by Wight, Will
Simon had to crush the thought of punching Alin right in his condescending face. Alin could probably set Simon on fire with his thoughts or something, but he had no right to speak like that. Besides, after Simon buried his mother, what was he supposed to do? Go back to the smoldering ruins of an empty house?
“There are lots of our people missing,” Simon said, making his voice reasonable. “Not just Leah and the others. A bunch of people ran off. Malachi may have caught dozens of villagers. And I want to help.” Even to his ears, it sounded like a child’s plea.
“Simon, you’ll be helping build something they can come home to. Besides, I will bring back as many as I can. I promise.” Alin’s voice was earnest, but it left Simon feeling hollow.
Simon agreed, though he felt sick. All he had done to prepare, all those hours practicing, and he had been useless against a real Traveler. Again.
“Thanks Simon,” Alin said, and there was real relief in his eyes. “Tell my sisters not to worry, all right? I’ll be back for them.”
Simon nodded and trudged back to the cave where his mother lay, silent and motionless. She was not near the other corpses but separate, alone, wrapped in the same filthy rags she wore for clothing.
And so she died as she had lived.
Simon gathered her in his arms and turned to watch the Travelers depart. They stood under the moonlight, leading the wounded villagers one by one through a Gate and into another swirling blizzard. Each villager hesitated when he or she first looked into the portal, but no one bolted. One at a time, they forced themselves through.
At last, only Alin and Gilad were left. Alin turned, saw Simon, and smiled a little. Then he waved good-bye and passed through the portal. Gilad glanced around nervously and followed, and with his passing, the Gate vanished.
Simon hefted his mother’s corpse in his arms and followed the few other weary villagers, heading for what remained of their home.
***
Leah stood on the gray plains of Lirial, still leashed to the nine other prisoners.
Above her, in a sky locked in perpetual night, a dozen moons whirled and shifted. One orange harvest moon drifted slowly overhead, full tonight, while a smaller silver-blue moon whirled from new moon to crescent to half moon to full in the space of five seconds, then back again. A red moon and a purple crossed each other, then switched positions.
There was a pattern to each of the Lirial moons, and understanding their interactions was vitally important to any Lirial Traveler. To Leah, they spoke of a steadily shifting interaction of subtle forces.
But, of course, Leah the daughter of Kelia—as the uneducated child of a Myrian villager—would know none of that. So...
“Where are we?” Leah asked, as if panicked.
One of the soldiers, a young man barely older than herself, stared at her in shock. He would have no more idea what was going on than one of the villagers, except he knew that she had done it. She had, of course—as soon as she had realized Cormac was going to lose his confrontation with Alin, she had opened a Gate and brought the sacrifices through. Along with a handful of soldiers, just to help her out.
Leah gestured quickly to the soldier, trying to signal him to catch on. At last, understanding lit his face.
“Um, yes,” he said. “This is a...Territory. For Travelers.”
“You’re still taking us to Bel Calem?” Leah asked, in a fearful tone.
The soldier cleared his throat. “That’s exactly what I’m doing, yes. Well? Let’s get moving.”
Leah shot him another covert gesture, pointing to her left, where a cliff of pure crystal glinted in the distance.
“This way!” the young soldier called, pointing in the direction Leah had indicated. With another glance at her—really, he was going to have to be more subtle than that—he started off in the right direction.
The sacrifices followed, most of them still hushed by the idea that they were actually in one of the mythical Territories. Rutha, who still believed she was Leah’s half-sister, clung to Leah’s shirt like a child to her mother’s apron. Leah patted her hand soothingly.
Though she was actually not supposed to form any real attachments to the Myrians, she still hoped she could find a way to spare Rutha. They may not be true blood relatives, but Leah had spent the past two years living with the girl as a sister. She couldn’t help but feel protective. Rutha was certainly a long sight better than Leah’s real sisters.
More importantly, how was she going to explain to her father about Alin? The Elysian Traveler had been in Myria after all, when Leah had spent most of the past two years insisting that the story was just a myth. And he wasn’t just anyone in Myria, but a boy who had nursed a painfully obvious crush on her almost since she had walked into the village.
She would have to find a way to get Alin back in hand, or else make a formal apology to her father. A particularly long and painful apology.
At all costs, she had to avoid that. Which meant that she would have to bring Alin back and get him under control.
Somehow.
CHAPTER FIVE:
A STEP FORWARD
Over the next three days, almost a hundred villagers trickled back to the scorched ruins of Myria.
They scooped out a shallow pit just outside the village borders and dumped into it the fourteen bodies they could find. Chaim said, as Simon helped him heave his daughter’s limp corpse into the mass grave, that they had gotten lucky. He said the words bitterly, and spat to one side afterwards.
The body count was too low for a real attack. In Chaim’s reckoning, it had only been a raid for slaves, or to keep the people in line. His daughter stared up at Simon, never blinking as he pushed a pile of dirt onto her face.
Simon buried his mother himself, separate from the rest. He buried her by starlight, on a hill next to a wizened fig tree. He didn’t own a shovel, so he used a board that had once been part of a window shutter. By the time he finished, fingers cracked and bleeding, the sun had begun to peek over the horizon.
