“It seems like it would be smarter to stick to the original plan,” said Sarah. “We can ride hard and outdistance Terrence, and we don’t have to take this shortcut—whatever it is.”
“There is no guarantee that you can outdistance Terrence,” said Greystone. “Even if you could ride fast enough, two weeks of such travel would surely kill your horses. Then you would truly be lost. You must take the shorter road.”
“Fine,” said Sarah. “Where is it?”
“Before today’s end, you will reach a river that crosses the land from east to west,” said Greystone. “I had planned for you to turn left and follow its course for three days before turning south once more. But now you will cross the river and ride south as quickly as you can. It will remove days from your trip, bringing you to the mountains within a week.”
“What can we expect to find there, Watcher?” asked Barius, who was connected to the conversation with a hand on Raven’s shoulder.
Greystone harrumphed. “I cannot tell you for sure. Legends do not speak well of the place. There are monsters aplenty, and creatures that do not love the free folk of Midrealm. But there are no sorcerers, and I have never heard of the taint of Chaos upon the place. You should be reasonably safe—as safe, at least, as you have been on your journey so far.”
“Oh, which is plenty safe,” I said.
“And what about after? When we reach the mountains?” said Calvin. “What happens then?”
“The mountains are known as the Giant’s Belt,” said Greystone. “They stretch from the Black Sea in the east to the Maid’s Ocean in the west, forming a border between the known world and the dark lands to the south. My hope is that you reach the Belt somewhere near Wyrmspire, but if not you shall have to search the range to find it.”
“Perfect,” I said. “So we just need to travel the length of the mountain range until we find the right mountain. Piece of cake. I’m sure every mountain looks completely different from the others.”
Greystone fixed me with a glare. “You need not fear, Lord Blade. You will recognize the right mountain when its inhabitants try to eat you.”
My stomach flip-flopped, but I kept my face passive. I held up a hand and ignited a small ball of flame, letting it hover a few inches above my palm. “Let’em try.”
“Your bravado is adorable.”
“Thank you for your advice, Watcher,” said Cara. “We had better get moving.”
“Yes, you better had,” said Greystone. “Lady Tess, keep the stone of scrying upon you at all times. I do not know when I shall reach out to you again, but you must be ready when I do.”
“Got it,” said Tess in a small voice. I gave her a reassuring smile, which she returned.
“Fly like the wind, my Realm Keepers,” said Greystone. “If you can reach the mountain, you will be safe. Chaos will not dare to attack the Wyrmspire and risk the wrath of the dragons.”
“We will, Greystone,” said Sarah. “Wish us luck.”
He huffed, but his eyes were kind. “I always have.”
His ghostly image blinked out of existence. Calvin let go of my right hand, but Tess still held tight to my left. I covered her fingers with my own, trying to reassure her with a smile.
“What if they catch us on the road?” she whispered, as the rest of the group dissolved into scattered activities of preparation.
“They won’t,” I said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because there are no roads,” I said with a smirk. “If anything, they’ll catch us on a plain or in the woods.”
She giggled. Finally she drew her hand away from mine, leaving my palm suddenly cool in the early morning air. Nora helped her up, and the two of them went to fix their breakfast.
“Let us eat, my Lord,” said Samuel. “We have a hard day of riding ahead.”
“A few of them, apparently,” I said. I held up a hand, and Samuel grasped it to pull me easily to my feet. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll actually make it?”
“Do not tell me that my Lord is worried,” said Samuel. He bore no sign of a smile, but his voice sounded amused. “You were so confident with Lady Tess just now.”
“She needs someone to tell her everything’s going to be okay,” I said. “But so do I. You’re my rock, Sammy Boy. You know that.”
“And who is my rock, my Lord?” said Samuel.
I waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t get one. Come on, let’s eat.”
Someone had brewed tea, sticking a kettle in the fire until it was hissing from the opening. I couldn’t imagine we’d have many opportunities for a hot drink in the next week, so I poured myself a cup. Then I grabbed some bread from my saddlebag and dropped it in the cup. The tea began to soak into the stale bread immediately, softening it.
“It’s so gross how you do that,” said Calvin. “I mean, wet bread? How can you choke that down?”
“It’s all going to the same place anyway, right?” I said. “Besides, stale bread is just as gross as wet bread.”
“It’s an old soldier’s trick, actually,” said Samuel. “Makes it easier for your body to digest. Losing your focus during a battle because of stomach trouble can be the difference between life and death.”
Calvin sniffed. “Well, if I was going to battle to the death, I’d rather not do it right after choking down a cup full of bread-like sludge. But maybe that’s just me.”
I forced the rest of it down. Just as I took the last bite, Cara called out, “We ride in fifteen minutes. Ready yourselves and your mounts.”
“Gonna take a leak before we go,” I said.
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” said Samuel.
We strode off from the camp a little ways. We were on a narrow ridge rising up the side of a low mountain, giving us a beautiful view of the landscape stretching away endlessly before us. It was all low green plains, criss-crossed here and there by streams and small rivers, covered by the brilliant blue blanket of sky.
