Chapter 11
2081 Words
11
The man kept his grip around my waist as we ran away from Lily’s house. He darted between buildings and sprinted for long stretches. I made it up and over the fences on my own. I don’t know how. I couldn’t feel anything. Not the pain in my limbs. Not the terrible, silent scream that echoed in my chest.
I had gone numb. Completely and totally numb.
The man spoke words. Instructions for when to run, and when to lie down in the grass and hide.
I must’ve done as he said. We made it to the cover of the trees alive.
The stench of the smoke had broken through the scent of the forest. Or maybe it only clung to me.
“We need to keep moving.” He grabbed my arm again, steering me farther into the woods.
“Moving?” The word felt heavy in my mouth.
“I can’t be sure the soldiers didn’t see us coming this way,” he said. “The farther we get from Harane, the better off we’ll be.”
“But I can’t just leave.” I shook free of his grip. “I’ll hide here until they all move on.”
“And then what?” He had a cut on his forehead. I didn’t know how he had gotten it. “You can’t go back there. I killed that soldier―the soldier who left his friends to follow you. They’ll blame his murder on you. Harane isn’t safe for you, not now, not ever again. We have to keep moving.”
“But I can’t just leave. The soldiers might not”―a sharp pain pummeled my chest―“the soldiers can’t have killed everyone.”
“Probably not.” He grabbed my arm, dragging me into the forest.
“What does that mean?”
“If people cooperated and didn’t fight back, they might still be alive.” He stopped at a thick patch of brambles.
“Karin might need help,” I said. “Cal is still back there.”
He dug a heavy pack out of the brambles, swinging it onto his back before turning to me. “Cal is the boy from the woods?”
I nodded.
He looked up into the trees. “Will he follow you?”
“What?”
“If we wait until dark, I can try to go back for him. If I tell him you’re waiting in the woods, will he come?”
“I…” I wasn’t sure if Cal would come. If he would hear I had lost the little shred of a life I had been clinging to for so long and come running to my side, ready to abandon everything he had ever known. “I don’t want him to. He has a family and a home in the village.”
A wrinkle formed between the man’s dark eyebrows. “Then there’s nothing for us to do but leave. You can’t go back to Harane. I’m sorry.”
“But where am I supposed to go?” I said. “I could go to Nantic or Hareford, but I don’t have any coin. I can work―”
“You can’t go anywhere along the mountain road.” He reached toward me. “It’ll be the same soldiers patrolling.”
The trees twisted and swayed around me.
He took my hand, and somehow I managed to make my feet move.
To get farther away than Nantic or Hareford would take days. To get anywhere off the mountain road I would need a map, and food, and money.
“Where am I supposed to go?” A hollow, childish fear settled in my chest.
“I’ll take you to your brother.”
“South?”
“No.” He paused for a moment, staring up at the steep mountain ahead of us. “I’ll take you where he’s supposed to meet me. You’ll be safe there until you can figure out where you want to go.”
The light faded from the sky, but he kept moving farther up the mountain. My legs screamed their protest at being asked to climb even more. Part of me wanted to lie down and wait for the forest to eat me whole. More of me wanted to run as far away as the land reached, beyond even the power of the Guilds.
“Why?” I asked when I couldn’t bear to swallow the question any longer.
It took a moment for the man to speak. “Why what?”
“Why Harane? Why did the soldiers decide to come after our village? Weren’t they satisfied with the damage they’d already done?”
“I don’t know if a Guilded soldier is capable of feeling satisfied until a town and all its people are nothing more than ash.” He stopped next to a wide boulder. Moss covered the stone, hiding most of its rough texture. He trailed his fingers along the bare patches of rock. “The whisper I heard on the wind said some fool traded a horse for marriage papers. No reason but hiding a baby to be that desperate for a scribe’s help. Even the paun scum from Ilara were smart enough to know that. Made them wonder who else might be breaking the laws in Harane.”
“Henry.” I dug my fingers into my hair. The grit of dirt and soot covered my scalp. “All of this happened because of Henry.”
“That’s not true.” He patted the boulder and started climbing again. “He might have been wrong not to take better care of the girl carrying his child, he might have been a slitching fool for trading his horse and thinking the scribe wouldn’t know why, but the death, the blood―that’s on the Guilds. They’re the ones who are determined to destroy us. Everything else is just reasons the Guilds tell themselves they have a right to s*******r the tilk.”
Tilk.
I hadn’t even thought the word in forever. The Guilded never used the kind term for common folk. They called us rotta instead. I’d started thinking it, too. Like I believed we were disposable rodents who deserved to be exterminated for contaminating the Guilds’ perfect kingdom.
“Do you think they’ll leave any of the village standing?” I asked.
“Maybe. It would be a long ride from Nantic to Hareford otherwise.”
I had more questions, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask them. My soul had grown too heavy to bear another word of pain.
The twilight chill tickled the back of my neck. The sounds of the forest waking up for the night carried through the shadows.
I wanted to say we needed to stop, climb high in a tree and hope we made it until morning. But he kept walking, and I didn’t know if letting the animals kill me would be the kinder fate.
