by S. M. Boyce
The isen just laughed. “You can huff and puff all you want, boy. It’s useless. Carden already told me about the one thing that scares you.”
She lifted a set of steel wrist cuffs from the pack on her belt and dangled them from her index finger. Thin spikes, just long enough to cut into the skin, bore inward on the shackles. Their tips glimmered with the green poison that could subdue even the strongest king and make him a compliant pawn.
Braeden’s heart skipped a beat out of habitual fear. He took a deep breath to fight the growing panic as he tried—and failed—to smother the sparking embers of childhood memories: a dark dungeon, rank with rotting bodies; the piercing agony of the cuffs; Carden’s laughter as Braeden, eleven, screamed and was forced to endure pain for refusing to torture a prisoner. He had to learn the ways of ruling a nation, Carden had said, and their nation excelled at punishing others.
With a deep breath, he snapped back to the present. Dust stung his nose, and his heart slowed as the memories vanished. He needed to concentrate. Killing isen was what he did best.
He settled into his stance and, with an unseen twist of his hand, shot six dark bolts of smoke from his palm. Each was aimed for the woman who had again glanced down to her fingernails, but she ducked out of the way without looking up, her gold cross glinting as she traveled.
The smoky curse landed instead on the unfortunate guards who had flanked her when she first appeared. It took root in their pores. Black vines sprouted from the smoke and raced up their necks. It choked them, spreading over their skin like a virus that forced itself into their mouths and came out their ears. They fell to the cave’s floor, thrashing as they tried to scream.
The isen sidestepped a fallen guard and drew her sword. Braeden swung. She parried. Her elbow cracked on his face.
Agony splintered across his cheek and forehead, but the skin began to stitch itself back together as soon as the pain spread. The stinging thawed. He grabbed and twisted her arm, forcing her to her knees. His hand shot for her now-vulnerable throat, but she wriggled free and his fingers slipped through her cold, soft curls instead. Guards ran toward their fight, but the isen held up her hand and glared at them.
“He’s mine!” she snapped.
Braeden grinned. She was arrogant. Good.
The isen turned back to him. “This is far more entertaining than I expected, little prince!”
She shot her fist into the cavity below his throat too quickly for him to block. He couldn’t breathe. He lunged for her neck to return the favor. She ducked out of his reach, and he snatched the gold cross instead. Breath returned to him. She backed away, and her gold chain broke as she disappeared into the darkness with a wink.
He threw the cross to the ground and scanned the shadows as he searched for her. The world returned around him in a sudden wave of screams. As he’d fought the isen, more of the guards had fallen prey to the curse. At least half of them writhed on the floor, wrapped in black vines that pulsed with their every movement.
A rush of gray in the corner of Braeden’s eye captured his attention. A soldier stumbled into the far wall, glaring as black vines climbed up his arm. Black smoke billowed from the soldier’s ears and mouth. He yelled and ran for Braeden.
Thunder rumbled through the tear in the roof. Braeden looked upward and caught sight of a dark cloud brewing in the sky. He reached for it, focusing his mind on the storm outside, and churned the cloud from afar with the heat that raced through his body.
The thundercloud swirled and darkened until the ceiling’s edges caved and dirt fell to the floor without a wind to push it. A boom shook the cavern. He grunted and pulled harder on the cloud with his mind. A bead of sweat ran down his nose.
The cloud gave in.
Brilliant green lightning flashed and filled the room, freezing the chaos in a blinding flare of grass-colored light. Thunder rattled the cave again. The air hummed. Everything froze in the blast until, like a sudden breath, the soldier slumped on the floor.
Sunlight glinted off the Grimoire’s clover symbol on the wall. Braeden’s stomach twisted one last time. For a second, he forgot the murderous din and the death all around him.
A flicker of movement sped by in his peripheral vision, and he turned in time to catch the shadow of long, curly hair running along one of the side tunnels. He bolted toward it and into a dark tunnel, which was lit only by the thin wisps of light that poured from occasional adjacent passageways.
His footsteps reverberated down the hall, mingling with the fading screams of the chaos he’d left behind. He paused, sniffing the air for pine or lilac. All he smelled was dust.
A low chuckle rumbled past him, surrounding him. It came from ahead and from behind, from above and below, but he was somehow still alone in the passage.
Something shifted its weight in the shadows of a dark side tunnel to his left. He narrowed his eyes and pressed himself against the jagged cave wall, his lungs pausing in the suspense. Heat coursed through him. He took a deep breath and peered around the corner into the vacant darkness.
The cold metal hilt of a sword struck his jaw. His jawbone cracked. Skin split, and blood rushed down his neck. He fell to his knees. Breath came in ragged gasps. He gagged. His vision blurred. Numbing warmth pooled on the broken bits of his bone as the skin, once again, began to heal.
