The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  And this thing spreading cold paralysis into my cottage was not natural. This thing was not human. So this thing was mine.

  I had fully awoken now, concentrating on it. Silently, I rose from the floor and pounced over the broken glass to land lightly next to the bed. I slid my hand under the pillow, and withdrew my long dagger.

  I began to slink toward the window, ready to drop down on the hissing breather and surprise the Frarshk out of it. But its senses were as acute as mine and I heard a quick hiss of surprise as the breather gasped, then I heard scraping and scratching on the gravel as the creature spun and began to run from the cottage.

  As I reached the window I caught a glimpse of an abnormally long, sharply pointed figure running across the paddock at an incredible speed. It loped so quickly across the land, stooping close to the ground as it blurred away.

  A surge of blinding need sent me I flying through the cottage, and I paused only to grab my sword as I passed it leaning on the wall.

  I ached for a fight, for the healing thrill of a chase, and I raised my glinting sword as I sped through the kitchen towards the door.

  Chapter Ten

  Dalin

  We had let the day pass, keeping to our hideout, and Noal and I were again by the fire, eating the stale bread and cheese we had avoided the night before.

  I stared at the darkening sky through the treetops listlessly, lying on my back with my arms under my head.

  Noal was scratching shapes in the dirt with a twig.

  “Gods it’s got cold,” I frowned, sitting up and rubbing my arms for warmth.

  Noal sighed forlornly. “As you said so optimistically last night, this sure is the life.” He pulled his cloak over his shoulders and shuffled closer to the fire.

  “Wilmont would have expected us to be dead already, living this sort of life,” I reflected dryly, poking at the suddenly dwindling embers of the fire to stir them back to life.

  “We were trained better than to die within a few nights,” Noal comforted me. “Wilmont would give us a week at least.”

  I cocked my head a little then, certain that I’d heard something beyond our camp. I peered through the dark trees. “Did you hear that?” I asked Noal.

  He paused in rubbing his arms for warmth to listen, just as another sound came from the darkness.

  His posture stiffened and he sat up straight. “There’s something moving,” he whispered now.

  I pulled my cloak tighter about me as Noal’s expression changed to one of hope.

  “Do you think it’s a rabbit? I could do with a little meat!”

  I rose to throw another few sticks and some dried leaves onto the struggling fire.

  There was the snapping sound of another twig breaking, but it came from the opposite side of the clearing this time.

  “Perhaps it’s the search!” I whispered to Noal, suddenly concerned.

  Noal got up too and began to creep toward where the original noise had come from. “Let’s have a look,” he whispered back over his shoulder.

  He disappeared between the tree trunks in front of him and, certain that the fire was crackling strongly enough for us to be able to find it again, I cautiously approached where the second noise had come from.

  Shivering, I shrugged away my sense of growing foreboding and stepped further away from the light of the fire until the darkness encased me. But then I grew painfully aware of how the trees stood close together in a suffocating way, and the air seemed to be getting colder. The night was endless, and I felt as though I were the only person left in the world.

  An irrational panic began to bubble in my chest, but I pushed it aside and listened for any sound from the dead of the woods, realising how oddly quiet everything had become.

  Why was it so cold? It didn’t feel right.

  The woods now seemed so ominous, so sinister that I was about to call out to Noal to prove to myself that I hadn’t been struck deaf, when a strangled yell rose out of the woods from the opposite direction.

  I gasped and another strangled yell tore through the trees.

  Noal!

  I spun around at top speed and began to stumble back.

  Gods, it was cold. I was running, swerving, and tripping over trees and roots. My mind felt like it was spinning in my skull and I craved warmth. I couldn’t think straight. It felt as though I’d been running for hours.

  I hunted for the clearing but couldn’t find the light from the fire and started to panic and blunder again. But through sheer chance I stumbled over a bush and toppled out of the trees into our camp site.

  “Noal?” I called loudly, no longer caring if the search was about.

