The Chronicles Of Ixia (Books 1-6)

14

THE NEXT MORNING, I headed out the south gate just as the sun crested the Soul Mountains. Soon a glorious sweep of sunlight rushed over the valley, indicating the start of the Commander’s exercise. My heart pulsed with excitement and fear. A strange combination of feelings, but they fueled my steps. I scarcely felt the weight of my backpack.

I had worried that the items contained in my knapsack could be considered cheating. After much thought, I decided that a prisoner intent on escaping from the dungeon would save some of her bread rations, smuggle a weapon from the guard room and steal the other items from the blacksmiths. And if I was stretching things a bit, then so what. No one had told me I must flee with nothing.

My determination to “escape” had increased since the plan had first been proposed. The money was merely a bonus at this point. I wanted to prove the Commander wrong. The Commander, who thought I wouldn’t get far, who had been concerned my death would jeopardize his exercise.

Before leaving the castle complex, I had stopped for a moment to view the main building in the daylight. My first impression was that a child had built the palace with his toy blocks. The base of the castle was rectangular. It supported various upper levels of squares, triangles and cylinders built atop one another in a haphazard fashion. The only attempts at symmetry were the magnificent towers at each corner of the castle. Streaked with brilliantly colored glass windows, the four towers stretched toward the sky.

The castle’s unusual geometric design intrigued me, and I would have liked to view it from other angles, but Valek had instructed me to leave the complex at dawn as I only had an hour’s head start. Then, the soldiers and dogs in pursuit would try to discover which gate I had exited, tracking me from there. Valek had taken one of my uniform shirts in order to give the dogs my scent. I had asked him who would taste the Commander’s food while I was gone, and he’d given me some vague reply about having others trained in the art of poisoning who were too valuable to be used on a regular basis. Unlike me.

My southern route was an obvious direction, but I didn’t plan to maintain it for long. I hoped the soldiers would assume I was headed straight for the border. The castle complex was in Military District 6 and quite close to the southern lands, wedged between MD–7 to the west and MD–5 to the east. The dead King, who had built the complex, had preferred the milder weather.

Alternating between jogging and walking, it wasn’t long before I entered Snake Forest, avoiding Castletown. While studying some of Valek’s maps the previous night, I had noticed that the forest surrounded Castletown on three sides. The northern district of the town faced the castle. Snake Forest also spread out to the east and west like a thin belt of green.

At the official southern border, Commander Ambrose’s soldiers had cleared a hundred-foot-wide swath from the Soul Mountains in the east all the way to the Sunset Ocean in the west. Since the takeover it was a crime for anyone, Ixian or Sitian, to cross this line.

I jogged through the forest, making a conspicuous trail. Breaking branches and stomping footprints in the dirt, I remained southbound until I reached a small stream. My hour head start was almost up. I knelt by the stream’s bank and reached into the water. Pulling out a handful of mud, I let the water drain through my fingers. I hunched over the stream and smeared the wet sediment on my face and neck. Since I had pulled my hair into a bun, I rubbed mud on my ears and the back of my neck. I hoped the men would guess I had knelt here for a drink. After stamping footprints near the stream’s bank to mislead my pursuers into thinking I had walked into the water, I traced my route back until I found a perfect tree.

About six feet from my path, a Velvatt’s smooth trunk rose high into the air. The first sturdy branch off the main trunk stretched fifteen feet above my head. Trying not to disturb the ground surrounding my scent path, I removed my backpack and pulled out one of the items I had borrowed from the blacksmiths. It was a small metal grappling hook. I tied it to the end of a long thin rope coiled inside my bag.

With my head start gone, a sudden image of guards and dogs exploding from the castle flashed through my mind. Hastily I threw the hook up to the branch. It missed. I caught it on the way down. Frantic, I threw the hook again. Missed. I calmed my raging pulse and focused on the task. The hook snagged the branch. Confident the hook was secure, I tied the extra line around my waist so it wouldn’t drag and put on my backpack. Grabbing the rope with both hands, I pulled my weight off the ground and wrapped my legs around the slack.

It had been a long time since I had climbed this way. All the way up the rope, my arm, shoulder and back muscles complained over my year-long inactivity. Once I reached the top, I straddled the branch and repacked the rope and hook in my backpack.

