“North?”
“I think you call it ‘up’ here in Klarand,” Andrew explained. “Does this world have no magnetic field?”
The boy shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Fire Prince. What’s a magnetic field?”
Andrew found the horseshoe magnet he’d taken away from Kyle all those mornings ago (he’d been teasing Parker with it) and waved it close to the compass. The needle spun around towards it. “This is a magnet,” he explained. “It attracts certain metals, like iron. It’s complicated, but earth, my world, is something like a magnet, and if you get a tiny magnet, like this compass, and allow it to float free, it will invariably swing north. That’s Up in your language.”
“You have an interesting world, Fire Prince. What do you call it when you go Down?”
“South.” Andrew shoved the magnet and useless compass back into his backpack. “Now I believe I told you not to get into my backpack.”
“But there’s just so much interesting stuff in here,” Karlos protested. “Besides, I’m not going to break anything. So, what’re these?” He held up a plastic grocery sack that Andrew didn’t remember putting into his backpack, whether in his own world or in that cave.
“Let me see.”
Karlos handed the bag to Andrew without protest. Andrew looked inside and let out an exclamation of, “Parker!”
“Parker?” Karlos repeated. “They’re Parker?”
Andrew looked up from the bag and shook his head. “No, Parker’s my youngest brother. However, these,” he pulled out a wooden kangaroo and placed it on the log next to him, “belonged to him. What is it with kids and not listening to instructions?”
Karlos picked up the kangaroo and examined it. “What is it?” he asked.
“A kangaroo,” Andrew explained. “It’s an animal from my world.” He then pulled out an ivory walrus, a wooden giraffe, an antelope carved from antler, and an ivory elephant and set them down on the log, one after another, giving the name for each as he set them down. “My dad travels a lot, and he takes my brothers and me with him,” he explained. “And Parker likes to collect animals, and – I’m not sure how he does it, but he manages to convince someone from every country to give him something from everywhere we go.”
“Oh,” said Karlos, as Andrew added a jaguar, a tiger, and a parrot. “They’re really cool. So these are the animals you hunt in your world?”
“Ah, no,” said Andrew. “Well, people do hunt them, but not where I live. Except for maybe this antelope, they all live in … on other islands.” Rizkaland didn’t have continents, and its only official country was the mainland of Rizkaland itself.
“Oh, I get it,” Karlos nodded. “Well, you have some interesting animals.” He picked up the giraffe. “This one has a really long neck. Why?”
“So it can reach the leaves of really tall trees,” Andrew explained. “In real life, they’re about seventeen feet tall, and their tongues are about seven inches long and blue.”
Karlos’ eyes widened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“So why did you seem so upset when I showed them to you?” Karlos asked. “They seem very nice to me.”
“They are very nice,” Andrew agreed, placing an ostrich, the last member of the collection, onto the log. “But the problem was, they weren’t supposed to be in my backpack.”
“Oh. Where were they supposed to be?”
“Back home on a shelf in the room I share with Parker,” Andrew explained. “Parker wanted to bring them with us on our trip to show our cousins, but I told him to leave them at home, and that if I found them in his backpack, I’d be very upset.” He shook his head. “Apparently, he thought he could get around me being upset by packing them in my backpack.”
Karlos clearly found that amusing. “I wish I could meet your brothers.”
Andrew paused to rumple the boy’s hair. “I wish you could too, I think you’d get along pretty well, especially with Parker and Josh, since you’re just between them in age.” Andrew found himself strangely reluctant to put away the animals, a connection both to the nature of his world and to his brothers.
Instead, he bent down and picked up his wallet, which he had stashed in the backpack for safekeeping overnight, and hadn’t gotten around to putting back in his pocket before taking his trip to Klarand. He opened it and pulled out the pictures he had stashed there. There was one from Christmas the year before, with him and his three brothers grinning at the camera, except for Josh, who was eyeing the presents under the tree, clearly wondering which of them were for him. There were individual pictures of each of his brothers. Then, finally, the last picture they had ever taken of their mother, at Parker’s third birthday party.
