Prophecy's Promise (Prophecy of the Edges Book 1) (14 page)

Arwan rejoined us early that evening. She mostly kept to herself, padding far behind and then racing ahead. We continued to ride through the night, Altis and me taking turns weaving light over the path. Between the strain of weaving and being up all night, I wasn't sure how much longer I could last.

Finally, dawn began to break over the trees to our left.

“We should set up camp soon,” Altis said. “Travel at night, sleep during the day until we're sure we've lost them.”

I made an affirmative sound. Without too much trouble, we located a small cave, the entrance covered by the bony branches of a willow tree and evergreen bushes whose tiny needles scratched as I went into the cave. I pushed aside the bushes and gingerly stepped through the undergrowth so as not leave an obvious footprint path to our soon-to-be-slumbering bodies. I laid out our bedrolls right next to each other, the edges softly touching, but then I dragged mine to the other side of the cave, which wasn’t more than five feet away since the space was so small.

Only a few stubborn leaves remained on the near-bare tree limbs. The birds that had not yet migrated called to each other in the early morning crisp breeze. Altis came up behind me, a little too close. I stepped to the side. “Do you think they are really following us?” I asked.

Altis nodded. “I tried covering our trail as best I could, but it's not perfect. Best case, we have plenty of distance on them. Worst case, they pass by us while we are sleeping, and we take up their lead.”

“Shouldn’t one of us stand watch?” I asked.

Altis gestured at Arwan. “I'm sure she'll hear them.”

The sunrise was barely beginning. Just like at The Edge, I couldn’t see the orange yellow dot of the sun, only its rays, streaming through the trees. I made myself busy, collecting grass for the horses.

“I’m sorry for the timing, but I am glad it happened,” he said, and I turned to face him. “You are as skittish as a young colt.” He smiled, putting a finger under my chin and lifting it up to face him. His arrogance again. Thinking he could make me look at him. But I loved the touch of his finger. Regardless, I shook my head free. He frowned slightly, his eyes flashing a depth of concern that I had not seen before. “Are
you
glad, Hailey?”

I could only nod.

“Come on.” He held his hand out to me and I took it. “Everything will be all right.”

We stepped through the threshold of bushes into our secret cave. Kael’s men seemed days away from this place. Altis pulled his bedroll next to mine. “Your heart is safe with me,” he promised, kneeling before me. He smoothed my frizzy hair back from my face. “You are an amazing woman.”

“Am I? I am a Scholar playing at being a Warrior. I’ve managed to get myself captured. Kael is hunting us down. I’ve started a civil war. I’ve had Mist Apparitions about The Edge but have no information on how to fix it. I have…” I took a deep breath. Could I trust him with the knowledge about Shezdon’s book? Impulsively, I pushed forward.

“The night that Shezdon died, he gave me a book. He thought that I would be able to translate it, but I cannot.” At Altis’s confused look, I grabbed the book from my pack. “It’s not a blank diary. It is in an ancient text. The next day someone had torn apart my room.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried to tell you that Shezdon’s death was not an accident.”

“You should have told me about the book. About your room being torn apart.”

“Shezdon’s last request to me was to tell no Initiate about the book. Then I had another Mist Apparition instructing me the same,” I blurted out. “And your cousin thinks that either you or my aunt has a conspiracy against the Crown.”

“It’s not me!” Altis said defensively.

“It’s not Nazarie,” I retorted. “And for the record, I didn’t tell her about the book, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Altis said. “I am ruining the mood.”

“Mood?”

Altis smiled mischievously. “Yes, my beautiful, naive Warrior-Scholar. We are alone in the wilderness. Maybe a little exhausted, but an element of danger increases a Warrior’s senses, making everything sharper, more poignant.” He slid the shoulder of my shirt slightly down my arm and traced his finger from my ear, down my neck, to the collar of my shirt.

Tentatively, I unbuttoned the simple, course shirt he’d borrowed from Nathan’s dead brother. I slipped it down his shoulders. His silver locket, the one that matched my own, stood out a stark contrast to his bronzed skin. He lay back on his bedroll, pulling my hand, coaxing me to lie on top of him. He smelled like the forest, earthy and fresh. I pressed my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Our gazes locked. I could feel his breathing quicken. I smiled coyly down at him. He flipped me over, and my hair cascaded over the pillow.

Unlike the first time, there was no imperative to be quiet.

