Little rills glistening down the old man’s cheeks, he, too, sang:
“Let the winds lead you, and you shall find your feet . . . ”
He was in the middle of a nap—the kind one took right before a long journey—when a tremor rippled across the dark.
Jaime sat upright.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
He heard had those drums before, the night the Archpriestess and Strategos Reizo came to build a pyre on his home.
Fear pricked the sleep out of him. He rushed down the stairs of Prescilla’s home. Now, as his sandals pounded down the stairs, it echoed from emptiness.
His oversized knapsack drooped over the kitchen table. Jaime tossed it over his shoulder and tucked his new fan under his sash. The windcloak the Menanders gave him—where was it?
Panic rushed up his limbs as he groped through his pack, under the table, inside drawers.
Nowhere.
He wouldn’t be able to follow Sojin’s escape route without it.
No time. You’ll have to leave it.
Jaime crossed the doorway—then stopped.
That night when he helped Lady Prescilla up the hill, his sandal shuffled against a loose stone in Achuros’s temple.
You never found out what was under it.
It would only be a matter of time before his bodyguards arrived to guide him out of the city. If Jaime never found out what Achuros was hiding, he would toss and turn till the day he died.
His thighs burned by the time he was back up Chikos Pagos Hill. Jaime hurled the knapsack over his other shoulder, bending down before the stone. His teeth grit as it gave way. A pool of black, dusted with dirt, reflected the firelight.
His eyes widened.
Ledgers. Tens of them. Achuros’s most recent one—its leather cover weathered from writing—rested at the top of the pile.
But why is he hiding them?
Well, no matter.
These pages recorded decades of precious Old Jaypes history. It was the last thing he could remember his mentor by.
A second after Jaime skidded back in front of Prescilla’s house, two standard-bearers and four guards escorted him to the akropolis.
It was deep in the night. Arcurea’s streets stirred with unrest. Merchants ushered their children onto unsaddled mules, wives kissed their husbands in the City Watch a final goodbye.
They reached the summit of the city. By habit, Jaime shoved his hand at his thigh, where he used to keep his breather. In the distance, a river of torchfire glowed against a black sheet. Horns fell into a single note, nightmarishly deep, dragging through the skylight’s dregs. Strategos Reizo’s legions were here.
“Prince!”
Lord Florin, Lady Prescilla, and several other councilors hurried out of City Hall. Tonight, the New Jaypes flag was torn from its roof. Even the silver swift of the Menanders—taken down.
The Air Emblem, the gold-and-white sigil of the Ascaerii, replaced both, flying higher than any pennant before it.
My sigil.
Sojin dismounted from his black destrier and passed him the reins.
“Quickly, take my horse.”
A thousand words lodged in his throat. All he could remember was the way Cassie helped him up a horse on Mount Alairus, how he rode away from a pyre on a different night, never to see his home or family again.
He couldn’t do it a second time.
The City Captain helped him off the lead guard’s courser and onto his own towering saddle. The rest of the Council folded their hands in somber silence. Prescilla stepped forward, bundling her eldest son’s windcloak over him.
“You forgot this,” she said. His heart leapt in relief. She folded three coarser ones into his knapsack. “In case you lose it.”
“I won’t lose it,” Jaime whispered. His eyes switched between Florin and Prescilla, the single couple who would command his lochoi as he rode to train at the High Temple. “You can’t stay here. They’ll kill you. I’ve seen what they did to the people on Mount Alairus—”
“There is no time.” Sojin stepped back, joining the Menanders. “Keep your promise to us, Prince Jamian. Fight for our children, and protect the people of this Kingdom.”
The destrier threw his head, restless against the echoing cries and drums. Jaime tightened his grip on the reins. Another first—he’d never ridden a horse on his own before.
“This war will end.” Jaime’s voice cracked. “I’ll see all of you again, soon, so I can return Aulos Menander’s windcloak.”
Lady Prescilla said: “Let the winds leads you.”
