The next morning the somber parade continued. They reached the Low Pass and pulled into the eastern lands. Olen played student as her cage-mate explained that Ma’alabrad Forest and the doorway to Nerikan were actually very close to Millthrace but on the far side of the mountains.
“Were we eagles, we would make the trip in one day, soaring over the snow caps,” he said, seemingly accepting her company. “Thankfully the Iron Road makes for a much longer journey—,” he said, as the cage shifted on the rough ground. “But a less graceful one also!”
He had taken to sitting with his back to the guards and conversing with her face to face. He had a lot of knowledge about Aurlings and scions, but nothing that could help her out of this cage. She had not been able to melt away the bars, but she thought perhaps it was because so many eyes were on her. She asked what he thought of her magic.
“It is very much like Aurling magic, but you I do not believe are Aurling.” He then spoke of ancient Eisen people with a magical bearing similar to the Aurlings. Demis they were called. “But all I had read so far was just a mention here and there.”
Similar to Aurlings, she thought, her confusion growing.
The caravan rounded a tall spire of carved granite and headed south. “Another way marker,” he said uneasily, as he craned his head back and forth trying to read etchings on the stone. He sounded out words of a foreign tongue and fell back against the cage. “We are moving quite quickly.”
A vast prairie opened up to the east. They journeyed south down the flatlands east of the Rückraadt. The grasses were short and brown, a field her legs ached to run through. Harvester mice sniffed at lilting stems, and tunnel pups stood straight and motionless on hind limbs, observing the curious trespassers before scurrying underground. Let me out here, she thought, and you’ll never see me again. She would happily live in this endless meadow. They rolled through the prairie as the sun passed slowly overhead. Edwin identified the birds, beasts, and stalks of life that grew colorful and tall. She spoke the names back to her teacher, and was met with a satisfied nod. How odd, she thought, that this hen-hearted wanderer, now at his most desperate hour, for the first time seemed content.
He caught her staring. “More lessons?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, please,” she said, as the caravan rolled on.
The sun fell low in the sky, another day passed. Clouds formed over the mountains while the prairie stayed clear. The train rolled up to a shallow circular stone structure just off the side of the trail. Three weather-beaten flags hung flaccid above. It was a water-well for traders on the Iron Road, maintained by the three major cities along the triangle. Koertig ordered two of his men to the well while the rest of his men set up camp.
“We’re stopping,” Edwin said. “One more night below the stars. If you have any more Aurling magic in you, now would be a good time to use it.”
“And if your University ever taught you how to best an iron lock, I suggest you work your magic on that,” she replied.
“So we sleep,” he said with a smile, and laid back against the bars. She did the same, but it was full dark before sleep took her.
***
Olen was already awake when a soldier approached with spear in hand. Edwin slept nearby. He had asked her earlier if her magic let her change things besides her clothes. Well, if that spear was meant for her or Edwin, then they were all going to find out together. She thought of a quick grab, rippling spear-to-rope, a quick tug out of his hands, and then back to spear again. Stabbing this bungplug of a soldier wouldn’t save her from Nerikan, but it would make her death sentence more honest. Explain how you lost a soldier to a caged girl, Koertig.
The soldier approached and ran his spearhead across the cage, jerking Edwin to consciousness. The old man jumped up, bumping his head. “The devil?” he said, shaking the sleep from his mind and rubbing his scalp.
The soldier laughed and reported back to the line, unaware how close he had come to ingesting his own weapon. It was morning, and time for the final push to Nerikan. Edwin pulled his cloak over himself and shivered.
“In my home, even prisoners are treated with respect,” he grumbled.
“Where is your home?” she asked.
“Ulm,” he sang, like a heavy bell rung. His demeanor changed quickly as he spoke of his land. “Dear Sweet Ulm. South of the Wide Galenic and past the Euloren Woods. A handsome land where the fig trees grow thick with green leaves, and the hills roll as if written in script. The land is tamed in Ulm. The worst displeasure for an Ulm man is waking to find a midnight hare has gnawed through his garden fence. It is a simple life. University is nearby, just off Welter Bay. It is there I have spent most of my years. And you, child?”
