Huntress Lost

by A. A. Chamberlynn

  Lights flashed around us as dozens of law enforcement officers closed in. Through the sea of faces, I saw Casseroux and Titus. I whipped my head over to Xavyr, who was helping Sabin off the ground. She must have woken up and followed us, something I imagined she was very much regretting right now.

  “Evryn Ashe,” Casseroux called across the plaza. He was about a dozen yards away, behind the law enforcers that had encircled us, forming a tight wall of bodies. “By my order, you are under arrest.”

  “For what crime?” I called.

  “You were to return to Solara after the battle on Skye, but you chose to become a fugitive from the law.”

  “What, so you can run more experiments on me?” I snarled. “That’s the real reason you want me back. I have done nothing to deserve this.” I flung a hand out to indicate the flashing lights and the armed officers.

  “You are a danger to yourself and others,” Casseroux said calmly, though his eyes glittered with a wicked glee. “You will live out the rest of your days in the capital, where we can monitor you and ensure you do not use the weapon that lives within you.”

  “Sabin,” Titus called. “Come out of the way. You shouldn’t be involved in this.”

  Sabin’s eyes moved over to mine for a moment, then down to her Rai, and finally over to Kellan. He was still unconscious.

  “Come now,” Titus said, his voice taking on a harsh edge. “You belong with me and the Stag Clan.”

  Sabin shot me one last look, unreadable in its expression, and she moved to stand by Titus. He nodded and murmured something in her ear as she joined him.

  “Come quietly,” Casseroux said, his eyes darting between me and Xavyr, who had his staff in his hand, very much at the ready. “There’s no need for unnecessary violence.”

  “So you can put me in prison with my mother?” I snapped. “To be quite honest, I’d rather die than live as your prisoner for the rest of my life.”

  Casseroux made a gesture and the law enforcers closed in.

  Yarrian, who had been quietly observing this whole interaction, turned and looked down at me. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  The neuromance lifted his white staff and made a circular motion in the air. A ball of silver light stretched out to cover me, Xavyr, and Kellan. And then, just like that, Ellsmer vanished.

  We stood in the midst of rolling hills carpeted in an array of exotic flowers overlooking a crystalline lake. Tiny huts sat on the shoreline, each with its own small paddle boat. The moon shone a pale lavender in the night sky, illuminating everything almost as if it were daytime. The air smelled like orchids and honey.

  “What just happened?” I squeaked. For someone who was used to jumping realms, I was surprisingly unsettled. Probably because I was the one who usually initiated the jumping.

  “You are more than just a neuromance,” Xavyr said with a slight narrowing of his eyes. It was clear he had also been taken off guard.

  Yarrian nodded. “Neuromancy is my primary practice, but I have other skills.”

  “I thought Hunters were the only ones who could jump realms like that,” I said.

  “I can’t jump realms. We’re still in Xayl. I can just transport myself and other things a small distance.” He looked over at me with his yellow cat eyes. “It’s not like how Hunters move at all. You have to summon your Call to the hunt. I merely focus on where I want to go.”

  “Where is this place?” I asked, looking around at the picturesque landscape.

  “It’s my vacation home.” Yarrian pointed to a larger house atop the nearest hill, set well apart from the others on the lake. “About a hundred miles from Ellsmer.”

  “Thank you for helping us,” Xavyr said, his tone grave. “We are indebted to you.”

  Yarrian shrugged. “It didn’t seem fair to leave you in that sort of predicament when I could do something about it. Plus, I loathe Casseroux. Anyone who is an enemy of his is a friend of mine.”

  He jerked his head toward the house on the hill in a gesture for us to follow. Xavyr shouldered Kellan and we began to trek uphill. A few minutes later we stood before it. It was one story, made of unpainted pale wood. A large porch overlooked the lake and it had many windows, which I noticed had no glass but were simply open to the elements. The roof was covered in thick green moss similar to that which had carpeted the forest in Ellsmer. It seemed a fairly ordinary lakeside cabin, other than the runes carved into every possible surface.

