Arrival of the Rifted (The Rifted Series Book 1)

by C. C. York

  Alik cocked her head, "Where did you spend your youth?"

  He quirked a smile that made her heart flip, and she chided herself for being a ninny. "I grew up on a barren land that has little appeal to most people, but I felt safe in its vast seas of sand."

  Alik's mouth gaped at the thought of the expansive fields of red sand dunes from her studies. "You grew up in Bakilar?"

  Alik thought of the sad little village sandwiched between the sea and the sand that served as the lone outpost for the entire wasteland. She'd never met anyone from Bakilar. The land was on the opposite side of the world from Efendi, a couple months' journey from Dvari, with leagues of sea plagued by the pirates of Perise in between. Her mother sent the most loathsome emissaries there only---ones that had slighted her significantly enough to be punished but not enough to kill or imprison. It was as dull of a place as Alik could imagine.

  Agnian laughed at her astonishment and leaned down to toss a pebble over the terraced edge ahead of them. "Yes. I know it doesn't sound as lovely as this, but there is beauty in the undulating umber sand. When I was old enough, though, I spent most of my time on a Perisien ship."

  Alik straightened, alarm bells clanging wildly in her head. The Perisiens would be the most logical buyer of Efendian women if someone is selling them. Their slave trade between their ships is notorious. She schooled her features and tried to calm the questions pounding through her mouth. "Oh?"

  He laughed harder at that. "You have the most obvious tells, Princess." He lightly traced the space between her eyebrows and the bridge of her nose, "Here," and then his fingertips brushed the edges of her eyes, "and here."

  She stilled at his surprising touch, alarm bells of an entirely pitch different ringing. Fortunately, he spoke before she needed to.

  "I know it would be ill-advised for me to mention that to you. I am not Perisien, though, as much as I loved them and wanted to be for a time."

  Alik sputtered, "But they're pirates."

  He shrugged, and it made him look like a guilty child that unabashedly felt no guilt. "They're seafarers making a living the only way they know how. Some are as terrible as the tales. I never saw the Adanuse, nor did I meet her Lord, but I sailed on a ship crewed with mostly good men. A little terrifying looking, but good nonetheless."

  The Adanuse is notorious. It is a ship at a scale Alik scarcely believed, and it serves as the floating city for the warmongering pirates. According to their sources, the Perisiens had few rules of law, except loyalty and tithe to its Pirate Lord. No one outside of a Perisien knew what the Pirate Lord looked like--- no names, no history. It was as fabulously terrifying to listen to those stories as a child as it was the tales of the Edicisi.

  It wasn't until Alik grew up and was privy to the treaties and woes of the lesser kingdoms that she came to understand that the Lord was a real, living evil. The looting and murdering aside, the most atrocious stories came of their slave trade. Once Dvari came under Firtina's rule, the Perisien threat on Dvarian ships sharply declined. Dvari once served as just a physical buffer between the pirates and Efendi, bearing the brunt of the worst attacks. Now, Dvarian ships armed with Efendian Duawielders served as protection against those same attacks. She recalled his tirade from the night before, how he claimed Efendians stole his country’s ships. Do they not realize we’re helping them?

  Agnian leaned in conspiratorially, "The thing about pirates is that they gossip more than anyone." He shifted back, nodding to the boats bobbing out to sea before continuing, "I was mending a sail when our quartermaster came on board from a small island port not far from Bakilar. I overheard him telling the Captain that a man deep in his cups on the docks claimed to be Queen Firtina's lover. He swore that he found a way to make her the most powerful ruler any world had ever seen, and he a living god. But that it would require a blood sacrifice. He was paying heavy coin for information on ships selling a Rifter."

  Alik thought back to the cups of blood in the Trades and at the Ates stairwell. They were ridiculous offerings to the Handmaidens, but the idea of Rifters resurfacing in Sakalid paled in comparison to what else Alik believed could be true with each word out of his mouth.

  “What happened to the man in the docks that claimed this?”

  Agnian snorted and cast another pebble out to sea. "That’s just it. We don’t know. My quartermaster went back at my Captain’s command to find him again, but he disappeared. Even the bartender that served them has never been seen since.”

