Ardent

by Florian Armas

  Flying silently, Umbra circled around me, then landed on my shoulder. “No Light,” he said, feeling my inner struggle.

  “No Light,” I whispered, and despite all my worries, a brief smile touched my lips. Such a small battle, so many implications.

  On the way back, a letter was waiting for me in Cernat’s hunting house – our usual arrangement. A loose stone in the back of the upper left column guarding the main stairway concealed a cache. Cernat was in Severin, and there was no way I could visit them. Orban’s army was supposed to arrive the next day, and his scouts were already circling around the city. I broke the seal, and learned from Jara that Duke Stefan’s army would arrive a day later than I expected, and that Saliné was awake. “Bucur drugged Saliné that night,” I read aloud. “He drugged her. What a bastard.” And I can’t to talk with Saliné right now... I crushed the paper in my hand, and threw it in my knapsack.

  “We leave Severin,” I told my sisters and mounted. They were my Wanderer sisters, not my real family (they died a long time ago), and my guards.

  It was a seven-day ride to Alba, a small collection of fortified villages scattered in the Zarand Mountains, north-west of Arad, adjacent to the Mountes’ land. All our Hives, three of them situated in Frankis, were hidden deep in savage mountains, at high altitude, over six thousand feet. Should I see Cantemir first? No, I may delay him. There was a small window of opportunity, allowing Jara to negotiate better terms. If Codrin wins the battle. I could not tell him that Duke Stefan’s army was coming to help Aron. Aron’s betrayal would soon become too obvious, even to Mohor. Codrin has enough things to worry about now.

  Four days later, we were threading our way through a secondary road, avoiding Duke Stefan’s army. Five years ago, Jara ran this way to escape Orban... Her fate had become almost an obsession to me; Jara was the little girl who had grown up with me, when I stayed in their house. She was three years old when we first met; I smiled. I was ten... Her mother, Lera, sensed my Light and arranged for me to join the Wanderers when most of my family was killed. I was only sixteen years old. Jara had a bit of Light too, even if she did not want to recognize it, because Cernat was not friendly to the Wanderers. He is not our enemy either. There was a strong competition between him and the Wanderers for Lera. She rejected the Wanderers to be his wife. Cernat never forgot or forgave us, but he was a man that we trusted, and sometimes we worked together. If only that stupid Circle had chosen Cernat instead of Orban... Saliné had some Light too. The Light is strong in Vio. She resembles her grandmother. A thing I never dared to touch with Jara; she wanted Vio to marry and have children, not to join us. When I was younger, many times I dreamt of having children too. I will adopt a young sister and train her, like Valera and Livia adopted me when I joined the Wanderers.

  “Old memories,” I said, feeling my sisters’ stares without turning toward them. Old memories indeed, resembling a mother’s recollections of events whose familiarity was only coincidental – in some ways, Jara was ‘my daughter’.

  “Danger.” The whisper rose into my mind, and I pushed the horse abruptly on its left flank, to enter the forest. Sunshine flashed on and off my face until we arrived in a denser region. Without turning, I knew that my sisters were following me, and we stopped after a minute behind some dense bushes, bordering a small meadow. To keep my hands free, Umbra landed on my horse after we dismounted.

  “Go and check,” I said to him, and with closed eyes, I let my mind to drift around, trying to feel the future. Unusually, nothing came. They are here for me. It was an indirect assessment; with some rare exceptions, no Wanderer is able to see her own future, and I could consider myself lucky for the warning. Slowly, I nocked my bow. My sisters did the same. With no wind to stir the leaves, there was no sound in the forest. When danger looms, it’s the quiet that’s initially unnerving.

  “Do you feel anything?” I finally asked. My sisters were not Lights, but no one is accepted as a Wanderer without having some Light.

  “Men,” Mira whispered. At twenty-eight, she was more experienced than the teenager, Irina, who had joined her as my guard just two years ago, when I became the Fifth Light of the Frankis Wanderers. “Two or three,” she added hesitantly, then both stared at me, realizing only now from my question that, having no vision of the enemy, I was their target. They moved closer to me, quietly.

