Arrival of the Rifted (The Rifted Series Book 1)

by C. C. York

  "What are you doing in my trees?" She spoke, clipping out words he could understand through a thick accent.

  Reed ran his hands over his face, his calloused palm coming away dirtier than before and a little bloody. "Please. I know that there were Rifters among you once. Someone, or something, took my friends and me from our world, and we just want to go back. We mean you no harm, and we will take nothing that is not given to us. All we ask is for some shelter and the guidance of a Rifter.”

  "You speak in pluralities. Do you mean there are more of you than just this?" She gestured behind her without turning.

  The wall of Magaran males shifted to show Monti, gagged and bound, in the fetal position against the trunk of a tree, and Reed's heart plummeted to the ground several hundred feet below them. Blood trickled from her scalp, and a violet bruise blossomed under her eye. He could scarcely see her chest rising and falling, but she looked at him with panicked eyes. He didn't even realize he had moved until the blade of a sword etched across his neck, and a Magaran male stood between Reed and their leader.

  "What did you do to her?" Reed asked low. The leaves in the trees whistled in the wind and the leader turned abruptly to the swaying branches before narrowing her eyes at him again.

  The leader said, "No harm will come to your female if you speak truths. Tell me, who told you Rifters were among us?"

  An old crone shuffled down from steps to their right while the leader spoke. When she lifted her face, her pale yellow irises were faint enough that they almost blended in with the whites of her eyes. Her wings hung low behind her, dragging the ground like a white train. The leader dipped her head once, and the elder Magaran sat at a bench brought out from somewhere behind him.

  Reed had no reason to trust these creatures like he had little reason to trust anyone else. He only remembered his mother's fears of them and the malice they radiated years ago. The leader began a slow circle around him. "Tell me, Efendian. Who sent you here for a Rifter?"

  "I am not an Efendian. At least not anymore. I want nothing to do with their people, let alone their world. My name is Reed Wells. I just want to go home." He tried to slow the panic in his chest at being circled like prey.

  The crone croaked out one syllable, and the leader nodded. "Truth. Good, you are not as stupid as you appear, then." She came to a stop before him, hands resting on the blades strapped low on her chest. "You did not answer my question. Few among us know that we have housed Rifters before, and even fewer land-dwellers have ever stood among our treetops. Answer carefully as it doesn't look like you will fare well if we decide to toss you over the edge."

  Reed thought back to the night of his 12th birthday, a few days after their visit to the Magaran base. His mother had hovered around him the entire day, not letting him out of her sight for even a few moments. That night she tucked him into Tilli's wagon between two Aygir beasts. She kissed him goodnight, and he dozed happily off as she spoke low to Tilli. Tilli woke him in the middle of the night, his wide dark eyes shimmering in the twin moonlight filtering through the curtains.

  "Come with me, boy. I'm to take you to your mother. No words, no sounds."

  Reed had never seen Tilli without a smile, and so he nodded and followed the creature outside, where a sleek Aygir waited for them beyond the caravan fires. They made little noise as they slipped into the fields or even as Tilli urged the beast to a full sprint. Reed, wide awake at the prospect of being in the valley alone at night, scanned continuously for Yurutecs or Garfus. After some time, they came to a rock outcropping shining bright under the red and blue moons like a violet island in a dark sea of grass.

  Two cloaked figures stepped out, holding hands. Reed’s mother dropped her hood and hugged Tilli while the other woman looked Reed up and down warily. She had a puckered, red scar across her neck that he had a hard time looking away from.

  His mother released Tilli after a few moments, and he cuffed Reed behind the ear. "Take care of your mother, boy. We are only blessed with one."

  Before Reed could respond, Tilli hooked a pincher behind the Aygir's head and galloped back the way they came. Reed's mother was smiling in the way she only did when she was nervous, rare for the performer. She took Reed by the hand, and her friend took his other before she said with a half-hearted smile, "We're going on an adventure."

  At her nod, his world slipped away.

