Rescue

by F. E. Greene

  RESCUE

  By Eyes Unseen

  by F. E. Greene

  Copyright 2016 by F. E. Greene

  Cover design by A Train Creative

  Map design by Sterling Illustration

  Interior artwork by O. Plakhotnuik, Samtoon ©123RF

  ISBN: 987-0-9965612-3-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by F. E. Greene

  Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Soli Deo Gloria

  Contents

  Copyright Notice

  Map of the Fourtlands

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Like it? Review it!

  Sneak Preview of REFUGE

  Refuge ~ Chapter One

  Refuge ~ Chapter Two

  Refuge ~ Chapter Three

  Refuge ~ Chapter Four

  About the Author

  Also by F. E. Greene

  Reading Group Discussion Questions

  Copyright 2016 by F. E. Greene

  Cover design by A Train Creative

  Map design by Sterling Illustration

  Interior artwork by O. Plakhotnuik, Samtoon ©123RF

  ISBN: 987-0-9965612-3-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by F. E. Greene

  Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Soli Deo Gloria

  Click here to view a

  Map of the Fourtlands as you read

  or visit www.fegreene.com

  on a separate device.

  Chapter One

  Exhausted and bleeding, Paxton ran with a strength that wasn’t his own.

  Fifty strides behind, a dervish of creatures gave chase. Slick as obsidian, they spilled past one another like pools of ink while their eyes reflected, in opaque flashes, the one human who should never walk alone in the Gloaming.

  To those who could see them, they were half leech and half locust, all teeth and all claws. Boundevils, some named them. Demols or helkytes.

  Paxton first knew them as darkgard. In the Overland, where humen lived, darkgard flew but could do no physical harm. They wafted unnoticed like shadows or clouds. Most darkgard were no larger than a housecat, but size wasn’t their hardship, above or below. The Gloaming did clip their invisible wings. Its gravity turned them solid. It also made them lethal.

  The Gloaming itself was no kinder. It lacked seasons and sunlight and civilization. Everything natural matched what flourished upworld, but all handmade additions – roads, wagons, fences, homes – were absent.

  So were people. A rare few knew how to reach the Gloaming, but most had no interest in going there. Among those who dared, no one with good sense went alone.

  But Paxton had. While he tried to be sensible, he didn’t always succeed. Sometimes he leapt when he should look. He swung when he should duck. There was a limit to his self-control, and life inside the castle required most of it.

  As the screeching increased behind him, Paxton forced himself to focus on what lay ahead. He carried a weapon, its short blade bared, but his stife was designed for single-hand combat. Part rod and part sword, it was a tool of delayed escalation – first a club, then a lance, then a double-edged dagger.

  Against a ruck of darkgard, his stife was also useless. Real salvation lay beneath an archway of brambles where the air thinned and rippled from a yielding of space. That lack of comprehension, for many humen, had led to forgetfulness. But terraveill were everywhere, in the Overland and the Gloaming. Despite so little notice, they remained.

  As Paxton chugged forward, his left arm throbbed, and he welcomed the pain as an unkind reminder. Earlier when he’d forgotten to watch for danger, a lone darkgard intersected his path. Shrieking, it had traced a lithe arc through the air before landing on Paxton’s left arm. Its weight thrust him sideways. Its claws pierced his armer. Like a child at play, the demol swung until its back limbs started carving. Wax from leather. Leather from flesh. Flesh from bone.

  With rehearsed agility, Pax had reacted. He’d lunged for the nearest tree and hugged its scratchy trunk, dividing himself from the darkgard before it could fillet his left side. With one firm thrust, Paxton sealed the embrace by skewering its skull with the blade of his stife.

  In a burst of palsy, the helkyte had died. As its limbs rattled, Paxton saw his reflection in its convex eyes. Few souls ever stood so close to a darkgard. Fewer kept their guts intact. While Pax had pried it loose with his boot, elation made him quiver.

  His euphoria was short-lived. When howls erupted around him, Paxton took off in a sprint. His chest heaved from the effort, wetness soaking his clothes, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake.

  In the Overland, most conflicts were as vague as the darkgard that provoked them. Many disputes could be settled with gestures and words. Not so in the Gloaming – where bones really broke and blood really spilled.

  As the ruck gained ground behind him, Paxton caught sight of the archway. Ducking, he plunged beneath the brambles. Their prickly vines formed a tunnel that led to the terraveill where his outstretched hand found a doorknob mounted within smooth wood.