  “Spread out.” I gestured toward other bushes around us. Nodding, they tensed their bows, and ran silently to their places. After one more useless attempt to peer into the future, I gave up and used my eyes to watch the forest in front of me, waiting for Umbra to return. At least we knew this: the enemy was in front of us. A bird, about Umbra’s size, flew somewhere over the left side of the forest, and my mind stretched to feel; it was just a bird. Three minutes have passed. Flying in circles, the bird came closer, a harlequin hawk. Sometimes they attack ravens. The impulse to send an arrow came too late; the hawk glided between the trees and landed on a branch of a large oak, behind us. It was accustomed to people. The Assassins use them for hunting. Umbra, be careful.

  Umbra did not come straight to me, another hawk was following him at some distance. “The hawk is danger”, he said when we were close enough to link our minds, and I tensed my bow, ready to shoot. Around the meadow, Umbra made a half turn through the forest, then flew out on a path stretching on a cord of the meadow, which was almost a circle. The first hawk plunged from its high branch, setting on Umbra, who was flying in parallel with us, until it came thirty feet in front of me. That’s when it realized the danger in our bows and turned back to the forest. We had no time to shoot. Busy following the hawk, none of us observed the second one flying from the opposite direction, straight at Umbra, who turned abruptly with his claws up. In the intense clash, some feathers flew away. Their calm descent contrasted with the furious fighting. The hawk had to change direction while Umbra continued to fly up-side down, disappearing into the forest under a thick branch. The hawk followed him, a few moments later.

  “I am fine,” Umbra whispered in my mind.

  “Drop the bow,” I said to Mira, who was between me and the flying birds, and she reluctantly laid it in the grass. “Take your knife, but keep it hidden.”

  “Fly back, twenty paces in front of Mira.” I sent a mental warning to Umbra.

  Umbra burst out from the forest, the hawk six or seven feet behind and above, gaining over him. I had the impression that one of its eyes was fixed on Mira. Only three feet remained between the birds when they passed in front of her. This time, Umbra did not turn up side down, keeping his speed. A peregrine raven is fast, but a hawk is always faster. Mira’s knife flew an instant later, and the hawk went down abruptly, hitting the ground with a dull sound. I followed the second hawk: it turned away through the forest. Clever...

  “Thank you, Mira,” Umbra said after landing on my left arm, and then he puffed out his feathers, as always after the danger had passed.

  “Let me see.” I raised him and moved my fingers through his feathers. There were three cuts on his legs, but his body was not touched, and blood was no longer flowing from the wounds. “It could be worse,” I smiled. “You are a good fighter.”

  “Fighter I may be, but the hawk is stronger. And usually they don’t attack peregrine ravens.”

  “No, they don’t. Mira, give me some black mushroom powder.” They were good against infections. Passing through so many dead bodies, the hawk’s claws were always a danger.

  “Ah!” Umbra cried, after I spread the black powder on his wounds. “Your medicine is always bitter, burning, paining. I never anything sweet.”

  “Sweetness is not efficient. I can sing to you,” I smiled, “after you give me the news.”

  “There is a Triangle of Assassins there,” Umbra gestured with his head across the meadow.

  “Mount, sisters!” I ordered, before jumping in the saddle. I pushed my horse to a gallop, back on the road to Severin. The Assassins Masters had their own hidden powers, they could track peo
ple, and they had better horses, the same quality as Zor, Codrin’s horse. There is one Master with them, a Seeker, and he knows me... That was the limitation of an Assassin Master: he could track only known people and only at a certain distance. Only the Grand Masters were able to track unknown persons, but they rarely leave their Nests, and Frankis was too far from them. “Did you recognize the Assassins?” I asked Umbra.

  “No,” he said from my shoulder.

  “The Master observed me when we were not aware. This was planned a long time ago. I wonder where it happened.”