Swallowing, he handed the stack to Karlos. “Here are some pictures of them if you want to see what they look like.”
Karlos took the pictures and examined them closely for several minutes. “Whoever did these was a very good artist,” he finally decided.
“What?” said Andrew, confused for a moment. “Oh, no, it’s not an artist,” he explained. “It’s another one of the strange things we have in our world, messing around with light.”
“Oh. You’re right, I think I would like them,” Karlos decided. “Is this your mom?”
Andrew nodded.
“You look like her, Fire Prince,” Karlos decided. “She looks like a nice woman.”
“She was,” Andrew admitted. It was true. He had his mom’s red hair and green eyes, though he had received his dad’s height and lanky form.
“You must miss her,” said Karlos, handing the stack of pictures back to Andrew.
Andrew nodded as he stuck the pictures back into the wallet. “She’s a tough woman to live up to, though I try my best.”
“I don’t remember my mother – my real mother, that is,” Karlos continued. “She died when I was a baby.”
Andrew looked up from the pictures. “She … did?”
The boy shrugged. “There was a plague of some sort that went through our castle just after I was born,” he explained. “Father and I survived, but my mother and grandfather didn’t. So, Father had to become the Lord of Lower Klarand, and since there had to be a Lady, he had to remarry. So, he married my Aunt Winona. She’s … nice enough, but there still are days when I just can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have my real mother.”
Andrew was quiet for several minutes after that revelation, then he reached forward and ruffled the boy’s hair, as he did so often when Parker asked about their own mom. “I think she would have been proud of you,” he assured him.
“You think?”
“You’re a kid to be proud of. I know your dad is, so I’m certain she wouldn’t feel any differently.”
The boy shrugged. “There is one good thing, though.”
Andrew raised an eyebrow.
“It means that I won’t ever be Lord of Lower Klarand, and I can’t imagine ever wielding such power,” Karlos explained.
“Is that so?” asked Andrew.
Karlos nodded. “I don’t know how it is in your world, but since my mother wasn’t ever the Lady, I can’t be the Lord. It’ll go to my younger sister, Iska, unless I ever get a brother.”
“Oh,” said Andrew. “That sounds complicated.”
“Not very,” said Karlos, shrugging. “Of course, that’s because I’ve grown up with it. If Grandfather had died before my mother, though, I would be the Lord. Right now.” He shuddered. “So I’m glad she died first, since she had to die.” He took a deep breath then added, “But don’t let Father know I said that.”
“I wouldn’t dream of breathing a word,” Andrew assured the boy. He scooped up the rest of the stuff sprawled across the snow and stuffed it back into the backpack. “How about a game of Uno?”
The boy’s eyes lit up. “You mean that game you had?”
Andrew nodded and pulled out the deck. “I think we should probably find a table to play it on, but certainly.”
Chapter 8
Andrew followed Karlos through the forest, as he did every morning, collecting all of the game into his netted bag after Karlos had taken care of it. If it was something too big or vicious for Karlos, Andrew dealt with it himself.
It was strange, but the longer he’d been here in Klarand, the less he worried about his brothers. Oh, he still missed them terribly, but he wasn’t worried. Abraham, and that Laura, had said that it was likely that he wouldn’t be gone long enough for them to miss him, and if they were wrong, well, his brothers were resourceful. They’d figure out how to survive without Andrew, just as they had their mom.
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Klarand had stolen some part of his heart. He knew that he would miss it too, once he left. From what he could tell from the legends, there was no promise that he would ever return. Once he was gone, it was as likely as not that he would never find a door back to Rizkaland again.
Lost in thought, Andrew wasn’t paying as much attention to his surroundings as he ought, and little more to Karlos. He’d walked this path every day since he’d returned to Klarand, and knew it by heart. So it wasn’t until Karlos stopped where they didn’t usually stop that it occurred to Andrew that there might be something wrong today.
