by David Ekrut
“Mother.” Zarah swallowed. The next part was difficult to say. Her mother and father were listening to her every word.
“What is it Zarah?” her mother asked.
“The dragons were gifted in the Elements, and they could all do things from legend. Beneath their power, the world began to crumble. Mountains shifted, the lands quaked, and the seas rose. The Alcoan nation was fissured and the Island Nations were swallowed by the sea.”
Her heart was beating faster, she realized. She swallowed the acid taste in her mouth and closed her eyes. “Then, I woke up.”
Her parents remained quiet for a long time. Her heartbeat returned to normal by the time her mother finally spoke.
“Zaak, would you please inform the king that we have an urgent matter to discuss?”
Her father’s jaw was tight. He gave her a single nod and exited, not stopping to dress. Mother did not speak until the door closed.
“I prayed this day would never come,” Jasmine said, “but you must soon be ready for war. Including you and I, there are three elementalists in the city. We had to send most of ours in defense of the northern isles. Those who remain on the island are in the port cities, preparing for attack.
“I am afraid that some of the northern isles have fallen to the enemy. Bain has elementalists using the Death Element in battle. They call themselves black savants.”
She took a deep breath. “The only reason we have this knowledge is due to a brave survivor, named Wilton Madrowl. He is one of the king’s thief-catchers. According to his reports, these black savants are going from city to city, looking for someone they call the Son of Bain. He followed one of them to our city.”
“Here?” Zarah wanted to stand up but knew her legs would not support her. “Why did you send Elwin away? And by himself? We should have gone with him.”
“Mind your tone, young lady. Neither of us could easily leave the city without notice,” she said. “We are both too well known. Elwin has been mostly restricted to the castle and is not well known outside its walls. I have spied on him in the shadow realm, and he is safe. No one has followed him. Sending him away was the best decision I could have made. Especially now.”
“What about my Vision?”
Mother looked at her for several moments.
“Elwin being captured is tied to our city in ruins,” she said, more to herself than Zarah. “It will take some time to puzzle out the rest. For now, he is safe in his hometown. He will not return until the day before his trial. That will give me the time to find this black savant in our city. Elwin’s power is so great that even a novice could find him if he was to remain here. After the trial, I will send him with Tharu to the Chai Tu Naruo people or with Hulen to the dwarven city of Dargaitha.”
“Mother,” Zarah said. “The prophecies are real, and Elwin will begin it. He will cause the Awakening. And if he dies, our nation will fall.” She could not push the images of dragons fissuring the lands from her mind. “The whole world will fall.”
Mother took a deep breath. “I know child. I know.”
The first streams of predawn light escaped the storm clouds in the east, giving the small village of Benedict a few pink rays. Wilton sat atop his father’s store with his legs hanging over the ledge, not bothering to wipe the rain from his face. Drops of water thrummed off the roof and dampened the red wood, turning it to a deep crimson. Dark pools gathered at sags in the roof like puddles of blood.
Beneath him, the square was desolate.
Maybe less people would visit this year’s festival. He knew it to be an empty hope. The rain would cause everyone to be inside the inn. Wooden walls provided flimsy protection, even if they were crafted of the thick redwoods from the Carotid forest.
It was not long ago when he remembered this height being the pinnacle of his life. He would come up here as a boy and watch people go by. He remembered being afraid of falling forward. The memories betrayed his current view. The ground was not so far away, ten paces. If he fell now, he knew how to roll into the fall to avoid injury.
If he jumped the right way, perhaps he could find his life’s end. People would say he fell. No one would know what he had done.
He felt tears in his eyes. How many of his family and friends would die?
Wilton had already seen more death than he cared to see. Zaak had been a fool to send him and the others to that island. They were like untrained children against giants. No. Children would have stood a better chance against giants. It was madness to have thought they could have defeated the black savants in their own camp.
Garrin Haysworth of Paradine, a lordling to a major house, had been in command. Like the rest of the thief-catchers, Garrin was lean of stature. Wilton knew that Garrin’s birthright wasn’t the sole reason for his leadership. His dark eyes had a way of weighing a man as if Garrin could see his inner thoughts.
Even now, Wilton could not fault Garrin for his strategy. The lordling had made the best of an impossible charge. With his eyes closed, he could see that night as if he was still there.
The moon almost waxed full, providing ample light by which to see.
Their ship dropped anchor a mile from the shore. Captain Tidworth had been a smuggler of wyvern’s tail before the war, but his ship had been torched by the savants. Seeking revenge, Tidworth confessed his crimes to the king’s court, and the king took the smuggler into his service against Bain. Tidworth’s unique skills took them unseen through the dark.
Not a single torch was lit. Tidworth sailed them by moonlight and memory.
From the deck of the ship, Wilton saw dying campfires, casting shadows on large tents. The encampment of Bain’s army stretched across the sandy shores and onto the rocky plains beyond the beach.
If there were sentinels, none cried out. Garrin said there would likely be no watch on the sea by night. The underwater crags on the east side of the island made it difficult to traverse even by daylight, so Garrin counted on the foot patrols to be apathetic as well. In truth, the enemy had little need for a diligent watch. Being one of the smallest of the northern isles, Napri had been conquered first. If any of the citizens had survived the attack, there would not have been enough of them to have been a threat.
