Crown of Oblivion

by Julie Eshbaugh

  I remember the princess, all the bridges I’ve seen her make, but the form that takes shape beside Jayden isn’t the princess. It’s a black-haired boy, crouching on his knees. He’s dirty and barefoot and shivering, and he holds his arms out wide.

  It’s Marlon!

  It’s my little brother, Marlon, looking almost exactly as he looked when I spoke to him in the roadhouse. The light grows again—evening brightens to noon—until all at once he sees us, as if we are all right there beside him. I swing my head around, looking for Renya. I’ve no doubt that this is her magic.

  But there’s no one but Marlon, his arms raised, his fingers stretched—and I realize with a jolt that this is not Renya’s magic at all.

  It’s Marlon’s magic.

  “Pontium,” Jayden breathes. “Astrid, look, it’s Marlon. It’s Marlon!” He reaches out to touch him, but of course he can’t. “Marlon, are you all right? Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “Astrid, I need you,” whispers Marlon, and I can barely hear him. He rocks from side to side, and what I’d thought was shivering I now realize is movement. “I’m in a truck. Someone grabbed me at the festival—two King’s Knights—and now I’m in the back of a moving truck—”

  “Where are you? Where are they taking you?” I try to keep my voice down, but I want to scream. I can hear loud music—a jig being played on a fiddle and drum—and I realize it’s coming from Marlon’s side of the bridge. “Where’s that music coming from?”

  “They’re playing it over their comms,” Marlon says. “I can’t see outside the truck. I don’t know where they’re taking me. I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says, and now the tears are coming, and I am struck by the fear that I’ll never see Marlon again. “I need you to win, Astrid,” he says. His arms are still held wide, but they quake like his muscles are fatigued. “I know you’re in the race—I saw your picture. I talked to the photographer who took it, too, at the festival, right before the Authority grabbed me. I’m scared,” he says. And for a moment, his arms sag and the air between us shudders. But then he straightens, his face a tight grimace. “I need you to win so we can both be citizens. Then they’ll have to let me go.”

  I’m so close to the image of Marlon, if he were really here, my breath would ruffle his hair, but then Jayden’s pushing in between us. “Marlon, it’s me, your brother,” he says. Marlon’s eyes go wide. “I promise to make sure she gets to the edge of the desert, Marlon,” Jayden says, and the words break in his throat. “I’ll make sure she makes it to the next clue.”

  Then Marlon asks something strange. He asks if we know how to find the mine.

  “Mine? What mine?”

  “In the clue. To find the truth you want, travel through the wild land to the mine at the edge of the desert.” Then he adds, “The finish line.”

  A mine? I shrug my bag from my back and pull out the atlas to look at the map again. And it’s right there. The Mineral Deposit Reserves. That’s where a mine would be. We think we’re so smart, Darius and I, but we had the clue figured out wrong.

  No one’s as good at puzzles as Marlon.

  “In the Mineral Reserves,” I say, and then I ask, “What’s the part about the finish line?”

  “The ride at the festival—the Finish Line—its sign flashed like all the other words in the clue. I think the mine might be the end of the race.” His voice is nearly drowned out. The whistle is back, then the roar. He won’t be able to hear me much longer, but I blurt out one more question. “How are you able to use this magic?”

  “How are you able to use this magic,” he repeats. But then he adds, “I’ve always had magic, just like you—”

  “What? But Marlon—”

  “And just like you, I’ve kept it hidden.” The bridge collapses like a coil, and there I am, on my knees, with my brother Jayden on his knees in front of me, his eyes and nose red and damp. A blast goes off behind us, but we’re both still far away, in the back of that truck with Marlon. Jayden presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, and when he looks at me again, he’s still far from composed.

  Then he’s scrambling, stuffing supplies in my bag, handing me a full canteen, and telling me he’s sending me off with Wendy. “She’s our best scout. She can get you around the prince’s line.” He pauses and swipes his nose with the back of his wrist. “We’ll keep them busy, keep them distracted, to give you the best chance,” he says.