  “So that’s why you’re here? You think that some lover of my mother has come back to make her more powerful than she already is?” Alik stood up, pacing. “I don’t get it. Despise her all you want, but there’s no arguing that she already is the most powerful ruler this world has ever seen. Who could offer her more power?”

  She stilled as she said those words.

  “I didn’t say this world. Neither did he. He said he could make her the most powerful ruler any world had ever seen. Not just this one.”

  Alik put her face in her hands. Bokki. I’m trusting a man that has lost his mind. She continued to pace, thinking back to her mother’s hidden room. But perhaps we’re all losing our minds.

  “OK. Let’s set that aside for a moment and focus. Your Captain sent you here to find this man from the docks that claimed to be her lover wanting a ‘blood sacrifice’ that required Rifters, right? Do you think he was part of Canavar’s Company?”

  I can’t imagine her slumming with anyone from more than a Tier below the Palace, but we may begin discussing crazier things than that.

  Agnian avoided her eyes, prompting her to scan him. Pale green reluctance. She crossed her arms. “Tell me what you are not saying.”

  “There are some things I absolutely cannot tell you. But it was not my Captain that sent me here. There are others. Others that---"

  Shouts of alarm and running footsteps from the guardswomen above cut him off. He stood before she could push him further. "There must be news. Let's go."

  Reed

  Reed could have wept with joy when they emerged from the tunnel and into the watery light of sunrise. He warily approached the milling Aygir while he answered Monti's question about how he worked with the beasts.

  "My mother and I spent some time with a traveling caravan--gypsies of sorts. A half-breed Itreni was part of the crew for a time, and I helped him perform tricks for Efendians as we made our way up the Tiers of their kingdom."

  He had his eye on his Aygir. She was a female, a touch broader than the rest but shorter as well. She looked old enough to have seen several battles, and the scars on her silver flanks confirmed that she'd taken a few wounds over the years. He slowly walked to her side and bowed low as his friend taught him decades before. The wind ruffled Reed’s stolen shirt, but he held his position.

  The beast took her time before she opened her mouth to him. The blood and gristle still wedged in her teeth told him that she'd already eaten. The Aygir were among the fastest creatures in Efendi, battle-trained, and bloodthirsty themselves. His friend Tilli told him stories of how they'd often turn on their riders for meals if they were kept out of battle too long. Tilli had been full of bokki, but Reed still hesitated before putting his hand in her bloodied mouth.

  Fortunately, she didn't eat his hand. Instead, she bowed low for him to loop the leather reign across her thick neck before hopping on. Reed's jump up was not graceful with his injured arm, but he was at least on top now. He pulled Monti up ahead of him, clicking two short bursts that prompted the Aygir to start a quick pace towards the fence. He squeezed his thighs together to give Monti more stability and held the reign in his good hand wrapped around her waist.

  Monti fired off questions about this realm, the kingdom, the valley, and the mountains in the distance ahead of him when Reed interrupted her.

  "Monti, we got a long ride ahead of us, and you haven't slept in two days. Sleep while you can. I'll answer everything in a couple of hours."

 
; He slowed the Aygir to a trot and aimed for the ice-blue river in the distance that would snake its way north to the dark mountains at the horizon. Within a few minutes, he felt Monti slump against him, and he allowed himself to think about the events of the last 48 hours.

  He and his mother were on the run for as long as he could remember. His earliest memories were of hiding in the squalor of Low Town with his mother, Alisha, always peering over her shoulder. Her eyes consistently tight with worry, and her dark hair hidden beneath a threadbare wrap. Reed never met his father, but his mother explained that they were hiding from this faceless man even at an early age. At some point, Alisha got word that his father had fled the kingdom of Efendi and its continent for lands across the Turkaz Sea. She wasn't sure where he went, but she said she felt safer in the expanse of Efendi so long as they never stayed in one place too long. She joined the Canavar Company Caravan shortly afterward as a singer.