# # #

I awoke to Arwan's growl. I knew that Kael was close. I nudged Altis and put my finger to my lips. Suddenly, I wished that we weren't in a cave with a single entrance. I could see that Altis felt the same.

Someone walked around outside.

And then I heard a mountain lion's growl and a man screaming.

“She'd only have done that if they found us,” Altis whispered. “Grab your horse and whatever you can carry.”

“They are out front. Do you think we can fight through them?” I asked.

A man burst into the front of the cave. I screamed and threw a Lightning Ball at him. When he dodged, I threw on my boots and grabbed a bag that I knew had food in it. I shoved Shezdon’s book into it and then threw the bag over my shoulder.

“On your horse. Now!” Altis yelled.

“What about the pack mule?”

“No time. Against the wall!” He pointed to the west wall and then immediately blew open the east wall, sending the rocks toward the men. We ran.

I have never been so scared in all my life. I kept pushing my horse, not knowing how much it could take. How much sleep had we gotten? Three hours?

The others were better rested and more prepared. They were gaining.

Altis rode up a hill and I followed. At the top, he turned around, and I pulled back on my reins. My horse, startled, reared up, neighing.

“Get your horse under control,” Altis yelled. “It’s a scouting group. We’ve got to take them out or they will tell Kael where we are, and many more will come.”

“What? Kill them?” My voice squeaked. “I can’t do that. They all must have families waiting for them to return.”

“We can’t subdue them all. You can do this.”

When I had killed before, I had been full of hate. But whatever had infected me at The Edge had dissipated at least a little bit, and I did not want to be fully engulfed by the tainted strength of it again. I did not want to lose myself to it.

Altis drew his sword and shouted, using Mist to bellow forth his voice for anyone nearby to hear. “I am Lead Initiate and Prince of the Realm Altis Acrovena. Attack and you are a traitor and will be treated as such.”

I wished for a cozy library and a battalion of books. I was not this person, battling alongside my lover, a prince. I drew my daggers. And then I felt it. The red eyes hadn’t only infected my ability to weave but had become part of me. I controlled it as much as it controlled me. I stroked Altis’s locket once for luck and tucked it beneath my shirt.

“Gryshelm!” I yelled as I ran toward the men.

The tales of old speak of a Warrior’s vision flooding with red. To them, hours of battle condensed to mere seconds, but my experience was much different. Time slowed down as if the universe stalled and zoomed in on the artistry of the dance. Move after move flowed through my body, but instead of halting as I did while sparring, my twin blades continued on, free to slice through bone, sinew, and muscle. Ever since I had touched The Edge, my control over the Mist felt easier, cleaner, and more pure. The tips of my blades painted a masterpiece of red. I did not see the men with whom I battled; I only saw the patterns the Mist took as I Channeled it through my daggers.

That is, until the fight was over.

Slaughtered men littered the ground around me. Men with families. Men with people counting on them to come home. Eleven pawns and a very, very young commander. They held nothing against me or against Altis. They were merely following orders. Treasonous orders, but orders nonetheless.

Their blood covered the field. Their blood covered Altis and me. A few were clean kills, but most were bloody. Five were my kills. Sollet was an accident, but traitors or not, these deaths were all on me...

I wanted to feel disgusted, revolted. The red eyes leagues away, spoke to me in the same way Arwan had, directly to my thoughts. The eyes told me of its pride for the souls I sent to the stars.

I threw up.

Once I was done, Altis came over. He bent down next to me. “All Warriors must do things, terrible things, for a good reason. It gets easier, but we are all tasked with remembering our first kills.” He looked around at the carnage. “Don’t forget how you feel in this moment. Don’t let this become too easy for you,” he said. “Forged in Blood. Forged in Mist. Today you are a Warrior.”

“At what price?” I asked. The killing already felt easier than when I’d turned Sollet into a pincushion of wagon shrapnel.

“A very great one,” Altis admitted. “This wasn’t a scouting party. There were too many of them. Kael struck, expecting us to be overwhelmed. But, he was wrong.”

I looked over at the closest man. The crimson blood dripping from his nose and mouth had already begun to dry. His lifeless eyes gazed toward the sky. The stars awaiting his soul were obscured by the brightness of the day.

“We must send these men to the stars and their next life,” I said. “They were following orders.”

“There’s no time,” Altis insisted.

“I don’t care. Leave without me. This is the right thing to do.”

