Ria raised her eyebrows. She seemed to handle Fern with ease and put him in his place quickly enough. She was small and quiet, and the lines around her eyes and mouth made her seem much older than she was.
“Fern, can we sit down? I have tidings for you,” Ria sighed. Before they could direct her to the campsite, she looked at Jane and said, “I take it she is trustworthy, so we may speak freely? I know why the sabre-tooths were massing to the north. You were right, though I know not how you realised—things have changed.”
Jane couldn’t hide the surprise she felt—a hand went up to cover her mouth. Fern’s expression was unchanged.
“You had better tell me,” he murmured.
Ria frowned and walked over to the makeshift camp. She sat down elegantly and said, “They were going north because they were called north. They were summoned.”
Fern’s grey eyes flashed. “By whom?” he asked sharply.
“Someone of great power. I don’t know. I don’t know who could have been controlling them that way.” Ria shook her head.
Jane’s heart sank into her stomach. “It’s Leostrial,” she said. “It has to be.”
“Surely he doesn’t have enough power to do that,” said Fern.
“Yes, he does,” Jane said softly. “He has more than enough.”
Fern sat in silence for a moment. “I am now very glad we are heading towards Uns Lapodis,” he said eventually. “I need to take council with Gaddemar, see if we can find out what Leostrial is planning.”
“Ria, do you know anything more?” the prince asked.
Ria looked at the ground. “There is something more. Whoever is calling the sabre’s north has a beast in his control. I don’t know how he could possibly manage it, but Leostrial has Locktar working for him.”
Everything stilled. Jane looked from Ria to Fern and back—the depth of the silence was alarming.
“Gods,” Fern whispered. “We may be undone after all.”
“What?” Jane exclaimed. “Who is Locktar?”
Ria tried to explain. “A dragon born from nightmares. We all thought him a myth, so horrible are the stories of his destruction. If Leostrial has the power to control the beast, then who knows what he could do. I don’t understand why he would be summoning the sabre-tooths, though.”
“I can only guess,” Fern replied.
“Go on then,” Jane said softly.
“I fear that he is readying himself for war.”
“But ... A war against whom? And for what reason?” Ria exclaimed.
Fern stood up and said, “We leave at sunrise. If we travel hard, then we might make it to the dock before sunset. From there we can sail to Amalia.” And then he strode off into the darkness. The girls looked at each other.
Ria said, “Would it be presumptuous of me to ask if I could come with you? Only, I have needs and vengeance of my own to seek.”
Jane stared at her for a second. Vengeance? Only a few days earlier she’d been worrying about the weather for that picnic, and now she was sitting at a campsite with a strange woman talking about needing vengeance!
“It’s not up to me whether you come or not,” she said. “But if it makes a difference, I wouldn’t mind a bit of female company.” Maybe she’d be able to confide in Ria and make a new friend. Fern was ... a bit much, sometimes.
Ria smiled, and her eyes lit up in a beautiful shade of green.
“I’m not sure you’ll find what you’re looking for in me,” she said with genuine amusement. Before Jane could ask her what she meant, Ria walked off into the night in the opposite direction of Fern.
Jane was still thinking about this when a tall shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere, and Jane’s scream filled the night.
***
Ria sat down on a log and put her head in her hands, feeling ill. She took up her harp, Collinia, and began to play. No song as such, only plucked notes and chords. And as she played, she felt her heart ease slightly, as she had known it would. In the comfort of her music, she went over the events she had been trying so hard to block out over the last few days.
It had started when she arrived back in Torr at her parents’ house. She had gone there directly after the contest in Luglio.
She knew something was very wrong as soon as she walked into her house and found her father still in bed, though the sun had been up for several hours.
“Papa, are you all right?”
He rolled over and looked up at his only child. “Ria? Is that you?”
“Yes, yes. What has happened?”
“Beasts ... There were so many of them. We were waiting for them on the hill, but they snuck around and killed the women while they were at home. I couldn’t—” He began to cry.
“Where’s mother?” Ria asked urgently. “Papa! Where is she?”
“I tried, but I was too late.”
“What happened?”
“She’s dead,” he whispered and rolled over.
Ria sank onto the bed with him and held him as tightly as she could.
A pack of sabre-tooths had charged through the small town of Torr and killed the women and children.
Ria did not shed a single tear, and vowed never to again until the day she avenged her mother. She hadn’t been there. She had saved herself from death, but she had not saved her mother, and thus, she had to pay the price.
A determination had come over her, such as never before. Her poor, beautiful little town in the hills that had just suffered the plague seemed now to be destined for further pain and sorrow. It was ruined. Every family had someone taken from them. There were hardly any women left. Shops closed, men worked to look after their children and bring in coin for food. Taverns were empty, the fields had no workers. It was like a ghost town, filled only with the widowers of their dead families.
She had gone into the cellar, retrieved her father’s sword, and sheathed it over her back. Then she had travelled into the almost empty town, bought a servant and two horses from a man who could no longer afford them and had ridden harder than she had ever before. It took her a week to catch up to the pack, following their trail of havoc through the countryside.