His arms were pulled behind his back, and a new agony bit into his wrists. He stifled a yell. Bile and stomach acid bubbled along the back of his teeth, but he kept it at bay. An icy torment throbbed in his veins and pooled in his chest, stopping his body from healing. Blood trickled in hot rivers down his neck.
The isen squatted beside him, but he couldn’t lift his head to see her face.
She sniggered and pinched his nose as if he was a child. “These cuffs are extra potent, in case you get any ideas.”
She hoisted him to his feet, and a fresh wave of searing pain shot through his body. His chest ached. Blood dripped from the spikes in his wrists and fell in thick drops to the floor.
“Who are you?” he asked through gasping breaths.
“My name is Deirdre, darling”—she brushed some dust off of his shoulder—“and I always win.”
The Grimoire
Kara rubbed her temples and leaned on the submerged library’s stone desk, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the letter she could now magically read. She didn’t try to tell herself to calm down, to chill out, or to breathe. Her only thought was of how royally she’d screwed herself over by walking through that gazebo or lichgate or whatever it was.
She had walked through a door in a mountain. A ten-by-ten dirt closet had swallowed her phone. Her pack and stun gun had probably already been eaten by a bear. She had heard whispers while alone in a massive, underground library and opened a secret book called the Grimoire, which was apparently pretty important. She’d discovered a hidden pocket of Earth called Ourea.
In an effort to stay calm, she took deep breaths. It didn’t work. Each breath became a panicked gasp as she tried to figure out what was going on. Only, she couldn’t figure out what was going on. That’s why she was panicking.
It was a vicious cycle.
The flick, flick, flick of the Grimoire’s turning pages stole her focus. The last page lingered in the air as it fell to reveal a small block of red text on the otherwise empty beige paper.
I wish I could have caused no pain or fear, but such isn’t a reality of life. A treasure has been awoken within you—you are now a vagabond of Ourea.
She groaned. “Yeah, thanks, I gathered that much. So what happens now?”
The pages flipped to another image of the hooded figure, but this time he wore a thick leather band wrapped around his wrist. Spidery red text adorned the paper beside him. Something was off about the drawing, and she leaned in for a closer look. It took her a second to realize the clover pendant in her hand was also drawn into his wrist guard.
The last blood-red rays of the day poured through the skylight. She sighed. Her dad’s searc
h party would head out any minute, scanning the ditches for her body. Oh, he was going to love this story.
She resigned herself to the impending lecture and leaned in to read the red text besides the drawing.
This is the Vagabond as he was in life. He wrote the observations of his travels here, creating me over his lifetime. The trials he faced were treacherous, and you will fare the same. The life of a vagabond isn’t an easy one.
I was made to open only for the gifted and the strong. Be patient in the times to come and trust yourself, for you are worthy of the power here.
Though it may sometimes seem as if life is decided for us, remember that in all actions before this, you made the choices which brought you here. You alone decide where to go next. There is always choice.
“Freaking awesome.” She rubbed her eyes. Apparently, it was her fault she’d been dragged by a root down a dirt closet.
She fiddled with her locket and looked down once again at the tiny clover amulet. Its diamond wasn’t blue anymore, though it did shimmer. She slid it over her head with a quiet sigh, and the clover dangled just above her collarbone.
“Look, I just want to get home. How do I get out of here?”
The pages flipped toward the back, where a sketch of the library consumed the page and more spidery red text described how to open a secret door in one of the shelves. She lifted the book and carried it with her as she looked for the way out. At least using the Grimoire was easy enough. That had to be some small compensation for the unrestrained hell it had already brought upon her.
Kara scanned the shelves for a few minutes, browsing through titles like The History of Isen Guilds, Earaks are Evil, and even All Anyone Will Ever Need to Know about Beer before she finally found The Ways of Peace, the green cover mentioned in the Grimoire’s instructions. It was the last on its shelf to survive the gale from earlier, as the rest of its neighbors littered the floor. She took care not to step on them as she reached for the green book and pulled, rolling it back on a hinge. The crack of splitting rock broke across the room.
A rumble quaked through the library. More books fell. Two shelves pulled inward on the opposite wall, opening like doors and missing the edges of the desk by inches. Beyond the confines of her book-lined prison was a dark cavern, its roof riddled with holes that leaked in the twilight and dripping lines of rainwater. The broken remnants of a white castle tower lay against the side of the cave, most of its bricks crushed to dust.
But Kara had a visitor.
A brunette looked up from where she knelt on the floor. The fading light caught the glint of a golden cross in her hand as flowing curls coursed over her loose white tunic. The stranger paused, watching the library with narrow eyes, but quickly stood and sneered.
Kara forced herself to swallow the rising sting of fear in her throat. She should’ve just stayed in the stupid library.
Caged
Kara’s pulse raced. Her body couldn’t take this kind of stress for much longer. The brunette standing in the cave laughed and slid the gold cross into her pocket.
