Haven (War of the Princes)

by A. R. Ivanovich

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure.”

  There was a certain calm about his heavily accented voice that subdued me and made me forget my myriad of questions. A few moments of silence followed.

  “Tell me, Katelyn,” he said, sounding tired. “What was your favorite thing about life?”

  “Don’t say was!” I scolded him, appalled. “I told you I’m not a ghost.”

  “No, you’re right… it was a stupid question,” he sighed.

  Feeling guilty, I answered. “I guess it’s seeing something for the first time. Like a new town.”

  “What else?” he prompted.

  “Um… sunflowers?” I added, saying the first thing that came to mind. It was a strangely simple question for such an unusual encounter.

  “Go on,” Rune said quietly.

  “Spending time with my friends. Making clay birds. Relay races, the dumber the rules, the funner they are. Toasting cinnamon rolls on rainy afternoons. I like rain, but sometimes I wish there was more of it,” I replied. “I don’t know, there’s lots of stuff that I love. What about you? What were- I mean are, your favorite things?”

  “Mine?” he asked, sounding unsure, as if he hadn’t come up with the question in the first place. “I haven’t thought about it in so long. Drawing things, painting, it just makes sense to me. Racing, now that was a good feeling. Fishing with my family,” he continued, his voice sounding tight. “I know there were other things but I can’t remember. Sometimes it’s the little details, those tiny little sparks, that keep you fighting and alive. I just can’t remember.”

  Something was wrong. I could hear it in his voice, unfamiliar though it was.

  “Those things, you still have them in your life?” he asked, voice wavering.

  “Uh… yeah. I see my friends every day and I have to deal with my family every night,” I answered, unsure what to make of the topic.

  “I’m glad for you,” he said sincerely. “Never take what you have for granted.”

  “Have your friends come back?” I asked, recalling that he was injured. This would be his fourth day in the cave, if what he said the evening before was true. Any thought of demanding an interview about the outside world was forgotten.

  “No,” he replied. There was another short pause. I kept trying to see him in the dark, but the cave was too broad and his light was off. “Would you like to know the truth? The truth is they aren’t friends. I can’t have friends.”

  I settled myself more comfortably, attempting not to press my bruises.

  “Why?” I asked curiously.

  “I’m a Dragoon. We are allowed no friends, no family. No connections. It is our duty,” he said, unemotionally. “But you know that. Everyone knows that.”

  “Actually, I didn’t,” I muttered.

  “That seems unlikely,” he said lowly. I could just barely hear his labored breathing. “But then, you said you were exploring here. I thought about it after you left. No one from Breakwater ventures toward these caves, and that is the only town on this side of the Whispering Sea. I thought then that you must be a ghost, lost here forever, like I will be.”

  “You sound like the ghost,” I accused him gently. “I can’t even see you.”

  “My light only has an hour left,” he explained, and then I could see a flickering. His lantern was weak indeed, but it illuminated enough for me to see him laying flat on the cave floor below, the wrappings of my sandwiches beside him. Even despite the distance and the darkness I could see the weakness upon him and the shadows heavily encircling his eyes.

  “I don’t think it matters much if I light it. You left me only about three hours ago, but already I can feel the infection spreading,” he continued.

  I bit my bottom lip. He thought I had been gone a few hours, but in reality, it had been nearly twenty-four. I had hugely underestimated the severity of whatever had happened to this person.

  “Infection?” I echoed.

  “My arm, it hurts more. Standing sends the world spinning. I can’t see well enough, but I feel it. It’s infected. Brendon and the others have either been killed by the Lurcher or given me up for dead by now. I’m no fool, once the infection really gets into my bloodstream, I’m as good as dead,” he said with such resignation, it hurt me to listen to him. “But it has been nice to have some company, crossing over. Thank you Katelyn the Ghost, for talking with me.”

  My mind was racing. I didn’t know what to do, but something had to be done. He really might die there and I was the only one who knew he was there.

  My first instinct was to run to the authorities, but Professor Block was very clear about my arrest and Rune’s detainment.

  “It’s possible that Brendon couldn’t find the passage to this part of the cave. The tunnels are complex and we were pursued by Lurchers when I came in,” he sighed heavily. “Having a light doesn’t guarantee I’d find my way out of here. No, I think this is all there will be for me. I wish things didn’t have to be this way. I hope Mother and Father remember me the way I was, before I became a Dragoon. I wish I could have lived.”

  “Rune,” I said, my voice tinged with frustration at his defeatist attitude. I was alive and so was he. There was no way I could walk away and let him die in the cold, damp, dark. “For the last time, I’m not a ghost. I’m going to help you get out of here. If I bring back a rope, will you be able to climb it?”

  “I don’t think so,” he replied quietly in his unusual accent. “My arm. I’m too weak. I’m tired just from speaking. If I could only get outside, someone might find me. There is an outpost not far from here. I could use my flare. That would be my only chance.”

  Knowing what must be done, I stood up, dusting myself off. Nervousness clawed at my stomach and sped my heart. I wanted to go straight to my friends. I wanted to get Ruby and Kyle. I wanted to help this stranger.

