Cam fell to her knees and reached to clutch at her sister. “How long have you been here?” Cam choked out.
“An hour? Cam-I…everything is spinning.” Fiera squeezed her eyes shut and leaned her head against the tree.
The next sound Fiera made sliced the air around them, and she thrashed her head. Caleb hurriedly covered her wound with shaking hands. “They tied me up, and when they heard Tyron coming after us...they drove an arrow into me...” Fiera glanced once again at her thigh. “And haven't moved since.”
“Oh, hell, Fiera…” Caleb breathed, his eyes filling with tears. “We’ve got to get you help.” The next instant, Cam’s eyes widened, for Caleb had leaned forward to press his lips to Fiera. The moment was brief, however, for he pulled away as if coming to his senses. Fiera looked at him, dumbfounded.
“Wherearetheynow?”Fiera exclaimedsuddenly,tearing her eyes from Caleb.
“They...they’re gone,” Cam panted, blinked, then swallowed.
The world was slowing. No longer spinning, but now far too still to accompany the electrifying tingling in her nerves. Her fingers still trembled with the sensation. “They’re all...gone now.” At these words, Fiera’s head fell forward, and her body sank to the ground.
“Hurry, Cam! Help me get her up! We need to find help!”
“The Seekers have dwindled then,” Cam thought as she scurried up. Caleb was swinging one of Fiera’s arms over his shoulders when Cam took the other.
Her veins raced, her blood pounding in her ears like the drums Tyron had beaten with fists in his homeland. The sound echoed. All of the sounds tainted the air. The cries of Jezz and the last chokes of Ahab. The groan of Riah before he had sunk on top of her. The wailing part inside of Cam that screamed, “You killed someone!” The sounds in her mind were the hissings of those creatures in the Shadow Prisons. “And now...the only one who knows where the hell we were even going is now dead.” Nowhere to go except east. Cam halted. “We have to bury him!” But burying Tyron meant leaving Fiera wounded for however long it took to dig.
One word was present in Cam’s blaring brain.
Lost.
And then Caleb spoke as if he had been reading her thoughts. “If they killed Tyron, they had a plan on where to go next.” He lifted a brown satchel. “Riah’s,” he added.
“Riah,” Cam’s mind echoed. And then she remembered. She glanced with alarm at Caleb. He seemed to be having the same thoughts. She spoke them aloud anyway in a panicky voice. “Caleb...that arrow has poison on it.” Fiera was drifting off, her lips shuttering shut.
Caleb’s eyes widened as he realized this was true. “No,” he breathed. Then in a tone more panicked, “No, no…”
“We have to find help.”
“But where do we go?” Cam’s thoughts were frantic as they scrambled to find something, anything that Tyron had told them that might help.
“There lies ruins beyond the swamps. If anyone remains, they might be able to tell us where to go next,” he had said.
“A graveyard, then,” Cam thought. But it was all they had. She turned to Caleb but he had already drawn out a map and started through the forest, leaving the swamps behind.
“There go the ships, and Leviathan, which You formed to play in in the sea.”
-Song of the Watchers
Seven
A stone wall loomed over Cam. Panting, Caleb dismounted and stood beside her. She reached her hand forward, pressing her palm into the cool stone to ensure that it was real. “Someone must have built this, which means someone must be near. The ruins Tyron spoke of.”
Cam turned her attention to Caleb, who was examining the wall. “If only we could climb this,” he murmured to himself.
Cam’s eyes dartedup the wall which was slick andhadno vegetation upon it to aid them up. Her eyes roved the length of the wall. The stone stretched as far as she could see. “You idiot!” she burst out. “There’s a door!” She let out a sharp laugh, but Caleb’s solemn expression cut it off.
“I’m not that stupid, Cam. Ofcourse, I sawthedoor.” Her brows creased in puzzlement. The door was likewise constructed of stone. It stood partially open as if to tell any passersby that it was unlocked. Cam rushed towards it, but Caleb stopped her before she collided with the wall. “Easy there,” he said with a hand on her shoulder to slow her down.
