“Keegan! Come here, son. I’ve something to discuss with you!” Dirk calls.
Never have I felt such gratitude towards the man.
Keegan rolls his eyes and heads in his father’s direction.
I’m tempted to ignore the two entirely, until the sinister glow in Dirk’s eyes has me readdressing that decision. Dirk is always upset, but I’ve never seen that light, the dead giveaway of suppressed rage, so evident on his face. Nor the effort he takes to conceal that rage behind a false smile of affection as he loops an arm around his son’s shoulders and leads him across the square.
I follow them.
Dirk pulls the lad into a dilapidated shed. The roof is caving in and the timbered sides are rotting. I slink up to the side and peer through one of the knotholes. They can’t be up to anything good and that uncomfortable feeling niggles in my gut again.
“Are you going to continue to be a disappointing pile of shit, huh? Do you even want to succeed in this miserable little village? Answer me, boy!” Dirk’s voice is harsher. Sharper. It makes the hairs on my neck stand on end.
“I’m doing my best and . . .”
“Your best is worthless! I want to see proof of your efforts! You hear me? Proof! Not excuses. No more damn excuses. Either you makes yourself worthy of being my son or you can crawl on the ground like their dog taking the scraps they decide to give you. Is that how I raised you? To crawl like a dog? I have sacrificed everything – everything – to make us what we are today. I have dug you out of the shit-hole I was born in. And this is how you repay me? With shitty achievements?”
“I’m trying!” Keegan screams. His voice cracks midway with strain. “I’m trying.”
“What’s that smell?” Dirk steps close and sniffs. “Frassas root?” The sound of flesh on flesh fills the air. Keegan gasps in pain. “You haven’t quit that stuff? I told you to throw it out, you worthless shit. Throw it out! Hear me? If I catch you smelling like a useless, slobbering dog again I’ll make you wish you hadn’t been born!”
“I’m sorry . . .” Another slap ricochets through the air.
“Never apologize! I will not take such weakness from you.” Dirk is screaming now. “Is that what you’ve become? A weak bastard? Everything you do is weak. Unsatisfactory. A Kelban girl took down a full-grown razor! And what happened to you? You let it put you in the sick-bed for two weeks. You couldn’t even kill it on your own. Shade had to help you. He’s winning, lad! He’s making himself look better than you. If you aren’t careful, he’ll take everything from you. Is that what you want? To be nothing because of him. Answer me!”
“No!” Keegan screams.
“Then get your shit together and take his ass down! This is your last chance to prove your worth.” Dirk elbows past his son and exits the shack, slamming the door behind him.
I creep away from the shed.
The Gavronites say it will take a day and a night to reach their village. What they do not say, I notice, is how rugged the terrain will be. Four hours after a painfully dense part of the forest, I find myself looking up a wall of unending stone. It juts above my head into the sky like a pinnacle of my nightmares. My stomach whirls.
I am not climbing that.
I’m not the only one ill at ease.
“We are not mountain ilk like you,” Keegan complains. He stares at the barely perceptible trail carved into the mountain’s side. It looks even less trustworthy than him.
“You lowlanders will adapt quickly,” Westave assures him with a knotted brow. He shoves past the surly lad and places a foot on the rocks. They hold his weight.
“And if we don’t?” asks one of the warriors.
Westave shrugs.
I hang back from the others as they begin their ascent.
“Either move or get out of my way,” Shade growls from behind me.
I move out of his way.
“You coming?” he asks when I don’t follow him.
Maybe I should return to Agron. But there’s a part of me that wants to go. To see what has happened. For some reason, I’ve been thinking it will give me answers. Answers that have – up until now – been avoiding me.
“I . . . I don’t know how to climb.” It’s a lame excuse. How can I tell him? Oh, yeah, when I was a child Celectate Wood threatened to throw me from the highest tower in his palace. He said, eventually, one day, I would fall to my death like all peasants do. Just thinking about it makes my stomach quiver.
