The Curse (The Windore Series Book 2)

by Valya Boutenko

  Amelliea was beginning to regret coming on this adventure when she caught the harsh eyes of Gabriellen upon her. It was at that moment that Amelliea decided that she would ride the reptile or die trying. Galvan demonstrated how to mount the beast by opening the stable gate and leaping in one swift motion onto the creatures back. The silver reins had somehow easily ended up in his gloved hands, and his boots had slipped comfortably right into the stirrups. Amelliea doubted whether this feat could possibly be as easy as it looked. Galvan pulled on the reins, keeping his gator from bolting out onto the street ahead.

  “Your turn!” he called over to the girls.

  Gabriellen glared at Amelliea and then kicked open the gate to her reptile, spooking the animal. For a second the girl panicked as the beast thrashed in the dust before her. Then she leapt forward and barrel hugged the creature, straddling its back and catching it around the neck with her arms. The creature tried to roll beneath her, but she kicked off the dirt with one foot, and then the other forcing it to stay upright. Gabriellen grabbed the reins and shoved her feet into the stirrups. Looking only at the Prince she smiled and rode forward.

  Amelliea looked into the yellow eyes of the third reptile and wondered if it even liked to be ridden. Its narrow pupils hostile and calculating, it seemed to be wondering it Amelliea was snack-worthy.

  “Come on, Amelliea, you can do it,” encouraged Galvan.

  The girl took in a big breath of air, and opened the stable gate before her. The reptile instantly opened its giant mouth and lurched forward at the girl. Suppressing a scream, Amelliea lifted her foot and pressed down on the gator’s nose, closing its horrible mouth. Next, she quickly stepped on its thick head and neck, leaping into the seat strapped across its back. She picked up the reins in one hand. They felt heavy and cold.

  “Well done,” smiled Galvan.

  “But how do I make it go—oh!” shouted Amelliea as the creature jumped forward beneath her. It moved nothing like a horse. Keeping low to the ground, the gator whipped its body from side to side in a serpentine pattern. Every motion moved like a shock wave through the animal’s body, starting at the gator’s nose and finishing at the tip of its tail. Amelliea pulled on one side of the reins and the animal swept sharply to the right.

  “Gators are perfect creatures,” said Galvan, pulling up next to her. “As far as evolution is concerned, there is no room for improvement since every scale is perfectly positioned to serve the beast in the most optimal way!”

  They raced forward, catching up with Gabriellen. The dark-haired girl seemed unhappy to see Amelliea doing so well. She must have expected her rival to fail, having only one arm, but Amelliea had proved her wrong yet again.

  “What do you think?” asked Galvan, looking at the girls.

  “I think I love it!” answered Amelliea. She urged her gator forward and it raced across the desert, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Gabriellen stayed behind with the Prince.

  It was a pleasant breezy day and Amelliea raced on through the desert, quickly leaving behind the shelter of the canyon. Enjoying the uninterrupted horizon line, she found herself in the open flatlands that comprised most of the Gator region. Here, the lifeless ground lay cracked and dry beneath her, having been roasted all summer in the baking hot sun. Her gator wove its way across the flat ground, leaving four-pronged footprints in the sand that were almost immediately brushed away by the wind. Amelliea could see how one could truly prefer riding a reptile to virtually any other animal. The gators provided a smooth and flowing ride that was not accompanied by the thundering of hooves. In many ways Amelliea thought that owning a gator was smarter than keeping a horse in the Gator region, since reptiles were better equipped by nature to handle the contrasting temperatures of the desert, and they required far less water. Perhaps the only downside of such a mount was that unlike a horse or even a camel, a gator would never become your friend, and would more then gladly devour you at the first opportunity that presented itself. Amelliea heard Galvan’s laughter behind her and soon the Prince came speeding past her, his royal reptile superior to hers in its efficiency of motion.

  “Show off!” Amelliea called after him playfully.

  Gabriellen’s gator had nearly caught up with Amelliea’s but the creature was in no mood to run across the desert chasing after the Prince. Gabriellen’s gator seemed bored, and was lax about complying with the girl’s aggressive tugging of its reins.

