Pandora's Box: Land of Strife: Pandora's Box Series, Book 1

by S. Y. Lee

  Eventually, sticking to the road, she reached the city that the merchants had mentioned. It was bigger and more grandiose than anything she could have imagined, and her spirits started to lift when she laid her eyes on it.

  The sun was well past its apex in the sky when she got in line to enter the city. She paid no attention to the dirty looks she was getting, which she was used to by now, and her mind started to drift from the weariness of her journey. She had lost track of how many days it had been since she came to this world. Without a cellphone, computer, or any kind of modern technology to keep track of time and date, Caitlin could only focus on the present. There was no need to think ahead into the future when she didn’t know what awaited her. She daydreamed about a soft bed and hot shower as she stood next to her horse and absent-mindedly took a few steps forward whenever the line moved.

  She was somewhere near the front of the line when there was a commotion and confused shouts started coming from the gate in front of her. Caitlin was struggling to keep her eyes open under the waning daylight and she looked up to see what was going on.

  Guards were shouting and pointing in her direction.

  “What in the name of— Seize her!”

  “Careful! Out of the way!”

  She was too groggy and tired to realize what was the cause of the commotion. Caitlin looked around to see who they were pointing at, when she noticed that everyone around her had retreated several steps away as the running guards approached.

  “Wait! I mean no harm! I’m not with the Dark Flame!” Caitlin screamed as hands grabbed her arms and pinned them to her back. Her bow and quiver were quickly confiscated from her as one of the guards bound her wrists together with a rope despite her protests.

  “Please! I can explain!” Caitlin begged, but none of them would listen to her or even acknowledge what she was saying. They were treating her like a wild animal who didn’t speak their language. She was shoved forward towards the gate and in front of someone who looked like he was in charge.

  “Please! I’m not with the Dark Flame! They forced me to join them and I didn’t have any other clothes!” Caitlin pleaded. The man simply made some notes in a parchment as he inspected her visually from head to toe. It appeared he was writing down her description and when he was done, he motioned for the gates to be opened and called for additional guards to come take her away.

  “Throw her into the prison and inform Captain Tylen. She might be a scout for a raiding party, though her head must be a little hollow if she thought she could infiltrate the city by standing in line in that hideous uniform,” the man smirked and several guards laughed boorishly at his snide comments. “And send for the interrogator.”

  “No! Please, let me go! I’ll leave if that’s what you want!” Caitlin begged, her pleas again falling on deaf ears.

  Chapter 77

  David cursed his luck. When he and Karine had separated from the group to follow Cohl to receive their uniforms and assignments, he wasn’t aware that there would be a test. In retrospect, since they were being conscripted into an army, it made perfect sense for their fighting abilities to be scrutinized, but he hadn’t been prepared for it. Not that it would have made a difference.

  Cohl administered the test himself in a courtyard where other recruits were being trained in basic sword wielding techniques, and he handed Karine and David each a wooden sword. Karine went first, and it would have been an understatement to say that she passed. Seconds after beginning to spar with Cohl, she swept his legs from under him and stood over him, sticking the blunt tip of the wooden sword at his heart as he laid on his back.

  Cohl was so thoroughly embarrassed that he barked at some of the recruits who had stopped in the middle of their training to watch the fight, ordering them to run laps around the courtyard. David was sweating with nervousness when Cohl called him up next. The older gentleman held his sword up and David mimicked his stance, approaching him slowly. He could tell that Cohl was still flustered from being made a fool of by Karine, and he looked determined not to let it happen again by David’s hand.

  David might have been overthinking it as he was caught between two minds when Cohl lunged forward and swung his sword downward at David’s head. In that split second, David couldn’t decide if he should block the strike or back away and out of Cohl’s range. The result was a clumsy attempt to shield himself and Cohl knocked the sword out of his hand onto the ground. Before David could bend down to retrieve it, he found himself staring down the end of Cohl’s practice weapon.

  That was how he had wound up becoming a lowly guard, one of many, to patrol and stand watch at the city’s gates and walls. Karine, on the other hand, had been made Cohl’s deputy in addition to helping supervise the training regimen of new recruits. David lamented his luck. They had arrived in Thelmont together on equal footing, and yet now the elf literally outranked him.

  He was daydreaming about scoring the winning goal for England at the World Cup finals when someone nudged him. “That’s us! Let’s go!” It was a fellow recruit he had met earlier while getting fitted for his uniform. His name was Ken.

  “What?” David mumbled as Ken dragged him by the arm towards the line of people waiting to enter the city. He had heard the commotion just moments earlier, but paid no heed to it. In the two days he had been on guard duty, he had seen plenty of fights and arguments break out as angry travelers tried to gain entry to Thelmont. He and Ken had been summoned over by one of the higher-ranking guards to a young woman dressed all over in red.

  She was tall for a woman, taller than David, and he furrowed his eyebrows as she protested vociferously while claiming she meant no harm to anyone or the city. It wasn’t her words that confused him, rather her accent and the manner in which she articulated them. It sounded familiar. Not quite like someone back home in London, but close.

