The Lantern's Curse

by Hannah King

  Ayla and Camphraz had also been assigned to the kitchen and worked busily beside me and other fielders from our rank. As frightened as I was, I was grateful to be among familiar faces once again.

  “Do you think they’re right?” Ayla asked under her breath as we worked.

  “About what?” I whispered.

  “Everyone’s saying Leida’s been compromised, just like Ralstag was. They think that we’re walking into another trap,” she bit her lip nervously.

  Camphraz had overheard us. “I heard that Captain Tratis argued the leads into taking this route,” he shrugged. “I guess he felt pretty strongly about it, but I can’t see why, except maybe that it’s not the move the Parters will have expected. Leida isn’t going to welcome us,” he speculated.

  I knew a lot about what was going on, so much more than my friends and their snippets of hearsay, but instead of my knowledge making me rest easy, it aggravated me.

  I remembered Tratis’ restlessness, the stubborn look in his eyes. I believed him, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I’d heard all the options, and realized there was nothing else to be done, except surrender, as Lewis had so shockingly suggested. But of course, I couldn’t tell them what I knew; that Tratis had spoken with the Leiden leadership. I remained mute on the subject while the others panicked.

  “How do we know Leida isn’t in the same state Ralstag is?” one fielder murmured fearfully. “We’re walking into another trap, aren’t we? We’re never going to see our families again.”

  Camphraz took a large piece of bread from one of the piles and bit into it. Ayla slapped his hand.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in disgust. “This is no time to be wasting rations. We don’t want to run out of food and strength before we reach Leida.”

  He shrugged. “I’m hungry. I might as well eat what I want before the Leidens toss us out like garbage for those Parter dogs.” A few of the fielders offered their own disheartened comments but didn’t stop working.

  “What do you think, Tali?” Camphraz asked.

  “About what?” I mumbled with a frown.

  “Do you trust the leads?”

  “Yes, I do,” I heard myself saying, but my eyes flicked back to my work quickly.

  “Why do you trust them though?” he pushed.

  “Because I should. We all should,” my cheeks flamed.

  “Because we were all taught to do so in training?” he asked, cockeyed. “There’s more to life than just eating what’s fed to you, Tal,”

  “You wouldn’t think that the way you eat,” Ayla muttered.

  “I’m just saying, we’ve all done what we’re told all our lives. Isn’t there something to thinking for yourself every now and then? I would have thought you’d at least have a smidgeon of an opinion, I mean, you usually do...”

  “I think you should stop eating all your rations because you’re going to starve later and I don’t want to hear about it,” I fumed, my voice growing unusually loud.

  “But if we’re walking into a trap, wouldn’t you rather see it coming than blindly trust that everything’s going to be ok? Just, think about-”

  “I do think for myself,” I retorted. “But I don’t have an answer, and I don’t know everything. And unless you do, you might as well trust the leads,” I ended in a bitter voice, eerily reminiscent of Captain Gray’s.

  Camphraz should have known better. It was one thing to have doubts, but to spread misgivings through foolish gossip would only add to the fear in the camp, cause our morale to drop and our friendships to become strained. I knew how dangerous those kinds of conversations were. I knew how much damage they could do; how easy it was to dissolve over something small.

  There was a time and a place for revolutions, but we were already part of the one our parents, aunts, and uncles had started. We’d split once, and if we split again, we would only shrink beyond recovery. The loyalty we had shown to our cause and our king, and to each other, had been the only thing that had kept us together.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TALITHA

  I STILL REMEMBERED my uncle’s face, so changed from the carefree man I had imagined him to be when I was ten years old. The famine had broken him. The lust for anything better than the weary lives that we Cronins were living had brought a hungry glint to his eyes. I hadn’t known what was happening as he’d shouted at my father. I had never seen them fight like this before, and it scared me. I’d cowered in my chair, unsure of what to do.

