by Aaron Hodges
Not very trusting, are you?
“Oh, do shut up,” Alana muttered. She flinched at her own words, her footsteps slowing.
Her voice had echoed loudly in the forest, accentuating the silence blanketing the trees. After a moment she picked up the pace, her thoughts turning to bandits and the dark creatures that might lurk in the night.
Paranoid, too, I see, the voice returned.
“I’m lost in the woods in the middle of the night, I’d hardly call myself paranoid,” Alana replied, then swore beneath her breath. “Great, now I’m talking to myself.”
Silent laughter whispered in her mind. Gritting her teeth, Alana resolved to ignore any further instructions from her mysterious guide. She was lost enough as it was.
Branches rustled overhead as a breeze blew down the deer trail she was following. Alana shivered as she tasted ice on the wind, and guessed snow was on its way. This deep in winter, the limbs of the surrounding trees were naked, offering little shelter from the elements. If the snow came, the ground would be covered by morning.
Struggling to ignore the growing cries of her injured body, Alana pressed on, though her every breath seemed to reignite the agony encircling her throat. She needed a healer, someone with the magic to heal her wounds. Unfortunately, the only ones left in the Three Nations were held in her father’s sway. Teeth chattering, she continued through the trees, the temperature plummeting around her.
Slowly the last of the light faded, until it was all she could do to keep to the trail. Exhaustion tugged at her mind, calling for her to rest, and she staggered to a stop. Grasping at a tree to steady herself, she sucked in a great, agonising mouthful of air.
You must go on…
“I can’t!” she screamed, then groaned as the action tore open her wounds. “I can’t,” she sobbed again to the empty forest.
The cold seeped through her thin clothing, draining away the last of her strength. She clutched at the tree, knowing that if she sat she would never get up again. In desperation she reached for her magic, for the warming heat of its power, but there was nothing there. Despair gripped Alana as she remembered she’d used the last of it to overwhelm Quinn. Her power was gone, at least until she could stop and rest, recover.
So this is how the Daughter of the Tsar meets her end? the voice sneered. Lost and defeated, with hardly a whimper of defiance.
Alana’s breath hissed between her teeth as she exhaled. Pushing against the tree, she staggered upright and continued along the trail. She was surprised to see snow on the ground. She hadn’t noticed it falling before, but now the air was thick with snowflakes, though Alana hardly felt the cold. A dull thudding began in her temples, spreading outwards across her skull and down the back of her neck.
She staggered as an unseen tree root tripped her, then cursed as the sword she’d taken from one of the guards slammed against her knee. In rage she tore at the scabbard, determined to hurl it into the trees, before sense returned and she only rearranged it on her belt. Without her magic, the blade was her only defence against any unsavoury characters lurking in forest.
“How much longer?” she croaked to the darkness.
Almost there.
Alana shook her head, struggling to hold back her despair. All her life, the Tsar had taught her to be strong, had beaten and tortured her until all that remained was unyielding iron. Yet in the aftermath of the throne room, Alana had been left in pieces. Her father’s teachings had done nothing to prepare her for Kellian’s death, nothing to ready her for the pain of watching her friend die.
Nor had she been ready for Devon’s revulsion. Even now, she could see the loathing in his eyes as he looked at her, his disgust, his hatred. He had seen her suffering and turned his back on her. In that moment, Alana’s strength had meant nothing, instead becoming a blade that seemed to drag through her very core.
Now she was lost and alone, at the very edge of her endurance, with nothing but dark forest and silence for company.
The thought brought a frown to her face, and slowing, she lifted her head to scan the darkness. It was a moment before she realised what had changed—that the trees were no longer silent. A soft whisper carried through the night. Overhead, snowflakes glittered in the faintest sliver of moonlight.
Alana started forward again, the whisper calling her own. The voice had silenced now, and she cursed beneath her breath, her hand drifting to the hilt of her sword. She gripped the pommel, willing strength to her weary limbs.
