Reign of Darkness

by Michaela Riley Karr

  “We have a small amount of power that allows us to change form, although anger or fear will often revert us back to our true form,” Chelsea answered as Sonya balked at her. “However, now I must ask, who are you? And why have you brought Rhydin to our home?”

  Rachel cut in before I had a chance to answer, “These are the Allyens. The ones who will destroy Rhydin. We are helping them, unlike you.”

  “My apologies,” Chelsea replied with a bitter smile, “my tribe was not made aware that the Allyens were in such dire need of our help.”

  Rachel could have blown steam out of her nostrils. She yelled, “Get out of here! We don’t need your help!”

  “Ha, we’d never help you anyway,” Sonya mocked just as she and Chelsea began to turn back toward town once more.

  “But, wait!” I shouted and put my hand on Rachel’s steaming shoulder. “You just said so yourself that you’ve never fought Rhydin’s power without feeling drained or been touched by that power without nearly dying! Just now, Luke looks like he simply got a sunburn when the last time, Bartholomiiu’s neck was absolutely destroyed, and he had brain damage! What if it was Chelsea and Sonya’s presence that made the difference? That’s the only thing that’s different about this fight!”

  “It’s doesn’t matter,” Rachel responded. “It would never work. There’s too much history between our peoples.”

  “But you just said that the Ranguvariians want peace. Why don’t you want peace with the Aatarilecs too? Maybe then, you’d all know how to swim,” I added disdainfully.

  Chelsea and Sonya snickered as all five Ranguvariians blushed, and I realized I might have gone too far. Chelsea crossed her arms, and one of her hips jutted out as she spoke, “Even if we did want to help our mortal enemies, what’s in it for us?”

  “A world free of Rhydin,” Evan announced to the group, reminding us all that he was still here. “Plus, two of the future Three Kings are our friends. We could try to fix the overfishing problem that’s leaving you hungry.”

  “And what of the third?” Sonya asked harshly. “Auklia has no leader anymore, and our tribe lives in the Auklian Basin.”

  “We’re working on finding one, and when we do, we’ll fix it, I promise,” I declared, and then changed my tone. “Please help us. When those Einanhis don’t return to Rhydin, he’ll know that something is up here. We’re running out of time to build a shelter to keep our children safe after we return to the mainland. Even just helping us finish this building would be great.”

  Chelsea and Sonya glanced at each other, a full, nonverbal conversation unfolding between them before our eyes. After a few moments, Sonya tossed her head and gave a short, strange bow to Chelsea.

  The mint-green-haired woman smirked at us. “Sure. We’ll see what we can do. On one condition.”

  Rachel groaned loudly and turned away like she couldn’t watch, plucking up hammer to play with absentmindedly. Jaspen glanced at her sadly.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You not only rid us of Rhydin and the human encroachment on our fishing grounds, but you also make us out to be the heroes to the rest of our tribe. They banished us here to Caark, and we want to go home,” Chelsea stated stoically.

  “Done,” I answered before I could think better of it.

  Rachel angrily tossed her hammer and began marching away with Jaspen on her heels. Luke and James looked at each other with worried expressions, but said nothing more, while nothing seemed to be able to sway Bartholomiiu’s happy mood. Evan nodded at me, and I ardently hoped that we had made the right decision. I stuck my hand out to Chelsea, and after she considered the very human gesture for a few moments, she reached out and accepted it, for better or worse.

  With Chelsea and Sonya’s help and resources, we finished the house as fast as we could in two days’ time. It was small with an earthen floor, but aside from the island materials, it reminded me a lot of the house I had grown up in Soläna. More important, it was solid, and we had chinked and sealed it twice as well as we would have in Lunaka in our best attempt to brace it for the island storms to come. Although, in my mind, I continued to insist that our children wouldn’t even be here a year.