If Shade notices the fear hiding behind my discomfort, he doesn’t show it. “You go ahead of me. It’s easy.”
Hesitantly, I place my foot on the rocks.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Twenty feet.
Thirty feet.
Fifty feet.
A hundred feet . . . and I’m going to die!
“Don’t look down, you little fool!” Shade snaps as he grabs my ankle to steady my feet. “Look up! Watch where you’re going and look up. Never look down!”
How can I tell him that when I look up I see Celectate Wood’s face leering down at me? Damning me. Cursing me. Letting go of me.
“Kyla? Kyla, look at me.”
I do. At first, I see the trees and forest so far beneath us. Green blurs of distant images. And then I see his eyes looking straight into mine. No mask. No wall. Just a connection of something stronger than my fear.
“You’re not gonna fall.”
I turn away so he won’t see the truth in my eyes.
I’ve been falling for a long time.
We don’t stop when night falls. Westave says it’s too dangerous to sleep on the edges of the cliffs when enemies prowl the stones. I silently agree with him.
My hands blacken from climbing and my water runs out quickly. The wind gets colder as we ascend higher into the hemisphere. I tie the shawl around my shoulders and chest in an intricate knot.
Shade hands me a water pouch of his own. When I pop the lid, the smell is definitely not water.
“Hunter’s brew?” I ask.
“It won’t make you lose your senses, I promise.”
A sip of the fluid gives me the strength to continue for another hour. By that time, we’ve reached a part of the mountain that has leveled off into a dense terrain of shrubbery and stones.
The Gavronites pause before a giant statue carved into the face of the mountain’s edge and whisper a few words: Imana se, mavre draves, e gatranas se.
Bless us, mother gods, and protect us.
Axle rolls his eyes dramatically.
“You mock your protectors, lad?” Westave scolds.
“I have never mocked my sword.” He palms the hilt of his Illathonian blade.
“Do not give worship where worship is not due.”
“Your knowledge of the holy scriptures is profound.” Axle makes a theatrical gesture of pain. “I am touched.”
“The gods will not be blasphemed and you . . .”
“We have come to defend you, Gavronite,” Shade interjects, “not your gods. Show us the way and then defend your religion.”
We silently continue our journey.
I know when we are close to Gavrone. The air smells of smoke. Burnt wood. Ash. Flesh. It strikes a familiar fear deep into my heart.
It smells like my vision of the streets of Kirath did.
It smells like massacre.
When we step out of the dense trees, the air is thick with gray fog and wet with morning mist. Through the density, shadows move. Human shadows.
I hear the sounds of weeping. Sobbing. Screaming.
Death is here.
A breeze blows through the curtain around us and reveals the sight we were briefly spared. Blood. Blackened flesh. Decimated homes. Burning timbers.
Westave’s face is white. I watch a single tear slip down his cheek. I know the look in his eyes. It has been on Landor’s face thousands of times in my visions.
Guilt.
“They’ve returned . . .” A woman
kneeling over the blackened body of what appears to have once been a man, lifts her eyes to our group. White lines glisten beneath her eyes where tears cleaned the soot away.
A man in a giant cloak of fur – the skin of a bear – steps out of the gray curtain masking Gavrone’s simmering remains. His beard is braided across his chest, his hair uncut past his shoulders, and his chest bare to the mountain air. He clutches a massive ax in one hand.
“Keeper, I have brought help but . . .” Westave observes the destruction around him. He falls to his knees and bows his head low to the ground before the mountain leader.
The leader shakes his head, long past the weight of tears and outward grief. “Do not let this weight on your conscience, Westave. You could not have stopped this or prevented the event. Rise. Go wash. Eat. Your wife and child are alive. They hid in the forest.”
Westave stands. The guilt disappears with the joyous news of his family’s survival. He hesitates, glancing between his leader and us.
“I will handle introductions,” the leader says. “Go. All of you.”
The remaining Gavronites disappear into the fog.
The mountain man introduces himself. “I am Alvar, Keeper of Gavrone.”
