Embers

by Ronie Kendig

  Splash—behind.

  Snap—to his left.

  Warriors everywhere! Surrounded.

  Panic tore at him, but he resisted the urge to look back.

  “Keep going!” Thiel’s voice echoed as she burst from the trees into a wide valley that opened up and spread before him. “Don’t stop. No matter what.”

  Of course he wouldn’t stop. Not with twenty Ematahri hunting him. Tokar tore past, sprinting as if he’d just started running. Agility and athleticism were his strong suits. Strength a bedmate. Envy spurted through Haegan, feeling the pains of the exertion. But he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t. If he did, he’d die.

  Something snagged his arm. He wrenched free.

  “Haegan.”

  He kept moving. But his brain caught up with her voice. The use of his birth name. He glanced to the side. Thiel ran alongside, her eyes on his with an expression that seemed to berate him. Then it hit him—I am slow. She was having to slow down to protect him, wasn’t she? “Leave me. Go. I’ll be okay.”

  “You can stop this, stop them.”

  He laughed as he scrabbled over a boulder. “Were that true—”

  “It is! The light.”

  Throwing a scowl at her, he dared not slow down further. “You mock me.” He focused on the trees on the other side. Searched for a way to hide. He couldn’t run any faster. Neither would he stop.

  Something whooshed past him. The singe of the air startled him as he watched a wide scimitar plunk heavily into the dirt, cutting deep, sinking nearly to its hilt. He sucked in a hard breath, stunned. Had that hit him or Thiel—

  Dead. They’d be dead.

  “Stop them, Haegan!”

  “I . . . can’t!” Pushing the words out proved great effort, his lungs squeezing hard with each breath.

  “You can—must!”

  “What . . .?” He looked to her.

  Something sailed into the air. Hit her. She snapped out of view behind him. Haegan glanced back. A warrior had tackled her. Meaty grunts sounded as they thrashed on the grass. Rolled.

  Haegan skidded, searching for help. Assessing the rest of the warriors. A half-dozen yards back and closing fast.

  “The light,” Thiel shouted, fighting the Ematahri atop her.

  Haegan threw himself at the warrior, knocking him backward. Somehow, the rogue flipped him, landing on top, straddling him. Grinning, his bared bloody teeth as leathered hands beat at Haegan’s face.

  He shielded himself, wrestling to be free. In vain. All in vain.

  Screams came from Thiel.

  Haegan tried to look at her, but there were a half-dozen warriors pouncing on her. She screamed again.

  A heat in him roared to the surface. Shrieked.

  Surrounding him, the warriors crowded in, beating him. Punching. Kicking. Cursing. Spitting. One drew a dagger and thrust it at Haegan. He deflected with an arm. The blade sliced his flesh with a fiery eruption of pain. Haegan howled. He arched his back, the move giving him a glimpse of his friend.

  The Ematahri stretched Thiel out, one at each arm and leg. Another kicked her in the side. She yelped, then whimpered.

  Anger exploded through him.

  Something swung at his head, rolling him onto his belly. The impact seemed as if he’d flown at a brick wall. His teeth rattled. Pain knifed down his head and neck.

  He’d die. He’d die here. So would Thiel.

  And he’d be to blame.

  Kaelyria.

  O Abiassa, send your Fires!

  On all fours, Haegan shook his head. Felt the kick to his side. Grunted. Spit up blood. Coughed up more. Another blow to his back and he slumped to the ground. His fingers dug into the damp earth. Come all this way to die. To let Kaelyria die. And Thiel.

  No.

  “Ïmnæh wæïthe he-ahwl abiałassø et fhurïætyr.” He knew not where the words came from but they resonated in his mind. Roiled across his chest. Expanded in his lungs. Beat against his heart. “Ïmnæh wæïthe he-ahwl abiałassø et fhurïætyr.” Warmth spread through his body. Muscles found strength. Wounds healing. Thoughts life. “Ïmnæh wæïthe he-ahwl abiałassø et fhurïætyr. Ïmnæh wæïthe he-ahwl abiałassø et fhurïætyr.”

