The Waking Land

by Callie Bates

  “Yes, I think it’s a trap.”

  I listen. More silence. Then gunfire bursts through the night. My horse bucks and shudders, and I struggle to hold her down. “Into the wood,” Alistar Connell shouts, “into the wood!”

  The gunfire flames red and yellow, sparks illuminating the near roof of the tower. More shots report. Men holler. Stampeding hooves trample the earth. The sparks leave bright fragments on my night vision. A rider barrels toward us along the road: “Run!”

  It’s Finn.

  We barely move out of the way in time for him to hurtle between us, thundering north, toward Caeris. Toward more Ereni soldiers, maybe.

  Alone.

  Gunfire reports at the tower.

  My father. Where is my father?

  “Go after the prince,” Alistar orders. “I’m going to the tower.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I blurt out.

  “No. It’s too dangerous. You have to protect Prince Finn.” And he rides off without another word.

  I breathe in. I know what I have to do. I turn to the remaining Hounds. “Follow the prince. I’m going with Alistar.”

  “But Lady Elanna—”

  I pull Alistar’s own trick, wheeling my horse off toward the tower before they can argue or stop me. The gunfire seems to have ceased, so quickly after it began. My horse stops dead as we round the curve. I nearly catapult into Alistar.

  “I told you to go after Finn,” he whisper-shouts.

  “You need me.” I can’t say why, but I am convinced I’m required at the tower.

  “Then shut up and do as I say. Get off your horse. Do you hear anything?”

  I dismount and listen hard, through the soles of my feet as well as through my ears. My ears hear little, but my feet—

  “Riders, going that way.” I point before I realize he can’t see me. “South.”

  He curses. “Tether your horse. We’ll go on foot.”

  We leave our horses at the forest’s edge, cropping grass as if nothing at all is happening. Alistar grabs me by the wrist, pulling me to the left—off the main approach and into a clump of bracken. We both go still, but our noise is not met with other noise. He paces forward. I follow, trying not to catch my feet in the tangled stalks of grass.

  A light appears, guttering on the other side of the tower. A torch. Alistar slips closer, then bends down to grab a branch from the ground. He pitches it across the opening behind the tower.

  No one comes running.

  And then I hear it. A soft moan.

  Alistar swears again, under his breath this time. I pull my dagger out. Someone is in the tower; I feel it in my bones. I also feel that many people have died here, more than once in the past. But I know someone is there now. Are they our friends or our enemies?

  We ease our way up the slope to the tower, a few paces at a time. Still nothing. Neither of us dares speak. As we close in on the door, Alistar gestures at me to stay back—this time, I obey—and pulls a second pistol from the holster beneath his coat. He cocks both pistols. He creeps along the wall, one wary step after another. I press myself to the wall as well. I feel a beat, but can’t tell if it’s only my heart.

  He pauses. We stand there, and stand there.

  Then Alistar lunges into the doorway.

  A shot explodes. Sparks shatter through the night.

  He rolls onto his knees, dropping the first pistol, coming up with the second in both hands. It reports, echoing in the chamber. More sparks flare.

  I feel the shudder as the body falls to earth.

  Alistar clambers to his feet, collecting the weapons. There’s none of the arrogance he’s shown in the past. His mouth is tight. “That’s the only one.” All the same, he pauses a moment to reload his pistols, his fingers brisk and efficient as he tips in powder and stuffs the lead shot down the barrel. He holsters them, and walks ahead.

  I follow him into the tower.

  An Ereni soldier is dying on the floor in front of us, eyes rolling, his chest a mess of blood and his—

  I run back outside to vomit in the grass.

  Alistar storms out after me. “No one else there. They must have taken the duke and the others.”

  I straighten and point, wordlessly. He hasn’t seen them, but now he does: the two fallen Hounds tumbled to the ground.

  But not my father.

  Not my father.

  “Where is Duke Ruadan?” Alistar says, echoing my thoughts. He seizes the torch off the wall and marches into the woods in search of tracks, swearing under his breath.

