“Daniel?” she whispered.
He stirred, groaning as his body shifted. She clamped a hand over his mouth and tensed, glanced over at Garrett. He snored but gave no sign of movement. Christine let out a silent breath and turned back to Daniel. She would shake him awake if she had to— but gently. Just as she opened her mouth, Daniel’s teeth clamped down on her fingers.
“Please,” she hissed as softly as she could. “I’m trying to get you out of here.” She bit down on her lip as the pain increased. “Please!”
Daniel narrowed his eyes and spat her hand away. She cradled it to her chest and glared at him.
“You’ll forgive me for not biting more tenderly,” Daniel whispered hotly.
Christine opted to grimace in pain instead of snapping back. He had every right to hate her. “I’m sorry for betraying you.”
“Oh, well, if you’re sorry.”
“We were supposed to turn Aidan in for a reward. I never wanted either of you to get hurt.” She liked Daniel, she truly did. And where Aidan was concerned... No, not now. She could not afford to worry about what Aidan would think of her. She did not want to.
“What my brother did was—” she began.
Daniel’s cracked lips twisted into a scowl. “He had help.”
She nodded. “I’m truly sorry.” What else could she say?
“Prove it.”
She gestured to the dying embers of the fire in the hearth. “One of the vagrants will be in soon to renew the fire. We eliminate him, and—”
“With what? Your brother took all my weapons.”
Christine pulled a dagger from her boot. “Always be prepared. So, we deal with the vagrant and make our way to the woods.”
Daniel twisted to glare at her brother’s sleeping form. “And Garrett?”
“What about him?”
“He’ll raise an alarm if he’s able to speak. We’ll need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Christine hesitated. “He’s asleep. If we just slip by him, we—”
“Second-guessing your allegiance, again?”
“No, it’s just... he’s my brother. I don’t want to kill him. I can’t.”
Daniel’s eyes went flat. “I’ll do it.”
“No.” She took a breath. “If he wakes up—if—then we do what needs to be done. Otherwise I will not let harm come to him.”
Daniel grunted. “Fine. Where will we go?”
“Somewhere Aidan can easily find us.”
“We’ll figure it out on the way, I guess,” Daniel said. “But we can’t leave without Heritage.”
Christine suppressed an impatient growl. “Don’t you think Aidan would rather us escape with our lives than his sword?”
“It comes with us.” His tone left no room for argument.
She looked back to her brother. His arms were curled tightly around his chest. Firelight glinted from the steel he cuddled in his arms like a child’s night toy. “He sleeps with it,” she mumbled.
Daniel’s face became incredulous. “What?”
“He sleeps. With. It. He’s so afraid of anyone stealing it that he holds it while he sleeps.”
“I don’t care how we do it, but if you really care about Aidan, you’ll understand how important Heritage is to him, and to his family,” Daniel said. “We are not leaving it behind.”
She sighed. “Fine. Work the kinks out of your joints then wait for me by the doorway. Stay out of sight. I’ll get the sword.” She extended her dagger to him, then pulled back when he reached for her. “Do not use it on my brother.”
“All right, all right,” Daniel said, pocketing the blade. He pushed himself up slowly from the floor, breathing hard through swollen lips.
Crouching, Christine made her way across the room to Garrett. Thinning her lips, she reached for Heritage, intending to slide it slowly from his grasp, when he snorted and rolled onto his back. His arms fell open, leaving the sword in the crook of one arm. This will be easier than I thought. Carefully, she eased her hands under blade and hilt, and lifted it up. She closed her eyes, expelled the breath she had been holding, and opened them.
Garrett, eyes bulging, a maniacal grin twisting his face, stared back at her. His foot shot out and caught her in the chest, sending her tumbling away. Heritage clattered to the floor. For a moment, no air would enter her lungs, and she panicked. Then breath returned, squeezing through a hot tightness in her ribs.
