Into the Dark (Light Chaser Book 2)

by J B Cantwell

  But I wasn't. Not yet.

  I knew that Duna, Connell, and I were the only ones capable of keeping the spell alight. The other four were too new to me, and I didn't yet know what their capabilities truly were. I didn't know what it was that might weaken them.

  "Trina," I said. "Can you fly ahead? Check for enemies who may be waiting?"

  Her face brightened with a huge smile, and she nodded.

  "How far should I go?"

  "That depends on how far you can go. How fast can you get to the tiger and back?"

  "Half a day," she said.

  "And you’ll be able to do this without trouble?"

  "Oh, yes. I've gone on long journeys before, when Father, well, when he became violent, I would often leave. I always paid for it, though."

  Despite the tragedy of this statement, she had a steely look about her face now, and I knew she understood there would be no evil father waiting for her upon her return.

  "Go then," I said. "But tell me first, what is it that may weaken you?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I've used my magic so seldom."

  "Well, if you find yourself getting into trouble, find somewhere you can hide and recover. We'll keep walking, searching for you until the third day. But you must understand, we won't be able to stay behind for you. You’re doing us a great service, you know."

  She shrugged, smiling a little "You're telling me to do the one thing in life I love almost as much as I love my sister. It won't be a problem."

  I nodded, then raised my eyes up to the sky, following the bolt from my knives as they reached up into the night.

  "We'll see you in a day, then," I said. "Make haste."

  And I watched her with the amazement of a young child as she took off from the ground and disappeared into the dark sky above.

  Chapter 18

  Right from the beginning, I knew we were going to have a problem. I had no watch, but I could feel the hours dragging by. Slowly, my magic dwindled in strength, and I began to worry about what we’d do if we were attacked while everyone was asleep.

  I had told Tosia, Carden, and Lesley to get some rest while they still could. It would do us no good to have half of us exhausted. There was great pressure, though. I was the leader and arguably the most powerful. I knew I needed to preserve my own strength if I were to be able to watch over the giants. But I was too frightened to leave them in someone else's care.

  It was stupid, really. I knew that I needed to rest, but I could see the rain high up above our barrier, and I didn’t know how else to take care of it other than relying on myself. The wind had become so fierce that instead of the rain falling to the earth, it blew sideways. I had felt rain like that before, once when I'd faced Varik and one other time when I was a child. I'd been with grandmother; we'd taken the day off of school and work, and she'd taken me out into the field, the very one in which Oriana and I had spent our last days together. The sky had opened up, then, and rain and wind unlike anything I’d ever felt began storming down upon us.

  The raindrops became like sharp knives, and I remembered crying, holding onto Grandmother tight as she carried me home. Once we'd arrived, I looked at my arms, expecting to see blood. But only red marks from the sudden cold remained.

  That wasn’t the case after my meeting with Phalen. That time, there had been blood.

  I was glad I was able to protect the giants from Phalen's wrath, assuming it was he who was causing the storm. For a moment, I worried about Trina, but then I realized it was unlikely that she was being followed like we were.

  I stood up and looked over the giant sleeping bodies between myself, Duna, and Connell. Those two were standing as well, probably trying to stay awake like I was. And they had the right idea. Being upright, two knives in my hands, brought me back to myself. I was no child, not anymore.

  I don't know how much time passed, certainly not enough to get us all the way until morning. But soon enough, the time had come. Carden, Lesley, and Tosia all awakened, Tosia with alarm. She jumped to her feet, looking around as if the predator were close by and lying in wait.

  "He's dead," I said, referring to her father. Just a simple, if not kind, reminder.

  I turned to the others.

  "Those of you who've taken the ridicule, abuse, and banishment that has come with living in Ezvar, those days are over. We live in an age of magic now, and we owe nothing to no one. If they don't accept us and follow us, there’s nothing we can do about it now. But take heart; we’ve found each other."

  I felt like crying, and it took some effort to swallow the lump in my throat that resulted from these words.

  You’re an outcast, too.

  Was. I was an outcast, too. But those days were behind me now.

  As the giants awoke, I began to walk around them, observing them and how their eyes looked at me, their chosen savior. Some of them looked away, but I couldn't tell if it was shame or disgust on their faces.

  I scowled. If it was disgust I was seeing, they wouldn't be with us for much longer. I could deal with shame, with forgiveness, even. I knew I’d be able to rally those meant to join us and that the others would fall away as danger neared. I wondered now how many would be with us in the end. Whenever that finally came.

  The giants were tired, but they didn't argue. They kept their opinions to themselves and stood up to leave.

  Soon, we were on our way again.

  I kept my eyes on the skies, looking for what, I wasn't quite sure. Trina? She’d said it would take half a day, and now I was already looking for her, and it had only been hours.

  What would happen to her when she ran out of energy?

  I’d been concentrating so hard that I didn't realize someone had fallen into step beside me. I looked up and found Kaelin there, his ever-present smile fixed upon his face. If he’d been older, and maybe fatter, I might have called him jolly.

