The Cursed Lands

by Timothy L. Cerepaka

  How much of that was true, Helnia didn’t know, and the book couldn’t tell her, either, because it was merely a record of myths and not a book of history. Still, the book had said that Ferro’s Pass was definitely real, even if no one knew for sure what it was like.

  Our parents might be there, Helnia thought, her hands closing around the letter, like a precious pearl. Waiting for Sarzen and me to see them again. To reunite with them, for the first time in ten years.

  Ten years … it certainly didn’t seem that long ago, when Helnia thought about it. Sometimes, she still had dreams and nightmares about the Draymens attack on their old hometown. She sometimes could still hear the screams and cries of agony from the villagers who had been unable to escape, as well as the unnerving clicks that came from the Draymens’ mouths. To this day, Helnia hated anything that made clicking sounds, because it always brought back memories of that attack.

  But if the letter was real, then Helnia would have to go. She didn’t know how, because the Cursed Lands were said to be full of Draymens; plus, the book had indicated that Ferro’s Pass was incredibly far away from Yores, too far for her to simply walk to. She would need a horse, at least, to travel the distance in decent time, and that was assuming she avoided Draymens attacks on the way there.

  I can’t do it, Helnia thought. Not on my own, anyway. But where could I find people who would be willing to make that journey with me? I’m not rich, so it’s not like I can hire help; besides, I think most people would rather stay here in Ars than go out on a quest to a dangerous land to meet people who may or may not actually be my parents.

  Sighing, Helnia put the letter down on her bed. It seemed like the only way to know for sure whether this letter was actually written by her parents was to go to Ferro’s Pass, but she simply did not have the resources to make that trip on her own right now. She fingered her necklace, thinking about how she would surely run out of Raugus if she were to try to make the journey, even if she carefully conserved it.

  What else am I supposed to do, though? Helnia thought. I can’t just sit here and wait. If this letter really is from our parents, then I need to figure out how to get there. Even if that means giving up everything I have, it would be worth it. If only …

  Helnia’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock at the door. She looked up suddenly, staring across her room to the door, which was now being knocked on rather incessantly by whoever was on the other side.

  “Coming!” Helnia said, rising to her feet and making her way over to the door as quickly as she could. “Please be patient!”

  Opening the door, Helnia peered out and said, “Yes?”

  Standing in the doorway was a scared-looking young child in a thick winter coat. The child looked homeless; dirty hair, tears in several places on his coat, and a rather thin face, like he hadn’t gotten enough to eat. He almost looked like Sarzen when he had been a boy, except if Sarzen had been homeless and didn’t have any parents.

  The young boy looked up at her with big, frightened blue eyes. He actually took a step back when Helnia opened the door, as if he was afraid that she might attack him.

  “Hello?” said Helnia, looking down at the young boy uncertainly. She smiled, trying not to scare the boy. “Who are you?”

  The young boy gulped and sniffled, like he’d just been crying recently. “My name is Tez and I need help. Fast.”

  “Help?” said Helnia. She peered out the door and looked up and down the other apartment doors on either side, but there were no other adults in the area at the moment. “What do you mean? Where are your parents?”

  “My mommy is in trouble,” said the young boy with a sniffle. He brushed some tears out of his eyes. “She’s being attacked by some mean men and needs help right away! Can you help her, please?”

  “Your mother is in danger?” said Helnia. “Why didn’t you get the law enforcers?”

  “I just ran away because I got scared and needed help,” said the boy. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “Please help. Mommy isn’t strong and can’t defend herself.”

  “Listen, I will try to contact one of the local law enforcers and see if I can get his help,” said Helnia as she turned to go back into her apartment. “I shouldn’t be—”

  The boy suddenly grabbed the hem of Helnia’s purple mage robes, causing her to look down at him in surprise. He now looked like he was in complete despair, as if he was about to jump off a bridge and needed her to convince him not to.

