Preparing to unsheathe my sword, I said, “Shit. Does anybody here understand me?!”
The more they converged on my position, the more I bared my blade. I drew it halfway out before the emotional words of a woman reached our ears. The new speaker, who never stopped talking in her tongue, shoved through the surprised guards to get a better look at me.
As for my own eyes, they saw a woman whose form dwelled in the in-between. For instance, despite no longer being a youth, she did not yet exude the mature guise or practiced poise of a proper adult, which included the immature tone in her voice. My first guess put her around three decades old.
As for her other features, an orange, body-hugging dress flaunted a body that resided in a transitory province flanked by the slim and curvaceous realms. Skipping or adding a meal would determine which realm she belonged to on a particular day. Her height could rightly be described as “tall” by half the girls in Orda and “short” by the remaining half.
Part of her raven hair hung in two formal braids next to her flushed face while the rest of its medium length sat loose and carefree on her shoulders. Her grayish eyes, nose, and pink lips looked almost too symmetrical, as though someone placed them there with exacting purpose. In any event, she broke the unrealistic proportions of her face when a childlike grin humanized her far too balanced physique.
She rested her fingers on the hand pulling out my sword, pushing it downward. Her second hand waved away the guardsmen. They hesitated, giving each other nonplussed expressions. The woman wrapped her arm around mine and calmly said something else. Finally believing whatever the woman declared, the guardsmen turned to leave.
Pulling away from the helpful stranger, I said, “Thanks for that. Can you understand me?”
“That I can,” she replied, her mastery of the shared tongue evident. Her eyes moved down to my chest, then her outstretched fingers caressed the scales exposed by the torn piece of my shirt. “I understand more than you know, Veknu Milaris.”
I stepped back. “Who are you?”
She chuckled. “A new friend, I promise. We have to leave. This city will be a tomb by tomorrow night.”
“I know.”
“Oh, good. I expected to… Eh, never mind. Let’s go.”
“Where? Do you have a boat?”
“Better.”
“A dragon?”
“Not that better. Let’s head for the docks.”
Following her fast walking pace, I asked, “What did you tell those guardsmen?”
“That I’m a noble and you’re my fancy foreign bodyguard… and, uh, lover. Couldn’t help adding that extra spice to my lie. If I’m going to lie, then why not have as much fun with it as possible, right?”
“I suppose. Will you lie about how you found me? I’m guessing you’ve been looking for me.”
“That we have.”
“We?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been hunting the Hoic-Dro. My master and his acolytes have done our best to interfere with their affairs. Unfortunately, gaining support from… Shhh!”
Pulling my sleeve, she dashed behind the side wall of what either a small tavern or largish home.
“What is it?” I whispered.
She peeked around the corner. “Our enemy is down the road.”
“Blondes?”
“Aye. I’ve seen them before. They helped protect the big crates hiding the giants. Come, we shall go the long way around.”
So rather than moving through the streets, we vaulted over and zigzagged through fences, troughs, and patches of garden.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Kiku Du. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Whatever you say. I’m Mercer. Now, who’s this master of yours?”
“A powerful seer who lives in Pukam Forest. He foresaw your coming, so he sent me and others of my ilk to wait for you here and in Watawara.”
“Watawara?”
She nodded. “Master’s vision showed him a large city near the water and Pukam. That meant either Watawara or Uratama, explaining our presence in both cities. Now that I found you, I will help you find what you seek.”
“I think I’ve already found the Advent.”
Kiku stopped at the edge of a street that lined the city docks. Smiling, she said, “I’m not talking about finding the Advent. I speak of finding a way to defeat them.”
I rose a suspect eyebrow. “How?”
“You already boasted such power, Mercer. You lost it, but it can be reclaimed.”
“Are you speaking of my corruption?”
“I’ll explain all I can as soon as we escape. My big pure heart promises. My tongue, on the other hand…”
“You’re a little peculiar, aren’t you?”
“I’d prefer to say I’m freer than most. My friends agree, even the imaginary ones.”