Squinting, she noticed some of the trees around her had been damaged. Jagged branches stretched across the trail, and it was a moment before she realised that several tree trunks had been snapped in two, as though a giant had come crashing through the canopy.
Her heart beating painfully against her ribcage, Alana stepped from the trail, following some instinct she couldn’t quite describe. Moving amongst the broken trees, she scanned the shadows, wondering if a tornado had torn through this section of the forest. Yet they were rare here on the Plorsean plateau, and the area seemed too small…
Alana froze as the trees suddenly gave way to a clearing. Breath held, eyes straining, she watched as a giant shape took form from the gloom. Great, clawed limbs stretched out across the clearing, where deep grooves had torn the earth. Broad wings of scaled skin draped over the broken trees, and a monstrous head lay not too far from where Alana stood, eyes closed. Horns twisted up from its skull, and beyond the body, a massive tail twisted its way into the darkness.
Dragon.
Terror flooded Alana’s veins as she recalled her father’s Red Dragons, the devastation they had reaped on his enemies. Breath still held, she was about to back away, when she caught the whispering again. It was coming from somewhere in the clearing. She frowned as something moved beside the dragon. With a start, she recognised the sound.
Someone was crying.
A part of her still screamed to run, but another part, one born out of her time with Devon and Kellian, urged her forward. On trembling legs, Alana crept across the clearing. The source of the sobbing came into sight as she moved around one giant foreleg.
An old woman crouched beside the beast, her long robes in tatters, wrinkled skin scorched and blackened from the flames of battle. Her long white hair hung limply against her skull, and there was an air of despair about her as she sat there, head resting against the leather hide of the dragon.
“Tillie…” Alana whispered, then trailed off as she remembered the name wasn’t quite right. She swallowed, agony engulfing her throat, and then tried again. “Enala…what happened?”
For a long moment, the old woman said nothing, though the sobbing had ceased at the first word from Alana’s mouth. The silence stretched out, heavy with pain, with grief, with anger. Alana opened her mouth, then closed it again when she realised she had nothing else to say.
“Your father happened, girl,” Enala whispered, rising to her feet. “My cursed son happened.”
Chapter 2
Darkness stained the world when Braidon woke, a cry on his lips. Gasping, he looked around, his panicked mind struggling to make sense of his surroundings. Slowly, shapes appeared through the black, shadowy and indistinct. The soft creak of tree branches shifting in the wind seeped into his consciousness, and he shivered as a cold draught touched the back of his neck.
A dull ache began in his lower back as he climbed to his feet. Rubbing his arms, he struggled to recall how he had come to be lying alone in the dark. Images flickered through his mind, disjointed and broken, as though they’d somehow become jumbled as he slept. He remembered a man with sapphire eyes looking down at him, a whisper on his lips.
My son.
The image changed, and he saw the same man in a great gilded room. Flames leapt about him as two aged figures charged, swords extended. Thunder crashed and a great roar filled Braidon’s ears as the picture faded to black, leaving one word on his tongue.
Tsar.
Another memory appeared, and he saw himself sitting
in a garden, a young woman beside him. Her steely grey eyes watched him as they spoke, her blonde hair blowing across her face. She smiled down at him, her mouth forming words he could not hear, and another name rose from his scattered thoughts.
Alana.
Sister.
More memories followed then, still jumbled, so that it took time for him to piece them together. He saw a giant of a man with warhammer in hand, facing off against a child with pitch-black eyes, then an older man with kind eyes telling him they would keep him safe.
Devon and Kellian.
As the names came, the flow of memories jolted, flickering forward in time, and he saw his father the Tsar poised over Kellian, golden sword in hand. He watched in horror as the blade descended, and Kellian died. Grief swept through him, turning his legs to water. Sinking to his knees, Braidon wept for the man who had given his life to save him.
The past continued to flow through his mind, faster now, a river that threatened to wash him away. He saw again their journey across the Three Nations, their meeting with Enala, the conflicts with Quinn and his Stalkers, the awful battle in the throne room, his flight with Enala on the back of the Gold Dragon, Dahniul.
