by Krista Rose
“Haunted?”
“I had dreams. They-” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I climbed into the rubble, but the embers were too hot. Burned the bottom of my foot. I still have the scar.”
I stared at him, horrified. What had I done? “I- I’m sorry.”
“Why?” He jerked a shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. The villagers all thought it was witchcraft. They thought the Crone murdered you and that’s why she left. But Lady Hetarielle told me only a Firemage could have set a fire that wouldn’t go out, and it’s not like you-” He noticed my flinch, and his eyes widened. “Oh, gods, don’t tell me. Are you-”
“No. I don’t know.” I squirmed under his incredulous gaze. Kryssa’s screams echoed in my memory. “It was an accident.”
He leaned forward. “Tell me.”
I stared down at my hands. Where could I even start? How could I ever explain what had happened in that prison that had been our home?
But I heard myself begin to speak, the words emerging before I even knew what I was saying. “The Crone murdered our mother.” I took a deep breath, and continued. “We didn’t know it, of course, since we were small when it happened. Our father lost his mind over it. Slept by our mother’s grave for years, didn’t talk, barely ate. The Crone started giving him cattakasha, though we didn’t know what that was either. It made him angry, and violent. Kryssa took the worst of it.”
Vitric’s face was horrified. “But- but why would the Crone do those things?”
“She was afraid to die. So scared, in fact, that she had started worshipping the Elder Gods. My father traded her Kylee and Alyxen for the drug. She planned to use them become a Vampyre.”
He flinched. “I- I didn’t know. I never thought-” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I knew your father was violent. I saw Kryssa’s bruises, even when she tried to hide them. But she wouldn’t talk to me about it, wouldn’t let me try to help her. Even when I tried to tell her we could take you all and leave, she wouldn’t listen.”
“We’d grown used to it. After awhile, it felt like that was the way it had always been.”
He shook his head. “What happened that night?”
“Reyce’s birthday. We’d all made him gifts, but Kryssa’s was the best.”
“A cake,” he murmured. “With pink icing.”
“Reyce was so excited, so happy. And then our father came home.” My hands tightened into fists. “He accused Kryssa of stealing the cake, and smashed it against the wall. She was so upset she slapped him. He tried to kill her for it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He beat her. She was screaming.” I could still feel the warmth of her blood on my hands. “It seemed to go on for hours. We thought she was going to die. Reyce-” I hesitated again, but only because I didn’t know how to describe what my brother had done “-saved her. He changed somehow, became stronger. It scared me, and I set the house on fire by accident.”
I swallowed. “We didn’t know what else to do, so we took Kryssa to the Crone’s. She tried to feed Kryssa the cattakasha, but somehow she knew, and she-” I bit my lip, and glanced at him. “She went into the Crone’s mind. That’s when we found out the truth of what she’d done.”
He stared at me, horrified and fascinated, his mouth half-open. “H-how-”
I glanced back down at my hand, allowing a small flicker of flame to dance along my fingertips. “We all have gifts. Little things, like my fire. Kryssa can read thoughts, but that night she wanted to destroy the Crone’s mind. Then Lanya killed her.”
“What?”
I shrugged. The Crone’s throat slit like a gaping smile, the bright sheen of the knife, blood dripping from her hands… “We left to find Kryssa a healer, but her wounds took infection. She nearly died. And when she woke up, it was no longer her. The Crone was still trapped in her mind, driving her mad. It was worse than the sickness.” I glanced at him. “That’s when we heard your name, while she was sick. She kept calling for you.”
He flushed. “I- I thought-” He gulped, and stared down at the flames playing across my palms. His voice was a whisper when he spoke. “I thought she was dead. I loved her, and she was just… gone. My mother didn’t understand. She tried to force me to marry another girl. I gave up on living. I started to think-” He glanced down at his wrists, then shook his head. “That’s when Lady Hetarielle found me.”
“The direction-giving bear?”
