by C. K. Rieke
What? I . . . I don’t know how to feel about that statement. We were close back then, closer to each other than any other, but that doesn’t mean I’m . . . jealous? Jealousy, is that what he’s asking me about? I don’t love him . . . Or did I? Do I? He is like an old friend or family member back from the past. Can I love him? No. It was just a bond. I can feel comfortable with that. Him just being here is enough for me.
“Lilaci?” Roren asked.
“Yes?” she asked, fidgeting with her hands.
“You just seemed heavy in thought there for a spell. You know what, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It was a foolish thing for me to ask. You’re fine. You’re always strong, stronger than anyone else I know. Forget I said anything . . .”
Roren hung his head and fell back into the ranks behind her, but she reached out and grabbed him by the arm. He stopped and looked up at her with both eyebrows raised.
“No,” she said. “You weren’t a fool to ask me that. I can see why you would think that. But just because we were close back then, doesn’t mean that the past has that strong of a pull on me. My past is all tragic, except for those fond memories of my time with him back then, and in a way . . . I suppose I could say honestly yes, I did love him now that I think about it, maybe not in the romantic sense. I’m not sure about that part . . .”
Roren’s posture went from stiff to a bit loosened when she said that.
“But Roren, I fail to find the definition of the type of love I have for him. I can say its somewhere in the gray between the love for a lover, or that that’s carried between a brother and sister. My feelings for him sway somewhere between those two, or somewhere out in the far reaches outside the two. I feel as if I’m not explaining myself properly. Perhaps . . . perhaps it’s closer to the feeling you have for Kera, but without the difference in age, and it was more a shared love, not like that of the protector and a child. Its somewhere around, or in between all of those.”
“Oh,” he simply said. “But you do love him then?”
She paused, looking back down to the gorge and across to the other side. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
Silence returned again.
I love him? What does that mean then? My head has been so filled with worry, I haven’t really had the time to process what it means that he is back. A ball seemed to well up in her stomach then, like a small jagged rock swallowed and rolling around in the bottom of her belly. Gogenanth is back. And after all these years, it would be perhaps out of place for me to show affection. If this war wasn’t approaching, and we were free to do as we pleased with each rising sun, perhaps it is possible that I’d want to spend each day with him. “Roren, does it change anything that I do say that I love him, just as family?”
He looked up at her with eyes that could be best described as sullen but doing his best to disguise it. “No,” he said.
“The weird thing for me to say is he’s like family,” she said, a flood of memories returning to her of the night she lost her them. That night, the Scaethers, they took them from me forever, and they ravaged my mother. I feel . . . I feel such a remorse for becoming one of them. A knot formed in her stomach, she raised a hand to cover her mouth, and even with her trying to hold them back, the tears began to streak down her face. My mother . . . what an awful thing I became a part of. Even after they took my memories of her from me, I can’t help but blame myself for becoming one of them. I’m disgusted with myself for that. I fought for Veranor, I fight with him now in a sense. Argh! All these thoughts are blocking my mind from the things I should really be concentrating on. Kera! Getting my Sanzoral back to its full strength! Gogenanth returning is sending me to a place I thought was gone.
“Well,” Roren said. “We can all be family now. It doesn’t have to be just him and you. Just because what you had back then with each other doesn’t mean that we can’t all form bonds that can last for a long time.”
She smiled up at him. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe time is the only difference between now and then, nothing else. Roren, we really should return to finding a way across now.”
“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “Also, we need to figure out how to find the other two ingredients for the cure to the Pixie’s curse. But we can figure that out later.”
She nodded to him, and he returned to his place behind her looking down the cliffs.
Why didn’t Fewn come to me about Gogenanth’s return? Why was it Roren? I suppose she wasn’t concerned about the same thing he was. But she also isn’t as mature as he, even by a mile. Burr doesn’t mind Gogenanth, as surely he finds him as a great asset for his strength and magic. Roren seems to be the only one who felt this way. What does that say about him? It’s rare on these sands that someone has ever cared about me other than for their own purpose. Does he care for me? No. He’s only concerned for my concentration on the mission at hand. I’ve got to find us a way across, and my focus has to be on that.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Veranor felt the light tickling of her hair as it wafted in front of his nose, causing him to pull up his hand to scratch the outsides of his nostrils. His black shadow grew ever taller as the sun sank back behind the sands. A tumbleweed shot over a patch of sand to his left and jostled in the air, tumbling end over end before it landed in front of him and continued its long roll forth. He’d heard it moving toward them, even before it pitched over the sand, even in the slow, rustling winds.
To any other out on the sands, danger loomed heavy in many forms. But, for Veranor, the sands were not a realm of danger, but rather, a battlefield where he would almost always have the advantage. His senses became sharp once his walk began. He felt he’d remained in the city far too long for his own good. Training others was a responsibility he was tasked with, but he was a hunter. The city was his training ground, the sands were his hunting grounds.