  A blow to his head nearly dropped him into a chasm of darkness. But he refused to embrace defeat. “Ïmnæh wæïthe”—punch to his gut, he clenched his eyes and gritted his teeth—“he-ahwl abiałassø”—searing pain dug through his shoulder blades—“et fhu”—a warrior jerked him upright, eyes glowing yellow with hatred—“rïætyr.”

  Howling rode the wind as Haegan dropped into the endless abyss of nothingness.

  22

  Haegan jolted upright, expecting danger. Expecting the Ematahri to finish what they’d started. Instead, he found darkness. A stone ceiling and walls. He was in a cave. And free of pain. Where was the headache? The fire of knife wounds? He felt nothing of the agony that should be riddling his body. He scanned his limbs, bewildered.

  “It ain’t right, I tell ya,” came Laertes’s strong objection. “Him what keeps fainting in the worst parts and missing the best parts.”

  “Him that brings trouble on us, is more like it,” Tokar muttered, glancing at Haegan.

  Haegan met his gaze. And where he expected hatred, he saw . . . What was that? Unease? Wariness? And what about— “Where is Thiel?”

  “On watch,” Praegur said, easing into view, a small fire crackling and spitting shadows over his face. “How are you?”

  “How is he? He isn’t wounded!” Tokar snapped. “I want to know how that’s possible.” He stood with his arms folded.

  “What do you mean I’m not wounded?” Haegan’s hand went to where the dagger sliced through his arm. Though there was a clean cut in his sleeve, there was no scab, stitches, or even a scrape against his flesh. What? How?

  He stretched his spine, testing and expecting shards of pain to pierce him. But again—nothing. “I . . . I don’t understand.” His gaze rose to the others, feeling their unease as his own now. “How is this possible? I was—”

  “That’s what we’d like to know. How is it you keep causing this trouble, yet emerge without a single mark?”

  “Foolspeech!” Haegan spat. “’Tis not possible.” He only realized he’d come to his feet when Tokar took a step away and drew his arms back, as if ready for a fight.

  No, not a fight. To defend himself.

  “Just . . . keep clear,” Tokar said, an edge sharper than any before in his voice. “And once we get to Hetaera—it’s close enough to the Falls. Go your own way. Leave us. ”

  Fear spirited through Haegan. If they left him, he’d be alone. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he needed them. Needed their help. “I don’t know my way.”

  “North,” Tokar said, his eyes dark. “Head north, then, when you hit the river, follow it upstream.”

  “In earnest? You will abandon me?”

  “I want to live!” Tokar snapped. “And I won’t let you hurt them.”

  Haegan jerked at the accusation. “Explain yourself—how have I injured anyone?” His mind leapt to Laertes, who had been unconscious and his arm most likely broken the last time he’d seen him. Now, the boy sat ambivalent and in peace. The arm supporting him, unbroken. How was that possible?

  Perhaps I simply over-read the situation.

  “You just do. Every town, every people we meet, someone ends up hurt because of you.”

  “Now, that ain’t true,” Laertes said. “Not wholly.”

  “It’s true enough to be justified,” Tokar argued. “Besides, we’ve had nothing but trouble since we got stuck with him in Zaethien.”

  Laertes nodded, tugging a strip of jerky from his pack. “Now ’at’s true.” He chomped into it, giving Haegan a speculative look. “But Tok, I gotta say, he don’t exactly look for the trouble.”

  “Yeah, but it finds him all the same.” He waved a dismissive hand at Haegan. “Once we reach Hetaera, it’s time to split up.”

  “I plead with you—I
am alone.” Did he truly sound so pathetic? “I need your help, and Thiel promised to see me to the Falls.”

  Tokar edged closer. “Listen, you care about her. I see it in your eyes. In the way you talk to her.”

  Heat climbed Heagan’s face but he ignored it, swallowing against the truth of the words. “My pleas are not about her, but her promise.”

  “Do you want her to get hurt?”

  The memory of her battered at the hands of the Ematahri hit him. Hurt him. He remembered thinking she’d die. “No,” he said quietly.

  Victory danced in Tokar’s eyes. “Then do what’s best. Protect her in the only way you know how.”

  Leave. Leave her and look back no more.

  “You know who she is, right?”