“Yes.” He flashed a small smile. “She gave me a purpose again. I never thought…”
“You never thought you’d see Kryssa again,” I finished for him.
He sighed. “At least I know why she keeps pulling away now. She thinks I didn’t save her.”
“What? No.” I shook my head. “Don’t you understand? She’s afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of herself. She thinks you’ll hate her.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to.”
“I know that. Why do you think I told you?”
He let out a long breath. “Well, that’s… a lot.” He glanced back at me. “So, the mind-reading. Is that why you said you hadn’t heard from her in two days? She’s been talking to you?”
“Something like that.”
“Is that normal? The lapse, I mean.”
“I don’t know.” And that was what frightened me the most. “I’m hoping she forgot.”
“Doesn’t sound like Kryssa.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I closed my palm, dousing the flames. “Come on. It’s time for our shift.”
TANNER
17 Davael 578A.F.
The Southern Road
We lost three days looking for Kryssa.
By the time I finally caught up with the others, it was fully dark. They reacted to the news of Kryssa’s capture as I feared they would- shock, disbelief, anger. Kylee wanted to search for her sister right then, but thankfully Lanya convinced her to wait until the morning.
It was tense and awkward as we made camp. The others avoided looking at me, and I immediately turned in, though it took me hours to fall asleep.
We were up at dawn the next day, but though we searched without stopping until dusk, we found no trace of her, or the slavers. I watched the fear on the other’s faces mingle with despair as the second day passed, and then the third.
It was Lanya, ever-practical, who pointed out what I had been afraid to say: that the slavers had most likely already reached Surak. We would never find her in the desert.
Kryssa was gone.
It was such a horrific thought, we couldn’t even process it, and simply stared at each other around the campfire. My shoulders bowed under the weight of my guilt.
“It’s alright, Tanner.” Lanya’s voice was gentle, trying to soothe despite her obvious fear. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“She sacrificed herself for me,” I mumbled, looking away. Shame burned in my chest, and I rubbed the healing bruises on my throat. “If it hadn’t been for me-”
“No, Kryssa just does that,” Kylee muttered, jerking a shoulder. “You get used to it. Don’t take it personally.”
I blinked at her.
“We need to get to Cedralysone,” Lanya pointed out. “That’s what Kryssa would want us to do.”
“And when we get there, we can ask Vanderys for help,” Kylee added in a slightly more hopeful voice. “He’ll know what to do.”
We all nodded. There was nothing else to say, and so we curled into our blankets and stared up at the stars, and tried to sleep.
KRYSSA
20 Davael, 578A.F.
The Deserts of Surak
The sun was like a hammer, beating down on me. It was hard to think around the cattakasha, but when I could, my thoughts were of the heat that all but crushed me.
I was not the only slave, though that thought did not comfort me. We were chained together with heavy manacles that chafed our wrists and left our ankles sore and bleeding. The others stared at me with blank
faces; the cattakasha had already taken their minds, and there was no room for terror around the drug.
The slavers slathered us each morning with a thick white paste. The leader- he had told me his name, but the drug made me forget- had said it was to keep the sun from poisoning our blood. It smelled horrendous, and caused my clothes to stick to me, but I did not burn.
During the day, the heat rippled off the golden sands, which stretched as far as the eye could see, all the way to the mountains which blurred the horizon behind us. We were kept in a wagon, pulled by a placid, uncaring mule, and we stared out at the world of sand and sky and nothingness as we traveled toward our unknown destination.
At night, the air was biting cold, and I huddled near the campfire, my mind empty and aching.
I had tried to refuse it at first, this drug that erased who I was and who I had loved. I had pushed it away, and they had been forced to pour it down my throat. But as the days dragged on, I began to yearn for it: the coolness of it against my burning lips, the taste of starlight on my tongue, the blissful emptiness it left in my mind.
