Arrival (11 page)

“Thrust, Jane!” Fern yelled as Jane feebly attempted swordplay. “Just stop,” he sighed and shook his head.

“Stop yelling at me!” Jane shouted, “I might be able to do it if you weren’t yelling!”

“If you would concentrate then I wouldn’t have to yell.”

Jane took a deep breath to calm herself. It was much easier than it would have been before she’d been given the pearl. It gave her a warm feeling every time she thought about it. Curiously, the power of the pearl didn’t seem to work on Fern though. He was just as infuriating as he’d always been, and too distracting.

She swung the heavy sword in a wide arc, landing it on Fern’s shoulder. At least, it would have landed on his shoulder if he hadn’t managed to parry the blow with laughable ease, even when he hadn’t been looking.

“Would you like to rest?” he asked.

She was about to reply with a resounding ‘no’ when something completely different popped out of her mouth. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

His eyes met hers briefly before he looked at the ground. “Thank you.”

“All your girlfriends will be pleased, no doubt.”

He didn’t rise to the bait, only shrugged. “I was never misleading with anyone. A royal marriage is not something one just walks into lightly, Jane. My bride has always had to be of a certain rank.”

Jane’s eyebrows arched and she nodded, thinking about this. “How long have you and Athena been together?”

He frowned. “You mean courting? Our parents have wanted the marriage for some time. We’ve known each other many years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Jane asked, making sure to sound casual.

He shrugged. “There are important things to be discussed other than marriages.”

Jane continued. “You said ... you said your parents want the marriage...?”

“Yes.”

“What about you, Fern? Do you?”

He took a slow breath, and finally after a moment he looked up at her gently. “Does it matter?”

She stared at him. “What do you mean? Of course it does.”

Suddenly he was grinning again. “No, sweetness, not for me it doesn’t. Not for a prince. There are certain expectations. But in the end it’s all the same isn’t it? Marrying one girl from the next? What does it matter who she is?”

Jane opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was a long silence. Then, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

He winked patronisingly at her. “Don’t try too hard, lady.”

“How do you think Athena would feel if she heard you say that?”

He shrugged carelessly, and Jane shook her head in disbelief. Suddenly he was serious. “We’re wasting time. Raise your sword.”

She sighed and again heaved the enormous blade into the air.

“You’d do better to hold it higher,” a voice offered from beside them.

They both wheeled to see a small, slim figure leaning tiredly against a tree. She had a long matt of mousy brown hair, and a plain, thin face, which showed signs of stress. A strangely-shaped thing in a leather case was slung on her back. Fern leapt over to take the girl in a big hug that lifted her off the ground. She laughed, but there was something tight about the sound. After struggling out of his arms, the girl gasped for breath and said, “Careful, Fern, I’m not one of your soldiers.”

“Are you all right, girl? You do not look well,” he asked in a low voice that Jane could only just hear.

“I’m fine, Fern,” the girl replied, “You’re worrying over nothing.”

“Did you go home like I told you to?”

She nodded. “Did you make it to the wise man?”

“Yes, I found Jane on the way down,” said Fern. He turned towards Jane. “This is Ria del Torr, the best and most accomplished singer in the land. I’ve known her many years, ever since she sang at the palace and changed lives,” he paused briefly to note Ria grimacing at Jane. “This is Jane,” he hesitated and then went on. “She is a Stranger.”

Ria raised her eyebrows. She seemed to handle Fern with ease and put him in his place quickly enough. She was small and quiet, and the lines around her eyes and mouth made her seem much older than she was.

“Fern, can we sit down? I have tidings for you,” Ria sighed. Before they could direct her to the campsite, she looked at Jane and said, “I take it she is trustworthy, so we may speak freely? I know why the sabre-tooths were massing to the north. You were right, though I know not how you realised—things have changed.”

Jane couldn’t hide the surprise she felt—a hand went up to cover her mouth. Fern’s expression was unchanged.

“You had better tell me,” he murmured.

Ria frowned and walked over to the makeshift camp. She sat down elegantly and said, “They were going north because they were called north. They were summoned.”