  Haegan looked away. The daughter of his father’s near-enemy.

  “And you know what her father and brothers would do to you if she were killed because of your unique ability to find trouble.”

  Danger whispered through the cave, bringing back that night on Abiassa’s Throne when he’d seen shadows become impossible things. Things his mind had clearly conjured. Things that could not exist. Even that did not lessen the threat of her ice-hearted brothers.

  “I’m telling you this for your own good.” Was Tokar now gloating? “I know it’d upset her, but she would be powerless against an order from Thurig the Formidable.”

  But I have neither the means nor the knowledge to reach the Great Falls. Without her help, he would not touch those blessed waters.

  Yet what was his life if it cost others theirs?

  Kaelyria. “My sister . . .” Haegan chomped down on the words, reminding himself they did not know his true identity. To them he was Rigar, a bumbling, wandering idiot. “I must make it to the Falls, or my sister will die.” It was vague enough not to injure his secret. But threat enough, perhaps, to persuade.

  Tokar angled in, his left cheek twitching as he stared him down. Beneath the fire and animosity lurked a steel forged in the fires of the hard life of a roamer. In five years, Tokar would be a man who could put a petulant equal in line with a stony look or stare down the fiercest of enemies. “And if we help you, we all die.”

  Was it true, that if he stayed, their deaths would be on his conscience? Would the others see it that way, too? Haegan glanced to Praegur, who looked away. Blond-haired Laertes, normally quick-witted and the first to tell it straight, slumped against the stone wall, chewing jerky, and shrugged.

  Those he had thought to call friends apparently were not. And yet, he a man of honor and integrity, would not will danger or the threat thereof on any he might call friend. It seemed there was but one recourse at this dark hour.

  “You are right. I should leave.” Everything in him railed at the thought. But he would spend the rest of his life knowing he caused their deaths.

  Then a different thought poked his conscience—what had happened back there that Tokar would be so ready to pitch Haegan from this circle? “Back in the clearing . . . I can scarce recall what happened.” Yet it pulled at him. Told him it was important.

  “Look,” Tokar said, handing him his sack. “I don’t know what happened—”

  “That’s right!” came Thiel’s sharp, decisive intrusion. “You don’t!”

  They all turned to the entrance where she stood. Haegan drew in a breath, awe spreading through him. Her brown hair lay askew, most likely from the probing fingers of the wind. But beyond that, she appeared uninjured, unbruised . . . unaffected by the battle that should have claimed her life.

  But that warrior—nearly twice her size—the other half-dozen beating her . . . And yet not a mark on her. How was that possible?

  What had happened out there? The question injected fear into his veins.

  “You’d do well, Tokar, to stop fearmongering.” She entered, snatched up a water skin, glared at Praegur. “You should have stopped him, instead of conceding.”

  The biggest of them all, Praegur suddenly seemed to shrink beneath her admonishment.

  She turned those amber eyes on Haegan. Plucked his sack from his hands and tossed it aside. “I would talk with you.” And she walked out.

  Haegan started after her.

  “Wha’?” Laertes said around a piece of jerky. “You know som’thin what we can’t know?”

  Hesitation held Haegan at the lip of the cave where darkness crouched, and he looked at the boy, then to Thiel, but she hadn’t stopped. Uncertainty chased him into the chilly night air.

  Where had she gone? The only path lay before him because the other was too treacherous. He glanced around, scant moonlight casting strange shadows along the rocks as he followed a narrow trail coiling around the hillside. Though he moved forward, he wasn’t sure he wanted to have the conversation that was coming. One that would bring questions. Questions he couldn’t answer.

  “You frighten me.”

  The words stopped Haegan. He, too, was frightened. But also because the one person he didn’t want to scare off, his only semblance of a friend, spoke them. At the base of the winding path, Haegan turned to the right, where Thiel waited with her arms folded, leaning against a tree.

  She pushed off and ran a hand through her short brown hair, then wrapped herself in a solitary hug. Shoulders hunched, she paced. “How did you do it?”

  Though he still didn’t want to admit what he’d done—was it truly his doing?—Haegan merely shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

  “Do you even know what you did?” She started forward.

