The Last Larnaeradee

by Shelley Cass

  “No. You’re going to bring my prisoners out for bait,” a low growl cut across the voices of our guards. We’d come to know that as the General’s voice.

  Then the flap to the tent door burst open with the two stormy looking guards hurrying to push us out into the daylight. We were quickly surrounded by jeering soldiers as we were led out, many bleeding from torn faces and shredded hands.

  The General yelled his threat out through the Forest, promising that he would end our lives, and my guard’s blade pressed into my throat, snicking my skin as I swallowed. I could feel his hot breath on my neck and his armour was hard against my back.

  But I didn’t truly expect that Kiana would take this threat seriously.

  I was as surprised as everyone else to see her lone figure standing calmly from a hiding spot near the top of the cliff, with arms outstretched in surrender as the camp beheld her in shock.

  “A girl?” the General hissed incredulously. “Where are the rest of them?” he demanded of us while we waited for Kiana to be led down.

  “There aren’t any others,” Noal strained to answer truthfully against the knife blade.

  “They will be found,” the General guaranteed while the crowd of sneering soldiers parted for Kiana’s arrival.

  “It’s a bad day for you, sweetheart,” grinned one soldier. He had a few bleeding holes in his face, and chunks of what looked like rock embedded into his cheeks and forehead.

  “Get too close to the fire?” she asked him, and the grin dropped from his face as the mass surged angrily forward like a swarm of bees.

  Then I saw the General clench his massive fist tightly, bringing it up to smash it with a staggering blow into Kiana’s cheek. Her head was thrown to the side, but she straightened steadily after a moment.

  I looked on in horror, Noal and I frozen in our captor’s hands.

  “Didn’t even feel my eye pop,” she scolded.

  There was swift silence from the crowd encircling us, and a sudden gleam of true interest in the eyes of the General.

  “I’ll do better next time,” he promised her darkly. Then he eyed her captors. “I’ll have this one,” he told them, and shockingly, he lifted a finger to trace her unflinching face. His finger pressed against the bruise already swelling on her cheek and then moved down to cup her chin and lift it.

  My heart was beating unbearably fast.

  “We’ll see if I can’t get her to explain all of this.”

  A hollow feeling created a cavity in my stomach and I started to strain against the guard holding me.

  “Don’t touch her!” I growled, managing to struggle free of the guard’s grasp for a moment before another stepped forward to add his grip. “Leave her alone!” I twisted and turned so desperately that another man came out of the crowd and threw a bunched fist into my stomach so that my legs folded. But I fought to get back up.

  And then Kiana spoke.

  “Dalin, stop.”

  Her voice was very close, and I looked up in shock to find she had managed to come to me.

  There were grunts of surprise as others noticed one of her guards was keeled over, clutching his throat, while another was wheeling around with his hands over his eyes. Nobody had seen how that had happened.

  She allowed two new soldiers to rush forward and seize her arms while I became immediately still; trying to fathom what was really going on, the same as everyone else.

  I gaped at her hopelessly, breathing heavily, but I did as she said, no longer struggling.

  The General smirked and they began to turn her away from me, to lead her to his tent.

  “Kiana?” I called after her desperately.

  But as I stared with horrified distress after her, I saw her head turn, and she looked back to me, over her shoulder.

  Then, in a split second, she had winked one brilliant, blue eye and turned away.

  Chapter Seventy Three

  Noal

  Her screams had stopped. So had the crashing sounds that had come from the General’s tent.

  Dalin slumped dejectedly beside Agrudek, having given up reassuring us, and himself, that Kiana had given him a sign not to worry. Instead all we heard now were the filthy speculations of our guards describing what the General must be doing to her.

  “Frarshk, I don’t think it was information that he wanted! No what he wanted –”

  I’d blocked out the rest, feeling sick, and trying not to remember my mother and sister on the day that they had been made to scream as Kiana had.

  When the tent flap was finally pushed aside Dalin and I sat up quickly, filled with dread.

