I dropped back towards the others, keen to let Aethan deal with Ebony. When we had hopped up that morning she had done her best to turn one of us into her personal slave. She had finally given up when Isla had pointed out that she and Aethan were also heirs to a throne and were capable of looking after themselves.
She had muttered to herself for a while, things like, ‘Wait till my father finds out about this.’ But once she realised none of us cared, she even gave that up.
It turned out that she was perfectly capable of saddling her own hagon and packing up her own tent. Who would have guessed?
We were riding as hard as we could without injuring the horses, and had covered good ground during the day. Aethan estimated that after today it was only two more days till we reached the border of Isilvitania. The problem was, that those two days would be spent in goblin territory. And we all remembered how well that had turned out the last time.
Isla moved her mount towards me so that we could speak unheard.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘Good. So, urrmmm, you and Wilfred. How long has that been going on?’
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Diplomatically or really?’
I smiled. That was one of the things I loved about her. So many layers that nobody else suspected. ‘Let’s start with diplomatically and then move onto really.’
She clapped her hands together and laughed. ‘Excellent, I do love leaving the best to last. Well we’ve known each other for a long time, but I always thought of him as my little brother’s buddy. Spending time together on this trip enriched our friendship to the point that we thought it was safe to take it further.’
I pulled a face at her. ‘How boring. Give me really.’
‘I’ve fancied him for a long time. I like strong, manly men and they don’t come much more manly than that.’
‘Or hairy,’ I added.
She grinned. ‘Keeps you warm in winter.’
I gasped. ‘That long? Since last winter?’
‘Try winter three years ago. I seduced him on his eighteenth birthday. We’ve been bumping ugglies ever since.’
‘Isla!’ I let out a shocked laugh. ‘Is that why you came on this trip?’
‘Partly,’ she admitted. ‘I would have come anyway. I don’t trust the night faeries.’ She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked toward Ebony. ‘And I certainly don’t trust her.’
Following Aethan’s lead, we pushed our mounts back up to a canter. Conversation became impossible over the noise of the horses’ hooves and tack. It wasn’t till we slowed back to a walk that Isla said, ‘All right your time to spill. How long have you and Aethan been an item?’
I considered her question from every angle, making sure I wasn’t going to trigger the Border Guard Secrecy Spell before I answered. ‘A proper item for about a year, but I’ve had a thing for him since I was a small girl. It took me that long to convince him I wasn’t his little sister.’
She nodded her head. ‘Wilfred used to talk about you occasionally. I could never work out how you fitted in.’
I looked at her, wanting to tell her, but knowing that I couldn’t. I was pretty sure she could handle the news, hell, I was more than pretty sure, but it was the verbalisation part that was the problem. ‘I want to tell you everything,’ I said.
‘But you can’t.’
‘Physically, it would be impossible for me.’
She was silent for a while before she answered. ‘I suspected something like that was going on. A couple of times when Wilfred and I were together he had a fit. It looked remarkably similar to what happened to you that time.’
She was smart. So smart in fact that….
‘You asked me that question on purpose,’ I said.
‘Hmmmm?’ she said, an innocent expression on her face.
‘When I had that fit, it was in response to your question on what I did with my nights in the barracks.’
She smirked and sung, ‘Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.’
‘There’s a name for that sort of behaviour.’
‘Clever cookie?’
I laughed. ‘No. Entrapment.’
She shrugged a shoulder. ‘No-one ever tells me anything, so over the years I’ve worked out ways to glean what I need.’
‘Did you ever think that if you let people know just how clever you are that they might share information with you?’
She considered me seriously. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t looked at it like that before. Besides, I kind of enjoy the challenge.’
‘Well, when Aethan becomes head of the Border Guards I’m going to suggest he makes you his Spy Master.’
She clapped her hands together. ‘Spy Master. Oh, what fun!’
I smiled. It was exactly that sort of behaviour that would make her perfect for the job. People wouldn’t see the brilliant mind hiding under the ditsy exterior.
