Harbinger

by Nicole Conway

  “He can’t even walk down a sidewalk in his current state,” Haldor mumbled under his breath. “Not without people scattering in terror.”

  I wanted to give him a good kick as well. He was too far out of reach of my leg, though. And … well, he was right. Even if by some miracle we won this war, retook Barrowton, and could rebuild it—Phillip might not be up to the task of taking his place as duke again. Not that I wouldn’t encourage him to try.

  As ridiculous as he’d been with me, Phillip had always done his part to be a good leader. He’d carried the torch of my father’s mission to peacefully unify humans and elves proudly. People liked him. The Barrowton citizens had trusted him. I wondered if that would really change just because he looked different. It didn’t seem fair. What had happened wasn’t his fault.

  “At any rate, that’s not why I asked you here tonight.” The baroness waved her hand, dismissing the subject as she took up her fork. “There is much unrest amongst my people here about what will happen if the Tibrans attempt to take this city as well. We are not prepared to wage a war. Cernheist has never seen battle before and our location doesn’t generally attract outside parties. The only soldiers here are the ones who came as refugees from Barrowton, Westwatch, and Austlen, and many of them are too wounded to fight.”

  Jaevid took up his goblet of wine with a nod. “Don’t worry about that. I will do what I can to help them. It would help if we could send out a decree for any wounded infantrymen or dragonriders to be brought to the city squares. It’ll be faster than if I go door-to-door.”

  “You can heal so many?” Baroness Adeline blinked at him in surprise. “Does it not tire you?”

  He shrugged. “It does. But being a little tired is a price I’m willing to pay if it puts more blades between the Tibrans and this city.”

  Her eyes narrowed with a small, approving smile. “Then consider it done. You can start in the morning. Hopefully, the weather will not make things more difficult for you.”

  “We’ll do the same with the other wounded—the city folk and villagers—but only after I’ve seen to the soldiers,” he added. “We don’t know how much time we’ll have.”

  “Speaking of time,” Haldor said, interrupting. He was the only one who hadn’t started eating yet. “How long are we going to wait before we count Reigh among the lost? It’s been nearly two days.”

  “It is a long journey on foot to come here from Northwatch,” the baroness said. “The mountain passes alone are quite treacherous for the inexperienced. That’s why the merchants drive me mad with their endless hazard pay negotiations.”

  Jaevid shook his head. “They wouldn’t be coming on foot. Reigh’s dragon stayed behind. I’ve tried seeking out her thoughts, but either she’s intentionally blocking me or … something else has gone wrong.”

  I swallowed against a cold, hard knot of uncertainty in my throat. “Can you tell if they’re alive? Reigh and my brother?”

  “Yes. It’s faint, but not beyond my sight,” he said. “Both your brothers are alive.”

  I dropped my fork. “Both?”

  Closing his eyes, Jaevid took in a deep breath. “I doubt Reigh would want me to tell all of you this. But considering what we could be facing, it’s only fair that everyone is aware of what we might be up against.”

  “I-I don’t understand.” My brain frazzled at the idea. Aubren had mentioned something in passing about that boy possibly being our brother. At the time, I hadn’t been able to process that new information. There were other, more important things to focus on—like surviving. But I never could have dreamed that he might have actually been right. How? Why had our father never told us about this?

  Jaevid gestured to Aedan. “Thanks to some valuable insight into how the Tibran Empire operates, I can guess what might happen if Argonox were to take control of a powerful being like myself or Reigh. The experimentation he did on Phillip using the switchbeast venom is just a taste of what goes on within their ranks.”

  Heavy silence settled over the table. No one was eating now. Every eye fixed upon Aedan, who sat rigidly in his chair with his face scrunched in anguish. His brow creased, eyes shut tight as he started to speak. “Argonox is a monster in more ways than you know. He has an appetite for power beyond just what he can win with numbers and brute force. Some of the other slave soldiers came from places thousands of miles away. They say he’s searched every kingdom he’s conquered, stealing all the divine relics and magical devices he can find. He warps their purposes, uses them to test on different subjects. He wants to find a way to weaponize these divine powers. He wants to make himself a god!”

