Girl of Myth and Legend (39 page)

But too late. His blade stabs through my keeper’s already injured arm, and he laughs like a maniac as she screams. Hot, searing pain, like a firework igniting—I feel it as if it were my own pain, for a brief moment only, but long enough to render me still for that single second.

Hau-Rai says, ‘I’ve come to claim your wrath, little puppet. Show me your
fire
!’

LEONIE

SOMEWHERE VERY NOWHERE

All I can see is blinding white. My arm is on fire, as if every nerve has been ripped from it slowly and my veins have become like lava. I push it into the snow, trying to lessen the pain, and it works, enabling my vision to focus on the scene in front of me: Korren throwing down a rebel and then leaping at Hau-Rai who is on top of me, and crushing his torso with his dagger-like teeth. Hau-Rai screams out, and Korren flings him away as if he were a toy. Then, Korren is at my side, and I’m surprised to feel his concern for me over the sheer pain I’m feeling, his worry for me strong enough to supersede this burning agony.

‘Little lion,’ he says, looking me over as I breathe rapidly and trying not to cry out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should have been closer to you, I—’

‘Y-you ca-can’t escape,’ I hear Hau-Rai say in a coarse voice. ‘They’re coming.’

And as he says it, I discern more figures approaching us in a run from within the mist. Two come first, one just a boy, his face covered in painted stripes. He looks afraid but determined.

‘D-do it now, Demetri!’ Hau-Rai shouts.

Demetri extends his arm, his palm facing the portal.

‘Hurry, quick!’ Korren says to me. He clips my coat with his teeth and pulls me up. ‘Through it, now!’

‘Now, Demetri!’ I hear Hau-Rai say.

‘I’m trying to locate the outpost!’ he shouts back.

‘Dad,’ I manage to say through the pain, and I find him on the snow, staring at me… no, not at me, at Korren, solemn and unyielding.

‘Kytaen,’ he says, his voice bristly. ‘
Korren
. D-don’t take her to the Im-Imperium. She won’t… won’t be safe there.’

‘I can’t find it!’ Demetri shouts. ‘I need more time!’

Korren grabs me with his talon, pulling me into him. I struggle against his grip. I can feel the heat of his body against my back.

‘Get
off
me!’ I scream, with every ounce of energy I have left. ‘We are not leaving him here! You hear me? I command you to let me go! Save him, Korren!
Save him
!’

As he pulls me towards the portal, I look at Dad one last time. A backdrop of silver. Rebels coming towards him, trying to get to me. Blood and muck covering his face. His eyes full of pride and hope and worry.

‘I love you,’ he mouths.

I scream for him as we enter the portal, and the world is covered in darkness.

I feel as if my body is being twisted and wrung. Then the darkness shifts and—

The sun is dazzlingly bright, stinging my eyes, and the air absurdly hot. I have to blink a few times before my eyes can adjust, and I look outwards to find I’m standing on a rocky peak overlooking a vast, dried land, mountains rising from its cracked floor, their peaks like harpoon tips. No snow. No mist. No darkness. No maiden. The only sound is that of the gentle, almost non-existent breeze winding its way around the rocks of the mountain. The wind carries the scent of earth and dust and magic.

‘Where are we?’ I ask.

‘Somewhere very nowhere,’ says Korren.

KORREN

CURSES AND DEMONS AND NIGHT

‘This isn’t right,’ I say. ‘This isn’t where the portal was supposed to take us.’

Instead of being in the dome that is The Core, my keeper and I stand on the peak of a rocky mountain, a blazing sun reigning the skies above us. The ground is dusted with sand, hot beneath my feet. The air is baking and dry, making breathing more of a chore than a subconscious act. If we had come to the Silver Forest I might have been able to navigate us to the Imperium, but this is not the Silver Forest, and we are some place far from the Imperium’s protection.

‘That boy, Demetri, he must have been trying to locate the rebels’ base,’ I say. ‘He was the one who changed the trajectory of the portal. He was the one who helped bring the maiden through.’ But was this his intended destination? Or didn’t he locate it time before my keeper and I went through it?

I look up to the sky. There isn’t a single cloud, and the sun is unyielding, heating the ground we stand on. This place is empty of life, and I can’t believe that the rebels would live here, that anyone would live here, so Demetri must have failed in getting us to wherever his comrades are.

‘This isn’t good,’ I say. ‘It’ll be dark soon. We can’t be out at dark. Are you listening?’

I turn to my keeper who is kneeling on the floor, eyes wide as she stares at the ground. She is shaking.

‘You’re no good to me like this,’ I mutter. It’s not as if I can leave her, though. Our soul-binding may not be as painful now, but any major separation is unthinkable for at least a day or so.

‘I…’ she begins.

‘What is it?’

She vomits. A lot. When she’s done, she stands up, legs wobbling, eyes distant and unobservant, and presses her back against the wall of the mountain and slides down it, small rocks clattering to the ground.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I say. ‘We can’t be out here at night! We need to find shelter.’

But she’s not listening. Her eyes are rimmed red and she stares ahead into an unfamiliar place, an unknown path. I sympathise with her, and I even feel fragments of her despair from the link between us. Even here, far from the maiden’s grasp, my mind clings to such dread. Those remaining souls trapped in a cage of nightmares will perish, if not by the maiden, certainly by their own hands. To acknowledge there is nothing I can do to help them leaves an empty feeling in the pit of my chest.

