At first it sounded like thunder, a great rumble far in the distance. Then the sharp, piercing cries of the Dragee grew distinct. She hadn’t heard the sound in so many years that its foreignness kept her pinned to the tree.
It can’t be!
She slowly opened her eyes, praying that she had fallen asleep and that it was some terrible nightmare stirred up from her thoughts of the past. She was not so fortunate.
The horizon overflowed with riders, the Moriors darkening the sky above them in a thick black mass, the Ereubinians each astride their Dragee, a creature not quite horse or dragon, but an unsettling combination of the two. They screamed as their hooves pounded the dry ground. Her heart felt stuck in her chest, devoid of blood, and despite all her talk of readiness, it took her a moment to shake herself out of disbelief.
“Koen, run!” She tore the reins from the tree branch while mounting and dug her heels into the steed’s side. She heard them as if they were already upon her, so many of them — far more than she remembered from the last time.
Please, Shadow. Ride swiftly.
As she came to the edge of the village, she jerked hard on the reins. There were enemies in Palingard. It must have been an advanced group. Shadow reared at the sudden pull on the bit, but she steered him hard to the right, toward the Netherwoods.
She couldn’t see much from where she rode, but what she glimpsed was a losing battle. She pulled her bow from the case and pivoted in the saddle enough to nock and aim an arrow. She struck a black-cloaked Ereubinian in the left side of his chest. Another shot and then a third were let fly in succession, several more Ereubinians falling, before she felt a tug on the bow. Suddenly, it was ripped from her hands by some unseen force and tossed beneath Shadow’s feet.
What the …?
She gasped as a hooded rider appeared beside her, as if born of thin air. There had been no one near her, she was certain of it.
He shook his head.
She dug in her heels and sped through the thicket at the edge of the woods, small limbs and twigs hitting her face. A Dragee was much faster than a horse and she realized as she heard him growing ever closer that she couldn’t outrun him this way. As much as she didn’t want to do it, there were areas in the Nethers that were simply too dense for the beast. Her decision had been made for her.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, folded her arms across her chest and slid her heels from the stirrups. Then, tucking her head, she braced herself and turned sharply to the right, where she executed an under-practiced rolling dismount.
She slid as she fought to get solid ground beneath her feet. Just as she’d found it, a sharp pain sliced through her ankle and she bit her lip hard enough to bring the metallic taste of blood to her mouth. She blocked out all feeling as she darted through the wild overgrowth, focusing only on the sound of her pursuer.
The root was thick — so thick that she might have seen it had she not looked back. It twisted upwards from the dirt and back down to form a perfect loop, which her injured ankle found with ease. Her back met the forest floor with rib-breaking force, stealing the breath from her lungs and clouding her vision with black swirls that threatened to pull her under.
Within seconds he was beside her, panting, his sword pointed at her neck. Once he’d caught his breath, he straddled her waist with a knee to her right and a foot planted on her left, careful to keep the blade at her throat.
He was dressed fully in black. Leather guards adorned his wrists and shins, connected by various plates of armor. Dragon’s heads served as shoulder plates and extended to his elbows. His hood covered an elaborate helmet that shielded all of his face except his eyes, which flared bright violet.
“I should tell you,” he said, “that I am impressed that you made it this far. I’m not easy to outrun, but you must already know that by now.”
“The threat of having one’s soul stolen tends to quicken one’s feet,” she hissed.
He removed his glove and placed his hand on her cheek, perhaps to keep her from turning from him in fear, though she wasn’t about to grant him that. Her gaze did not waver from his masked face.
Unimpressed, he ignored her bravado and closed his eyes, speaking in a language that she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t a very harsh-sounding phrase, but she could tell it wasn’t meant for her benefit. She contemplated an attempt to pry her ankle from its snare, but found even a slight shift impossible.