  I hadn’t fully understood why there was so little food on our table, or how some men thought they held the answer to bringing back the country’s wealth. I only knew that Da was taking longer hunting trips and coming back with less and less. Mem was almost always home because the mill was closed, and the mill was closed because all the yatilda flowers had died.

  Even Mem’s loom in the corner of the cabin had silenced. I missed the whir and clack that it had made at night by the firelight. She’d always loved making clothes for me, and I’d used to look forward to the part where she would let me choose the color of the wool.

  Kneeling on the floor, she would set out a basin of boiled, deep blue yatilda petals. Then we would add salt, bit by bit, bringing out whatever shade my youthful heart desired. Sometimes we put too much in, and Mem had never hesitated to pour out the solution so we might start again and get the exact color that pleased me.

  During those days the yatildas had been Cronin’s livelihood. Rare in other regions, but greatly coveted, they craved the mild air by the sea and adorned every hill and field along the coast of Cronin.

  Our economy had been based on the trade of the flower and its dye. The common people were largely shepherds, harvesters and weavers, many working at the mill, their skin tinged blue every day at the end of work, but their faces satisfied with the fair wages they had earned. Yatilda goods fetched a healthy amount of currency when traded, and that reflected on the entire kingdom in those days before the famine. To have anything dyed with yatilda was a mark of royalty in many countries. For us, it was simply everyday wear.

  Not only was yatilda able to be manipulated into hundreds of shades and tones, it also added softness to any fabric. I had never been as comfortable as I was when wearing the clothes that Mem had made me. I would have given anything to trade my stiff and scratchy wool and leather garments for one of the smooth yatilda dresses I’d had back then.

  Then one year the season of temper had hit us harder than it ever had before. The season that was usually so mild for us had rushed in like a screeching hawk; harsh, relentless and unforgiving. We had hardly stirred from our houses for four months, enduring the bitter cold best we could.

  Then had come the season of night, when darkness fell over the land, lasting an entire month. When light had finally returned, the long-awaited glorious burst of green and rose, of birds singing and nesting while flowers pushed up through the rich earth, had never come. The season of color was dim, and bleak, almost like temper. The lengthy cold had destroyed the yatilda, and with it, our livelihood.

  The loss of the flower had plummeted us into a hopeless mess. We had struggled along, following the king’s instructions. Given a few years, if we could hold out that long, the flowers could grow back, we were told. If they didn’t, we could save money to buy seeds and start them again. In the meantime, we would shepherd our skinny sheep and trade as much simple wool and leather as we could.

  The king had promised things would improve. Whether or not they would have, no one would ever know for sure, for after enduring a long year of hardship we had come out of the season of night again, only to find that nothing had changed. Many had begun to doubt our king’s instructions, losing hope that we could wait out the return of the yatilda. That had been when one man had decided it was time to take our country’s future into his own hands.

  Faldir, a courtier of the king, had begun making long hunting expeditions with a company of his close friends into the land of Daun. He would return, bringing goods and silv
er, claiming he had traded the furs and pelts they had hunted. But it was all a guise. Faldir had not hunted animals on his expedition to Daun, but human beings. The trading of slaves had been expressly forbidden in Cronin, but while our king remained unaware, Faldir had continued selling hundreds of men and women to slaving countries such as Wrendell, Ralstag, and Leida.

  Momentarily, the kingdom had seemed to stand on its feet again. Faldir had become the hero of Cronin, saving our families from ruin. I remembered Da having a rare smile on his face one night when he’d come home, carrying a few pounds of flour with him in a burlap sack. He’d swung it back and forth in front of my mother and let the full weight of it thud pleasantly on the table. I’d watched my mother’s face light up at the sight of it.

  “Faldir brought it back from Wrendall,” Da had grin-ned, “Some for everyone who’s ever been employed at the king’s mill. He’s brought back spices too, and picks and axes, and new wagons so we can work toward trading timber.”

