by D P Rowell
He sorted through everything in his head during his walk. Was he making the right decision by going to Hillrun? His recent encounter with the fae and the elyr had him questioning everything. What did he have to do to see her again? When would time permit? Her knowledge of this power might be the only true help for Yutara. And now he was leaving Gathara; not knowing when he’d come back. What if the Indies were dead wrong? Even Rio? The elyr was the answer; but it had been outlawed by the only group of people in Yutara who oppose the council . . .
The parcel! The parcel in Gathara was deceiving minds into believing the elyr was witchcraft! What other explanation was there? He did need to go to Hillrun, interrogate this parcel, and find out who the mole is. But what good could be done without the elyr? He had to find Kareena. But how?
Just as he turned another street, something caught his eye. It seemed a shrub of green and yellow jutted from an alleyway. He stopped in his tracks and looked all around him. No shrubs anywhere else. He made his way to the alley, and when he arrived, his heart became full. The alley opened to a familiar grove, swallowing the buildings on either side.
Shywater, Ace thought. Kareena! He looked once again, being sure nobody was around to see him. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to him. And it also appeared as nobody in Gathara cared much for the random forest in the alley. Perfect time to move. So, he took off into the forest, following the path he remembered. The familiar needles prickling his skin and the halt of the outside city noise stirred up his excitement to see the fae. She must have seen him walking along the road and invited him to Shywater again.
“Kareena!” Ace said as he made his way to the end of the path. He brushed himself through the last bit of pine and found himself in the oasis with the unlit torches, but no fae. “Kareena?” He shouted again. She had to be there. Only an elyrian could find Shywater. He shouted her name a few more times but was only met with silence. He sat by the water. Unlike his previous visit, the sun lit up the oasis, so he could see everything clearly. The way it shone on the water revealed its true stillness. It was perfectly unmovable, silver, and reflecting every detail of his face like a freshly cleaned mirror. Anyone could have mistaken the pond for glass. He imagined being able to slide straight across with his socks.
Where is she? I can’t wait forever, Rio’s expecting me.
Why would she bring him to Shywater and not be there? He grunted and stood to his feet, leaning one hand on one of the torches beside the pond. He closed his eyes and remembered the night he spent with her. He pictured her breathing and swift motions. The way she glided about. He soon became uneasy at the thought of her not showing up. But, from the darkness under his eyelids, something like a flicker of light appeared. He opened his eyes and looked to at the torch beside him. His heart fell, and he jumped away from it. The torch had been lit!
“I knew you were here!” Ace said as he turned in circles, facing the wall of trees.
Still no Kareena, and none of the other torches were lit.
“Come on, stop playing! Come out!”
Ace jerked his head back at the sound of leaves rustling behind him.
No one.
“Hello?” He said. Whoever was there, it wasn’t Kareena. Someone else had brought him to Shywater. Some other elyrian must have lit the torch. “Where are you?” Ace stepped closer to the trees where he heard the noise. Slowly, his eyes combed every inch of the woods. He stepped closer still, now beginning to leave the pond, and further into the wooded area, where there was no path to follow. He stepped on a root.
“Ow!” Said a voice.
Ace leaped back in a fright and nearly hit a tree but caught himself. “Who said that?” he said.
No response.
“Quit playing games! Show yourself!” Ace started panting. Something glistened eerily and caught his eye at the trunk of a great pine before him. He squinted and stepped closer. What were those shining balls? They were light brown and reflecting the light of the sun. He stepped closer and whatever it was lunged at him.
“Ahh!” Ace jumped back. It was only the size of a child, even younger than he, now running into the forest. Some sort of goblin-like creature with tree bark for skin.
Tree . . . goblin? Ace thought. He buried his fright, as was usual when his curiosity overcame him, and took off after the goblin.
“Wait!” He said. The halfling turned his head as it kept running. Its eyes were nearly half the size of the little thing’s head. The goblin leaped from side to side, dashing through the trees, and finally, at one leap into a grove of trees, it vanished. The boy stopped.
“I’m not gonna hurt you!” Ace said. “I’m looking for someone. Maybe you can help?”
