by Aaron Gansky
It found its mark. The staff punched the fangand in the chest but served only as a distraction. Turning from the archers, it locked eyes with Oliver. Already, he sprinted toward the wolfish animal. He leapt higher than he thought possible. His cerulean robe trailed behind him and, for an instant, he felt like a superhero.
The fangand swung at him, but Oliver kicked its clawed hand away, landed at its feet, and spun around behind it before it could grab him. He somersaulted away and grabbed his staff in one fluid motion. When he came up, he brought the staff in front of him in time to deflect a swipe from the fangand. He followed the block with a crushing spin-stab with his staff. The end of the staff caught the animal in the stomach. Wind rushed from its lungs.
Oliver kept moving. He punched the staff up under the fangand’s jaw and cracked it in half. Two spurts of blood sprayed his face. Startled, he staggered back a few steps. He hadn’t cut the fangand, so the blood must be his. He steadied his vision and saw two arrow tips in the beast’s chest.
The fangand used Oliver’s distraction as an opportunity to swipe at him. The sledgehammer fist caught him on the shoulder, and Oliver felt it slip out of the socket. Gnarled roots tangled his feet, and he fell backward.
The creature dropped to its knees and its paws. It pulled itself toward Oliver slowly. Every muscle in his body tensed. Run, they said. Kick, anything! Instead, he petitioned Adonai on his behalf. “Save me,” he whispered. “Save us.” For the first time, he understood the words he said in the Ancient Language.
This must be what Lauren felt like when she used magic.
The fangand pulled itself closer. Blood ran down its chest and abdomen and matted the black and red and silver fur. The skin on its nose wrinkled back to its eyes, making ridges, making rippling waves of anger. Its lips pulled up to reveal finger-long fangs in a thin, evil grimace. Blood seeped out and pooled on the ground in front of them. The fangand brought its nose up to Oliver’s, sniffed, and collapsed. Its arms twitched, its tail swept leaves. And then it stopped moving.
Oliver took shallow breaths. He thought, for sure, the fangand would leap up at any second, claws and fangs first. But it didn’t. He measured the breathing of the fangand, which slowed quickly, and eventually ceased. Was it playing dead? No, he hadn’t coded them to do so. It must be dead—too much lost blood, likely.
He steeled his heart, willed it to slow, and reached toward the beast. He lifted up its jaw. It took him a moment to find them in the matted fur, two pulsing gashes the size of dolphins’ snouts. The blood soured his stomach.
His shoulder ached—like a fantastic pinch from a giant. The pain exploded in his brain, hurt so bad, he could feel it in his eyes.
Ullwen stood over him. “Fine staff-work, Sir Vicmorn.”
“Thank Adonai,” he said.
Ullwen said, “I do, every day.”
“Little help!” Lauren called.
A smoldering fangand leapt at her. She collapsed into the leaves with surprising speed. The fangand flew over the top of her. She stood and stretched out her hand. Ullwen sprinted toward her, sword drawn, but Aiden beat him to it.
With jaw-dropping speed, Aiden brought his blade cleanly through the fangand’s neck. It collapsed quickly, and Lauren brought her hand back. She shifted her attention to the fangand in the cloud of razorbeaks. She stretched out her hand, and fire burst from the feet of the fangand. Its howl split the sky. The cloud of purple birds scattered.
Oliver smelled burnt hair and boiling blood.
The two Varuthian soldiers stood up and joined the fight. They each nocked an arrow in their bows and let them fly. Another howl.
The fire subsided, and the fangand, bloodied and burnt, rolled on the ground. Aiden walked to it and stuck his sword deep into the beast.
The yellow tint left Oliver’s eyes, and all returned to normal. He ran his hand over the prayer amulet his father had given him and said a silent “thank you.”
“That’s why we keep moving,” Ullwen said, his long black hair damp with sweat despite the chill in the air. Blood spattered his face and hands.
Weakened with exhaustion, Oliver thanked God for his healthy rush of adrenaline. He rubbed his shoulder, hoped the adrenaline would dull the pain enough to make it to the horses.
