The Assassin Princess (The Legacy Novels Book 1) (23 page)

Slowly, and not without effort, he pulled himself to his knees and looked around him. To his left was a chair, large and wooden and familiar. Beyond it was a dead fireplace. He recognised the room as the same one he’d created in Ami’s mind, the room he’d held her hostage in, forcing his will upon her.

He stood up.

From the shadows came a swift rush of air, and Adam’s head cracked to the right, snapping his neck. He fell to the ground again.

“Faaagh,” he sounded, not able to make his jaw move. He pushed himself up on his hands and felt a boot step on his fingers.

“No, no, be a good boy, Brother,” she said from the gloom.

Adam’s hate came back in a flourish. “Why don’t you die,” he screamed, and the power rose up, shooting from him in daggers of jaded light, but she brushed them aside and swatted at them like flies.

“No, Brother, not anymore. I’m much more powerful.” She smiled and pulled him out of the open door and onto a stone walkway. Dragging him by his foot a ways, she hurled him onto the grass. Adam whipped round, but she’d stopped to lift a fallen rose, breathing in its pure scent. Then she turned to him.

On his back, Adam scrambled in retreat—but then he saw them, and memories came back with a shudder. The archway, the steps. He hadn’t recognised them when he’d battled Ami, before she’d succumbed, but now he did. Now he did, and he was afraid. The ruined arches towered over him, and he heard the screaming his head that he’d forgotten.

Ami smiled over him, and withdrew her sword.

*

“Beware the Mortrus Lands, beware, North to the flow, below, below, Danger in light, blue and glow, Many go in, one must go. That poem was known to all who travelled in the caravan of people I was with. My father had read it himself many times over, though only to sound knowledgeable. He was so proud to be there and was proud of me, his only daughter, being there with him. Off to discover new lands. We knew the poem, but none took any notice of it.

“When we entered we travelled for hours, lost in the bleak wilderness of this blue and dark wood. As you can see for yourselves, the land is desolate of life and not at all what we had expected. My father at some point had begun to shake, though he tried not to let on. He muttered something about dreams, and another overheard him, a scribe from the castle. Their voices were low but still too loud in the quiet. Some were talking of going back, but the way back was as lost as we were.

“We’d reached a clearing, the only one we’d seen for the hours we’d travelled, and in the midst of the clearing were six large trees clustered together. Their trunks were split, hollow inside. The group—many of us—clustered around these trees, walking around in the mist. A few began to walk off on their own, weaving in and out of the black trunks, ducking the branches. Then a few more, until eventually only a handful of us were left.

“Lionel Barrel had long gone, and only when none had returned after what must have been hours, and the food reserves they’d kept ran too low, was it mentioned that maybe they weren’t coming back. A couple of the men staggered out into the woods calling the names of their friends, but their voices soon became distant. We were frightened, alone, and huddling together for warmth when the hollows of the trees lit.

“Flames burned in them of the purest white, so bright that we had to shield our eyes from them as if from the sun. My father held me tight, shivering all the more when he revealed that he’d dreamed of this, dreamed of lights in the wood. The flames rose out from their hollows as spheres of fire, before elongating into tall columns that reached far, far up into the dark branches. They surrounded us, and voices came from them, all booming the same chant: ‘One must go.’

“The chant was repeated over and over as they rounded on us, the pillars containing flames of faces, peering out in seeming agony. Men got up then and ran, ran far away into the trees. My father held me, both of us crying, and the scribe stayed with us, clinging on to my father, shielding his eyes from the light. We were alone with them.

“The chants stopped, and to my horror the nearest pillar of light bent toward me, a giant pillar of white fire bowing obscenely down before me, just to point its tapered top and say, ‘You must go.’ A second later the light from all six pillars merged upon us and I was torn away from my father, dragged into the fiery light. My father and the scribe scrambled to the trees and fell into the two hollows. Flames engulfed them then and they disappeared. My screams and cries were echoes in the silence.

“I was put down on the ground, released from the pillar, and as I watched through teary eyes, the pillars became spheres once more, balls of light that floated around my head. When my sobs began to subside, I began to hear the voices, whispered voices. They entered my ears and overlapped and echoed. It took me a while, but eventually I came to understand what they were saying. I was being told who they were and what was to happen.