“What is it?” Andrew asked.
“Shh!” Karlos chided, grabbing Andrew’s arm and pulling him down. He pointed. “There’s something big in those bushes. We need to back away slowly.”
There was little that frightened Karlos in these woods. Andrew took his advice and started the retreat. Before they could go very far, however, a ferocious blue-black beast sprang from the bush. It was twice the size of any bear Andrew had seen before, with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and paws bedecked with claws the size of steak knives.
Andrew swallowed, frozen with fear until Karlos tugged at his arm with a cry of, “Run!” Andrew needed no further suggestion, he turned and with a hand held tight around Karlos’ wrist so he wouldn’t lose the boy, started running as fast as they could.
He didn’t want to look back, but found himself glancing over his shoulder anyway. The beast lumbered after them, faster than he wanted it to.
And where were they to go? There weren’t any houses anywhere nearby that they could hide inside. This monster could knock any one of the structures at camp down with one half-hearted swipe of a paw.
But they kept running. It was their only hope, for Andrew knew with sickening certainty that neither had any chance of surviving a fight with it. All Andrew had was a knife, and Karlos wasn’t strong enough.
Then just as things couldn’t possibly get worse, Karlos tripped. Andrew stopped to help the boy up, but his foot was hopelessly caught in some roots. Andrew pulled out the knife and began to pry them away. The beast was closing in on them. Any lead they might have possessed was gone.
“Fire Prince, go!” Karlos protested.
“Not without you,” Andrew countered, snapping through a root.
“I’m not important, not like you are!”
Andrew refused to argue further and kept sawing through the roots. The beast was standing right over them, and Andrew could smell its foul breath, though he refused to look up. It was only a matter of seconds, but perhaps at least Karlos could make his escape…
There was the thwank of a bowstring, and the beast leaped back, uttering a cry of pain. At that moment, Andrew snapped through the last root, and, grabbing Karlos by the arm, pulled him away from the danger. Standing in the path was Rhodan, the oldest of the men.
“Get back,” he growled. “You two’re no match for a kirat.”
A kirat, so that was what the monster was called. Andrew filed the name away for future reference.
The man fired a few more arrows, each one finding its mark in the beast’s hide, one landing in its eye. Then it let out an enraged snarl and charged forward. Rhodan drew his sword and a long knife and calmly walked forward to meet it. Just as the kirat rose up on its hind legs to swipe at him, he ducked under and jabbed both weapons upward, into its chest. Then, pulling them out, he ducked away and to the side.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” he taunted, holding up sword and knife for another round.
The monster roared and swiped at him again, and again he ducked, though this time he wasn’t quite fast enough. The claws raked across his back, just as the knife found a home in the kirat’s heart. Rhodan took a painful leap backward just as the monster fell forward and its eyes went dead.
“Oh, thank you, Rhodan!” Karlos cried, rushing forward and throwing his arms around the man’s waist. The man winced visibly.
“You’re hurt,” was all Andrew could find to say.
“It’s lucky for the two of you that I was nearby and watching,” said Rhodan. “I’ll survive.”
“We need to get you back to camp,” Andrew countered. “Get something on those … claw marks.” As he circled around to get a better look at the man’s back, it looked even worse.
Terrible thoughts chased themselves around in Andrew’s head as they made their way back to camp. What if Rhodan hadn’t been watching? Andrew had been a centimeter away from freeing Karlos, but it still would have been too late.
And it hadn’t been that hard for Rhodan to take it down, just some speed, strength, and skill – skill that Abraham had been trying to drill into Andrew since he had arrived in Klarand. If it hadn’t been for his stubbornness about learning, he could have been the one to take down the kirat. As it was, not only had he nearly been killed, but – far worse – he had endangered Karlos’ life.
