The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  “I didn’t dare to look at any of the nearby charred remains for fear of finding a familiar face among the piles, but fear engulfed me as instead a pair of heavy, steel covered war boots walked into my line of vision. Then my eyes rose to behold the Warlord of Krall. Angra Mainyu’s returning gaze was as bloodshot red as the burning morning sun, and every inch of me was shaking when he lifted his sabre. But I closed my eyes, and was comforted that it would all end. I could not face the idea of living with what had been done.

  “Then, almost as if in response to that very thought, I heard the swooping rustle of the raven’s wings, and I opened my eyes to find the Warlord’s blade poised inches from my chest. He and everybody else were now looking to where smoke rose, spewing from the burnt earth to swirl around the place where the black feathered raven had landed.”

  Noal stifled a moan as I swallowed and remembered the next part. Dalin just continued to hold my leg as if he could keep me grounded.

  “Uttering a single, horrible cry and spreading wide wings, the raven began to grow into a completely new shape until finally the Witch of Krall stood in the shroud of smoke. A regal black dress hugged her overly thin frame and black hair framed a beautiful, terrible face in darkness. And instantly a feeling spread from her that dispelled any final beliefs I could have that magic was only in stories.

  “She asked me my name, and her eyes and voice held a foul power that silenced the entire army. They were transformed from a shouting, jeering pack into a subdued crowd of quieted sheep shifting nervously in the background. Many warriors bowed their heads or averted their eyes, and even Angra Mainyu lowered his blade and stepped away – leaving me to be her prey.

  “I couldn’t even think of defying her power myself, and told her my name as she stepped close – sending the smoke and ashes that had been drifting about the hem of her dress into a writhing, swirling frenzy of dancing spirits.

  “Leaning in like a poised snake readying to strike, her face was almost touching mine as she whispered: ‘Do you fear me Kiana?’ so close to my ear so that my scalp prickled and my tongue moved of its own accord. Betraying me with a quavering ‘yes’.

  “Then abruptly she straightened as her hand, so wiry as to show the bones of every claw-like finger and knuckle, slapped my face. It made me gasp as her blow seemed to imprint on my stinging cheek with reverberating shockwaves of poison.

  “I remember I began to pray for Angra’s sabre to return. I would have preferred him to wet his blade with my blood than to face her and this new awful world alone.

  ‘Oh no,’ she told me. ‘You made your choice to live when you hid for your own safety and watched your family die.’ Her eyes had glittered. ‘I did notice you never lifted a finger,’ she remarked, and traced her own long painted nail in a line of fire down my cheek.

  “I prayed to any God who would listen to let me die. But her lips curled in delight, and I knew I would live.

  ‘I am kind,’ she said. ‘I will brand you so you remember the choices you made, and I will allow you to live in grief. Weeping,’ she told me, nodding with a smile. ‘And facing the coming darkness alone. It is your punishment, and your reward.’

  “Then without warning her claw-like hand gripped my shoulder, pressing what felt like the end of a flaming torch into my skin so that it seared, smoked, hissed and steamed as I convulsed until her hand withdrew and I hung limply in shock.

  ‘Under my grace, your branding will remind you of what you’ve lost and must live with. It will remind you of all you never did, and never shall do.’

  My burnt skin was left bleeding and melted, but only in one spot, where there was a scarred mark in the shape of a tear drop.”

  The boys were beginning to understand now, what the pain in my shoulder could mean. I saw their faces blanching with realisation.

  “Then her form twisted,” I said, “back into the raven. She screeched and rose into the smoke hazed air, and the army broke apart like storm clouds scattering.

  “I was dropped and my face rested in the dirt, which became mud as it mixed with my tears. And with whoops and roars the soldiers ran around and past and over me. Some of them spitting on me, or kicking and slapping at me as they passed while I yelped in a scrunched ball in the dust.

