The Lore Of The Evermen (Book 4) (39 page)

53

Ella didn’t know where she was.

She stood on a path made of neatly fitted stones. The path stretched ahead as straight as an arrow until it vanished into the hazy horizon. The air felt hot and heavy, weighing down on her, and looking up, she saw the sky seethe with storm clouds, shifting hue from gray to red, plunging down to greet the land but shooting back up again as if shying away from making contact.

Ella frowned in puzzlement. How had she come to be here? She heard a rumble but knew it didn’t come from the clouds, and
turning
around she saw that behind her the path continued back in the opposite direction, but shadows danced on this horizon,
shadows
that launched streaks of flame into the air and erupted with smoke.

A second sound carried forward from the shadows: the clunk of marching boots, and Ella felt a surge of fear when she saw the flash of steel as spears and swords poked through the flame.

The shadows were moving along the path, picking up speed as the thunderous footsteps grew louder, heading inexorably forward, toward Ella.

Ella’s heart began to race. She knew that the enemy was approaching. If they caught her here, she would die.

Ella began to hurry forward, glancing back over her shoulder with every few steps.

In all directions the horizon blurred, impossible to focus on. An angry purple haze coated the land, as if seeping up from the ground itself. Ella looked for features, anything to break the monotonous landscape, but saw only a rocky, barren wasteland.

Her footsteps were heavy, and she felt tired, but she hurried fearfully on. Her hair fell in front of her face, and she pushed it away, her eyes widening when she saw golden tresses tumble through the air, though she’d only touched her hair with the lightest caress.

Looking back, Ella saw with relief that she’d outdistanced the enemy. They were still there, at the limit of her vision, back behind her, but the detonations weren’t as loud now, and she could no longer hear the marching.

She wondered how she would ever get out of this place.

Ella pinched the skin on the back of her hand and grimaced. Wherever she was, she could still feel pain. She looked at her bare arms and then down at her body. She wore a plain white dress, sleeveless and short, and her bare feet moved silently on the smooth paving stones.

Ella squinted ahead again, shading her eyes from the glare, though there was no sun in the sky. To the left: there was something there, beside the road. It was a building of some kind.

Checking to confirm her pursuers were still far behind, Ella progressed along the road until she drew close to the structure. She decided to investigate.

It was a wooden house, more of a shack really, with
crumbling
steps leading up to a rickety porch. A post outside the house
proclaimed
its name.

“‘Mallorin,’” Ella said, reading the sign.

Ella stood at the bottom of the steps and gazed up at the house. Then she heard a voice from outside the building, and looking to the rear, she saw trees clustered around a muddy pool.

Ella crept around the side of the house until she could see.

A little blonde girl sat on her knees at the edge of the puddle, a scooped bowl in her hand. She submerged the bowl in the water and then lifted it out. She grinned.

“Come along, tadpoles,” the little girl said. “Your pool’s drying up, and you need to get to the river.” Ella watched the muddy girl climb to her feet, holding the bowl carefully in her hands as she began to walk. “Don’t jump, it’s a long way down.”

Ella spotted movement in the nearby trees. A woman stood watching, hidden by the forest. She had ivory skin and wore an embroidered dress, with jewelry at her throat. The woman smiled as she watched the little girl, though tears spilled down her cheeks.

Ella looked back over her shoulder as she heard crashing sounds and the shouts of men and cries of women. She couldn’t stay here long: the thudding explosions were again louder, and once more she could hear marching boots.

When she returned her gaze to look forward, both the woman and the child were gone.

Leaving the side of the house, Ella walked over to once more stand at the foot of the steps. She hesitated, knowing she should leave, but she felt she was searching for something, and she began to climb.

Reaching the top, Ella crossed the porch and pushed open the thin door to look into the house’s interior.

Three chairs stood around a table, though only two were
occupied
. An old man sat with the same little girl, and each had a plate and knife and fork in front of them.

