Keepers of the Crown

by Lydia Redwine

  “We will go in with a plan. We do not know where the Crown is, so there is nothing we can tell her,” Peter said at last in the wake of Fiera’s statement.

  Cam turned to Joel. “If you wish, we can have one of our company journey with you back to your home. I know you never asked to be involved in anything beyond locating Ilea”

  Joel interrupted. “I’m going with you, Cam. If I return home, I will always wonder what would have happened had I continued. And besides, I would like very much to meet your sisters.” His lips lifted in a small smile.

  “Ifyouarecertain,” Cam said. Henodded. Cam turnedas Joel left her side to see Peter looking at them intently. When he found that Cam had caught him, his gaze flickered away.

  “There are plenty of chambers within the castle for your company tonight,” Ilea offered.

  “Are you sure we wouldn’t be intruding?” Peter inquired.

  “Absolutely not!” Ilea exclaimed. “It will be different, however. But I do not mind. I will feel far less lonely than I have for nearly a thousand years.” Ilea’s laugh was sharp. “This way.” Within the next half hour, the twelve and their additional travelers were roomed and putting themselves to rest before the next day.

  The castle fell silent, and Cam could hear only the steady breathing Fiera who shared her room. “Cam,” came a soft voice. Cam turned sideways in the bed to face Fiera whose eyes were filled with concern. “We have to save our sisters, no matter what happens.” Cam nodded and reached forward to squeeze Fiera’s hand. A tear slipped from Fiera’s eye. “I wish I hadn’t left them.”

  “They would have taken you too,” Cam said. “And then we wouldn’t have one of the most capable soldiers in our company.”

  Fiera seemed to brush the comment away. “How far is Mingroth from here?”

  “Owen says it is close to a four-day journey.”

  “Anything could happen or have had happened in that time.” Fiera rolled onto her back and stared blankly at the ceiling. They said no more.

  The looming truth stared back at them. Screamed at them.

  Mirabelle was gone. Or what they knew of it anyway.

  Cam reached for the sorrow she knew was within her, but these past months, since Terra, she had learned how to feel hollow instead. She reached beneath the bed and withdrew a dark, glass bottle.

  Another thought flickered across her mind. Cam whisperedat Fiera in thedark. “Ilea saidLeviathan wouldreturn tonight.”

  Fiera was silent for a long moment before she said quietly, “No doubt he knows where we are headed. He will await us there, I believe.”

  The silence grew heavier, and Cam opened the bottle to drown it out. “You’ve been doing this too long, Cam,” she thought. She glanced at Fiera. She had rolled onto her side and could not see her.

  Fiera spoke one last time, her voice small and far away. “We must save them. All of them.”

  Peter addressed the company in the main room of the castle the

  following morning. He lifted a cup as he spoke. “Let us take an oath, make a vow to commit to one another and be undivided and unified for Elyon! Let us promise one another that if one of our company discovers the location of the Crown or further details concerning the Savior’s coming, that such information should never be released to the forces of our enemies even if our people are tortured or killed before our eyes.”

  Cam lifted the cup to her lips, hesitated, then drank the wine. Her head was still pounding, nerves still tingling. Even Peter’s voice seemed deafening. Quickly, she set thecup down.

  She looked grimly before her as Lia tied her hair up. The company donned armor, weapons, and supplies in bags of cloth. They departed on foot from the castle and tramped through the forest of thorns in a single file line. Peter walked at the front, and Cam wondered how long he had been their leader. Since leaving Mirabelle? Questions hung between them. Whenever she had looked at him this morning, she had read them. “Is he still upset with me for leaving?” Cam wondered.

  When they broke out of the forest and into the fog clung air, Cam looked about for signs of horses, but they were nowhere to be seen. Were they to travel on foot the rest of the way? This was answered when she heard rushes of wind from overhead. She glanced up and saw the outlines of great flying creatures soaring toward them. Their wings crackled and sparked, but the flames did them no harm.”

  “The Lumenbirds survived,” Cam breathed as her eyes swept their lengthy forms covered in ash-colored feathers. They were smooth, like rippling gray waves and with eyes the color of stars. The color of the first ember of light in their world. And they were allied with them now.

