Season of Wonder

by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  I shook my head. “Whoever did it was really quiet.”

  But we both thought of the same person. I dug into my satchel with renewed fervor, not wanting Ronan to see my face at the memory of the young man staring at me, happy that I wore the blossom in my hair.

  Rising dread filled me. Why did it scare me so? The attentions of a monk we’d soon leave behind forever?

  Cold fear, warning, caution rushed through me. My armband felt frigid, so much so that I rubbed it as if it were an appendage I could circulate blood within again.

  Ronan lifted his hand to his cuff too and frowned at me. “Dri …”

  “We have to get out of here,” I said, meeting his gaze. “Now.”

  He nodded and rushed over to his pack as I lifted my own to my shoulders.

  Niero appeared at the door, every inch of his face shouting alarm. “Ready?” I glimpsed Bellona and Vidar behind him, yanking their burlap straps over their shoulders.

  So they’d felt it too. Where were Tressa and Killian? I felt the fear rising up all around us, as if the palace walls themselves were climbing, then closing in. A trap, a trap, a trap …

  We moved out into the hall, just as Tressa and Killian emerged, our armbands practically zapping us with sharp, cold dread. Was it this place? The monks? Or approaching Sheolites?

  All I knew was the Maker’s firm command, clanging in my mind as clearly as a giant, round bell. We hurried down the empty hall toward the patio where we’d been forced to leave our swords and other weapons.

  Niero carefully peered out and then led us forward. We all moved as we’d practiced in the wood … even Tressa and Killian utterly silent, nothing but skin on adobe and stone. In seconds we reached the racks that had held our weapons, and in one glance saw it was empty.

  “My friends, you must have breakfast before you are off,” said Zulon, behind us. He gave us a smile, seemingly unaware of our alarm. “It is ready,” he said, gesturing back down the hall. “Just as soon as my brothers are done praying, they shall join us.”

  Niero paused. I knew his conundrum. For us to walk out of here, without our weapons, might be a different form of suicide. But to stay here … The mounting pressure made me feel like we might all implode at any moment.

  “Zulon, we must be on our way to make the most distance in the coming day. Might you tell us where our weapons are stored?”

  The small man paused. “I am sorry. But the master has not yet said it is time to go. You must wait for him to dismiss you.”

  “Master?” Niero said in confusion. “I thought you were all but brothers.”

  Zulon gave him a patient smile. “We are all brothers, yes. But there are elders. And there is one master.”

  “Who is your master?” Niero asked, giving him a hard look.

  “Emperor Keallach, of course,” he said.

  I held my breath so long I felt faint. Could it be? The young man we’d met in the gardens last night? The one I saw this morning? The man taken with the story of Gemini’s twins, and their cruel parting? My eyes shifted to Ronan’s, and knew the same dread in his heart.

  Niero slammed Zulon up against the wall, his big hand at the man’s slender throat. “Our weapons. Now.”

  Zulon wriggled, clawing at Niero’s hand. “Storage locker …” he choked out. “Around the corner.”

  Niero released him and Zulon dropped to the floor in a crouch, any peacable look about him disappearing, hate filling his heart. Ronan dragged me away, but I was stunned at the transformation I sensed within the monk; within seconds he went from empty, emotionless friend to savage foe. How had he cloaked such hatred at all? We turned the corner and ran to the end of the vine-covered portico, near the pool. All around it, monks were chanting, heads bowed, their staffs beside them in neat, tidy lines. For the first time, I didn’t see the staffs as an aid for hiking the rough trails around their homes — I knew them as weapons.

  Bellona, Killian, and Ronan formed a defensive arc around the rest of us, and Niero kicked in the wooden cabinet holding our weapons. It took two tries, and the chanting of the monks ceased as Niero wrenched aside the splintered wood and tossed each of us our blades, shields, bows. The monks turned toward us as one, but remained where they were, on their knees. Niero grabbed hold of his second crescent-shaped sword and said, “C’mon,” leaving us, leading us in a sprint.

