An arrow struck Altis’s invisible Mist barrier and fell harmlessly to the ground. I searched around for the source, but could see nothing through the thick forest.
“Let's hope they don't have any Weavers with them,” Altis said. And then turning to look at me he said more quietly, almost gently, “It's probably bandits. We could leave the barrier. They won’t get through it even in the middle of the night. But I’d rather get them off the roads. I’ve seen you spar. You can do this.” He smiled encouragingly and patted my shoulder. I wish he would decide if he was a nice person or a mean one. This vacillation just confuses me.
I swallowed and put my back against Altis’s, standing ready. “Here’s the plan,” he began, but an arrow broke through the barrier and struck his arm. He screamed in pain, but immediately passed out, his Mist shield crumbling.
Weavers. No simple bandits could send arrows through the Mist. The arrow had to be Mist-Fortified. No normal poison could act so quickly. Was it the same Weavers who had attacked me in the library? Is that why they took out Altis immediately? “Who’s out there?” I shouted to the forest. “Or are you afraid to fight a little girl? You have to shoot from the trees?”
I realized that I could sense the Weavers. I’d never learned how to do it, and I wasn’t sure what to do with this information, but there were ten different points of Mist power surrounding me. The strongest point began to move, and a large man emerged from the trees. A wicked grin split his face.
I brought my twin daggers in front of me and bent my knees slightly. As customary in a duel, I began to bow, but the man rushed at me. I crossed my daggers, deflecting his blow. Sparks leapt from our blades. My arm ached beneath his weight. I wouldn’t win a game of pure strength. I tumbled out of the stance, nearly falling over myself.
This wasn’t practice sparring with Meena or in Leham’s practice court. This was to the death. Perhaps Altis was dead already.
For the next few minutes, he tested me, toying with me. Simple moves, nothing fancy. But of course, as Leham said, that’s all it took. This man would outlast me. And that was what he was counting on.
Once again, he repeated the same hook, and I, expecting it, swooped lower and cut his arm, barely. In a proper duel, I’d have won. First blood.
Sparks of Mist flew from his blade then forked outward like a reverse lightning rod. He wove coils of Mist around my blades, pulling at them. Fine. If that was how he wanted to play it. I released the dagger in my right hand, and it followed his taut string of Mist. He trundled out of the way, dropping his sword in the process.
And then two things happened very quickly.
An arrow bounced off a translucent pink Mist barrier not of my making, and not of Altis’s, either, as he still lay unconscious on the muddy path. And then a large mountain lion leapt from the trees and mauled the man. His blood splattered across my shield. Red was all I could see, intermingled with flecks of flesh. I began to scream. I couldn’t stop. Through the haze of human remains, I could see the mountain lion staring directly at me. It roared and then bounded into the forest. I could hear it attacking the other men. I could hear their screams as the mountain lion devoured them. I don’t know how many ran away and how many the cat killed, because I fainted.
Chapter 9
I awoke to a wet, bristly tongue across my face. I opened my eyes and saw a large, tawny mountain lion gazing down at me. I yelped and tried to sit up, but it held me down and started licking the blood off me like I was her kitten.
Once it had finished, it walked over to sniff Altis.
He lay crumpled beside me, unconscious. He looked so young when he slept, almost peaceful. I pushed the poisoned arrow out through his arm, hoping that the wound wasn’t beyond my meager abilities to Heal.
And then the cat started to lick him. I couldn’t do anything to stop it, so I watched. When it moved away, Altis’s arm was fine. His shirt was torn, but there wasn’t even any dried blood left. A moment later, Altis sat up. And then he saw the mountain lion. He reached for a large stick and jumped to his feet. He shouted at the cat that continued to look at him as if trying to decide if he was amusing or annoying.
“Altis, no, it saved us.” Beyond the obvious fact that the mountain lion had killed our attackers, I could sense that it meant us no harm. Somehow, I understood that the cat wanted to be friendly. “She wants you to put the stick down.”