He took my hand as he cut sideways along the edge of a rise, as though he were afraid I would tumble off the slope or run back to the village if given the chance.
I ducked my head as bats chittered above us. A gaping darkness grew from the mountainside, blocking our path.
I took a quick step to walk nearer to him. My free hand fumbled, digging into my bag for my knife.
“It’s all right.” He let go of my hand and stepped into the darkness in the mountain.
I held my breath, waiting for the sounds of some animal tearing him apart.
A tiny spark broke through the black. Then a deep blue light glowed in the cave.
He stood in the middle of the hollow, holding a blue light in his hand, searching each of the stone corners.
“Nothing’s been sleeping here for a while.” He waved me toward him. “We’ll be safe here for the night.”
Giving one last glance to the woods behind me, I stepped into the shelter of the cave.
It wasn’t large―it only cut about ten feet back―and wasn’t wide enough for me to spread my arms out. There were no loose stones on the ground, though aging sticks had been piled in the back where something had once made its bed.
He set the blue light down in the center of the cave before shrugging out of his pack. “You should eat something before you sleep.”
“I’m not hungry.” I knelt next to the blue light.
It wasn’t a lantern with colored glass as I’d thought, but a stone formed of bright blue crystals that seemed to have trapped the spark of a fire deep within itself.
“What is this?” I reached out to poke the stone, expecting him to tell me to stop. But he only watched as my finger grazed the cool surface of the rock.
“A lae stone.” He pulled a set of six black rocks from his bag.
“Won’t the soldiers be able to see all that light?” I trailed my fingers over the sharp ridges of the lae stone.
“These don’t light up.” He laid the six stones out along the mouth of the cave.
“Then what are they for?”
“Protecting us.” He eyed the line of stones before turning back to his pack.
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t speak until he’d unfastened the bedroll from his bag, pulled out a packet of dried meat, and forced a piece into my hand.
“Do you know the ghost stories that keep people out of the mountains?” He leaned against the wall of the cave.
“Sure.” I shivered. The cold of the night seeped into my bones now that the heat of the climb had left me. “Everyone knows the stories, even the paun.”
“Well, the ghosts that haunt these mountains aren’t dead,” he said. “I should know. I’m one of them.”
I sat against the cave wall opposite him, pressing my back to the cold, damp rock.
“There’s magic in these mountains, Ena.” He pointed to the stones. “These hold a tiny piece of it.”
“You’re mad.”
“No. I’m a Black Blood.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. Black Bloods are a legend. Magic doesn’t exist outside the Guilds’ control. The sorcerers in Ilara hoard all the magic in Ilbrea.”
“Your brother said almost exactly the same thing.” A hint of a smile caught in the corners of his eyes.
“My brother does not have a speck of magic in him.”
“He doesn’t. But he saved my life, and he’s joined my family. Which makes you my family as well.”
“I don’t understand.” I looked toward the night beyond the opening of the cave. I had trapped myself in the forest with a madman.
I have nowhere else to go.
“You don’t have to understand,” he said. “I owe your brother a debt. I heard the Guilds had decided to raid Harane and there was no way Emmet could have gotten to you in time. So I came for you myself.”
“You came to the village for me?” The weight of his words sank into my stomach, pulling my gaze back from the open air.
“I promised your brother you would be protected.” A hint of worry flitted through his dark eyes. A wrinkle that had no place on the face of one so young creased his brow. “I’m sorry I made it so you can’t go back. It wasn’t my intention.”
“You saved me. I can’t be anything but grateful for that.” I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to stop my shivering.
“Here.” He untied the bedroll, laying the thin pad and heavy wool blanket out on the ground. “You should get some sleep.”
“You’ve just said there’s magic outside the Guilds’ control and you want me to sleep? With a fancy, glowing, blue stone and six rocks as protection?”
“We’ve got a long journey ahead of us. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out if you think the Black Bloods are real.”
I didn’t move. “Where are we going to meet my brother?”
“Farther into the mountains. No point in telling you where, you’d never be able to find it.”
“Right.” I crawled over to the bedroll. The cold ached in my hands. “Can we start a fire?”
“Not safe.” He leaned his head back against the stone wall. “Not with the chance of soldiers trying to find us.”
“Are you keeping watch?” I untied my dirt-caked boots.
“No need. The stones will protect us.”
“Do you have another set of blankets?” I crawled under the heavy wool, grateful for the weight of it even though the air had left the material chilled.
“I was supposed to be traveling alone.”
“You should share with me.” I pulled the blanket up to my chin.
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you die of cold, I won’t be able to find my brother.”
He gave a smile that only moved one corner of his mouth. “I’m not sure which Emmet will do first,” he said as he untied his boots, “thank me for saving you, or murder me for dragging you through the mountains.”
“I’ve no idea. I don’t really know him.”
I turned away as he crawled under the blanket. Even through my coat, I could feel the heat of him. It made the cave seem less like a tomb.
The blue light blinked out, leaving us in darkness.
I took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know your name.”
“Liam.” His breath whispered on the back of my neck.
“I have nightmares, Liam. I’m sorry if they wake you.”
- Writer