“Our Keeper, Otis of Agron, sends his condolences and our services. We are to conduct a full survey of this unfortunate catastrophe and present it to the king.” Axle sounds like a diplomat.
“There is no need for you to investigate,” Alvar says, his voice harsh.
“Pardon?”
“We are attempting to root out the source of the problem. Once we have weeded our village of the curse, we will inform you. Until then, your services will be appreciated. Much needs to be rebuilt and, if any of you are skilled hunters, you will be very useful.”
Axle’s eyes widen. “The curse?”
Keegan smiles slyly.
“Something drew the monsters here. Something unnatural. Once we find it and rid ourselves of it, we will not suffer their attacks any longer.” Alvar sounds convinced.
“You never considered the idea that the ‘something’ that drew the bastards here was their longing for blood and destruction?” Shade’s voice is border-line control.
Alvar shakes his head. “There is a curse among us.”
“Yeah,” Axle nods. He scans the edge of the mountain. The village is built on a cliff’s edge. “The fact that you live only two miles from the Dark Mountains. That’s a curse.”
The Dark Mountains?
“Despite that we are certain . . .” Alvar cuts himself off mid-sentence and looks in my direction. Our eyes meet. He gasps. “A Kelban! By the gods, a Kelban . . . Mavre draves gav ressa!”
Instinctively, I rest a hand against the side of my leg. Three seconds, and I can have the dagger in my hand. Five, and I can have it in Alvar’s skull.
A hand closes over my wrist. Axle’s hand.
“The Kelban is under the king’s protection and is not open to your judgment, Alvar!” Axle’s voice is no longer diplomatic.
Nearby, Shade observes the altercation with a glint in his eyes, but makes no comment.
“Protection? Her kind deserves our protection after what they have done to us? Done to our land?” Alvar’s eyes bulge in rage. “Curses follow curses. Mavre draves, gav ressa. Mavre draves, gae ressa!”
Mother gods, have mercy!
“If you harm her the wrath of the King will be upon you, and his justice is harsher than the gods!” Axle warns. He tightens his grip on my hand.
“The mother gods will have their justice! Their revenge on her! The King cannot stop that. He cannot stop her fate if the mother gods judge it so! And the mother gods . . .”
“I am Shade of Smoke!” His voice cuts like a knife.
Alvar grows silent.
“Have you heard of me?”
Alvar nods, mutely.
“Then listen . . . I am responsible for the Kelban. Should any harm be attempted upon her person or any accident befall her, my wrath will know no bounds. It’s decimated armies of shadows and cut men in pieces. If you wish to face it, then, by all means, carry out the will of your mother gods. However, if you’re the smart man I think you are,” Shade pauses in front of Alvar, eye-to-eye, and a few inches taller, “you’ll make an excuse and let a braver man than yourself fall on my sword.”
Alvar swallows.
“Show us what we can do to help,” one of Agron’s warriors interjects quickly.
Alvar is eager to lead the way, leaving Axle, Shade, and I alone.
“Was that wise?” asks Axle.
“He knows better than to battle with a monster,” Shade replies.
“What about the ‘curse’ he was talking about?”
“Rubbish. Nursemaid tales. Nothing more.”
“But . . .”
“If you would like to go hunt useless fantasies, be my guest, Axle. Don’t expect me to join you.”
I pull my hand from Axle’s and glare at Shade. “I don’t need you to protect me from the wrath of the mother gods!”
“The gods have an amusing way of using human hands to do their work,” Shade remarks with a slight nod in the direction of Alvar’s retreating back.
“I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t even get ten feet off the ground without turning into a shivering little girl. How do you expect to take care of yourself, Kelban? You couldn’t even fight water. Water!”
“Shade!” Axle snaps.
I can’t feel anything. In my head. In my hands. In my body. All I know is I’m shaking. Shaking. Shaking.
My fears. My weaknesses. My defeat. He’s thrown them in my face.
“You . . . you . . .” I can’t find curses harsh enough to proclaim my anger towards him. Can’t slap him hard enough to release the rage. Can’t stab him because he’d stab me first.
