Amasai

by Stevie Rae Causey

  “What would she think if she saw you now? If she saw what you have let your grief become?”

  “I could say the same for you, and your old master,” Cain shot back. His response was met by a soft growl from Fiora, and I sensed that things were about to become more serious than I was prepared for.

  “Now or never,” Nova’s consciousness prodded mine forward. It seemed my act hadn’t fooled everyone. I sat up, yawning loudly as I rolled the soreness of a night on a stone floor from my shoulders. The arguing ceased.

  “She wakes,” Fiora stated, just as she had done the day before. She would say it many more times before we would part ways.

  The cave was well lit, with sunlight streaming in from around the corner behind me. The cave was not as deep as I had thought. Fiora sat perched atop a ledge on the cave wall, looming over Cain in a way that would make even the bravest of knights nervous.

  Cain’s fists were clenched at his side, and his jaw set tensely. He looked up at Fiora, and then at me before rolling his eyes and scoffing.

  “Come with me,” he demanded gruffly as he brushed by. He did not wait to see if I followed. I stood quickly, stumbling a bit before looking to Fiora for confirmation. I’d decided that, between the two of them, I most feared being on her bad side. When in doubt about a possible enemy, always choose the side of the one big enough to eat you.

  She nodded her approval, and I turned to leave. Nova rose to follow me.

  “Just the girl,” Fiora instructed. Nova lowered her head apologetically. It made sense that they would want to keep us separate. They couldn’t be sure yet of my intentions any more than I was of theirs and I couldn’t make a run for it without the Deyanian. Still, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat betrayed as I made my way out of the cave.

  I’d figured out by now that something about Nova’s presence helped keep the Darkness in check, and I was sure that Fiora had come to the same conclusion. If she had been a guardian as long as she claimed then I reasoned she must understand what it would be like to find some measure of relief, only to have it stripped from you, even if it was just for a short while.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and pay attention,” Cain said. “The snake has her reasons for wanting things the way that they are.”

  Could he read my mind? I gulped. He looked down at me from the corner of his eyes and smirked. “All your years among the humans have ruined you. You’ve picked up their habits, absorbed their reactions. You’re as good as dead out there on your own.”

  I had no idea what he meant. If I had absorbed their manners so well why had I always been an outcast? And besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t had any exposure to my own kind.

  “Cazlyn was teaching me, before I ran away.” A pained expression crossed Cain’s face when I said his son’s name. It was gone as soon as it had come.

  “Either you are a poor student, or my son is an inadequate tutor. The latter seems unlikely.” He looked down his nose at me and sneered.

  “That’s not fair! It wasn’t like we had very long, not really! And so much of that was wasted on culture and customs. You can’t expect me to pick up everything in a matter of months!”

  “Apparently not considering your maternal side. That pesky human blood, inhibiting your potential.”

  My face flushed with anger. “How dare you speak of her that way!”

  “Even the traitor knows you’re no-good, just like her.” Anhedonia’s voice in my mind was an unwelcome reminder of what was ahead. Painful, but oddly comforting in its familiarity.

  Cain raised a hand to silence me. “My opinion on the way things are no longer matter. For better or worse, you hold the destiny of all on that chain around your neck, and if Fiora is about to convince you to do what I fear, then you have little chance of surviving unless you listen carefully.”

  We came to a stop at the edge of the clearing and he picked up a hatchet that was leaning against a tree stump. It was obvious the tool had been neglected and left out in the weather. The metal was dull and tarnished, the wooden handle was in danger of rotting. Cain didn’t seem phased by its appearance as he placed a log the size of my torso atop the stump and handed me the ax. I flinched as the grimy wood settled into my palms.

  “Split the wood.” The glimmer in his eye danced and his lips curled upward. “Silently.”

  I tried to restrain myself from scoffing visibly. What he was asking was impossible, even for a Mystic! Even if I had been given a proper tool—something well-tended and recently sharpened, there was no way that a girl my size could cut through a piece of wood as large as what he’d placed before me. Let alone, silently. Still, it seemed as if I had no choice but to attempt this impossible task.

