‘What are you talking about? You didn’t do this.’
The temple trembles, casing us to stumble.
‘She won’t know things have changed,’ says Dad, as if the place wasn’t falling apart. ‘She won’t understand. She’ll hate me for setting you on a new path.’
‘Who?’ I ask.
‘Your mother.’
‘My… but she’s gone. She left.’
He nods slowly. ‘But you have to understand, though I saw the vision, it was your mother who set your path, Leonie, it was her who enforced my vision.’
‘What? She’s powerless. She knows nothing about this.’
‘She was never powerless. She’s like you and me: Chosen.’
Words try to form in my mouth, but I don’t say a thing.
‘We spent so long planning and scheming and doing the impossible,’ he continues, ‘all for the sake of your future, for what you would become. Though she left, your future remained the same. Always. You would meet her again one day and continue your purpose.’
‘What purpose? Didn’t you just want me to be normal?’ I say.
‘Normal? No, no never that.’
‘But you said… I mean, the things you did—’
‘A pretence,’ he says. ‘Just pretence.’
‘You lied to me?’
‘No person should know of their future. If I’d told you of what you were to become, it would never have happened.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Now that’s what must happen.’ He leans forward, staring into my eyes. ‘The day I showed you your future, when you wanted proof of my magic, it all changed. All of it. The entire future. You were in the Imperium, remember? You were its destruction… and I was horrified. This was not part of our plan, for you to be the ending. I couldn’t understand it. Why would Fate alter your destiny? I thought it was a mistake, a fragment of a vision that could have been. I thought that, until now. Before this destruction began, I was shown a future that was blinded from me, and I saw the maiden, I saw what it would do to this place, and I saw two outcomes. The first, you perish this night. The second, you live and by living you create many more paths. But none of them was the one your mother and I planned. None of them. They were worse.’
‘You knew,’ I say. ‘You knew this would happen?’
‘And you did nothing?’ Korren says. ‘Even though you were imprisoned, you still could have warned everyone. You could have made sure my keeper was safe. You could have prevented all of this.’
For once, Dad doesn’t reprimand him. His expression remains horrified, horrified over what he has done. ‘To be chided by a kytaen? It’s no less than I deserve.’
‘Then why?’ I say.
‘Because how could I stop it? Because from this catastro-phe spans an even darker path, one that cannot be overcome. Leonie, you are at its end. You will either be the darkness, or die in it. In order for you to divert from this fate, you have to run from this place. You must defy destiny. You must be a normal girl, one who doesn’t dabble in the fate of the Imperium. You must have a normal life. I… I never planned for you to have a life like that. The future your mother and I paved for you was tainted by death and power, by glory and eternity, but I would no longer wish for you to be the girl with no happiness, no longer would I want that for you. Live how you wish, but live any life other than what your mother and I wanted. Anything but that, because it will leave the world in chaos, worse than anything I could’ve imagined.
‘She won’t want this, though, your mother. She won’t ever know or believe the vision I showed you, and she won’t stop until the dream we planned comes to pass. She is unstoppable.’
He closes his eyes as if he sees the woman from so long ago before him. ‘Please understand: I never meant to cause you harm. Your mother and I saw greatness in you and we were going to use that to create a better world. Now I see how wrong we were. She won’t forgive me, she won’t understand why I’m sending you on a different path, but don’t allow her to dissuade you, don’t, for she will try all her tricks and schemes against you! Be a normal girl, Leonie, and live a normal life!’
‘Why are you acting as if you’re not coming with us?’ I ask.
‘I won’t make it out of this alive, Leonie, if at all.’
I remember what the angel said, and I glare at him. ‘Did you see that in one of your preordained visions? Like hell I’ll believe you’ll die today! What’s the point of living if you’re not there beside me? Get up! I’ve had enough of this destiny bullshit, OK? If I destroy the world one day, fine, whatever, but right now, in the present, I just want to get out of this hell!’
I stand and walk away.
‘You have to be brave, Leonie,’ I hear him say.
My fists clench. ‘I’d rather be a coward; at least I know I’ll live longer that way.’ I continue through the crypt and make my way to its entrance.
We’re getting out of here. All three of us. We will survive, and if that’s not in destiny’s plan, then we will make our own destiny. We will pave our own path, and we will survive.
KORREN
CATALYST
‘We’re never going to make it through the portal at the speed you two are going,’ my keeper complains.
Orin and I walk behind her. All of us struggle to walk, but, despite her injured arm, she pushes forward without hesitation, the mist and the maiden and even the rebels no threat to her determined mind. How quick she is to gain courage.
The mist feels colder, deeper than before. The rebels said they were losing control of the maiden, that it was killing their own, so I can only assume it is now looking for my keeper, its greatest source for food, and once it has found her there’s nothing that can be done. At the thought of that, I quicken my pace, though still not enough to walk by her side.
Time passes slowly as we walk towards the portal. I have to shout directions to my keeper so she knows where to go. She’s too stubborn to slow down and let me lead.
‘Left, round this bend,’ I call to her.
She does as I say.
‘We’re almost there,’ I tell her.
‘You both OK?’ she asks, craning her neck to look back at us, still walking.