  “In moments they had swarmed back to remount, wheel about, and thunder on nightmarish steeds out of the village. Then with one last screech from the raven, the entire army disappeared as if they had never been, leaving me alone in a village of corpses.

  “It took time before I at last staggered up from the dirt, finding and clutching my Unicorn figurine, my final gift from my parents, as I dragged myself down all of the village lanes in a daze.

  I found that the lovingly tended fields were now squares of black char. My own home and Star’s stables were destroyed. And when I got too close to the burnt bodies that remained, they broke and disintegrated.

  “I picked my way through the scattered parts of people I’d always known, realising it would be impossible to ever reassemble all of the limbs for each of the dead to have an afterlife without suffering. I saw things like a baby tooth laying in the dirt. Not even as big as my smallest fingernail. It had been kicked out of a small mouth, and I thought of Tommy and of his little friend, Jin.

  “I was still retching from that alone, when I found the three forms that I’d dreaded seeing most, but that I had been searching for unconsciously.

  “My mother’s body was charred and father’s chest was open. Tommy, a fallen little soldier, could have been alive the way his face looked, except for how blue it was. A slit had been made in his tiny neck, and there were holes all over him. A baby pincushion.

  “I was shaking wildly, but I quickly leant over my parents. Glittering under ash, the jewels at their throats that they had always worn were somehow still there, and now I took the stones from their necklaces.

  “When I came to Tommy, I closed his eyes, and took his hand in mine. But his small fingers were cold and stiffening, and little patchworks of blood spattered across the chubby cushion of his palm. So, moaning, I put his hand down and felt in my darling little one’s pocket for the wooden bird I knew would be there.

  “I cradled and kissed those treasures, not looking back at the bodies, and found a patch of clear earth to bury them in.

  ‘Alriynn, ingruda una dess boundesslyn,’ I’d whispered; something I had heard my mother say over those whose healing beds she had always stayed by until the last. ‘May your spirits always run free.’

  “Then, as if I were being chased by a demon of the Other Realm, I ran. I ran and ran for what seemed like all of eternity, stumbling and falling when it became dark, and sobbing and choking when it became light again so I could claw my way numbly forward.

  “When it stormed I took shelter in caves like a scared animal burrowing down. Wet hair clung in strings across my face, and the chattering of my teeth echoed off the walls, as, racked by shivers, I stared at the grey light seeping gradually in through the mouth of my cave, spreading to almost touch where I sat, before gradually fading to night.

  “For a time I remained unmoved, and surely would have died if some strange hallucinatory voice had not started in my mind and pushed me to run on.

  “I followed the delirious compulsion witlessly, even when I sometimes had to drag myself across the grass on hands and knees. Then at last I pulled myself along on my belly, grasping my way right up a small hill, to come to a stop – blinking at the sight of lights and sounds of a village ahead.

  ‘Seek the blacksmith’ – my hallucinatory voice was urging, and I limped my way through that unknown village, hardly aware of who I was myself. Falling, rising, and swaying my way to the smithy, I knocked on the door with a dirty, tattered hand.

  “The Gods must have helped me to get to that place, because though I was a stranger, a grim companion and a wisp with no appetite, Marlin, the smithy, cared for me and even adopted me as his own daughter when I was physically well once more.

  �
�In return I hunted our food, honed my abilities to perfection and brought great prosperity to Marlin’s forge with the skills my father had given me. I made my weapons, and strengthened each day. Though I dreaded sleep each night, suffering plagues of nightmares, and could never really settle.

  “Foul rumours often disturbed me further, with tales of Darziates’ movements towards war, of more villages being sacked, and of dread creatures spilling into Awyalkna.

  Finally, while I was hunting one day I came across a creature feasting on the remains of a traveller. Some innate reaction took over. I felled the beast, and then I knew I had to do more.

  “When I left the warmth of Marlin’s home, I surrendered to a wanderer’s life. But I found incredible, driving purpose that pushed me to make new discoveries in healing, that spurred me to triumph over fiends I could hardly believe in, and that led me to track monsters amongst new cultures and nations.

