The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  And had woken to find my village on fire, with Angra Mainyu’s troops and a raven that could only have been Agrona the Witch of Krall leading an ambush against my people. This time when the smoke set in, it was exactly how it had really happened.

  Chapter Eight

  Dalin

  We silently led our weary bays across the green plains. The moon climbed steadily higher in the darkening sky, the stars grew steadily brighter, and we both became steadily more morose.

  I had almost lost hope and confessed that I’d probably led us astray before we finally saw the outline of a fence surrounding a field. If farmlands were close, then so was a village.

  “Is it Gangroah, Dalin?” Noal was regarding the fence as though it was a revelation.

  “Course it is,” I grunted. “Did you think I’d got us lost?”

  We both remounted, wincing as we settled back into the unforgiving leather of the saddles and began to pass small farms along a dirt road. The road ran between the fields and led us into the tiny village where the mares quickly sought the nearest water trough.

  “It’s smaller than the inky dot on the map back in Awyalkna Palace suggested it would be,” Noal observed of Gangroah.

  The village almost blended into the fields, and the few brow beaten, sleepy farmers seated outside the tavern also seemed to fade into their surrounds. There were no stalls, but a few laden, sheltered wagons selling necessities that had been covered for the night. The tavern leaned over the road and some barns clustered across from it. The ten or so cottages were all small enough to be called huts, and they were lined up on the opposite side of the fields like aged comrades huddling in a group. Then the dirt road continued on to where the empty cottage we were headed for was meant to be.

  The cottage was a distance away, and I remembered that the secluded blocks of land surrounding it were private and overgrown. The abandoned place would serve for a refuge if the search didn’t come this far, until our Quest could begin.

  I’d been reminded of this place quite conveniently while I’d been planning our escape, as I had overheard the talk of one of the new young Palace maids. She’d had stunning green eyes like my mother’s, auburn hair, and had been gossiping about the little old lady who lived in the other cottage at the end of Gangroah. I’d seen the cottages years before when I had passed through Gangroah to attend the festival in the now destroyed Bwintam village, where the dark haired singer I’d given my heart to had lost her life.

  “We’d best head straight to the cottage,” I commented as I turned to Noal, only to find that he was gazing with yearning at the tavern, which was casting light out into the street as well as an aroma of cooking meat.

  Noal opened his mouth to speak, still staring at the tavern.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “But couldn’t we at least buy a cooked meal – just quickly?” he pleaded.

  I thought about the stale bread and cheese in our packs and he saw my expression weaken.

  “The villagers won’t be shocked if we just stop to eat and then pass through like most travellers would,” he seized his opportunity eagerly, grabbing both sets of reins to tether the horses by the side entrance before leading the way inside with a radiant expression.

  He was resplendent with the idea of a meal when the leathery looking bar maid seated us by the unshuttered window.

  I relaxed as we were served and began to feel sleepily contented under the merrily burning lanterns hanging from the rafters. It looked like most of the farmers were gathered there, smoking pipes, lounging in the worn out chairs, talking over cups of ale, and not taking any notice of us.

  I finished my meal and sat back, downing my own frothy cup of ale while Noal added a third plate to his pile and finished what was left of my second half eaten helping of stew.

  He reached for some doughy bread next, and I gazed out the window lazily while many of the farmers now began to file out to get home.

  The light spilling from the tavern lit the road outside, and everything was easy to see as I took a long mouthful and swilled it around my mouth, filling one cheek and then the other.

  I only became more attentive again when an elderly woman passed close by, her striking green eyes meeting mine for a moment. I nodded out the window politely, but she looked away pointedly and moved onto the road. I watched her progress with sudden unease as a group rode along that road from the same direction Noal and I had used, stopping in the village on their huge stallions.

  I sucked in a breath while the group dismounted to question a passing farmer who had been stumbling drunkenly home. Each man in the dismounting group bore the Awyalknian coat of arms, gleaming on their armoured chests. But the old woman appeared to be creating a fuss to capture everyone’s attention, and even in my rising panic I saw that many of the newcomers had at once become oddly drawn to her.

  “Gloria at your service, sirs,” she cried. “You must be tired!”

  Oddly, almost everyone watching her really did appear to abruptly become highly exhausted, there were slumping shoulders and weary nods from all but one of the crowd.

  A sharp eyed scout from the group, an archer carrying a bow, slipped gracefully from his mount and began to look about as the others watched Gloria in stupefaction.

  I turned with exaggerated calm back to Noal, who was happily licking his fingers clean.

  I swallowed the ale, casually scraped my chair back and then pulled Noal up by his collar.

  “Hey!” he protested, but then his eyes widened as he saw the search, many only now starting to try to escape the doting Gloria, or to question the intoxicated farmers.

  I led us backward through the inn to the side door, stopping to watch until the one sharp-eyed archer scout had passed by, and then we slowly and naturally exited. We sauntered down to the wooden planks where our horses had been tethered, untied them and coolly mounted as a couple of guards finally entered the tavern by the front entrance. We continued down the road at an indifferent pace until we were at a safe distance. Then we kicked our heels into the water filled bellies of the mares and rode away from the village like scared rabbits, all the way to the abandoned cottage and Gloria’s neighbouring cottage on the town’s outskirts.