Once we finished, Samuel turned to head back to the horses. But I held still, looking out at everything. He stopped and waited as my eyes followed the curve of the land, its rise and fall. The horizon seemed so close, and yet I knew we’d probably barely reach it before the sun had set. At moments like these, I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the world. Earth—or, I guess, Midrealm—was just such a massive place.
“See anything you like, my Lord?” said Samuel beside me. It was hard to miss the sarcasm in his voice.
“Just thinking about how big everything is. Look at how far we can see. And yet we’re just looking at a tiny, tiny portion of the planet. There’s no way you could see all of it in a lifetime, not really. And look at the sky. You know how far it goes out? Forever. As big as our planet is, we’re just a tiny speck in the expanse of space.”
“For a tiny speck, it seems mighty valuable,” said Samuel. “Else kings and warlords would not have fought each other for millennia to control it.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t mind owning a good-sized slice of it myself,” I said. “You know that’s always been something I’ve wanted? Just a few dozen acres out in the middle of nowhere with a solid, warm wood cabin in the middle of it. Nobody around within a day’s journey. Some place I can just look around and appreciate things, not have to worry about anything.”
Samuel blinked a couple of times. “You do not strike me as the hermit type, my Lord. If you will forgive my saying so.”
I felt embarrassed and turned away so he wouldn’t see my jaw clench. I couldn’t remember ever having told someone that before. It was one of those things, like the story of my car, that I didn’t usually talk about.
“Yeah, well, so what?” I said, trying to cover my moment of hesitation. “Didn’t you know? Under this cold, hard, incredibly good-looking exterior, I’m just a philosopher waiting to be unleashed.”
Samuel was quiet for an awkward moment. Then, “I think that might be truer than my Lord often likes to admit. I did not mean to make light
of your dream of land and a cabin. It is a worthy goal.”
I snorted. “Worthy? A worthy goal would be more like saving the world. Which I’m also working on.”
“My Lord, why do you feel that you want to get away from the world?”
The question surprised me. Off guard for a moment, I opened my mouth to silence before closing it again. Finally, I could only shrug. “I don’t know. Why? Doesn’t everyone?”
“Of course we all wish to get away sometimes,” said Samuel. “But it is the reason why that defines us. What is yours?”
I felt my shoulders grow tense. “I don’t know. Never thought about it. Should I start psychoanalyzing myself on my downtime? Which is never?”
Samuel’s eyes grew confused.
I sighed. “Psychoanalyze. Think about yourself and try to figure out why you think the way you think.”
His eyebrows raised. “That sounds like a pointless and self-serving waste of time.”
“You ain’t kidding. And I’m not going to start now. Why? What’s your reason?” Maybe if he told me his, he’d forget that he asked me mine.
“I have already gotten away,” said Samuel. “I do not need to run any more.”
That piqued my interest, despite myself. “What did you get away from?”
“My father,” he said simply. “I got away from my father. We had a…difficult relationship.”
I could understand that. “Drinking?”
“Professionally,” he said with a wry smile. “When he was home at all. You might say that he was the one who taught me to fight.”
I chuckled. It was a dry, humorless sound. “Does Greystone know about your family history?”
Samuel shrugged. “I have never told him, if that is what you mean. But there is much that the Watcher knows, and I am not privy to all of it. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I lied. Greystone had been the one who assigned us our Runegard bodyguards. The more I learned about each of them, the more sense his decisions made to me. The old man was crafty, I had to give him that.
Why do you not tell him of your own family?
I gave a quiet sigh. I didn’t want to answer Meridia, and I definitely didn’t want to do it with Samuel standing right there where he could hear me.
I can hear your thoughts, you know, she said haughtily. You do not have to speak words out loud. It’s so inefficient.
If you can read my thoughts, you should know I don’t want to talk about it, I said. Now shush.
I expected her to give me flak for that, but she was mercifully silent.
We headed back to the group. Most of them were mounted and ready to go, so we hurried to sling our saddlebags across our horses’ backs.
“We will travel hard from here on,” said Cara. “But as the Watcher said, we cannot drive the horses to exhaustion. If we lose them, our journey will come to an end much more swiftly than we wish.”
I glanced down at my horse. It was one of the ones we’d taken from the ruins of Frith. She wasn’t as young or strong as the horse I’d taken from Morrowdust, but she was healthy. I just hoped she could keep up with all of the well-trained mounts we’d started our journey with.
“Keep a careful eye in all directions, especially up,” said Cara. “We will travel from cover to cover so that we can hide if we spot the flight of crows.”
“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” I said. “Are we gonna sit here and yap about it all day, or are we gonna ride?”
Cara gave me a cool look. “Very well, if my Lord wishes.”
She turned and spurred her horse, leading us down the other side of the ridge and into the flat land below. We all hurried to catch up.
Trees and grass were all we saw for the next many hours. Cara led us unerringly south, keeping the sun to our right as it rose in the sky. It was disorienting if you had any sort of nature sense, which I did—a skill picked up from a few camping trips with my grandparents back in the day. Everything was backward in Midrealm. The sun rose in the west and set in the east. Subconsciously, it made me feel like we were traveling north instead of south.