  "You're doing well," he said. "Nobody has left us yet."

  "Except Arte," I reminded him.

  He nodded gravely. "He wasn't a bad man, you know."

  "You think that a leader who has left his tribe in the greatest of danger wasn't a bad man?"

  "That, I can agree, was not his finest hour. But you must know, that story… if that story is true, then he’s suffered unimaginably."

  I scoffed. On the one hand, I could understand why he’d done what he’d done, but on the other…

  "Not everyone can be a leader," he said.

  I thought about this, and it gave me pause. Was I, as the leader of this effort, making mistakes as terrible as Arte's had been?

  "You're right," I said. "But he still should've known."

  "Known what?"

  I stopped walking and turned to him.

  "He should've known that abolishing something that many in his tribe possessed caused fear and doubt among his people."

  "Maybe, but those people have followed him for hundreds of years, including those with magic."

  I turned and walked on.

  "I just don't like people who banish others for things they can't control. It's not like we asked to be given magic. It's just something that… something that is."

  "I know," he said.

  I scoffed.

  "You don't."

  And he stepped away from my side, falling back to walk with the rest of the group.

  I felt guilty, then, for letting my own anger take over and unleashing it upon this one man, one of the few friends I'd made since coming to Ezvar.

  But it was true. He didn't understand.

  Yet, for the next hour, doubt followed me. The rest of the giants stayed back, cautiously looking around as I led the way, as I took the risk.

  I looked up and saw the rain was still pounding on the top of the barrier. I was growing tired, but I knew I needed to keep going. Somewhere out there was an end to this rain. I’d thought before that perhaps it was following us, that we were being watched. But now, I was starting to wonder whether that was true.

  Why ha
dn't Phalen come after me? Not now, of course, but before. When I’d been walking alone and stumbled upon the giants, why didn't he kill me then? Why didn't he come to my call?

  I looked around at the many strong bodies who followed me. They were protecting me as much as I was protecting them.

  And Kaelin. I had dismissed him, treating him, perhaps, as Arte had treated so many in his tribe over the years.

  I sighed heavily—just another person I needed to apologize to.

  I wondered if Arte ever apologized for anything, if he'd ever admitted wrongdoing. Probably not. That was probably the reason he'd left in the first place. He just couldn't face the fact that he’d made mistakes along the way.

  I realized then that I pitied him, and once I did, my whole perspective changed. Arte wasn’t a bad man; many had attested to that. I didn't believe people were born bad, and Arte was no exception to this belief. He’d been faced with unimaginable consequences, the result of trusting too easily. I tried to imagine what I might've become if my family and half of the others I knew from Eagleview had been decimated by evil. If I’d been in charge under those circumstances, what choices might I have made?

  Of course, this way of thinking allowed for pity, not just of Arte, but of someone even greater, even darker.

  Torin.

  No. That was preposterous. To think that it was possible for a child to be born and to be innocent, and then to be corrupted by an evil so fully that he sought to control everyone in the world, that he sought to hurt everyone in the world, was unimaginable. Wasn't evil that great something that was passed down through generations?

  In both cases, I came to the same conclusion.

  Torin was innocent.

  Either he was born evil, which he couldn't help, or he’d been made to be evil, which he also couldn't help.

  I shook my head, trying to shake the thoughts out of it. One thing was for certain: no matter where he’d developed his taste for blood, he was too far gone now to ever return. Torin was beyond help. Both he and his sons, and maybe even his network of sorcerers, were evil now, whether it was born into them or not.

  They would not be helped. Not by me.

  I raised my knives up above my head and sent a jolt of power not unlike the one Phalen had sent that night, the first night I came to know Bevyn. The bolt of light shot up into the sky, a beacon to anyone who might be following us. It was reckless of me to do, I knew. But then I thought, why hold it off any longer? Why not have the fight now, when we were all still strong, still ready?

  "What are you doing?"

  I turned and found Duna staring at me as if I were insane.

  "You'll be the end of us!"

  I shook my head. "No. He won't come for us."

  I wasn't actually sure about this, but there was no other way to tell if the storm was going to follow us all the way to the end of the Shadow Mountains.

  I stared all around, watching the skies for a competing bolt of light.

  None came.

  So there would be an end to the rain. This fact kept me going, kept my power sharp and bright. I extinguished the light, going back to only providing the shelter from the rain. I felt relief flood through me, for I knew, at least, that I was taking the group in the right direction.

  It would be the difference between life and death. And, for now, it appeared that I had chosen the right way.

  Despite my discovery that it was unlikely we were being followed, I still started to lose steam as the night wore on. After a while, Tosia came to my side. She, Carden, and Lesley had been resting their magic at the back of the pack. But now, with me, Duna, and Connell having walked and maintained the barrier for most of the night, her appearance was welcome.

  "Do you think you can do this?" I asked.

  "I… I really don't know," she said. "I've never actually tried to do anything other than hide." She looked down, a slight smile, a sad smile, on her face. "I guess that's why I'm so good at it."