I tried to think of Vitric, but his face slipped away, fluttering out of my reach, the cattakasha slowly erasing him. I tried to cling to thoughts of my siblings, to remain strong against the cattakasha’s dark pull, but their faces grew blurry in my memory.
All that remained was the drug and my need, and the oppressive, furious heat.
On my third day in the desert, my nose began to bleed profusely, and a slaver forced a horrid-smelling salve in my sensitive nostrils. The bleeding promptly stopped, though the stinging pain he had caused seemed to last for hours.
They watched our water carefully, only giving us a little to drink each day, even when our lips cracked and bled. They made us eat salt, which made my thirst worse. I tried to refuse, until the leader grabbed me by my hair and forced the salt to my stinging lips. “If you do not take it, you die.”
I swallowed the salt.
By the fifth day, I knew the others were not coming for me. I was alone, with only the drug to numb my emptiness. Someone was screaming deep inside my mind, and I drank to silence them.
The cattakasha consumed me, and left me blissfully empty.
KYLEE
22 Davael 578A.F.
The Rhyulian Mountains
We found it at last: the entrance to the Madyrim. It looked as Vanderys had once described it to me: a massive stone arch, three times as high as a man, and broad enough that the four of us could enter at the same time mounted. Above us, the Rhyulian Mountains reared out of the mists, dark grey stone clawing into the grey sky to rip the clouds to shreds.
Other than its size, the entrance to the Madyrim looked innocent enough- except for the tingle of dread that skittered along my skin as I stared at it.
“Ready?” Lanya asked me, her eyes watchful.
I rolled my shoulders. Memories of Kryssa’s madness threatened to swallow me. I was choking on terror. I did not want to lose my mind, to see visions and horrors that were not there. If I said one word wrong-
Kylee. Lanya’s golden light filtered into me, draining my fear. I scowled at her, not wanting the others to see how grateful I was for her calm.
I took a deep breath, and urged my stallion Nightking beneath the arch. “Aurelion, dyslan E.”
Glowing runes lit the pillars, as large as my hand and spiraling around the stone. The ground began to glow, a bright path between the mountains.
“Stay to the path,” I cautioned, and started forward.
Gloom descended around us. It was like traveling through twilight; though our horses’ hooves echoed from the sides of the mountains, we could not see them. Dread crushed in upon us. If it had not been for the light of the path guiding us forward, I would have fled.
It seemed we traveled for hours. I clutched the saddle horn, terror swamping me. I said the wrong words, we’re trapped in here, we’ll never escape-
Then, ahead of us, a light: brilliant, blinding, welcome. Sunlight illuminated the end of our dark tunnel, and I urged my horse toward it.
We emerged in paradise.
The sky was vivid blue above a world of impossible green. The vale spread out before us like a magnificent bowl, surrounded by an imposing ring of snow-covered mountains. Dozens of orchards were in bloom, mixing with the scent of wildflowers to create a heady perfume. Parks and ponds and benches were scattered across the valley, inviting any that wandered across them to sit and relax and enjoy the scenery.
Birds sang sweetly, and a warm breeze whispered along my skin. Far in the distance, I could see a herd of majestic white horses, huge wings spreading from their shoulders to carry them prancing into the air. Pegasi, I realised, and nearly laughed in delight.
And rising above it all was Cedralysone.
To call it a city was to call a sunset plain, or to call the ocean a drop of water. It was breathtaking, carved into the mountain and crowned by a magnificent waterfall, which crashed like music into the mist-shrouded river below. The rooms of Cedralysone appeared to have no outer walls; in their place hung colorful curtains, most pushed aside to allow in the warm sunlight.Towers soared into the sky, golden and lovely, and I longed to climb them, to stare out at this utopia.
It was all so dazzling, we almost didn’t notice the couple sitting on the bench near us.
The girl was beautiful and slender, her hair gleaming like silver in the sunlight. Delicate, pointed ears peeked from beneath her hair, and her eyes were the color of warm violets when she looked up at us with a small smile.
