When Esta picked up her spear, Ander didn’t stir. He knew as well as she that she wouldn’t touch him. She sat down at the base of a tree at the edge of the firelight, knees drawn close with her spear lying across her lap. She fingered the shallow gash Ander’s axe had put in it. The image of her skull with the same gash flashed in her mind. It made her stomach churn.
She wondered if leaving her home like some stupid, willful child had been the best idea. The tears running down her cheeks were all the answer she needed.
Chapter 19: The Waystation
It was near dawn when the pounding of heavy footsteps woke Esta.
Blinking in half-sleep, she clambered to her feet with her spear in her hands. Ander was already standing and looked like he’d been awake for hours. Though he too held his axe, his stance wasn’t that of a man expecting a fight. More like one waiting for news.
Lannod staggered into the clearing, clutching his leg. Strips of cloth were tied around his upper thigh, but even in the dim pre-dawn light, Esta could see a large, dark stain spreading from the makeshift bandages. His face was twisted with pain.
In no great hurry, Ander went to Lannod’s side to help the wounded man to the remnants of the fire, little more than embers now.
“What happened?” Ander asked, crouching down next to him. He shook his head. “Never mind, save your breath. She got away from you, didn’t she?” He gestured at the wound. “More than that, I’d say.”
Lannod puffed out his cheeks and nodded sharply.
Ander stood. “And now she’s on the loose.” He sighed, scrubbing his hand through his beard, making it even more unruly. “You can still ride, can’t you? Come on, up you go.” Lannod gritted his teeth as Ander pulled him to his feet.
“What’s your name, girl?”
It took a moment for Esta to realize Ander was talking to her. “Esta.”
“You’ll ride with Lannod here. Don’t worry; he’ll be in front.”
Esta stood in shock. Ride with him? She looked to Lannod, expecting him to leer, but he seemed to have forgotten she even existed. As the two men shuffled toward the treeline, with Lannod’s arm draped over Ander’s shoulder, Esta realized that she was still standing there, gaping at their backs. “Shores take me,” she muttered and hurried after them.
The two horses were hobbled only a couple minutes’ walk away. Just out of earshot from the campfire, Esta realized. She didn’t like the fact that Ander had kept them a secret from her. But any suspicion she felt was utterly overwhelmed by the sense of amazement rushing through her as she stopped to stare.
The two horses stopped their snuffling of the grass and raised their heads at the approach of their owners. They stood well higher than Esta, their creamy coats dappled with large dark spots. Their manes, so silky they shimmered, were colored the same way. They were incredible. Beautiful.
“Until only a few days ago,” Esta said, “I’d never even seen a horse.”
Ander and Lannod shared a glance. “Where you from, girl?” Ander released Lannod to head over to the bags sitting on the saddles stacked nearby and pulled out a brush of some kind. He eyed her as he ran the brush over the horse’s back. Lannod shuffled over to the saddlebags to fuss with them, his back kept to Esta.
“Naruvieth,” she said. “Looking for my brother.” She took a step forward, but Ander raised a hand to halt her.
“Careful. Let them get used to the smell of you first. These are battlehorses. They’ll bite and kick anyone they don’t trust.” He continued brushing. “Saw a man lose his face once. Chomp, and most of the skin was gone. He screamed for nearly an hour before he bled to death.”
Esta nodded. It seemed impossible that these magnificent creatures could be capable of such brutality, but she’d read the histories. Horses trained for fighting were often as fierce as their riders.
* * *
Riding sidesaddle, Esta soon learned, was tricky. Especially when clinging desperately to a man who was wounded and liked to grumble wordlessly to remind you of the fact. She didn’t like the way Lannod smelled, either. Though after traveling as much as she had, she doubted she had any room to talk.
Fortunately, Ander kept them at a slow pace—a walk, Esta reasoned, based on what she’d read—but for the first half hour or so she was certain she’d nonetheless be bounced off the horse to fall flat on her face. After a while of staying ahorse, however, she loosened up a little and found that riding became a little easier once her back wasn’t as stiff as a statue’s.
