Authors: Usman Ijaz
He holstered his guns and went inside and lay
down on the ground beside the boys.
4
“Adrian!” Connor shouts to him. “We have to
go back to the inn!”
Adrian looks up from the ships swaying
before him and the distant black clouds that shroud the horizon, and sees his
cousin waiting. He leaps from the wall and heads over to him. Together they
begin to walk up the street towards the Golden Lilly. Above them the sky is a
perfect bright blue and the molten sun hangs unhidden. The lower market is full
of people, as it always is in the afternoon, but there is something odd about
it. He looks from person to person, and notices that they all look away from
him, faces obscured in shadows.
“Do you see them, Connor?” he asks.
Connor simply looks at him crossly. “Of
course I see them. Why wouldn’t I?”
In silence they continue up the street, and
every face that he looks at turns away and grows dark. He looks behind them,
and notices that the distant black clouds are slowly rolling towards them.
A
storm
, he thinks. He remembers then the tales told to children of such
clouds on such bright days; that they hid witches.
He puts the clouds out of his mind as they
approach the inn. Instead of going to the stables, as they had originally
intended, they head into the common room.
“Adrian, you’re back!” shouts Bertha as she
emerges from the kitchens.
He looks at her, wondering why her face is
not changing. “I never went anywhere,” he tells her, confused. Had he gone
somewhere? It’s hard for him to remember anything before Connor had retrieved
him.
The clouds...
he thinks, suddenly worried.
The worry dies, and there is nothing left but a sense of trepidation; something
about the clouds ... what they bring ... but he can’t remember what.
Bertha turns around and walks back to the
kitchens. Adrian looks around for Connor, but he’s nowhere to be found. At the
back of the common room he sees his uncle walk into one of the private rooms
behind some shadowed men, and he wants to shout out, though he doesn’t
understand why. The door slams shut behind Jon Moor.
Feeling in a daze, he heads into the
kitchens. All the maids and cooks that turn to regard him look away quickly,
shadows concealing their faces. Off to one side he sees his cousins sitting at
the table, with Nina standing over them. He heads towards them as though
walking through thick jam.
“Adrian!” Anne shouts.
He looks at her smiling face. His gaze shifts
to one of the windows and he sees that it is suddenly growing dark outside.
The
clouds!
he thinks, and even as the thought comes to him he hears the first
cracks of lightening far off in the city. Screams announce more lightening,
closer, and the sound of stones and mortar crumbling and tearing apart. He
looks towards his cousins, and sees them staring at him in horror. He takes a
step forward to warn them, and they cringe and retreat from him, as though he
were a vile snake.
“Get away!” Nina shrieks from where she has
fallen against the wall. “Please! Leave us!”
He doesn’t understand, and can only look at
them in wonder. Then the sound of God’s hands clapping comes from directly
overhead, and a dozen bolts of lightning rip through the roof of the inn,
tearing everything apart. He’s tossed to the ground, and shuts his eyes against
the bright bolts, hearing them lay waste to everything.
At last the lightning and thunder stop, and
he opens his eyes. The inn is no more than broken rubble, and bodies lie scattered
everywhere. He stands up beneath the black sky, and through the dust and debris
sees Port Hope in rubble all around him. Not a single structure is left
standing.
He looks to where his cousins and Nina had
been, and instead sees only charred bodies lying beneath broken rubble. And as
he looks at them, he is filled with a sudden realization.
It’s not the clouds that bring death ...
but him.
He looks to the sky and is surprised to see
the sun still visible in that roiling mass of black clouds. No, not the sun,
but something far brighter. He can do nothing but stare at that brilliant white
disk in the sky.
A voice, familiar yet distant, whispers to
him like a gentle breeze.
Now you know the cost of failure.
5
Adrian awoke suddenly in the middle of the
night, shivering and sweating profusely. He took several deep breaths to try
and calm his racing heart.
It was a dream, nothing more! A dream.
But
the feel of the dream still lingered and its emotions of still gripped him.
I
would never do that, not to any of them!
Slowly the memory of the dream
began to fade, and he was able to calm down, still feeling appalled at what had
happened. Looking around in the semi-darkness he saw only the sleeping shapes
of the others, all but one. Connor’s blankets lay empty. Adrian heard the sound
of footsteps from outside. He rose unsteadily to go and see. It never crossed
his mind to waken Alexis.
The clearing and the surrounding woods had a
frightening air, wrapped in absolute darkness, with the moon above providing barely
enough light to see. Adrian didn’t like the thought of venturing into those
black woods at all. A nightbird rang out a curious cry from the darkness.
“Connor!” he whispered fiercely. There was no
reply. Then again, would Connor really call back to him?
He walked past the black coals that had been
their fire, and again called out Connor’s name in a loud whisper. Again there
was no response, but he could now hear muffled sounds from somewhere in the
woods. They were coming from the river, he realized. Adrian headed towards the
path that led to the river, calling out Connor’s name as he went.
The ground was littered with leaves and branches
and rocks. They poked away at his bare feet as he made his way through the
woods. The encroaching darkness made him wary of the surrounding woods and what
they might be concealing. He headed towards the Rye, and that other stifled
sound became louder. He felt certain that it came from Connor.
“Connor, where are you?”
Adrian came out onto the embankment and found his
cousin on his knees. His hands covered his face as he wept in loud, harsh sobs.
Below them the black water of the river shone like polished steel as the
moonlight shimmered across the surface. The wind rolling off the river was
sharp enough to send chills through Adrian’s body.
“Connor,” Adrian said, suddenly frightened.
