Reign of Darkness

by Michaela Riley Karr

  After several minutes of wobbling up and down the narrowest hallways I’d ever seen in my life with no success of discerning which rooms belonged to any of us, I planted myself on a three-legged stool in a large area that appeared to be some sort of mess hall. A few others milled about trying to obtain their sea legs, but for the most part, the room was dim and empty. I was just beginning to entertain the thought that I might get a few precious minutes to myself when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

  I startled hard, my hand reflexively darting for my sash that magically contained my sword, but another hand stopped me before my magic could spring forth in full view of other passengers. I blinked at the person behind me, studying him closely. “…Jaspen?”

  “Are very perceptive, you,” the creature chuckled, but for all intents and purposes, I could have sworn a human man sat before me. He had come to sit at my little table undetected, his head only an average amount above mine now versus what it would be like if he were standing. A thick, worn bandage wove around his head, masking his colorful eyes and Ranguvariian ears. He appeared to anyone else on the ship as nothing more than a poor, blind man in ragged, traveling clothes headed for Caark just like the rest of the passengers.

  “I’m impressed. I didn’t know Ranguvariians had such skill in the art of disguise,” I remarked, a smile threatening to crack my melancholy.

  “Is a lot still don’t know about us, you.” Jaspen grinned, the edges of the bandage around his eyes wrinkling upward. “Received this before snuck aboard, I.”

  Jaspen revealed a thick envelope from underneath his ratty cloak and tunic and slipped it to me with his long, leathery fingers. Frederick’s beautiful script leapt up at me from the parchment, and I jumped up, snatching it out of his hands. More definitions! I could decipher the next chapter of my history book and find out what happened to Rhydin Caldwell!

  But, I couldn’t do that in front of Jaspen. For whatever reason, I just knew that if the Ranguvariians realized what was within my book, it would be taken from me before I could say a single word. Looking at it in front of them was one thing, intently cross-referencing it with a letter was another. The strange presence of the Archimage Palace had given this book to me. Therefore, its secrets were only mine to discover.

  “Jaspen, where are our quarters? I’d like to read Frederick’s letter in private,” I said as calmly as possible, trying to make it appear like no big deal.

  The disguised Ranguvariian tilted his head to the side like he was thinking, and I realized in a moment how much I had come to depend on the Ranguvariians’ changing eye colors for a guess at what they were feeling. He stated matter-of-factly, “Go down a level, you. Is yours and Sam’s, third cabin on the left.”

  I grimaced and was suddenly glad for the bandage that hid Jaspen’s sight. Sam’s name dredged up my feelings of hurt and isolation all over again. I muttered a brief thank you and scurried away in hopes that I could have more alone time before Sam managed to find his way to our cabin.

  The word “cabin” was a gross overstatement when I arrived. It was more like a rotting, mildew-smelling cubby hole that was hardly wide enough for the two, slim cots it possessed, which scraped slightly back and forth along the floor with the movement of the ship. I swallowed my disgust and fear of finding a rat later, and plopped onto the nearest cot after lighting the stubby, moldy candle beside the door.

  The only other light filtered through a porthole maybe the size of my fists from the setting sun outside. While part of me wanted to go up to the deck and view the sunset along the open ocean, the other part nimbly ripped Frederick’s letter open, bypassed the first two pages of actual communication, and buried my nose in his list of definitions.

  Time faded away. It had no meaning for me as I struggled to sound out the words of the history book and matched them Frederick’s definitions. To my frustration, the next chapter was only halfway useful. The narrative remained aloof and detached, again not detailing how a boy named Rhydin Caldwell was given enough magic to become Archimage or anything about his time in the position.