As the sun slipped back into its dark nest on the other side of the tallest of dunes, Kera lay on his back, snoring lightly. An hour now she’d said her feet had grown achy, and he—without asking—lifted her onto his back. She didn’t fight, and moments after he felt her anxiety about being placed high up on his back, she seemed to relax. Twenty minutes later and he felt her head bobbing up and down as he walked like a leaf on the wavy sea water. A few more minutes later and she was fast asleep on his back.
He told himself that he would have to walk throughout the remainder of the night. Perhaps he could sleep a couple of hours just before the dawn. After all, he had seven days. Only seven days. After that, Dânoz and the others would be after him. If they came themselves, he was as good as dead, Kera too. If they sent an army, he was dead. There was no other option than to get the egg as fast as they could. But there was one major problem with the plan; the egg was nearly one thousand miles away.
He trudged through the sands with as light a footstep he could muster, and he walked as briskly as he could without growing fatigued. Yet, he knew he couldn’t walk for seven days straight. But even if he did, he wouldn’t make it halfway.
“There’s got to be another way,” Veranor said to himself. “Herradax may be the only answer.” He spoke to himself in a rare moment of frustration with the ex-commander of the Scaethers. “But Kera is unable to call the dragon directly, and if she could she’d be alone. That I can’t do. Herradax is growing strong, and deadly there is no doubt, but I can’t—”
“If I could call her,” Kera suddenly lifted her head from his shoulder and said, “should I? I’m not sure if she is big enough to fly with me yet.”
“Kera,” Veranor said, “you need to travel with me, for your protection.”
“I . . . I’m told to trust you, from the voice in my head, but I can’t help but feel you’re a danger.”
“Why do you feel I’m a danger?” he asked her, his voice held more of a high pitch from his surprise at that statement. “I’ve done no harm to you, and I won’t. I’ve made my promise.”
“Lilaci,” she said. “Why’d you do what you did t
o her? Part of me tells me you’re here to help me, but the other side says that you’re the villain. You betrayed the gods’ will—twice now, but why did you do those things to Lilaci? You had the Scaethers search me out my whole life, and they’ve done things. Terrible things. Even in a desert with gods that spread their dark roots, you led boys and girls to become bad people. Why?”
“I don’t have a simple answer to that, child,” he said.
She wriggled her way out of his hold and fell to her feet on the sands. “That’s not good enough for me. Not right now. You’re right, we aren’t going to make it to the egg in time. I may as well call Herradax. Maybe if I just scream her name out right now she’ll come.”
“Don’t,” he said, with a shushing motion of a finger to his lips. “We still don’t want wandering eyes focusing on us.”
“Then give me a reason,” Kera said. “Why’d you do it? Lilaci deserves better. She’s good.”
“Again, things are not that simple. You think she’s good? Lilaci has killed many; many she never knew and never met until their deaths. That’s part of playing the role we all must play sometimes. You however, as the Dragon’s Breath. You get to play your own role, since birth you were given the rare gift to control your own destiny. It’s as rare a gift as the dragons themselves nowadays. Does that make any sense to you?”
She thought for a long moment, her dark hair whipping in the winds. She looked up at the pale moon lingering in the vanishing light of the sun. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“Well, young lady, right and wrong are things that could be considered a luxury to be able to contemplate. The times are moving quickly now, but for the last few hundreds of years, in the Arr—it was do what was told of you—or die. Us simply having the conversation in one of the three Great Oasi would be punishable by a quick death if any sort of prying ear was lingering on a thin wall. I only did what needed to be done.”
“It didn’t need to be done,” she said with spite on her tongue. “You didn’t need to kill her family. You killed Fewn’s family too, and how many others?”
“Many,” he said. “I know the exact number.”
“You like killing, don’t you?” she asked, glaring at him, waiting for his answer.
He didn’t respond. He only peered down at her with his mean gray eyes, and he scorned slightly with the two scars across his face streaking past his pale-skinned face and nose.
“Don’t you?” she said, the corners of her lips turned down, and her face squinted in.
“Those who don’t kill,” he snapped, “end up the ones on the other side.”
“You’re different, though,” she said, her shoulders hunched as she leaned toward him. “Lilaci and Fewn kill because they have to. You do it because you like it. Don’t you!”
“You are young, but if you had more years I’d simply respond with . . . What’s the difference? In the end, the one on the other side ends up the same either way. Whether killing is enjoyed or not, the killing itself causes death. I say that regardless of its underlying obviousness.”
“It matters to me,” she said. “Lilaci never killed a family. Fewn never ravaged a father in front of his son’s eyes.”
“You are true in that,” he said. “They were never asked to. Kera, that was the first time you’ve seen Dânoz, correct?”
She nodded.
“You know he’s hunted you throughout your entire youth, but what do you know about him?”
“A lot, my elders told me all about him.”
He stroked his chin. “When you saw him, is that what you expected after all your elders told you?”
“Honestly,” she said, “he seemed a little more . . . human than I thought.”
“That’s a mistake that you’ve made then,” Veranor said. “Dânoz and the others are as far from humans as a bird from the worm. They’re predators. If you’re a worm and you inch your way up to a bird’s beak to defy it, you end up the same every single time. We’ve got seven days.”
