A Race of Trials

  “What is it?” I mumbled.

  A woman stepped forward, and I recognized her as the thin-lipped woman I’d overheard whispering outside the Emperor’s room.

  “As you know, many of the sentries are using humans to increase their mental agility—”

  “Kidnapped humans,” retorted Julian.

  “As I was saying,” the woman continued, “the kidnapped humans the champions have been using have nowhere to go now that their champions have been knocked out of the running, and we can’t release them until the Hellswan barriers are down—which we absolutely cannot do until we have a new ruler in place.” She eyed Julian, daring him to protest. When he didn’t, she continued, “So, we are at a loss as to what to do with them, and we thought that perhaps it might be easiest if they were to stay with you.”

  “It appears you have the space,” added the man dryly, looking about the huge—and empty—living quarters.

  “But not the resources,” Julian said. “You’d need to give us clothes and food for them.”

  The woman eyed him shrewdly. “The kitchen will be able to assist you, and I will ensure that clean clothing is provided.”

  She didn’t look too happy about her new responsibility, but I was glad that Julian was taking advantage of us having the upper hand. Plus, they were the ones that had put up the barriers in the first place…this was their doing.

  “I shall bring them along to you shortly. There will be six coming today—more, no doubt, tomorrow.” She turned back toward the door, the other ministers following her lead. Clearly the conversation was over.

  Six?

  It seemed like a lot, even for the amount of space we had. I didn’t really know where they would all sleep, especially if more came.

  “We need Jenney,” Julian said.

  I nodded. I didn’t know how to begin looking after a bunch of displaced kids—I could only imagine the state that some of them might be in. We were lucky, I supposed, that we’d been kidnapped as a group. Most of these children would have been taken alone, and left to navigate the terrifying realities of mind-sucking sentries and Nevertide on their own.

  Ruby and Hazel would know what to do, but they were off with their champions… doing God knew what.

  About an hour after they’d left us, the ministers returned with the six humans.

  “Here they are,” trilled the woman, shoving them into the room. “I’ve told the kitchen staff. They’re your responsibility now.”

  Her eyes gleamed. Clearly she was glad to be rid of them. She slammed the door shut behind her, and I imagined it would be the last time she’d set foot in here for the foreseeable future.

  Julian and I stared at the assortment of bedraggled humans standing in the middle of the living quarters. I counted six, as she’d promised.

  “Who are you?” one grubby-looking girl demanded. She had bright blue eyes and matted hair which was probably once red, and wore nothing more than sackcloth. Even so, with her hands on her hips and her chin jutting out, she looked like a potential pain in the backside.

  “I’m Benedict, this is Julian,” I replied. “We’ve been put in charge of all the humans till we can all get back home. You’re staying here with us.”

  “Here?” she asked, looking about the room with boggling eyes. “But this isn’t where the humans stay!”

  “It is in Hellswan,” corrected Julian. “Shortly we’ll assign you each a bed, and food will be brought up. Most of you need a bath.” He surveyed them all, some cleaner-looking than the others, but still in need of some fresh clothes and a hairbrush. “I’ll get someone to help with that. Just take a seat here”—he gestured to the sofas in the middle of the room—“and wait with Benedict.”

  Huh?

  I stared at him. I wasn’t comfortable being left alone with them—the youngest looked about five, what if he started crying?

  “I’m going to find Jenney,” he said to me. “You’ll be fine!”

  With that, he marched out of the door.

  “Uh… okay.” I hesitated, trying to come up with something we could do till Julian returned. “Why don’t you all tell me your names, and a bit about where you came from originally?”

  “I’ll start,” announced the blue-eyed girl. “I’m Yelena, I’m twelve, and I was taken from Rome in Italy, when I was on holiday with my parents. They tried to make me stand in a line to see some stupid old monument and so I ran off for ice-cream, but was kidnapped and brought here instead.”

  For such a traumatic experience, she seemed quite upbeat about it. Perhaps her sentry hadn’t been that bad, though she certainly didn’t look well-kept.

  The names and the stories continued. The youngest one, the boy I’d thought was five—who was actually seven, but so malnourished that I couldn’t tell—hung on to Yelena’s arm the entire time and sniffled. I wanted Ruby or Hazel to be here—they would have known what to do with him. All I could manage was what I hoped was a reassuring smile in his direction.

  “So how come you’re living in a place like this?” Yelena asked. “How come you’re being treated like royalty?”

  I frowned at her. She was already starting to irritate me with her accusatory tone and I made a mental note to ask Julian to put her bed miles from mine.

  “Our friend and my sister, Hazel, are helping Ash and Tejus—the prince of Hellswan. That’s why we’re getting special treatment. They’re the two likeliest champions—everyone’s saying so,” I replied huffily.

  “The kitchen boy’s the likeliest champion?” Yelena scoffed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, yeah, who was your champion? They obviously didn’t do very well,” I retorted.

  She rolled her eyes at me and flung herself backward on the sofa.

  Girls!

  Thankfully Jenney and Julian re-entered the room, and I left the kids sitting on the sofa. They were odd. Most of them just kept looking around, as if something was about to jump out at them.