  Reed shook his head at the memory and met the Magaran's hard stare straight on. "My mother was Alisha Wellis. She was friends with a Rifter that once took pity on us and gave us the best chance at escape when I was a child. I lived in another realm called Earth for the last twelve years with no intention of ever returning. However, a group of us were Rifted from our world into here a couple of nights ago. She and I have been on the run ever since. We just want to go home."

  "Even if Rifting realms wasn't absolutely forbidden without permission, it is almost impossible for anyone but the strongest Rifter to do so. Why would anyone take the risk of Bakilar's wrath for a few land dwellers? What is the name of your Rifter?"

  Bakilar’s wrath? He wondered how the desert village could ever be in a place of authority, but his mind spun around the possibility of something else she'd said. No one ever spoke of Rifters so plainly, and it never occurred to him that one would be forbidden to return them to his world. He looked again to Monti on the ground behind him and tried to slow his rising panic.

  "My mother never told me her name. She said it was too dangerous for everyone involved. But she had a scar across her neck that looked fresh and wrapped her throat almost ear to ear. Even twelve years wouldn't erase that scar."

  A guard behind the leader stiffened at his description of the Rifter. Clearly, at least some of them can understand what I’m saying. Only the leader kept her eyes on Reed.

  Monti stirred, breaking the silence.

  Reed held his hands out to them, "I have no more secrets. I'll tell you anything you want to know but let me check on her. Her head is bleeding badly."

  The leader tapped her foot on the wooden planks. The red crescent moon hovered almost level with the full blue moon, separated by jagged mountain peaks. The leader's bones in her beaded headdress shook with each tap, and Reed thought he'd go mad if she didn't say something.

  Finally, she stopped tapping. She clipped something Reed didn't understand to the guards behind her. Without warning, a guard scooped Monti into his arms and threw her over the terrace’s edge to the valley far below.

  Reed reached. Any broken promise to his mother, the warnings drilled into him for the last twelve years, fell with Monti. She was worth his secrets and was better than his lies, and Reed swore he’d get her home. I am not failing another. He shoved his hands out and held his breath at the top of his lungs while he frantically pushed the air around them to the retreating form almost out of eyesight below.

  The air surrounding the group whooshed out, snatching all the leaves and small branches off the limbs surrounding them at this height. Reed felt dizzy with power, a thrum in his veins like a chord struck in a cavern. He felt Monti catch, the same way he would have if he had held out a giant net and pulled her to him. Every eye was on him as he lifted her floating form from the edge of the terrace to him, and she shook with shock in his arms.

  He ignored the stares and murmurs and knelt with Monti on the ground. He took her head in his palms, brushing her hair back to search for more injuries. He ripped his linen shirt and held it with one hand to her temple, and cupped her head with the other. He repeated so only she could hear, perhaps more to himself than anyone, "I have you. I have you. I have you."

  All but the leader and the crone now knelt before him when he looked up.

  The female merely nodded once, "It is as I thought. Come Edicisi; there is much to discuss. She will be well taken care of. I just needed proof."

  Reed

  The Magarans ushered Reed and Monti down a set of stairs to a large open-air room supported by a massive tree o
n the far end. Reed set Monti on a low table, and several female Magarans waiting with bandages, water, and herbs of some form fussed over her. Reed wasn't sure if he should murder every one of the Magarans walking with him or hug them. The secret he'd held onto his whole life, the one that his mother felt forced to flee worlds for, was out. More so, the leader appeared to expect it.

  The leader walked alongside Reed and nodded her head to a door beyond them. "Bathe, Efendian. She will be safe, and you will attract beasts we'd rather let pass with your smell. She will be here eating when you finish, and then someone will attend to that wound on your arm. We will discuss what needs to happen next."

  He walked in a daze to the small room with a large, round, wooden bathtub steaming in the chilled night air. A female attendant left a stack of linens and a towel with him, and he sank quickly under the water. He scrubbed with the herb satchel left on its edge, wincing at new cuts it discovered.