“It was told as I have told you, that they were called Sentries, and they were the cause for the separation of the world into layers. They were the last guardians of the portals, made so long ago. Those who were not Sentry were to be banished to the forests of the Mortrus Lands where one could wander forever and never find a footstep made by another, where one would never die but would eventually lose reason, where one could tear hair and skin in loneliness and emptiness, but would only find demons of the mind between the never-ending trees. They had made it so, for many go in, but as always, one must go.

“I was to be ejected from the forest as mad as the others before me, and sent back to where I was from as a warning to all to never enter the land.”

*

“Wow,” Ami said, staring into the gloom. The light returned but shone far to their left, upon the unicorns who remained unconcerned. “So what happened?”

“I ran. I ran and I ran. I whipped through the wood as fast as I could and ran as far as I could, and when I couldn’t run any more I hobbled, and when I couldn’t stand anymore, I fell. They were right, the place was a maze, and what kind of maze? Did we indeed enter the wood we saw, or were we lost in another of those layers they whispered about? The dark trees were endless and my shoes were lost, ruined, my tears dry, my horror fresh.

“I soon saw the lights again, searching, filtering through the trees, looking for me. I was to be released without my mind, without my sanity and even at nine years old it was a concept I understood. So I got up again and ran. At some point I stopped by a tree and leaned upon it to rest, to catch my breath. My hands pushed against the bark as I coughed, and my fingers sunk into the bark like tar. I pulled away. The tree moved and opened its eyes and I found it hadn’t been a tree at all but a man, black and rotten, his skin rancid and slipping from his bones. He screamed at me and I screamed back—took to my feet and ran—jumping roots and dodging trees until I fell once more. I gave up and lay down.

“I slept, or thought I did. It was hard to tell. I dreamed, though I wasn’t sure now what was real and what wasn’t. I saw a square of lush green grass, and rising from it a white, shining platform of stone, maybe marble, and a single red rose blooming.

“I opened my eyes and expected the black, the gloom, the blue of the land that was now my forever, and I got exactly that—except for one difference. Between a bank of closely growing trees was a gap, and through that gap I saw a glint of green, a hint of yellow. Slowly I pulled myself up and crawled toward it, looking around me for the Sentries, the searching light through the trunks. I saw none and hurried toward my discovery.

“You know of what I speak, I suspect, Ami?”

Hero and Raven looked down at her and she nodded. “Yes,” she said, her voice so meek.

“I climbed through, between the trunks, beyond the opposing hollows, and through into a place of wonder. How long had I been lost in the woods? Days? Weeks? Years? Time had no meaning, and it was meaningless to guess. This place too was timeless, and I have never been sure whether I created it in my need, or whether it was always there, waiting…it is a mystery I don’t know the answer to, but what I did learn was that the Sentries do not know of it, or cannot at least enter it. It was a sanctuary and an escape.

“Fleeing across the grass I witnessed something magical happen. Upon the white platform three arches grew out of the very stone. Columns joined them creating gateways. I went to them, and after passing beneath them, touching the columns either side, I found myself outside of the forest. The river ran in front of me, the green—oh so lush and needed green—of the Planrus and Solancra forests on either side. I was where I had entered, not knowing at that point that no time had passed since my entry—I didn’t care. I ran.”

“But the girl?” Raven said, whispering as the light searched to their right, touching the black trees and giving them no light.

“A part of myself was ripped away when I passed through the arches. I think of her as a shadow, and I share her fears every night. Every night I dream, or travel, back to this place to be with myself here, hiding from the Sentries. Hiding, but never escaping. I found a way to leave, but part of me will always be here, able to leave but always returning and remaining. No one ever truly leaves.”

The girl smiled up at her again and touched the old woman’s face. Grace smiled back and held her hand.

Ami’s mind was blown, as if everything else that had happened hadn’t been enough.

“So what about us,” Raven said. “Are we lost, or can we escape?”

“We haven’t yet found what we are looking for,” Hero said. “A way to stop Adam, if we can. I don’t understand how—”

“All things are coming together,” the girl said, looking now at the ground. The forest lit as the pillars appeared over the rise. “Run!”

The four scrambled through the rising mist as the Sentries moved over the land, their light searching.
“One must go. One must go.”

The chant called out across the dead wood.