  “You two! Take her to the prison! Hurry!” the man barked at them and David went to the woman’s left and took her arm, while Ken stepped to her other side, and they escorted her to the now slowly opening gates. He struggled to hold on to her arm as she squirmed and struggled against their grips, but with her hands tied securely behind her, there wasn’t much she could do except walk in the direction they guided her in.

  The woman continued to beg David and Ken to let her go as they escorted her into the city, but they kept walking through the busy streets. She even called out to bystanders who stood and watched her being dragged along by the two guards, begging them to intervene and free her. However, the uniform David wore was held in high esteem and respect, and nobody even showed a smidge of sympathy towards the woman. They assumed she was guilty of something.

  “Please! Let me go! I’m not who you think I am. I was forced into the Dark Flame to save my sister and nephew,” the woman said to David. “My name is Caitlin Owen, I’m from Sydney. I’m a bartender and I have two sisters at home.”

  David stopped in his tracks and stared at her. She looked back, not saying a word, but there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  “Uh… Ken, do you know where we’re going?” he asked his fellow recruit.

  “No, I thought you were leading the way? I’m new to the city too. I don’t know where the prison is,” Ken responded.

  “You don’t have to bring me to the prison! Just let me go, I have money. There’s a coin pouch tied to my waist. You can have it!” the woman said. There was indeed a pouch tied to her right side and Ken poked at it with a finger. It jingled. He took it into his hands and loosened the string holding it together slightly, peering into the pouch as a gold piece reflected the glimmer of the sun onto his face.

  “She’s not kidding. We could be rich,” Ken said, but David wasn’t interested. He was more concerned about the identity and origin of the woman they had in custody.

  “What country is that in?” he asked.

  “What?” Caitlin and Ken said at the same time.

  “Sydney. What country is that in?” David asked again, this time with more urgenc
y.

  “What are you going on about? Look, there’s gold!” Ken said, showing David the pouch he had taken from Caitlin. There was genuine glee in his expression and it was possibly the most amount of money the man had ever held in his hands or seen.

  “Australia,” Caitlin replied. It had taken a while for her to put two and two together, but she now understood why this random guard had asked the question. For the past few weeks, while she had no difficulty speaking the language that everyone conversed in, she felt like she was on a different planet from them. She had forgotten what normal, everyday people talked about or sounded like, that she had missed this guard’s distinctly British accent.

  “You’re from Australia?” David asked.

  “Yes. And you’re from… the UK?”

  He nodded and let go of her arm.

  Ken also released Caitlin and was now holding up one of the gold coins from the pouch as he examined it in the sunlight.

  David hesitated for a moment as he considered his options. He could just let Caitlin go and Ken would be none the wiser, although the gold currently in his possession might come in handy. Even the bandits they encountered at the Shining Bridge hadn’t had that much gold in their ill-gotten fortunes.

  “I’m going to regret this,” he mumbled, and snatched the pouch out of Ken’s hand, before delivering an uppercut into the unsuspecting guard’s jaw. Ken didn’t stand a chance and fell backwards as blood and teeth spouted from his mouth. The gold coin he had been admiring dropped on the ground and bounced around as David grabbed Caitlin by the arm and shepherded her down the street. They ran without looking back.

  Chapter 78

  “What was he thinking?” Sarah exclaimed after Karine finished telling her what happened. “Why would he knock out a guard and run away with this Dark Flame person? It doesn’t make sense!”

  The elf shrugged. She had come to check the inn for David after hearing about what happened yesterday. When she noticed that she hadn’t seen him in a while, Karine had gone to inquire about his status from the other recruits. While her other companions returned to the inn after the meeting with the council, she and David were ordered to stay in the barracks with the other guards. David had been stuck into a miserable bunk with about a dozen other guards, while Karine was assigned her own room, given her higher status within the ranks and the fact that there were few females who had volunteered to fight.

  According to the guards she had spoken with, instead of escorting a woman to the prison as he was ordered to, David had absconded with her when she bribed him with gold. Karine suspected it wasn’t the entire story, but she couldn’t find anyone who knew more and while some guards had been dispatched to find David and the prisoner, she understood that manpower was limited and the streets of Thelmont were easy to disappear into. If what they claimed about the gold was true, the duo would have had no difficulty finding a change of clothes and a place to lay low.

  Sarah was the only person around when Karine went to the inn. Elin had dispatched the others to procure supplies needed for the journey to Gormore while she had revisited the library for more consultation with the ancient tomes to see if there was any further knowledge to be gained.

  She let Sarah vent her frustration for a while, as the Englishwoman listed off David’s past transgressions. This wasn’t the first time he had acted impulsively or let his emotions get the better of him. She kept returning to the incident that had gotten him kicked out of the youth soccer academy, when he lost his cool at his own teammate after a disappointing defeat.

  “Sarah, the guards might have it all wrong. We won’t know the truth until we find him.” Karine was trying to calm Sarah down as the elf saw her spiraling out of control.