And it infuriates me.
“Asshole!” I scream and run into the fog.
I don’t expect either of them to follow. I stand at the cliff’s edge and let the breeze dry the tears on my face. It smells like the sea. When I look five miles below me, dark blue water meets my gaze. And across the water – across from where I stand – loom the darkest mountains I have ever seen. They are blacker than coal and gray smoke furls from their surface.
Evil. Evil. Evil!
And the invisible magnet inside of me reaches for it.
In the back of my head, I feel that dark pit open up. The dark claws spread out. The pulse in my head grow louder. Stronger. Larger. It breaks into pieces. Places. Events. Distant times. I close my eyes. Concentrate. The pieces draw closer. Like a puzzle I have to piece together. I hear noises. Trees. Laughter. Screams. Pain. Waterfalls. Chains.
“Kyla?”
I open my eyes and they are gone. Nausea fills my stomach, and I back away from the cliff’s edge.
“He’s a little shit, isn’t he?” Axle chuckles. He stops when I don’t join in and rubs the back of his head nervously. “Look, Kyla, I . . . He’s . . . it’s hard for him to . . .”
“To what? Act human? Entertain human emotions? Human understanding? Hard for him not to pity those weaker than him?” I flip my hair over my shoulder and glare at Axle. “Look, I’m sorry I was raised in the spotlight of society. Sorry I had food in my belly, a roof over my head, and money at my disposal. Sorry I haven’t been through the shit that he has, or done the shit he has, or started the shit that he has. Sorry I am weak and stupid and useless and frightened. Sorry I am not a monster like he is!”
The mountains echo back my words.
“But you don’t believe that, do you?” Axle asks softly. His eyes search mine.
I look away from him, knowing what he’s doing. That he’s trying to read my thoughts.
“You don’t see him as a monster,” Axle says. “And that scares him.”
“Scares him?”
“It kind of scares me too, to be honest,” he continues. “You aren’t scared of him. You don’t fear him. You don’t give a shit if he’s m
ad. You do everything that everyone else doesn’t do to him.”
“And what’s that?”
“Call him out. Give him sass. Fight.”
“You do it all the time.”
“We wouldn’t have survived any other way.” Axle’s eyes go far away – beyond these mountains, beyond the Wilds, beyond light and humanity – and he blinks it away.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” He holds up a hand to interrupt me. “Don’t ask me again, Kyla, please? It’s in the past and should stay there.”
“Really?” I ask. “And have you put it behind you? Seems like you carry it everywhere.”
“What?” He looks startled.
“Well, not you, really. Shade. It’s always there. Always hanging over him. Hate. Anger. Pain. He won’t let me see it. Tries to hide it. But it’s there. He’s dwelling in a dark place and it’s killing him. Slowly.”
Axle’s eyes glisten.
“Don’t think you’re the only one who can judge characters, Axle. I may not have your gods-given talents or your insightful abilities, but I’m an excellent judge when it comes to people’s actions. And Shade’s actions were not that of a monster! Just a boy – scared and trying to be brave.” I turn my back on him and start to walk away.
“Kyla,” Axle calls after me, “don’t stop.”
I do and turn around. “What?”
“Don’t stop looking at him. Don’t stop calling him out. Don’t stop treating him like a little shit. Don’t stop kicking his ass.”
“If I don’t stop, I might kill his ass!”
Axle splits a grin. “No, you won’t. Unfortunately, you’re not that lucky, darling.”
I flip him the finger and leave his laughter behind me.
Two days should go by fast, considering the amount of time I’ve spent in this wild land, but each minute, each second, drags like an eternal moment. I spend most of my time picking up pieces of ruined wood and throwing them on the giant pile of remains in the middle of the Gavrone. I attempted to help gather the bodies surrounding the village, but Alvar refused to let me touch them with my “filthy” hands. If I touched them, the mother gods would not allow their souls into the heavens, apparently.
Ostracized (The Ostracized Saga Book 1) Page 37