  “They captured him. Or they killed him, and…” The thought is too terrible for me to voice. I’ve just gotten my father back, and now I’ve lost him again. Sudden rage pounds through the numbness in my head. If Loyce has ordered him to be murdered, I’ll kill her. I’ll find some way to wake the land, and I’ll use it to destroy her.

  “Here,” Alistar calls. “Tracks going south.” He swings his fist—an empty gesture—and returns, shining the torch in my face. He shakes his head. “I was right. The Idaean’s a double agent.”

  “He is not.” At least, I don’t think so.

  But then, how well do I actually know Jahan?

  Alistar’s jaw clenches. “You and the prince seem very convinced of this matter, but how else do you explain what happened here?” He gestures to his two dead men.

  I have no words, only this useless rage tightening around my skull. So I walk to the dead, crouching beside them. Alistar follows me and kneels down across from me, glaring at me over their bodies. I can’t look at the terrible things death has done to them, so I stare back at him. We need to bury the Ereni soldier, too. I may be ready to murder Loyce with my bare hands, but her soldiers are simply men following their orders. Will Alistar agree, though? I have to let it pass. We don’t have time for an argument. “I don’t know the customs,” I say.

  “The customs.” He spits the word. His nostrils flare. Then he leans over the bodies and kisses each man on his bloodstained forehead. I do the same. Their skin is cold and smooth. Alistar folds one man’s arms over his chest; I follow suit with the one closest to me, though my hands become sticky with clotted gore.

  Loyce has done this, and the Butcher’s carried it out. If I had gotten here sooner, if Alistar hadn’t killed the Ereni soldier before he could kill us, it could be Alistar or me lying there on the ground.

  A tear rolls off Alistar Connell’s chin. In halting, archaic Caerisian, he says, “Now I am with the land always. I am always with you. Mo cri, mo tire, mo fiel.”

  “My heart, my land, my blood,” I say. It’s the phrase the specters speak at the Hill of the Imperishable—the line taken from one of the books in my father’s library.

  Alistar nods. “From our old poem about Wildegarde, after she weds the land.” He gestures for me to repeat the phrase. I mumble the words over Nevan’s body.

  There’s a silence. Then Alistar stands abruptly, a fist pressed to his lips. “Let’s go.”

  “We need to bury them.”

  “There’s no time.”

  He turns, but I can’t move from the bodies. It’s wrong to leave them here, exposed, their empty faces naked to the night. My hand curls into a fist on my knee. Beneath me, as if in response to my anger, the earth shifts. I call to it: Come.

  I scramble backward as the soil reaches up and tumbles the bodies of the Hounds deep into it. Alistar Connell whirls, an outcry stillborn in his throat. More soil is falling over to cover the bodies. It is finished in a matter of moments, but we both remain, staring.

  The earth knew what I wanted. It did as I asked.

  I look away from Alistar’s open tears, for my own eyes are wet, not just with grief but with the shock of triumph. The land answered my bidding. Maybe there is more to these stories than legend, after all. Maybe the Caveadears really can wake the land—maybe not as powerfully as Wildegarde did, but wake it all the same. Maybe I can win this fight.

  But how? And at what cost?

  I lo
ok at the freshly turned earth, and my chest flushes with anger. These men lost their lives for no reason. None. They died so that we could be betrayed, so that my father could be captured. The Ereni soldier died because someone commanded him to remain here: a quirk of fate. Whatever powers I have, whatever powers Wildegarde had, can’t give these men back their lives.

  Just this morning I was ready to depose Loyce, to give Eren and Caeris a new king. Now I want the queen dead. I want her taken captive and locked up behind bars, so she knows what it’s like. So she really understands fear. I want revenge, and it burns under my skin, sure and steadying, without logic or reason.

  Alistar Connell stands up. “Well,” he says. “Shall we go see if the prince has gotten himself killed as well?”

  —

  “I’M A COWARD,” Finn says. His voice is flat. He’s shivering, and not trying to disguise it.

