CHAPTER 26
The Walk
"Ho, there!" a wrinkled old man called to them from a wagon as it trundled by. It was still early morning but they had been walking since they climbed down the walls of Hennelea in the middle of the night. Elaina had stumbled a few times, but she had not complained.
She was nervous about her eyes—she hadn’t cast Illusion in a while and couldn’t check her work since Illusion wouldn’t reflect and he could never see it. Cade stared straight ahead, she kept her head down, and they kept walking.
"I say, there!" The man pulled the plodding cart horses to a halt. "Would you and the lady be needing a lift? We're going south as far as the Nerith River, if you care for a ride. It's a mighty long walk and not too civilized a road, if you know my meaning." He said with a wink.
Cade finally stopped to examine him and his wife. The man was younger than he seemed, Cade was sure, with skin darkened and lined by the elements like the roots of an old oak, likely around forty or so. Between that, his sturdy but well-worn and simple clothes, the bags of seed in the back of the wagon, and his destination, Cade guessed him to be a farmer. His wife wore simple clothes as well, and if her face was less weather-beaten under her deep bonnet, it was just as warm and open.
"We would be grateful for the help," Cade said, taking Elaina's hand and leading her over. "I'm Dominic, and this is Maile. What might we pay you for the trouble?"
"Never mind that, lad, always enough room at the table for a few more friends. The wagon's a going south with or without you, just the same. Join in, join in." He replied with a smile, waving away Cade's purse before he even loosed it from his belt.
"Our thanks, sir—"
"Pyers Dawson, and this is my lovely bride, Braewyn." He introduced them both. "The young ones are waiting at home with her mother—they'll be right sad to have missed meeting you, sure." He said frankly. "Though some of them are not so young as that—you look about the age of our oldest." He said with another broad smile.
"Up you get, there. Sit on down." Pyers settled them in behind the couple on a seat made of a long sack of beans slung over the tops of three little barrels—a year's supply of brandy, he informed them.
It was better than walking, and Cade knew that Elaina could use the rest, but balancing on a sack of beans in the back of a rickety wagon was hardly comfortable. He preferred a saddle or his own two feet any day. At least then he would have been able to go up ahead a bit and miss out on the chatter of the amiable farmer Dawson. His wife was mercifully a quiet woman, as if the Neverseen had plucked her from the Well of Fates to make up for her husband's talkativeness.
In a matter of minutes Pyers had asked where they were from, where they were going, how they'd met, and a half dozen questions about their families and their futures. Cade found himself spinning a tale of young lovers running from a wealthy but boorish suitor, seeking refuge in the forgotten south until the uproar blew over.
Cade wished he had been able to think up a better story. He had no idea how the man believed that he and Elaina could be passionately in love. He knew he was less than expressive, while Elaina was as modest as ever. They made an effort to convince the Dawsons. He threw his arm around her protectively, and she brought him his meal that evening, then made a quiet show of stitching up a hole in his shirt.
Retiring to sleep was awkward, even with the two of them on the ground while the Dawson's hollowed out a spot among the other items in the wagon bed. There was enough of a history that Cade wanted to flinch when they went to their blankets, and he couldn’t imagine she felt completely at ease either.
Fortunately, Pyers took Elaina's shyness to be the mark of a newlywed from the north, blushing to show affection in front of strangers, and he chuckled at it instead of wondering. Cade thought Braewyn looked oddly at them now and again. Once or twice he caught the question in her eyes when she watched them, but she never gave words to her thoughts, the blessed woman
Elaina peered past the little house on wheels she shared with E'dan and A'lan. Her chains clacked together loosely in her hands. If she could make it to the blacksmiths, perhaps she could break the chains. As she prowled between the wagons of the caravan, a shout went up.
"There she goes! After her!" Elaina took off, darting between horses and great wooden wheels. Red chains trailed after, marking her path as the dogs barked and men yelled. Her lungs burned and her legs felt like water as she ran. There! The forge! Elaina reached out for a hammer that lay across the anvil and—
She was jerked to a halt by the collar around her neck. Behind her came Keravel, reeling in the Bloodstone chain hand over hand. Tears filled her eyes as she stretched her fingers out to the hammer.