The sun was well over the horizon, if still partly shrouded by clouds, when Esta caught sight of a squat stone tower in the distance. The trees had thinned as they rode, revealing jagged green hills scarred by jutting rocks. Yet despite the wildness of the terrain, a flat copper ribbon cut through it in sheer defiance: the Runeway.
“How’s that leg?” Ander called over his shoulder.
Lannod winced as if he’d forgotten about it until Ander mentioned it. He grumbled again, getting a chuckle out of Ander.
“Worse than Caney Forks, eh? You couldn’t walk for three weeks after that.” Ander chuckled again before his voice turned serious. “Can’t have you walking on it like that, Lannod. We need you hale. You’re going to stay at the station. And don’t fight me on it,” when Lannod opened his mouth, presumably to do just that. “I’m pulling rank here.”
When they got close enough that Esta could make the shapes of men standing atop the roof of the drum-shaped tower, Ander sawed his reins and raised an arm. One of the helmeted men on the tower followed suit. Ander kicked his horse back into a walk with Lannod’s mount not far behind.
A red-haired young man wearing the same colors as the two Way Patrolmen, though lacking any sort of armor, rushed out of a rickety wooden building abutting the tower when the three of them neared with a mounting block tucked under his arm. He took the reins and helped a wobbly Esta out of the saddle.
“Make sure they’re well-watered,” Ander told the young man, adding with a growl, “and don’t touch the saddlebags.” The young man, a stableboy it seemed, saluted awkwardly before leading the mounts toward the wooden building, chatting the horses up as if they were long-lost friends.
“Well, girl,” Ander said, “you have two choices while I report in. You can either follow Lannod and watch him scream and soil himself while the medic sews him up. Or you can hang around the stables.”
It wasn’t a hard choice. Scarcely a choice at all. “The stables.” Esta silently cursed at herself for saying the words so breathlessly.
Anders face shifted under his beard. She realized he was smiling. “I figured as much. Tony, the stablehand, is better with beasts than people, especially pretty, young women like yourself, and would likely soil himself if you talked to him. Better just to watch him work, I think.”
Esta nodded, idly wondering who among the Way Patrol wasn’t prone to soiling himself, and jogged to the stables to poke her head through the open side door. She grinned like a little girl who’d just tasted sweets for the first time and suddenly decided that she really did love the smell of horses. Even more than she loved the smell of books about horses.
* * *
“Well,” Ander said when he appeared some time later, startling Esta while Tony nervously instructed her on the finer points of currying. “It seems this brother of yours passed by some four days ago. Carrying an official summons from the Council of the Wall.” He raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “You never said he was the Shores-damned Warden of Naruvieth.”
Esta handed the curry comb to a now-gaping Tony. “You never asked. Are we ready to go?”
Ander swept his arm out with a shallow bow, his dark eyes never once leaving hers. “By your leave.” She could tell by the way his face shifted under his beard that he was smiling again.
Esta ignored him—he was mocking her, wasn’t he?—and scratched the brown gelding she’d been currying under the chin, eliciting a snort. “Stay out of trouble, you hear?” she told the horse. Silently, sh
e added, And I’ll try to do the same from now on.
She turned back to Ander. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 20: Through the Gates
In the days since the rain had come, little had happened, but much had changed. Nina could feel a strange tension in the air. Rogert and Noil no longer boasted during their swordplay, and their sparring had become fiercer, more like real fighting than playing. Noil had throttled Rogert after getting a bleeding welt on his cheek from a swipe of Rogert’s switch, and Thomerlin of all people had had to pull them apart.
Nina herself didn’t get out of the carriage much unless Lora Bale commanded it. The woman seemed not to notice the change in all her new charges. Either that or she didn’t care. Nina didn’t know which it was and her mind was too muddled to even begin to puzzle it out.
