“My brother asked you to let him go. I’d suggest you listen,” Jaeger said. His quiet voice echoed in the room.
Ivo’s lips twisted into a grim smile.
“I have the right to refuse service!” Gadrun stammered. He foolishly didn’t release the folds of moth eaten cloth.
Those eyes flicked from face to face in mute curiosity. Hanging limp and motionless above the floor like a scruffed cat from the barkeep’s huge fist, the kid watched and waited.
The axe gleamed in the dim light.
“Wait,” the voice from within the folds of cloth was muffled, but strong, and all three men jumped.
Ivo stared down at the bundle still clutched in Gadrun’s fist and caught another flicker of eye shine in its shadowed depths.
“How about a bet?” the kid asked. The golden gaze dulled and Ivo almost smiled at the thought of the kid trying to be brave.
“What?” Ivo asked, puzzled amusement quirked the corner of his mouth up, but that sad gaze didn’t waver. He shot his brother a warning glance and Jaeger tilted the axe blade just enough to keep Gadrun worried. Ivo sank into a crouch until he was roughly level with the small creature.
“I’ll make you a bet,” the voice whispered. Ivo studied the shadowed depths of the rags for a clue to the owner. No distinct shape or coloring save those unusual gold eyes could be seen within, however; and Ivo found himself asking before he even thought about it.
“What kind of bet, kid?”
“I bet I can make it to the door without being touched by a single hand.”
Ivo’s eyebrows shot up and he again noted how soft the voice was.
“What will you bet then?” Ivo asked, oddly bemused despite himself. Jaeger blinked, startled, as he listened to the low conversation. Beneath the axe blade, Gadrun snorted in disgust, but remained still.
“Me.”
Ivo flinched and stood quickly. “I don’t hold with slavery, child. Nor any other type of abuse,” his gaze darkened, hardened with anger,and his fingers twitched on the grip of the sword. The small figure shrank deeper into the ratty cloth, his gaze now glazed with terror.
“I have a counter bet, kid,” Jaeger whispered from beside the barkeep. “I will buy you an ale if you get out of here. There is nothing but evil here and no place for… children.”
The last word was a sigh and icy blue eyes flickered with pain.
The creature in the cloth only huddled deeper, fear and panic clouding those vivid eyes.
Ivo scowled at the barkeep who was still clutching the kid in a vise-like grip even though his own neck was within his brother’s. Even enshrouded within the folds of cloth, it had to be painful to be handled so roughly, and something about the fear in those eyes told Ivo that the urchin was no stranger to pain. Regret burned a hole in his chest.
“Are you all right, kid?” Ivo asked, his voice calmer. The kid studied him from the depths of the cloth.
“I am now,” the voice whispered. “Many thanks, Immortal.”
A whisper of smoke and a swirl of flame, and the cloth suddenly hung empty. Shocked, the three men stared at the folds of cloth as they fell from the barkeep’s limp hand to the floor.
A rush of wind, a flare of light and heat, bolted between them. Ivo turned with a snarl to face whatever it was, his sword swinging wide out of habit. He froze, wide eyed, as a long, pale streamer streaked past his face. He could have sworn a curl of flame, in the form of a tail of a braid, brushed his arm.
The entire room watched in mute shock as a small figure leaped off the long wooden table and vanished in a swirl of fire and smoke. The kid reappeared on a table across the room, spun in a wheel of blonde braids and shimmering flame, and vanished again only to reappear on another table. The whole room watched in awe as she danced and spun across the room in a swirl of ghostly flame.
Two things occurred to Ivo then as he watched the petite figure wheel and vanish, only to reappear again on another table. He was a she… and she was an Immortal.
A young one.
“How…” Gadrun stuttered. He opened his big mouth only to snap it shut as both men turned stony glares on him. Ivo bent and scooped up the folds of cloth, a huge hooded cloak, and stared after the rapidly disappearing girl, heartsick. What was a girl…
“Ah, hell. I owe her an ale now,” Jaeger grumbled. He scowled and shoved the barkeep away before sheathing the axe into the shadows at his side. Like the tiny girl, the axe vanished and the rest of the room turned wary eyes on them now.