He didn’t feel the pain in his fingers. The wind was chill, and he was a little cold. It felt as if his tears had frozen on his face.
But there was still work to be done.
His house stank after years of his mother’s illness, so he brought in fresh sand for the floor, scooping out the old grit. He even found a carpet in the house of a family he had buried. They were beyond using it now, so he rolled it up and dragged it back home.
New boards were plentiful, lying about the streets in the form of broken crates or feeding troughs, so he brought a few home and tried fixing his door. He gave up after only an hour; the frame was fine, but the original door was too warped and cracked to be worth fixing. He built himself a new one.
Scrubbing the wax from old candlesticks, sifting the flour, replacing the wineskins, and laundering his few remaining rags took another day. As the moon rose for the fourth time since his return to Myria, Simon found himself wondering:
What now?
He sat on a log with his back to the communal bonfire. Villagers huddled around it—men, women, young, old—with no regard for social standing. They muttered to each other about grief and anger and revenge, but here and there a soft laugh would break the night. They were beginning to get used to the smaller size of the village, and some had begun to say that most of those missing would return, too, in time.
“But what about the ones that were captured?” Chaim said. His voice was scraped raw from crying over his slain daughter. “That Traveler got ten of them, and they’re probably slaves in the capital by now. What if they got more? What are we going to do about it?”
A woman humphed dismissively. “That’s not a concern of ours,” she said. By her voice, Simon identified Nurita, Leah’s aunt. She had no children of her own, and spent most of her time bullying the town leaders into one decision or another. “Torin’s son Alin will take care of the ones at the capital, and you can count on that.”
&nb
sp; There was a chorus of murmured agreements from around the fire.
Simon’s chest tightened. Alin would take care of it, sure. While Simon and the rest sat at home, scraping together ashes.
“Besides,” Nurita continued. “We’re not Travelers. We can’t stand up to the Overlord.”
That was true. There was no way any of them could face the powers Simon had seen the night Myria burned. Alin was the only one who stood a chance. The only thing Simon could do against a Traveler was die. Even now, with nothing left to live for, he still didn’t want to die.
“We’ll just do what we can,” Nurita said. “We’ll stay here and pull our homes back together. No matter what happens to us, we’ll keep on living like we always have.”
Like they always had. Simon remembered a stone-marked grave next to a fig tree, and Leah’s face before she rolled out of hiding and was taken by enemy soldiers.
Everyone voiced their agreement to Nurita’s words. Even Chaim, though he sounded like he was going to cry again. When Simon turned around to face the fire, they were all still nodding along.
“That’s not good enough,” Simon said.
Everyone stopped to look at him. They looked mildly surprised at his presence, as though they had forgotten he was even there.
“We have to do something,” Simon said. “We have to do better.”
Chaim laughed bitterly, and Nurita arched one eyebrow. “If you think you know a better way,” she said, “then by all means show us.”
Simon rose to his feet.
“Okay,” he said.
He kept his sword buckled to his waist at all times, now. There was nothing else he owned that he needed, or cared enough about to gather. He thought briefly about bringing some food, but he just couldn’t summon up the energy.
Alone, Simon walked out of the south gate without looking back.
***
He hadn’t been back to the Latari Forest since he was eight years old. In fact, no one from the village had. Kalman vanishing and his wife Edira turning up insane had apparently been enough warning for all of Myria to stay away. Simon had certainly never intended to return.
Except that he wanted to fight Travelers, and he had only ever met one man who could do that.
Simon reached the wall of trees after two full days of walking. The sun weighed down upon him, and sand swirled in his path, but the wind coming out of Latari was cool and wet.
Simon had imagined this moment as dire and significant. He had pictured himself facing down the dark forest, building his courage until he could force himself to walk into the trees.
But he was about to collapse, and all he could think about was how nice that cool air would feel after two days exposed to the heat. His eyes were caked with grit, and his throat felt like he had been chugging sand. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t had a bite to eat since he had left the village.
In the end, he rushed eagerly into the forest’s shadows.
He collapsed in the sparse grass near the border, letting the cool air wash over him, and he swore he was just going to sleep there on the ground. But it took only a few seconds for thirst to drive him back to his feet.
Simon stumbled around for almost an hour looking for water before he realized he had been hearing the bubbling voice of a creek almost since the moment he crossed the border. He cursed his own lack of attention and forced his body to stagger nearer to the sound of water.
When he finally found the creek, a small but steady flow between loose banks of pebbles, clothed in reeds and thin grasses, he fell into it facedown. Once his thirst was satisfied, he made a bed of leaves and grass and curled up next to the trunk of a tall tree. By the position of the sun it was still early afternoon, and the Demon might come after him as he slept. But surely he could sleep for a few hours and wake up before dark.
Simon relaxed on the soft grass and let his mind drift. He had begun to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t go to sleep after all when darkness took him.
He woke to a man looming over him in the darkness, dagger drawn. Night had truly fallen, and the moon gleamed along the man’s drawn blade.
