1
At the farthest southeastern corner of Montane lies a small village called Valmorn. It comprises two roads that intersect in the middle, lined with homes and businesses, encircled on the outskirts by struggling farms. At the center of the crossroads is a large textile factory, where the majority of the townsfolk work feverishly to produce their next tithe to High House in the hopes that some of their suffering will be alleviated in return. It is entirely unremarkable in many of the same ways as the village I came from, and all too familiar.
Only the most daring of travelers will ever see this place, which is cut off by the dreaded expanse of wasteland that encompasses most of the country.
At least, I try to think of myself as a daring traveler. It’s a bit more glamorous than “terrified fugitive” or “vile seditionist.” I am those things, too.
A cold, damp wind blows from the east, past the hilltop overlooking the town. It crawls down the collar of my shirt and along my spine to where I sit on a patch of dead grass. I shiver it away, pulling my black cloak a little closer around my shoulders. It’s only wind, but it feels like a quiet warning.
I keep my gaze on the town and not my traveling companion, who paces in small circles to my left. Without even looking in her direction, I can practically see her rolling her spectral amber eyes at me, bright yellow glints in the light, as though my reaction to the cold has betrayed some deep inner weakness.
I try to imagine this view as it could be, free of the trappings of death, fear, and sickness that were implanted long before my time. Streets bustling with people working for the betterment of their home instead of existing to appease a distant power that cared nothing for them. The buildings painted with vibrant colors, window boxes housing herbs and flowers, instead of hung with dead vines and walls caked with the grayish brown dust of the wasteland.
A faint whistle by my side nearly causes me to jump out of my skin. I screech in alarm, rolling out of the way. Turning around, I see a small throwing knife embedded in the dirt inches from where I was sitting.
I look toward my companion, concerned we might be in trouble, only to hear her bark a laugh at me.
“If you keep spacing out, you’re not going to be alive much longer,” she says. Her bright eyes and white teeth stand out in stark contrast to her dark skin as a long grin spreads across her face.
Of course this was her doing. She’s delighted in vexing, threatening, and insulting me since the moment we first met. I take a deep breath, trying to purge myself of my desire to scream in frustration as I get to my feet.
“I’m not supposed to fear for my life from someone I’m traveling with.” The words grate out through my teeth.
“Naivete like that will also shorten your life substantially.”
“I’m not your student anymore, Kennan.” My temper rises at her dismissive tone. “And even if I was, I don’t exist purely for you to derive whatever sick enjoyment you get out of torturing me!”
Kennan lifts an infuriatingly calm eyebrow. “Touchy, are we?”
“I swear—”
“Calm down, both of you.” A welcome, amiable voice carries over the hilltop as two familiar figures, laden with equally welcome supplies, make their way toward us. “Can’t we leave you alone for ten minutes without returning to you at each other’s throats?”
“Sorry, Fiona.” I feel like I’m apologizing more to a displeased parent than a concerned best friend.
“I’m not apologizing,” Kennan states to no one’s surprise.
“Look, let’s not lay blame.” Mads pulls his rucksack over a broad shoulder and sets it heavily on the ground. “We need to get some food in us, and we need a plan. That’s more important right now.”
“Yes, I agree.” I nod, relieved to set aside my argument with Kennan. “Did you learn anything in town?”
“Not much more than we learned in the last few towns we’ve passed.” A grimace passes over Fiona’s seraphic face. “They did say there was a weird old hermit who used to live on the outskirts of town, but he died ages ago.”
“From the Blot?” I ask. I can’t help nervously running my fingers over my wrists.
Fiona and Mads shake their heads in unison, sharing an apprehensive glance. I’m about to ask again when Mads speaks up.
“He was murdered. Stabbed through the heart with a golden dagger.”
My blood freezes in my veins. The wind picks up again, somehow colder than before.
For a split second, the scene flashes through my mind, only it’s not some old hermit’s house—it’s mine. And the body is my mother’s.
The floor is covered in blood. The smell is overpowering. The silence is deafening.
My legs are shaking.
“Shae.” A gentle hand on my shoulder brings me back to the hilltop outside Valmorn. Fiona’s gentle green eyes are locked on mine. “It’s okay, you’re safe.”
I grip Fiona’s hand over my shoulder and squeeze it, letting her warmth seep into me. I focus on the familiarity of her face—high cheekbones, pale blond eyebrows, small, upturned nose, and reassuring smile—letting her ground me in reality. Gradually, I feel myself return. I remember how to breathe.
“That’s it?” Kennan drums her fingers irritably on her crossed arm. “I could have turned up twice that information in half the time.”
“So you keep insisting,” Mads says as he crouches to unpack his rucksack. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a Bard, and thus instantly memorable, and asking about stuff that people will remember when High House inevitably comes through here looking for us.”
She knows he’s right, but Kennan just sniffs and looks in the other direction.
I approach Mads alongside Fiona. The supplies they managed to get are meager, but I know it took all their skills, and possibly the remainder of their coin, to even get that much.
I’m not sure what to say as I sit back down on the cracked earth, watching as Mads and Fiona take inventory of our supplies. Gratitude mixes uncomfortably with guilt. They are here because they care and want to help me. But that meant leaving everything they knew and loved behind.
Unlike me, they have families back in Aster. Fiona’s father and brothers are probably worried sick and Mads’s parents must miss him terribly. I can’t even bear to ask if their loved ones know they left because of me—the town’s favorite pariah.
