by Sarah Dalton
It has to work.
I pause to remove my shoes. I need to feel it. Everything. The dirt under my soles, the rise and fall of Anta’s belly, the smell of his grassy breath, the whisper of the trees around me, and the taste of the forest. I need to be aware of it all. I need to be part of it, to feel the ingredients of the world come together. I must be the bridge between Anta and the world. I must allow his healing to flow through me like a river. Beneath me tree roots lie, and beneath that, the bones of our ancestors. With my eyes shut, I think of them, believe in them, and believe in Anta.
I call on my powers, and a flash of strength flows through me, helping to knit the injured flesh; to reduce the fever; to make him well again.
He breathes laboured breaths of steam. Sweet breaths. There’s another roar, and I know he is fighting too. That’s it, Anta. Work hard. Stay with me.
I’m aware of a sense of fading. As the power flows through me I experience the sensation of the world slipping away. All I know is myself and the stag I am trying to heal. My protector. Our symbol of hope.
Someone calls my name.
*
Casimir
For days we have heard the sound of a roar in the forest. Both Treowe and Ellen shudder at the sound, but I have a feeling that I have heard that noise before. I had a dream about the first time I went into the Waerg Woods with Mae. She was searching for Anta, and I didn’t believe her about the white stag. There was this horrendous noise, like a horn being played in the dead of the night, and Mae set off at a run. I had to try hard to keep up with her. And then I got sight of him illuminated in the moonlight, with these huge antlers tangled up to the sky.
I was afraid. I thought that I had to fight this creature. I never imagined that something so imposing could be so peaceful, and when Mae pulled me back away from trying to slay him, I felt deeply ashamed by my reaction, and wondered where it had all gone wrong. When did I start viewing the world as a threat? The truth is: that stag reminded me of my father and everything he represents. The desire to hunt, the desire to be the greatest—the deadliest—and here was this beast far greater than me. I felt as though I had to defeat it. I had to claim victory and become the man Father always told me I could not. That white stag was my father in that moment.
And then I woke, and I knew we had to follow the sound of that roar. I knew we were close, that we would find Mae at last.
From then on the tricks of the forest didn’t frighten us. When the branches tried to curl around our horses legs we fought them back with cold indifference. When bats attacked our camp at night, we fled, barely concerned with the scrapes and scratches on our faces. When a landslide forced us down a steep slope, we picked ourselves up and kept going. We became a formidable force to be reckoned with. We became survivors. And now, as I see the daub clad walls of the Borgan compound for the first time, I know I am ready for her. I am ready to face her. The lie doesn’t matter anymore. Grief has reshaped me from a boy into a man.
The guards take one look at me and open the gates. Perhaps Sasha or Allerton has told them to watch and wait for me. How do they know I am coming? I don’t dwell on it, I ride Gwen through. She is slightly lame from yet another slip so I stop her part way through the camp and dismount.
There is a ripple in the air. A hum of power. I step forward slowly, my body trembling from exhaustion and nervous energy. The camp is primitive, made up of small tents and fires. The Borgans are as I remember them, stern-faced people in cloaks with young children at their heels. As I make my way through the camp, I hear that roar one more time. My head whips around, and there she is. My heart skips a beat. The girl who lied to me, but who saved my life over and over, who became my friend, someone I could finally confide in, but who chose not to confide in me when it mattered most. As my eyes find her, it all slips away. It’s just Mae, the slim urchin girl I once knew, dressed only in a sodden and dirty white dress, leaning over her injured white stag.
I whisper her name.
And then it becomes a shout.
Mae.
Mae.
“Mae!”
*
Mae
There’s a call. My name is shouted from a voice I recognise, and for a moment it stops the world from slipping away from me. The hollowed out feeling in my body tells me that I’ve overreached my powers. But I can still sense the dark poison in Anta’s body, and I know I have to keep going.
The soil is no longer at my call. It resists me, and I feel it pulling away from me. As Anta’s breathing slows, a sense of panic takes over. I try to open my eyes but I can’t. It’s as though the world is disappearing from beneath my feet, and I am powerless as I freefall into an abyss.
