The Wandering Isles

by C. L. Schneider

  Raising an arm, I slammed my studded brace across Jem’s elongated jaw—once, twice. Hide split. Blood misted. Hurting him this time, he recoiled. His boot slipped on a rock. His ankle twisted. I took the opportunity and knocked his weapon aside; mine slid in under his reach. With a step and a hard thrust, I shoved through armor and flesh. Steel sunk in clear to the hilt and pushed out the other side. His body bucked in my grasp. Blood struck the side of my face from his wet, strangled breath.

  A somber sense of relief pounded the heart in my chest, as I pushed him off the blade. My grip was lathered in his blood. Despising the feel of it, I tossed the sword and wiped my hand on my leg—looking up in time to catch his teetering body as it fell against me. Holding him, I was reminded of our clash in the cave on Kabri. That night was the first time I killed my father. How naïve I’d been to think it would be the last.

  Ten feet away, the doorway pulsed. The void shrunk in on itself. The lines of auras faded, and the passage closed. With it, went my chance to see Jillyan and our child. If it went to Arulla, I thought. If I could ever believe a single word he said.

  A change came over the limp form in my arms. It grew lighter. Smaller. The texture of Jem’s armor on my skin, and the smell of his fur, disappeared. Startled, I lifted his body away from mine. For a split second, I stared at what I held, not comprehending. Shock turned to disbelief, and I cried out, barely maintaining my grip as I stretched the corpse out on the ground. I staggered back, gagging, gaping at the fatal hole in his chest.

  It wasn’t my father I ran through. It was—

  “Jarryd…? No, I… No…”

  I dropped beside him. His blue eyes were wide and fixed. Blood soaked his tunic, pumping steadily from the wound. Even if I had the magic to heal him, it was too late.

  “No. This isn’t you. This can’t be you. It’s a spell. It can’t be…”

  Praying Jarryd was nothing but another distorted figment, I reached out. I lowered my trembling hand to his chest. It was solid. Tangible. Real. “How…?”

  I scanned the silent field, searching for an answer, looking for help. But there was no help to be found on the barren isle and only one explanation. The islanders. They tricked me.

  But they didn’t kill Jarryd. I did.

  Choking back a sob, I drew Jarryd’s body up into my arms. The lump in my throat was nearly too large to swallow. The hole that would open inside me at his passing would be much larger. The severance of our link was a slow, lingering decline. And well-deserved, I thought. Jarryd left his home for me. He left his son, people he cared for. He believed in me. In return, I slaughtered him like he was a common enemy.

  “I didn’t mean to. I thought you were him. I thought you were…”

  But my father was never here. I understood that now. Our entire encounter was contrived and designed by magic. It explained the inconsistencies, the unstable flashes of my past, but little else. How was Jem crafted so convincingly? And why? Was it all a cruel stunt to mislead me into killing Jarryd? Were the beings that lived here truly that sinister?

  Unless it’s not him. Unless I’m still in their spell.

  Are they watching me?

  I checked my surroundings. Behind me was the slope I fell down. The way ahead was flat and clear. I was alone. There was no mist, only the net-like pattern of dark vines reaching like fingers across the entire expanse. There was only one discrepancy: Jem’s discarded coat was on the ground. Its edges lifted, stirred by a sultry wind. I stared at it, confused. Had the islanders left it behind as part of the ruse, to keep me grasping at reality?

  A harder gust folded the garment and rolled it in my direction. I shielded my eyes, waiting for the wind to die, as handfuls of parched grains danced and twirled over the mess of skeletons. I refused to let my friend end up among them.

  Vowing to come back for him, as I rested Jarryd’s body on the ground, I recalled the ominous words of the islanders. “We know what you fear.”

  Resurrecting my father, showing me my victims, deceiving me into spilling the blood of the one man who fundamentally changed my life for the better—their assessment of my fears was dead on. Their spell: brilliant. It jumbled my thoughts and twisted my memories, creating an altered version of reality so credible, it was near impossible to distinguish fact from fantasy.

  I let my gaze wander one last time over Jarryd’s still form. If he was gone, there was no practical reason for hunting down the islanders. Killing them would be purely retaliatory. It wouldn’t bring him back.