  In hindsight, I probably should have gone to them, or braved the possibility of arrest, but in that moment, the known seemed far more frightening than the unknown. If I was arrested, I would shame my family and be locked away for as long as the Judges deemed necessary. Rune’s fate would likely be worse. He was from the outside. I had no idea how the people of Haven Valley would treat him. Of course he would not be physically harmed, but being contained against my will seemed the worst form of torture I could imagine.

  And then there was the writing over the dry pool.

  DON’T LET THEM IN.

  An involuntary chill snaked down my spine.

  There was another way. I could help him leave the cave. I knew I’d be able to find us a path out, I always found what I was looking for. What could it hurt? I’d just send him on his way and come right back. It looked like I could scale the cliff well enough when I returned. No one would be arrested, no one would know. I’d be back before my dad turned off the living room light.

  I inhaled a shaky breath and smiled, unable to help myself. I had made my decision. Placing my lantern on the ledge, I gingerly swung down my messenger satchel. My aim was decent enough. It landed on the gravelly cave floor below.

  “What are you doing?” Rune asked worriedly, attempting to prop himself onto his good elbow, without much success.

  There it was, right in front of me: The crossroads... that intersecting fairway where each path led to one of two things, safety or danger. To my seventeen-year-old eyes, they appeared one and the same. How could I know that one small step, one decision would change everything?

  Rune’s lantern light was flickering out.

  “I’m coming down,” I told him, and jumped off the edge.

  Chapter 10: Good Gravity

  It really wasn’t a safe thing to do. In retrospect, I had no way of knowing if the pool at the foot of the ledge was deep enough to break my fall without breaking my body. I was in luck, at least in that respect.

  I wasn’t prepared for the long fall. The foot of the cave had seemed much closer than it really was. My stomach felt like it resettled itself where my heart
should have been, while my heart wound up in my throat. I hissed in a breath and grabbed hold of my nose just in time.

  Hitting the water wasn’t at all like descending into the aquamarine pool. It swallowed me whole like a frozen trap and the shocking cold had me thrashing for the surface before I’d even sunk completely beneath it.

  “Why did you do that?” Rune kept saying while I floundered, struggling to swim in my heavy coat and boots.

  The stupidity of jumping into freezing cold water fully clothed only sunk in after I’d done it. I was so involved in taking action that I hadn’t really thought it through. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d be punished for my shortsightedness.

  “Are you alright?” he said, his voice thick with concern as I came sloshing and shivering to the shore.

  I was too busy quaking with shivers and looking for the bag I had tossed down to say anything back. Rune’s light was sputtering to darkness. If it went out before I found my satchel, we’d both be in trouble. I didn’t want to give my imagination reason to take over again.

  My little round lantern was just a ball of yellow-golden light illuminating only the top of the ledge I had jumped from. It wasn’t really helping me.

  I used the ledge as a guide for where my pack should have landed, spotted it beside another end of the pool’s shore and ran for it. The light flickered and went out just as I pounced on my bag.

  “Katelyn?” Rune rasped. “You shouldn’t have done that. We could both die down here, unless you’re already a ghost. Then I suppose it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  Using both hands, I rifled through my things until I felt a familiar little box. I slung the satchel over one soggy shoulder and struck a match. It didn’t work on the first try.

  “Rune,” I said, mildly irritated. “I’m not a ghost.”

  A spark brought my match to life and there was a little light.

  “Well you look like a floating face to me,” he mumbled.

  “Keep talking so I can find you,” I told him.

  “I don’t see what good it’ll do, ghost,” he said, wearily. “Even if you were here to help me, and you guided me out of this haunted maze of yours, I might not make it. I can’t walk through walls. Ah, it makes sense now. I know what you are. You’re my wish. My final wish. Someone to talk to. Someone to be my friend before I die.”

  “If your voice wasn’t helping me find you, I’d tell you to shut up,” I told him grumpily. Insisting I was a ghost and that he was going to die was really getting old.

  “I wish every single day that I wasn’t the one chosen as Dragoon,” he said, sounding morose. “But if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else… it’s better that they chose me. I’d sooner accept this fate than let someone else suffer through it.”

  I shuffled carefully across the cave until I could see him lying there on the gravelly floor. The sling that cradled his arm was made from torn cloth and wrapped across his chest. Meager supplies were cast about him: sandwich wrappings, an empty water skin, his extinguished lantern and a dark pile of bloody leather armor.

  “But if I die now, it will have been for nothing,” he said sadly. “They’ll take someone else, and if that person refuses, they’ll take everyone. Everyone.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I muttered, collecting his heavy hexagonal lantern and lacing it with a new wick and oil from my bag. I had brought extra for my own. The rope was a little thin for this one, but it would have to do.

  “That’s the strangest thing you’ve said all day,” he replied, bewildered. “How old a ghost are you that you don’t know what goes on here?”

  “It’s a good thing you have an old lantern like mine, or I might not have been able to get this to work,” I said, ignoring his curiosity about me.

  “Not mine. It belonged to old Warren from Breakwater militia. Mine had a bulb. It was smashed when we fought the Lurcher,” he rambled. “Warren is dead.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said genuinely, only pausing for a second lest my match burn out. I lit the lantern wick and it came brilliantly back to life.

