Calen pulled down the hood of his cloak, the warmth of the day's sun fading. He winced as he watched the sun sink into the western horizon, his breath already misting. He didn't think he would ever get used to the way the temperature in the Burnt Lands went from scorching to freezing in such a short span of time.
He took a waterskin from his pack, unplugged the stopper, and poured a trickle into his mouth - just enough to wet his cracking lips and moisten his dry tongue.
"We're settled in for the night."
Calen turned to see Ingvat – Aeson's contact who Erik had first reached out to – standing beside him, her dark cloak about her shoulders. She tugged on the long, blonde braid that dropped down past her chest. "Surin and one of other Craftsmages – Holbrok – used their magic to forge the rocks together, creating a nook for the injured. It should help keep them warm."
"How are they?" The night before, some of the rebels who had joined them had fallen behind, drained from the heat, tired due to the lack of food. By the time Valerys had heard the screams, the N'aka had already claimed three lives and injured four more.
"Vaeril says two might live, but there is little he or Kiko can do for the other two. They are too close to death to be healed."
Calen nodded softly, chewing at the inside of his cheek.
"It was our choice," Ingvat said, tilting her head so she could meet Calen's gaze. "You told us some of us would die, and we accepted the risk."
Calen let out a sigh through his nostrils, pressing his fingers into the back of his neck as he looked out over the twilight glow of the setting sun. More dead because they followed him. More blood spilled.
Ingvat moved so she stood in front of Calen, blocking his view, an unyielding glare on her face. The woman was old enough to be his mother, and in some ways, she reminded him of just that. "Don't give me that sulking, brooding look. The others might look to you like some kind of god, but I know what you are. You're just a man, Calen Bryer. A man with a dragon, but a man, nonetheless. Beneath it all you are nothing more than flesh and bone. You can't carry the weight for every drop of blood spilled around you because if you do, you will drown. War is coming, and most of us have been committed to it since before you were nursing at your mother's tit. We knew the risk. We've always known the risk. The consequences are ours to bear. We must mourn the dead, and we must move on."
Calen stared back at Ingvat, his throat tightening. If only it was that simple, if only he could just move on.
The woman let out a sigh and rested her hand on Calen's shoulder as she made to return to the others. "Your task is to lead. I don't envy you. But our task is to choose to follow. Choose." She emphasised the word. "Take away their choice and you take away who they are. Use their loss, let it fuel you, but understand it was their choice, not yours. They died for what they believed in. Many aren't so lucky."
Ingvat's expression softened, and she squeezed Calen's shoulder before setting off to where some of the others were setting up spits to cook the tasteless N'aka meat.
Calen drew in a long breath, tilted his head back, and exhaled. He reached down to where his sword hung from his hip and took hold of the silk scarf knotted between the loops of his belt: his mother's scarf. He had only noticed recently that he had taken to rubbing his thumb and forefinger across the waxy material whenever his mind pulled him to darker places. "I miss you…"
He'd found grief to be a strange creature. It wasn't all-consuming and unyielding. It came in flashes and waves, as though Calen's mind only periodically remembered he would never again hear his mother's voice. He would give almost anything just to see her one more time, just to have her force a mug of Arlen Root tea into his hands. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist around the scarf, and shook his head, trying to loose the thoughts.
The cold of the falling night creeping across his skin, Calen let out a slow sigh, opened his eyes, and followed Ingvat to where the others were camped within the rock formation.
Haem, Tarmon, Erik, and some of those who had fled from Berona – those who had been part of the Beronan guard – stood watch around the perimeter of the camp, extra blankets draped around their shoulders in preparation for the frigid night. They would move in closer soon, but after the recent N'aka attack, they decided to set camp a little earlier and double the watch with a wider perimeter.
Erik puffed out his cheeks as Calen passed. He could see the weariness in his friend's eyes. Erik had told Calen what had happened with Fritz before they'd entered the Burnt Lands. Calen had been surprised at the pang of sadness he'd felt at the news. Fritz had always been an arsehole, but what he'd done in the dungeons of Berona was far beyond that; it was twisted and cruel. And yet, Fritz had still been a reminder of home, a fragment of a past forever gone.
