by Kyle West
“You’d think it would be preserved somehow,” I said. “Have people memorize the important things to pass down, exactly, to the next generation. If songs and stories can survive from before the Ragnarok War, then why can’t something that important survive for even less time?”
“Yes, but those stories have surely changed in their details. Do you really believe that men used to fly to the moon? Or that there was a tower so tall that you could peer into the sky and not see the top of it? What about flying ships and motor-coaches that could zip across the horizon in three seconds flat?”
I sighed. “Yeah, maybe you have a point. Maybe some of that stuff is true, though, like with the ships.”
“That’s the point exactly. If it’s not written down, on paper or tablet, there’s no telling the exact words. As such, we have our traditions, legends, and stories. The story of the Exile is even popular among us; that the Prophecy was taken to Hyperborea. Isandru didn’t believe this was true, and for good reason; he lived in Hyperborea, and he knew it wasn’t there. And yet, Valance is sending us there again, because he knows it’s not in Colonia.”
“We’re wasting our time, then,” I said. “It’s Isandru we should be going to.”
“Except Valance has told us not to talk to anyone, and that if we did, he would know about it.”
“How? We’re the only ones here.”
“You got me there. One thing I do know: there is so much more to this than either of us realize. We’re missing pieces still. I think some of those pieces might be in Hyperborea. Isandru himself is guarded about his past; he seems to never tell us anything until we have already figured it out for ourselves.”
“Which is most inconvenient.”
“Perhaps, though, there is a reason for it,” Isaru said.
“Inscrutable, Seeker, reasons.”
“The point is, no matter how we hash this out, we have three months. Three months will have to do,” Isaru said. “We should move faster now that we’re out of the Ruins. Assuming we go along the edge of the Selvan, like we’re planning, there should be water. The Wild locks a lot of the water for itself, which is part of the reason why the Exiled Lands are so bad. But there might be streams to be found.”
“If that’s where the water is, there might be people, too,” I said. “If we’re going for miles and miles up that way, we’re going to run into trouble.”
“Maybe so,” Isaru said. “And I don’t like what Rasi told us about the people there. He said they made the gangs in the Ruins look soft.”
“Why not go through the Red Wild, then? I know you said there’s a good chance of being discovered, but not if you cut your hair, and perhaps dye it.”
“Even so, it’s too risky. You only saw Haven, but there are way too many people that would recognize me. I know it’s called the Red Wild, but a lot of the land is actually very well-populated. Unless we bushwhack through the thickest part of the Western Wild, someone will see me and recognize me. And guess what? You stole Annara’s blade, perhaps one of the holiest relics of the Elekai.”
Isaru chuckled at the irony of me stealing what was rightfully mine. Well, kind of rightfully. I doubted my “evidence” of having a prophecy that I was actually Anna would hold up in any court.
“What does this mean, then?” I asked. “We’re just...going to have to avoid people for the rest of our lives?”
“Let’s just get the Prophecy first,” Isaru asked. “Survival is the only thing that matters right now. I’m more worried about keeping ourselves fed for hundreds of miles than anything like that.”
Isaru had a point there. It reminded me of something my mother once told me: so long as you had a full stomach, you had settled the most important question of the day.
“How long will it take following the Selvan?”
“Assuming nothing slows us down, perhaps two weeks,” Isaru said.
“We'll be crossing desert, but as long as we can find water, our food should last us until we can forage in the Wild.”
I didn’t like that he’d said “should,” but I supposed it was true. I knew next to nothing about edible plants in the Red Wild, but I knew most of the animals that existed outside the Wild also lived inside it, and in greater numbers. Some of them were a bit different, but it was mostly the same.
“I expect we’ll need to turn north at some point and leave the river behind.”
“We’ll use it for as long as we can,” Isaru said. “We need the free water. As soon as we come to the border, we’ll need to find a way out.”
It was then that I realized I had never told Isaru about my dream. It had been days since I’d had it, and I’d been so exhausted on our way to the Ruins, and too busy during all the fighting, to even think about telling him.
Now, though, was my opportunity, after only one day of travel and plenty of food in my belly.
“I forgot to tell you about a dream I had,” I said. “It happened when I fell asleep in Rasi’s cabin, but I was so tired after that I didn’t think I could tell it to you properly. Then we got mixed up in the Ruins, and...well, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to tell you.”
“What did you see?” Isaru asked. “A prophecy?”
“A vision,” I said. “It was so clear that it was as if I was there myself. As if I were this person.”
“Who was it?” he asked.
“That’s just it,” I said. “It was like I was inside the mind of Mia Farl.”
Isaru’s eyes went wide. “Mia Farl? The Prophetess of Hyperborea?”
I nodded. “Yes, it has to be the same. But that’s not even the most surprising part. You know how Elder Isandru said that Mia lived before him...almost a full century before him?”
Isaru nodded. “Yes, of course I remember.”
