The Chosen of Anthros (13 page)

As he neared he could see the way the person was poised on their feet as if at any moment they might attack.
Like a coiled spring,
he thought.

He wasn’t surprised when Ephram introduced her as Camilla. She had an angular face and black hair that was longer in the front than it was in the back. She had twin blades strapped to her back, and the leather armor she wore was soft and black. She was almost like a shadow.

Camilla’s green eyes took in every inch of Rorick.

“How do you expect me to train an ox?” she asked Ephram. She didn’t bother looking at Rorick again. “He’s better suited for blunt objects.”

“That’s what I told him,” Rorick said.

She ignored him. “At least then his brutish size would work in his favor. No one will believe he is stealthy enough for a blade.”

“Then teach him power instead of stealth,” Ephram said. “He’s to be a guard, not a warrior.”

“He would make a good warrior,” Camilla commented, turning her eyes back to Rorick as if he was a specimen rather than a person. “Train him with an axe or a cudgel and put him on guard near the Fey Forest.” Camilla waved her hand as if dismissing Rorick from guard duty that night.

“I will not,” Ephram said. There was a note of authority in his voice.

Camilla sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Fine.”

She left and Rorick had to scurry behind her to keep up. “I don’t have a sword,” he told her.

“Better grab one,” she motioned dismissively behind her toward the weapon’s wrack.

He jogged back to where the weapons were kept in a lean-to beside one of the training yurts. He selected one he thought was a good heft, and had to run to catch up to Camilla. In the darkness he could barely make her out until he saw the rigid movements of her slight frame.

“I won’t have time to train you tonight,” she told him. “When we are on guard duty we guard, we don’t mess around. Tomorrow before your duty we will train, and we will train hard.”

“Ephram showed me the basics today,” Rorick told her.

“You will learn as we go,” she told him. “Basics and advanced, it all comes down to experience. You won’t practice with me all the time, you will start out battling some of the other students and learn from there.”

Rorick didn’t say anything.

“We don’t use practice blades when I teach,” she said.

“What? How am I supposed to not lose a limb or something?” Rorick asked.

“You better be good,” she said. She smiled over at him, but there was no humor in the gesture. “If we used practice blades, then it would allow you to be sloppy. Real weapons and you’re more on edge.”

They were silent the rest of the trip down the switchback hills of the different levels of Haven. Finally they were below the last level of houses and entering the more overgrown portion of the mountain Haven perched on.

Camilla took up a position near a large bush that she nearly disappeared within and Rorick stood beside her.

“Well, find a spot,” she told him.

“And do what?” he asked.

“Guard?” she said to him sarcastically. “We watch the hill, make sure no one is coming or going. Try to hide.”

Rorick shrugged and found a spot close to Camilla and tried to fade into his surroundings like she did.

“So what brings you here?” Camilla asked in a whisper some time later. It felt like hours to Rorick, but he knew that guard shifts happened in six hour increments.

“A friend of mine caught the shadow plague, her father sent us to Agaranth to her aunt.” Rorick recounted the story of how Mattelyn hadn’t been at the house they arrived at, and they had to travel through many hardships to find her. When they did, the harbingers rescued them and brought them to Haven.

A silence hung in the air between them. Rorick thought for a moment that Camilla wasn’t going to speak again when finally she did.

“Harbingers destroyed my home,” Camilla said as if it didn’t matter. Her tone was more like she was commenting on the weather rather than talking about the destruction of her family.

“You mean harbingers of darkness?” Rorick asked.

“What does that matter? All harbingers have darkling wyrd running through their veins, whether they act upon it or not.”

Rorick couldn’t really argue with her. As far as he knew once they were trained, the harbingers didn’t have darkling wyrd any longer, just wyrd. But he could be wrong. He had heard many times traveling with Abagail that the emotion behind the wyrding was what mattered. Maybe the darkling wyrd never left a person once they were infected. Maybe it was always a balancing act. Would he always have his promise to kill Abagail if she turned into a darkling hanging over his head? Was she always going to be at risk of becoming like what destroyed his home?

“So why are you here?” he asked. “Why did you come to Haven to protect harbingers if you think they’re all evil?”

“Hope,” she said. “I hoped they weren’t evil.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“There’s war coming, Rorick,” she said. “Good and evil kind of war. You can see it already. Agaranth wasn’t always like this. The shadow plague comes, and the shadow plague perverts and it’s already killing all of what’s good in Agaranth. The harbingers aren’t only to blame, but they are a big part of it.”

“The harbingers of darkness,” he asserted again.

“What does it matter? The harbingers are on both sides of it. They are the reason for this war. It’s better to watch an enemy close up than it is far away.”

“But you guard them!” Rorick said incredulously. “How can you hate them?”

“I never said I hate them,” Camilla barked. “I just don’t trust them.”

“And what, you’re planning on killing them?” Rorick asked.

“If I were planning such a thing, would I be talking to you about it right now?” There was a smirk in her voice. “I plan no such thing. My cousin, Gil, is a harbinger. I’m merely here to watch and guard and make sure they remain harbingers of light. That’s the true reason we guard.”

Rorick’s stomach was in knots. He didn’t know exactly what Camilla had been getting at. Was she trying to recruit him for something? Was this something he was supposed to tell Ephram about?

