The Immortal Walker

by McKellon Meyer

  “What were you doing in the Royal City?” Kaislyn asked.

  “Do I need a reason to visit my cities? Cities that I love above my own life?”

  “You love those cities as much as you do me,” Kaislyn said, rolling her eyes.

  “Some would consider hatred a perverse form of love,” said Ikaros.

  “Then I must be madly in love with you.”

  Ikaros frowned and did not answer.

  Kaislyn pointed across the valley. “Look, there’s a vulture. Circling endlessly over the ruin of others. Just like you.”

  Ikaros squinted into the distance. “Perhaps, but I see two of them. One for each of us. How did you enjoy your own circles in the Royal City? How lovely they must have been.”

  Kaislyn’s frail self-control snapped. She turned, swinging a fist at him, completely forgetting about her knife. Ikaros ducked with a laugh. He caught her in the stomach, and Kaislyn stumbled backward, toward the edge. She pin-wheeled, trying to keep her balance.

  Ikaros leaned closer, face twisted in a delighted smirk. “Good-bye, little walker.”

  A gold earring dangled tantalizingly in front of her. Kaislyn flailed a hand at him. Her fingers brushed the earring. She yanked and pulled Ikaros over the edge with her.

  For a few long seconds, she was cushioned by the air, suspended above the mountain slope. Then she crashed into the waiting underbrush with a crack of branches and spray of stones. Eyes clenched shut, Kaislyn rolled and tumbled. The sound of her mad rush filled her ears.

  Her descent ended with a burst of pain throughout her body as she hit a tree. The world spun wildly before tilting into place. She smelled pine needles. A groan made its way through her bruised ribcage and into the air. Then another.

  No, not another. That wasn’t her.

  Turning her head, she saw Ikaros in a crumpled heap against another tree. His black robes were torn and muddy. Sticks and leaves dotted his hair, and there was blood smeared across his face. Kaislyn suspected she looked very similar.

  His blue eyes focused on her, shining with pain and rage. “You... vixen,” he rasped.

  Kaislyn pushed loose hair out of her face and realized she was holding something in her fist. Unfurling her fingers, she stared at the gold earring attached to a pink lump. Kaislyn gulped back a cry of disgust. She looked at Ikaros, and reconsidered the blood smeared across his head.

  She held up her prize and bared her teeth. “Lose something?”

  Snarling, Ikaros lunged toward her and fell several feet short.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she taunted him. It hurt to talk, hurt to breathe. Cracked ribs, possibly broken ones. Her lips twitched in a smile. It could be worse; she could have lost an ear.

  Ikaros staggered to his feet again. He was bleeding from numerous cuts. From the way his arm hung, it must have broken in at least two places. “Blast the cities, why aren’t you dead?” he wheezed.

  “I got lucky.” She climbed to her feet and an expletive escaped her as her ankle gave out.

  Ikaros fell into her and they tumbled to the ground.

  “Damnation,” Kaislyn gasped. She wasn’t about to give up the earring. An agonizing wrestling match began as each, battered and broken, fought over the earring.

  Freeing herself at last from Ikaros, she crawled away. Ikaros limped after her. A steady stream of profanities in the Old Language fell from his lips. Kaislyn only recognized a few of them. The rest she filed away for future use.

  She grabbed a tree and pulled herself to her feet. “I win,” she gloated. Waving the earring and ear at Ikaros, she took a step and Shifted.

  The air shimmered with intense heat, smelling of sulfur, and her hair began to frizz and crackle. The dried leaves beneath her withered and burst into flames. To finish the Shift, she had to step onto her bad foot. She forced herself to take the step and the shimmering heat and sulfur smell vanished. She sneezed.

  Ikaros was gone.

  Kaislyn slipped and fell against the ground as pain shot up through her body from her ankle. Through the distant treetops she could see stars fading in a sky turning grey and pink with dawn.

  She ran a hand through her hair, making sure there were no stray bits of flames left. It took a few minutes to uncurl her other hand. To her mild surprise, the earring and pink flesh of earlobe were still there.