*

Adam deflected her first blow in a shower of sparks, but her swing had already returned, the steel blade singing through the air as it sliced toward him, cutting his cheek, his blood stippling the grass as he stumbled backward, Ami looming over him with a smile. Her hair blew from her hood like autumn fire.

“Get away from me,” he spat, and from the depths of his open mouth came a belch of black mist that rose into the air and coiled like a snake, finding Ami and tightening around her neck. She clawed at it, but her fingers slipped in a black tar that came from its dark body and dripped down her dress; it crawled her neck and onto her face, edging across her cheeks in small broken veins toward her mouth.

Adam backed away laughing as it entered her, her breaths labouring rasps of spluttered black—then she burst into flame, and the tar burned away from her skin, rising from her as a cloud. She sparked like a firework and sent the cloud swirling into the air with the rising wind. It turned into a dark storm, tinged with purple and green flashes that rumbled with thunder. In a single motion, Ami sent the storm raging toward Adam, chasing him to the trees where a shadowed figure stood just within the branches.

The storm exploded against the trunks.

She smiled and turned back to the platform, climbing the white steps one by one.

At the command of her risen hand, the charred branches came forth, floating upon the wind. They settled in a pyre in front of her, bursting into flame at once. There within the flames, the other world throbbed and dimmed. She pushed the blade of her sword into the centre, and the fire rose high.

“Let me find you there,” she said. “Let me find you, Hero.”

Her voice was a whisper on the breeze, singing a slow Celtic tune she’d once heard at a wedding.

The misted air
passed between them and divided as they ran, and Ami’s hand slipped from Hero’s grip. A second later her foot snagged in a tangled root and she was thrown forward, down a sloped embankment and into a deep gully where she rolled to a stop, gasping and grasping at the soft earth around her. Hero had also fallen, but her desperate hands couldn’t find him; she could see nothing. All around was a thick fog where the mist had dropped low, and Ami was blind. Only the subtle light of the searching Sentries above penetrated the cloud.

“Hero,” she whispered, feeling thick roots and wiry vines, her bare knees bruised from the fall.

“Shh.” He was behind her. She twisted, feeling a large root dig into her back as she did. If she’d had her sword she would’ve cut through it—but she didn’t. “Take my hand.”

Something stroked up her side and Ami grasped it, feeling only hardened steel beneath her palm. His sword. The space in front of her lit with a purple glow, muted yet there all the same. A spark of green flame flickered and doused, but Ami ignored it, grasping instead the hand that was held out to her.

“Hero, where are the others?” They’d run as a group but the trees had swallowed them in darkness, the light behind them touching their retreating shadows, the mist thickening. It had soon taken the sound of Raven’s footsteps and the whisper of Grace’s gown, and their hands had parted either side of a thick trunk. Then they were gone.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice urgent from a face hidden. The light strobed and flashed above them as if the underbelly of a quiet storm. His hand held tight to hers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, though she had no idea whether that was true or not. By what standard could she rate her level of
okay?
If it was against the
okay
of the last few days, then she was doing just peachy-keen, but if against her other life, her old life of what seemed so long ago now? Then no, she wasn’t at all okay. “I’m okay,” she repeated.

Trees above creaked and groaned while a soft breeze from nowhere shifted the mist making her feel dizzy. Her eyes closed to it, and in the darkness behind her lids she saw Adam, struggling and screaming, rolling in a minute of flame.

A bass boom echoed and the silent woods exploded to her right, lifting Ami with a sudden wind that caught her and threw her, dashing her against the ground where she struck her head hard. A flare of purple lit the terrain for an instant and was then gone, an anguished cry rising a chorus of cries, each overlapping the next in hate—but Ami hardly heard it. There was a darkness fast approaching her senses and she was sure she could taste blood. The mist took her as an arm drew around her and pulled her between the roots of the trees.

When she opened her eyes, it was to a blue sky that seemed too clear and perfect. Far away clouds weaved and striped between the sapphire air like marble, and her only thoughts were of the perfection of such things. Rarely did people truly look at the sky, or at a tree, or a field; rarely did they penetrate the invisible layer of perception to find the true beauty. It was a moment of clarity she’d never been able to explain, and as her eyes scanned the endless sky now, she understood herself more than anyone else ever could. She was an artist. She would create from the natural and create it again…it was just who she was.

