by Adam Blade
“Tanner!”
He opened his eyes and saw Gwen. The grass was soft beneath him, but his head was pounding. “Firepos?” he muttered.
The flame bird cawed again, a comforting sound. Tanner managed to sit up with Gwen’s help, and reached for his head, drawing his fingers back wet with blood.
“Careful,” said Gwen. “Take it slowly.”
Tanner’s mind cleared. “What about your brother?”
Gwen’s eyes moistened for a moment, but she blinked the tears away. “When I saw you falling, I couldn’t just leave you…. He was carried away in the servant’s chariot.” She shuddered. “I’ve never seen a man like that. He’s worse than Gor.”
“I know what you mean.” Tanner tested his legs. Nothing seemed broken. “With Gor, at least we can understand what he is — an army man who follows orders. But that servant … There was a stronger connection with Derthsin, there. Did you see what he did to Firepos?” How had that happened to his Beast? How could she plunge from the skies like deadweight? But he pushed these thoughts away. Something more important had happened — Gwen had lost her brother. From under his eyelashes, he studied his friend. Her braids were bedraggled and dark shadows stained the skin beneath her eyes. She looked exhausted. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get your brother back.”
Gwen shook her head. Her face colored as she looked at the ground. “You were right,” she said in a quiet voice. “He did betray us, stealing away in the night like that.” She frowned. “But how was he able to let Gor know where we were?”
Tanner sighed. “I think Gor let him escape when I fought them in the mountains. He must have already given Geffen instructions for what to do if they were ever parted. It was only a matter of time until the general found us.” He cleared his throat. “Geffen saw the map, didn’t he? He’ll be able to tell Vendrake where the next piece of the mask is. And he’ll tell Derthsin. We have to get to the mines first.”
Firepos climbed to her feet, stamping the ground and flexing her wings, casting them in shadow. Her feathers rippled with color, from amber to vermilion.
“Are you ready?” said Tanner. Gwen was staring at the ground. Two red spots had appeared on her cheeks. “Gwen? What’s wrong?”
She looked up at him. “If Geffen wants to share secrets, he won’t just be leading Vendrake to the mines. He’ll know exactly where the mask is. Jonas used to tell us stories about the eastern tunnels and a treasure buried there.”
Tanner felt the energy drain from him. “Why did you never share this with me before?” He tried to keep any accusation out of his voice; he knew Gwen had done a lot to help him.
She shrugged, but there was nothing careless in her movement. She looked loaded down with the cares of the world. “Jonas was very special to Geffen and me. We don’t often talk about him. The day he left …” She turned her face away so that Tanner couldn’t see the tears he knew would be brimming in her eyes. He waited for her to compose herself, for her breathing to calm down again. Gulkien watched her keenly. Eventually, she looked back around. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, you’ve told me now. That’s the main thing. It’s not too late. Come on.” He smiled at Gwen. He wanted her to find her spirit again. “I know you’re a good fighter. We just need to get to the mines.”
Gwen flicked back her cloak to reveal her throwing axes. “I’m an excellent fighter,” she said, smiling.
“Has he always been jealous of you?” asked Tanner, as he watched Gwen unroll the map. He didn’t have to say Geffen’s name out loud — he knew Gwen would understand.
“I don’t know,” she said. She released the gauze from her locket, spreading it over the details penned across the scroll. “He wouldn’t have been happy if he’d known that Jonas had given the secrets of the map to me alone. Yes … He’s always been competitive, wanting to be the best. Perhaps it isn’t jealousy exactly.”
“Perhaps not,” Tanner said, “but being competitive should not mean that you lead your sister to her near-death.”
Gwen shook her head. “Can we stop talking about it now?” She looked up into Tanner’s face. “Please.”
Tanner crouched beside her, the parchment on the ground between them. It was more like soft cloth than paper. The secret gauze transformed the map into something much more special. As she straightened it over the top, the surface moved like water under the shifting clouds, showing the entire kingdom. Four points began to glow like gemstones — the pieces of the Mask of Death.