  When Pax shoved the door open, inertia sent him tumbling onto a rough stone floor. The air cooled. The howling ceased. Again he was safe in the castle.

  Outside the terraveill darkgard frothed and snarled. As they clawed uselessly at the lustrous barrier, Paxton taunted them with a look. Those helkytes acted trapped, but they weren’t. He was the
one living like a fish in a bowl.

  When his breath had steadied, and he felt like standing, Paxton closed the Gloaming door. Its ancient panels were stained red in warning. Its crimson knob had no lock.

  More than once as a child, Pax had opened that door to test the depths of his courage. The risks he took grew with him, but his latest choice – to go there alone – wouldn’t earn him a hero’s reward.

  Not that he needed to be anyone’s hero. He’d give a hand to save a stranger and his whole arm for a friend. But he snuck into the Gloaming because he was bored, not brave.

  Ignoring his own fatigue, Paxton jogged across the broad green lawn of the castle’s empty courtyard. Everyone was at breakfast where he should be. Common meals weren’t compulsory, but his absence always raised questions since there were some things people expected of him, and some things they thought he’d never do.

  Missing a meal was unexpected. So was entering the Gloaming alone. But watching a sunrise from the castle storch was not.

  First he slipped into the infirmery to clean and treat his arm. He worked hastily, using what was left of his shirtsleeve as a towel. His mother ran the castle infirmery with immaculate precision, and only because Paxton knew her habits could he leave the place as he found it. His mother was often the last to finish breakfast. She was also the first to overreact, and if she caught him in his current state, she might finish what the darkgard began.

  In the armery, Pax removed his gear. He was used to injuries, even his own, but he wasn’t prepared for the chaos of his appearance. Staring down, he felt a delayed gush of fear.

  Everything on his left side was shredded. His dense bracers now resembled fringe. His leggings looked like cabbage in a salad. None of it could be salvaged, and Paxton hoped his friends wouldn’t notice one less set of armer on the hooks along the wall.

  He hid the remnants at the bottom of a neglected chest, then returned his stife to its assigned shelf. Cleaning the blade could wait until later.

  Dressed in fresh clothes, most of which were his own, Paxton headed with relief for the storch. Its worn staircase felt taller than normal as he dragged himself up its steps. The castle had lots of places to hide, but his favorite was in plain sight. When he climbed the storch, the inkeepers knew what he wanted – and how to respond. They might call out and wave, but they stayed away.

  Paxton pushed through a trap to access the roof. Shutting it, he scaled a short ladder to the tower’s crest. The storch was older than he cared to consider. Age gnawed at its mortar. Weather softened its stones. The structure seemed worthless, not to mention unsafe, until one stood atop it.

  After peeling off his boots and socks, Pax settled onto the roof’s northern edge. He welcomed the wind’s freshness by inhaling deeply, over and over, until his lungs felt clear of what passed for air in the stagnant Gloaming. Sunlight purged the eastern sky while the countryside awoke. Roosters crowed. Shutters opened. It was, Paxton realized, the last day of summer.

  The town of Castlevale was ready. Banners of cloth, brightly dyed, decorated its orderly square. Kiosks lined its sides with militant precision.

  Although Paxton had never walked its streets, he knew Castlevale like it was kin. Its shops and houses crowded the vale just north of the castle, and from the storch, Pax had memorized the pattern and pace of its citizens. He knew who made this and who sold that. He saw who profited and who starved.

  Methods might change, but motives rarely did, and without ever moving among them, Paxton learned plenty from those Castleveilians – chiefly that people were predictable.

  Darkgard were, too. From his perch Paxton watched them flit like oversized bats among the weathervanes sprouting from rooftops. Darkgard lurked wherever humen stirred, and while helkytes never slept, most retreated at dusk into the Gloaming. Some remained upworld to stalk the rowdy towns where the wealthy and desperate caroused.

  But in Castlevale, profit trumped frivolity. Because of this, its nighttime skies stayed vacant.

  So did those above the castle. Like Paxton, the darkgard never crossed its pale, not even to circle above it. Unlike them, Pax was born in the castle. Once he left it, he could not return, and if he did risk a stroll on the outer wall – though no one liked it much when he did – he kept his weight tilted inward. One careless tumble, and the damage was done.

  Stuck as he was, Pax still learned all he could about the Overland. Since childhood, he’d amassed a gallery of maps that draped the walls of his tuck, and each night before sleeping, he memorized their contents, quizzing himself in hushed whispers. He knew the towns and terrain of all four anchorlands. He could describe, without looking, where to find every terraveill. When he did finally leave the castle, Paxton meant to be ready.