  I was ready to throw the book into the ocean as a total waste of time when I reached the last paragraph of the section:

  “Toward the conclusion of Caldwell’s brief tenure as Archimage, it became transparent that too much responsibility had been laid on the shoulders on too young of a boy. Seemingly overnight, his most intimate colleagues detected a radical shift in Caldwell’s nature. His goals, ambitions, and personality soon no longer aligned with the description of the Archimage duties. Therefore, the council diagnosed their miscalculations in granting magical powers to a commoner, and Caldwell was unanimously eradicated from office. In his stead, Princess Minndosia of Mineraltir, an endowed pyromage, was elected Archimage and divested of her Mineraltin liaisons. This culminated in an era of peace and prosperity where Archimages were then on elected from second-born Royals to advise the Three Kings.”

  I held the book numbly. This wasn’t true. Rhydin used his position as Archimage to boost himself into the role of emperor and reigned for at least a few years before my ancestor, Nora Soreta, created the Allyen magic and kicked him out of power. I had been told before how all the history books were burned and how even the dating of our years was reorganized in order to cover up the fact that Rhydin ever existed, but I had never seen it so plainly in front of my own face before.

  This book acknowledged Rhydin’s existence at least, but it still put forth a false history to make the world forget their mistake in placing Rhydin on a throne. Or at least the Gornish, since the Ranguvariians and the Rounans each passed the story down. It made me sick. If the people at the time had owned their mistakes, none of what was happening now would be possible. I glanced at the tiny porthole, which had long grown dark now that the sun was gone, and found myself wondering if I could fit the book of lies through it.

  Suddenly, the door to our little compartment creaked open, and I wasn’t quick enough to hide the book and letter under the threadbare, moth-eaten blanket on my cot. Sam sidled through the door sideways, a slumbering child in each arm, and his eyes grazed across the book in my lap as he used the toe of his boot to shove the door closed behind him. I leaned forward so perhaps my arms would somewhat hide my studies, but I couldn’t look him in the eye which caused feelings of guilt to bubble up in my throat.

  Sam gently eased Kylar and Rayna onto the measly cot next to me, the cabin barely big enough for him to even turn around between the two cots, and then he sat a few inches away from me, his fingers threaded together. I didn’t have time to wonder how long we would sit in silence before he lightly cleared his throat, glancing at me every couple of seconds. “I’ve been talking to a bunch of the other passengers. Turns out a lot of them are Rounans.”

  My curiosity betrayed me. I looked over at him slowly, his mud-colored eyes clearer than they’d been in weeks. I asked quietly, “Really?”

  Sam nodded slowly. “They’re escaping from Rhydin. They know he’s not who he says he is, but they couldn’t come forward in their hometowns without being hanged for being Rounans. So, they’re going to Caark in hopes that Rhydin will turn a blind eye to the island since it’s tiny with no kingdom or magic.”

  “Just like we are,” I mumbled, my shoulders dipping as I turned to stare at Kylar and Rayna’s dreaming faces.

  “Yeah,” Sam admitted softly. A few seconds of silence enveloped us before he spoke again. “Maybe we’re not completely abandoning our people by leaving.”

  I nodded slowly, hoping this wasn’t his version of an apology. I bit my lip, and my fingers had minds of their own as they rubbed the worn corners of the history book that lay half-hidden in my lap.

  Sam judged the ancient cover. “That’s the book you were trying to tell me about. Isn’t it?” He reached for it, like I might give it to him to inspect and make up for lost time, but my fingers tightened like cement. He withdrew his hand sluggishly and whispered, “Would you like to tell me about it now?”

  “
Apparently, I’m not a good enough reader to understand it,” I answered spitefully.

  “Lina, I… I didn’t mean that. I’m proud of you for trying to be a better reader. If I hadn’t been raised as the next Kidek, I’m sure my reading and writing skills would be far worse than yours, although they still don’t compare to a Royal’s.” Sam eyed the letter from Frederick that still lay next to me on the cot.

  “Then why did you say it?” I asked, finally meeting his gaze again.

  Sam’s eyes turned a bit glassy, and he cleared his throat before staring at his folded hands again. “To push you away. To somehow make you think that it would be alright to go to Caark without me if you thought I didn’t want to be around you.”

  “Even if you’d told me you hated me, I wouldn’t have gone to Caark without you.” I shook my head, pondering how he could have ever thought such a thing.

