by J B Cantwell
It would be the only path to my salvation.
Chapter 9
Hours passed, though I had no idea how many. I knew this mountain was crawling with creatures who had my death as their only goal, but I couldn't stay in that hole forever. I began to count, first in seconds, then in minutes. But without the light of the sky, it was hopeless.
The mountain had gone silent, and not even the whispers bothered me now. I was finally alone, and not a single sound occupied my mind.
I knew that the slimy beasts and flying Wicks were still out there searching for me. It seemed that I’d chosen my hole wisely, and soon I realized why. When I stuck my head out carefully to look around, I found that the rock all around me was completely vertical. There would have been no way for any of them to climb down from the top of it, much less chase me. Maybe they knew where I was, maybe they didn't, but I felt safe enough to stay until I knew the danger had passed.
I spent some time studying the map, something Phalen had wanted so badly. What a prize it would’ve been for him to arrive home and give this most cherished possession back to his father. I spread out the parchment in my hiding spot and lighted just enough fire from my hands to allow me to read it. Now that I had a chance to see it without immediate threat to my life, I realized how valuable this one particular map was. Not only was the Veiled Kingdom shown, it was no longer veiled at all. I spent hours pouring over the map, looking for clues, making plans. In many ways, the map was unremarkable. It did not show the Keepers from the Wild Lands, but it did show those in the Shadow Mountains, all five of them, and that was all I needed to know.
Bull. Gazelle. Tiger. Elephant. Bear.
Finally, after what felt like days, I emerged. I slung the staff across my pack and held tight to the vertical wall of stone. I managed to stick to it without having to light my hands, a great improvement in my stealth. I remembered how Bevyn had taught me to focus my mind, and suddenly, while hanging from the edge of the mountain, my heart broke all over again. Tears fell from my eyes as I mourned the man who had waited so long and helped me so much.
I would have my revenge.
Going down the mountain took a lot less time than climbing up. I saw no Wicks, no creatures at all; the mountains were empty once more.
When I reached the ground, I immediately took up my staff just in case I was tricked. But I found the land around me completely silent.
That was when the rain began. Though I had energy, my heart was low, and I let the rain fall over me without complaint. In the past, I had shielded myself, but now it seemed somehow appropriate for me to let myself get drenched. I imagined Bevyn's body at the base of the cliff where we’d been hiding. I highly doubted that Phalen had buried him or shown him any sort of dignity.
I tried to keep my head up, paying attention to the world around me. Those creatures, the strange slimy ones, had come out of nowhere. I had no knowledge of them, where they lived, what they ate, whom they served. All I knew was that they had been trying to kill me, just as the Wicks had been trying for months now. They were dark creatures, and I would do well not to disturb their nests.
I'd had so much Light to drink that my body felt invincible. One might think this feeling would've been enough to lighten my mood, but it wasn’t. All it did was remind me of the losses in this world, and those losses seemed to be piling up. I hoped that wherever Bevyn had been hiding it, Phalen had not been able to find his Light. The last thing I needed was a powerful sorcerer, drunk on Light and on my trail. I knew I needed to stay away from him, but my mind went to dark places when I thought of him.
What would it feel like to possess Phalen?
Bevyn had told me all about his father but not as much about his brothers. They had abandoned him, yes. I knew that. And yet, I hadn’t expected his own brother to kill him as he had. Part of me wanted to stay away from Phalen, to ensure my safety. But another part of me, a much darker part, yearned to battle with him. I found myself looking around as I walked, hoping that he might come out from the shadows to challenge me.
But I knew he was unlikely to do so. Probably, he was telling his father about me, about the map that put an even bigger target on my back. Now that I thought about it, though, Phalen was unlikely to murder me, himself, and more likely to deliver me to Torin. I wondered if that was what had happened to all of the other people whose names had been in that book.
I might've felt in danger, panicked, even, by everything that had happened. I felt like I’d lost so much in the space of only a few months. How was I able now to continue this quest?
I had certainly thought of abandoning it before, and I knew that doing so now would make me a coward, too. But part of the fire in my heart had been extinguished. I still had my magic, but I had no one to share it with, no one even to use it against.
But I couldn't have stayed in that cave forever. Though I had let a couple of days go by, I had eaten half of the bread, and it was only a matter of time until it was gone completely.
I saw nothing as I walked away, and I continued my journey without fear.
I might’ve thought that fearlessness would have been a sign of my strength. Instead, I felt it was a sign of my body, my mind, unable to feel anything anymore.
After studying the map, I decided to head toward the great Keepers on the south side of the mountains, the tiger, elephant, and eventually the bear. I hoped they would be able to help me as the bull had done, with their Light and counsel.
The bull had known that if he'd stayed much longer, the Wicks would drain him dry and take the spoils to their master. So he’d made it impossible, instead choosing to destroy himself when I'd found I couldn't do it for him.
It was an act I was sure would drive Torin mad with anger.