He abruptly stopped, seemingly mid-word, though there was no way she could tell for sure, and sat upright to slide the hood back and remove his helmet, revealing a black shirt below his breastplate that rose and clung to his neck. His jaw was strong, his profile defined. But the look in his eyes as they grew ordinary brown in color, the expression, was what struck her — he was not just handsome, but known somehow. It made her chest ache.
An acrid thought crossed her mind that the odd emotional reaction he was invoking in her was somehow related to the Erubians’ rumored power to steal a human’s soul.
“You are not human,” he murmured, scowling in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal his shock.
“Of course I’m human,” she said, “do you not see me bleeding?”
“Adorians also bleed. Why are you here?”
She assumed that it was a rhetorical question, but before either of them could speak again, a cry pierced close to where they’d entered the woods.
Garren glanced back toward the sound of the Morior’s cry, visions of the Laionai’s justice filling his mind. He’d seen death come slowly by their hands for much lesser sins than this.
“If I am what you say I am, then I’m your mortal enemy, am I not?” When the girl spoke, there was acid in her words and none of the timidity or outright dread he had come to expect from others in his presence.
He turned back to her with narrowed eyes, his lips twisted in an incredulous smirk, and laughed below his breath before he could speak. He couldn’t begin to imagine her reason for antagonizing him, especially considering what she was. “You don’t fear me?” She started to answer him but he cut her off. “Before you speak, perhaps you should know to whom you are speaking.”
“I don’t care who you are. Your arrival has told me enough of your allegiance, that’s all I need to know.”
He really wasn’t certain what to say. Before he could reply, the Morior could be heard coming closer and he saw, finally, fear in her eyes. He expected to be pleased by it; instead, all sound left his head and his sight blurred. His gut felt uneasy.
She lifted her gaze to the sky above them, took a deep breath, and with no small portion of reluctance, acknowledged her defeat by gracing him with a faint smile. It wasn’t sarcastic. All traces of amusement had fled her winsome features. What it was, however, was so much worse; she’d resigned herself to leave this world on her own terms regardless of the circumstances. Her expression was perhaps the sincerest he’d ever seen.
He lowered his eyes, weighing his decision. “Can you walk at all?” The words came out as a forced whisper from his lips.
She looked at him, dumbfounded. “You intend for me to walk to my execution? I think not. If they want me, they’ll have to come for me here.”
He exhaled sharply as he leaned down and lifted her with one arm while reaching to free her ankle with the other. As she struggled against him, he placed a finger over her mouth to silence her and motioned toward the thickest underbrush. He let his fingers slide beneath her chin as he whispered, “Go there, and do not move until nightfall. We’ll be gone by then. Do you understand me? Do not move until then.”
She nodded, remaining still and wordless as he picked up his sword. As he rose, his eyes met hers again and lingered warmly for a moment before cooling. He tightened his jaw, stunned by his own actions. Without thinking, he shrugged the cloak from his shoulders and shoved it into her hands.
“Go,” he whispered, then turned back and disappeared into the thicket.
Just before he emerged on the other side, Garren took hi
s sword and slid it quickly across the gap in the armor at his left leg, blood spilling onto the metal and down onto the cuff of his boot. He clenched his teeth, sucking in air as the stinging subsided, and walked into the clearing.
Tadraem approached with a wry smile on his face, Garren’s Dragee cantering beside his own. “My Lord, tell me that you haven’t met your match in such a tiny opponent.”
Garren took the reins from him and mounted the Dragee, repositioning his helmet as soon as he was seated. “She paid for it with her life,” he growled.
“No matter, my liege, one less soul will make little difference to our spoils.”
“Let us pray that the Laionai and her most Holy will be pleased,” Garren said it just loud enough for Tadraem to hear it. He hoped his old mentor, now his second in command, hadn’t detected the hitch in his voice.