  We’d almost reached the doorway to the monastery again — intent on running through the long, abandoned corridor to the other end — when a man shouted, “My Ailith kin!”

  I knew his voice. The monk from last night. No, it’s not possible —

  “Don’t stop,” Niero said, reaching for the door. “The Maker wants us — ”

  But the door was locked from within.

  Niero tried the door again, shaking it, as we sensed the monks rising behind us. “Around the building! Quickly!”

  He knew what we all knew now. We could sense Keallach as a fellow Ailith, feel the hum within our armbands, even though he’d been somehow able to partially cloak his presence before. That was why I’d felt drawn to him, pulled. He was Ailith! But to pause, to give him a chance, or to try and fight our way through all the warriors at his side — either might prove deadly. The push to flee was so strong; it almost made me blind with panic, and I fought to remember my trainer’s words, his methods to fight the fear. My eyes caught Vidar’s and I imagined angels all about us, unseen but protecting us. The comfort was soon lost, but it gave me room to breathe at least.

  “They’re coming!” Bellona shouted from the back of our group.

  “We’ll have to divide!” Niero cried. And while I knew it was likely our only opportunity to all avoid capture, it increased my fear that he felt compelled to separate us — the last, most desperate thing we were trained to do.

  It was an admission that some of us would surely be lost.

  “Ronan!” Niero called.

  Ronan turned and narrowly caught the leather bag our captain had worn tied to his waist. The one with all the remaining arm cuffs.

  “See that it isn’t intercepted by anyone but us!”

  Ronan nodded, but I felt sick. He’d only give up the armbands if —

  “Meet up in the mountains to the west!” he hissed. “Go!”

  He paused and turned, lifting one crescent-shaped sword and shield as a group of monks swarmed him, surrounded him, their staffs in their hands and glee on their faces. It gave us a momentary reprieve. We were running, only twenty paces away. We’d caught some of the monks’ attention, and they turned as one to chase us. “But Ronan … Niero! We can’t leave him!”

  “We will do what he told us to, Dri,” Ronan grunted, grabbing hold of my arm, yanking me onward when I dared to pause.

  Above Niero, on a wall, I glimpsed Keallach — indeed the man from the garden last night and the hallway this morning — as he took position as leader. But what I felt in him stopped me cold, even as Ronan practically wrenched my arm from my socket, his fingernails tearing at my skin as he belatedly let go.

  I paid it little mind. My eyes were on Keallach. My Ailith brother.

  One of us.

  And his were on me.

  CHAPTER

  30

  My eyes dragged to Niero, who was below Keallach, surrounded.

  “No!” I heard myself shout, as if listening to someone else. The monks were attacking our leader from all sides, swarming him. He defended himself well, but he was taking one blow after another, visibly weakening. Worse, two Sheolite elite trackers appeared on either side of Keallach. And one of them was Sethos.

  Both jumped from the ten-foot wall and landed in a crouch to either side of Niero. The monks split and made way for them, as if in deference. In but a moment, Niero lost one crescent blade and drew the other, even as the second tracker struck his shield.

  “We will find a way to free him,” Ronan growled in my ear, wrapping his arms around my chest and wrenching me backward. “But we can’t do that if we’re captured too. C�
��mon, Dri. It’s what he wanted.”

  Still, I stared back, torn by my desire to wade into the fray now, but knowing we were hopelessly outnumbered. There was a reason Niero told us to divide; he’d known this would be the way. Our only chance.

  Keallach looked across the red-robed masses, and I knew the moment his searching eyes found us again. A jolt of clear chill ran through me, from my neck down my shoulders. But the combination of what I felt left me almost paralyzed.

  Both hatred and love.

  Yearning and revulsion.

  Pull and push.

  “He’s confused,” I murmured. “He doesn’t know — ”

  “C’mon, Dri!” Ronan yanked me forward, and I knew he was right. We had to sort it out later. For now we simply had to escape.

  Ahead of us, we saw Bellona and Vidar hop the wall and jump ten feet below, apparently deciding to try and dive into the river and swim their way across. Killian and Tressa followed, but I knew they’d likely make for the bridge and up the cliff on the other side — preferring to risk a death from a fall than another chance at drowning.

