“What if…” he starts, and then pauses. I look up at him. His brow is furrowed, his jaw clenched. “What if bringing her back to Cerion somehow triggers memories? What if she remembers her past because of us? I just feel like it’s best for everyone if she’s left forgotten. We should have told them she was killed. Or maybe we should have told Iren to—”
“Don’t.” I interrupt him with a kiss. “You made the right choice, Rian. You spared her. She isn’t Viala anymore, she’s someone else.” Over Rian’s shoulder in the dim light of the hallway something moves. A shadowy figure. As soon as I focus on it, it flickers away so quickly that I wonder if it was ever really there at all. I rub my eyes. “I have to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be awful if I don’t.”
I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him, and he circles his arms around me and holds me close. Neither of us wants to let go, but we do eventually, reluctantly, and retire to our beds.
Chapter Five: Lurking in Shadow
Azi
“Who goes?” a guard’s call jolts me awake.
“Halt, I say,” he shouts. “Halt in the name of the Prince! Halt! Halt!”
“Halt!” More voices command, and with their shouts comes the whooshing sound of arrows leaving bows.
I’m disoriented at first until I see Mum bolt from her bed and grab her sword. This is our third night on the road and our third inn since Westhaven. It’s much smaller than the first. Mare’s Head is a small village. It’s much less grand and not nearly as secure as our previous stops have been. We all went to bed on edge and still half-dressed in our armor padding knowing that it would provide at least some protection if we were to be attacked during the night. It was almost as though we knew this would happen.
The clash of swords rings out in the street outside our window, and flashes of magic burst through the cracks of the shutters. Mum and Mya rush off and I’m not far behind them, my sword raised and ready.
Rian meets us in the hallway and follows our charge, and as we descend the narrow staircase I hear him casting and feel his shield spell fall over us. The sounds of the battle are louder now, more urgent. Metal on metal. Explosions of fire and lightning. Thundering footsteps behind us tell me that Bryse has joined the defense. I glance over my shoulder to see the hulk of a man bulging out from behind his tower shield, which is taller than I am and twice as broad. Behind him Da has his hammer ready and Cort his slender, elegant blades.
We charge together into the street and the scene that greets us shocks me. All of our soldiers, every one of them, lies lifeless in the dirt road, utterly defeated. I stumble back against Rian from the shock of it.
“No,” he whispers and points to the far end of the road. A hooded figure, terrible and black, glides toward us. As it approaches, the royal soldiers rise eerily to their feet behind it and stand in formation. Each one’s eyes are vacant. Dead. They remind me of the skeleton sentries that we faced at the Sorcerers’ keep in the battle of Kythshire.
Mum puts her arm up to guard me and the others arrange themselves between me and Rian and the approaching Sorcerer. The marching of undead boots thumps rhythmically on the packed dirt road as they near. Bryse readies his shield. Da raises his hammer. Rian murmurs so many wards that I lose track. It’s no use, though. The Sorcerer glides effortlessly through the wall that our family has created to protect us. As the robes whip around, curls of black tendrils lick at our guild members one by one. Mum falls. Da falls. Mya falls. Elliot falls. As each of them rises up again, blank-eyed, I try to charge but my feet are rooted to the spot. I can’t move. My arms are heavy. Cort falls. Bryse falls. His tower shield clatters to the ground.
The hood slips from the Sorcerer’s face to reveal a curtain of shimmering black hair and slanted, deep brown eyes. Viala. At her throat, a perfect diamond glitters brightly. My diamond. Flitt’s tether. Anger surges through me as she glides to Rian and slips her fingers into his auburn hair. He smiles at her the way he smiles at me, like she’s the only thing in the world that matters to him. Then she pulls him to her and they kiss passionately, deeply.
I wake up screaming. Instantly Mum is at my side, soothing me. She strokes my hair and I feel her calming pulse wash over the bed and settle my racing heart.
“Shh, a dream, just a dream, Sweeting,” she whispers as she settles beside me. “Do you want to tell me about it?” I shake my head and close my eyes, but the image of my undead family is burned into my eyelids. I open them again, but the darkness of the room isn’t much comfort, either.