“Why did you kill Lilaci’s family?” she asked. “I get what you are saying, but you’d rather have children’s blood on your hands than fight? I can tell you what I’d do.”
“First off, we never killed children, that was part of the code. One I was very strict on. Secondly, you can’t put yourself in my position. You were born in an entirely different world. You had choices. Real choices. You were born with the rarest gift of all in the Arr: freedom.”
“Freedom at a cost I wouldn’t bare on anyone,” she said. “The gift and curse I’ve been born with made me the loneliest person out on the sands. No one understands what I have to go through.”
Veranor knelt to her and lifted a hand to brush her wafting hair behind her ear. “I suppose you and I have more in common than we both care to admit, even if we were on completely separate sides. I want you to know, Kera, that whatever happened up until this moment; I regret nothing.” She pulled away from him. “I say that only because if I had veered from the gods, even just a hair’s width—I would’ve been killed, and I wouldn’t be here with you now to help you. Everything I’ve done in this life has been leading up to this time. I’m here to help you to kill these gods. I may have been the killing dagger, but they were the arm and shoulder that thrust it. I can only hope that by the time this story is done and written about in a book that will sit on a shelf for centuries that in the end I can be redeemed as one of the ones who tried to save these lands and help you to do what you need to do.”
“This isn’t some tale where what you’ve done can just go away,” she said.
“You’re right,” he said. “I may be the villain. I’ve killed many. But in one hundred years when this is all said and done, those that’ve been killed won’t be remembered. It’s a sad fact but the weak are rarely remembered. The strong—us—we will be remembered.”
“Is that what you’re in this for?” she asked. “A legacy?”
“For the first time in my life,” he said, “I’m here to do what is right. I won’t deny it . . . I feel as if I was born to kill. I’m no different than the fisherman fishing, except I don’t eat my prey.”
She stood silent, swaying back and forth, seemingly in contemplation, even for a little girl. “So how do we get to the egg?” she asked. “That seems to be the most important thing at the moment.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked back east, in the direction of the egg, somewhere in the mountains between the three Great Cities of Voru, Azgobinadan, and Godan. “I’ll figure it out, but until then . . . we are just going to keep walking. Up you go.” He motioned for her to get on his back once again.
She scrunched her face again but knowing that she could hardly keep walking through her tiredness, walked over to him and jumped onto his back as he crouched. “We don’t have much time, so I hope we figure out something, because I’m tempted to call Herradax, and I may, but again I don’t know if she could carry me or would let me fly atop her back. I wish Lilaci was here, she’d know what to do.”
“I hope you get to see her again,” Veranor said. “I hope that I get to someday.”
“I used to have to tell Fewn that I’d try to stop Lilaci from killing her,” Kera said.
“It seemed you did a good enough job at it,” he said.
“I can’t promise it’ll work for you,” she said. “And I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t listen to me this time.”
“Neither would I.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Just before the cool dawn the following day, Veranor opened his eyes, squinting to avoid the bright glow of the yellowing clouds growing on the horizon. His eyelids were heavy and hard to open, because opening them was like pulling back thick wool drapes from a sunlit window. Lying on his back on his outstretched cloak’s cape on the hard desert floor, he rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. He pushed himself up from the sand to look over at Kera who slept less than a meter away. A slow, light-wheezing snore came from the young girl.
Her cape was pulled snuggly over her body, and she had curled her knees tightly up to her chest, only her toes hung out from under the tan-colored cape. Her black hair rustled delicately in the early-morning breeze. Even the hard-hearted Veranor found it difficult to wake the girl from such a sound and peaceful sleep, but he knew time was not on their side.
“Rise, child,” he said, placing his hand on her arm and nudging her back and forth softly.
She let out a sigh that broke through her snoring. He shook her again, this time with a bit more force. Another sigh, this time louder.
“The sun is rising Kera, we need to be off,” he said.
She turned over to look at him, her silver eyes glistening yellow and orange in the glow of the rising sun. Her face had a thin layer of sand, like a second skin. Kera looked as if she wanted to cry with her sad eyes looking up at him, Veranor wondered if she had enough water in her body to release tears or not.
“Come, girl, let's be off,” he said, holding out his hand for her to take.
Again, it looked as if she wanted to let tears fall, but none came. She took his hand.
“If you’re still tired, I will carry you.”
“It’s impossible,” she said softly. “There’s no way we’re going to make it there in time. There’s no sign of Herradax. And I’m so thirsty.”
Veranor knew all of what Kera said was true. But first thing was the water. He’d need to find some water soon, even from a fresh cactus, then he’d need to do the impossible; he’d need to find a way to get to the egg within that week, or Dânoz would send out sure-death to find them.
“Either way, we need to be getting on our way,” Veranor said. “Come, now, hop on up.” He knelt, with his back to her, and she jumped up, wrapping her slender arms around his strong neck. “There you go. I’ll find you something to drink, you just rest.”