  I approached the piece of wood. Sitting atop the stump it was nearly as tall as I was. I swung the ax around my shoulder and slammed it down with all my might, bracing myself against the impact. I closed my eyes as metal hit wood, half expecting the handle to shatter. Much to my surprise it held. I opened my eyes slowly, sighing inwardly as I saw that, as I’d expected, the dull blade had barely made a notch in the wood. Not only that, but it had been decidedly un-silent, announcing itself with a loud *THUNK*.

  Cain said nothing, but raised an eyebrow and folded his arms, waiting to see what I would do next. I pushed the tip of my foot against the stump, giving myself enough leverage to pull the ax out of the log before trying again. And again. Each time I was met with the same *THUNK*. Each time I made a tiny notch in the log. Half the time I couldn’t even hit the same spot more than once, so rather than making progress in splitting the wood, I succeeded only in creating a series of crisscrossed notches along the top.

  “Not up to the task, silly girl?” Anhedonia taunted me as I worked. It still sounded a lot like my own voice, but now that I knew the truth it was easier to distinguish what thoughts were my own, and what ones belonged to The Darkness. That didn’t make them any easier to ignore though. “Not elf enough. He wants to see you fall into oblivion. He wants you to fail, so he can have the power for himself.”

  Finally, I’d had enough. Exhausted, sore, and drenched in sweat, I charged the log. A guttural noise emanated from the core of my being, and before I could stop myself I had kicked the log off its pedestal, screaming and hacking away at it all the while.

  “Interesting,” Cain said once I had stopped. “Not what I expected.”

  I could feel the weight of the ax in my palms long after he took it. My hands were shaking, my arms felt like wet noodles, and my back ached. I wasn’t sure if my legs could carry me back to the cave on their own or if they would give out under my weight. Maybe that was the point—to exhaust me so that I couldn’t run.

  Cain lifted the log back onto the stump, placed the ax against the tree, and motioned back toward Fiora’s cave.

  “We will try again tomorrow.”

  He was silent the whole way back.

  ***

  Fiora did not speak much when we returned but exchanged a look with Cain. He shook his head solemnly before leaving once again.

  I had failed his test, or so I thought. Fiora neither confirmed nor denied my suspicions. We ate in silence. Even Nova had nothing to say to me the rest of the day.

  Every morning Cain would return and give me the same task. Every afternoon he would return me with the same results. It became normal to me over time, even mundane. I was fed well, protected from the elements. Fiora even gave me access to roam the area on my own. She said it was to find a place to bathe because I was fumigating the cave, but I suspected it was because she knew I was bored. Still, she was no fool, and neither Nova nor myself were permitted to leave the cave without leaving the other behind.

  I was certain that Nova could have made it on her own. That she knew where home was and could safely have traveled through the forest relatively unhindered. Yet she stayed.

  “She is a prisoner because of you,” Anhedonia would often remind me. Some days it weighed heavy around m
y neck, and on my heart. Other times it was easier to brush away.

  And though Anhedonia was correct in saying that we were technically captive, it wasn’t at all how one would imagine captivity to be.

  I couldn’t say that either of our captors had become friendly. Cain maintained his air of superiority and smug satisfaction at my failure. And Fiora? Well she was mulling something over. What it was, she would not say, Indeed, she had seemed to retreat into herself the further I got into my “training”.

  Finally, I could stand the silence no longer.

  “What is the point of all of this?” I demanded one afternoon after Cain had left. It felt like I had been hacking away at that piece of wood forever. I was making almost no progress, though I had become more accurate, hitting the same notch up to four times in a row before missing.

  The dragon looked up from her work. Stuck supervising us, she had taken to menial tasks like sorting her treasure and carving intricate designs into the cave walls. It seemed we weren’t the only ones who had become prisoners.

