Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) Page 3

  Panic seized her. Her hour had yet to pass. Where had Xain gone? She scanned the ground for his trail. Then she heard the snap of a twig, and he rose from behind a fallen log.

  “I am pursued,” she said quickly.

  His eyes flashed. “The constables?”

  “No, I sent them the other direction. But my father spied me as I left the village.”

  He muttered a curse. Loren thrust a hand into her travel sack, wrapped it around cloth, and tugged.

  “Here. Leave your coat—it will get in the way, and shine like the sun besides. Put this on.”

  He obeyed without question, dropping the garment to the dirt and donning her father’s green cloak. She saw his nose wrinkle at the smell, but he issued no comment.

  “Come, and quickly. Shadow my path exactly. The track will be difficult to follow. Mayhap we can lose him.”

  “I have no quarrel with your father,” growled Xain. “We should split up, or you should stay.”

  Loren’s stomach spun circles. “I had no quarrel with your constables, and yet I would have gone with you. You cannot leave me!”

  His eyes darted back and forth. “Very well. But if he should catch us, I will not raise my hand to him first.”

  He will raise his, I assure you.

  But Loren said nothing. Xain would go with her, if she did not scare him off.

  The land fell away before them as they headed south. Sloping ground lent them speed, and Loren used it to their advantage. Once the land began to level again, she swerved suddenly right and up a low rise. At the top, broken rocks formed a sort of circle. The Giant’s Crown, some called it, where the forest floor grew hard and stony beyond. She followed the rocky terrain as long as she dared, but when it turned north she abandoned it and plunged again into the trees.

  Before long, a small stream sprang at their feet. They ran down its speedy flow, splashing through shallows at the edge. It slowed them somewhat, but water bore no marks of passage. When the stream turned north, Loren led Xain out of the water again.

  Here the trees were more spare, and they had to run long distances over open ground. Loren imagined she could feel her father’s eyes on her back as she ran. Her steps came faster and faster, but soon Xain tired and began to flag behind her. She slowed her pace to match him, and every step seemed an irredeemable loss.

  “You must hurry. He will find us.”

  Xain did not bother with an answer. He could move no faster, and both of them knew it. After a time, his ankle caught upon a protruding root. He stumbled, and her father struck.

  He leapt from the shadows between two thick oaks. His hand lashed out, cracking against Loren’s cheek. She fell to the ground with a cry and struggled up before he could pin her. But he did not come for her. When she rose, Loren saw him atop Xain instead, wrapping an arm around the thinner man’s throat. The wizard’s face turned red and then edged purple. He fought to bring a hand around, scrabbling for her father’s face, but he caught the hand and twisted it, prompting an agonized screech.

  Loren’s mind turned to ice at the cry. Never had her father hurt another in her presence—except when he fought her mother, and Loren only wanted each to hurt the other as much as possible. But now he threatened to crush the life from her only chance, the one man Loren had ever truly believed might be able to save her from a life of pain and obscurity.

  Icy rage turned white hot, and Loren drew the dagger. She charged her father, blade held high. But he saw her coming and released the wizard, scrabbling to his knees and away from his daughter’s wild swing.

  He rose and roared like a bear brought to bay. The sound dampened Loren’s sudden burst of fury, and she hesitated. That single moment was enough. Like a snake, her father sprang. One hand gripped her wrist to hold the dagger helpless, his other curled into a fist.

  Stars erupted at the edge of her vision as he drove it into her face. Loren doubled over. Father squeezed her wrist until the dagger dropped to the grass. She gasped at the pain in her eye, blinking as she fought to clear her vision.

  “Spawn of soiled seed,” said her father. “You have been a plague and a pox upon me since the day you first clawed air into your lungs.”

  He kicked her. The hard leather of his boots felt like a tree trunk. Loren screamed, trying to roll away, but he only kicked her in the back.

  She could not see. Or think. Where was she? Who was this man, and why did he wish to hurt her so? Why did some part of her mind cry that he should love her, pick her up and cradle her in his arms, promise to take the pain away? Instead of salve, he gave her more.

