Dark Fate: The Gathering (The Dark Fate Chronicles Book 1)

by Matt Howerter

  Kinsey had almost made it to a stairway that looked clear of scavengers when he came across a spot where the river ran directly below the wall. There was a pool of dried blood here, the first he had seen on this path. The gelled puddle was nestled partially in the shadow of the battlement and he shuffled to a halt. He put one hand on a merlon and leaned out over the wall to look down. The rush of the Tanglevine boiled past about forty feet below. He could see no sign of a body. He turned from the river and looked down into the courtyard on the other side of the wall. Nothing.

  Kinsey ran a hand through his hair and knelt beside the puddle. He dipped two fingers in the blood, rubbing the liquid against his thumb. A little more than a day. The puddle was deep enough that the top layer had coagulated, but there remained a substantial amount of liquid, and it was slick. On impulse, he raised the fingers to his nose and breathed in.

  Eos preserve me.

  This was Erik’s blood. He knew it in a way he could not define. As he breathed in the scent of the blood, he could hear his father’s voice in echoes from a childhood long past. Natural impressions of rich earth and leaves layered with the woodsmoke of countless campfires they had shared. He didn’t smell Erik in this drop of blood. He felt Erik.

  Kinsey placed his hands on the battlements and noticed he was trembling. “You went into the river. Injured,” he spoke to his absent father. “Eos be merciful. Let me find you. Alive.”

  “I’m sorry. I can do nothing more.” Sacha leaned over Erik. The elf’s shirt was rolled up so she could examine the weeping holes in his back.

  Their fall into the river and the rough treatment through the rapids had not helped the injured man. The shafts of both bolts had been splintered and she suspected from the torn flesh around the broken quarrels that there was more damage inside.

  By the time they had made it to the shore, Erik was all but useless, and she had had to carry the elf from the water as dawn was breaking.

  To complicate her situation, whatever that bastard thief had done to her back at the Keep was still preventing her from using her power effectively. She could both sense and access the power now, but it was only a trickle; she could only manage to start a fire and slow Erik’s bleeding, despite having gathered the power to herself through most of the day.

  Back at the Keep, the barrier had felt like an empty space she could not cross, preventing her from creating a conduit to the Shamonrae. Now it still had elements of the same void, but it was fractured somehow. She had been able to draw on the power, but the effort had made her head swim. Between the exhaustion from the past few days and her flight from the Keep, creating the fire had almost made her pass out. Only through gritted teeth had she managed to extract the shattered bolts and stop most of the bleeding. Luckily, Erik had passed out, for she had nothing left to prevent him from feeling the pain as the metal tips tore his flesh. The very thought of trying something else now, without a rest, threatened her vision with black spots.

  Erik shivered as he helped to roll his torn and bloody shirt back down. “It’s okay,” he said. “I would be dead back there, if not for you.” More quivers shook his frame, and his teeth chattered.

  Sacha shook her head at his comment but did not respond to it. “We have to move you soon.” She gently covered him with fronds of vegetation she had collected when pulling tinder for the fire. “Are there any towns nearby?”

  His voice was faint. “Not sure. Don’t know how far downriver we are.”

  That was bad news. If she couldn’t get him to a physician, he might die in spite of her best efforts.

  “Thank you.” Erik looked up at her. “For saving my life.”

  Sacha got to her feet and looked down at him with a small smile. “Thank you for saving mine.”

  Erik coughed in an attempt to laugh. “I may have placed you in more danger at this point.”

  She went to the small pile of wood she had collected and placed another branch on the fire. “No. I believe I was in greater danger before you came for me.” Shaking her head, she continued. “I might still perish, but here, I can do it on my own terms. Also, whoever that bastard was working for will not be able to use me as leverage in their schemes. Whatever they were.”

  Erik made a motion that might have been a nod, but it was jerky and halting as he continued to shake. “We never got a chance to finish our conversation,” wheezed Erik.

  She frowned and tilted her head in puzzlement. “Conversation?”