  The fire had gone out, and I ran to try to stir it to life as the horses showed the whites of their eyes and pawed the ground in restless fright from where they were tethered. Their manes were clinging to them with sweat, their lips curled back from their teeth in silent screams.

  “Noal?” I yelled, and then was stopped short when there was again the sound of a twig breaking.

  The back of my neck prickled and I had the feeling of eyes upon me.

  “Noal?” I whispered into the clearing.

  A long, low sound of hissing came from behind me, like the air rushing out from between jagged rocks. My breath billowed in an icy cloud as I whirled around with dread.

  I saw the shadows of the trees begin to move, taking on the shapes of impossible beings.

  They were advancing toward where I stood, taking sharp, jerking steps.

  As the shadows advanced the fire weakened and died again, and two sets of piercing white eyes glared down at me from a great height. These things were not human.

  The anxiety was swelling like a disease in my chest and felt as though it was choking me.

  “What in the Gods’ names …”

  One of the moving figures was caught for a brief moment in a puddle of moonlight. It was easily three times my height.

  “Oh Gods!” I moaned in fear. They didn’t belong to this world, which had gone quiet around them, and it seemed certain that this was one of Darziates’ unnatural beasts from Krall.

  “Oh Gods!”

  I tried to dart toward the trees, yelling with a hoarse voice, screaming for help even though I had led us too far from the village to be heard by anyone.

  Sharp, torturous hissing followed my every step and I ran wildly.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw a pursuing creature bend its wiry body, and stoop. Time stood still as I watched it pounce. I saw it soar through the air like a spider, its long body twisting high over my head in the air.

  Then it landed effortlessly in front of me and I practically ran into its arms.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kiana

  Sword held ready and a snarl of determination etched onto my face, I peered around the door, opening it an inch.

  The wild yard was empty. The morning light cast a fresh glow upon the field. Birds argued, the sky was cloudless, and even though autumn was still clinging to the fresh breeze, the sun was already beaming with a faint sign of warmth.

  “Frarshk,” I cursed under my breath, slipping watchfully out and beginning to jog down the yard in the direction I guessed the strange figure had taken. The woods?

  I was pushing vines, long grass and scratching branches away with huge sweeps of my blade. I was focusing only on the ground as I ran, looking for some kind of evidence of what the thing had been. It had looked nothing like any of the beasts I’d ever hunted through Awyalkna, Jenra, Lixrax, or Krall.

  I saw a mark in the dirt for a fleeting instant as I ran past and started to push my legs harder, feeling my heart and my lungs working faster.

  Slicing through anything in my way, I had nearly reached the end of my property and made it to the fence when I heard the sound of a twig breaking.

  My legs and pulse worked even faster as I considered that perhaps this hunting trip was going to be a short one. I began to steady and raise my sword.

  “YOOOOOOO
HOOOOOOOO!”

  My head jerked up in surprise and my eyes registered the dread inspiring, fearsome, waving figure of Gloria standing in my path.

  I started to skid but she was standing right in line with my careening descent and I was going too fast, with my sword still pointing forward.

  I shouted in warning, but she didn’t seem to hear as she smiled and waved. Perhaps her old green eyes couldn’t see the sword.

  I was sliding with momentum and she was just feet away.

  Desperately I angled my body backward and hugged my blade sideways across my chest. Then I stopped moving my legs, letting them slide forward while my body was dragged down to crash along behind them.

  The air knocked out of me in a rush and my head smashed into the dirt so that my vision was filled with blurring earth as I was carried past Gloria. I kept my teeth gritted against the pain and my sword held tightly against my chest so that I wouldn’t slip and slit my own arm or throat until I at last laid still.

  It took a few moments of breathing heavily and blinking at the bright blue of the sky before the burning, stinging feeling of scrapes all over set in, and before I awkwardly flailed to sit up.

  “Gods, Gloria!” I spluttered, struggling to stand and turn back to where she’d been.