  I grabbed my sword and tugged it toward me as I stood.

  “If revenge is all I have left now, so be it.”

  Chapter Three

  Pain exploded across my jaw with a solid crack. My head snapped to the side, smacking into the rock wall. Mercifully, the world blurred…making dim the jolt of a fist in my side.

  The jab to my throat brought awareness back with a roar.

  Gagging, eyes watering as I gasped for breath, I clung to the wall for support. A pair of rough hands yanked me off. Another set hauled me up straight. My voice compromised from the hit, I forced out a raw, unimpressive, “Get off me!” as I struggled to break free.

  The burly men trying to contain me were twice my size. Their grips were like iron. It was in their knuckles, too. Langorians were known for punching with everything they owned, every time. What I couldn’t understand was why they were punching me.

  “Who are you? What is this?” I turned my aching head, trying to work out how I got here, in a dimly lit cave passage, in the custody of uniformed guards. “Where am I?”

  “Where am I? Where am I?” one of them taunted, chuckling his stale breath in my face. “Same place as the last four years. Crazy Rellan bastard,” he muttered.

  “Four years? What are you talking about?” I looked down at myself. My garments were unfamiliar, baggy, torn, and streaked with dark stains. “Where are my clothes?” My feet were bare and dirty. Sores riddled my arms. My hands— “Oh, gods…” I recoiled, staring in horror at the ugly things at the ends of my wrists. My knuckles were swollen and gnarled, fingers crooked and useless. The skin was cracked and raw, rutted from years of repeated injury. “No…no...” Breath left my lungs. I struggled to get it back. “This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening…” Weakness swept through me. My knees buckled.

  The guards caught me before I fell. Each seizing an arm, they dragged me along the corridor. I wanted to struggle, but I couldn’t shift my focus. These aren’t my hands, I thought, fixated on the repulsive abominations swinging at my sides. They can’t be. Mine were healed, years ago, by magic. They were straightened, cured of the constant throbbing. There was no pain. No more twinges of agony shooting up my arms.

  Then why can I feel them now?

  I studied the corridor, the rock formations, the sandy floor. I looked again at the uniforms the Langorians wore, at the state of my clothes. The air was oppressive, stale. Foul. I breathed in the smell of my unwashed skin—and an ache formed in my chest. It pressed in, sitting heavy on my lungs. I couldn’t get them to work, couldn’t catch my breath. Wheezing uncontrollably, panic turned my bowels to water. “I…I can’t be here. You don’t understand. I can’t be…”

  Back in Darkhorne. Back in prison.

  Not again.

  This is wrong. This is all wrong.

  A defiant, “No!” burst from my throat. “This is a dream, a nightmare. I’m not here. I’m not. Gods, I can’t be here!”

  The younger guard indulged me. “And why’s that?”

  “I was just on the ship!”

  “You was just pissin’ yourself in the corner, by the smell of it,” the other one snickered, his accent thick and guttural. “Move.” He shoved me ahead. “Or we’ll head back to the forge—and I’ll stuff you right back in the cage.”

  It was only a word. One, small word. But it held so much power.

  The sound of it stopped my heart. The memories it conjured dissolved reason, so quickly, fright turned my voice
to a strained, trembling whisper, as I echoed him. “The cage?”

  “Miss it already, do ya?” he grunted, tightening his hold. “I’ve been thinkin’ I might snap one of them skinny legs of yours next time. Maybe you’ll fit better, eh?” He yanked me close. “I’ll hobble ya real good. For the rest of your miserable life, you’ll be crawlin’ through these tunnels like a snake on his belly.”

  “You…you can’t do that,” I sputtered over his laughter. “I’m not a prisoner anymore. I’m not. You can’t keep me here. You can’t hurt me!”

  “Oh yeah?” He slammed a fist into my stomach.

  I doubled over, gasping. Every fractured draw of breath stung. The sound of the guard’s continuing laughter sliced at my frayed nerves. I tried to hold onto what I knew was true, what I remembered: the waves, the rock of the ship, my bunk below deck. But doubt swarmed with my every thought. Panic pushed against my chest, drawing the sweat up on my skin.