Ria sat on a hill overlooking the beasts for a night. The silent, dark-skinned servant sat next to her. His name was Saish, and he was of the Kabduh race that lived in the desert sands of Anuk. He carried two curved swords slung over his back, much like her single straight one, about ten different-sized knives placed strategically over his body, and two tattoos, one under each eye, like black knife points dripping from the sockets. His lean, muscled body added to his terrifying appearance.
He was exactly what Ria needed. She was about to ride through one of the most dangerous parts of the country, a place that thieves and other unsavoury characters were known to inhabit.
Saish sat quietly by her side through the night. Although he must have been perplexed by what she was doing, he showed no sign of it.
Halfway through the next day, their patience was rewarded.
They were lying on the grass when they felt the air grow chill and the sky darken. Strong winds howled. Looking into the sky, Ria saw a colossal beast that reeked of evil, flapping its scaly wings slowly so as to land on the ground below them. A dragon, entirely black with a long scaly body and huge wings. It snapped its long jaw, screeching in fury and flaring its smoky nostrils.
Every person in Paragor knew the story of Locktar, the myth of a dragon raised from the very depths of hell and stolen from Ares himself by someone humans had long ago named ’the Scourge’. Children would scare each other before bedtime with stories of the dragon. But everyone knew they were just stories.
But they had all been terribly wrong.
The creature standing before them was real enough. Locktar, messenger of darkness, snapped at the cowering sabre-tooths, breathing flame onto their tails to hurry their journey.
“Who could be making this happen?” Ria whispered. “Who could be controlling that beast?”
Saish said nothin
g.
How was it that a mortal man could control such a creature? A beast that had been controlled only by the Scourge himself.
And so she had come to know that the sabre-tooths were massing towards the north, and that something was driving them there. They mounted their horses and rode again—Ria needed to get to Sitadel so that she could warn the king. Had they stayed another few hours and witnessed the battle between Cornelius and the beasts, it would have saved them several days of riding hard north. It had been purely chance that she had heard swords clashing near the Elvish Lands boundary.
Sending Saish to scout the area for danger, she crept through the trees.
Ria had almost cried out in relief upon finding Fern standing in the trees.
“This is Jane,” he told her. “She is a Stranger.”
Ria stared at the girl, taken aback. A Stranger? And Jane was so young! The girl’s huge brown eyes stared at Ria boldly, inquisitively. She was so beautiful—a youthful, innocent kind of beauty—she struggled to hold the sword with her slender arms.
“You haven’t been here long, then?” Ria had asked and Jane shook her head.
Sitting on the log now, Ria wondered how long the girl’s innocence could remain in a world like this.
Suddenly a scream sliced through the quiet air. Ria ran as fast as she could through the trees towards the cries. Fern had beaten her there, and was now holding his sword against the throat of Ria’s silent friend, Saish. They both looked calm and menacing.
“Fern, no!” Ria cried. He looked over at her, but did not lower his sword. Ria ran and stood in front of Saish. “He’s my friend. Trust me.”
The prince hesitated, then sheathed his sword and muttered an apology. Ria knew it had been an act of honour for Saish not to have drawn his own two swords and silently thanked him with a nod.
“I’m sorry,” Jane breathed, clutching her heart. “He startled me a little, coming out of the bushes like that.”
“This is my servant,” Ria said quickly. “His name is Saish.”
“Servant?” Jane repeated.
“The parts of country I was travelling through are not safe for a woman to go alone,” Ria told her. “Hired protection.”
Jane nodded, eyeing Ria and then Saish.
“He is from the sands of Anuk. A Kabduh.”
“What’s a Kabduh?”
“Desert warrior,” Saish grunted for himself.
There was silence for a moment, and a cold north wind blew in from the sea to ruffle their hair.
“Tell me. What is a desert warrior from Anuk doing travelling around the country of Cynis Witron with a young female singer?” Fern asked softly.
“I was exiled,” he replied quietly after a pause.
“Why?”
“Killed the wrong person.”
“I think it’s time we slept,” Jane interrupted quickly.
Ria returned to the log where she had left her beloved Collinia. She had never been without it. She knew that no one in their right mind should be this attached to an instrument.
“Thank goodness,” she breathed when she saw it sitting in the moonlight. Ria sat back down on the log to play again, but as she did, there was a ruffle in the bushes and Jane stepped out to sit beside her.
“So that’s what was in there,” Jane said looking at the harp and case. “I was a little worried when you ran away like that ... Sing for me?”
Ria did, just briefly.
“Ria, that was ... so beautiful. How did you ever learn to play like that?”
“I don’t know,” Ria sighed. There was a long silence as they sat together in the forest.
“I have a friend,” Jane said after a moment. “He is a musician too. I’m almost certain he is here in Paragor. Maybe, one day, if you ever meet him, I would love to hear you both play together.”