  “Why?” Sam turned his body more toward me, swinging a long leg up onto the cot as he did, and I recognized my own pain and neediness in his expression. He needed reassurance just as much as I did.

  “Because even if you stopped loving me, I could never stop loving you.” I reached for one of his hands and gripped it tight. “You’re my husband, my childhood friend, the father of my children, my partner both in the crop field and the battlefield. That doesn’t just go away.”

  Sam hooked his arm around my neck and pulled me across the inches that separated us, planting a kiss on my temple. “I’ll never stop loving you either.”

  I smiled and relaxed into him, finally feeling at ease.

  “Now,” Sam said as he pulled back and grinned at me, “tell me about your book.”

  Excitement brewing, I uncovered the book and began flipping pages. Sam’s eyes widened at the sight of the tattered exterior in comparison to the pristine pages on the inside. I was just about to the first chapter that detailed Rhydin when abruptly the whole ship lurched forward, throwing us both on the floor before it catapulted backward and stayed there.

  In the seconds that followed, I threw a hand in either kid’s direction, keeping them from tumbling off their cot, and then rubbed my aching head where it had bashed into the leg of the cot. Both children began to bawl as Sam helped me off the ground. I was trying to get the words out to ask what had happened when I realized that the endless rocking of the ship had stopped completely.

  “The ship isn’t moving,” Sam breathed, his hand still firm on my arm like we could be tossed again any second. “Let’s go up-…”

  The presence I feared the most suddenly busted through the pain in my head, and ice slid down my spine.

  The ship had not stopped. Rhydin stopped the ship.

  Chapter Eight

  W ith our crying children in our arms, Sam and I threw the door of our compartment open to find a current of water trickling down the hallway and passengers running against the flow. Strange lights flickered into the narrow hall from the other ajar doors, and as the pungent odor of smoke stung my nose, I realized that some of the candles must have fallen and caught something on fire. Which was worse, death by fire or water?

  “We’ve run aground!” one passenger yelled as he splashed toward the exit and pushed others out of the way.

  “Or hit an underwater shoal or shipwreck!” a woman squealed as she followed after him, clutching her tattered skirts.

  A third person came rushing up the hallway before we could manage to get out of our doorway, a thin man without any shoes, but to my surprise, he stopped abruptly upon the sight of Sam. The other passengers we had seen had a sort of panicked fear in their eyes, but this third man… It was absolute, wild terror in his as he stared at Sam.

  Sam’s eyes darted to a ragged bandage on the man’s wrist, and mine followed suit to see what could only be the mark of a Rounan peeking through. He knew this was no natural occurrence, that Rhydin was making it look like the ship was crashing rather than stopping it like the dictator he was, and it made my heart race faster.

  Sam immediately barked orders, “Get up to the main deck and hide your mark. Stay as far away from you-know-who as you can. We need to get off this ship.”

  The Rounan man snapped his head up and down, and took off toward the exit, but while I turned to follow, Sam darted in the direction of the flooding water. I called after him, bracing myself against the subtle tilt the ship was beginning to acquire, “Sam! Sam, what are you doing?”

  Sam poked his head into each of the doorways, his trousers now wet up to his knees as he sloshed around, and then kicked one of the last doors open. I heard the screech of one of the cots against the floor as the door opened, and a young, Auklian woman suddenly dove out of her room with a silk scarf plastered to her nose and mouth. She coughed and sputtered as Sam pushed her in my direction, and that was all she needed to get herself past me and up the ladder down the hall.

  “Sam, come on!” I coughed as smoke began to really fill the hall and the water reached my shins.

  “One more!” he called back as he looked in the last room on our level. Then, he hustled back up the hallway the best he could, slowed by the higher water at the bottom and the worsening tilt of the ship.

  At the sight of him heading back toward me, I turned and worked my way toward the ladder leading through the upper levels to the main deck. My worn, leather boots slid on the wet wood underneath, the gurgling water threatening to pull each of my steps back out from under me. As I hurried, I shouted back over my shoulder, “Where are Evan and Cayce?”

