Ruins Falling Page 13

  She just stared at him. He grit his teeth briefly, and told her something about the Knights. His voice rolled over her in strange, muted tones, until suddenly it was angry. She heard the dog growling. And when she blinked, she saw that the Prince’s ears were red.

  “What?” she asked.

  He looked bewildered. Then wrath passed over his face. “I don’t care if you’re in school with the nobles, or if you’re serving as the scullery maid. You are to never speak above your rank again! Do you understand me?!” The dog sat up and barked at her too, as if in agreement.

  “Why would I bother now?” she whispered.

  He stopped yelling after that. The dog kept growling, but slowly it faded. She didn’t know if she fainted or died or magically reappeared outside the Prince’s door, in the same world or in another. She realized she was pushing the tea cart somewhere, but she didn’t know where she was going. There was a bunch of noise. Shouting. She caught glimpses of Graedin, beside the stone path she walked along with the tea cart. There was blood on his cheeks, running from under his cracked helmet into his silver hair and gray beard, and along the length of his sword. He was shouting as he swung wildly at hazy shadows. He turned to her, his eyes widening, yelling her name. Airaine looked down at her hands, and her hands were so raw suddenly that they seemed to have no skin. Before her eyes, they turned gray, and began to crumble into bits of rubble. The pieces didn’t even hit the ground before the dust blew away on the breeze. She looked up as Graedin yelled for her again, racing toward her, reaching for her, his hand outstretched toward her.

  Clap! She startled, her cheek stinging and burning. She touched it with one hand, wondering why Graedin would slap her, until she recognized the voice.

  “Are you awake now?!” Steward Austerren snarled at her.

  She didn’t understand. So she let him rant on and on, waiting. His volume hurting her ears, but her mind barely comprehended. “I can’t run a royal household with even one rebellious child in my service!” he shrieked, and she managed to understand that. “I won’t have it!”

  “Are you going to banish me or not?” she asked. Everything was gone from her heart and mind. Not even fear as the old man’s face darkened from red to purple.

  “Not yet, I can’t!” he shrieked, grabbing a hot tin of water from the cart and throwing it down. Warm water showered her legs, and her worn shoe soles, and soaked her toes. “You don’t deserve the favor you have! But you will obey me! You will learn to mind your place! I tell you, you will clean that cursed library on the fifth story, and you’ll do it alone! I don’t care if there’s a thousand bloodthirsty ghosts, you’ll do it, or I swear I’ll throw you out the doors myself!”

  Any other day, Airaine would have left him dancing in celebration. She had no fear of the library. It had been her haven, and Daireth’s haven, for years. And on any normal day, she would have told the steward she would gladly trade the scullery for the haunted library for the rest of her days. But still, she felt nothing. No joy. No sorrow. Just a gaping emptiness, as if she were staring into an abyss, and she’d just slipped from the cliff edge.

  What happened?

  Was he injured?

  Was he alive?

  Was he coming back for her?

  Where was Graedin?

  When Storms Collide

  Who—or what—was that woman—really?

  Captain Graedin Kairathed stared out across the fortress wall with a far-sight in his hand and the incessant cawing of ravens and buzzards in his ears. Thankfully, none of the ravens paid him any attention—at all. Unlike this morning. Even so, he stayed close to the guards watching on the wall. He glanced around, then lifted the far-sight up again and looked across the line of trees, just far enough for a longbow to hit if the archer was skilled. The scavengers occasionally blocked his view as they fought over the dead, as if there wasn’t enough for all, but all was still where he searched along the tree line. No one had come to tend the wounded. No one had come to claim the dead. He faced southeast, and he could see some of the clouds in the east turning orange and pink from the sun setting behind him. He set the far-sight down, but didn’t turn.

  Was the woman a healer for the attacking party? If so, why didn’t she try to pull some of her men into the forest to attend their wounds? Perhaps she was wary of being shot. But she didn’t have any equipment on her for tending the wounded. Not even a healer’s pack.