The stillness of Shywater was the only response he received. Only the woods surrounded him.
“Who are you?”
No response again. Ace heard the busy bodies of Gathara strolling about the city in the distance. His head turned, and a path seemed to clear itself in the woods before him, leading straight to the city. The tree goblin had taken him to the edge of Shywater.
I need to go to Rio, he thought.
“I have to go now!” Ace shouted to the still forest. “Do you know Kareena Flare? She’s a fae! Silver hair, freckles on her nose?” He waited for a response but didn’t receive one. “Well, if you see her, tell her I’ve gone to Hillrun on an important mission! I don’t know when I’ll be back! But I’d really like to see her again! I need her help!” He paused once more in vain. The tree goblin was not going to reveal where he was hiding. At this, he made his way out of Shywater once more. What a strange encounter; who was the tree thing?
Ace hurried through the path lined with pine and white fir. Shortly after, he found himself stumbling on the brick path in Gathara leading to the castle. Shywater took him exactly where he needed to go; just as it had before. Hunters, young and old, went to and from the bridge over the moat. None of them seemed to notice Ace’s random appearance from the mystical wood. In fact, none of them seemed to pay much attention to him at all. The boy took advantage of his luck and marched along the path leading to the castle.
Rio awaited Ace at Keele’s living quarters, where they had agreed to regroup. Ace found his way up the winding staircase to Keele and Rio sitting at the table. A large duffle bag lay on the right side of the room against a wall.
“There’s the kid,” Rio said.
“Are you sure no one’s going to suspect me coming up to your room?” Ace said. “The security loop’s been fixed by now.”
Keele shook her head. “I’ve already discussed this with the elite. They know you and Rio will be leaving for some time.”
Rio stood from the table and interjected. “They’re under the impression that family members of yours from Eveland are getting suspicious of you and the Peppercorns. Asking questions. And we’re going to make sure they don’t learn of what’s going on here.”
“And they believed it?” Ace said, “I mean, wouldn’t we want more people informed about the witches and Indies?”
“Not your grandfather,” Keele said. “He kept his family in the dark. Believing it was protecting them.”
The stone protected them, Ace thought. He must have known he was going to give the stone to me and put his family at risk all along.
Ace nodded. Rio grabbed his bag, and Keele nudged Rio and Ace out the door. As the dry desert air blew against his cheeks, something seethed his insides. The feeling he didn’t know who to trust. How everyone seemed to be working against him. And what about Kareena? Did she know the tree goblin? Would she get his message? But as Rio stepped outside, following the boy, and placed his gentle hand on Ace’s shoulder, the worry melted away. He looked at the drake, who smiled at him. A rare sight.
“Let’s go find us a parcel,” the drake said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Hillrun
The ground mixed in a pale yellow and dark brown sand with patches of green where the stubby bushes and trees sprung forth. Gathara had c
laimed the greenest parts of Heorg, and the most hills. Once they had left the foothills, the land was flat as a pancake. Gathara was a large city placed like a spec in the middle of nowhere, for the roads were lonely, as well as the rocky red Heorg surface. They passed signs for smaller towns nearby, but the main road lay mostly isolated from civilization. When they arrived in the airplane, it had looked like the towns were closer to Gathara than they truly were.
He soon shut his eyes and let the faint hum of the hovercraft engine disappear as consciousness left him. An odd mix with the anxiousness of having to interrogate a parcel soon. What if the parcel’s magic was too powerful? So powerful, it broke through Ace’s immunity, and he ended up cursed? Or even killed? Ace’s eyes shot open again.
“Nervous?” Rio said.
“A little, I guess.”
“Me too.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“Hey, we told you what the risk was, kid.”
Ace nodded. “I know.” After the following silence proved awkward enough, Ace blurted, “Why were you going to kill Angus Kar?”
The drake turned to him and clacked his tongue, his eyebrows wrinkled with frustration. “I told you. I got mixed up with the wrong people.”
“Getting mixed up with the wrong people is like robbing a convenience store. Shooting the elected President of Eveland is an entirely different thing.”
