Alexa Drey- Hero Hunting

by Ember Lane

  Straight after, I’d slumped and slept. My own skill of sleep-like-a-log-anywhere-anytime, kicking in, and I forgot all about the shaman’s words right up until that point. Walking between the forge and the tavern, they came rushing back to me. Who was Draylane, and why was The Thief in trouble? I veered away from the tavern and instead walked back toward Lincoln’s, stopping by the feasting hall and grabbing enough food for a few—I was starving.

  Krakus was back out on the stoop. Glenwyth was by his side. I skipped up, laid the food, begrudgingly.

  “Who’s Draylane?” I asked, without preamble.

  He froze as if that name had caused his heart to stop and then looked out over the lake, focusing on some distant point. “A voice in my head,” he said. “Draylane was my only other companion these last few years—just him and the demon.”

  “Someone was imprisoned with you?”

  He shook his head. “In there, no, not in there.” He tapped his temple. “In here. Somehow he found me, how, I haven’t a clue. I got the sense he wasn’t close but not too far either.”

  “What is he?”

  “What? Like elf, dwarf, that sort of thing? I have no idea. I only saw his mind, a text, and a blue-painted clay plate with a candle stuck in the middle. It was like the text joined us—like it was some kind of conduit or spell—but I couldn’t fathom too much about him.”

  “Why?”

  Krakus turned to me. He looked drawn, his almost healthy glow from yesterday gone. “I can’t tell because Draylane is quite crazy. His mind is a muddle of twisted thoughts that his sanity has to navigate through just to think a straight thought.”

  “But The Thief?”

  “The Thief is in great danger, and he doesn’t know it. Draylane knows it; he watches from the margins like a great spider, waiting, waiting for his prey to wander into his web. I fear that you might be too late. That The Thief may be dead before you find him.”

  “Then I will fail.”

  “Yes.”

  15

  Goodbyes

  Lincoln was no good at goodbyes. He barely made eye contact, choosing to stare at his feet and mumble his words instead. I swear I saw a tear in his eye. Then again, it might have been a hangover from the previous night’s celebrations, though I wasn’t too sure you could actually get one of those in-game.

  “I’m sorry, what did you just say?” I asked.

  Taunting him with my questions was my new favorite thing, and I was determined to keep it up right until the end. He kicked a pebble into the river and looked up at the vast stone buttress of Starellion. Taking a breath, he huffed and blurted, “I said I’ll be sorry to see you go, there, that good enough?”

  “Because…”

  He gritted his teeth. “So far, you’re the only human-human I’ve met here.”

  “And…”

  His gaze finally met my own. “You’re an ass, you know that, don’t you?” But his eyes were smiling.

  I cocked my head.

  “All right, I’m gonna miss you. I still can’t work out why you can’t just stay here.”

  “You know full well.”

  He pursed his lips. “Yeah.” And then he reached out and touched my cheek, ever so gently. “I worked it out—fifty thousand folk aboard the ship, six thousand in each of the nine countries, assuming Mandrake was our allocated area. Now, that ain’t a whole load in a place as big as I’m told Irydia is, but heck, I’d have thought I’d have met a few more.”

  I punched his shoulder, playfully. “You’re in the middle of a thick forest and pressed up against a mountainside. What part of remote aren’t you getting?”

  He pulled me close and gave me a big Lincoln-style bear hug. “If you find any in Brokenford, send them to me,” he said, stroking my hair, softly. “And you take care there. You haven’t seen the politics, it’s not like at home, not remote. It’s right in your face; it’s there, staring at you, waiting to pounce. Take care.”

  I looked up at Starellion too, at the great mass of rock. “You’re telling me to be careful when you’ve got to clear that of…whatever lurks there? I think you have the most daunting task.”

  “Ah, well, about that. You know I said that I was going to take either Grimble or Ozmic as one of my companions?”

  “As…yes, I thought Ozmic.”

  “Well, they both turned me down.”

  “Eh?”

  “Apparently, dwarven culture dictates the male dwarves mine and quarry and do most things you associate with dwarves, but it’s the women who like to…fight.”