Garrin tapped him on his shoulder and pointed to the ropes hanging over the ships rails. A dozen moonlit faces bobbed in and out of the sea.
Wilton felt his heart flutter when he swung his legs over the rail. His raqii dath bounced against his naked thighs as he eased himself down the rope. The rope rubbed against his bare chest, reminding him that he wore only a loincloth.
It had taken a few months to grow accustomed to the lean apparel. Now he hardly noticed.
Summer had just begun, but the water still had a chill. The waves were calm, but they still made him rise and fall. The feeling was quite different than the lucid lake of the Carotid where he had spent the summers of his youth. He tried not to think about the water’s surface beneath him. The Lifebringer alone knew what creatures dwelled in the ocean’s depths.
Wilton kicked his legs and moved his arms to stay afloat, while the others lowered to join those in the sea. No one spoke. He and his thief-catcher brothers had grown accustomed to silence. Dark and quiet were close allies to a thief-catcher. Even their commands were all given by hand signs.
Garrin was the last to join them. Once submerged, Garrin immediately began swimming toward the shore. Wilton followed Garrin’s lead, as did the others.
They were fifty in number. Fifty thief-catchers against an unknown number of enemies. It felt like madness. They were to cut the black savants down in their sleep, then swim back to the ship without raising an alarm. In and out unnoticed. That was the plan.
Wilton moved his arms and legs, trying not to think beyond the moment at hand. Even an apathetic sentry would notice fifty grown men splashing in the sea. Quick careful kicks and slow steady arm stroke
s carried him closer to the shore. After a time, the waves stopped working against him and started working for him, carrying him closer with each wave.
When his feet struck sand he began to crawl forward and let the wave wash him onto the beach. When he was completely out of the water, he forced his breathing to slow.
After standing, he realized he was not the first on the beach. Garrin waited up the shore next to a large boulder. The shore was littered with large boulders and crags. Beyond that, the beach gave way to rocky plains.
He followed Garrin up the moonlit beach, his heart racing from the swim.
His legs froze when he realized men slept on the beach atop blanket rolls. They were scattered, but there were dozens of them, stretching up and down the beach.
Despite his training, Wilton felt fear seize him. He couldn’t make his legs move. The light from the moon made him feel exposed. His heart seemed loud enough to wake the closest sleeping soldier. He was a large man with long, braided hair. He wore only his small clothes. A longsword and pack laid to his right side with a wooden buckler on his left.
Tharu had trained him to move in the darkness like a shadow. But in training, a misstep would mean longer days of working routines. A wrong step now meant capture or worse. If a single soldier were to rouse and see him, he and his brothers would be outnumbered ten to one.
Garrin signed them to move forward. The familiar signal freed his legs, and he moved on the balls of his feet across the sand, making no more noise than his brothers. Once he was in the crags, he felt some relief. Dark shadows hid them from all directions, but his heart still raced as if he had run the few dozen paces from the shore.
In front of him, the crags gave way to plains where hundreds of tents had been erected, each several paces apart. The tents would hold lords and black savants. They were the targets.
There was not a single sentry. The arrogance of Bain’s savants had given them an advantage. For the first time, Wilton was hopeful for their success.
Garrin signed them into position around the fifty closest tents, then signaled them to pull their raqii dath. As silently as he had moved up the shore, Wilton unsheathed his blades in unison with his comrades and awaited the command.
Garrin held his hand straight up for several moments. Then his hand fell like an ax. Losing sight of his companions, Wilton entered his own tent with raqii dath in hand ready to spill the blood of the enemy.
The moonlight spilled into the tent through the open flap, allowing Wilton to see clearly.
The tent made a small dome on the inside. A black robe hung on a peg opposite the entrance. In the middle of the tent, there was a straw cot with a small, wooden chest at the foot. A small figure slept upon the cot.
Wilton moved closer to the cot, getting a better look. The boy’s face had the beginnings of stubble in patches on his chin and cheeks. Wilton would have wagered the boy had never shaved his budding stubble. He could not have been older than Feffer or Elwin.
The blades began to feel heavy in his hands. His heart pounded. Wilton had been trained for this moment. He had been trained to take lives, but he could not make his hand move to slit the sleeping boy’s throat.
He is a child, Wilton thought. How could a child be as dangerous as they say?
In that moment, he had remembered Elwin’s accident at the Summer Solstice. Elwin had not meant to kill Biron, but the man had still died.
How much more dangerous was a child trained to kill with such power?
A cry of alarm sounded in a distant tent, and the boy’s eyes sprang open. The tint of his eyes made him look even more like Elwin, until an orange-red glow entered them.
Wilton’s hesitation ended then. Before he was truly aware of his movements, Wilton stretched his blade across the boy’s throat. A warm viscous substance sprayed across his hands and face, causing him to flinch.
The boy never had a chance to cry out. He gurgled and drowned on his own blood, and his fiery-red eyes extinguished into a cold blue.