Amongst the memories were some he did not recognise, and with a chill he realised they must have come from his other life, from the time before Alana had wiped his mind. Unfamiliar faces rushed across his thoughts, and for the first time he felt a sense of sadness, of loss for the life he could not remember.
Finally, he saw the shining beam of light that had cut across the sky, heard Dahniul scream and Enala cry out, felt himself coming loose from the dragon’s back, falling through empty air…
Braidon shuddered, tearing himself from the flow of memories. Turning his mind to his mentor and her dragon, he sent out a silent prayer to the Gods that they had survived his father’s attack. There was no doubt in his mind the burning light had come from him—only the Tsar could have commanded magic across such a distance.
There was nothing he could do for his friends now though, and gathering his thoughts, he turned his mind to his own situation. When he’d fallen, it had still been early in the afternoon. He had no idea which direction the dragon had turned as they fled the citadel; all he could recall from before he fell was a sea of green beneath them.
If only he knew which forest he was in, he might be able to find his way out. Many of the forests around Plorsea spanned hundreds of miles. It was said a man could wander lost in the trees for a lifetime, without ever seeing another soul. If he set out without knowing which direction safety lay in, he might end up walking deeper into the abyss, never to be seen again.
Well, not never. It was only a matter of time before his father sought him out. With the magic at the Tsar’s command, it didn’t matter how many leagues Braidon put between himself and the capital. There was no corner of the Three Nations the man’s magic could not reach out and touch his consciousness. Amidst a city of thousands, he might have hidden for a while, camouflaged by the host of other minds, but out here in the wilderness, his mind would shine out like a candle in the darkness.
Unless…
Closing his eyes, Braidon sought his own magic. Breathing slowly, he sank into the void where his power lurked, searching for the flickering white. But he found only darkness, only emptiness where before there had been life. His heart sank as he returned from his trance.
He had used his magic to conceal himself and Enala as they flew a dragon back from Northland, but the effort had drained his power. Until it regenerated, he could do nothing to hide himself from the Tsar.
Braidon started as a realisation came to him—that Alana had wiped their memories as a way of deceiving their father. Without them, their minds would have been unrecognisable to their father, so that even if he’d touched them with his magic, they would have remained undetected.
A shiver swept through Braidon as he sucked in a breath, tasting the ice on the air. He rubbed his arms and rose to his feet, trying to get his circulation flowing again. The ground crunched beneath his boots, and looking down he noticed a slight sheen to the ground. Brushing his shoulders, his hands came away wet with snow.
His eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, allowing him to cast around for somewhere that would offer shelter. He let out a long breath as he saw the massive buttress roots of a Ficus tree. Twisting away from the trunk, they stood almost a yard off the ground. It was the best shelter he was likely to find in the dark.
He crossed to the tree, and crouching down, crawled into the space between the roots. He moved quickly, collecting as many dry sticks and fallen branches from the grooves between the roots as he could. Protected from the snow, they were still dry, and stacking them in the corner, he started to build a fire between himself and the forest beyond.
Then he paused, realising with a curse he had no way to light it.
As though summoned, a memory came to him, rising from the murky fog that was his past. Born in the citadel atop the cliffs of Ardath, he and his sister had dwelt in luxury—but their lives had never been idle. Their father had wanted them to be strong, ready for any eventuality the world might throw at them.
And Braidon was more than capable of lighting a fire.
Taking out his knife, he cut a slice of bark from the Ficus and placed it on the ground in front of him. Then he took one of the dry branches he’d collected and sliced thin shavings from the wood, collecting them in a pile beside his strip of bark. Selecting a stick from his pile of kindling, he placed its point on the bark, and pressing down, he began to twist it rapidly between his palms.