  “So that’s why…”

  “So that’s why you don’t seen many around. They’re guarding the bowels of the earth against wraiths and demons and the like. At least…”

  “At least?”

  “Well, Gimble said, and these were his exact words: ‘At least that’s what they tell us.’ So, that’s what I assume they do. Anyway, Dunaric—”

  “Dunaric?” He was rambling, definitely rambling as if he wanted to tell me something, but didn’t.

  “He’s the head of the stonecutting dwarves. So anyway, he heard about the party I was putting together, and he immediately vanished into the mountain, only to resurface late last night.”

  “While we were getting drunk and dancing away.” I remembered the huge dwarf—shovels for hands and flame-colored hair.

  “About that time. Apparently, the dwarves have a dungeon champion and a wrestling champion. Apparently, they have a log-tossing champion, a boulder-pulling champion, and a few other champions that I can’t remember. Thing is…”

  I really could not wait for the thing. Somehow, I knew it was going to make my day. Lincoln had fear in his eyes.

  “Thing is…there is only one champion, and she’s their champion wrestler, dungeon runner, log—”

  “Tossing champion,” I near sang.

  Lincoln coughed. “You’re getting the picture. Her name is Griselda Irongrip, and by all accounts as I’m deemed steward of Starellion, or whatever the dwarves call it, I’m quite the…”

  His words became wedged in his throat. “Dish?” I prompted.

  “Eligible husband material. It appears Griselda Irongrip has heard about my ale; she’s heard about my Joan’s Creek, my Sanctuary, and my little castle over there, and she fancies her chances of capturing my heart.” Lincoln looked at me, his eyes pleading. “According to Dunaric, she’ll see little difference between capturing and imprisoning my heart.” He shuddered.

  I cracked up, doubling over. If last night had been a welcome release from two days of learning and honing my skills, Lincoln’s revelation was the icing on the cake.

  “Lincoln Irongrip—it’s got a ring.”

  “I knew you’d find it funny. I mean, look at Grimble, Dunaric, Ozmic, and then imagine a female one… I’m telling you, Alexa, I’m thinking of running.”

  My sides were screaming in pain and tears were running down my cheeks. “It might not be so bad…”

  “She throws boulders in competitions and wins…”

  My legs gave way.

  A short while later, he helped me onto my horse, and we hugged it out. Riding away from him was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. Not knowing if I’d ever see him again was impossible to accept. Sure, we made promises, and sure we made plans for me to come back, but the land was huge, and my quest might take me anywhere. In some ways I was jealous of Lincoln, with his base, with his friends all around him, but I knew, deep down, I wanted to see more of this land.

  Lincoln was not the only one I was leaving behind. Cronis was staying too, and part of his destiny was to be there when the secrets of Starellion were unlocked. Though the old wizard was grouchy, coarse, even downright rude, he was my Cronis—the Cronis that would blow himself up or stare up at the stars through a telescope made of beer barrels—and I knew I’d miss him terribly too. Flip had elected to remain behind, though not for too long. He had a hunch, a feeling he couldn’t shift that there were some other things at pla
y within Starellion or the mountain, somewhere. He said it was like an itch he couldn’t scratch and had urged Jin to help him root it out.

  And so our party lost two, but it gained four.

  Krakus had chosen to come. He was hell-bent on reviving his race, on seeing if the curse of the graveling could be reversed, and he sensed some in the mountains northwest of here, which was our eventual destination. He was still frail, his mana pool had only just started filling, and painfully slowly too. It was my belief that the jaspur had cured him—not the potions or my magical infusion, but the tree itself. Since my first encounter with those trees, I knew there was something strange about them—something mystical. This mythical Lamerell and the jaspur were undoubtedly linked.

  Wherever the shaman went, Aezal wasn’t far behind. The Atreman wasn’t inclined to let Krakus out of his sight. He had appointed himself guardian, protector, and servant, and his bond with Krakus was greater than that with Lincoln. I was surprised that Lincoln was okay with it, but he’d said he’d always known that Aezal’s path lay elsewhere. He was more sorry to see Glenwyth choose to leave though he’d seen that coming too.