“She okay?” Mya murmurs from her own bed and suddenly I feel foolish. Childish. I wonder how long I was screaming and who else heard me.
“I’m fine,” I say a little more defensively than I intended to.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Mya yawns and pushes herself up onto her elbow to look at me. “Dreams are important, Azi. They show us things that our hearts know, that our minds are too closed to see as truths.”
I know she’s trying to comfort me, but what she says only frightens me more. I don’t want any part of that dream to ever become a truth.
“Talking about it sometimes helps us work out the meaning,” Mum offers gently. I shake my head and turn away from her, and she sighs and tucks the coverlet around me. “Try to sleep then. We’ll reach the castle on our next ride. Be at peace.” Her final words carry with them a beautiful sense of serenity. My thoughts clear as my eyes close, and the next thing I know, it’s morning. I wake fully rested and eager to be on the road. Just one more day of riding and Rian and I will be able to head to Kythshire.
I’ve woken later than I’d like, and Mum and Mya have gone down already to breakfast. I throw a tunic over my armor padding and nearly collide with Dacva right outside of my door.
“Sorry,” he mutters, his eyes fixed on the floor. Dacva and I were longtime rivals through our training in the Arms guild, where we practiced swordplay for several years in the same troop. He took pleasure in rallying his friends to bully and torment me, and I paid him back by besting him in every spar and competition that we faced each other in. Knowing how things turned out, our rivalry seems pointless now. When Dacva’s guild, Retribution, betrayed the throne, Dacva took refuge with Brother Donal, my guild’s cleric. He traded his sword for a cleric’s mace, and he’s been following Donal ever since. Now that I’m a Knight and he’s an apprentice healer, I try not to play to my rank too much around him. The Elite are still wary to allow him to join, but Brother Donal insists on mentoring him. I imagine things between us will always be strained.
“Good morning,” I offer and step aside to let him pass. When he nods and moves to rush on, I note the bundle of herbs he has clutched to his chest.
“What happened?” I ask him, my insides suddenly twisting with dread. I think of the dream I had last night. A dark dream. I don’t quite remember the details.
“Her Highness is having pains,” he whispers, nodding toward the quarters where the prince and princess spent the night. My eyes go wide.
“Is she all right?” I ask. “Is the baby?”
“I think so. I think they’re both okay. Brother Donal is with her, and the midwives. And the physician.” He frowns at the last. Clerics and physicians often work together, but neither one is ever very trusting of the other’s methods. “We won’t be riding today though. That was agreed on early. I have to bring these.” He holds up the herbs.
“Of course.” I wave him on urgently and watch as he disappears through the princess’s door.
“I hope the baby is okay.” Rian appears beside me as if out of nowhere, making me jump.
“Rian!” I cry. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
He takes me in his arms and kisses me, and as my eyes close, my forgotten dream floods back to me. The way he looked at Viala. The way he kissed her. I break away from him and try hard to hide my disgust. It was just a dream, after all.
“Hey,” he says softly, holding me at arm’s length to look me over. “You all right?”
“Sure.�
� I force a smile. “Breakfast?”
The others are already crowded around tables in the dining hall when we arrive. I squeeze into a space on the bench between Bryse and Elliot even though Mya slides over to make room for Rian and me to sit together. Bryse is laughing over some jest by Cort and barely notices me, which is fine. I don’t really feel like talking to anyone. I push my breakfast of hot ground meal mixed with winter berries around my bowl as more of the dream comes back to me. The bloodied soldiers rising up into formation with the Sorceress orchestrating them. The glint of Flitt’s diamond sending a spray of rainbow light across the folds of her robes.
My hand goes to my chest where I keep her diamond secure in a pouch that hangs tucked inside my shirt. The pouch is there. I pat it. It’s empty. Panic grips me like a vice clamped over my heart. Losing Flitt’s tether is like losing Flitt herself. She trusts me to keep it safe. It’s the only way she can leave Kythshire and get to me. Me, or whoever holds the tether. I swallow the lump in my throat and nearly fall from the bench in my effort to free myself from the tight space between the two men who are oblivious to my sudden alarm.