  The morning of our departure, my feet dragged. My hands were numb as I gathered my things. Sam would waver between sticking to my side like glue and not being able to look at me. Evan and Cayce remained sequestered away from the campfire with Aron for as long as possible. Meanwhile, Jaspen and Rachel stood around the house awkwardly, seeming to study its walls and beams for the first time. They, too, seemed to be having trouble soaking in the fact that Evan and I, people they had looked after for many years, were leaving the island without them.

  We made sure both Kylar and Rayna were awake for our departure, and they carried on with their usual morning routine like nothing was different. We served them a breakfast of the sweet, purple, Caarkian fruit along with a couple of duck eggs that Cayce had managed to haggle down to a realistic price yesterday.

  I took a deep breath and knelt down next to Kylar as purple juice dribbled down his chin. I rubbed his head and thick hair the color of my own, and I willed myself to keep it together. I warbled, “Mama and Papa have somewhere very important to go, Kylar. But we’ll be back soon. We promise. We love you.”

  Kylar glanced at me with his big, brown eyes and smiled, purple egg squeezing out between his baby teeth. I grinned in spite of myself, and I hoped that he understood most of what I had said if not all of it. I repeated something similar to Rayna, who likely didn’t understand all of what I had said, but I think it was more for me than for her. Sam bid his own quiet adieus to the two toddlers. We both planted kisses on their heads before ushering ourselves out the door as quickly as possible before it was too hard to leave.

  Cayce was immediately on the other side, running through the open door stone-faced likely in the same goal, little Aron tucked into her side, snoozing. She didn’t look at us, but I didn’t blame her. Evan stood several feet away with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped. I began to walk toward him as Rachel followed us out the door, her face pink.

  “Well,” she said breathily, “this is it.”

  I stopped and turned. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

  Rachel swallowed hard and then grasped my hand. “I’m sorry. For everything. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, and I know I can be bossy. But it’s because you’re not just the Allyen to me. You’re my friend. My best friend.”

  “Easy, Rachel.” I tried to crack a smile to keep myself from crying. “You’re acting like this is forever. I’m going to do everything in my power to find our new rebellion a safe place, and you’ll see me again before you know it. You’re my best friend, too.”

  Rachel nodded and sniffed as Luke, James, and Bartholomiiu appeared behind us to transport us to the port in Calitia. She chuckled to break the tension, “Keep my brothers in line, will ya? They won’t know what to do without me bossing them around all the time.”

  Luke and James glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. I laughed and agreed before I gave her a quick hug. Then, I took one last long look at the tiny house with our children inside before turning on my heel and walking in the opposite direction.

  The three Ranguvariians transported the three of us humans as close to Calitia as they dared get without being spotted, maybe a quarter mile away in a brushy clearing. I asked why we couldn’t just transport all the way back to the mainland instead of bothering with the ship, but I had forgotten that we needed to create a few Einanhis to travel with us to complete our façade that the children returned with us.

  Sweat balled up on my skin regardless of the island humidity. With Sam’s being a Rounan and the three Ranguvariians also having an entirely different type of magic, it was up to Evan and I to create these Einanhis. And it was impossible for him to create them by himself. Two failed birds or not, it was crunch time now.

  “Alright, so we have these,” Luke announced as he pointed to two bundles in
James’s arms, one tiny like a newborn and the other much larger, “to simulate Aron and Rayna since we can only make two Einanhis and they’re small enough that this will work. You two just need to be the ones to carry them so that your presences mask the fact that these bundles don’t have any magic. Speaking of which, hand over your feathers.”

  Evan’s eyes went wide, and I gaped. Sam showed no reaction.

  “Rhydin has to be able to sense that you guys have returned to the mainland, he’s watching all these ships like a hawk. That’s the whole point, otherwise he’ll still come to Caark to search for you,” Luke explained. “Now, hand ‘em over.”

  I reached for my neck soundlessly, picking out the leather cord from the metal chain, both of which I had worn for so many years they were like a part of my skin. I threaded the sleek, purple feather shard away from my locket and looped it over my head, dropping it into Luke’s hand. It all felt very surreal as Evan and Sam followed suit.

