by Chase Erwin
“It will take time,” Antareus said. “It will be a long journey, but with your friends by your side, I know you will do it. I have faith in you, Abel.
“But be warned,” he added as his image began to fade. “You are still not truly safe with these people. As long as Kane and the Ravens walk this plane, that will always be the case.”
And then he vanished. I blinked as I pondered his words.
Thwack!
It felt like I had been stung by a very large wasp. Confused, I looked down at my right shoulder. A bloody-tipped arrow jutted out from me.
“Everybody stay just where you are and drop your weapons! Hands in the air!” shouted a voice from behind me.
The sounds of crossbows being cocked told me there was another band of Ravens emerging from the dead forest.
An arm wrapped around my neck and pulled me tight from behind. I could see nothing but the gray fabric of his tunic. I measured my breath carefully. In doing so, I triggered that familiar sizzling sensation – it started from the wound in my shoulder and was rapidly traveling down my arm.
“By order of The Raven himself,” began the man with his arm around me, “you are all hereby under” –
I began to yell as the electricity engaged and begin to arc around the two of us. I felt every sensation he experienced as his body absorbed the lethal energy, which seemed to only multiply the effect. He let go of my body and I plummeted to the ground.
Hell broke loose as the five remaining Raven operatives scrambled to capture our party. There was the clanking of metal upon metal, the sounds of fireballs going off around me, but I was in a state of shock. All I could do was stare up at the ground…
And I swore that I saw a blur of red fly past my field of vision. There was the sound of a choked cry. I tried to raise my head, but a splatter of blood struck me in the face.
Wiping my face with the sleeve of my uninjured arm, I forced myself to sit up. The glassy-eyed remains of a head stared up at me from the ground.
“It’s the Kaa!” shouted one of the Ravens. “Retreat! Retreat!”
A flash of red passed me by once more, and I saw two Raven goons fall lifelessly to the ground, their necks broken.
The blur seemed to bounce off the dead trees and ricochet through the battleground. With each pass, another Raven fell dead.
Mere seconds later, silence returned to the field. The red blur sped up to me, then stopped.
“Abel… are you alright?”
I was hit by a wave of memories and emotions.
The figure in red… I saw him once before, back in the Raven lair, the night of the breakout. He was the one that led me outside.
The voice… yes, the voice – assuring me things would be alright… the voice was as fresh in my mind as… as recently as this very morning.
“Bloody hell,” I exclaimed as the pieces began to fall into place.
Slowly, the figure reached to his hood and unsheathed his headpiece. Blond hair spilled out over his forehead.
“Ricken?!”
“Yes,” he said softly.
Within seconds, Enwel and the gang surrounded us. I tried to stand up but the pain shooting through my shoulder prevented it.
“Stay still,” Irek said. He began to cast a healing spell on me.
“I… I couldn’t say anything,” Ricken began as I stared at him in amazement. “Not until I was certain the Ravens were making a move… but of course I didn’t know about it until the attack began back in Galek.”
“What? What is all this?” My head was spinning.
“Princess?” Ricken looked at Enwel for guidance. She nodded her head.
“I was deputized by the Daggers of Allach to investigate the disappearance of you and your brother, Abel,” Ricken said. He was visibly nervous as he spoke, but he continued to look me in the eye. “It was quite easy to determine who did it, but the real mystery has been why.
“And in the midst of investigating why, I uncovered the location of where you were being held, so I led the operation to rescue you.”
“The silence on the matter was on my order,” Enwel said, kneeling to me, checking my wounds as they healed. “I didn’t want anything to unnecessarily strain you while your Wild Mage powers were still at risk of going haywire – especially once we learned Beltrin’s potions were being used” –
There was a hurried rush of “shh!” sounds from everyone’s lips. Enwel looked confused.
As did I. “Beltrin’s… potions?”
Enwel nodded, “Yes, the potions Beltrin made that the Ravens… stole… and… Oh, my, you hadn’t told him about that?” Enwel turned red.
“You made the potions?” My eyes transfixed on Beltrin, whose ears splayed back in shame.
“Y-yes,” Beltrin said. “I had been making them and selling them on the black market before I went straight. The Ravens wanted me to sell the recipes to them, but when I refused, they tried to kill me and stole everything I had left…”
It felt as if I was in a tunnel. The only things I could see were darkness and Beltrin’s face. I felt the old warning in my body that power was beginning to charge within me.
“It’s your fault,” I whispered. “It’s your fault they did this to me…”
Beltrin’s eyes began to well with tears.
“Abel, I think that’s a little unfair,” Enwel said. “He had no idea they were going to use those potions on you – or anyone else for that matter.”