  “Lavalt keep him,” my mother had blessed the man.

  “I never imagined furs could fetch such hefty prices,” my father had pondered. “He and his men must have worked themselves to the bone on their expeditions.”

  “King Lardox must be grateful. Things are finally turning,” my mother had whispered while embracing my father.

  But the next night my father had come back home graver than ever. The king had discovered the truth behind Faldir’s story and been outraged. He had forbidden Faldir to take any further expeditions, relieving him of his position.

  Cronin and her citizens were to take no part in the slave trade that so many other countries depended on for livelihood, partially because we had never needed to kidnap and chain others to fatten our wallets, but especially because of King Lardox’s conviction.

  As a young man he had traveled outside of his father’s borders before taking the throne and had seen for himself how harsh the slave trains were. Those kidnapped were bound, beaten and forced to march for days with little food and water. When they reached a port, those who had not died from heat or starvation were sold at market or loaded onto massive boats to be traded with countries across the Northern Sea, never to see their families again.

  When Lardox had ascended to take his father’s place, his first decree had been to forbid the practice all together, much to the dismay of our merchants. The pressure to trade anything was strong in Cronin, being by the sea with our own port of trade. Still, the king had insisted we trade only material goods.

  Back then, there had been little temptation to break the new rule. The flourishing yatilda crop had doubled every year and satisfied nearly every need for us. We had found prosperity without heartache and guilt, and as the years went on, we had become proud of what we had built without the crushing of others’ souls and bodies. We had worked hard as a whole, saving our backs from breaking by working together, each feeling pleased to do their part.

  Year after year, news of the king’s edict had spread, and over time, Cronin had become a place of sanctuary to runaways, slaves and foreigners. Our people had grown into a muddled group, our language was twisted with different tongues into several dialects.

  I was born into a day when a Cronin’s skin might be brown or bronze or starkly fair, when ebony colored eyes smiled freely at blue ones. We had been recognized as a place of safety and of freedom, a place where wages could be earned honestly and workers were, in the majority of the situation, well treated and well rewarded.

  But desperation had formed a cloud of doubt over the country. Faldir had tried to reason with the king, pleading for the starving people around him, but had met a deaf ear. King Lardox was stubborn. He knew only what he would not do, and lacked the strength of mind to dream up what could be done instead.

  Faldir had turned to the people of Cronin, demanding that the king was being unreasonable. He’d spoken to the fear in the hearts of those who’d recognized the trouble we were in. He’d insisted we needed the money the slave trade would provide us, to get us back on our feet, to keep us safe from larger countries that would prey on us if we became any lesser. We couldn't wait. We had to take it into our own hands, he’d said.

  Thus, the people of Cronin had suddenly split. Many were weary of the way we’d been living. They had seen a spark of hope, imagined that Faldir would be their savior, returning things to how they had been, bringing back the prosperity they had known.

  But among us there had also been those who were weary as ever, and yet stood against Faldir’s plan. My father, my mother, my aunt, along with many of those who had come as runaways or been children of runaways and foreigners, had refused to stop our suffering by bringing about more suffering. They would not rebel against their king. They’d believed that somehow they would get through those hard times, that Creator Lavalt, in His kindness, would see them into better days.

  All over Cronin tension had been rising, but there were still more who stood with the king than those who didn’t. Those who followed Faldir were simply a rebel uprising that could quickly be snuffed out by the king’s army. The rest of us had set our jaws, tightened our belts and prepared to wait our misery out, planting what crops we could and hunting whatever we could track.

  There was division and anger in almost every home then. My aunt wouldn’t speak to my uncle, my uncle wouldn’t allow me to play with my cousins. The last time I had seen my uncle had been the day he and my father had fought.

  “We can’t stay this way forever, Daniel!” my uncle had raised his voice at my father, pushing back his chair abruptly as he got to his feet. “Wouldn’t you rather bring some life into that skeleton of a child?” His hand had gestured toward me.

