The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  My mind then shied away from thinking of the death and horror that had marred this once peaceful place, as a huge gust of wind threw Kiana into my side and Noal and I helped her to get her usually unerring balance back, dragging ourselves onward against the onslaught and through the ensnaring prickles of the wild fields.

  Our progress was laboured and slow, but when we began to pass through the remains of Nature engulfed homes, there was no comfort.

  Signs of the fire that had destroyed this place still scarred the twisted tree trunks, but otherwise the area was covered in tall weeds, creeping vines, gigantic barbs and contorted, bare bushes that clawed upward with deformed branches.

  I could see the Great Forest lurking as a show of vitality and life far away in the distance, and on the border of these village remnants I was sure I could see Kiana’s Willow, where she had taken shelter from the Krall attack. But the savage torrents of wind had stripped the nearest trees, and their leaves tore around us in a cruel whirlwind like coloured daggers.

  Kiana turned toward the vague forms of dwelling ruins that rose above the weeds, so we staggered toward the empty structures, ploughing our way to one cottage that had an intact roof and that looked stable enough to house the horses and ourselves for the night.

  I caught the door, which was hanging off its hinges awkwardly, hammering against the wall with loud crashes in the gales of wind. The shutters had fallen away from the windows, blasted inward, into the cottage.

  I pushed Kiana in ahead of us and Noal steadied the mares enough to help them squeeze one by one through the door, before I backed my own way in after them.

  I dragged the door closed, trying to wedge it shut so that it couldn’t beat on its shattered hinges anymore while Kiana forcefully tied the rattling shutters down over the two gaping windows. At once the storm was shut out and we were left shivering and creating puddles in the dark.

  “Look for firewood,” Kiana chattered, and we fumbled our way out of the main space and found that there were only two other rooms in the darkness.

  The room we first entered had a bed in it, and Noal broke up the frame so that before long we had a weak fire burning in the stone hearth at the centre of the main room. It cast a wavering light on damp, sullied walls, which looked to have once been white washed.

  “I’ve never been so cold in my life,” Noal croaked through blue lips. “Or wet.” He sank down onto the dirt floor.

  “Take off your wet layers and try to dry them by the fire,” Kiana instructed quietly, and she laid her own outer layers of clothing on the dirt before taking wet saddles and packs off Ila and Amala.

  We spread out our cloaks and laid in frozen heaps near the fire while Kiana rifled through our weatherproofed bags and found all of our belongings were just as saturated as ourselves.

  I shut my eyes as Kiana wrung out her cloak and upturned the bags to pour pools of water out of them, but when I woke, she was no longer in the room.

  I groggily pushed myself up and looked about, wincing at the pain from the welts across my back as I dressed once more in damp clothes.

  There were rotted tapestries and half broken household items like plates and cups visible in the dirt. The grime caked walls were now decorated with clinging plants that had climbed upward with leafy hands, and the windows were choked with green plant tendrils that were wedged under the shutters Kiana had forced back into place.

  I moved quietly past Noal’s sleeping form and past where Ila and Amala were clustered together, following a hallway lined with steadily climbing ivy. I glanced around the leaf covered door of the first room, but Kiana wasn’t in there so I turned to the next door, which was slightly ajar at the end of the hallway.

  This door was almost completely covered by ivy that leaked down from the top of it, and swept all the way to the floor. Through the tendrils, the faint, wavering light of a candle cast a small glow out into the corridor, and I parted the leafy curtain with a swish to step through the opening.

  Kiana was sitting on a bed in the middle of what had become an ivy palace. A window and the walls were so overgrown it was as if a giant green net had been cast over them and water drops twinkled and drizzled down from a hole in the roof.

  On the dirt floor a grimy lantern with cracked glass created a glow that hardly reached beyond the bed, and the mildewy bed itself was a mound of roots and ivy, as tendrils of creeping leaves entwined around the bed legs, tiptoed up the frame and poured down the wooden head. Little white flowers had budded and opened upon the vines like tiny stars knitted into a green sky. Underneath this green blanket were traces of what had been a white, lacy quilt, which was now so mouldy and damaged that the ivy was growing through it, weaving itself into the material and becoming a part of it.