A strong breeze blew from the west. Wanting to stay downwind of the dogs, I spent the next half hour climbing east through the trees until I was well away from my original path. For once, my small size and acrobatic abilities proved a benefit.

When I came across a Cheketo tree, I found a secure nook near the trunk and unslung my backpack. The Cheketo’s leaf was the biggest that grew in the Snake Forest. Its circular-shaped green leaf, spotted with brown, was perfect for my needs. I sat still for a minute, listening for sounds of pursuit. Birds chirped and insects buzzed; I heard the quick rustling of leaves as a deer moved. I detected the faint baying of dogs, but it might have been just my imagination. There was no sign of Valek. But knowing him, he had to be close behind.

Taking Rand’s glue from my pack, I stripped leaves off the tree. When I had enough, I removed my shirt and glued the leaves onto it. Feeling self-conscious in just my sleeveless undershirt, I worked fast.

I covered the shirt, then my pants, boots and backpack with leaves. Finally, I glued a large leaf onto my hair and two smaller ones onto the backs of my hands, leaving my fingers free to move. Rand’s warning that the glue only held for a week passed through my mind, and I smiled as I envisioned his reaction when he saw me walking around the castle with leaves attached to my head and hands.

I didn’t have a mirror, but I hoped I had camouflaged my entire body in green and brown. I wasn’t concerned with the small black patches that might show through; it was the bright red of my uniform shirt that would immediately give me away.

Too nervous to stay in one place for long, I continued to climb east as fast and quiet as I could. My eastern direction wandered. Since I was unwilling to let my scent touch the ground, I had to detour either north or south on occasion. My grappling hook and rope were employed many times as I used them to bring branches within reach, or to swing from tree to tree. My muscles protested the abuse, but I ignored them. Laughing to myself whenever I overcame a difficult hurdle, I enjoyed the pure freedom of traveling above the ground. I grinned as I sweated through the entire morning. Eventually I knew I would have to head south again because that was the only place a fugitive could find safety and asylum.

Sitia welcomed the refugees from Ixia. Their government had had an open relationship with the King, trading exotic spices, fabrics and foods for metals, precious stones and coal. When the Commander ceased trade, Ixia lost mainly luxury items while Sitia’s resources became limited. Worry that Sitia would try to conquer the north for needed resources had dissipated when the Sitian geologists discovered that their Emerald Mountains, a continuation of the northern Soul Mountains, were rich in ores and minerals. Now, it seemed, Sitia was content to keep a wary eye on the north.

Soon my climb through the trees intersected a well-used path in the forest. I saw deep wagon ruts in the hard-packed dirt. The road was probably a part of the main east-west trading route, which turned north for a few miles to detour around Lake Keyra before resuming its easterly direction. The lake was just over the border of MD–5.

Settling on a sturdy branch within sight of the path, I leaned back on the tree’s trunk, rested and ate my lunch while deciding where to go next. After a while, the soothing noises from the forest almost lulled me to sleep.

“See anything?” A male voice beneath me disrupted the quiet.

Startled, I grabbed the branch to keep from falling. Caught, I froze in shock.

“No. All clear,” another man’s voice replied from a distance. His tone was rough with annoyance.

There had been no barking to alert me; it must be the other team. I had been so worried about the dogs that I had forgotten about the smaller team. Too cocky, I thought. I deserved to be caught early.

I waited for them to order me down, but they remained quiet. Looking below, I searched the forest but couldn’t locate them. Maybe they hadn’t seen me after all. After a bit of rustling, two men emerged from the dense underbrush. They, too, wore green and brown camouflage, although their snug overalls and face paint were more professional than my glued-together ensemble.

“Stupid idea, coming east. She’s probably at the southern border by now,” Rough Voice grumbled to his partner.

“That’s what the dog boys figured, even though the hounds lost her scent,” said the second man.

I smiled. I’d outsmarted the dogs. At least I had managed to accomplish that much.

“I don’t know if I follow the logic of going east,” Rough Voice said.