Fern’s grey eyes flashed. “By whom?” he asked sharply.

“Someone of great power. I don’t know. I don’t know who could have been controlling them that way.” Ria shook her head.

Jane’s heart sank into her stomach. “It’s Leostrial,” she said. “It has to be.”

“Surely he doesn’t have enough power to do that,” said Fern.

“Yes, he does,” Jane said softly. “He has more than enough.”

Fern sat in silence for a moment. “I am now very glad we are heading towards Uns Lapodis,” he said eventually. “I need to take council with Gaddemar, see if we can find out what Leostrial is planning.”

“Ria, do you know anything more?” the prince asked.

Ria looked at the ground. “There is something more. Whoever is calling the sabre’s north has a beast in his control. I don’t know how he could possibly manage it, but Leostrial has Locktar working for him.”

Everything stilled. Jane looked from Ria to Fern and back—the depth of the silence was alarming.

“Gods,” Fern whispered. “We may be undone after all.”

“What?” Jane exclaimed. “Who is Locktar?”

Ria tried to explain. “A dragon born from nightmares. We all thought him a myth, so horrible are the stories of his destruction. If Leostrial has the power to control the beast, then who knows what he could do. I don’t understand why he would be summoning the sabre-tooths, though.”

“I can only guess,” Fern replied.

“Go on then,” Jane said softly.

“I fear that he is readying himself for war.”

“But ... A war against whom? And for what reason?” Ria exclaimed.

Fern stood up and said, “We leave at sunrise. If we travel hard, then we might make it to the dock before sunset. From there we can sail to Amalia.” And then he strode off into the darkness. The girls looked at each other.

Ria said, “Would it be presumptuous of me to ask if I could come with you? Only, I have needs and vengeance of my own to seek.”

Jane stared at her for a second. Vengeance? Only a few days earlier she’d been worrying about the weather for that picnic, and now she was sitting at a campsite with a strange woman talking about needing vengeance!

“It’s not up to me whether you come or not,” she said. “But if it makes a difference, I wouldn’t mind a bit of female company.” Maybe she’d be able to confide in Ria and make a new friend. Fern was ... a bit much, sometimes.

Ria smiled, and her eyes lit up in a beautiful shade of green.

“I’m not sure you’ll find what you’re looking for in me,” she said with genuine amusement. Before Jane could ask her what she meant, Ria walked off into the night in the opposite direction of Fern.

Jane was still thinking about this when a tall shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere, and Jane’s scream filled the night.

Ria sat down on a log and put her head in her hands, feeling ill. She took up her harp, Collinia, and began to play. No song as such, only plucked notes and chords. And as she played, she felt her heart ease slightly, as she had known it would. In the comfort of her music, she went over the events she had been trying so hard to block out over the last few days.

It had started when she arrived back in Torr at her parents’ house. She had gone there directly after the contest in Luglio.

She knew something was very wrong as soon as she walked into her house and found her father still in bed, though the sun had been up for several hours.

“Papa, are you all right?”

He rolled over and looked up at his only child. “Ria? Is that you?”

“Yes, yes. What has happened?”

“Beasts ... There were so many of them. We were waiting for them on the hill, but they snuck around and killed the women while they were at home. I couldn’t—” He began to cry.

“Where’s mother?” Ria asked urgently. “Papa! Where is she?”

“I tried, but I was too late.”

“What happened?”

“She’s dead,” he whispered and rolled over.

Ria sank onto the bed with him and held him as tightly as she could.

A pack of sabre-tooths had charged through the small town of Torr and killed the women and children.

Ria did not shed a single tear, and vowed never to again until the day she avenged her mother. She hadn’t been there. She had saved herself from death, but she had not saved her mother, and thus, she had to pay the price.

A determination had come over her, such as never before. Her poor, beautiful little town in the hills that had just suffered the plague seemed now to be destined for further pain and sorrow. It was ruined. Every family had someone taken from them. There were hardly any women left. Shops closed, men worked to look after their children and bring in coin for food. Taverns were empty, the fields had no workers. It was like a ghost town, filled only with the widowers of their dead families.