And then darkness.
Light. And the whisper of a breeze. Mae. A voice I know. Deep and soothing, how I imagine the sea to sound. Mae.
I don’t fully open my eyes, I leave them slightly parted so that a little daylight filters in, but my head throbs with pain. I see a slight blur of a person in front of me.
Mae. We’ve been such fools. I hated you for that lie, just for an instant. It hurt me deep inside, or at least I thought it did. Now I know what true pain feels like. What true suffering is, and I know what matters. We are what matters. Our love. It will repair the world. Mae. Wake up, Mae. Anta is alive and well. You healed him with the craft. But you used too much and burned yourself out.
“Casimir? But that’s not possible,” I mumble, half to myself. “I must be dreaming.”
This isn’t a dream, Mae.
My eyelids flutter open.
“You’re not dreaming,” he says. And now I see his lips moving. I see his bright silver eyes and sandy hair. He’s here.
“But. How? Why?” I pay more attention to his features. He’s the same Cas, with an open, honest face. But there’s a change. His smile is different. He doesn’t stretch his mouth wide like he used to, it’s more of a half-smile, restrained and cautious. And his eyes are shadowed and darker. I have seen the prince at his worst in the Waerg Woods, after little food, water, and sleep, and yet his eyes have never seemed so dark. “Something has happened. What has the king done?”
Cas swallows and his jaw tenses. The smile is gone in an instant, replaced by a hard glare that makes the hair on my neck prickle. “He killed my mother. He killed the queen.”
Our eyes meet then and we both know. We both know each other’s pain. All of a sudden I’m sitting up and my arms are around him in a way they never have been with another human being. He’s gripping me. His fingers dig into the soft flesh on my upper arms. We don’t fold together like I’ve seen others do when they embrace, instead we press our foreheads together and stare deep into each other’s eyes. His gaze burns me with its intensity, but I cannot turn away. My fingers seize the back of his neck and we stay like that, one moment, one minute, two, I don’t know. We just stay.
Eventually Cas leans back and he nods.
“Your lie doesn’t matter anymore, Mae. We’re the same now, and that’s what matters.”
“I will help you.” I keep my hand on the back of his neck. The other arm—the disfigured, ugly one—drops to my side. I had forgotten about it for a moment. “I will help you through this.”
His face contorts as though he is holding onto an emotion and trying to throw it away at the same time. He nods. He cannot speak.
I wish I didn’t know his grief, but I know it all too well. It’s the kind of grief that can eat away at you, turn you into a husk of a person.
“I’ll kill him for this,” Cas says.
My stomach sinks. He is on the same revenge path I was after my father died. I had Cas to ground me then, which means I must be his anchor. My shoulders tense. Am I enough?
“Let yourself grieve,” I say. “The king can wait.”
I sense the impatience in him. He pulls away from me and rocks back on his heels. It’s only then that I gaze around me and see that I am in one of the tents. It’s a tall, hide covered tent big enough for Cas—who see
ms taller now—to walk around in. And he paces and paces as I sit and watch. I don’t like this. My heart aches to see him suffer. But most of all, I am afraid of the man he could become if he does kill his father.
Chapter Eleven – The Queen of Fire
Mae
Allerton sits on a large chair in the centre of his tent. There are fine rugs, furs, and fabrics all around him. He twiddles the amber coloured amulet around his forefinger as he regards me with narrowed eyes. The tent smells of rosewater and fragrant tea, but Allerton has not invited me here to offer me treats. He has a stern expression on his face, and I know I’m in trouble.
“I’m no longer your protector, and so I have little place saying this, but what you did was reckless. You could have died. I know you have not yet mastered your powers, but even you must have realised that you were using too much. You’re clever enough to know when to stop.” Here, I attempt to interject, but he raises a finger to silence me. The twiddling of his amulet stops, and he holds his hands on his lap, and purses his lips. “What were you thinking, attempting to use a healing power? Most craft-borns are incapable of healing. It’s dangerous, very dangerous indeed. It involves flooding another being with your life force. It’s a draining, all-encompassing task.”