  Haegan held her gaze, gauging what was the right answer because he had the strongest inclination that providing the wrong one would tear the fragile threads of their friendship. “I didn’t—”

  “Those words!” Her brow knotted with heated emotion. “What were those words? Are you an incipient, Haegan?”

  He started. A rush of anger shoved through his body. “No!” The repulsive nature of those creatures made her words bitter and cruel. “How could you suggest such an abomination?”

  “Because you healed me! Healed yourself—with strange words in some language. What did you say? What did it mean?”

  Stunned, he scanned her body, disbelieving. Thought of his own vanished wounds. And Laertes’s. “I have no idea.”

  “You said them—how can you not know what you said?” She raised her hands in frustration.

  “Answers evade me.” Now he sounded stupid.

  “You’re not making sense, prince!”

  “Well I know that none of this makes sense!” He spun away, caught in some wicked scheme that had brought ruination upon him and any future he might have had a few months ago. “Nothing has made sense since leaving my chambers that horrible night.”

  “So, what? Now you’re the victim?”

  Haegan glared at her. “I see no victim, nor do I perform as one.”

  “So, you’re performing in another manner?”

  “You twist my words.”

  “They’re easy to twist when you’re hiding—”

  “I hide nothing.” He sighed and let his shoulders sag. “Not even my own ignorance, though it shape me into a imbecile worthy of ridicule.”

  “You hide everything! Haegan, Prince of Zaethien. Brother to the heir apparent, brother who can walk when Princess Kaelyria is now bedridden. The kingdom is falling and you are running.”

  Her words ruptured the thin hold he had on his anger. “How dare you turn this on me. Would that I still lay in that musty tower cell, rotting and bored out of my mind with a seventy-year-old tutor who felt the Histories were a better subject than real life!” The edges of his vision blurred white. “Would that I could track down the accelerant who betrayed Kaelyria’s naïve trust. That I could undo what has been done. That I could—”

  “Haegan.” Her voice was breathless as she swooped forward, capturing his hand. Her touch silenced him as she held him hostage in a gaze so deep and true he could not breathe.

  Something broke in him, riveted him to her. He heard in his he
ad, her thoughts, her voice, her tears. Haegan stepped back, but she did not release him. Instead, she lifted his hand between them, cupped between her delicate fingers. A strange glow cast upward, illuminating and yet shadowing her eyes.

  Slowly, Thiel peeled her fingers away as one would an onion—and the glow brightened, emanating from her palms.

  Haegan sucked in a breath, staring at the strange light. “What is it?”

  Thiel looked from the glow to his face, hers awash with amazement and the pale gold halo surrounding his hands. “Your anger.” She sighed. “I wondered if anger was the trigger.”

  Haegan jerked free. Took a step back, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Of what do you speak? What trigger?”

  “Three times I’ve seen the same light—”

  A thundering roar filled the night, devouring her words. The ground shook beneath them, and Haegan wondered if he was to blame for this, too. Noises cracked and popped, pushing past the roar. Haegan looked around, wondering . . . Guilt tugged him.

  No, that was Thiel.

  He turned and saw her mouthing something. No, shouting. At him!

  “Go!” She grabbed his tunic. Pushed him. Desperation dripped from her face as she shoved him harder. “Hurry, before—”

  A massive horse shot from between two trees and skidded to a halt. It reared, hooves raking at the air as if fighting a mighty enemy. Mounted bareback, the Ematahri warrior lifted a hand and made a horrible, wobbling noise.

  Haegan tripped, his mind and body tangling in panic as Thiel again shoved him.

  But somehow, warriors were there, too.

  Haegan whipped back and collided with Thiel. Her momentum toppled them. She scrambled up, moving like lightning, yanking at him.

  Why would the Ematahri not leave them alone? Haegan turned to the first warrior and stopped. Long black hair, half secured away from his face, draped his broad, bare shoulders. Orange paint streaked his torso, three bands circling his right arm. Poking up over his right shoulder, a massive blade seemed more an extension of the warrior than a weapon. Daggers and blades lay strapped over his leather trousers. He was every bit as terrible as the night terror stories Haegan had been told as a child.