I race to my room and search everywhere: The bed, my packs, Mum’s bed, Mya’s bed, Mya’s packs, Mum’s packs. Under furniture, inside furniture, between mattresses. It’s nowhere. It’s gone. I try to think of the last time I had it. Flitt came to me yesterday just before supper, so I had it here at the inn. It has to be here somewhere. I go through my bedding again. I take off my shirt and my undershirt and shake them out. Nothing. My hands are shaking so hard I have trouble dressing again. I barely hear the knock on the door and Rian calling in over the ringing in my ears. How could I have lost something so precious? More importantly, who has it now? The thought of Flitt appearing to someone else chokes me. I gasp for breath as I wrench open the door.
“What happened?” he asks. When he sees the state I’m in, his eyes widen in fear. “Azi, what’s wrong?”
“The diamond,” I whisper. “The tether.” I hold up the empty pouch. “How did I lose it, Rian? I had it yesterday. I never took it off. I never do.”
“We’ll find it.” He tries to calm me with an arm around my shoulder, but his touch just annoys me. “Here.” His fingers close around the pouch and he whispers a spell. My hair flutters around my shoulders as a soft breeze swirls around us, carrying with it a floral scent. A tendril of light swirls up from the pouch and forms a tiny globe. The globe bobs before us for a moment, and then darts off down the hallway.
“Follow it!” Rian says. He grabs my hand and we jog after it as it weaves through the corridors of the inn and outside into the street. We lose sight of it for a moment and then I spot it far ahead, dancing its way to the north along the road.
“There!” I cry and take off at full speed. The globe speeds up, too, through the village and down the road into a thick of trees. It veers from the path and disappears again into a thicket.
“Azi!” I hear Rian call from behind me, but I don’t stop. I crash through the underbrush and dodge around twisting trunks, focused only on the globe. It shoots through a thick hedge of ferns and I jump after it. I’m mid-leap when I realize my mistake. The other side of the ferns is a ravine, at least two stories deep. There’s nothing I can do. The light hovers above me as I plummet, taunting me. I scream, and just as I’m about to crash to the bottom I feel myself caught and lifted. Blue energy shimmers around me as Rian’s levitation spell carries me upward.
“Are you out of your mind?” He shouts as his spell settles me gently in the ferns. “What were you thinking?” I jump to my feet and turn, looking for the globe.
“It’s gone,” I cry.
“I dispelled the globe,” Rian says. “I didn’t know you’d be so careless about following it. Lucky I got here in time to catch you.”
“Cast it again,” I demand as I creep through the ferns to assess the climb down. Maybe the diamond is there at the bottom, buried in the thick green underbrush.
“No,” Rian says firmly.
“No?” I spin to face him. “Why not?”
“Because,” he says gently, offering a hand to me as though trying to tame a wild creature. His tone and manor irritate me. “I thought it would be in your room somewhere. I didn’t know it would lead us all the way out here. You’re unarmed and without your armor, and we’re a few hundred paces off the road in an unfamiliar forest. Be smart about this, Azi. Don’t overreact.”
“Overreact?” I scoff. “Rian, this is important! It’s gone and we have to find it. Flitt’s life depends on it.” I shove past him roughly and storm away toward the road.
“Azi, wait!” he calls after me. “What’s with you today? You’re not yourself.”
“Well for starters, I don’t appreciate being called stupid.” I throw back over my shoulder. A bush of thorns catches my pants, scratching through to my skin. I growl at the thorns that rip into my fingers as I yank it away.
“No, it’s something else. Did you have a dream last night? A nightmare?” he asks as he catches up to me. I pause. My hands start to shake again. He takes them and binds them with a strip of cloth.
“How,” I whisper. “How did you know?”
“I had one, too,” he says quietly and kisses my fingertips. My cheeks grow hot and I pull my hands away.
“Was she in it?” I don’t want to say her name. He’ll know who I mean if she was.