  “But there’s no time!” said the boy. “If you don’t help mommy, she’ll get killed! And you need to help. Mages are good people. Mommy told me so.”

  Helnia hesitated. She wasn’t a vigilante and certainly didn’t like fighting criminals or crooks, even when they were attacking someone. She knew that there were potential legal issues involved in that kind of stuff and she didn’t want to get stuck in something that she would regret.

  On the other hand, the young boy seemed really earnest and she couldn’t ignore his very sad-looking eyes. She was reminded of herself and Sarzen, because they had also lost their parents at a young age (though not nearly as young as this boy). And if she really was the only help that the young boy could find, then didn’t she have a moral obligation to help him?

  So Helnia nodded and said, “Okay, Tez, take me to your mother. If she’s in danger, we have no time to lose.”

  -

  Helnia—clad in her winter coat, with her magic necklace hanging from her neck—followed young Tez down the street. Helnia tapped her necklace, ready to cast a spell to save Tez’s mother as soon as they saw the men attacking her.

  Tez himself seemed oddly less sad than he had been just seconds ago. Maybe it was because he had help now, which meant that his mother was going to be safe, or maybe it was because he knew he needed to lead Helnia to where his mother was if they were going to save her. Either way, Helnia was glad he was less depressed, because she wasn’t good with sad children.

  “So where is your mother, Tez?” said Helnia as they ran down the street.

  Tez jumped over a water puddle in his path as they ran. “This way, Miss Helnia. Just around the corner and into this alley.”

  Tez reached the alley before Helnia, dashing inside it and vanishing from Helnia’s view in an instant. It surprised Helnia, because she doubted Tez could handle whoever his mother’s attackers were, but she increased her speed so she could keep up with Tez and soon turned a corner into the alley, saying, “Tez, where are—”

  Helnia stopped when she saw that the alleyway was entirely empty. Aside from some frozen water puddles and a few discarded papers, the alley was empty. She looked to the left and to the right, but she did not see Tez, his mother, the attackers, or anyone else here.

  “Tez?” said Helnia. She raised her voice. “Where are you?”

  No answer.

  A warning siren sounded in Helnia’s mind. She took a step backwards briefly, instinctively thinking that this was a trap, but then she caught herself. While the situation seemed odd, that didn’t mean that something bad was about to happen. Maybe Tez was hiding behind that large dumpster over there, which looked big enough to hide a small boy like him. Besides, she was confident that, with her magic beads, she was going to be all right, regardless of what was going on here.

  So Helnia walked into the alleyway, very carefully keeping her eyes and ears open for any possible traps. Again, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but the alleyway was pretty dark, which made it hard to see, though she could see enough to know that she was all alone here.

  As she walked, Helnia said, in a low voice, “Tez, Tez, are you there? Where are you? Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, I’m not laughing.”

  Still no response, but Helnia was about to reach the dumpster. She thought she heard movement on the other side, so that was probably where Tez was hiding. She decided that she was going to be the one to spook him, rather than give him the opportunity to spook her.

  So Helnia ca
refully approached the dumpster. She tapped one of her beads, causing a small fireball to appear in her hands, the magical aura around it protecting her hand from getting burned. She carefully walked up to the dumpster and stopped, listening for a moment, but she did not hear the sounds of anyone else on the other side.

  But Helnia knew she had heard some movement there, so she jumped over to the side of the dumpster and said, “Got you!”

  But, instead of seeing Tez crouching behind the dumpster, Helnia saw a cat, which hissed at her and ran away before she even realized what it was doing. Aside from the cat, there was nothing else on this side of the dumpster.

  “Huh?” said Helnia, blinking in confusion. “Where—?”

  She suddenly heard movement behind her and whirled around just in time to see a heavy bat coming toward her face.

  Helnia ducked at the last minute, allowing the heavy wooden bat to pass by overhead. She jumped backwards, putting herself out of the bat’s reach, and saw that the bat was being held by a woman she didn’t know. The woman wore dark clothing that fitted her form quite well, making her look like a living shadow. Only her eyes—a striking green—were visible in the slit in her mask.