Altis observed me for a moment. “I’d never leave you.”

“Then grab some kindling.” I pointed to the woods nearby.

Being mid-autumn, dead leaves littered the ground around the trees. The collection of dry branches and deadfalls went quickly, but it still took the better part of three hours to construct the pyre and fortify the branches with Mist so that they could burn at the required temperature. We lugged the corpses onto the pyre. They lay on top like broken dolls.

Altis lit the pyre. The branches cracked and burned and slowly the bodies turned to ash. The fire cleansed the souls from their fleshy cages, and the smoke bore them toward the heavens. I thought about Nazarie’s forest fire metaphor. Were the red eyes not really eyes, but embers ready to ignite? Would The Edge free our souls from this rock upon which we careened through space? But the planet itself would crumble to nothingness. I bent down and touched the dirt, scooping some up and running it through my hands. The fire beat upon my face.

“May the gods welcome you along your path,” I whispered. Arwan roared as if to say goodbye to their spirits.

We left their bodies burning. Kael’s soldiers would see the smoke and come to find the wreckage. We hurried along our path, minds too full to rest. Arwan did not continue with us. Did she leave with the supernatural knowledge that we were out of danger, or did she have somewhere else to be?

The next day, the weather cooperated with us, making our trek easy and adding miles between Kael’s men and us, but we were not as lucky on the next few days. During most of our trek, we had been blessed with clear, sunny weather, but rainy fall was upon us. It didn’t help that the terrain changed from forest to muddy swampland, which caused our mounts to lose their footing. We debated whether to go back to the city to alert the queen of Kael’s treachery, but decided that finishing the task at hand and fixing The Edge remained our primary goal. Since Kael’s soldiers didn’t seem to be tracking us anymore, we switched from traveling at night to the day.

I found the forest much prettier than the swamp. Obviously.  Who would like a swamp, besides amphibians, I suppose.  Each night we would find a dry patch and do our best to remove as many sticks from where we would set up camp. At night, we would fall asleep wrapped up in each other. Each morning, we’d wake with the sun. Some mornings it was easier to wake up than others.

“You shouldn’t have kept me up so late last night, then,” Altis teased. “Come, we are almost to The Edge. Shouldn’t be more than a four-hour ride.”

“I hope we will find answers,” I said. “I’d hate for this last leg to be a waste. We could have gone straight back to Gryshelm.”

“I wouldn’t consider it a total waste,” Altis said.

“There have been some… interesting parts,” I agreed. “But we could easily do that anywhere.”

“Well, not completely anywhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain something to you because I’m worried that you might not understand.”

“Understand what?” I asked.

Altis slowed his horse. “I do care about you.”

“You told me as much before the first night and many times since,” I said, cautiously, urging my horse to match step with Altis’s.

“It’s more than that. I think that I am falling in love with you,” he said.

“And?” I said, not baited by the word “love,” knowing there was more.

“But you do understand that I have certain… obligations.”

“I understand that you are very busy as the Lead Initiate. I won’t distract you.”

Altis licked his lips. “I also have certain obligations as a Prince of the Realm.”

“Such as?”

“That party before we left was also to celebrate my betrothal to Princess Krystin of Dybreakea.”

“I see,” I said, not really seeing. “You are betrothed?”

“My children with her will inherit her titles. It’s a very important match.”

“So, we are playing around,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about,” he said. “I’d like you to be my official mistress. I want this to be formal.”

“What!” I felt sick. “No!”

“Krystin will spend most of each year in Dybreakea. Most of the year it will just be us. There’s no reason this has to end,” he protested.

“There is every reason this has to end and why this shouldn’t have started to begin with,” I said indignantly.

“Hailey, come on, I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy?” I whirled around and glared at him. “How in the Guardians’ names did you think I’d be
happy
?” I encouraged my horse into a run.

“Hailey. Come back. Let’s talk.” Altis called after me.

I didn’t want to talk. I kept galloping down the path. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so angry, I would have sensed that The Edge was very, very close. Hours east of where it should have been. Perhaps if I was not fueling my horse to run unnaturally fast with my Mist, it would have noticed how dangerously close we were coming to The Edge and would have slowed to a halt sooner.

I didn’t ever notice, but my horse did, feet from The Edge. He stopped, but I did not. I catapulted over his neck, toward The Edge and the angry red eyes.

Screaming, I tumbled into The Edge.