  “Sha-ou-Taun.”

  She half chuckled. “Ah. That conversation. Feel like baring your soul, do you?”

  Erik’s teeth chattered. “Traditional, is it not? To lose all secrets before you die.”

  Her gaze darted away from the elf. “Don’t say that.” She bit her lip and whispered, “You’re not going to die.”

  “My apologies,” he said with a cough. “I did not mean to upset you.” He scooted closer to the fire, wincing with every motion. “I meant only that death may be near, and I am at peace with that. It would please me, however, to finish telling you of my past.”

  Erik seemed to be handling the possibility of death much better than she would have. Perhaps it was because of the many years he had lived, but regardless, his peace did not help her. Her fear increased as she considered the prospect of being alone as well as wet, hungry, battered, and tired. Sacha immediately chastised herself for being selfish. Time to grow up, she thought harshly. Erik needed her help, not her worry. “I should be the one apologizing,” she said as she settled to the ground next to him. “You’re the one who’s injured.” She touched his knee, drawing his eyes from where they had lingered on the meager flames. “If we are baring our souls, I must make a confession.”

  His brow lifted. “Hmm?”

  She hesitated for a moment, a twinge of apprehension at his anticipated reaction. “I’ve been avoiding you.”

  He started to laugh but was seized with a fit of coughing instead. After he calmed himself, he asked, “Whatever for?”

  Sacha frowned slightly. “Because of our last conversation about your past.” She felt rather sheepish saying it aloud. “I thought I had offended you.”

  “I see.” He inclined his head to one side and hunched his shoulders. “You needn’t worry about that. I wasn’t offended.”

  Sacha let out a breath of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Glad to hear it.”

  Erik stared at the fire, apparently lost in thought. The damp wood hissed and crackled as it surrendered its moisture. Around their small clearing, the forest was beginning to churn with activity. The sounds of insects and movements of small animals were strangely peaceful. Erik’s voice was low and blended with the surrounding noises of the forest. “I was only a child when Ou-Taun was attacked. The details of what happened are just jumbled memories to me now, like old, faded paintings in a forgotten hall. Even so, those memories will remain with me until my last breath.” He was seized by another coughing fit. When he had recovered, he shot her a wry grin. “See? Here we are, almost upon it.”

  “We shouldn’t do this now. You need rest,” she said, dismissing his black jest.

  “It’s okay.” He wiped a bit of blood from his mouth. “I need something to keep my mind off the pain.”

  The blood was a bad sign; it confirmed the internal bleeding she feared. Frustration from her failure to help him began to build, and once more she attempted to reach out to the Shamonrae. Blackness swam at the corners of her vision. She was so tired. The barest trickle entered her, but before she could use it, it slipped away. She clenched her jaw, biting back the desire to scream.

  Erik apparently did not, or could not, sense her struggle. He cleared his throat and continued, “I had been fishing along the northern shoreline of the bay when I heard the first screams. The waters were so calm that day and the setting sun looked like a great orange ball dipping into the distant ocean. So peaceful.” He stopped to lick his lips and shake his head slowly. “I can’t look at a sunset without thi
nking on the events of that day. By the time I had reached my home, the whole village had been destroyed. I searched for signs of what had happened, but I could find nothing. No enemy soldiers. No animals of war. Not even a set of tracks to say what had happened, where the doom had come from or where it had gone. Only the dead people of my village remained.” He coughed again, less violently than before. “I found my parents amongst the scattered bodies and I wept for what felt like days.” He fell silent and they both stared into the fire.

  “How horrible,” Sacha said finally.

  Erik nodded his head in reply. “I don’t really remember much after that, just surviving in the wilderness on my own, until an actual army did come. An army of elves and humans. They found me, took me in, and asked questions I could not answer.”

  Sacha interrupted in his brief pause. “What questions?”

  “The same ones I had asked myself; What happened? Who was responsible?” He shrugged and fell back into silence.