  “Wait a second.” Eirik raised his hand with a frown. “Why does that sound so familiar?”

  “Because it happened once before,” Calem growled. His gray-blue eyes narrowed as he stared Jaevid down. “We fought an enemy who called himself God Bane with that same agenda. He tried to take Maldobar and it was the dragonriders who put a stop to it. We all hear this story during our training at Blybrig Academy.”

  “But that was over three hundred years ago,” Eirik protested. “No way God Bane and Argonox could be the same person. No one lives that long. Besides, the god stone was in Luntharda at that point, right? If he was looking for divine relics, he was attacking the wrong kingdom.”

  Memories swelled in my brain like a roaring ocean wave, sweeping me back to Northwatch tower. I’d stood face-to-face with our enemy. Argonox had said many things, and men like that always liked to talk themselves up. To gloat in front of the poor helpless woman. But … something he had said pierced my mind like a wasp’s sting.

  “Become my queen. Stand at my side and Maldobar will know prosperity forever, guarded by the power of my empire. You would become legendary. A queen for the ages. A goddess.”

  I ground my jaw against the urge to gag.

  “There’s another possibility.” Jaevid’s voice was soft, but it carried a finality that chilled me to the marrow. “He came to Maldobar in search of a different relic—the same one that Reigh needs in order to complete his ritual and be able to fully channel and control his power.”

  No one at the table said a word.

  “Just as the god stone once held the essence of Paligno, the essence of Clysiros is contained within a crystal. To the untrained eye, it might look like onyx or volcanic glass.”

  My lungs constricted. I couldn’t breathe. My pulse roared. I knew exactly which crystal he was talking about. I had seen it almost every day of my life.

  Jaevid stared back at me from across the table again, as though he could read the blurred, panicked thoughts racing through my brain. “It sits in Halfax, placed in the royal throne.”

  Once again, no one spoke.

  After a few uncomfortable minutes, Jaevid turned his gaze back to the baroness. “Knowing that, and seeing what Argonox has accomplished so far, you can imagine what he might do with someone like Reigh—especially if he were to take control of the crystal as well.”

  “What can we do?” My voice would hardly come out as more than a shaking whisper. “Can we destroy the crystal? Remove it from play?”

  Jaevid’s mouth tensed. “The same rule applies to it that applied to the god stone. The essence of the gods must be present on earth in some form. If we destroy it, the only other natural place for it to manifest would be within Reigh.”

  “And if Argonox has him, then we’ve handed him a weapon of immeasurable destruction.” Haldor slumped back in his seat. “Gods and Fates bless us.”

  “King Felix knows about this crystal, then?” Calem was as direct as ever.

  Eirik shrugged. “He must, right? Why else would he focus all his forces on keeping Halfax secured.”

  Of course. Gods, why had I not seen it before? Father had to know—both about Reigh and the stone. That must have been why he’d sent Reigh away after he’d been born. Living in obscurity, lost to that immense jungle, seemed like a much safer alternative for someone with
power like his.

  “I had hoped to take Reigh to Halfax immediately following our rescue attempt at Northwatch,” Jaevid went on. “I thought having us both fighting against Argonox would be enough to finish this quickly and cleanly—before any more damage could be done. Knowing that there is any chance at all we might have to fight against Reigh … ”

  His voice faded.

  He didn’t need to finish. Most of us had already seen what that boy was capable of at Barrowton. The thought of him fighting for Argonox made my blood run like ice water.

  “What do we do?” Eirik’s voice had an irritated edge. “Sure, it’s bad, but we can’t just sit here. Waiting and doing nothing while fate creeps up on us is not the dragonrider way.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Jaevid agreed. “And we don’t know for sure that Reigh and Aubren haven’t already escaped. But we now must think of the safety of the people here as well. If we leave, they are defenseless.”