Now, though, all that weight, all that hopelessness has been lifted. For me at least, but not for my keeper, it’s like breathing new air where senses are more profound, brighter, happier.

‘The Imperium will come soon,’ I tell her. ‘They’ll track us with the device they implanted in you. We can’t depend on them to come straight away, though. They’re probably in chaos trying to comprehend the attack on the Temples. But once the maiden has destroyed itself, they’ll come for you, regardless of what your father wanted.’

Still, she says nothing in reply.

‘We don’t have time for your breakdown,’ I say. ‘Either follow me or die here. With your arm how it is, you’re not going to last long without treatment.’

I turn my back on her, limping down the steep mountain path. Each step feels as if the blade that cut me is stabbing it again, every second, without fail. On the path ahead of us a cluster of small rocks trundle down the mountain wall onto our rugged path and over the precipice into the chasm below. Silence follows, and I look back to see my keeper following me without a word.

Our long descent journeys us around the mountain, and then I spot something far off in the distance.

‘Snow,’ I say.

On the horizon I see mountains dusted with snow, and ground blanketed by it. It’s as if the desert comes to an abrupt stop. That’s impossible, though. Unless…

‘This is cursed land,’ I say, turning to my keeper. But she’s in her own world. I look back to the snowy region. Someone or something, perhaps even Duwyn itself, has cursed the land we’re walking on. When a curse is cast on a land, for whatever reason, most of it becomes dried up and dies. We’d never make it across the desert with what little time we have before dark settles and shadows slither from their holes, and even if we had more time it’d take more than a day to get there. Without a sanctuary, we’d be killing ourselves. So what then? Stay in this cursed land until we die?

It takes us a long, sweltering hour to reach the bottom of the mountain, climbing over rocks in our way, carefully manoeuvring ourselves down the steep edges of the mountain. I’m relieved that we’re now on flat land, but that relief is short-lived. Ahead of us lies only a basin of endlessness, of heat and aridness to be lost in. I look at my keeper: she has discarded her jacket without me noticing, and sweat is sticking to her shirt, the sun having burnt her skin. At some point she must have ripped the fabric from her underclothes and wrapped it around her arm, not that it’s helped much: it is blood-drenched, and the peeling skin is red raw with small boils covering it. She must be in a lot of pain, but her mind is probably shutting it out for now. She licks her parched lips over and over, and I notice she’s breathing faster than normal. She won’t last long in this heat, and I don’t think I will either.

I make a decision, and it’s one that might kill us.

Rather than go out into the desolate plain, I choose to walk around the mountain. There might be something in that direction that will help us survive, and if not, we didn’t stand a chance either way.

We keep on walking, stumbling and pushing forward, my leg burning and aching and tiring, but I have to keep going. I will not die like this, as another meaningless kytaen who will not be remembered.

It takes us another hour to get to the side of the mountain, and when we do, we’re met with the sight of an optius built into the mountain itself. My hopes lift. An optius is a sanctuary for wanderers who get caught out in the open at night with no hope of reaching a safe place. They can be anything: a shack, a hole or, as in our case, an opening in the mountain. Cast upon them is a charm of protection, which burns a symbol into the sanctuary so Chosen know what it is. The symbol only becomes effective when the light of the moons touch it, so if it’s a moonless night, the optius is an ineffective place for protection. This optius is visible from the outside, which makes me feel uneasy, but it’s all we have, and it
will
make sure nothing gets in. Far better to be within it than out on this flat land, and besides, my leg is laborious—it won’t last for much longer.

‘In here,’ I say, rocks cracking under my talons as I go towards it. I don’t hear my keeper following and crane my neck back to look at her. She’s holding herself, choking on tears she won’t let come. I pity her, I really do, but there’s no time for her to cry: the sun is already setting on the horizon, the sky filled with shades of red and orange. ‘In here,’ I say louder.

‘He’s dead.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘You don’t—’

‘He’s dead. They killed him.’

‘Even if they did, that realisation isn’t going to help us now, is it?’

She tilts her head down so that her hair covers her face, and she walks forward. I lead her towards the mouth of the optius, glancing back at her a few times.

It’s not as hot inside, though it’s dark. I search for an inscription in the wall, and when I find it I turn to my keeper.

‘Press your hand against this,’ I say.

I can’t see her well enough to know if she’s listening, but after a moment she comes beside me.

‘All Chosen who create an optius put an inscription within it,’ I tell her, ‘and it can only be activated when another Chosen uses their magic on it.’

‘I have no magic,’ she says in a detached voice.

‘You don’t have any power yet, that doesn’t mean the magic isn’t there.’

‘Heh. Sersu said something like that…’ She presses her hand against it, and the inscription begins to glow. Like veins in the wall, the glow moves through the cave, brightening our surroundings.

‘I did that?’ she says.

‘Not exactly. This is magic created a long time ago by whoever made this optius. Your magic just triggered it.’

There isn’t much in here, only an empty sack that was probably once filled with food, and a few painted drawings of beasts and dark swirls on the wall. I even notice one that says ‘as hee’ with a circle drawn under it.

‘Sit down,’ I say to her. ‘You’re probably exhausted. I know I am.’

She doesn’t move, staring at the ground. I see the maiden in her eyes, her father, Jacob, all of those she watched die. I’m adamant about refraining from physical contact with her, but at this rate she’ll lose her sanity in grief. I nudge her with my snout. That seems to awaken a little bit of her, as she gives me a fleeting glare.