  She remembered Chancellor Tomelen mentioning the elves and humans putting aside their differences to travel south in search of answers. “I’ve been told of the forces that traveled south to inquire about the events at Ou-Taun. What became of them?”

  “Yes, in search of answers I could not provide, they traveled further south. I had refused to join them. Several weeks later, two men stumbled out of the desert. An elf and a human. I recognized them both as part of the forces that went south. What had happened to the rest of them, they could not, or would not, say. All they seemed able to remember was that we must all flee or suffer the same fate as the village.” He smiled, but not with joy. “Ironic. They could have been my saviors, but instead, I helped them travel back to Waterfall Citadel.”

  “You were the child,” Sacha exclaimed. Kesh had mentioned a child surviving the events of Sha-ou-Taun, but not that it had been an elven child. “In the histories Chancellor Tomelen told me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you stay with the humans?”

  The elf’s eyes blinked slowly and his voice was slow, as if he were on the verge of falling asleep. “It seemed like the right thing to do. I can’t really explain it.” His eyes closed and didn’t open.

  A surge of panic went through her as he began to slump over. She caught his shoulders and lowered him gently to the ground. Her hands searched desperately for a pulse and found the slow rhythmic beats still thumping against the side of his neck. She sighed a breath of relief and leaned against Erik. Please don’t die.

  Drying the tears from her eyes, Sacha resumed tending the fire and let her thoughts wander. It appeared that the mystery of Sha-ou-Taun would continue unresolved. The only survivor lay mortally wounded, and he only seemed to remember vague pain and loss. It didn’t really matter, though. The events had transpired over two centuries ago, and the answers would provide her no assistance now. Now she needed to find a way for her and Erik to survive.

  A rustle startled her from her contemplations.

  Sacha grabbed the only sword that had made it through their flight. She spun to face the noise and her heart sank.

  A dark-scaled head rose from the forest floor. Its thick, muscular body was easily as wide around as either Sacha or Erik and disappeared into the darkness of the forest behind it.

  She cursed softly as she realized that the jungle noises had almost entirely ceased. The small animals around their clearing had frozen at the predator’s approach, and she had blithely carried on a conversation as if sitting by the safety of a hearth!

  Firelight glittered in the giant snake’s golden eyes, and its muscular neck flared into a giant teardrop as it swayed and reared up from the forest floor to a height of at least ten feet.

  Sacha gritted her teeth and assumed a defensive stance, sword high. When the viper attacked, she would do her best to defend.

  A hiss erupted from the snake as it opened its mouth to display two massive, curving teeth that folded down from the pink flesh inside its head. Rows of back-slanted teeth were coated in saliva and they all glimmered in the firelight.

  Sacha tensed for the strike.

  An arrow whizzed by her head and struck the large reptile in the mouth. The massive head snapped back, shying away in pain. Blood rained from the wound in its throat as it reared up again. A second arrow sprouted from one of the large yellow eyes. The massive body shuddered and crashed in the underbrush while the head slammed again and again on the ground. Eventually the thrashing slowed and stopped.

  Sacha lowered her weapon, amazed.

  “Princess!” came a voice from behind her.

  She spun for a second time, sword rising once more.

  Mason stood at the edge of the firelight and lowered his bow. “Princess,” he repeated, bowing his head. “Thank Eos we’ve found you.”

  It took every ounce of her will not to run up and kiss the Pelosian guardsmen. She managed to just lower her sword and stare at the man in disbelief. “Mason?!”

  The guardsman was stoic as he stepped into their camp and made his way over to the dead snake. At a gesture from Mason, other shadowy figures in Pelosian uniforms slipped to the sides of the clearing and blended into the night. “We can stay here for a few hours, but then we must leave. You are being hunted.” Mason knelt beside the beast to retrieve his arrows. “What’s left of the brigands from the Keep are making their way west, along the river. They will be upon us by tomorrow.”

