by Brindi Quinn
“Cousin! Calm yourself. We were just conversing. I assure you it was innocent.”
Was it?
“Silence, cousin! Do you not know your place? I will not tolerate your disrespect any longer. Pray tell, do you love this creature of disaster?” she scoffed. “She has bewitched you! She is not even an Elf!”
Love?!
“And you,” she turned to me, “are you not content with sucking the life out of him once? Have you come back for a second helping, leech?”
She sank her nails into my arm and flung me away from him.
“Rend!” Nyte hopped up, still clutching the sheet. He stared her down, his eyes ablaze with fury. It was a look akin to the ones he’d given the wretched monsters we’d fought. “Your behavior is unforgivable.”
The tent door fluttered again.
“What’s goin’ on in ‘ere?” Grotts surveyed the scene. His massive body blocked the door and made the tent much stuffier. “Awe, Rend, don’ make me use this on ya again.” He held up his hammer threateningly, and it lit with blue crescents.
“Try me,” she hissed. “I am ready for you this time.”
“What’s going on in there?” said Kantú from outside the tent.
I caught a glimpse of her tail wiggling furiously behind Grotts, and I suspected that Scardo and Ardette weren’t far behind, straining their ears to hear the tent’s inner going-ons.
“No! Everyone stop!” I cried, holding my arm where her fingernails had cut. I was surprised at how authoritative my voice sounded.
Rend looked down at me with blood-lust.
“You’re right, Rend! I am a leech. I took his spirit in greedily. I’m ashamed that something so sacred and valuable I drank so carelessly. I’m sorry. I know you’re charged with watching over him, and I know you care about him. You have every right to be mad. I understand so . . . what can I give you as compensation?”
Her eyes widened. “Compensation?”
“Yes.” I stared at her with determination. “I have little to offer. I wish to compensate you for accompanying me so far and for the strain I’ve put on your ward’s body and spirit.”
I stared her down. Would my bargaining plea work?
She thought for a moment, and a smirk crept across her lips. “I want,” – she narrowed her eyes evilly – “your hair.”
My hair? Why did she want that?
“Cousin, that is a ridiculous request. Do not forget that you are in her debt!”
“Hair? What good’ll that do ya?” Grotts rubbed his own red locks and tried to figure out what use Rend might have for it.
“Did she say ‘hair’!?” squeaked Kantú from somewhere behind Grotts.
“You will not feel for her so if she is ugly,” sneered Rend.
“My feelings will never change,” said Nyte, and his voice shook with quiet rage.
Ugly? I don’t care about being ugly.
Maybe I would have treasured my appearance at the beginning of our journey, but not now. There were so many other things to worry about. So many other more important things, that I couldn’t be bothered with something as insignificant as hair. If that was all it would take to appease her, then . . .
“Fine,” I said. “Nyte, your sword.”
“No! Miss Havoc, you owe her nothing. If anything, she owes you. I will not let you do this.”
“Very well. Then, Ardette, your saber please. I know you can hear me out there.”
As I’d suspected, Ardette had been listening just behind Grotts. He slipped around the massive man and into the tent.
“Rend,” he said, smoothing his hair, “never took you for someone so kinky. Whatever are you going to do with dear Aura’s hair? Can I play too?”
Rend ignored him.
“Ardette, your saber,” I insisted.
He raised his eyebrows at Nyte and then unsheathed his saber and handed it to me.
“May I have a lock while you’re handing them out?” he asked. “You know how much I enjoy the smell.”
Nyte shifted his furious gaze from Rend to Ardette.
I held out the hair at the side of my head and brought it to the blade. Nyte ran forward to stop me, but Ardette held out his hand. The game-loving Daem found the event amusing. With a smile on his face, he watched me hold the saber.
Goodbye, hair like starlight.
“Wait!”
“Huh?” I looked up, surprised to find that the protest belonged to Rend. Her face read . . . defeat?
“I do not want your hair,” she said through gritted teeth. “What will that change?”
“Nothing,” said Ardette, still amused.
“Er? Are you sure?” I still hadn’t removed the blade.
She glared at me. “On my honor I cannot dismiss that you spared me after Cana. It would be shameful for me to allow you to compensate here. You are forgiven.” She looked away, her expression pained.
That was the debt Nyte had mentioned?
“Then we are even.” I lowered the blade.
Rend said nothing but pushed Grotts out of the way and stormed from the tent.
“Ow!” said Kantú. Rend must’ve rammed her on the way out.
“These love-triangles get heated, don’t they? Now then, put a shirt on, why don’t you? Do you have pants on under there?” Ardette peeked under the sheet. “Oh, you do? Hear that, my cherry pit? Don’t get too excited.”
Nyte punched him in the shoulder.
“My, my, I should hope he’s not so rough with you, my pit. Then again, maybe you like it that way?”
“Aura, did that meanie cut off your hair? Ugh, move Grottsy!”
Grotts moved out from the tent’s entrance, and Kantú wiggled her way into the room. She ran over to me and put her arm around my shoulder. “What’s wrong with her? She’s gone crazy!”