We turned in early that night. We would be entering goblin territory and would need our wits about us.
Brent and Wolfgang took the early watch, leaving Aethan, Isla and me to take the late one. Historically, most attacks occur in the hour before dawn. It was safer to have three of us watching then. Ebony didn’t offer to help, and frankly, I don’t think we would have let her even if she did.
I raced through my evening preparations, desperate to get to bed before Aethan. I had to be there waiting for him or he would go without me. I knew it.
I lay down with Scruffy, closing my eyes and slowing my breathing. Getting to sleep had been getting easier and easier. Wolfgang had told me it was a trait of dream-walkers. As I got more proficient I would be able to sleep when and where I wanted at the blink of an eye.
My problem was that Aethan was a dream-walker too. And he’d been doing it longer.
It didn’t take me long to step through to Trillania. Either Aethan was already gone or I had beaten him, because he wasn’t at the campsite. I would have to wait till I was sure he wasn’t coming and then go looking for him.
I shivered and rubbed my hands up-and-down my arms. I hoped he’d hurry.
A few minutes later he shimmered into view. ‘You’re not coming.’ His heart wasn’t really in it though, I could tell.
‘Yep. Sure am.’
‘What if he comes for you?’
‘What if who comes for her?’ Isla’s voice intruded before I could give him my well thought out argument.
‘Isla?’ I wasn’t sure which of us was more shocked.
‘What?’ Aethan said.
‘How?’ I spluttered.
She held up her arm. Wilfred’s armband lay snug around her bicep. ‘He wears it on his wrist, but hey, he has big hands. And you know what they say about a man with big hands?’
‘It’s big feet,’ I cut her off before she could make me blush.
‘You can’t come,’ Aethan said.
‘Who? Her or me?’ I pointed at Isla. A part of me was secretly delighted that she had worked out our secret. I was sick of having to keep it from her. The other part had to admit that Trillania was not currently a safe place for an untrained dream-walker. Especially not if they were with me.
‘Both of you.’ He shoved his hands through his hair so fiercely I thought for sure he would wake with a bald patch.
‘So…,’ Isla spun as she spoke, ‘where exactly are we?’
Unsure of whether the spell would activate if she were there with us, I let Aethan answer. I didn’t feel like writhing in pain.
‘It’s called Trillania. It’s where we go when we dream.’
‘Where dream-walkers go?’
Aethan shook his head and I was tempted to conjure up a set of drums for a drumroll. ‘No, where everybody goes. Dream-walkers are conscious of being here. That is the only difference.’
‘But….’ I could see the cogs in her brain whirling faster and faster as she contemplated all the ramifications of what Aethan has said. ‘And these bring us here?’ Sh
e looked at the armband.
‘They bring you as a dream-walker. The dream-catcher,’ he stopped and looked at her and she nodded her head to indicate that she knew what he was talking about, ‘can stop anyone who has worn one of these from coming here.’
‘Bad shit that goes down here?’
‘Will happen to your body when you awaken.’
‘If you awaken,’ I added.
‘Are we the only ones that come here?’
I shook my head.
‘Goblins?’
‘Orcs, giants, trolls, mudmen. They all have their own version of those.’ Aethan pointed at the armband.
‘I can see why you keep it secret,’ she said. ‘So, what are we up to tonight?’
‘You can’t….’
‘Aethan,’ I cut her off, ‘let her come. You know she’s going to creep around here anyway. This way we can keep an eye on her.’ I turned so he couldn’t see my face and winked at her. ‘And besides, we could do with the extra firepower if anything happens.’
‘What do we use as a weapon?’ Isla asked.
‘Whatever you want.’ I held out my hands and a crossbow appeared in them.
She let out a delighted laugh. ‘That’s so cool.’ A bow appeared in the air in front of her and she snatched it before it could hit the ground.
‘Hold our hands and empty your mind,’ Aethan said. ‘We’re going to find Rako.’