  “We have nowhere else to go.” The baroness’s expression had become desperate.

  Jaevid put a reassuring hand on her arm. “You do. You can go to Luntharda. Surely there must be a road that will take you there from here.”

  She frowned. “Well, yes, there is. It was a trade route long before the Gray War that ran between here and Luntharda.”

  “It wasn’t reopened after the war ended?”

  “No—but it had nothing to do with the elves. That path is extremely dangerous, especially this time of year. The slopes are unstable because of the spring melts. Avalanches are common and the stonehide bears are ravenous after hibernation. We would be traveling with elderly and children.”

  “The animals will not touch you.” Jaevid’s voice carried that firm, commanding sense of certainty one might expect. If anyone could dissuade hungry bears or predators from the hunt—we all knew he could. “I will send word to Mau Kakuri. They will let you take shelter in the jungle.”

  “Some might argue that’s trading one death for another,” Haldor muttered. “That jungle is no sanctuary.”

  Aedan crossed his arms. “I’d take it over going back to the Tibrans any day.”

  “It’s not as though we have any other choice,” the baroness agreed. “We are cut off from every other side. The Tibrans have taken everything on the western coast from Bowfin to the Canrack Islands. Some say Blybrig still stands, but who can know for sure? No messenger we send ever returns. With Barrowton lost, there’s nothing else we can do.”

  I didn’t envy her position. I supposed, being the crowned princess, I could have offered some advice or even insisted she do as Jaevid told her. But Baroness Adeline knew better how to handle the citizens here. These people weren’t your typical city folk who worried about who held the throne—they had built their lives for generations in this unforgiving part of the kingdom, cut off from everything else. No doubt my father was merely a distant figure to them; someone they heard about but who didn’t really have an effect on their lives. They’d been kind and generous with us. Forcing the hand of their baroness might send the wrong message. This was her choice to make. I wouldn’t take it from her.

  Leaning forward, she put her face in her hands for a moment and rubbed her brow. “Very well. I will send out a request for every man, woman, and child within this city to go to Luntharda, as you suggest. We’ll leave as soon as the storm lifts. With any luck I can negotiate with the merchants to let us use some of their wagons for the young and feeble.”

  Jaevid narrowed his eyes. “If they give you a hard time, send them to me. I’ll handle it.” Then he looked back to the rest of us. “I should still have time to see to the injured. But we need to prepare as well. We’ll need weaponry, armor, and other outfitting.”

  “Where are we going?” Haldor cocked an eyebrow, looking more curious by the second.

  “With any luck, to Halfax.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The rest of dinner passed like a blur.

  Everyone talked more about what we would do to help the citizens of Cernheist prepare for their perilous journey through the mountains and what we would take with us on our mission to Halfax. Reaching the royal city would be a miracle in and of itself. We would have to somehow make our way across the entire kingdom. Dragonriders flew that distance all the time. It took about ten hours with typical weather conditions, or eight if the winds favored. Taking potential storms into account, it might take us two days if we were forced to land to wait out bad weather.

  The kicker was knowing next to nothing about how many and what kind of Tibran legions might stand in our path. Ground legions, for the most part, wouldn’t be a problem. Weather permitting, we could fly high enough to stay out of range for archers. But if they had war machines, namely the ones they used to shoot dragons out of the sky, then we had an issue.

  The fact that there were so few of us was perhaps the only advantage we had. Our company was so small, maybe we could pass without ever being noticed.

  “The last official report we received from Halfax said the city’s western front was still clear,” Haldor recalled. “I suppose Tibran war machines didn’t roll well through the swamps. It slowed their ranks to a crawl. They were forced to go farther south, around the marshlands.”

  “If we did happen across some of them stuck in the mud, I’m not sure I could resist the idea of bathing them in dragon flame—just for spite,” I mumbled.