  Warm colors flooded us in a circle and I could see Rune clearly for the first time. He was much taller than I had thought he was: likely at least six-foot when he was standing up. He wore dark trousers, a long sleeved shirt, and some very functional looking heavy-duty boots. His build was lean and muscular, but judging by the slump of his posture his slack limbs, he looked entirely devoid of strength. The rise and fall of his chest was without any proper rhythm. There was a pleasantness about the design of his face, something in the shape of his brow and the angle of his jaw, but his high cheekbones were gaunt. His warm brown skin and short black hair were damp with sweat. It was plain to see that he was suffering. I ventured carefully closer and he looked up at me.

  To my everlasting shock, his eyes were blue.

  The people of Haven Valley came in every skin tone, every natural shade of hair, but each and every one of us was the same in one way. We all had silvery gray eyes. My entire life, I had never seen anyone with color in their eyes. Rune’s were only faintly blue in the lantern light, but they were so different to me, they might as well have been glowing.

  The weak gaze of those blue eyes sketched the contours of my face. I could see him studying me, now that there was a little more light. He glanced over my cheeks, nose, lips and spent more time looking me in the eyes.

  “I was wrong about you,” he said quietly, closing his eyes. When he reopened them, he was looking at the cave ceiling, far above us. “You couldn’t possibly be a ghost.”

  “Thank you,” I said, unable to break my stare, even though he had. The color of his irises held me transfixed. I blinked and rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

  “You’re clearly an angel,” he said, closing his eyes again and letting his head fall back farther onto his makeshift pillow of torn cloth.

  I wasn’t prepared for him to say that. It was my second shock in a span of five minutes. The odd thing was, I was fairly certain he wasn’t trying to be flirtatious. He was serious.

  “Far from that,” I recovered clumsily.

  He didn’t move or reply.

  “Rune?”

  Nothing.

  Fearing for him, I crawled closer, too startled to notice the pain the bruise on my shin gave me when it pressed on the hard ground.

  I was infinitely relieved to tell by the barely noticeable rise and fall of his chest that he was still breathing. He had passed out cold.

  Peeling off my sopping coat, I ignored my own shivering and tried to breathe some warmth back into my frigid hands. When they felt warmer than the rest of me, I placed the back of my hand gently on Rune’s forehead. It was blazing hot. He was burning up with a fever. That explained his delirium.

  I grabbed his water skin and hopped up, leaving the lantern where it was. It took me less than a minute to fill the skin and return to his side.

  “Rune?” I said, gently pushing at his good shoulder. He didn’t awaken.

  My body was shaking violently from the cold. If we didn’t get out of this cave soon, we’d both be in trouble. There wasn’t time to be shy. I tore a tattered strip of cloth from his pillow, poured some chill water on it and used it to wipe down his brow. I left it on his forehead for good measure and set about inspecting his arm.

  I was no young prodigy doctor, that was for sure, but I had taken several first aid classes. It was my dad’s idea, since he had thrown in the towel on worrying about me.

  Without moving his arm, I gently pulled back the binding to have a look at it. The lighting wasn’t ideal, but even so, it was easy to see the shredded, swollen flesh of his forearm. It looked like it had mostly caked over with dried blood, but it was off color. He was right about the infection.

  I tore another strip of cloth and laced it around his bicep. I could only hope it wasn’t too late, and that if I at least slowed down the circulation to his arm, the infection wouldn’t spread.
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  Readying the knot, I zipped it as tightly as I dared, and tied it. It must have pinched him, because he awakened with a start.

  “S-sorry Rune,” I chattered before he could say anything. “If we don’t get out of h-here soon, you will be right about the ghost th-thing.”

  He breathed heavily, opening and closing his eyes, and pushing the compress on his forehead. A nod was all I got.

  “Do you think you can s-sit up?” I asked him, crouched at his side.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, struggling to rise. It was difficult to do with one arm, so I gently helped to pull him into a sitting position.

  “Water?” I offered.

  He nodded and took it from me, drinking deeply and not caring that it spilled a bit down his chest.

  “I’d like to try and clean your arm,” I told him, biting the inside of my lip. In the past, I’d cleaned up my own gouges and scrapes, but none of them were as deep or gruesome as this. The truth was, I was afraid to touch it. He saved me from having to try.

  “No,” he shook his head blearily. “It needs special attention.”

  “Well we’re not going to find any of that here. Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, appearing very, very tired.

  “W-well you’re going to have to,” I ordered him sternly and climbed to my feet. “Because I’m not going to c-carry you.”

  I slipped my pack over my neck and one shoulder so that it was more secure, and slung my coat over it. Since my hair was wet, it was easy to twist into a bun that would stay put. I picked up the lantern with one hand and held out the other, struggling to control my shivering.

  Rune looked at me wearily, and I couldn’t stop wondering if I was imagining seeing that blue tint in his irises.

  He took my icy hand, smothering it in his feverishly warm grasp. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the sensation was a nice alternative to my self-imposed hypothermia.

  Digging my heels into the gravel, I did my best to help him get up. At barely five foot five inches tall, I doubt I really helped that much.