  The Canavar Company men were hardly a step in the right direction, but Reed and Alisha had their own iron wagon, and some of the men were tolerable. It's where he met Tilli, where he learned stories of his land and its brutal inhabitants, and where he spent the formative years of his childhood. His mother always spoke in whispers, though, when they traveled through the Tiers, making discrete inquiries of the powerful man she once fled. I don’t know how my father did it, but somehow he’s figured out a way to drag me back here.

  But Reed knew why, which is why he aimed the Aygir far from the glittering kingdom behind him.

  Monti stirred a little while later while the sun was still over the sea in the distance. She must have felt better because she instantly started complaining about her smell, the pain of sitting on the broad back of the Aygir, and the way Reed smelled. Whatever begrudging alliance they'd forged below ground grew thin as she complained.

  I can’t take another minute of her complaints, he thought. The tumultuous river that ate through the valley devolved into a slow current at this section, and Reed gave no warning before he clicked the Aygir to dive headfirst into the ice-cold water that rose above their knees. He pushed Monti off the Aygir, smiling when she thrashed like a cat doused in the water. He dove in, keeping the Aygir between them, to use the beast as a shield from her wrath and laughed.

  She splashed at him, glaring mutiny as she proclaimed, "You son of a one-legged whore. You could have at least warned me before you tossed me over like a heap of potatoes."

  However, she ducked under and shot back up through the sparkling water, laughing, and Reed momentarily forgot how to blink. He rubbed his calloused hands over his face. Swimming away, Reed focused instead on scrubbing the dried blood off his body. He winced as he washed the wound in his forearm, and when the refreshing water took a turn for frigid, they dragged themselves back into the grass.

  The sea of green and gold grass swayed with a slight breeze coming off the mountains, but the sun's heat penetrated even his wet clothes. The Batiwood loomed far off to the west, and the kingdom of Efendi was a small, golden toy cake behind them. Reed stomped his feet to bring the blood back to his stiff legs.

  Reed loved this Aygir. Monti opened her mouth, likely to complain more, just as the beast rambled back from the water, holding a large, mangled fish. The Aygir took that moment to shake off all the excess water, showering Monti. The fish, gored open by the Aygir’s sharp teeth and curved horn, landed with a thick plop on her shoe.

  Reed fell back in the grass, laughing as hard as he'd laughed in years at her fish gut shoe. “Your face is worth whatever tantrum I’ll have to endure.”

  To his surprise, Monti tipped her head back, laughing as well. She had a deep belly laugh, one used often and without reservation. Grinning, Monti tilted her chin towards the sun and shook her hair like a wet dog. She bellowed something between a yell and a war cry at the sky, and Reed stopped laughing. The fear of facing his father took up most of his thoughts, and the chaos of landing here, fighting the Itreni, and hiding from the Yurutec took up the rest. But now that they put distance between themselves and the Batiwood and the kingdom, he realized with a start that Monti was breathtakingly beautiful.

  She motioned to the grasses that reached her knees. "Is this patch of grass safe to take a break, or will dragons come barreling over that mountain there?"

  Reed smiled, "Nah, the dragons won’t fly during the day." He laughed at her incredulous stare and relented, "That's a joke. There are no dragons in this world."

  "That's not even remotely funny,” Monti said as she wrung out her hair. “Now turn around; I gotta get down to my skivvies so my clothes can dry."

  The sun almost reached the mountain peak now, and the loudest sounds were the fish bones crunching beneath the Aygir's teeth. Reed stripped off his shirt and pants and dropped to the soft grass to dry as well. He heard Monti do the same behind him as he rested back on his good side, rewrapping his injury with the cloth she swiped from the Itreni's home for him. He ripped up some grass seed and handed the golden stalks to Monti without fully turning to her.

  "Eat this. It tastes like the wafer crackers in church, but it'll tide you over."

  The sun's kiss warmed his pebbled skin, and Reed just closed his eyes when Monti said, "Alright now. Tell me everything."

  He groaned. Reed turned to Monti and caught her golden-green eyes through the stalks watching him like a tiger on the hunt. She flipped over to her belly and faced him with her head on crossed forearms. The ends of her hair dried into soft golden waves, and she swatted a strand off as it slipped over her eyes. Reed tried to think of anything terrible and came up with a myriad of options quickly.