“Clearly,” Altis said, not moving his eyes from the mountain lion.
“No.” I knit my brows in concentration. “She told me somehow. I'm not sure. She's friendly. Besides, even if she wasn’t, you couldn’t stop her with that stick.” He seemed to agree with my assertion, because he cast the stick aside.
I didn't know how I could hear what the mountain lion said. It wasn't in words, thoughts, or anything. Somehow I knew, like a transferred awareness. “Her name is Arwan. She said there were many men. She killed most of them, but a few got away.” I turned to Altis. “What is this? How can I tell what she is saying to me?”
Altis didn't answer, but continued to look at the mountain lion.
“Were we ambushed? I can hardly remember. Do you think she saved us?” I continued.
“I'm not sure. It all happened so fast. Where are the horses?”
“She says they are about a mile down the road along a river,” I said, not realizing the words until they were half out of my mouth. “She says that she sent them there to get a drink. They have our gear.”
“I don’t believe you.” Altis glared.
“I don’t care. We should both be dead, but we aren’t. It's getting dark, and we need our things. Do you have a better idea?”
Altis harrumphed, but followed me down the path. The daemon followed us a few paces into the trees.
“Have you ever heard of an animal acting this way?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I remember a child's tale about protectors in the forms of animals, daemons, who used to accompany the great Weavers of centuries ago before the Dark Ages.” He looked over his shoulder at the tawny beast sauntering through the trees. “They were children’s tales. But no one has had a Mist Apparition in centuries, either.”
I tried to think of something clever and self-effacing to say, but no words came to me. Maybe the Apparition s and this daemon were related.
It was unnerving when the daemon, Arwan, told me, “Yes. I sent Apparition. I came now. Came too soon.” She continued in words. “But I will help you make it to The Edge. You and your book must be safe. Shield borrowed. Not safe to leave them unguarded. Put back.”
But… How did Arwan know about Shezdon’s book? And what was she leaving unguarded?
She refused to answer.
Arwan continued along with us for the next several days, expecting the men to come back again, but they didn’t. Maybe because Arwan continued with us, they were too afraid to try, or maybe she’d killed them all, which was unfortunate because we had no one left to question as to their motives. If Arwan knew who they were or why they had a Weaver with them, she didn’t tell me even though Altis continually pestered me to find out.
“If she isn’t going to say then she isn’t going to say,” I kept telling him, but he kept pressing. Patiently, Arwan would explain how she had already come too soon and pushing things further out of the path wouldn’t help. What the path was, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it had something to do with Shezdon’s book and the secrets locked away in the ancient text.
At lunch and dinner, Arwan would curl up beside me, and I’d share some of my food with her and scratch her head. Once she brought us a rabbit that she had killed, and I made it into a soup.
“She's not a pet,” Altis said.
“No,” I agreed. “That she is not.” But still, I had to admit that I enjoyed her company. She made me feel safe. Like I had someone watching my back. I never expected to befriend a mountain lion, although Arwan was as much of a mountain lion as a volcano was an anthill.
“Will you teach me to read the b
ook?” I whispered to her, scratching behind her ears.
“I cannot.” She conveyed sadness through our physic link. “I cannot counter the counter.”
“Counter?” I asked. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Arwan disappeared. For hours, I worried that she was gone for good, but she returned that night as if she’d never left. I did not press her for details again.
As we drew closer to my old town, memories began to trickle back to me, just as Nazarie had predicted. First, they all started as dreams. I could remember playing tag with my childhood friend, Euan. I could remember a little girl yelling at me, she must have been a friend. I could remember learning to ride a horse. I could remember arguing and fighting—my mother arguing and fighting with my father.
The first time I remembered what my mother looked like, I almost began to cry. She had my auburn hair and her eyes were green. And I remembered lavender. I remembered that she smelled like lavender when she scooped me up into her arms. Nothing was concrete, mostly vague images.
