Only the Worthy (2 page)

PART ONE

Rea sat upright
in her simple bed, sweating, awakened by the shrieks that tore through the
night. Her heart pounded as she sat in the dark, hoping it was nothing, that it
was just another one of the nightmares that had been plaguing her. She gripped
the edge of her cheap straw mattress and listened, praying, willing for the
night to be silent.

Another shriek
came, though, and Rea flinched.

Then another.

They were
becoming more frequent—and getting closer.

Frozen in fear, Rea
sat there and listened as they neared. Above the sound of the lashing rain
there also came the sound of horses, faint at first, then the distinctive sound
of swords being drawn. But none were louder than the shrieking.

And then a new
sound arose, one which, if possible, was even worse: the crackle of flames. Rea’s
heart sank as she realized her village was being set ablaze. That could only
mean one thing: the nobles had arrived.

Rea jumped from
bed, banging her knee against the andirons, her only possession in her simple
one-room cottage, and then running from the house. She emerged to the muddy
street, into the warm rain of spring, the downpour getting her instantly wet.
Yet she did not care. She blinked into the darkness, still trying to shake off
her nightmare. All around her, shutters opened, doors opened, and her fellow
villagers stepped tentatively from their cottages. They all stood and stared
down the single simple road winding into the village. Rea stared with them and
in the distance spotted a glow. Her heart sank. It was a spreading flame.

Living here, in
the poorest part of the village, hidden behind the twisting labyrinths that
wound their way from the main town square, was, at a time like this, a
blessing: she would at least be safe back here. Nobody ever came back here, to
this poorest part of town, to these ramshackle cottages where only the servants
lived, where the stink of the streets forced people away. It had always felt
like a ghetto that Rea could not get out of.

Yet as she
watched the flames lick the night, Rea was relieved, for the first time, to
live back here, hidden. The nobles would never bother trying to navigate the
labyrinthine streets and back alleys that led here. There was nothing to
pillage here, after all.

Rea knew that
was why her destitute neighbors merely stood there outside their cottages, not
panicking, but merely watching. That was why, too, none of them attempted to
run to the aid of the villagers in the town center, those rich folk who had
looked down upon them their entire lives. They owed them nothing. The poor were
safe back here, at least, and they would not risk their lives to save those who
had treated them as less than nothing.

And yet, as Rea
studied the night, she was baffled to see the flames getting closer, the night
brighter. The glow was clearly spreading, creeping its way toward her. She
blinked, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her. It didn’t make any sense:
the marauders seemed to be heading her way.

The shrieks grew
louder, she was certain of it, and she flinched as suddenly flames erupted
hardly a hundred feet before her, emerging from the labyrinthine streets. She
stood there, stunned: they were coming this way. But why?

Hardly had she
finished the thought when a galloping warhorse thundered into the square,
ridden by a fierce knight donned in all-black armor. His visor was lowered, his
helmet drawn to a sinister point. Wielding a halberd, he looked like a
messenger of death.

Barely had he
entered the square than he lowered his halberd on the back of a portly old man
who tried to run. The man hadn’t even time to scream before the halberd severed
his head.

Lightning filled
the skies and thunder struck, the rain intensifying, as a dozen more knights
burst into the square. One of them bore a standard. It glowed in the light of
the torches, yet Rea could not make out the insignia.

Chaos ensued.
Villagers panicked, turned and ran, shrieking, some running back into their
cottages by some remote instinct, slipping in the mud, a few fleeing through
back alleys. Yet even these did not get far before flying spears found a place
in their backs. Death, she knew, would spare no one on this night.

Rea did not try
to run. She merely stepped back calmly, reached inside the door of her cottage,
and drew a sword, a long sword given to her ages ago, a beautiful work of
craftsmanship. The sound of it being drawn from its scabbard made her heart beat
faster. It was a masterpiece, a weapon she had no right to own, handed down by
her father. She didn’t know how he himself had gained it.

Rea walked
slowly and resolutely into the center of the town square, the only one of her
villagers brave enough to stand their ground, to face these men. She, a frail
seventeen-year-old girl, and she alone, had the courage to fight in the face of
fear. She didn’t know where her courage came from. She wanted to flee, yet
something deep inside her forbade it. Something within her had always driven
her to face her fears, whatever the odds. It was not that she did not feel
terror; she did. It was that another part of her allowed her to function in the
face of it. Challenged her to be stronger than it.

Rea stood there,
hands trembling, but forcing herself to stay focused. And as the first horse
galloped for her, she raised her sword, stepped up, leaned low, and chopped off
the horse’s legs.