“They really should’ve never showed you that simulation.”
“Well, they did.”
The drake paused before he responded. “Look, kid. I had been in Eveland, homeless, for as long as I can remember. A group of drakes found me and took me in. I didn’t realize they were a gang when I joined. Eventually, my reputation started to grow. I became very good at stealing and. . .” Rio squinted an eye at him, then shifted his gaze to the road again, “other things. The point is the gang started to use me, because of my skills, for bigger and bigger jobs. Eventually they were becoming the mob. We were gaining a reputation in Eveland. I had no family. . . no one else around to talk sense into me. When Angus Kar won the election, a lot of Eveland was infuriated. . . including myself. I had done so much bad for so long; I figured I might as well do something good for Yutara. At least what I thought was something good. I was messed up in the head.”
“So, you knew something was off about Angus Kar?”
Rio snickered. “You were in the simulation. You heard him talking about wanting to get rid of the Indies and everything.”
“Yeah, at first, I thought he was a parcel.”
Rio rattled his tongue. “At that time, I had no knowledge of the council or any witches. I just knew he was a bad man.”
“Well, that’s one of the things that threw me off. Kar spoke from his podium about ridding the world of the Indies, and how they would no longer bully the people of Eveland with nonsense about witchcraft and things of that nature.”
Rio tipped his head as if he only half agreed. “That was his main platform. He thought the Indies were a radical religious organization. But I doubt the man was a parcel. That’s something they didn’t teach you before putting you in that simulation. Remember, parcels aren’t always the ones who appear to have the most power. . .”
“They’re just standing alongside the one with power. It was probably someone at Kar’s table!”
The drake smiled. “Yep.”
Ace remembered the slightly familiar man next to Kar. Probably someone he’d seen in history books or on TV. “But,” He said, changing the subject, “I thought no one really knew about the Indies.”
“Not anymore. Thanks to Kar’s presidency, really. The man delivered on his campaign promises. He spread the anti-Indie nonsense across the nations. For the past few decades, witches and parcels flooded Yutara. Now that the peoples of Yutara believed that witchcraft wasn’t even real, it gave them more power. From leadership in local and larger communities, the council ate away at the belief of witchcraft, until now, where it’s nearly been diminished. Fairly soon even the faes in Breen adopted this view. Which is why many faes came to Gathara.”
“So, faes were actually for the Indies?” Ace’s mind was racing at this point. If the faes were for the Indies, why did they try to outlaw them? This must be the work of a parcel in Gathara! Someone had to be deceiving them into believing the elyr was witchcraft!
“That’s a little complicated,” Rio said. “We never quite knew what the faes’ intentions were. Some of them claimed to serve the Indies. Others claimed to be escaping the hold that the council had on Breen but didn’t believe in fighting them. And there were some who even opposed the Indies all together but came to Gathara for freedom. Faes are tricky creatures. Once we learned of their magic abilities, we became much more selective of the faes we let in.”
Ace wasn’t sure how to respond. He wanted to tell Rio about Kareena. Tell him the only reason anyone believes it’s a bad thing is because they’ve been deceived by whatever sorcerer has infiltrated Gathara. But what if Rio didn’t believe him? What if Rio thought he was being deceived himself?
Was he?
Was Kareena just a talented and clever witch?
No. Couldn’t be. Still, it was a long shot for convincing Rio; who seemed set in his ways. Ace couldn’t just tell the drake. He’d have to show him somehow. Show him the elyr can be used for good. Thoughts zoomed through his head like the hovercraft zoomed over the rocky red surface of the Heorg desert. He remembered the meeting where Sebastian announced himself as the Interim Halder.
“Rio,” Ace said. “What’s the deal with Dodger Girdleg?”
“Prime Minister of Heorg? What about him?”
“Sebastian mentioned not letting him take the Indies down. What was that all about?”