That might be a good way to bring Torin out of his hiding place. If I were able to take away all of the things he held dear, it might bring him out to fight on his own. Surely he had weapons much greater than mine, but did he have the power that everybody seemed to think? How long had it been since he'd fought his own battles and not sent his sons or his Wicks to fight them for him?
Yes, the best way to bring him to battle was to take away each of the things he felt he owned, one by one.
Suddenly, my trajectory changed, and it was Phalen I was after, not escape from the mountains. I quickened my pace. The rain had become steady now, and the rocks were slippery, causing me to fall again and again.
It was madness, I knew. But Phalen was surely looking for me, and it was only a matter of time before we met again. I wondered, was it possible for him to feel threatened by me? I supposed it was. I wasn't powerless after all, and it had been my name in that book indicating I was a real threat to Torin. I remembered how my name had been the last in the book, though there had still been several pages left. If I were to die, would another name fill itself in? Or would mine be the final entry?
I wanted that book back. I’d left it in the cave, so that was where I headed, the last place I'd seen Bevyn's evil brother.
Navigating in the darkness was a challenge, but not impossible. The rain, instead of disheartening me, strengthened my resolve to return to that terrible scene. I knew Phalen was walking through the valley, searching for me, but I could think of no way to track him. To bring him out of hiding.
I moved forward without fear, hunting him the same way he was hunting me.
It took me three days to find my way back to that valley and one more to come across Bevyn's dead body. It was as I’d thought; Phalen had offered him no dignity at the end of his life, and Bevyn's body lay in the dirt, twisted and broken. I shouldn't have been surprised, and yet I was. This alone was proof that he was unloved, hated by his family. I'd had no reason to question his stories, and yet part of me had thought that maybe they had been embellished. Now that I saw him on the ground, though, I knew I'd been wrong.
He had been telling me the truth all along.
I used the staff to lift the dirt from the ground, digging him a final restin
g place. I wished that it could have been somewhere where the sun would be up, warming his grave, but I couldn't take his body with me.
I slipped him into the grave. His eyes were wide open in death, and it was unnerving, alarming even. When it was time to bury him, I was glad to shift the dirt over his body, if only to shield myself from those eyes.
I turned to face the mountain. Whatever was left in there would be mine. Though, now I thought of it, Phalen had probably left everything behind. Everything but the book.
Had he found it?
I began to climb, and now I found I was able to make my feet stick just as well as my hands. This time it only took minutes to reach the cave, not hours, and as I went inside, I lit the staff to show me the way.
I hadn't been wrong; Phalen had left nearly everything behind, the tools he must have thought useless. He'd even left the sword, perhaps seeing it as worthless, the garbage of his family.
I began digging through the piles of weapons, searching desperately for the book that had my name within its pages. But, of course, Phalen would’ve searched, too.
I stood back from the scene and stared around.
Where had Bevyn put it?
I spun slowly in a circle and looked all around the cave. And then I realized it.
The bread.
It had been left uncovered, and clearly overlooked by Phalen. I knelt down and shifted loaf after loaf until finally, all the way at the bottom, a glint of gold-lined parchment became visible.
I had found it.
I turned, checking that there was no one in the entrance coming for me. But it was just me, alone. I wanted to open it, eager to read more about the many people who had lost their lives because of Torin.
But it was only their names listed on those pages, nothing more.
I flipped to the back of the book and saw that my name was still unmarked. No new names had been added. Would I truly be the last?
I stuffed the book into my cloak and went for the door, leaving the rest of the weapons behind. I could only carry so much, and I would do better with tools I had trained with than the many other items I had never touched.
I hoped that I would find others to support me, others to prevent my name from being scratched from the book’s pages.
I headed for the door. This entire time, I'd expected to see Phalen waiting for me. Perhaps he was hiding in the shadows, watching me. That was fine. I was waiting to see him again, too. But as I lit up the space with the staff, I did not find him in the corners.
He had left me.
Suddenly, I became angry, tossed aside as Bevyn had been. This was a strange feeling to have. It hadn't been that many days since I'd fled this place and that man. If you could call Phalen a man. Was someone who kept themselves alive for a thousand years by magic truly a man?
I went out into the darkness and climbed down the cliff face. I was done, and I turned back to the valley, back to the empty riverbed. I had no reason to hide now. Instead, I began to call out, beginning my search for Phalen, no longer frightened.
"Phalen!" I yelled into the night. "Phalen!"
I hoped that he would hear me, and I readied myself for his arrival. But nobody came. I would have to search.
That would be fine.
I started walking away from Bevyn's resting place, but I did not stay quiet. I thought about using the light from the staff to attract some attention, but I took note that Phalen hadn’t arrived at the destruction of the bull. He’d been elsewhere, doing other things that perhaps he felt were more important.
"Phalen!"
As my boots crunched against the rocks, I shouted out for him. The rain that had been falling on and off for days intensified, but this didn’t deter me. It was only a matter of time before I was heard.
I stopped walking and held the staff high over my head. With all the fire I could find within myself, I sent a bolt of light into the sky. It was not unlike what the bull had done. Not unlike what Phalen, himself, had done that first night I'd heard his shrill voice in the valley.
