Circle of Reign (18 page)

“What have I done? Who are you?”

The man stopped and looked up. Halek saw scars of some create covering the man’s face and head. “No more than your family has done. Your name has brought this upon you.”

“My family?” Halek asked, his voice nearly breaking. “What do you know of my family?”

“There was nothing to know. I was Charged with them. That was enough.”

Halek dropped down from the tree and landed inaudibly, the thin curved fishing blade gripped tightly in his hand.

“What is this you are speaking? What do you mean, ‘Charged’?”

“They were given to me by my Liege, just as you have been. I smell it, your fear, your anger, even your confusion. It’s all a grand spectrum of ecstasy to me, Kerr. Thank you.” The man bowed slightly in a show of mock deference.

It was the way he had said “Kerr” that hit Halek. A realization of the circumstances teased his thoughts but he could not put it all together. It was slippery in his mind.

“Does my family live?” he asked.

“Only if you believe in something beyond this world. I personally do not.” The predatory smile that grew on the man’s face was wicked.

Halek lunged at the man, his blade thrusting through the air faster than the sound of his anguished scream. He missed. Before he could retract his arm, the large man grabbed his wrist and with a palm thrust of his other arm, broke Halek’s elbow. His blade fell to the earth. The pain was searing as it shot through his arm but a low grunt was all that escaped his lips. Forcing his hips to rotate, he ripped his arm free and danced from the immediate reach of this monster.

His broken arm hung at a disturbing angle but he still had his legs. He ran toward his home but before he had sprinted five strides he felt the heavy gait of the man behind him. It was not long before the hand of this creature found him and pulled him down by his hair. He hit the ground with such force that the wind flew from his lungs and a sharp pain shot up his back. He attempted to roll and bring himself upright, but his hips and legs did not respond.

When he had gained enough of his breath back, he asked, “Why?”

“We have been over this,” came the answer. “Your name is enough reason. But I am not one that cares for reasons. I am content to simply carry out my Charge.”

“From who? Who would want me dead?” he wheezed.

“Only the Stone of Orlack may command me. And that, Kerr, is as much as you will be privileged to know.”

Halek felt a foot come crushing down on his throat. Skin was torn, cartilage crushed, and bones broken. A final
snap
came and he mercifully felt nothing further as his sight dimmed to blackness.

TWELVE

Reign

Day 24 of 4th Rising 407 A.U.

THE COLD AIR BURNED
Reign’s lungs as she ran, trailing behind Hedron. Her father’s cloak flapped in the wind despite Hedron having adjusted it to not hang so long on him by folding it over on itself. Their speed of travel had slowed to what would be considered a fast sprint among most races, but slow for any wood-dweller. How long had it been? Days? Closer to a span, surely. They had traveled generally north ever since escaping the hold, ever since Reign had been reunited with her mother for precious few moments before being cruelly torn from her yet again. Their route was circuitous, plundering supplies from villages and markets when they could. Normally, anyone of want needed only ask in the Western Province, but their presence could not be made known. They would almost certainly be recognized if spotted and word would eventually reach those who sought them.

“Hedron, I have to stop!” she cried out.

“No, we can’t. Not yet.”

“The sun is going down. We have to, please. I’m hungry and I can’t feel my feet.” Reign wasn’t sure if her feet were numb from the cold that had found them the farther north they traveled or if
they were just unaccustomed to the near constant usage she had demanded of them recently.

Hedron stopped, to Reign’s surprise and relief. He put his hands on his hips and turned around, heaving for air.

“The air is colder. It feels thinner, harder to breathe,” he said in between gasps.

“It burns,” Reign said. “I don’t want to breathe.” She hunched over, leaning her upper body toward the ground and bowed her head.

Hedron laughed briefly before stopping and bringing a hand to his left cheek. It was chapped and almost cracked from the cold and wind. The laughing had aggravated it.

“We’re safest when traveling at night,” he grimaced, knowing the discomfort of being amid the dropping temperatures and wind.

“How much food do we have?” Reign asked.