It pained her to
do it, to maim this beautiful animal; she had, after all, spent most of her
life caring for horses. But the man had raised his spear, and she knew her
survival was at stake.

The horse
shrieked an awful sound that she knew would stay with her the rest of her days.
It fell to the ground, face-planting in the dirt and throwing its knight. The
horses behind it rode into it, stumbling and crashing down in a pile around
her.

In a cloud of
dust and chaos, Kyle spun and faced them all, ready to die here.

A single knight,
in all-white armor, riding a white horse, different from the others, suddenly
charged right for her. She raised her sword to strike again, but this knight
was too fast. He moved like lightning. Barely had she raised her sword than he
swung his halberd in an upward arc, catching her blade, disarming her. A
helpless feeling ran down her arm as her precious weapon was stripped away,
sailing in a broad arc through the air and landing in the mud on the far side
of the square. It might as well have been a million miles away.

Rea stood there,
stunned to find herself defenseless, but most of all confused. That knight’s
blow had not been meant to kill her.
Why?

Before she could
finish the thought the knight, still riding, leaned low and grabbed her; she
felt his metal gauntlet digging into her chest as he grabbed her shirt with two
hands and in a single motion heaved her up onto his horse, seating her before
him. She shrieked at the shock of it, landing roughly on his moving horse,
planted firmly in front of him, his metal arms wrapped around her, holding her
tight. She barely had time to think, much less to breathe, as he held her in a
vise. Rea writhed, bucking side to side, but it was no use. He was too strong.

He continued on,
galloping right through the village, weaving his way through the tortuous
streets and away from her home.

They burst out
of the village into the countryside, and suddenly, all was quiet. They rode
farther and farther from the chaos, from the pillaging, the shrieking, and Rea
could not help but feel guilty for her momentary sense of relief to have the
world be at peace again. She felt she should have died back there, with her
people. Yet as he held her tighter and tighter, she realized her fate might be
even worse.

“Please,” she
struggled to say, finding it hard to get the word out.

But he only held
her tighter and galloped faster into the open meadow, up and down rolling
hills, in the pouring rain, until they were in a place of utter quiet. It was
eerie, so quiet and peaceful here, as if nothing had ever been wrong in the
world.

Finally he
stopped on a broad plateau high above the countryside, beneath an ancient tree,
a tree she instantly recognized. She had sat beneath it many times before.

In one quick
motion he dismounted, keeping his grip on her and taking her with him. They
landed in the wet grass, rolling, stumbling, and Rea felt winded as his weight
landed beside her. She noted as they landed that he could have landed on top of
her, could have really hurt her, but chose not to. In fact, he landed in a way
that cushioned her fall.

The knight
rolled on top of her, pinning her down, and she looked up at him, desperate to
see his face. It was covered, though, the white visor down, only menacing eyes
appearing from behind the slits of his helmet. On his horse she saw that banner
again, and this time she got a good look at its insignia: two snakes, wrapped
around a moon, a dagger between them, encased in a circle of gold.

Rea flailed,
punching his armor. But it was useless. Hers were frail, small hands punching
at a suit of metal. She might as well have been punching a boulder.

“Who are you?”
she demanded. “What do you want of me?”

There came no
response.

Instead, he
grabbed her with his gauntlet, and the next thing she knew, he turned her
around, face first in the grass, and was reaching, pulling at her dress.

Rea cried,
realizing what was about to happen. She was seventeen. She had been saving
herself for the perfect man. She did not want it to happen this way.

“No!” she cried
out. “Please. Anything but that. Kill me first!”

But the knight
would not listen, and she knew there was no stopping him.

Rea shut her
eyes tight, trying to make it go away, trying to transport herself to another
place, another time, anywhere but here. Her nightmare came back to her, the one
she had been awakened from, the one she had been having for many moons. It was
this, she realized with dread, that she had been seeing. This very scene. This
tree, this grass, this plateau. This storm.

Somehow, she had
foreseen it.

Rea shut her
eyes tighter and tried to imagine this wasn’t happening. She tried to determine
if it was worse in the dream, or in real life.

Soon, it was
over.

He stopped
moving and lay on top of her, she too numb to move.

She heard the
sound of metal rising, felt his weight finally off of her, and she braced
herself, expecting him to kill her now. She anticipated the blow of his sword.
It would be a welcome relief.

“Go on,” she
said. “Do it.”

Yet to her
surprise there came no sound of a sword, but instead the soft sound of a dainty
chain. She felt something cold and light being placed into her palm, and she
glanced over, confused.

She squinted in
the rain and was stunned to see he had placed a gold necklace in her hand, a
pendant at its end, two snakes, wrapped around a moon, a dagger between them.

