follows, interrupted periodically by the chatter and movement of the soldiers. I wait nervously in my spot, my eyes focused on the entrance hopeful that the soldiers will leave and my ears fixed on the stairs behind me fearful that the sound of footsteps will begin echoing up toward us.
After a long while, another unit of soldiers emerges from a canyon to the north. Wade, who up to this point has remained idle, becomes more attentive as they approach. They are dressed in the same sort of strange armor and uniforms that the others are wearing, but something about them seems to agitate him, perhaps the tall soldier leading at their front.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“Severin,” Wade replies tersely, as though simply saying the name produces a sour taste in his mouth. “He’s captain over the forces that protect Sanctuary.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I suggest, sensing Wade’s obvious displeasure at seeing him.
He doesn’t respond, nor do I get the impression that I want to hear the answer, so I just watch as Severin ushers his men across the bridge and into the fortress. My unease worsens with each passing moment. I gaze at the top of the stairway, anticipating the inevitable sound of footsteps, which eventually begins clattering up the tower. They are coming.
I look around to see if there is some place we could hide, somewhere I might have missed, but nothing stands out. The top of the tower is simply a large platform covered with stone roofing, something that seems strange since the only covered towers in Kalepo are decorative ones. Such an extravagance feels altogether out of place here, that is unless this fortress needs protection from both the ground and the air.
The thought frightens me a little as I recall the two animals we saw fighting after we crossed the Lethe. Considering the rich diversity of the plains, anything seems possible, including the existence of great winged creatures. I heard many myths in Kalepo about flying beasts, not that I ever believed them. Now, I’m not quite sure what I believe.
Wade gestures at me to come where he is, and I hurry over, kneeling behind him at the far side of the tower. Once I’m in place, he situates himself even more in front of me so that I can barely see the arched exit to the stairs. He is just placing the palm of his hand over the handle to his gun when Severin and two other soldiers emerge from below.
Severin immediately steps back when he realizes that he is not alone, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he looks past Wade right at me, studying me like he doesn’t know what to make of me. Finally, he opens his mouth, but his voice still lacks any semblance of emotion.
“This is the girl?” he asks, his eyes shifting to Wade.
Wade nods, standing up and letting his arm hang down much more relaxed. I get up as well, stepping shyly forward.
“Meaning what?” I say hesitantly.
“Meaning I need to get you back to Sanctuary as quickly as possible.”
Severin steps forward as though he means to immediately take me and escort me back down the stairs himself, but Wade resolutely steps in the way to cut him off.
“That is my task,” he declares roughly, almost viciously like a prowling beast making claim over its prey. “You obviously have other things you need to be worri—”
“Because I’m incapable of doing both?” Severin snaps back. “She is coming with me now. You brought her this far, so I will let you accompany us since Anastasia will need to speak with you, but the princess is no longer yours to protect. Your role in this came because we had no other choice. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are welcome within the mountain.”
A few tense seconds come and go, Wade finally yielding to Severin’s demands after giving me a frustrated look. Severin, too, stares at me, apologetically as his softened voice indicates.
“I’m sorry to be so pithy, but with everything that has happened, I can’t take any risks with your safety,” he says, then glaring at Wade. “Your escort’s talents for staying alive don’t usually extend to those around him.”
Wade glances at me again, but his tongue remains behind his sealed lips. The angry look in his eyes suggests that he is not in a position to defend his character, which makes me feel for him. Severin is obviously in charge here. Still, Severin’s words make me once again question Wade’s true motivation for bringing me all this way. Maybe it will be best for us to part ways once he receives whatever he did this for.
“Kaela,” Wade then says turning to me, “only you can keep yourself safe.”
The way Wade speaks comes across as caring, even in the austere tone that he uses. Then, without another word, he disappears down the stairs, and I immediately regret even considering for a moment that I would be better off without him. Whatever feeling of security he had provided vanishes the instant of his departure, even now that I am in the midst of a whole guard of men.
