Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (40 page)

“What have you got there, Seth?” Kyleigh's voice rang inside his head, as
if he was speaking her words.

A smile creased his face, lines creased his eyes. He held up the bit of
wood he'd been carving and Kael saw it was a deer. The creature was so full of
life, so intricately detailed with every tuft of hair and every point of its
horns standing tall, that he almost expected it to leap out of Setheran’s hand
and go galloping across the deck.

“Do you think he'll like it?” Setheran asked. He had a deep, rumbling
voice — one that didn't quite match his lithe frame.

“I can't imagine any child not liking that,” Kyleigh replied.

This made him smile again. “I hope you’re right.” Then he held the deer
out to her. “Take this for a moment, will you? I've got to clean up the
shavings before Matteo sees.”

“Yes, we wouldn't want that. He'd likely get his breeches in such a knot
—”

Black. A burst of light. Rain struck his face, wind ripped at his wings.
He crashed through the ocean's surface and it hurt, but he didn't care. He saw his
own body lying cold and lifeless in the mud. A terrible fear tore at his throat
and choked him with un-fallen tears. His lips were blue and parted, his chest
didn’t rise.

Then breath came back to him. He watched himself double over and cough up
the ocean, and relief struck him like a wave. It welled up and spilt out his
eyes — just as another feeling burst from the very center of his chest.

It engulfed him, consumed him. It raged like a tunnel of fire: burning
deeper and more dangerous than the sea. Though it threatened to drag him down
and under, he found he didn’t care. Let the waves come! Let the rain fall! He
would lose himself to this storm, purge his soul in the flames. Let it take him
—

Kael ripped his hands away and fell onto his back. He struck the ground
and gasped as tears poured down his face. Where on earth had they come from? He
dashed them away with his sleeve. “What
was
that?”

She said nothing. She wouldn’t even look at him.

Whatever lurked inside her head had grabbed him and wringed him out like
a wet cloth. His legs shook as he got to his feet. “Were those your …
feelings —
?”

“Kael! Kyleigh!”

A chorus of three voices rang out from the trees, followed by three
people. Thelred popped out first, turned around and bellowed: “Found them!
They’re over here.” He didn’t seem at all surprised by the fact that Kyleigh
was now a large white dragon.

Lysander was next to appear. His right eye was swollen almost shut and
ringed by a nasty, purplish bruise. He walked stiffly — his back arched
away from the blade Aerilyn had digging into it.

“There, we’ve found them,” he grouched. “Now will you kindly release me?”

But Aerilyn wasn’t paying any attention to him. Her eyes found Kael and
she gasped in relief. She dropped the sword and flung herself into his arms,
smacking him in the back with the bag she had clutched in her hand. “Oh Kael!
I’m so happy you’re alive. So very,
very
happy!” she said, her tears wetting his neck. “I thought you were gone for
good. And then Kyleigh leapt in after you, and I thought I’d lost you both
— where is she, by the way? I’ve got her armor.”

Kael turned her by the shoulders and she froze when she saw the white
dragon smirking at her. She clamped a hand down on Kael’s wrist, looked the
dragon over once, and finally squeaked: “Kyleigh?”

She barely had a chance to nod before Aerilyn grabbed her around her long
neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a, um …?”

“A shapechanger, more generally. And a halfdragon, specifically,”
Lysander said. He tried to smirk, but ended up wincing instead.

Aerilyn’s arms fell limply back to her side. “A shapechanger?” She
cleared her throat. “Well, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’re
my friend. And on that note — how
dare
you.” She jabbed a finger in Kyleigh’s face — a gesture made much less
threatening by the fact that she had to point so far upwards. “How could you
just go leaping off the ship like that? You might have told me you could sprout
wings and fly! But no, you disappeared without a word and left us with naught
but a pile of clothes, all slashed to ribbons—”

“Your clothes?” Kael sputtered. His face burned when he realized what
that meant, and Kyleigh’s laughter started up again.

“It’s not funny,” Aerilyn scolded. “It isn’t ladylike to go frolicking
naked in the woods.”

