Shielded

by KayLynn Flanders

  Except me.

  I exhaled slowly, relaxed every muscle from my head down to my feet, and kept my hand on my sword. I needed to blend in. For now.

  The men’s circle around us tightened. They were near enough for me to see their empty eyes, to smell death on their skin. The gray figure approached. Mud covered his horse’s legs, splattered over its belly.

  He was a smudge of gray. Gray cloak, gray horse, as if all the light and color had been leached out of him. He waved his hand, almost as if in greeting. But this minor motion knocked Leland and everyone in the front of the caravan aside, like a giant hand sweeping them away, clearing a path to the door of the carriage.

  The gray man was a mage.

  And he was coming for me.

  Pressure built in my ears until my heartbeat drowned out everything else. My father’s tether tightened, winding around and around my ribs, crushing me from the inside. My muscles shook with the effort to stay still. To blend in.

  Surprising the mage was my only chance.

  My heart pounded. The mage dismounted and stalked to the carriage, my view of him now gone.

  The rain turned to a drizzle, then the clouds broke apart. Sunlight seeped through as a power thrummed over and around us, like a river rushing past a boulder in the middle of a stream. My ring warmed, its gem glowing brighter, absorbing the magic pressing harder against my body as the mage stalked closer.

  My hood blocked most of my vision, and the carriage blocked more. But I could see the mage’s shadow pass by the warped glass of the carriage window.

  He forced the door open and grabbed Aleinn by the throat, dragging her out and tossing her in the mud at the hooves of his gray horse. My mouth went dry. Would he question her to get to me?

  “Stand.” The mage’s deep voice grated down my spine like a dull knife.

  No longer held by magic, Aleinn pulled herself up with calm dignity. From hem to hood, deep-brown stains marred the silver embroidery of her cloak.

  No, not her cloak. My cloak. The one I had traded for her cloak of plain gray.

  I choked back a gasp. Ren’s tether spiraled into an anxiety that scraped at the bottom of my stomach. My father’s squeezed like a noose around me.

  Aleinn didn’t sob or plead or even tremble. She stood with her shoulders back, face shadowed. The trees on either side of the road swayed and shook, yet the wind never managed to reach us.

  But the gray figure didn’t attack. He instead dropped the cowl obscuring his face. His profile was normal enough—strong nose, sharp cheekbones. Yet everything about him was blurred at the edges, as if he were neither here nor there. An empty scabbard was buckled at his waist, but he pulled a silver dagger from within his cloak. He turned Aleinn to face those of us he hadn’t swept aside. He drew back the hood of her cloak and grabbed her hair, forcing her chin into the air. She gasped but still didn’t speak. Mud smeared her face. Deliberate swaths.

  No.

  “King Marko of Turia has asked me to deliver a message.” The mage’s voice echoed off the trees, the silence amplified after its absence. “The rulers of Hálendi are dead.”

  My mind emptied for a terrifying moment. The tethers had sharpened to near-perfect clarity since entering the Wild. Father’s fear had changed to determination, the cord a band of thick steel. The mage was lying.

  But the mage grinned, showing too many gray teeth. Suddenly, his whole being sharpened into focus.

  And then my father’s tether snapped.

  Gone. Like a thick branch breaking from its tree. Like a limb.

  Blistering pain radiated from my middle out to the tips of my fingers and toes. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t force air into my lungs. Just like that, my father—

  My eyes locked on the mage, and even though his magic still didn’t affect me, I was as frozen as everyone else.

  Ren.

  I focused on his tether with everything I had.

  Still alive.

  Nothing existed beyond this connection with my brother. Not the earthy smell of the mud after the rain, not the puffs of men and women straining against an invisible force immobilizing them. Nothing.

  The mage’s face twisted in fury, and then I felt it. First a slight tug on the invisible cord connecting me to my brother, like the pluck of a string on a fidla. Then the tether shredded into an unrecognizable mess, a yawning agony at my core.

  Ren had been ripped from me, too.