  “Okay. Let’s go find him,” Sarah said. She had been pacing back and forth the bedroom that they all shared in the inn and Karine had to block her path as she made for the door.

  “You need to stay here in case he comes back. I’ll go look for him. Don’t worry, he can’t leave the city,” the elf said.

  “But I—”

  “You need to stay here,” Karine reaffirmed.

  Sarah turned away and walked over to the window. “Fine,” she grumbled.

  Chapter 79

  With the help of his guide, Themba had found a way around the blocked valley that would allow his donkey-drawn cart to pass and continue onward to Thelmont. The problem was his guide, the new passenger currently sitting in the back of the cart as they waited to get into the city. Somehow, Alister managed to survive the blaze that had decimated the community living in the Kallen Valley by wrapping himself in a pelt that was fireproof. According to him, he had gotten the rare pelt from a horned animal called a raforzl for a bargain. The way Alister described the creature, it sounded like a rhinoceros to Themba, and apparently, they were almost extinct in this land as well. It was an irony lost on the South African in his misery. Again, Themba’s bad luck had caught up with him. Just as he was beginning to think he had put it behind him, he crossed paths with someone who had recently been in pursuit of him.

  Alister had recognized him from the episode at the giant tree and there was nothing Themba could do to get away in time before a small blade landed between his thighs on the cart. All he heard was a sharp clink as the blade struck wood and he looked down to see how close he was to being hurt. When he looked back up at Alister in his brightly colored clothes, the man had brandished another blade, which he had a seemingly endless supply of, and waved it at Themba. Since then, they had traveled together with Alister directing the way through the hills until they eventually made it back to the main road.

  Alister had grilled Themba for information about Sarah and the others, demanding to know their whereabouts. Not wanting to incur Alister’s wrath, Themba lied. He said that he had been separated from the group, which wasn’t false, but then went on to complain about how they had abandoned him in Thermine, leaving him to fend for himself while they journeyed on to their destination. For good measure, Themba also told Alister about how he had survived in the streets until a kind act by a generous young lady had gifted him the resources to leave. He tried his best to describe the woman when Alister asked about her, but he had only caught a momentary glimpse of her before she disappeared.

  Fortunately, Alister still found use for Themba as his personal chauffeur and he financed the rest of their trip, paying for food and lodging along the way. There had never been any explicit threat made or consequence spelled out by Alister, nor did he do anything to ensure that Themba wouldn’t run away at night while he was sleeping, but Themba stayed nonetheless. Themba didn’t have the will to venture out on his own anymore. If anything, the chance encounter with Alister proved that this world was dangerous and at least he was with someone who shared a common destination and not looking to rob or kill him.

  Themba saw that most people were being turned away from entering the city, but Alister appeared unperturbed as he laid back in the cart, resting on some clothes while eating an apple. When it came to their turn, the guards ordered Themba and Alister to get off the rudimentary vehicle, and the latter made a big flourish of it with an unnecessary leap off the cart, followed by a front flip, landing on his tiptoes inches in front of a guard who stepped back and drew his weapon in surprise.

  “No! We don’t mean any harm!” Themba raised his arms in surrender. More guards promptly surrounded them, forming a small circle around the two unlikely travel companions.

  However, Alister did exactly what Themba expected him to. He swept the fireproof pelt aside, revealing the bright colors underneath and bowed deeply, until his head was around his knees, before coming back up. He stood taller than the guards and they had no idea of the rumbustious man’s proclivity to using throwing blades, which Themba was certain wouldn’t miss at this range.

  “My name is Alister the Wonderful, at your service!” he announced like the ringleader of a circus. “I and my manservant wish to enter the city.”

  Themba grimaced at th
e mention of the title Alister had bestowed upon him, but it wasn’t the right time to quibble about political correctness and social roles. With the proclamation, their fates now were closely aligned.

  One of the guards stepped up with his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Are you citizens of Thelmont?” he addressed Alister.

  “No.”

  “Then, what business do you have in the city that is vital to the crown?”

  “I’m looking for my daughter.”

  “Is she a citizen of Thelmont?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll have to deny you entry. Please leave or we will make you,” The guard wrapped his fingers around the handle of his sword in an attempt to intimidate Alister.

  “You didn’t ask me if I was willing to fight.”

  “What?” The statement had caught the guard by surprise.

  “You asked the people in front of us if they were willing to fight. I was listening. You didn’t ask me.” Alister folded his arms and pouted. Themba couldn’t tell if he was genuinely offended or if he was just acting.

  The guard looked around at his colleagues and they all shrugged at him, not knowing what to do or make of the strange character.

  “Uh… will you fight for us?” the guard asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh,” the guard uttered, not sure how to proceed.

  Fortunately for him, Alister had his own plans. He reached into his clothes and dug around until the sound of metal jiggling could be heard. He then counted the number of guards around them, as his concealed hand moved around a little more, before he withdrew it from a hidden pocket. It was like a magic trick. Holding the hand close to his face as he opened it, Alister counted the contents of his palm quietly. From behind him, Themba could see a handful of gold coins, just like the one the young woman had given him back in Thermine.