“Would you stop squawking and help her get dressed?” Thelred grumbled.
“We’ve got too little time as it is.”

Aerilyn shot him an icy look. “Come along, Kyleigh,” she said haughtily.
And they disappeared into the trees.

Thelred carried Kael’s bow and quiver across his back. He pulled them
off, thrust them impatiently into Kael’s hands, and went to carve up the
rabbits.

While Thelred got their breakfast ready, Lysander fussed over his eye. He
touched it gingerly, wincing. Then he muttered a string of curses and snatched
the discarded cutlass off the ground. “Women,” he said, thrusting the weapon
into the sheath at his belt. “You can’t hold a man hostage with his own sword.
It’s completely against the rules.”

Kael was sure he deserved whatever he got. “What did you do?”

Though he made a great show of scowling, a reluctant smile pulled at
Lysander’s lips. “When we anchored in Copperdock, I promised to search for you
the best I could. But your forest friends were determined to come ashore. For
some reason, I don’t think they trusted me,” he mused. “Anyways, I told them
they couldn’t come. And then Jonathan tried to mutiny, so I had to throw him in
the brig.”

“You did
what
?” His words came
out in a growl that made Lysander take a hasty step back.

“Don’t worry: he’ll have plenty of food. And I’ve told Morris to keep an
eye on him,” he said quickly. “Jonathan made a scene, but Aerilyn was smarter.
I was heading to the deck when she ambushed me — socked me in the eye,
disarmed me and threatened me with my own sword.” At this point, Lysander was
grinning to either ear. “She paraded me in front of my men and straight down to
the docks. I can’t imagine the sort of ridicule I’ll have to endure when I get
back … but,” he touched a finger to his swollen eye, “I think this means she
likes me.”

Kael was about to tell him how very wrong he was when Kyleigh returned.
She strode into the clearing, fully armed in black and with Aerilyn close
behind. “Let me see.” She took Lysander under the chin and turned his head to
the side. “Nicely done,” she said approvingly. “Though in the future, try to
aim for the nose. It’s a great deal more painful.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Lysander said, batting her hand away. When the
girls left to get their share of the rabbits, he leaned towards Kael and
whispered: “What did I tell you, eh? If she didn’t like me, she would’ve swung
for my nose!”

Shortly after breakfast, Lysander
informed them that he’d given the crew permission to sail off at sunset. “If we
haven’t returned by then, they’ll just assume we’re dead. So obviously, time is
of the essence.”

Obviously, Lysander had no concept
of geography. Because by the time they made it into Copperdock, it was almost
noon. They could see the spindly towers of Wendelgrimm perched high on a cliff
above town, leering over the rough stone houses like a vulture over corpses.
Kael wagered it would take them at least another hour to make the climb, and
then they’d still have to face the Witch.

And he had no idea how long that
would take.

Copperdock
turned out to be an awful lot like Crow’s Cross — with its winding
streets and houses crammed end to end. The only real difference he could see
was the complete lack of people. Small gardens stood overgrown and abandoned in
front of their houses. Wagons stopped in the street, almost in mid-roll.
Tattered laundry hung dirty and forgotten on sagging lines.

He imagined the
people must have fled in quite a hurry. Once they lost their protectors, there
would have been no one to stop the Witch from swooping down and gobbling them
up.

He was trying to
peer through the dusty windows of an old shop when he tripped over something
lying in the road. A glass bowl rolled out from under his feet, sloshing half
of its water and a small fish onto the cobblestone. The poor thing flopped
helplessly until Kael managed to scoop it up and drop it back into the bowl.

“Watch where
you’re going,” Thelred said.

Kael glared at
him. “How could I know there’d be a fish bowl out in the middle of the road?”

“It’s not like
they had a choice,” Lysander said. “The villagers are stuck exactly where they
were when the Witch cursed them.”

Aerilyn looked
horrified. She glanced at two bowls perched on a wagon seat. “You mean these
fish are … people?”

Lysander nodded
grimly. “It’s awful, I know. But that’s precisely why it’s so important that
the Witch be stopped. Her death would not only free me, but the good people of
Copperdock, as well.”