She almost answered the Ward. He had asked where she was from, and her natural reaction was to say the Ward. “Kessel,” she said, wondering why that town that had dominated her thoughts for so long had so quickly become buried under thoughts of the Ward. “I’m originally from Kessel, though I don’t know if my parents were from Kessel, or if they just lost me there.”
“Yes, Kessel,” he said. “Near Brennan. It is a small town.”
She laughed, “You know where it is? I guess I just should have asked. We could have avoided all of this,” she said as the train lurched ahead. “I would have paid you a full silver honor to take me there.”
“I would have required a full silver,” he said arrogantly, cleaning his fingernails. “Kessel folk are not my kind.”
“Hey!” she said, “I’m Kessel folk.”
To his credit, he apologized kindly. “And when did you discover your…talent?” he asked, spitting fingernail dirt aside.
“Talent? I like that,” she said. “Just a couple years ago. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, placing his fist on his chin. “I’m still learning.”
The first sparse trees of Ma’alabrad Forest passed by the caravan. The prisoners pressed their heads against the bars to look ahead beyond the marching soldiers. The tree trunks were wider in Ma’alabrad and taller than any she was familiar with. The leaves were brownish green, and the trunks were all a lifeless grey. The trail into the woods wandered away in darkness, and the sun shone less and less down the path, like a long hallway lined with ever dimmer candles. And, she thought, this horrible forest was not their prison; this was merely the road to their prison. Soldiers pulled spikes off the trucks, and unsheathed their thin sabers.
“Any last wishes,” Edwin asked.
“Yes, don’t be morbid,” she said, her own morbid thoughts crawling through her mind.
“I am being realistic. Many consider me an optimistic man,” he said confidently, “but I fear I see no way out of this one.”
“What is so bad about this place anyway?” she asked, trying to convince herself.
“You might as well ask what is so wet about the ocean, so dry about the desert. Nerikan is the denomination of all that is bad. It may not be the birthplace of evil, but it is most certainly its adopted home.”
He went on to explain that it was first an iron mine with deep and twisting corridors curling far and wide under the Rückraadt Mountains. Its many paths stretched out farther than all of the roads in Eisen, its countless wide rooms forever shrouded in darkness. It was not long after the mines gave up their last cartful of ore that the deep barrow halls were acquisitioned for their new purpose. “Massive iron gates were set at the only known entrance, and one by one magical men and women were either lured or hauled in chains to the vast underground.”
“Aurlings,” she said, and he nodded.
The mountains faded behind the growing forest. Past those trees and over those peaks lay a city she had once called home, now already so far away. Straight through those mountains lived a group of girls she had called her sisters, and a woman who had acted as surrogate mother. How far away that life seemed already as she rode deeper into the woods. She still had not accepted this as a death sentence. In the past, she had always wormed her way out the worst trouble, or Haggart had arrived just in time to bargain for her pardon. But as the green fields faded away and shadows crept over the carriage, she began to believe that this time things were different. She could not talk her way out of this cage. And even if she could melt the bars and slink away, Koertig’s men and horses would be upon her in an instant. She was stuck here, on this train to Nerikan, and no one, not Haggart, not Philippa, not any of her sisters were going to save her.
This is what she thought as Edwin droned on. Her focus drifted away from the old man to the hillside where the forest and mountain met. It was there amongst the trees that something like a shadow dropped down behind thick holly bushes.
“It would be a much more fascinating history,” Edwin continued about Nerikan, “if we were not the next chapter.”
The form moved again. Large and dark the shadow appeared, trampling heather and heath, and sheltering away behind hardwood and shrub. Too big for a man, too subtle for a beast. It trailed them, lurking, watching. A hand as big as her cot in the Ward slid through a honeysuckle bush and pulled open a peephole. How long have you followed us, Bakku? she thought, and smiled.
“Oh, it is nothing to smile about,” Edwin said, lost in his tale. “You see, it is not just empty caves. Still today there are creatures of the underworld at play down there. Gores they call them. Scions, like the wolf-boars. Their eyes blackened by unnatural means. They see by sound. Their hollow clicks resounding off walls and feeling all that moves. We will sit in the darkness, lost to the light, and you will only know when the gores are nearing when those awful clicks rattle your ears and tap your neck. For years they survived off the wayward worms and beetles that had foolishly dug themselves into their own graves, we will not survive the gores.”