“That’s right,” Ricken said. “We didn’t know about the connection with those potions until we knew what exactly had happened to you with the Ravens. We just thought they were using them on themselves.”
“And you,” I said, turning to Ricken. “You knew about all of this, and you didn’t say anything…?”
“I told you, dearest,” Ricken said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I wasn’t sure what all I could tell you, knowing that Kane has some sort of connection to your mind. That’s what I had in my case at the hotel. I was hoping to let you know about all I had learned.”
“If you are all quite finished,” Jonathan yelled as he stumbled across the field towards us. He was severely beaten, blood pouring from many wounds on his face and arms. “I could use some help here.”
Enwel and the Winds of Andusk each leapt and looked towards Jonathan and rushed to his side, leaving me and Ricken alone.
“How do you feel?” Ricken asked.
“Numb,” I admitted. “I don’t know what to think, or say, or do…”
“It’s best if you do nothing,” Ricken said, reaching for my hand. I wanted to fight it off, but I let him take it. “There is a lot to process. Just… process it. You don’t have to say anything, and all you should do right now is rest. We can talk things out as you feel ready. That is… if you think we can?” He looked at me with a very worried expression.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
Ricken frowned and nodded. “I understand. I… should go, anyway. I need to report back to the Daggers and tell them Domnall is dead.
He stood up and began to walk away. Turning to me, he said. “Please get better.”
I nodded, staring at the ground in front of me. “Goodbye,” I whispered.
“Goodbye,” he whispered back.
15. A Hundred Paper Cranes
The four days of mourning throughout the kingdom were tough. By custom, no one was permitted to speak during the first three days, as a mark of respect for the fallen King.
The morning of the fourth day – the morning of the king’s funeral – all the questions we had bottled up for each other came forward like water through a levee.
“How on earth did you manage to turn into a liquid?” Beltrin asked me.
“When were you going to tell us about that chair’s generator power?” Remi asked of Taryn.
The answer to both was some variation of “I don’t really know.”
“Guys,” I asked of the room, “what does Enwel want with us?”<
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Everyone shook their heads in response.
Enwel had told us before the king’s death was officially announced that she wished an audience with us immediately after his body was laid to rest. She did not say a word of explanation after she made that statement.
The funeral was a stately but dismal affair. Everyone in attendance wore black. The royal staff wore all-black versions of their usual attire, save for an emerald green ribbon pinned above the heart.
Enwel was unable to speak during the funeral. Her eyes were red and puffy with strain. Anyone could understand the loss she had suffered with her father. But perhaps I was one of only a few who saw another layer of mourning, deep within those tear-stained eyes.
It was the loss of her brother – the loss of an idol, someone she had looked up to, and the loss of the hero she thought she once had, which she was trying so hard to conceal. She was fighting herself from mourning the brother she used to know and thinking of him as the power-hungry tyrant he revealed himself to be.
At least she knew what her brother really was. I still had no inkling what my brother’s possible connection with the Ravens was.
After the burial of the King on the north edge of the estate, our small constituency walked on foot back into the castle’s main foyer.
We expected Enwel to stop at the foot of the staircase to address us.
However, she simply went up the marble steps and hurried to her room. We could hear the sobs from her room as the skies outside turned a mournful gray and a soft rain began to fall.
We stood in the foyer for a few minutes, unsure of what to say or do. Jonathan, his face bruised and battered, excused himself and sailed up the stairs to check on Enwel.
Moments later, the rain stopped, and the clouds began to part. Jonathan came back solemnly.
“Enwel has asked me to apologize to you all,” he began. “She thought she would be able to carry on today, but I advised her it might be too soon between laying her father to rest and her ascension ceremony later tonight.
“She agreed and asks that you reconvene here tomorrow morning just after dawn,” Jonathan said. “I am to see you out.”
Once we returned from the castle, Ricken was at the church, waiting on me. Having had four days to think, I realized I shouldn’t have been angry with him for his withholding of information. I asked him to talk with me before I took care of a small errand.
✽ ✽ ✽
Several hours later, hand in hand, Ricken and I strolled up the worn grass path leading up to the Bridge of the Unforgotten.
Legend has it that the Great Mother, as her first act upon ascension, created the bridge so that the spirits of those who passed could cross the planes with one last glimpse of Serene Brook, which was her favorite place to meditate as a human.
“I’m sorry all those spirits didn’t get the chance to cross the bridge like the Great Mother wished,” I said as we reached the curved apex.
“They’d been deprived of the chance to cross for so long, I suppose they just couldn’t wait to ascend… once you told them it was safe to do so,” Ricken offered. I nodded.