  “Come on you stupid creature!” she cried in irritation, as her gator lagged behind.

  “Be careful,” Amelliea warned her, “You’re going to make it mad.”

  “I don’t need advice from a total novice!” snapped the other girl. “I’ve been riding gators for half my life!”

  “All I know is that animals turn on those who mistreat them, and these animals are more dangerous than most.”

  “Well look who’s afraid of a dumb lizard, miss hacked-up prissy pants.”

  “Actually I was born—” began Amelliea.

  “I don’t care how you lost it,” interrupted Gabriellen. “It’s missing and that’s ugly. Besides, being born deformed is nothing to brag about.”

  “Is that how you always talk?” asked Amelliea.

  “Is stupid how you always look?” retorted Gabriellen. She urged her gator forward, and the creature resentfully complied, snaking past Amelliea. “Finally, you lazy lump of lard!” yelled Gabriellen. The Prince was well ahead of them by now, and Gabriellen was eager to catch up to him. She lashed her gator with the steel reins, and that was when it happened. Gabriellen’s gator bucked its hind legs making the dark-haired girl bounce in her saddle, her feet coming loose from her stirrups. Before the girl could recover, the creature swung its head to one side, tossing Gabriellen from her seat like a rag doll. The girl clutched the reins in her hands and this was a mistake, for it resulted in her landing just a few feet ahead of the beast’s ferocious jaws. In an instant, the gator was upon her. Gabriellen screamed.

  Amelliea’s stomach was in knots, she urged her gator forward, and pulled a dagger from her belt. As she neared Gabriellen she tossed the blade as she had trained during practice. It struck true, sticking deep in the gator’s neck. Green blood oozed from the cut and the creature issued an angry grunt, before falling limp across Gabriellen, pinning her to the ground. Amelliea leapt from her seat, letting her gator run off into the desert.

  “Get it off—get it off!” shrieked the dark-haired girl.

  Amelliea strained to shove the gator’s lifeless head off of Gabriellen. One of the girl’s legs had been bitten, and there were several deep gashes in her flesh that bled profusely.

  “I don’t need your help!” shouted Gabriellen, trying to rise.

  “Yes you do!” yelled Amelliea back. “Now sit down, and shut up!”

  Gabriellen did as she was told, and using a knife Amelliea ripped a long strip of fabric from her own tunic and tied it firmly around Gabriellen’s thigh, forming a makeshift tourniquet.

  “What’s that going to do?”

  “Slow the bleeding so you don’t die,” answered Amelliea.

  “It’s going to scar isn’t it? I’m going to have hideous scars!”

  “You’re lucky it didn’t take your leg,” said Amelliea, pressing her handkerchief against the largest of the wounds.

  “Ouch!” screamed Gabriellen.

  “Hold it down,” said Amelliea, placing Gabriellen’s hand over the handkerchief. “Keep steady pressure,” she instructed.

  Sensing trouble, Galvan had turned around and was racing toward them.

  “It hurts!” moaned Gabriellen, on the brink of tears. “Oh my perfect beautiful legs! They are ruined! Who will love me now? I’m a monster! I don’t want to live, not like this!”

  “You’re going to be alright,” said Amelliea.

  Galvan approached them, his gator agitated by the smell of blood.

  “We need to get her to a healer,” Amelliea told him urgently.

  Galvan nodded, his fac
e grim as he took in the scene. He pulled a thin silver chain from his breast pocket and threw it at his gator’s snout. Clearly charmed to bind whatever it was thrown at, the chain wrapped itself around the massive jaws of the beast, locking the gator’s teeth securely closed before sealing together at the loose ends.

  “That would have been useful before,” groaned Gabriellen, lifting her head from the ground.

  “Gators are living creatures and binding them without reason turns them into vicious monsters,” said Galvan, dismounting. He knelt to pick up Gabriellen. The girl complained less now that he had arrived, and her face took on the noble look of dignified suffering. Galvan hoisted the bloodied girl up into the saddle, and got back onto the gator behind her. There was no room for a third passenger.

