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It took them the better part of the next day to arrive at Highgate. The tall gates of the mountain pass city stood across a clearing. The city was beyond, and on the far side of the city was another pair of gates before the Pass of Hearn. They towered even higher, sealing the way through the pass. The Fangs of Grunae loomed above them, their jagged peaks stabbing the sky. Dark gray clouds rolled in from across the mountains, their edges stained the rusty orange of a bright sunset.
A strange silence filled the air. Rain felt she had to speak or she’d be swallowed in it. “Awfully quiet,” she managed, whispering.
Shea stopped his horse and pointed at the top of the gate. Rain stopped her horse next to his, and Whiskey on his other side. “The fire’s not lit.” He looked at Whiskey, wide-eyed. “It’s always lit.”
“Something’s not right,” Whiskey mumbled. “Follow me quietly, slowly. Keep your eyes open, and don’t speak unless you need to.”
He led them along the path to the main gates. The sun finished its dip below the horizon, sending fiery hues into the sky. The sharp, cold wind blew through Rain’s cloak and settled in her bones. She pulled her cloak closer around her, but kept a hand on the bow hung over her shoulder. Fearing the worst, she wanted to be prepared.
They stopped in front of the iron gate, and Whiskey peered up to where the operator should have been. Nobody was there.
“What now?” Rain whispered, seeing her breath fog in the cold air.
Whiskey dismounted. He stood before the gate and placed both hands upon the great doors. He muttered something and a huge gust of wind blew around behind the gate, unlatching it. Whiskey pushed the gate open.
“Was that innate magic?” Rain asked at the same time Shea said, “How did you do that?”
“Elemental. Hush.”
They rode slowly through the gate. There were no sounds of kids playing, no scent of food cooking, no fires billowing smoke out of chimneys. There were no people.
Shea’s face had gone white. “I can’t believe it.”
In the dim light, they came to the first house on the main road, and Shea dismounted. The door had markings on it, three thick vertical lines in a row, stained a dark reddish brown. He fingered them, she saw, with shaky hands.
“Craetons,” he murmured.
He set a determined look on his face and opened the door, taking a look around. He closed it quickly, shaking his head. “It’s Brygern all over again.”
“Where are the people?” Rain asked. She looked around the street and glimpsed a few places where a charred hole had been burnt through a roof or a wall.
“They must have been taken somewhere,” Shea said. “I can’t think of anything else that could have happened to not leave a mess.” He pointed to the marks on the door. “I’m pretty sure these show the number of people who lived in the house. Whiskey, you know more about magic than I do. Is there some reason Myrna might want people?”
“I’m not entirely sure. There could be, but I didn’t study spirit magic as thoroughly as Myrna. I only learned what I did so I could protect myself and Rain.”
“I need to go to my captain’s house, to see if anything’s left. Maybe he had some idea of what this attack was about.” He mounted his horse and hurried off down the street.
“I’ll go with you,” Rain called after him, but he was too far ahead. She looked back at Whiskey. He nodded, letting her go. It would be better to keep an eye on
Shea, especially if the captain was somehow still in the city.
“I need to look around a little. Meet up with you later,” Whiskey said.
She kicked Pan into a quick trot, glimpsing Shea at the end of the street in front of her. They wound through the empty streets, speeding past ruined houses with blood marks on the doors. Despite the clear lightning strike patterns, none of the buildings were burnt down. She could barely look around her, only able to imagine how Willshire must look by now.
Finally Shea slowed down in what seemed like a town square. Rain called out and he glanced behind him, but didn’t stop, walking down a side street. A few minutes later, they stood before a house that seemed like any other.
Rain dismounted and walked to his side. “What is this place?”
“Captain Marthus’ house. We always met in taverns, but he told me where he lived, in case anything went wrong.” He stood staring at the three lines of blood above the insignia on the front door. Rain didn’t speak, afraid to upset him. Finally, he spoke again. “Captain Marthus. His wife. His son. Maybe they had wrong beliefs, but they were good people.” He kicked the door and it slammed open, going askew in its frame.