Glints of gold caught her eye follow by words carved onto the door.
Engraved into a plaque of wood were the following
words:
Dare to enter and an easy path you will find not.
Healing can only be found the day this maze is in rot.
For the mind wanders, as do the feet
through these enchanted walls.
If answers are what your heart calls,
walk not beneath these darkened trees.
The Watcher’s eye will ever be on thee.
“A maze?” Cam muttered. “Great. And apparently, it won’t give us what we want.” She sank against the wall.
Caleb glared at her. “We have to try. It’s our only chance to...” he trailed off and swallowed the visible lump in his throat. His hands trembled as he swung open the door. He held out a hand. Cam staredat his callousedskin for far too long. “Fine. I’m going in with just Fiera then.”
She opened her mouth to object, but her words evaporated. Caleb swung his weapons, a cloak, and a bag of other supplies over his back before he tore the reigns from Cam’s grip. He hunkered through the door, the horse with Fiera on its back clopping after him.
Cam gazed after him as he trudged through a narrow passage among stone walls enrobed in vines. Caleb melted into the shadows. How he planned to find his way was a mystery. He had never been good at that sort of thing, Cam remembered. “Neither have I,” she muttered. Another sight caught her eye. The floor of the passage was not dirt or stone as she had expected. It was softer. Lush...
And bright red. Roses. Everywhere.
Ones which did not die. Ones just like those that had been kept in vases in Medulla. In her own home. Nurtured by Silva. “What the hell?” she breathed aloud. And with this last thought, Cam hurled herself through the doorway and into darkness, leaving any sort of sanity behind her.
“Youwere here all night?”
The man bobbed his head. Peter was convinced he was speaking the truth. He may have been a fool, but at least he was an honest one. “Were you alone?” Again, the man’s head bobbed vigorously. He was the broadest man Peter had ever seen. With muscles like boulders and owning the structure of a giant, he had been appointed guard of the magic after Apollyon’s revolt. “And…what about this?” Peter reached down to grasp at the empty whiskey bottle on the stone floor just inside a small doorway leading down a small passage to where the magic was. Or where it used to be rather.
“I ain’t been drinkin’ one drop! I swear it!” the man said emphatically with flying hands in the air. Peter frowned at him, turning the bottle around and peering inside of it. “I had it with me, but I never drank a single drop. I swear!”
“How is it empty, then?” Peter was growing quite exhausted of questioning people. He leaned against the door frame and let out a yawn, one he made no effort to conceal.
“I musta knocked it o’er when I was tryin’ to get thatman outta here.”
Peter straightened, his eyes widening in interest. “A man? What did he look like?”
The nervous fellow fumbled with his belt, drawing it out from his stomach so as to allow himself more breathing room. “Well…err I don’t know that it was a man. Coulda been a woman or…one of them…” he stuttered near the end, hesitating to say the next words.
“The Shadow Bearers are no more,” Peter told him firmly. The man opened his mouth to say something, but nothing was uttered. Instead, he cast his eyes to the stone floor lit only by his torch which was perched on the wall. “I’ll ask this again: What did he look like?”
“Whatever he was…he was wearin’ a robe or cloak or whatever. It had a hood and
it covered most of his face. He uh…didn’t seem to have much on him. Not even a weapon. Not that I could see anyhow.” The guard’s brows furrowed.
“If he was weaponless, how was it he was able to attack you and take the magic?”
“There was a black cloud, and I couldn’t see, Sir. See, he blinded me. I was a stumblin’ aroundin thedark fora while, and when my vision cleared, the bottles were gone. There wasn’t a thing in here but meself.”
The giant of a man paused, and Peter considered his story, playing the images through his mind. What the man was explaining sounded nearly impossible, but it was not as strange as the occurrences in the other realms. The magical tree of the Medulla Realm had been struck by a sudden bolt of lightning with no sign of a storm. The water in the hidden pool of the Imber Fel had evaporated into steam and vanished. The fallen stardust in Cinis Lumen had been seen melting away until it disintegrated into useless ashes. Perhaps what the guard before Peter had said, was what he had truly seen.