  I don’t answer. There’s nothing to say that won’t result in raised voices, and we can’t afford to be overheard. We came upon him and the Hounds beside a ditch on the main road. Finn was being sick into a shrub. Not far away, we could all hear a soldier whistling on duty. Our prince, in his panic, took the easiest road: straight to the gates of Portmason.

  Alistar insisted on going in, while we got off the road and into the woods. “They’ll have brought the duke here.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “And it’s probably just what they want us to do—go in after him. How do you propose to get in, anyway?”

  “Have you never scaled a wall before, Caveadear?”

  Part of me wishes I’d gone over the wall with him, instead of waiting in the woods with Finn and a couple of Hounds. It’s getting cold out here, without a fire, and I can’t stop thinking about my father. About Jahan. Everything certain seems to be slipping out from under me. Father’s captured, and Jahan betrayed us or, at the very least, got caught. I want to ride to Laon and burn down the palace; I want to scream in Loyce’s face and demand my father back. Instead we’re sitting here, in the dark woods, my trousers growing damp with condensation.

  I think about that conversation with Jahan, the one we had after my father declared me the steward of the land. I’ve run through it in my head so many times it’s memorized. He said, This is more than I ever expected! And when I asked him what he meant, he avoided the answer.

  Not only that, he wanted to take me to Ida with him. It made sense that my presence would make a difference in helping our cause—or I thought it did. Has this all been a ruse? Has he been trying to isolate me all along so that he can hand me over to Loyce? Or—I flinch at the thought—the emperor?

  But he’s a sorcerer himself. Why would he betray me? Maybe it would make his position more secure; if he’s seen handing over another magician, he’s less likely to be accused of practicing magic himself. I feel sick to my stomach. Have I misread the way he looked at me, the meaning of his smiles? Was that last, burning look, the fleeting touch of our hands, not about me at all, but about the indemnity he envisioned buying with me? Was he playing me all along?

  All I know for certain is that my father’s gone, and Jahan may have orchestrated it. And the man who’s dedicated his life to Caeris’s freedom will soon be paying for that dedication with his life. There’s no question what Loyce will do with him.

  “I bolted,” Finn is saying. The self-loathing in his voice is almost unbearable. “I heard the gunfire and I ran—like the most lily-livered coward.”

  I dig my hands into my sleeves. I wish he would stop telling me this.

  “It took me back. To Chozat. The Getai came upon us out of nowhere. They called it a true test ‘of whether you were a man or not.’ ”

  “It’s a good thing you did run. Imagine if they’d caught you both. It was intelligent.”

  His jaw works. I stare into the night sky, flecked with stars between moving clouds. Heaven knows what the other Hounds are making of this conversation. Caeris’s would-be prince shouldn’t be admitting to his own terror in the face of battle. Yet here he is, spilling the words as if desperate to confess. He doesn’t know that, beside him, I’m struggling with such impotent rage. I want to snatch a pistol and ride into Portmason, brandishing it. I want to wake the land and let its magic vent my fury. Even though I don’t know how to fight, even though I know that violence only begets more violence.

  Maybe fighting is the only way.

  A pale slice of blue touches the sky as I watch. Dawn.

  I still can’t believe Jahan betrayed us. No, someone else must have found out. They must have stopped him. Only…

  I wish I dared to believe this. But it’s so easy, now, in hindsight, to read all our interactions in another way entirely.

  There’s a creak and stomp; one of the Hounds stands up. I’m on my feet a moment later: I heard it, too. A low hooting, like an owl.

  Except no owl actually sounds like Alistar Connell.

  Bran hoots in reply.

  In another moment Alistar and Declan run into our little grove, throwing hot buns at us. Mine catches me in the chin.

  “Mount up,” Alistar says grimly. “They’re after us.”

  Good thing we didn’t unsaddle the horses—though the fact that their mission did not go well is obvious simply from my father’s absence. As we swing onto our horses, a shout rises behind us.

  “That’ll be them.”

  In the dense woods, we can’t move fast, but neither can our pursuit. At last we achieve the edge of a farm field, and Alistar and the Hounds shoot off, leaving Finn and me to scramble in their wake.