  Loren’s eyes fell on Xain, crouching several yards away. The wizard’s lips moved, and his eyes began to glow. A hand curled at his side, and Loren saw the flash of fire within it.

  “No!” she cried. “Don’t kill him!”

  Xain froze. His lips stopped moving, and the fire wisped to nothing in his palm.

  The shout drew her father’s gaze. His ugly, beady eyes fell on the wizard. His lips split in a grimace and showed spots of blood.

  He leapt catlike upon Xain and grounded the wizard. He wrapped his hands around the thinner man’s throat, digging his fingers in deep. The wizard’s eyes bugged forth as though they might burst from their sockets. He gasped a phrase, and blue lightning sprang into being, but it vanished before he unleashed it.

  Loren’s heart broke. Xain would not have been here if not for her. He might have died on the way to Cabrus, and he might not. But she had led him to this place and brought her father’s wrath. And now Xain would die.

  She could not allow it. Loren saw the dagger lying by her fingers and thought of her childish dreams.

  Nightblade could not allow it.

  Loren fought to her knees. Her bow still hung on her back, and by some grace of the gods its string was whole. Her fingers felt like wood, but she forced them around the bow’s shaft and pulled it free. She raised a shaking arrow to string and half drew before taking two stumbling steps forward. This time, her father had eyes for nothing but Xain.

  Loren kicked as hard as she could, and something in her father’s face broke beneath her boot heel.

  He fell away, rolling over and over to lay distance between them. Screaming in rage, he regained his feet. Then he paused. Loren’s arrow rested at full draw, aiming straight for his heart.

  Slowly, her father’s hamfist hands came up on either side of his head. For every inch they climbed, the fury in his eyes grew darker.

  “No more.” The words left Loren in a whisper. “No more will you torment me. I am leaving, Father, and I mean never to return.”

  “You mean to defy me? You will do your duty as a daughter or—”

  She pulled harder on the bow, another inch of draw. Her father fell to silence.

  “You have never done your duty as a father. I owe you nothing.”

  “You owe me everything. I could have killed you in the cradle. I could have killed you when I woke up this morning and emptied my bowels on your corpse. I made you, and now I see I made you worthless.”

  His words should have stung, but Loren was beyond them. They were only a stronger flavor of the same things he had said all her life. And in this moment, now that another fate beckoned, she stood under his sway no longer.

  “Then when I leave, you shall suffer no great loss.” Her icy eyes met her father’s boiling rage.

  Xain had finally recovered his breath and came to stand at Loren’s side. He muttered. His eyes glowed white, a ball of lightning hovered in his grasp.

  “You think you can escape me? I learned these lands years before I spilled you between your mother’s legs. Nowhere in Selvan can you hide from me. Ready yourself for sleepless nights by a bright fire. For if you close your eyes in slumber, if for even a moment you relax into darkness—”

  Loren loosed the shaft. It sank into her father’s thigh. He collapsed to the ground without a scream, only a gut-deep grunt of agony.

  “Chase us now,” said Loren.

&nbs
p; She turned and walked away, stopping for only a moment to retrieve the dagger and return it to its sheath. She did not turn to see if Xain followed but after a moment heard footfalls behind her.

  Her father’s hateful screams followed them for a while, long past the time when she could no longer understand the words, finally dying as they reached the flat plain between the forest’s edge and the King’s road to the south.

  The sun hung low in the sky by the time they reached it. Loren had only seen the road twice in her life. Its hard-packed dirt felt odd underfoot. Not far beyond, they heard the Melnar’s whispering sigh roaring its way toward the High King’s Seat.

  “The King’s road at last.” They were the first words Xain had spoken since the fight, and they left his throat in a hesitant rasp. His bruises would long remain, Loren knew. She feared to see the marks on her ribs and whispered a quick prayer of thanks that nothing had broken.

  But the road would not let Loren long consider her aching. “Is it as long as they say?”