  “Ha,” she said, voice hoarse. Wrinkling her nose, she shook her hand free of the ear and pocketed the earring.

  Kaislyn closed her eyes and lay where she was. Safe. Ikaros was in worse shape than she was and she doubted he would try to follow her.

  Everyone talked about the powers of the Phoenix Queen and of the royal Phoenix House. Often forgotten was the less flashy Serpent House. Ikaros was the last heir of both houses, but Sveka was the last heir of the Serpent House, inheriting the serpent part of it.

  Kaislyn shuddered. She hated her mother’s snake. Hated snakes in general and Mael in particular. Fortunately, the snake avoided her as much as she did him.

  Everyone called it the Serpent House, but that wasn’t accurate. It was the Immortal House. Ikaros embodied its meaning by living long past any natural lifespan. Proved it each time he didn’t die from a life-ending injury. Kaislyn was the same way. When she wasn’t being stupid and letting Ikaros catch her in her birth life.

  Birth life.

  She had two lives. One was normal and as uncomplicated as a tapestry thread. It began in one spot, wove in and out of other threads, other lives, and ended. What everyone else merely called “life,” she had to define separately as her birth life. The life in which she was born and would—could—die permanently.

  Then there was her immortal life. The life she had when she left—Shifted—out of her birth life. No longer a thread but a dye. Dropped onto the tapestry, bleeding across the threads in every direction at once, influencing and changing lives all in one go. Stained, permanent.

  Dying was merely an inconvenience in her immortal life.

  The Immortal House might have powerful gifts, but they were painful ones. Kaislyn let her breath go in a loud exhale. Her body ached and she knew from experience that soon she’d be as purple as a raisin from the bruises.

  She forced herself to her feet and hobbled from tree to tree, searching for a branch to use as a walking stick.

  “Naturally, I’d picked the only spot on the entire mountain that doesn’t have any spare sticks lying around,” she complained as the latest branch she found broke under her weight.

  The only thing to do was to start walking. Each step hurt, each breath short and harsh. Immortal Walker. Ha! The irony of Ikaros’ name for her did not escape Kaislyn.

  How far should she hobble before Shifting to her birth life? She didn’t want to risk meeting Ikaros again in case he lingered still after their fight.

  Kaislyn was determined not to live her life in one random Shift after another. Ikaros might do so, suspended in an endless immortal state, but it was important for her to return to her birth life whenever possible. It made her world orderly. Everything, and everyone, moved in a straight line in her birth life. She didn’t have to fret over when she was or worry about what she was supposed to know or not know. She’d learned from the Fourth City. Never would she go through something like that again. Or the aftermath again.

  After a while of slow progress, Kaislyn risked Shifting to her birth life. If she had a gold marker in her head for wherever she was in the mountains, she had dozens of stone ones from her Shifts. It wasn’t difficult to find the one from earlier, her birth life marker, and return to it. It was like ricocheting between established points.

  She brushed soot from her fingertips and sneezed. The slow, painful walk began again.

  Her thoughts slid into a stupor of, Just one more step, girl. Just one more step.

  She’d veered too far to the eastern side of the slope. That unerring sense of where she was in the mountains punctured her dulling senses. A shepherd’s path helped her progress, but it was some minutes more before the
whistling penetrated her foggy thoughts.

  Ikaros didn’t know how to whistle.

  “Help!” Her voice was little more than a ragged whisper. Had she been yelling that much while squabbling with Ikaros?

  The whistling died.

  Kaislyn looked up and recognized the man from the goat incident. He had a half-full sack of wood strapped to his back and had stopped mid step on seeing her.

  “You’re related to Grehesh, aren’t you?” Kaislyn asked as the silence grew and he continued to stand there.

  A short nod.

  “Your eyes are the same. Son?”

  Another nod. “Fadil.”

  “Are you going to help me or keep standing there?”

  Fadil jerked forward. “What... what do you need, Immortal Walker?” He wouldn’t look at her face.

  “My ankle’s broken. A walking stick would be a good start.”

  He wavered. “There’s blood.”

  “I’m fairly confident most of it isn’t mine.”