The other man sighed. “You’re not supposed to follow the logic. The Captain ordered us east; we go east. He seems to think she’ll head deeper into MD–5. Familiar territory for her.”

“Well, what if she doesn’t come back? Another stupid idea, using the food taster,” Rough Voice complained. “She’s a criminal.”

“That’s not our concern. That’s Valek’s problem. I’m sure if she got away he would take care of her.”

I wondered if Valek was listening. We both knew he wouldn’t need to hunt me down; all he had to do was wait the poison out. I found the conversation helpful, especially the fact that it wasn’t common knowledge that I’d been poisoned.

“Let’s go. We’re supposed to rendezvous with the Captain at the lake. Oh, and try to keep the noise down. You sound like a panicked moose crashing through the woods,” the smarter man chided.

“Oh yeah. Like you could hear me over your specially trained ‘woodland-animal footsteps,”’ Rough Voice countered. “It was like listening to two deer humping each other.”

The men laughed and in a wink disappeared into the underbrush, one on each side of the path. I strained to hear them moving but couldn’t tell if they were gone. I waited until I couldn’t bear the inactivity. The men had decided my next move. The lake was to the east. Climbing through the trees, I headed south.

As I worked my way along, an odd, creepy feeling burrowed its way into my mind. Somehow I became convinced that the men I had seen on the path were following me, hunting me. An uncontrollable urge to move fast pushed on me like a strong hand on the back of my neck, propelling me forward. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I threw all precautions of keeping hidden and quiet aside. I dropped to the ground and bolted.

When I burst into a small clearing in the trees, I stopped. The overpowering feeling of panic had disappeared. My sides stitched with pain. Dropping my pack, I collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath. I cursed myself for such panicky behavior.

“Nice outfit,” a familiar voice said. Dread and fear gave me the energy to jump to my feet.

No one in sight. Yet. I ripped open my backpack and pulled the knife. My heart performed somersaults in my chest. I turned in slow circles as I scanned the forest, searching for the voice of death.

15

LAUGHTER SURROUNDED ME. “Your weapon won’t do you any good. I could easily convince you that it was your heart you want to plunge that knife into instead of mine.”

I spotted her across the clearing. Clad in a loose, green camouflage shirt cinched tight at the waist and identical colored pants, the southern magician lounged against a tree with her arms crossed in front of her, her posture casual.

Expecting the southern magician’s goons to attack me from the forest, I kept the knife out in front of me, turning in circles.

“Relax,” the magician said. “We’re alone.”

I stopped circling but retained a firm grip on my weapon. “Why should I trust you? Last time we met, you ordered me killed. Even supplied that handy little strap.” The sudden realization that she hadn’t needed her thugs at all leaped into my mind. I began reciting poison names in my head.

The magician laughed like someone amused by a small child. “That won’t help you. The only reason reciting worked at the festival was because Valek was there.”

She stepped closer. I waved the knife in a threatening gesture.

“Yelena, relax. I projected into your mind to guide you here. If I wanted you dead, I would have pushed you from the trees. Accidents are less trouble than murders in Ixia. A fact you’re well aware of.”

I ignored her jibe. “Why didn’t I have an ‘accident’ at the festival? Or at another time?”

“I need to be close to you. It takes a lot of energy to kill someone; I’d rather use mundane methods if possible. The festival was the first time I could get close to you without Valek nearby, or so I thought.” She shook her head in frustration.

“Why didn’t you kill Valek with your magic at the festival?” I asked. “Then I would have been easy prey.”

“Magic doesn’t work on Valek. He’s resistant to its effects.”

Before I could ask for more information, she hurried on. “I don’t have time to explain everything. Valek will be here soon so I’ll make this brief. Yelena, I’m here to make you an offer.”

I remembered my last offer, to be the food taster or to be executed. “What could you possibly offer me? I have a job, color-coordinated uniforms and a boss to die for. What more could I need?”

“Asylum in Sitia,” she said, her tone tight. “So you can learn to control and use your power.”

“Power?” The word squeaked out of my mouth before I could stop it. “What power?”

“Oh, come on! How could you not know? You’ve used it at least twice at the castle.”