  We catch up to them around midmorning, beside a stream. The horses are tired, breathing hard. I rub mine down and give her a good bag of feed, then go straight down to the water, plunging my hands in and flinging the shining, icy-cold droplets onto my face. My eyes ache, my body aches. Everything in me aches.

  They’ve taken my father. My desire for revenge has shrunken to a small, cold thing, a weight in the pit of my stomach. I’m afraid of the way I’m thinking now—of how easily I’ve begun to think taking up arms against the crown might be a reasonable course of action.

  Mostly I’m afraid of how much I want to.

  Behind me, Finn is asking Alistar if they found any sign of Father in Portmason.

  “No. They took him south, by the looks of things. To the Tower in Laon, most likely.”

  “You aren’t going to pursue him?”

  “Well, Your Highness, we have you and the Caveadear, don’t we? The duke knew the risks he ran. He always did.”

  Why do they always write off their own people, saying they knew the risk? Hensey has already been so easily dispatched.

  But Alistar’s tone is heavy, and I wonder how much he believes his own words. I saw his tears last night. My own eyes feel bruised with the effort not to cry. I feel as though I almost understood my father, and now he’s been torn from me.

  The water clears, revealing my reflection, hovering over the river stones and soil. I start to reach for another scoop to drink—I am so thirsty—but stop just as my fingertips touch the surface.

  My face has transformed. Jahan stares at me, his lips parted, wide-eyed.

  “Are you safe?”

  I wonder if I’m inventing the breathless panic in his voice, if I simply want it to be there. After all, I hear him in my mind, though the words are his.

  “The Butcher’s caught your father—they knew somehow, I don’t know how, and they stopped me from going to the tower. I’ve had to pretend complete ignorance about the duke. I tried to find you, but—”

  I can’t believe him. I want to. I want to so badly. But I can’t afford to take the risk—to make the mistake of wishing him to be our ally when the truth is that he’s a double agent, protecting himself and his own secrets before anyone else.

  When he could be trying to hand me over to the witch hunters to disguise the truth of his own nature.

  “Don’t pretend,” I whisper to the water riffling over his face. “Don’t lie.”r />
  Then I plunge both hands into the stream, destroying his reflection.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At noon, when we cross the border, they find us. Shots ring out. A shocking hiss of lead shot passes close to my face, leaving a stinging cut of blood. I reach for a weapon to fire back, but I have only my dagger.

  The border magic. Maybe it can save us.

  The land is already pulsing with renewed awareness under my skin. Last night, I persuaded the earth to cover the Hounds’ corpses. What if making it do my bidding is as simple as asking?

  Come, I call. I think of the history books I’ve been reading. Ossian called mists to confuse the Ereni soldiers; he sent them through valleys that appeared on no maps.

  The earth whispers under my skin.

  Fog rolls up from the ground, gathering so densely around us we seem to be smothered. Alistar shouts for us to change formation, though we can barely make out one another’s shapes in the thick white mist. The shots behind us have stopped. I hear someone shouting, still some distance away.

  “Is this your doing, Caveadear?” Alistar calls.

  “It is.” I feel a bit foolish; I’ve effectively blinded us as well as our pursuers. Even the Hounds’ sense of direction won’t help us in this impossible fog.

  The earth pulses again. And, perhaps because I can see so little, I realize how much I can feel. There are layers to the pulsing—lines, I might almost say. “Cerid Aven,” I whisper.

  The sensation coalesces into a tugging, like a rope pulling me forward. “Alistar. Has anyone rope? Let me lead. I can—” I’m embarrassed at how foolish the words sound, but I say it anyway. “I can feel it.”

  Alistar Connell does not question me. We loop a rope through the horses’ stirrups, throwing one to the other. Then I am in the lead, following the tugging in my sternum into the hills of Caeris.

  Once I can no longer detect pursuit, I let the fog dissipate. It fades immediately, leaving us in a damp, dark forest. The men send up a cheer. I can’t help smiling at what I’ve done, out of shock as much as anything else. The Hounds recognize this patch of wood, and I fall back to let Alistar lead us home to Cerid Aven.