  “I do not know what you have been told,” Xain said. “But I would imagine it is longer. Follow it west from here, and you will come to every capital city in the nine lands. Follow it east, and soon enough you will find yourself at the High King’s Seat.”

  “But we do not go that way.”

  “No.” He frowned. “We do not travel upon the road at all. Fast though our path might be upon it, watchful eyes would too easily spy us. We must cut across and follow its course south, far from its edge.”

  Loren nodded. “How far will we go tonight?”

  “Your arrow was well placed. We need not fear your father’s pursuit. And if I know constables, we will not see them until the morrow, if then. We will make for the river and camp upon its bank.”

  Loren would have traveled all night, eager to prove her willingness and worth as a traveling companion. But her heart nearly melted in relief at the wizard’s words. A bone-weariness had set upon her. For the first time, she had stood up to her father, and she had emerged alive, though not unscathed. Her mind had not yet decided what to think of the encounter and had settled instead for a comfortable numbness that drained her of energy.

  Loren led the way across the road. She walked it easily enough, but Xain did an odd thing: he skittered across the packed dirt, stepping lightly as though placing a foot upon it would invite the watchful eyes of every constable in Selvan. Then, once crossed, he resumed his stiff gait.

  The sun neared the horizon as they reached the Melnar’s bank. Loren walked downstream until she found a large rock where they could make camp and returned to lead Xain to the place. She threw her travel sack upon the dirt and fell beside it, resting her head on the soft, silty dirt of the riverbank.

  Xain slumped against the rock, and for a long time they sat, neither saying a word nor looking at the other. Eventually, Loren felt her stomach rumble, so she dug into the pack and fetched some salted meat. She cut it with the hunting knife she always kept in her boot—the dagger at her belt was meant for a different kind of flesh—and split it with Xain.

  She pulled out more salted meat and one waterskin for Xain. He drank as though famished and refilled it from the flowing river. He chewed sparingly at the meat and wrapped the remainder to place in the bags at his belt. Loren felt great relief to see the wizard ration himself. At least she would not have to mother him.

  The sun had vanished past the horizon, but dull orange still glowed in the sky when Xain finally spoke. “Will you never return home?”

  Loren thought hard upon it. “He might die. My mother, too. Not from today—that arrow wound will heal long before his temper. But one day. We never grow younger. One day, I might return. But why would I?”

  “Do you have no other . . . No. I am in the wrong to ask. Some wounds must wait before we can clean them.”

  Loren wondered what he meant. “What of you? You do not seem on a course that bears return. What will you do? Run forever?”

  He did not answer, only turned away and lay upon the ground with a small pillow of torn grass. He fell asleep faster than she could believe.

  Loren built her own grass pillow and lay upon it, but sleep would not come. She could only stare at the numberless stars as they appeared in the inky night sky. Her mind raced in the silence.

  She could not think of home. Or remember Mother’s face. She could recall Chet but not his voice. And she could not picture Cabrus or any place else that lay ahead. There was only here and now, and the quiet bubbling of the river close at hand.

  She did not remember drifting off, but had fallen asleep upon her pillow of grass before she knew it. And when she woke, Xain had taken his meat and waterskin, leaving Loren alone by the bank.

  six

  Loren waited for nearly an hour before she came to accept that the wizard would not return.

  She spent the time eating more of her rations. She drank from the waterskin, careful not to waterlog herself, and refilled it from the river. And she poked gingerly at the bruises on her ribs and around her eye, probing their extent.

  When Xain still had not appeared, she cupped river water in her hands to see her reflection. The skin around her left eye had grown black. She let water seep through her fingers.

  All the while, Loren’s eyes avoided the empty spot where Xain had slept.

  At last, she realized he would not return. She expected the revelation to accompany doubt or fear. Instead, her insides turned to ice, and doubt gave way to resolve. She stowed her waterskin in the travel sack and slung it over her shoulder. Then, hand gliding along her dagger’s hilt, she set off west along the river.