My mind whirled. She was talking about my survival instinct. That strange buzzing that possessed me whenever my life was in serious jeopardy. My body numbed with dread. I felt as if she had just told me I had a terminal disease.

“I was working undercover nearby when I was overcome by your screaming, raw power. Once I was able to pinpoint the source to Commander Ambrose’s food taster, I knew a rescue effort to smuggle you south would be impossible. You’re either with Valek, or he’s been one step behind you. Even now, I’m taking an extraordinary risk. But it’s too dangerous to have a wild magician in the north. It’s amazing you lasted this long without being discovered. The only choice left was termination. A task that proved more difficult than I’d first imagined. But not impossible.”

“And now I’m supposed to trust you? Do you think I’d meekly follow you to Sitia like a lamb to the slaughter?”

“Yelena, if you weren’t playing fugitive, which brought you out of the castle and away from Valek, you’d be dead by now.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed her. What would she gain by helping me? Why go to all this effort if she had the power to kill me? Something else must be motivating her.

“You don’t believe me.” She grunted in frustration. “Okay, how about a little demonstration?” She tilted her head to the side and pressed her lips together.

A searing, hot pain whipped through my mind like lightning. Wrapping my arms and hands around my head, I tried in vain to block the onslaught. Then a fist-size force slammed into my forehead. I jolted backward and fell to the ground. Sprawled on my back, I felt the pain disappear as fast as it had arrived. Through vision blurred with tears, I squinted at the magician. She still stood near the edge of the clearing. She hadn’t touched me, at least not physically. The weight of her mental connection felt like a wool cap encompassing my skull.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded. “What happened to the singing?” I was dazed by her attack, the air on my body feeling as if it had liquefied, and when I moved to a sitting position the dense air swirled and lapped at my skin.

“I sang at the festival because I was trying to be kind. This was an effort to convince you that if I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t be wasting my time talking to you now. And I certainly wouldn’t wait until you were in Sitia.” Her head cocked as if she listened to an invisible person whispering in her ear.

“Valek has dropped all pretense of stealth. He’s traveling fast. Two men pursue him, but the men believe they’re chasing you.” She paused and her mouth settled once again into a hard line as she concentrated. “I can slow the men down, but not Valek.” She focused her faraway gaze on me. “Are you coming with me?”

I couldn’t speak. The thought that her idea of kindness was singing someone to death had left me quite distracted. I stared at her in complete astonishment.

“No.” I had to force the word out.

“What?” It wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “You enjoy being the food taster?”

“No, I don’t, but I’ll die if I go with you.”

“You’ll die if you stay.”

“I’ll take my chances.” I stood, brushed the dirt off my legs and retrieved my knife. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to the magician about the poison in my blood. Why give her another weapon to be used against me? But with her mental link to me, I only had to think about the Butterfly’s Dust and she knew.

“There are antidotes,” she said.

“Can you find one before morning?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. We would need more time. Our healers would need to understand where the poison is hiding. It could be in your blood, or in your muscles or anywhere, and they would need to know how it kills in order to banish it.”

When she saw my complete lack of understanding, the magician continued, “The source of our power—what you call magic—is like a blanket surrounding the world. Our minds tap into this source, pulling a slender thread down to enhance our magical abilities, to turn them on. Every person has the latent ability to read minds and influence the physical world without touching it, but they don’t have the ability to connect with the power source.”

She sighed, looking unhappy. “Yelena, we can’t have your wild power flaring uncontrolled. Without knowing it, you’re pulling power. Instead of a thread, you’re grabbing whole sections and bunching the power blanket around you. As you grow older you will have amassed so much power that it will explode or flame out. This flameout will not only kill you, it will warp and damage the power source itself, ripping a hole in the blanket. We can’t risk a flameout and soon you’ll be untrainable. That is why we have no choice but to terminate you before you reach that point.”

“How long do I have?” I asked.

“One year. Maybe a little more if you can control yourself. After that you’ll be beyond our help. And we need you, Yelena. Powerful magicians are scarce in Sitia.”

My mind raced over my options. Her display of power had convinced me she was more of a threat than I had ever imagined and that I would be a complete idiot to trust her at all. However, if I didn’t go, she’d kill me where I stood.