Kael couldn’t believe
the fish were really people. He knelt down next to the bowl and stuck his nose
to the glass. The fish swam up to him and stared back with watery eyes. It
turned to the side, and that’s when he noticed how very strange its markings
were. The coloring of its scales made the fish look as if it was wearing
trousers with suspenders, and sporting a set of thick sideburns on either side
of its face. Perhaps it really
was
a
man trapped in a fish’s body.

“Don’t worry,
I’m going to kill the Witch,” Kael said quietly.

The fish blinked
in reply.

“And sorry for …
knocking you over like that,” he added as he got to his feet, just in case the
fish could understand him.

The others had
moved on down the road, but Kyleigh stayed back. She must have heard his conversation
with the fish, because she smiled and said: “That was kind of you.”

He couldn’t tell
if she was heckling him or not, but to be safe he grumbled: “Leave off.” And
stomped past her.

*******

The climb to
Wendelgrimm was steeper than they’d been expecting. The winding dirt road was
long overgrown. Years of neglect invited thorns, which snaked out from the
stone and latched onto their breeches whenever they could. Some parts of the
path were nearly crumbled away, leaving only a thin ledge between them and a
dizzying drop into the violent ocean below.

Kael was used to
steep climbing. The most annoying thing about it all was the fact that the road
twisted so much. With every bend they came to, he could feel another handful of
minutes slip away. He tried not to worry about the time and instead listened to
the belabored breathing of his companions.

It gave him some
satisfaction to see how Lysander and Thelred struggled with the climb. He
thought it was good for them to get a little sweat on their brows. Aerilyn
panted like a dog, but kept her chin stubbornly in the air. And then there was
Kyleigh.

He thought, if
he tilted his head just right, that he might be able to see a drop of sweat
glistening on her brow. Other than that, her face was calm. Pleasant, even.
Just to look at her, he might have thought they were going for a stroll through
the woods — not climbing to what might very well be their deaths.

They’d made it a
little more than halfway up when Lysander suddenly came to a halt. He drew his
cutlass and held his hand taut, signaling for them to stop.

“What is it?”
Aerilyn asked. She had an arrow drawn and ready to fire. Kael was proud of how
steady her hands were.

He leaned around
Thelred and saw someone standing out in the middle of the road. He wore plainclothes
and had a staff gripped in one hand. From such a distance, he couldn’t tell if
the man was facing them, or had his back turned.

“A spy,”
Lysander said out the side of his mouth. “The Witch has posted a guard to
thwart us. We’d better kill him quickly.”

Kyleigh stepped
up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “That’s a statue, Sandy.”

“What?”

She picked a
rock up off the ground and hurled it at the figure. It ricocheted off his head
with a sharp
thwap
and sailed into
the ocean.

Lysander cleared
his throat. “Well how was I supposed to see that? Not all of us can have
dragon’s eyes,” he mumbled. “All right, pressing on.”

They were nearly
to the statue when a breeze swept in from the ocean. It blew past the figure
and directly into Kael’s face, carrying with it a stench that burned his nose …
and made him itch.

“Magic!” he
said, but not soon enough.

The statue
cracked down the middle and blasted into a thousand pieces. Kael put his arm
over his head, trying to shield his eyes from the sharp bits of rock that stung
his body. As the stone fell away, a man stepped out from the rubble.

He had a thin
face and a long nose — hardly the look of a killer. And yet the eyes
behind his round spectacles were cold and unfeeling. He raised his staff over
his head and shouted something unintelligible, then brought it down with a
roar.

It struck the
ground, and the road in front of them cracked. It split from the cliff side and
broke away, tumbling down into the waves below. Thelred managed to leap to the
other side while the rest of them dove back the way they came. Kael heard
Aerilyn scream and spun around in time to see her lose her footing. She was
falling backwards, arms waving frantically as she tried to regain her balance,
and he couldn’t get there fast enough to save her.

But Lysander
could.

He dove and
landed on his belly, grabbing Aerilyn’s hands just before the fall could take
her. They froze like that for a moment, with his arms shaking as he held her
over thin air. Then the weight of her body began to drag him over.