“I shall find my feet,” Jaime replied.
She dipped her head. The others followed. His gaze blurred. He kicked the stallion forward.
The heavyset pounding of feathered hooves blended in with the drums. Gradually, City Hall, and the rest of Arcurea, smeared, bleeding into the distance behind him.
The second he was level with the Krete Forests, an arrow shot past him. He ducked his head by impulse.
“Skies!” he gasped.
Scouts from the royal lochoi galloped in from the west. Jaime struggled to grasp onto The Empyrean. The horse rattled his brains up and down. He couldn’t draw air—his focus was entirely on the Arcureans.
The hillock he meditated with Achuros on rose in front of him. The shadow of an airmarker stood high above him like a cloaked watchkeeper.
A jolt.
The gelding shrieked—an arrow burrowed into its neck. Jaime cried out. His mount furled him high in the air. By impulse, he twisted his body into a ball, broke his fall with one roll, two, three.
Royal outriders streamed towards him.
Jaime clenched his medallion. He would never make it to Solstice Current in time.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Jamian!”
The unfamiliar shout caught him off guard. He turned around, knees bent, mind flustered as he fished for The Empyrean. Come on, come on. Two shapes charged towards him at a sharp angle, intercepting the royal scouts.
“My lady!” he cried.
The sight of Eridene Swansea and Toran Binn nearly made his lungs collapse. The lady pulled up at the base of the hill, glaring from the saddle.
“Would you like a ride, Your Holy Highness, or are you going to stay there on your ass?”
He sprang up and snatched his fallen knapsack. “I’ve got extra windcloaks. Just ride to the top of the hill.”
Toran chucked rocks at the scouts. With that brief distraction, Jaime climbed up behind Eridene. The shouts behind them swelled. Something about “in the name of the King.”
Lady Eridene muttered, “I poop on the King’s name,” and slapped the reins.
Toran laughed, whooped, “There’s my Beanie!”
The winds stung the crusts around his eyes. Jaime blinked hard. Glanced over his shoulder. The Solstice marker was disappearing behind them.
Alarm spiked in his chest.
“Stop! We’re going to the wrong way—we have to go back!”
They galloped over the spine of the next knoll. More arrows flew overhead. One whizzed past his ear.
Lady Eridene clenched her teeth. “Too late.”
The ghostly shadow of another airmarker fast approached from the north. As they surged past it, Jaime twisted his upper body parallel against the stallion. His fingers brushed stone.
Lunas, the winds whispered to him.
Not Solstice. I knew it. We’re riding into the wrong air current.
Jaime looked up—saw what lied ahead of them. His breath stopped.
An ocean of clouds had blanketed these hills the day he last meditated on them, but tonight the skies were clear. Steep cliffs dropped off into a narrow, fertile plain that stretched into the horizon, interrupted by glitters of flame and limestone
mountains. Wild rivers blazed unnavigable paths through deciduous forests. No highways. No milestones. Only ancient trails stamped into the earth by travelers and their pack animals: the land was waiting for him to carve his own road.
The lady slid off the saddle. “Here we are, just as you wanted!” she shouted above the roaring gusts.
Toran pulled to a halt behind them. Jaime scrambled for his pack, dumping out the other windcloaks.
Eridene stared at him in disbelief.
“This is your plan—an ugly wardrobe? The royal army’s going to capture us, Your Highness! What a stupid idea, I knew I should have never left camp—”
Jaime shoved a windcloak at her and handed one to Toran. They went white as he took a long, deep breath, poking a sandal over the hill’s edge.
“The kid’s crazy!” Toran cried. “We’re gonna die!”
The wind currents swirled around him, tossing every which way. He closed his eyes. One, two, three, four. And then he felt it: a steady current brushing his arm, twisting over the cliffs.
“Now!” he yelled, and jumped.
For one terrifying moment, he was trapped in freefall. Darkness nipped and gnashed at him. The crags zoomed in fast.