  Was she one of the rabble’s warriors, or marshals? If so, she should’ve been one of the first to die. But Graedin had never seen a woman in the ranks of any army. Women didn’t go to war unless they were healers—not even in Ye’shurun. But did this rabble allow women fighters? Which brought up yet another question. If this rabble did allowed women in battle, could she be one of their commanders? But if this was so, why wasn’t she leading the attack on the field?

  A nearby raven shrieked at a buzzard, and Graedin shuddered, brought back to that morning. He’d woken at daybreak to screams. Screams with a volume so magnified that it sounded like someone was screaming in his room. But the source had come from a wounded man far away, outside in the woods. The man had stumbled onto the field, barely visible through thick fog. He was suspected, and later confirmed, to be a marshal who had gone missing in the past fortnight. That had worried Graedin—strange things had been happening since he’d left the capital, the citadel of Ariel in the north, to inspect the fortresses along the borders of Ye’shurun. Older warriors in those fortress, men who looked like Graedin himself, were being targeted by assassins. Enough men had been harmed that his lieutenants were urging him to return to Ariel.

  So to test the theory—that someone was trying to kill him—Graedin led a very cautious rescue mission for the screaming man in the field. And sure enough, they were attacked. It was only because of his careful strategies that he and his men survived. The small army who’d attacked had ultimately outnumbered his rescue band six to one. He could count them now, lying on the field before him. They’d never attempted to scale the walls. They only tried to kill the rescue company. So Graedin knew he had been their target all along, and the wounded marshal had been used as his bait. He knew he should be pleased—his men had been wounded but none had died, the rescue was a success, and his mysterious attackers had paid most dearly.

  But not that woman.

  He remembered thinking it was strange that, just as the screaming marshal had stumbled onto the field, he’d seen a coyote through the far-sight. It never attacked. It just watched, looking up at the fortress and back down. A raven had attacked him during the battle though, and in such a manner as if it were trying to drive him into enemy hands. After the battle, he’d seen the woman standing at the edge of the forest. The woman, young and potentially beautiful, had startled him with the ferocity of her glare. How had she known where exactly to look? Graedin could see further than most men, even without the far-sight, but could not possibly have seen someone staring at him at a distance like that. He’d brought down his far-sight, but when he brought it up and looked for her again, she was gone. But the coyote was back, and it too had snarled at him.

  Now, another of his concerns gained strength. The marshal they’d rescued from the field had not improved. His voice was no longer magnified, but it echoed off the stone of the dungeons as he begged in the darkness, “Please, I don’t wanna see anymore! Please!” Bright red splotches stained the bandages wrapped around his head and over his empty sockets. He’d torn out his own eyes on the field, so they’d bound him up, afraid he’d harm himself more than he already had. They’d put him in the quietest place in the fortress, the dungeons, so not to bring down the morale of the rest of the men. They’d tried to make him comfortable other than that, with furs and pillows. But still, he wept and begged and trembled. The guards had asked Graedin how he’d lost his mind, or what he could possibly be remembering, but he had no answers for them.

  The unnaturally magnified screams. The thick fog. The raven. The woman’s glaring eyes. The coyote
’s unusual behavior. The shattered mind of the man in the fortress cells. Graedin didn’t tell anyone else, but more and more, he felt certain that this attack was absolutely unnatural. There was something—he hardly dared think it, but the word kept creeping to his mind—magical about the battle. And he couldn’t help but wonder, with a shudder, where the source came from. The woman’s glare had haunted him since the moment he saw her. Was she…he shook his head, turning his eyes from the birds feasting. Was he losing his mind?

  He almost hoped so. Daireth and Airaine, the children he loved as if they were his own, were waiting for him in Ariel. And he didn’t want any more trouble to slow him down—or prevent him—from embracing them and seeing their smiling faces. One day was too long to be parted from them, and the journey back had already been stretched several months longer. He clenched his fist. He would do whatever it took to get back to them. Whatever might befall, he would escape his enemies and return to them. They needed him. And, he knew full well, he needed them too.