"I'll take over soon." Calen rested his hand on Erik's shoulder, giving him a sympathetic smile.
He made his way through the camp, checking on the men and women who lay about, before moving to the back where Vaeril knelt with the Healer who had come with them from Berona.
Kiko was a young-looking woman who hailed from Arkalen, though when it came to mages, trying to gauge how many summers they had seen was like trying to guess how many blades of grass were in a field. She was small, with short black hair straight as needles. She had 'kind eyes', which was something Calen's mam always used to say. And despite the situation they currently found themselves in, she was relentlessly positive. She was always the first to wake in the morning and always laughing at things that weren't even particularly funny. She was – again, as his mam used to say – a 'breath of fresh air'.
Kiko and Vaeril knelt on the rock beside Lasch, Elia, and Gaeleron, who sat amongst the injured. They had trekked through the Burnt Lands for eleven days and nights without stopping, and in that time Gaeleron had regained a semblance of his former self. He was not able to hold full conversations, but he was speaking, and he was also walking without aid – thanks, in no small part, to Vaeril and Kiko's healing.
Elia and Lasch, however, had barely spoken a word between them. It was almost as though they had gotten even worse since leaving Berona. They had spoken, here and there, in broken sentences. But mostly they retreated into themselves, whispering, answering questions that had never been asked and asking questions that made no sense. Elia was doing better than Lasch. On a few occasions, when talking with either Calen or Haem, she had seemed to regain her senses. But those moments were fleeting, and she often fell back to wrapping her arms around herself, her head twitching to the left.
Vaeril and Kiko had tried to help them, but as Vaeril had explained, healing with the Spark was not as simple as waving his hand. The Spark's ability to heal was more a powerful amplifier of knowledge than a magical cure for ailments and injuries. One could not heal a wound without the understanding of how to do so. And in that, wounds of the mind were near impossible to heal with the Spark alone, because it was difficult to understand something you could neither see nor feel.
"Little change," Vaeril said to Calen, pulling a waterskin away from Lasch's lips. The elf stared at the broken man for a few moments before rising to his feet. "They grow stronger with each day, though not by much. The progress is there, which is what matters. They need food and rest, far more than they are getting in the Svidar'Cia. Elia still refuses water more often than not."
Calen knelt before Elia, leaning his neck so as to meet her gaze. Her face was still gaunt, cheekbones threatening to pierce paper skin, eyes still sunken and dark-ringed. She was frail, broken. Calen gestured for Vaeril to hand him the waterskin, and he lifted it to Elia's lips. "Elia, it's me, Calen. Please, you need to drink. I can't keep you safe if you don't drink."
Elia's gaze darted back and forth between the sand-dusted rock and Calen, streaks of red painting the whites of her eyes, dried blood crusted on her cracked lips. Her fingers trembling, she took the waterskin from Calen as though she feared it might bite her.
Calen gave her a soft smile, gently resting his hand on the back of hers, urging her to raise the skin to her lips. "It's all right, just drink. I'm here. I won't let anything hurt you. I promise." Calen pulled the waterskin away and touched it to his own lips, taking a sip, then handing it back to Elia. Seeing her like this, so weak and broken, cut into his heart in a way that left a physical ache in his chest.
Elia's head twitched, and her tongue moved across her cracked lips, eyes darting from Calen to the waterskin. After a few moments, she lifted the skin to her mouth and took a short sip, followed by a longer one, and finally she lifted the skin up and drank with a rapacious thirst. She coughed and spluttered, choking on the water, pulling the waterskin away. Once the coughing stopped, she pulled the skin back to her lips and drank with abandon. When she finished, Elia panted like a tired animal, exhaling through her nose and dragging air back in through her mouth. "It tastes right…"
Calen's jaw clenched as he took the skin from Elia and handed it to Vaeril. That was the third time he had helped Elia drink the water. Each time she had treated it as though it were poison. He hadn't understood at first, but then he'd remembered Lasch's words in the interrogation room. 'It's not you. It's not. It can't be. He did it again. More things that aren't real.'
It hadn't taken Calen long to realise that Rendall had been feeding them poison that broke and twisted their minds. Of all the lives Calen had taken, Rendall's was the only one for which he held no regret. It had brought him no happiness. But neither had it brought him even the slightest trace of guilt. That was a man he would have killed twice, and if he could go back, he would do it slower.