“Right… You said your master sent others here. Will they be all right? The real ones, I mean.”
“Should be. They know the danger. They won’t linger beyond morning. Come on, we’re close to getting out of here ourselves. I can summon my gitra once we reach the water.”
Swiveling our heads revealed no Advent presence, encouraging us to sprint for the bay. We chose a short fishing pier with no boat or person employing the wooden platform. Kiku jogged ahead of me as I slowed to a standstill.
Noticing the absence of my steps, Kiku spun around and asked, “What’s wrong?”
I turned back to review Uratama’s tense populace, no one quite sure what to do. Sighing, I said, “Tell everyone you can of the danger of staying in the city. Tell them to board any ship that will have them.”
She frowned, then pouted. Her lips finally settled in an assented smirk. “Okay. If only one person listens, that’s something, right? Hide yourself by that hut for a few minutes and watch out for Advent.”
I huddled under the hut’s shadow as Kiku went to accomplish my request with a subdued zest that further instilled my first impression of her mental soundness, or unpredictability thereof. The rank of soured fish guts waited with me while Kiku proceeded to help ease my guilt for failing to kill a single nismerdon here. At least the swirling sea breeze limited how much of the smell collected in one place.
Kiku. What kind of person encouraged someone to become corrupted? Kiku did not appear corrupted herself, but perhaps her master was another story. What else explained the ability to track me through visions when Alslana’s seer couldn’t get so much as a peek? A corrupted seer might very well serve the gods of strife, beings intent on spreading their influence to all worlds incapable of resisting them.
Was Omen already proving himself correct? A future invasion by the corrupted realm would conceivably be made more difficult by a new race of humans enhanced by nismerdon prana. Did their side foresee that possibility as a likely one? Or did they have another angle? How many others besides myself would they persuade to corrupt themselves for the “good” of Orda? How close was I to accepting the idea that I needed corruption to defeat the Advent?
Chapter Nine
Odet
As Gerard and Clarissa jostled me toward the barrier’s breach, the vampire kept apologizing for playing her part in Mercer’s plan to use himself as a decoy. I finally asserted myself and planted my feet right under the breach.
“Enough! We can’t leave Mercer alone!”
“Do you think we want to?” Clarissa rhetorically asked. “But we need to run, not fight. Look! Mercer isn’t fighting, he’s running too!”
“Then we help him run.”
“It looks like Captain Shao is already on that,” said Gerard. He was right. The captain’s kingclaw swooped down to Mercer at the same time the giant rose a dirt wall to block the gate. “See? The captain will help Mercer escape. Please, Odet, we need to run or waste Mercer’s diversion.”
“Ugh! Fine!” I walked backward to exit the confined city. To those helping keep the breach open, I said, “Let it close!”
My words were transl
ated and supported by anyone who understood me. Deprived of active defiance, the barrier healed its tear at a languid rate. On becoming whole again, it reflected nothing but a purplish blackness. I wanted nothing more than to strike my fists through the heinous ward.
Gerard put a hand on my shoulder and called over Eu-Sook and the remaining riders, now standing at five strong. “Hurry, get on.”
Ryosei spoke with Eu-Sook. The female rider then said, “Master Shi wishes to stay and search for his comrades.”
“He’s welcome to,” I said, taking Eu-Sook’s hand to pull myself onto her steed. “We thank him for his aid and plead that he keep himself safe.”
“Where do we go?” asked the worried voice of Hanying’s slim friend.
“We’ll go west for a few days, following the northern edge of Pukam Forest as we try to reach Tawahori. Follow us if you wish. Find a steed or go by foot. Whatever you do, don’t linger here or seek support from Jegeru’s army. We can’t trust their intent. If you can, convince others to move away from Uratama.” To Hanying, I said, “Thank you for wh-”
A high-pitched groan with the strength to cross the barrier startled the griffins.
“We have to go,” said Gerard.
I nodded. To the exiled academy students, I said, “Run.”