“Come on, brother,” Ivo said. “We drove her into the storm.”
He kicked aside the spindly chair and wound his way across the room, Jaeger at his side. The crowd parted before them as everyone stared with a mix of reverence and fear at the two huge Immortal men. They reached the doorway and stopped on the rickety porch.
Out in the thundering rain in the courtyard, a small figure stood alone, her thin back to them, waiting.
“Who are you?” Ivo called to her. Thunder cracked, drowning out the commotion behind them, and sending goose bumps up his neck. He crossed the courtyard, blinking as the hard, cold rain stabbed into his skin like shards of glass. His doublet and leggings clung to him in sodden folds.
She didn’t speak for a long moment, and her thin shoulders sagged as if the weight of the rain was too much. He stopped and waited, the silence uneasy. The driving rain had matted her long braids and linen dress to her thin body. Ivo studied her in the dark rain with keen eyes, noting that while young, she was undoubtedly a woman grown. Curves in all the right places meant that she was certainly not a child.
After a long, tense moment, she turned and the brothers inhaled as her stunning, haunted, gaze met theirs. Raindrops and tears trembled on thick, dark eyelashes as she studied them back. Fear battled loneliness. Pain battled panic.
“I am the Youngest.”
The Present
“We never did buy her an ale, because the rest of the crowd in the tavern began to swarm us and beg for help from us Immortals. We had to leave and Emaranthe came with us,” Jaeger chuckled, smiling at the memory. “And the rest you know, Jadeth.”
Jadeth sniffed. Yes, she knew what had happened after that. Years of running, fleeing their fates among the organized army of The Unknown Sun. She had joined them last of all; had not been there for the early decades, until just before they had trained with Rodon’s army. She inhaled and her eyes filled with tears too stubborn to fall. She sat up.
“Jadeth?” Emaranthe watched the flare of sorrow, the longing, in her friend’s gaze. “What is it?”
“I wish I had been there with you instead of seeking revenge. Maybe my life would have been better.”
“Jadeth, your life before you met us was what it was meant to be,” Ivo said. “Had we met before you did what you felt you had to do—”
“I wasted so many years that I can’t take back,” she said.
“Jadeth, we met you when we needed you, and you needed us. Fate,” Ivo added, “is not always a kind guiding hand, but an unavoidable one in our world.”
“It is, if you can find her,” Gabaran snorted. “Fate, hope, destiny, such words are created by the god I seek.”
“You seek the impossible,” Jaeger scowled. “There may be a god, but fates change.”
“Perhaps,” Gabaran shrugged and vanished deeper into his hood. “I have seen what she can do.”
Jaeger asked, “I have more cause than many to seek to change the winds of fate, Elf; and even then, I am hesitant to ask such a thing.”
Jadeth remained silent, her gaze downcast as their words punctuated her mind. An image of the mysterious woman with scarlet hair burned behind her eyes like a flash of lightning. She stiffened, her gasp cut off by teeth chewing her lower lip raw. Could it be?
“Gabaran?”
“What?”
“Your god… she had red hair?” Jadeth asked. The room stilled as the old Elf turned eerily bright eyes to her.
“Yes,” Gabaran’s smile twist
ed in the meager light. “You’ve seen her. She has you in her sights.”
“Dear gods,” Emaranthe gasped. “I think I’ve seen her too!”
All gazes swung to her, but only three of them widened in surprise. Gabaran’s smile widened and a rumble of laughter filled the room.
“Yes, you would have seen her. Should have recognized her.”
“I don’t understand, why?” she asked. “I only saw her for a moment, right before we returned to The Unknown City after our last mission. At least, I think it was her. She was very young, a girl, but her hair was unmistakable.”
“It was her,” Gabaran conceded with a sigh. For a split second, longing turned his vibrant eyes dull. “Years of searching have turned up many a rumor of a young girl, or a woman. They all wax poetic on her rare red hair.”
“I don’t understand,” Jadeth interrupted. She dragged a tail of a red braid close. “What has red hair to do with her legend?”
Gabaran’s piercing stare turned on Jadeth.