  Alone, but compelled, I have kept to that purpose ever since.”

  I sighed again, swallowed thickly, but didn’t look up as I finished.

  I registered that Dalin’s hand was still on my knee, but it was some moments before at last he spoke.

  “You’re not alone anymore,” he said. “You have purpose – with us, and we’re all in this together now. The three of us.”

  I felt gratitude warm every part of me. Spreading outward from my core.

  But before I could reply, a loud, unnatural wail sounded in the distance. Then another sounded, returning the call, closer than the last.

  Noal and Dalin’s expressions became anxious as they looked to me, and I felt desperately glad to still be regarded in the same way by them.

  “Together, then,” I affirmed, and pulled myself up with resolve.

  Chapter Forty Six

  Noal

  We had been in a race of blurring days. They blended together with riding, running, hasty stops, and following Kiana into invisible hiding places each night in exhaustion. Yet tonight I laid fretfully awake, staring up at the dark, cavernous roof of the burrow-like cave we were stowed in. I swore I could hear talons scraping the dirt over our heads.

  “All will be well,” Kiana soothed me, sensing my distress even in the darkness while Dalin slept. She was on sentry duty and never seemed to tire after running circles around us all day. I had confided my own story of loss and crippling anxiety to her, and she now seemed to recognise my growing, silent panic. But in contrast, she was used to this life, and seemed as unmoved as ever at the scuffling sounds above.

  “Every night the calls sound closer,” I whispered back nervously.

  “We have tethered Ila and Amala far from here, and if our four-legged decoys are sniffed out, they will break free and flee, leading danger away,” Kiana’s quiet voice was assured. “Besides, we have not yet let our pursuers get close enough to see us during the day,” she added calmly. “And when the time comes for us to meet, we’ll face the challenge.”

  I shivered, certain that I could feel their spreading cold and dread, and certain I could hear wailing screeches all around our hiding place as they searched for us. I prayed to the Gods that they would not sniff us out or find the opening above us that looked no bigger than a rabbit hole once we’d covered the small entrance.

  “Noal,” she said softly, firmly. “When the time comes, you will have courage. For you will be protecting not just yourself, but Dalin, who you love.”

  “And you,” I sighed, feeling a little comforted.

  She slung a reassuring arm over me and began to whisper tales of other lands to help carry me to sleep. And Kiana must have taken the watch all of that night, because when we awoke she wasn’t there.

  I could see traces of early light filtering through the little gaps in the leafy branches that covered the small entrance, and we were becoming alarmed before she slid expertly through the hole at high speed.

  “Kiana!” I exclaimed, clasping my chest. “Gods!”

  “Shush,” she scolded, but she grinned quickly. I noticed that she’d remained sitting where she had landed and was clutching her shoulder.

  “Where have you been?” Dalin asked, concerned. “Is your shoulder giving you pain?”

  I covered the hole back up as she talked.

  “While you slept last night the calls of the beasts got closer. There sounded to be at least four of them, but at first light their noises grew fainter.” She winced, clasping her shoulder. “I thought I’d check out how things are with the enemy on our tail.”

  Dalin grunted. “You should have woken us.”

  But Kiana took no notice. “I scoured the lands all about here after checking that the horses were untouched, and found that there were tracks five hundred yards from here.”

  I spluttered as Dalin cursed.

  “But I was wrong in my guess of how many there were,” she added consolingly.

  “Less than four of them?” Dalin asked hopefully.

  “No. There were tracks enough for five. I was one off,” Kiana replied. “But my guess is they’ll have lost our scent until we surface and move again.” She leant over to grip my hand for a moment. “I don’t think we will be so lucky as to trick them by simply hiding for too much longer. A confrontation may be approaching, just as we predicted.”

  I nodded dumbly as she squeezed and released my fingers, but I mostly felt my shuddering pulse and fluttering courage instead.