Finally, he
spoke his first words.

“When he is
born,” came the dark, mysterious voice, a voice of authority, “give this to
him. And send him to me.”

She heard the
knight mounting his horse, and became dimly aware of the sound of his riding
away.

Rea’s eyes grew
heavy. She was too exhausted to move as she lay there in the rain. Her heart
shattered, she felt sweet sleep coming on and she allowed it to embrace her.
Maybe now, at least, the nightmares would stop.

Before she let
them close, she stared out at the necklace, the emblem. She squeezed it,
feeling it in her hand, the gold so thick, thick enough to feed her entire
village for a lifetime.

Why had he given
it to her? Why hadn’t he killed her?

Him
, he had said.
Not her. He knew she would be pregnant. And he knew it would be a boy.

How?

Suddenly, before
sweet sleep took her, it all came rushing back to her. The last piece of her
dream.

A boy. She had
given birth to a boy. One born of fury. Of violence.

A boy destined
to be king.

Three Moons Later

Rea stood alone
in the forest clearing, in a daze, lost in her own world. She did not hear the
stream trickling beneath her feet, did not hear the chirping of the birds in
the thick wood around her, did not notice the sunlight shining through the
branches, or the pack of deer that watched her close by. The entire world
melted away as she stared at only one thing: the veins of the Ukanda leaf that
she held in her trembling fingers. She removed her palm from the broad, green
leaf, and slowly, to her horror, the color of its veins changed from green to
white.

Watching it
change was like a knife in her heart.

The Ukanda did
not change colors unless the person who touched it was with child.

Rea’s world
reeled. She lost all sense of time and space as she stood there, her heart
pounding in her ears, her hands trembling, and thought back to that fateful
night three moons ago when her village had been pillaged, too many of her
people killed to count. When
he
had taken her. She reached down and ran
her hand over her stomach, feeling the slightest bump, feeling another wave of
nausea, and finally, she understood why. She reached down and fingered the gold
necklace she’d been hiding around her neck, deep beneath her clothes, of
course, so that the others would not see it, and she wondered, for the
millionth time, who that knight was.

Try as she did
to block them out, his final words rang again and again in her head.

Send him to me.

There came a
sudden rustling behind her and Rea turned, startled, to see the beady eyes of
Prudence, her neighbor, staring back at her. A fourteen-year-old girl who lost
her family in the attack, a busybody who had always been too eager to tattle on
anyone, Prudence was the last person Rea wanted to see know her news. Rea
watched with horror as Prudence’s eyes drifted from Rea’s hand to the changing
leaf, then widened in recognition.

With a glare of
disapproval, Prudence dropped her basket of sheets and turned and ran. Rea knew
her running off could only mean one thing: she was going to inform the
villagers.

Rea’s heart sank,
and she felt her first wave of fear. The villagers would demand she kill her
baby, of course. They wanted no reminder of the nobles’ attack. But why did
that scare her? Did she really want to keep this child, the byproduct of that
monster?

Rea’s fear surprised
her, and as she dwelled on it, she realized it was a fear to keep her baby
safe. That floored her. Intellectually, she did not want to have it; to do so
would be a betrayal to her village and herself. It would only embolden the
nobles who had raided. And it would be so easy to lose the baby; she could
merely chew the Yukaba root, and with her next bathing, the child would pass.

Yet viscerally,
she felt the child inside her, and her body was telling her something that her
mind was not: she wanted to keep it. To protect it. It was a child, after all.

Rea, an only
child who had never known her parents, who had suffered in this world with no
one to love and no one to love her, had always desperately wanted someone to
love, and someone to love her back. She was tired of being alone, of being
quarantined in the poorest section of the village, of scrubbing others’ floors,
doing hard labor from morning to night with no way out. She would never find a
man, she knew, given her status. At least no man whom she didn’t despise. And
she would likely never have a child.

Rea felt a
sudden surge of longing. This might be her only chance, she realized. And now
that she was pregnant, she realized she hadn’t known how badly she wanted this
child. She wanted it more than anything.

Rea began the
hike back to her village, on edge, caught up in a swirl of mixed emotions,
hardly prepared to face the disapproval she knew would be awaiting her. The
villagers would insist there be no surviving issue from the marauders of their
town, from the men who had taken everything from them. Rea could hardly blame
them; it was a common tactic for marauders to impregnate women in order to
dominate and control the villages throughout the kingdom. Sometimes they would
even send for the child. And having a child only fueled their cycle of
violence.