“You know, this had been my favorite place as a child, even before I knew of the legend,” I said, looking out at the evening sky. Purple clouds mixed with the orange sky as the red evening sun descended past the rolling hills of the horizon. Nightingales chirped happily, flying from one treetop to the next, as the babbling water rolled over river rocks underneath us.
“I can imagine so,” Ricken said. “Especially if this spot offered such gorgeous scenery year-round.”
“Oh, indeed it does. In the autumn, all the leaves tumble off the trees and dust the land in browns, oranges and reds. But I think my favorite is in Deepfrost, after the first snowfall, and everything is covered in undisturbed white powder. And there is such a peaceful silence. I actually imagine that’s what heaven is like: an everlasting Deepfrost.”
I broke our hand-holding, so I could open the paper sack I was carrying with my free arm.
“So, are you going to tell me what we’re doing here, besides just taking in the ambience,” Ricken asked.
I showed him what was inside: dozens and dozens of folded paper pieces, shaped like cranes.
“The Great Famine happened when I was four, almost five,” I explained. “My family and I didn’t suffer because we had plenty of food stockpiled; we handed out our excess, but it was not nearly enough to help everyone.”
“I remembered being told about that by my parents,” Ricken said. “Several hundred people died just within the Galekian border.”
“The following spring, we finally had the long rainy season that set the crops growing again,” I continued. “My mom said that since the Kaa” – I stopped, looked at Ricken and grinned sheepishly – “since the Kaa blessed the land again, we should take the time to remember those that didn’t survive the drought.
“We spent an entire day folding up 100 paper cranes. Then we walked up to the bridge here, and one by one, we released them and watched as they floated down the brook.”
“…To symbolize their spirits crossing the bridge,” Ricken said. “That’s quite sweet.”
“So that’s what I wish to do today,” I said, raising the bag and setting it on the bridge’s stone railing. “In honor of those that lost their lives during this period of… unrest, including those I killed during my time in captivity.”
Ricken nodded. We spent the next half hour or so taking turns dropping paper cranes off the side of the bridge. We watched them flutter down to the water and float gently down the brook and out of sight.
“I’ve had to renounce my position at the Culinarian’s Guild,” Ricken said as we neared the last of the cranes. The sudden break in the silence caught me by surprise more than what he said.
“What?” I finally said. “Why?”
“In their view, since I was working for a spy organization, I’m considered a security risk for guild secrets.” Ricken shrugged. “A weak excuse if you ask me, but if they want me out, I don’t see why I should fight it. I could do without all the stress of keeping all those kids from accidentally poisoning each other.”
I didn’t have to ponder what I said next for more than a fleeting moment: “Well, I’m about to have a tavern of my own – would you like to work with me there?”
“Whoa – what?” Ricken blinked. He seemed blindsided. “Th-that’s… I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say yes,” I said, taking his hands in mine. “You’ve already done so much for me and my friends. They’ve offered me shelter and a business to run – why don’t I offer you the same thing? We can devise the menus together, hire the staff, it’ll be a partnership!”
“A business partnership,” Ricken chuckled. “I don’t know, Abel… mixing business with personal relationships has always been frowned upon by the Guild. And even though I am no longer a teacher with them, I am still a member, as are you.”
“Well, we can work out the details later,” I said. “But promise me you’ll think about it?”
“Of course.”
We continued to hold hands as we watched the sun finally conceal itself under the horizon and the evening sky gave way to the stars.
16. A New Home
The day after the funeral, just after sunrise, the group arrived back at the castle gates.
During our walk up the path leading to the castle, Beltrin tapped me on the shoulder.
“Have you stopped seeing the ghosts since the battle?” His voice lower than usual, Beltrin seemed very concerned about my continued mental well-being.
“So far, yes,” I said. “I don’t want to jinx myself, but we may have solved that issue.”
“Good!” Beltrin smiled, a reptilian smile that reminded me a lot of a crocodile but friendlier. It only lasted a moment though, before he asked me another question:
“Do you think some people are beyond forgiveness?”
I stopped walking, as the question had taken me by surprise
d.
“…Or redemption?” Beltrin added. “Abel, honest to Goddess, I am sorry you got mixed up with the potions. I never thought something like that could ever happen with something I created.”
I sighed. “I know, Beltrin – I shouldn’t have said it was your fault. It wasn’t. In answer to your question…” I began to walk again as I gathered my thoughts. “I think it is in our best interest to forgive. A heart can harden so fast if it doesn’t forgive for transgressions, real or perceived – I mean, look at Domnall.”