Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  She’d been silent since. I wondered if she regretted coming along, but she walked on as the sun dipped low and shadow-tinged clouds skimmed across it.

  Mercer secured us lodging in a crammed public house and sent a missive to Fabian explaining where the Realm Alliance could meet us. The one room available was a musty attic with a table but no bed, only sacks stuffed with hay and wool blankets. It came with nut bread and bean stew, brought to our room and served with a helping of inquisitive stares.

  We ate ravenously. Calanthe made even quicker work of her portion than I did of mine, wetting her wiry mustache, licking her chops, and begging for a nibble of bread when finished. I gave in.

  After wordlessly wolfing down his stew and bread, Mercer pulled a map of Nissera from his pocket and unfolded it on the rickety table, ironing it down with his fingers. He’d scrawled various notes to help him marry his knowledge of an older Nissera to this new, more populated one.

  “We will have a long and arduous journey to Mount Emlefir,” he said, voice hushed. “Without the ability to materialize, the trek through the Brazor Mountains will be difficult. But I’m sure roads are better than they were in my time. With the Realm Alliance’s troops and supplies, we might make it.”

  Glisette met my eyes as we waited for him to tack on a “quickly” or “without trouble.” He didn’t.

  I traced a path to Mount Emlefir, straying east to brush across Arna. I missed my home with its green flatlands and hills and forests. I even missed the cursed snows of deep winter and the way the stars seemed to twinkle brighter in cold air.

  “Or we could avoid roads altogether,” Mercer said, eyes sparking. “King Tiernan creates portals from one place to another, does he not? He could make a way for us to reach the Moth King’s court, protected from ambushes and traps.”

  A sudden fear seized hold of me, fear that I was not ready to do what needed to be done. “I don’t—”

  “And when the Realm Alliance is ready, their army can follow us through the portal to Mount Emlef—”

  Mercer stopped abruptly as the gray film slid over his eyes. His chest rose and fell with a rapid rhythm. The color washed from his cheeks.

  “What’s happening?” Glisette asked, nearly knocking her chair over as she tried to distance herself from him.

  “It’s a vision,” I whispered.

  It endured just long enough to invite worry. After nearly a minute, Mercer blinked the mist away from his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Darmeska,” he said finally. “Valmarys’s old court in Mount Emlefir is nothing but dust and crumbling ruins. He wants his new court to be magnificent. He’s going to invade Darmeska.”

  “He won’t be able to,” I said, fury and pride filling my chest. “The fortress is impenetrable and they’ve enough stores to endure a five-year siege.”

  “This is no ordinary elicromancer,” Mercer said. “We need to update the Realm Alliance and ask for King Tiernan’s help before Valmarys cuts off communication and travel between the cities. His first goal will be to isolate each power.”

  He looked feverishly about as though more writing supplies might suddenly appear in a puff of smoke, then stood up and struck his head on the low ceiling before stomping out of the room.

  Glisette kneaded her temples and used the tharat insaf spell to turn her lukewarm tea into wine. “This is so much to take in.”

  Mercer returned and dragged his chair back to the table with his toes as he plunked down. He scrawled out his message and muttered the spell that inhaled it into the magical missive routes.

  There was no shortage of thick woven blankets and we succeeded in making a comfortable pallet, though the three of us hesitated when it came time to determine where to sleep. Calanthe settled down first, listless as ever. With a wry smirk acknowledging the forced intimacy of our sleeping arrangements, Mercer lay on the far end nearest the small window.

  I sank onto my meager slice of the pallet next to Calanthe, my head by Glisette’s dainty feet, which were dotted with blisters she hadn’t mentioned.

  With a huff, I extinguished the lantern flame. In spite of the sounds of breathing around me, I felt more alone than ever, skewered with worry for those I loved.

  * * *

  We woke at the crack of dawn to scour the market. Before we’d even choked down breakfast, a jolly man had offered thirty silvers for Calanthe and a cobbler’s wife had tried to buy Glisette’s hair, nearly taking a knife to it before Glisette could squeak out a refusal.