  And I found Gloria beaming away as if nothing had happened.

  “Kiana! Are you well on this fine morning?” she enquired sunnily.

  I stood dazedly, panting, with fire now running up my legs and back, and with an unnatural beast, ready for the hunting, instead getting further away.

  “Gloria, what are you doing here?” I asked, trying not to sound agitated. “I saw no one on my property a moment ago.”

  “I noticed candle light from your cottage last night, and thought you may need something,” she replied reasonably. “And it is clear that you do, dear, running about like that.” She gave me an appraising look. “Let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

  She was coming toward me as she spoke, and I glanced down at myself as she took my arm. I was amazed by how foolish I had nearly been, because if I had chased that thing with only a sword and night shirt to protect me from it and the elements, I would either have frozen or stood out in the woods so starkly that it could easily have spotted me.

  As soon as I could be rid of Gloria I would prepare and hunt this beast down properly.

  But right then Gloria was guiding me gently by the arm toward the cottage. Like a mother would.

  “The candle light was glowing so late, you must be tired,” Gloria was saying, and I swiftly began to feel rather exhausted. My shoulders sagged wearily, and I nodded to her in surprise.

  I let myself be led into the cottage, where she bustled about exclaiming at how nicely I had fixed it up, and how there must be some hope for me after all, if I knew how to make myself a home.

  She took the sword from my hand and leant it against the kitchen wall. She swept up the glass in the bedroom, then pulled me into the light spilling from the unshuttered window.

  Fuzzily, I felt something about her… something warm and natural that boggled my thoughts and that my mind shied away from and couldn’t quite grasp. Never had she actually touched me, and now that she had, I could feel a million puzzling things about her. But fatigue was weighing my mind and muscles down.

  She tutted as she pulled glass from my hands and knees, and she regarded me with care. Such exquisite eyes that held me strangely fascinated. Something about her …

  My own eyes were shutting and I had to keep hauling them open, and when she pulled my arms over my head and yanked the dirty nightshirt off I only grumbled like a protesting child. I seemed to have lost my senses.

  She shushed me immediately, just like a scolding parent, and her striking green eyes lingered on the mark on my shoulder for a moment, before she slid a clean shirt back over my head and guided me to settle into bed.

  I had a dim awareness growing within me that, as dark and unnatural as the creature had felt, she seemed to be full of light.

  The last thing I saw was Gloria bending to pick the Unicorn figurine up, putting it on a shelf and saying: “My, my, what a pretty thing”, before walking out.

  When I awoke it was with a dreamy smile on my face, feeling greater peace than I had in two years. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms out in front of myself happily, realising I hadn’t been haunted by terrors and memories as I’d dreamed this time.

  I looked toward the open window where a dazzling sunset was filling the sky.

  Then I sat bolt upright in bed.

  I had slept through the whole day?

  “Frarshk!” I hissed and threw off the blankets, crossing to the cupboard and pulling on a dark green tunic, trousers and my boots. I quickly combed my hair back with my fingers and wove it into a tight braid, then strapped on my quiver full of arrows, grabbed my daggers, slid my sword into its sheath, and threw a dark cloak about my shoulders.

  This time as I made my way through the kitchen door I checked not only for lurking threats, but also for the enigmatic and fearsome old Gloria. I could not fathom how she had been able to surprise me in the yard earlier, how she had enticed me to let my guard down enough to allow her care for me, or how she had sent me to sleep.

  Certain the yard was clear, I travelled quickly through my land, jumped the fence at the end and closely inspected the surface of the wood. Six scratches curled around the wood in the shape of a giant, narrow, clawed foot. The engraved mark looked as though it could have come from the foot of an incredibly unusual bird, but a bird that was bigger than most people or animals. I moved away from the fence and looked closely at the dirt around the area.