  An hour later, Graedin gathered the twenty-five men of his traveling company in the meal hall near the fire. The flames flickered on their faces and their tall shadows hovered and shifted high on the walls. “We’re leaving at dawn.” Several men began asking questions, but he cut them off. “I’ll explain everything. For now, if you’ve made friends here, say no goodbyes until tomorrow. Let no one know.” He drew a folded map from out of his cloak pocket and set it on the table. “We must discuss how we’ll avoid any enemies along the road.”

  Ye’shurun was small beside her neighboring nations, long and somewhat narrow. On its west lay the sea, and on its eastern borders were mountains. It was a lush, green land filled with rivers and forests, but after the mountain range, the lands beyond soon turned to hot deserts in the southeast and colder, mountainous deserts to the northeast. The far north was still mountainous and forested, but colder. Ye’shurun was an easy land to inhabit. Which, of course, meant that other peoples had fought to overcome it over the centuries. So, scattered throughout the land were many fortresses in strategic places. Two fortresses and a long wall covered a wide expanse called Reah’s Pass about two thirds of the way up the border.

  “We’re going to travel hard,” he stated. “We’re aiming to make it to the nearest fortress, here—” he pointed, and looked up and around as he finished, “—by night. This won’t be a direct path back to Ariel, but we’ll be able to stay in fortresses and cities. It’ll be longer, but safer.”

  “Captain Kairathed.” He looked up. Only two of his fellow Knights of the Realm had come with him on this misadventure. The younger, Ki Su’rah, was staring at him. He was like a younger version of Graedin himself: he was a young Knight at thirty-five, he had long black hair he tied at the back of his neck, and he was smart and skilled at strategy. But that was where their similarities abruptly ended. “Do you suspect something is going to happen?” Su’rah’s dark, heavy-lidded eyes stared without so much as a blink. His brows were slightly low, always. Though Su’rah was dedicatedly clean-shaven, he somehow managed to veil even the most subtle change of expression in his cheeks, lips, and eyes. He barely smiled even when cracking a rare joke. He looked both young, with an unfair lack of wrinkles, and yet ancient, with his carved expression.

  “I don’t know,” Graedin admitted. “But I’d rather be safe. We’ve had a terrible trip.” There were murmurs of agreement. “Our path will be along swift roads and near towns. But as we draw near to the mountains again, we’ll be more likely to be alone on the road. We’re going to need to be extremely careful, and swift, in those areas. We’ll change horses in each fortress too.”

  “Don’t you think the threat is neutralized after the battle today?”

  Graedin glanced to his left, forcing himself to imitate Su’rah’s ever-neutral expression. Another man, not much older than Su’rah, was frowning at him, nostrils flared slightly, one slightly higher than the other, lifting up the thin, neatly trimmed moustache and skewing his goatee. His light brown hair ended in a sleek line at his shoulders. “As I stated, Captain Tarven,” he replied, “I fully intend to err on the side of caution.” He looked down at the map.

  “I can understand caution, but this seems excessive. Why not get some rest along the way? Get a good meal, sleep in a bed, rest our horses?”

  The map blurred. “If you’ll remember,” he stated quietly, looking up into Tarven’s eyes, “our enemy began stalking us within Ye’shurun’s borders. Why should I believe the threat is neutralized here?” He glanced around. “I’m sure you’ll all forgive my paranoia if we make it home alive, even if we take slower roads. As would your families. Am I correct?” Most of the men nodded at this. Su’rah glanced back and forth between them. He looked back at Tarven. “Looks like family takes precedence over rest,” he said, forcing a polite smile.

  Captain Tarven looked away, his expression wiped clean. Graedin turned back to his map, gritting his teeth, and thinking, Joreth Tarven will make a fine Prince when one dies. He was a skilled commander, but he was also a womanizing pub-rouser. He’d been sly enough to avoid scandal, smart enough to follow orders he didn’t like, but was no loyal warrior for the love of country. He was loyal to anyone who could sate his appetites for pleasure and glory. And he was so vain that he always smelled of cinnamon, because he put cinnamon oil in his hair, as if he were a nobleman. And Graedin was fairly sure that’s what Tarven intended to do, eventually: become a Prince. He got along better with them than the other Knights. He couldn’t see why else this knight would be interested in a military career. It was too stark a lifestyle for such tastes.