Abraham had trusted Andrew to take care of the boy, and this was what he did with that trust? It was no wonder that the men despised him. What sort of Fire Prince cowered like a child and made others fight for him? Not a good one, Andrew imagined.
They reached the campfire and Andrew instructed the man to sit down. He sent Karlos after cloths and a bowl, while he himself fetched his backpack and the first aid kits inside. Once everything was collected, he had the man remove his ruined shirt while Andrew melted some of the snow in the bowl and it turned blue. Karlos mentioned that purple water was best, but Andrew ignored the comment. They had to work with what they had, and what they had was blue.
After cleaning the cuts as best he could and deciding that they weren’t as bad as they might have been, Andrew dug a large package of antiseptic wipes out of the first aid kit. He warned Rhodan that it might sting a bit, and proceeded to use half the package on him. Andrew made a mental note to return to the cave and see if he could restock. Then he bandaged up the man.
“What is this stuff?” Rhodan asked.
“Medicine from my own world,” Andrew explained, putting the stuff back into the box, and then into his backpack. “I happen to have some on hand, so I used it, since I know little about your own cures.”
The man nodded. “Ah. Thank you. I would have been hard-pressed to clean that wound on my own.”
Andrew eyed the bag of game that he’d thrown to the side in his haste to get the first aid kit. He supposed that he and Karlos should go check the few remaining traps, but he found himself reluctant to venture back into the woods.
“So … that was a kirat.”
Rhodan nodded. “That it was. A nasty creature to deal with and made only nastier by her magic. I think Abraham thought us out of her range here, but it seems not. That beast was at least twice the size of any kirat I’ve ever seen before, and the gleam in its eye can only be found in creatures obeying her bidding.”
Andrew frowned. “Magic? Who is her?”
“The Lady Dragon’s,” Karlos whispered.
“But I thought she was banished to her island,” Andrew protested. “She escaped once, yes, but … no one has said anything about her being here now.”
Rhodan shook his head. “Lord Abraham thought it best not to scare you, Fire Prince, since you already seemed so upset. But she’s not still on her island and hasn’t been for many years. That’s why the
Wind Prince and Leaf Princess are trapped in the Kastle. That’s why we need you and the Water Princess.”
“That’s why Abraham has been so intent on teaching me how to fight.” Andrew buried his head in his hands, trying to block out the waves of guilt that washed over him. Why hadn’t they told him this sooner? That he would have to fight Amber, the Lady Dragon herself? Oh, he’d heard Rhodan’s answer, but that still didn’t make it feel right. Why hadn’t Abraham trusted him with this knowledge?
And the answer was flung back at him, clear and terrible. Because he had no reason. Andrew had flipped out after learning about his fate as ruler and was refusing to take his lessons seriously. Had he told Andrew about the Dragon, well, Andrew was quite certain that it wouldn’t have gone over well.
Abraham had surely foreseen this.
He pushed the thoughts aside, stood up and grabbed the game bag. “We have work to do, Karlos. Can’t let a simple kirat keep us from it, now can we?”
But as they made their way back to the remaining traps, Andrew took a detour by the weaponry cave and grabbed a loaded gun; one he was familiar with. He strapped it to his back and with an explanation of, “It’s a weapon from my world, don’t touch, and don’t you dare go in that cave,” they continued on their way, Andrew feeling quite a bit better to have this bit of defense on him.
After adding another rikka to the bag, they retreated to the smokehouse to clean them. The day continued as normal, despite the fact that both Andrew and Karlos were considerably jumpier.
As soon as the rest of the men returned from their hunt, Abraham noticed Andrew’s new weapon. His raised eyebrow threatened a question, so Andrew beat him to it.
“I decided that since I’m not doing great at weaponry from this world, I should get one from my own world out of the cave, just in case,” he explained. “It’s not good for the Fire Prince to be defenseless, after all.”
“No, it’s not,” said Abraham, with a thoughtful tone to his voice.
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