Prophecy's Promise (Prophecy of the Edges Book 1) (10 page)

Early the next morning, Altis and I set off for The Edge. Euan had the day off, so he acted as our guide. I'm not sure what I expected The Edge to look like. When it had been hidden by the wall, I could only see patches through the trees, but now that it had eaten past the wall, it was completely exposed. Up to The Edge, each blade of the dew-covered grass danced to the same pattern, shaking itself beneath the golden rays of the early morning sun. I parted my feet as far as I could without losing balance and stared at the grass under me and then turned to stare at the grass behind me. The unending pattern reminded me so much of the ebbs and flows of Mist. I didn't want to turn back and look at the phenomenon that had stolen my happily boring life and had thrust me into this new life. The grass waved with its brothers and then was—nothing. There were flashes that I could remember of my old life and this field was in many of them. I hadn't grown up more than a half mile from where I stood now, but this familiar field was marred with, not blackness, not emptiness. Nothing.

“This field used to stretch toward a huge wall,” Euan explained. “Easily a hundred feet in the air. Ancient. Made with techniques that our people had forgotten. About five months ago, the wall was eaten by... whatever this is.” He waved his hand along the expanse.

It wasn't fair that the setting of some of the few childhood memories I had was being eaten away. We stood upon a hill. For reasons beyond my memory, I had felt called to this spot. Maybe I’d played here as a child? It certainly held some significance. But, regardless, it too would soon be eaten by The Edge. I felt a real connection here. Like I was woven to this spot. Like the Guardians themselves sent that Mist Apparition so I could be here on this day on this hill.

I looked to my left, into the nothingness where I used to run as a girl back when the grass continued. I remembered trees east of this clearing that butted up to the ancient wall that hid The Edge, the one Euan had mentioned. Euan, the girl with blonde hair, and I would pick dozen of apples—as many as we could hold. Today, there was no wall and there were no trees. It had all crumbled into the nothingness. Now only the empty prairie remained.

“Knowing and seeing are two different things,” Altis said. “I just didn't expect this.”

“I remember the wall.” My words sounded distant and aged to my ears. “There was more here.” The men assumed that I meant more earth, more planet, more grass. But there was something bigger than that. Bigger than any of us. Something infinitesimal and beyond my comprehension surrounded me, but I did not have the eyes to see it. I could only feel it, deep down where the power to weave came from. I couldn’t explain it, so I didn’t even bother to try.

“When it first ate through the wall, half the village moved further inland,” Euan told us. “And who can blame them.”

I reached out to feel the Mist. It felt like the grass looked. It undulated right up to the edge where it... stopped. Became nothing.

I watched Altis stare at the nothingness. Watched his eyes flick back and forth. “It's like the Earth is ripped.” He walked along the edge a few paces. “I thought seeing it would help me know how to fix it,” Altis said to no one in particular.

“Are you okay?” Euan put his hand on my back. “You look really pale.”

I nodded. And then paused. “I don't know,” I said, barely above a whisper. I turned around and threw up on the ground. Euan put his arm around me.

I sat on the ground a put my head between my legs. I waved to Euan to go back and examine the wall, but he took my hand instead. My hand felt so little in his. Something shivered in my stomach, and I looked into his brown eyes and immediately glanced away, feeling warmth spread across my cheeks.

Altis coughed. “If you are feeling better, would you mind looking at something for me?”

Euan helped me to my feet, and I walked over to Altis.

“I'm trying to decide if it is a clean break or if it's breaking down unevenly. Can you reach out to the Mist on The Edge? I can only go about a pace away from it before I feel The Edge repel me. How far can you get?”

I called to the Mist with my mind, tracing down a thread that ran directly to the nothingness. As I approached The Edge, the thread began to vibrate, but not from me pulling on it. I sat down on the ground and folded my legs beneath me. Being near the elements helped me touch the Mist more easily.

The vibration was uneven. It held no pattern. The pattern of the Mist was broken here, not cut. I traced along the path further, slowly as not to be thrown from the tenuous thread. Fear crept into me. The thread began to feel like melted slime. It stuck to my Mist as I touched it. Still I continued down the path, I was inches from The Edge. The Mist behind me tugged at me, trying to pull me back. Then The Edge reached to me. Red eyes, pupils slit like the blade of a knife, stared at me. No mouth, no ears, and no forehead. Just eyes. I screamed and pushed back with all the power in me.

I was drowning. Drowning in red. The eyes darkened in recognition, in knowing. Anger burned through my veins, becoming part of me. The eyes beckoned me like an old friend. Screams of terror filled my ears.