  My vision blackened around the edges, and I swayed on my horse. The mage’s head snapped up, and he swept his gaze over the crowd. Stay still. I had to blend in. Had to.

  A deep coldness saturated my extremities. An excruciating throbbing marked the jagged edges of the broken tethers.

  They were dead. My father and brother were dead.

  And I was next.

  The heavy blanket of magic flickered. Birds shrieked in the Wild, but the sound was muffled, barely reaching me. My ragged intake of breath broke the final beat of silence.

  The soldiers on the road, who had been thrown from the mage’s path, finally scrambled up with a shout, rushing toward the empty-eyed attackers surrounding us. Magic flickered in the clearing again, then disappeared like a snuffed-out candle.

  The clang of metal on metal tore through the clearing as everyone around me charged into action. Boots stuck and slipped in the slushy mud; the coppery scent of blood already tinged the air as our attackers crashed against us. Hafa stayed by my side, waiting to strike anyone who came near.

  I couldn’t pull my eyes from the mage. Couldn’t move. He jerked his fistful of Aleinn’s hair so her head tipped to the side. He leaned in. His lips moved. He spoke to her, words only she could hear. Liquid ore pulsed in my veins instead of blood.

  She met my gaze and quirked her lips up, almost a smile, then closed her eyes against the sun’s brightness and relaxed in its warmth.

  The mage’s face twisted into a snarl, and he dragged his knife across her throat.

  My mouth opened in a silent scream. Something small and fragile inside me snapped—a tether I hadn’t even known existed. Blood now mixed with the mud on her clothing. She’d never open her eyes again.

  I knew what she had done. Our coloring and build were similar. She was wearing my cloak. She’d smeared mud on her face.

  She had traded her life for mine.

  No. She couldn’t have. She hadn’t even said goodbye to her parents. There hadn’t been time before we left. It was supposed to be only until I got settled. Then she’d return. See her brother again. Her family.

  I knew their pain. It lived raw inside me.

  A piercing scream clawed its way from my throat. The mage released Aleinn’s hair, and she sagged to the ground.

  No.

  I kicked my horse toward her limp body, but someone grabbed my reins and pulled. A hand roughly squeezed my shoulder. Leland. Dark-red blood smeared across half of his face from a gash in his cheek. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear over the high-pitched ringing in my ears.

  I shook my head. Chaos surrounded me. Soldiers, servants, and the mage’s army fought and fell and cried all at once. Master Hafa, still at my side, swung at anything he could reach.

  I hadn’t even drawn my sword yet.

  “Jennesara, listen to me!” Leland yelled.

  A ring of our muddy soldiers pushed off wave after wave of the mage’s army. I sat in the middle like the bull’s-eye of a target.

  If everyone was protecting me, I realized, the mage might see that he hadn’t killed the right girl.

  Leland still held my horse’s reins. “Jenna!”

  My gaze snapped to his.

  Father. Ren. Aleinn.

  Dead.

  “We can try to outrun them,” Hafa shouted.

  Leland cursed and yanked my horse closer. “There are t
oo many. But Jennesara might outrun them in the Wild. I’ll go with—”

  “No!” Hafa bellowed beside me as he swung at the clubs beating at his horse. “She’ll never make it!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Leland screamed. He hacked at something I couldn’t see on the other side of him.

  Someone crashed into Gentry from behind, and she kicked out. I snatched my reins from Leland. Don’t go off the road. Don’t go…

  Master Hafa’s beard twitched, sweat running down his face and smearing specks of blood and mud into a canvas of war. “Go,” he finally rasped to me. His expression turned to stone. “Survive, or that gray monstrosity wins.”

  I knew his look. The one that said failure was not an option. But I also saw how tight he gripped his sword. How his horse shuddered beneath him.

  “Go!” he yelled again.

  I reined in my sidestepping horse. The shredded tethers shrieked inside me. My numb mind latched on to Hafa’s command. Death would surely come here, or death might find me in the Wild. But I was the only one left in my family. The sole heir.

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out.

