The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  She hissed with resentment, clawing and shredding the shirt material and only calming when she felt the presence of comforting magic instead. She looked to find the five Evexus slinking their way through the trees to meet her, and she obscured for a moment into her other form.

  “We have work to do,” she hissed.

  And as Agrona left with her beloved’s Evexus close behind, the Witch bent all of her ill will towards that obscured, hidden woman. Stabbing out at this surprise foe in hatred.

  Chapter Forty Two

  Kiana

  My shoulder was aching, and all of my hunter instincts felt betrayed as I led the boys away from the sounds of the beasts.

  We rode endlessly, pushing Ila and Amala as hard as they could go. Then we ran alongside them when we had to.

  I had worried that Noal would be unable to keep up with Dalin and I, but he maintained a stubborn, unwavering speed. They both rasped for breath and cramped often at the start, but I increased each challenge steadily to build their endurance.

  As they strengthened, I hid the fact that every footfall sent a jarring impact through my shoulder. I made sure my face never contorted.

  By each nightfall the boys had to stop, and I would scout ahead to find a sheltered area, just as I now directed them under some trees that ringed a very small clearing. The boys collapsed into moaning heaps, while I left them to meticulously check over and water Ila and Amala.

  The boys finally roused when I had filled our flasks and hunted and cooked us three plump birds.

  “Is it safe to have a fire? It could serve as a beacon,” croaked Dalin, sitting up from a near comatose state.

  “Who bloody well cares!” moaned Noal, flopping onto his side from a starfish position to look at the meal. “After all these days … it’s meat.”

  “I’ve decided that a fire shouldn’t make much difference,” I answered Dalin soberly, not mentioning that I felt they needed the meal. “The beasts seem to operate well by each of their senses so they could use our own scents to track us. And, the only success I had last time was with fire.”

  My shoulder felt as though a knife was twisting through it, but I showed no pain on my face.

  “I don’t know how they could follow my scent,” rasped Noal, always first to recover a sense of humour. “It must be you two. I smell like a dew drop.”

  I smiled as my shoulder pounded. As if the socket had been crushed and shards of bone were tearing through the muscle.

  I was feeling dizzy with the pain. It was biting across my chest now.

  The boys, however, were utterly exhausted. So after they ate dinner and drank a hydrating concoction from my healer bag, I offered to take first watch.

  “I won’t put up a fight to that suggestion,” Noal agreed gratefully. “My muscles, it feels, have turned to liquid.” He flopped like a sack of flour back onto the grass, resuming his starfish position.

  “You’ve probably just wet your pants,” Dalin yawned, not even putting effort into his jibe.

  “Probably,” Noal had already shut his eyes.

  After first watch I sat with Dalin at the start of his turn until he lost the glassy-eyed look. And apart from a slight stinging, prickling feeling covering my skin feverishly, I was actually feeling more settled as we shared a companionable silence.

  It was a comfortable hush that spread between us, only broken by little snores coming from the lump that was Noal in the dark. Until the peacefulness was broken by a shrill, screeching cry that tore across the night.

  It was faint, like last time. But it washed dread over all of us, even making Noal cry out in his sleep.

  It was close enough to mean that all feelings of comfort were again gone, and we would need to ride hard tomorrow.

  “You should get some sleep,” Dalin told me gravely, sitting straight backed and cross-legged at the fire.

  Nodding, I spread out my cloak, feeling increasingly unwell with every gesture. My shoulder felt as though a cold inferno was seeping through the flesh, eating through muscle and sawing into bone.

  I couldn’t lie on my side. At times my shoulder felt stiff and heavy, almost dead. At other times it felt hotter than fire or colder than ice. But at all times it hurt, and I took it as a sign.

  A sign that I was afraid of.

  Chapter Forty Three

  They had found the trail of the travellers easily enough, but every night when they were right upon the three they hunted, it was impossible to find them.

  Sick dread gnawed at Agrona as their elusiveness confirmed that some power or cloak really must be over the group, keeping them out of Agrona’s reach.

