Messenger in the Mist (16 page)

“That’s it!” Valen held the fabric like a prize. “It’s a repellent of some sort. It keeps the Elyndra away.”

“That’s how the intruder navigates the walls outside the fortress unharmed. The substance repels them. But why?” Odious asked, more rhetorically. “What is it about the odor they disfavor so vehemently?”

“Why is not the most important question right now.” Valen searched Odious’s eyes with hope. “What I want to know is can you copy it?”

Suddenly, a horn sounded down the echoing halls leading throughout the castle. It was a long wailing call, followed by two short utterances. Seconds later it was repeated again.

Odious walked toward the hall to peek his head out. “What is going on?”

“It is a warning signal.” Valen draped the cloak over a chair, his thoughts turning to the guards stationed on the wall. He hoped they were prepared.

The alchemist walked toward the door to check out the situation, and Valen ran over to pull him back. “Listen to me, this is crucial.” Valen’s grip tightened on his arm. “Stay inside and bolt your door. We’re going to need as many odor-soaked cloaks as possible. Get to work on reproducing that repellent.”

“But why?”

Valen’s eyes rose to the ceiling, looking beyond the castle walls. He let the old man go as his hand moved instinctively toward the hilt of his sword. “That is a distinctive alarm. The mist is rising.”

* * * *

People scattering in alarm clogged the streets of Ravencliff. Valen had to fight his way to the battlements. There was chaos everywhere and so many people needing help.

Valen tripped over a young, drunk squire. The man looked up groggily before recognizing the Prince of Ravencliff. “Your Highness, my apologies…”

“Not now.” Valen waved him back as he stood. “Get up and get under cover. There isn’t much time.”

The squire froze, suddenly sobered with shock and disbelief.

“Go.” Valen pulled him to his feet. “Get yourself somewhere safe.”

Valen turned and heard a young girl’s screams rise up from the shouts to hide and the whinnies of finicky horses. He saw a small, frumpy street urchin left alone in the marketplace holding a grimy doll in one hand, the other dragging a moth-eaten shawl on the ground.

As Valen propelled himself through the crowd to reach her, he was almost hit by a carriage as the horses skittered back and forth, trying to avoid crashing. Another carriage rammed into a vendor’s stand, sending apples flying past his head. Valen finally reached the girl and kneeled down to talk with her. “Where is your mother?”

The girl choked on sobs. Her tear-stained face told him she’d been crying for a long time now and her body shook with exhaustion. She looked at him as if he were trying to trick her and refused to answer, shaking her head.

There was no time for polite explanations. Valen snatched her up in both arms and ran to the healer’s quarters underneath the parapets. The woman in white robes looked up from her bundle of bottles and vials, startled at the sight of the prince with a grubby rascal from the street.

“Please take her. She’s lost her mother.” He handed the girl over to the older woman. He looked at the others in the room. “And the rest of you—be prepared. War is upon us and your skills will be needed.”

When he finally reached the top of the parapets, the soldiers had already begun piling up sandbags on top of the steep wall. The commander-in-chief, Stoughton Rile, met him halfway, bowing ceremoniously despite the chaos that surged behind him. “Your Highness.”

Valen ignored his formalities. “How far?”

His answer came with one look over the commander’s shoulders. The mist seeped through cracks in the sandbags, surpassing the fortress walls.

“We are keeping it at bay, Your Highness.” Rile defended his station with confidence. “Only small tendrils are creeping through. I have every man that can shoot an arrow equipped and ready to fire.”

For Valen, that wasn’t enough. “Is it still rising or has it stopped?”

The commander squinted, looking back over his shoulder. “Hard to say.”

A sudden gust of air threw Valen’s hair back from his forehead and sent his cloak whipping behind him. Valen turned to the north. The mist traveled fast, aided by the unseasonable wind. Ladders teetered in the raging gale as the lookouts climbed with bows in hand to keep abreast of the growing wall. Valen ran to steady one ladder as an archer reached the top. The young man’s face was hardened for the battle, but Valen saw fear, raw and untamed, shine in his eyes.