The rain had washed away the vomit from the side of the carriage, but to Nina, it felt as if the stain were still there, hidden under the lacquered blue wood of the carriage’s door, as if nothing could ever wash it away. The vision of what had happened to that soldier was burned in her memory. Even the wordless whispers of the Raccoon family, clutched close to Nina’s chest at all times, couldn’t soothe away that horrifying image.
It wasn’t until the carriage trundled out of the forest and into a land of rolling green hills and distant rocky peaks that the sickening feeling begin to fade. Nina was beginning to realize just how vast the Accord really was—and just how puny Naruvieth was in comparison. She had lost track of how many weeks it had been since she left home. Now more than ever, she wished she could go back to that day and tell Lora Bale no. Nina didn’t care what would happen. She just wished she had never left home.
Though Nina apparently had power, going back in time was not something she could do.
She sighed as she stared out the window. The downpour had only lasted a day, but the dark clouds hadn’t gone away, only letting the sun peek through every once in a while. A small village, only a handful of small wooden huts, passed by. A farmer in shabby brown clothes stood among the rows of vegetables, watching the carriage impassively as he hoed the ground.
He was completely unaware of who—or what—was in this carriage.
Fensoria.
Monsters.
Nina was starting to realize why she was feeling so bad. It wasn’t just the horrible things done to that man. It was that the power Alicie had used was the very reason Falconkeep existed—to keep monsters like Alicie away from normal people.
But Alicie wasn’t the only monster. They all were.
Nina started to cry, and Chad was there with his arm around her, just like the other times she had been like this. And it was more than a few times. Even Thomerlin and Chrissoth didn’t bother the two of them anymore. Whenever Nina met their eyes, and that wasn’t very often these days, they only looked at her sadly. And that just made it worse.
As much as Nina wished she were still home, she knew why her family had sent her away.
She wished she’d at least had a chance to say goodbye, a real goodbye, to Uncle Tharadis. But maybe it was better that when he’d last seen her, he’d thought of her as just a little girl, and not a fensoria. A monster.
Nina wiped at her eyes and dried her hands on her dress before touching the faces of Mother Raccoon and Father Raccoon, tracing her fingers along the lines of their smiling features. The Raccoon Family was the only family she had left, it seemed. At least they’d never need to send her away.
As twilight fell, gravel crunched under the wheels of the carriage as it came to a halt under a sheltered overhang jutting out of the side of a wooden structure. Nina heard the snort of horses aside from those pulling the carriage; the structure was a stable. A couple of stable hands, a bit too old to be fensoria, rushed out of the building to slide blocks under the wheels and remove the horses’ harnesses, but not before bowing and murmuring greetings to Mistress Lora Bale.
“All right, everyone,” Lora Bale called out cheerfully as she slid out of the driver’s seat and onto the gravel. “Who’d like to come see your new home?”
The five of them filed out, none moving any faster than was necessary. Nina, the last one, clung to Chad’s vest as they shuffled out. He smiled briefly over his shoulder but said nothing.
Just beyond the stables was a massive fist of stone rising high into the sky.
Falconkeep.
The walls were high, far higher than any building in Naruvieth, and they looked sturdy enough to withstand a tidal wave, though there was little risk of that this far inland. The tops of the walls weren’t flat, but had short gaps at regular intervals, looking like teeth. A pair of blue and gray banners hung from the gaps, and on the banners was the same picture that was on the side of the wagon: a bird soaring over a stone tower. Nina had learned that the bird was called a falcon, though no one, not even Lora Bale had ever seen one. They were supposedly birds from the old world, from before the sheggam scourge and Andrin’s Wall.
Between the two banners was an arched gate huge enough for two carriages stacked on each other to pass through. The squeal of grinding metal came from the gate as it slowly rose, revealing wooden spikes at the bottom that looked the fangs of some beast. Nina shuddered and looked away from them.
Vidden and Alicie jogged ahead to join two rows of children of various ages and sizes that stood rigid in their Falconkeep uniforms, like soldiers lined up in front of the gate to honor important guests. The pomp and silliness of it all—Us! Important guests!—almost made Nina forget what this place was and why she was here. As she got closer, however, she saw the same expression, or lack of one, in their faces as in Vidden’s and Alicie’s. These were children who had given up on dreams of home.