  “Rub some dirt into it, won’t you?” Mercer joked, but it rang humorless. No reply had come from Fabian, Queen Jessa, King Tiernan, or anyone else.

  I almost feared their reply more than the lack of one. What would it say? That the realm’s armies were ready to march? That King Tiernan could create a portal for me to go to Darmeska this very hour? Would I stand on the ramparts of the fortress city, challenging the Moth King to try to take what didn’t belong to him? Would soldiers have to die so that I could stand face-to-face with him?

  My stomach contorted in fear for the hundredth time. This dilemma was a barrel rolling downhill, picking up great speed—with me stuck inside.

  Hurried hooves striking earth made my heart lodge in my throat yet again, but it was a coach hurtling up the dirt road from the south. It jerked to a stop at the edge of the market square and Kadri popped out, sporting a bow and quiver packed with neatly fletched arrows.

  Calanthe strained at the leash to greet her and I stumble-stepped after. Kadri waved the coachman along. He bowed his head and snapped the reins, leaving us in a cloud of dust.

  “I saw your message to Fabian,” Kadri said before I could ask her why she’d come. “The Realm Alliance isn’t coming to your aid.” Mercer swore in Old Nisseran, pacing several steps to calm himself.

  “The leaders think one of you killed Brandar,” Kadri continued, eyes haunted with dark circles. “Neswick has a silver tongue.”

  “He convinced the Realm Alliance?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry as dirt.

  “He did,” Kadri answered. “But they’re more concerned with the plague than they are with capturing you. At least for now. Hundreds of people fell ill with sores and fever yesterday and the palace elicrin Healer was found beheaded.”

  A fresh wave of terror washed over me. The blacksmith at the forge across the street fanned the fire with her bellows and I jolted as livid flames answered. I thought of the boy whose hat we’d taken, one of many innocent people who would fall victim to a deadly disease.

  “They plan to stop all traffic in and out of Beyrian by noon,” Kadri said. “I’m lucky to have made it out.”

  “What about Fabian and Rayed?” I asked. “They just let you leave?”

  “Everyone thinks I boarded the last ship for Erdem before the quarantine. I had to sneak away without even bringing my horse.”

  “What about our second message?” Mercer asked. “Did it reach King Tiernan?”

  “I didn’t see or hear of a second message, but King Tiernan returned to Arna yesterday morning anyway. Elicromancers are desperate to get to their homes before more materialization traps crop up.”

  “What did Fabian tell the Realm Alliance?” Mercer asked.

  “Everything. I wrote to you last night. Did you not receive my missive?”

  “No,” Mercer said darkly. “The missive routes must be compromised.”

  “Then I have more news.” Kadri raked her teeth across her bottom lip. “Valory…Neswick twisted everything Fabian said until it sounded plausible that you were behind the chaos. He thinks that when your father encountered the Summoners on his travels in the mountains, he converted to their thinking and passed their creed along to you. In his mind, you planned to resurrect an ancient evil, and Mercer is that evil in disguise. He echoed Ambrosine’s accusation that your grandmother helped you set up Devorian to take the fall for breaking the contract. He said Brandar knew you were practicing your magic and that’s why you killed him.”

  I felt as though
the wind had been knocked out of me. “Jovie told me I should master my power before it mastered me. She’s the only way Neswick could have known.”

  “But what would they have to gain?” Kadri asked.

  “I…” I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  “Those who don’t believe you plotted this seem to think you’re a victim of Mercer’s wiles,” she continued, her mahogany eyes searching my face. “Queen Jessa believes both of you are innocent and telling the truth. But she is vastly outnumbered.”

  I wished to sit down. “So both the Realm Alliance and the Moth King’s men will be after us?”

  “We’ll have to take obscure paths to Darmeska, through the Forest of the West Fringe,” Glisette said, snatching the map from Mercer’s breast pocket. “The roads are heavily regulated. There are guard outposts everywhere.”

  “You two would be much safer if you returned to your families,” Mercer said, looking from Glisette to Kadri.

  “I am here to right my brother’s wrongs,” Glisette said defiantly.