  Kiana was cross-legged and her head was bowed while one of her hands rested on the damaged white cover and the other cradled her shoulder. There was an odd hush in the room, though the storm raged outside, and I wordlessly crossed to sit on the end of the damp bed of lace and ivy with her.

  This felt like such a sorrowful place, and I shivered as the water splashed from the hole in the roof and the candle light flickered weakly around the garden bedroom. And when she finally lifted her chin so that her hair fell away from her face, I saw that her pale cheeks were wet with tears. She seemed unwell, and looked right through me.

  “Are you ill, Kiana?” I whispered, glancing at her shoulder. Another shiver ran down my spine at the same moment that a chilled breath of air rustled along the green leafy fingers covering the walls.

  Her voice was dull when she responded. “I hurt everywhere all at once. I hurt all over. I hurt on the inside. Being here is just one part of it, but really there’s no rest from the hurt.”

  Kiana blinked drowsily, half in a dream state.

  She held her shoulder as if somebody had broken it, and I saw cuts and welts along her arms, as well as old scars and bruises. But I knew she wasn’t talking about any of those pains.

  “Try to find rest now,” I told her gently. “You won’t be alone, I’ll keep watch.”

  She leaned further back into the bed of leaves, silently surveying the green curtains of ivy, and the glistening drops of water pattering down from the roof.

  When the candle had burned lower, I heard the faint swish of Noal coming through the ivy at the door. He, too, took in the eerie room and our silence, and crossed to sit beside me quietly.

  The candle light was fading quickly in the stillness when Kiana spoke softly once more, her eyes not leaving the droplets of water as they twinkled their way into the dirt.

  “What is your age?” she asked.

  Her lips were purple.

  “We have both reached our eighteenth year,” Noal answered carefully for both of us. I saw a brief flash of colour with the memory of the party Noal and I had shared for our coming of age back in the Palace, surrounded by smiling faces.

  “I reach my eighteenth year at midnight tonight.” She ran her fingers over a small patch of clear, lacy bed covering. “And Joelle would have reached her seventeenth year within a month.”

  Kiana paused, gazing at the tendrils of ivy that were swallowing the rest of the bed covering.

  “This was her cottage. This was her bedroom. And this was her bed.” She dragged herself backward, wincing, and leant into the stream of ivy behind her, looking like a Queen leaning upon a throne of green. “We used to pretend this was her wedding gown.” Kiana drowsily stroked the lace cover with her fingertips again, closing her eyes and shivering.

  After a while she became still and her breathing became even with sleep as she rested upon the pillow of leaves.

  The ivy in the room rustled as another icy breath of air issued through the hole in the roof. It stirred the leaves on the bed, along the walls and at the door, making each green finger wave and whisper.

  The light of the candle died as if a ghost had stirred in the room, and Kiana looked faintly blue now. The ivy she laid upon twisted a green crown of leaves t
hrough her midnight hair and over her arms and legs, as if it was trying to take hold of her just as it was creeping over the whole cottage to make it disappear.

  I shuddered suddenly and pushed myself off the bed. I quickly stooped over Kiana, swept my arms under her legs and around her shoulders and lifted her. She didn’t stir but felt chilled to the touch.

  “I don’t like this room,” Noal shivered in agreement and quickly pulled the creeping ivy that was veiling the door aside for me to pass through. Once I was through with Kiana he came out behind and shut the leafy door on the cold, still room forcefully. The ivy’s fingers were jammed in it tightly, and he hurried to follow me out of the hallway.

  Chapter Fifty Six

  Noal

  We remained helpless and in need of shelter as the storm continued to rage, and there had so far been no signs of our enemies. So we wrapped Kiana up beside the fire and left her in peace. She did not stir in her slumber for the rest of our first night in Bwintam and the following day.