“Only that red hair is as legendary as she is,” he said. “And you are only the second person I know of to have it.”
Jadeth frowned and traded worried looks with the stunned group.
Red hair?
Chapter Four
Sometime in the night, the sandstorm moved on, leaving the tower battered but still standing. A split seam in the metal let a single ray of sunlight in, rousing Ivo. He sat up with a grimace, the cold floor unforgiving even to an Earthlander Immortal. At his side, Emaranthe curled deeper beneath her cloak until only a pale braid was visible. He glanced around at the others before making his way to the stairs and down below.
The heat-sealed door was no barrier. He ripped it free of the frame and propped it beside the doorway. Blinding sunlight filled the opening. He waded through a knee-deep pile of sand, blinking when the glare of both early morning suns hit him full force. His grimace deepened at the sight of the destruction done to the small outpost of Shed-Akr. The shredded canvas streamers clinging to iron and bone had been tents. The great beast now wore raggedy clothes over his armor, Ivo thought. He chuckled, but stifled the sound when footsteps approached from behind. They were light, quick, and familiar.
“Oh, no,” Emaranthe slipped past Ivo and halted in the sunlight beside the tower. “It’s all but destroyed.”
“The tower still stands,” Ivo said. He turned to study the rest of the outpost. “As does the beast. It will be repaired. Eventually.”
“Do you think anything is salvageable?” she asked. She hugged her cloak closer about her thin frame and worked to hide a shiver. The sunlight, pouring from two different directions was too low in the sky to be warm yet.
“No, the people had already fled with what they could carry before we noticed the storm.”
“Too bad, we have no horses and no supplies,” she frowned, turning her face to the meager warmth of the southern sun just peaking over the mountains. “And the way south is not for the faint of heart, I fear.”
He turned to the south and studied the swells of dunes that rippled into the horizon where the mountains ringed the land. In every direction, Ivo thought off handedly, there are mountains but few ever reach them in a world so vast. In truth, none of them had ever reached the ends of their world, never seen where the land ends. Still staring into the sea of dunes, he mulled over this.
What does the end of Ein-Aral look like?
Paradise or hell?
A small hand crept into his slack one, and the feeling of worn wool gloves on his bare skin startled him out of his reverie. He glanced down at Emaranthe only to be snared by her wide golden-brown gaze.
And...freckles.
He swallowed and struggled to piece his thoughts together. “We should regroup. Come.”
He pulled his hand free, mindful of the fragile bones within the worn gloves.
Emaranthe took her hand back self-consciously and busied herself with the folds of her cloak. She tugged the hood over her hair and hurried ahead of him before he could lead the way, her shoulders hunched. He followed, his heart curdling deep inside his chest.
Ivo nearly mowed Emaranthe down as he entered the tower, but instantly saw why she had halted. Blocking the stairs with long, lean legs was Gabaran. Cold dark-blue eyes watched the pair from the depths of his hood, the eerie white centers pinpoint bright. With a wordless grunt, the old Elf shifted to his feet and waited for the Mage and Warrior to lead the way back up.
“What’s the news, Little Sister?” the Elf asked from behind them. Like most Elves, his movements were nearly silent, absurdly graceful.
“Shed-akr is nearly destroyed,” she replied. “But the tower and bones remain.”
Gabaran snorted. “Someone will repair it. Someone always does.”
“We are still at a loss for supplies and horses,” Ivo said. “We need to make our way south as soon as possible.”
“Let’s get the others and see if anything is salvageable,” Gabaran said. “I’m not putting much store on it though.”
***
“Nothing.” Jaeger kicked a drift of sand and watched the individual grains slip and slide like water, unburying the upended table as it moved. “Empty jars, a few broken cups, an eating knife with no hilt. Nothing.”
Ivo tilted a cracked mug and sand rained out. Wordlessly, he dropped it, and made his way to the back of the tent where the women had found a small iron chest. A quick flash of fire melted the lock. Upended, the heavy trunk only poured out more sand.
“It’s empty,” Emaranthe sighed and sat back on her heels, the disappointment sharp. “Now what?”