  Ronan ran close to me, and I was glad I’d always been as fast as him. We were still searching for an alternate route out, without pulling more of the monks who chased us toward our Ailith brothers and sisters. Raniero had been right in his assessment; if we were caught, our only chance was to fight a much smaller group of monks than those en masse.

  We passed the far end of the monastery and ran down the sloping road, and I glimpsed the horses. “Think we can make it to the corral?” I panted, and Ronan saw what I intended.

  “I’ll hold ’em,” he said. “You go, Andriana. You hear me?” he cried as I continued to run. “Do not turn back!”

  But I had other things in mind. I became aware of the two red-clad monks a hundred feet above, now scrambling at an angle toward me using a tiny goat trail that crisscrossed the cliff, as well as two others that had managed to get past Ronan and pursued me. The monks above picked up rocks and threw them at me, coming terribly close. I dodged and wove, watching as one after another hit the stone path only to crack and roll.

  I reached the corral and yanked open the gate, relieved that they ceased heaving rocks — probably because they feared hitting their horses. I grabbed the reins of one gelding that still had a bit in his mouth and shooed the others out through the gate, not wanting to leave any in easy reach for a chase. I climbed the rails and leaped on the horse’s back, drawing my sword as the two monks on the ground reached the corral and attempted to trap me inside. I leaned down and rammed my heels into the gelding’s flanks, shouting out a warrior cry so fierce I surprised myself.

  The horse rammed the closing gate with his right shoulder and shied left. I swept my sword down at the nearest monk and he released the gate, bending back to avoid my strike. The other swept his staff down on my wrist, so hard I almost lost my grip on my sword.

  But I didn’t. I kicked the horse again and leaned low, fixing my eyes on Ronan ahead of me and then spying the road below him. The monks kept coming, past the monastery. If I could pause to grab my knight, and we took the road down below them, much of it was too far for them to jump. And the road led … away. I wasn’t sure if it would lead out of the canyon. But it would get us out of immediate danger.

  The horse galloped up the cobblestone road, the two monks from the corral in pursuit. I paused near where I thought Ronan had stopped, above me. I could hear the grunt and cry of men fighting. “Ronan!” I screamed. “Down here! Ronan!”

  Two, three seconds went by, each one bringing my enemies closer. A monk peered over the wall at me and shouted, and other heads appeared. Then a moment later, Ronan came flying over the wall, without as much as a look before he leaped. He landed in a crouch, took a breath, then turned and swiftly killed the first monk who was after me. As he yanked his sword free, the other struck him squarely in the back, making him arch in pain. I gasped, feeling it with him, as well as a fury I didn’t know I had in me. The second monk didn’t pause. He hit him again and again, moving so rapidly with the dreaded staff that Ronan didn’t have the chance to respond — only bear up against the next strike he was to take.

  I let out a growl and whipped the horse around, pulling a dagger from my belt. I sent it flying as the monk continued to attack my man, and it circled in the air — blade over handle — before landing between his shoulder blades. He stopped, stunned, and then his knees crumpled beneath him. Ronan looked up at me, panting, holding his belly, and then wearily stood to sheathe his swords on his back, climb onto a rock, and take my arm as I passed.

  His weight nearly unseated me, but I managed to swing him almost all the way on. The horse pranced beneath us, unnerved by the second body upon his back, but as soon as I felt Ronan settle behind me, his arms wrapped around my torso, I kicked at the gelding’s flanks and we were moving again, up the road, back toward the pool-end of the monastery high above us.

  We rounded the bend, and I felt a breath of hope when I saw that no red-clad monks stood in our way. The farther we went, the higher the wall was above us.

  And then I saw him again in the distance. Keallach, on a new section of the wall. Dimly, I realized that Niero was gone, but I could only concentrate on Keallach.

  “Brother,” I breathed as we galloped closer, longing to reach him, pull him back from whatever dark bindings held him. I willed the Ailith call — the thing that bound us all as one — toward him. Reminding him. Begging him to turn back from the abyss.

