Haven (War of the Princes) (10 page)

He took my icy hand, smothering it in his feverishly warm grasp. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the sensation was a nice alternative to my self-imposed hypothermia.

Digging my heels into the gravel, I did my best to help him get up. At barely five foot five inches tall, I doubt I really helped that much.

He swayed when he stood, and I didn’t even consider feeling uncomfortable by slipping an arm around him to help him walk. If you would have asked me whether I’d ever put my arm around the waist of a stranger twenty-four hours ago, I would have asked if you were crazy. There was more at stake here than traditional meekness. If I didn’t help him, he could die. It was that simple.

Heat radiated off of him like the sun at midday and set my shocked nerves to tingling. He didn’t seem to mind that I was pretty much a walking icicle.

“You’re freezing,” he noted.

“You’re burning,” I replied.

“Surprise, surprise,” he said sarcastically and I smiled.

“Come on,” I said forcing us forward. “One foot in front of the other.”

He struggled ahead, pushing and pulling me this way and that as he fought to maintain his equilibrium. The weight of his arm around my shoulders was already very uncomfortable.

“Yes sir,” he said, with an inflection on “sir” that I had never heard before.

“If you don’t pull it together, you’re going to squish me,” I complained, battling to stabilize him as we shambled along.

“Sorry,” he apologized honestly. After a few deep breaths he’d made a considerable improvement. He still needed to rely on me for balance, but at least we weren’t swinging like a hammock in a windstorm anymore.

As we began our trek, I wondered how lucky I’d be at finding us a way out of the cave. I had absolutely no idea how to picture the outside, so I imagined seeing a big sky, unobstructed by caverns. Couldn’t go wrong there.

Finding what I was looking for had never been so risky, and the consequences of failing had never been so grave.

Chapter 11: Finding The Sky

           
The phrase, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” kept leaping to the forefront of my thoughts. Part of me recognized that I must be completely out of my mind for straying so far from home when no one else in history ever had, not to mention leaping off a cliff to help a stranger who could die because he was fighting something called a “
Lurcher
.”

           
I should have been terrified out of my wits. I shouldn’t have blundered into all of this, but didn’t dwell on it. Save for the irritating squeaking of the voice of reason in the back of my mind, I was too busy focusing on getting Rune to safety.

           
The good news was that I wasn’t freezing anymore. My skin was damp and clammy, but between my physical exertion and the six-foot tall guy with a fever hunched beside me, I was beginning to feel a combination of uncomfortably toasty and annoyingly waterlogged.

           
The only thing more difficult than keeping my balance was holding the heavy lantern up under the weight of Rune’s arm on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure how long we had struggled along, winding our way through the narrower tunnels of the crystal-flecked cave. They all looked the same and intersected so frequently, it was easy to respect Rune’s loss of heart.

           
“How did you manage to get so deep in this cave in the first place?” I asked him between heavy breaths.

           
“You’d be surprised how far you can stumble when you have an angry
Lurcher
on your heels. I didn’t want to run,” he murmured weakly. “Mick ordered me to. It wasn’t that he wanted to help me to save my life, it’s just that my life is worth more while my heart is still beating... for now.”

           
“That’s horrible,” I said, understanding what he was saying but not the reasoning behind it. The idea was not something I could relate to. Why would a person want to keep another alive, but not care about them?

           
“That’s life,” he replied bitterly.

           
The next few moments felt uncomfortable to me. “What is a
Lurcher
?” I asked with earnest curiosity.

           
“A very nasty animal with a book full of tricks and a taste for human blood. We hunt them. Dragoons, I mean, and the militia helps us. The more we kill, the better. The Commanders take the bodies,” Rune said, his voice trailing off, like he was about to say something else. He didn’t.

           
“At least you’ll be able to go home soon,” I offered, trying to cheer him.

           
“Home,” he smiled, and there was such softness in his eyes. “I have a little sister named
Lina
. She should be seven years old by now. Close to eight. I see her sometimes, when I make my way through town. I don’t think she understands that we’re not allowed to know each other. She’s a smart girl. Maybe she just doesn’t
want
to understand.”

           
I still didn’t grasp the reason he wasn’t allowed to keep ties with anyone. So many things didn’t make sense, and I wasn’t sure if they ever would. As soon as I was certain he was safely out of here, I’d be homeward bound. There was only so much adventure a girl could take in one night.

           
“You and your sister’s names don’t start with the same letter. Do you have different last names?” I asked as we limped around a sharp corner. I figured it was good to keep him talking.

           
“No. We’re both
Thayers
. Why should our names start with the same letters?” he asked, sounding baffled.

           
“Where I come from, almost everyone has the same letter in their first and last name. I’m Katelyn
Kestrel
,” I explained. “My little brother is close to your sister’s age. His name is Kevin, my dad is Keller, and my… mom is
Kassey
.”

           
Rune began to shake, and at first I was worried about him, until I could hear the dry chuckle that followed. “That is ridiculous.”

           
“It’s normal to me!” I said defensively. “
You’re
the weirdo.”

           
“Weirdo?” he echoed.

“Just reporting it like I see it,” I said with a grin.

“Do you always prey on the weak?”

           
“You’re an easy target,” I joked.

