by Shae Ford
And just as she’d suspected, a tawny mountain lion sprang from his cover and landed gracefully atop the boulder.
Jake let out a sharp hiss of air and aimed his staff between the lion’s eyes, but Kyleigh grabbed his wrist. “Believe me — he isn’t worth the spell.”
After he cleaned one of his massive paws for a moment, the lion dropped down behind the boulder. A second later, Silas’s head and shoulders popped into view.
“Kingdom’s name,” Jake sputtered, with a glance at Kyleigh. “There’re more of you?”
“More than you realize, shaman,” Silas said lazily.
“Shaman?”
“It’s what the shapechangers call their mages,” Kyleigh said quickly. Then she turned her glare on Silas. “I’m going to think carefully about where to mount your head —”
“I’m not in your territory anymore, dragoness,” he said, flicking his hair away from his glowing eyes. “I stopped smelling your scent a mile or so outside of the den. And you would do well not to threaten me, since I have decided to go out of my way to help you.”
She snorted. “Unless you plan to fling yourself off a cliff, I can’t see how you’re going to help me.”
“Ah, you can’t see it yet,” he said, smirking. “But you know as well as I that when Fate brings two paths to forge, we must be content to walk together. We must travel through the dark of the unplanned … until Fate sheds her purpose upon us in glorious morning.”
“I didn’t know you lions were so poetic,” Jake said. He sounded rather impressed.
Silas bared his white teeth in a grin. “How do you think I woo my mates? The females of my species are fond of pretty words — especially when the words shine light upon their beauty.” He turned the full, haughty force of his eyes on Kyleigh. “So what say you, dragoness? Will you fight the path Fate has set you on … or will you embrace me?”
Kyleigh had absolutely no intention of embracing him, and she growled at the thought. Still … she knew they couldn’t lose him — not at Jake’s pace. Even if she told him he couldn’t come, Silas would follow them anyways. But there was a fair chance that he’d turn on his tail the minute they reached the desert.
With all that fur, he wouldn’t take well to the heat.
“All right, then.” She turned to hide her smile and said: “Jake? Give him a pair of your clothes. It won’t help us stay hidden if we have a naked man following along behind us.”
Chapter 8
Gilderick the Gruesome
Kael was determined to keep his powers a secret. He was so much scrawnier than the giants that he knew it would only raise suspicions if he were able to keep up with them. He had to find someway to seem weaker … but how?
As they dragged the plow down the field, he could feel Declan watching him. He may have been a great deal quieter than Brend, but his eyes never stopped roving: they watched from the deep cleft in his brow, hiding his thoughts in shadow. There was probably very little Declan didn’t see.
So while Kael kept half of his concentration on pulling, he dug through his memory with the other half — trying to figure out a way to throw Declan off his trail.
He remembered the long, darks days of winter all too well. They’d seemed to stretch endlessly: every minute became an hour, and every hour became a day. He might’ve gone mad just watching the sun creep its way across the sky, had it not been for Morris.
The old helmsman must’ve sensed how his chest ached, because he filled Kael’s days with as much training as possible. Morris taught him all sorts of different crafts, like sewing and drawing, and how to carve shapes from stone and wood. Kael’s head was so packed full of information that he feared he wouldn’t be able to remember it all. But now, just when he needed it, one of the lessons came back to him.
“Using your mind is all well and good — if you’re only facing a scuffle or skirmish, that is,” Morris had said one day. “But what if you ever found yourself in the middle of a real battle, eh? What if you were trapped, and had to fight for hours on end? You think your mind could last that long?”
Kael remembered shaking his head — reluctantly, because he knew how Morris would gloat.
“’Course it wouldn’t! And you can’t get a headache and go passing out in the middle of a battle — you wouldn’t wake to rise! No, once your head gives up, you’ll have no choice but to rely on your body for strength. Which is why we need to get those skinny little limbs of yours into shape.”