Simon had heard rumors that bandits were moving in and out of the Latari forest, but he had secretly laughed at the idea. The forest’s Demon would not allow such a thing.
Except apparently, he would.
Simon panicked. He grabbed at the arm holding the knife and kicked as hard as he could in the direction of the man’s knees.
The man yelled and staggered, but he put more pressure on the dagger. It lowered to within two inches of Simon’s eye, shining from a finger’s length in front of him. Simon grabbed the other man’s wrist with both arms and pushed, but he was fighting against a grown man’s entire weight.
With the strength of panic, Simon kicked up again and again, trying to land a hit between the man’s legs, but he was running out of time. He couldn’t hold the dagger off of him forever, and he couldn’t reach down to his own sword. If he got a little space, maybe he could put up a fight.
Someone nearby chuckled. “You can’t handle him, huh? You think maybe I should take over for you?” Another shadow appeared at the corner of Simon’s vision, and his fear surged up again. There were two of them.
Simon pushed the man’s arm to the side, and the dagger plunged down, slicing a burning line into his left cheek. The knife bit into the soil, and Simon tried to scramble out from under his attacker.
The second man grunted and planted a boot on Simon’s forehead, shoving him back.
Simon continued to struggle, shouting for help whenever he could, but in his head he had given up. He couldn’t escape from two of them. He would fight until the end, but it was over.
At least he would die in the same place as his father.
A sing-song voice drifted through the forest, barely louder than the sounds of rustling leaves.
“Hush, little one. It’s loud, I fear. Three little mice have come to play. No, don’t fret; I know just what to do. I will send them all away.”
The second man spun to the side, and a bush in front of him rustled. He drew a short sword. Simon tried to cry out, to encourage whoever or whatever was hiding in the bush, but the man in front of him covered his mouth with a foul-smelling hand. The point of a dagger pressed into his ribs, and he fell as still as possible.
“Not a word,” the man whispered, and Simon gave a tiny nod. “We’re all on the same road now. You’re quiet, and we might all live.”
Simon smiled, though neither of the men could see it, scanning the bushes as they were. As much as he had a plan, this was it. The Demon of the forest had let him live once, so why not twice?
“Oh no, my dear, the first little mouse has a sword. What is he going to do with that, I wonder?”
“We’re here on order of the King himself,” called the man with the drawn sword. “We’re his property, see. So get on out of here and leave us to our business!”
A shadow detached itself from the darkness, and moonlight flashed on steel. The bandit’s sword hand vanished, and it tumbled to the ground still clutching the weapon. But the sword’s owner did not scream; blood sprayed from his sliced throat.
As he watched the man clutch at his throat, Simon noticed something that he had missed in the darkness: the man he had taken for a bandit wore an iron collar around his neck.
Not a bandit, then. A slave, like the nobles of Damasca supposedly kept. But who left their slaves to wander around the Latari Forest in the middle of the night? Were they runaways?
The slave man holding Simon made a sound like a sob and pulled the dagger away from Simon to point into the darkness.
That sing-song whisper cut through the forest again. “One little mouse is bleeding, my dear. What will the other ones do?”
“Stay back!” The slave yelled. He pushed Simon aside and rose to his feet. “I’m not afraid of demons. I eat ‘em before breakfast, just to wake up my appetite!”
> Only a breeze responded, rustling the leaves overhead.
“I’ll show you what I do to demons!” the man called. He stepped forward to challenge the invisible Demon, sword raised in front of him.
Then he bolted. He ran as hard as he could away from Simon, leaping over low-rising bushes, trying desperately to get away.
He made it maybe fifteen paces before a sword drove through his heart. The blade was long and curved, sharp on one edge. Simon got a good look as the shadow slowly pulled the sword from the dying man’s chest.
The sword had a ridiculously long blade, maybe six or seven feet, though it was slender and slightly curved along its whole length. The shadowed Demon held it lightly in one hand, angled out and to the side so that the blade did not scrape along the dirt. How much did a sword like that weigh? No one could hold it so easily. And how did anyone sheathe a blade that long?
The Demon of the forest spoke to something he held in his left hand, though Simon couldn’t see it clearly through the underbrush. “What do you think, little one? Will the third mouse run for its hole? Or will it stay for cheese?”
“I’m not with them!” Simon said. He had to fight the impulse to edge backwards, to get further away from that huge sword. “They found me sleeping and tried to kill me.”
The shadow cocked his head in Simon’s direction, like a bird confronted by a worm. Then he stepped forward into the moonlight and began unwrapping a dark cloth from around his head. It had hidden his hair and mouth, leaving only his eyes uncovered. Simon assumed it was meant to keep the man as covered in darkness as possible, to make him harder to spot in the woods at night. So the fact that he was taking it off should be a good sign, right? Or it could mean that he wasn’t planning to leave any witnesses.
When he pulled away the cloth, one of Simon’s hopes was confirmed: he was just a man, if an odd-looking one. Judging by the smooth skin of his face, he was only twice Simon’s age, but his tangled, wiry hair was pure white. Clumps of it hung down into his face, obscuring his eyes.