  Reed felt adrift in his skin. Maman made me swear to never tell another soul about the curse in my veins. It’s why she lived in fear and squalor in Low Town, why she put up with the men in the Canavar Company Troupe, and why she fled to another world. What happens now? I want no part of Efendi. He splashed his face with the water, begging answers to come. Will my father sense that I used that power? Maman believed doing so would lead him to us even a world away. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I have to get us home. The water was murky with dirt when he dressed in the beige linen clothes left out for him.

  His reflection in the dingy water was one he'd hardly recognized. He ran a hand over his shaved head, brushed the scruff that had bearded on his face, and walked out to the domed room on bare feet.

  Monti sat at a table under a thick blanket, propped up against the base of the massive tree that supported the main room. Her hair had become a mangled mess of gold gone airborne, and her bright green eyes tracked Reed as he walked to her. She cupped a wooden mug of something steaming between her hands, and a clean bandage haphazardly gripped her head. The leader walked away from a group of Magarans on the opposite wall at Reed's entrance. She took the stool across from him as he sunk next to Monti.

  "I have questions---" she began, bristling at the hand Reed held up as he turned to face Monti directly.

  "Are you OK?" He asked. His thigh pressed tight to hers so he could be as close to her as the prickly woman would allow.

  She arched an eyebrow at him. "I will never be OK, Reed. But I might feel better if I can pitch that woman off a balcony as well."

  Reed laughed, relieved. He didn't doubt her for a moment, and he felt an unexpected sense of pride that she was likely plotting someone's death rather than falling apart. He smiled, unable to restrain the quick touch he stole to her jawline as an attendant changed the bandage on his other arm.

  The leader just smirked at Monti before continuing, "My name is Uci. I am the Oonder of Magara, and I have as many ridiculous titles as your queen, but they're a waste of time. We've been looking for you ever since the first power began leaking from the Batiwood. Tell me. Do you have the Katapak?"

  An uncomfortable pause hovered in the room, a bubble on the verge of a sticky pop. "The what?" Reed asked, mind blank.

  Uci's smile flattened. She opened her mouth but closed it again before trying once more. "The Katapak. Of the prophecy. As the Edicisi, you are the only one that can carry the stone and rid us of the Others once and for all."

  Reed had every eye in the room on him but could think of nothing better than a shrug in response. "I have no idea what you're talking about. But if we can just talk to your Rifter, it would only take a moment to go home. I remember that clearly. I want nothing to do with whatever prophecy you've deluded yourself into believing."

  Monti's head cocked at an angle he likened to battle prep. "Steady there, pumpkin. We're not going anywhere without my dad. That was the agreement. That is the only reason I didn't shoot you in the farmhouse. I don't care if you did just save me from a deadly fall; I will kill you if you try to go home without both of us."

  "We don't even know where he is," Reed said and then abruptly changed course at Monti's face. "What I'm saying is that we will find him, obviously. But it does no good without a Rifter. We find the Rifter, then she takes us to your dad, and then we go back home."

  Monti set the cup down to better cross her arms. "Why should I believe you? You told me verbatim that men of this world didn't have magic, yet you just did something that looks a hell of a lot like magic. And why does she keep calling you 'Edicisi'? What does that even mean?"

  Reed clenched his fists on the table. "It means I'm cursed. A monster. That's what you want to hear? It's the reason my dad hunted us years ago across worlds. It's what ruined my life. It's what killed my mother. It's the reason my wife is dead and why I had to give up my daughter." He swallowed the lump in his throat, "I want nothing to do with this world. I don't care what happens to it so long as I'm off of it. And no one, not even you, will stop me from leaving."

  Monti had a wind-up face. It was a tell Reed discovered within the first day of knowing her and signaled the deep inhale she used to launch a verbal assault. A blade cut her off midway though as it whistled between their faces, sinking deep in the tree behind them.