  Late every morning, after searching out finally where the group had been hiding, the spot was always empty and the three were ahead again to repeat the process.

  Agrona was almost exploding with desperation after a fortnight of this strange search, and every day she was galvanised to send out her will to try to hinder and hurt the group. But it was getting harder to even see their shadowy forms.

  She should have been terrified when one night she felt a strong pulling on her very essence and recognised Darziates’ call – along with his obvious disdain at her lack of success. Instead she groaned with pleasure as his magic erupted around her, pulling her from where she stood to then make her reappear in the training room of the King.

  Only he had the unnatural power to manipulate travel like this, through the Other Realm to trick time in their own world. And he waited in front of her, barely an arm’s length away. Boundless black magic pulsing around him, through him.

  She breathed it, drinking him in. White blonde hair. Bare chest and stomach hard and powerful. Only the light of a fireplace showed him to her, but it was enough. She etched every detail into her mind.

  “Agrona,” he uttered in his low voice.

  “My King,” she purred. “Much has happened,” she began to report delightedly, her dark eyes reverent. “After the successful attack on Wrilapek and escorting Angra’s troop back to the border, I returned to await the promised Evexus.”

  He was void of expression.

  “While I sat alone amongst the trees, another vision came upon me, in like to the one that was sent to me some months ago. First I saw the two that I had been warned against, and then I saw their companion.”

  “What man was it?” he asked quietly, crisply.

  “It was no man,” Agrona glowered bitterly, but she had resolved to completely block all images from her mind for once, as he always saw everything there. She would reveal nothing of her fears that this woman had enough power to interest the Sorcerer.

  “My vision told me that if this woman were to remain alive and help those boys they would be successful in their Quest, and Krall would be made even with Awyalkna.” Better for him to want her dead.

  Uncharacteristic amusement touched the hard eyes of Darziates. “A woman?” he asked softly. “An Awyalknian peasant woman managed to save two young noblemen and kill two fledgling Evexus,” he mused. “And now the fate of my own divine calling is resting upon her shoulders.” He raised his eyebrows imperceptibly. “How can this be?”

  “I do not know,” Agrona retorted, still frantically trying not to reveal everything that her vision had warned. But in the process of holding some things back, Agrona all at once remembered she’d recognised the strange woman somehow.

  Darziates’ eyebrows rose again slightly, and her heart skipped a beat as she knew she’d let him catch that thought.

  He studied her as she hastily closed her mind again.

  “How would you come to know the face of an Awyalknian peasant? None has lived to tell the tale of meeting you.”

  “I have no idea,” she scowled. “I have never been one to become acquainted with many mortals.”

  A bead of sweat rolled down her brow as she strained to keep everything from slipping out.

  “Perhaps you came across this woman during a visit to the Awyalknian Palace spy,” he said.

  “She wasn�
�t from the Palace,” Agrona frowned. And then an idea struck her. “Perhaps it was during one of the attacks on Awyalkna when I first saw the wench.” She paced away, thinking.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed you would let anyone survive any of those village invasions.” With a glance, he stopped her in her tracks and whirled her around.

  She revelled in his rough magic’s touch.

  “I remember that I may have found the kindness in my heart not to kill everyone in Bwintam.” The delight was plain in her voice, and he showed no surprise at her games. “How many survived?” he asked.

  “One,” his Witch replied slowly, a smile spreading across her lips. “A girl.”

  He dragged her forward, her shoes scraping the floor and her hair whipping back. “Why didn’t you kill her?”

  “She wanted me to,” Agrona laughed, feeling better that this girl couldn’t really be such a threat after all.

  “Your mistake has put my cause in jeopardy.” The Sorcerer’s voice was still low, but she scowled at the rebuke. “You do not want to fail Agrona.”

  The Sorcerer didn’t move and his voice never changed in tone, but the implications were clear, and for it she feared him and loved him and lusted for him with all of her being.