  “Sending me back to the city would mean condemning me to die by plague,” Kadri added, resituating the bow slung across her back. “Besides, I’m a fine shot.”

  “You’re mortal and therefore a liability,” Mercer pointed out. “You’re one more mouth to feed and one more set of footprints to track.”

  Kadri fluidly slipped the bow off her back, nocked an arrow, and let it fly so close to Mercer’s head that it ruffled a lock of his sandy hair on its way to skewering a slab of meat in a stall about fifty paces away.

  “Ho there, missy!” the shopkeeper yelped. “You’ll need to pay for that!”

  “Go on, Mercer,” Kadri said through an acerbic smile. “Please elaborate on how useless I am.”

  “I’m going to buy a sword.” He sighed, extracting a few silver and gold coins and dropping Fabian’s purse into my hands. He stalked toward the smithy. “Please talk some sense into your friend before she ends up dead. We’re leaving in a quarter hour.”

  “I’ll need boots that fit,” Glisette said, peering warily at the cobbler’s wife.

  “What about your engagement?” I asked Kadri as we filed into the market crowd weaving through the stalls.

  “The king and queen approved of my decision to return to Erdem until it’s safe in Beyrian. When that time comes, Fabian and I will marry as planned.”

  “Not if you’re disgraced when they catch you keeping company with the likes of us,” I muttered. That is, if any of us survive.

  “Fabian isn’t exactly in good graces either. The Conclave confiscated his elicrin stone, though I’m sure it’ll only be for a few weeks. In the meantime, he’s decided he’s useless and escaped out to sea with his ‘little foundling,’ the girl who saved him. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him I was supposedly departing for safer shores. How do you pack to part with civilization?” she asked, readily changing the subject.

  I thought of my father, of the laden bags we’d carried over snow and jagged rocks. His feet had been as sure as a mule’s, while mine slipped and stumbled often. The songs he would sing rang with melancholy through the thin mountain air. I remembered trying to guess what he searched for—perhaps hidden treasure, or a long-lost friend. But when he taught me to navigate by the sun and stars, I realized how aimlessly we wandered. My father was looking not for a place, a person, or a thing, but for a purpose he would never find.

  I recalled the supplies he used to carry: waterskins, dry food, bandages, cloaks, lightweight bedrolls, a pot, a pan, flint, and tinder. After making the rounds at the market, Kadri and I joined back up with Glisette, who’d had the foresight to buy a garden trowel. When Kadri asked what it was for, Glisette said simply, “Privy digging. We must leave no trace,” and moved on to the next stall. “I do enjoy luxuries,” she added, noting our surprise. “So much that I will happily hunt down anyone who poses a threat to them.”

  I shrugged and traded a few thesars for a packet of sage ground with salt for freshening our teeth, bars of wood ash soap, and rags for menstruation. Glisette was proving surprisingly stalwart, but I didn’t want her—or me—to become sore company in the absence of basic comforts. Years had passed since I’d survived the wilderness.

  We loaded down bags with our spoils and crossed the market to the forge, where Mercer was speaking with a girl just younger than me and a burly, middle-aged man. The girl’s hair was dark blond and bundled in a sensible braid, and her nose was dusted with freckles and streaks of soot. She held an unadorned longsword with a leather grip.

  “Smiths in the city outfit the soldiers,” she was telling Mercer. “My uncle and I just make tools, locks, horseshoes, and the like.”

  Mercer noticed us and said, “The only sword here belonged to her father. She’s asking a higher price for it. Do you mind?”

  “How much?” I asked, digging into the significantly lighter coin purse.

  “Five more silvers,” the bearish man said. “Right, Pearl?”

  “Two is sufficient,” Pearl replied, and I gave her the coins. She offered Mercer the weapon. “This didn’t just belong to my father, but to his father’s father, who fought for Queen Bristal against Tamarice on the Lairn Hills when he was barely old enough to wield a sword.”

  “Perhaps the strength and valor of its past owners will give me strength,” Mercer said. His gaze lingered on hers before he accepted the sword and belted it around his waist. “I’m not sure whether you’ve heard, but a contagious disease is making the rounds in Beyrian proper. Beware of strangers.”