  That was all Helnia could see, however, before the woman attacked her again. The woman ran at Helnia and swung her bat, which Helnia again dodged.

  But as Helnia dodged it, she tapped her necklace and cast a telekinesis spell. She ripped the bat out of the woman’s hands with the spell and threw it away out of her reach.

  As soon as the bat was torn out of her hands, the woman drew a long, sharp knife from her side and jumped at Helnia with it held above her. She slashed at Helnia, but Helnia tapped her necklace again and created a thin, invisible barrier that caused the knife to bounce harmlessly off its surface.

  The barrier, however, existed for only a second, but it was enough time for Helnia to back away and put some distance between her and her assailant. Helnia was panting and sweating already; while she had received some combat training as a mage, she had never been as good at fighting at Sarzen and got exhausted far more quickly than him in a fight.

  The woman advanced on Helnia, but more slowly now, no doubt because she didn’t want to walk straight into another one of Helnia’s spells. That only served to make her look even more threatening, however, rather than less.

  Still backing up, Helnia tried to think of which one of her many spells would be useful in this situation. She ran her fingers along her beads until she thought of a spell that might possibly be useful here.

  So she tapped her necklace and fired a blast of water from her hands, but the woman in the dark clothing dodged it and ran at Helnia. The woman was fast, moving fast enough that she was able to close the gap between her and Helnia in seconds, and slashed at her again.

  Again, Helnia tried to dodge, but thanks to how quickly the woman in dark clothing moved, she wasn’t fast enough. The woman’s knife cut through Helnia’s right arm, tearing through the coat and actually cutting her skin, but Helnia was already moving to the side, so she managed to avoid getting anything deeper than a flesh wound.

  Still, the wound hurt and it bled, forcing Helnia to cover it with her hand as she staggered away from her assailant. Her assailant advanced on her again, but Helnia just tapped her necklace.

  Then Helnia jerked out her hand and sent a wave of ice snaking across the ground toward the woman. The woman tried to jump out of the way of the incoming ice, but she was too slow and the ice got her feet, making her stuck to the ground. The woman desperately tried to tug her feet out of the ice, but the ice was too thick for her to break on her own.

  As for Helnia, she had staggered as far away from the woman as she could. Her heart was beating fast and she was so out of breath that when she hit the other side of the alley, she just leaned against it, panting and trying to catch her breath. She winced at the pain in her arm from where the woman had slashed her and made a mental note to have a doctor to look at it as soon as she could.

  For the moment, Helnia carefully watched her assailant. The woman had stopped trying to free herself from the ice; at least, she was not pulling her legs free anymore. Instead, she was now focused on smashing apart the ice with the metal handle of her knife, and she appeared to be making progress, based on how much ice she was smashing.

  Gritting her teeth, Helnia said, “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not getting away that easily.”

  Helnia reached for her necklace, but before she could touch any of her beads, she heard a voice say, “Helnia?” and looked to the left to see Tez standing not far from her. The boy was staring up at Helnia with a mixture of surprise and anger, like he had not expected to see her here.

  “Tez?” said Helnia. “What … what are you doing here? You should leave. This woman is dangerous.”

  “This woman?” said Tez. “You mean my mom?”

  Helnia was almost too shocked to react when she heard that, but then she heard the shattering of ice and looked back over at her assailant. The woman had finally succeeded in shattering her ice shackles and was running toward Helnia again, moving far too fast for Helnia to keep up.

  Before Helnia could cast another spell, her assailant slammed the butt of her knife over Helnia’s head hard enough to knock her out in one blow.

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  “Helnia?” said a familiar voice through the fog of unconsciousness that covered Helnia’s mind. “Helnia, are you awake? Helnia, can you hear me? Helnia?”

  Helnia groaned. She didn’t want to get up. Her head hurt, her arm hurt … every part of her body seemed to hurt. She felt the hard gravel of the street under her, which was nothing like her nice bed back home.

