The Azureans

by R Gene Curtis

  Buen takes me back to my room and I shower again. It takes a while for Za’an to get the robe off this time, it’s so plastered to my body with sweat.

  When I’m done, Buen comes back and we go down to a large breakfast of eggs and some kind of bacon. But, after breakfast, Buen doesn’t take me back to my room. No, we go out to the horse pastures.

  It’s going to be a long day. I wonder why Za’an even bothered giving me a shower this morning.

  2 Invite

  Lydia

  “The little princess is asking us to do what?”

  I’m totally bigger than Sharue. I could take her out, especially now that my knee is at full strength. Who does she think I am, a Disney princess? The Little Princess. It does sound like a nice title for a movie. Not that anyone would watch it if it were about me.

  No one answers her. They all heard me. We have three more chambers to find. We know one is at a grove of pine trees. We’ve already established that no one knows where the grove is.

  “It’s time to make a contingency plan,” Tran says. “The blue flower stuff is distracting us. Cadah is dead. Arujan has Watch. Lydia can walk, but that’s about it.”

  After carrying me for a hundred miles, I’m surprised he’s not a little more impressed that I’m walking around.

  “The blue flower is our only hope,” Ziru stands in front of the group, taller than anyone here. His leadership style is quiet, but powerful. It’s why the people at Watch have followed him for so many years. It’s why I almost believe in this blue flower legend stuff. “We have listened to you rant about this for too long. Lydia was a cripple, and now she can walk. Her face was burned by the sun, and now it’s clear and beautiful. This is only the beginning.”

  “So, she can make herself beautiful. That doesn’t mean people will follow her.” Sharue is way more beautiful than I am. Maybe she speaks from experience. I wouldn’t follow her either, even if she’s the daughter of Keeper’s leader.

  “We have had territory wars in these mountains my whole life,” Ziru says, and he points his large finger at Sharue. “We keep a constant guard over our food so the people from the North don’t raid our supplies. During the years Dynd was the leader up there, things went better, but they weren’t perfect. The relationship between our cities has been tumultuous. Things were primed for a man like Arujan. The blue princess isn’t causing this—she’s the one who can stop it.”

  “I never said she was causing it, only that she was distracting us,” Tran says in his whiny voice.

  All this talk about me as if I’m not present makes me claustrophobic. I was amazed at what happened in the cavern, and the others seemed to be at first, too. I told them how I met Cylus and how he taught me to heal my knee. But once they realized how little he taught me about hemazury, and especially after I told them I have more places to go, things went south fast.

  “I’m standing by the princess. How are we getting to the grove?” Ziru asks quietly. He surveys the group. I don’t meet his gaze because I don’t know. I don’t know where this grove is, or how to find it. Ziru looks at his son Ler, then at Sharue, and Tran. They shake their heads. They don’t know either.

  “Dynd is probably dead.” Sharue shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair. “If only they hadn’t killed him before they all killed themselves. He would have helped us.”

  “How do you know Dynd is dead?” Ler asks, always the optimist. Even after seeing Cadah, his sweetheart, die. Even after losing Karl in a mad leopard chase. Always the optimist.

  “The Northerners are practically all dead now,” Sharue says with a smirk. “We usually do a lot of trading with the North people at this time of year, but we haven’t seen anyone. The scouts we’ve sent up haven’t found people either, at least the ones that weren’t killed by bandits along the way.”

  “I agree. If Dynd survived, he would know where the pines are.” Ziru paces a few steps and then returns to the group. “And he would know how to avoid the bandits.”

  “If Lydia was half the princess she claimed to be, we wouldn’t have to worry about bandits,” Tran grumbles.

  “But she isn’t and she’s worthless as she is.” Sharue glares at me. For every minute Ler smiles, Sharue’s look tries to kill someone.

  “We’ll think of something.” Ler steps up to me and puts his large arm around my shoulder. “She’s the princess. Things will work out.”