Yet still, none
of that could change how she felt. A life lived inside her. She could feel it
with each step she took, and she felt stronger for it. She could feel it with
each heartbeat, pulsing through her own.

Rea walked down
the center of the village streets, heading back to her one-room cottage,
feeling her world upside down, wondering what to think.
Pregnant
. She
did not know how to be pregnant. She did not know how to give birth to a child.
Or how to raise one. She could barely feed herself. How would she even afford
it?

Yet somehow she
felt a new strength rising up within her. She felt it pumping in her veins, a
strength she had only been dimly conscious of these last three moons, but which
now came into crystal clear focus. It was a strength beyond hers. A strength of
the future, of hope. Of possibility. Of a life she could never lead.

It was a
strength that demanded her to be bigger than she could ever be.

As Rea walked
slowly down the dirt street, she became dimly aware of her surroundings, and of
the eyes of the villagers watching her. She turned, and on either side of the
street saw the curious and disapproving eyes of old and young women, of old men
and boys, of the lone survivors, maimed men who bore the scars of that night.
They all held great suffering in their faces. And they all stared at her, at
her stomach, as if she were somehow to blame.

She saw women
her age amongst them, faces haunted, staring back with no compassion. Many of
them, Rea knew, had been impregnated, too, and had already taken the root. She
could see the grief in their eyes, and she could sense that they wanted her to
share it.

Rea felt the
crowd thicken around her and when she looked up she was surprised to see a wall
of people blocking her path. The entire village seemed to have come out, men
and women, old and young. She saw the agony in their faces, an agony she had
shared, and she stopped and stared back at them. She knew what they wanted.
They wanted to kill her boy.

She felt a
sudden rush of defiance—and she resolved at that moment that she never would.

“Rea,” came a
tough voice.

Severn, a
middle-aged man with dark hair and beard, a scar across his cheek from that
night, stood in their center and glared down at her. He looked her up and down
as if she were a piece of cattle, and the thought crossed her mind that he was
little better than the nobles. All of them were the same: all thought they had
the right to control her body.

“You will take
the root,” he commanded darkly. “You will take the root, and tomorrow this
shall all be behind you.”

At Severn’s
side, a woman stepped forward. Luca. She had also been attacked that night, and
had taken the root the week before. Rea had heard her groaning all the night
long, her wails of grief for her lost child.

Luca held out a
sack, its yellow powder visible inside, and Rea recoiled. She felt the entire
village looking to her, expecting her to reach out and take it.

“Luca will
accompany you to the river,” Severn added. “She will stay with you through the
night.”

Rea stared back,
feeling a foreign energy rising within her as she looked at them all coldly.

She said
nothing.

Their faces
hardened.

“Do not defy us,
girl,” another man said, stepping forward, tightening his grip on his sickle
until his knuckles turned white. “Do not dishonor the memory of the men and
women we lost that night by giving life to their issue. Do what you are
expected. Do what is your place.”

Rea took a deep
breath, and was surprised at the strength in her own voice as she answered:

“I will not.”

Her voice
sounded foreign to her, deeper and more mature than she had ever heard it. It
was as if she had become a woman overnight.

Rea watched
their faces flash with anger, like a storm cloud passing over a sunny day. One
man, Kavo, frowned and stepped forward, an air of authority about him. She
looked down and saw the flogger in his hand.

“There’s an easy
way to do this,” he said, his voice full of steel. “And a hard way.”

Rea felt her
heart pounding as she stared back, looking him right in the eyes. She recalled
what her father had told her once when she was a young girl: never back down.
Not to anyone. Always stand up for yourself, even if the odds were against you.
Especially
if the odds were against you. Always set your sights on the
biggest bully. Attack first. Even if it means your life.

Rea burst into
action. Without thinking, she reached over, snatched a staff from one of the
men’s hands, stepped forward, and with all her might jabbed Kavo in the solar
plexus.

Kavo gasped as
he keeled over, and Rea, not giving him another chance, drew it back and jabbed
him in the face. His nose cracked and he dropped the flogger and fell to the
ground, clutching his nose and groaning into the mud.

Rea, still
gripping the staff, looked up and saw the group of horrified, shocked faces
staring back. They all looked a bit less certain.

“It is
my
boy,” she spat. “I am keeping it. If you come for me, the next time it won’t be
a staff in your belly, but a sword.”

With that, she
tightened her grip on the staff, turned, and slowly walked away, elbowing her
way through the crowd. Not one of them, she knew, would dare follow her. Not
now, at least.

She walked away,
her hands shaking, her heart pounding, knowing it would be a long six months
until her baby came.

And knowing that
the next time they came for her, they would come to kill.