  “You... aren’t very large. I could carry you on my back.”

  Kaislyn weighed the embarrassment of being carried like a baby against her throbbing injuries.

  Being choosy, girl?

  “All right. Thank you.”

  Fadil slung his load off his shoulders and neatly stacked the wood to retrieve later. It took some maneuvering to replace the wood with Kaislyn on his back. Kaislyn bit her tongue to keep from swearing as Fadil jostled her into position, jarring her numerous injuries. At last, they seemed arranged and Fadil started walking. Their progress was slow, if faster than Kaislyn’s previous pace. Neither spoke.

  It grew cold and the sun vanished. Kaislyn began to shiver. Too cold, she thought. She was heading into shock.

  She didn’t notice they’d reached the village until Fadil was calling for Grehesh.

  The darkness increased as Fadil entered a hut and untied Kaislyn, letting her slide gently onto a bed.

  Grehesh arrived at a run.

  “I found her like this, Da. I swear it,” said Fadil. “She did it herself.”

  Grehesh’s anxious face appeared in the gloom above Kaislyn. He did a quick examination. “I want a wrap for her ankle and a dose of Bliss Root. Blazes , girl, what’d you go and do now?”

  “I got pushed off the mountain.” Her voice sounded thick in her ears.

  “Why am I not surprised? Lie still.”

  “I thought I was already doing that.”

  “What great calamity will it take to curb that tongue of yours?” Grehesh asked.

  “Nothing... too great. Passing out will do it.” And so she did.

  She woke briefly in the night from the pain. It wasn’t just her ankle, but her entire body.

  “Grehesh?”

  Immediately, Grehesh was at her side. He’d moved his rocking chair inside the hut.

  “I hurt.”

  “I gave you everything I dare for the pain.”

  “It doesn’t... work that way,” she said, fuzzily. Every time she moved, pain rippled through her body. “Sometimes I can walk away from my injuries—”

  “I’ve seen you walk away,” said Grehesh cryptically.

  “—but the consequences always catch up with me somewhere in my life as a Shift attack. Did you know my ankle kept me from taking the fish district sooner? I couldn’t walk for two weeks. Hah. Now I know why. That was from today. But I’m experiencing the other pains from my fall right now... like a normal person might.”

  “Hmm.” Grehesh disappeared. Kaislyn watched the moonlight filter through the open doorway before it was blocked by the shaman’s return.

  “This will make you sleep. Drink it all.”

  Kaislyn took the clay cup and choked down the pungent liquid. “Thank you.”

  Grehesh smiled, despite the worry on his face. “That’s my girl.”

  Kaislyn woke to the sun against her face. Opening her eyes, she looked across the hut to the open door. She could see Grehesh in his rocking chair outside, angled so he could keep an eye on her. A welcoming smile crossed his face. “Good morning. How do you feel?”

  Kaislyn pushed back the blanket and inspected her neatly wrapped ankle. She rotated it. No pain. She eased out of the bed and did a few experimental jumps. Nothing. No painful ribs or broken bones. No aches even.

  She joined Grehesh outside. “Morning? Not bad if I was only out for a day.”

  The sudden resumption of rocking made her suspicious. “It’s only been a day. Right?”

  “This evening will make two days since Fadil brought you in looking like a nightmare.”

  “It is?” The lack of immediate pain and the warm sun against her face made Kaislyn no more than mildly surprised by that fact.

  “Mmm. Tell me, Kaislyn, how long have you known that your body does not respond to pain medications?”

  She shrugged uncomfortably. “I think I always knew. Some people are just born that way.”

  “Mmm,” Grehesh repeated, still rocking.

  “Will you stop saying that!”

  The shaman’s eyes sparkled with mirth for the first time. He picked up something concealed in his lap and offered it to Kaislyn. She took the gold earring, cleaned and strung on a chain.

  “I have been keeping your secrets for a long time, child. Be honest with me. No lies, no half-truths, no cleverly-worded truths. Do that and I will make sure you have as many sleeping potions as you need when Ikaros pushes you off a mountain again.”