“We’re here,” said Gwen, pointing to the section of rolling plains in the center of the kingdom. “Vendrake was heading north.” She indicated the glowing portion of mask in the mountains at the far reaches of the map. “We’re right. Geffen must be taking him to the mines.”
Tanner leaped up and rushed to Firepos. The flame bird lowered herself to the ground, and he climbed up, using the crook of her wing as a foothold.
“We have to hurry,” he said. “Gor will be marching his army that way, too.”
Gwen rolled up the map and put away the magical gauze. She gripped the fur of Gulkien’s neck and hoisted herself onto his back.
“To the Northern Mountains!” Tanner shouted.
Tanner watched the treetops grow smaller below them, as Firepos pounded her wings, picking up speed. Gulkien flew beside them, the air rippling his fur. They soared over flat, empty fields. Tanner spotted stone ruins, overgrown with trees and high grass, and, just beyond it, a small village. The thatched houses spread unevenly out from a stone manor at the center. Farther on, a line of trees marked a boundary to another network of vegetable and wheat fields, surrounding a river town, ringed with a thin, wooden fort. The hills around it shimmered with grass and stands of trees, but Tanner could see the discolored lines and jags of weather-eaten stone where older roads and proud houses had once stood. Another village was built on a hillside that was topped with crumbling brick. The boundaries changed, but Avantia’s people remained.
For now, Tanner thought.
Gwen hunched low on Gulkien’s back, peering over his bony shoulders to gaze down at the passing fields. They approached what looked like a trade route — a beaten dirt path marked at the edges with black distance stones.
Tanner tried to ignore the dread in his belly. Somewhere, out there, was Derthsin. And through Vendrake, he seemed to have a hold over Firepos.
The Beasts ducked lower in the sky. The deserted trade route had led them to sprawling black rubble. Blocky ruins clustered inside scorched fields. The houses had been gutted to crumbled corners and empty doorframes, and a large building in the center of the village, which Tanner guessed might have been a great hall or a marketplace, had been burned to the ground, leaving only the jagged edges and a haunting brick chimney. He couldn’t see anything moving, and the roads were empty in every direction.
“This is what the whole kingdom will become if we don’t stop Derthsin,” Tanner called over the whistling wind to Gwen. She drew her cloak tighter around her body and nodded grimly, holding on to Gulkien’s fur with one hand.
They swept on over the plains until in the distance they saw slate gray stone.
“Look!” Gwen cried. “Those are the Northern Mountains!”
Ahead, Tanner saw sharp peaks, topped with snow and ringed with low-hanging clouds. They flew in silence for a long time, following the steep hills up into the mountains.
Firepos and Gulkien slowed as they neared the outskirts of a town, perched in a gap between the steep slopes. Even without the help of the Looking Crystal, Tanner could see people moving among the buildings.
The wolf turned his head to Firepos and growled, a low rumble like distant thunder. Tanner’s Beast called back, and both creatures adjusted their paths and glided downward.
“Hey!” said Tanner to Gwen. “Did you ask them to do that?”
She shook her head, frowning. Why had the Beasts decided it was time to land? Tanner clung on as Firepos descended to the hilltop tow
n.
Gulkien has sensed it, too. This place is special.
It draws us, like the moon pulling at the tides. Through a rush of air, I clamp my talons on to bare rock. Gulkien hits the ground at a run, his leathery wings folding into his back in a clatter of dry joints and sinew.
He snarls with bared fangs, excitement ruffling his thick fur.
Be calm, my brother. The one who waits here knows we are coming. She will be ready for us.
“Why are we landing here?” Gwen asked, slipping down from Gulkien’s back and taking out the map. “The piece of the mask is half a day’s walk away according to this.”
“The Beasts must know something we don’t,” Tanner said, climbing off Firepos’s wing. They had to get to the mask before Vendrake and Gor, but … Firepos can’t have brought us here without good reason, he thought.
Gwen held the map in front of her, peering at the surface.
“Colton,” she said at last. “We’re near a town called Colton.”