“Somebody did,” Olen said.
“Yes, that creature. Imagine a lifetime in darkness and chains. The daily torture and torment of those clicking fiends playing evil games with its mind. It must be like a rabid dog freed. I was there when he escaped, he is as mad as the mirror maker.”
“I have never understood that phrase,” she said. “But he is not mad. Angry maybe, but not mad.”
She watched the tree line. The shadow leapt down a short cliff and hid poorly behind a wide tree trunk. A large sack hung over its shoulder. It was Bakku. She was certain now. Here was one who had not abandoned her. She wanted to jump and dance and cry and laugh, but she held steady as they rode into the thick Ma’alabrad woods.
***
Her sisters were different now, Philippa thought, as she sifted her rake through the horse bedding, weeding out the brown dung. It had been three years since she had worked in Mr. Schmid’s stables, but the smell was the same. The sisters avoided her at the Ward now and tried to get out of doing chores with her. It was not that they were mad at her for exposing Olen, it was something else, more like fear.
“Over there, Icha,” she said, as her sister arrived with a barrow of fresh wood shavings discarded from the mill. The young girl with the Swarhee head scarf set the barrow in the corner and quietly waited for instruction. “Grab the fork off the wall and help me.”
They slung manure in silence, a silence uncommon to the horse stalls. Mr. Schmid often haggled over the price he paid for this service, claiming Olen and Icha spent more time talking than they ever did working. But Olen was gone now, so when Schmid’s wife came around looking for help, Philippa volunteered. She wanted this change at the Ward to be a smooth one.
Icha poked through chips and dust, but never looked at her older sister, and never spoke. Yes, Philippa thought, fear. They were afraid of her, but she could not understand why.
“You will have to talk to me eventually,” Philippa offered, while still raking the stalls. Still nothing from the young girl. “If you don’t talk to me,” she said, and motioned her fork to the pile of dung, “Then I won’t share my chocolate buns.”
Icha smiled at this and informed her that horse poop is not chocolate.
Philippa straightened her back and slapped her gloved palm to her forehead. “No wonder the boys don’t kiss me!” she said and sent Icha laughing.
She let the good feeling remain in the air while they worked before asking about Olen.
“Are you mad at me for telling on Olen?” she asked, sweeping the last of the manure out of the stable.
Icha took a small flat scoop and flung fresh wood chips and sawdust on the bare spots of the floor. “She was my friend,” she said. “I miss her.”
“And she was my sister,” Philippa said. “But you must understand by now, she was different.”
They both scooped sawdust and chips and painted the floor a woody yellow.
“I’m different,” Icha said softly.
“Your religion is different, but you are not.”
“Sure I am,” she said back. “Everywhere I go people say I’m different. My clothes, my hair, my skin, it’s all different. And now Olen had to go away because she was different?”
How, she thought. How to convince this little girl that just because her family came from a different land, that does not mean she was a witch like Olen.
“Olen was a different kind of different,” Philippa tried but knew her words fell hollow.
Too soon, she told herself. It had been too soon to talk about Olen. She cursed herself for bringing it up, and told herself to be wiser from now on. They emptied the barrow and looked over their work. Not bad for a couple girls from the Ward, she thought, but said nothing. She put their shovels into the barrow and made to leave.
“I had a dream,” Icha said, pausing before going on. “I had a dream you took me to the bad place, too.”
“Nerikan? Why would I do that?”
“Because I was different. Because we all were.”
“All?”
“All the sisters,” Icha mumbled, on the verge of tears. “You took us all to Nerikan. And it was dark, and it smelled bad, and there were monsters.”
Philippa fought off the thought, that damnable and incorrect thought that maybe she had made a mistake turning in Olen. They were all different, everyone at the Ward was. They were different from the Midtowners, vastly different from the Uptowners. They were even different from the travelers and traders that came through the city. They were poor orphans who didn’t quite understand how families and friends and relationships worked. They were different from everyone else in the world, and they would always be that way. But even so, Olen had used magic, and for that she was unsafe.
“It was just a dream,” Philippa said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But sometimes, when I dream things…” Icha said, but refused to finish.
