Lichgates

by S. M. Boyce

  “Onward!” He pointed toward the horizon and noted with a sad pang that he could no longer see the waterfall in the distance.

  The griffin bolted for the cliff. Kara tensed and grabbed the feathers on its neck, which made him laugh as he reached around her to balance himself. His arms brushed hers as he did so, the satin bodice of her traveling clothes both cool and soft. He swallowed hard and looked at the sheer drop ahead of them, trying once more to ignore the way he had trouble breathing when he touched her.

  The griffin jumped off the cliff and spread its wings, curling them after a second to dive into the forests below.

  Kara screamed at first—a lot—but the terror became uncontrollable laughter not long after the griffin rolled out of the dive. They had no reins and no saddle; there wasn’t anything to hold on to but the beast’s feathers, which he noticed were already quite rumpled from her grip.

  Three hours later, they landed to make camp before the sun set. Braeden leaned against a tree with a loaf of bread and watched Kara scratch the griffin’s forehead. The beast squeezed its eyes shut like a puppy at her touch. He chuckled and closed his eyes, too, basking in the last of the day’s hot sun and relishing the breeze as it rolled through the forest.

  “I want to name it,” Kara muttered.

  He peeked through his eyelids to see her sit against his tree. She scooted closer, until her arm brushed his. He grinned.

  “It’s not a poodle.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but paused as a different, unknown thought seemed to consume her. He eyed her and finished the last of his bread, wondering what she wanted to say, but he remained silent while she formed her words. She wrung her hands and stared at the griffin, eyes out of focus. When she finally spoke, her voice was almost too soft to hear.

  “Why are you really here, Braeden?”

  “If I recall properly, I’m protecting you,” he said, smirking as he leaned his elbows on his knees.

  “Yeah, but why?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “Okay, we can do the heart-to-heart thing. I won’t lie to you. At first, it was only because I wanted to ask the Grimoire a question.”

  “What question?”

  “It’s more of an inquiry, really. I hoped the Grimoire could break my tie to the Stele.”

  The griffin squeaked and twisted its feathered head to glare at him. He assumed the noise had been a gasp or something to that effect, but it had sounded more like someone stepped on a mouse.

  “But that would make you a vagabond. And everything in yakona life is tied to the Blood, right? The people’s power fuels his power. Everything here seems to need that kind of balance. I get the feeling that making you a vagabond would break that. There wouldn’t be an Heir. What would happen when your father died?”

  He cleared his throat and went silent, shifting his gaze as he toyed with his words.

  “There is a legend that, when a Blood dies without an Heir, all of his people die as well. Everyone with the blood loyalty.”

  There was silence. He peered over to her, but regretted it. Her mouth hung open in horror. She furrowed her brow, but her shock melted into revulsion as she seemed to realize that he was entirely serious.

  “I can’t believe you!” Kara pushed herself to her feet. He reached for her arm, but she batted him away.

  “Kara—”

  “That was your plan, wasn’t it?” she interrupted. “You just wanted to use me to kill all of those people? You’re no better than Gavin! There have to be hundreds of thousands of Stelians!”

  “Seven million if you count the villages,” he corrected. “But don’t compare me to Gavin! He wants revenge. All I want is to be free. Besides, you’ve met Stelians. You know what they’re capable of. They aren’t the nicest—”

  “They’re still people! Well, yakona. But it’s the same idea,” she said, pacing. Her eyes roamed the forest, looking at everything but him.

  “Kara, sit down for a minute and listen to me.” He snatched her wrist when she walked by and gently pulled her back to sit on the ground beside him. She still wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “It’s wrong and—”

  “Think about it, Kara. Think about what Ourea would be like without the most vicious race in this world. Stelians rule the evil things here and enslave everyone else.”

  He curled a finger under her chin and turned her to look at him. She still scowled, which cast a small shadow over her gray eyes. Her look of disgust made his stomach churn. He wanted to be ashamed of himself, but as many deaths as this would cause, he was right. The Stele had nothing good left in it to save.

  “Just listen,” he begged as he released her chin.

  “I’m listening.”

  He took a deep breath to steady himself. Richard had taught him that if he fought hard enough, he could have whatever he wanted in this life. Well, he’d dreamt of the day he asked the Vagabond for his freedom since he was twelve. This was it.

  “Think of that world, Kara, where there is no crime, where everyone is safe and we can walk out and about like this all the time, anywhere, without ever being afraid. You would never be hunted. If we can kill Carden and break my ties to the throne, that can happen. Exactly that will happen.”

  “It’s murder.” Her soft voice cracked. Her eyebrow twitched, and she glared at the ground as she ran her fingers through the grass. Her frown melted into deep thought.

  “Kara, please,” he said, setting his hand on hers.

