Girl of Myth and Legend (44 page)

‘Can’t believe I’m doing this,’ I mutter. I try to pull off the lid but it doesn’t work.

‘Remember, focus your magic, Leonie. Just focus.’ She’s almost twitching from excitement, and I don’t like it.

I try not to think about her. I think of Korren. I think of seeing him again. I think of his bright laugh and his awkward way of reassuring me. No doubt he’d think me reckless for what I’m doing. No doubt he’d lecture me on being so stupid and thoughtless. But I am desperate.

The lid comes off and I let it drop to the floor. I look inside the urn and find a dark emptiness. I shake it a little, thinking something might rattle.

‘There’s nothing in it,’ I say to Sersu.

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing in it.’

‘Let me see.’

She snatches it from me and looks inside, she shaking her head. ‘No no no. That can’t be. He must be here. He has to be.’

‘He? What do you mean—?’

‘Ow!’

Sersu drops the urn to the ground, shaking her hands, which are marked red. I look at the urn, and then back to her. She glances at both her palms, and burnt into them is a strange symbol, and not a pretty one at that. It looks like what I would think of as a curse-mark, as if she’s been chosen for something, and not something good. The ground beneath her feet begins to crack like spider webs weaving outwards, and I take a few steps back. Sersu is sweating, looking around frantically. I don’t think she can move.

‘Help me!’ she shouts to me, a pleading arm extended.

I rush forward and grab her, but my arm is weak and whatever is holding her in place is too strong.

A force pushes against me, and I’m lifted into the air and thrown against the mountainside. The pain in my back takes over everything, even my vision. I struggle to breathe for a moment and curl up into myself. When it begins to fade and my vision returns, I look towards Sersu to see her on her knees, arms wrapped around her stomach, and there is a large, unfathomably black shadow curling itself around her. She’s screaming. I watch as it latches itself onto her, as if sucking the life out of her, and it grows larger, its dark tendrils reaching out… towards me! I stumble backwards.

Sersu’s eyes snap open and she looks at me. There are no irises. There is no white. Her eyes are black. Just black. Her skin begins to rot, her cheekbones becoming more prominent. The shadow around her draws my attention again, and as it writhes and twists around Sersu, it speaks in a language I don’t understand, but I don’t need to: it sounds dark and ancient and terrible. And I have a feeling it is speaking to me.

I run. It’s all I can do.

What have I done? What have I done? What did I just open? Did she trick me? Did she play on my desperation to save Korren so that I’d open it? Of course she did. Of course she did. And like a fool of fools, I believed she would help me. Whatever that thing was, I know that I’ve unleashed something terrible, something maybe not even Sersu anticipated.

What
is
it?

‘There! She’s there!’ I hear a voice cry.

I gasp and swivel round, hearing something closing in on me as it climbs up the mountain. My heart picks up its beat and I stumble backwards, before I regain the sense to run and run fast.

I almost fall a few times as panic engulfs me. I don’t let it overrule my mind, though. I allow myself to think of a plan, of a strategy. I have to disregard Sersu and whatever that thing was. Right now I have to think of Korren. If I can distance myself from whoever is tracking me, then I can start my search for Korren again, maybe even track who is chasing me in the hope they can lead me to where he is. Can I do that? It sounds like a good plan in my head, but I’m playing with the possibility of death right now, all to save Korren. He might be dead, and if he’s not, what can
I
do? I have no power. All I could do is to make a trade with the rebels: the Pulsar for a kytaen’s freedom. Could I really do that for Korren?

Korren, who saved me and got hurt for me when the maiden attacked?

Korren, who is grumpy and bitter and such a goddamn downer?

Korren, who, for some insane, inexplicable, nonsensical reason, I can’t lose?

I hear my pursuers getting closer. I keep running, my eyes scanning the mountain behind me, and I see their figures becoming larger and larger as they close in on me.

I turn my head forward—too late.

I try to stop as I near the mountain edge, but I’m going too fast. My foot slips in an attempt to steer myself away from the precipice, and I slide off of it.

Down down down.

The scenery whizzes past me, all yellow and sand and blue.

I hate you, gravity.

My body says hello to the ground.