  There were only two bedrooms. Yarrian showed Xavyr into one of them, and we carefully laid Kellan out on one of the two beds. I watched him breathe to reassure myself he was still alive.

  Yarrian said, “Your friend may sleep for a few days. Not to worry. His mind has a lot of healing to do. You can stay here until then.”

  “Will he be back to normal when he wakes up?” I asked.

  “I don’t think anyone goes back to normal after something like that,” Yarrian said, a frown tugging at his lips. “It remains to be seen what aftereffects the possession will leave. He’s alive, though, and that’s a miracle.”

  I nodded, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. It was a miracle we were all alive. So why did I feel like sobbing?

  Yarrian looked at me. “I’m afraid, however, that your condition is something I can’t treat. I don’t know exactly what you have inside you, but it’s not a spell of the mind. It’s something that’s embedded itself into the very fibers of your being.”

  I nodded, feeling numb.

  “I suggest you stay as far as possible from the thing that controls it,” Yarrian said. “The Timekeeper is not a being to tangle with.”

  “But now that you’ve broken his tie with Kellan, Evr should be safe,” Xavyr said, though it rang with a slight question. “He can’t activate the Artifex without being in her presence.”

  Yarrian shrugged, which was not in the least bit comforting. “It’s still an incredibly dangerous instrument. I don’t know what to tell you. I just know I can’t disable it.”

  “We are trying to find a witch who might be able to,” I said. “Mirelda.”

  “I know of her,” Yarrian said. “She might be able to help, if you can find her.”

  “We were told she follows the starlings,” Xavyr said.

  “I don’t know. She just moves around a lot, that’s for sure,” Yarrian said. He added another shrug. “Not sure about you two, but I’m starving. Using magic always leaves me famished.” He waved a hand. “Wander around, make yourselves at home. I’ll have some food ready soon.”

  “We can’t thank you enough,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and disappeared down the hall, presumably to the kitchen.

  “Well,” I said to Xavyr, with a glance down at Kellan’s sleeping form, “I guess now we wait.”

  Xavyr nodded. “Now we wait.”

  So we walked outside, and we stared at the lake, and the moon shone, and the flowers swayed in a light breeze, and giant butterflies swooped down from the sky. And, for a few minutes, I pretended that I wasn’t a fugitive, I didn’t have weapon of mass destruction fused to my soul, my mother and father weren’t prisoners of a psychopath, and Kellan was awake again.

  The sun coming through the curtains was a hazy, deep gold the color of tiger lilies. I sat up in bed and let my toes dangle off the edge. The bed next to me was empty. Which meant Kellan must have woken up. I leapt up.

  I wandered through the house on the hill but it was empty. Had everyone gone outside? Perhaps they hadn’t wanted to wake me. In my eagerness I practically jogged to the door, and when I reached it I threw it open with more force than was probably necessary.

  There was nothing there. The house floated in a black void, an endless stretch of absolute emptiness.

  Panic seized me. I couldn’t breathe, which at first I thought was due to my panic, but a moment later I realized was because there literally was no atmosphere here. A wave of vertigo moved over me and I fell, down, down, down into the darkness.r />
  I fell for what seemed an eternity.

  When I finally stopped, it wasn’t with a bone-shattering impact. I simply found myself in the black waters of the Timekeeper’s realm. The white marble house loomed over me, and at the dock stood the Timekeeper.

  “Surprised?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be. They’re all destroyed, of course. By your hand.” He pinned me with his black eyes, which seemed to grow larger as he spoke. “All the realms, gone. Nothing is left. Nothing but you and me.”

  And he began to laugh, and from within the folds of a golden robe he pulled the stag’s horn. Holding it in his right hand he stabbed it into the air. The space between us rippled and tore, and everything began to spin round and round…

  I sat up with a gasp, clawing at the air before me. Xavyr ran into the room, lips set in a grim line, prepared to challenge whatever threatened me. My chin whipped around, and Kellan was there on the bed, still sleeping.