So Kael had spent the better part of his afternoon hauling bags of sand from the shoreline, all the way up the hill to Gravy’s mansion. He wasn’t allowed to use his mind — and in order to keep him from cheating, Morris made him recite passages from songs and books while he walked.
It worked. Kael was so busy concentrating on which words came next that his body was left to fend for itself. He hadn’t realized how often he’d been relying on his mind for strength. He supposed he’d been relying on it his entire life, because he hardly made it three trips before his legs turned to jelly and he collapsed.
But he wasn’t discouraged. Knowing his weakness only made him want to work all the harder. The day might come when he needed strength, and he intended to have it.
Today, however, was a day when his weakness might serve him well. Kael started out small, letting the first few lines of the Ballad of Sam Gravy ring in his head. While he concentrated on remembering the words and the different changes in notes, his legs were left to walk on their own.
He could feel the plow’s weight in every cord of muscle, in every quivering string of sinew. His boots slipped backwards and he dug his toes into the earth, pounding footholds out at every step. When the earth hardened, the blade got stuck. It jerked Kael and Declan backwards on their harnesses. They gathered their breath for a moment, and then they lunged forward — throwing their bodies against the plow until the blade popped free.
It was slow, backbreaking work. Kael lost track of how many lines they scraped. At one point, he felt the straps of the harness biting into his shoulders — gnawing with a thousand tiny teeth at his raw flesh. But he knew he couldn’t stop. Instead, he lunged forward with a determined grunt, pushing back against his pain, and his shoulders eventually went numb.
The sun blended with the sky, sweat trickled into his eyes and burned like seawater. He matched his panting breaths to Declan’s. Sharp bits of earth ground their way under his fingernails, blistering them as he dragged himself stubbornly across the field.
“Supper time!” Brend called.
Kael didn’t hear him. He tried to take several steps before he realized that he wasn’t moving: Declan had a firm grip on his harness, holding him back with one hand.
“The day’s finished, rat,” he said. “You’ll have to wait till tomorrow for more pulling.”
Brend let out a bark of laughter — so sharp that it scared a flock of birds out of a nearby tree. They swooped in a disheveled crowd, squawking angrily to one another before they finally returned to their roost.
The giants ambled back towards the barns, with Brend talking loudly and Declan throwing in a yeh every few steps. Kael knew he should follow them, but he was afraid to take his harness off.
The leather was plastered very firmly onto his shirt, held there by thick layers of sweat and raw flesh. He decided it would only hurt worse if he dragged it out, so he pulled the harness off quickly — and grimaced when he felt a good bit of skin come off with it.
Kael’s legs shook so badly that he could hardly stand still without falling over. The work had drained him of his muscles, his bones — everything. He felt like all that was left of him was an empty sack of pale skin.
With no small amount of effort, he urged himself into a walk. He followed the giants at the wobbling pace of a fawn, and it wasn’t long before they outdistanced him.
The Red Spine had begun creeping in the deeper they got into Gilderick’s realm. Now the closest mountains were only a little over a mile away. Sunlight brushed across their
rifts, creating a pattern of red and shadow. The protruding cliffs caught the light and rent the orange and yellows, casting them along the waves of the stone. At a glance, the whole Spine looked like a wall of slow-moving flame.
It was so stunning that Kael was tempted to pause and watch it for a moment. But then he remembered what Dred’s men had said about the lions, and he thought better of it.
By the time he arrived at the barns, most of the giants were already inside. A few loitered around the water troughs, taking long gulps and splashing the grime from their faces. Kael found a spot that wasn’t too crowded and went to get a drink.
Dirt layered the bottom of the trough. It swirled around his hands as he scooped up a mouthful of water. It was warm, and little bits of sand stuck between his teeth as he swallowed, but that didn’t stop him from gulping down several handfuls.
He was completely filthy. He stared at his rippling reflection for a moment and thought he could see a small trace of a mountain boy hidden beneath the dirt, but he wasn’t sure. If he hadn’t been able to feel it, he didn’t think he could’ve found his nose.