Hedron took the coarse satchel he had stolen in Calyn their first day on the run off his shoulder and opened it.

“Not much. We haven’t passed a village or city for two days. A few apples, a crust of bread. At least there’s frost for water. One benefit of the cold, I guess.”

The twins were hungry, but not yet starving. The night they had barely escaped from their hold was spent deep in the forest outside Calyn. Before sunrise the next morning, they had ventured into Calyn in search of food. Reign knew they would have to steal but took no pleasure in such a thing. They had no krenshell with which to purchase goods or supplies. Hedron had left her secluded between several crates behind a building as he snuck through the alleys between merchants that were setting up for the day’s market. The young Kerr girl was devastated by what she overheard as she lay in the last moments of darkness before the sun bathed the world in light.

“Did no one survive?”
she heard one voice ask.

“
Not from what I have heard. They resisted when the Khans came
,” answered another.
“All the servants, Lady Kerr, everyone fought back.”

“All dead? The servants? The boy?”
a third voice said.

The second voice answered:
“To the last person, if the reports are true. It’s hard to believe Lady Kerr was part of her husband’s plotting, but why resist if you’re innocent? Even the servants were implicated.”

“Just a shame,”
replied the first voice.
“But the boy? The girl has been dead for cycles and now her brother as well? Is there no Kerr left?”

“No survivors,”
the second said again.
“But,”
he continued with a conspiratorial tone, “
there were Khans in the forest north of the hold for hours, say the rumors. Why do you suppose that was?”

“Searching?”
the third voice asked.
“But, searching for what?”

“For whom, you mean,”
the second voice corrected.
“Why search when all are being reported as ‘regrettably killed’?”

There had been no answer to this last inquiry, or none that she could hear as she sat hidden in an alley of Calyn. Reign felt sick and nearly vomited the nothingness in her stomach as she held in her grief. She had been clinging to the hope that her mother was alive, and thought of perhaps returning to find her. But no, she was dead and there was little time to grieve. In her solitude, she wept as silently as she could for her mother. She didn’t realize how much time had passed until Hedron returned with the same sack he now carried full of different food supplies.

“We need more food,” Reign said, stating the obvious. “How will we get more?” There was fear in her voice, the anxiety of a little girl. She knew Hedron felt much of the same inside him. It was impossible for one of them to shield feelings from the other.

“I’m not sure, yet,” he answered.

“Where are we?” Reign surveyed their surroundings and saw trees spread around but thinly populated. It was a forest, but too dispersed to be anything from their homeland. The ground was relatively flat with a few occasional rolling hills. Patches of frost clung to the ground and trees. She knew Hedron was listening, feeling as far out as he could through the ground, as was she. They would get no better sensitivity by attempting to speak with a tree. They were outside their forests and trees did not speak here. She felt nothing.

“I’m not sure of that either,” Hedron admitted. “I just know we’re two or three days north from the hold as the crow flies. But, we’ve been running for seven, I think.”

I was right
, Reign realized.
Closer to a span
.

“If I had to guess I would say we’re somewhere in the Northern Province, maybe the north parts of the Eastern Province. But it’s just my guess.”

“Why? Why must we keep going?” Reign asked. “All we’ve done is run!”

“Because it’s what mother said to do. You were there, too. You heard her.”

“I don’t care, we should go back for her. She’s looking for us, she has to be.”

“She’s not looking for us, sister.” Hedron knelt down to look up at Reign as she was still hunched over. He could not see her face through her hair. “She’s not looking. She’s gone.” Reign stood up and turned away from him.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t want to believe it either, but we both know it. You heard what they were saying in Calyn.”
Dead…to the last person
.

“It could have been just rumors!” Reign said stubbornly as her voice started to break.

Hedron didn’t answer. He stood up and turned his face north again. Without looking, he reached in the satchel and gave Reign an apple as well as the last of the bread.

“As soon as you’re done, we’re going to start running again. Eat slowly.”