  A shiver of excitement raced through him when he touched her, and for once, he didn’t try to ignore it. His heart beat faster. He finally admitted to himself that he liked it, but she didn’t look up. He scooted closer until his knee brushed hers. He slouched and leaned forward in an attempt to catch her eye.

  “Ourea can be a safe place,” he said. “Ever since I first listened to Richard’s stories about the Grimoire, I knew that it was everything I needed to bring peace to this broken world. This is what you have to do to get that peace. Please help me with this.” He leaned closer, until his head was less than an inch from hers. She still smelled like the roses from the cliffs.

  She twisted her gaze to him, and he held his breath at her intense stare. She watched him for a moment, but the glower dissolved as she once again lost herself to her racing thoughts. Her fingers toyed with the two pendants around her neck, such that they clinked against each other.

  Blue ash swarmed in the air before her, twirling and pooling on the grass. A few loose strands of the dust flew off in the wind, but the Grimoire appeared at her feet in a sudden flare of light without them.

  He grinned. Kara ran her hand along the cover, her face smooth and unreadable.

  “I had no idea this book could kill like that. It’s supposed to be for learning. For knowledge.”

  “Peace doesn’t come without bloodshed.”

  She shifted her gaze back to him. “Sure it can. It’s wrong to destroy an entire race of people, Braeden. It makes you no better than your father. I’m going to look, but not because I promise to help you. I’m doing it because I need to know if it’s even possible. Can you understand that?”

  “Kara, they deserve it!”

  “Neither of us gets to decide that,” she snapped. She turned to the griffin, who perked at her movement. “Keep watch, buddy.”

  She opened the cover and let it flop on the ground. Her fingers inched to the first, blank page, and she closed her eyes. Her lips mouthed words he couldn’t understand. The pages flipped as she whispered, turning one after the other like a gale was ripping across them. His heart raced, but he pinched his wrist to stem his excitement. She hadn’t promised him anything.

  The pages stopped turning and fell open to an image of a hooded figure that Braeden recognized from Richard’s storybooks—it was the Vagabond. The cloaked man stood on the right side of the page with his hand outstretched, and to his left were blocks of red text that shifted as Braeden scanned them. He managed to catch a word or two that he recognized,
but they blurred into illegible runes just as quickly as he read. He squinted, trying to make sense of the words, but they evaded him.

  “How can you read that?” he grumbled.

  She shrugged. “It looks like English to me.”

  She ran her finger along the text as she read. She frowned, looking briefly at the next page before she reread the section.

  “What?” he asked. He squared his jaw and held his breath.

  “You aren’t going to like this.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Don’t get mad.”

  “I—I’ll try.”

  She pursed her lips and read the passage aloud. “‘A vagabond may never break a Blood’s tie to the throne. Be he good or evil, his duty to the balance of our world is too crucial to break. While his people may be free, the Blood is forever a slave to the bloodline with which he rules.’”

  The air left Braeden’s lungs.

  “‘Life requires balance,’” she continued reading. “‘Though a dandelion is never as stunning as an orchid, we would never appreciate a flower’s beauty without also appreciating a weed’s simplicity. Therefore, we must accept that there is evil if we are to understand what it means to be good. Even if a Blood or Heir was to become a vagabond, it’s useless. The bloodlines of the yakona people will forever find a way to return, to survive, despite how we may strive to destroy them.’”

  Braeden leaned against the tree for balance and stared into the forest without absorbing anything but his own panic.

  “Are you—?”

  “I can’t be free?” he interrupted.

  She shook her head. “That’s all it says. The next page is about fruitcake.”

  “There must be something else.”

  “Braeden, I looked. I promise that it’s legitimately about fruitcake.”

  “That’s—you—”

  He stood. His hands tightened into fists. Knuckles cracked from the force. A memory resurfaced of the impenetrable white wall in Ethos, and that same wave of helplessness washed over him.

  He was never helpless. He’d spent his life training, learning, fighting—anything to never again be the little boy trapped in a carriage, at the mercy of a stranger. And here, now—he glared at Kara. Hatred burned in his gut, churning the smoldering rage that would always and forever burn within him. After everything he’d done to be good, he was still at the mercy of a book that wasn’t anything more than the lifeless shell of a dead man.

  The last ounce of his will dissolved. His control over the dark magic that ruled him snapped.

  “Braeden—”

  “YOU CAN’T DENY ME!”

  Kara pushed herself against the tree at his outburst, her eyes wide and afraid. His form rippled. Beneath the rough Hillsidian skin shone bits of the ashen gray he so despised. And yet, as it covered him, he sneered with pleasure.

  The rage scorched his veins and ignited the depths of his fury. His chest rose and fell in short, quick bursts. Red flames roared to life in his palms and turned black as they engulfed both of his hands and raced up to his neck. The fire seared the sleeves of his shirt. The stench of melting cotton stung his nose. He laughed. The sound was like rocks grating.

