Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (8 page)

We walked a few paces before he changed the subject.

“Have you ever run into trouble delivering messages?” he asked.

“Why? Do you see something?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“Do you expect it?” I pressed.

Again I felt him staring at me. I knew I was correct when he asked, “Do you always answer a question with a question?”

I answered candidly, seeing no reason not to. “When it serves my purpose.”

He chuckled quietly to himself. “Yes, I can see that about you.”

“What, exactly?”

“That you don’t freely give others information about yourself.”

I considered this for a moment. “No, I don’t. And how could you determine this after knowing me for the entirety of just a few minutes?”

He laughed again, this time shaking his head hopelessly as he did. “Is it just me, or do you give everyone you meet a difficult time?”

Again, I thought about my answer. “Just you.”

His laughter deepened. “Lucky me,” he muttered, swinging his head up to measure the distance to our destination. “We should pick up the pace.”

Again, I got the impression he was being diligent about our safety for reasons he hadn’t shared with me. “Is there something I should know about, Thomas?” I asked.

He seemed to waver on how to answer. “I’m not sure.”

“But something is making you guarded,” I pointed out.

He nodded downward and smiled to himself. “While you don’t let people in on what you’re thinking, you certainly have an interesting way of invading the thoughts of others.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I didn’t hear you ask one.”

He was playing with me, or delaying.

I sighed, loudly. “Is there some sort of risk nearby that I should be aware of?”

He frowned before admitting, “I’ve been informed of alarming characters entering these parts.”

“Involved in the war that is mounting against the nobles?”

His eyebrows rose.

“Yes, I’ve heard of the insurrections taking place in the west.”

He seemed to appreciate my knowledge of what was happening around me. “I was, in fact, speaking about others…with their own agendas.”

I nodded, committing this information to memory. “And is that why you came?”

He smiled, curiously. “I tell you that strangers, of less than ethical intent, are entering the area and you are more interested in why I am here?”

“Alarming characters don’t naturally concern me,” I countered.

“And what does?” he inquired, trying to subdue a smile.

“Those who answer questions with questions.”

He ducked his head and the smile he’d been trying to quell broke through. The tables had turned, and I was certain he wasn’t familiar with them turning on him. He took it well, though.

“Are you here because of them?” I repeated. “Because of the suspicious characters?”

I wanted to know, had to know, because I got the feeling there was more to him being here, at this moment in time, than the people he was referring to.

He stared pointedly at me, and I got the impression he was considering how to sum up a concise response. “We should walk faster, Friedricha. Others are waiting for you.”

So we did, keeping such a quick pace from that point on that there was no energy left to continue the verbal sparring we’d been engaged in.

We reached the outskirts of the walled city in record time, slipping through a slim, low crumbling block without being seen and into the narrow streets. Torches along the walls above and the faint moonlight glinted off water that carved a stream of branches through the muddy roads. While the dim light helped, I had been here many times before and knew the route well enough to trace it in the darkness. Even the stench of uncollected sanitation and the sounds of the illnesses it bred echoing from inside the homes through incessant coughs and sneezes was sadly familiar to me. Yet when Eran and I arrived at our destination and my knuckles rose to the knobby wooden door, I froze.

This was when I felt it first, the prickle up my neck, the feeling of a spider’s fangs stabbing rapidly and consecutively along my spine from my shoulders to my skull.

The hand I moved toward the door deviated from its path, ending up on the back of my neck. While the stinging pulse didn’t subside, my fingers did suppress the hair standing on end there.

What’s happening to me?

Recognizing something was amiss, Eran asked, “What’s wrong?”

I barely noticed his hand moving toward me.

“Nothing,” I said a little too hastily.

But something
was
wrong…terribly, unavoidably wrong.

CHAPTER EIGHT: GUESTS

E
RAN’S HAND SLIPPED UP MY FACE,
offering a welcoming distraction from whatever was taking hold of my body.

“You’re perspiring,” he muttered and withdrew a thin handkerchief to hand to me. When my fingers couldn’t grasp it, he added, “And now you’re trembling.”

He ducked to get a better look at my face, which was downcast as I drew my shoulders together into a feeble shield against whatever was hurting me. A moment later, his arms came around me and he stepped in to press our bodies together. Contained by his embrace, I felt my body quiver erratically against his chest. In reaction, his muscles flexed to keep me under control. The heat and pressure of his palms flattened along my back before running the length of it, moving consciously and with tenderness I didn’t think possible in him.

He was trying to comfort me, this warrior who was called on to fight only the most egregious, most brutal violators.

It was this realization, this unfathomable behavior from him that began to settle me. And as his arms moved and our bodies pressed the last bit of air from between us, my attention was diverted away from the strange sensation. And as it was, the more it faded.

I’m not sure how much time passed, but eventually I managed to look up at him. He felt me shift and pulled back to meet my eyes.

“Mind telling me what just happened?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to respond but the stiffness in my neck warned me not to try to speak. I shook my head instead.

“No, you don’t want to tell me?” he inquired.

I shook my head more rapidly and closed my eyes as I struggled to unclench my jaw.

“Or you don’t understand what just happened?”