Calen rubbed his thumb across Elia's blanket-covered shoulder, feeling little more than bone. "I'll get you back home, Elia. I'll get you both home. Just stay strong."
Elia's eyes gleamed, the light of the fire behind Calen shining in them. She stared at Calen as though looking at a ghost, her mouth ajar. "You've always been a good boy, always. I said that to my Rist. I said, 'You stick with him'." Elia's head twitched as she nodded to herself. "And Dann too. He's a troublemaker that one, but he's got a good heart. He does." Tears rolled down Elia's sand-crusted cheeks. "My Rist is lucky to have you both. He's a good boy too… always a good boy… I miss him…" Elia stared at the ground for a moment, then looked at Calen. "Where's Freis? She told me she'd…" Elia's words faded, her head twitching. She dropped the waterskin, tucked her hands under her armpits, and leaned back against the wall as though she'd not been speaking at all.
Calen's throat constricted, tears threatening to fall. Elia did that sometimes, talked about Fries and Vars as though they were still alive. Each time was like a dagger to Calen's heart. He reached to his hip and once again rubbed the scarf between his fingers. Gently, he picked up the waterskin and stood.
Vaeril gave him a weak smile, taking the waterskin back. "Vået." Time.
"Du haryn myia vrai." You have my thanks.
Calen moved to where Gaeleron sat with his back against the rock wall, staring into the flames of a nearby campfire. The elf still wore Rendall's red cloak – at least in death the man finally did something worthwhile in keeping Gaeleron warm. Some of the fleeing rebels had brought spare clothes, which meant Gaeleron now wore a pair of linen trousers, a loose cotton shirt, and a pair of sturdy boots that were a size too small. The elf also held a blanket over the robes.
"How are you feeling?" Calen asked as he dropped to his haunches beside Gaeleron. Calen felt like an idiot for asking the question. He knew the answer all too well; he still had scars of his own from when Artim Valdock held him in that cell. Scars he feared might never heal.
Gaeleron turned his gaze from the fire. His skin still looked as brittle and attenuated as it had when they'd found him, cheekbones protruding, eyes sunken. The flesh at the end of his left arm, where his lost hand should have been, had healed quite a bit since they'd left Berona – with Vaeril's help. Where it had been red and raw, twisted and blistered, it had regained a natural colour, the flesh smoothing. Long, thin scars ran down the length of the elf's neck, disappearing beneath the folds of the red robes. Calen looked at the scars and remembered Vaeril's words when explaining why Rendall would have healed him after torture. 'To keep him alive. To spend longer torturing him.'The elf grimaced as he pushed himself back against the wall. "I have seen better days." He coughed, something catching in his chest, but palmed Calen away when he tried to help. "I am all right. I do not need the mothering of a human who carries an elven blade."
"Well, you're definitely getting better." Calen let out a soft laugh, the edges of his mouth curling into a half-smile. "I'll go and see if Ruon has some food for you."
As Calen made to stand, Gaeleron reached out and grabbed his forearm. The elf's grip was weak as a child's. "Thank you, Draleid. I know you did not come looking for me, but you also did not know I was lost. You brought me from that place, and I will forever be thankful." The elf stared into Calen's eyes. "You have changed in the time since we last spoke – you have grown. When I am stronger, I will test how you flow through svidarya."
What Calen believed was meant to pass for a smile touched the elf's lips, followed by a wince.
"I look forward to it."
Calen moved about helping one of the knights, Varlin, and three rebels – a man named Jin and two women, Loura and Ohna – pass out the food that Ruon and some of the others had been cooking. Calling it food was stretching the definition of the word to its breaking point, but it was edible. The bulk of it was roasted N'aka meat, which was tough, chewy, tasteless, and dry as sand. There was also the legs of some reptiles they had found, and the spotted eggs of large birds that nested in a rocky crevice nearby. Surin had created a cavity in the ground with the Spark and filled it with water from underground, which she'd boiled to cook the eggs.
