Reign of Shadows (9 page)

W
E TRAVELED FOR
almost a week with very little conversation. This wasn't because of any reticence on my behalf. I talked. My whispers filled the space around us. It's all I could do the first few days.

I was nervous and the sound of my chatter helped fill my own head. It also helped block thoughts of Sivo and Perla. I ached with the knowledge that I would never see them again. That I left them alone to face the eventual return of Cullan's soldiers.

Fowler never talked, but I didn't let his silence discourage me. I addressed the back of him, glad for the distraction, needing to forget the ache in my heart.

A nearly impossible task. A lump formed in my throat as I skirted a large outcropping, my palm skimming the rock's jagged surface. Fowler jumped down lightly before me, the sound of his boots hitting the earth signaling the sudden drop in the ground. I followed suit, bending slightly to brace my hand on the ground and landing smoothly where the ground gave way.

It had taken everything in me to say good-bye to them. Sivo had clasped my hands until they ached in his grip.
Swear to me, girl. Promise me you will never come back here.

So I had promised. Not that Fowler would try to stop me if I decided to break that promise. He would probably be glad to be rid of me. Most of the time, he behaved as though I wasn't even there. Whenever we managed to find a spot to bed down, he would roll out his pallet, and turn his back on me without a word.

So I clung to the diversion of my one-sided conversations.

“How long have you been on your own?”

“How did you meet Madoc and Dagne?”

He never replied. His silence wore on me. I understood he didn't want me tagging along after him, but must he pretend I didn't exist?

My steps grew swifter and I began to answer my own questions as though I were him.

I deepened my whisper into an imitation of his tone, angling my head to the side. “I am from a little town called Foolshaven.”

Angling my head in the other direction, I replied as myself, “Never heard of it. Is it anywhere near the village of Idiotsville?”

He made a slight sound, an intake of breath that might have been a laugh or a grunt of disgust.

“It's a bit near there.” I adopted a deeper voice again, attempting to sound masculine. “A lovely place. I miss it dearly.”

He turned to face me, the air churning with the sudden swirl of movement as he advanced on me.

His presence was too close. I stepped back, unsteady on my feet in my sudden haste to avoid colliding with him.

His low, deep voice rumbled out, making a mockery of my imitation. “A bit of fancy drivel, that. You'd never hear such words from me. There's no place left in the great vastness of this world that can be called lovely. Not since the dwellers came.”

“Oh.” I tried to sound flippant as his words sank through me like rocks. “Now he speaks.”

“Everything is bleakness and death,” he added, his voice flat, almost reprimanding. As though I should accept this.

How could his voice be so hard and yet reverberate through me with the quietness of wind? Gooseflesh broke out over my skin and the day was not even its usual cold.

I moistened my lips, my fingertips brushing the insides of my palms. My skin felt grimy and I wondered if I looked as dirty and travel worn as I felt. “When we get to Allu, what do you want to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, once we reach there, you won't be on the road anymore. You'll be putting down roots.”

“I don't know. Find a shelter. Build it if necessary. Maybe
farm and store up a respectable food supply.”

I huffed out a breath. “Those are the things that you need to do. I asked you what you want to do once you get there. Once you're safe.”

“I don't think about what I want. That's a luxury I don't have.”

“Well, you might get that luxury there if Allu is all you think it will be.”

“I'll worry about that when I get there.”

“No.” I laughed. “You don't understand. Having free time, doing something you want to do, relaxing . . . that's not supposed to be a worry.” I lifted my chin. “Haven't you ever enjoyed yourself before?”

His stare crawled over my face, and I sensed his unwillingness to answer the question. Waves of frustration poured off him and I wasn't certain whether it was a result of me or himself, but I had the distinct feeling that he wouldn't mind giving me a good shake.

I pushed another question at him: “Do you remember life before the dwellers?” He had mentioned that there was no lovely place since the dwellers came. “They've been here for seventeen years,” I added unnecessarily.

I knew nothing of life without dwellers. Nothing of the time when my parents lived and ruled a kingdom awash in sunlight, where the forests ran thick with game and the fields yielded a bounty of crops.

I heard the rustling of his clothing. “Enough. Let's move.”

My shoulders slumped with the slightest disappointment. I lowered my face, unwilling to let him read my expression if he was even still looking at me.

Sivo and Perla rarely discussed life before the eclipse with me—only as much as they felt I needed to know about life in the capital and Cullan.

He started walking again. I fell into place beside him.

“I was two years old when the eclipse happened,” he confessed.

My head snapped in his direction at these words.

“So you don't remember anything then?” Two years old was hardly an age to hold on to many memories.

“I remember sunlight. Once it turned my skin red. I stayed out too long and it burned my face. Lasted a week until it faded. A few days later the skin peeled off in flakes.”

I shook my head slightly, trying to imagine that. Trying to imagine the taste of warm sun on my skin so strong it could burn.

He continued softly, “Grass so thick under your feet it was like a lush rug. There was none of this barren landscape. There was color everywhere—” He stopped at this, clearly realizing I didn't see colors—that colors would be something I would miss.

“No withered trees and plants,” he added after several moments. “It didn't smell of rot or decay. It smelled like . . . life.”

I listened, hanging on to his every word. I wanted to ask more from him, wanted to keep him talking. I wanted to paint a picture in my head with his words. “And?” I prompted.

“And—” He stopped abruptly. “And nothing. I don't remember anything else.”

He was lying. I heard it in his voice. He remembered more. He simply didn't want to share it with me.

This shouldn't have hurt. It was nothing Perla hadn't done before. Talk of the past, of the way things had been before, was too much for her.

He increased his pace again, marching off ahead of me, extinguishing our fleeting conversation as effectively as the snuffing of a flame. Thunder rumbled in the distance and I looked up to the skies as though I could see the rain there, waiting to drop down on us in a deluge.

