanted to hunt. Fallon didn’t see how they were to do that in this small courtyard.
“We should get started,” Patrick said as if reading Fallon’s thoughts. “This is the best time for hunting.”
Patrick disappeared through a door in the Keep, the clear expectation that Fallon would follow.
“I wonder if he thinks there are animals in the Keep that need killing,” Caden said by Fallon’s shoulder.
Fallon gave his First a look of irritation before following Shea’s father, again questioning why he was here. There were many things to do. Devoting precious time to this was not how he wanted to spend his afternoon.
Patrick led them into the belly of the Keep, and Fallon found himself paying closer attention, his suspicions roused when they headed away from the outside and any wilderness where they could hunt.
He’d expected to gather weapons and then leave the Keep before trying to track down some infernal creature in a bonding ritual. That’s not what he received.
Shea’s father headed toward the rear of the Keep, where it had been carved into the cliff behind it, a great monolith that cradled the keep in its stone arms.
It was the perfect place for an ambush—the corridors narrow and cramped. They were isolated from the rest of the Keep. No one to interfere or know what had happened.
Fallon was a great warrior, but he was also a man. Come at him with enough opponents and even he could be overwhelmed. He’d take down a considerable number of his adversaries before he fell, but he’d still be dead.
Caden gave him a grim look, his thoughts running down similar tangents, before resting one hand on the pommel of his sword. Both men moved through the corridors with an alert wariness.
Soon, they began to climb, some of the route forcing them to scale short stretches of rock interspersed with sharp inclines and the occasional rudimentary stair.
“Almost there,” Patrick called.
Caden muscled his way up to where Fallon balanced on a thin ledge. “Where is he taking us?”
Fallon didn’t know. They’d climbed a good way. Sweat made his shirt cling to his back despite the damp chill that seemed to permeate this place.
Shea’s father disappeared through a hole in the top of the narrow space they’d been working their way through.
“He wasn’t lying,” Fallon said. “Look alive. Whatever is coming will probably happen in the next few minutes.”
Caden shifted, grunting as he found a better spot on the wall that allowed him to take some weight off his arms. “I should go first.”
Fallon looked up, calculating their best odds of survival.
“Fallon, this is what I’m here for,” Caden said when there was no response.
“I can’t afford to show weakness,” Fallon replied. He headed up the way Shea’s father had gone before Caden could finish arguing with him.
Caden’s face turned frustrated as he grumbled, “There’d better be something to kill when we get up there.”
Grim amusement filtered through Fallon. It was a sentiment he wholeheartedly agreed with.
He reached the opening and paused, listening for sound on the other side. There was only the whistle of wind and the slight sounds of someone moving around. He didn’t detect more than one person, no sense that someone was waiting just on the other side, no held breath or small sound to announce their presence.
Fallon took the chance and pushed through the small
space, using the wooden ladder that had been secured to the stone. He pulled himself up, his movements slow and cautious.
No blow came.
His eyes adjusted to the faint light and he looked around, studying the long cave he found himself in.
“What is this place?” Fallon found himself asking.
Long and narrow, there looked to be some type of tracks anchored into the rock on the ground.
“We call it the Reaches,” Patrick said, busying himself over in the corner. “It’s natural, not man-made.”
“You sure about that?” Fallon asked, looking back at the tracks on the ground.
Patrick looked behind him, his face amused. “Those who came before us were quite good at using their surroundings to their fullest capabilities. It might have been carved over time by nature, but our predecessors found other uses for this place.”
Fallon walked to the edge of the cave, ignoring the wind that buffeted him as he looked out over the Keep. From this high, he could see over the mist to the mountain valley they had come through.
What could the people of before have used this place for?
There was a low grunt behind him as Caden pulled himself into the space. After a quick look around, Caden joined Fallon at the edge, stepping carefully and leaning over to look down.
“Quite a fall from this height,” Caden said, his face uncomfortable.
He wasn’t the biggest fan of heights and had not enjoyed their time in the treetop villages of the Airabel.
Fallon and he shared a glance before Fallon walked back down the long narrow cave toward Patrick.
“Why have you brought us here?” Fallon asked. “I somehow don’t think we will catch much game.”
No, the only wildlife they were likely to spot would be birds and the odd mountain goat—neither of which would be worth the effort, given the easy pickings in the valley.
Shea’s father looked up from where he’d brushed away some debris that had been swept in by the wind.
“We’re not doing that kind of hunting,” he said, lifting a small object from the ground.
He turned toward Fallon. In his cupped hands was a dull gray ball. Patrick ran a finger along it and the ball shifted, a tiny head with horns lifting as wings unfurled.