  I wondered how in the Gods’ names we had made it without being spotted, but promptly decided it must have been those Gods and their grace that had sent the old woman and allowed it. Some kind of magic had happened there.

  “Well, the search didn’t overlook this village,” Noal surmised, panting and raising his eyebrows.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of it all ending like this. Being sent home to face my parents, and our supervisor Wilmont’s ruffled, ringleted disdain.

  “We can’t stay. They’re going to check this place over from end to end,” I said, thinking fast. I pushed to remember back again to when we’d passed this way, years before.

  “There was a small woodland around here last time …” I turned this way and that in the saddle, getting my bearings while Noal waited nervously. “It was somewhere in that direction,” I nodded past the two lonesome cottages.

  But at that moment we heard the approaching sounds of galloping horses and we both peered down the lane anxiously.

  “Hide first though,” I whispered. “Then back on the road when we won’t be spotted.”

  He quickly followed my lead, and we both slid from our saddles, leading the bays into the miraculously overgrown grass at the end of the field. I wasn’t sure, though I thought I saw a light in the abandoned cottage’s windows in the distance before we pulled our horses down into the grass, quieting them with soft clucking noises and squatting down ourselves.

  Moments after we were settled and safely hidden a good distance away, the search became visible as they rode in a tight band out of the darkness. They stopped only yards from where we had been and four of them dismounted to walk quickly up and down the fences. The lithe archer sentry was one of them, and I held my breath. Awyalkna’s archers were famed for their i
ntuition and scouting.

  But, as if the God of Concealment was watching over us they walked right past, staring over us as we held our breaths before they rejoined the group.

  I handed Noal my horse’s reins so that I could creep as close to them as I dared. My vision was somewhat obstructed by towering grass, but I could discern the scene enough to note how disgruntled the soldiers were.

  “It’s too dark to spot much and these paddocks are pretty wild,” the archer scout reported to the leader at the front of the group.

  “That green-eyed old lady out the front of the tavern already said no strangers had been here,” one of the soldiers crossed his arms. “The other villagers around her agreed.”

  “I don’t know why we were sent out this far. Those two don’t have the experience to make such a distance,” another soldier complained.

  I tried not to bristle. I’d been relying on the fact that they’d miscalculate us, so that was a slight consolation.

  “We’re needed for more vital work than searching for runaways,” added another. “Even valuable ones.”

  “I’ve heard good things about them at court, but wasting soldiers at a time like this …” another man leaned tiredly against the fence.

  I was feeling increasingly like a criminal, and the guilt of my necessary crime twisted in the pit of my gut.

  “Enough,” the archer sentry said then, and stopped all of the chatter. I raised my eyebrows at his slight figure.

  “We can quickly look through the village again and question sober farmers in the morning. It’s more than likely that when we get back to the City the boys will have been found in a closer village. And,” he added, “I have met those lads. They aren’t just spoiled children.”

  The archer had a strange air of self-assurance to him, and the group leader was nodding, almost in deference. This archer had to be one of the elite of Awyalkna.

  “Of course you’re right, Dren,” the leader demurred, and the men were all quieted as they followed his motion to remount.

  I watched as they rode slowly back toward the main part of the village and the archer, Dren, turned once, seeming to scan the long grass just in front of me. Then they were gone.

  As I found my way back to Noal I was feeling slightly reassured by Dren’s kind words and I wished that I could remember him as he remembered us.

  “I can’t believe our fortune,” I whispered on my way back to Noal’s silhouette as it got clearer in the moonlight. Finally I straightened, stretching my legs and then dusting the damp from my pants. I tugged at the horses to get them to rise too before I reached for Noal, wondering why he hadn’t stood for himself.

  He was crouching pale faced and trembling in the grass, going cross-eyed as he looked at something sitting on his face, taking up the entirety of his forehead. I leaned in to see what it was, and found that it was peering back at me with rows of beady eyes, and with eight clawed legs that were either digging into Noal’s brow, or waving about in the air in an almost friendly way.

  “Granx spider?!” I hissed incredulously, and fumbled immediately for my knife.

  Noal wailed and I worried that the search would hear, or even little old Gloria, who had probably finally got back to her home next door.

  “Be calm,” I instructed with my own heart racing. “I’m just going to scrape it away from your face.”

  As quickly and precisely as possible I slapped the spider off Noal’s face with the blade. It tore away from his flesh, flew in a graceful arc through the air and landed with a thud on a tree a few yards away.

  Its bulbous shape appeared almost indignant in the moonlight as it pattered away, but I didn’t pause to stare, instead spinning back to Noal, who was still frozen. I grabbed the front of his tunic in my fist, pulled him up and pushed him to mount.

  I mounted too, pressed his reins into his hands and slapped the flanks of his horse.

  We took off at a light trot and I guided the mares in the rough direction of the woods until, with relief, I spotted a mass ahead that could only be the outline of the trees. I found a small clearing easily, and busied myself finding water and kindling for a fire before grooming the horses so that Noal could recover. He never handled fear well and I’d seen him freeze up from it many times before.