Perfect.

I had smelled the rain on the air for the last several hours, but hoped we would somehow skirt the storm.

Sighing, I followed after Fowler, stepping over a bit of fallen log, rotted and decaying as he had just mentioned.

The first droplet landed on my nose, followed in quick succession by more. A steady patter soon filled my ears as rain pelted down, soaking me to the bone through my garments. The wet added to the chill and I was soon shivering. Fowler did not ease his stride. I struggled after him, the sodden earth sucking at my boots.

After several moments, I began talking again, needing to focus on something other than my misery. I stayed close enough so that I didn't need to project my voice over the rain.

I probably appeared mad, muttering to myself, trudging
across the bleak landscape after Fowler, two little ants amid a vast, pitiless quagmire.

As I hurried to keep up with him, ignoring the burn in my thighs and the way my sopping wet clothes stuck to my skin, the sounds of the forest suddenly stopped.

I fell silent, too.

My steps slowed and I cocked my head, listening over the beat of water. I reached out a hand to touch Fowler's arm. He was right beside me. His forearm tensed instantly, all tightly corded sinew and strength beneath my fingers.

“To the trees,” he mouthed against my ear, grabbing hold of my hand.

He ushered me to the closest semblance of shelter. A tree amid a dense thicket of dripping wet brush. He directed me to climb it and followed right behind me.

Of course, hiding in a tree offered its own misery. Stuck on a branch, water rolling down my face and dripping off the end of my nose, I had little to focus on except how cold and wet I was.

My teeth chattered and I contemplated reaching inside my pack for my cloak, but then that seemed pointless. It would only soon be as soaked as the rest of me.

I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and blew out a puff of breath, trying to warm myself—helplessly pressed up against Fowler when he clearly didn't want to be stuck with me. It made me long for home.

It made the ache in my heart that much worse.

I settled back against the hard scratch of bark, Fowler's arm
aligned to the right side of my body. Another branch hemmed me in on the left. He'd positioned me to be secure even if it meant we had to sit plastered together side by side.

His breath fell beside me, slow and steady. A dweller cried out, closer now. The sound echoed long and thin through the woods. Moments later an answering call followed, much farther in the distance.

“Good,” Fowler declared softly, the word a warm breath on my cheek. I shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with him. “Maybe the first one will head after that one.”

I nodded, even though I wasn't entirely convinced. Perhaps the second dweller would head closer to us. That could happen, too.

The rain continued to fall, finding its way through the tangle of branches to where we huddled together. I lifted my face to the opening skies, my fingers swiping uselessly at my wet cheeks.

“This is good,” he murmured, his lips still close. I felt their movement beside my hair. The rain was on his skin, too. I could smell the combination of water and salt from his flesh. It was a heady thing. A little dizzying, in fact. “They don't like hunting in the rain.” His deep voice stroked over me like a feather's brush. “It makes them slower. . . . Sometimes they go to ground altogether.”

I knew these creatures were led by sound, perhaps even smell. The wash of rainfall would dull both those senses.

“I imagine it impairs their hearing,” I murmured, wrapping
my arms around my knees and drawing them up to my chest, resisting leaning to my right where his warm body pressed into mine.

“Does it impair yours?” It was a simple question, yet it felt intimate squashed together as we were. I wondered what it would feel like if his body relaxed—if he didn't hold himself so rigidly beside me. What would it feel like if he were to turn and fold me into his arms.

My face grew hot. “I suppose it does.”

“We'll wait. Make certain they're gone and then push on for as long as the rain lasts.”

I nodded. He was always so sensible.

“How long will it take to reach the isle?”

Silence stretched over the pattering rain. I was beginning to think he would not reply, but then he said, “By my calculation, three to four months.”

A few months of me talking to his back. Months of us being together but not together.

My chest pinched considering it. I might have been trapped in the tower for the extent of my life, but I'd never been alone. I always had someone.

Now I had no one.

We stayed half an hour longer in the tree before climbing down, and then we tromped through the rain, moving as quickly as we could in the dragging mud, taking advantage of the sudden downpour.

I trailed behind Fowler, listening to his near-silent tread, following in his steps, gauging the shape and direction of Fowler in front of me as the air passed around him.

We walked until I was well past the point of exhaustion, until I could no longer feel my nose on my face. I pressed my lips into a mutinous line, determined not to complain.

“This way,” he directed as though I could see him.

I followed him up a steep, rocky incline.

Suddenly I was out of the rain, my boots no longer squishing over sodden earth. I rotated in a small circle, wringing the water from the thick plait of hair that hung over my shoulder. “There is no wind.”

“It's a cave. Sit down. Rest.”

“Should we not push on through this rain?”

“You're dead on your feet. You need to rest—”

“I'm not wearied. I can continue—”

“Stand down. I'm wearied, too. Does that make any difference to you?”

I sniffed in response, mollified at least that he admitted this.

“We covered a great deal of ground,” he continued. “This is an ideal shelter and we should take advantage of it.”

I nodded, relenting. I listened as he dropped his pack. Following that, he divested himself of his garments, slapping them on the nearby rock.

My cheeks burned, thinking that he was naked—or nearly so.

“You should spread your clothes out to dry.”

“I'm not undressing in front of you.”

“You'll catch an ague, and that would do us no favors. Besides,” he added, “we will be in close proximity for months. Am I never to see you in an indelicate state? That's not very realistic. If you want, you're welcome to go deeper into the cave.”

I turned, facing the chasm. The damp air felt colder in that direction and my flesh broke out in goose bumps. Who knew what lurked in there?

“Come, I'll turn my back.”

Still, I hesitated.