  “Strangers like you?” the girl asked with a sideways smile. “Who look like they belong in a royal court in fancy clothes?”

  Her uncle cleared his throat. “We should get back to work.”

  “Fortune be with you,” Pearl said to us.

  “And with you,” Mercer replied.

  With that, our little caravan headed to the edge of the market, where only a few humble dwellings separated us from a vast wilderness of hills and woods.

  “You can stay with us until we’re three days clear of Beyrian and the plague,” Mercer said to Kadri. “We’ll deliver you to a crossing and you can catch a coach to a safer city.”

  “Why?” Kadri asked. “Because I’m not an elicromancer? You can’t materialize anyway.”

  “We’re attempting stealth,” Mercer argued, “not gathering an army of recognizable princesses to flaunt.”

  “Are we that ostentatious?” I bristled, gesturing at my plain brown breeches and dusky blue tunic, ignoring the fact that neither Glisette nor I had quite scrubbed off the sparkling minerals caked on our skin.

  “If you keep impaling slabs of meat with arrows, the answer is yes,” Mercer said.

  “I’m not recognizable outside the capital,” Kadri said calmly. “I think you’ll find me amenable to the trail and, dare I say, useful.”

  Mercer looked from Kadri to me. I nodded approval. Like a compass needle oscillating as it settles closer to true north, I sensed him aligning with me. “Did you happen to bring enough coins to buy a horse or two?” he asked her.

  She scoffed. “Not quite.”

  “Then we’ll walk for now, until we can steal horses in the cover of night,” Mercer said.

  Mercer and Glisette cast spells to cover our trail while I commandeered the map and plotted our path to Darmeska. It was hard to believe that Professor Strather and I were supposed to have already embarked on our tedious journey to the very same place.

  We didn’t stop walking until the last dregs of daylight drained from the western sky. Low hills began sprouting from the flat wilderness, and my legs burned with overuse.

  When we stopped to make camp in an escarpment at the base of a green slope, I sought privacy to relieve myself, gulped water, and built a fire. Glisette tried to make herself useful by setting the kindling aflame. Her spell roared up robust flames, licking outside the circle of stones I’d arranged.

  “Matara sarth,” Mercer said, extinguishing th
e fire and tossing dirt on it for good measure.

  “Why did you do that?” Glisette demanded.

  “We’ll save the risk of bigger fires for cooking and keeping warm. Tonight we just need a little light.” Mercer whispered to what was left of the heap of twigs and coaxed a tender flame from them.

  After we rolled out our pallets, I doled out jerky, apples, and flat, dry bread, then tore my meal into bites for Calanthe. Aside from the occasional wild game or foraged berries and mushrooms, most of our meals would have to be plain and serviceable.

  Glisette whimpered as she pulled off her boots and found raw blisters. I hauled myself over to the supplies and hunted for salve and the roll of woven fabric I’d bought for dressing wounds. But when I sat next to Glisette, Mercer said, “Better off saving the bandages.”

  This brought a sick feeling to the pit of my stomach, which in turn roused my anger. I stomped back to the bags and tucked the bandages away, then dropped onto my bedroll by the fire.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not your keeper. Do what you will.” Mercer tucked his sword beside his bed, settled under his blankets, and closed his eyes. He stopped fidgeting first and thus Calanthe heaped her hairy warmth next to him instead of me.

  Kadri was asleep by the time I lay down. Glisette had applied conservative dabs of salve to her blisters and curled up with her hands tucked under her cheek. I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t help envisioning Neswick and Jovie returning to Calgoran with their tales, poisoning my own people against me. The gossip was all too easy to imagine. She always did have a hard time accepting her lack of magic. Studied so hard, that one, and trailed Ander and Ivria everywhere they went, as if she could soak up their gifts just by breathing the same air. I’m not surprised she found some way to use dark magic to get what she wanted. She may even have murdered Ivria. She’s always been bitter.

  I hushed these thoughts and blinked at the stars, tracing the constellations in hopes of lulling myself to slumber. But the sheer enormity of the universe unnerved me and made me feel small and powerless, so I turned over with a huff.