Valen didn’t realize that his grip was so fierce until someone took his place holding the ladder. Rubbing the splintered palms of his hands, he surveyed the battlements with an uneasy estimation. In that moment, the entire fortress was a precarious barricade. Suddenly Star’s journey no longer seemed so impulsive and farfetched. He wished he’d supported her with his entire heart, but his heart was not his to give away. It belonged to the throne.

With a sting of regret, he realized if he had extended more encouragement, she might have spoken to him more openly before she left. Now he wondered if he’d ever get another chance to speak to her at all.

Valen reached into the deep folds of his cape and clutched the letter she’d brought to him, as if the paper could somehow tie him back to her. He pleaded with the gods to protect her not only for his own selfish desires, but for the good of the kingdom. Every life in Ravencliff dangled from the thread of her success.

Journey’s End

Star and Leer broke free of the fog-smothered forest the next day. Although the giant caterpillars had vanished into the misted limbs like vipers into burrowed holes, neither of them could sleep. Restless from the night’s visitation, they felt an urge to press on before the first rays of dawn graced the horizon. It would be better to face the end of the forest in broad daylight and get a head start on whatever awaited them at the mist’s end.

The mist carried on, thick as ever, a milky film blurring their eyes and bogging down their cloaks with dankness. It gushed from the north like it overflowed from a primordial waterfall standing sentinel at the tundra’s end.

During the course of the forest, the edge of mountains slowly receded into foothills and tapered away into a desolate hinterland of barren plateaus at the forest’s perimeter. Now there was nowhere to hide.

“Leer, what if I was wrong?” Star asked softly as they peered through the last trunks of trees into nothingness. “What if the mist just keeps getting thicker?”

Leer turned and Star could see half his face underneath his hood. His expression was calm as ever. “No. Everything has an end.” He winked, surprising Star yet again. “Come on, Miss Doom, let’s settle down, let our horses rest and eat something before we race out there without cover.”

Leer’s words loosened the clench in her heart and she smiled to herself, surprised that he had so much power over her mood. She knew he was right. They would need every second of energy to keep their pace fast enough and they didn’t know how long the expanse ran. Although Leer believed in her, Star’s own doubts were festering.

They made a makeshift camp at the edge of the forest. Leer started a fire to cook food and ward off the giant caterpillars should they come back. Trying to get her mind off the impending race ahead of them, Star turned to Leer with a question that had simmered in her thoughts for some time. “Leer, why did you quit the Interkingdom Carriers?”

He looked up from his boiling concoction of stew with amusement in his eyes. Star knew he was flattered by her interest in his past. After a moment of reflection, the lines on his strong-boned face hardened. “Too much corruption.”

Star was shocked. She thought it might have been about his own negligence, the harsh schedule, any number of things, but not that. “I didn’t think I would, but I completely understand.”

Leer nodded. “Probably so.”

She picked up a twig and broke it between her fingers. “I could complain for days about my experience with corruption. Favors for the gentry, free letters getting smuggled in. Heck, I was even replaced with someone who could be ‘more diplomatic,’ if you catch the drift.”

“If you are here now, what happened to your replacement?” Leer didn’t ask many questions, so Star knew she’d caught his attention.

“Dead. I found only a pool of her blood.”

Leer laughed lightly. “Serves her right.”

“Leer!” Star was shocked. It was such a dastardly reply, and disrespectful of the dead, but a part of her liked the fact that he was so willing to stand up for her and take her side. An enemy of hers was an enemy of his. She shook her head. “To think we’ve encountered the same trials in each of our lives. I used to love my job. Besides my family, it was all I had—a summation of all my accomplishments and hard work. But after the incident with the replacement and your letter, I’ve felt like quitting as well…”

A sly smile spread over Leer’s lips. “Despite our differences in opinion, you and I are much the same.”

Star sat back, studying the lines in his face and wondering if he was right. He had an easiness to his personality that Valen lacked, a calm, underlying trust that he controlled his own destiny, coupled with an acceptance of the inevitability of certain things. He calmed the nervous anxiety bubbling through her and she found herself glad he sat with her in this nightmarish land.