So I delayed the inevitable. “Give me a year. A year to find a permanent antidote, to find a way to escape to Sitia. A year free from worrying that you’re plotting my death.”

She stared deep into my eyes. Her mental touch pressed harder in my mind as she searched for a sign that I might be deceiving her.

“All right. One year. My pledge to you.” She paused.

“Go on,” I said. “I know you want to end this meeting with some kind of threat. Maybe a dire warning? Feel free. I’m used to it. I wouldn’t know how to deal with a conversation that didn’t include one.”

“You put on such a brave front. But I know if I took another step toward you, you’d wet your pants.”

“With your blood.” I brandished my knife. But I couldn’t keep a straight face; the boast sounded ridiculous even to my own ears. I snickered. She laughed. The release of tension made me giddy, and soon I was laughing and crying.

The magician then grew sober. Cocking her head again, she listened to her invisible companion. “Valek is close. I must go.”

“Tell me one more thing.”

“What?”

“How did you know I’d be the fugitive? Magic?”

“No. I have sources of information that I’m unable to reveal.”

I nodded my understanding. Asking for details had been worth a try.

“Be careful, Yelena,” she said, vanishing into the forest.

I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

“Irys,” she whispered in my mind, and then her mental touch withdrew.

As I thought about everything she had told me, I realized I had many more questions to ask her, all more important than who had leaked information. Knowing she was gone, though, I suppressed the desire to call after her. Instead, I dropped to the ground.

With my body shaking, I replaced my knife in the backpack. I pulled out my water bottle and took a long drink, wishing the container was filled with something stronger. Something that would burn my throat on its way down. Something to focus on besides the disjointed and lost feeling that threatened to consume me.

I needed time to think before Valek and the two men caught up with me. Taking out the rope and grappling hook, I searched once again for a suitable tree and reentered the forest canopy. Moving south, I let the physical effort of climbing keep my body busy while I sorted through all the information the magician had given me.

When I reached another path in the forest, I found a comfortable position on a tree branch within sight of the trail. I secured myself to the trunk of the tree with my rope. The magician had promised me one year, but I didn’t want to tempt her with an easy target. She could change her mind; after all, what did I know about magicians and their pledges?

She claimed I had power. Magical power that I had always thought of as my survival instinct. When I had been in those dire situations, I had felt possessed. As if someone else more capable of dealing with the crisis took temporary control over my body, rescued me from death and then left.

Could the strange buzzing sound that erupted from my throat and saved my life really be the same as Irys’s power? If so, I must keep my magic a secret. And I had to gain some control of the power to keep it from flaming out. But how? Avoid life-threatening situations. I scoffed at the notion of evading trouble. Trouble seemed to find me regardless of my efforts. Orphaned. Tortured. Poisoned. Cursed with magic. The list grew longer by the day.

I didn’t have the time to resolve these complex issues that circled without end in my mind. Focusing my thoughts on the present, I studied the trail below. Small saplings threatened to retake the narrow forest path; it must have been one of the abandoned roadways used to trade with Sitia.

I waited for Valek. He would demand an explanation about my encounter with the magician, and I was ready to give one.

My only warning of Valek’s arrival was a gentle rustling of the branch above mine. I looked up to see him uncoiling from the upper branch like a snake. He dropped soundlessly beside me.

Green camouflage seemed to be the outfit of choice today. Valek’s was skintight and came equipped with a hood to cover his hair and neck. Brown and green paint streaked his face, causing the bright blue of his eyes to stand out in stark contrast.

I looked down at my own ragtag outfit. Some of the leaves had frayed at the edges, and my uniform had sustained many tears from climbing through the trees. Next time I planned to flee through the woods, I’d persuade Dilana to sew me an outfit like Valek’s.

“You’re unbelievable,” Valek said.

“Is that good or bad?”

“Good. I assumed you would give the soldiers a good chase, and you did. But I never expected this.” Valek pointed at my leaf-covered shirt and swept his arms wide, indicating the trees. “And to top it all off, you encountered the magician and somehow managed to survive.” Sarcasm tinged Valek’s voice during his last comment.

His way of asking for an explanation, I supposed.