"He's coming, he's coming," she panted, straining for the handle. Her fingers brushed the wood worn smooth by a thousand uses. Behind her, Keravel laughed.
"Too late," he hissed, yanking her back with the chain so that she tumbled onto her back. Above her, his eyes burned like embers, and the metal wand in his hand glowed with heat. "Too late, little sparrow." The Firstborn smiled, leaning for her with the hot metal.
"No, no, no—please! Please, no." she cried, curling into a ball.
"Sing for me, sparrow." He commanded, and the metal hissed as it burned into her skin. Elaina screamed.
Cade awoke well before dawn. The moon was huge and bright, casting everything in a thin silver light. Beside him, closer to the wagon, Elaina was murmuring and moving about in her sleep.
"He's coming, he's coming," she breathed in her dream.
"Maile," he whispered, reaching for her shoulder with a frown. "Maile, wake up!" Crying out softly, she cowered in her blankets.
"No, no, no—please! Please, no." she begged. With a glance over her shaking form to the stillness of the wagon, Cade leaned over her to whisper in her ear.
"Elaina! Wake up!" Grey eyes fluttered open. Staring wildly, Elaina gasped and flinched from him with a look of unbridled terror. Cade felt it like a kick in the stomach.
"It was a nightmare," he managed through clenched teeth, "go back to sleep." He yanked his blankets over himself roughly as he turned away from her.
So I am in her nightmares. So she shrinks from me like a poisonous viper. I stood there and watched her tortured, didn't I? Led her to that little red tent more times than I want to remember, didn’t I? How else would she dream of me but in nightmares? He shut his eyes against the moonlight and deliberately ignored the shifting of blankets behind him.
"Dominic?" came the quiet voice in the stillness. He did not react.
"Cade . . ." she said again, softer, moving closer to avoid being overheard. "I would have flinched from anyone, you know. I was still half-asleep." Silently, Cade wondered how she'd known exactly what bothered him. Perhaps he was far more transparent than he thought. Perhaps I am only transparent to her.
"I know you wouldn't hurt me," she tried again.
"And what of handing you over to Keravel? I should sooner have given my life protecting a woman, but I stood by and watched. No! I even took you to him!" He whispered vehemently into the darkness.
"You were giving up your life to save another—Sarina. My claim was never greater than a sister's, Cade. You did what you had to, and you never laid a hand on me, though Keravel would have approved if you had." She pointed out.
"I did." He maintained grimly. "I struck you that first day, at Split Creek." Cade insisted. I will not hide my crimes, once committed. A vicious man I may be, but not a coward too.
"I'm surprised you remember that." She did sound vaguely surprised.
"Why? Did you think I have hit so many women I cannot remember them all?" he asked bitterly. "No wonder I am a nightmare of yours."
"That is not what I meant, and you are not—you saved me from it when you took that collar off." She reminded him. Cade snorted.
"Which you would not have needed if I had not put it on you in the first place."
"If you hadn't chained me, another ashendari would have. But would any o
f other have freed me?" Elaina shot back. "Only you and Corin, the instant you discovered you were not protecting Sarina." She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder, urging him to turn and face her, but he resisted.
"Even so. I struck you." Cade maintained.
To his surprise, she huffed, "Only to get my teeth off your brother—hardly in the realm of civilized behavior. I'd strike anything that bit me like an animal. You even resisted when I clawed your arm that day you took the knife from me; you still have the scars, in case you've forgotten," Elaina declared in quiet triumph.
"So you see? You feature in no nightmares of mine. Dasfinya," she promised, "Truly." She would not tell a lie in the old tongue. Cade rolled over to study her face, and she didn't move back despite his nearness.
"How do you do that?" he asked quietly, searching her grey eyes in the moonlight. She glanced away.
"What?"
"How do you take the worst things I've done, the darkest parts of my soul, and make them light?" Cade watched her with a small frown marring his forehead. Elaina considered him for a long moment, then her lips twitched mischievously.