CHAPTER TWO
SAY THE WORDS
T
he woods were deep and still. Ariana had watched the color of the sky progress from bright blue to a bruised and bitter color and finally saw the sun sink below the tops of the trees. It felt like hours, but she couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since darkness had fallen. She tucked her arms against her chest, her back against the base of a tree. It was ironic how frightened of this place she’d been as a child; now the recesses and alcoves felt somewhat comforting.
The moon was still a night away from being full, a thin sliver perceptibly missing from its side. It peered back at her from its place in the sky, sending pale rays like silk threads through the forest. Gingerly moving branches aside, her walk back to the village was almost reverent, as if leaving nothing wounded by her presence would somehow save those she had been unable to.
The place she’d taken for granted for years grew new form. The trampled leaves, twigs, and roots seemed foreign to her, rolling from under the overgrowth and snaking along the forest floor to trip her already unsure footing. She knew better than to imbue inanimate objects with hostility, but her gut recoiled at the mere whisper of a thought related to what had befallen her morning. She went back to cursing the wild, unkempt underbrush.
Gregor is never going to hear the end of this when I get a hold of him. This should have been clear-cut months ago.
The absurdity of her thoughts hit her and made her throat dry. A voice murmured in her mind that she would never have the chance to throttle Gregor properly for his negligence.
There is no sound, nothing, save your own fettered breathing. There is nothing left.
She almost tripped on it. Absently, she picked up her satchel from where she had thrown it to the ground in dismount and slung it over one shoulder.
Listen … what do you hear?
She shook her head against the question. She couldn’t let herself think this way, she had no reason to. Then, her internal ramblings halted with her breathing and any threadbare hope she’d held that Palingard had in any way been spared. She crossed over the densest part of the forest to see clearly what she had been hearing, and ignoring, for a few paces …
The flames danced and licked angrily at the night air, spiraling upwards toward the waxing moon. Any trace of the festival décor was long gone, and scant pillars remained where modest cottages had once speckled the clearing. Those on the outskirts smoldered, while those in the center remained viciously ablaze. There were no survivors; no one picking up the remnants to begin again, no weeping and mourning, no scurrying of animals to find new shelter. Her vision blurred, her eyes glossed over with unshed tears. Her thoughts were as barren as the devastation before her.
What she could see beyond the destruction was the scene she had once tried so hard to forget, the one she had been clinging to anew with hope. As if on top of what was real and in front of her, she saw Palingard as it was fifteen years past. The village was reeling from the aftermath of the last siege — shouts of pain and grief heard in equal measure.
Shock turned to anger as she pictured her savior’s face again. He’d known. The Ereubinian had not spared her life out of goodness or mercy. This had been a game for him.
What good are his spoils with no one to suffer for them?
“Was this what you were waiting for?” She wailed. “To see me fall apart?” Her resolve weakened and the ground rushed to meet her knees. Tears rolled down her cheeks and sobs choked her words of clarity. “Why didn’t you come back sooner? Finish us off before we had a chance to recover?” She rested her cheek against the soil as she wept.
At first she thought she felt his breath, the Ereubinian’s — that he had returned to revel in his win — but she realized the very idea that he would have knelt down to lie on the ground beside her was lunacy.
“Koen,” she moaned. Grabbing the dog by his nape, she pulled him to her and buried her face in his matted fur. “You left me, you useless coward.”
Her brief joy was sobered as she fought another round of tears, this one stronger than the first. Keeping one hand on Koen, she lowered her head into the other hand and tried to slow her breathing as her father had once taught her.
I can’t do this now. I can’t let this paralyze me. She didn’t trust the Ereubinian to keep his unspoken promise of respite. She waited another minute before trying her legs. Once she was secure on her feet, she limped back to the edge of the woods, where she stood for a moment, peering into the darkness of the Netherwoods. A wind whipped through the boughs of the trees above her, bringing a chill to her skin. She moved to pull her cloak tighter to her when she realized whose cloak she wore.
Ripping it off, she held back a string of curses that would have made a seaman blanch, but couldn’t bring herself to drop it to the ground.
