by ylugin
Lana hopped off Kaiden’s horse and made her way to Donn and Alex first. She paused, speaking to Alex. “Try to rest while we ride. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.” Lana gingerly stroked Alex’s blond hair. Her gaze met briefly with Donn’s, he offered her a nod of reassurance, before she walked over to Nadina.
They began riding through the night.
Every sound that came from the woods sent Lana’s heart into a gallop. She knew that Donn’s little creatures would warn them if Garin approached, yet she couldn’t get herself to relax. There was a constant tightness to her muscles, they were ready to snap into action at the drop of a hat.
Once Nadina had fallen asleep Lana slowed, allowing herself to get closer to Kaiden who brought up the rear of their party.
She glanced back, meeting his eyes, pulling him from his dark thoughts. Kaiden shook his head to himself, seemingly deep in thought before he saw Lana watching him.
“I need to ask you a favor.” Lana asked when she was close enough for him to hear her without need of raising her voice.
“What is it?” He asked suspiciously.
“Will you train with me?”
Kaiden stared at her, this was not at all something he expected her to ask him.
Lana spoke before he could reply. “If I am to do this, if I am to take on this fight, I need to be strong. There is no room for error. I need practice. I need to be better prepared.”
Kaiden thought for just a moment before he nodded in agreement. Normally he hated trying to teach people things, the amount of patience it always seemed to entail. But training Lana would be fun. She was always a quick study and he never needed patience when it came to practicing with her.
Before he could say anything more Lana sped up, taking the lead again. They rode throughout the night in silence, taking a small break at dawn and then continuing throughout the entire next day.
* * *
Their first night of sleep after running from Garin would not be a restful one for Lana, for she woke to a feeling of free fall. Something was wrong, she knew before even opening her eyes. When her eyelids did open it was with a sudden purpose and a need to see. She sat in an open field, the sun not yet over the horizon. Jumping to her feet, she spun around, there was nothing there but brown fields of dry grass. She was alone.
Ardin?
“ARDIN!” Lana screamed in a panic.
That’s what was wrong. She was alone, too alone. In a frenzy she looked all around but there was nothing but fields. Her mind raced in an attempt to put together the pieces of how she got here, where here even was, and where were the others.
“It’s alright, child, he lays right next to you.” A woman’s voice spoke calmly.
Lana spun around to see a middle-aged woman in a long black cloak standing behind her. She wore her brown hair in a single braid. Her face was pale yet not unattractive and her body slender underneath her cloak. Yellow golden eyes stared back at her.
Gaping up at the stranger, Lana took a step back. The woman was not there a moment ago. She forced her strength into her palm and a sword formed in her hand. It seemed unnatural to act in such a manor to a lone woman with no evident weapon but the whole thing seemed wrong. In fact, everything seemed somehow off.
Lana’s eyes glanced at the sword in her hand, to make sure it was truly there. The pull to form the blade oddly did not drain her energy they way it normally did. She still had no idea what was going on.
“You are dreaming.” The lady simply stated, as she lazily pulled her long thick brown braid over her left shoulder. Lana looked around without a word. All that could be seen was fields of grass in all directions. The sky was beginning to change to lighter shades of blue. She didn’t know what to think, this didn’t feel like a dream.
“Who are you?” Lana asked.
The woman smiled a very sweet smile, “People call me Shade.”
Lana’s eyes grew larger and she took a timid step back while tightening her grip on her sword. “You’re… you’re the Shade?”
Very quickly her mind raced through everything she knew of the Shade, which was almost nothing. She heard she was dangerous and unpredictable, capable of a magic Lana had no knowledge of. A folk tale is what Lana had always assumed the Shade to be.
“That implies that I am the only one.” She answered.
“Are you not?”
“Discussion for another time.”
Lana felt a slight relief at the Shade’s comment, another time. It implied that Lana should leave the meeting with her life.
“Why am I here?” Lana asked.
“Curiosity.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“It isn’t much of one, I suppose.” The woman took a step to the side, looking at Lana from an angle underneath her long thick lashes. “We met once, you know.”
Lana shook her head, confused.
“You were a little thing. I knew there was something interesting about you from the very start.”
“When was this?”
“It was right after your mother died. Valdor came seeking answers, you were there.”
“My father, brought me to you?” Lana asked. Shocked that Valdor would risk doing something like that. The Shade wasn’t exactly a safe being to bring a child to.
The Shade tilted her head to the side, like an animal observing something new, before answering Lana.
“It was a part of my condition to meeting him. I assured him no harm would come to you during the meeting.”
Lana just stared at the woman unsure of what was happening. Why had her father brought her to this meeting, why had he gone? Before Lana could ask anything the Shade spoke.
“But we are not here to speak of Valdor.”
“If you are not here to hurt me what do you want?”
The corner of the Shade’s lip turned up in a dangerous smirk. “Do you believe in fate, child?”
This woman seemed to be all over the place with her comments and questions. Making it difficult for Lana to string together a point of her being here, in this odd place the Shade called a dream.