"Magic!" she declared in a whisper, eyes laughing as she waved her fingers through the air. Cade held back a smile. Here is a spirit that will not be repressed.
"Now sleep! And wake me from my nightmares—the ones that you won't be in." She instructed flippantly, turning in her blankets to face the wagon again. Cade shook his head and lay back, staring up into the heavens. He was asleep much sooner than he expected.
The Dawsons set a slow pace along the great road south, but Cade found it did not trouble him. Once Pyers was satisfied with Cade’s story of young love, they talked of other things, and he could often retreat with Elaina to the wagon bed to sprawl across sacks of beans in a comfortable silence.
It was strange for him to live so sedately. Everything in his life had been discipline for so long. Even before the Invasion, his childhood had ended relatively early, replaced with the training he would need to take his father's place.
Watching Elaina, Cade found himself wondering if this was what she had been like before agents had been sent after her, before the chains and the Link and all of it.
Her smiles were quick and free and open, as was her laugh, and with each passing day she lost more of the sickly pallor chilling her skin. She was even making her dress look like a dress again, instead of a shapeless sack. Braewyn treated her like a grown daughter, and they could talk together for hours—something Cade was not altogether in favor of, since that left him with Pyers, a man who did not understand the concept of silence.
The four of them had been on the road together for nearly a fortnight when they reached the River Nerith. Although the Dawsons were not crossing, Pyers insisted on helping Cade pull the ferry across, drawing it hand over hand along the sturdy rope strung between the shores. In better times, it had been the business of some enterprising soul to shuttle people, wagons, and horses back and forth, but the ferry over the Nerith was long-since abandoned. There was little need for it—few ventured into the waste of Antral anymore.
Though they left the heavily-laden wagon on the north shore, Braewyn made the trip too, unwilling to stay behind and miss the proper goodbyes, she said. She and Elaina stood in the center of the raft, and the farmer's wife had one hand resting affectionately on the caster’s shoulders. Cade wondered what these simple people would think if they knew exactly who the imposter newlyweds were.
"Well, here's our end then, I suppose." Pyers said frankly, offering his hand to Cade with a smile. "It made a pleasant trip, having you youngsters along. We thank you for it."
"On the contrary, sir, our thanks for making our walk that much shorter." Cade replied courteously.
"May the true spirits guide you," Braewyn said affectionately, patting Elaina's cheek like older women do. "They'll give you the peace you seek one day." She assured them both. Cade nodded, but Elaina replied with an enthusiastic hug.
"And may they be watching over you as well, and your family." The Wielder murmured over the woman's shoulder. For a moment, they held each other at arm's length.
"Perhaps we'll meet again." Elaina suggested.
"Perhaps," came Braewyn's response as she stepped back onto the raft. Pyers took twice as long to get the ferry back across to their wagon, not because he wasn't strong enough, but because he was constantly stopping to wave at them mid-stream. Shaking her head, Elaina waved back.
"An interesting couple," she said as they watched the little figures on the far side of the river clamber back up onto the wagon seat.
"Many are, if you look close enough." Cade agreed. Elaina glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
"We're the proof of that."
Cade had no argument there. "Come, we've a long way to go yet," he said, setting off toward the west. It would take another ten days of steady walking along the faded and overgrown track that ran along the cliffs to get to Hennelea. Much of it was tediously similar, scrubby, pale green brush sweeping into a dusty and little-used path, but the first view of the Sea of Yaltiran was breathtaking. The two travelers reached the spot four days after leaving the Dawsons and the River Nerith.
Elaina stopped at the top of the rise, staring out over the endless water. She had seen the sea in Hennelea, but it had been a crowded one edged by the smudge of Ronam on the horizon. This was vast. It was immense.
"It's lovely, isn't it?" Cade asked, coming up behind her. "Antralians have always been a people in love with the sea. We moved inland to defend the southern border and farm the good land, but we are of the sea. Our crown is called the Diadem of Storms after the ones that rise against these shores, and where all our forts are called after the great kings and warriors of our past, the cities by the sea are named for their loves."