“Thinking to cut my throat while I sleep?” Garrett asked. He leered over her, bouncing the flat of Heritage against one palm. “Going to run off and find your hero? I won’t let you ruin this for us, Christine. We’ve been promised more riches than you can even imagine, and I—”
Daniel barreled into him, shouting and hammering at Garrett with his fists. Heritage skittered from Garrett’s grasp and stopped at Christine’s boots. She scooped it up with trembling hands and pulled herself to her feet. Across from her, Garrett rolled over to mount Daniel, pinned his hands to the floor, stood, and dropped one knee squarely into Daniel’s exposed ribs. Daniel wheezed and turned purple.
“Garrett,” Christine said in a calm voice. Her brother whirled on her, snarling. He saw the shaking sword in her trembling hands.
“You can’t do it,” Garrett whispered, advancing. “Give me the sword, Christine. You don’t want to hurt me; you can’t hurt me, but I’ll hurt you, Christine, I’ll hurt you bad if you don’t give me the damn sword!”
She winced and stepped back. She took another step back and bumped into the wall. Garrett came on, smiling now as he stalked her. She raised the sword and swallowed. She didn’t know anything about swordplay, but one didn’t have to be a master swordsman to swing and hit something.
Noises from outside stole their attention: shouts, roars, a flash of light, silence. Then the back wall of the cabin exploded, vomiting dust, dead grass, dirt, and wood over the floor and walls.
Coughing and sputtering, Christine looked up. Aidan stood in the splintered hole. She would have shouted with joy had another cough not reared up from her throat. He reached to her, and she almost slipped her hand in his before following his eyes. They rested on Heritage, not on her. She gave it to him. The swordbearer’s hands wrapped around the hilt. Instantly his eyes lit up, blazing like fire.
Garrett swallowed and quickly stepped forward. “Aidan, you’ve come at last! Thank goodness you’re here, my friend. We were ambushed by—”
Aidan pointed a finger at him. Garrett stared at it, curious. Aidan kindled. Garrett shot through the doorway, hands wrapped around his stomach as if he’d been kicked by a horse. There was a loud thud and muffled cry as his body landed somewhere outside.
The sword-bearer turned, locking Christine in his white-eyed gaze. She swallowed but did not back away. He was here, right in front of her, alive and—from the looks of it—unhurt. She could confess everything, and perhaps he would spare her and maybe, just maybe, still care for her.
“Aidan, I—”
The whole cabin burst into flames, as bright as the Lady’s light reflected on a field of snow. Aidan’s eyes flared. “Get Daniel out,” he yelled before shifting away.
Aidan reappeared outside. Behind him, the cabin vomited flames. Smoke poured through every opening. He barely noticed. Standing across from him was Aidan Gairden. The face changed, becoming his mother, his father—Tyrnen.
Aidan blinked. Ordine’kel soaked through him and he charged forward, Heritage cleaving and swinging. His strikes were not timed and measured, not carried about by the precise and tactical hand of an expert warrior like Ambrose or his father. He did not want to dissect the harbinger standing calmly across the Vale. He wanted to butcher it, to rend and tear it into slabs of meat, to— The harbinger shifted behind him and threw thin bolts of lightning. Aidan kindled, slicing the light in half for a shift and a return blast of his own. All across the Vale they jumped, magic cutting and burning the air and mixing with the pure-fire that reduced the cabin to a smoldering ruin. Aidan chopped and s
tabbed with Heritage when he appeared near the harbinger, but the undead was always one heartbeat ahead of him.
Suddenly the pure-fire vanished, leaving a pile of charred remains where the cabin had stood. Hefting Heritage, Aidan spun around, but like the magical flames, his enemy was gone.
“Aidan!”
Christine scrabbled out from beneath the rubble. Her face and hair were black with ash. One arm was wrapped around her chest.
“Where’s Daniel?” Aidan asked, tensely, sweeping his gaze around.
Christine gestured helplessly at the cabin’s remains.
“Probably under there,” she said from between fits of coughing.
“Why didn’t you shift him away?”
“I can’t! Tyrnen tied me. I—”
A torrent of choking coughs broke out from behind them. Aidan turned and saw a hand claw through smoldering wood, clutching at the air. He leaped forward, gripped it, and pulled. Daniel crawled out, covered head to toe in ash.