“What’s wrong with your shoulder?” Erica asked.
“Separated,” he said quietly.
Ullwen nodded. “I wondered. Would you like me to fix it?”
Before Oliver could tell him no, Ullwen had grabbed the wrist of the sore arm and yanked hard.
The bone scraped back into the socket, snapping in with the tight pull of tendons and ligaments. Oliver dropped to his knees in pain. The solution hurt more than the problem. He held his shoulder harder now, eyes clamped shut, tears squeezing to his cheeks.
Ullwen clapped him on the back. “The pain subsides quickly. We must move.”
* * *
Autumn dropped off Bailey Renee and drove down the long, winding driveway before Bailey even had her keys out. She fumbled through her backpack in the dark and wondered why no one left the lights on for her. Lauren must be pouting still, but she’d never taken it to this level, never sat alone in a dark house. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe she did need counseling.
Mom would be home in another hour. Still, Bailey couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad may have happened. This wasn’t like Lauren at all. This wasn’t how she sulked. Bailey used her irritation to quell her rising apprehension, found the keys in her backpack, and let herself in.
She flipped on the light in the great room, a combined living and dining room. The television wasn’t on. Aside from the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, the house was quiet. By now, she should have heard video games blaring from Lauren’s room or some sulky music. Anything.
Something was wrong. Fear washed her irritation away completely. “Lauren?” she called gently.
No answer. The still, calm house worried her. The icemaker rumbled like some dumb beast.
Bailey Renee walked directly to Lauren’s room.
She knocked hard with numb arms. Too many push-ups after practice and too many free-throws before. Her shoulders, fatigued from carrying the weight of literature novels and calculus texts, protested the force of her knocking.
In the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed. The pendulum groaned while the clock ticked. Chimes signaled the late afternoon hour.
Bailey Renee tried the door knob. Locked.
She told herself not to panic. Lauren must have gone to Oliver’s house and accidentally locked her door before she left. Or she did it on purpose, to keep Bailey Renee out, away from her precious journal.
But why didn’t Lauren answer her phone? “Lauren! Answer the door! You’re starting to freak me out!” She dialed Lauren’s number again. The phone rang on the other side of the door.
She went to her mother’s door. The key to all the interior doors lay on top of the jamb. Bailey Renee took the dusty key and unlocked Lauren’s door. Her mind invented terrible explanations and images, things she feared finding on the other side of the door—Lauren unconscious, passed out drunk, or overdosed on drugs, her dead body with bloody wrists.
But she found none of these. The room was empty. On the shelf closest to her bed sat Lauren’s customary water glass, her keys, and her cell phone, flashing a notice: 13 missed calls. Those were Bailey’s calls. Before school, during school, at lunch, after school.
Thirteen times she’d called Lauren, and Lauren never left without her cell. Until now, Bailey assumed Lauren had simply been ignoring her. Now, her worry kicked into high gear. If Lauren were in trouble, if she’d simply gotten lost or forgot her phone, why wouldn’t she call Bailey from a pay phone? From Oliver’s house?
Something was very wrong.
Bailey Renee scrolled through Lauren’s contacts until she found Oliver’s number. She punched the number into her phone and sat on the foot of Lauren’s bed while Oliver’s ring back tone hummed unconcer
nedly. Mozart—really? “Pick up, please. Come on, pick up and tell me she’s over at your house.”
No one answered.
She tried the home number. A female voice answered quickly. “Mrs. Shaw? This is Bailey Renee. Is Lauren over there?”
“No, she’s not. I thought she and Oliver were at your house.”
She set her backpack down at the foot of the bed. “He’s not, and Lauren left her cell here. Did they say anything to you about doing something today?”
Mrs. Shaw’s voice trembled with a wave of worry. “I don’t remember Oliver saying anything. He’s been working on that game of theirs non-stop for the last few weeks. I don’t think he’d stop working on it for anything in the world. He said he was really close to finishing it.”