  The Lumenbirds were immensely strong and could carry two humans as well as much supplies without complaint. Cam mounted one and found that Peter was climbing up after her. He said nothing. Cam tensed when he pressed his chest to her back and wrapped his arms around her waist so as to hold on.Last night, she had been glad to see him, but now…

  “Now he sees that I was right to leave Mirabelle all along.” Cam dug her knees in and grasped the feathered front of the creature before her.

  The Lumenbirds swooped into the heavens. Their wings burst into little embers of flame. The fog faded as they rose higher into the sky, and the expanse all around them was light blue splashed with morning pink.

  Cam dug her knees in further to prevent risk of toppling off the creature. Peter tightened his hold around her waist. “I hope this doesn’t last long,” she thought she heard him say. But it was hard to tell with the wind. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help smiling. And maybe she was smiling because they were so high up and everything was so breathtaking…

  After a couple hours of high soaring, the birds began the descent at a slow pace. They emerged from the clouds into a shadowed valley far from where they had begun that morning. The birds landed with ease on the thin grass. Cam glanced at the vicinity. Everything seemed dead. In high summer, this valley was parched, the trees forlorn and no water to be seen.

  Cam, Peter, and the rest of their fellow travelers hauled their baggage from the backs of the birds and plunked them upon the ground. “We will rest and eat for a couplehours before flying again,” Peter told Cam.

  “Why wait until dark?” Cam queried, as she watched the sun slowly sinking into the horizon.

  “We stand a better chance of not being spotted by any…passersby if we travel by the cover of night.”

  “Wouldn’t one see thefire of the birds’ wings far easier in the dark though?” Fiera countered, approaching them.

  “Clouds will provide coverage for that tonight,” Caleb commented, glancing towards the sky. The expanse above them was indeed heavy with the clouds.

  “Let’s hunt,” Caleb said, tugging at Fiera’s arm. Fiera gave Cam a long look. It was hard now, knowing their sisters to be in Mingroth, to remain apart from each other. A silly fear, really. But losing sight with one another still made Cam’s stomach churn. Cam nodded, and Fiera left with Caleb at her side.

  “Not that there is anything to hunt,” Cam thought. But she knew Caleb said it to offer distraction. For both he and Fiera. “Walk with me?” Cam turned to Peter who was looking at her with expectancy. She nodded.

  They circled the encampment quietly for several moments in silence. A silence so loud it drowned out the sounds of the others in their company about them. “I didn’t prepare myself for this. I wasn't expecting to see him so soon. And when I left, I still believed him to be my friend. He saved me which means he may think the same. Or maybe... he just saves people because that’s who he is. It doesn’t matter that it was me.”

  Cam couldn’t stop the flow of her thoughts of her own accord, but they were broken when Peter finally forced himself to speak. “Please accept my apology for ordering you to stay in Mirabelle…I…” he trailed off as he turned abruptly to face Cam. “I shouldn't be telling you what you must and must not do. And I see now that it was better for you to be away from Mirabelle. Providential I would say. Elyon’s will, I think.�
� Peter raked a hand through his hair and released a shaky laugh. His eyes, however, were earnest.

  “I accept your apology, Peter. And... thank you. It means much to me,” Cam said softly as she brushed her hand against his arm.

  “I will make some effort to make it up to you,” he said hastily. “Though it isn’t much…”

  “Isn’t much?” Cam protested. She laughed the first real laugh in a while. “You came to rescue us. You lived, Peter. That is enough for me.”

  Peter stopped walking and turned fully to her. His gaze had taken on a new sort of emotion, one Cam had not seen him look at her with before. He did not say anything although he looked as though he wanted to say many things.

  “Will we go back, Peter? Will we go back home?” Cam asked at last as she reached for his arm.

  He shook his head and swallowed the lump that had visibly formed in his throat. “There is no home left for us, but yes, wewill return towhatlandremains.Tobewiththepeople…”

  “That’s it, Peter. That’s home. The people” was all Cam said. She would not look at him while tears burned her eyes.