With more people, they had been able to hunt better and find a slightly wider variety of foods. And thanks to the presence of the knights, the madness that tainted the Burnt Lands seemed to hold back. Which was something they had only discovered a few days previously, when Vaeril had collapsed after pulling from the Spark for too long and trying to shield too many at once.
Calen groaned as he sat on a flat rock beside the fire where Ruon was still roasting N'aka meat – just the smell of the flesh turned Calen's stomach.
"Here." The woman ripped a hunk of N'aka meat off the spit Surin had forged and skewered it with a sharpened twig. She looked as though she had seen no more than thirty summers, but Haem had told Calen that she had seen over six hundred. Whereas a connection to the Spark slowed the ageing of living things, whatever magic coursed within the veins of the knights seemed to freeze it entirely. "When you start feeding others, it's easy to forget to feed yourself."
"I didn't forget." Calen took the meat from Ruon, scrunching his nose as he sniffed it. "I was just building up the courage."
Ruon laughed, turning the meat on the spit before tearing a strip off with her teeth from a skewer in her free hand. Calen looked at the woman, catching a glimmer of the metallic green tattoo that marked her chest, the top of which was visible through the split at the collar of her tunic. Since he had accepted Grandmaster Kallinvar's offer of an honour guard and they had set off for the Burnt Lands, Calen hadn't spent much time talking with the knights, except Haem – for which Calen felt little guilt; he could spend an entire lifetime talking to Haem and never make up for the time they'd missed. Haem had answered many of Calen's questions, such as who the knights were and how they were able to do what they were able to do – though Haem's only answer for the latter was that their abilities were a gift from the warrior god.
A thousand more questions still burned within Calen, but the foremost of those couldn't be answered solely by speaking with Haem: who were the knights – the people themselves – and what did they truly want? Who were these men and women, so valuable that Achyron himself chose to hold their souls back from entering his halls?
"It hurt, if that's what you're wondering." Ruon pulled back the collar of her tunic to show more of the metallic tattoo, running her finger across it.
"What is it?" Calen couldn't help but lean a bit closer, watching how the light of the fire reflected off the tattoo's surface as it would polished steel.
"It is a gift, from Achyron himself."
He let out a sigh through his nostrils. "That's what Haem said."
"It must be difficult." Ruon stared into Calen's eyes. He hadn't realised how vibrant the green in her irises was, flecked with spots of gold.
"What?"
"Seeing him." Ruon nodded towards where Haem stood, his smooth metallic armour now covering all but his head, his hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his hip. "Hearing us call him by a different name. It must be difficult."
Calen looked into the flames of the cookfire, pressing his tongue against the point of his canine tooth. "Why do you call him Arden?"
"It is part of taking the Sigil," Ruon said in a matter-of-fact, tone. "To be given the Sigil of Achyron is to be snatched from the jaws of death and offered a chance at life once more. But as you well know, everything has a price. Arden was told that price before he accepted, as we all were. And he chose to pay it, so that he would have the chance to continue protecting you – at least, in some capacity. Taking a new name is a symbol of… a rebirth, of sorts."
"Does anyone ever say no? You ask dying people if they want to live. Surely some say yes, simply to escape death."
"You would be surprised. Like I said, the price is clear, and some are simply not willing to pay it. Some have seen their share of this world. Some are tired. And, in a few cases, the captain or Grandmaster granting the Sigil decides the candidate is not worthy. Sometimes for precisely the reason you gave. Because making that decision solely out of self-preservation is a sure mark the wrong candidate has been chosen." Ruon turned the spit and stared into the flames for a moment. "It does not happen often, a knight having to look upon the life they sacrificed and then also getting the chance to step back into it in some form. He cares for you, deeply. You are all that tethers him here. You are why he said yes."
Calen nodded, staring into the flickering flames, watching as they popped and crackled, sparks rising into the night.
Ruon shifted in place. "How are the others? Have any of them shown signs of the madness?"
Calen shook his head. "We wouldn't have made it across if you were not with us. That much was clear when Vaeril collapsed. We wouldn't have been able to shield them all."