I jerked awake—limbs flailing unconsciously. I sucked in hot, sticky air. The memory of touching the corrupted Mist came to me in a flood. Hatred. Repulsion. Brokenness. My head felt like a vice had been clamped against my temples. Every inch of my body screamed in agony. I tried to sit up, but blankets covered me like a shroud. I thrashed and twisted, but only succeeded in entangling the sheets around me.

Altis leapt to my side. The movement awoke Euan who had been resting in a chair beside my bed. Altis smoothed the covers around me and put his hand on my forehead. It felt so cool against the fire I felt inside me. “I'm so sorry I asked you to reach out. If I couldn't reach it, how could I ask my Journeyman to?” His normally condescending eyes were wide with concern.

“You shouldn't have,” Euan said, glaring at Altis. Then he came around to the other side of my bed and crouched next to me. “But I'm here. It's okay. Don't ever scare me like that again.”

I felt cloistered. Overheated. Sick. They both looked at me like I was a little bird with a hurt wing. I wanted everything to go away.

I screamed and pushed every strand of Mist in the vicinity at them.

#  #  #

I jerked awake again with a deep gasp. Euan and Altis both stood at the foot of my bed talking in sharp, hushed tones. Neither man looked as if he had slept. Altis's normally fastidious wardrobe was wrinkled and his face was unshaven. Euan simply looked beat up. His arm was in a cast, he had a black eye, and his trousers were ripped. I remembered pushing Euan and Altis, but I couldn't remember why. Altis must have been able to protect himself against my blast, but was not able to buffer Euan.

Or hadn’t tried.

“Oooh!” My eyes began to fill up with tears. I didn't mean to hurt him. Or did I? I couldn't remember properly. “I'm so sorry I hurt you.”

“I'm okay.” Euan moved as if he planned to put his hand on my forehead, but then pulled back. “You were still pushing against The Edge, weren't you? Didn't know you were safe.” He turned to Altis. “Because she shouldn't have been doing it.”

“I don’t have to answer to you, blacksmith. She is a Journeyman Warrior. She’s more than capable of—”

“Capable of what? She’s injured.”

Altis’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t take that tone with me, peasant. Need I remind you who I am?”

I felt it again. Hate. Misery. Loathing toward everything in creation. The part of me deep inside with which I wove Mist ached like a bruise, but at the same time, felt oddly good. Something about this pain fueled me, making me feel more connected to the Mist than ever before, but feeling so exhausted and depleted, I ought to barely be able to touch the Mist.

I remembered The Edge. I had touched—or come close to touching—it. There were red eyes glaring at me. What was that? Was something there? Did The Edge have eyes? That didn’t make sense. I bet that damn book held the answers if I could only read it.

I struggled to sit up. Both men lunged to help, but I put my hand up. “Give me some breathing room, okay?” The covers were still tangled around me, but this time I managed to not panic. I smoothed them out, pulling the blankets up to my chin and sliding my legs out in a V and back together again like I had as a child. I folded the sheets down to my waist and looked around for the first time. I realized we must be upstairs at the inn Euan’s mother ran.

I turned to Altis. “How close were you able to get, again?”

“As I said, a few paces away from the source. It’s okay if you couldn't get as close,” he said quickly. “It took most of my strength to get that close, and I've trained for this much longer than you have.”

The hate from The Edge bubbled up my throat like bile. I did come much closer than he had. I'd touched the source and stared into its red eyes. How dare he think that I couldn’t! I closed my eyes for a moment to let the anger pass. I was moody from everything that had happened. What I had done, what I had felt, kept cycling in my mind's eye. I needed out of this damn room. The only thing I knew was that, even if I used to view The Edge as the place of the sunrise, something ancient and evil lurked in the nothingness, and whatever it was, it had touched my ability to weave the Mist. I didn’t want to think about it or talk about it.

“Yeah, I couldn't get very close,” I lied. I sat up all the way. “How long have I been out?”

“Dinner's in about fifteen minutes,” Euan said. “We were at The Edge yesterday morning.”

“I think I'm hungry,” I said and tossed the covers aside. “No, I need to get up,” I said to both men who looked as if they were about to protest.

“Well, at least let me help you down the stairs,” Altis said. Euan opened his mouth to say something but then looked sadly at his cast.

Altis gingerly scooped me into his arms. I pressed myself into the warmth of his body and wrapped my arms around his neck. I looked up into his eyes, and we shared a smile. Embarrassed, I broke eye contact and saw Euan over Altis’s shoulder. Euan grinned at me. I felt something akin to little butterflies flutter in my stomach.