Bailey’s brain whirred. She had a flimsy thought, but one she wanted to cling to because it was optimistic and hopeful, and far better than the alternative. “Do you think they finished it? Maybe they’re playing it for the first time at the computer lab? Or they went out to celebrate?”
“Could be. Let me ask his father.” Mrs. Shaw got quiet for a minute. Muffled voices filtered through the phone. “He says Oliver was up late working on the game, and he hasn’t seen or heard from him at all today.”
Bailey didn’t say anything. Think. The thought did little to motivate her mind to move. Fear had set in and halted every idea.
Mrs. Shaw was quiet, too. The sound of her breathing came through the cell. She spoke softly. “Do you think we should be worried?”
Chapter Eleven
They lived in peace in those days, the elves and dwarves and humans. They lived among each other, shared land and livestock. They traded wheat with honest scales. They took wives from other races. And Adonai walked among them.
—The Book of the Ancients
THEY REACHED THE HORSES a half-hour later, still in the dark, and Lauren wanted nothing more than to curl up in her bed at home. The chill in the air pinched her skin in a million places. Slightly pointed ears freezing, she pulled her hood over her head. She’d suggested stopping and making camp—really she wanted to build a fire—but Ullwen insisted they keep moving, no matter how much she or anyone else protested. She’d even tried commanding him as the Princess of Alrujah. He’d simply stared at her.
“It is precisely your position that urges us forward. Your safety is more important than your comfort. We can purchase warmer clothes when we get further along.”
Though he’d come in and immediately taken control, having Ullwen along comforted Lauren. She didn’t appreciate having to walk so far for so long, but it felt nice to have someone pushing them, someone urging them forward in a land that seemed stranger by the second.
Speaking of stranger, Ullwen’s two companions stayed eerily quiet. NPCs were a lot creepier in person. Hardly seemed like real people at all. Still, they moved with the same fluid grace as Ullwen. Their hair, though not as wavy as his, had the same sheen of midnight black. If she’d met these two on the streets of Alrujah or Varuth, she’d assume they were twins—the annoying kind that insisted on dressing alike, speaking alike, and finishing each other’s sentences. But these two spoke so seldom, she wondered if they could complete a sentence between them.
The harspus trees thinned, and the group came to a clearing where seven horses were tied to seven trees. They neighed, pulling their lips back and showing their white teeth and pink gums. Varuthians prided themselves on their meticulous care of their horses.
The well-combed manes nearly sparkled in the moonlight. Each hoof was properly shod with a solid iron horseshoe, which dug into the freezing soil. The horses’ tails, long and flowing and free of knots, whipped around them. Their restlessness marked them as riding horses. They did not like being tethered. Their powerful legs worked ceaselessly, eager to run.
Erica stopped walking and wrinkled her brow. “Hang on a second, Skippy,” she said.
Ullwen turned, his eyebrows slanted down toward his nose. “My name is Ullwen.”
Erica sighed and shook her head. “How’d you know to bring horses? And how’d you know to bring them here. Smells a little fishy to me.”
Ullwen sniffed. “I smell no fish.”
Oliver said, “She means it seems odd. And I agree. You’re not telling us everything. If you had horses available for us, why not have them at the edge of the Cerulean Woods? Why make us trek through dangerous land to get to a convenience that would have been more effective closer to Varuth?”
Lauren stood next to Ullwen. He set his jaw tight and he ground his teeth.
“Need I remind you,” he said, “I helped save your lives? Twice. Why do you distrust me now?”
“Bro, you got to earn our trust,” Aiden said as he stepped forward, hand on the hilt of his sword.
Lauren moved alongside Aiden, both to show her support and to subtly hint at her interest in him.
Ullwen’s soldiers stood by either of his shoulders, their hands on their bows.
Not good. The last thing they needed was to fight Varuth’s finest soldiers. She put a hand on Aiden’s forearm to discourage him from drawing his sword. “Ullwen is right,” she said. “Saving our lives twice should earn something.”
“Could be a trap to get us to lower our defenses,” Aiden said.