  I was sharpening my sword and Dalin was brushing down Amala when we finally heard a sigh from Kiana.

  “Good morning,” she greeted us lethargically.

  “Good afternoon,” Dalin corrected and answered her at the same time.

  She frowned.

  “We decided not to wake you and enter the wrath of the storm again,” he explained calmly.

  She sat herself up, still wrapped in our cloaks. “I’ve held us back,” she said blankly.

  “No,” I smiled at her. “It’s still too wet for me out there.”

  “And the horses were too fragile to be back on the trail just yet,” Dalin added, flopping a cajoling arm over Amala’s shoulders. Amala flicked an ear with disinterest.

  “You’re going to blame the horses?” Kiana asked.

  “Entirely.” Dalin asserted. “They’re slowing the team.”

  Amala peered back over her shoulder at him and he smiled winsomely at her. She snorted in his face and went back to chewing at the bent grass that was jammed in one of the windows.

  “They’re very touchy about it,” Dalin explained laconically, wiping his wet face and smoothing his hair.

  Kiana moved to sit in the warmth created by Ila as the bay laid stretched out in a corner. Amala at once left Dalin’s brushing so that in the end, Kiana nestled between the two mares and they nickered comfortingly at her.

  Kiana seemed soothed, and it was a while before Dalin glanced back across to her. She was still tucked amongst the horses, but she was staring intensely at something held in her hands. She looked shaken.

  “What is it?” Dalin asked, his previously light voice suddenly concerned.

  She didn’t break her gaze from whatever she was holding.

  “Kiana?” I asked.

  “It’s alright,” she finally lifted her eyes away from what was in her hand. “Perhaps I’m not adjusted to inaction. I’m imagining things and getting as eccentric as Gangroah’s old Gloria,” she held up her hand to show us her Unicorn figurine. “As I held this, I thought I felt a spark of heat emit from it,” she explained.

  I remembered she had been given that figurine as a gift for her birthday, and that it was her birthday now once again.

  Dalin rose and crossed to her. “Come, sit by the fire,” he encouraged, and held out his hand to pull her up from the protective circle of the sleeping mares. But when she held out her hand to him, he looked at it closely with surprise. “There is a red mark on your palm!” he exclaimed.

  “I probably held the figurine too tightly,” Kiana answered, her voice uncertain.

  Dalin drew her to the fire, but instead of sitting, she tucked the Unicorn back into one of her dried packs, and lifted one of her daggers from where it had been set aside.

  Kiana traced the flat edge of the blade. “I’m restless. Perhaps I could go out to scout the area, or to find us some fresh meat.”

  “We have biscuits and dried food in our packs,” Dalin told her, not sitting down either.

  “It can no longer be classified as dried after the downpour we went through,” she raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t worry,” I implored. “I ate some before and I’m fine.”

  Kiana smiled her half smile, but looked towards her cloak. “Even if I don’t find us game, it would be good to see if the storm has abated enough, or if trouble is about. I don’t like waiting to be sprung upon.”

  “Kiana, it’s not wise to leave our shelter now,” Dalin reasoned with her earnestly. “We know the storm is still dangerous, and we would have no advantage stumbling through it blindly. You would also fare no better if you did find the Witch, or went through the ruins to see things that you don’t really want to see. Try to think only of what is best for the survival of our Quest.”

  Kiana’s shoulders slumped slightly. “You’re right,” she agreed finally. “We’re helpless and at the mercy of the storm and what the beasts desire.”

  “What do you usually do when you have too much energy?” I asked to change the topic. “Apart from going for a hunt and killing something nasty,” I added hastily.

  Kiana frowned – but allowed herself to be diverted, and balanced the hilt of her dagger on a fingertip before bouncing it up and catching it in the air. “I train.”

  Kiana proved herself to be a patient teacher as we both eagerly took part in distracting her. She demonstrated and guided us through drills that seemed to match an expert dancer’s moves, albeit a dancer who was also skilled in wielding deadly weaponry. Her movements were captivating and fluid, and Dalin and I became genuinely absorbed in trying to mirror her talent.