Abruptly, the wind caught the feathery folds between his arms and legs. A sharp jerk—
He swooped forward like a bird of prey, wings outstretched in a dive.
Screams echoed over the canyon. Toran and Eridene tumbled into jagged flight. The winds clawed at them, tossing them up and down. Their screams turned into shrieks of terror.
For the love of Lord Jaypes!
Jaime gauged the airstreams with his avai. Then he tilted his outstretched arms like an eagle in flight and looped himself around. The current dropped him behind his friends. Jaime extended his hands.
Eridene and Toran fumbled to grab them.
“You have to trust the winds to hold you!” he yelled. “Don’t be afraid or you will fall!”
Arrows punctured the air.
Jaime ducked his head. “Come on! Spread out your arms!”
“Easy for you to say, Your Holiness of Air!” Toran gasped.
Lunas thrust them forward, although his friends were falling fast: the winds refused to support them. Jaime clenched his teeth, searching for The Empyrean—
Got you.
At his mind’s command, Lunas broke into smaller currents. Jaime lifted his friends back up with air.
The enemy arrows fell out of range. Royal soldiers pull up sharply at the cliffs, figurine-sized as Jaime led the sail ahead.
He gulped in a breath.
Far below him, the toy villages and patrols he saw so many times from the akropolis passed him in a smear of battle flames. They were crossing a wide fissure now—away from northeast, and south; away from everything in Jaypes he had come to know and love. Out here, dark clouds obscured whatever awaited him in the west.
Jaime crossed into the greater world of men: Usheon Ottega’s world, and civil war.
Part Three:
The Banestorm
Chapter Twenty-Five
At the break of dawn, they crashed into prickly shrubs. Jaime swore he had seen all of Jaypes. Beside him, Eridene giggled out her innards.
“Now that was the best time of my life.”
Despite the sting of his wind-bitten ears, Jaime wheezed, “Me too. We flew—” He windmilled his arms.
Lady Eridene hiccupped a laugh. “It was like—”
Jaime collapsed onto his back and stared up at the sky. He couldn’t form whole words. His head felt lighter than the fluffy clouds that always obscured Mount Alairus’s peak.
Toran popped out from his windcloak, rubbing down his explosion of hair.
“Will you shut up?” he growled. Eridene giggled harder. “I mean it, if you don’t, I’ll . . . ”
He leaned over and vomited.
The lady’s laughter faded.
Wiping the water from her eyes, she crawled over to him. “Seas, Toran, are you alright?” Eridene pinched her nose. “Lady Glaidde, what did you eat.”
Jaime studied the lands beyond them. The forests he came to know so well were gone. Now, ashy clouds blotted out all skylight. Not a single mountain to climb. An infinite plateau swept into the horizon, devoid of life.
He squinted into the distance, hoping to find the peaks Sojin spoke of, but gnarled crags and unruly cypress trees populated space. The ground was a flat sheet of purple knotgrass.
Am I still in Jaypes?
“Oh, this is horrid.” Lady Eridene cupped her face. “No roads, no rivers or any source of water, no bodyguards for hire. No proper toilets, nothing.”
Toran mumbled, “Is that a bad thing?”
“It’s okay, let’s start with finding water.” Jaime shuffled through his pack for his map. “Let’s see where we are . . . ”
He flipped open the map—and froze.
So many labels spattered the parchment, so many unfamiliar towns and geographical regions he could’ve been holding it upside down and it wouldn’t make a difference.
“Um.”
Eridene glared at him.
Sighing, Jaime folded the map. “It’s okay.” He grinned. “We’ll just use the winds to navigate.”
The clouds swelled into a cancerous yellow.
Jaime stayed ahead, his senses perked. The air streams spoke to him in whispers of Ancient Empyrean, guiding his way through the knee-high wild grasses. Somehow in his avai, he could feel which way was northeast.
Toran fell behind, batting away mayflies, clouds of pollen swelling his eyes shut. After another few hours, he declared with a sneeze: “Alright, I’ve had enough of this place. I ain’t taking another step without a few decent hours of sleep.”
