An Assassin
1073 Words
Zhira fled back towards the trees and past her sanctuary. Her foot caught under a thick pile of leaves and she stumbled, hearing the blaze roar across the ground behind her as she scrambled upright and thudded up the hill. Chest tight with icy morning air, she coughed, pushing branches out of her way as she climbed back towards the road. She strained to hear swearing, shouting or footsteps behind her, but there was nothing except her own frantic gasps. Her face felt detached, suspended in the fog of her own frigid breath. He'll go straight for the road, she thought. She slipped to a halt and circled slowly where she stood. She wouldn’t head back the way she'd come, that'd be hopeless, and not to the road either. The river, she thought. He was less likely to follow her there. She could hear it pitching against its bed, and turned towards it.
Zhira smoothed a hand over her hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ears, straightened her belt, hitched up her greyskirts and hastened towards the rushing water. The forest seemed to stretch on forever as she ran, and Zhira started to worry that she'd mistaken the direction. The sun was too low to do anything except lighten the sky, but with every stride the water's call seemed to grow louder as she ran through a tunnel of red and amber foliage. Her renewed fear erased the pain of her blistered feet and chilled body. She gripped the coarse wool cloth, determined, and ducked under a branch. Her frozen toes struck a rock and she tumbled head over feet across a boulder. She scrambled back to her feet and pushed on, dazed, sparks skipping across her vision.
Light beckoned beyond the trees. Cringing, she tottered on battered feet past the forest edge to the river's bank. Thinning grass gave away to frostbitten rocks and then the water’s edge. A large willow, its leaves turning russet gold in the autumn air, gripped the edge of the bank like a man bowing down to the water. Its enormous roots burst from the ground and curled back in again like ribbons among the grey stones. All the rain she'd watched from her tower made the water flow deep and fast, rushing past in a tumbling thunder. She felt cold just standing by it and wrapped her arms fast around her body, as though she could preserve any heat. Well, she thought, matter-of-fact, I've made it to the river. She looked back the way she'd come crashing through the trees, but there was no sign or sound of the man in black. Yet she couldn't escape the feeling that she'd be seeing him again.
Now she’d stopped fleeing, Zhira forced herself to keep walking. I'll keep the water to my left, she decided firmly. That way I know I'm headed north. She'd not gone three steps before black fire lanced across her path. It blistered the stone she'd been about to step on. She screamed before she could stop herself, and froze mid-step. Flames sprang from her ankles to her knees, circling her quickly. She was trapped between them and the watercourse.
Zhira spun, forcing herself to keep breathing. She scanned the dense forest for the source of the power. She remembered her own magic and was relieved when she found it: a tingling pulse, humming in her fingertips. Something that was always there, just below the surface of her skin. She searched the dense, dark trees for the source of black magic. Breathe, she reminded herself. A chill wind dragged at her cloak and frost glittered beneath her feet. The cardinal trees gave nothing away. Her imagination stirred instead: she could picture the man in black, Rhyode, stepping out from behind one of the thick trunks and pushing a stem of leaves out of his path.
So Zhira was surprised when instead a woman swung down from a branch and landed with a whisper in the grass. Zhira watched with what she knew was doomed fascination as the woman straightened and the flames lashing the ground stretched upwards. She was surrounded and the heat from the obsidian fire blazed across her face. She was starting to loathe the continuing flood of panic. Maybe it didn't just appear and fade again, she thought dimly. Maybe panic and fear were like the tide. They washed over her in waves, never-ending, just sometimes bigger because the layers overlapped. She dropped the skirts she was still clutching and folded her arms over her chest as the flames shot higher. Ignore them, she told herself, and hoped she would at least live to regret the decision.
The woman who silently approached was of an equal height with Zhira, slender and yet more defined. Between the flickering ebon rises she could see the woman studying her, as Zhira studied her in kind. Her expression held nothing but contempt and distaste. She had deep brown eyes and a thin upper lip, curled back in disgust.
‘Who are you?’ Zhira demanded. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful, or so cold.
The woman wore soft brown clothes that Zhira recognised, with astonishment, as armour. Smaller and smaller plates became visible as the woman grew closer. They overlapped one another, perfectly synchronised and fitted to the shape of the stranger as she advanced, face set with determination. Zhira tried to take a step back, but faltered. The sudden drop down to the icy river was just a beneath her heel. Fire in front and ice behind. She was trapped again.
‘Who are you?’ she repeated. Maybe she should not have run away from Rhyode’s protection, she thought with regret. Fire twisted around her fingers, red and umber. The proper colour of fire, she reminded herself with an uneasy glance at the black barricade surrounding her. The stranger stopped on the other side of the flames. Her skin was a soft fawn and her hair was black, braided tightly back from her face, where a hood was pulled up to conceal the rest of it. She drew a sword. It flashed in the rising sunlight. An extension of her arm, like a branch on a tree. Reluctantly, Zhira looked up. The stranger’s expression was now tinged with a confusion that faded fast into malice.
‘I’m not going to ask you again!’ The words burst from Zhira in a fit of false bravery.
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