  Two soldiers dragged Kiana limply between them by her arms, and the tips of her boots scraped along the ground. Her head hung, and her hair was a curtain hiding her face. When they laid Kiana on her back her face was still away from us and she stayed motionless as a pair of shackles were closed around her wrists and linked by a length of chain to the ring in the dirt connecting all of ours.

  As soon as the two soldiers were gone, Dalin was sliding his way across to Kiana, lifting her to rest against himself as best he could with restrained wrists.

  “Kiana?” he whispered, moving the hair from her face to reveal a mass of blood that had spread down from a slice across her hairline. It had bled so much that hardly any clean skin remained on her face. Blood had leaked down her nose, her eyelids, her cheeks, her neck and had stained her shirt.

  The crooked set of her nose suggested that it was broken.

  Dalin’s eyes were wide. “Can you speak Kiana?” he asked softly.

  We were so unprepared for her frighteningly lifeless form to spring to action then, that Agrudek gasped audibly when Kiana quickly jerked her head up and gestured for us all to be quiet.

  It was only at that moment that we noticed the voices of our guards outside of the tent had stopped.

  Kiana jabbed at Dalin pointedly, and made exaggerated motions for him to keep talking. Dalin caught on. “She isn’t responding,” he delivered the line a little more loudly this time, watching her for approval. “He really hurt her.”

  Kiana gave a satisfied nod when we heard the curse filled conversations begin outside again.

  “Frarshk, must’ve beat her good ...”

  Kiana propped herself up in Dalin’s lap when she was certain our guards were focused on themselves once more.

  “I was worried sick about you two!” she whispered, her white smile standing out against the crimson blood soaking her skin.

  “What?!” Dalin hissed. “You …?”

  “Shush,” she told him more sombrely, using Dalin’s shoulder to pull herself up properly. “I didn’t let him do too much. I was in control.”

  With a sickening crunch, Kiana’s shackled hands squelched her nose back into line with another spurt of coagulated blood.

  “What in the Other Realm is going on?” I asked weakly, while Agrudek simply gaped.

  Kiana looked miserable for a moment. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to help you,” she said. “And I’m sorry if I gave you a scare,” she squeezed Dalin’s hand and tapped my boot encouragingly with hers. “But it was the only way I could think of getting myself in.”

  We were silent, staring at her, dumbfounded.

  “I had to try something didn’t I?” she implored. Then she reached to inspect the back of Dalin’s head before he could register her movement. “You had a good thumping here,” she mused. “Did either of you have any bleeding from the ears or nose? Have you been dizzy?” she questioned me, releasing Dalin’s head as I motioned that we had not.

  She slid over to Agrudek next, and he gulped up at her almost demonic, bloodily red face.

  “And what’s your name, friend?” she asked kindly.

  He swallowed nervously. “Agrudek.”

  “What part of Krall is your accent from?” she asked easily, briskly checking him over.

  “From … in the main City … near the castle.” He seemed surprised, but didn’t resist or cower as sh
e reached for his injured arm.

  “That must’ve been a nice house, in those parts,” she said conversationally.

  “Yes … before they … yes.”

  “Last time I went to Krall I passed through the east side sectors. It would’ve been nice if the rainy season hadn’t made the roads and houses so muddy.”

  “You … you have been to Krall?” Agrudek stammered incredulously. I often forgot myself how well travelled she was beyond the lands I knew.

  “Several times,” she told him, tutting as she felt his ribs. “I know you must ache all over, but we shall try to help you,” she said then. “When we get free.”

  He gazed after her wonderingly as she slid back across to where Dalin and I waited.

  “When we get free?” Dalin repeated as she sat comfortably beside him, dabbing at the cut across her own forehead with her shirt sleeve.

  “I have chosen to be confident that we can escape with our lives for this Quest,” she affirmed, stretching her legs out luxuriously.

  “How did you do it? How did you create the explosions inside the camp?” I asked curiously.