“I had to. It was Anta.”
Allerton’s crossed leg jerks out as though kicking a ball. “Bah! The stag is not worth your life—”
“I disagree.”
“You might, but you’re wrong. I thought you had accepted your destiny, Mae. You know how important you are to Aegunlund. You have no heir. You have barely begun learning how to use—and control—your magic. If you died, you would be leaving millions of us with a tyrant king, and no magic forevermore.” He leans back in his chair, finally silent.
He’s right. A flush of shame works up my neck. I must stop acting so impulsively. One of these days I am either going to get myself killed, or someone else.
“If you had come to me, I might have been able to help,” he says. “But instead you block everyone out. You withdraw into yourself. You haven’t spoken for days. Sasha has been sick with worry. She’s far too young, and far too inexperienced to be your protector.”
“I trust her,” I say.
“And you still don’t trust me.” He sighs. “I cannot change the past and I cannot bring your father back to life. I’m sorry for how things turned out. But it does not change the fact that you must now learn as much as you can about being the craft-born, and you must confide in Sasha, because you need to explain what exactly went on in the Red Palace. I’ve heard reports of you causing quite the scene at the wedding before you escaped. You’ve lost a hand, which is terrible. I am sorry, Mae. I only wish I could have been there to prevent it.” For the first time he seems genuinely distressed. “The curse has been lifted, I know that much, but whether the Nix is gone, I don’t know.”
“I’ll go to Sasha immediately. Now that I know Anta is safe.” I took him out to pasture this morning, and he was chewing on grass as though nothing had happened. The only change in him is a patch of black hair where the poisoned arrow hit him. “There is much I need to tell her.” And Cas, too.
Allerton dismisses me with a narrow-eyed glare. Once outside, an excited Sasha almost knocks me to the ground.
“Look, I have an amulet now. I’m a proper Borgan protector.”
“That’s great.” I take the amulet and feel the smooth stone between my thumb and forefinger. We both gasp when the amber glows, emitting a bright light—like sunshine.
“It can sense your power,” Sasha says.
“The amulet responds to it.” I smile and drop the amber stone. Sasha pushes it beneath her tunic, out of sight.
We walk away from the tent and through the camp, feeling eyes watching our every move. A shiver runs down my spine as I meet the gaze of the people around us. I cannot get used to the way the Borgans treat me. Back in Halts-Walden people kept their distance. They were always suspicious of my ability to survive the Waerg Woods, believing me to be as cursed as the forest around us. The villagers stayed away from me and Father. Even our healer disliked touching me. But the Borgans treat me like some kind of royalty. They regard Cas as someone with little importance, and yet hail me as a queen. It’s strange, but Sasha told me it was because they see the craft as the true power in Aegunlund—not the king—which is why they live outside society.
The mood soon turns sombre.
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me,” Sasha says. “When I left you, the Nix had gone. Now I find out you lost your hand, and that the king has tried to imprison you… What is going on?”
I’m silent as we pass the bowing heads of the Borgans. Almost all of them stop to curtsey. The children reach out with little hands to touch me. Some bring me flowers.
We find Cas by the animal shelter tending to Gwen. I’ve seen little of Ellen and Treowe since they arrived, but Sasha tells me they are helping out in the camp. Treowe has been showing some of the craftsmen how to make swords. Ellen has been working with the women to repurpose old fabric.
He looks up as we approach, and again I wince at the hard edge to his expression. But when he sees us, his jaw unclenches, and a small smile emerges. He lets go of Gwen’s hoof and straightens up. As he stands up straight, my mind drifts back to the first time I met him, remembering how he would always stand upright, puffing up his chest like a small man trying to be larger. Now he has a quietly proud posture. He stands taller without even trying.
“She’s still somewhat lame,” he informs us. “But the healers here are incredible. Whatever is in their poultice, it works.”
“It’s the Waerg woods,” Sasha says. “The herbs here are better. Stronger. They carry Mae’s craft in them.”