  Hunted? Well, that was what she assumed would happen. She had hoped they would be farther ahead of their pursuers than just one day. They must not have been swept as far downriver as it had seemed. “I am glad you’re here. You can help me with Erik. He can’t move on his own.” She went to stand by the elf, sheathing the sword as she moved. “We’ll have to carry him.”

  Mason inspected his arrows as he cleaned off the gore. He shook his head and tossed one into the fire but put the other back in his quiver. He looked at Erik, then at Sacha. “We must leave him and make our own way to Waterfall Citadel.”

  Sacha stared open-mouthed at her savior. “What?”

  “We won’t make it if we try to take him, Princess.” He placed his hand on his sword. “I can make it easier on him.”

  “Mot’s fires, you will!” She snapped. “This man saved my life. I’ll not leave him behind or let you kill him to make our escape easier.” She stepped between Mason and Erik’s prone form. “By Eos, you sound just like Bale!”

  The soldier bowed his head again. “Forgive me, Princess. Your safety is my only priority.”

  “How did you even find us?” she demanded.

  “I was ordered to follow the three men who went looking for you and make sure that you returned safely.” He lowered his hand from his sword.

  Sacha relaxed as his threatening posture eased and thought on his words. Bale had never fully trusted the Basinians. It made sense that he would send Mason after them.

  She settled next to Erik’s still form and touched him to assure herself that he still lived. “Do you know what happened to the other two?”

  Mason made his way around the fire and sat across from them. “No. By the time I caught up at the ruined Keep, the forces residing there were already mobilizing. I had expected to find the dwarvish man and the chancellor with you.”

  “The chancellor came with them?” she asked in surprise. “What on earth was he thinking?” The man couldn’t possibly think himself able to help in such a task... or maybe he did. She could almost hear his voice claiming his assistance would be invaluable.

  “I know not, My Lady. Princess Sloane agreed to his request and that was the end of it,” the young man replied.

  “By Eos, are the others okay? My sister? Cousins?” This past day it was all she could do to survive. She was ashamed to realize she hadn’t even considered asking Mason about her family’s fate until he mentioned them.

  “They are well, My Princess. You needn’t worry, the escort has most likely arrived at Waterfall Citadel already.”

 
Relief flooded through her and she almost wept. She swallowed her tears, burying them so Mason would not see any weakness. She was his superior. Showing such emotion would not bode well for her authority, and he might decide to act on his initial intentions for Erik if she wavered. Only when she was again master of her emotions did she respond. “That is good news.”

  “Yes it is,” said Mason as he staked several arrows into the ground and stood to face the darkness beyond the firelight. “You should get some sleep, My Lady. We will need to press on in a few hours. I will keep watch.”

  She didn’t argue, though she had no intention of sleeping. She knew Bale, and she suspected Mason’s offer was what the captain would want done. She lay next to Erik but only pretended to fall asleep. If Mason moved to take the matter back into his own hands, she would be ready.

  Erik opened his eyes upon hearing the rasp of steel on cured leather. He had been conscious enough to catch bits of the conversation that had transpired between the princess and her guardsman, and he had caught the look in the soldier’s eyes as Sacha berated him. He knew the Pelosian’s decision had been made, regardless of his apparent acquiescence to Sacha’s wish.

  Unfortunately, Mason had been correct. Erik didn’t want to die, but he knew he would only slow their progress in his current state. From the time that sleep claimed Sacha, he had been patiently waiting.

  Mason caught the glint of Erik’s steady gaze and stopped his creeping. The Pelosian straightened and walked carefully across the cleared ground to stand before him with Sacha’s sleeping form between them. He hefted his weapon almost as if he were offering it to Erik, and whispered, “You know this is the only way. She will not leave you behind if you still live.”

  “Knowing doesn’t make this any easier for me,” Erik whispered back.

  Mason frowned in confusion. “You agree?”

  Erik closed his eyes briefly. He was going to die from his wounds, he knew that. He also knew Mason was correct. Sacha’s heart would not allow her to leave him behind. He smiled and opened his eyes. “Yes, I do.”