“It really is my lucky day!” the woman said. “So the Vagabond’s back, now? And it only took a thousand years. We were beginning to think you would never show up.”
Her arsenal of snappy comebacks exhausted, Kara shrugged. The brunette meandered closer, her loose curls sliding over her neck as she gloated. She stopped only when she could graze the Grimoire with her long, pale fingers.
The old leather book imploded at the woman’s touch, scattering its dust in the air. Kara gasped, and the clover pendant’s diamond glowed blue from where it hung around her neck.
“Bring it back!” the woman demanded.
Kara stuttered, unsure of what to say.
“I said bring it back!”
“I don’t know how!”
“Don’t lie to me.” The brunette grabbed Kara’s collar and lifted her to her toes.
She seized the woman’s freckled wrists without thinking. Heat flooded through her hands, just as it had when she pulled the clover pendant out of the lock, and something sparked in her palm. Blue light exploded from her fingers.
The woman sailed backward and crashed against a bookshelf, but Kara fell lightly back on her feet and examined her hands. All of the freckles and wrinkles of her palm were in the right place. There was no sign at all that lightning had just exploded from her fingers.
Books tumbled off the shelves, burying the brunette in parchment and crinkled leather that fell away just as quickly when the woman stood a second later. Her shoulders hunched as she glared, but she didn’t come closer. As much as Kara wanted to run, her feet would not listen.
“How long have you been the Vagabond?”
“Um—”
“You can’t even control what you are, can you?”
“Well—”
A white streak blazed across her vision, and the woman was gone. Something grabbed her shoulder and shoved her into the nearest bookshelf, pulling one of her hands behind her. An itchy material scratched her wrists. Before Kara could take another breath, the woman spun her around. Kara’s hands were now bound in front of her with thick rope.
“Hey! You can’t—”
The woman laughed. “I already did. My name is Deirdre. I want you to remember that, because this was too easy. You’ll want a rematch someday, and I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”
Deirdre dug her nails into Kara’s arm and pulled her away from the study. The rope wriggled like a worm as Kara struggled. Its fibers dug deeper into her wrists, stinging her fingertips with pins and needles as it cut off circulation to her hands. She stopped resisting, and the rope, in turn, was still.
They turned down a dark tunnel. Kara couldn’t see, and the only sensation besides the moldy damp of the cave was Deidre’s nails as they bruised her skin. They walked for a few minutes, slowing only when they neared the entrance to another passage. Light splashed from it, illuminating gray rocks that cast shadows into the hallway. They walked through, and the glare blinded Kara until her eyes adjusted to the rows of pale gray flame emanating from dozens of torches.
A massive cavern stretched into the expanses above, dissolving beyond the light’s edge into solid darkness. The torchlight illuminated a swarm of ash-gray creatures. The pores on their arms hissed, releasing streams of hot mist that hovered above them. She stopped to gape, but the brunette shoved her forward. Several of the gray monsters snickered or leered at the rips in her clothes.
Something roared nearby. Kara jumped. To her left, two lumbering monsters leaned on their forearms like apes. They loomed over her, their bodies clunky blocks of rock that sent pebbles falling to the earth with each movement. Each had a pair of gaping holes served as a nose. Their lipless mouths cracked and tore as they roared, revealing three rows of stubby teeth.
“What—?”
“Trolls,” Deirdre interrupted. “Don’t get too close. We want you in one piece, at least for now.”
The brunette tightened her grip on Kara’s shoulder and turned her toward the trolls. The beasts snorted and shuffled in place, revealing glimpses of a wheeled metal cage that was attached to them with thick leather straps.
One troll lowered its head, leaning closer when Kara passed, and its brown iris shrank as it focused on her with a look of uneasy curiosity. When she was close enough to touch it, the creature lunged, twisting its head to snap at her neck.
Deirdre swatted its nose, and it recoiled, screaming. Kara’s knees shook, but her captor continued walking as if nothing had happened, dragging her around to the back of the cage where two gray-skinned soldiers had already opened its gates. Another prisoner sat in the corner of the jail, his hands bound behind his back.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Kara said, finding her voice.
Deirdre threw her into the cage. “Everybody’s done something, darling.”
The gates slammed closed with a rattle. Kara swallowed hard and pushed herself into an empty corner of her prison. One of the so
ldiers peered through the bars, eyeing her over the brim of a crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken and left untended more than once in his life. He was easily seven feet tall, and everything about his build was stocky and squared: his jaw, his head, even his shoulders. He muttered something, his words rolling together too quickly for her to understand, and then he shouted in a foreign language to a group of soldiers nearby. They all looked over to where she sat in the mobile jail and laughed.
She draped her tied hands around her knees and tried to calm down, but she was thrown off balance when the crack of a whip sent the trolls and their cage lurching forward. Her cellmate stifled a groan and leaned against the bars, his dark hair sticking to the edges of his olive face.