  Why are they hunting me? The Assassins don’t act on impulse; there are schemes and plans within plans. Like us, or the Circle, they could play a game for many years. How did they know my route? There are no Assassins’ Nests in Frankis, nor in Litvonia, Silvania or Arenia. They are hidden in the mountains south-east of Arenia. Did the Circle help them? We were not at war with the Circle, but not in love either. The strain came with Orban’s selection as candidate King. The Wanderers had suggested that Cernat was a better choice. We were right... But the Circle decides in such matters. What would a war between us and the Circle mean? With the Assassins on their side... Who needs a war between the secret orders?

  “Isn’t that the way?” Umbra stopped my thoughts, his wing pointing toward a gallery going through the trees, and he was right; the small creek I was looking for was splitting the dense forest in two, on our right.

  “Yes, that’s the way,” I answered, and turned the horse abruptly to leave the road – there was no time to hide our traces or to pull out a trick, and on the rocky road, the advantage of the Assassins’ better horses would diminish, slowing them more than us. The Assassins are better than dogs at spotting a trail. Dogs they are, I laughed quietly. And the tracking... “Can you fly back? Just to see how far they are behind.”

  “My wings are not hurt,” Umbra said, a small dose of protest filling his voice. Spreading them, he glided for a few moments until he started to flap and gain height. In one minute he was back.

  So early... Bad news...

  “One mile behind us,” Umbra said, flying at the same speed we were riding.

  “Fate is on our side; the place we need is not far from here.” Seven miles...

  “The Saddle,” Mira said, her voice flat, telling me that they needed no pampering.

  “Yes, Mira. I like the hairpin road before entering the Saddle. Hairpins are a woman’s best friends,” I laughed. At the roots of the Saddle, our trail would leave the creek, going north again for less than half a mile, then back south for the same length, running in parallel. Wandering under a high cliff, the path was full of scree. Sixty to seventy feet above, the entry in the Saddle towered over the first trail going north. “Those who control the Saddle control the entry of the Assassin dogs,” I said loudly, and a burst of laughter answered me.

  We arrived at the Saddle’s foot at the same time as our pursuers left the forest. Dismounted, we prepared our bows. As I knew, the Assassins’ tracking was not that accurate, but they were too trained and clever to enter the hairpin trail. From a safe distance, three mounted black shadows were searching the rocky edge hiding us. I wish I had a foot-bow. They were too far away to risk an arrow. We have to wait. Through the clouds, the sun was already going down, half of its red disk already hidden by the Saddle.

  “Mira, you are stronger than me,” I said, looking at her bow, made of a ticker wood. “Did you ever tense your bow with your feet?”

  “It may work,” she said thoughtfully, “but I think that they are too far even for that, and I won’t have a good aim. My feet have no eyes,” she laughed, nervously.

  “Only be sure that the arrow falls in their direction.”

  “That I can do.” She lay back, and tensed the bow with her feet until the arrow point touched the wood. The arrow hissed, and fell thirty feet short, in front of the Assassins. In a hurry, they moved fifty steps back. “I may gain a few more feet, if I shoot from that rock,” she pointed to the left: a twenty-foot tall rock resembling a bull’s head. “But it’s difficult to climb it.”

  “Use this ladder.” With my back to the stone, I pressed my palms together in front of me. Mira put her foot on them, then on my shoulder, and with feline grace climbed the rock, then waited for me to throw her bow and quiver. “Don’t let them see you. They have good spyglasses,” I said before she would complain that they couldn’t shoot her. “Let the dogs guess where you are. Their last hawk is useless; it can’t speak and reveal us.”

  “Hawks are good hunters,” Umbra said, thoughtfully, watching the sky.

  Mira’s arrow hit the ground ten feet further on than the previous one, and remained stuck in the ground too. The Assassins did not move from their new place.

  Stare, but stay there, I watched the motionless Assassins. “Mira, wait for a minute, then fire another one.”

  She did her best, and the third arrow went two more feet farther. The Assassins ignored it, or so it looked from our vantage point.

  “Good shot,” I said. “Now come down.”

  “What should we do now?” she asked, safe again at the roots of the rock.