“We should leave Gulkien and Firepos here,” said Tanner. “If people spot two Beasts they haven’t seen before, they’re sure to get jittery — and hostile.”
Gwen stroked her Beast’s fur, and he gave a soft growl, pawing the dried earth. “He’s right,” she said. “You two have to hide. But don’t go too far — we don’t know what we’re going to find. Do you understand?”
Gulkien’s wings sprang from his back once more, and he stretched them, then licked his sharp teeth, ran a few paces, and leaped into the air. The wolf curled his hind legs tightly under him and beat his wings powerfully.
Firepos cocked her head and launched into the air, the swoop of her wings nearly knocking Tanner off balance. As she rose higher, she circled and went after the wolf, her feathers shimmering.
When Gulkien howled, Firepos sent out a returning cry, and they flew together into a patch of low clouds hanging over the town.
“Looks like they spotted the best place to hide.” Gwen smiled.
Tanner grinned back. “Now let’s find out why they brought us here.”
Tanner jumped from boulder to boulder as they approached Colton, leaping over deep fissures in the ground. They scrambled over a cluster of rocks and found themselves on a dirt road leading to the village. It was churned with hoofprints and wheel tracks. Tanner knelt to examine them.
“These tracks are too narrow to be from farm carts,” he said solemnly. “They’ve been made by army chariots.” Tanner ran his fingers through the beaten dirt and grass. Dark streaks flecked the grass: dried blood.
“I don’t understand,” said Gwen. “Gor’s troops can’t have come this far already. Most of the soldiers were on foot.”
“Perhaps Derthsin has more than one army,” said Tanner grimly.
The mountain leveled as they picked their way along the road. When they reached the edge of the town, they stopped, and stared about them in shock. The roofs of houses had been burned away, leaving deep rings scorched onto the half-ruined walls. Splintered boards and bricks cluttered the blackened streets, and Tanner could see gashes and deep holes in the sides of the crumbling walls, made by swords and arrows.
They passed through the ruined town gate. It was clear that there’d been an attempt to repair it, but the posts still leaned dangerously. Ahead, a group of ragged townspeople were using lengths of rope to hoist a long wooden beam onto a broken rooftop. As the adults worked, children chased one another between piles of broken street debris. This town had been attacked. It was trying to put itself right, but Tanner could see that the devastation had been massive.
“Higher!” a woman on the roof called. She reached for the beam as the others pulled a rope to raise it. “Steady!” The woman caught the beam in both hands, and as she guided it onto the roof, she saw Tanner and Gwen — and froze.
The other townspeople turned. The children stopped working.
Tanner raised his hand in greeting, but the townspeople only stared back. Their faces were tired, their eyes empty. Tanner glanced from one woman’s torn skirt to a girl’s ragged pigtail, then looked back at the woman struggling with the beam. They’re …
“Women and children,” Gwen murmured.
The people whispered and continued to stare suspiciously as Tanner and Gwen kept walking. Some of the women clutched the children tightly as they passed. At the next corner, a stooped old man was nailing a new board onto a shattered doorframe. The hammer shook in his arthritic hands. More children collected smashed slivers of pottery and twisted nails from the dirt.
“This is horrible,” Gwen said. “Everything in this village — the houses, the streets …”
They stopped when they saw a fragile, elderly woman crawling through a patch of black dirt, picking vegetables. Her garden had been flattened and crushed by horses’ hooves and soldiers’ boots and was cluttered with burned wood and brick shards. The woman found a shriveled carrot in the mess, and as Tanner watched her pick through the rubble for bruised, half-smashed potatoes, hot anger welled in his chest.
Gwen ran over to the old woman and knelt beside her. “Please,” she said, “can I help you fill your vegetable basket?”
But the woman scrambled away, startled. “Who are you?” she said, glancing between Gwen and Tanner. “What do you want? I don’t have anything! They burned my home, everything that was mine!”
“We’re here to help you,” Tanner said as gently as he could. The old woman made him think of Grandmother Esme, her house ransacked, her broken body left for dead by Derthsin’s troops. He glanced at the scrap of red linen tied around his wrist, the only memento he had left of the woman who had brought him up. It was grubby and frayed now — how much longer would it survive intact?