“Well, at least in this dream...that’s not true. Elder Isandru was her brother.”
I waited for that to sink in. It didn’t seem to register with Isaru; not at first. And then, he just appeared worried.
“Shanti...are you sure this was a vision? Perhaps...”
“No. I know it was true. Every bit of it. I was seeing something exactly as it had happened in the past.”
“You saw Hyperborea, then. Even if you were exhausted, how could you fail to mention this?”
His tone wasn’t rough, just incredulous.
“I’m sorry, I know I should have told you sooner, and there was no reason not to, except for the fact that I knew you’d have a lot of questions, and I wouldn’t have the time to answer them.”
“Well, I guess that’s true. What happened, then?”
So, I told him. About how Mia had been trying to prophesy in the woods and how Isandru had found her, and that somehow she was going against the will of her parents. Then, I described the city for him, exactly as I had seen it. I’d had a vision of the city before, but only from a distance. I tried to give him all the things I remembered, including just how big it was, how many towers, how one of the lakes was named Makar...pretty much anything I could think of.
I told him about what Isandru had said to Mia, as well as her own thoughts on the Hyperfold...whatever that was. From what Mia had said, it was a creation of a man named Rakhim Shal, who had made it as a way to cure the Fading, and apparently it had worked.
When I was at last done, Isandru contemplated for a very long time. I was surprised he wasn’t bombarding me with questions.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It bothers me that Elder Isandru lied to us,” Isaru said. “He wouldn’t have done so unless he had a reason.”
“The one time he mentioned Mia to me, he seemed to get really sad,” I said. “Sadder than one would expect from two people separated by one hundred years. I think the vision is true. It has to be.”
“The question is, why?”
That was the question, but it wasn’t one that could be answered. Not for a long time, and only assuming we survived everything to come.
“What do we know about Mia?�
� I asked. “From our own history.”
“History knows little of her, other than the fact that she died young, and that she had prophesied the destruction of Hyperborea long before it ever occurred.”
“Is there a firm date on when she was born?” I asked. “Isandru mentioned being fifteen when Hyperborea was actually destroyed by the Shen.”
Isandru had looked older than fifteen in the dream, but perhaps he had simply looked more mature.
“It’s not known for sure, but according to what I’ve read, it wasn’t too long after the Xenofont was constructed. That would be long before Isandru was born. But if your vision is right, Mia would have been born much later. Was she younger or older than Isandru?”
“Younger,” I said.
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, it was like I was inside her mind, but it felt as if I were in control. Only...it was she that was in control. She seemed unaware of my presence.”
Then again, there had been that bit where she felt as if she were being watched. Could it have been myself doing the watching?
“Too many questions, and too few answers,” Isaru said. “My guess is this: Mia and Isandru were siblings, and her birth happened during the latter part of Hyperborea. Yet, the prophecy for which she is famous no longer makes sense. Saying Hyperborea will be destroyed while the city itself is under siege is no prophecy, it’s just pessimism. Even if it becomes true.”
“The prophecy was about the Sea of Creation being the undoing of the city,” I said. “Perhaps that is still true. Perhaps the Shen could have been held off had the city not used the Sea to excess.”
“Perhaps,” Isaru said. “And it could be that it wasn’t an actual prophecy, but a warning. Over the years, maybe that warning was remembered as a prophecy. The Mindless Wars were a troubling time. A lot of cities were destroyed, and a lot of records lost. It’s possible that things have just been misremembered over time, and it isn’t as if any written accounts of Hyperborea are to be believed on their face. It’s so questionable that there are even people who are skeptical of the city’s very existence, and almost all historians contest some of the more fantastical details, which they think of as myth. In fact...”
Here, Isaru suddenly stopped and his entire body went stiff. It was as if he saw something.
Immediately, my hand went to my blade and we were both up with katanas out. I peered past the darkness and brush, but could see nothing.
I drew a deep breath, seeking Silence. Even so I felt my heart pounding. When I spoke, it was very quietly.
“Do you mind telling me why we're doing this?”
“Someone’s out there by the river. I’m sure I saw someone.”
I stared into the darkness. It was hard to see anything through the brush, but if there was, they had probably heard us speaking.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said.
”He's gone, now.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“One of us stands watch tonight,” Isaru said, after a moment.
“And what if he’s dangerous, and just left to get reinforcements? Maybe it’s best if we ran and confronted him. I’d rather go out there and deal with the problem before he gets too far.”
“You sound confident of our chances.”
“Why be the prey when you can be the hunter?”
Isaru didn’t really have an argument against that, so we eased out of the brush until we were walking toward the river. The only light came from a thin sliver of moon hanging in the star-filled sky above the high canyon walls.
“How far, you think?” I asked.
“That stand of trees is the only place he could be hiding. He can’t have gotten that far.”
A small thicket of stilted trees grew on the riverbank. As soon as we made our way toward it, a burst of movement shot out of them. The man was running downriver.