  The Melnar stretched wide beside her, babbling and whispering as it ran the opposite direction of her course. She focused on its sound to bar her thoughts from Xain but only felt like the river dragged her backward. So she tried to think of nothing. Fortunately, Loren traveled through a foreign land that lay beautiful in the early morning. She let her eyes roam the rolling terrain and a glow of pink in the eastern sky, focusing her mind upon the land around her.

  It had few trees compared to the Birchwood, affording her excellent visibility in every direction. She walked atop the line of hills between the Melnar and the King’s road, where she could see the dark line of the Birchwood on the northern horizon. But soon she realized that others could see her as well. The thought sobered her, and she descended the south side of the hills to walk the riverbank instead.

  She could not still her mind forever and at last thought of her father. He had no doubt returned to the village. If the constables too had returned, Father would tell them about his fight with Xain and Loren. The constables would come. She must remain cautious until the memory was long behind her.

  Well before midday, Loren reached the road’s great turn south. It swung left and crossed the river by means of a great stone bridge. She had seen the bridge once as a girl of five summers but did not remember it. Now it robbed her of breath.

  The stones stood at least twenty feet high from the water’s surface, like river willows given form by human hands and grown from living stone. They joined in great arches that supported the road, curving across the top of the river’s swells like the path of a thrown rock. The bridge stone was dark and wet, the top stones caked with a white crust.

  “How could such a thing ever come from human hands? How could they build such towers of stone in the deep, deep water?”

  Loren realized no one could hear her, and her cheeks flushed, hand creeping back to her dagger.

  “Well, for lack of anyone better, I shall talk to you, then. Though I think the wonder of this bridge is lost upon you.”

  The dagger said nothing.

  “I must give you a name.” Loren glanced over her shoulder. “But perhaps it can wait until I have more time to think and do not fear the pounding of boots behind me.”

  She expected the bridge to shake like the rickety wood-and-rope bridges common to her home. But it stayed solid as the road. It unnerved her to cross t
he stone and see the water swirl twenty feet below.

  Immediately, Loren cut off and away from the road. Trees grew plentiful again, and she dipped into the space between their trunks. She kept walking until the ground rose and she could scarcely see the road. Then she struck south, following the road’s straight course and keeping it just on the edge of eyesight.

  In the Birchwood, Loren had often walked beneath trees that stood fifty feet or taller. Here, she barely saw a single trunk that reached more than twenty or twenty-five feet. “Though I am grateful for their company, these trees are bare saplings next to those from home,” she murmured, her finger brushing the dagger.

  Midday came and went. The sun began its slow journey back to the earth. Loren felt a gnawing in her stomach and reached for the travel sack where her meat and bread waited. But just then, she spotted a telltale patch of brown fur beneath a nearby shrub. Quiet as a ghost, she drew her bow and notched an arrow.

  Silent she drew, and silent let fly. The rabbit gave a thin death scream.

  She dressed it quickly and struck a small fire. The rabbit tasted delicious, so Loren ate as much as she could—long past the point of enjoyment. Salted meat would last her long if carefully rationed, but on an uncertain road a wise traveler ate sparingly from reserves. She drank carefully, too, taking only a small sip of water.

  Still limbs brought thoughts of Xain, urgent and unwelcome. Loren pushed down a sour feeling as the meat lost its savor. Soon, she stamped her fire’s dying embers and resumed her trek south.

  The rest of the day passed without event, but she felt a curious sense of growing urgency. It spurred her legs until she no longer walked but half ran through the woods. Loren thought she might feel better if she did see the constables, if only to end her aching uncertainty. What if they trailed her in hiding, waiting to see if she would reunite with Xain? She felt eyes boring into her back and hoped they were only her imagination.

  As the sun neared the horizon, Loren decided that she must rest. If the constables had indeed trailed her, she would gain nothing by pushing on through the night. She would only waste precious hours of sleep and dull her senses for the morrow. With no one to trade night watches, Loren spent her last hour’s walk in search of a good place to sleep.