Only when she moved her head to the side did the pain take hold and pierce its claws into her neck, bringing back everything that had happened. She clenched her eyes tight shut, seeing
Dangerous
wielding a sword in her memory, seeing Adam, lost and ignited in his own anger and fear. Opening them she glimpsed the columns and arches, clearer now than ever before. Across the grass, close to her face, rose petals danced and curled. She reached out her hand to touch one, hot pain stripping the muscles of her arm—but her fingers touched, and the velvet softness brought a smile despite it.

Wincing, Ami sat and stared out across the clearing. The woods were to her right, black and now familiar, and between the branches she could just make out a dusky blue, far, far away. To her left the white steps led to the platform, half-finished arches rising with columns, and between them a burning fire. Smoke rose white into the air but disappeared before polluting the sky.

“I like to keep it blue,” a voice said, and Ami turned, her neck in agony as she looked behind her. “The fires make it black, and sometimes I can’t stop it changing colour, but if I can, I like to keep it blue.”

The voice came from the girl, the younger Grace, who stood before the stone walkway, barefoot and filthy. She rubbed her feet against the grass and came forward. Ami watched her for a moment and then gave in to the pain, collapsing back to the ground.

“Why don’t you heal yourself? I’ve seen the lords do it. Some of them have to when they come here because they get hurt in the woods.”

Ami rolled onto her front and pushed herself up to look at the girl. “Heal myself?” Adam had said she could, yes, she remembered. He’d attacked her and she’d moved, defended, was wounded. She looked down at her cut arms and legs, the dress filthy but unharmed. Closing her eyes for a moment only, she called the power to rise up within her. Purple and green light shimmered across her, sealing the wounds, running her body in beads of tiny flame. She felt the pain let up in her neck, and wounds she didn’t know she had suddenly felt fresh and cool. Her arms and legs strengthened and she felt the fire flash in her eyes.

“That’s it,” the girl said, and took Ami’s hand.

“Where am I? What is this place?” She rose with the girl and found herself being led by her toward the raised platform, the fire burning low between the arches. What a curious thing.

“This is my safe place,” she said, sitting with her upon the steps. She smiled and Ami couldn’t help but do the same. “You can stay here for a little, but the other will come back soon.”

“The other?”

“The other you.”

“But I thought—” Ami’s eyes flicked between the rosebush and the walkway, the arches and the woods. “I didn’t think this place was real. Is the
other
me real?”

The girl nodded. “She comes here. She sets fires and disappears. She touches the roses. I stay hidden. I’m good at hiding.” Her voice was dreamy, vague, a little far away.

“Where does she go?”

The girl shrugged. “She isn’t you yet, or no—I mean, you aren’t her yet. You are her, but you aren’t yet.” She looked up at the sky, thinking. “I think that’s right. I help the lords. They come into the woods and get lost, but I watch them and bring them here. I send them through the gateway that the other me went through. Another returns, it happens again. I keep them safe, and away from—”

The girl looked back to the woods. All was quiet except for the crackling of the fire.

“You send the Lords of Legacy through?” Ami pointed to the archways. They looked innocent enough, and yet somehow mystical—they did look like gateways.

The girl nodded. “And show them how to leave when they come back. I don’t know how it works.”

Ami stroked her hand across the steps and stood up, looking around again. “You did the same with my father? What happened? Why didn’t he send me back? What happened with Adam?”

“The last lord.” The girl shook her head and walked up the steps, twirling on the marble flagstones. “There was a fight. The man who came with him wasn’t the one to go. The last lord said that as long as the man still lived, another heir wouldn’t return—too dangerous. The man tried to hurt me, but the Sentries came and he went into the wood.”

The air was sweet with the smell of the roses, and turning now, Ami headed to the rosebush she’d been to so many times, only this time it was real. She pulled a rose from the bush and a thorn stuck her.
Dangerous
. The fire burned perpetually.

“She’ll return soon,” the girl said, “and then you’ll know yourself.”

*

The boom had blown Hero back also, and flying like a leaf in the wind he’d landed against the branches of a tree, falling to the ground with shattered black limbs showering him. The white-grey mist had lit a purple flash, and in the distance he heard the screams—Adam.

Checking himself, he rolled into a crouch and pulled himself up. His sword was in his hand.

“Ami?” he whispered, but the air was empty, the gully his entirely. “Ami?”