  I jumped at a disembodied whisper in my ear: “We know what you fear…”

  “What the hell was that?” The voice was feminine, with not a trace of a Langorian accent. “Who’s there?” Turning my head, I searched for someone in the shadows.

  The younger guard shook his head. “He’s seeing things again. Wonder what set him off? He hasn’t been this worked up in weeks.”

  “Who cares,” the other replied. His bearded lips twisting in a malicious grin, he locked a hand on the back of my neck and leaned in close. “A few dozen lashes should shut him up.”

  His threat taking precedence over the strange voice, I shied away. He tightened his grip and moved me along the corridor. My sluggish steps angered him, but all my energy was dedicated to denial, as I strived not to recognize my surroundings. I didn’t want to know the pitted boulders, the sweltering heat, the hiss of pitch dripping from the smoking torches. The nauseating stench of too many filthy bodies in close quarters. I didn’t want it to be familiar. But for years, these walls were my home. I was acquainted with every inch of the place that twisted, bent, and wrecked me, nearly beyond repair.

  I’m here, I thought, as the pain of reality set in. I’m back at Darkhorne.

  But how? The wandering Isles are nowhere near the mountains of Langor.

  I had no memory of returning, no memory of being captured.

  “This is a hoax,” I said. “It has to be. I was on the ship, asleep. Ian was yelling. There was this…strange fog. These things came aboard and…” Ian. Frantically, I looked for him. “Where is he? Where’s Ian? Is he here, too?”

  The Langorian on my right whipped his black, sweat-slick curls in my face as he laughed with a hearty shake of his head. “Ya hear that, Dunn?” He glanced past me to the younger guard. “The whelp’s really lost it this time.”

  “I heard him, Klarin. Just let it go. No need to rile him any further.”

  “So what if I do?” Klarin shot back. “The fool can barely string his thoughts together on a good day, let alone do a damn thing about it. Besides, it’s funny. After all this time, he still thinks Rella’s magic soldier is gonna swoop in and save him.”

  “Ian did save me,” I cried, “you stupid son of a bitch! He rescued me. He emptied out this wretched pit and set everyone free. And he’ll do it again.”

  “A prison break, at Darkhorne?” Klarin let out a dismissive snort. “There’s only one way to leave here, Kane, and you know it. But don’t worry,” he assured me with a vigorous squeeze. “You’ll be with us a nice, long time. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” I hollered, striving (and failing) to contain the quiver in my words. “Langor and Rella aren’t enemies anymore. The war is over. I stood beside the king when he signed the peace treaty. He closed the prison at Darkhorne. This place doesn’t exist!”

  Dunn, on my left, slowed long enough to pat the cave wall beside him. Dust crumbled on contact. He blew it off his palm. “Pretty solid for something that doesn’t exist. Think about what you’re saying, Kane. You’re only making this harder on yourself.”

  “I want to see him,” I said. “I want an audience with High King Malaq. Now!”

  “Malaq Roarke?” Klarin glanced past me, bobbing bushy brows at his companion. “That’ll be the day, eh, Dunn? When some half-Rellan prick sits on Langor’s throne? The traitor’s lucky Draken let him live after that failed coup. He shoulda slit his damn throat.”

  “It didn’t fail,” I said, clinging frantically to my fading hope. “Draken of Langor is dead.”

  “And I suppose you think your brave Shinree did the deed?” I said nothing, and Klarin drew me dangerously close. “‘Cuz killin’ kings and breakin’ into prison… Those aren’t easy feats to pull off from the grave.”

  I stiffened. Forcing myself to meet the man’s stare, I searched for a glimpse of tension or unease. Desperately, I wanted to find even a glimpse of deceit in the guard’s dark, wide-set eyes. There was only cruel amusement and a nonchalant sense of honesty.

  Every word he spoke was the truth as he knew it.

  My shoulders slumped. My gaze dropped.

  But I couldn’t let it go. “Fuck you, Langorian. Ian’s not dead.”

  “Oh, but he is, pup,” Klarin chuckled. “Worms’ve been feastin’ on that witch’s moldy corpse for some time now.”

  I said it again, slower, more emphatic. “Ian Troy is not dead.”

  “Pull it together, Kane,” Dunn warned. “Your mind keeps going like this, one of these days it won’t come back.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my mind. This isn’t happening. Ian—”

  “Is gone,” he broke in. “I’ve told you before. I was at the execution.” Dunn glanced at his companion. “We both were.”