Surely someone would see and come after me.
But nothing happened. No Wicks. No slimy creatures from within the mountain. And no Phalen.
I started walking again, still shouting out his name from time to time. I was greeted by nothing but silence.
Eventually, my voice became hoarse, and I stopped yelling. I kept the staff lit, though. It was a relief to see the mountains around me. I’d been walking in the dark for so many weeks that I'd felt I might never see the world around me again. After a while, though, I started to feel out of sorts. This strange place did not look familiar, even though I’d been walking among the mountains for so long.
I dared not take the map from my pocket, though. I couldn't risk losing it, so instead, I kept it hidden.
Bevyn had hidden the map in that cave for hundreds of years, even though it held no magical power. And how fitting that the one weapon Torin would’ve wanted the most had no magical power at all.
I kept walking. I would just have to hope that the light would be enough to attract Phalen, and I stuffed the map deeper down into my pocket, resolving not to use it until I knew for certain I was safe.
I called out again, but my voice was low and scratchy, and my throat was sore. I began to tire, not from the lack of Light but from the sadness and hopelessness I was beginning to feel. I sat down right on the banks of the dried-up river and took a chunk of bread from my pack. I did not hide. I did not run. I simply waited.
The bread had become tough, and it was difficult to chew. But I was hungry, and I couldn’t walk any further that day without food. While I wasn’t frightened of being discovered, I knew that if I were to lay down and sleep out in the open, I’d be killed without even knowing who had done it. So, when I finished the bread, I got up and started searching around for a cave to sleep in.
I looked up at the mountain, and for a moment, I considered scaling one of the steep cliff faces. I would be safer that way, up and out of the way.
But I was feeling reckless. So instead of going up high, I stayed on the ground, eventually finding a hidden place to sleep.
I dumped my pack at the entrance to a little cave just big enough to hold me, crawled in alongside it, and collapsed on the dirt floor.
I faded in and out of consciousness, and for this reason, I knew that I had slept. My sleep had been without dreams, which at least was a comfort. I just couldn't take another burn that day from enemies, real or imagined.
When I finally awoke, the storm had stopped. I stayed where I was for a while, looking out at the valley, empty and dark. I was no longer as anxious to fight as I’d been the night before. I stood up and stretched; I was unable to see much of anything. I lit the staff and moved it all around me, trying to get a sense of what was going on in the valley beyond. From what I could tell, there was nobody out there.
I strapped on my pack, but suddenly I realized I didn’t know where I was. Like before, without the light of the bull to guide me, I was lost. I held the lit staff high above my head, but I recognized no landmarks.
It didn’t matter, though. I had nowhere to go. I was simply wandering, and my desire to battle with Phalen was waning. I could've headed to the next Keeper, had planned to head to the next Keeper, but I found I was exhausted as well as lost. The fight had drained right out of me. I was so tired, and I realized that not only had my desire to fight Phalen gone away, but my desire to fight at all had gone away, too.
Not good. Not for this war. And not for this valley.
I walked aimlessly, thinking, thinking about going home. I could fight Zahn when I arrived, and perhaps I would be the one to take control of Eagleview. Then, I would be the one to decide who would be allowed to learn, who would be allowed to use magic.
For a little while, I entertained myself with this idea. I wondered, would a fight with Zahn be the only thing I needed to win? Or what I need to fight with the king and the entire kingdom to take control?
Quickly, I
realized the flaw in my plan. I felt it was likely I’d be able to survive if I were to return to Eagleview, but I had no desire to be a teacher, no desire to pretend I knew more than I did. What I needed was a new teacher, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to find one back home.
I was turned around by indecision and the relentless darkness. I tried to stay calm, but my heart started beating faster, and I wished for rain, for anything to soothe the heat that was rising up to my skin. Panic. The whispers started again in my mind, and I shook my head, hoping that it might drive them away.
I took several deep breaths and walked back toward the closest cave and crawled inside. There, I lit my hands and dared to open the map. This was a risk, I knew. If I were being watched…
I spread it out on the floor of the cave and began studying it. The land from which I'd come was enormous, much bigger than I’d ever imagined. Father had been right; it would’ve taken me a very long time to get to Zemira if I'd had to go around the mountains. Remembering this felt like a dream. Everything that had happened in the Wild Lands seemed so long ago, like in another world, another life.
I knew what would await me on every side of the mountain range. I just didn't know which direction I was headed in.
On the east side, the Wild Lands. To the south, the mountains, and eventually Zemira. To the north, the Soaring Mountains that were close to Eagleview. And to the west, the port city Brista.
Each direction held danger for me. But I had weapons now, and though I wasn’t a fully trained sorceress, I could hold my own in a fight.
I exited the cave and walked to the center of the valley, chose a direction, and started off.
I didn’t know where I was headed, only that it was time to go. Where I would end up was anyone’s guess.
This may have been the death of me, I knew, but it was what had to be done. I couldn't stay hidden forever. So I went back out into the world, the danger following me with every step I took.
Chapter 10