It took half an hour, several blisters, and Braidon’s full assortment of curses before a thin column of smoke rose from the bark. Letting out a yelp of joy, Braidon removed the stick and added the wood shavings to the bark. Carefully he lifted it to his lips and blew gently onto the embers. After a few attempts, the flames leapt to life amongst the kindling. Braidon quickly placed the bark on the ground and added more fuel, until he had a small blaze.
When he was finally satisfied the fire wouldn’t go out, Braidon lay back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes, a sigh on his lips as the warmth of the flames bathed his face. Beyond the flickering orange, the forest faded into the darkness, his night vision banished by its light. In that moment he didn’t care, so long as he escaped the icy cold creeping through the world beyond his tree.
As his mind relaxed, his thoughts turned back to Enala, and he wondered again at the old woman’s fate. She taken him in and taught him to use his magic, had defended him when everyone else had wanted to hand him over to the Tsar. He had wondered why for a long time, but in the throne room Braidon had learned the truth—Enala was his grandmother.
He bit his lip, recalling the moment Enala and the Tsar had faced off. Their words had been bitter, their hatred for one another undisguisable. It saddened him to think of it, and he could only imagine what pain must have come between them to cause such a rift between mother and son.
His mind drifted as the call of sleep beckoned, but he shook himself back awake and added another branch to the fire. The flames leapt at the fresh offering, tongues of orange dancing up to consume the slender wood. He glanced at his small pile, aware it was not enough to last the night. Beyond the flames, the snow was falling faster, piling up in the entrance to his crevice between the Ficus roots. If he didn’t want to freeze to death, he’d have to find more before the flames died out. Exhausted as he was, he wouldn’t have the strength to relight it.
Even so, Braidon couldn’t bring himself to leave the warmth of his shelter. His eyelids drooped again as he leaned against the tree trunk. A loose rock was digging into his backside, but it hardly seemed to matter…
Gasping, Braidon snapped back awake, aware that time had passed but unsure how long. He scrambled up, his heart beating rapidly. The fire was still crackling amongst the wood, and he let out a long sigh of relief. Clutching at his chest, he was about to rise and find more fuel, when a voice spoke from the
shadows beyond the flames.
“Evening, sonny.”
Braidon gasped as adrenaline burned through his veins. Leaping to his feet, he scrambled for his dagger, until the gentle rasping of laughter reached his ears. Heart still pounding, he paused, squinting into the darkness. The shadows shifted, and a giant of a man appeared. Firelight lit his wiry beard, glinting in his amber eyes. He wore a leather jerkin and steel gauntlets on his wrists, and carried a massive warhammer one-handed. There was a weary smile on his face as he looked down at Braidon.
“You going to stick me with that, sonny, or you gonna invite me to join your camp?” the giant rumbled.
It took an effort of will for Braidon to release the hilt of his dagger. He shook his head, still staring at the warrior in disbelief. “Devon…” He trailed off, swallowing hard. “How…how are you here?”
Devon only grunted. Stepping closer, he brushed the snow from his woollen cloak. The giant warhammer, kanker, made a thunk as he dropped it, then Devon lowered himself down beside the fire with a groan. “Oh, but it’s been a long day,” he said quietly, his eyes on the flames. “Can we leave the questions until the morning?”
Braidon stood for a second longer, before the weight of his own exhaustion drew him back to his seat against the tree trunk. His eyes still did not leave Devon, and after a moment the big man sighed.
“Was there something else?”
Stifling a sob, Braidon darted forward and threw himself at his friend. Until the moment Devon had appeared, he hadn’t realised how afraid he’d been, out here in the darkness. He had no idea how the hammerman had found him, but he thanked the Gods for his presence.
Clearly stunned by Braidon’s sudden show of affection, Devon tottered backwards beneath his weight. Then giant arms wrapped around Braidon, squeezing him into a bear hug. Unable to hold them back any longer, tears came to his eyes, and he sobbed softly into Devon’s chest. The warrior’s leather vest was cold from the snowy night, but it was warm in the giant’s embrace, comforting. After the gruesome scene Braidon had witnessed in the throne room…