  "Don't 'ughhh' me. I've been chock-full of patience. Start with this, are we really in another world? Is it like a planet or another dimension?"

  Reed thought back to how his mother explained it to him years ago. "Imagine this: you're in a library with aisles and aisles of books stacked together. They're pressed in tight from floor to ceiling. The characters and worlds within every book exist on their own without any knowledge that there’s another story smashed alongside it, bound by another cover. Our world is like that. It's just behind the next cover."

  "So if we hop covers, we could be in Hogwarts?" Monti looked hopeful.

  "Jesus. No. I'm just trying to give you a visual."

  "So, how does it work?"

  "Do I look like Carl Sagan? If I knew that, we would be out of here. That's why we have to find a Rifter if we want to get home."

  "Who is Carl Sagan?" Monti asked.

  "Nevermind."

  She kept firing without pause. "But you know where one is? A Rifter?"

  Reed explained how his mother's best friend fled to the Magaran mountain range with another Rifter like her. He watched her brows furrow as he said, "The Magarans took them in when the Efendians renewed the hunt of their kind years ago."

  Monti interrupted, "Wait. So Rifters are witches?"

  "No. Efendian folklore and ignorance turned them into something like witches. Efendians think they eat human flesh and snatch unruly kids from their beds, but in reality, they're no different than other Duawielders."

  "Dua whatters?" Monti was back to munching grass seed while drying her dismantled gun on the hem of her shirt. Reed was simultaneously relieved and disappointed that her damp shirt was back on.

  "Women in this realm have power. Like magic power that revolves around soil, fire, air, and water or a combination of a few. The most powerful are the wealthiest, and the women with very little power are in a caste barely above, sometimes subpar, of the Aygir."

  Monti paused her drying, "Every single woman has power?"

  Reed stood up to stretch his arms over his shaking head and clarified, "Efendian women are the only ones with any sort of Dua---magic-- in this world. It's why they're the most powerful." He tilted his head to the distant Tiers stacked near the sea behind them. "This valley is part of the Kingdom of Efendi, but there are other human lands beyond it. The women from the surr
ounding villages and kingdoms do not have Dua."

  He bent down to pick up his shirt and saw Monti's eyes linger over his torso before dropping down to the gun again. He bit back a surprised smile and asked, "What did you do for a living back home?"

  She replied quickly, "Marketing. How many other kingdoms are there?"

  "Dvari is the next largest kingdom, though when we left this realm, the Iktidar Queen was launching an assault to take it over as well. It's an archipelago a couple of weeks by sea, made up of hundreds of small islands." He nodded to the peaks ahead of them. "The Magarans live in those mountains. They're a race of creatures that look like a cross between a falcon and a human. They're hostile to everyone outside their race, but they hid Rifters when no one else would. There are minor villages and farming communities scattered on the other side of the mountains that are a mixed bag of humans and creatures that would make the Itreni look normal. They live together under the protection of the Iktidar rule, though they are little better than serfs."

  Reed blew out a breath and ripped the grain from the stalks surrounding him as he continued. "Let's see...On the far side of Dvari, there is a sand wasteland called Bakilar that may or may not still have villagers, and there's a race of pirates that sail the seas in between everyone that call themselves Perisiens."

  Monti looked to the orange-red tree line across the valley. "And that? Are the woods part of the Efendian kingdom?"

  "No. That's the Batiwood, and no one, other than the realm's foulest creatures, goes there willingly. It's said to be cursed. It destroys the land under its roots slowly over time, turning it to sand. It's a lot closer than I remember to the gates of Efendi, and the Efendian race has been working for years to figure out a way to stop its encroachment."

  Monti arched an eyebrow. "You guys have magic. You mean to tell me they haven't figured out a way to stop some trees from growing?"

  "First, there's no 'you guys.' Only Efendian women have magic, no men. Second, the Efendian Queen is the most powerful Duawielder in over a century. There are few things she'd ever need to fear, and yet, even she wouldn't ride through those woods."