Grotts’ leaving the tent also made room for Scardo, who was muttering to himself with a sour expression on his long face.
“I don’t approve of her,” he said, pacing about. “She is a wild card. Her presence endangers the Pure Heart.”
“Scardo!” I was at once overcome with a sense of protective pride. “She’s a member of the guard, and she’s stronger than most of us. Please accept her as she is, and speak nothing more on the matter.” I looked around. “That goes for all of you.”
It was one of the few times I actually exerted my authority as Heart of Salvation. My guard. I wanted to protect the ones that’d been protecting me. All of them.
Kantú looked disappointed. “Boo!” she whined, dropping her arm.
But Scardo took the command quite differently. “Yes, Miss Heart,” he said, bowing low. The excitement in his voice gave me the feeling that he much preferred my personality when I played that card.
“It’s Aura.” I gritted my teeth.
Ardette cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we leave this boy to get dressed? It is quite sickening that he flaunts his body so.”
“It is not as though I asked you to enter.” Nyte narrowed his eyes.
“Jealous?” asked Kantú, flicking Ardette with her tail.
Ardette’s smile diffused only slightly. “Hilarious.”
As he walked past me on his way out of the tent, he grabbed the end of my hair and let it drag through his fingers. I didn’t protest, for I knew Ardette well enough to know it would’ve only caused an argument or more unwanted attention from him.
Kantú and Scardo followed after him, and Nyte and I were alone. I started to leave. My brief check-up had turned out to be way more chaotic than I’d anticipated.
That’s what I get for barging in without thinking.
“I apologize for her behavior,” said Nyte when I reached the tent’s mouth. He looked ashamed – like it’d been his own doing.
“It’s not your fault, but will you go speak with her?” I asked. “You do understand, don’t you?”
Not only does she believe you should be engaged, she loves you, at least enough to be jealous.
He nodded, under
standing my unspoken words.
I left him to contemplate exactly what he could say to his cousin to make the situation more bearable. If only I could give him the words . . . but it wasn’t my place, nor did I fully understand the inner-workings of Elven culture. It had to come from him. It was the only way Rend would really understand. Things were complicated enough as it was without me getting involved any further.
Sorry, Nyte, it has to be you.
~
“I’m really excited to see Crystair!” said Kantú, throwing her fist into the air. “Grottsy, will you show me where you used to live?”
The great man nodded with a wide grin on his face. He was pleased that his Squirrelean friend had taken such an interest in his homeland.
Only Scardo had been given the prophecy’s exact location, but supposedly it was somewhere in Crystair’s outskirts, and we’d set the city of crystal miners as our next destination. I was as eager as Kantú to find out what it was like.
Grotts had said it was bigger than any city we’d ever seen, with well over ten thousand residents and still more that traveled there for work and trade from outside towns. I tried to imagine such a place, but it was hard to picture a town with so many people. Did something like that really exist – where you might not even know the names of everyone sharing your water source?
I knew that Farellah was unusually small, and that so far on our journey, we’d avoided the fabled large cities of the south, but it still seemed unreal that there were places so populated. It was kind of exciting to think about the things we had yet to discover.
As we walked, more pieces of metal jutted from the sparkling whiteness, breaking up the otherwise natural terrain. Our course was riddled with rocks and uneven, rough ground, making our pace much slower than it’d been through the tunnel. At several points, we had no choice but to climb over jagged boulders and through small crevices, all the while dodging the odd machines that extended from the crystal sands like foreign creatures reaching for help as they sank into the white ground.
It was all like a dream, but I found the crystallized trees the most marvelous to behold. The first time our course took us through the center of a small cluster, we stopped to study them a bit. Their trunks were smooth like glass, their branches brittle and cracked.
“Do they continue to grow?” I asked Grotts, rubbing my hand against the polished bark of one of them.
“Sure they do. But real slow.”
“Do they need water?” Kantú paced around the trunk warily, examining it for ill intent.
“Nope, just air and moonlight.”
“Really?!” I said. “Wow.”
Another living thing that thrives off of the moon.
Grotts beamed at my reaction.
Despite my enthusiastic response, I found it hard to fully enjoy the scenery; there was something holding me back. Up ahead was Rend. I don’t know what Nyte had said to her, but she’d remained silent since the outbreak earlier that day. I felt extremely awkward walking near her after the morning’s events. I’d held up a strong front at the time, but after the fact, I was unsure of myself around her. I felt guilty that Nyte paid me the attention she desired, but at the same time, I selfishly reveled in it. Even with everything going on, I couldn’t ignore the feelings I had for him; I couldn’t just forfeit our relationship for Rend’s sake.
Should I have? I’d never encountered such a situation before, and I wasn’t sure if I was being unreasonable by holding onto the feelings I felt for Nyte, though I don’t know if they’d have gone away even if I’d tried to dismiss them.
After this was all over I’d tell him. I’d admit what I’d only realized during my kiss with Ardette.
Nyte, you are my –
“Off in a faraway place, are you?”
I scowled. Ardette had disrupted my pleasant train of thought.
“So far he’s been on good behavior, but I’m still not convinced.”