  “Good. You’ll get those back after we’ve been in Lunaka for maybe a week so that Rhydin doesn’t grow suspicious,” Luke said as he pocketed the three feather charms. “Now, we just need to create Einanhis of Cayce and Kylar, and we can go board our boat! Once there, we have some important information to tell you.”

  I opened my mouth to ask about this information, but Evan put a solid hand on my shoulder and leaned in to say, “You can do this. I’ll do Cayce’s and you can do Kylar’s. That way, just hedge more toward not giving him enough magic if you’re worried. If he looks limp, it won’t be the end of the world since he’s just a kid. We can pretend he’s sleeping. So, you can do this. Don’t worry about messing up.”

  My heart began to pound. Evan closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated. This would be the largest and most complex Einanhi he had ever attempted, I remembered.

  Before I knew it, a large, golden orb had appeared. It grew to a couple inches taller than Evan, which I had never realized before, and the glowing ball thinned down and sprouted two limbs on either side, looking more human-like with every passing second. Finally, Evan focused for a moment or two before his eyes opened with a sad gleam, and he whispered, “Anadlu.”

  The yellow, human-shaped bubble burst, and in its place was Cayce’s identical twin. Her lavender curls were spot on, and she wore an outfit that I recognized although hadn’t seen since before we’d left the Compound, one that likely burnt up in its destruction but must have been Evan’s favorite. The Einanhi Cayce blinked at us slowly and then smiled, and I noticed that Evan had neglected to put Cayce’s small scar on her cheek. Actual human beings had to be the hardest Einanhis to create, I decided.

  Luke and James nodded in approval, and then turned to me expectantly. My heart rate doubled, and I tried to breathe evenly. I could do this.

  I shut my eyes tightly and pictured my son. This was somewhat easy to do since I had just seen him, yet it was hard when I remembered that I wouldn’t actually see him again for some time. I familiarized myself with his height, taller than the average two-and-a-half-year-old due to his father’s frame, and his coloring. His face that reminded me of Sam’s when I’d first met him as a child. It was hard not to get choked up, but I had to focus.

  I shifted my magic outwards, and judging by the glow against my eyelids and the sudden siphoning of my energy, I knew my orb had appeared. Anxiously, I cut off the flow a little earlier than I probably should have, but a limp Einanhi was better than one on an uncontrollable rampage. I stammered, “Anadlu,” and opened my eyes.

  Standing before me was not quite Kylar’s twin, but Luke and James grinned in response so it must not have been too bad. I was his mother after all. The Einanhi Kylar’s eyelids and shoulders drooped. It didn’t have quite enough power, and even though I had planned for this, I was still disappointed in myself.

  Sam stooped and collected the Einanhi Kylar into his arms, and Evan and I took our respective bundles. We made our way to Calitia in silence where we were enveloped in the noise of an overcrowded city. Bartholomiiu broke away to meet us on the ship, and Luke and James guided us through the sardined alleyways and treacherous streets to the port with the Einanhi Cayce following dutifully. My eyes glazed over and didn’t see much of what went on around us. With every step we took, the distance between us and our children became more tangible.

  We boarded a Caarkian ship that was sleeker in style than the Lunakan liner we had set out on, and we all walked toward the entrance to the underbelly of the ship, none of us really interested in remaining on the main deck this go around. I reached for Sam’s hand, but he didn’t respond. His eyes empty and sad as he lugged around a magical shell shaped like our son. I guess I couldn’t blame him too much.

  When we reached the compartment we would all be sharing on this much smaller ship, Luke gave a sigh of relief as he shut the tiny door behind us. “That was good. If Rhydin is watching this port as closely as we think, he’ll have seen us. You can take a break from keeping up the Einanhis for now, but if we ever go up to the main deck, we should have them with us, as well as when we arrive in Canis.”

  Instantly, the Einanhi of Cayce disappeared, and Evan gasped for breath as if he had just sprinted a mile. It must have been more complicated and draining to keep her up than I’d thought. I let Kylar disappear as well, if only not to have the reminder that he really wasn’t here.