“I did see somethin’ else though. Don’t know how important tis it though.” Peter’s attention darted up to meet the man’s gaze. “He was wearin’ somethin’ green under his robe. It was lookin’ like the color of poison.”
“Poison,” Peter mumbled to himself.
“Yer that’s what I said. Poison!” he announced, this time thrusting his hands into enormous pockets.
“Ifyer wouldallowmetostatemy opinion, Sir…I’vegotta theory.” Rubbing the side of his face and slumping more and more against the door frame, Peter returned his attention to the man’s intense gaze. He looked at the latter expectantly. “It’s my theory that the magic wasn’t stolen.”
Peter laughed. The sound was dry and sharp. He was outright mocking this man. “Oh really? Then where is it?” Hurt flickered across the guard’s face. Peter softened his expression and allowed the man to explain.
“Ithinkitwas destroyed, not stolen,” heremarkedfirmly. The giant of a man no longer appeared unintelligent but strong and determined. “Whoever’s done whatever to our magic is clever and powerful enough. They don’t need our magic, Sir Peter. They have enough of their own.”
Lightning out of nowhere, an unknown source to evaporate, sudden melting of stardust, and now a black cloud. It didn’t sound like ordinary magic to Peter. But what else could it be? “All them evil peoplewant is to weaken us. There’s somethin’ else they gonna do to Mirabelle. We’re in danger.”
“But this is merely your opinion,” Peter told him.
“Not just mine, Sir. Many people ‘round here is agreein’ with me.”
“I would, perhaps, allow myself to consider the possibility you have stated, if only you’d tell me how. Magic is not capable of such things.”
“Neither is the weather or whatever you’s thinkin’ destroyed the magic,” the man laughed, the sound filling the dank passageway. Peter remained silent and still. Presently, the large man’s amusement subsided. His voice lowered, and his expression grew dark. “The magic we know of isn’t capable of what we’ve witnessed. But there is other magic. The Infernal magic…”
“Do not say it!” Peter muttered loudly. The man’s mouth clamped shut. Peter knew exactly of what he spoke. “There is no such thing.” Peter knew very well that there was such a thing.
“Then why, Sir Peter, may I inquire, are ye so afraid fer me to say it out loud?” Peter glared at him, but the guard’s expression remained the same. Peter sighed.
“We can’t make any resolutions. Not yet. We don’t know enough. Thank youfor your cooperation, Sir.” Peter gave a slight bow of appreciation, and the man bobbed his head once more.
Peter turned on his heel and strutted down the passage, leaving the man behind. The theory turned over in his mind. The guard could be right. Although few had ever confirmed seeing the magic they called Infernal in their stories, he knew it to exist. Peter’s imagination pulled together images from the battle just north of the castle in a valley. Apollyon’s army consisted of beings that could create clouds of blackness from nowhere. An act they had no explanation for. Peter kicked a loose rock in the passage out of the way, releasing some of his frustration in the movement.
And as for the Shadow Bearers...well, who was to say that they didn’t exist elsewhere? The Black Mountains of Mirabelle was one place. One small, excluded place. If what the guard had just told him was true, it was possible the magic was stolen to weaken Mirabelle, and worse things could be lurking just outside of its borders. Or perhaps, evil was already seeping through.
Whoever had stolen the magic had known exactly where it had been.
Eight
Riah’s dreams were a combination of blurs and memories. He
saw swamp water and fire. There was cold iron and then trees ripping in a storm. There was a darkening forest and then a slice of blinding light. Voices...sweet and stirring. And finally, a face. A creature warped and wrinkled, a gaping mouth and empty eyes. A hissing voice, “Awake, Apollyon…”
Riah stirred. Pain rippled through him. His vision was a blur of overhanging trees and gray sky. Something soft brushed his face. His hand shot out to grasp it. Something hissed and what appeared to be a cloak or cape was ripped from his fist.
“What ails you?” Riah was convinced he was dreaming. “Up.”