  Kaislyn grinned at her grandfather. “I took him with me.” Her smile faded and she turned away from him. She paced to the vantage point overlooking the valley below them, her hand curling into a fist around her new necklace.

  Ikaros had turned her into... this. Vengeful, angry. Once, long ago, she’d been a scared eight-year-old girl who only wanted to go home. And he’d smiled at her. Taught her how to Shift. Then sold her as a slave to the Royal City nine years before she was born.

  “Tell me what happened in the Royal City sixteen years ago.” The command was soft behind her.

  She didn’t question how he knew to ask about it. She was beginning to suspect she’d been visiting with Grehesh long before she met him a few days ago.

  Think so, girl? A little late realizing that.

  “I hate that city,” she said, gazing at the sunlit valley. “I hate everything about it. But when I think of my time there, I always think of the end. That was the worst part of it. The rest I can forgive. But not the end.”

  She turned and fixed a grim smile on Grehesh’s wrinkled, patient face. “I was running,” she began.

  5 | The Fourth City

  Kaislyn sprinted through the streets. In the dark, it was hard to distinguish the shadows of buildings from the not-so-empty shadows of booths and wagons. She hadn’t meant to go this way, but she didn’t know her way around the Fourth City. She wished she’d paid better attention to the layout during all those wasted evenings traveling in bumpy wagons.

  She could hear the three guards behind her. Three for a tiny thing like her! What did Hezere think she was going to do? Kaislyn’s lips twisted in satisfaction. He was afraid she’d ruin everything for him. And, oh, it was so very tempting. But she’d kept her lips shut during those confused four years she was beaten and trained as a dance slave. Kept them shut another three years after she was sold to fat Acalan. Doing something now in a fit of rage seemed like a terrible waste.

  Her interview with Hezere had burned a darker hatred into her mind than that of her first encounter with Ikaros. That hadn’t been much more than a crazy Sorcerer tricking a stupid girl after her first accidental Shift. But Hezere? She’d begged him for help and he betrayed her.

  It’d started a few days previously when Hezere first arrived. At first, he had stood in that gaudy room surveying everyone. Intimidating them by his mere presence. Black scarf secured across his face so only his telltale black eyes showed. Arms folded across his chest, posture rigid, sword hanging ominously at his waist. He’d been confid
ent. The swagger as he entered the room nearly made her roll her eyes. Looking back, it was enormously satisfying to have taken that confidence away.

  She had every reason to think he would help her, knowing what she did of his relationship with her parents. She only needed to tell him who she was and then she could go home at last.

  The moment their gazes met, the confidence vanished and he jerked back from her. Not visibly. He had too much self-control for that, but Kaislyn felt it as he pushed against her mind, felt the surge of panic. What had gone wrong?

  The mind push was a familiar sensation. Ikaros periodically tried it. Kaislyn knew enough to know it was the Phoenix House that enabled Ikaros and Hezere to control the minds of others. She could only imagine it was her heritage from the Serpent House that made her immune to it.

  Why is the Immortal Walker in the same room as my princess? Hezere’s silent voice had gone even darker than his eyes as he tried to regain control of himself and the situation.

  Immortal... it was the first time she’d heard the phrase and it confused her, but she wasn’t going to lose this chance.

  You have to help me!

  Did you grow bored playing in Ti-em? Have you come to play with Ariana’s life now? She is mine! You do not belong here.

  Her mother had neglected to tell her just how crazy Hezere really was, Kaislyn decided. She seized on the only part of his comments that made sense. I just want to go back home. Ikaros tricked me into coming here.

  He actually blinked at that.

  You can’t deny I look just like my parents! That I can’t possibly be someone else!

  That horrible moment when Drazan and Sveka had burst into the room, playing their part. Enthusiastic, flamboyant. Young. It’d shocked her to see her parents without greying hair, without all the lines and scars. The shock disappeared in a sudden panic. She couldn’t let them see her like this, trapped as a slave in the Royal City. It didn’t matter that she technically didn’t exist yet for them. It mattered to her. It’d instantly become the worst moment of her life.

  You’re the only one who could possibly believe me, Aamir.