“Help?” the woman repeated. Her hands trembled as she offered them the withered carrots and potatoes. “Here, take them. Take anything you want. Just please don’t hurt me.” She cowered to the ground.
Tanner and Gwen stared at each other. Gwen’s eyes were moist.
“Derthsin’s army came to our villages, too,” said Tanner. He could hear other people murmuring to one another from behind his back. He raised his voice so that they could hear. “My grandmother and everyone else I knew were slaughtered….”
He stopped as the old woman seized his arm. “They took my grandson, Corrin,” she said. “The soldiers came in the night, ten moons ago. They went through every house, pulling the men outside, out of the arms of their wives and mothers….” Her face contorted with pain at the memory. “They killed the men. We buried them in the yellow field outside the town wall. But the boys … The soldiers lined up all the boys old enough to work and put ropes around their necks. One woman tried to save her son, but the soldiers beat her. Then they took them away….”
Gwen put her arm around the woman’s shoulders as she sobbed.
A sudden shout drew Tanner’s attention. They left the old woman, passing through the crowd and past more ruined blocks, until they approached the town square. Women and children had gathered in a great circle. They were chanting, “Castor! Castor!”
Tanner and Gwen pushed their way through until they could see what was happening. In the middle of the square, a boy of about Tanner’s age was waving a sword and grinning at the crowd. His hair hung in golden locks, framing his face, and an easy smile lit up his eyes. He had the wide shoulders and muscular arms of someone who practiced hard with his sword. Tanner noticed a dagger sheathed in his belt. It wasn’t hidden, like Gwen’s throwing axes. He wants people to know he can fight, thought Tanner.
The boy strutted in a slow circle and thumped his chest to encourage the chanting. The boy tossed his sword into the air and, as it spun, he clapped in time with the chants — “Castor! Castor!” — then caught the sword behind his back.
“So who’s next?” the boy, Castor, shouted. He pretended to fumble with his sword and laughed. “See, I’m not a great swordsman!” He spun the blade in a fast double swipe. “Which of you thinks he can face me? Step in now, and I’ll f
ight you with one hand behind my back!”
The way Castor smirked at the crowd, as they cheered and encouraged him, made Tanner clench his jaw with irritation. Gwen nudged him with her elbow.
“He’s quite a showman, isn’t he?” she said, raising her voice over the noise.
Tanner scowled. “Show-off, more like. We’re wasting our time. I don’t want to watch this preening fool.”
But to his surprise, Gwen was smiling.
“He’s good!” she called over the noise.
Tanner stared at her. “Good?” he said. “Are you out of your mind? Look at him!”
“Oh, I know,” she said, “you were right when you called him a show-off. But do you see how fast he is with his sword? I’ve never seen anyone fight like that.”
Back in the circle, Castor spread his arms wide. “What, no one here’s brave enough? Everyone’s terrified of me? I don’t blame you — I would be, too!”
A voice piped up. “I’ll fight you!”
Tanner peered over to see who the challenger was. A scrawny boy who couldn’t have been older than eight or nine stepped into the square. The crowd whooped and cheered as the boy raised his weapon — not a sword, but a fire tong.
Castor rolled his eyes. “No, no, no,” he said. “You’re lost, little boy. I am Castor. Do you hear me? You can’t fight me!”
“I c-can,” the boy said.
“What?” said Castor. “Speak up — they can’t hear you!”
“Y-yes, I can,” the boy stammered. The tong trembled in his hand, but he stood up straight to face Castor. “On Midsummer Eve, my father was killed and they took my brothers.”
Midsummer Eve! That was several dawns ago — more than Tanner could remember. He exchanged a glance with Gwen. That meant that Derthsin’s armies had been attacking dwellings since even before their homes were ransacked. How long had this been going on? Tanner had no way of knowing — few people moved between the towns and villages of Avantia. Word had no way of traveling. But now one thing was clear: Grandmother Esme had not been the first to die.