Lana shrugged. “I think our actions determine what happens, and our actions will not be determined by fate.”
“But say your father was fated to die.”
Lana went ridged.
The Shade continued as if she hadn’t noticed, “No matter what he did he would perish, his actions only altered the way the inevitable was to happen.”
“Stop playing games with me.” Lana spoke between clenched teeth. Her father’s death was a sore subject, something that she could not help but feel partially responsible for.
In an instant, the Shades yellow eyes were an inch from Lana’s face. Her hand wrested on the blade of Lana’s sword with the strength of a stonewall, locking the sword in place. Her black gown flowed around her as whips of shadows flowed out from the seams.
“Listen, child, I am not playing games.” She said with an edge. Her voice, a warning.
Suddenly Lana was standing alone as the Shade took her place farther away from her. The woman moved like a fleeting shadow. Lana looked at the Shade’s hand, where the she had gripped her sword, not a single cut.
“Are you saying my father was fated to die? That it was not my fault?” Her voice wavered.
“I am not here about Valdor. He knew his fate.” Just like that Lana’s hopes for an answers were ripped away. She stared at the woman, wondering what exactly that meant. Had her father known he was going to die? She wanted to ask more, but the Shade said she was not here to talk about him.
For a moment the two of them seemed to just watch each other. The Shade constantly appeared to be moving, lazily running a hand down the length of her braid, moving from one foot to another.
Releasing an exasperated breath, Lana broke the silence. “Okay so what’s my fate then.” She asked, deciding to play along, trying to end whatever this game was and be sent back to reality.
“That is the question isn�
�t it?” The Shade responded, her eyes widening ever so slightly, her lips curved up into a secret of a smile.
“You mean I don’t have one?” Lana’s eyes narrowed. None of this was making any sense.
“Oh you do, its just… how can I explain… splintered.”
“Splintered? What’s that mean?”
“The normal Madonian or Rami has a solid fate. I can see it as a solid line, a bright glow. That doesn’t mean I can tell everything that will happen for him or her, but I can see its path, more or less. You, however, have a path unlike any other, a splintered fate of sorts. It is not one strong line but more of a line with wisps breaking off of it and cracks.”
“Okay, so?” Lana didn’t know what to make of it. If she were to believe in this fate nonsenses, then what did it mean for her? That she had no true fate? That she was free to make choices which would lead her down different paths, like she always assumed herself to be? Had her father believed in this fate business? He had never mentioned it to her if he had, but apparently he hadn’t mentioned a few things to her.
“So. Something is heading here, I can feel it, I know it to be true. I believe that you may be able to alter the fate of the Lands.”
“But you said fate could not be altered?”
“Yes, but you are different. We all have a fate and it usually never changes. Only when those who are the closest to us can at times alter our fate, but ever so lightly. Think of it as pebbles in a pool. Normally we are all evenly spaced apart to where if we drop a pebble the waves from our pebble never reach the next. Only in rare occasions when two pebbles are close they may influence one another. Well, your pebble is larger than most. Those closest to you, their fate begins to splinter as well.”
Lana stared at the Shade, confused as to what this all meant and the reasoning behind it. So her fate was somehow contagious? “Why are you telling me this?”
“You should know. The choices you make are important.”
“This makes no sense. I am a no one special, no special powers. Yes, I am a Madonian council member but I do not have much influence, apart from the Selvirian lands, nor have I done anything great.”
“Perhaps you haven’t done anything great, yet, but you are a council leader. And your bloodlines are strong. You must stop speaking this way.”
“I now come from a family of one, me. Everyone else is gone. There are no great bloodlines. I am no more special then the next council member.”
“Ah, you know so very little.” The Shade hissed, throwing out a hand in front of her in what seemed to be frustration.
“Why are you here?”
“I am helping myself. I told you. I feel it, something is coming. I see an end and you are the only thing that may be able to help stray from that.”
Lana looked at the ground. A Shade, something most didn’t believe to be real, and those who did believe lived in fear of the creature. Something so powerful and dangerous was telling Lana that she was important. Lana wondered if she had fallen asleep on horseback and slid off, hitting her head, sending her to the dream. It must have been just part of her subconscious.
“You know where I can be found?”
Lana shook her head, “no.”
The shade looked longingly towards the horizon, across the distant grass fields before turning back to Lana.
“I apologize, going back will not be pleasant.”
Going back? Wasn’t the shade going to tell her where to find her? Lana looked at the woman in confusion.
Suddenly the Shade stood an inch from Lana with her hand forcefully shoving Lana back. She fell into an unexpected pool of water that had appeared from nowhere, with no way out. Trapped in the water, unable to breath Lana began panicking. She was suffocating. Spastically her hands and feet flailed, attempting to get to the surface, but there was none.
With a feeling of free-fall, Lana gasped for air as she sat straight up.
Donn knelt down beside her, holding out a cup to her.
“Bad dream.” It was not a question. He held out a cup. “This is valerian root tea. It will help calm you.”