“Now, Ella. Pick up the fork in your left hand,” the old man said to the little girl. “Hold it like this. Do you see how I’m ho
lding it?
”

Ella watched the small girl struggle to copy the old man.

“Good,” he said. “Now pick up the knife. You always hold the fork with your left hand and the knife with your right.”

Ella smiled as she saw the old man reach over to adjust the child’s grip.

Then she heard another explosion, and the sounds of pursuit urged her on. She closed the door to the house and walked back down the steps.

A young boy with a shock of black hair strode toward where Ella stood. He was scowling as he stared right at her. He had a
savage
red mark to the left of his mouth.

“What happened?” Ella heard a voice behind her, and she saw that the little girl was behind her on the steps. The boy wasn’t
looking
at her; he was looking at the girl.

“I got into a fight,” the boy said.

“Why?”

“Because people say stupid things.”

“Did you have to fight?” the girl asked.

“Sometimes there’s no other way. I don’t care what they think of me, but it’s important what I think of myself.”

Ella stepped away from the steps and watched as the boy and girl spoke.

“I don’t want you to fight,” the girl said.

The boy sighed. “Neither do I.”

Ella heard the clash of steel against steel, and looking back toward the road, she could now make out individual soldiers, terrifying men with black armor and sharp swords revealed in the occasional gaps in the smoke. Another boom came from the enemy, and Ella heard the sound of splintering wood combine with the roar of flames.

When she looked for the two children, the boy and girl we
re go
ne.

Ella decided to go back to the road. As she walked away from the house, she suddenly saw the little girl in front of her holding a stack of books precariously piled in her arms. The roar of
fighting
men grew louder, and the girl glanced apprehensively over her shoulder and tripped.

Books fell everywhere as the girl fell down to her knees.

“Here, let me help,” Ella said.

She knelt and began to gather the books, placing them side by side on the ground. Reading the spines, Ella saw every topic
imaginable
covered, from language to the study of weather, to mathematics, to lore.

The girl went completely still, and Ella saw her face turn
completely
white.

“He’s here,” the girl said.

Ella felt cold fear shiver down her spine, and following th
e directio
n of the girl’s gaze, she saw a man step out from behind the house.

He shifted as he walked, changing appearance and stride, even bearing, as if two men existed in the one body. He was an old man in a gold-trimmed white robe with a black sun on the breast, an emaciated frame, and stick-thin arms. The old man’s skin was dead, wrinkled like parchment, and his eyes were dark and intense, the stare of a fanatic. He held a dagger in his hand.

Then he flickered and changed. Now he was a slim middle-aged man in elegant clothing of dark velvet, diamonds set in chrome at his cuffs and a silver chain around his neck. His hair was blood red, and his eyes were the shade of blue frost. As he walked, something wet and liquid dripped from the tips of his fingers, pattering to the ground with each step. Ella saw it was blood.

“Please,” the little girl said, looking imploringly at Ella. “Don’t let him get me.”

Ella scooped the little girl up in her arms and ran.

Expecting at any moment to feel hot breath on her neck, Ella left the house behind her and rushed back to the paved stones of the road. Risking a glance behind her, Ella saw the cloud of smoke and flame surge ahead. The house was gone, as if it had never been.

The menacing figure still walked toward them.

“Please,” the little girl whimpered.

“I’ll protect you,” Ella said.

Ella’s heart pumped as she ran along the road, away from her pursuers, heading into the haze. She was forced to set the girl down and instead held her hand, pulling her along as they ran from the encroaching darkness.

The blonde girl was surprisingly fast and kept pace with Ella, no faster and no slower than she was herself. Her little hand fit snugly into Ella’s palm. The task of protecting the girl gave Ella a sense of purpose she hadn’t felt before.

They ran, and now the man was at the front of the cloud that was the enemy. He was one of them, and the threat stronger than ever before.

A blurred shape appeared through the mist, a triangular mass at the end of the road, lying directly ahead.