“What are you doing out here? Are you all right?”
Connor didn’t look up at him, only covered his
face as if afraid to see anything that might be out here. “No.”
Adrian went and knelt beside him. He pushed
Connor’s hands away to look into his cousin’s eyes. “What’s the matter?”
Connor stared back at him with large, tearful
brown eyes. For a moment those eyes simply stared at him, as though trying to
recall who he was. Then Connor’s face crumpled and he burst out. “I miss my
father! I miss my mother, and I miss Anne, and Bertha. I miss Nina, and Tarak.
I even miss Hailey !” His voice came out thick and choked and raw.
“It’s all right,” Adrian told him soothingly. “I
miss them too.” But he knew Connor’s homesickness was much worse, for Connor
still had a home there. Adrian could still remember the look in his cousins’
eyes when they had learned what he was, and though they had hugged him farewell
and told him to return, he wasn’t sure he could face those looks again.
“I want to go home!” Connor cried bitterly, as
though pleading to the night. Tears rolled down his cheeks and fell onto his
clasped hands in his lap.
Adrian’s heart went out to him.
We can’t go
home now,
he thought.
Maybe
you
still can, but not at the moment.
He didn’t give voice to these thoughts but instead leaned forward and
hugged his cousin.
I’m sorry, Connor. I’m sorry you have to go through this.
“It’ll be all right.”
Connor stopped sobbing and wiped at his eyes
with the back of his hands. For a long while they simply sat there, shivering
in the cold, but Adrian knew that Connor needed the time to pull himself
together. “Yes, it’ll be all right,” Connor said at last. He looked at Adrian
then and there was shame in his eyes. “Why are you doing this? I treated you
like dirt.”
“You didn’t mean it,” Adrian told him quietly.
Connor only looked at him in silence, tears
still wet on his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said at last in a bare whisper. “I’m
... sorry.”
They headed back then silently, bare feet
crushing twigs and fallen leaves. When they entered the hut Connor slipped back
into his blankets quietly, not noticing that Alexis’s cot was empty. Adrian,
however, did notice. He slipped under his own blankets, and after a while, as
he was falling sleep, he saw the Legionnaire slip back in.
6
In the morning began the actual construction of
the raft that would ferry them across the river. They began work on it at the
river’s edge, suffering the chill winds. Alexis set up two long tree trunks,
bare of branches and leaves, vertically and then two shorter pieces across the
ends of those, creating the frame for the raft. The bark strips which had been
soaked overnight to strengthen were used to lash the pieces together. Then they
lay the other pieces of wood atop the frame, tying every piece down with strips
of long bark.
The work progressed through the morning. Alexis
watched their supply of tree trunks and bark dwindle down, and realized that
they wouldn’t have enough to strengthen the underside of the raft, as he had
planned on doing so. They could get more, but that meant spending perhaps
another day or two more than was necessary, and he was not willing to risk
that. They would simply have to take their chances with the raft as it was.
By evening of that day they finished the raft, a
small structure that was twice as long as a man in length, and half in width.
Alexis thought it best to test it before resting all their hopes on it. They
tied a small rope to the raft and anchored it to a tree before pushing it into
the water, where the current immediately tugged at it, trying to carry it
downstream. Alexis stepped onto the unstable structure, and after some stepping
around came to the conclusion that it would serve their purpose.
As dusk came, Alexis sat trying to fashion a few
paddles as a means to control the raft. He made three improvised paddles by
cutting away the ends of a few large branches so that they were flat. It was
crude work, but it was better than nothing.
He looked around for Adrian and Connor and saw
that the two were napping inside the hut. It pleased him to see that they had
actually started to talk to one another again. He thought the previous night’s
unexpected tryst between the two had much to do with it. It didn’t really
matter; he was simply glad that they were willing to acknowledge one another
now.
“Do you really mean to set out tonight?” Rebecca
asked. She sat in front of the fire, and Milen lay dozing on the ground, his
giant head resting in her lap.
“Yes,” he answered. “ I think we can reach the
other end before complete dark.”
Rebecca frowned as she stroked her son’s head.
“It will be safer if you leave in the morning. And do you really hope to travel
at night once across the river? What difference does it matter if you camp here
tonight or over there?”
Alexis thought it over as he worked. At last he said,
“All right. We will leave in the morning, then.”
“Good. I don’t very much like the thought of you
not being able to see anything around you.”
Alexis set the paddles aside and sat before the
fire. He watched Milen dozing. “I don’t think he will be too overjoyed to see
the boys leaving.”
Rebecca continued stroking Milen’s head. “No, he
won’t. But if there is anything to be thankful for it’s that he will likely
forget them within a month after your departure.”
Alexis nodded. He met Rebecca’s eyes. “What will
happen to him once you pass away?”
For a long time the other woman didn’t respond,
only sat with a sad, far way look on her face. She had pondered long on this as
well, Alexis concluded. “I don’t know,” Rebecca said at last. Her voice shook
and she fought to hold her composure.
“I’ve been giving it some thought,” Alexis said.
“You could take him out of these woods once you realize your time is drawing nearer.”
“Take him outside? And how will they receive him
outside? Any better than before?” She shook her head.
Silence passed between them, filled with the
sounds of the woods and the crackling fire.
“Take him to Grandal,” Alexis said at last. He
reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a bullet. He held it up before
Rebecca’s puzzled frown. “Show this to king Aeiron and tell him of how you
aided us. Tell him that I, Alexis Marshall, promised you protection for your
son. I believe the king will take proper action then.”