Elevation of the Marked (The Marked Series Book 2) (26 page)

Ko-Jin squinted. Another flicker of lightning revealed, for a quick second, a familiar face—boyish still, beneath curly light-brown hair. “Roldon?”

His friend nodded. Other hoods were pulled back, revealing Chisanta of varying ages. Two of the women had unfashionably short hair. Chiona, clearly. Ko-Jin paused at a second familiar Cosanta, the old, mustached face of Dedrre Alvez. Yarrow would be pleased to see him, no doubt.
 

Ko-Jin remained tense. “Are you with Quade, then?”

A shake of the head. “Haven’t you seen the papers? He’s named us defectors. There are prices on our heads. The six of us just sort of found each other, but everyone else is dispersed. I’ve been looking for you, you and Yarrow.”
 

“Where is Yarrow?” Dedrre asked, shouting over the rain.

“Away,” Ko-Jin said. “How did you find us?” He hated the distrust he heard in his own voice. Thunder rumbled off in the distance. The rain lessened, reducing from deluge to moderate downpour, as they all stood frozen.

Roldon stepped forward and an arrow hit the ground just by his boot. He stepped back and held up his hands. “Her,” he answered, pointing to the woman at his left. “She finds people.” The woman in question—an Adourran in her thirties to look at her, a Chiona by her hair—inclined her head slightly.
 

Ko-Jin sucked in his lips. “Why did you look for me?”

Roldon tipped his head to the side, puzzled. “Why? Because if the Chisanta are at war, it’s you we need, brother.” He looked hurt. “Of course I looked for you.”

Ko-Jin let his suspicion go along with a held breath. He closed the distance between them and pulled his friend into an embrace, thumping him on the back. “It’s good to see you, brother.”
 

He turned back to the window, where Chae-Na was silhouetted against the firelight. “Stand down. They’re friends.”
 

14

Yarrow stood within the expansive remains of a city—far larger than he could have ever envisioned. Crumbling clay edifices, half engulfed in sand, extended in the distance as far as he could see. The wind whistled through the debris, the only sound aside from his own footfalls.
 

It was eerie, this place bathed in sunlight, a massive city, yet utterly empty. He could not help but imagine how it had once been—an oasis, teeming with life. It was a fancy, but he could almost feel the ghost of the city. The marketplaces crammed with people, merchants calling out their wares, a barefooted child laughing as he weaved in and out of crowds, dancing between the long legs of camels. Yarrow imagined that he himself could have been one of those boys, and in his mind’s eye he was. He was running, the sun blazing down on a city whole and buzzing with life, a loaf of bread tucked under his arm.
“Stop, thief!”

Yarrow shook himself and rubbed his eyes against the brightness of the day. He scanned his surroundings, but found himself entirely alone, the city about him a ruin once again.
That was odd.

Yarrow surveyed the rubble and his eyes settled upon the towering pyramid at the center of what had once been the great city of Nerra, a structure that dwarfed all that surrounded it, like a man-made mountain. The size of it was boggling. He could not fathom how man could make such a thing now, let alone thousands of years ago.
 

He teleported to the base of the pyramid and found himself in its vast shadow. He craned his neck to glimpse the peak. From such a height, surely he could see for leagues and leagues in every direction. If there was a monument to the south, he would see it, unless it were buried.
 

It would make the most sense for him to use his gift, to reach the top of the pyramid in an instant, but something compelled him otherwise. He wanted to climb, to reach the apex through his own sweat and perseverance. It seemed a feat worth his time, though he could not say why.
 

He rolled up the sleeves of his linen shirt and took a swig of water, then began to climb. The clay bricks formed a stair where they had not crumbled, so he took a circuitous route, finding the places where the pyramid was most undamaged. Sweat ran down his back, slick strands of hair adhered to his neck, but the higher he climbed the more resolved he grew to continue.
 

He glanced over his shoulder, at the steadily shrinking ruin beneath him. In his mind, for a moment, the city flashed before his eyes, intact and full of people. The texture of the clay bricks beneath his hands, the smell of the dust that clung to his clothes, had a distinct impression of familiarity, as if he had done this very thing many times before.
 

The higher he ascended, the greater grew his sense of expectation. At the top, he was certain something wonderful awaited.
 

It took many hours, but at long last Yarrow reached the summit. His heart hammered in his chest as he extended to his full height and gazed out at the wide world. The wind pulled at his hair and the sun broiled his scalp. Below, the relic of the city spread in a perfect circle, surrounded by a fragmented wall. Beyond, the desert stretched in rippling waves of gleaming sand. It was a magnificent sight, the sort of moment a spirit would never forget, yet Yarrow felt suddenly terribly disappointed. Solitary.
 

He focused on Bray’s emotions in his mind.
She should be here
.
 

Despite this sense of loss, his eyes locked with ease upon a fleck in the distance. He was too far to see more than a shadow in the sand, but he knew with inexplicable certainty that what he sought lay there. After one last, melancholic scan of the place that had once been Nerra, he closed his eyes and mentally focused upon that point in the distance. His innards clenched with nervous anticipation.
 

He opened his eyes. Before him towered a ring of rough rocks twice as tall as himself, each coming to an asymmetrical point. He moved closer and saw that they were covered in symbols. Studying the markings, he discovered them familiar. They were like those on the archway at the Chisanta Temple, an ancient text for which there was no key.
Perhaps Peer could read it…

He stepped past the stone, entering the center of the ring. His skin seemed to sing with each step, his hairs stood on end.
 