  I turned my horse, found a gap in the fighting, and escaped into the brush. Thorns scraped against my cheeks, latched on to my trousers and cloak as if to pull me back to the road.

  Once I was through, the clashes of metal and cries of battle were immediately muted behind me, as though a thick wall stood between me and the fighting. Hafa’s bellow rose above everything else, and I turned Gentry so I could peek through the foliage. Hafa had spotted the mage.

  They were impossibly fast as they tore into each other. A wide circle opened around them to avoid their wild blades. The mage used a dirty sword from one of his men. Hafa swung again and again, pushing the mage back a step with each attack. I gripped my sword. Even outnumbered by their men, maybe I could help kill the mage.

  And then the mage’s blade found Hafa’s chest. A move he never saw coming. A move I never saw coming. Hafa fell to his knees in the mud, then toppled to the side.

  The greenery spun around me. I gasped in a breath. How long ago had I stopped breathing? Leland burst through the brush with a murderous gaze fixed on my still form. I understood then why others feared him in battle.

  “What—” he screamed, but three of the mage’s men spilled in after him.

  I put my head down, turned Gentry toward the Wild, and kicked her flanks. Branches and wet leaves whipped at my face and snagged my cloak. A few strides beyond the trees, the shrieking faded. Crunching hoofbeats followed fast behind, though. Hafa. Aleinn. Ren. Father. I dug my knees into Gentry and pushed her harder.

  No matter what turn I made, how fast we ran, I couldn’t lose my pursuer. We pressed into the Wild for what felt like hours. Days, maybe. Gentry’s sides heaved, matching my own gasping breaths. She found a narrow path up a hill, widening our lead. We broke through a line of trees, and the land in front of us dropped away. Sheer rock walls lined a deep, narrow ravine with more forest looming on the other side.

  I yanked the reins hard to the right. Gentry’s hooves slid for a moment, but she found traction and raced along the cliff. We pounded across fifty feet of open ledge as stones skittered over the side. I peeked down and saw a raging river swollen with snow runoff twenty feet below. Steep, smooth rock walls lined the chasm. I could push back into the forest, but Gentry would tire eventually and I knew I’d be caught. If it was the mage following, I’d be dead.

  Survive, or that gray monstrosity wins.

  There was no time to think. No time to decide. My instincts were all I had left.

  The Wild hadn’t spit me out yet. I steered Gentry as close as I could get her to the cliff’s edge, then wrapped her reins around the pommel of her saddle and pulled my feet out of the stirrups. “Be safe, girl,” I whispered.

  Then I slapped her flank to keep her running, and I jumped.

  * * *

  Icy water engulfed me. I tucked my knees up to my chest, but I didn’t hit bottom straight off. The current dragged my body along, tossing me end over end as my cloak and boots and sword and layers of clothes dragged me deeper. My ears and face and hands ached with the cold. My lungs screamed for air as my heart pounded in my chest.

  I kicked my legs but couldn’t find a foothold to push off from, wasn’t even sure which way was up. My mind numbed along with my body. Even the hole where the tethers used to be wasn’t as painful.

  My cloak suddenly tightened around my neck. I wrenched at it, trying to free it from whatever had caught hold of it. I reached back and followed the cloth, hand over hand. A log. It was snagged on a log.

  Logs float.

  My hands scraped against the jagged bark and pulled me up, gasping and sputtering when I broke the river’s surface.

  I got in an entire lungful of air. Two. And then a black horse and its rider appeared on the cliff’s edge, barreling toward the forest where Gentry had disappeared.

  I dunked myself underwater, keeping a tight hold on the log, which was wedged between a boulder and the wall of the canyon. My legs kicked against the current so I could move under the log to the other side. I surfaced in time to see my pursuer swallowed by the Wild once again.

  My teeth chattered as I clung to the log. The rock walls were too slick to scale—I had only one path to escape. I needed to move before the rider realized I wasn’t on my horse.