  At times she would retreat to the ledge at the back of the cave. It was there that she spent the most time. I wondered what could occupy so much of her time. Whatever it was, it was hidden from my view. All I could see was the end of her tail as it swung back and forth.

  The ledge is where she sat now as I shouted at her from the cave floor.

  “I go out every morning, knowing I will fail again. You must know by now that whatever test you are giving me, I will never pass!” My body and mind exhausted, I unleashed my rage with my voice, soaking up the echo of my words against the cave walls.

  “You might as well just roast me now, serpent! Because I will not go back out there and attempt his impossible task one more day. I just won’t!”

  I sounded much like toddler throwing a fit, but I didn’t care. My body ached, my soul was lonely. I was through feeling like a failure.

  Fiora’s tail disappeared from sight. I held my breath. Having expelled most of my frustration, I realized that I didn’t actually wish to be roasted. I hoped the dragon had enough sense to know I was being dramatic, not literal.

  Her head appeared over the edge, tilting curiously.

  “Is that what you think this is?”

  My voice failed me. I nodded silently. The dragon sighed.

  “It is not so much a test for you,” she explained. “As it is a test of Anhedonia’s power over you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Anhedonia has embedded himself in your mind, so deeply that any attempt to take him from you may prove fatal.”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Even after all this time, Fiora had to keep her distance from me. Any attempt to get close resulted in the same piercing pain as the first day we’d met. We had tried a few more times but had the sense not to push it so far that I passed out again. For that I was grateful. It was not an experience I was eager to repeat.

  “We—Cain, myself, the Professor—none of us have ever encountered such a phenomenon. We needed to know…if he is so rooted in your psyche, does he have full control over it? Over you? And so, we put him to the test.”

  I stared, slack jawed. My mind couldn’t put together the pieces. How was wood cutting going to test The Darkness?

  “Anhedonia convinced you to run from those who would protect you,” she pointed out. “And so, we knew there was some influence on your behavior. Young minds, after all, are not difficult to sway.”

  I resisted the urge to argue. Setting aside the perceived insult. Which only made me want to point out that I had done so and therefore was not as prone to the nature of children my age. The irony escaped me, at the moment.

  “We assigned you an impossible task and waited. How would you react? Even a dull blade can become a weapon.”

  “You didn’t think that I’d—”

  She didn’t let me finish.

  “Desperate people will do many things when they feel trapped. We had to be sure that Anhedonia would not sway you into violence.”

  I stood slack-jawed as her words sank in, “You mean this whole time you’ve held me here I’ve near killed myself trying to complete a task that you knew was impossible? And you just sat there atop your pile of treasure, fat and happy serpent that you are, and let him treat me like garbage? For no reason?”

  Fiora’s nostrils flared. My flippant words had me standing on dangerous ground. I knew it, even as I let them fly out of my mouth, and I wouldn’t let fear take them back.

  “How dare she! Who does she think she is?” Nova’s muzzle against my shoulder melted my rage, until it was less of a rising flame and more of a dying ember: present, painful to the touch, but not an immediate danger.

  Fiora rose from her seat and approached me, stopping just short of the distance that would cause me pain. She’d measured it, more than once since I arrived. She bowed her head until we were almost eye-level—or as close as we could come with our size difference, anyway.

  “The time has come for you to leave us, half-breed,” Her voice was soft and solemn, and her breath reminded me of the warm ash of the dying campfire. It was not a threat nor a punishment, but a statement of fact. One that she announced somewhat forlornly. And for the third time in my short life, everything was about to change.

  Chapter Nine

  The forest on the other side of Fiora’s cave was no different in terms of foliage than the terrain we had encountered before. And yet it felt denser, darker…more ominous. Perhaps it was a matter of perception, the knowledge that my movements carried the weight of my people’s salvation, that made it seem that way. Or perhaps it was because we were skirting the borders of the Uncharted Territories. Either way, I had no desire to dawdle and instead urged Nova to pick up the pace.