  “How are they doing?” Julian asked in a faux whisper that could definitely be heard across the room.

  “Fine,” I replied shortly.

  “All right, kids!” Jenney shouted, ignoring both Julian and me. “Who wants a bath?”

  If their parents could have seen the enthusiastic response that resulted, they would have been proud. They all scrambled up from the sofa and rushed to Jenney as though she were holding a tray of chocolate doughnuts.

  Jenney led them out of the room, saying that she was taking them to a larger bathing area in the main quarters of the castle. Other servants emerged with an assortment of bedding, and Julian and I set about rearranging it so that we had enough space for the six to sleep, and more when it was needed.

  “We should have a girls’ area and a boys’ area,” I said to Julian, thinking of Yelena.

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  Other than the room that Julian and I were sharing, and Ruby’s room, there were five other rooms—some with beds, some just containing shelves and large chests or broken furniture. We cleared them as best we could and made up makeshift beds.

  “That should be enough for now,” Julian said. “We can make more if we need to. But they’ll have to start sleeping out in the living room.”

  “Well”—I shrugged—“at least we know the sofas are comfy.”

  “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?” he muttered.

  I thought of the downtrodden seven-year-old with the sniffles, and chatterbox Yelena.

  Yeah, you can say that again.

  Hazel

  Two carriages had come this morning to take Tejus and me, and Ruby and Ash, to the third trial. They had been driven by guards, and were pulled along by the strangest half-horse, half-bull creatures. The drive had been about an hour, and when we disembarked, we were surrounded by green rolling hills and open meadows. The walk down to the ravine would have been a pleasant one, were it not for the lurching anticipation I was experiencing. Tejus, on the other hand, appeared completely calm in the face of the u
pcoming trial. It was kind of irritating.

  I looked up at the dusty, dry banks from the bottom of the ravine. They were easily seven or eight meters high, with thin edges creating a causeway on which to climb to the top. I took a step forward, and heard a gloopy sound as my boot got caught in the thick silt that had been left behind by the river.

  Tejus pointed to the dark black holes that were dotted along the bank walls. “See these? They’re the caves of Helic—legend has it they have mythical properties, and used to be home to water sprites.”

  They certainly looked dark and foreboding, and I had a sickening feeling that they would house today’s trial.

  “Are you stuck?” asked a familiar voice from behind me.

  “Oh. Thanks,” I murmured, as Nikolay leant down to help me remove my boot from the mud.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, smiling up at me from his crouched position on the ground. Even surrounded by a smelly and muddy ravine, his good looks made my heart hammer more energetically than it should.

  “I’m fine,” I muttered.

  “Oh, come on, everyone knows these trials are harder on the humans than they are on the sentries.”

  “Hazel!” Tejus called, making me jump.

  “What?” I replied irritably, wishing he’d stop sounding so commanding all the time—it was starting to wear very thin.

  “We need to get up there. What are you doing?” He glared at Nikolay, then back at me. Nikolay bowed his head respectfully.

  “Good luck to both of you,” Nikolay uttered, smiling at me alone. Then he walked back the way he’d come.

  “Will you focus for one minute?” Tejus said.

  “My foot got stuck and Nikolay was kind enough to help me!” I hissed.

  “Well, if we fail, you’ll have all the time in the world for conversations because you’ll be stuck in Nevertide forever.”

  I clenched my fists. “Let’s go then!” I flounced off in the direction of the causeway, where I could see other champions and their humans all ascending one by one.

  The crowd had also started to arrive. I turned my head to face the opposite wall of the bank, and could see them all sitting and standing at the edge, with a good view into the caves.

  I could hear Tejus walking behind me, and we rapidly made our way up to the rows of caves. Red-robed watchers were directing the sentries to the opening of individual caves, and Tejus and I were assigned the one furthest away. As we walked along the causeway, I saw Ash and Ruby standing outside one of the caves, three before ours. I waved at Ruby and she smiled back at me, but her eyes reflected her unease.

  We approached our assigned spot, and I noticed a small, freshly dug hole at its entrance. I looked back. At every cave entrance I could see the same small hole.

  “What do you think those are?” I asked Tejus, my previous irritation with him forgotten.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, observing the hole. He shrugged. “Maybe we put something in it that we get from the cave. They go back for miles.”

  I peered inside. It was almost pitch black, but the dark didn’t frighten me. It was what might lie in its shadows that I was concerned with. I very much doubted that this was going to be a family-fun treasure hunt.

  Tejus’s gaze was now directed at the crowds on the other side of the bank.

  “They really love him, don’t they?” he mused softly.

  I saw what he meant. Team Ash was out in full force today. New flags had been created, not of the insignia of the kingdom, but from the same brown material of the servants’ uniforms that they wore in Hellswan castle. They chanted his name, and their echoes were amplified throughout the ravine.

  “They love the idea of him,” I concluded. “He hasn’t ruled them, and so they can project their ideas and dreams onto him.”

  Tejus looked at me with his eyebrows raised.

  “You are sometimes surprising,” he remarked.