  “Keep on it, Dri,” Ronan moaned over my shoulder as I eased our pace. “It’s our only chance!”

  Keallach stood there, hands on hips, dark hair and red robe flying in the dry breeze, watching us from his perch. We’d have to pass right below him, just twenty feet away.

  I pulled up on the reins, and the gelding circled in agitation, one way and then the other.

  “Dri, no!” Ronan cried, clumsily trying to reach around me for the reins, but hurting too much to do much good.

  Keallach held no weapon in his hand. No stone, no bow and arrow, not even one of the staffs. I felt pain from him, longing, as if he’d heard my Ailith call. But then Sethos stepped up beside him, blood glistening from a wound at his cheek, and that decided me. I dug my heels into the gelding’s flanks and drove past them, before the tracker might leap again into our path.

  Sethos did move as we passed, as if he intended to try and intercept us, but Keallach lifted a hand and grabbed him. The tracker snarled at him, his eyes betraying his confusion. But Keallach only looked at us. Fierce protection. Hope. Kinship came at me in waves as we passed.

  He was one of us.

  And yet not.

  It made me sick to my stomach, the confusion, the roiling indecision within him.

  We raced down the road below them, toward what I hoped was freedom, as well as clarity on what had just happened. Why would he just let us go?

  Unless we were heading to a dead end and he was simply playing with us.

  But there was nothing to do but move down the road ahead. Gradually, it began to slope upward, out of the canyon like I’d hoped. But behind us, an enormous gong sounded an alarm so loud and deep in tone that it felt like it filled the entire canyon. And as we turned another corner we spied a small post, with six monks keeping watch on the road. A guard gate was visible just beyond them.

  I pulled up on the reins again, and we hastened back around the corner and dropped to the ground. Still, there were no others giving chase. Why? Because they were concentrating on the others? Because they still hadn’t rounded up the other horses? Or because Keallach played some odd game with us?

  Ronan, still clutching his belly, edged against the wall to take another look. He grimaced and looked back at me, then beyond me to the road we came down. “Guard gate,” he said with a wince, glancing down to his stomach as if he expected to see blood. How badly was he injured? “I’m betting they have weapons beyond wooden staffs in their arsenal. And the trackers arrived —
did you see them?”

  “Yes,” I said, wishing I hadn’t. If Sethos had rejoined Keallach, that meant that Niero was down, or captured. I swallowed hard, looking back up the path, wondering if we were supposed to go back to him.

  “We can’t free him, Dri. Not today. Not just the two of us. And we have to get rid of these,” he said, lifting the leather bag, shaking it like it was an added curse. He leaned against the cliff and looked up, as if hoping the Maker himself would show up.

  “Can’t go forward, can’t go back,” I muttered, pushing my hair back from my sweating face. I looked across the riverbed, over to the cliff on the far side, riddled with hermit caves.

  Ronan did too. He slapped the gelding’s flanks, sending him shying down the road on which we’d come.

  “Ronan, what are you doing?” I cried.

  “Creating a diversion. C’mon,” he said, reaching for my hand and tugging me toward the river.

  I saw it too, then, and felt the hope, the relief in him, even as panic threatened to overwhelm me. He meant for us to climb. Up, up into the caves. Or worse — to the top. But time was short. The gong continued to thrum, so loud it resonated in our chests as we reached thigh-depth in the river, trudging across. Ronan’s arm came around my back, and we pushed against the water that now covered our waists then slowly receded as we came out on the other side. Still, there were no monks in pursuit.

  “Quickly,” he growled when I hesitated, practically tossing me onto the first ladder that led up to the nearest cave. I forced myself to scramble upward, the ladder rocking as he came up behind me. Was it strong enough to hold me? Hold us both? I fought back against the idea of us both falling to the ground.

  We reached the first cave and slid into the dark, both panting, watching the road.

  “Let’s do another,” he said, already moving toward the cave mouth. “The higher we can get before they — ”