At first, I wondered if the memories were real. Maybe I’d smelled lavender on the path and my subconscious cobbled it together. Maybe I expected her to have my same hair color. But after a few more days, the memories became aggressive, overtaking me like a waking dream. I was either losing my mind or the memories were real. Or both. Flashes of my childhood would swim before my eyes, and then I’d be back to reality. Arwan told me whatever trauma held back my memories was being pushed aside by my proximity to the place where these memories were born. She told me that when I felt the men’s Mist in the forest, I had remembered how to do that. She did not know if I would remember more skills, or if they would all be events. I wondered what had made Nazarie so worried and if I would fill in gaps incorrectly as she had predicted.
I kept playing various predictions of my homecoming over and over in my mind, but I could barely remember details of the town. What would I say to my father? Would I even recognize him when I saw him? With it half a day's travel away, it was all I could think about. Arwan left us in the mid-morning while we were still a couple of hours away from the village. “My time is short. Be safe. We will meet again.”
“When?”
“When it’s time,” she responded in her vague manner.
I turned around, but she had vanished. I had gotten used to having someone to talk to on the journey. Altis had returned to his normal taciturn self.
“I think she’s gone,” I informed him. Altis shrugged.
Chapter 10
As we continued on, the road steadily grew wider and more traveled upon. We began to pass remote homesteads and farms. The fourth wagon that passed was stuffed like a roasted pig, loaded down with what appeared to be every valuable possession the people had. We stopped them.
“Ahoy, where are you going?” Altis waved them down. The wagon slowed to a halt.
“Don’t go any closer to The Edge. Turn around. Run away,” the man warned. He gripped the reins so tightly that his knuckles were white.
My horse nickered nervously as I nudged him closer to the wagon. “What are you saying?” I asked.
“There is something evil in that Edge. It reaches for people. It beckons them to their deaths.” The man’s voice cracked. “We must hurry.”
I’ll never forget the faces of the two children peering from the back of that wagon as it carried them away. The folds of the wagon’s white canvas encased them. The children looked at me, their small shoulders hunched, their faces as pale as their father’s, their eyes forlorn.
We passed several other wagons of refugees fleeing The Edge. They had abandoned their homes and livelihoods seeking anywhere that did not have The Edge for a neighbor. We approached an intersection in the road, and I heard two voices from the other road. One voice belonged to a man and the other to a young boy. I could swear that I recognized the older voice. As we arrived at the intersection, the two appeared before us.
“By the gods! Euan!” I yelled in disbelief, half surprised that, of all the people on the road, it was my old friend and half surprised that I actually recognized him. The young man turned to look in my direction.
“H...Hailey!” He half asked half exclaimed. “What are you doing back? I thought that I'd never see you again.” He stood in the road, no longer moving forward. The little boy looked at him strangely. I ran to him and jumped up into his arms. Altis hung back awkwardly, unsure of how to proceed.
“You've grown!” I exclaimed.
“It's been ten years.” Euan laughed and shook his head. “Ten years. I can't believe it.” The boy tugged at Euan's sleeve. “Of course you remember my brother, Brody. He’d barely begun to crawl when you left.”
I did not remember Brody, only Euan. But, for some reason, I didn’t want to tell them about my memory. It felt nice feeling normal, like I had some connection to my childhood, even though it was only a small sliver of a connection. “No! You can't be Brody? You are almost as tall as me.” The boy nodded solemnly and I grinned at him, playing my part and not knowing why I played it. “You were a baby when I left. You won't remember me, but I'm Hailey.”
“Hey, I know you!” Brody said, sounding a little in awe. “Euan talks about you a lot.” I looked up at Euan. His face went as red as his thick hair.
“Really?” I stood up and smiled into Euan's eyes.
“You come to see your pa?” Euan asked, changing the subject.
“No.” Altis entered the circle. “My Journeyman and I are here on Mist Weaver business.”
Euan considered Altis for a moment and turned back to me. “So you made Journeyman, eh?”
“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but yes, I did.”
“Euan's made Journeyman, too!” Brody piped in.