“I would like that too,” Ria smiled, then turned to Jane. “Are you frightened?” she asked the younger woman.
“Frightened of what?” asked Jane.
“Of being in a new world,” Ria said. “You’re a newborn.”
Jane looked over at her and she could see the girl try to weigh up whether or not to speak. Finally Jane replied, “Of course I am. But ... it’s exciting too.”
“Even with a tyrant who wants to wage war on us?” Ria asked wryly.
Jane smiled. “Even then. Are you? Frightened, I mean?”
“I never used to be,” Ria replied slowly. “But ... things are changing, I think.”
Jane shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t really know about that.”
Ria stole a glance at her. “Paragor hasn’t faced a real war in a very long time. Certainly no one alive, nor our parents nor our grandparents have ever had cause to fight.”
Jane shivered a little. “Once I find my friends, I’m sure we’ll be able to find the portal home,” she murmured.
Chapter 14
In a small abandoned hut, about fifty leagues from Amalia, in a thick forest, there were five people. Their horses were tethered outside against the trees.
As the sky darkened, they were all looking at the princess as she tried desperately to thank them.
Satine stammered. She wasn’t very good at this sort of thing.
“What you did, what you all did back there, was, well it was very courageous. Very brave. I understand that it could have cost you your own lives, and that you probably should have just left me there. It was my time to die, I think. But as you didn’t, I guess I need to show my gratitude. You did do a good job. You carried out your plan well, although it wasn’t the best of plans in the first place...”
“Satine, are you trying to thank us, or insult us?” Harry asked with a grin that increased when Satine flushed.
“I’m thanking you, of course,” she snapped.
“All right, then say the words and it’ll be done. Anyway, Accolon did all the work. It was his terrible plan that saved your life.”
Anna noticed that Satine’s eyes went, for the first time that evening, to where Accolon was sitting at the window.
“Ah ... well done, Highness,” she muttered.
“What are we going to do now?” Anna asked to change the subject.
“Live happily in the woods for the rest of our days,” Accolon snapped.
Anna was aghast, and then embarrassed when Satine assured her he was kidding.
“Harry and I can’t go back to the city—we will be captured if we do. Accolon will have to go back and claim the crown, now that the king is dead and he is the rightful heir to the throne. Anna and Luca, you can go with him but make sure you enter the city secretly. It can’t look as though you had anything to do with this.”
Satine paused as the others nodded their understanding. She frowned. “We need to know more about the maps, so we can find out what Leostrial is doing,” she murmured. “They’re the only clues we have. Harry and I will have to wait here until you can make some sense of them. I have a bad feeling about what’s going on. Leostrial has been different lately. He’s planning something.”
“So who shot the king?” Luca asked. They looked at Accolon. The prince didn’t look back at them, and Luca wished suddenly that he had broached the subject with a little more sensitivity.
“I did,” Accolon said slowly after a moment, and now it was so much worse. They gaped at him.
“I’m so sorry, Accolon. It is my fault he is dead,” Satine whispered with a hand over her mouth.
“No, Satine. Was it your hand that let loose the arrow?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing.”
“How did you shoot two arrows at once?” Luca asked after a few minutes.
“I didn’t.”
“Then where did the other arrow come from?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
The abandoned shack was actually one of Accolon’s own and used for hunting, so it was well stocked with weapons and implements. An hour later, Accolon had caught a small d
eer. He used a long hunting knife to skin the animal and cut it into portions small enough to roast.
“That’s disgusting!” Harry exclaimed at one point, covering his nose so he didn’t gag at the smell of the blood.
Accolon, who was gutting the creature, glanced up at Harry and frowned. “Don’t stand there and watch if it isn’t to your taste,” he muttered. “You three can see to the fire.”
Anna collected twigs, and Harry and Luca set about trying to light a fire. They had a small box of flint that made sparks easily, but it was still very difficult without any paper to get the flame started. Luca leant in close and blew on the sparks to get them going and soon they had a proper blaze.
Satine took the opportunity to lower her feet into a bucket of cold water. They had been badly burnt in the fire, and none knew what to do to fix them. The water soothed the pain a little.
Accolon was sharpening the tips of his arrows with a small knife. Anna watched him as unobtrusively as she could, trying to figure out what he was thinking. Surely he could not be so calm after everything that had happened? He looked like he didn’t even care about what he’d done. His brow creased and his face turned into a scowl as he concentrated.
“I’m going for a ride,” Satine announced suddenly, lifting her feet out of the bucket.
“Sit down, Satine,” Accolon ordered. She stumbled and fell, and he was just in time to catch her. He quickly put Satine back on the seat.
“Accolon, I’m going for a ride,” Satine said, more forcefully this time.
He looked at her determined face for a moment, then sighed, “Fine. I’m coming with you.” And then he picked her up and carried her to the bed inside the hut.
“Accolon! I am not an invalid!” she cried.
“No, but you have bad burns on your feet,” he replied. “What do you want to wear?”
“I’m fine as I am. Let’s just go.”
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