“Are you all right?” Aidan asked, swatting aside charred debris and pulling Daniel to his feet. Daniel nodded, hacking and spitting. He took a step and fell. Aidan caught him.
“Thanks,” Daniel said, looping an arm around Aidan’s neck as Aidan tugged him free from the ruins. Suddenly he grinned and wrapped his hands around Aidan’s throat. The sword-bearer gagged, dropping the huge and useless Heritage to beat and claw at the hands digging into his throat. Daniel’s hands began to glow. Heat seared Aidan’s skin—then the tip of Heritage erupted from Daniel’s forehead, splashing Aidan with green gore.
The harbinger went limp and crumpled to the ground. Rubbing gingerly at his neck, Aidan watched, bewildered, as another Daniel Shirey tossed Heritage at his feet.
“This is becoming a dangerous habit of ours, good prince,” Daniel said, his voice raspy from smoke. Christine stumbled to his side and threw one of his arms across her shoulders.
“It was the harbinger,” Christine said, staggering under Daniel’s weight. “They can change their appearance. The vagrants, too. They—”
“I know what they’re capable of,” Aidan snapped, still massaging his neck. He still felt as if he wore a necklace made of fire. He scooped up Heritage and hurried to Daniel’s other side. “Are you all right?” he asked, slinging his friend’s other arm over his shoulder.
“Never better.”
“Is there any sign of Garrett?” Christine asked.
“Are you concerned about him?” Aidan asked her.
“No, I just—”
“No sign,” Aidan said. He eased Daniel over to Christine. “Stay with him. There’s something I have to do.”
Aidan moved briskly to the rubble of the cabin. Would the Fang have been inside?
His family didn’t respond for several moments.
—We do not feel its presence, Anastasia said. If Tyrnen would have found it, surely he would have severed the mask we placed over its compulsion magic. And yet...
What?
—Look around you.
Raising his eyes from the charred debris, Aidan started in shock and disgust. The leaves of the trees bordering the vale withered before his eyes, fading to autumn-orange then charcoal black. Others crumbled, sprinkling to the ground like ashes. Bark rotted and peeled from trees. Flowers shriveled and died. The water in the stream ceased its cheerful burbling and became a greenish-black, as though vagrant blood ran through it.
What’s happening?
—The Thalamahns tainted everything they touched, Anastasia said. Their corruption lay at the very core of their souls. With the Prophet dead and the shield removed, the Serpent’s Fang would spread that corruption like mold on fruit.
—The same way the Serpent King corrupted his kingdom eight centuries before, Ambrose added.
Aidan nodded, thinking. I don’t think Tyrnen found it, though. Given the state of the vale, wouldn’t we see a trail of corruption leading out of the Duskwood?
Heritage was silent. Then: —Excellent reasoning, Aidan, his grandfather said. See if you can find it. Do not touch it if you do, though. Use the lines. Keep a steady hand, just like waiting for a bite from Lake Carrean.
Aidan smiled in spite of his bleak situation. Rising, he went to where the ground was blackest. The corruption spreads outward from here. Like a pebble cast into a pond, the corruption spread out in ripples—black at its core, then brown, yellow, and green through the Vale where the corruption had not touched. Drawing light, Aidan muttered a prayer to the Lady and cupped his hands over the dead earth. Dead grass and dirt came apart with dry rips that sounded like tearing leather. The hole gradually widened until Aidan saw a flash of blue approximately six feet down.
I see something. Refocusing, he closed his hand into a fist, kindled, and prayed to the Lady, throwing open his hand as he did. The blue light shuddered. Aidan beckoned with his fingers, reeling in his catch. The pulsing blue light wriggled toward him, crawling up the side of the hole. When it finally crested the lip of the hole, Aidan hissed and stepped back. He had expected to find Dimitri’s weapon, but it was the blade’s resemblance to Heritage—black instead of white, a blue jewel in the guard where the Eye of Heritage was red, and encased in a black guard covered in glowing green swirls—that sickened and shocked him.
I have it.
—How do you feel? Charles asked.
Pondering, Aidan shrugged. I don’t hear any voice coaxing me to trade my soul for eternal agony, if that’s what you mean.