She hadn’t said she was going to go on a killing spree,
he told himself.
Honestly you should be watching for the same thing. If she’s right, and what you’ve heard is right, then maybe a harbinger of light could go dark at any time. Maybe Abagail is right to be afraid. Catching a harbinger of darkness at the quick does make sense.

He let his eyes roam the side of the hill and was just about to say something to Camilla when he saw a shadow move toward the base of the hill. Another joined it.

“Camilla,” Rorick whispered.

His teacher eased closer. He pointed off into the darkness where he’d seen the shadows.

She watched with him for a time and nodded. “We see those shadows every night,” she told him. “They never come any closer, and we can’t tell where they come from. But we watch, and we guard.”

“Are they darklings?” he asked, casting his glance in her direction.

“If they were, you’d think they would attack,” she said. She sounded as though she wasn’t completely sure herself. “But it’s almost every night at this time. Which means that noise you hear coming down the hill is our replacement.”

Rorick nodded but waited for Camilla to move before he did.

“They’re back,” she said to the burly man that came to take their place. “About five of them tonight.”

“I thought maybe they had moved on,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high for all his baulk. “I haven’t seen them for about a week.”

“What do you think they are?” Rorick asked the man.

“No one knows,” Camilla said in a way that shut him up. “Besides, it’s time to turn in. Take your sword with you and head home. You have an early start tomorrow. Meet me at the sparring ring at first light.”

Rorick nodded and headed up the hill. Camilla didn’t follow him though, she stayed behind with the other guard, their heads together and whispering.

“You’re breath smells like meat.” Skye scrunched up his nose and looked sidelong at Abagail.

“I just got done eating, what do you expect?” She asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “We can’t all live on twigs and berries you know.”

“Have you ever tried it?” Skye asked.

“Yes, while I was traveling with Celeste when I first arrived here.” It was strange for Abagail to think of arriving in Agaranth from O. So much had happened since she’d come to the strange new world. She’d met so many creatures and beings and learned so much about wyrd that she would never have learned about or met on O. The worlds were so different from one another. It was almost like she was living in a dream.

“And did you die?” Skye asked.

“I nearly died several times,” Abagail reminded him. “Many times while in your company.”

He nudged her with his shoulder laughter clear in his violet eyes. Abagail stumbled and nearly fell over a barrel outside the barn. Only his hand clasping her gloved hand kept her from falling.

“See, and here you go again trying to kill me!”

“I remember darklings and your plague going rampant, I don’t ever remember me trying to kill you,” Skye said. “I even remember you nearly killing us a few times because of your plague, but never me trying to off you.” He helped steady her, but he didn’t remove his hand. Abagail was okay with that. The butterflies were back in her stomach, tickling places low in her abdomen. She didn’t want to move her hand too suddenly or the elf might notice he was still holding her hand and drop it.

She liked the way it felt, her hand in his.

Skye tightened his hand and the butterflies swirled higher.
He might end up killing me after all,
she thought.
If not intentionally than from the effect he has on me.

Abagail pulled herself out of her thoughts and back to the present. They were walking again, she hadn’t noticed that. What she had noticed was Skye wasn’t shying from her hand. He’d said last night that he wasn’t scared of her plague, and it seemed that he was proving that now.

It’s not like he can catch it through the glove,
she thought.

“You’re inside your head,” Skye said.

“I’m sorry,” Abagail said. She focused her attention on the twilight darkened path before them. They were heading out of the upper rim of Haven and into a large copse of trees between New Landanten and the village of harbingers.

“Why do you do that so much?” Skye wondered.

“What is it that I do?” Abagail asked him, glancing over at the elf. His eyes were fast on her face.

“Retreat inside your head, as if you like it better there than you do out here with everyone else.”

She shrugged. The trees were coming up fast. It was an evergreen forest. Snow clung heavily to the boughs of the trees, but the path into the forest was clear like any wood road she may have tread around her own home on O.

“I don’t know. I must be good company?” she said with a smile.

“Well, I think so. At least, when you talk.” He smirked.

Abagail looked away from the elf’s face as a blush reddened her cheeks. She stumbled over a root that she hadn’t seen there before. Again, Skye caught her.

“Or when you do something stupid like that,” he said. He laughed and steadied her. “Don’t worry, as long as you can keep your feet from killing you for a few more moments, we will be where I wanted to show you.”

“If you remember, you’re the one that shoved me into the barrel.”

“I shoved you?” Skye smiled at her. “No, it was a playful nudge.”

“I think you may be more dark elf than light elf. You’re working for them, aren’t you?” she wondered.

He splayed his free hand against his chest. “You caught me. I bring all the pretty harbingers out here and slay them where no one will ever find their bodies. It’s a fault of mine.”

“I knew this was all too good to be true,” Abagail said. “But I think I could probably take you.”

“You do, huh?”

“Yea. I’m bigger than you and probably faster.”

“I’m taller than you, and you’re not faster than my little elf light show that I can do.”

“Hmm,” Abagail itched her chin thoughtfully. “Well, I will just get angry and create a big plague cloud and put an end to your flittering about.”

Skye laughed a loud laugh and pulled her closer to him. Abagail let him. Again she was painfully aware of the heat his body was putting off. There was a smell about him too, a smell like lavender that mingled with the woodsy scent of the darkening forest around them.

In the distance Abagail could see spots of light bloom in the underbrush. Pinpoints of yellows and vibrant greens that blended in with the leaves. Reds and blue lights flickered in the tree branches around them and a strange laughter, almost like the tinkling of bells made her breath catch.