It doesn’t matter whose it is, it will still keep me warm.
She swallowed a healthy measure of disgust before grudgingly wrapping it around her shoulders again. Koen seemed to look at her with approval.
“I don’t want to hear it from you,” she sounded ill, but was more than pleased he’d run from the fight. She’d seen nothing but what appeared to be charred carcasses of both man and beast. No doubt Koen wouldn’t have made it.
He looked up at her and sneezed, as was his tradition when she spoke to him as if he had the ability to answer.
“Not that you would have been able to do much anyhow,” she murmured. Though she played a one-sided conversation, her mind was already elsewhere. Father, where are you?
She’d heard for three years counting that Palingard was the last stronghold and it had been at least nine years or more since they’d stopped trading with the city of Ruiari. Could we really be the last? Her intuition told her that somewhere there had to be smaller camps of those, like herself, who’d managed to evade capture.
Surely Father is somewhere among them, maybe without sense or memory of where he is from. As much as she avoided others and feigned little interest in what Palingard called society, she now found herself wishing for the world of Sara’s parents to be real, for Ruiari to be intact, for anyone to be out there in the darkness other than those who’d taken her life from her.
She imagined as she trod along that she would find the University still stood, and that maybe the village leaders in Palingard had been misinformed. They were hard-headed, ill-read and it wouldn’t have been entirely out of the question for them to take the words of one mistaken messenger to heart. Had they even bothered to see for themselves? Given the extent of their preparations, they couldn’t have. Then she recalled hearing something herself from Sara. It had fallen. She was being ridiculous. Even Jonathan, whose family was as lofty as Sara’s in what had once been Ruiari’s royal court, had spoken of its fall.
She traveled for several hours, until the depth of foliage hid the light from the moon. Only when she could no longer see did she stop and take refuge beneath the overhang of what appeared to be a large rock formation. Finally, she was left with no choice but to contend with thoughts of Sara and Bella that she’d previously held back; she surrendered to another bout of tears.
&n
bsp; When she woke the next morning, she found she’d slept so deeply that it took her a minute to gain her bearings.
“Koen?” What she’d thought to be stone was in the light of day a huge root. Standing, she found that she could observe nothing but the walls of dirt that blocked her view. “Koen!”
As she climbed to the top of the embankment, she was overcome with awe. Ravines wove their way deep into the ground, dipping from trees whose bases were larger than the home she’d been born in. Moss clung to the winding roots and made their way in strings to the forest floor. The varying hues of green and specks of pale violet flowers left her speechless. The effect was stunning. She had grown so accustomed to the simplicity of her village, the rugged cliffs and barren stretches of land, that a new definition of the word “forest” was beginning to form.
“Koen!” Still hearing nothing, she shook herself from her stupor and began to tread through the maze around her with staggered progress. Her ankle, still swollen, throbbed.
She spied her companion a few paces ahead, hopping from one root to the next. “Koen!” He howled in recognition of his name.
After walking a bit, her stomach overturned her will and forced her to admit she was hungry. She’d argued with herself for some time, insisting she was too shaken to eat and digest anything properly, but in the end, the growling in her gut won.
Untying the satchel, she pulled from it bread, dried meat and a small bit of cheese. Koen refused when she broke off a piece of the bread for him.
“Suit yourself, but don’t whine later that you’re famished. We could have a long journey ahead of us.” She took her time eating. Her ankle needed the rest and her mind began to wander.
Surely the waterfront villages had been stronger than Palingard. She was aware that she was reneging on every point she’d ever made in her arguments with the men in the village when they’d tried to convince her that Palingard was not alone and that there had to be other strongholds farther from Eidolon. That had sounded ridiculous to her at the time. Why would Eidolon have wasted its efforts on a little tract of land like that? Palingard had nothing of value and what they did have they accredited to their damned Adorians.
Son of Ereubus Page 3