  Graedin couldn’t deny himself a slightly smug pleasure at dawn. He stood with the commander of the fortress, and glanced over to see Tarven’s disgruntled expression. He yanked on his horse’s girth belt, cinching the saddle tight, but stopped to yawn. Graedin tried not to grin. The commander, Lieutenant Earren Hart, turned to look over his shoulder. When he turned back to Graedin, he was frowning. “Be careful. He’s a crafty one.”

  Graedin felt his smile fall. “I know. Did you see him on the wall at all yesterday?”

  Earren shook his head. “Didn’t see Tarven till it was over. Su’rah came later and asked if you'd taken charge. I said yes, but that you had me commanding the fortress. He followed your lead, obviously—he didn’t command me to step down. He asked me what I wanted him to do, and I had him take some men down to the gate to defend it and wait for you.” Earren’s brows furrowed, and he glanced around before speaking again. “Did you see Su’rah on the wall?”

  “No. I don’t remember, anyway. I was pretty shaken up.”

  “Hmm.” He glanced around, then back to Graedin. “Well, good luck with those two.”

  “Yeah—thanks.” Graedin clasped his hand. “I wish I could trade your rank and Tarven’s without backlash from the Princes. I would right now if I could. You actually deserve it.”

  Earren chuckled. “Good thing you’re not dumb enough to push the Princes, and I’m not dumb enough to accept the position—no offense.” He let go of Graedin’s hand, and his smile fell into an exaggerated frown, with a scar pulling his lower lip down. “But really, stay safe, Graedin.”

  That day, he and his men had pushed their horses as hard as they dared, and managed to reach the next fortress by nine o’clock. The lieutenant was startled to see them, but welcomed them inside. Graedin apologized for the unannounced visit, especially when he’d only inspected their fortress a few weeks prior. They stayed one full day. The second morning, Graedin apologized again to the frustrated, confused lieutenant when he traded them for fresh horses and left with an hour’s notice at dawn. He did not apologize for his lack of confidence.

  Graedin kept up this habit as they traveled northward, wearing out both the horses and his men. He was certain he felt it the most, at his age, but he made sure not to complain openly. They passed through seven different fortresses, exchanging their horses every time. Their route weaved east and west, but to Graedin’s
frustration, predominantly east, toward the mountains. It made sense that the closer fortresses would be along the mountains passes, but still, it frustrated him. He poured over maps late into the nights trying to plan a westward route, but it was always just a little too far to make a city or fortress by nightfall realistically, without harming their horses.

  But thus far, they hadn’t met trouble. The late winter weather was surprisingly kind to them. It was cloudy, but little rain fell while they traveled. The only day that Graedin would have worried about the weather was the nicest day yet. They had have to hike through a small portion of hill country at the foot of the mountains. He led his men out of the fortress at dawn feeling more confident in this particular stretch than at any other point. The trails in these foothills were a labyrinth, but as long as they stuck to the trail, and he kept a close eye on the map, they would be fine. And if they had an enemy following them still, Graedin knew that this stretch of confusing switchbacks and side trails would be the best place to throw them off.

  For the time being, Graedin led the way with a scout beside him. When he glanced over, he took a look at the red-tailed hawk on one of his scouts’ shoulders. It had its cap on its head and was roosting peacefully. This was the calmest he’d seen either the hawks or horses act their entire trip. He smiled, and looked away as he breathed in deeply. The smell of the forest was in his nose, the crisp, cool air of the mountains in his lungs, and the sun shone warm on his face. He’d almost forgotten how peaceful the mountains could be.

  They were scheduled to arrive at the next fortress before sunset, so he felt confident enough to stop the party for a long lunch break. “It’s about time,” he overheard Tarven comment to Su’rah. He ignored it, and even let his men joke and mess around for an hour before saddling up again. The following hour was as pleasant as before, and he allowed himself to think of Daireth and Airaine again. He could imagine them playing in the creek near the trail, gazing around with wide eyes. He smiled, thinking of their smiles, thankful to finally be heading back home to them.