The room was as destroyed as any other place they’d seen. Glass shards from windows were scattered across the floor. Papers and books lay strewn all over. Gas lamps, chairs, and a large table in one corner of the room were all smashed or broken.
Shea started gathering the papers on the floor, looking through them. Rain stood awkwardly waiting, not sure if she should be leafing through Knights’ papers.
“There’s nothing here,” Shea said, dropping the pile of papers on the ruins of the table. “Nothing about an attack, or craetons, or anything. And no sign of where they might have gone.”
Shea walked to a back room, this time opening the door carefully. Rain glimpsed remnants of a large bed, table, and chair. Shea went inside and bent down, picking up something from the ground.
“His cloak pin.” He turned around so she could see it. A gold lion.
“We don’t know that he’s dead, Shea.”
He looked up and she could see the tears in his eyes, ready to fall. He cleared his throat, holding them back. “I can’t take this. What’s happened to all these people? Maybe Captain Marthus and his men killed my parents, but what about the rest of the people in this city? In Brygern? In Willshire? I’m sure now that this can’t be the work of the Knights. It’s got to be that Myrna that Whiskey talks about.” He shook his head. “Someone’s got to stop this.”
Rain realized that Shea hadn’t yet witnessed the full power of a Wingmaster, or the gripping fear of a spirit magic spell. “Just wait. Soon enough, you’ll be glad you own that aegis.”
Shea gave her a grave look. “Do you know what it does?”
Rain couldn’t see any point in not telling him, especially now, when his superiors were missing. He couldn’t expose Whiskey or herself to anyone very easily. “All I know is that it protects against a certain fear spell, based in spirit magic. I think it’s a favorite of Myrna’s. It saved our lives in Willshire, and again in the woods last night. You’ll have to ask Whiskey about where it might have come from.”
Shea nodded. “Thank you. You have no idea how good it feels to be with people who believe in the good of magic again. I was beginning to doubt myself, and my mother’s beliefs.”
For a person from the city, he wasn’t half bad. “I don’t know much about magic yet,” Rain said, “but from what I do know, your mother shouldn’t have been killed for what she did.”
“Thank you.” He smiled.
“Let’s go,” she said, motioning toward the front door. “I don’t want to keep Whiskey wondering where we are.” Shea held the cloak pin firmly in his hand and followed her outside.
They walked silently toward the horses, and Rain led them out of the side street into the darkening town square.
“Whiskey!” Rain yelled, looking around for any sign of movement.
Immediately, she knew her loud voice had been a mistake. A deep growl seemed to come from the buildings around the square, one voice and many all at once.
“Get behind me!” Shea whispered to Rain as he unsheathed his sword with a ring of metal.
“No,” she said. She didn’t want to hide this time. She wanted to prove to him that she could have defended herself against the craeton outside Fairfield.
Around them in the near darkness, shapes crept out from the shadows, the moon illuminating fur and fangs. Wolves. They were much larger than the wolves in the forests around Willshire, with black fur and all-black eyes that seemed to suck in light rather than reflect it. They were strangely similar to how Damien’s eyes looked when Myrna was speaking through him. The aegis warmed her skin, and she wondered if it was countering any spirit magic fear spells. With a shaky hand she drew an arrow from her quiver and nocked it.
“I’ve never seen wolves attack humans like this,” Shea said under his breath. Still a fair distance away, at least ten wolves had emerged from behind the buildings and were slowly approaching, deep growls still sounding from their throats. Their teeth glistened in the moonlight.
“If I shoot, will they all rush at us?”
Shea looked at her and whispered, “I can handle it. I’ve been trained to fight. You haven’t! If you shoot, they might attack you instead. Don’t shoot.”
“At all? There are at least ten of them! You can’t take them all at once.”