  So, our party now consisted of Shylan, Star, Krakus, Glenwyth, Aezal, and one other. I rode away from Lincoln and drew aside Mezzerain. We trotted along the riverbank and toward the vast stonewall that held the forest outside at bay.

  “You sure?” I repeated. I’d already asked him the same question a dozen times, but with each time it bugged him even more, so I thought I’d chance it again.

  “Sure I’m sure I’m sure,” he growled, sounding anything but sure. “Why would I want to stay in a newly upgraded tavern, sleep on a straw bed, and eat around an open fire pit under stars that seem to hang just above your head? Why that, when I can get saddle sores, foot rot, and an empty belly?”

  “Well, now you put it that way…”

  The wall was clad in wooden scaffold poles and was crawling with Lincoln’s building bots. It was part of our job to try and find a way of rectifying his labor issues without giving his location up—a job for the apachalants, no doubt. We were also charged with finding out if the river was navigable and if not all the way to the Silver Road, exactly how far. In order to get word back, we had a couple of other companions. Elleren and Crags were rowing alongside us. Well, that wasn’t quite right; Elleren was rowing, and Crags had his feet up, pipe in hand.

  The pathway we were following ended at the wall, and we had to coax our horses onto temporary pontoons to round it. Once on the other side, we were back in the thick of the forest, and it was like we’d never left. Fortunately a trail led south, a way for the mills to bring in their lumber. Using my navigation, I estimated Lincoln’s mills stretched about a third of the way into the belt of trees that hid him.

  “How long?” Mezzerain asked me.

  The others were a good one hundred yards ahead of us, my own goodbyes taking the most time. So I knew the question was directed at me.

  “How long for…”

  “Until he’s discovered. I hope he’s ready. It’s a much easier place to defend than Brokenford, and the king’s got no spine. If he could run, he would. Mind you, Brokenford wouldn’t take much to topple.”

  “Couldn’t Lincoln just become a lord?”

  “Of Irydia? He could, but first he’d have to swear fealty—that would basically be the end of his time as a free man. For instance, though Quislaine has sworn allegiance to the king; it is merely a marriage of convenience. Muscat thinks the southernmost tip of his realm is taken care of, and that’s all he gets. He receives no troop drafts, nor any taxes because Addison doesn’t care for the king’s rule. If the king were to exact any command on Addison, it would take him a whole day to reply and that is because its hard to apply your seal while you're laughing. Lincoln would not be so strong. He hasn’t got the soldiers.”

  I thought on the hero’s words. “But he’d be hard to attack?”

  “Lincoln? If I were attacking him, I’d relish the nights. These trees give any fantastic cover and an endless supply of lumber. If you uprooted the trees in channels you could have trebuchets pounding that wall day and night. A committed but patient army could take that city all the while the wall’s low and the trees are thick.” He fell silent for a moment. “And all the while there’s no army behind it.”

  “Then we need to give him that time.”

  “Indeed.”

  In the silence that followed, I decided it was time to ask Mezzerain a question that had been bugging me since I’d found out where he’d come from. It was a question even Lincoln hadn’t asked, and if he’d told Shylan or Cronis, neither of the wizards had told me.

  “Tell me, Mezzerain, I’ve seen the mists from the top of Castle Zybond. Zybandian, Cronis, Shylan—the bunch of them—they tell me that you can’t travel through the mists, that no one can. So why is no one asking you how you traveled through them?”

  He scratched his head and creased up his face. “One of them did, not sure which one. Might have been him.” He pointed at Shylan. “Might have been the other one. Either way, it’s actually easier than you might think. They smuggled me through for a price.”

  “Who did?”

  “Addison. You see, the very tip of Irydia and the very tip of Horns Isle aren’t too far apart. Once the mists separated the lands and isolated Mandrake, well, commercial opportunities came to light.” He winked at me. “There are some things that just aren’t available in these lands, and coin will always be the master of an ambitious man.”