  Her hooves made soft crunching noises on the forest floor. My body swayed atop the ornate saddle Fiora had insisted we take to make the journey easier. Nova had not been a fan, puffing out her belly to keep me from tightening it appropriately until I threw my hands in the air and declared her no better than the common horse. It wasn’t until Fiora pointed out that the saddle would provide a measure of safety for me that she finally conceded, and we were on our way.

  Exactly where we were going was a mystery. Fiora had not given much guidance on the matter, only caution. As much as she eluded to the workings of fate, my departure was premature.

  “There is so much more that I wanted to teach you before this moment,” she’d said, as if we were old friends rather than a girl that had been captured by a dragon.

  “Alas, the young prince has forced my hand, and it is no longer safe for you here. His time with Anhedonia has not left him unchanged, and your life is in danger. He thinks that I cannot see what is in his heart. How he has let the Darkness feed his hatred.”

  “I don’t understand,” I’d said. It seemed as if she were speaking to someone else. As if she had forgotten about me entirely. Her eyes were sad and far away.

  “There is a traitor in our midst,” Fiora echoed the words I’d first heard on the night I left home. But how could that be?

  “Of course, the blame will fall upon another,” She swung her great neck around, locking eyes with me. “But there is naught you can do for him now.”

  “But where will I go?”

  Fiora let out a forlorn sigh. “That is a decision that must be your own. Where will you go, little one? Will you become the leader the Alliance seeks to shape you into, or the savior of all the Mystic races?”

  I wasn’t sure how she expected me to be anyone’s savior. But then again, I didn’t see myself leading the elven people either.

  Fiora’s head shot up, her body hunched like a cat about to pounce. Someone was coming. “Our time together is at an end, child. You must take Anhedonia and flee, now. I will deal with the Wayward Prince.”

  ***

  The further into the Darklands we got, the more ominous things felt. It wasn't that
the forest was naturally dark. In fact, I was surprised to find that my predeterminations about the scenery were so wrong. The moss hung off the tree branches like gnarled lace. More than once I had to reach up and brush it out of our path. Back home I had learned to navigate by where the moss grew, but in the Uncharted Territories it cloaked the trees all around, overtaking them.

  Foliage covered most of the forest floor. Everything from ferns to fungi carpeted our path, and soon Nova’s hoofbeats became muffled by its softness. But aside from the dankness, the forest felt rather benign. At times the sun would break through and it seemed beautiful, in its own way.

  I hadn't thought about what we would do when we reached Thana. Fiora had said only that she would know what to do next. Though marching into the land of the Dark breeds seemed like a huge risk to me, Fiora was insistent that she was the only one who could protect me from Cain.

  Why had she thought that Cain's wife could protect me from him? I had asked the same thing. Other than the fear of the Alliance using me to force the dark breed into submission, which she was sure would secure the fate of all Mystics by forcing Irving to unleash his Amasai and doom us all, she also feared for my life because of what she called the traitor in our midst.

  I remembered Eoma using those same words to describe whoever had tipped off the elite, leading to the death of the elven king, but I hadn't given much thought to it since I had run away. I supposed, based on what I knew now, that everyone would blame grandfather. After all, he had given me the necklace which housed Anhedonia. But I believed in him. I didn't think that, just because he was guilty of smuggling goods, even if he did know who they came from, that it meant he would betray his friends.

  Certainly, he wouldn't have given the information to the enemy on purpose

  "Are you sure of that?" The Darkness questioned. "Can you be sure of anything, really?" I leaned in to Nova, pushing the voice away. I was getting better at ignoring Anhedonia's attempt to bait me. I knew what it was now: a liar. But it didn't mean that his words couldn't take a toll on me. The amount of mental and emotional labor that went into keeping the voice in check was exhausting. Add it to the anxieties of going on what may have been the most dangerous adventure of my life, and I was downright exhausted. Luckily Nova didn't seem to need me to guide her. She floated effortlessly through the woods, seemingly unhindered by the fact that we were treading on enemy territory.