  My feet hit the floor and I ran to the front door and tugged it open. The flowers and the lake and the cottages were all still there, perfect in the first light of dawn. I could hear Xavyr’s footsteps behind me. I sucked in several deep breaths of the sweet air and sunk into a cushioned chair on the front porch.

  “It was a dream,” I said, as much to myself as to Xavyr.

  He didn’t say anything, just took a seat next to me. We sat in silence for a while, looking out over the storybook landscape.

  It’d been three days since we arrived here with Yarrian. And with each day that passed, instead of working out a plan for what to do next, I’d fallen deeper into despair that I’d ever get out of this mess. I mean, the lord of all the realms wanted me as his personal test bunny and had me on an interdimensional watchlist. How was I going to get out of that? How long was I going to have to stay in hiding? And with the Artifex inside of me, it was only a matter of time before I annihilated something. Unless I could find the traveling witch that followed the starlings, whatever the hell that meant. Which I couldn’t even try to do unless Kellan woke up.

  So had begun the dreams, starting on the first night. The same one, always ending with me and the Timekeeper in a black void of nothingness. My dreams of the stag had stopped entirely, and I realized I actually missed them. Those seemed to be trying to tell me something, lead me somewhere. But these dreams of late… they did nothing but wind me tighter and tighter.

  I’d been keeping my frustrations from Xavyr, but now it all came bubbling out. “This is never going to end.”

  He turned his eyes from the lake to me. “What do you mean?”

  “I will never be safe. I had people trying to kill me before I even got near the Artifex, simply because I was the only Hunter who could find it. And now, not only am I an outlaw, I can’t be sure I won’t destroy myself and everyone around me.” I turned to look at Xavyr. His amber eyes matched the colors of the rising sun. “Have you ever had to protect someone from themselves?”

  “That must have been some dream,” he said.

  “Really though, at some point you’ll have to give up on me, Xavyr. I can’t be helped. I’m a threat to the whole universe. I should just do what the Timekeeper suggested and trap myself in his realm.”

  “He would only use you once you got there. It wouldn’t be any better,” Xavyr said. “Also, I have never shirked my duty, and I most certainly will not do so with you.”

  “But you can’t guard me my whole life,” I said.

  Xavyr didn’t speak for almost a full sixty seconds, and I began to think he was contemplating my offer. Then he leaned toward me and took my hand. I could feel his breath on my face when he spoke. “You are brave and kind and I will never leave your side, even if that means we see the end of the world together.”

  At that moment, a shadow fell over us.

  Kellan stood in the doorway.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Kellan!”

  I stood and reached for him, but he flinched back ever so slightly. I dropped my arm back to my side, my heart climbing into my throat. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel…” His voice sounded rough and froggy. “I don’t know how I feel.”

  I looked over at Xavyr meaningfully and he got up and headed for the front door. In the doorway he halted and met my eyes over Kellan’s shoulder, but then continued inside. “What do you remember?” I asked Kellan.

  I motioned for him to take a seat beside me. He sat down, moving slowly as if he wasn’t sure he was really awake. His skin was chalk white, and purple rings hung below his eyes. He looked as if he stood on death’s door.

  “I remember us going down into the Timekeeper’s realm,” he said, and then stopped.

  After a long pause, I said, “And?”

  “Only flashes here and there after that. I remember…lions, and some sort of desert area with snow and lightning. And the Ferryman, not on his ferry. A city of trees. That’s about it.” He shook his head and his black hair fell across his eyes. His hands rested on his knees and they shook slightly.

  I looked at the planks of the porch beneath my feet, studying the grain of the wood. I couldn’t look at Kellan, not when he was so broken. I’d thought it was difficult when he’d slept, but this…“Do you remember what the Timekeeper did to me? When we were down there together?”

  Kellan’s eyes flickered up to mine and a haunted look moved across them. “No… though I know it was something horrible. I can’t see it in my head, but something inside of me flinches at the mention of it.”

  I shivered. Perhaps it was best he didn’t remember it. Just hearing his screams as I faded into the realm of Death were enough to drive anyone mad.