“We have about three days’ worth of food—if we’re careful,” Mads states. In front of him is our water supply in tin canteens, an unimpressive tower of canned beans, and a few strips of jerky.
“We still don’t know how much longer this journey will take,” Fiona says, her pale brows creasing with worry as she turns to me.
I understand her fear. My hand tentatively reaches toward my pocket where our only guide, a scrap from the Book of Days, rests.
When we escaped High House, the page seemed animated, as if alive. Words and images wove themselves on the surface, showing us our path. It led us past two safe houses in a little under a week. As the days passed and our journey progressed, however, the movement of those images became sluggish and the words faded. The safe house we just came from, we found by dumb luck.
The prospect of uniting the page with the rest of the book grows more unlikely the farther we travel. The thief could be anywhere by now. With no clue as to his motivations, I can only blindly continue along the path before me.
What are you up to, Ravod? I wonder. He is irritatingly never far from my thoughts. I know he’s out there, somewhere, with the Book of Days. If his plan was to use it to rewrite reality, I assume he would have done so by now. It seems odd to put such an idea past him. But then, I never thought he’d steal the book, either. When we meet again, I plan to give him a very stern talking-to. Hopefully that’s all I need to do.
I pull the page out and examine it, hoping my worry isn’t too obvious. There’s a dark smudge in one corner—my blood—that I can never look at for too long. Otherwise, it is an ordinary piece of torn paper, with a faded glyph of a house surrounded by trees and a single word: East.
“We’ve got to keep heading east.” I try to muster as much confidence as possible when I add, “If we look for trees, the next safe house should be there somewhere.”
I don’t have to look up to know that Kennan is rolling her eyes as she approaches.
“You sound about as reliable as a cheap fortune-teller at a bazaar.”
I blink at her, unsure whether to feel enraged or surprised that she’s already picking another fight.
“Kennan, that’s not helpful,” Fiona says. “We’re all tense. We need to work together.”
Kennan fixes Fiona with a stare I remember all too well from the days she trained me at High House. I find myself rising to my feet, prepared to defend my friend if even one golden strand of hair on her head is threatened.
“What’s not helpful is traveling in a group this size with no way to ensure our survival,” Kennan hisses. She’s launched into this diatribe before, about how one skilled individual could ensure success better than three bumbling kids. “We’re not making good time on reaching Gondal—if it even exists—and three days of provisions for four people would last two weeks for one.”
I know she’s not wrong, but I still stare at her in disbelief. She really would leave us, just like that.
“Look,” I begin, forcing myself to sound calm. I can’t believe I’m playing peacekeeper, but if even Fiona’s powers of diplomacy are ineffective against Kennan, the least I can do is try to keep our ragtag group unified. “You’re the most skilled among us, Kennan, there’s no question. But we all have a stake in this journey, and we deserve to see it through. So instead of arguing this again, let’s eat and get back on the road before we lose daylight.”
Kennan shifts her gaze between me and Fiona before mercifully turning away.
“She really knows exactly how intimidating she is; I’ll give her that,” Fiona whispers to me.
I nod. “So do I, believe me.”
* * *
When all this is over, I’ll be very happy never to eat cold canned beans ever again. A few hours’ walk east and I still can’t get the taste out of my mouth. Even if we were willing to start a fire to cook them, they probably wouldn’t have tasted much better, and Mads made the excellent point that a campfire would make us easier to track.
That we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of High House is starting to get worrying. The longer we travel without being ambushed, the more imminent an attack feels. From a glance at my companions, I know I’m not the only one who thinks so.
As the sun begins to wane overhead, the flat, dusty ground gives way to dead shrubbery and strange, twisted overgrowth. By my side, I hear Fiona’s quiet growls of annoyance whenever her skirt catches on the thorns. By the time we reach a ragged line of trees, the pesky article is knotted well above her knees and her long, pale legs are covered in scratches.
In all my life, I’ve never heard Fiona complain and, apparently, she’s not about to start now. She waves off my concerned look with a gentle laugh.
“I guess the first casualty of this adventure is my skirt!” Her tone is light, but her lips twist as she passes me.
I know better than to insist upon anything with her when she’s set her mind to something. Instead, I fall in step alongside Mads as he scans the area.
“Never seen terrain like this, even up in the wooded areas of the mountains back home,” he says thoughtfully. “We’re at a number of disadvantages here.”
“We’ll just have to tackle them as they arise,” I reply. I can’t help agreeing with his assessment, though. The dead trees and underbrush are growing denser the farther we walk, and the sky is rapidly darkening. All I can make out of Mads is the silhouette of his tall, muscular frame beside me, his blue eyes lost to the gloom.
He’s handsome, in a rugged way that he takes confident ownership of. His attractiveness was never much of a barrier in our ill-fated courtship. By the time I refused his proposal of marriage, however, I had come to realize that a deeper problem stood between us—we were simply too different, in temperament and expectations.
Now that our trajectory is once more aligned, I still find it difficult to rekindle the spark we once shared. Come to think of it, I struggled to ignite it the first time. And I don’t see any reason to try—I’m perfectly comfortable with the way things are.
Mads shifts his gaze from the trees to me with a slight frown, interrupting my thoughts. “The sooner we find this safe house, the better.”
A low howl sounds from somewhere deeper in the dead forest, sending a shiver down my spine. Whatever predators live here will find four lost travelers quite appealing.
“What was that?” Fiona whips around to face us.
Copyright © 2022 by by Glasstown Entertainment and Malone Farrow