My scowl deepened. It bothered me when the handsome Daem was able to read my thoughts.
He dropped his voice. “It’s not too late, you know.”
“To what?”
“To change your mind. My feelings haven’t changed.”
I shot him a sideways glance. Is he being serious right now? I couldn’t tell.
“What was that look for? When you brood like that it reminds me of your boy. It’s not very becoming, I must admit.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind.” I smirked, hoping to kill off any further advances.
But Ardette only smiled. “You fit in here, my cherry pit. These surroundings suit you.”
“They do?” I examined him, wondering what kind of game he was playing.
“Your hair shines like the crystals themselves. It really is like starlight . . . quite extraordinary.” He took a lock in his hand.
I braced myself for whatever crude remark was to come, but none did. Ardette only stared at the lock in his hand thoughtfully and then released it.
“Thank you,” I said, but my voice was questioning.
He smiled brightly. “Well then, I’m off. Continue your happy thoughts, my cherry pit.”
He galloped away and settled next to Rend.
What a playboy.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying to her, but I watched their backs and waited for Rend to storm away or injure the Daem in some way, though she did neither. Were they actually conversing? I couldn’t tell.
Ardette and Rend.
I thought about the times Ardette had lowered his mask. The real him wasn’t so bad, it was actually pretty likeable. If he showed that side to others . . . He’d even saved Rend that time, when her power had gone haywire. He’d been able to accomplish what even Nyte had been unable to. Was he also capable of taming the bitter woman?
I scoffed at myself.
How silly.
A relationship like that was definitely only wishful thinking. What exactly was I thinking? That everything would be great then? That with those two out of the way, Nyte and I could . . . ? I blushed at the thought.
As we continued on, the light dusting of crystal grew deeper and deeper until it was thick and hard to tread through.
“That’s how we know we’re getting’ close,” assured Grotts.
That night we camped under an arching rock that glittered even in the moonlight. The clouds crept across the moon in ominous gray waves, off and on dimming the eastern moon’s beams. I missed the western moon. It saddened me to think that by the time I returned to Farellah its time might have passed. I leaned against the arch alone, watching the passing clouds. Even the night air was warm.
A light tinkling sound alerted me that someone was approaching.
“Are you gonna come to bed soon, Aura?” asked Kantú. She held the chimbree in her hand.
“Yeah, soon.”
She leaned against the arch alongside me and examined the instrument.
“Wonder why this was in that room,” she said, turning it over in her palm.
Truthfully, I’d pressed the strange discovery to the back of my mind in lieu of everything else, and only now realized just how odd it was that a priestesses’ tool should be discovered in the sealed-up Orolian Tunnel.
“It is kind of weird,” I said. “Was it dirty when you found it?”
She shook her head. “It looked just like this. And Grottsy said that there aren’t any songstress villages around here. Priestesses use them, though, right? I didn’t think to ask Grotts about them.”
“Priestesses are just songstresses that don’t possess songs of their own.”
I thought for a moment and added,
“I thought that chimbrees were native to Farellah, but maybe other people use them too? After all, I didn’t know that other songstress cities existed either. How strange that Farellah didn’t know she had sisters.”
“Hey, just remember, no matter how much you think Farellah doesn’t know, Ohre was a zillion times worse!”
I guess that’s true.
/>
Ohre was the name of Kantú’s hometown. According to her, they kept no records of any sort. Anything she knew about the outside world she’d learned from being Marbeck’s assistant.
“It would be nice if I could really go there with you sometime,” I said, staring back at the moon.
“That dirty old man!” Kantú’s right ear tweaked in remembrance of Parnold Rekrap’s forged letter. The emotion was fleeting, however, because her expression quickly softened. “Yeah, sure; we can go sometime . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Why didn’t you ever return to visit there after coming to Farellah?”
“Well, that’s because I don’t know the way, of course.”
My eyebrow twitched at the absurdity of her statement. Eh, so it was something like that? It didn’t really come as a shock to me, though.
“Do you ever miss your family?”
“Naw, not really. They’re the ones that kicked me out, all because of my beautiful tail!” She wiggled it to prove her point. “Besides, you’re my family now!”
Family . . . Illuma . . .
“You’re right.” I smiled at her. “Come on, family, it’s time for bed.”
Together we walked back to the tents.
Family. If only we could surpass all of this prophecy business and go straight to Druelca. Surely Yes’lech’s army could go on ahead and ensure Illuma’s safety. But then, they were all waiting on my power, weren’t they? My power.
Just wait, I’m coming for you. Just wait a little longer.
Chapter 19: The Betrayer
The morning sun crept over the horizon, blinding us as it reflected against the white sand. Just ahead of us was Crystair: the city of crystals.
We're almost there.
As we approached, its lively buzz and bustling sounded long before we actually saw any of the city’s many inhabitants. This buzz grew louder and louder, the closer we neared the sparkling, glass-like gates that marked the way into the market district, accumulating into a chorus of busy excitement at the city border.
Grotts trotted ahead to speak to the gatekeeper. He returned a moment later, face flickering with excitement.