  “Mostly everything was dark, but I knew the whole time…” he stopped, closed his eyes a moment, continued. “I knew that I was powerless, that someone was controlling me. That I had been shoved into a tiny box in my mind and that I had no ability to stop it.”

  The Timekeeper had controlled my mind for a minute or so the first time I’d visited his realm. That brief period of time had been torture. The complete lack of control, the presence of something else, shoving everything that was me down and away into a dark corner of my existence. It had been the most helpless I’d felt in my whole life, and being raised as an orphan who skipped between foster homes, that was saying a lot. I suppressed a shiver at the memory of it. I couldn’t imagine experiencing it for such an extended period of time.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said, tears filling my eyes.

  Now it was Kellan who wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Tell me what happened,” he said at last.

  And so I rehashed everything that had happened since I left Kellan in the Timekeeper’s realm. Or rather, had been stabbed with one of the stag’s horns by the Timekeeper and sent into the realm of Death, where Skye was trapped. How I’d met my mother finally, just before Soo Kai attacked. How I’d been hurled into the sky and managed to jump realms, and discovered Veron and the Grayfeathers. And everything that had happened since then, from the capital, to the battle on Skye, to my second visit to the Timekeeper.

  “And now here we are,” I concluded, sweeping my hand out at the incredible view. “The devices we got from the locksmith in Ellsmer should keep the other Hunters from finding us.” I lifted the trinket around my neck and pointed to his. “The man you saw before is Xavyr. He’s my bodyguard. He’s been helping take care of you.”

  Kellan raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “Hired by my father,” I clarified.

  “So, the Hunter’s Council is doing the bidding of Casseroux, who is imprisoning any Hunter who doesn’t obey,” Kellan said. His face had a pinched look, as if he’d been forced to swallow poison.

  “Yes. He has Jaffe and my parents. I know it’s hard to believe. Everything’s just blown up in the last few days.”

  “And Sabin went back to Titus,” he said, confirming what I’d already told him.

  I nodded. I didn’t blame her, not really. She’d been forthright in her ambivalence to become
an outlaw. Plus, it wasn’t like she was going to take my side in that serious a situation (or any situation). And who knew where Rorie had gotten off to. Kellan had reacted to the news that Rorie was still alive with a visible flinch and then said nothing else about it, so I kept additional details to myself.

  Silence hung between us for a bit and then Kellan looked over at me. “And your plan is to stay in hiding?”

  I couldn’t help but notice how he said your and not our. “Well, there’s something else I need to do… I left one thing out of my story. It’s a bit hard to take.”

  Kellan looked even more ill now, but he sucked in a deep breath and nodded for me to continue.

  “The tool the Timekeeper gave me to disable the Artifex…it didn’t work. What it did was move the Artifex into me.” I did look up at him now because I had to know his reaction, even if it broke my heart.

  His brow wrinkled. “Into you? How does that work exactly?”

  “I don’t know. The magic fused with me or something.” I sighed, and there were more than a few tears riding on my exhalation. “The Timekeeper can control it somehow, though I don’t yet know how myself. But there’s this witch that the Sorenson Sisters said I should find. She might be able to help but she travels a lot, so it could be difficult to find her.”

  Kellan looked as if he wasn’t seeing me, as if I’d pushed him into a fugue state again. “So, that’s why Casseroux and the Council want you.”

  I shook my head, perhaps a bit violently. “No. Before Casseroux even knew about the Artifex he’d put me on lockdown. He wants to experiment on me because of my special lineage… like a test bunny or something.”

  “So, you’re sure the Council’s not just trying to protect you from hurting yourself or someone else?”

  “I’m sure that’s their official statement,” I said in a clipped tone. “But you weren’t there with Casseroux, didn’t see what a sicko he is. I promise you, there is nothing altruistic in his motives. If he finds me, I’m as good as dead.”

  Kellan shifted in his seat, his hands shaking slightly again. “Evr, you know I’ve been working for the Hunter’s Council secretly, and you know what I was sworn to do.”