  “I did at first lack friends to help me,” she admitted. “But the incredible Forest provided me with some new friends who were able to breach the perimeter.”

  “Friends?” I asked. “What friends?”

  She shrugged. “You’ll understand when you see them, just keep in mind the strange ways of the Forest. It mustn’t just effect the creatures of Darziates.”

  “But what went wrong? Why did you have to surrender?” Dalin asked, confused. “Didn’t the explosions work well enough to kill at least some soldiers?”

  “No, no, no,” she shook her head. “So far everything’s been going just as I’d hoped. I had to put up enough of a fight for them to want to bring me in. And for the General himself to bring me in further.”

  I let out a huge breath. “Well knocking out a troop of their men and blasting the place was a good start,” I congratulated her.

  She crossed her legs and leaned cosily against Dalin’s shoulder, somehow getting comfortable on the ground while being held by chafing chains.

  “I needed the General to force me to surrender for questioning, as the alternatives were that they would either kill me or at least put me under heavy guard. Instead they saw me as desperate and weak, giving in.”

  “Simple,” I puffed.

  “So,” Dalin started uneasily. “What happened when you were with the General?”

  Kiana crinkled her face in distaste. “I’ve seen his kind before. All he wants is someone small, powerless, and also defiant, who he can have fun breaking. But I broke early,” she said smugly. “After throwing me around, threatening me and trying to learn of who must have aided my efforts, he was disappointed and disgusted enough by my clearly broken spirit to send me away with little harm done.”

  “Little harm done?” Dalin scowled.

  “Oh, I did the surface cut to myself to make things authentic,” she reassured him. “Our weapons were all laid out on a table at one end of his tent. I just had to roll around a lot, subtly block any dangerous blows he delivered, and angle myself around the space until he found himself throwing me into the table.” She became sly as she described his abuse. “I was theatrical in my screams as I landed on my stomach, facing away from him and taking the opportunity to hide this under my shirt.”

  Kiana fleetingly lifted her shirt to reveal her own safely sheathed dagger pushed, into her pants so that only the hilt showed.

  “A quick nick at my hairline that would bleed like crazy was all I needed as an excuse to faint. That took all the fun out of it for the General, and when I simply refused to be roused he lost interest. He sat on the cot, pulling something out from his cases …”

  She paused for effect.

  “What was he doing?” Dalin asked obediently.

  “From where I was lying, I could see that he was looking into a globe of some sort.” She gave us a meaningful look then. “And he was talking to it.”

  “Talking to a ball?” I asked, my face scrunching in disbelief.

  “Yes,” she nodded, her eyebrows raised. “Please remember that his master is a Sorcerer. And please believe that I saw the ball glowing and heard it start talking back.”

  Dalin released an astonished breath as I sat back in bewilderment.

  Agrudek was leaning upright and listening with interest. “Describe … the ball.”

  Kiana regarded him for a moment, just as intrigued by his curiosity. “It was fist sized and red. A deep, rich red. So dark that at first the ball looked black, but then as the General spoke it glowed and became a brilliant blood colour that filled his cupped hands with crimson light. And it wasn’t a smooth or perfectly rounded ball, more like a large stone.”

  “What did the … General say to the ball … and what did it say back?” Agrudek asked.

  She paused, thinking. “First, the General uttered a strange word. It sounded like ‘engrark’. And the light started, before a terrible voice replied – from the ball.” Kiana shivered unconsciously. “The General confirmed our capture, and resistance. And the voice ordered that all three of us, and you Agrudek, had to be taken to Krall immediately.”

  “The Sorcerer wants the three of you …” Agrudek sank back, shell-shocked as he sagged against the wall of the tent.

  “It definitely seems so,” Kiana grimaced. “But the General hid the ball in a case beside his bed and ordered me to be removed. So now I am with you again at last,” she eyed us seriously. “And we do not wish to be taken to pay our respects to Darziates in Krall, so we must begin to plot our way free.”