  Peter sighed.

  “There is something else I need to tell you…” Cam said slowly. She wouldn’t look at him. She hadn’t even remembered deciding that she would tell him what she had been struggling with for months now. “I haven’t even told Fiera.” The thought punctured something inside her. It opened an old wound that might have closed long ago had she made different choices.

  Peter turned, and his brows furrowed when he realized that Cam’s eyes were wider than usual, her hands a bit more fidgety in her lap. “Yes, Cam?” he asked softly.

  “I-” she started. “No, not now. This isn’t the time for a sob story. Later…”

  “I am glad you came for me first, Peter,” Cam said after a long moment.

  Peter nodded but avoided her gaze. “Of course. We couldn’t rescue your sisters without you.”

  Flying by night was far less enjoyable than by day. Perhaps if

  the stars had been out, and they were soaring through the eyes of night, Cam would have found it enthralling, but instead all she knew was cold, bitter winds and the grim noises of flapping wings and crackling sparks. She huddled against Peter’s form and clenched her teeth to prevent them from chattering. Even the embers of the Lumenbirds did nothing to warm them.

  Cam pulled the cloak closer around her body. Every now and then the creature would flap its wings and sparks would burst around them, but mostly the birds glided with determination. “Only three more nights of this…” Cam tried to assure herself. “Before we enter Mingroth.”

  “I wonder what it will be like,” she wondered aloud, knowing no one would hear her. But apparently, Peter had.

  “Like something sulfurous and sinister,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Like the Shadow Prisons…” Cam murmured. And the Shadow Bearers. Did they dwell there too? Peter had said the attack was made mostly of Shadow Bearers.

  She recalled then that Lia and Saffira had been sent ahead on the swiftest of the Lumenbirds to map out the valley from a higher viewpoint.

  The sky was tinted a charcoal gray when Cam lifted her eyes and peered beyond the Lumenbird’s head. Rising before her, were evergreens and what appeared to be extremely dense fog. The birds landed on a ledge and the company slid off. “They will wait here,” Peter said, indicating the winged creatures. “They will be too noticeable once we’re in the valley.”

  From that moment on, the company stood in dead silence, overlooking what must be the valley but was too dense to distinguish. The world was tainted green and gray. Cam dared not to breathe deeply. “This is a place where one becomes ill. In body and in mind.”

  Absently, she gripped the slingshot at her side. The last time she had seen such a place as this…

  Terra was lying among the brambles, flesh pierced. She was coughing, the sound drowning out the screams of the Shadow Bearer imprisoned beyond the walls. Her smile…

  The dirt.The pink flowers.

  And Cam was standing in the glowing ballroom back home. Just her and one woman. Silva with a sickening smile surrounded by bright red roses. Cam was holding a dagger dripping with blood.

  She felt rather than heard her own scream. She flung the blade from her hand and…

  Silva vanished in a wisp of black smoke, her laughter curdling the air behind her as she went. Another figure stood in her place. Haggard and ashen, broken and bent...Terra stumbled toward Cam.

  “Help…”Terra chokedout. Butall Camfeltwasherbody moving away, far, far away. Out of the ballroom, out of the valley, into…

  Nothing.

  The scene vanished as she startled when two figures emerged from the fog. One figure supported the other who was limping.

  “Saffira,” Peter called out, darting forward. Lia grunted as she attempted to continue supporting Saffira’s weight. She allowed Saffira to slump into Peter’s arms and onto the dirt- ridden ground.

  Lia’s brow was creased, her eyes glazed and breathing heavy with exertion. Dirtand blood streaked her face. “We could not see into the valley,” she said through panted breaths. “So, we went inside and found the path to what appears to be the main structure...” She allowed herself to breathe as Peter pulled the pant leg of Saffira’s trousers up to her knee. A gash caked in blood and dirt ran from her calf to just below her knee.

  Saffira wincedandgraspedat her brother’s arm.She, too, looked highly disheveled. Even more so than Lia, Cam noticed. “You were attacked,” Peter said grimly.