  I try to sneak a glance at Darius, but he’s looking right at me. “What?” I say.

  “Our deal was if I gave you the clue, you’d get me there.”

  “You didn’t give me the right clue. Marlon—”

  “I got you this far.” I want to argue, but the truth is, there’s not even a vehicle involved anymore. There’s just the knowledge that the mine is the next checkpoint—the finish line—and Wendy is leading the way. I don’t know how I would stop him from following us, short of Jayden threatening to shoot him if he tried.

  I consider this—all I’d have to do is say the word—but if I do leave him here, I could be condemning him to death. Of course, he could die just as easily coming with us, but at least it would have been his own choice. “I can’t stop you from following us,” I say.

  Rafaela volunteers to come along, too, and when she does, Wendy crawls up beside her and kisses her. “If we’re gonna die, we’re dying together,” Rafaela says, and my chest goes hollow. I hope someday someone loves me enough to risk their life to be by my side.

  “Astrid!” Jayden calls from behind me when we’ve already hiked down from the ridge. I squint back up at him, but he’s running down to meet me. When he catches up, he draws me into an embrace. He smells like gunpowder. “Be careful, little sis,” he says into my hair. “Now that I have you again, I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You be careful, too,” I say. When he lets me go, I force a smile. “See you soon.”

  He gives me a sad smile, a brief nod, and then he turns and hikes away. Just like when we parted at Falling Leaf, I can’t leave until he disappears.

  It’s a hard hike, so no one talks; we all save our breath for the effort. But when we’re finally on a level straightaway, the echo of the blasts moving farther behind us, Rafaela decides to break the silence. “Congratulations on the bomb you set in Falling Leaf,” she says.

  “What?” I say, but before she can respond, something lands between Rafaela and Darius. It explodes, kicking up a cloud of dirt so thick, it’s impossible to see.

  Thirty-One

  Before I can see again, I know someone’s hurt. No one screams like that unless they’re in horrible pain. But when the wind blows the dust clear, I realize the person screaming isn’t the person who’s hurt.

  It’s the person who loves the person who’s hurt.

  Rafaela is flat on her back, and Wendy is hunched over her leg, so I can’t see the wound until I move closer in. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Wendy murmurs, pulling herself together, but it’s only for Rafaela’s sake. I still feel her raging fear.

  Rafaela gives her a hard look and says, quite calmly, “Tell me the truth.”

  Wendy slides over so Darius and I can see Rafaela’s wound. Her foot and ankle are covered in blood. I don’t want to touch her more than necessary, but I work her shoe and sock from her foot, open the canteen, and let running water reveal the extent of the damage.

  There are three long gashes—two shallow, one deep—and to be honest, they all look pretty gruesome. “Can anybody back with Jayden fix her up?” I ask Wendy, after she finishes describing the injury to Rafaela and promising her everything will be all right. “Do you have a medic?”

  “Carlos can fix it,” Rafaela grunts. “You just gotta get me back there.”

  Darius has already fashioned the ruined sock into a bandage—it’s bloody, but at least it’s not covered in dirt like everything else—and she grunts but doesn’t scream when he helps her to her feet. Wendy looks stricken, her eyes darting from Rafaela’s bloody foot
to the rocky slope ahead of us.

  I nearly say, You have to take her back, but I hesitate. Instead I say, “What options are we looking at? How will I get to the mine if you take her back?” I’m about to suggest that Darius should return with Rafaela so Wendy can continue with me, but before I speak, Wendy says, “Keep going downhill.” Though I sense her guilt for leaving us, I also know she isn’t wavering. I won’t be able to persuade her to go a step farther without Rafaela. “The mine you’re looking for . . . The entrance will be marked by a flashing green light. You’ll need to cross a stretch of sand before you reach it. So it’s downhill all the way. Uphill leads to rocks; downhill leads to sand.” Another explosion goes off somewhere in the direction we came from. Rafaela shifts her weight onto her injured foot and winces. She shoves her gun into my hands.