As Altis carried me down the stairs, Euan scooted around us and rushed to pull a high-backed cushioned chair in front of the fireplace. Altis placed me gently upon it and I settled in, resting my head on the pillow-like back of the chair. The autumnal smells of roasting pheasant and sautéed squash floated through the room. Euan draped a blanket around me, trapping the fire’s heat against my skin. For a moment, I wondered if my life could have turned out such that I would have been here, at this inn, with Euan beside me. If I’d never needed rescuing and Nazarie had never come to get me, I could have very well been in this exact spot.

“Fainted, I hear,” a familiar voice said with disgust. “You always were a weak child.” I could feel the color drain from my face as I realized that the speaker was my father. I hadn’t remembered what he looked like, but when I saw him standing there at the inn’s front door, memories flooded back. His brownish-black eyes were identical to my own, and they echoed the hate I’d seen in the eyes at The Edge. A thousand questions flooded into my head, but I couldn’t find the strength to form words.

“And then you left me to deal with the farm on my own,” he continued. “You didn't stay to help. You became a Weaver.” He spat the words. “Now how am I going to get a decent bride-price for you? No man wants some Mist Whore.

“No! No! Wait! Not right!” He flung his head wildly back and forth, his moppy gray curls thrashing like trees in a hurricane. “There's more! More!” His whole body convulsed, almost toppling over. Then suddenly he stood still. “Doesn't take back that she's a Mist Whore,” he spat.

“As you can see, he's gotten even crazier since you left,” Euan whispered to me.

“You can start something if you want, but I will finish it,” Altis said in a low voice as he stepped between my father and me. The air around him sparkled bright green as he pulled Mist to himself.

“Fine. Keep her,” my father said and turned to leave. Then he turned back around, hands clawed to strangle me. “That's not it! Not it!” His eyes looked horrifically lucid. “Changed! Worse than before! Changed and cheated. Prophecy. Nazarie. Pawn. Wrong.”

Euan stepped forward and with one swoop of his good arm knocked my father flat on his back. With a flick of Altis’s hand, my father flew out the door carried by the green of Altis’s woven Mist. Euan slammed the door shut. Both sat down with an air that they had taken out the trash.

I raised a shaky hand and brushed the hair out of my face. “Why don't you lock him up? He’s got no comprehension of reality.”

Euan frowned. “Usually he's not like that. Since you left, all he does is talk to himself, but he's harmless.”

“Apparently,” Altis said dryly.

A young woman entered the inn’s front door and ran up to Altis. “I saw what you did. Are you a Mist Weaver? My boy… He's sick.” The woman’s voice, horse from crying, cracked. “Can you come take a look at him, sir? Please?”

There was no denying that Altis was a Mist Weaver. He had made my father fly out the door. “Yes, but I'm not a Healer,” Altis began, but the woman looked like she was about to start a fresh batch of tears. “I can try,” he offered and then turned to me and Euan. “Excuse me.” He followed the woman out the door. His hand was on her shoulder, and he was speaking softly to her.

I looked over at Euan. He held his hand, the one he had decked my father with, against his chest. “Did you hurt it?” I asked. He’d thrown his punch poorly. He now had two damaged arms because of me. “I’m sure you’d have been fine if you hadn’t broken your dominant arm,” I told him as I took his hand into mine and stroked his palm with my fingers. Although I felt depleted, I had enough energy to Heal his hand.

“Is it hard?” Euan asked.

“What?”

“To Heal.”

“Not really. It takes a little bit of energy out. I’d Heal your other arm, but I’m so exhausted. I’m sorry. I’m not trained as a Healer, either, else I’d be better at it...” I rambled, looking down at his hand. Euan put his finger under my chin and lifted it up. He gently moved his mouth toward mine. I opened my eyes and looked into his, unsure of what to say. I noticed Altis out of the corner of my eye. I jerked back slightly from Euan as I held Altis’s gaze. Euan looked over his shoulder to see what I was looking at. Altis quickly left the room.

“I’ve got to go,” I said to Euan.

“What? Why?” Euan asked.

“I'll be back.”

“Are you going after him?” The disdain was palpable in his voice.

“What? No?” I realized that the 'no' came out as a question. “Look, I'm his Journeyman. Maybe he needed help with the sick child.” I glanced toward the door. “I... I'll be back.” I opened the door, but Altis had disappeared into the night. I walked down the street calling his name into the empty, dimly lit cobblestoned street.

“There it is!” a rough male voice hissed from around the corner. “I knew it would come out eventually.”

I turned around and saw a large sack coming toward me.