  Sharue laughs. I’m done. I shake out of Ler’s arm and leave. I bump into Sharue’s servant girl at the door, and then I start running.

  ✽✽✽

  I don’t stop until I find the house where Mara and I are staying. I don’t wipe the tears from my eyes or knock. Mara is feeding Jarra and singing softly in the corner. I need a hug right now. I’m emotionally spent and completely overwhelmed. I don’t see how Mara can hug me with a baby on her chest, but I sit next to her anyway.

  “What are you singing?” I put my arm around her shoulder. She smiles and leans into me. I lean back and let her warmth wash over me.

  “I shouldn’t be singing it, but it’s the only song I know.”

  “It sounds pretty.”

  She blushes. “Let me tell you the words:

  Wynn is mighty

  Wynn is God

  You must obey him

  Or his men will find you

  He knows what you say

  Wynn knows what you do”

  My mouth falls open as she sings. “You’re right. That’s an awful song. Is it really the only one you know?”

  Mara shrugs and looks at the floor. “Most singing is forbidden. At the great celebration of Wynn each year, one person is chosen to compose one new song. This is the song from last year.”

  I rest my hand on her arm and wish I hadn’t been so forward. I didn’t mean to make her feel bad for singing. “Did you hear Ler sing on our trek here? He has such a beautiful voice.”

  Mara smiles a little. “Yes, he does. I love hearing him sing. I don’t think I could have made it through all those miles, swinging in a hammock, otherwise.”

  I nod.

  “I wonder where he learned so many songs,” Mara wonders.

  I laugh. “People from my world sing, too. It’s something we do for fun.”

  “Your world sounds so strange!” Mara says. “All my life I thought that the world was just my town and Sattah. I saw the same people every day. I submitted to my father always, except when I married the mountain man. Who knew there was more world than that?”

  “I know what you mean.” Seattle may be bigger than either of the mountain villages I’ve visited so far, but Mara’s right. I never imagined this world even could exist. And right now, I feel so small—so helpless to do anything in a world I’m supposed to save.

  We sit together. I squeeze her hand. “I wish you still had your mountain man. I wish you still had Anu.”

  “I’m glad you can walk now.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Are you as powerful as Wynn? Have you become a god?”

  I almost say, “I wish,” but I stop myself. Do I wish that I were a god? No. My wish is to go home, back to the time when Mom was still alive, back before I knew she wasn’t my mother. I can’t have that, so I don’t know what I want. Being a god would sound good if it meant I could go back in time. It doesn’t sound good if it means I’m forced to lead a group of people who hate me. It sounds horrible if it’s really a call to save a world from pending doom.

  “No,” I say, “I’ve only learned how to manipulate a few things with my mind. I healed my knee and my sunburn.”

  “You were beautiful before, but now you’re stunning! I wish I looked like you.”

  The tears start again, but these tears feel good. “You’re beautiful, too,” I say, and I squeeze her shoulder. Mara’s loyalty is the balm for the cuts from Sharue’s tongue lashing. Friendship, not hemazury, heals those cuts.

  “Jarra is almost done,” Mara says. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

  “Ye
s.”

  She hands me the baby, and I pull him close. The warmth of his little body warms my heart. I saved this little boy; he would have died without me that night in Watch when I found him and Mara shivering in that shack. With everything else that has gone wrong, maybe I can do some good.

  ✽✽✽

  “Hello?” a small man calls as we reach the end of the road. Peaks tower above us and a cliff looms in front of us. The man sits in front of a small house with a roof of thatched grass and walls made of wood covered with clay.

  The scene would be picturesque, if it weren’t for the hundreds of birds that wander around the little house. They look a lot like chickens as they strut around the yard, which is mostly brown and white from their droppings. If the man wasn’t here, I would totally plug my nose from the smell.

  “Hi,” I call back to the man.