  He was far less attentive to routine things and rules that weren’t really rules. Among friends, etiquette seemed pointless. So did the details of castle life which felt as ordinary to Paxton as a town did to everyone else. He didn’t notice when the herb garden flowered. Or if someone dusted the cupboards. Or how the stables needed a fresh coat of paint – unless he was expected to paint them.

  But he always noticed the Sterling girl.

  She lived on the fringe of Castlevale and worked at its one-room schoolhouse. Back and forth she traveled, day after day, walking dutifully along a narrow road to the southern end of the square. When Pax happened to catch sight of her in the afternoon, he watched the Sterling girl fall and rise – down the hollow, up the knoll – before vanishing again.

  At some point, he began noticing what she wore. The habit bothered him, but rather than stop, Paxton found himself ranking the options. That bothered him even more. He shouldn’t care about other people’s clothing when he paid no attention to his own. Shirts were shirts, and slacks were slacks. Propriety required both.

  Still, Pax liked it best when the Sterling girl wore her light blue dress. His next favorite was the shade of clotted cream. He cared the least for her dark grey frock that looked like mourning clothes.

  The Sterling girl often seemed mournful, even when her dress didn’t agree. Her shoulders hung from the weight of more than a lunch bucket. With midnight hair and skin like the moon, she was pretty and often sad. She was also faithful, tackling the same lane twice a day with steady, reconciled strides.

  Until this last day of summer when she stopped and turned.

  Boggled by the change, Paxton straightened. The Sterling girl looked at the castle, then directly at him – as though she could see both. Even with so much distance between them, Paxton recognized what she felt. She was tired of being sad. She ached to be rescued. She wept.

  The single peal of a bell rang out across the grounds.

  Unaccustomed to hearing that sound only once, Paxton swiveled to check the courtyard. Nobody stood on its lawn. No one emerged from the stables or apartments or keep. The king’s bell always rang three times, and Pax wondered if he alone had noticed its solitary comment.

  Confused, he returned his gaze to the girl. He focused on her face. He waited.

  Then, audaciously, he waved.

  As calm as a willow on a windless day, the Sterling girl waved back.

  Chapter Two

  From her earliest years, Pearl knew her parents were different. It took her longer to learn why that mattered. The lesson began on the day they vanished.

  Alyn and Maye Sterling weren’t at home when their daughter returned from the town schoolhouse. Often Pearl arrived to find them gone – her mother bartering at shops in the market, her father exploring forgotten back roads – and at fifteen she was old enough to start supper and finish her chores. Always, by sunset, her parents appeared.

  But on that dreary midwinter day when the sun begrudgingly rose and fell, Pearl sat alone, waiting, until the house darkened. As she cooked, curiosity changed to concern. While she cleaned, worry swelled to distress. And when the town campanile rang twenty-four times, irrepressible panic took hold.

  Her parents didn’t return that night or the ne
xt. No satchelback delivered a message. No carters arrived to collect their things. Silence in the house grew as loud as a cry.

  The Sterling farm, called Hollycopse, taught Pearl how much there was to love and how much there was to fear. Neither of Pearl’s parents were farmers by trade. Her mother, who could bring order to a swarm of ants, had managed Hollycopse with vigor, if not skill, by hiring others to do what she couldn’t.

  Pearl’s father was an itinerant schooler – always distracted, often absent, and rarely aware if they skipped supper for lack of food. It was his insistence that led their little family to settle at the edge of Castlevale, a lumbertown tucked in the Great Vales of Rosper.

  Within a day of their disappearance, the townsfolk of Castlevale counted the Sterlings as lost. And good riddance, many said under their breath. Or in bold, audible tones.

  Rumors flew like crows looting a cornfield. The Sterlings were dead or arrested. Or they’d grown tired of farming and left to try their hand at business elsewhere.

  Whatever the reason, Castleveilians agreed. Alyn and Maye Sterling were gone.

  Why they had left, Pearl couldn’t decide. She hated all the rumored options, so she refused to pick one. Instead, Pearl imagined her parents still lived and waited for her wish to come true.

  Humbug and hokum, the townsfolk declared.

  Hope, Pearl replied – every time.

  Over the next five years, Pearl learned the difference between inconvenience and need. Without her mother to manage things, the barley crop dwindled. Each season Pearl earned just enough to pay the bank lien on Hollycopse, an unexpected burden that reared up not long after her parents vanished.