‘I’m fine,’ says Orin, struggling to breathe.
‘Yeah, you’re the picture of health right now, Dad. What about you, Korren?’
‘Just keep walking,’ I tell her.
She turns her gaze forward. ‘There! It’s there! I see the orange light. It’s the portal!’ she yells. ‘Come on!’ She begins to jog ahead. ‘Come on!’
‘She’s determined not to believe what I told her,’ Orin says as we hobble forward. ‘I hope you’ll be able to persuade her.’
‘All this future business sounds like drivel to me,’ I say.
‘I wish it were. I saw her, before she was born, ruling over Duwyn, and she was divine. I wanted to see her above us all. It was fate, after all, and I’m fate’s tool. But the Imperium still found her, as expected. When her mother left I knew they’d find her, because her mother was the one, the only one, who could’ve found a way to protect Leonie from them. And then the vision that I saw when Leonie’s magic awoke, what Leonie would become… so distorted from my original vision…’ He shakes his head. ‘That destiny was set, but tonight’s events have been merciful.’
‘Merciful?’
‘They’ve allowed Leonie many more paths than the one I showed her. All I know now is that she must leave this place and find and follow the pathway. She must not go to the Imperium, but most of all, you must never, never become the catalyst, kytaen.’
‘Catalyst?’
He nods. ‘In the following years, Leonie will be tested like she has never been tested before. There’s a chance something terrible will befall her—because of you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’ll awaken something in her, kytaen, something that will—’ He stops. Pauses. Eyebrows crease together. ‘No.’ His eyes widen, as if he can see something I can’t. ‘It’s time?�
� He turns around, gasps, and then throws himself in front of me. A blade penetrates Orin’s chest and through his back, a blade that was meant for me, and blood gushes out. It takes me a moment to comprehend it. A moment that costs me.
First, Orin crumples onto the snow.
Then, a rebel who jumps out from the mist pushes my keeper to the ground, shoving his foot into her neck.
And finally, my mind catches up with the situation. I realise it is Hau-Rai who is attacking my keeper, Hau-Rai, who I thought had died. I have to act. Now. Now!
But too late. His blade stabs through my keeper’s already injured arm, and he laughs like a maniac as she screams. Hot, searing pain, like a firework igniting—I feel it as if it were my own pain, for a brief moment only, but long enough to render me still for that single second.
Hau-Rai says, ‘I’ve come to claim your wrath, little puppet. Show me your fire!’
LEONIE
SOMEWHERE VERY NOWHERE
All I can see is blinding white. My arm is on fire, as if every nerve has been ripped from it slowly and my veins have become like lava. I push it into the snow, trying to lessen the pain, and it works, enabling my vision to focus on the scene in front of me: Korren throwing down a rebel and then leaping at Hau-Rai who is on top of me, and crushing his torso with his dagger-like teeth. Hau-Rai screams out, and Korren flings him away as if he were a toy. Then, Korren is at my side, and I’m surprised to feel his concern for me over the sheer pain I’m feeling, his worry for me strong enough to supersede this burning agony.
‘Little lion,’ he says, looking me over as I breathe rapidly and trying not to cry out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have been closer to you, I—’
‘Y-you ca-can’t escape,’ I hear Hau-Rai say in a coarse voice. ‘They’re coming.’
And as he says it, I discern more figures approaching us in a run from within the mist. Two come first, one just a boy, his face covered in painted stripes. He looks afraid but determined.
‘D-do it now, Demetri!’ Hau-Rai shouts.
Demetri extends his arm, his palm facing the portal.
‘Hurry, quick!’ Korren says to me. He clips my coat with his teeth and pulls me up. ‘Through it, now!’
‘Now, Demetri!’ I hear Hau-Rai say.
‘I’m trying to locate the outpost!’ he shouts back.
‘Dad,’ I manage to say through the pain, and I find him on the snow, staring at me… no, not at me, at Korren, solemn and unyielding.
‘Kytaen,’ he says, his voice bristly. ‘Korren. D-don’t take her to the Im-Imperium. She won’t… won’t be safe there.’
‘I can’t find it!’ Demetri shouts. ‘I need more time!’
Korren grabs me with his talon, pulling me into him. I struggle against his grip. I can feel the heat of his body against my back.
‘Get off me!’ I scream, with every ounce of energy I have left. ‘We are not leaving him here! You hear me? I command you to let me go! Save him, Korren! Save him!’
As he pulls me towards the portal, I look at Dad one last time. A backdrop of silver. Rebels coming towards him, trying to get to me. Blood and muck covering his face. His eyes full of pride and hope and worry.
‘I love you,’ he mouths.
I scream for him as we enter the portal, and the world is covered in darkness.
I feel as if my body is being twisted and wrung. Then the darkness shifts and—
The sun is dazzlingly bright, stinging my eyes, and the air absurdly hot. I have to blink a few times before my eyes can adjust, and I look outwards to find I’m standing on a rocky peak overlooking a vast, dried land, mountains rising from its cracked floor, their peaks like harpoon tips. No snow. No mist. No darkness. No maiden. The only sound is that of the gentle, almost non-existent breeze winding its way around the rocks of the mountain. The wind carries the scent of earth and dust and magic.