At the center, there sat an ancient stone stairway which, unaccountably, led nowhere. It went up and then stopped. Yarrow wondered if there had once been a tower here and only the stair remained, but rejected the notion as soon as it occurred to him. Though he could not say where the knowledge came from, he knew that the stair itself was what mattered.
 

With great expectation, he set his boot upon the first step. His breath came in short bursts, his pulse ticking in his ears. He stepped again. And then again. He mounted each individual stair as if it were momentous. When he finally climbed to the second to last step he paused, feeling that perhaps he should not go on. Perhaps it was better not to know.

The air weighed heavily upon him, the act of remaining on his feet a tremendous effort. This place was strange, special. It held answers to a thousand questions. He knew it as he knew that goodness was to be strived for, that life had purpose, that he loved Bray—a truth too fundamental, too obvious to be questioned.
 

He arrived at the top step, the final step. Below him was nothing but empty space, then sand. Logic told him that if he proceeded he would fall, but some deeper knowledge whispered that this was not the case.

His heart pounded a crescendo against his ribcage. He raised his foot to step backwards, to flee, then placed his boot back upon the final stair.
Chin up, feet flat.

He strode forward, into the nothingness, and reality rippled around him. The desert wavered before his vision, then changed, transformed. He sank to his knees.

The sun shone overhead, but it was not the same sun. The grass beneath his hands felt dry. Around him, sheer shelves of rock rose in massive rings. A single tree interrupted a symmetric circle of grass, but it was not the right tree, not the one he expected. It was burnt, charred, dead. The sight of it made his chest ache and his throat burn.

He lurched to his feet and stumbled towards it. As he drew closer, he saw that from within the blackened corpse of the trunk sprouted a new tree—a small, young thing. The pale color of its bark, the bright green of its precious few leaves stood in stark contrast to the scorched husk that encased it.
 

Though he could not say why, the sight of that bit of life sprouting from within the casing of death made wetness prick at the corner of his eyes.
 

“Not gone, after all,” he said, though the words did not pass through his mind, and he did not understand them.

The
Aeght a Seve
was not quite the same, but that it was the Place of Five could not be denied. And he was there in body, not spirit alone.
 

It felt different, yet the same. As if he’d only ever experienced a shadow of the place, and now it had form and gravity.
 

He heard motion and he jumped. In the
Aeght a Seve
, he was always alone. There were not even gnats to pester him, nothing living beyond the vegetation. But this time he had company.
 

The shape of a man appeared from the other side of the tree—or had it emerged from the tree itself?
 

“Yarrow Lamhart,” it said, with the flash of a white smile against a dark face, with familiar golden eyes twinkling as if with a private joke. “It is good to see you, my friend.”

Yarrow’s eyes bulged. “Adearre?”

Arlow lingered in that warm, magical place between sleep and consciousness. He listened to Mae speaking softly to Poppy, her accent thicker when she believed he couldn’t hear. The texture of her voice, the clopping of mule hooves, soothed enough to lull him back towards oblivion.
 

The sound of an approaching horse at last roused him, however. His eyes flew open and he sat up straighter in the gig. They were still on the South Road, and if the thinning on the forest was any indication, they were not far from their destination.
 

“Oh good,” Mae said, thrusting the reins into his hands. “You’re up.”

Arlow rolled his shoulders and experienced a pang of guilt when he noticed how high in the sky the sun had risen. She should have woken him so she could sleep herself.
 

Mae knelt on the bench and turned around to the horseman who approached from behind. She waved. “Oy, Rodgeman!”
 

The man rode up beside them, then slowed to match Poppy’s pace. “Mae, my dear. How lovely to see you.”

He was a handsome man, perhaps in his early forties. He had a tightly trimmed red beard and dark, friendly eyes. His deep baritone voice tugged at Arlow’s memory.
 

“You are looking well,” he said.

Mae snorted. “No I ain’t,” she said, running a hand through her short hair. “But thanks.”

Arlow squinted at the man for a moment, then realization struck. He had met this man once before—when he’d been robbed as a boy. This was the very thief, the man who had glared at him with such loathing and called him ‘nobleson.’ The invective had rung in his mind for ages afterwards. That first trip from home had been most illuminating. It was the first time he had interacted with those outside his own social sphere, the first time he’d been made aware that he and his kind were so despised.

For a moment Arlow scrambled mentally, unsure what to say, until he realized there was little chance the man would recognize
him
. He had been a mere boy at their last encounter, after all.

He inclined his head. “Arlow Bowlerham, at your service.”
 

The man tipped his hat. “Foy Rodgeman.” Then he gave Mae a tight-lipped smile. “It has been quite a while, I think, since we last spoke. An age.”
 

It seemed an innocuous enough thing to say, but the statement was uttered as if it meant a great deal. Mae’s cheeks turned pink and a peculiar tension seemed to crackle between them. Arlow frowned, remembering suddenly something Mae had said in Dalyson: that she’d had an offer of marriage and had not yet answered it. He flashed a black look up at Foy Rodgeman, instantly disliking the man.

“Where’re the rest of the boys at?” Mae asked, craning her neck to scan the empty road behind them.
 

“A few hours behind, I’m afraid. I rode ahead to meet you. I feared you might be disinclined to wait, and I did not want you going ahead on your own.”

“I ain’t on my own,” Mae said, turning her frowning face away from the man.
 

Arlow gave one definitive nod—she was
not
alone. She was with him, blight it.

“So I see,” Foy said, and ice crept into his voice. “Tell me, Mr. Bowlerham, how did you come to know the location of our missing street runners?”
 

Arlow opened his mouth to reply, but Mae spoke first. “He’s been spying for Linton, getting information from Quade Asher.”