Hard quick breaths escaped her while Lana looked around at the familiar woods. Her sweat-licked skin glistened from the dying ambers of the fire. Ardin lay right beside her as the Shade told her he was. She wondered if that was an awful dream or true.
“Why did you not wake me?” She asked Donn. If he knew she was having a bad dream long enough for him to make her tea, he should have woken her. Ardin stirred next to Lana at the sound of her voice.
“It was not the kind of dream one could be woken from.”
Lana eyed Donn suspiciously, before taking the tea, wondering what he might know of her too real of a dream. Her eyes followed Donn as he moved to a near by tree and sat. She stared at him a moment while holding the tea in both hands. He was so old, with his white hair and weathered face, but he seemed also to be wise and mysterious. He always appeared to know things.
“What do you know of The Shade?” Lana asked, deciding to pick Donn’s brain. She took a small sip of the tea, finding the warmth of the cup in her cold fingers soothing.
“Not much.” He replied, staring at the ambers of the fire in thought, before continuing. “They are not from here, not really anyway. These lands have done something to them, making them what they are now. Usually they are only found if they want to be, interested only in serving their own interest. Some have killed our kind, but to what end I do not know. They are not kind, nor are they usually evil, but I would not like to be involved with them.”
“Seems like you know more than most… Where do they come from?”
“Don’t know.”
“Then how do you know they are not from here?”
“Why the sudden interest?”
“You really have no idea?” Lana stared at him, waiting for him to answer. His words, it was not the kind of dream one could be woken from, resonating in her mind. He knew, somehow he knew what kind of a dream she had been in.
The corner of his lip turned up ever so slightly. “Your dream.”
“The Shade came to me in my dream,” Lana confirmed Donn’s suspicions.
“What was the point?”
“The point?”
“Shade’s do not normally enter the minds and dreams of Madonians or Rami. It is not easy to do, especially if there is not a connection between the Shade and the being already. There must have been a purpose to it.”
“She said some things about my fate.”
Donn sat silent.
“We have had a connection before, she met me when I was a child.”
“Friend of the families?” Donn raised a bushy white eyebrow.
“No, I had never seen her before. Not that I remember anyway. My father met with her after my mother passed and I went with him. At least that’s what the Shade told me, I have no memory of it.”
Donn nodded and asked no more questions nor did Lana want to share any more with him. Somehow the conversation she had with the Shade seemed personal, and even though she liked Donn, it wasn’t something she wanted to share. At least not until she figured out more of what it all meant.
Is there more? A gentle voice entered Lana’s mind. She turned to look at the large wolf beside her. His eyes were peering up at her from the ground.
She told me I had a splintered fate. That she could not see one path but many and that those around me are affected by it too. She said something horrible is coming.
Lana went on to tell Ardin all that happened in her dream. He listened and discussed with her what it might mean. They talked to each other until she finished her tea and the sun’s rays shone over the horizon. Once the distant sun was high enough for her to feel its warmth at her back, Lana got up. She got everyone up and moving. They were heading towards the lost city of Alogrin, and she had no time to waist.
The rest of the day went by uneventfully.
Lana and Kaiden set up a schedule to train together. After the threat of Garin and the une
xpected visit from the Shade, Lana more than ever wanted to better be able to defend herself and those she loved. She wanted to be a strong leader and warrior. She wanted to not have to ever be saved by another again. Self-reliant, that’s what she would have to become, and the sooner the better.
Chapter
Ten
Every day at sunrise and sunset Lana and Kaiden would practice their fighting and defense skills. To Kaiden’s surprise Lana was not bad to begin with. He assumed she must have learned after they left Ucu since while they were there she had almost no skills. As a kid he would always be able to trip her or sneak up on her, maneuver around her. Now it was more of a challenge.
Lana advanced quickly, eventually using a sword she created with her own energy for their practice. She liked not having to rely on a weapon and being able to better use the one that she created. Soon the forming of a sword began to feel almost natural to her.
On days they felt particularly tired, Kaiden began teaching Lana how to better throw knives. With time she was able to throw the daggers she created a farther distance before they fell to dust.
This became both Lana and Kaidens favorite part of the day. It gave them a chance to be together without any outside pressures or thoughts. Nothing mattered but whatever the task was in that moment. It was so easy to be around him, the way he was able to pull smiles from her, making her laugh. It was like magic. Never was he unkind or impatient with her when she messed up.
Ardin enjoyed watching them, every now and then when Lana tired he would play fight with Kaiden, being careful not to actually harm him. Lana would watch them, run around together. Kaiden would throw out lightning fire. Ardin would dodge, deflect, or shield himself from it, even he began learning a thing or two.
During one of Donn’s stops at a nearby town he brought back some hemp string that Kaiden had requested. Kaiden used it to fashion a bow out of a long thin curved rod Alex had created and he began teaching the boy archery. Lana watched as slowly Alex began to enjoy the gifts he was given as a Madonian. He even began joining Lana and Kaiden during their routine practices and practiced his archery shot while Ardin and Nila hunted. This became their routine, travel by day, practicing combat whenever they were able to.