The whiptail trotted for a few strides before taking flight. I hated leaving so many people to flee and fight on an undefined battlefield. I would have relinquished my seat on the griffin to anyone who wanted it were it not for the urging of my friends and the memory of promising my family to take every precaution to return home. If only I could rely on Jegeru’s army.
I also hated that the drumming of my heart slackened. Calming down meant that I felt the smarting in my left foot to a greater and greater extent. Simply scrunching my toes sent a biting pain up my entire left leg. No doubt a puddle of blood collected around my footwrap. Nothing I could do about it until we rested somewhere leagues away.
Glances below and behind me revealed the scale of our enemy’s overarching power. A black tent a mile high tyrannized a city of twenty thousand people, most of them yet unaware of the inhuman nature of their ancient subjugators. It’s clear defeating the Advent would require assembling support beyond a single army. Rather than seeking this support from Jegeru’s unpredictable aristocracy, Mercer obviously wanted us to regroup in Tawahori’s Warriors Guild to call upon Orda’s warriors, whether they belonged to the guild or a nation.
What concerned me more than finding the people willing to fight against misguided foes was the time it would require to gather them, not to mention that the Wregor Empire would undoubtedly use the chaos in Jegeru as an opportunity to expand her borders. And how much would Wregor insist on managing those who volunteered to fight the Advent? Curse it all. One complication at a time, Odet.
Flying over a square fort showed soldiers the size of beetles swarming out of the military structure, heading for a dark ward they could not miss spotting even at night. Assuming an unhindered, sunny view, I imagined one could not miss catching a glimpse of the stupefying sight as long as they were within a hundred miles of Uratama.
As for my own view, the ward merged more and more with nocturnal’s embrace as the griffins flew a flap short of a full haste. The whiptails continued on their torrid pace for about as long as a healthy horse could gallop at top speed. Though my heart held no desire to abandon Uratama to its fate, my mind could not help but hope that we left the bleak vision of the city’s demise with as much briskness as possible.
My mind’s wish came true when I next looked back. From then on I ignored my own counsel and filled my head with as many complications as I could think of. Then I deliberated on how to best go about countering those problems. Years of witnessing my parents discussing the intricacies of trade deals, resource allocation, border defenses, and countless daily hiccups conditioned me to find an abnormal sense of comfort in mulling over a quandary. I can’t say what I would do if there ever came a day when I couldn’t engage my mind by trying to solve a challenge, big or small.
Smoldering daylight prompted the tired griffins to seek rest by the northeastern boundary of Pukam Forest. Tall, slender trees with light gray bark appeared to be the prevailing plant in the region. The forest grew considerably denser only a few miles to the west, but we stayed in an area that still had the space to grow soft grass and hide us only if we wanted to be hidden.
Ghevont treated my wound while Gerard and the riders secured the area. Thankfully, the cut wasn’t deep, though I clenched my teeth when the scholar spread his salves over the wound. With teeth gritted, I had no response to Ghevont matter-of-factly remarking on the “lovely bone structure” of my foot. This inevitably transitioned into a one-sided discourse on the leg anatomy of humans, reminding me that he used to desecrate tombs to study such anatomy firsthand before he met Mercer. He would have been hanged had he been caught exhuming corpses in my kingdom. For the time being, I just wished the scholar would go ahead and finish his treatment.
Another peculiar compliment came when Clarissa, partly to recuse herself from the “mouthwatering” smell of my blood, went to find a patch of shade to sleep under. I had to remain still for an hour to give the treatment time to vitrify, which led to the loosening of mind and muscle. I fell asleep without wanting to.
A cloud moving out of the sun’s way sent down a bright ray of sunlight right on my face, stirring me awake a couple of hours after first setting my head down. Ghevont rubbed another layer of quick drying salve on my cut before swaddling my foot in a fresh footwrap. My torn boot had been partly sewn back together by Tsuji Okin, a gaunt rider born east of the sparsely populated Jins Mountains, placing her family at the southern brink of the Naked Desert and the northern limit of Jegeru’s border. That hopefully meant they would be safe from Advent incursions.