She had gone into the cellar, retrieved her father’s sword, and sheathed it over her back. Then she had travelled into the almost empty town, bought a servant and two horses from a man who could no longer afford them and had ridden harder than she had ever before. It took her a week to catch up to the pack, following their trail of havoc through the countryside.

Ria sat on a hill overlooking the beasts for a night. The silent, dark-skinned servant sat next to her. His name was Saish, and he was of the Kabduh race that lived in the desert sands of Anuk. He carried two curved swords slung over his back, much like her single straight one, about ten different-sized knives placed strategically over his body, and two tattoos, one under each eye, like black knife points dripping from the sockets. His lean, muscled body added to his terrifying appearance.

He was exactly what Ria needed. She was about to ride through one of the most dangerous parts of the country, a place that thieves and other unsavoury characters were known to inhabit.

Saish sat quietly by her side through the night. Although he must have been perplexed by what she was doing, he showed no sign of it.

Halfway through the next day, their patience was rewarded.

They were lying on the grass when they felt the air grow chill and the sky darken. Strong winds howled. Looking into the sky, Ria saw a colossal beast that reeked of evil, flapping its scaly wings slowly so as to land on the ground below them. A dragon, entirely black with a long scaly body and huge wings. It snapped its long jaw, screeching in fury and flaring its smoky nostrils.

Every person in Paragor knew the story of Locktar, the myth of a dragon raised from the very depths of hell and stolen from Ares himself by someone humans had long ago named ’the Scourge’. Children would scare each other before bedtime with stories of the dragon. But everyone knew they were just stories.

But they had all been terribly wrong.

The creature standing before them was real enough. Locktar, messenger of darkness, snapped at the cowering sabre-tooths, breathing flame onto their tails to hurry their journey.

“Who could be making this happen?” Ria whispered. “Who could be controlling that beast?”

Saish said nothing.

How was it that a mortal man could control such a creature? A beast that had been controlled only by the Scourge himself.

And so she had come to know that the sabre-tooths were massing towards the north, and that something was driving them there. They mounted their horses and rode again—Ria needed to get to Sitadel so that she could warn the king. Had they stayed another few hours and witnessed the battle between Cornelius and the beasts, it would have saved them several days of riding hard north. It had been purely chance that she had heard swords clashing near the Elvish Lands boundary.

Sending Saish to scout the area for danger, she crept through the trees.

Ria had almost cried out in relief upon finding Fern standing in the trees.

“This is Jane,” he told her. “She is a Stranger.”

Ria stared at the girl, taken aback. A Stranger? And Jane was so young! The girl’s huge brown eyes stared at Ria boldly, inquisitively. She was so beautiful—a youthful, innocent kind of beauty—she struggled to hold the sword with her slender arms.

“You haven’t been here long, then?” Ria had asked and Jane shook her head.

Sitting on the log now, Ria wondered how long the girl’s innocence could remain in a world like this.

Suddenly a scream sliced through the quiet air. Ria ran as fast as she could through the trees towards the cries. Fern had beaten her there, and was now holding his sword against the throat of Ria’s silent friend, Saish. They both looked calm and menacing.

“Fern, no!” Ria cried. He looked over at her, but did not lower his sword. Ria ran and stood in front of Saish. “He’s my friend. Trust me.”

The prince hesitated, then sheathed his sword and muttered an apology. Ria knew it had been an act of honour for Saish not to have drawn his own two swords and silently thanked him with a nod.

“I’m sorry,” Jane breathed, clutching her heart. “He startled me a little, coming out of the bushes like that.”

“This is my servant,” Ria said quickly. “His name is Saish.”

“Servant?” Jane repeated.

“The parts of country I was travelling through are not safe for a woman to go alone,” Ria told her. “Hired protection.”

Jane nodded, eyeing Ria and then Saish.

“He is from the sands of Anuk. A Kabduh.”

“What’s a Kabduh?”

“Desert warrior,” Saish grunted for himself.

There was silence for a moment, and a cold north wind blew in from the sea to ruffle their hair.