  But now that Helnia was actually thinking, she found it impossible to go back to sleep. So she gradually opened her eyes until she found herself staring up at the dark, cloudy sky visible through the gap between the two buildings on either side. The clouds looked as white as snow, which was how Helnia knew that it was probably going to snow soon.

  The sky wasn’t the only thing she saw, however. Kneeling over her was a familiar friendly face, the face of a middle-aged old woman wearing a thick wool cap, her hair as gray as rock. The old woman looked extremely worried, but then she smiled when she saw Helnia awake.

  “Oh, Helnia, I am so glad you are awake,” said the old woman with a sigh. “How do you feel? Are you cold?”

  Helnia nodded. “Yes, a little.”

  “A little?” said the old woman in a disbelieving voice. “Young woman, I know you are healthier and younger than me, but you have been lying out here in the cold for who-knows-how long. I’m surprised your blood didn’t freeze in your veins.”

  Helnia blinked. She was trying to remember the old woman’s name until it suddenly came to her. “It’s … fine, Grandma Deri. My head hurts, though, and my arm, too.”

  Grandma Deri looked at Helnia’s arm. “You mean the one with the bandages on it?”

  Helnia frowned. “Bandages?”

  She raised her right arm and saw that it was indeed bandaged. “Huh?”

  “You must have gotten a bad wound at some point,” Grandma Deri remarked. “And it must have been sometime fairly recently, because you certainly didn’t have bandages on your arm yesterday, when I last saw you.”

  Helnia blinked again. Grandma Deri was the headmistress of the magical school that Helnia worked at. It was how Helnia earned her living; in fact, that was where she’d gone to school when she and Sarzen had first arrived in Ars ten years ago, which was another reason she worked there.

  Grandma Deri technically wasn’t her real grandmother; Helnia’s paternal and maternal grandmothers had died a few years before Helnia was born. Grandma Deri was only called that by everyone because of her age and how much she cared about her students and teachers at her school. Even people who didn’t go to or work at the school called her Grandma, she was just that well-known.

  But all of that was irrelevant right now. Helnia sat up, but slo
wly, because her head was hurting. She put a hand on her forehead and said, “Grandma, what happened?”

  “I was about to ask the same of you, Helnia,” said Grandma Deri, who Helnia noticed was wearing her favorite blue-and-black coat. Her old face peered out from her hood in concern. “You look like you got into a fight, and used some Raugus while you were at it.”

  Helnia grabbed her necklace and pulled it away from her neck. She was dismayed to see that some of the beads were a dead gray, which made her feel terrible, because that meant she’d need to buy more Raugus, a resource that was becoming scarcer and scarcer by the year.

  “Do you remember anything, Helnia?” said Grandma Deri. “Anything at all?”

  “I—” Helnia was about to say no, but then, without warning, all of her memories rapidly returned and she said, “I was attacked.”

  “Attacked?” said Grandma Deri in surprise. “By who?”

  “A woman,” said Helnia. “Her young son—he was maybe about seven or eight, I don’t know—lured me out here and I was jumped by a woman. I tried to defend myself, but then she knocked me out.”

  “Knocked you out?” said Grandma Deri. She whistled. “You are lucky that she didn’t kill you. Who was she?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helnia, shaking her head. “I didn’t even get her name, so I don’t know if she is a known criminal or what.”

  “Did she rob you?” said Grandma Deri. “Do you still have all your possessions?”

  Helnia immediately felt the pockets of her robes and coat, only to discover that they were as empty as they had been when she left her apartment. “They didn’t steal anything from me because I didn’t have anything to steal.”

  “Of course you have something to steal,” said Grandma Deri. She pointed at Helnia’s necklace. “That’s a fifty bead necklace full of Raugus. It’s a popular item for thieves in Ars to steal. But I’m surprised they left it; most thieves who jump mages usually steal their bead necklaces and then sell them on the black market to make a profit.”