In the end, he decided it might be best if he didn’t wash. He remembered the welts that had risen on the giants’ faces when Finks struck them. If he were ever struck on his bare skin, the lack of welts would only raise more suspicions. He thought a layer of dirt might help to hide it.
“Still alive, rat?”
Kael choked on his water. He hadn’t been expecting a blast of Finks’s rank breath. He was actually grateful when the water clogged his nose.
“Well, we’ll have to do something about that.” Finks grabbed the back of his hair and thrust his face into the trough.
Kael gasped — and a huge lungful of water rushed in.
Icy terror gripped him. His limbs froze as memories of the tempest rose up in his head. He swore he could feel the briny water swirling about him, sucking him downwards. The impossible weight of the ocean pushed on him, crushing him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t …
Finks’s voice shrilled inside his head: “I didn’t even hold him down that long! The little rat just fainted.”
The sharp toe of a boot jabbed against Kael’s ribs. “Up, you!” another familiar voice said. Kael blinked back the heavy darkness and Hob’s pinched face came blurrily into focus. He didn’t look pleased. “You’re lucky he’s not dead,” Hob snapped around his chew. “Gilderick would skin you alive if you cost us another one.”
He spat, and the brownish spittle landed a hand’s breadth from Kael’s face.
“Back inside, beasts!” Hob lashed out in the direction of the barn — where several giants had been craning their necks around the door to watch. They popped back inside, and Kael thought he saw Brend’s spiky hair among them.
Finks waited until Hob had stomped out of earshot before he put his boot in the middle of Kael’s chest. “Well played, rodent,” he hissed. Though fury burned his eyes, he broke out into an unsettling grin. “That’s the second time you’ve bested me today.”
Kael knew what he was talking about. At an hour before sunset, Finks had marched over to their field. Hob followed along behind him — a sinister-looking, many-headed whip clutched in his hand. Kael swore he saw sharp bits of metal glinting along the cords.
But Finks’s serpent-like smile had begun to fade back the closer he got to their field. By the time he drew even with the plow, his mouth hung open in shock.
“Impossible!” he sputtered. He jogged along the field lines, looking for mistakes, and Hob grew cross.
“What? Did you drag me the whole way out here to gloat?” he fumed, thrusting a hand at their work. “So you’re a few fields ahead of schedule — good for you. Waste my time again, and it’ll be you that gets the whipping.” Hob spat out a large clump of his chew on Finks’s boot before he’d trudged away.
Now, Finks must’ve still been angry about the fact that there hadn’t been a flogging. His boot pressed down harder, and Kael’s shirt buttons dug uncomfortably into his chest.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Well, mountain rats may be hardy little beasts, but we mages hold all the power. I am your master. And the next round,” Finks warned, “will be mine.”
He removed his boot and Kael got hastily to his feet — well, as hastily as he could with his sore limbs. He didn’t trust himself to be able to take Finks’s foul breath much longer: he’d lost control once before, because the smell of magic had driven him mad. And he didn’t think tearing Finks limb from limb would help keep him hidden.
“Oh, and I feel I ought to warn you,” Finks shouted as he jogged away. “You’ll want to be inside the stalls, after the light dims. Horrible things happen to little beasts who don’t make it into their cages in time.”
Kael had no idea what that meant and frankly, he didn’t care. If the stalls were where they kept the beds, he’d be there just as soon as he could.
The inside of the barn was much larger than he’d expected it to be. A wide aisle of packed earth split the barn down the middle, and a row of stalls lined it on both sides. Doors made of iron sheets stood to the side of each stall. They were nearly as wide as they were tall, but he imagined the giants’ heads could still clear them.
A long trough had been set up in the middle of the aisle — stretching almost the length of the barn. From the way it bowed and waved in places, Kael guessed that it was the hammered-together product of several smaller troughs. As he got closer, he could see the weld marks clearly.
Someone made a loud, gasping sound, and Kael looked up instinctively. He wished he hadn’t.