  “Take it,” she says when I try to pull away. “I won’t be able to use it. And Wendy’s got one.”

  I sling the strap over my shoulder. It’s not too heavy, but I still worry it might slow me down.

  Another blast goes off, this one closer than the last. “No time for long goodbyes,” Wendy says. “Just one word of advice. When you come to a cave that leads underground, go through it. You can stay aboveground, but that path will slow you down. The cave gets dark, but it’s a shortcut. Good luck.” And then she’s helping Rafaela take her first step, and then her second, and there’s nothing for me and Darius to do but walk away.

  I’m wondering how long I should wait before I make a break for the mine, when a gunshot rings out from right behind us. We both duck instinctively, and I swing my head to look back over my shoulder. On the ridge to our left, I spot a female Enchanted Authority guard, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, raising a long gun in our direction. “Sniper!” I shout to Darius, as another shot rings out. The echo fills my head. I look back again, lifting the gun in my hands, but the guard is gone. Then Darius grabs me by the arm and starts running.

  He pulls me along as he runs up and over jagged boulders and down precariously high ledges, and I’m reminded of the climbing skills he displayed at the lighthouse—skills I don’t share. He runs and climbs much faster than I do, and though I try to keep up, I stumble now and then and he nearly drags me. I’m shocked he hasn’t let go of my hand. He’d make much faster progress without me. Maybe it’s because I have the gun.

  When my feet get caught up beneath me and I finally stumble and drop his hand, Darius goes a few steps before he stops and turns back, his feet skittering on loose stones. He’s running toward me, shouting for me to give him the gun, when another shot goes off not far behind me. I roll onto my back and raise the gun, and as soon as I spot the guard, looming over us on a high rock ledge, I fire.

  I miss—I’m not sure I’ve ever fired a gun before—and she fires again. Darius lets out a guttural grunt. I manage to get off another shot, the sniper scrambles out of view, and I turn to see Darius, his left hand clutching his right shoulder.

  “We need to run,” I say.

  “No kidding,” he says, then groans as he straightens. I want to tell him to save his smart answers, but my knees are bleeding from my fall, and they wobble a bit as I get back onto my feet. “Do you think you can keep up?” he asks.

  My only answer is to run right past him.

  A vulture is circling overhead, but otherwise, everything is still. The only sound is our breathing and the crunch of the rocks under our feet. I want to look back for the sniper, but I know that would only slow me down. So I run on, down a gravel incline that leads to the base of a large rock that fills the path like an outsize boulder. I’m imagining trying to climb it—my palms are lacerated and sticky with blood—when I notice, farther down and to the right, the dark mouth of a cave.

  “This must be the shortcut,” Darius says from directly behind me.

  I swallow. I’m not anxious to head into a dark underground passage, but Darius scrambles down, and I’m not about to let him take a shortcut without me.

  The entrance is under a low-hanging rock ledge, and we both have to stoop. I notice Darius’s shoulder. Blood runs down both the front and back of his tunic. I almost ask if he’s all right, but I don’t want another smart answer, so I keep the question to myself.

  Light reaches only a few yards into the cave. Then we’re in complete darkness. “Wait,” I say, stepping back into the light. “Jayden gave me supplies. I’m not sure what . . .” I dig through my bag, my heart racing, until my hand falls on something just the right shape, and I pull out a battery light.

  It throws a paltry yellow glow only a few feet in front of us, but it’s enough to get me to shuffle a few steps into the cave. That’s as far as we’ve gone when the air around us stirs with movement. Something flies past our ducked heads. I turn to watch as a hundred bats take flight and pour out of the cave and into the light.

  When the cave goes quiet, I shiver. But I take a step, and then another. The cave won’t be a shortcut if I don’t move as fast as I would move aboveground. I swing the light from side to side, and the cave breathes out a gust of cool air. Darius asks, “Can I take your hand?”

  “I’m all right,” I say. The truth is, holding his hand might help me stay calm, but I want to win this race on my own terms. I don’t need a man to lead me.