  “If ya ask me,” Klarin sniffed, “it wasn’t much of a show. Never saw nobody react so calm to bein’ drawn and quartered. They shoulda weaned him off first.”

  “Your friend was on that drug,” Dunn said, “to keep him from casting. I don’t think he felt anything.” He caught my eyes, insinuating compassion for a heartbeat. It was all he dared.

  I still didn’t believe him. “I don’t know why, or how, but you’re lying. Ian’s coming for me. And he’s going to rip every last one of you to pieces.”

  “Shut up.” Klarin dragged me faster through the cave. “Goddamn Rellan resolve,” he muttered, shooting an irritated glance at his companion.

  “Can’t blame him for his nature, “Dunn replied. “None of them. It’s all they’re living on these days, with what’s left of the realm.”

  “What do you mean?” I glanced between them. “What happened in Rella? What did you do to my home?”

  Klarin tightened his grip until I winced. “You’re like a goddamn dagger in my side. Y’know that, Kane?” He gave me a shake. “I think you was born to piss me off.”

  “It’s only going to get worse,” Dunn replied. “Unless he has an accident. Slips in the mine, crossing one of the gullies. You’d be rid of him then.”

  “Murder, eh?” Klarin thought a moment. “Looks like you’re finally startin’ to think like me. Unless it’s a mercy kill. Are you tryin’ to let him off easy, Dunn? ’Cuz, if you was showin’ sympathy for a Rellan, I’d have to do somethin’ about that.” Klarin’s warning gave way to a sly chuckle. As it faded, his focus returned to me for a new round of insults and intimidations, peppered with gory recollections from the ‘celebrated execution of the war criminal, Ian Troy.’

  With every callous word he spoke, my grip on what I believed, and what I remembered, slipped faster from my grasp.

  I didn’t have the strength to stop it.

  Pieces of my past dissolved into shadow and drifted away. Details of the ship grew fuzzy. People and places, who were once important, became meaningless. Events disappeared. Recollections rearranged. Reality fractured. And I suddenly couldn’t find a single, reliable memory of anywhere else. I couldn’t recall the smell of clean air or the last time the sun hit my face.

  There was only here.


  The ever-present stench in my nostrils. The dust crawling in my throat and down my lungs; the snickers of the guards, as they watched us wrestle for enough drips of stale water to wash it away. The itch of sweat and filth, baked on my skin by the heat of the forge.

  Hunger gnawed like a beast at my insides. Yet, I’d come to see the biting pangs as a blessing. Starvation was a distraction from my wounds, and a potential road to the end.

  As the junctures went by, my dread multiplied. I was afraid of the lashes Klarin promised; afraid of what else they might do to me. But I didn’t beg for mercy. It was a waste of what little energy I had. They wouldn’t listen, anyway. No one here would. There was no one to help me, no one who cared. There was just the thing that lived in the dark.

  I felt it at night in my cell: a heaviness, a presence, watching me

  It sat in the corner, breathing in the shadows. It crawled closer and perched on my chest, pressing the air from my lungs. Its hands wrapped around my throat. Tightening.

  Squeezing…

  Gasping for breath, I stumbled on the rocky path. My surroundings rushed back with a wrench of pain as Klarin yanked me straight. It took only a moment to recognize we were in one of the living quarters now—my living quarters. The torches were near to snuffing out, giving off more smoke than light. Thick, rusty metal grates covered the holes in the cave floor. The bodies at the bottom were little more than hunched shadows. None looked up at our passing. They’d long since lost the one thing Langorians were adept at stripping from us: hope.

  I tried to cleave to mine. Somewhere there was a moment, a time when I wasn’t afraid. When there was laughter and light—I knew it. But I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t see anything but blood and bone. I couldn’t remember the feel of the grass, or what it was like to move without pain. But I did. I was made whole again. I was sure of it.

  “This is wrong,” I muttered. “This is all wrong. She healed me.” I couldn’t see her face, couldn’t locate her name in my mind, but the woman was real. “She made them work again,” I said, staring at my swollen fingers. “She fixed what you did to me. Ian saved me, and she—”