The boy’s hair was darker blonde, and his eyes sapphire blue. He sat cross-legged beside her, dressed in plain linen clothes that were finer than any we had seen in our lives.
And, when he smiled, he looked like Kryssa.
“Reyce.” Lanya threw herself out of the saddle to race toward him.
We had finally found our brother.
LANYA
Cedralysone
Kylee and Alyxen clustered around me, their eyes bright with grateful tears as we hugged our brother. My own heart felt like it was both bursting and breaking, my arms wrapped around Reyce’s shoulders tightly, afraid to let go.
“Where have you been?” I murmured, my voice thick and choked. “We’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
He simply smiled at me, and wiped a tear from my cheek.
“Kryssa got kidnapped,” I continued, the familiar fear clutching at my stomach. “By slavers. And we can’t find her. We need to talk to Vanderys. And Brannyn’s still in Fallor, and Tanner needs to find something called the Temple of the Burned, and-”
Reyce’s expression had slid into confusion and fear. I realized I was growing hysterical, and tried to calm myself, though it was difficult past the strangling grip the worry had on my throat. “I- I’m sorry. I’m glad to see you.”
He gave me a tentative smile, but his eyes were still concerned.
The girl who had been sitting with him had stood, unnoticed, and approached us. She looked young, but Kylee had already warned us that the Cedrani didn’t age as we did. She looked about fifteen, but whether it was fifteen years or fifteen hundred, I had no way of knowing.
“I am Aillel Ethralyss,” she said, and curtsied. “I am Reyce’s caretaker. Are you his brothers and sisters? Vanderys has told me of you.”
“We are.” Dread knotted in my stomach at the word caretaker. Why did my brother need someone to take care of him? He looked fine.
He continued to stare up at me, his eyes intense.
“Your brother was healed of the moret’ethla’s poison,” Aillel continued. “But there were complications. He suffered a- what is your common word for it?- a seizure? It has affected his mind.”
The ground seemed to fall away beneath me. I stared down into my brother’s eyes, so like mine. He smiled up at me, and squeezed my cold fingers.
“Reyce cannot speak.” Her words were soft, and seemed to come from miles away. “He can understand some words, but the meanin
g of them has been erased. He can understand tone and expression, and his intelligence is undiminished. But it is as if he is surrounded by a foreign tongue. The words you speak have no significance to him.”
The world spun, dizzy and swaying beneath my feet. Kryssa was gone, Brannyn was too far away. I did not know how to handle this. The weight of it was simply too much.
Darkness spun before my eyes, and swallowed me.
REYCE
Lanya fainted.
Tanner leapt forward to catch her, and lowered her to the ground. Kylee and Alyxen were gaping at me, their eyes wide and frightened.
Alight spoke to them, her voice calm and soothing. The words flitted by me, strange and dissonant. I struggled to catch them, to make sense of what was being said, but it went by too quickly. I sighed, frustrated.
It had been this way since I had woken from the nightmares of the Vampyre attack. Pieces of words and names caught in my ears, but I could not understand them. I was unsure if the girl’s name even was Alight- she had repeated it, over and over to me, but it was the best I could comprehend.
The others began to speak, high and excited, arguing with her. Lanya’s eyes slowly reopened, though they remained dark and unfocused as she sat up.
Kylee tried to speak into my mind, but I couldn’t understand her then, either. I could feel the presence of her, green and wild and angry, but nothing else made sense. It was like being thrown into a kaliedoscope with no sense of up or down, just meaningless patterns repeated over and over. She withdrew, though her irritation lingered.
Alight raised her hands in a peaceful gesture, and pointed at me. Her tone was calm and pleading; I guessed she was urging them to slow down, explaining the difficulties I had in understanding the language. I almost caught one of the words, but it slipped out of my reach.
Lanya was staring at me, wringing her hands. I wished I could tell her that I was fine, to stop looking so worried, but when I opened my mouth, the only the sound that emerged was “Guh-guh-guh.”