Jaime wanted to keep going, but when Lady Eridene sided with Toran, he sighed.
“Okay. Let’s find a place to camp.”
At twilight, they burrowed inside a gorge. Now that his giddiness was gone, the dry emptiness of this place widened the hole in his heart. He missed Achuros’s nagging. The trill of his flute. His huffs and short sighs as Jaime stumbled over the modern translation of The Legend of the Four.
Toran started a campfire with flint and stone. Lady Eridene wandered off to take a piss, although in her words, it was to “pray alone with the Holy Lady.”
Jaime handed out the stale biscuits Prescilla had packed for him.
Neither of them talked.
His legs twitched. He’d climbed up slopes with Achuros every day to strengthen his physical energy and mental discipline. The lack of resistance in these plains was driving him mad.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, he stood up.
“I’m going to go for a walk.”
Toran grunted, absorbed by the shape he was absently drawing into the dirt. Something with multiple legs.
A mini foothill rolled out west of their camp. Jaime started scaling. Rocks tumbled. His sandals crunched under wild flowers and grasses. Charred blocks of clay scattered the landscape. A battle must have raged here, years ago. His last night in Arcurea flashed across his eyes.
A rock cut into the sole of his foot.
Jaime stumbled.
Abruptly, an old memory flashed in his mind: the autumn he climbed up the base of Mount Alairus with Hida. It was his sixth birthday. To celebrate, she insisted they climb to the cave temple two-thirds up the mountain. That way she could pray for his asthma in closer proximity to the God of Air. On that day, they were as sure-footed as Sokrates, their pack donkey.
“Lord Jaypes lives on Mount Alairus,” she told him, “above the clouds. No one has ever reached the top. It is not terrain meant for human feet.”
“Then how do you know he’s real?”
“Because he gave you to me,” she replied.
“But Mamá, Peri Kreed says you
have to see things first. Or you can’t believe them.” Jaime’s little hand tugged at her peplos. “I’m tired. This climb hurts.”
Hida Pappas bent down and lifted his right foot. Blood and dirt crusted his soft soles. She took a rag from their pack, pressing it to his wounds.
“One day, my son, you will climb Jaypes’s highest mountain, and you will see everything.”
The memory faded. Jaime’s face was buried in a clump of heliotrope. He stayed there, head bowed. Musky clouds passed overhead.
His eyes dampened as he thought about the sturdiness of Hida’s faith. Even when the Archpriestess began building the pyre in Townfold, she didn’t stop believing.
Lord Jaypes, what is Jaypes’s highest mountain? Is it the Lunar Peaks, where the High Temple is? I’ve climbed small hills and cut across alps, but Mamá says it’s impossible to reach the top of a great peak. There’s not enough air up there. I have a feeling my father is on the other side of Jaypes’s biggest peak. Help me make the climb . . .
“What by the great gods are you doing?”
The voice startled him. He stopped in mid-prayer.
Lady Eridene stood on a boulder below him, her shadow falling on his shoulders. He snapped upright.
“Nothing! Just—just resting.”
She gave an indifferent shrug and started her way back to camp. Jaime’s heart jumped. He was alone with her for once. He had to keep it that way. Just for a little longer.
“Thank you,” he blurted.
The Glaiddish lady turned around, her eyes narrowing.
“For, you know. Helping me back at Arcurea.”
“It wasn’t my idea. Toran saw the royal armies and insisted on helping you. You’re lucky he’s on your side.”
“Oh. I thought you—”
“I’m only here because circumstances forced me to come with you, but once we find a city or seaport, we separate.”
The resentment in her glacial eyes made it clear they were not friends. His throat grew lumpy.
“Oh—yeah, I know.” As she was turning again, he shuffled forward. “Wait. I wanted to ask . . . you’re from Glaidde, right? The Water Kingdom?”
Stormfire Page 18