—I hope you would decline.
I am rather attached to my soul. It’s flawed, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
—The shielding must still be mostly intact, Charles said.
—Is it safely covered? Anastasia asked.
All but the hilt.
Aidan felt a surge of exultation from the sword. —We’ve got him, Anastasia said. Do something about that hilt, will you?
Looking around, Aidan went to the dead harbinger, cut off its shirt, and wrapped the bloody article around the hilt. I’ll be safe so long as I don’t touch it, correct?
—Correct, his grandfather said, but make sure your cover does not slip away. If your skin so much as grazes the sword, Dimitri could pounce.
—Your grandfather is correct, Aidan, Anastasia said. We will need to summon Disciples of Dawn to forge a new shielding once you return home and tidy up after Tyrnen and his creatures. In the meantime, tell us immediately if you hear or feel anything out of sorts. It could be that Dimitri’s soul has not awakened yet and detected your presence. The moment he does, he will want to add your power to his own.
Fear rippled through his anger. He forced it down and started to rise when something gold caught his eye from between brown blades of grass. His Cinder Band, hidden in a pocket of charred flowers and earth. He plucked it up and cocked his arm back, ready to hurl it into the endless night and unseen horrors of the Duskwood. Then he reconsidered.
Tyrnen had given him the ring, and that had meant more to him than receiving the ring itself. Now that memory, like all the times he had spent sitting in front of Tyrnen’s hearth drinking tea and listening in rapt attention as the old man regaled him with myths and legends, was like a poison in his system. A disease that had lain dormant only to suddenly reawaken and eat away at him from the inside.
The gesture was poison, but the Band was not. Tyrnen had been as much a friend as a mentor, but neither he nor his mother had made lessons easy just to coddle their prince. The Band was his by right, if for nothing else than as a testament to all he had survived over the past month. He shook his head, amazed. His life seemed to have divided in two: before his sixteenth birthday, and after. The latter period felt like another lifetime spent in a different place among different people, lived by another prince.
He pocketed the ring and went back to Christine, slinging one of Daniel’s arms over his shoulder without a word.
Chapter 29
Roadside Talks
AIDAN STEPPED FROM THE darkness of the shanty out into t
he sickly green glow of the haze that hung over Sallner. Daniel limped between them, one arm slung over each pair of shoulders and dragging his feet behind him.
“Down,” Daniel gasped.
Aidan and Christine eased him to the ground. Christine immediately folded her arms and stepped away, gazing around at the ruins of the southern kingdom. That was good. Aidan did not want to see her face. One look at those almond eyes, or the way her hair framed her face and spilled over her shoulders, or the way her boots hugged her—
His lips thinned. He kept his gaze fixed on Daniel, on the way he clutched at his ribs and hissed in each breath through his teeth. Christine was partially responsible for this. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness.
“We need to get you to a healer,” Aidan said. “If I can get us to the tunnels, can you find us a key back home?”
Daniel nodded and took Aidan’s offered hand. Christine reappeared as suddenly as she had vanished, ducking under one of Daniel’s arms.
“How far to the tunnels?” Daniel asked as they started off.
“The ones we used to get here?” Christine asked. “They should be just—”
“A few hours north,” Aidan said over her. He squinted up at the sky. “I’d rather shift us there to save you walking, but the Lady’s light is...” He shook his head.
“The screen blocks it,” Christine said.
“The screen?” Daniel asked.
Christine nodded at the clouds overhead. “When Anastasia Gairden and the Disciples of Dawn exiled Sallner from the rest of Crotaria, they created an artificial cloud cover to block Sallner from the Lady’s sight. They didn’t want any Touched—any Sallnerian Touched—sneaking back home to cast spells, I assume.”
Aidan glared at her. She was not wrong, exactly, but he did not care for the insinuation behind her words. His ancestors had had no choice but to exile Sallner, especially with the Serpent’s Fang and Terror’s Hand hidden in the remains of the south. Perhaps if the Sallnerians had not fallen under Dimitri and Luria’s influence, they could have kept their realm.
Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles Page 24