"I was aware that my brothers and sisters and I were immune to the madness of the Taint here, but I was not aware that would extend to those around us. We have not had the ability, nor the cause to test such a thing. I can feel it even now." Ruon lifted her gaze, staring out over the vast, sand-covered wasteland. "The Taint permeates every crack and crevice of this desolate land. It oozes through the air like a sickly oil, staining everything it touches, pulsing like a beating heart. The sensation scratches at me, makes my skin itch. But where we walk, it pulls back like a shadow fleeing the light of the waking sun."
As Ruon spoke, Calen felt a familiar sensation rippling through his mind. He rested the skewer Ruon had given him on the flat rock – half the N'aka meat untouched – and rose to his feet. "Thank you," he said, inclining his head. "For looking after him."
As Calen turned away from the fire, he watched Valerys drop from the sky, wings spread, the broken carcass of an N'aka in his jaws. Valerys had grown more adept at hunting the creatures since they had re-entered the wasteland.
Valerys dropped the broken body of the six-limbed beast into the sand, blood dripping, then reached his neck out, a low rumble resonating from his chest. Calen stepped forwards, ignoring the carcass, and rested his palms against the dragon's snout, laying his cheek flat against Valerys's scales.
The dragon tilted his head, leaning into Calen, a wave of comfort flooding through the bond as a low whine escaped his throat. Images of Haem flashed across Calen's mind, from when they were young, images that were his own but that Valerys shared. Those were followed by memories of Vars, Freis, Ella, and Faenir, the meaning of which was obvious: pack, clan, family.
Calen drew in a lungful of air, lifting his head momentarily before resting his forehead against Valerys's scales. "Come on," he said, exhaling. "Let's do one last circle."
Arden tilted his head back, twisting his face in irritation as the cold wind whipped sand across his face. He rested his hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip, watching as Calen moved about the makeshift camp. His brother stopped and checked on each and every one of the fifty so or rebels who had come with them into the Burnt Lands before moving on to where Lasch and Elia Havel sat with the healers.
Seeing Lasch and Elia had twisted something in Arden's gut. They were good people by every measure of the word. Kind, caring, honest. Growing up, Arden hadn't been as close with them as Calen was. Rist and Calen, along with Dann, had always been inseparable, but the Havel's didn't have a son Arden's age. He was closer with the Fjorns and the Netlys – Durin and Almin would have been ashamed of what Fritz became. But Haem had watched how Lasch had treated Calen like a second son and how Elia had fawned over him, her frantic positivity almost contagious.
Would things have been different if he had been there? Would Lasch and Elia have suffered the way they had? Would his mam and dad be alive? He knew the thoughts were poisonous and pointless. If he had said no to Kallinvar's offer, he would have died in Ölm Forest and everything would have played out the same. But that didn't stop his thoughts from drifting that direction.
"I'd wager he's not the boy you remember?"
Arden turned his head towards the voice to see Tarmon Hoard standing a few feet away, arms folded across his chest. According to Calen the man had once been Lord Captain of the legendary Belduaran Kingsguard. Arden didn't have to stretch his imagination too far to see it. Tarmon was one of few who matched Arden for height, and he was broader in the shoulders, his arms thicker. More than the physical though, he had an aura about him, a stoicism that extended past the quiet brooding type Arden had known in the town guard of The Glade.
Tarmon Hoard watched and observed. He spoke rarely, but when he did, Arden had noticed the man's opinion was rarely wrong. It reminded him of something his father had told him after Arden had gotten into a shouting match with Joran Brock shortly after they'd both joined the town guard. 'The power of words is in the choosing of them, my son. Not just in the choosing of which words to speak, but in choosing when not to speak at all. The man who speaks rarely but wisely is heeded far more often than the man who can't hold his tongue.'"No, he's not the same boy I remember." Arden looked back at Calen, who had just finished handing out skewers of that horrid N'aka meat and boiled eggs, and now sat with Ruon. "He's grown, more than he should have had to."
"He's seen a lot in a short time. Been through a lot."
Arden nodded sombrely, trying his best to push the thoughts of Ella and his parents from his head. To know Calen went through that loss alone clawed at his insides. What he would have given for his parents to see Calen now, to see the man he had become having barely witnessed twenty summers. "Thank you, for being there for him when he needed it." Arden turned to meet Tarmon Hoard's gaze. "Thank you for being what I couldn't."