“I don’t,” I uttered fighting through the pain, “need your help.”

Slowly, in deep contemplation, he nodded.

When his eyes drew back to me, they were serene, confident. “We’ll figure it out,” he said.

Right then I knew what attracted others to Eran. His infallible confidence, which was so frustratingly beguiling to me, made a person feel that he had control when there didn’t seem to be any. No matter the issue, regardless of the odds, he would see it through.

I stared back at him, still unable to speak easily but for a different reason now. Here was someone whose ego I could barely tolerate and now that very same trait I struggled to accept was actually calming me.

He hadn’t let me go.

“Should you turn around and go home?”

The tension in my muscles relaxed then. “Not yet.”

I stepped back and he released me, concentrating on how I handled myself as I knocked on the door.

The second my knuckles made contact, it opened.

Inside, the Hertzogs stood intermingled with the cluster of farmers and peasants who had the need and courage to visit the notorious Messenger. I recognized every face but three, a girl and two boys. When my eyes passed over those three, the feverish panic returned. If it wasn’t for Eran’s arm remaining looped around me, I’m certain my reaction would have come back full strength.

Eran didn’t release me as he guided me to the lone, vacant chair in the room. It sat against a wall facing the crowd so thick in number that they concealed all other pieces of furniture.

While I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I needed his guiding touch. The three that sparked the reaction in me, who stood in the far corner as if they were a group entirely unto themselves, seemed to be considering me as much as I was them.

The stifling body heat in the home was almost too much to bear, which Eran acknowledged by unlatching the window above my head and allowing in the cool air. The concerned momentary look at me that followed told me that he didn’t agree with my staying but that he would do what was needed to keep me comfortable.

“We will be heard,” a man proclaimed from somewhere in the group.

Eran countered in such a tight manner that it didn’t leave room for argument. “Then speak quietly.”

Stiff looks were exchanged between those in the crowd.

“And who are you?” the eldest Hertzog asked.

«I’m her…,” he said and swung his head down to me in the chair. That now-familiar smirk appeared and I prepared myself for whatever it was he didn’t think I would appreciate. “I’m her guardian.”

He was right. I didn’t appreciate it.

At that point, I began to seriously wonder if he recalled his past in the afterlife or if that irritating teasing simply accompanied him no matter where he went. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to contemplate it before the first guest stepped forward. She was desperate to ask if her sister was doing well after losing her bout with an illness. I told her that her sister was busy visiting those in the afterlife who she had missed while in this realm and was enjoying her time there. Another guest stepped forward for his message and afterwards another guest followed in his footsteps.

The guests came at a steady pace as I delivered messages back to those who had come a few days earlier to send them. Unfortunately, I never felt as if I gave these people their due attention because part of it was planted on the three grouped in the back corner who, for some reason, sparked the painful vibration on the back of my neck whenever one of them adjusted their stance or moved to speak to one another.

I didn’t know them, and I would have recalled if I did. Their stark-white hair and pale skin wouldn’t have been easily forgotten. The fact that they were around my age would have given me even more of an impetus to remember them. And yet I didn’t. They were completely foreign to me.

After all messages had been delivered, I took new messages from the people wishing to begin conversations with those in the afterlife but, even as I waited, the three individuals never stepped forward. This was probably a blessing in disguise because I wasn’t sure my nerves could handle any more than what they were enduring. It seemed that they were simply there to watch.

When I had finished taking all new messages, I stood and as was the stated procedure, I left first. This prevented anyone from hiding outside and following me. Eran, of course, came with me, but didn’t speak until we had left the city wall through the same broken opening and started across the fields.

When we were several hundred yards away, he asked plainly, as if he were simply commenting on the brightness of the stars, “So, do you have any idea who they were?”

I was surprised. “You noticed them?”

“No…but
you
did,” he pointed out.

So he had been watching me…

He was astute, which I wanted to commend him on but which would only have enflamed his ego.

We crossed over a fallen tree branch, him offering me a hand and me denying it, before we spoke again.

“No,” I answered, “I’ve never seen them before.”

“But they knew you.” His voice was flat as he said this, but I detected a sense of inhibition in it.

“Or they knew the Messenger,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” he replied deep in thought. “Maybe…”

A few more yards passed before he remarked, again in a questioning manner, “They had the same reaction to you…”

“What do you mean?”

“Their faces glistened, their heartbeats sped up, their muscles grew taut.”

My eyebrows puckered in suspicion. “And how did you know their heartbeats quickened?”

He answered without a hint of pride or any acknowledgement toward the gravity of his ability.”By the pulse in their neck.”

His answer was both riveting and frightening. “That isn’t something you pick up farming or raising cattle, Thomas.”

He shrugged and replied offhandedly, “I’ve learned it along the way.”

“Huh…,” I mumbled, scrutinizing him. “And what do you surmise made them so fearful?”

“You.”

“Me?” I balked and came to an abrupt stop at his inference.

Eran paused too and faced me. “There was a reason why they didn’t approach you, Friedricha. They felt the same level of sickness you did.”

“And you know this because of the pulse?”

He nodded. “Which quickened with every look you sent them.”

I was astounded. “Why would they think
I
was to blame?