Ella saw it was a mountain.

“Quick,” Ella said to the little girl. “We’ll be safe here.”

The mountain came at them all at once, a stepped pyramid of dark stone looming down, solid and indomitable.

“There’ll be a chamber at the top,” Ella panted as she led the girl up the steps. “They can’t hurt us there.”

“I’m scared,” the little girl whimpered.

Ella’s legs burned with fatigue, and sweat dripped down her brow. Wet strands got in the way of her vision, and she
impatiently
brushed them aside. At her touch, the hair came out in a big clump. Ella looked at the strands in her hand in horror and flung
them awa
y.

Ella climbed step after step, surprised that a girl so small could keep pace with her. Glancing back, she saw that the enemy had reached the base of the mountain, the man running forward to lead the charge. He brandished the dagger and snarled as he dashed up the steps, his white robe twisting around his thin frame, though there was no wind. He smoothed back his slicked hair, and
symbols
on his hands and neck glowed with fire. Ella shook her head and returned her gaze to the front, desperately searching for the
chamber
she knew was here.

The man was nearly on them. Ella reached the dark
opening
and turned wide eyes behind her as she saw him lunge up the mountain. Ella heard his hoarse breathing and saw the dagger in the man’s hand speed through the air, not aimed at her, instead shooting forward at the little girl.

Ella pulled the girl into her arms, and she launched herself up the final step and into the dark opening.

Ella fell.

Suddenly there was nothing in her arms: the girl was gone. Ella screamed as she plummeted endlessly through darkness, her limbs writhing and her vision conjuring a hard floor coming up to meet her. She ran out of breath and gasped before screaming again. She screamed, emptying her breath three more times before she realized she was face down on the ground.

Ella struggled to make sense of it. She’d been falling, and now she was on the ground. She lifted her head. Where was the little girl?

Ella was in a cavern, and though there was no source of light, she could easily discern the craggy walls and smooth stone floor. She rose to her feet and, tilting her head back, could only see a black void above, a shadowed height disappearing endlessly to the limits of vision.

There were two side tunnels leading from the cavern, one large and one small.

Ella walked toward the entrance of the smaller tunnel and peered inside. This tunnel was walled, with blocks of stone fitted next to each other to fill the arched ceiling. The tunnel glowed with blue light, and it turned at the end. Deciding to see what lay after the turn, Ella walked inside.

Her bare feet made no sound on the stone, and the air was cool and dry. She rounded the corner, and still the tunnel stretched on. Ella walked for an age as the tunnel bent left and twisted right, heading deeper and deeper into the rock.

Ella frowned, tilting her head to the side as she heard a strange clinking and bubbling. As she rounded the next corner, Ella stopped and stared.

A man in a black robe had his back to her, and Ella saw a symbol on the back of the robe: a triangle bounded by a double circle. A bench stood against the wall of the square room, and Ella saw smoke pouring from the mouths of bubbling glass flasks, with pipes leading from one vial to another. Jars lined the wall, each containing a colored liquid or powder.

Ella cleared her throat, and the man turned.

He was old, with kind eyes and a high forehead. Ella saw he held an open book in his hands, the pages yellowed with age.

He closed the book with a snap and scowled at Ella.

“I told you,” he said. “Everything is poison; there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison.”

“I . . . I don’t understand,” Ella said.

“Listen! Everything is toxic, and small amounts of things
considered
poisonous can do good, while large amounts of safe
substances
can kill. For every bad there is good.”

“Please . . .” Ella said.

“You aren’t listening!” the old man roared at her.

Ella turned on her heels and fled. She ran back down the
winding
passage, gasping as her bare feet slapped against the stone, until she finally stood back in the wide cavern.

Ella leaned against the wall to regain her breath.

Shaking her head, trying to clear it, she resisted the urge to sob. She didn’t understand any of this. What was happening to her?

Ella was frightened of what she would find in the larger tunnel. But she had to find out what was in there.