  I turned to Luke keenly and asked, “So what was this important thing you had to tell us?”

  The edges of Luke’s mouth twitched upwards as he said, “Frederick figured out who the woman in Archimage Dathian’s portrait miniature is.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “H er name is Sabine.” Luke’s voice trickled back to me from our voyage back across the ocean nearly a month ago. “She’s Dathian’s daughter and the only heir left to the Auklian throne. She disappeared over a decade ago when her mother left Dathian and the Archimage Palace.”

  “If she disappeared so long ago, how do you think we could ever find her?” My response echoed in my ears. “She could be dead for all we know.”

  Luke had simply shrugged. “In my experience, you can’t assume someone is dead until you see the light leave their eyes yourself.”

  A month had passed since that conversation. Once arriving back on the mainland, we spent a few days in Canis before discovering that very few of the people there were remotely interested in joining our cause. Canis’s economy was booming between the fish trade gaining customers throughout Nerahdis as Rhydin struck down trade laws and tariffs and the massive influx of travelers paying their ships for passage to Caark.

  People couldn’t have cared less about anything beyond their city and didn’t believe us when we claimed that Rhydin was sinking their ships. He was too much of a “hero” for that. I wondered how long it would take before Rhydin thoroughly made sure they all knew that he was in charge.

  When we left Canis, we began cycling back and forth over the border between Lunaka and Auklia. We searched for random settlements and other secret Rounan compounds on our way to Rondeau, a small town in northeastern Auklia. With every stop, we tried to discover any interest in a rebellion against Rhydin as well as any leads on what happened to Lady Sabine. Sometimes there was some interest due to older folks’ nostalgia for the old ways. Sometimes there wasn’t, due to the “good” things people still believed Rhydin to be doing, but there was never any information on Sabine. I was beginning to wonder if both of our tasks were impossible.

  I let myself fade back into the present moment, which I had purposely left to let my thoughts ramble for a reason. The sun was beating down on the top of my head, roasting my scalp. Sam, Evan, and I stood in the middle of a crowd of Rounans at yet another small Rounan settlement at the base of the mountains dividing Lunaka and Auklia. They had listened to our speech intently, as most Rounans did due to their experience with Rhydin, but the conversation afterward had taken a nasty turn from a polite debate of pros and cons for stepping forward against Rhydin.

  “If we
oppose Rhydin, won’t the Royals step back into control?” one portly man bellowed. “Nothing will change for us! Rhydin hunts us down and so do the Gornish!”

  “No, things will change!” Sam tried to say. “If we succeed, we will make sure that Prince Frederick and Prince Xavier are placed on their rightful thrones, and both of them have sworn against ever allowing Rounan persecution again!”

  “That’s what you think!” an old, scrawny woman in a threadbare cap called. “The Gornish have always lied, we can’t trust them! Besides, Auklia has no leader anymore!”

  Another young man chimed in, “Can we trust you, Kidek? You’ve married a Gornish witch, how do we know she isn’t manipulating you into our destruction?”

  Evan instinctively put a hand in front of me, and Sam’s jaw tightened. My eyes wandered over to Sam, wondering how he would react. He had shut down after we left Caark, and I could only assume that it was because of how he felt about leaving our children.

  Sam responded more politically than I would have preferred, “I assure you, that is not the case. My wife has everyone’s best interests at heart, and she lived with me in another Rounan compound in Lunaka for over two years before it was destroyed.”

  “By the Gornish?” the first man sneered.

  “No. By Rhydin and his Followers. And if we don’t do something about it, he’ll just keep destroying our homes and murdering us!” Sam replied tersely.

  A couple people shook their heads and walked away, but the majority of the crowd remained. They looked at each other, and I could see a few nod, even if it was hesitantly.

  A young woman shouted, “If we want to join you, what do we do?”

  The smallest hints of a smile lingered on Sam’s lips. “Right now, we are still searching for a safe, central location to establish a base. We want it to be new so that Rhydin has no knowledge of it. When that day comes, I will send word to this compound to come join us there.”