“I don’t know what exactly happened. I found myself tearing through the woods until I reached a clearing, where she was waiting. The only thing she told me was that I had ruined her plans by killing Reyad, and then pain slammed into my skull.” The memory of her attack was still fresh in my mind, so I allowed the full horror of it to show on my face. If Valek ever suspected what had really happened, I wouldn’t live the year the magician had granted me. And mentioning Reyad’s name supported one of Valek’s theories about why the magician was after me.

I took a deep breath. “I started reciting poisons. I tried to push the pain away. Then the attack stopped, and she said you were getting too close. When I opened my eyes she had disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me in the clearing?”

“I didn’t know where she had gone. I felt safer in the trees, knowing you’d be able to find me.”

Valek considered my explanation. I covered my nervousness by sorting through my backpack.

After a long while, he grinned. “We certainly proved the Commander wrong. He thought you’d be caught by midmorning.”

I smiled with relief. Taking advantage of his good mood, I asked, “Why does the Commander hate magicians so much?”

The pleased expression dropped from Valek’s face. “He has many reasons. They were the King’s colleagues. Aberrations of nature, who used their power for purely selfish and greedy reasons. They amassed wealth and jewels, curing the sick only if the dying’s family could pay their exorbitant fee. The King’s magicians played mind games with everyone, taking delight in causing havoc. The Commander wants nothing to do with them.”

Curious, I pushed on. “What about using them for his purposes?”

“He thinks magicians are not to be trusted, but I’m of two minds about that,” Valek said. He gazed out over the forest floor as he talked. “I understand the Commander’s concern, killing all the King’s magicians was a good strategy, but I think the younger generation born with power could be recruited for our intelligence network. We disagree on this issue, and despite my arguments the Commander has—” Valek stopped. He seemed reluctant to continue.

“Has what?”

“Ordered that those born with even the slightest amount of magical power be killed immediately.”

I had known about the execution of the southern spies and the magicians from the King’s era, but imagining babies being ripped from their mother’s arms made me gasp in horror. “Those poor children.”

“It’s brutal, but not that brutal,” Valek said. A sadness had softened his eyes. “The ability to connect with the power source doesn’t occur until after puberty, which is around age sixteen. It usually takes another year for someone other than their family to notice and report them. Then, they either escape to Sitia, or I find them.”

His words had the weight of a wooden beam pressing down on my shoulders. I found it difficult to breathe. Sixteen was when Brazell had recruited me. When my survival instinct had started to flare, defending against Brazell and Reyad’s torture. Had they been trying to test me for magic? But why didn’t they report me? Why hadn’t Valek come?

I had no idea what Brazell wanted. And knowing now about my power only added yet another way I could die. If Valek discovered my magic, I was dead. If I didn’t find a way to go to Sitia, I was dead. If someone poisoned the Commander’s food, I was dead. If Brazell built his factory and sought revenge for his son, I was dead. Dead, dead, dead and dead. Death by Butterfly’s Dust was beginning to look attractive. It was the only scenario where I would get to choose when, where and how I died.

I would have sunk into a deep, brooding bout of self-pity, but Valek grabbed my arm and put a finger to his green lips.

The distant sounds of hoofbeats and men talking reached my ears. My first thought was that it was an illusion sent by the magician. But soon enough, I saw mules pulling wagons. The width of the wagons filled the entire path, saplings and bushes thwacked against the wheels. Two mules pulled one wagon, and one man dressed in a brown trader’s uniform led the team. There were six wagons and six men who conversed among themselves as they traveled.

From my post in the tree, I could see that the first five wagons were loaded with burlap sacks that might have been filled with grain or flour. The last wagon held strange, oval-shaped yellow pods.

Snake Forest was just bustling with activity today, I thought in wonder. All we needed was the fire dancers to jump from the trees to entertain us all.

Valek and I sat still in our tree as the men passed below us. Their uniforms were soaked with sweat, and I noticed a few of them had rolled up their pants so they wouldn’t trip. One man’s belt was cinched tight, causing the extra material to bunch around his waist, while another’s stomach threatened to rip through his buttons. These poor traders obviously didn’t have a permanent residence. If they had, their seamstress would never have permitted them to walk around looking like that.