  Either the thing had vanished after latching onto the fence, or it had become more careful about leaving tracks, but I trusted my instincts that any creature in need of shelter would head for cover in the woods.

  I ran across the grassy lands, scanning them keenly, and recalling how unreal the creature had seemed, even in comparison to those I’d hunted in the past.

  But it was real, and the idea of how real it was, and how much damage it could do, spurred me on.

  Chapter Twelve

  She tapped long, black painted fingernails on the arm of the steel chair she lounged in. Her eyes flickered impatiently around the candle lit chamber. Tonight the Sorcerer’s newest creatures were acting on her prophecy. They would seize the two Awyalknian runaways, and her vision would be proven invaluable. After years of toiling relentlessly, she would be proven worthy and invaluable to the Sorcerer King.

  If all went well.

  Agrona had met the Sorcerer Darziates when she had been twelve. He was a defender of ones like her and a protector of the world, he had said. He had strange abilities just as she did. He had described how he had already hunted out many of their divided enemies, ending the separation by ending the magical races in these lands. Almost at once she had given her withered, young heart to him, and she’d spent her life fighting for his approval ever since.

  He had been a young man at the time of finding her – a small, spiteful, vengeful wraith, and while she had grown he had never changed. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen after a childhood of being scorned, shunned for her wondrous abilities. She had been glad to follow him, and from the beginning Agrona had done as Darziates suggested, allowing him to help her use her abilities to poison her two greatest haters – her parents – until their faces turned black, their eyes rolled back and their throats gurgled for air. Agrona had then gone without question to serve him in his great cause and in his ascension to power in Krall so that now the mortal races could be dominated under one ruler too. She’d aided him in seizing his rightful throne, sweeping in with him to shrivel Krall’s royal family of that time on the spot, and helping to terrify or magically manipulate and subdue the rest of the kingdom.

  Together they had shared in the righteousness of Darziates’ higher purpose, both craving to feel the sweet comfort of consistent, unified control. And if
she were the right one, he’d said she would be his bride, working forever by his side to unify the entire world under his rule. Oh, how terribly she desired him, the most powerful being she had ever encountered.

  She could feel when he was angry, she could sense when he was pleased, and she could taste the magic of him without even standing near. When she was near though, he sent thrilling sensations like shivers through her entire being. She delighted in it. It made her very blood spark and bubble with energy.

  So she had done much in his name. She had scoured the lands in raven form, spying on what was to be his world, and finding the best places to attack. She had installed the Awyalknian spy, Wilmont. She had teamed up with Trune raiders, ordering them to ambush a noble Awyalknian family to get the war started. And she had overseen the destruction of Awyalkna’s most industrious border villages to help break Awyalknians into fear.

  Even though she hated the disgusting mortal soldiers she had also been given the job of dealing with, she still gladly performed her duties of keeping all Krall soldiers in check for Darziates too. The mortals repulsed her with their simplicity and scorn, the worst being Warlord of Krall, Angra Mainyu. But despite despising this tyrant militant human, who was allowed power in spite of being a mere mortal, Agrona tolerated him. Her master was amused by the animalistic Warlord, and appreciated how loyal and effective he was with mortal soldiers. So she kept the vile human close. She would always whole heartedly obey her Sorcerer.

  And the fact that men quailed at her beauty and her cruelty was nothing. Everything the Witch did was in an effort to please her King. She could control entire armies with a gesture or command. She could stare down any grizzled warrior. Angra Mainyu himself was transfixed by her. She could cut off a man’s airways with a twitch. She breathed evil magic like air; it pulsed through her body instead of blood.

  Yet still, Darziates was more powerful than she, and he remained indifferent to her as anything more than a second in command. Often even being seen as on par with the insane Warlord Angra Mainyu.

  Agrona knew Darziates thought she wasn’t the one, wasn’t the bride he wanted, wasn’t powerful enough. But who could be more powerful? More beautiful? Darker? More willing? Who could adore his work so entirely, other than his Witch?