Aside from the dozen that stood outside the wall, there were thirty or so inside the walls standing in a half-circle. These children had no uniforms, but were dressed like Nina and the other newcomers, in whatever clothes they had brought with them. Once Nina and the others were beyond the gate, standing in the courtyard with the uniformed children pushing their way in behind them, the gate began to lower.
One of the children in the half-circle, a tall boy with short-cropped brown hair and eyes so big they looked like they would fall out of his head, began to fidget.
Then he ran for the gate, screaming.
Shocked, Nina followed him with her eyes.
Instead of ducking under the still-lowering gate as she expected, he ran straight into the stone wall.
The gate had vanished.
Nina spun, searching everywhere. She knew it was still there; she could hear it. But she couldn’t see it, not a trace of it. Neither could the boy who tried to escape.
Still screaming frantically, he clawed at the stone as if his fingers could find purchase and carry him over the wall, but they only left streaks of red where his fingernails broke. In no hurry, two girls in Falconkeep uniforms began to drag him away. He thrashed in their grip, not intent on hurting them, only on getting to the wall.
With her hands on her hips, Lora Bale shook her head, tsk-ing. “You disappoint me, Thello. You know the rules. Unless I deem you ready, you cannot leave.”
Gone was all the pleasantness that Nina had seen in Lora Bale’s face before this. Nina knew, with sudden certainty, that that had all been a mask. A lie. The true woman was the one standing here. Lora Bale’s eyes were cold as the ocean’s depths, and just as deadly.
She turned to the two girls. “Take him to the stones.”
The boy, Thello, began shrieking even more maniacally at these words. He punched at the girls’ backs, tried to trip them, but they handled him easily. His energy was flagging even as he became more desperate. Tears fell from his red-rimmed eyes as he and his captors disappeared through a heavy wooden door in a square building off to the side of the courtyard, though his screams didn’t fade until long after the door was shut.
All of the children without uniforms stood still, hands folded in front of them, heads bowed as they stared at the ground. Several had t
ears on their cheeks. One sniffed quietly. All of them made Wenny look boisterous by comparison.
Take him to the stones. Something about these words had made them look even more scared than before that boy tried to run off. Whatever these stones were … everyone was utterly terrified of them.
Nina glanced over her shoulder, trying once more to see the gate. But it had already crashed back into place; even if she could see it, she couldn’t go through it. She was stuck here.
At her side, Wenny started to cry.
Lora Bale leveled them with a glare and raised her voice. “Everything I told your parents was true. You are here because you’re a threat to everything you love. You are, each and every one of you, abominations. You are something that should not be. But rather than killing you abominations, as is their right, I have convinced your parents to abandon you. In time, they will move on. Perhaps even forget about you.”
She paced slowly, staring at every face. Nina felt her breath catch when Lora Bale’s cold eyes met hers. “If you love them, this is what you will hope for. You are nothing. No, worse than that. Your very existence is evil.” She halted in her pacing. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t useful. Yes, I have use for you. Which is why I have claimed you as my own. Not as my kin. But as my property. Don’t you ever forget that that is what you are, and all you shall ever be. Keep that in mind, and you may yet see the outside world again.”
She turned to the other children, those in uniform and those without them. “Well?”
All the children bowed to the five newcomers, intoning in unison.
“Welcome to Falconkeep. Welcome home.”
Chapter 21: Ritual of Joining
Gaspard Rikshost sat on the small reed cot with his legs crossed, wearing only a rough-woven tunic and a rope belt. He gently breathed in the cloying air of the tiny, underground room, emptying his mind of distractions. He closed his eyes; he didn’t want the sight of the meager plate of seasoned radishes and strips of dried rabbit meat to remind him just how hungry he was. He imagined the food was part of the test, though he had no way of knowing for certain.
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