  The repetitive drills all noble boys completed each morning back at the Palace could hardly be called elegant. But then, we’d never had to train alone, and this independent weaponry dance incorporated fighting stances, as well as being focused on careful movement and exertion.

  A mist of sweat covered my brow and I had forgotten the horrible wailing of the storm as she guided me to lean at an angle that made my core burn as I held the weight of my sword.

  “You must begin slowly to wake your muscles and teach them to be controlled in their pace and movement. It takes discipline to keep the movement steady despite the weight of your weapons,” Kiana explained as she tilted Dalin’s shoulders for him. “You must continue breathing evenly and soundlessly to practice stealth.”

  She moved now to extend my arm unbearably slowly so that I understood the challenge, and I saw Dalin shaking with the effort to maintain balance and the slowed pace as he completed the movement at the angle she’d set for him.

  “Your speed only increases as your heart beat does. It becomes your personal rhythm,” she advised.

  “My heart is already rebelling,” I puffed.

  “Control your breathing, or you’ll give yourself away to your invisible enemy,” she told me with her half smile, and I tried to stop inhaling gulps of air so noisily.

  “Your breathing must always be regular. And when you do quicken your speed, you must continue to be infinitely precise in each movement and in fluidity, while maintaining silence.”

  Dalin’s expression was intense as he grimaced and raised his sword. The sword tip was shaking more than he liked.

  But when Kiana stood on the other side of the fire, the flames looking as though they danced about her legs, and started the weaponry dance properly for herself, we both stopped to watch; entranced.

  I saw her breaths, and her careful rhythm as she followed the steady, musical drumming that guided her in her chest. And the precision of each movement was so clear as to be almost audible.

  It seemed suddenly that I had never seen such a beautiful and accurate demonstration of the distinctive and powerful movements that I’d previously only considered to be mindless drills.

  Like ripples across a lake, Kiana swept the shining sword directly, slowly away from herself while she drew her dagger upward to point to the roof. Her arms were straight and unwavering. But before fully locking into that positi
on they were already sweeping out in front of her body, the blades glinting in the firelight.

  When she gradually built into a flurry of action, I became breathless myself, as lost in the noiseless fight as she was and Dalin was. I could almost picture the invisible enemy she fought, defensively blocking and attacking in a blur of action until her dance was ended with a ferocious lunge – leaving us gaping and with our own weapons now trailing in the dirt as we stared.

  “You were both doing quite well, until you stopped,” Kiana broke our reverie, and straightened from her stance to stow her weapons away once more. “And it feels much more beneficial to end in a more empowered position when you do decide to finish.”

  We both immediately shook ourselves and puffed up our chests with vigour as we sheathed our own blades.

  “One day I would like to learn to do that properly,” Dalin told her enthusiastically as we returned to being seated at the hearth.

  “We’ll try to find time to work on it,” Kiana granted, massaging her shoulder and looking more awake than ever.

  “Ready to go to sleep now?” I asked hopefully, flopping down on my cloak. “We’ll have a nice big day of fleeing the enemy tomorrow.”

  She grimaced.

  Dalin leaned across to where Kiana was still rubbing her shoulder. “Let me try,” he said, and she didn’t give him her usual wary glare.

  He pushed her hair away from her shoulder and started to gently massage the muscles there. At once her frown of discomfort cleared with relief. “Harder,” she murmured, closing her eyes.

  “You know, Noal,” Dalin said as he kneaded her shoulders. “I’m starting to think that it’s not actually you who smells like a rosebud in this team.”

  “Well it sure in the Gods’ names was never going to be you,” I huffed.

  “But how can Kiana smell like flowers all the time?” he asked, ignoring me.

  “Perhaps she eats them,” I supplied, rolling onto my stomach lazily.

  Kiana didn’t reply, but seemed much more at ease as she relaxed with the massage, so I no longer felt concerned at her restlessness.