‘Be ready,’ I cautioned her. ‘Bad shit can happen.’ I laughed. That had been Aethan’s brief to me when my witch half had her first trip to Trillania. It had seemed so insufficient at the time but now I got it. It perfectly summed up Trillania.
The world shimmered around us and when we opened our eyes we were standing in front of Isilvitania Castle.
‘Home,’ Isla said. ‘I didn’t think I’d miss it so much.’
‘Get down.’ Rako’s voice came from the trees behind us.
We ducked and ran to where he hid with some of the other Border Guards. Isla threw a few of them an impish grin and waved.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Rako hissed.
‘She worked it out,’ Aethan said.
‘Yes, but why isn’t Wilfred wearing that thing?’
‘That’s what we came to tell you Sir.’ There’d been a lot of calling Rako ‘Sir’ lately.
‘He’s dead?’ Rako’s voice came out in a choked whisper.
‘Yes, I mean no, I mean he was.’
‘He was dead?’
‘We were pursued by monsters last night and a Ubanty Tribesman led us to the shelter of the Oracle of Ulandes. A gurantha killed Wilfred but Ulandes brought him back.’
I had showed them Cedric’s school project that morning and we had been taking turns reading it since. It was knowledge we couldn’t afford to lose.
‘I have no idea what most of what you just said means,’ Rako said. ‘So is Wilfred resting?’
I shook my head. ‘Ulandes took him. It was the price to be paid for bringing him back.’
Rako stared at us while the Border Guard around us muttered angrily. ‘We must get him back,’ one of them said.
‘You don’t understand,’ Isla said. ‘He has gone in servitude to a Goddess. He will be back when she wills it and not before.’
Rako rubbed his fingers over his scar. ‘I thought I’d heard everything.’ He shook his head and then poked it back out of the trees to check the castle.
‘Sir,’ Aethan said, ‘we lost Luke.’
I waited for Rako to ask us where we had left him, but by the look on his face he knew what Aethan meant. It was as if someone had ripped an energy rug out from underneath him. His eyes dulled and his shoulders sagged as he asked, ‘How?’
‘Ghouls.’
Rako scrubbed his hands across his face a few times. ‘He was a good man.’
‘There’s something else,’ Aethan said.
‘Not Brent?’
‘No, the rest of us are fine. It’s about the last time we were here.’
I held my breath while Aethan filled Rako in on what we had seen after we had left him, only letting that breath out when I knew for sure he was going to leave out the part about Santanas and me. I fully expected an explosion of sorts but Rako was too stunned by the news to react to the fact that we had disobeyed him. Again. I guess he was getting used to it.
‘How many?’ he asked in a hoarse voice.
‘Thousands,’ Aethan said. ‘Tens of thousands. They stretched toward the horizon as far as we could see.
‘And it was definitely him?’
Aethan shot me a look and said, ‘Pretty sure about that.’
One of the other guards let out a whistle. ‘We’re going to need every man we’ve got.
‘And more,’ another one said.
‘Not if we can stop Galanta,’ I said.
Rako nodded. ‘We need to cut the head off the snake.’ He froze and peered back out of the bushes, sucking in a breath at what he saw. He pulled his sword free and said, ‘You three need to get back. It is more important than ever that you bring the night faery safely home.’
I peered over his shoulder. Orcs were massing near the entrance to the castle.
‘We will meet you at the border the day after tomorrow.’ He gestured to the other guards and they linked hands and disappeared. They re-appeared a second later right behind the orcs, their blades slicing heads from shoulders before the orcs even knew they were there. Just as fast as they appeared, they were gone.
‘Where’d they go?’ Isla moved some foliage to the side as if to move towards the castle.
‘Not our problem,’ Aethan said, grabbing our hands. ‘They have their job and we have ours.’
The world shimmered and we were back at the campsite.
‘Take that thing off when you wake up.’ Aethan tapped the armband.