Brend had obviously been reenacting the incident with Finks. He rose from the trough with a gasp, his face plastered in whatever lumpy, porridge-like substance the giants had been eating. His mouth gaped open as he scrabbled at his throat. Then with a loud thump and a puff of dirt, he collapsed — his limbs sprawled out in every direction.
The giants behaved as if this was the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. They laughed uproariously and slapped their meaty hands together. Several turned to sneer at Kael.
Had he been less exhausted, he might’ve been bothered by it. But as it was, there were only two things in the whole Kingdom that concerned him: the aching of his legs, and the rumbling of his stomach.
When Kael walked by, Brend made a show of twitching his limbs — flinging them about like a man in his death throes. His antics brought on another round of bellowing laughter, but Kael didn’t even glance up.
He wandered the length of the trough, looking for a space between the giants’ hulking shoulders where he might be able to slip in and get something to eat. At the very middle of the trough, he spotted a man-sized gap.
The space left a clear divide between two groups of giants: those on Brend’s side talked loudly to each other as they scooped handfuls of porridge into their mouths, but the giants on the other side were far less social. Not a word passed between them — and that was probably because they had their heads buried in their food. They lapped at the porridge like dogs, coming up only to take breaths.
Kael squeezed into the gap — ignoring the looks he got from Brend’s side of the trough — and brought a scoop of porridge to his mouth. It was grayish, lukewarm and slimy. But it didn’t smell too horrible. He stuck his tongue out and took one apprehensive taste.
There were several different flavors mixed into the porridge. He chewed the lumps he came across and thought he tasted potato. There were some carrots, too. And a meat that he thought might’ve been pork — though it wasn’t the thick, fatty cuts he’d enjoyed at Gravy Bay. They tasted suspiciously like the bits that most cooks tossed out.
Kael tried not to think about this as he swallowed. Instead, he convinced himself that the porridge was nothing more than a mushy helping of Tinnarkian stew.
He’d finished two handfuls and was going in for a third when a monstrous hand clamped over his wrist. By this point, Kael was entirely fed up. The giants c
ould make fun of him all they wanted to, but if they tried to stop him from eating — well, that was going to be a problem.
When he looked up to say as much, the icy words died on his lips.
This giant was not like the others. Porridge ringed his mouth, dribbling from his lips and down his neck, where it crusted onto the collar of his ragged shirt. His skin was so filthy that his hair had actually begun to yellow. But the worst part, by far, were his eyes.
They were a stark, milky white — like the eyes of a man who’d been dead for a while. They hung still in their sockets; they didn’t rove over Kael or even narrow in warning. So he was rather shocked when he was suddenly thrown to the ground.
“Argh!”
The giant bellowed as he stood over Kael. He seemed to be trying to speak, but his tongue rolled uselessly inside his gaping mouth. Finally, he seemed to give up on speaking and instead, raised his huge foot over Kael’s head.
His meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
Kael forgot about his aching bones and rolled madly to the side. He swore he could feel the earth shake as the giant’s foot came down. He’d narrowly missed being crushed to death, and he realized that this wasn’t a battle he was going to win. So he scrambled to his feet and tried to make a dash for the nearest stall — but the giant grabbed him by the shoulders.
With his arms pinned to his side, Kael had no choice but to fight dirty. He swung his leg up and caught the giant between the legs. It was a move he’d learned from Aerilyn — and one that had so far proven itself to be effective against men of all sizes. But even though his boot struck true, the giant didn’t release him. He did stop roaring for a moment, and his dead eyes blinked slowly.
But in the end, the blow only seemed to make him angrier.
One of the giant’s hands wrapped around his throat, and Kael’s feet left the ground. He grabbed the giant’s wrists, trying to hoist himself up and take the strain off of his neck. His legs kicked out wildly, his boots struck the thick meat of the giant’s chest and stomach, but did nothing to stop him. If anything, he only squeezed harder.