We sprinted after him. If he was running, he couldn’t have been up to anything good. Either that, or he was scared witless.
Or maybe worst of all, and something I couldn’t discount...he was leading us into a trap.
We had run half a minute when it was clear that the runner was breaking away. We weren't going to catch him. He disappeared around a bend, and Isaru and I stopped when we got there, breathless.
“Turn back?”
Isaru hesitated a moment. “We have to move camp. We won’t be getting any sleep tonight.”
WE RETURNED TO CAMP and packed all of our gear. Within a couple minutes, we were back on the riverbank and following it cautiously east. Our path was leading us in the opposite direction in which the man had run, but we were still going as fast as we could. We ran some and walked some, putting as much distance between ourselves and who it was we saw.
After a half hour of this, I was utterly exhausted, especially considering my full pack and how hard we’d pushed ourselves throughout the day. There was nothing driving us except the need to get away.
Throughout the craggy canyon, our path veered and climbed. From time to time, we’d look back to see if we were being pursued, but always, we were alone. Maybe we were doing all this for nothing.
Another hour later found us still following the river. I remembered Isaru and I flying over all of this in a matter of minutes when he had saved me from my failed execution. A few hours by air would see us to Haven from this place, but going as we were, it would take a week or more.
We waded into the shallows of the river to skirt the remnants of a rockslide. By the time we returned to the stony riverbank, I paused to take a break.
“No more,” I said. “We need to sleep.”
Isaru didn’t answer, probably because he was too busy trying to catch his own breath.
I looked around for a place for us to take shelter for the night. The canyon wasn’t too promising, but in the rockslide itself, there was a slight depression. Enough, perhaps, to keep us out of sight, which was all that mattered.
“There’s a hollow in those rocks,” I said. “That’s probably best.”
At last, Isaru conceded. “All right. Let’s hurry, then.”
We walked up the rocks until we reached the depression. As I suspected, once inside, I could see that the rim was high enough that we would be completely hidden from the canyon below.
We both sat inside, and Isaru closed his eyes immediately to go to sleep. I closed my own eyes. Hopefully, this put us far enough from potential danger.
It was my last thought before falling asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WHEN I OPENED MY EYES, it was still dark and every bone and muscle in my body ached. I didn't know why I was awake with my exhaustion, but that became clear in the next moment.
There were voices outside the depression.
It hadn’t been far enough, apparently.
I shook Isaru’s shoulder to wake him. He opened his eyes slowly, and looked at me questioningly. He became more alert when the voices came again, louder.
I could hear rocks shifting, more movement, and more voices.
Our worst fears were coming true. They were walking straight toward us, and apparently, it was easy to follow our trail up here.
He reached for his sword, pulling it slowly from its scabbard. There would be no running, here. We had to stand and fight.
It was hard to judge how many men there were. We wouldn't know that until we stood and climbed out of the depression, making ourselves targets. Besides the several voices filling the night, there was nothing else to do. With luck, they didn’t want to attack us.
“If we take the top, we’ll have the high ground,” Isaru said, quietly. “That’s all I can guarantee, though.”
If we waited much longer, they would fall upon us, so we had to move now. We stood quickly, and I followed Isaru until we were standing on the rim of the depression, looking down.
We were met with the sight of twenty or so men scrambling up the incline. I had already entered Treeform, and Silence had tak
en hold of my mind.
“Kill them!” the man, who must have been the leader, ordered.
Isaru and I were already moving in tandem toward the lead climber, who was isolated from the rest of the group. He tried to back up, even as he reached for his cudgel, but it was too late. Isaru stabbed him through the stomach before he could even defend himself.
There were still a few others who were isolated, but we’d have to move quickly before they rejoined the rest. Our best chance was to pick off as many of those as we could. If they ever worked together, it would be too much, even for Isaru and I both.
The two men who were each alone, recognizing their danger, backed up to form ranks with the rest. There would be no more easy targets, but I took the opportunity to shift into Windform, as its flexibility was well-suited to fighting on an uneven surface. Isaru, being of a similar opinion, followed my move.
The heaviness of Treeform was replaced by the light-footed grace of Wind, allowing me to dance down the rocks and initiate combat. The men were now formed in a line, eight or so men across and two deep. They raised their round shields in tandem, with spears out.
Well, they were more coordinated than I had counted on. But we had the high ground, and the benefit of Seeker training.
And with luck, Anna’s talents at the blade. I needed everything I could get if we were to survive this.
There was nothing left but to attack the men; the longer they waited, the more they’d be able to prepare. So, I feinted as if to attack directly into the line, but instead skirted toward the formation’s right flank, even as Isaru moved left. The man at the end of the line had allowed himself to become slightly separated from the group, but before he could react, I was upon him. He raised his shield as I attacked, but instead of hitting the shield, I swung above, cutting into his neck and into his jugular. His scream gurgled with blood, but already, I was trying to find my next target.