If she was going to be any help to him at all, whether he wanted her to or not, she decided she had to shoot. If they rushed them and got too close, she’d have to use her dagger, and she wasn’t trained to use it. She drew the string back, focusing on a wolf still a reasonable distance away in the town square. Shutting out her thoughts, there was only her arrow and the wolf. There was no distance between her and her target, as if she could reach out and touch it.
A second before she was going to release the arrow, the nearest wolf snarled and bolted for Shea. Rain’s concentration faltered, but she switched her target to the attacking wolf as the other wolves began to run towards them. She let the arrow fly. It pierced her target, the wolf letting out an agonizing howl. The animal fell onto the stone paved street. It whimpered in pain and went limp.
“Rain! I told you not to shoot!” Shea said, but she ignored him, nocking another arrow.
The wolves were all running towards them now. She shot another, but the closest one was too close. It leaped at Shea and he whirled his blade like a trained swordsman, slaying it in one swift motion. He stepped in front of her, protecting her from the nearest animals, but restricting her range to shoot.
From behind Shea, she focused, picking a target far off. The arrow flew true once again, when she felt the distance between her and the animal was nonexistent.
A sudden burst of fire came from across the town square and the howls of wolves in pain reverberated in the night. Rain and Shea were both surprised. Two wolves had reached Shea at once, and he concentrated on grappling with one as the other bit his leg. He cried out in pain and Rain worried that he had been seriously wounded. In no time both animals fell at his feet and he continued slaying the beasts that came at him.
Another blast of fire came from the other side of the square, making the wolves howl, and Rain squinted in the darkness to try and see what was causing it. In her distraction, she suddenly found herself on the ground, a wolf towering over her. She tried to shield herself with her bow and the wolf grabbed it with its teeth. Using all her strength without drawing on her magic, she tried to keep the wolf’s claws away from her, but the bow broke in two.
In a blind panic she tried to draw her dagger, and the wolf nearly had her at the throat, but it fell on her instead, forcing the air out of her lungs. She felt warm liquid ooze over her clothing, but knew it wasn’t her own blood.
Shea stood over her and lifted the animal off, then helped her to her feet. “Thank you,” she said, and realized the wolves had stopped coming. The streets were eerily quiet, and Shea turned his back to her again, sword still at the ready.
A figure strode across the square with another larger shape behind it. When it was close enough, she realized who it was.
“Whiskey?” she said, incredulous. “Was that your fire?”
“Just a bit of elemental trickery,” he said, stopping in front of them, eyeing the dead wolves. “You’re pretty good with that bow, yourself.”
“Thanks. But it broke in half,” she said, showing him the pieces.
“We’ll find you a new one, not to worry.”
Shea shook his head. “She could have gotten seriously injured. If I hadn’t saved her just then—”
“You look pretty injured yourself,” Whiskey said.
Shea moved his leg slightly and grimaced. “I’m alright,” he said through gritted teeth. “Just some cuts.” He whistled loudly, and his dark horse came around the corner of a building. Pan followed. They didn’t seem to be injured, only frightened. Shea tried to walk to his horse and groaned in pain.
“Slow down there, lieutenant. Let’s get you bandaged up.” Whiskey shuffled through the saddlebags to find first aid items, and set about dressing Shea’s leg wound. Rain winced in sympathy as Whiskey applied the poultice.
When he was done, he helped Shea on his horse so he wouldn’t have to use his left leg. He checked with Rain that she hadn’t been hurt, and then the three of them set off down the road at a fast walk, leaving the bloody animal carcasses where they were.
“Why did they attack us?” Rain asked as they passed through street after street of broken, blood-marked houses. “Their eyes seemed just like the Wingmaster’s, or Damien’s.”
“Did they? I didn’t get a good look at the eyes. If you’re right, I would have been paralyzed if I’d seen them. Damien probably used his Demonmaster powers to make them attack.” He looked over at Shea, who was rather quiet. “Lucky you had your aegis, eh boy?”