Keeping one hand upon the root of a tree so as to not lose his bearings, Hero turned around, the blade of the sword lighting purple, glowing dully in the muting mist. The screams had stopped and no longer echoed, but the lights of the Sentries were back and roamed closer, firing the mist like a blinding furnace. He heard their faint chants as they searched: “One must go.”
Many go in, one must go.
But who was to go? Grace was sure to have answers, but she was nowhere to be seen, lost with Raven and the child, lost like Ami was now; and Adam was here. He’d found them, followed them. Yet hadn’t Lady Grace said that he’d be here? She’d known…

He spun as sounds above filtered down, movement through shrub, scratching against bark, light in the grey mist and blue hue. Hero stepped back, entering what he hoped was the centre of the gully between two banks, though he had no way of knowing for sure. The blade in his hand flamed and he held it aloft, ready.

A sound of a drop, someone near, the light hazy and unfocussed, yet the mist moving and swirling. “Who’s there?”

“Hero?” The familiar voice startled him, for it held a lilt of strangeness, but as the light became defined he recognised it more fully. The horn came before the beast, and Florina appeared close. The crystal shone a bright white, pulsing. “Hero, I’ve found you.”

“Florina, I have lost the others, I have—”

“They’re safe,” she whispered. “Raven and Lady Grace are with Talos, though where Ami and the girl are I’m—”

A cry ripped through the woods, closer. It sounded human and yet unhinged and dangerous.

“It’s Adam,” he said. “He is here. If he finds Ami—”

“Then let’s find
him
first,” she said. “We unicorns are born from power, akin to the Sentries here. Their power is ours. I am powerful here.”

The mist parted around the unicorn and her luminous body glowed a bright white, the crystal horn lowered, rippling with flame. Hero hid his face behind his hand, the glare too much. When it died, leaving only the flickers of flame, the unicorn had gone. In her place was the girl from the Commune. Florence. The horn in her hand, a fiery sword.

“Let’s hunt,” she said, smiling, and Hero raised his sword to hers. Their combined light shone through the mist enough to define a path that rose from the gully and led them to the forest floor above. Their steps quickened as they rose from the fog bank and into the blue.

The lit pillars of the Sentries were close, clusters of black trunks casting shadows that moved as they moved, tracking them. From somewhere deep within those shadows came the frustrated cries of a madman. Florence pointed her sword forward. “There.”

Hero saw him. The man was running and tripping, throwing bursts of power back over his shoulder. Pursuing him was another, ducking and diving, deflecting. “Let’s go.”

They picked their way carefully between the trees, Hero conscious of falling beneath the mist once more, and constantly thinking of Ami. Where was she? Was she safe? Was she lost? Wherever she was, if they were able to eliminate Adam, she would be much safer, but how were they going to do that?

Florence cut them a path through dense trees, the mist rising at the trunks and crawling up the bark. Several times he heard murmurs in the shadows, the trees whispering—or perhaps not the trees at all. There was a desperate sense here, and as he looked at the spaces between the trees, the blue dusk of eternity, he began to slow and think. What would it be like to wander the forest forever, to know nothing but an endless walk, a constant thirst, a starvation that ate your body bit by bit, but never yielded to death; what would it be like to—

“Keep moving,” Florence said, pulling his robes. “Don’t stop. People go mad here, people stay mad here. Stay with me.”

“Yes,” he said, shaking. He’d stopped and lowered his blade—he hadn’t noticed—but now he jogged beside the girl. A unicorn, powerful, a woman, resourceful. Yes, she would’ve made a fine addition to the Guard and to Legacy. He looked out toward the men. They were closer, much closer now, though the Sentries had disappeared from view. The darkness was now only blue-lit shadows, and the path Adam travelled led to a wall of mist between a cluster of trunks.

“In through here,” Florence said, and entering a tight space between two wide trunks, Hero found himself on a pathway. The pathway was not defined, was sparse with trees and seemed no different to any other part of the forest, and yet it was leading him. He felt it, and the power within him felt it. Whatever was ahead was where they were meant to go.

“Don’t you recognise this place?” a voice said, near, quite close. Hero saw nothing ahead, yet he felt them. His blade lifted as they made a turn, and found themselves within a large clearing.

Adam was there, with his back to a cluster of hollowed trees, a man standing before him, taunting him.