  Lia nodded. “Shadow Bearers of the earthen kind. They came from the ground, out of nowhere, and slashed her leg.”

  “How infected?” Peter inquired anxiously.

  Owen had stepped forward to examine the wound. “She will heal. And she won’t need Medulla, though if we had more, I’d give her some. She shouldn’t enter the valley again.”

  “No, no!” Saffira cried out. “I want to go. I’ll heal soon. I can walk…”

  “No, you must rest,” Peter insisted.

  Cam steppedforward. “What can wedotohelphernow?”

  “Water,” Owen replied. “AndI have someointment in my baggage. Not as good as Medulla but sufficient enough.” Cam dismissed herself along with Fiera to search for the necessary items. Once they had gathered them, they stood in a circle around Saffira and nursed her wounds. Saffira’s groan through gritted teeth had Cam wincing.

  “The Valley…” shegasped after taking a gulp of water. “Is far more dangerous than we anticipated.”

  “How did you escape?” Cam asked, turning to Lia.

  Lia’s brows knit together. “I climbed, dragging Saffira with me. But wefoundSilva’s strongholdandeven quitepossibly a tunnel that runs underneath with an opening below.”

  “Perfect! We can take a passage that way,” Peter commented.

  Lia shook her head. “We must take the utmost precautions. Shadow Bearers patrol those tunnels. And they aren’t...ordinary Shadow Bearers.”

  “What do you mean?” Cam asked, turning to face the harried-looking Lia.

  “I mean, they don’t look like any I’ve ever seen before. They seem...weak. Powerless. Compared to others.” Lia sighed.

  “Good, that works to our advantage,” Cam said.

  “But they’re hidden,” Saffira gritted out. “And have the element of surprise.”

  Lia nodded. “We still have a chance. We killed the ones that sawus. Silva doesn’t knowwe’rehereyet. Or, at least, I hope to Elyon that she doesn’t.” Cam knew these words were spoken in hope, but to her, it didn’t matter. Silva was waiting for them.

  Eighteen

  Cam’s hands grasped a taut rope before she slid down and was

  enveloped in clinging gray. She shuddered as her feet sank to the ground. She surmised that she had slid for at least fifty feet. What a climb it must have been for Lia. The walls of the valley were jagged stone, but the floor surprised her. It was not hard and firm like the ground abo
ve but soggy and nearly swamp-like. Trees of flimsy form reached out like decaying skeletons to grasp at her. The air was stifling and thick, just as it had been in the Shadow Prisons.

  This valley was just as toxic. “This place is poisonous. But not just for thebody.” Caleb emerged from the fog, his own rope in hand.

  “For the mind too,” Cam agreed.

  “And the spirit,” Caleb added, “We must be careful.”

  Within moments, the rest of the company had descended into the valley around her. They left the ropes hanging so as to have a way to climb out when the time was ready. Cam glimpsed the fading silhouettes of the Lumenbirds as they edged away from the valley.

  “This way,” Lia said, pointing to a divided path under a passage of overhanging trees which protruded from the swamplike ground.

  “We’ll split our company in two so as to have better coverage and to better secure ourselves,” Peter announced. “If it weren’t for Lia and my sister’s quick thinking, the Shadow Bearers would have passed the word on that we are present within their territory. Silva must not discover that we have come into her land.”

  The travelers nodded after Peter’s words. Lia spoke up. “As far as we know, there are two paths adjacent to Silva’s stronghold, the main structure within the vicinity. They both end at the same place.”

  At this, Peter took the lead in separating the company into two groups. Cam counted those around her. “Joel, Owen,

  Ilea, Peter, me, and those two,” she thought as she glanced at two older men. “Fiera, Caleb, Lia, and the others…” she finished. Owen took the lead on the right path with a map drawn on light colored cloth by Saffira and Lia. The others were melting into the grayness when Cam grasped her slingshot and plunged into the tree covered passage. “Like diving into the maze again. And I still can’t see very far.” She was already sweating, her throat already feeling far too dry.

  “It feels awful, that feeling of knowing you’ll be attacked but the question of ‘when’ hangs in the air,” Joel said as he stepped into Cam’s stride.