  Uci spoke low, her fists clenching on another blade hilt on the table before them. "My people have been stationed in this mountain range for hundreds of years. Waiting. Watching, to ensure that the Others do not consume our world. Your resurrection signifies that they are on the brink of breaking through. Our scouts have gone missing over the Batiwood, and its creatures are creeping into our mountains. And now they have one of our most powerful Rifters."

  She slipped the blade into a pocket on her vest and stood. "We leave at dawn to bring them all home ourselves. I'm done waiting on orders; you’ll leave in the morning. I will not jeopardize the fate of them or this world because you are too ignorant or too selfish or too stupid to realize your role in our prophecy."

  "Say what you want about me,” Reed said, leaning back. “I just need us to get home. I am not a tool in your prophecy, and this world is better off without me."

  She shook her head in disgust and gripped her face in her hands for a brief moment before turning back to Reed, fingers curled as if she intended to strangle him. "You are a boy playing at a man. You are not going home, you fool. You are being sent to Bakilar to learn how to control your powers so that when the war comes, you are ready."

  Monti raised her hand. "Back up. War? Can someone explain to me what this prophecy is, seeing as it's trying to keep me in this hellhole as well?” She jerked her head at Reed. “And what in the hell is he?"

  The Magaran at Uci's shoulder was one of the scouts that captured him and Monti. His wing tips flared over bare skin that matched his hickory feathers as he spoke. "The Edicisi is prophecy-bound to be the most powerful Duawielder in our realm and the only one strong enough to permanently fight off what is coming with the assistance of two others prophesied. The Rifter and the Reader. He and the Reader only come in dire times of need to protect us from the Others. World eaters. Demons, hovering on the skin of our world seeking a chance to come in."

  Reed said, "I don't even know how to do any of this. I've never even heard of the Others."

  Uci snapped, "That's because you ran. You've been running your whole life, and because of that, we will be months behind in preparation. You are wholly unprepared for what must be done. We have yet to find the Reader, so we cannot close the portals indefinitely, but he or she must be living if you are here." She turned to the group of Magarans waiting behind her. "The best hope we have is to kill whoever is opening the gates from within the Batiwood and bring our Rifter home. Risindi, send word to Bakilar that this boy-man will arrive soon and to prepare for the worst. Tell them he does not have the Katapak, so they must hasten the search."

  "Wait, please!" Monti leaned across to grip Uci's arm despite the anger pulsing from the Magaran. "My father was captured by Efendian g
uards. I can't go to Baki-wherever. I have to go to him. He and I have no part in this, and I have to get him home. I will go alone on foot if I have to."

  Good to see she has no problem leaving me here with the monsters, Reed thought.

  Uci yanked her arm free, interrupting Reed’s thoughts. "You said you were Rifted a few nights ago. Did you see the Rifter that brought you here?"

  Reed shook his head. "No, but she took an entire building with her. Most died in the Rift or its aftermath, but at least five of us survived. Efendian Hordesmen took three others fleeing with us. One would have stood out. He wore an outfit of all orange that looked nothing like what an Efendian would wear."

  One of the guards leaned over to Uci and said something in their native language. "Two nights ago, one of our scouts spotted several men bound and gagged in a wagon. He noted it because they headed towards the Batiwood and not Efendi. They did not return. One wore something similar to what you've described."

  Monti slapped her hands on the table, throwing the blanket off her. "Then that's where I need to go."

  "Land Dweller, if you go to the Batiwood, you will die. I've sent my best warriors there, and they've not returned." She turned to leave with Monti at her heels.

  "Then let me go with you. I will fight. I can't leave my dad."

  "You are a liability, and you will get my kin killed. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your father is likely already dead if the Horde took him.” She nodded towards Reed, “Even he, as dumb as he is, knows that. You are not my prisoner. You can choose if you want to go with this worthless man to Bakilar or be dropped at the gates of Efendi. But know this---they do not treat women without Dua well. The best life you can hope for there is on your back. It's your choice."

  Uci stalked out of the room with the bulk of the Magarans. The round room felt significantly more cavernous as Monti stifled a sob back.