  Kara whimpered. He could hear her racing heartbeat. Sweat licked her forehead, neck and palms; he could smell it. Her breath caught on quiet sobs. He took a deep breath and smirked—fear.

  He missed that.

  His neck cracked as he twisted to see her. Her body trembled, and she watched him, apparently too afraid to run. Good. She wouldn’t have gotten far, anyway. A thin trail of blood streamed down her fingers from her grip on the trunk’s bark. That fueled him—that is, until a slow understanding spread across her face.

  She could see what he was, now—what he really was. She finally saw the true depth of what it meant to be in line to rule the Stele. Her realization quelled the hatred long enough for him to regain some sense of control.

  He remembered the tingling rush of heat that raced through him every time he touched her. He tasted the way his breath was always hard to come by when she caught him with her clear gray eyes. She would never look at him the same way again, not now that she’d seen this.

  Guilt and shame reignited his self-loathing. The fires raged across his body, stronger now. His flicker of lucid thought was gone.

  Smoke hissed from the pores along his neck and arms, the steam turning black as it stole the oxygen from the air, and he gave himself over to the depths of his Stelian power. His legs and arms and spine stretched. The threads in his clothes strained. A shadow fell across Kara’s body, and it took him a moment to realize that it was his. The darkness within him grew.

  Heat welled deep within. His chest burned. The hair on his arms prickled. An icy fire raced through his blood. Red and black and gray flames coursed over his gray skin, fighting for dominance.

  He hurled a ball of fire into a tree to relieve the tension. It cracked and toppled, smashing into the underbrush. The charred bark smoked and popped. Evil glee consumed him. Twelve years of suppressed resentment bubbled to the surface. He yelled into the sky, but it became laughter. The sound echoed in the trees.

  A wave of cold air fell suddenly over him, like a storm front before a blizzard. It froze his racing blood. His head cleared. His mind was heavy. Exhausted. He sank to his knees and peered around the clearing.

  Kara stood above him, shrouded in a wispy black fog that clung to her like a hooded robe. The makeshift cloak grew deeper and fuller until she was just a hazy outline within it, staring vacantly at him through its gaps.

  “Heir Drakonin!” Her real voice—the soft sound he recognized—was a murmur behind a second, deeper tenor. His eye twitched at the use of his formal title and his father’s last name. His palms pooled with heat. He seethed.

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Braeden,” she whispered.

  The final threads of his glee dissolved when he heard the gentle undertone of her voice. His pulse slowed as his control returned. He was so tired.

  “Kara, is that even you?”

  “You speak to the first Vagabond now, boy,” she said. “And when you seek my wisdom, you will obey what you find. I won’t negotiate, even with you. If a Blood dies, so do his people—that isn’t a legend. It’s a fact. Neither my vagabonds nor I will have a part in genocide. You must accept that.”

  It wasn’t a request.

  Braeden sat on his heels and looked at the grass. Clumps of ash clung to the thick layer of clover which carpeted the hill. The last fire in his palm burned out with a violent hiss.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Then there is still hope for you. You must learn to control your rage, prince, and not be governed by it. You have made a valiant effort all these years, but you still have so much to learn.”

  Braeden bowed his head and shrank into his Hillsidian form. His hands faded back to the familiar olive tone, but the darkness still smoldered within him, as it always had. He would never extinguish it.

  “Think of it though, Vagabond,” he pleaded. “My father killed the Blood of Hillside. He doesn’t care about the balance of the bloodlines. He’s a murderer.”

  “He is. But you can’t kill many for one man’s folly.”

  “But—”

  “No! You must accept that it will never happen. In the coming years, you will have the single most important role in restoring the long-overdue balance to this world. You must be strong enough to face what is coming. You will be more important even than Kara.”

  “Me?”

  “I see more than you might believe, prince, and learn more every day. Kara will need you before this is done. All the world will.”

  “Where do I even start?” He sighed with the hope that Kara wouldn’t remember any of this when she came to.

  “The muses will guide you. But, my boy, you need a reason to fight. Without a purpose for the bloodshed in your future, you will only fail.”

  Braeden looked up, confused, but the misty
cloak of the first Vagabond was already thinning. Patches of Kara’s pale skin appeared beneath the fading wisps, and her eyes snapped back into focus as the last of the haze evaporated. She blinked, glancing around and holding her head as if it ached.

  “Huh. Wasn’t I sitting down a second ago?” she asked.

  She doesn’t remember anything from during the possession. Braeden sighed with relief. Still, she probably remembered a fair bit of his outburst. He sat on the charred grasses and rubbed his neck, brooding over what the Vagabond had said.

  “Braeden, what happened?”

  “The first Vagabond took over your body.” He bit his cheek, his anger making it impossible to say anything more.