Severin walks to the edge of the tower and looks eastward as I stand in a stupor of thought wondering why Wade would leave me with someone he so obviously despises if he cared about me at all, but I stop myself. Confusion is swirling around me like the clouds around a whirlwind. I don’t know if I can trust Severin, Sanctuary, or anyone for that matter. The only person I’m sure I will be able to trust is Eliana. Hopefully Anastasia, whoever she is, will be able to help me find her.
After a moment, Severin turns around, prompting me to follow him down the stairs. As we descend and go from room to room, I realize that the number of guards is even greater than I’d thought. Most of them scurry about hastily with the work of refortifying themselves within the structure. Most of the bodies have been removed, though there are stacks of them in a few areas. I hesitate to imagine what they’ve done with the others, guessing that it would be easiest to just drop them down into the lava trench beneath the bridge.
Once we are outside, Severin walks purposefully toward one of the sentinels standing guard beyond the entryway.
“Which way did he go?”
“North,” the guard answers.
“Why are you so worried about him?” I interrupt, eager to understand just who Wade is, or who the people here believe him to be.
“I think a better question,” Severin snarls back, “is why you aren’t.”
The scowl he then gives me is one not too different from how he looked at Wade up in the tower. However he thinks I should be, I’m not acting like that person, and it seems to be making him suspicious. Severin hardly knows me, and if he did, he would understand that I’m just trying to figure things out. He has no reason to distrust me, so the fact that he does makes me feel exactly the same about him. Wade is right. I’m the only person who can keep me safe.
I make it a point to avoid Severin as he leads me and a couple dozen soldiers on a trek north through the same pass he used to get to the fortress. I trail at the back of the unit’s formation, at least as far as Severin seems to allow. One of the soldiers at the rear, a woman, slows to join me. She doesn’t say anything at first, but an hour or so in, she breaks the silence.
“What’s it like above the clouds?”
The politeness of her voice surprises me. I’ve never known soldiers to have personalities of which to speak, other than the kind that Severin demonstrated the moment he opened his mouth. It makes me immediately like her.
“Very blue,” I answer, half-smiling at the thought of the sky.
“That’s a color you don’t see here very much,” she comments.
I hadn’t thought of it, but it’s true. When I try to imagine anything I’ve seen in the plains possessing some amount of blue other than the greyish water from the lakes and rivers below Kalepo’s plateau, I come up empty. Without the sky, the world seems to take on a completely different spectrum of colors. Most people down here have probably never seen the sky, or the sun or the moon for that matter.
“Have you ever seen the stars?” I ask.
“No,” she says much more gloomily. “It must be nice, having light even in the darkness of night, not being afraid of it.”
With that, the conversation sto
ps for a moment as I struggle to think of anything else to say, feeling sorry for her and all those who had to grow up in this miserable place. Could I have enjoyed my childhood in Kalepo’s peace and safety knowing that so many people below the mist live in such awful fear?
“My name is Kaela,” I finally manage.
“Strange,” she replies, trailing off.
“Why is that?”
“There is a girl from the legends of my ancestors named Kaela, one who lived in seclusion on top of a mountain. My great grandmother told my mother about her when they came here because the mountain you come from reminded her of the story. My mother loved her grandmother and the tales that she would tell, so much so that she named me after her, Minerva.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” I say.
“Thank you.”
At that moment, Severin glares back at us as though Minerva shouldn’t be talking with me so casually, so our conversation comes to an abrupt end. My eyes return to admiring Sanctuary, which is now so close that it hangs over us like a giant reaching up into the mist.
The canyons here are higher than the ones I traversed with Wade, folding into Sanctuary and allowing me to see the mountains of Kalepo to our west. They turn northwest suggesting that they have reached their end. I always wondered if the mountains went on forever, and it seems that they don’t. Instead, more plains stretch into distant hills to the north.
Early in what