  It was understandable, and Noal had been like this since childhood after his family had been attacked by Trune raiders while passing through the rocky lands between Awyalkna and Krall. Trune raiders often came from Krall to find wealth and food by targeting those travelling on the roads, but this had been one of the first attacks where the Trunes had aimed specifically at the nobility of Awyalkna for a political purpose.

  Noal had been bound and forced to watch his family die in brutish ways before the remains of his loved ones had been piled around him, and a letter to the Awyalknian King had been left in Noal’s pocket. That letter had promised open war on Awyalkna, or surrender and a peaceful take over by Krall’s King, Darziates.

  Noal had been barely alive and never the same when they had carried him into the City. The nation had been outraged, the King grief stricken, I had gained an adopted brother, and both Awyalkna and Krall had started to prepare.

  As I sat by the fire now, watching over Noal out of the corner of my eye, I saw him gradually come back to the present. He stumbled closer to the fire and huddled to stare into the flames.

  “My forehead has never had such a close shave,” he joked hollowly with a thin smile, looking up at me from the fire at last.

  I felt myself relax and crossed over to give him the water flask.

  “Life doesn’t get much better than this, hey?” I smiled back, squeezing his shoulder.

  Chapter Nine

  Kiana

  The sun had burned gloriously above the debris, its rays as red as freshly spilled blood. Ashes had swirled slowly on a scalding breeze, dancing, like snowflakes of death.

  The still rising tendrils of smoke had coated my lungs. Choking with warm, cruel fingers. And the charred ground had crunched under heavy, steel covered war boots as they had come slowly closer.

  I had been found, the sole survivor of Bwintam’s massacre, and strong arms had forced me down on bloodied knees while Krall’s Warlord had approached.

  Angra Mainyu had brought his and Darziates’ soldiers into Awyalkna’s border lands. Into my village. And he had burnt away everything I had ever known.

  He had towered threateningly over me, gripping a curved sabre that had glinted like a dangerous smile in the sun. I would be the last lamb to the slaughter, and I had truly hoped for death.

  He had licked his lips, smudging the dirt around them, and then leaned in. There had been the reek of unwashed body and spilled alcohol, and his hulking shadow had blotted out the blood red rays of the burning morning, mourning sun.

  His curved sabre had risen, ready to slide along my throat. But then a raven had landed near us, the Warlord had withdrawn, and it had become so much worse without him.

  Worse without the sabre that could have ended the pain right then, sliding effortlessly across my throat, opening fine, soft skin so easily and allowing red blossoms of blood to bloom, blanketing me peacefully in nothingness.

  Instead the raven, transforming before my eyes into the Witch Agrona, had wanted to keep me alive to suffer. And though I’d always thought magic was just in stories, she had placed her hand upon my shoulder to brand me with her magic so that the ghastly hole I was left with, both outwardly from her physical attack, and inwardly by my devastating losses, had rent me wide open much more effectively than a sabre could have.

  When the troop had gone, I had been left with nothing but ash settling on my eyelashes and falling down my cheeks. Everything had become dust, and when I had taken the hand of someone lying close to me, its charred fingers had disintegrated at my touch. More ashes had floated like funeral petals in the air about me. Settling in my hair.

  That was how it had all happened. How I had lost them. How I had been left with only a lit
tle stone Unicorn in my pocket. And nothing else in the world.

  Instead of scorched dirt I became aware of the cold, hard floor of my own cottage in Gangroah, and felt my shoulders slump forward as the last of the memories, flickering within my mind like wavering light cast across a wall, released me at last. Flashing, stinging and disappearing.

  I blinked myself back to the present, wincing at how stiff my jaw felt after being clenched all night. Glass shards from the lantern surrounded me, the Unicorn figurine still looked up from where it had landed, and the pale sun of first morning filled the fresh room.

  I frowned and rejected the heavy swelling feeling in my throat. Instead, I made myself blank and refocused on a new sensation. An instinct from the present. Something in this moment, in current time, wasn’t right.

  Snap.

  I threw my head up. It was the sound of a twig breaking underfoot. There was somebody outside, the sound of their footsteps on the gravel outside the cottage carried in through the open window.

  The steps were slow. Purposeful. Hushed.

  A faint scratching noise came with each step, as though claws or talons were scraping the ground, and it seemed an enormous amount of time stretched between each step, as if the walker had irregularly long legs.

  I noticed that the fresh air seemed to turn suddenly colder as the scraping footsteps drew nearer, and watched as the breath began to issue from my mouth in icy clouds. A chill shot down my spine and goose bumps broke out all over me like a rash.

  Then the scraping sound of the footsteps stopped, right next to my window, and I shivered involuntarily. My fingers were icy.

  From where the steps had stopped came the sound of slow, deep breathing that hissed through the breather’s teeth.

  Gods was I glad to have awoken to this. Almost as if they had been reminding me of my duty and motivation, the Gods had sent me my next unnatural beast. Hunting Darziates’ creatures was the only way I could take a stand against the Sorcerer of Krall.