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Amelliea, “I will make it back on foot.”

  Galvan handed her his water flask. “Take this,” he said. “I will send my guards to come for you.”

  Amelliea nodded. “Hurry, get her help” she said, as Galvan urged his gator into motion. Amelliea watched them snake away across the sand, and before long the dust that trailed behind them had settled and she found herself entirely alone. Amelliea walked toward the canyon in the distance. She had not realized how far out she had ridden. For a long while she trod along, lost in her own thoughts. It was comfortable to walk with all the new muscles she had developed during her vigorous training at the palace. Over the weeks, her stomach had gradually formed into a six-pack, and her legs and shoulders rippled with lean, graceful muscles. Amelliea felt stronger than ever, and the simple act of walking felt effortless. She was quite pleased with the accuracy of the dagger she had thrown, and she slapped her hands together, imitating on a small scale the collapse of the gator she had slain. It had happened so quickly. She was glad to have saved Gabriellen, but Amelliea had never killed anything before, and the experience was a hard one. In the future she would strive to avoid killing anything or anyone if at all possible. As a warrior it was her job to protect life, and strangely that sometimes meant taking it. She was beginning to find out that being a fighter also meant carrying the burden of death, and being responsible for things that were not always her fault. She wondered if Galvan would be upset that she had killed one of his gators, and released the second into the wild. Amelliea had not known what else to do, and she had done the best she could in the moment action was required.

  Amelliea thoughts shifted to her father, and she wondered how he faired. She worried about him and wished he were beside her now. He was a great wizard, whose kind actions had touched the lives of people he did not even know, and was likely to never meet. She thought of magic. How handy it would have been to use a healing spell on Gabriellen! Perhaps it would be worth her while to learn a few spells after all. Amelliea sighed. Magic seemed so impossible to learn, but maybe with a willing mind it would prove easier? Amelliea paused. She heard a sound she could not place coming from behind her. She turned around. There was movement on the horizon. It looked like heat waves radiating off the sand far off across the plain. Heat waves in the winter? Something didn’t add up. Amelliea put her hand over her brow to shade her eyes and peered into the distance. So consumed by her thoughts was she, that Amelliea had not noticed the wind pick up. Now it whooshed past her, making her hair fly around her face. The plume on the horizon grew larger by the second. “Sandstorm,” whispered Amelliea, and broke into a run. She had heard of such storms from her father, and though she had never found herself in one before, she knew her best chance for survival was to seek shelter. It suddenly made sense to her why the Gator people chose to build their city inside the canyon, for it was a place that was sheltered from the destruction of the frequent sandstorms, which were a constant threat in their region.

  Amelliea raced for the canyon that was still several miles ahead. Sand was blowing into her eyes and she choked on dust. Her teeth felt gritty and her mouth went dry. Amelliea poured water from Galvan’s flask onto the sleeve of her tunic and hid her face in her elbow, breathing through the wet fabric to filter the air. She hurried on. Ahead she saw the guards of the Gator kingdom coming for her. No more than tiny specks in the vast landscape, they hurried toward her. Amelliea glanced behind. A wall of wind and sand rolled toward her across the ground at an alarming rate. She ran to the gator riders as fast as her legs would carry her, but that wasn’t fast enough. The sand storm caught up with her, and as she was engulfed, Amelliea tried hard to maintain the direction she was headed and focused on memorizing the landscape before her. An instant later the world was blotted out by reddish-beige. She gasped for air, feeling suffocated. Tiny granules of sand lashed at her face and neck, and any part of her skin that was exposed. The shifting wind shoved her body this way and that, pushing first from the front, then from the side, then from behind. Within moments Amelliea was disoriented. She moved on anyway in what she thought was more or less the right direction. The rough bursts of wind pushed her to her knees several times, but each time she pressed back up to standing and kept going. On and on she moved through the wall of airborne sand. She began to panic. Where were the gator riders? They should have reached her by now. Amelliea called to them, but her voice was cut off and carried away before it reached its destination. Amelliea coughed, and leaned into the wind. She knew she could not stand much more. That was when she saw a dark shape appear before her in the storm. It was a gator rider astride a reptile, emerging from the storm as though materializing before her. The masked man reached down to her, and clasping forearms with the girl, he pulled her up into the saddle behind him. In anticipation of bringing back a passenger the gator had been saddled for two riders. Amelliea fit her feet into the stirrups as the gator turned around and raced back in the direction from which it had come.