Cas regards me with the kind of awestruck expression that makes my insides squirm. This is what I both longed for and was terrified of. How will I ever be able to distinguish between a person’s real feelings for me, and their admiration of the craft?
I ignore my worries and do what I came here to do. “There’s a lot I need to tell you both,” I start. I lick my lips and try to relax my shoulders. For some reason, my hand shakes with the fear of talking to them both, but it is something I must do, a duty, a task that I owe them. So I suck in a deep breath and open my mouth to speak. Once I have, I do not stop talking until our stomachs rumble with hunger. Both Cas and Sasha stare at my stump with tilted heads, eyes watery and pitiful. It makes me hide it away in my pocket.
“You did all that for the kingdom while we were sleeping?” he says, his mouth hanging slightly open. “And without a single thank you?”
“The dreams of Avery are important, I think,” Sasha says. “There’s a clear path, a destiny that you must follow. I think it must relate to the king’s plans.”
“I have his journal,” I say. Cas’s eyes light up. “And I have some plans Beardsley started. They are theories about where the Ember Stone is hidden. He believes it is under the Anadi Sands, where an old and immortal race of people lived.”
“Immortal?” Cas says. “That can’t be right. Immortality doesn’t exist.”
“Not without the Ember Stone, anyway. I guess we will have to dig beneath the sands and find out what’s there.”
“We can’t do all this alone, Mae,” Sasha reminds me. “I know you’re the craft-born, but we’re still bairns without life experience. What do we know about beating the king’s army?”
“It won’t come to that. Once I have the Ember Stone—”
“Once you have the Ember Stone, the king will come after you with everything he has. And by you, I mean us.” She waves a hand towards the rest of the camp. “And how exactly do you propose to dig up the Anadi Sands? Do you know how long the sands stretch for? And the kind of blistering heat you’ll be under? Mae, you can’t do this alone. You need everything we have. You need Allerton to start preparing his own army.”
“And don’t forget me,” Cas says. “I am the heir to the throne. Those who wish
to fight against the king may join forces with me. I can be the head of a civil war.”
“Does that mean you’ll be fighting in Cyne?” I ask. A sudden flush of terror grips me. Now that I have Cas back, I don’t want to lose him again.
“I don’t know,” he replies, his voice laden with sadness.
“This is exactly my point,” Sasha says. “We don’t know what we’re doing. Cas, how do you propose to find these rebels when you are in hiding? Do you have any link with the Red Palace?”
“No,” he admits.
“And you,” she points at me with the kind of cruel-to-be-kind accusatory finger of a mother, “how are you going to get to the Anadi Sands? Are you going to ride Anta—a forest animal unsuited to the climate?”
“No,” I admit.
“Right, that’s it, craft-born and prince, you are now officially under my instruction. We tell Allerton everything, and we get as much help as we can.”
I can’t help but break out into a smile. “I like it when you’re bossy.”
*
There is much to do, and little time to do it. After a much needed sleep, and checking that Anta is still recovering well, I take the scrolls to Allerton so we can get to work.
The bald man leans over the parchment, holding a magnifying glass; his expression sombre.
“And you know who the Sihran are?” he asks, not moving from his cramped position.
“I know they are an ancient tribe, and that they disappeared long ago. Beardsley thought they might still be alive, and he thinks they were buried beneath the Anadi Sands after a great storm.”
“Buried by accident or on purpose?” Allerton asks, finally turning back to me and meeting my gaze. “Quite an important distinction, I might think.”
“Well, I… I don’t know. Does it say so in the scrolls?”
Allerton sits up straight, and places the glass back down on the desk. “It’s going to take some time to translate. I will need to consult my books. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time. Our new camp could be discovered at moment. Yes, we are well hidden, as always, but you are the most wanted woman in all of Aegunlund. Not to mention the exiled prince. I received word that the king has announced the queen’s death and blamed the murder on Prince Casimir.” I draw in a disgusted breath, but can’t say that I am shocked at the king’s despicable actions. “We will have to move fast, my dear. We will translate these scrolls, discover the location of the Ember Stone, and make our way to the Anadi Sands as soon as possible.”