  “You’re the woman of the Blue Flower,” the man calls and motions for us to join him on the porch. I don’t want to walk through that muck. But we can’t very well communicate by shouting over the coos of the birds, and the man doesn’t look keen to move. As I hesitate, Mara hops the fence and carries Jarra over to the man on the porch. He beckons yet again, and I follow Mara’s path through the crowd of birds. Some peck at me as I walk by, but for the most part they ignore me. I walk carefully, trying to get as little poop on my shoes as possible. It doesn’t work.

  “You have been in the cavern,” the old man says. I decide not to sit down on the porch—it looks dirty—and so I stand awkwardly hovering above him and Mara. “Yet you can do nothing to help us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The man shrugs. “That is what everyone is saying.”

  Who is everyone? “I don’t know why they’re saying that.” Though I do. Sharue. “I have been in the chamber and met a man named Cylus. But he didn’t tell me I could do nothing. He told me about a plan. It will take a while, but I want to do it. I want to stop Wynn and help you all go back to the valley.”

  The old man leans back on his hands and stares at the mountains around us. He looks surprised, which annoys me. Not at him, but at the source of his information.

  When he speaks again, his tone is friendlier, lighter, as if I’ve turned from convicted felon into the princess Ziru thinks I am. “How will you have time for a quest? In the spring, these mountains will belong to Arujan and we will all be dead.”

  Another surprise. Ziru told me no one was taking Arujan seriously in Keeper.

  “We’ll make it happen,” I tell him, “but we do need to move quickly.”

  “Perhaps, then,” the man says slowly, “you’re saying that there is hope?”

  If anyone can figure out where Dynd is.

  “Hope is life’s constant.” It’s one of Mom’s favorite phrases. Does Mom’s wisdom transcend across worlds? I hope so.

  “Well, that is much better news than what I heard.” The man shakes his head. “You’re wise, but it seems there are forces at work against you, Princess of the Blue Flower. Discontented villagers can’t be part of your plan.”

  I shake my head and the image of Cadah’s broken body laying in the street flashes across my mind. I trusted people in Watch—I won’t make that mistake again.

  “Does anyone else live here?” I ask, desperate to change the subject, but hoping that the answer is no—for the sake of whatever person it might be. No one deserves to live here with all these birds, no matter what sins they’ve committed.

  The old man nods.

  “Who?” The smell is nauseating. Hopefully, whoever it is has a rare condition where they can’t smell.

  The man laughs. “You’re surprised about the rumors circulating about you. Now it’s my turn to be surprised that you knew that Dynd lives here. Information travels quickly, doesn’t it?”

  “The mountain man? Dynd lives here?”

  “You knew that before you came, or else why would you have crossed a yard full of bird droppings to talk to an old geezer like me?”

  Because my only friend in this world crossed it before me.

  “I just want to make sure it’s the right Dynd,” I say. Dynd might be a popular name. With everything going wrong, there’s no reason to believe that things will start going well.

  “Dynd was a powerful man up in the canyon. Before Arujan came, Dynd was the leader of the Northern Alliance.”

  Yup. That’s him. The guy everyone said they wished was still alive. The guy who supposedly can help us find the grove of pine trees.

  The old man looks across the yard and shakes his head. “Dynd is a kind leader. He saw Arujan for what he was immediately, and chased him from his village, assuming he would never see him again. But Arujan knows where to find desperation and how to manipulate it. Deep up the canyon, people have even fewer resources and more cold days, and they were willing to listen to Arujan’s vain promises.”

  “They turned against Dynd,” I say, hoping the man will say more.

  “Yes. Just weeks after chasing Arujan away, Dynd was running for his life.”

  After the man is quiet for a moment, I speak again. “Does Dynd know where Arujan came from?”

  The man shakes his head. “Dynd was the first one to meet him, as far as anyone knows.”

  “Isn’t that weird, given that everyone lives in small communities?” I ask.

  “Yes. It’s possible the mountain seal is breaking. Or, perhaps he came from a small village somewhere in the Northern Alliance. There are a lot of those. But what I do know is that he causes destruction everywhere he goes.”