“Yeah, he’s not a big fan of the Indies. He’s always rattling on about how we make the jags look like a bunch of crazy people. We’ve never given him reason to go to war with us, but he’s looked for other ways to take us down. Always watching us, waiting for us to make the wrong move. There’re two reasons he hasn’t just run us over with Heorg’s military. One, we’re not publicly causing any issues. In fact, half of Yutara doesn’t even believe we exist. He openly supports those who push the idea of Gathara being a fairy tale, because it works to his advantage. If Gathara isn’t real, the rest of Yutara doesn’t look down on Heorg for being ‘Home to the Indies.’ So, if he were to overpower us, rumors of the war might spread, it would cause economic problems he’d have to explain and so forth. Because we don’t make much noise, war would cause a bigger mess than having us around. Two, I don’t think he knows if he’d even win. The Heorg War did a lot of damage to the strength of Dodger’s military. Anyway . . . he’s looking for any opportunity he can to take us down.” The drake chuckled. “Like the rest of Yutara.”
Ace nodded and turned to the window. The sun had begun to drop; its color fading to dark orange. Mountain shadows of navy blue lined the horizon on either side. The road took them to a steel bridge over a wide river as purple as the ocean. On either side of the river stood palm trees of green and yellow leaves and thick clumps of the desert shrubs, much greener than those they passed by on the way there. Once traveling over the bridge, a small town to the right came into view, just on the river bank. The buildings were small and made of dark red clay and stone, and they only occupied the areas covered by the palms and thick shrubs lining the river.
“Welcome to Hillrun,” Rio said.
CHAPTER FORTY
The Fae at the Inn
Rio landed the hovercraft just outside the town. A few jags peered from around the buildings of clay and stone.
“Remember,” Rio said. “If there is a parcel here, he’s not going to like two hunters showing up. We have to be careful about this. We want his disguise to fail. What we don’t want is for any innocent people to get hurt or paranoid. Keep your eyes peeled and come to me if you see or hear anything suspicious. Don’t make it obvious you’re looking for him because it may scare him off, or he may
attack you in front of a bunch of people. Although that’s unlikely.”
Ace nodded.
“For obvious purposes, we won’t use our names. So, I’m Lun Marion: your chauffeur. And you’re Logan Charm: the twelve-year-old son of Luther Charm, who’s a billionaire from Eveland; and you’ve wanted to visit the smaller towns of Heorg for your vacation time.”
“Logan Charm?” Ace said. His face looked as if he’d bitten into a rotten fruit as he spoke the name aloud.
“Got any better names?” Rio said with a smug look.
Ace scratched his chin and pondered a moment. “How about Dusty?”
“Dusty Charm?”
Ace shrugged. “Logan just sounds weird.”
“And Dusty sounds better?”
“Oh!” Ace said, “Dusty Spalding!”
Rio stared blankly at the boy for a moment. “I really don’t care. Pick whatever name you want. Just make sure you don’t forget it!”
Ace smiled. “Got it, Lun!” He sassed with a chuckle.
Rio rolled his eyes and opened the doors of the hovercraft. At the push of a button, the hydraulics sounded, and the doors lifted. They grabbed their bags and made their way across the rocky red path to the entrance of the city. A small cluster of palm trees stood tall, just behind a wall of red clay. An opening in the wall offered an entrance and an arched sign above, reading Hillrun.
Just under the entry lay a worn path leading into the town. From it, two jags stepped forth. Their clothing was tattered cloth wrapped around their bodies in different shades of a blueish gray lighter than their skin. Their hooves clopped against the ground as they walked to Ace and Rio. One female, the other a male. Both with sharp yellow eyes. The female’s clothing wrapped perfectly around her curves and trailed down her back, dragging behind her. Dust came from the ground by the edges of the cape. Her small antlers grew straight away from each other, barely curling backwards at their tips. Her brunette hair flowed in thick curls all the way to her waist. The male reminded Ace much of Marg. Strong as an ox. Maybe even part Ox. His chest popped through his cloth torso, and his hamstrings swallowed his knees, ankles, and hooves. Hard to believe those tiny things were holding up such a heavy creature. His antlers grew directly from the frontmost part of his forehead and curled all the way behind his head. His long black hair pulled straight to a thick ponytail.