“Just last month. I'm studying under Blacksmith Pareden,” Euan said.
“Blacksmith?” Blacksmiths were in high demand in farm country and paid well for their services. As a second son, it was about the best Euan could hope for. “Well, you always were very strong.” The words escaped my mouth before I truly had thought of them. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as I said it.
“Well, nice running into you, blacksmith.” Altis managed to make the position sound as insignificant as possible. “We best make camp before nightfall. We’ve a big day tomorrow. We are to see The Edge.”
“My ma still runs the inn,” Euan said. “She’d be disappointed if you didn’t stay with us.”
“Great,” said Altis, sounding less than enthused.
The walk into the village consisted mostly of Euan and me catching up on the past ten years, Brody running head on the path and then back to us, and Altis leading the animals. I was unsure as to why I remembered Euan, but hardly anyone else besides the girl that I’d seen in my memory flashes. The mind is a strange thing. “It’s been a long time, but do you remember a little girl a couple of years younger than us that we used to play with?” I asked. “She had blonde hair. Is she still around?”
“We didn’t really play with many girls. You were always quite the tomboy.”
“Must have been a friend at the Keep,” I said and quickly changed the subject. But it did not make sense. I definitely remembered this girl in this village. It couldn’t be a coincidence. She must have had something to do with the accident and that’s why her image burned into my memory.
When we reached the inn, Euan’s mother greeted me with a whoop and a bone-crushing hug. I did not remember her or her husband or Euan’s older brother, Owin. But they all seemed excited to see me, so I feigned recognition.
That night, we dined right next to the fire, in the most honored spot. We would have expected to sit there, regardless, given Altis’s station, but it was for me and not him that we were placed there.
“You remember much more than I thought you would,” Altis whispered to me when Euan left the table to help his parents in the kitchens.
“I only remember Euan, but I didn’t want to tell him.”
“Interesting,” A
ltis said, considering me for a moment, looking as if he wanted to say more, but he turned back to his meal.
Chapter 11
Early the next morning, Altis and I set off for The Edge. Euan had the day off, so he acted as our guide. I'm not sure what I expected The Edge to look like. When it had been hidden by the wall, I could only see patches through the trees, but now that it had eaten past the wall, it was completely exposed. Up to The Edge, each blade of the dew-covered grass danced to the same pattern, shaking itself beneath the golden rays of the early morning sun. I parted my feet as far as I could without losing balance and stared at the grass under me and then turned to stare at the grass behind me. The unending pattern reminded me so much of the ebbs and flows of Mist. I didn't want to turn back and look at the phenomenon that had stolen my happily boring life and had thrust me into this new life. The grass waved with its brothers and then was—nothing. There were flashes that I could remember of my old life and this field was in many of them. I hadn't grown up more than a half mile from where I stood now, but this familiar field was marred with, not blackness, not emptiness. Nothing.
“This field used to stretch toward a huge wall,” Euan explained. “Easily a hundred feet in the air. Ancient. Made with techniques that our people had forgotten. About five months ago, the wall was eaten by... whatever this is.” He waved his hand along the expanse.
It wasn't fair that the setting of some of the few childhood memories I had was being eaten away. We stood upon a hill. For reasons beyond my memory, I had felt called to this spot. Maybe I’d played here as a child? It certainly held some significance. But, regardless, it too would soon be eaten by The Edge. I felt a real connection here. Like I was woven to this spot. Like the Guardians themselves sent that Mist Apparition so I could be here on this day on this hill.
I looked to my left, into the nothingness where I used to run as a girl back when the grass continued. I remembered trees east of this clearing that butted up to the ancient wall that hid The Edge, the one Euan had mentioned. Euan, the girl with blonde hair, and I would pick dozen of apples—as many as we could hold. Today, there was no wall and there were no trees. It had all crumbled into the nothingness. Now only the empty prairie remained.
Prophecy's Promise (Prophecy of the Edges Book 1) Page 8