  “Now we run. In fifteen minutes, darkness will come on this side of the mountain.” I gestured toward the Assassins, down in the valley. “Let’s go. They may be able to feel that we have left, after a while, but they are not stupid enough to risk walking blindly on the scree. If they risk it...” I shrugged. “It’s mostly cloudy, and the moon will rise only in the morning. On the other side,” I gestured toward the Saddle, which was already hiding the sun, “we still have some light, for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. And it’s only grass until the trail goes down again.”

  From the Saddle, I looked back one more time, but the Assassins were no longer in sight. I hope they did not move. Walking slowly, with the horses led by the halter, we left the plateau, going down, toward the next valley. “We camp here,” I said, when the horses became too frightened to walk. “We take turns on watch, and leave with the rising moon, in the morning.” A few drops of rain fell on my head, a gentle reminder of the clouds in the sky. “If there is a moon.”

  There was no moon in the morning, and we moved on once I could see my fingers, trembling like shadows, when I shook my hand. It was full dawn when we arrived in the valley, a narrow cleft with no roads, not good enough to gallop in, but our horses’ speed increased. Umbra came back with the news that the Assassins had passed to this side of the mountains.

  “They are a mile and half behind us, I think, and the distance will increase before they reach the valley, too.”

  Now everything was on our horses. In the evening, we should reach the Lonely Pass, and from there it was just a short ride to the Devil’s Gap, a narrow passage, five miles long, through the mountains. The first entry point into our lands. At times, the gap was less than twenty feet wide, its walls more than a hundred feet high.

  “They are no longer following us,” Umbra said when we entered the Lonely Pass, and the sun was already going down behind the mountains. “We will be home soon.”

  “Leave us alone, sisters.” Valera raised her head and smiled thinly when I entered her room. “I am glad that you are back, Dochia.”

  “I am glad to see you again, First Light.”

  “Spare me the title,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “Duke Stefan...”

  “I know,” she cut in, “he wants to safeguard Aron. Even without Orban’s attack, things were going toward a certain resolution in Severin.”

  “That despicable Aron betrayed Mohor and Jara,” I spat.

  “Don’t let your feelings for Jara blind you. We know that Aron is playing his own game, but that does not necessarily mean betrayal. Everybody is waiting for an opportunity. If Codrin loses the battle, the Duke will impose his own rules: Orban takes enough land to become a Duke, Aron takes Severin. If...”

  “Aron is a traitor,” I repeated.

  “What proof do you have?”

  “Codrin…”


  “The blind leading the one-eyed,” Valera laughed. “He may be right or not. We can’t afford to antagonize Stefan, especially not when the Circle would elect a new candidate King to take the throne. For the moment, we stay out of this game. Officially,” she smiled. “Did you tell Codrin about the Duke’s intentions?”

  “No, he had enough to bear. He will learn. The Duke’s interference complicated the landscape. There are now too many variables in the timelines.”

  “I may be able to help with that. Still able.”

  Why still able? I stared at her in silence.

  “Three days ago, Fate granted me a favor. She let me have a glimpse of my own future. A rare thing. It will end in a week from now ... my future. You are the first to hear it.”

  I took a deep breath, but said nothing.

  “Breathe, breathe,” Valera said, smiling gently.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? One Light comes, another one goes. Regeneration. Nature’s cycle. Stagnation would rule the world without this.” She left her chair and moved, slow steps, toward the windows. “I wish that Livia be here with us,” she whispered. “I’ve been so lonely...” Valera turned briefly toward me, a hesitant gesture, her hands on the sash of the window, and I caught a brief glimpse of her face: there were tears on the seamed cheeks. Although Livia was five years younger, they were both orphans adopted by the Wanderers, and they grew up together in the Hive.

  Like I was... “I wish it too, Valera, but Drusila is now the Second Light...” Maybe this is the right time to talk about Livia’s death.

  “Both Livia and I trained you, and we arrived at the same conclusion; you are the most gifted Frankis Wanderer of the last three generations, mine included. Don’t interrupt,” she raised her hand, without turning. “You may have the Blue Light in you, and be able to see not just through time, but also things that happen in faraway places. You could become a Seer. A rare thing.”