Much more vulnerable were the nearby hamlets the riders saw from the air. I told Gerard to go with two or three of the riders and warn them to keep a sharp eye out for armies, human or not. I would have joined them if Ghevont had not advised me against putting too much pressure on my foot for the next few days. If we wanted to, we could have taken flight as soon as everyone slept a little, but without imminent danger in sight, I preferred resting longer and waiting awhile to give Mercer, Hanying, or anyone else following us a chance to catch up.
A league north of the hamlets lied Ren Shu Road, a long path that connected Watawara to Uratama. The riders took turns overlooking the road, not only to look out for those coming from Uratama, but to dissuade travelers going to the city. While the better part of the day did not have many wayfarers, the riders reported that they persuaded those they encountered to turn around, or at least wait for corroborators in the nearest tavern.
Being that the majority of those fleeing Uratama could not summon flying steeds, the first of them did not pass by until the late afternoon. They expressed confusion as to what they were running from, but they confirmed that something frightful enveloped the city. Someone even said they saw the summoning of a phoenix. Giving me yet another stratum of foreboding, they also described that many who escaped the city chose not to run, but to rely on the army to defeat the menace.
Now my regret trounced the irregular pangs in my foot. Why didn’t we stay and convince people to flee? General Liang may have been a traitor, but it would have taken him the rest of the night to establish his orders across the thousands of people under his command, and that’s if the city’s lords did not somehow succeed in superseding his authority. What’s more, there was a good chance many of his men would rebel against the concept of letting their own people die.
However, I feared the general might very well sacrifice his own men to the monstrous forces if they contested his orders, suffocating any resistance. And if history was any indicator, plenty of soldiers would settle for following immoral orders if it avoided having to fight comrades who still believed in their leaders. Or if it meant not struggling against the all-important onus that gods, royalty
, and commanders habitually demanded of them. So much woe befell the soldier under an ignoble leader!
Admittedly, my guilt had no place in realistic ruminations. The blondes had surely still been in the area, waiting for reinforcements or the opportunity to re-engage us in a drawn-out battle that would have misused Mercer’s contribution to our escape. To top it all off, I recognized that nothing short of defeating the Advent right then and there could have wiped away my regret.
The regret swelled a little larger when I decided it was time to restart our journey westward. That swelling turned out to be a temporary affliction. Before we ascended as high as the griffins wanted to go, we spotted a group of horsemen coming from the dimming east. Flying closer revealed Hanying to be among the ten people on seven horses. We dove to the dirt road ahead of the trotting steeds.
Staying on Eu-Sook’s steed, I waved at Hanying, who sat behind his friend. A shy hand enfolded in a wrapping of cloth waved back. Except for an old woman and the young boy sitting between her plump arms, everyone else appeared to be the unlettered type. They were dressed and armed like bargain bodyguards, putting me on guard.
Entering a normal speaking range, I said, “I’m glad you are safe, Master Okazaki. I never got to properly thank you for pulling me out of danger.”
“Oh, y-yes, you’re welcome. Others were going in to help as well. I only happened to be closer.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Are you the foreign princess?” asked the largest and hairiest of the horsemen. His scruffy gray beard added a decade to an otherwise virile, middle-aged face.
“That I am. Odet Astor, first princess of Alslana. And who might you be?”
Bowing without taking his insincere eyes off mine, he answered, “A mere lout, Your Highness, but you may call me Aritomo Kagemori.”
“Kagemori? Then you share a relation to Uratama’s high lord?”
“My dear uncle. I hope he finds himself well, but I swear that huge ward only got darker the last I saw it.”
“I see.” So, an armed, gruff looking man who spoke the shared tongue and who shared his blood with a lord. This was not a man who enjoyed official titles, yet enjoyed throwing his surname around when it gave him what he wanted. Without question the rule of law meant little to him, as they often did to the entitled and connected. “Where does your path take you?”
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 10