"Who was Ashira, then?" Elaina asked, turning from the sea to watch him watch the waves. There was a softness around his eyes, and he looked peaceful. It was not an expression she had seen on him before.
"I'll tell you as we walk," he said, nodding to the left down the cliff-top road. "Don't get distracted by the view—a wrong step could be . . . unhealthy." Cade noted, peering down at the rocks below. With a shiver Elaina obeyed, keeping to the far edge of the path and ignoring the beacon of the sun's long glimmering finger across the water.
"Ashira was called the Jewel," Cade began as they walked, "She wed the third child of Gaildren and Aldebaron, a man named Landor. The southernmost fort at Landoram was built for him by his father, and the Prince was the commander there in the Great War."
"The Great War?"
"That is what we call the first war after Antral's founding. Aldebaron united the people into a nation to repel the attacks from the Lostlands after the fall of the Balthesar Dynasty. The War of a Thousand Banners seldom spread so far south," Cade explained,
"Aldebaron was the governor of the region under the Balthezars, and was very nearly independent of them most of his rule. He built up the border forts and founded the first of the cliff cities, called Gaildena after his wife. During the Great War the peoples of the Lostlands were trying to take advantage of the collapse in Arith and were constantly challenging the new nation of Antral."
"How did they meet, Ashira and Landor?" Elaina asked. Cade smiled, thinking of the many times he told this story to Sarina when she was a child. Of all the stories—Aldebaron and Gaildren, Ayslinora and Jayden, Jeor and Eloysa— she loved Landor and Ashira the best.
"The fort was besieged, and though a great commander called Jayden held the ridge to the east, the city was suffering. Landor rode out with his best men to destroy the enemy's siege engines, but was ambushed and captured. With green eyes, a young woman named Ashira stood out among the Antralians, but not among the enemy, a people called the Harsonrim, named for the desert they live in. They all had black hair that hung loose in curls, but the women wore long veils over it. Dressing as one of their women, Ashira covered her hair and went in the night to rescue Prince Landor.
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“She joined the dancers who performed before their King at the victory celebration where the Prince and his men were chained as trophies. Ashira and was so enchanting the King promised her as a gift anything in the room that she desired, save his crown, thinking she would choose the golden goblets or the fine perfumes that littered the low tables. Instead, Ashira tore the veil from her hair and declared she was Antralian She chose as her prize the Prince himself.
“Whatever else they are, the Harsonrim are a proud people that would never go back on their word. Impressed with her spirit as well as her beauty, the King granted her wish. She and the Prince returned to the fort together." Cade paused, and Elaina turned back,
"Then what happened?"
"They say no man who saw her dance that night did not fall in love with Ashira, and it was not hard for Landor to make her love him as a man and not just a prince, handsome and kind and brave as he was.
“At the end of the Great War they were married. Landor ruled together with his brother Jeor when their father died. Each built a city in the cliffs for their wives, Queen Eloysa the Rose, and Queen Ashira the Jewel, just as their father had done for their mother. Those are the three cities of the cliffs." When he finished, Elaina sighed happily.
"That is a wonderful story. Is it real? Was there really a woman called the Jewel, who rescued the prince?"
"Of course! If the royal vaults were not burned in Alcondar, I will show you the letters they wrote each other one day. I doubt the invaders found them—only the royal family knew where the entrance was, so as long as it did not collapse, the records should be there." Cade assured her.
"You know where it is. You are part of the royal family." Elaina said. It was not a question. She had seen enough in the Linking to guess, but they had never spoken of it.
"I was."
"Braewyn thought so. She thought you a prince, and Truth only knows what she thought of me," declared Elaina.
"I wondered if she suspected," Cade said unhappily, "but better Braewyn than her husband; he would tell every living thing he encountered. And I am not a Prince, not anymore. There is nothing left, and I already have a duty—to be your Watcher is my future." Cade said simply. Elaina could think of nothing to reply, and so they walked in silence.