  My father had stood to face him, his hands clenched into fists at his side.

  “She has enough to eat, I make sure of that.” His words had sounded calm, but his eyes were fiery.

  “But for how long?” my uncle had strained. “How long will you and Hera be able to starve for her sake? You’re wasting away,” he’d accused. I had looked at my father, thin and rail-like, his eyes sunken. I’d wished he’d had an answer, something to fling back at my uncle to show him that he was wrong, but he’d only sat down.

  “I will not come with you, Mitrov,” he had said wearily.

  My uncle had shaken his head bitterly and paused a moment before saying coldly, “You can’t escape this,” he’d warned. Uncle had glanced at me, his eyes full of regret, then he’d turned somberly away and left us, shutting the door behind him. Da had gathered me up into his arms, shaking his head.

  “They’re fools, Talitha,” he’d said, almost to himself. “They think they are strong enough to destroy the king.” Setting me down, he’d cradled his head in his hands. He had said nothing else to me then, but later that night I had overheard him talking to my mother.

  It was then that I had realized they feared for my uncle’s life. He had joined Faldir, the rogue who had disobeyed the king, and my uncle had been recruiting other men to join the cause. That night they were planning to march on the castle. My mother had gone to bed that night, crying for the brother she thought would be executed for treason the next morning. But when we awoke, we had heard the toll of the bell in the palace tower.

  It had not tolled for Mitrov and the rest of the revolutionaries; it tolled for our king. Fourteen horrible bells, the signal of a monarch’s death. Faldir had ordered it rung, so that everyone would know.

  The outcome left everyone reeling and dumbfounded. I was much older before it was explained to me how they had beaten our strong soldiers and king. Faldir had wielded a type of sorcery that had given him strength enough to accomplish what he wished. He had used dark magic to gather the resting creatures from the ancient marshes, and had bent their will to his. It was the shazod, the unseen, that had aided him; they had given the ragtag group the edge over the king’s men, and once these nightmares were released, our world was never the same again.

  A day had passed and we were warned that anyon
e in Cronin who remained loyal to the king would die. Faldir’s spirit was vengeful and hungry, reaching beyond to snuff out anyone that might threaten his vulnerable new state. There were still so many that believed as my father did, that mourned our king, that shunned the deeds that Faldir had committed.

  We had planned to fight back, to stay in the land that was rightfully ours, but word reached us that Faldir was sending his horrible creatures after us, and there was no choice but to flee the city, hiding in old barns and the attics of distant taverns.

  Then, as we had tried to catch our breaths and make decisions, we had been struck by the massacre at the South Inn; the deaths of so many we knew, accomplished in the dark by things that light would not reveal. Screams we would never hear, too far away in the attic of an empty grain barn, but would always remember.

  Hours before I had whimpered childishly to Mem that I wished we could stay at the nice inn like my cousins and my aunt. She had told me there simply wasn’t room. I’d laid down on the cold, splintering boards in the pitch black and tried to sleep, annoyed with getting the short end of the straw, oblivious to how narrowly we’d all escaped death.

  The three that had survived that night at the inn had played dead, huddled beneath the bodies of their friends until the creatures had left.

  The next morning, they’d shakily made their way to the rest of us and told us a story that had struck horror and grief in our hearts. Mem never told me so, but I’d known I would never see my cousins again.

  The stink of borage oil had filled our noses as we’d smeared our arms and faces with it; the old wives’ tale, once reserved for deep marsh hunters and fishermen, would save our lives many times in the weeks and years to come. That night we had vowed to never separate. We had rallied together, spurred on by the deaths of our friends and family members.

  It was Lead Breiden who had spoken up in the midst of our trembling that day. She’d once lived in the palace, as a well-educated scribe to the king. She had escaped to warn the countryside of Faldir’s plan to destroy those still loyal to the king’s ideals. She’d helped us to find temporary hiding places.