_________________

My world is made up of silver and midnight-blue. I blink a few times before the colours become distorted versions of the moons and the sky. My first thought is that I’m alive. The second is that I will soon be dead. I hear the night’s howls and cries, and feel the cold cocooning me within an icy blanket. I try to control my racing heart. I can’t be here. I can’t be here. I have to move. Now!

‘Urgh.’ I move my neck and meet with a head-splitting pain. I try to push my body up, but pain drives down my spine like an electric current. My mind acts as if it’s a carousel, consciousness and then darkness, consciousness and then darkness, around and around and around. I have to force myself to stay awake, I have to find that adrenalin reserve that can force me to survive, but after all of the relentless pain, agony and despair, after all the loss and fear and sorrow I’ve faced, I realise I’m tired, tired and tired and tired of surviving, of having to keep pushing forward. I’m drained, and it doesn’t matter if I want to live, because my body is broken and has decided that I’m a lost cause.

I see a figure. He stands below my view of the moons, the light surrounding him in an eerie way. He’s wearing enviably warm, though strange, clothes: a scarf that covers his head and face, revealing only his eyes; a thick, fern-coloured leather vest and trousers half-concealed by a cape brimmed with fur; iron bracers patterned with silver markings; and black winter boots. I notice he’s also wearing a necklace with a circular, antique clock that is cracked attached to its end. My deluded mind wonders if he’s an angel, come to take me away from this reality and to someplace elsewhere, but as he leans over me, his cold crystal-blue eyes penetrating, my heart hammers in my chest. There is something in those eyes, something cold and forbidding, something that survives not lives, something that makes me feel like prey.

Ha! I really have no luck, which is proven by my increas-ingly blurry vision and intense pressure in what feels like my swelling head. Before I can even attempt to make some kind of fruitless escape, my mind slips from my grasp, and as easily as falling asleep, I fall into a deep unconsciousness, well aware that I may not wake up again as the figure draws near.

_________________

I dream of ashes and starlight, and within them stand two figures. One is doused in light, the other in darkness. I want to reach out to the light, warm and inviting, but I’m drawn to the figure that stands in the shadows, as if there is a string tied to my waist and I’m being pulled towards them. I try to resist, but find my body unwilling. I come to the realisation that I want to go to them, to clash our fates together and shatter the world. It doesn’t matter that this thing is something dark and terrible, only that I’m supposed to go to them.

The light speaks.
‘Why are you so willing to die?’

‘I don’t mean to be,’
I reply, like I understand what he’s talking about.

‘You are bound to this future.’

‘There’s nothing you can do about it.’

‘…We will see.’

I near the darkness and the figure’s face comes into view. As my hand reaches out for theirs, I fall. Down down down.

My eyes open. I blink a few times, groaning. My joints are bruised, and my head feels like it’s made of iron. What happened? Oh, that’s right: I decided to do some cliff diving. But then, why am I staring at a ceiling and not a night sky?

My heart clenches as the events of the past week rush back to me. The rebels. Dad’s death. Jacob’s death. Korren’s sacrifice. Sersu and the urn. The hooded man. His cold, forbidding eyes. I try to sit upright—pain wreaks my body and my head slams back onto the floor. No, not the floor, a pillow.

I gasp as a hand touches my face. The hooded man dressed in a fern-green cloak is kneeling beside me, holding a leather bottle. He pours the water between my lips and I sip it, gazing at him with terrified eyes. He moves the bottle away and stands up. I hear him shuffling around, and I take this opportunity to survey my surroundings.

I’m in a wooden room with no windows and one door with a crossbar on it. I see a bed—though it’s little more than a cot—in the corner of the room beside a bookcase, and near to me is a blazing fireplace filled with logs, where the man is standing, cooking something that smells wonderful to my starving stomach. I realise that I’m on the floor, enveloped by rugs and blankets. I touch my swollen head and feel a bandage wrapped around it, surprising me—wasn’t this man going to kill me? Didn’t he hold my gaze with piercing hostility?

‘Wh-where am I?’ I manage to say, my speech slurred.

He crouches down, handing me a wooden plate with meat on it, not cannibalised meat with bones protruding from it, which I half expected, but slender slices of cooked meat. I figure it’s not poisoned; what would be the point of saving me only to kill me? I struggle to sit up and he helps me straighten my back, keeping the blankets from falling off me. I take the plate and eat the food, not bothered that I’m eating like a famished pig. The meat looks like chicken, but it doesn’t taste like it.