“Now we do what we’ve always done.” Jaeger jammed a sandy hand through his blond hair, not caring that it stuck up in sweaty spikes. “Move on.”
Ivo glanced up at the southern sun. It hung, small and orange, weaker and more distant than its sister sun, but still powerful enough to turn the southern wilds into unpredictable desert.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Maybe the Elf has found something where the corrals had been.”
Gabaran was easy to find among the rolling sea of dunes behind the tower. A large, dark silhouette against the orange sun, his shadow stretched down the dune behind him.
“Anything?” Ivo asked. He crested the dune and studied the devastation beyond. The giant Elf didn’t answer, didn’t have to. The corrals had been obliterated, the occupants either scoured into bloodied bones or run off. The stench of death and decay rode the breeze. He choked and buried his nose in his arm to ward off the smell. His stomach threatened to rebel.
Half-buried carcasses littered the desert; and if sand wasn’t piled into rippling dunes, it was scoured free from odd sections, leaving only bare rock in its place. The wicked wind, trapped between the tower and the mountains to the south, had turned the sandstorm into a sand-hurricane by all evidence. Ivo turned away, using the high perch as a lookout point.
“What do you see, brother?” Jaeger asked. He halted halfway up the newly made dune, his eyes watering from either the stench or their fate. He didn’t need to see beyond to know why his brother’s face was ashen in the morning light, or why the Elf was still and grim.
“Nothing,” Ivo said. “Simply nothing. But if that is what we must have, then so be it. We must move on.”
Ivo trudged down the dune, sand following like a hissing snake. Gabaran followed; his face void of emotion. Jaeger’s gauntleted hand shot out and gripped the old Elf Hunter’s upper arm as he passed. Ivo halted, turned, and his hand flashed to the hilt of his sword. He hesitated, eyebrows raised.
Gabaran halted; a growl of warning on his lips. “Get your hands off me, Warrior.”
The strong fingers tightened instead.
“Wait,” Jaeger scowled. “How did you meet this Dehil, Elf? Can we trust you? Our quest is steadily growing more questions than answers.”
Gabaran jerked free, but remained facing the large warrior. “Why do you care to know, Earthlander?”
Jaeger’s eyes narro
wed into chips of ice and the air before him fogged as he growled in annoyance. “I would like to think I can trust you, Elf, especially if Emaranthe has vouched for you.”
Gabaran studied the Earthlander, noting the ice swirling in the Immortal’s gaze with interest. Of all the Immortals who he had known, only this one and Emaranthe had eyes that reacted so. With a snort of anger, he stood until he was chest to chest with the armored male.
“If you doubt Little Sister,” he grunted, “then you doubt the strength of your so called family.”
“I lost my wife and daughter, Elf,” Jaeger snarled. His gaze pierced the Elf’s, cold and bitter. “I will not risk the rest of my family for a Mortal who will betray us all.”
“Jaeger,” Ivo barked at his brother. “Enough.”
Jaeger shot his brother a cold glare and shrugged away from the large Elf, knocking him back with a not so subtle shove of a shoulder. He made his way down the rest of the dune without looking back, nor caring that the sand beneath his feet froze with each sliding step.
Gabaran watched the Immortal go before turning a glare on Ivo.
“I was wrong I see.”
Ivo frowned, but his hand fell from the hilt of the sword shimmering in the shadows at his side, and resumed walking. Gabaran fell in beside, matching his steps with shameless grace. Side by side, they were of the same build; but without armor, Gabaran was undoubtedly taller, and more muscular of shape, than the Earthlander.
Ivo asked with a smirk, “How so, Elf?”
“You are clearly not the Hotheaded One.”
***
The days passed in a strangely comfortable pattern of trudging up and down sand dunes. Blowing sand scoured the skin, leaving them grateful for the armor and robes they wore. Unaffected by the stinging grit, only Jadeth dared to walk uncovered. Every morning the twin suns traded places and sank behind their mountains with no enemy stronghold or even change of scenery to lighten their thoughts. The third day came and went with the five companions no closer to any answers, or maps, than before.
Allies & Enemies Page 5