“I didn’t feel any sort of fear spell…”
“Exactly,” Whiskey said. “You weren’t unnaturally afraid. You just felt any normal amount you would feel in that situation. The aegis shields it completely. You did see the eyes though, right?”
“Yeah, eerie. What do you mean, ‘normal amount’? A Knight can withstand more than a few rabid wolves before being scared.” He grinned, looking at Rain.
She rolled her eyes, amazed he could be so lighthearted after a battle like that. “What are you going to do now? Do you have to go back to Eastcastle?”
He shook his head. “These past few days I’ve finally seen proof that everything I learned from my mother was true, and found clues about what my father might have gotten into before he died. I’m prepared to leave the Knights, at this point.”
“You can’t just leave the Knights,” Whiskey said. “They’ll kill you.”
“I know. But, I can also continue investigating what happened, which is probably what the general would want me to do anyway. I’ll come back before too long, and explain my long absence as a deep investigation. Which is what it is. I’m coming with you over the Fangs.”
Rain gave him a brief smile, not sure whether she enjoyed the thought of him coming with them or not.
Whiskey nodded. “As long as you know what you’re getting into. We’re not going to start crossing the pass tonight. It’s treacherous terrain, even in the daylight. We should find a safe place to stay till morning.”
“I met with the Knights quite frequently at the White Ram,” Shea said. “They have decent beds. We could see if there are a few of them intact.”
“Sounds good. Rain, could you get a torch ready? Almost all the lights have burnt out here. It’s clearly been abandoned for at least a few days.”
“Couldn’t you just use your magic?” she asked him as she started shuffling through her saddlebags.
Whiskey shook his head. “It takes much more energy to keep a flame going with magic than to just create the spark to start the fire. You don’t want to waste your energy—you never know when you might need it. Your first magic lesson,” he smiled.
“Why did you use magic back there in the first place?” Rain asked as she let the rags on a wooden dowel soak in oil. “I thought we were trying not to be followed.”
“You two needed help and I needed some practice. I haven’t used my magic to fight like that in years. Besides, they’re looking for you. The only one with innate magic. There are more elves and others who still use elemental magic—in hiding—than you’d think, on this side of the Fangs.”
***
After leaving their horses in the White Ram’s stable, Whiskey opened the front door. Rain tried to ignore the lines of blood on the door. Shea held the torch out and walked in first. The room was smashed to bits like any other place, but it was also lightning-strike free. Rain kept up hope that she could sleep in a real bed another night before braving the long road ahead.
Whiskey went behind the bar and looked around a minute, then pulled out two oil lamps. “I wasn’t sure I’d find these in one piece, but let’s make use of them and not burn the place down with a torch.”
“Good plan,” Shea said, putting out the torch while Whiskey lit the lamp.
They foraged a little in the kitchen for food, finding most things either smashed open or gone bad. Even so, Rain found enough food to make a good stew, remembering a recipe her mother had taught her, and made the men wait outside the kitchen.
Soon, she brought out three steaming bowls and set them on the table in the common room where Shea and Whiskey were talking.
“Here we are. One of my mother’s many famous recipes.”
Whiskey took a sip. “Well done. One of my favorites.”
“This is amazing,” Shea said between mouthfuls, and grinned at her.
Rain smiled briefly and then set about eating her own bowl of stew. For a while, the sound of spoons against bowls was the only thing filling the silence.
“I don’t know about you two,” Whiskey said when he finished eating, “But I’m beat. I’m rather out of practice when it comes to magic, and I tire a little more easily. I’m going to look around upstairs for a bed.” He stood up and left his bowl on the bar, then picked up an oil lamp.
“Goodnight, Whiskey,” Rain said as he went upstairs. She lifted her bowl a little to get the last bit of broth.
“I’m tired as well,” Shea said and stood up, leaving his bowl on the table and taking the other oil lamp. “You look finished, want to go scout for a couple of nice beds?”