  “I didn’t mean . . . I’m glad you’re all right, but I’m not so good. I can hardly see, and the dark is not my favorite place.”

  My foot comes down in a puddle. I shine the light at the walls. They’re wet. Water drips down and trickles along the floor of the tunnel. The air reeks of mold and bat droppings. I reach out and let Darius take my hand.

  We shuffle like this, following the trickle of water, and the cave is so silent, I almost think I can hear Darius’s heartbeat. My Cientia felt rivalry in him before—a hunger to win—but in this cave, I feel only his fear. The light is fading, the circle narrowing. I hope the battery holds until we reach the exit.

  “Do you hear that?” Darius asks me. And I do.

  “Wind.”

  We pass a shallow pond where the water pools. We’re climbing now, the trickle running toward us as the floor slants uphill. The air in the cave is still damp, but every so often, a dry breeze blasts across my face. Then I notice we don’t need the battery light anymore. We’re almost out.

  The light grows, but it never becomes bright. Meanwhile, the wind grows louder. We’re at the end of the cave and the Wilds are behind us. In front is nothing but sand, stirred into the air by a windstorm.

  We push forward into the wind, and Darius startles me when he cries out. I have to turn back to look at him. His shoulder has become a bloody mess, and he’s fallen slightly behind, but he stumbles forward and grabs my arm and points into the distance, and I see what he sees—a pulsing green light. “Could be the entrance we’re looking for,” he says, and for the first time in a long time, when I feel a twinge of hope, I don’t force it away.

  Walking into the wind is exhausting, like swimming against a current. Every muscle aches as I shuffle forward. The wind is moving so much sand it’s changing the terrain, piling it up in places like drifts. “Can you still see the green light?” I call over the gale. I have to squint against the pelting sand, but I can see well enough to know Darius shakes his head. My Cientia has felt nothing but fear in him since the cave. His tunic is stained through with blood that has soaked down from his shoulder. “You look terrible,” I call to him.

  “It’s nothing,” he says back. “Just grazed me.”

  I roll my eyes, though I know he can’t see me. One high black dune looms in the distance. I point to it, and Darius nods, but he doesn’t answer—there’s no point in trying to speak. That last brief exchange left sand sticking to my teeth and tongue.

  At last, when we reach the towering dune, it acts as a windbreak but also a shield, and the constant pelting finally abates. I chance a look over my shoulder, but I see no one. So I let myself drop onto the ground for just a minute. Just long enough to take a drink from the
canteen.

  Darius drops down beside me.

  Sitting here with our backs tucked up against this dune, ripples of black sand roll up and over our legs, like waves on the ocean when the tide is coming in. As I watch, wave after wave grows and breaks, piling up and weighing us down. I search the desert all around us for the sniper or other racers, but all I see is a thick cloud of airborne black sand.

  I jiggle my legs to work them free, but more sand blows in so fast, all at once my legs are buried again. A shadow falls across us, and I raise my face in time to see a sand wave growing so tall and so high, I have to duck my head. I cower against Darius, and the sand smacks into the side of me, filling up my ear and burying my arm.

  I try again to kick my legs free, but I can’t. And even as I try to free myself, more sand rains down. I turn my face into the wind. Another massive wave is building, cresting and coming straight for us. It slams into me, covering my chest and both arms up to my collarbone. If I had hope of getting free, that last wave smacked the hope right out of me. I wriggle my legs and swing my shoulders, but I only sink farther down.

  It’s as if the desert and I are battling at Hearts and Hands, but somehow I missed the starting signal, and now I’m half beaten already. Panic-stricken, I turn toward Darius. He is all but gone, consumed by the sand up to his chin.

  “Can you move? Can you twist yourself free?” I call over the roar of the wind.

  He shakes his head. “It hurts too much,” he says. At least that’s what I think he says. His words are garbled by the sand covering his mouth. “It’s hot and heavy against my shoulder, like it’s grinding right into me.”