  “Now that I know the wench involved, I can track them more easily,” Agrona boasted confidently. “I scarred the girl with my fire brand the day that I spared her life. I can search for the echo of my power, and follow the feel of my own work. I can also give her more pain than she has ever felt in her life.” Agrona glared past the King, seeing the beautiful face of the mortal wench from the vision.

  Even if this girl wasn’t an all-powerful threat, she would be tortured for the trouble she’d caused, and then obliterated … just in case.

  The Witch moved forward to kiss the Sorcerer, but his magic pushed her away and she felt herself being buffeted and rushing back through time and space across the Other Realm to where she had left the Evexus. Not a moment had passed.

  Chapter Forty Four

  Kiana

  Screeching, cruel, laugh-like squawks shredded my mind. There was the sound of swooping wings and the click of a sharp beak snapping.

  The raven watched me being dragged down into blood and ashes before Angra Mainyu.

  But then the raven swooped in, becoming the Witch of Krall.

  What had been a glossy wing then became a bone-white hand taking hold of my shoulder. Her touch sent a jet of boiling heat into my melting, blistering flesh.

  But the smell of my skin burning and the perversive, defiling feel of some dark sickness being sent in to invade my body was hardly as painful as the tearing in my heart.

  Her eyes were alight with gleaming, greedy joy as she felt that my heart was broken, and told me that I would weep into the darkness. Alone.

  “Kiana!” a new voice seemed to call from very far away.

  My shoulder was burning. I was burning, Bwintam had burned. Everywhere ashes.

  “Kiana!” the new voice called again, and it sounded concerned. It wasn’t laughing, and it wasn’t hurtful.

  I turned toward the voice. My eyes wouldn’t open, they rolled with the dizzying agony. The memories were clinging, smothering me.

  I felt hands upon me, and because my skin felt feverish it throbbed at the touch. But these hands weren’t cruel in their grasp.

  Then my eyes dragged open finally and I jolted from sleep into reality.

  Dalin was leaning over me on one side and Noal was at my other side.

  I sat up quickly, my vision lurching with the throbbing agony of my shoulder. I felt bile burn the back of my throat, but I somehow managed to launch myself up to stagger a step away, swallowing the sickness and the embarrassment.

  I also swallowed the slashes of memory that the dream had reignited, teetering a little as I forced down the images of Bwintam, and then of Wrilapek. Churned up, mangled bodies with staring eyes and gaping mouths. The sickly smell, like off meat. The dark magic causing premature rot.

  I stopped myself from remembering the sabre, the hand on my shoulder, the raven.

  Tommy’s little blue hands, little blue lips.

  “Don’t push us away this time,” Dalin said firmly, breaking my reverie as I firmly pushed away everything else. “You were calling out in your sleep again. Something is troubling you and we want to help. We are a team now.”

  I smoothed my face and steadied myself inwardly and outwardly. “It is my own problem. It’s not of your concern,” I spoke in an almost inaudibly low voice at last.

  “I do have some business in it,” he stated, though not unkindly.

  My mask was firm as I turned away, trying not to swoon with the nausea and agony. It roiled in my stomach and bunched in my shoulder.

  “You cry out in your sleep, and though I know you don’t mean to do it, the sound could compromise our hiding,” Dalin explained in a reasoning way to my back. “If we understand, we may be able to help you. We could watch over you as well during our watch for the enemy – if we know how to calm you in your sleep.”

  I remembered remorsefully the violence I’d confronted Dalin with when he’d disturbed my delirium in the past.

  Holding my shoulder and closing my eyes tightly, I sank to the ground gingerly. “You are right,” I admitted with a sinking feeling.

  For this Quest to work, we all had to trust each other, and we had to be able to perform as a team. But keeping myself separate was an armour I had built so effectively, that I hardly knew how to remove it.

  I opened my stinging eyes and stared into the fire. The flames consumed all else from my vision, and seemed to dance and shift. “Please, come and sit with me.”