  I felt a grain of hope as resolve crossed Kiana’s face and she pulled her dagger out before expertly picking open the locked shackles at her wrists. She had leapt across the tent to grab her medicine bag and had returned to her shackles in moments before rifling through her bag. “First I’ll show you how to make some real explosives and some real diversions. There’ll be no need to hold back on the way out.”

  Agrudek watched her, dumbfounded as she set to work, pulling ingredients out of her pack. “Those are some of the most … reactive plants in the land!” he exclaimed. “Half of them don’t even grow in Krall or Awyalkna! The other half … I didn’t realise truly existed!”

  “Collecting them was tricky. But they’ll serve us well now,” Kiana agreed.

  “What a … wonder,” he breathed, mystified.

  Dalin and I nodded mutely in agreement.

  Chapter Seventy Four

  Dalin

  Kiana had found Agrudek to be no mere admirer as she hastily prepared what she called ‘real’ explosives with ingredients from her healer bag. She realised that he was learned in such things himself, and questioned him on his past.

  “I was a scientist – an inventor – in one of the poorer City sectors when my two beautiful daughters were born,” he explained timidly when she quizzed him. “I was unusually good at making gadgets ... and putting things together to make them work in different ways. I could do things that other people found impossible. And it drew the notice of … the King.”

  “You would have had no choice but to serve the Sorcerer,” Kiana surmised as she worked.

  Agrudek nodded sadly. “He … was beyond anything I’d ever imagined. The power that I felt, he was much more than just a man … I could hardly stand in the same room as him.” Agrudek’s eyes lowered. “I’ve never been so afraid of anybody. His own guards and servants trembled when he looked at them, or – or flinched when he moved. I was aware of his every breath! I could barely concentrate over the feeling of dread … but he gave me proper facilities, a good house for my family, and he set me to work.” Agrudek still didn’t look up, but he shuddered. “It wasn’t long before the King demanded I make him things for the war. And when they failed … he took my family, and my hand, before I was thrown out. I wandered for so long as a beggar until I was lost in the Forest and found by these soldiers, who do not know
what should be done with me.” The little man sagged sadly then.

  “I hope to offer you your freedom,” Kiana told him grimly. “I hope, for you, the worst has passed.”

  He smiled faintly in gratitude. “I don’t deserve as much. I would do anything to get my family back. And … the things I made –”

  The tent door was suddenly thrust open and a huge Krall soldier burst inside, holding a bowl with what looked like lumps of bread and scraps of meat in it, which he dropped at my feet.

  My eyes darted to Kiana but her dagger was nowhere in sight, and somehow the ingredients she’d just been mixing in a bowl were now hidden with a cloak.

  Still, the massive man let out an outraged bark and thundered across to Kiana, grabbing a fistful of her hair before he threw her into the dirt.

  “What the Frarshk do you think you’re doing with that pack?” he bellowed.

  Kiana’s bag was incredibly suspicious looking, and with the flap untied I could see the cloths, jars, bottles and assorted herbs packed neatly away in there. The soldier raised his hand to strike her.

  Noal gripped my arm to try to restrain me before I even moved to her defence, but we all watched, stricken, as Kiana wailed and threw herself at the soldier’s ankles.

  “Please!” she cried and sobbed, grasping at his legs. “Please don’t!” she wrapped her arms around his left leg and he stood, at his bulky height, frowning down at her in disgust. “Please! I want to go home! Please!” she wept all over his feet, grovelling and writhing pitifully while he stood, at a loss.

  He tried to shake her off, but she clung more tightly and howled louder still, seeming every bit a helpless wraith, until he flung her away from himself in aversion.

  He shook his head contemptuously and threw the medicine bag to the other side of the tent while Kiana hiccupped and gurgled in a convincing heap on the dirt. He glared under thick eyebrows and stomped back out of the tent to reprimand the two guards outside for having clearly left the packs within reach.