‘Where are we?’ I ask.
‘Somewhere very nowhere,’ says Korren.
KORREN
CURSES AND DEMONS AND NIGHT
‘This isn’t right,’ I say. ‘This isn’t where the portal was supposed to take us.’
Instead of being in the dome that is The Core, my keeper and I stand on the peak of a rocky mountain, a blazing sun reigning the skies above us. The ground is dusted with sand, hot beneath my feet. The air is baking and dry, making breathing more of a chore than a subconscious act. If we had come to the Silver Forest I might have been able to navigate us to the Imperium, but this is not the Silver Forest, and we are some place far from the Imperium’s protection.
‘That boy, Demetri, he must have been trying to locate the rebels’ base,’ I say. ‘He was the one who changed the trajectory of the portal. He was the one who helped bring the maiden through.’ But was this his intended destination? Or didn’t he locate it time before my keeper and I went through it?
I look up to the sky. There isn’t a single cloud, and the sun is unyielding, heating the ground we stand on. This place is empty of life, and I can’t believe that the rebels would live here, that anyone would live here, so Demetri must have failed in getting us to wherever his comrades are.
‘This isn’t good,’ I say. ‘It’ll be dark soon. We can’t be out at dark. Are you listening?’
I turn to my keeper who is kneeling on the floor, eyes wide as she stares at the ground. She is shaking.
‘You’re no good to me like this,’ I mutter. It’s not as if I can leave her, though. Our soul-binding may not be as painful now, but any major separation is unthinkable for at least a day or so.
‘I…’ she begins.
‘What is it?’
She vomits. A lot. When she’s done, she stands up, legs wobbling, eyes distant and unobservant, and presses her back against the wall of the mountain and slides down it, small rocks clattering to the ground.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I say. ‘We can’t be out here at night! We need to find shelter.’
But she’s not listening. Her eyes are rimmed red and she stares ahead into an unfamiliar place, an unknown path. I sympathise with her, and I even feel fragments of her despair from the link between us. Even here, far from the maiden’s grasp, my mind clings to such dread. Those remaining souls trapped in a cage of nightmares will perish, if not by the maiden, certainly by their own hands. To acknowledge there is nothing I can do to help them leaves an empty feeling in the pit of my chest.
Now, though, all that weight, all that hopelessness has been lifted. For me at least, but not for my keeper, it’s like breathing new air where senses are more profound, brighter, happier.
‘The Imperium will come soon,’ I tell her. ‘They’ll track us with the device they implanted in you. We can’t depend on them to come straight away, though. They’re probably in chaos trying to comprehend the attack on the Temples. But once the maiden has destroyed itself, they’ll come for you, regardless of what your father wanted.’
Still, she says nothing in reply.
‘We don’t have time for your breakdown,’ I say. ‘Either follow me or die here. With your arm how it is, you’re not going to last long without treatment.’
I turn my back on her, limping down the steep mountain path. Each step feels as if the blade that cut me is stabbing it again, every second, without fail. On the path ahead of us a cluster of small rocks trundle down the mountain wall onto our rugged path and over the precipice into the chasm below. Silence follows, and I look back to see my keeper following me without a word.
Our long descent journeys us around the mountain, and then I spot something far off in the distance.
‘Snow,’ I say.
On the horizon I see mountains dusted with snow, and ground blanketed by it. It’s as if the desert comes to an abrupt stop. That’s impossible, though. Unless…
‘This is cursed land,’ I say, turning to my keeper. But she’s in her own world. I look back to the snowy region. Someone or something, perhaps even Duwyn itself, has cursed the land we’re walking on. When a curse
is cast on a land, for whatever reason, most of it becomes dried up and dies. We’d never make it across the desert with what little time we have before dark settles and shadows slither from their holes, and even if we had more time it’d take more than a day to get there. Without a sanctuary, we’d be killing ourselves. So what then? Stay in this cursed land until we die?
It takes us a long, sweltering hour to reach the bottom of the mountain, climbing over rocks in our way, carefully manoeuvring ourselves down the steep edges of the mountain. I’m relieved that we’re now on flat land, but that relief is short-lived. Ahead of us lies only a basin of endlessness, of heat and aridness to be lost in. I look at my keeper: she has discarded her jacket without me noticing, and sweat is sticking to her shirt, the sun having burnt her skin. At some point she must have ripped the fabric from her underclothes and wrapped it around her arm, not that it’s helped much: it is blood-drenched, and the peeling skin is red raw with small boils covering it. She must be in a lot of pain, but her mind is probably shutting it out for now. She licks her parched lips over and over, and I notice she’s breathing faster than normal. She won’t last long in this heat, and I don’t think I will either.
I make a decision, and it’s one that might kill us.
Rather than go out into the desolate plain, I choose to walk around the mountain. There might be something in that direction that will help us survive, and if not, we didn’t stand a chance either way.
We keep on walking, stumbling and pushing forward, my leg burning and aching and tiring, but I have to keep going. I will not die like this, as another meaningless kytaen who will not be remembered.
Girl of Myth and Legend Page 29