Isla’s face got the whimsical look it did when she was up to no good.
‘How are you going to get Wilfred back if you die here?’
She pouted. ‘Oh fine.’ She closed her eyes and disappeared.
‘You’re going to use that on her forever aren’t you?’ I said.
He smiled his crooked half smile I loved so much. ‘Nice to finally have a way to get her to obey me.’ He pulled a face. ‘Not that there is anything good about what happened to Wilfred.’ The smile was gone. Instead, pain creased the skin around his eyes.
‘I know what you mean.’ I reached out and took his hand and he squeezed my fingers.
‘You know, right up to that last minute, I really thought there was something going on between you and Wilfred. I never guessed it was Isla.’
Questions started whirling around in my head. Questions I couldn’t bring myself to voice. ‘I told you he was like a brother to me,’ I said.
‘That’s not technically true.’ He was still holding my hand. ‘He said you were like a sister to him.’
I took a deep breath. ‘So you thought I had a crush on him?’
He nodded.
‘And now you know I don’t.’
He cocked his head to the side and stared at me. I was totally aware of the feel of his fingers still grasping mine. Never had such a small area of skin dominated so much of my mind.
‘No.’
‘No, you don’t know, or no you do?’ Honestly, the man was totally infuriating. What did I have to do to get him to realise he was the one I crushed on?
He tugged on my hand and I took an involuntary step towards him. ‘The only thing I really know,’ his voice was a husky rumble, ‘is that someone is trying to wake me up.’ He let go of my hand, closed his eyes and was gone.
‘Damn,’ I said, stamping my foot with the word. ‘Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.’ I got the vaguest feeling, as if someone were shaking my shadow. He was right. They were trying to wake us up. I closed my eyes and willed myself back into my body, opening my eyes to the vision of Wolfgang, with one hand on my shoulder and the other held up to his lips.
‘Shhhhh,’ he whispered. ‘Gobli
ns.’
***
The others were already up when I crawled out of my tent. Ebony’s eyes were huge as she hugged her arms around her chest and stared off into the trees. For the first time I felt a wave of sympathy for the woman. She’d been sent alone to a strange land to marry a man she’d never met. Along the way she’d been hunted by ghouls and all sorts of other monsters, and the only person she had known from before was gone. Loneliness and fear radiated off her, yet still she had the guts to go on.
A wave of guilt swept over me. The poor thing needed a friend and I had let my jealousy blindside me.
‘We’re going to have to leave the tents,’ Aethan whispered.
‘But then they’ll know for sure that we were here.’ Brent ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. ‘We’re too far from the border to risk that.’
‘Wolfgang?’
‘I can hide the campsite. They’ll only find it if they stumble into an object they can’t see.’
Aethan nodded and said, ‘It’ll have to do. Get your things and mount up.’
I tugged at Brent’s sleeve. ‘Do they suspect we’re here?’
‘Don’t think so. Looks like a routine patrol. But they are heading this way.’
I ducked back into the tent and threw my things into the saddle bags. By the time I got back with Scruffy, the horses were saddled. I threw my bag over Lily and secured it, then lifted Scruffy up onto her back and mounted.
By the position of the moon we couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours. That was a couple more than Brent and Wolfgang had had so I stifled my yawns and tried to stay alert.
Brent led us out of the campsite in single file. When we were clear, Wolfgang waved his hands in the air. I tried to feel what he was doing but all I got were tingles running over the skin on my arms.
Little pieces of the area surrounding the campsite seemed to snow down over the tents. Bits of trunk and leaf and ground all piecing together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle till the tents were gone. Brent swept over the ground with a leaf-covered branch, and the last signs that we had ever been there disappeared.
We walked the horses for the next hour, my nerves twisting tighter and tighter as I waited for goblins to break from the trees. I tried not to think about Cedric’s book, but the monsters from it were burned into my brain. There were so many more we still hadn’t encountered, and that made my stomach tighten into a knot.
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