“No. Emris was,” he says. I shiver. Emris was one of the six Sorcerers we defeated at the battle of the Keep at Kythshire. I can see his evil face as plain as day, blue-black and terrible with swirls of the Mark so thick that his skin seemed to undulate with it. He tried to entice Rian to join him. In the end he was defeated by a wind fairy named Shush, and Iren, the massive, statue-like Spirit of the Shadow Crag, who drained him of his magic and ground his body to pebbles and dust. Rian goes on.
“He was marching on the village with an army of Mages. I’ve never seen so many gathered together before. They were using unfamiliar spells. Horrible spells. He was gliding at the front of them, and you were beside him.” He looks at me and swallows, and then looks away. “You were dressed in robes and covered in the Mark. I couldn’t even see the color of your eyes anymore. And then you reached for him and pulled him to you and you let him…” His breathing is shallow. He shakes his head.
“It was just a dream,” I say, my voice shaking. His was almost exactly the same as mine.
“So was yours,” he whispers.
We stare at each other for a long time in silence. I know he’s right. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. He loves me today as much as he did yesterday. Viala is gone, she doesn’t exist anymore. Emris is dead, his magic embedded in a single pebble and entrusted to the fairies. To Flitt. The thought of her chokes me up again, and then I have a thought.
“Did he have the diamond? Emris? In your dream?” I search his face and know the answer even before he nods his reply, wide-eyed.
“What does it mean, Rian?”
“I don’t know. But one thing is certain. You need to warn Flitt before she tries to jump to her tether. Hopefully she hasn’t tried to leave the Grotto yet this morning.”
He’s right. I know I can get to her if I think hard enough. I just need to set an intention to see her and concentrate hard on her grotto. I’ve done it before. I go to Rian’s side and take his hand.
“Ready?” I ask. He shakes his head. Tears prick my eyes.
“I knew it. You’re not coming.” I whisper.
“I can’t,” his voice is thick, like he’s fighting his own tears.
“I need you,” I say, moving closer to him.
“You don’t understand,” he says quietly. “I shouldn’t, Azi.”
“I trust you, Rian. They trust you. They said you’re always welcome back. Please.” I squeeze his hand. “Please. Don’t make me go alone. If she isn’t there—”
“She’ll be there,” he says firmly.
“Rian.” I say pleadingly. I can’t bear to leave hi
m behind. Not for this. I can’t face it alone. He reaches up and rakes shaking fingers through his short-cropped hair and lets out a long, slow sigh.
“Fine,” he says finally. “Do it quick before I change my mind.” He whispers a spell and I feel the air shift around us as we enter the Half-Realm.
“It’ll be easier from here,” he says.
I close my eyes and think of the Grotto that Flitt calls home. Nestled in a colorful corner of Kythshire, it’s a beautiful, tiny space with a sparkling pool full of graceful fish and a peaceful little waterfall. Rainbow-colored willow fronds drip down to graze the water’s surface, and the trees there are adorned with trinkets that chime melodically in the breeze. I think of it purposefully, and I feel the crunchy leaves beneath my feet fade away to be replaced with soft, spongy moss.
“Did you see that?” Rian asks from beside me.
“What?” I look around the sparkling scene hopefully, but my heart sinks. Flitt isn’t here.
“Not here. In the Half-Realm,” Rian says. “Never mind. It was probably nothing.” He closes his eyes and I know that he’s trying to keep himself in control. Kythshire is like a wonderful dream. The air here is saturated with magic. I can feel it surrounding us, thick and tangible, like the scent of a delicious meal luring me, inviting me to enjoy every last bite. For Rian I know it’s more like he’s been starved for a week and then dropped in the middle of a great feast and forced to resist it. I squeeze his hand and he forces a smile.
“All right?” I ask, and he nods. “Oh, Rian, she’s not here.” I pace, trampling the moss as fear and regret wash over me in waves, followed quickly by anger. I’ll find whoever has the diamond. They’ll pay. If any harm has come to Flitt, heads will roll. I think of my sword and wish for it and feel it at my back. For good measure, I wish for my armor as well and it appears out of nowhere, fitted perfectly as always to my body.
Call of Sunteri (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 2) Page 6