  Before I could ask what he meant exactly, the crowd started to hush, and the minister of ceremonies stepped out from the far end of the causeway.

  “Welcome,” he announced grandly, “to the third, and possibly the most important event of the kingship trials.”

  The crowd roared with approval, and I glanced at Tejus. His expression seemed set in stone, no facial tic giving away what he might be feeling on the inside.

  “Today we will test our champions’ honesty, that they may come to understand their own truth, in order to see honor and honesty in others. The truth will set us free, and only unchained and proud can we hope to rule our people.”

  Proud was right.

  “Watchers will be delivering a liquid for each champion to consume,” he continued, and I watched as the red robes filed down the causeway, handing each champion a bottle of amber-colored liquid.

  “This liquid is taken from the flower honestas, native to our land. Many of you will know it to have hallucinatory properties, but do not be alarmed, the visions you will see will be the product of your imagination alone. You will face your innermost self in the caves—and that is what you will battle today.

  “The winner will be the first to emerge from the caves with the golden seed and plant it into the earth.” He gestured to the row of small holes that lay at each cave. “Those who come out of the cave without the seeds forfeit the trials.”

  A low horn sounded, and Tejus lifted the glass vial he’d been handed into the air. It glowed briefly in the sun, and then he swallowed the contents without leaving a drop.

  “Stay behind me, but mind to keep out of my way. I don’t know what will happen, or what I will become in those caves. I know this liquid well. Its effects are all-consuming and absolute.”

  With his warning ringing in my ears, I followed him into the darkness of the cave.

  In the absolute pitch black, I felt his mind reach out for mine. When our energy met, I felt his grasp strongly—it wasn’t the light feathery touches that I usually experienced, but more of an intense probing sensation that caused my temples to throb. I could feel his trepidation and anxiety filtering down our bond. I realized that the grasp was so tight because he was afraid.

  In a strange way, I understood instantly that the one thing that Tejus would be afraid of was himself.

  I clutched at the stone within my robes, and instantly the throbbing in my head died down. In the next moment, I was aware that I could see what Tejus was seeing—my viewpoint changing to being ahead in the cave—and I could no longer see the dark shadow of Tejus standing before me.

  I fought the strangeness of the feeling, and settled into accepting that I seemed to no longer be in my own mind.

  Tejus spun around, looking toward the light of the cave… but my body was gone. I should have been standing behind him, and I could feel that I still was, but Tejus couldn’t see me.

  Waves of isolation and panic washed over him, and he called out into the darkness, “Hazel! Where are you?”

  I tried to send my presence over the bond, as if I was knocking on the door to his mind, but either I wasn’t strong enough to do it, or the hallucination was set so deep that he couldn’t feel or hear me.

  “I’m here!” I called out, but his mind didn’t register my presence. It was like I’d completely disappeared.

  Instead, visions started to form in front of him. They were just shapes and wisps of gray at first, but soon they started to take on solid outlines, and I could make out the Hellswan castle, dark and looming with the moonlight behind it. Tejus focused on one of the towers, the furthest on the right, and a small, puppet-like figure flew out from one of the windows and down onto the ground below.

  It was a sickening image. Even though I couldn’t discern any facial features of the figure, the flying, helpless body and the stillness after it smacked into the ground was horrifying.

  I could practically taste Tejus’s fear and despair as he watched the image. No sooner had the scene played out than it started up again on a macabre loop—the figure appearing at the window, and
its fall to the ground below.

  His brother.

  I finally realized what we were seeing. It was his brother, Danto, the one who had supposedly committed suicide the night before the trial the emperor had prepared for his sons—where each one of them fought their way through his despicable labyrinth to win the sword of Hellswan and be put forward as the champion.

  Tejus closed his eyes as if he could block out the image, and I could feel the effort he was expelling trying to remove it from his mind.

  I clutched the stone harder, wanting the image to be gone as badly as he did.

  Eventually it started to fade.

  The gray wisps and shadows returned, and started to form again. This time we were inside the castle. Burning torches lined the walls, and the vulture heads set in gold gleamed in light.

  A young boy appeared in the corridor, smiling as he walked toward us. He was very pale, with dark hair, his robes trailing along on the stone floor behind him. I wouldn’t have recognized him in a million years had it not been for the fact that I’d seen him in another vision of Tejus’s—an old memory that he’d shared with me a few nights ago.

  The boy was Jenus, his banished brother.

  The boy opened his mouth, trying to say something, but no sound was coming out. He started to look cross, repeating himself and clenching his fists.

  I held the stone more tightly, trying to focus on the movement of the boy’s lips, willing for sound to come out. A high-pitched whine echoed around the cave, as if someone was turning a dial on an old radio and getting nothing but white noise. It settled down, and the boy’s voice could be heard faintly, as if it was coming from the very depths of the cave.

  “It’s not fair, Tejus!” the cry came. “You spend all your time with the others… you never want to play with me… what’s so wrong with me?”

  The childish plea was harrowing—not because of what was being said, I was pretty positive Benedict had moaned at me in a similar way before, but it was the fact that it was so well remembered, so full of resentment and anguish.