For the first time, he sounded paranoid. But, after waking up in some strange fantasy world, he had every right to be suspicious. “Ullwen would not raise a hand against me,” she said, remembering the earliest version of the script as well as she could. She walked forward and touched Ullwen’s cheek. “Two loves,” she said.
Ullwen closed his eyes and touched her fingers. “Aye. Two loves.”
Erica said, “Oh brother.”
Ullwen said, “I have no brother.”
“Would someone please get this guy to speak normally?”
“I do speak normally,” he snapped. “But you speak like an Otherlander.”
Oliver leaned against a harspus tree and said, “It’s only getting later. We either need to make camp or move on. We need to rest, and if we have to ride to the monastery to do it, we should.”
“I’m not moving until we get some answers from little mister hero,” Erica said. “How’d you know there’d be four of us traveling? How’d you know Varuth would attack us?”
Lauren moved back to Aiden from Ullwen. He looked disappointed, or hurt, or jealous. The idea pleased her, and though she didn’t want to, she smiled softly. “I think you better tell us,” Lauren said to Ullwen. “No use having secrets, especially if you’re planning on traveling with us.”
Ullwen said to his soldiers, “Ride back to Varuth. Tell them you lost me in the Cerulean Woods, but you saw my tracks headed east, toward the sea.”
Silently, the soldiers mounted two black horses and rode off into the night.
Ullwen continued and said simply, “King Ribillius is not the only one with spies. His Chameleon Soldiers may have better armor, but they’re not as clever as Varuthian Infiltrators.”
“Of course,” Oliver said, gentle acceptance coming over him. He must have remembered the Infiltrators as she did.
“We learned of Ribillius’s plan to root out the Mage Lord. Viceroy Thadeus did not appreciate the sentiment and ordered us to kill the Chameleon Soldiers if we found them. I urged him not to, but he was determined. The tension between our two cities alone could lead us directly into another civil war. He didn’t care. No one cared. So I ran away, like a coward, but not before my spies reported you four were headed toward us. I knew my officers would accompany me, but I didn’t want it to lead to their deaths, hence I prepared the seven steeds and brought them here, beyond where the Infiltrators would look for us.”
Aiden dragged the tip of his sword through the fallen leaves at the edge of the Cerulean Woods. “And where will these steeds carry us?”
“Tonight, they’ll take us to Harland or Orensdale. Which city depends on where you want to go next.”
“We’d have to ride through the n
ight to make it by sunsrise,” Oliver said.
Without hesitation, Lauren said, “West. Yeval Forest.”
Ullwen laughed. “The Bleeding Lands? It would take us days to ride to it. And once there, what would we do? Hope to die quickly? No, I have no interest in going to Yeval Forest.”
“Those are all myths,” Oliver said, then whispered, “Sort of.”
Ullwen rubbed the muzzle of the remaining black horse. “Do as you please. But don’t expect me to ride with you. I’ll keep my stay in Harland. My actions here tonight have left me without a home. If I return to Varuth, I will be executed.”
Cold air pressed in on her, as if she were standing at the cliff overlooking North Chester. And, as much as she enjoyed being in the game, the memory of her pajamas and her slippers would not leave her alone. She was tired. She was sad. She was scared.
Dark, thick clouds obscured the stars overhead. The moon diffused into a silver disk. “We’re sorry, Ullwen. I’m sorry.”
Ullwen stared at Lauren. “Apologies cannot clear the bounty on my head, Indigo. I made a vow long ago, and I intend to keep it, whatever the price.”
Lauren said, “I cannot hold you to your vow. So much has changed.”
Aiden flipped a leaf in the air and sliced it in two. “Enough. If we’re going, let’s get moving.” No question; he was jealous. Her cheeks heated against the cold air. Would anyone see her blushing in the dark? She hoped not, but guessed they would. She’d never had the attention of one man, much less two. It felt—nice.
“Tell me about it,” Erica said. “This whole Romeo and Juliet thing’s getting a little stale.”
Oliver said, “The monastery isn’t much farther. We can stable our horses, get a night’s rest and some food, figure out where to go, and press on in the morning.”
Ullwen began untying horses from trees. “The monk is wise. We should do as he says.”