After a couple bites into her apple, Reign stopped suddenly. She fixated her concentration on something, a sensation in the ground. Faint but there. Yes, it was definitely there.

“Hedron—”

“I feel it,” he whispered. “From the west.”

Hedron unsheathed his short blade and deftly scaled the tree closest to them for a better vantage point. He leaped about ten
paces to another and continued to concentrate. Reign sat looking up at her brother.

“What do you see?” she called out to him softly. Try as she might, she could not accurately identify what they felt. It was difficult without the sensitive interlocking root systems of the forests in the west to aid her.

“Nothing. Wait…” her brother said. He looked back at his sister with wide and excited eyes. “It’s a deer!” he exclaimed. “A doe!”

Reign stood up and dropped her apple. She could see intent in Hedron’s eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“Get dinner,” he replied with a look that seemed to ask,
What do you think?
He jumped down from the tree and landed with a sound not audible other than to a wood-dweller. The doe, probably sixty paces away, looked up as Hedron hit the ground. He sat still, crouched in his father’s cloak. Slowly, he untied it from around his shoulder and let it fall to the ground. The doe went back to searching for food by breaking ground frost with a hoof and searching beneath. Hedron slowly advanced around the animal, closing in on it from the rear. The wind blew at Hedron’s back and he realized his mistake too late. The doe raised her head with a start and jolted forward, alerted by his scent.

“No!” he cried out and chased the deer. Malnourished and physically weakened, his pursuit presented a significant challenge. He kept his prey in sight but could not seem to gain ground. He was about to end his chase and give up when he saw the animal fall. Reign stood over it, her short blade buried in the deer’s neck. Hedron reached her a moment later.

“What? How? Where did you come from?” he asked, perplexed.

“You were losing our dinner,” she said. The doe was still struggling but weakly so. “Now what do we do?”

“I’ve only seen father do it,” Hedron replied. “I’ve never actually—”

“I killed it. Figure out the rest,” Reign demanded. She turned away and put her hand over her mouth, nauseous from the adrenaline of the moment.

“Are you all right?” her brother asked. She held out a hand behind her and motioned for him not to come nearer.

“Just figure it out,” she muttered.

The days turned to spans, and spans to cycles. For much of the time, the Kerr twins wandered aimlessly, well fed through the High Season as they adapted to life on their own. For Reign, living in the open was nothing new by virtue of the last many cycles. But, as the clouds changed with the waning of the Dimming Season and the Low Season being ushered in, Hedron and Reign found themselves with little food and no shelter in the freezing weather. Even during the High Season, the Northern Province barely received enough warmth to compare with the weather of the Rising Season they were used to in the West, where life became more full and blooming things manifested themselves. Game became less prevalent as the climate changed, most seeking hibernation or more southern parts.

Most nights they huddled together in some cave or crevice that gave insult to the word shelter, until they collapsed from consciousness in exhaustion from shivering, having no means to create fire. They awoke in blankets of snow and, though cold, the snow mercifully insulated them against the wind. Still, they continued north, clinging to the last plea of their dead mother.

Early one morning deep in the Low Season, Reign awoke startled, her hands and feet frozen to a point of numbness that she was almost used to. She brought a hand to her chest and rubbed gently. She had felt something, hadn’t she? Some pressure against her chest and head. A dream perhaps—but no, it was more than a dream. The light of a new day was starting to shine through the gray clouds and falling snow. Hedron lay still, sleeping next to her, curled into a ball. His face was pale, almost blue with cracked cheeks and lips.

Reign scanned their surroundings as she tried to shake the feeling that something real had just touched her.
Pushed
on her. It had to only be a dream. There was nothing—

Movement caught her eye. The sparse trees had no leaves where she lay. Nothing else save rocks and snow existed here. Nothing else except the gray wolves about a stone’s throw from their position. She counted five.

Reign shook Hedron. Then again. He protested by groaning, not wanting to awaken to another cold morning. Sleep was an escape, even if temporary.

“I’m scared,” Reign whispered, her breath’s vapor almost spelling fear in the air. She shivered, but not only from the cold.