  Eirik chuckled in agreement.

  “We’ll have to at least try not to draw any attention to ourselves unless we have no other choice,” Jaevid cautioned. “The last thing we want is Argonox finding out where we are headed. I can only assume the only reason he hasn’t attacked Halfax already is because he was hoping to draw Reigh or me out into the open. That—or he’s hoping to cut off all possible points of retreat for Felix so that his first assault is the only one necessary to take the city.”

  “Could be both.” Eirik shook his head slowly. “Either way, he’s well on his way to handing our rears back to us on a silver platter.”

  I hated it—but I had to agree. What chance did we stand? How could we hope to make it all the way to Halfax without meeting resistance? We had barely made it here. The whole eastern coast was alive with Tibran ships like bees around a puddle of sugar water. That had been my last view of my home after Father had banished me.

  I could hardly work up enough of an appetite to eat for the rest of the dinner we shared with the baroness. Thinking myself in circles was one of my natural talents, just like worrying about things that were completely out of my control. When the meal ended, I took my time wandering out of the dining hall behind the others. They were so wrapped up in talking about their plans, none of them seemed to notice when I stopped following altogether. Soon the sounds of their voices faded to echoes, and I was alone.

  The open stone hallways of the keep had a cold, cavernous feel to them. And for what was probably the thousandth time since I’d left Halfax, I was homesick. I missed my room, my bed, my things, the familiar faces of the servants who had looked after me since I’d been a child, and the oil painting of Mother that hung in the grand foyer. Sometimes, late at night, I would visit her. I’d sat up for hours by the light of a candle, staring up at that ghostly rendering of her face while I talked to her. I told her about Phevos and how I missed the way she would braid my hair. Sometimes, in the silence, it was almost as though I could still hear her voice.

  Thinking of her made my heart wrench painfully, remembering vividly the pain of her loss. That pain never faded. I always—always—missed her.

  When I finally stopped wandering, I was standing in the middle of a long corridor with an arched stone roof. This part of the keep was dim and chilly, and I honestly didn’t know where I was anymore. It must have been hours since I’d last seen a servant.

  I glanced around, staring back down the way I’d come. It was just as dark and empty as the way I’d been going. Was anyone looking for me? Had the others still not noticed I was
gone?

  “Jenna?” A voice echoed through the corridor, calling out my name. “Jenna, is that you?”

  I turned just in time to see a tall, dark figure running toward me. The faint light from the iron fixtures caught over a pair of eyes the color of pale steel. My breath caught.

  Once again, Phillip had found me.

  He stopped before me, out of breath and flustered. His wavy, black hair was falling out of the stumpy little ponytail. Usually, he only tied it back like that if he was reading or horseback riding. Now, it made his long ears and strange, sharp features seem more obvious.

  “What happened? Why are you wandering around down here?” He panted. “Did you get lost? Gods and Fates, do you have any idea how worried I wa—”

  I put my arms around his waist and hugged him, resting my forehead against his chest.

  “J-Jenna?”

  “I love you, Phillip.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. With my head still against his chest, I could hear his heartbeat start racing even through his shirt. “W-What … ? I, uh, I’m not sure what you … um.”

  Leaning back, I stared up into his bewildered expression. His vertical pupils went so wide, they were nearly round. Even with his skin that strange, soft gray color, I could still see his cheeks and nose turning bright red.

  “Tell me again,” I whispered.

  “But, Jenna, I—”

  I let him go and took a step back. “If you’re about to say something about how you look, don’t. Just, please, don’t insult me like that. I know it isn’t the same, but there are parts of me that I hate, too. There are parts of myself that I am utterly ashamed of—things that no man would ever consider beautiful. I have scars, Phillip. I am damaged, beaten, broken-down, and nothing at all what a princess should be like. But my feelings for you aren’t conditional to whatever either of us look like.” I crossed my arms. “Are yours?”