  “I think I can lead us in ways that will confuse them for a little while longer. But once we meet we will have to defend, escape as unscathed as possible, and then evade them again. And we’ll possibly have to repeat this process for our entire Quest, unless we can somehow lose them in the Great Forest before we reach the Jenran mountains.”

  Dalin was looking grim. “What do you think the ache in your shoulder means?” he asked, and now that we had a greater understanding of what it could represent, it only filled me with further foreboding.

  She paused. “Likely it means that the Witch is close by, searching for us too.”

  “I guess we best get moving as far from here as possible then,” I said miserably. “Might as well put our scent out there.”

  I wondered if we would hide so successfully again at nightfall, or if today would be our last day.

  I also wondered if I truly would have the courage, if we did have to face our last day.

  I wondered the same thing every day for two weeks as I got fitter outwardly but more unsettled inwardly, listening each night to the bestial wails in the distance.

  “That’s amazing,” Kiana remarked one night as I sat tensely waiting for the wails to begin. She lounged on a fallen tree trunk that was creating a bridge above Dalin and I, eating an apple.

  “What is?” Dalin took her bait with curiosity.

  Kiana dropped her apple down to Dalin, who caught it automatically, and she slid off the tree trunk fluidly to land beside me. She drew her dagger.

  I didn’t have time to process her movement as she swiped her blade over my shoulder in a rush of air.

  I felt something brush off my tunic, and saw a dark, hand sized shape land on the grass a yard away. It had long, sharp legs with dagger-like tips and rows of beady little eyes.

  “A poisonous Granx,” she replied speculatively, eyeing the deadly insect as it waved at us and pattered away into the bushes.

  I choked and felt as if the skin around my skull had tightened while the skin at the back of my neck was rippling.

  Dalin’s jaw was hanging.

  “They’re very rare, and yet I’ve seen two recently,” Kiana explained, as if that was why we had been struck dumb. “Or the same one twice.” She sheathed her dagger with a business-like swish.

  Fear began to take hold of my breathing even though the danger had passed. I began to feel exactly the same kind of sick anxiety as I had when I’d been a boy and my family’s cart had been taken over by Trune raiders.

  “Noal?” Kiana asked then.

  I heard Dalin try to explain and excuse me.
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  Then Kiana’s face was thrust into my vision and apparitions of my screaming family faded. Her hands gripped the sides of my face. “Noal,” she said calmly, firmly. “Snap out of it.”

  I thought I heard Dalin plead with her to let me come out of my freeze in my own time. “He can’t help it,” Dalin was saying sadly. “He can’t help freezing up.”

  It’s true, I thought to myself. I’m afraid. I can’t help freezing up.

  “Noal,” Kiana said authoritatively. “Stop it. You can, if you decide to. Overcome the anxiety.” Her voice refused to be ignored. “You just have to force your mind back into this moment.”

  It’s too much. I thought to myself. I can’t fight it.

  “Your greatest personal battle is now,” she told me decisively. “You can fight your fears instead of succumbing. Snap yourself out of your reverie and focus on right now. Or you will have never truly escaped those raiders.”

  My eyes honed in to concentrate on her face.

  “Don’t be crippled, don’t let the raiders take your life or your mind,” Kiana was saying.

  I took a careful breath and felt myself surfacing.

  “You need to end it. End the fear, or the attack on your family and yourself has never been finished.”

  I took another sharp breath.

  I could hear each of her blunt words distinctly now, not as if I were under water.

  Then I cleared my throat. “I’m alright,” I said shakily, and I heard Dalin gasp.

  Kiana gave a curt nod of approval. “That is the greatest battle you’ll ever face. You have shown your courage, and will not freeze when the time comes.” She went to reclaim her apple from Dalin.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Dalin

  “Next week it’s my birthday, and exactly two years since the loss of Bwintam,” Kiana remarked as she looked into the fire, which was the most comforting aspect of our whole campsite, and had drawn all of us close.