  “Like cigars and garlic.”

  “Like those and more besides. So, after a bit of trial and error, the story goes that Addison had a rope made that would easily span the mists, but every time one of his knights tried to row through them, he would soon drift back to shore without his mind—totally mad. So, Addison had another rope braided, a thin but incredibly strong rope, attached a note to it and then coaxed a griffin to fly it over the mists, landing on Horns Isle and joining the two.

  “On the other side, a witch called Melinka saw the griffin, read the note, then summoned a few folk who then tugged on the cord and slowly dragged a thick rope across, and after a bit of messing around, a pulley system was put in place and a smuggling boat commissioned. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “It still doesn’t explain how you crossed the mists without going crazy.”

  Mezzerain grinned and pulled his horse up. “That’s the clever part. Remember, Melinka’s a witch, and she was banished to Horns Isle by another witch called Corsaka, but that’s another story. Are you familiar with Damage Over Time spells?”

  “Damage over time spells,” I repeated slowly, hoping it would trigger some kind of memory.

  “They reduce your health by a certain amount over a certain period. So, if you can regenerate your health by 20 per minute, and the spell reduces your health by 20 per minute, theoretically, it does nothing to you, but, what if your health was only 1? A damage over time spell could keep it there—keep you hovering on the verge of death until it runs its course. That’s what they did to me. Melinka, essentially, very nearly killed me and then kept me there for a day while I was pulled through the mists. I appear to have come through unscathed, apart from a slight tick in my eye.”

  “So as long as…”

  “As long as you’re unconscious, you won’t go mad.”

  “Cool,” I said, wondering if I’d ever need this information, but hoping not. It was just after that when my navigation icon started blinking on the edge of my vision. I pulled my horse up and pulled the map down. The arrow pointing to The Thief's location was moving, no longer west-northwest, more due west. “He’s moving,” I muttered.

  “This thief?”

  “Yes.”

  Mezzerain scratched his stubbly chin. “I’ve been thinking about that. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but shouldn’t you get…shouldn’t you start tracking him? Instead of going to Brokenford, shouldn’t you get after him?”

  H
e had a point, but since leaving Zybond, we’d had this route that destination in mind, and destiny had unraveled the first Veil, so I’d kind of assumed it’d fall for the next. But with the navigation skill, and with The Thief programmed as a target, it seemed like my course was set in a different direction to Brokenford and Beggle.

  “But we’re meeting Marista and Greman in Brokenford and then traveling to Beggle,” I said, but realized that those were Shylan’s plans, that Cronis had already tossed his own aside once Starellion was uncovered. “You think I should just go after him?”

  “Nope,” Mezzerain said. “Not you, us, I think we should go after him. Krakus will slow the whole party down, Aezal will not leave him, and Shylan has duties that are beyond yours.”

  “So you think we should just go?”

  “You have a quest. I can help you with your fighting skills. I’ve spent a lot of time with Star, and she’s adept in many things, so you can still advance those skills she can teach.”

  “And Glenwyth?”

  “The elf is perfectly capable of making her own choices. It’s not up to you to keep everyone happy. It’s up to you to complete your quest.”

  “And you?”

  “Me? It is my duty to protect Sakina, that was my vow.” He jumped off his horse and knelt by me, reaching out and pulling my hand to his lips. “And now that vow is transferred to you.”

  I sat for a while, dumbstruck. I’d already lost Lincoln, Flip, and Cronis that day, and now I had to lose more, but I knew he was right.

  “We’ll tell them tonight,” I said.

  And we did, and Shylan didn’t even argue, nor did Krakus, and Aezal just shrugged.

  “We’ll meet in Pandreya,” Shylan announced after some thought. Apparently it was the capital of Beggle—a city at the head of their valley which itself emerged from a black volcano called Serenity. “You’re entirely right, of course, plus it will save your meet with Muscat—he was bound to want to bind you in service. No, that all works for me. I have things to attend to. As Lincoln said, ‘It was broke, so I killed it,’ and that is what we must do.”