It wasn’t long before the horses were breathing more heavily, a fine lather building up on their flanks as they ran. After a bit, Cara slowed us to a trot, letting them have a half hour’s rest before upping it to a canter once more. We went like that, in fits and spurts, until the sun began its low descent toward the horizon on our left.
As we rode, Samuel and the other Runegard kept glancing up at the sky and toward the horizon behind us, keeping an eye out for black shapes in the air. I tried to do the same, but as the day wore on I found it harder to focus. The monotony of our ride, plus the conversation with Samuel, drew my thoughts away from the air above.
What were the odds, honestly, that we’d end up with the Runegard we did? Cara was a smart, young girl in charge, just like Sarah. Darren would have been a nerd on True Earth, just like Calvin—he was only a knight and a warrior because Midrealm didn’t have much of a geek culture. Nora had an inner strength, but mostly she was a soft, sweet girl inside, just like Tess. And now I knew that Samuel, besides sharing my love of sarcasm and a certain cynical view of the world, had a background that was remarkably similar to mine.
What were those odds? Calvin could probably figure them out to the tenth decimal, but I knew just enough to know that they were pretty close to zero.
Barius and Melaine were another matter, of course. They didn’t fit with the half-baked theory that was just now forming in my mind. If anything, Barius was more like Miles—conservative and a bit reluctant to do anything crazy—while Melaine shared Raven’s nonchalance and attitude. But those similarities weren’t as striking as the rest of us, and besides, Greystone assigned them to the opposite Realm Keepers.
What did it all mean? Did it all mean anything? Was this part of our destiny, the inevitable fate that everyone in Midrealm was always talking about?
I shook my head. I was reading way too much into this. There was no destiny, not really. Sure, my mind might have changed about magic and monsters since coming to Midrealm, but I wasn’t ready to believe in some all-powerful force controlling my life. That led to too many other things, things like a great bearded man in the sky and a place you go to after you die. I’d already taken a look at all of that in my own mind, and I’d decided it was something optimists and fools believed so their own lives didn’t look so bleak. Nobody with an ounce of realism in their soul could subscribe to crud like that.
Besides, if fate was real, then Aurora’s prophecy was real. And if Aurora’s prophecy was real, at least one of us was going to die. I couldn’t accept that. I wouldn’t.
Especially since I had a persistent feeling in the back of my mind, no matter how I tried to tell myself that it was just nerves. It wouldn’t leave me alone. And it said that I was going to be the one who had to die so Chaos could be defeated.
NAUGHTY CHILDREN
BLADE
WE STOPPED FOR A QUICK midday meal after several hours’ hard ride. Cara gave us a half hour to rest, stretch our legs and grab something to eat before we moved on again.
I slipped out of the saddle gratefully. There was a tiny brook nearby, and I led my horse over to it to drink. She lapped at the water hungrily, her tongue snaking in and out to scoop it up.
“Draw her back, my Lord,” said Samuel, appearing at my elbow. “Do not let her drink too deeply, or she will hurt herself.”
I tugged on the reins, drawing her head out of the water. “I understand how she feels,” I said. “I thought we were traveling fast before.”
“We were,” said Samuel. “But now we are traveling dangerously fast.”
I smirked and followed him to a tree where we tied our horses to a low branch. After scanning the sky one more time for crows, Samuel took a seat on a flat rock, and I plopped down beside him.
“So you mentioned your dad before,” I said. “What about your mom?”
He didn’t look up from the dried meat in his hand. “Dead. Two y
ears ago.”
My bread went dry in my mouth. “Dude, I’m sorry.”
“Do not concern yourself,” he said. “I have made peace with it. And despite what you might think, she did not live as bad a life as you might think.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Even with your dad…how he was?”
“He was a drunkard, and he was less than kind to me,” said Samuel. “But he never struck my mother as he did me. He never once laid a hand on her. He said often that he had been raised never to strike a woman, but a man such as myself was fair game.”
His mouth twisted, the word man coming out with so much hate and venom that it made me grow suddenly tense. Like the way you feel when someone else’s parents are arguing in front of you, and you have no idea what to do about it.
Will you honestly still keep your words to yourself? said Meridia in my mind. What do you have to fear if you reveal them?
I ignored her. “Wow. Well, that sounds pretty rough.”
Samuel shrugged again. “To be honest, it was far less arduous than my Runegard training. But the difference in how we view our suffering often lies in whether or not we chose it.”
I blinked. “I don’t get it.”
He took another bite of meat. “Imagine that you want to be a blacksmith.”
“That would take quite a bit of imagining.”
“Humor me. You have always desired to craft metal with your hands. It calls to you. But your parents wish you to be a scribe. Perhaps they want you to work in a church, laboring away day after day copying texts by hand in the candlelight. They see this path as safe. Quiet. Docile. It is a peaceful existence. No parent can ask for more for their child.”
“It also sounds like its own kind of hell,” I said.
He nodded. “Exactly. You wish to be hammering in the forge, not scribbling in the near-darkness. But your parents are your parents, and you try to humor them. Soon you complain that your hand is cramped. Your eyes begin to fail in the dim light. Your back hurts from being hunched over a writing desk all day. In short, you are miserable.”
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 44