* * * *

After sipping Leer’s motley stew made from their dwindling provisions and foraged food, they packed and prepared the horses for the final race to the finish line. Both Star and Leer knew they were drawing closer to something big and powerful. Whether it was a force they could reckon with was another matter.

Star reigned in Windracer at the forest’s edge, a vast plain spreading out before them. “So here we are at the end of the world.”

“Indeed.” Leer’s eyes grew mischievous. “You are quite the adventurer, Miss Moonshine.”

“And you are quite the partner.” Star could feel her cheeks burning so hot she thought the mist would sizzle out around her face. She turned her head away, ashamed of the feelings she developed for Valen’s supposed assassin. In fact, she hadn’t thought much about Valen the past few days.

They took off with a rustle of leaves, leaving the canopy’s cover and entering the unknown.

The smooth terrain allowed for swift riding. Star felt as though she careened across the slick surface of a frozen lake. They needed to maintain speed to keep the Elyndra at bay. Every time Star chanced a brave look at the sky, she saw shapes moving above her head, giant shadows of wings soaring through the mist as the beasts cluttered the sky. One misstep and they’d be picked off the ground like mice.

At first Star thought she imagined it, but with every racing hoofbeat, the mist seemed to be thinning as if the ground soaked it up. Star’s hopes rose. Maybe they’d found the mist’s end after all.

Leer raised a hand to his brow and squinted against the mist. His features turned from mild interest to horror. “Stop!” He reined in Wildfire. “Stop Windracer now!”

Star couldn’t imagine standing still with the Elyndra hovering. “But—”

All of a sudden, Leer veered in her direction. Wildfire forced Windracer to lurch directly to the left to avoid colliding in a tangle of legs.

“What are you doing?” Star fought the pull of gravity and the knot of reins. “You’ll get us both killed!” Windracer leaned into the fall, regained balance and straightened, trained from years of riding in the stadium amongst the other foolhardy contestants where a random blow to the side was common.

When Star regained control over Windracer, she realized Leer herded her away from the line of thinning mist up ahead. A few feet further, the mist disappeared over the edge of a deadly steep canyon lining the horizon. If Leer hadn’t ascertained the reason why the mist thinned, they both would have ridden to their deaths, plummeting over the edge with no warning. Star realized he’d just saved both of their lives.

Leer was beginning to look more like a hero than a criminal. That thought brought along others like it, and Star realized that her feelings for Leer changed the way she thought of Valen. He spoke of his cousin as a selfish criminal, and Leer was more of a savior in disguise.

“Over there,” he shouted over his shoulder. “I see a way down.”

Star followed Leer to the cliff’s edge where the ridges of rock separated, revealing a rocky slope lining the canyon wall. Shivers tickled her back, making the hair on her neck stand on end. “Are you sure you want to go down?”

“Seems like there’s nowhere else to go. Besides, I have a feeling this path will take us to some answers.”

“You mean because it looks like someone carved it into the canyon?”

Leer’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly.”

* * * *

Jagged rocks made the footing treacherous. Dizziness overtook her senses each time she looked over the ledge to the depths of shadows taking refuge below the line of mist. To Star’s relief, no Elyndra chanced a flight into the steep canyon. She and Leer inched down the steep incline, tugging their horses behind them, careful not to kick a stray rock over the ledge. It would be foolish to alert whoever resided down in the canyon. Theirs was an uninvited and probably unwelcome visit.

Star shook her head, trying to make sense of a distant throbbing in her eardrums.

“Flies getting to you?” Leer grinned.

“No. There’s a weird sound ringing in my ears, like the distant buzzing of a giant wasp. Can’t you hear it?”

Leer tilted his head into the breeze, the hood of his cloak brushing against the three-day stubble on his cheeks. “Hearing is not my strongest sense.”

“What is your advantage?” Star hoped to prolong the conversation and get her mind off the relentless hum.

“Sight. Not only of physical objects, but intentions and emotions.”

His answer unnerved her, his words stripping her cool facade, as if he could see her innermost desires and needs. Part of her wanted to ask him, “What do you see when you look at me?” She looked back at the path meandering in front of them, turning her back to Leer so he couldn’t see the rush of blood flood her face.