Aia held her dagger steady in one hand and grabbed Les's arm with the other. "We have to move, they're coming for me," she said urgently.
Les gave her a sharp look, nocking another arrow from a crouched position. The Celet beyond the stable fence were occupied in a very close, very bloody battle with Adreth and his companions.
"Let's go that way," Les nodded off to the right, a path that led around the stables to the wide open, vacant hills.
Aia nodded. The presences were coming closer. Les gave her a hand to pull her up. The moment they rose to standing, there was a severe crack and the shattering of a fence from beside them that bowled them over.
It was the same sensation from when she thought Drei had killed her, or when she heard the shot that took down Teveres -
The image of him on his hands and knees, the hole in his back and the blood on the floor flashed in her vision unbidden, choking her. This can't be happening. Not now, damn it.
She pulled it together in an instant, shoving Les ahead and restarting the jog around the stables. Run or die - stay still and be captured. She could not go down like this. She could feel them, the Followers and the Celet coming up behind them. The shock of the invisible arrow hitting the fence gave their pursuers the few seconds they needed to get close enough. Two people - a cream-skinned, dark haired woman and a dark haired man were mere feet away.
If only running could save me, she thought, legs pumping, fear coursing through her worse than she could remember. If onlIf only I didn't know the way this ends.
A hand closed around her arm. Les pulled away from her, running a few steps ahead.
"Les!" She screamed, fighting the grasp. She spun against the hand on her elbow, driving her dagger towards her attacker's torso. The woman barred her teeth when the dagger sunk into her side. There was blood on Aia's hand, on the ground - and a scream let loose from the woman's lips that rang through Aia's whole body.
The man's reflexes were quick as he wrenched Aia's arms behind her back. The strength in his hold chilled her; she remembered the hands of her mother, the feeling of being out of control, at the physical mercy of another. Not again. Please, never again. She kicked, she yelled, she writhed - and still she was being pulled farther away.
“Get your hands off her!” Les roared. He pulled back an arrow, and another. The first missed, and the second struck the woman who was already bleeding from the stab wound in her side. The arrow lodged itself in her belly. Les called out in vain for Adreth to help him.
Four more people, Followers and Celet, were coming from Nivenea's wall to support Aia’s capture. One of them clasped shackles around her wrists. A chain link leash was held by a middle-aged woman with the Celet words in her thoughts.
Tears pricked Aia’s eyes from the desperation, from the struggle, from the physical pain that everything was causing her. She could only watch as one of the Celet pulled out a pistolet and aimed it at Les.
Aia had never seen that look on Les’s face, one of guilt and dread and confounding knowledge. He wasn’t going to win if he held his ground and fought for her - he was going to get himself killed. They started to approach him, and he was smart enough to run, dodging side to side, towards Adreth.
Aia, I will find you, He was thinking quite deliberately for her benefit. Don’t give up. Don’t stop fighting.
It would have been more comforting if his thoughts were backed by confidence. All she could feel from him was unrequited dread.
The woman holding Aia’s leash had almost dragged her all the way to the wall when Adreth finally saw Les, pursued by two of the Celet. Adreth’s gaze flickered to Aia. A dead man lay beneath him, all of the Celet who were hiding in the stables now deceased. There was blood splattered across his face and body like war paint. He raised his newly-acquired Celet weapon and shook his head almost imperceptively, as if to resign with, I’m sorry this happened to you.
He broke his connection with her when he fired on Les’s assailants.
As they rounded the corner, Aia gave up on the struggle against her restraints. She let herself go limp, daring her captors to pick her up, kill her, or making any decision otherdec they r than requiring her to be complicit in her own confinement. She lowered herself to the ground, arms pulled painfully behind her back.
“Please, if you’re going to kill me just kill me,” she said quickly, her voice threatening to give out on her. A sharp tug pulled her around the corner, out of the view of friendly eyes. Aia sat atop cobblestones, leaning to the side against Nivenea’s cold stone wall.
She finally got a good look at the face of the woman holding the leash, a hardened, cold face framed by wild, kinked brown hair. The woman’s eyes were empty of any compassion. She stood in front of her looking down, so far above and removed from the situation that she may as well have been one of the gods who had forsaken the Children of Elseth.
The woman was saying something, but of course Aia could not discern it. They might have been orders to kill her, or they might have been words of concession. She would never know.
I just wish I could have my life back, Aia thought to herself, tears streaming down her cheeks. If she cared for dignity she might have held them back, but in that moment, looking up at a woman who held her life ransom, she could think of no reason to hold anything back from anyone. I want to work out of my house and make small differences. It wasn’t much, but I was happy... I was safe... I was free. I’d give anything just to have that again.
The answer to her forlorn prayer never showed their face. A warm body pressed against her back and wrapped an arm around her neck. The last sound she heard was choking from her own lips; her vision blurred, then blackened, then was lost.
Epilogue
With his shoulder crunching against the bark of a barren tree, Elden peeked out from his hiding place. He clenched his hands to control the fine tremors which had begun to plague him. A mental fog closed in around his head, turning his cogni
tive processes to slush. Each moment was a little harder than the last. It was three days since he had his last shot of the fire, and it still pursued him, made him vulnerable.
Gods but the headache was bad, and even worse out in daylight.
The fields between his hideout and Layvin's Embrace were peppered with groups of Kaldari warriors. They walked in groups of five or six, weapons in hand. The black smoke of burning houses rising from over the hills danced ominously through the air against gray skies.
Mind-talker and her friend had been right. The day after three corpses showed up at his back door, four more people came looking for him. When he dispensed with them, two more came after that. They attacked him in his sleep, and nearly won.
He couldn't have that. He survived too much to be taken out by religious fanatics. Deldri, Aiasjia had called him - gifted, she said. Cursed was a better term, blighted or disfigured, perhaps. His ability had only ever landed him in trouble and ostracized him from his home. It brought him here, to Nivenea, on what appeared to be War Day. In his head he shouted all manner of obscenities at himself.
He was beginning to regret his decision to run from Vail. Aiasjia told him that they would be in Nivenea, as if she were offering an alliance. She said it was bigger than just their problems. She failed to mention that Nivenea was about to be under siege.
Afterword
First and foremost I’d like to thank you, dear reader, for getting all the way to the end of this novel. It is my most sincere hope that you enjoyed what you read and found something in its message worthwhile. If you’d like to keep up with news, story extras, and my upcoming publications, please visit www.sydneymcooper.com. Fathers and Sons, a short-story prequel told from Garren’s perspective, is available on Amazon if you’re looking for more Forsaken Lands material. With any luck, Forsaken Lands, Book 2: Suffering will be hitting the web by early 2015 at the latest, with perhaps more short stories and other tidbits released in the meantime. Stay tuned!
This novel was a joy to write, and I had a lot
of support in doing it. I thank my husband for his unwavering belief in this novel’s success and his willingness to endure long, late-night walks talking plot strategies and historical context. Without him this book would have been much more convoluted! The cover is credited to Raechel Gasparac of R.A.G. Studios, and I cannot express enough appreciation for her phenomenal work. To my friends who were involved in various stages of the process – Becca, Quack, Theo, Bridgette, Chris, and Todd: you are all lovely people for bearing with me through the early drafts.
Lastly, I would like to make special mention of my Grandmother, whose patience and love gave my creativity room to grow. Every little girl should have a mysterious garden full of fairies to come home to, as I did. You kept my magic alive.
Peace.
Tragedy (Forsaken Lands) Page 29