‘Thank you,’ I say, when finished. ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

He doesn’t respond.

‘I… that is, I should thank you for helping me, so, yeah, thanks,’ I say. ‘Can you, um, tell me where we are?’

He hands me the water bottle, without answering my question. OK, so he wants to play the mysterious saviour, apparently.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask, not giving up.

He reaches for me. I flinch, but it doesn’t deter him. He unwinds the bandage from around my head. I suck my breath through my teeth, feeling as if my brain is going to ooze out of my ears. ‘So now I know why I have the headache of all headaches,’ I mumble, noticing the blood stains on the bandage. The man brings a fresh one and I let him tend to my injury. He checks my arm, which I only now notice is also bandaged. I try to push the image of broken bones and ripped flesh from my mind. As he looks me over, I wonder how long I’ve been unconscious. But there’s no point in asking him: he hasn’t answered any of my questions so far.

I have a suspicion that this man isn’t just a friendly desert ranger, but a rebel. I may be wrong, yet I can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t one of the Imperium’s lot. I have to be careful. It can’t have been a coincidence that he was close to where the rebels attacked us. He may be one of them. If not, I still have to play this game properly. I can’t let him know I’m the Pulsar—if he doesn’t already know. Good thing I put in those lenses that hide the true colour of my eyes.

He stands up so quickly that I flinch back, the sudden movement inflicting my body with pain. He walks towards the door, pulling up the crossbar. When he opens the door, snow spills into the room, the wind pushing it into my face. Snow? Why would there be snow? I get only a quick glimpse of the outside world before he shuts the door behind him, the crossbar falling back into place. Um, OK, so goodbye? Well, whatever. I got to see that we’re in a forest, and though I hope it was my imagination, we seemed to be level with the treetops.

I wait about ten minutes before I force myself up. I struggle, my joints protesting, my arm aching, my bruised ribs raging, my head blazing like fire. Soon, I’m on my feet pulling up the crossbar and opening the door. The wind is strong enough to send me flying backwards, so I keep a tight grip on the door. I can’t see much outside but a blizzard of white, and the only noise I can hear is the
whoosh
ing of the wind. I blink back the tears in my eyes, the cold so fierce I feel as if it’ll freeze me over. Where the hell are we? Where are the desert and the sun?

Oh.
Oh
. I was in a daze at the time, but I remember how Korren and I stood on the top of the rocky mountain, and how in the distance there was a world of snow. He said we were in a cursed land, whatever that meant. This saviour of mine must have taken me away from there and into the land on the horizon.

I look down.

OK, right. So, this is bad—very bad. Like, bad enough to make me question my karmic destiny. Was I a mass murderer in another life? Because with maidens and losing my dad and now
this
, I’m starting to think that Unnamed guy has a grudge against me. Without a doubt I am high in the trees—I can barely see the ground. What bewilders me more is that there is no ladder or means of getting down from this cage in the sky, so how the hell did we even get up here, and how did the hooded man get back down?

I had planned to escape when he left, thinking that if my saviour was a rebel, then I was in a whole lot of trouble, but there is no possible way I can get back to the ground—not without a
splat
at least. I mumble a curse. I move away, struggling to close the door, and when I manage, I slam down the crossbar.

‘Damn it!’ I say, stumbling back to my bed of blankets. What am I supposed to do now? Wait for him to come back? Although he saved my life, I still don’t know if he’s one of those rebels who were trying to capture me. I can’t just sit here and
wait
.
You don’t have much of a choice,
I remind myself. Even if I did manage to get to the ground without further injury, there’s still a possibility I might die. My current injuries plus the freezing wind equals a probable-death scenario.

‘Damn it!’ I say again. There is no way I can find Korren now.

So instead, I decide to pull a Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes or whatever and look through my saviour’s stuff. I might be able to find something that will tell me exactly who this person is and if he’s my enemy. I start at the bookcase, thinking that if he’s a rebel, he probably has some secrets stashed away here, like a book that opens up a door to another room… or maybe I’m just stupid. I don’t find anything suspicious.