“I...can’t,” Riah replied through clenched teeth. The slightest of movements caused pain to surge through every fiber of his form. Not to mention that his legs had grown numb. The creature loomed over his fallen form with cape billowing in the wind. His inky hair scattered across his ivory flesh.
The Shadow Bearer dropped before him. “You’ve been poisoned.”
“You don’t say,” Riah muttered. “It was the arrow. I left it in... the poison is in my system.” He winced as Leviathan’s elongated hand grasped his upper arm and pulled him to his feet. When he was released, he sagged to the ground in a helpless heap.
“This willhurt,” Leviathan warned. Riahdid not askwhat he meant but became instantly very still. Every limb had gone suddenly stiff, and he was vaguely aware of a dark cloud enveloping his vision. He cried out as if something deep within him were splitting open. Fire filled his veins. Riah threw his head back, screaming past his inflamed throat and mouth. A sensation of breaking coursed through his arms and legs. Finally, the burning ebbed before subsiding. He shuddered and gasped.
Blood lurched through his throat, and he kneeled over to cough it from his lungs. Leviathan stepped back. With a swipe of his hands, he declared, “That should do it.”
When Riah had caught his breath and managed to stand on his weak legs, he asked, “How did you do that?”
“Ispent a lengthy timein Imber Fel a coupleofyears ago. I learned of their poisons and cures there. It really is beneficial knowledge. You’re welcome.” Riah did not thank him but merely nodded. “It is fortunate that I located you on my way to my home, where you should already be at this time.”
As if making a sudden realization, Leviathan whipped his head around and surveyed the vacant camp. “Where are the others?” he hissed.
Riah spat blood. “Tyron is dead as are the ones you appointed me from Gnosi. And Fiera...she was poisoned too.” Riah’s eyes scanned the border of the forest but did not say anything on the matter of the other three.
“They escaped and managed to poison you?” Riah responded with a cold glare. Leviathan laughed. “Which one?” Riah refused to tell him it had been Camaria. The Shadow Bearer’s expression became hard. “Pathetic,” he spat.
“Are we still going onward to your home, then?” Riah inquired, choosing to ignore Leviathan’s remark.
“Eventually,” thecreatureresponded. “First, Iwilldeliver you to your destination. I will then go onto my home alone before going to the queen in order to finish the task once and for all.”
“How long will the journey take?”
Leviathan cut Riah a sideways glance. “That all depends on if you can walk.” He tossed to Riah a sheathed sword, a handful of daggers, and a sma
ll, drawn bag. Riah inquired what was insidethebag. “Poisons…andcures. Iswipedtheingredients years ago from Imber Fel. You will learn their properties, effects, and formulas on our journey.” He paused once for a brief moment to survey Riah before starting off towards the north where gray fog clung in the air.
Riah stayed with his feet planted firmly to the ground. “How did you do it?” he called.
Leviathan turned. “Told you that I spent years in in-”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Riah walked toward him. “How did you destroy Mirabelle’s magic?”
A cold, cynical smile twisted Leviathan’s lips. “It was not I who destroyed it, Prince.”
“Then who did? And how did they accomplish it? You must know, for you were a part of the scheme.”
“Of course, I know. I told her how.”
“Her?” Leviathan nodded. He turned on his heel, leaving Riah standing with brows creased in curiosity. “Andwho thehell might this ‘her’ be?” Riah muttered. Seeing that Leviathan was no use for answering this question, Riah set off after him.
Camaria had caught up to Caleb within a matter of minutes.
She had left her exhausted horse behind. As they walked through length after length, section after section of the maze, Caleb’s irritation grew as Cam’s curiosity grew. “These roses...they’re almost like…” Cam shut the thought down. Still, it persisted. Her feet scraped the blood-red petals, but this didn’t cause them to break or tear as normal, fragile petals would. It was as if they were a part of the floor.
Caleb didn’t seem to notice them at all in his concentration. “Have you lost count yet?” Cam asked silently. Shehadn’tbeen countingtheturns herself. “Atleasttwenty,” she surmised. She shifted her baggage from one aching shoulder to the next.
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