Wilton staggered out of the tent, almost dropping his blades. His hands were red in the moon’s light. Flames and lightning began to materialize behind him in the distance. Voices began to cry out in agony.
One loud cry of pain was cut short. It had been the voice of Jard of Laslow.
None of Wilton’s training prepared him for what he felt in that moment. He couldn’t move. His heart was still pounding, and his head had begun to spin.
He had a faint memory of hearing a boot scuff on rock just before a hard object slammed into the back of his head.
Wilton awoke in a deep trench with an ache in his head. Six of his companions were with him. Morning light spilled into the entrance above. The hole in the earth formed a perfect circle and spanned five paces across and five paces in depth. The walls of the trench were a smooth stone. He knew immediately, no spades had dug that trench. No shovel could cut into rock. They had made a prison with the Elements.
At the top of the trench stood a single black-robed figure. Another blond-haired boy. Cold eyes regarded him, and Wilton looked away.
He pushed himself from the hard floor. His raqii dath were beneath him. They had not considered him enough of a threat to even disarm him. Wilton leaned against the wall and studied his hands. Red-brown flecks stained the crevices of his fingernails. He wiped them on his loin cloth, but it wouldn’t rub off without water.
He noticed his brothers watching him. Six. There were only six of them.
Garrin was there, along with Blanden Paysworth and Dacker Cobstan. Blanden was a squat-nosed man with patchy, dark hair and Dacker had a narrow face with high eyebrows. They were both from Goldspire.
Blane Dudswin of Bentonville and Wharrin Barfit of Westertin were there. They hadn’t known each other before joining the White Hand, but they could have been brothers. They had the same short auburn hair and dark eyes. Last was Briad Karsth of Kinset. He had eyes that reminded Wilton of Feffer.
Wilton groaned and opened his mouth to speak, but Garrin placed a hand over his mouth and pointed to the savant above.
Cold eyes still regarded him. He looked to Garrin. When his leader began to sign, a cold wind entered the trench. Wilton felt an invisible fist crash into his face and side, knocking him to the ground. Garrin had cried out and Wilton heard the other man crash into the wall.
Wilton’s head spun, but he remained conscious.
The entire time he had been imprisoned, he had not made another sound, not until the invisible fist had pulled him from the cave. He was not ashamed to admit that he had screamed when the hand came for him.
Wilton shuddered and opened his eyes. What had come next was not something he wanted to remember while sober. Though it haunted his dreams, he would not let it haunt his waking thoughts.
Movement from the west road pulled at his eye.
Though he could not see the sun, enough light now leaked through the dark clouds to light up the square below. A man approached from the west. His walk had a casual grace. There was a silhouette surrounding his form where the rain did not touch him. It struck empty air and slid down the invisible shield. The man’s dark hair flowed unbound about his shoulders. He wore black robes under an open cloak. Attached to his belt, just visible under the cloak, was a sword with serrated teeth on the side opposite the edge.
Wilton held his breath as the dark-clad man approached the Scented Rose Inn. The wooden steps creaked beneath the man’s feet. As he opened the door, Zeth Lifesbane glanced up to where Wilton sat. Even through the rain and the distance, he could see the man’s smile.
Wilton felt a chill travel down his spine.
He thumbed the hilts of his blades, knowing how useless they would be against the black savant. Not bothering to stand, he dropped from the roof, rolling as he hit the ground. His feet were running north and west, even before completing the roll.
Wilton Madrowl di
d not even glance over his shoulder. It was far too late for good-byes.
Rain droplets echoed off the wagon’s roof. The scent of fresh baked pastries next to Elwin made his stomach growl. This was the latest he had ever arrived at a Summer Solstice Festival. It was already after the noonday meal, and he hadn’t eaten lunch. He had been thinking about sneaking a pastry since they had first started loading them into the wagon. But his mother knew the exact amount.
Feffer sat across from him, making a game out of the leaking spots in the roof. He would hold his hand beneath a drop and move it out of the path of the falling drop at the last second.
Elwin looked to his left, out the back of the wagon. The rain was so thick, he couldn’t see anything.
“I still can’t believe it’s raining,” Feffer said.
“Yeah, so much for the fireworks. But at least now, we will have a good excuse to get inside and share a couple of my Momme’s famous crown cakes.”
“Mmm,” Elwin agreed.
Feffer stared at him for a moment without saying anything.
“What?” Elwin asked.
“Do you ever think about your real ma?”
“Sometimes,” Elwin admitted.
“Do you want to meet her?”
Elwin had actually thought about this at length. If there was anyone he wanted to talk with about this, it was Feffer.
“I think so,” Elwin nodded. “But that doesn’t change the fact that my real mother abandoned me. I grew up dreaming about being an elementalist and great adventures. But deep down, I always knew that I would live to be a farmer. Now that it isn’t a dream. It turns out, I really just want to be a farmer. I would do anything to go back and save Biron. I killed a man, Feffer.”
“I had forgotten about that,” Feffer said.
They were silent for a time. Elwin was thinking of a way to bring up his upcoming trial, but Feffer interrupted his thoughts.
“What about her?” Feffer pointed to his pendant. “What do you think she was running from?”