  “They were up on the deck when I came down to find you,” Sam responded as he finally caught up with me. He put a hand in the center of my back to brace against the strengthening water flow and urged me forward faster. All the while, the cold blackness of Rhydin’s presence was building in the back of my mind.

  After what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only a few minutes, we reached the ladder and hoisted ourselves up, each of us balancing a child in one arm. We met with quite a bit of traffic on the upper levels before we were able to slowly reach the top deck.

  Just as the cold, ocean breeze caught my hair, I came nose to nose with Rachel, the dark sky clouding over beyond her. She hauled me up and out of the ladder hole like as if I weighed nothing more than a sack of potatoes, and then she scowled in my face, “Where have you been? I was about to start shoving people back down so I could come find you!”

  “Sorry, we-…!” I tried to say before Rachel locked her hand around my wrist and dragged me toward the wall of the captain’s quarters.

  “Quiet!” she hissed even as the rest of the passengers scurried and screamed around us. “He’s here.”

  Initially, I folded myself closer into the damp, moldy wall. Then, I peered around the ship, taking in all the terrified passengers in various stages of undress from the lateness of the hour as well as the frazzled crewmembers attempting to give directions. They were scrambling for the two very meager lifeboats that looked more like they were constructed of matchsticks. The tilt of the ship now was undeniable; this thing was going down, so I certainly didn’t blame them. I couldn’t deny the innate urge to board one myself considering I couldn’t swim well and I had my children to think of. But what I did not see was Rhydin or any of his Followers, even though my senses were screaming the opposite.

  “Where?” I breathed, scared of being overheard even in the ruckus.

  Rachel subtly pointed a finger to the sky. “From Jaspen and Bartholomiiu’s reconnaissance, it appears to be Rhydin with only an Einanhi or two. They’re just watching from beyond the cloud cover. We think they’re waiting for the ship to sink before doing anything else.”

  “Why?” I whispered, “Do they know we’re here?”

  “They shouldn’t, since you all are wearing our feathers and we can’t be sensed. But anything is possible, and we’re not taking any chances,” Rachel stated solemnly as Luke subtly rounded the bend behind her. His face was paler than usual, and his eyes had shifted to a molten copper color. I could only guess from the s
et of his brow that he was tense for more reasons than one.

  “So, what’s the plan?” I asked, knowing that there seemed to always be one. “Board a lifeboat? Where’re Evan and Cayce?”

  Rachel shook her head, and Luke’s entire body suddenly shuddered as if something had chilled him. “The lifeboats will be packed full of all the passengers and crew, exactly where Rhydin’s Einanhis will start searching for any of his enemies. With where we are in the ocean, I’m sure they’ll head back to Lunaka too which is the last place we want to go. We’re going to wait until the ship is nearly submerged, when the life boats are as far from us as possible, and then fly the rest of the way to Caark.”

  Luke gulped, hard. I could only stare at him in bewilderment. Of all the Ranguvariians, he had always seemed the most unshakable. Sam became jittery behind me.

  “Evan and Cayce are just on the other side of this building with Jaspen and James,” Rachel continued. “We had them at the bow of the ship, but…”

  My head swiveled to my left, and I couldn’t stop my heart from sinking to my stomach. The bow of the ship was underwater, and the eerily calm waves continued to lap at the main deck, as if slowly ingesting it. That’s when I heard it. The creaking moan of the ship as the bow sunk lower and lower, which in turn caused the slant of the main deck to worsen. The cry echoed onto the empty ocean.

  I stammered, “So, we’re just going to stand here and do absolutely nothing until the ship is pretty much sunk?”

  “To keep Rhydin from discovering that we’re here? Yes,” Rachel said firmly, her blue eyes like ice.

  “But-…!” I tried to cry.

  “Not gonna happen,” Sam interrupted, thrusting Kylar into my other arm and beginning to pace away before any of us could stop him. “If Rhydin’s going to check the lifeboats, all of the Rounans on this ship are going to be killed. We’re going to make a stand right now because Rhydin can’t reveal himself without losing the support of the people.”