“Gladly,” she said. She left her own bowl on the table and followed Shea up the stairs. He was limping slightly from the wolf bite.
The light from Whiskey’s lamp came through the cracks in the doorframe from the last room on the left. Shea looked in the rooms on the left side and Rain looked on the right, but every room was a disaster. Finally they came to the last room, across the hall from Whiskey’s. It was a bigger room, with a large bed, fit for two people. The room was untouched except for a broken chair.
“Pretty good, considering,” Shea said, putting the oil lamp on the small table. “I’ll take the floor.” He took one of the two pillows off the bed and a blanket folded on the end of the bed, and started setting them up on the other side of the room.
“I wouldn’t want to take the bed from you. I don’t know when we’ll next be able to use real beds, and you’ve traveled a lot more than I have, probably sleeping outdoors…”
“I’m used to it. You’re not. Don’t worry about it.” He swiftly took off his light armor and boots, leaving on his shirt and pants.
Rain sat on the edge of the bed, taking off her own shoes. She looked over at Shea and saw he was checking his leg wound.
“How is it doing?” she asked.
“Painful, but manageable,” he said.
She frowned in sympathy and sat up against the pillow on the bed. Shea was much different than she originally thought, and she almost felt bad for originally thinking so badly of a city man. He had only been being friendly, not pushing for more.
Curling up against the pillow, she drew the covers over her, too self-conscious to take off her traveling clothes. She tried to relax, but being in an inn again made memories from home rush back to her. Her mother could be downstairs making preparations for tomorrow’s meals. Her father could be splitting firewood out back. But it wasn’t true. Even if it was, they weren’t even her real parents. She felt another wave of tears coming on, but held them back.
She rolled over so she could face Shea. He was lying down, quiet. “Shea are you asleep yet?” she asked, trying her best to keep the despair out of her voice.
He rolled over and faced her. “Not quite,” he said drowsily.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
That seemed to wake him up a little more, and he nodded.
“How old were you… when your parents died? How did you deal with it? I… can’t sleep.” It was more like her life had been turned upside-down, but she didn’t want to turn into a basket case in front of him.
He sat up. There was pity in his eyes. “I was thirteen, barely a teenager. My father’s death was a blow, but my mother’s…” He ran a hand through his hair, looking at the floor. “It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen. I just couldn’t accept that it was a suicide.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rain said quietly.
“Joining the Knights helped in a way I think nothing else would have. Giving myself a goal—to find out the truth of what happened to my parents—helped me focus and, really, to stay sane. I’m not sure how smart that thought was, though, that I could find out the whole truth. The only clue I had though, was my aegis, which my father had given to me a short time before he died. But I couldn’t tell anyone about it, since my father told me so, and nothing I studied with the Knights mentioned it. In all the years since then, meeting you and Whiskey has been the only lead I’ve found.
“A few times, I thought I was crazy, that I was wrong and my parents’ deaths were what they said it was. Two accidents. I was lucky, though, to be able to join as young as I was. Looking back, they probably let me join because they wanted to ingrain their beliefs on me, and not have to kill me like they did my parents. They’d get a new recruit out of me.” He grinned. “They had no idea I would never truly follow their beliefs.”
He looked at her, his eyes glinting in light of the oil lamp “I could easily say meeting you two has been the best thing that’s happened to me.”
She smiled back at him, the threat of tears now gone. “I’m happy for you, then. I’m glad to help.”
“Rain, I can’t imagine how it feels to witness your parents’ death. I only saw my mother, and she was already gone. You’ve also discovered that you’re a fostered child, and only a day later. I do know how it feels to lose the parents you grew up with, though, so if there’s anything I can do, just tell me.”
“Thanks. It means a lot,” Rain said.
Shea lay back down. “Goodnight, Rain.”
“Goodnight.” She shut her eyes, wishing for better dreams than the night before.