  My voice sounded hollow and my heart raced as I imagined my invisible armour breaking away to expose the withdrawn person I truly was, huddling and struggling to cover too many fracture lines and unhealed wounds.

  Dalin knelt down beside me. “You can trust us. We want to support you.”

  Noal put a hand on my shoulder and I didn’t even feel the pain. They sat on either side of me, as if providing a new kind of protection. A shelter at my sides to keep me safe as I stripped that armour away.

  The taste of sickness fouled my tongue again, but I looked only into the dancing flames. Like twisting demons.

  A faint screech came again from the distance and we shivered. The pain in my shoulder exploded into a feeling of a thousand pins being wedged into sensitive flesh. But I began to speak to them, and to explain.

  “I was not raised to be a hunter,” I began. “Though my family taught me many great skills that helped me to become as I now am.”

  I sighed deeply. Readying myself.

  “I only chose to hunt after suffering the loss of my family. Before I lost them, my life was one of great happiness and normality.”

  I sank back into my nightmare, with this time a waking heart.

  Chapter Forty Five

  Kiana

  My voice got stronger as I spoke, and I didn’t pause when Dalin and Noal gasped as they began to truly understand.

  “I’d slept the end of my birthday and Bwintam’s festival away peacefully beneath a Willow tree. But when I woke, it was in fright at the thundering sound of pounding hooves, screams, and the smell of burning.

  “The sucking wind of an inferno whipped my hair, lashed my skin and plucked at my dress. Flames lit the night as they tore through the stage, stalls and pretty cottages, when before there had only been the cheerful glow of the village torches. Worse, in the blindingly ignited streets there were the silhouettes of dark figures on horses, charging and slashing through villagers who were running in all directions.

  “I sprang from my distant resting place in terror and hooked my arms around one of the Willow’s lower boughs, swinging my legs up and pulling myself into the safety of the branches to cling to the trunk like a child.

  “Over the thundering raiders there swept a black bird, a raven, and it seemed to stir the Krall warriors into an even
greater frenzy. They swung axes and curved sabres, hacking at anyone in their path. And it was from the Willow that I saw my own father in their path, standing protectively in front of my mother and brother, Tommy. Two warriors on horses bore down with their curved, ugly blades raised.”

  I felt Dalin’s hand grip my leg in support, but I hardly registered it.

  “My father raised a hand,” I continued bleakly. “As if he thought his gesture could magically stop the attackers. Something did make the first rider topple, but the second rider continued to swoop and I saw the sabre slicing and father falling.

  “I heard Tommy’s squeals as mother cradled him. But then she was down too, and there was no one to protect him. I remember it too clearly. Tommy’s hands, smaller than my palm, were held up in terror. His tiny lips, which still gave awkward, wet kisses, were shaped in an ‘o’. His uncoordinated little legs were stepping this way and that. Then he was caught in a frenzy of stabbing.

  “All the while I clung to the Willow as night lightened into the blood red sky of morning. Everyone I knew had been turned to ash and even the raging flames in the dwellings were dying back to leave only smoking shells.

  “Meanwhile the rough voices of the warriors laughed out from the smoke as they used their butcher’s tools to cut and plunder, and I hardly thought of my own self until the black bird – the raven, circled out of the sky, down to the Willow, and let out a harsh cry.”

  Neither Dalin or Noal said a word.

  “There was no time to try to camouflage myself,” I said resignedly. “I sat frozen as the warriors found me clinging pathetically to the trunk. The whole horde massed around the Willow’s roots like a hungry pack of dogs, shouting and jostling in a sweaty crowd as one warrior pulled himself up into the tree and his grimy hand snaked up to grip my leg and tug. The warriors below bayed greedily in an excited uproar as I flailed downwards and screamed, only to be caught by snatching hands that ripped at my dress. I was tossed from one man to the next, caught and pulled and clawed at in a tug of war as I was jerked to and fro. It only ended when an order was barked and then I was pulled through the crowd and through Bwintam to be set down on my knees, my arms pulled roughly behind my back.