  I braced myself against the canyon wall and pushed the log. It didn’t budge. The current clawed at my cloak and boots to drag me beneath the surface. I filled my lungs and sank below the rushing water, keeping my grip tight on the wood as I followed it to the boulder and the wall it was wedged between. I got underneath it, eyes shut tight against the icy water, moving by touch alone. Rushing filled my ears, and my chest ached. But I found a foothold and pushed again.

  The log shuddered, then dislodged and started spinning with the current. Kicking to stay afloat, I wrapped my cloak around myself to keep it from catching once more and put both arms around the log, pressing my face into it as I bounced up and down on the river’s current. After several tries, I found a spot I could hold on to and keep my head above water.

  The canyon walls eventually tapered down, and the river widened and slowed. Thick trees jutted into the sky from the edge of a sandy shore. The forest was bursting with noise: the river’s lap against the bank, birds above and animals below. But no sign of the rider.

  The sun’s harsh light signaled its descent into evening. I had no tent. No fire. If I didn’t get out of the river and dry off, I could freeze to death, and what good would my escape be then?

  I waited for a rocky shore before leaving the water, remembering Master Hafa’s warnings about footprints in sand. In a lurching, stumbling crawl, I dragged myself out of the river.

  Dead.

  Dead.

  Dead.

  Three beats pounded in my head for my father, my brother, and Aleinn. I clutched at my damp tunic, trying to ease the pain in my chest. Master Hafa. General Leland. All those soldiers and servants. They’re…I couldn’t even finish the thought.

  I was alone.

  Survive, or that gray monstrosity wins.

  Master Hafa’s voice penetrated the fog clouding my thoughts. Survive.

  I pushed my wet hair out of my face and forced my legs to stand. Evergreens towered above, and the underbrush was no longer spiny like it was near the road. Now, soft ferns blanketed the forest floor in innumerable shades of green. My shivering abated—the air was warm. Unnaturally warm.

  A bird darted overhead, its long blue-green wings a blend of the sky above and the woods below. I craned my neck, watching until it flew back into the trees.

  I’d never in my life seen a bird that color. I’d never even read about one. I closed my eyes as the events of the day hit me hard all over again.

  I was alon
e in the Wild.

  On the other bank of the river, the emerald mass of trees and brush could conceal any number of threats. Even the mage’s entire army. I shuddered and wrung out my cloak, then held it so its damp weight wouldn’t strangle me. I needed to get away from the river—the last connection to my pursuer.

  With my first steps into the shadows, my boots sank into tender soil. The chattering squirrels quieted, and I sensed eyes watching me. I inhaled air that smelled like fresh rain and tasted like berries, but the leaves and ground were dry. The ferns caressed me, welcoming me into the Wild’s embrace, yet every kindness sharpened my agony.

  I hiked as far as my shaking, battered legs would go, while the sun dipped toward the horizon. I carried my sword to dry it off. And to stay alert.

  A steady beat against my skull kept time for my shuffling march. Sweat dripped down my temples and soaked my collar. I kept my eyes trained on the ground in the fading light as I dragged one foot in front of the other—until I slammed into something hard and landed in a bed of tiny pink flowers. Flowers that bloomed only in late summer. A fallen tree lay across my path, its trunk wider than I was tall. Smaller trees grew from its remains, thin branches unfurling over the wreckage.

  My spent legs wouldn’t hold me up again.

  One thought carved into me despite my exhaustion: I shouldn’t have run away. Leland and Master Hafa had commanded it, but if I’d stayed, fought the mage with Master Hafa, perhaps…I shoved the thought, the memory, away. I couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t bear it.

  Master Hafa always told me to listen to my instincts and trust them, but nothing here made sense. I felt for the tethers, pushing through the curtain of pain, hoping there had been some mistake. But they were still torn and broken, just as my mother’s had been.

  I had no one left, nowhere safe to go. Would anyone even care if I somehow managed to make it out of the Wild alive?

  I slumped over and burrowed out a small hole in the leaves and dirt at the tree trunk’s base, overshadowed by its wide girth. I wrapped my damp cloak around me and lay in the hole, covering myself with as much displaced dirt and leaves as I could.