           
“I won’t argue that.”

           
“Good. I win at arguing.”

           
“Is that something you should be proud of?”

           
“When you’re as good at it as me, yes. I keep my prize ribbons right next to my ‘Talks-too-much and sounds-like-an-idiot’ trophies.”

           
He chuckled between heavy breaths. There was something about making him laugh that made me feel good. Maybe it was just an unusual sound coming from someone who was obviously so unhappy… and feverish.

           
“I think I’m eligible to win the sounds-like-an-idiot award,” he said cheerfully, belying the exhaustion in his voice. “I’d like to watch an event like that.”

           
“It’s a lot less enjoyable when you’re participating. Right up there with looking-like-an-idiot,” I said remembering being thrown into the river by Calvin.

           
“When I was twelve I won a city-wide award for one of my paintings. I was so surprised, I didn’t go up to claim the prize… I just stood there in the crowd. Everyone around me just stared. How far does that one get me?”

           
“Silver.”

           
“Tough break. I’m going to have to try harder at embarrassing myself,” Rune said, and I could see the flash of his white teeth in the corner of my eye when he smiled.

           
“Hang around me long enough and there will be embarrassment in abundance,” I said with a droll grin.

Was that fresh air I tasted? I’d hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking. My lungs were starting to hurt and I was beginning to feel very thirsty. It would be a shame if I were leading us into the belly of the world.

           
“Where
are
you from?” he asked suddenly, squinting at me through the relative darkness. “You really are different. You treat me like a normal person.”

           
“Maybe I’m from the moon,” I said noncommittally.

           
“A ghost from the moon,” he said, weighing on me a little more, almost swaying again. “Odd combination. Maybe I’m dreaming this conversation. Maybe you’re just someone from Breakwater making up stories. I honestly can’t tell… not right now. But if you really are from another place, do me one last favor.”

           
“Tall order. I’m already full on favors,” I said, joking again. This time he didn’t smile or laugh. “Okay, what is it?”

           
“When we get outside,” his blue eyes flashed to mine and held them with an intensity I didn’t expect to see. “Leave me. Forget we’d ever met. Go back to wherever you came from and never return here again.”

           
“So much for making friends,” I said, evasively. I didn’t want to make a promise I couldn’t keep. My passage was a huge discovery that was not something to be selfish about. How could I go home and not think about showing someone what I found? How could I not come back?

           
As long as I’d known him, which really wasn’t very long, Rune had seemed very tall but youthful to me. It wasn’t exactly mature to insist that someone right next to you was a ghost. When he talked about
Lurchers
and Dragoons, his expressions had become morose, but when I made light of his request, it seemed as though he alone carried the very weight of the world on his shoulders, and that burden transcended his years. He had transformed into a different person entirely.

           
“Katelyn,” was all he had to say, and my silly little façades crumbled.

           
“I’m planning on leaving right away,” I assured him.

           
 
I was studying his tired face, wondering who he was and what the rest of the outside world was like, when the wind hit us. The blast of fresh air was so absent of pine that it confounded me. I never imagined that even the air would be so different. It smelled faintly of dried flowers and sage.

           
Without exchanging another word, we hastened to the cave entrance. We’d made it. My luck had prevailed again. I straightened my sore back with the exhilaration of triumph.

           
If the air was a surprise, our surroundings were anticlimactic. The maw of the cave opened to a moonless, starry night, obscured by rocks and the dark shapes of unfamiliar trees. I couldn’t see much else in the night.

           
“We’re out,” I said, feeling the rising excitement of another discovery. A smile crept across my face and I looked at Rune to see his relief, but he had gone pallid, his head lolling to one side. I recognized the exact moment that he lost consciousness, his body going slack and pulling me down with him.

           
I skidded to the rocky ground, awkwardly crumpled beside him, and managed to hit my bruised shin again. I barely had time to recoil in pain before his body began to slide down the crumbling slope of the cave’s lip. I dropped the lantern, ground my heels into the gravel and put all of my weight into stopping him from tumbling down farther.

           
That woke him up.

It looked like it took him a minute to register where he was and who was crouched beside him.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, when his eyes focused on me with recollection.

He staggered slowly to his feet, gestured for me to retrieve the lantern, and with my help, made it to the foot of the slope without falling.

           
I was gasping with exhaustion when he told me, “Just a little farther.”

           
We ventured into the dry grasses and shaggy trees that stood too far apart to be called a forest. The trunks were bone white in the lantern light.

           
This time Rune was leading. His breathing was ragged, nearly louder than the hapless crunching of our feet over the dry tall grass.

I felt very unsafe, very exposed in the unknown night. As good as it felt to see the sky again, and as much as I hated the confines of small spaces, the cave was familiar now, more so than this place.

           
We came upon the large broken trunk of a dead tree when Rune stopped walking. He shrugged away from my helping grasp and turned to face me, taking one of my hands.

           
“I don’t have enough words to thank you,” he said formally, his accent curving his words. I could see how hard he struggled to stay on his feet. “I never thought I’d have a friend again. For that, I could say all of this was worthwhile.” He indicated his mauled arm. “If I survive until they find me, if I make it through this, I will never forget your kindness.”