  I’ve been around long enough to see that firsthand. The man swings his feet at the birds close to him, sending them squawking away.

  We fall silent. Mara still hasn’t said anything. The wind blows and the birds cluck. Eventually there is a crunching of footsteps. A man approaches from the forest behind the house.

  Dynd has a stocky frame and a slight limp. His long black hair hangs behind his back and covers some of his face, though not enough to hide his good looks. His hair is braided like Ziru and Ler’s.

  He looks at us, but his expression doesn’t change. He steps over the fence, and I nearly puke when I realize he’s barefoot.

  I decide to bow. “Hello Dynd.”

  “Who are you?” His voice is deep, husky. I look at Mara. Her eyes are riveted on him—I’m not the only one affected by his good looks.

  “I’m Lydia.”

  He says nothing in response, towering over me, his back to the light so that I’m completely enveloped in his shadow. He could pick me up and break me like a toothpick. Are all the people in the North tall like this? Or, is the society leadership determined based on size, like in the caveman days?

  Whatever the case, with Dynd towering over me, I don’t feel like a princess—I feel like a girl who was caught stealing candy at a store.

  “I need your help,” I say, and I can hear a tremor in my voice. “Do you know where the pine trees that stand in a circle are located?”

  “Yes.” It’s just one word, and a positive one at that, but it feels more like a rebuke than a response.

  “I need you to help me go there.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I’m the blue princess. I have been into the chamber in Keeper, and I need to go to another chamber at the pine tree circle.”

  “No.” The word is curt. Final. Dynd reaches out with his powerful hand and pushes me away from the door to the house. “I have had enough with people who randomly show up to beguile people away from their safe havens.”

  “It’s true this time.” My voice is small. Pathetic. “I’m not Arujan. I’m here to defeat him.”

  Dynd stops in the doorway and looks back at me. The sun falls on his face, and I can see a large scar that runs across his nose and cheeks. He says nothing, but his dark eyes tell me everything. He doesn’t trust me. I see the pain the old man warned me about. He looks at the baby and then he notices Mara for the first time.

  I clutch Jarra tight
ly, trying to pull strength from his little body. “We can’t do this without you. No one knows how to navigate the mountains up the canyon.”

  Dynd nods. “You’re right about that. You don’t know the trails in the mountains and Arujan has turned the North into a military state. Anyone going or coming will be captured and tortured. Probably killed. Going to a grove of trees isn’t worth risking one’s life. What do you think you’ll find there?”

  “I’m learning about hemazury,” I say. “I’m an Azurean.”

  Dynd laughs, but stops when he notices Mara’s intense gaze. “You expect me to believe that?” he asks her.

  “Show him.” Mara speaks for the first time.

  “I’ve only learned a little.” I haven’t tried hemazury outside the cave yet. If I fail here, we won’t gain his trust again.

  “So, what can you do?”

  “Maybe I can heal your limp?”

  “No!” Dynd shouts, and I recoil and jump off the porch, ducking away from a blow that doesn’t come.

  “Sorry,” Dynd says, his voice quiet. “But, do not heal my limp. Ever.” He takes out a knife and pricks his left finger. Blood, red blood, oozes out of the cut and drips down onto the porch. Ten birds rush onto the porch and squabble over the drops of blood.

  He holds out his hand. Slowly. He’s not going to hurt me.

  I hold my breath and grab some dirt, hoping it’s more dirt than bird manure. I rub it slowly between my hands, trying not to gag on the smell or my anxiety. It takes me a minute before I can concentrate fully on the dirt. Then I feel the warmth on my hands. I’m ready to do something. I put my hands on Dynd’s large hand. The hand is strong. There is pain. I find the pain—the finger is split open. I pull, and the skin stretches over the wound. The bleeding stops, and the cleaved cells reattach.

  I let go and the world around me comes back into focus. Dynd stands in front of me, his eyes thoughtful. He’s staring at his finger.

  “Can you do anything else?” His voice is nice when he’s not upset.