  Blinded by the storm the creature misgauged its location and it ended up bringing its passengers to a section of the red cliffs instead of the mouth of the canyon. It roared a pitiful cry, and the gator rider indicated for Amelliea to climb off. She did as he instructed, and the man unclipped the reins from his reptile and released the creature into the storm.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Amelliea, but the man heard nothing of what she had said. He gestured for her to follow him and began to climb a section of the cliff. In order to keep up, Amelliea had to release her arm from her face and hold on to the rocks. She was instantly lashed in the face with a furious burst of sandy wind, and she squinted her eyes and took small, shallow breaths, to minimize the pain and protect herself the best she could.

  They climbed for several long minutes until they came upon the mouth of a cave. The gator rider roughly helped her into the shelter. Relieved to be out of the storm at last, Amelliea rushed coughing into the dark space. The sandstorm howled outside, spitting sand onto the cavern floor. Amelliea leaned against the wall with relief, breathing deeply and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  “Thank you,” she said to the stranger.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered, taking off his mask.

  “Galvan?” asked Amelliea. “Is that you? What in Windiffera are you doing here?”

  “Saving your butt,” he answered.

  “You came back for me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered, stepping closer.

  “I thought you were with Gabriellen?” All she could see was his profile, and the reflection of the storm in his eyes.

  “She didn’t need me, and you did,” he replied. “She will be alright,” he said, answering Amelliea’s next question without her having to ask it. “Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice echoing lightly against the walls.

  “No,” answered Amelliea.

  “Good,” said Galvan. He brushed his fingers down along her arm until he found her hand. “Come this way.” He pulled her gently deeper into the cave. They passed through a section that narrowed and then sloped downwards. On and on they moved through the darkness, feeling their way as they went.

  “Watch your head,�
� warned Galvan, and Amelliea ducked below a low hanging rock that hung down from the roof of the cave like a giant fang.

  “You know this place, don’t you?” asked Amelliea, feeling the cool touch of stone on her hand.

  “I used to play here as a child,” he replied.

  “They would let you leave the palace to come here?”

  “No,” he laughed, “I would escape.”

  In time the cave opened up into a spacious cavity, where a large pool of turquoise water had gathered in the concaved portion of the stone floor, fed by a robust waterfall. The falling water was smooth as glass, and it steamed as it rolled off the rocks. Droplets of condensation that had gathered above, fell erratically into the pool, making a musical chiming sound. Several holes in the roof of the cave above them let in beams of soft light at varying angles. Dust particles swirling in the light indicated that the sandstorm was still raging up above them.

  “It is so beautiful!” cried Amelliea breathlessly, her voice echoing against the walls.

  Galvan smiled. “I have not been here in years, yet it is just as I remember it,” he said.

  “The water is warm!” exclaimed Amelliea upon running her fingers along the surface of the pool.

  “It’s a hot spring,” explained Galvan.

  “You mean to say it comes out of the ground hot like that?”

  “Yes, it is heated by magma.” He looked up at the roof of the cave. “We will be safe here until the storm passes.”

  “And we shall have ourselves a swim!” said Amelliea, kicking off a boot. She undressed down to her under garments, and stepped down into the water.

  “Do avoid the waterfall, I am told that it is a good deal hotter than is pleasant,” warned Galvan, with a laugh before yanking off his own shirt.

  Amelliea waded deeper into the pool, her undershirt billowing around her in a white cloud. “It is as warm as a bath!” she marveled. Turning around to see if Galvan was coming to join her, she noticed that the Prince was a good deal more muscular than she had imagined, but she pretended not to have noticed this, bashfully turning away once more.