  "Have you ever used a wand?"

  At this, she laughed.

  I stared back, not finding the humor.

  "Understand, in our family, there was never time for things like exploring our abilities. We had other work to attend to."

  "Like what?"

  The smile fell away from her face.

  "My mother. My mother was terribly abused by my father. I don't know that anyone in the village knew what was going on behind our front door, but if they did, they never let on. And neither did she."

  "I would've liked to have met your father," I said, suddenly angry. "How did he get away with it?"

  She shrugged. "No family. No one to keep watch. That and all of her scars are hidden beneath her heavy clothing."

  Of course. And I had a thought.

  "When we stop, in a little while, we'll get Duna to come and attend to her."

  "Oh, no," Tosia said. "She'll never let her, and certainly not you."

  "Tell me," I said. "Where are you hurt?"

  She looked up at me, pain outlining her every feature.

  "Everywhere."

  My breath caught, and my heart broke.

  Had her father, a man capable of such evil, been born good?

  "Duna can help," I said. "You have to trust me."

  "I know. There’s no other choice. I can't spend my life hiding."

  I wondered how old Tosia was. She was taller than me, of course, but I didn't think much older. Honestly, she seemed younger. She reminded me, actually, of Regan. Regan was younger than me, and yet she’d accomplished so much. Maybe more than I would be able to do in my entire lifetime.

  She would’ve despaired if we hadn't found her.

  Maybe. But that girl was tough as nails, and though in the end she had gone through an unimaginable transformation, her strength had remained.

  I saw in Tosia a similar steely nature. One did not survive in a household like hers without great strength.

  These people, their stories were so terrifying, so much worse than what I, myself, had endured. It was almost a disgrace to be put in charge when I had such little experience in the world. Shouldn't the leader be someone like them? Someone who had suffered greatly?

  This brought me back around to thinking about Arte, and I recognized where I’d gone wrong. Arte had suffered greatly, along with the few others who had survived Torin's wrath. After Torin left these lands, Arte had been the leader because there was simply no one else to do it. It wasn't his fault, what had happened, not his fault that Torin had found the Ezvar. And it wasn’t his fault that Torin had given the command for their destruction.

  I will be better.

  I said these words to myself, and I had to believe them, though I wasn't sure I did yet.

  "Go find Duna," I said to Tosia. "Tell her I sent you to her and that you need healing."

  She shook her head.

  I understood that the part of her that was hurt would not be helped by the type of healing that Duna could offer. Still, it was worth a try.

  "She can help you," I said.

  "I don't want her to."

  Her face wore a scowl, something that surprised me.

  "Why? She can fix any physical pains you may have. You know, as a result of your… abuse."

  "I don't want to forget, and if she takes the pain away, I will."

  "You will? How could you?"

  "You'll just have to believe me," she said.

  I wished I had Light, wished that I had enough to make things inside her right and good. But giants consumed Light as if it were water. I would need an elixir much more powerful than that.

  "I'm going to look for Lesley," she said.

  She turned and walked away. I realized that I had never given her my wand, never taught her how she might use it to help the group, to help me.

  I felt certain I’d offended her in some way. It wasn't my place to judge what she did or didn't need. All I could do was hope for her, hope that she found solace someday soon.

  It was Duna who found me
next. She looked tired, but everybody looked tired.

  "We need a break," she said. "People are dragging, and so am I. We need to stop."

  I looked up; the rain had not lessened. I wondered if Carden, Lesley, and Tosia were strong enough together to keep the barrier in place while the rest of us rested.

  "Do you think they can do it without me?" I asked.

  "If they can't, we'll know right away." She looked up, too, and her face was worried. "How long do you think this’ll go on for?"

  "It’ll stop. It's just a question of how far we need to go until we find the end."

  "Do you think they're watching us?" she asked.

  "I don't know, but if they are, I think the Ezvar are protecting me."

  She frowned. "Protecting you? We are just giants. Well, most of us."

  "If the best Phalen can do is send a rainstorm after us, then there's something else keeping him away," I said. "Either he’s distracted by another task, or I'm protected while within your ranks. I don't think he can see me."

  She stopped walking and put her hands on her hips.

  "Well, I don't know what to say about that. There is certainly magic within us. But we know little about it."

  "Just like me," I said. And it wasn't untrue. All I knew about my magic was that it had come from my mother's side of the family. Having been kept from training with Zahn, I’d known little until I met Bevyn. He’d treated me with kindness, but like Duna, I’d been outcast from my home because of something I couldn’t control.

  Bevyn had been, too.

  The giants slowly stopped walking, gathering around me in a circle. I didn't say it, but it sent chills down my spine to be regarded this way. It was like too many nightmares I'd already had. Only in those terrible dreams, the soldiers who followed me were faceless.

  These people were real.

  Pain showed in their eyes. They were not warriors. Not yet.

  "We can't go on like this much longer," I said to the crowd. "Duna, Connell, and I need a rest. But I worry about us staying out in the open, and I've been told there are no caves within this valley."