***
Olen wondered why the older soldiers, who had surely toiled for years to earn rank, took orders so shamelessly from the younger Koertig. Men nearly twice his age pounded stakes as the sergeant brushed Tasker. He was tall and bold, but his visored helm could not hide his youthful face. He ordered his men casually as the sun fell, and they submitted easily.
Night spread across Ma’alabrad. Short tents rose up around a campfire where guardsmen cooked. Olen watched sweet venison turn on a spit, knowing fair well that such precious meat would not be shared with her and Edwin. All but Koertig had stripped off their armored plates and sat around in loose shirts and trousers, talking boisterously. The city clerk Reeve sat alone from the men, eating a small portion quietly while the others passed around leathers of beer and wine.
“This is no celebration,” Koertig offered unprovoked, finally pulling off his helm. “This is a somber day. We do not near the end of our task, but instead mark the beginning.” He took a swig from a young soldier’s cup as an owl hooed in the distance. “We would be fools to believe these were the only creatures to survive the tales.” He reached to his hip and slid a small blade out of a hidden sheath. It was a thin boning knife. He looked at it as if remembering. He sliced off hunks of venison and handed them to his men. “For so long they have hidden in our world, living as one of us. They have infiltrated our universities to learn our secrets, and they have taken the form of children to influence the subtle minds of our youth.”
The men rumbled at his words and gave muffled assents as they chewed. Edwin looked around the cage and then up at Olen, as if he had lost something.
“What?” she asked, also searching the dark forest for her own lost something.
“Just distracted,” he whispered, and shook it off.
“They could be anywhere,” Koertig continued, “secretly plotting against us, like they did so many years ago. It is not even below them to take the form of a handsome male to marry our sisters and daughters, tarnishing our bloodlines forever. This we cannot allow.”
The men growled and shouted their support, but Edwin spun in the cage as if spooked, searching the deep forest behind him.
“What are you doing,” she asked.
“I have this thing—don’t ask me to explain,” Edwin said and pointed beyond the camp, “that is telling me I really, really need to be over there.”
Koertig continued, “These are just the first of many we will hunt down and cast away. Too long has our army been bound in chains, secreted behind city walls. Our mayor-general must understand we are not mere stewards of commerce. We are an army! Eisen is threatened, and we will fight for her. We must renew the old guard, and again stalk the wildest beasts,” Koertig paused as if lost in thought, and then added, “Just like our fathers.” A half-moon shone through a break in the clouds and lit the encampment. “The cleansing will be complete.”
The men cheered and raised their flasks. Guardsmen raised their spears and swords and shook them over their heads.
“Oh dear,” Edwin said to his palms.
“Just ignore him,” she said and noticed how truly agitated he had become. On their journey he had calmed to the situation quite well, becoming almost complacent with his fate. But now he cowered like a frightened child huddling in a corner.
“It is not Koertig,” Edwin said. “It is something else. Something is about to happen, I can feel it, something very bad.”
“When?” she asked.
He clutched the cage and squeezed shut his eyes like a child flinching from a spank. Through his tightly pressed lids came the faintest dull glow.
“Now!” he cried, pulling his hood over his head.
In the forest a mule cried like a tarnished war horn’s final blow. A snap like a breaking branch ended its call. A few of the more eager guardsmen leapt to their feet and slid swords out of sheaths, yet they had no direction to attack or defend. A wide black shadow flew overhead, snapping off bough and bole. It crashed into the campfire, splashing red coals into the faces and laps of dining soldiers, and then landed atop a scrambling guardsman, pinning him down. Soldiers jumped, tearing off their burning shirts and screaming for water for their scalded eyes. Men scattered as the encampment burned.
Olen’s rags rippled and tightened, then darkened to pitch black cloth. She was all but invisible in the night.
“Form up! Form up!” Koertig yelled, but his panicked men ran chaotically, fleeing their own dancing shadows as a hellish orange light radiated from the scattered coals. Koertig pulled a long sword from the supply wagon and advanced on the cage.
Edwin cowered in the corner, covering his ears and crying out, “No, no, no!”
A cart crashed to their right, and soldiers who had dashed into the forest cried out. Koertig turned to the sound and raced off, pulling more men with him as he went. “We fight!” he shouted, and led the assault. Soon the encampment was empty save for the caged two, as shouts and cries came from the dark woods. She rippled her ankle and worked herself free of her chain, tossing it aside.
“Be ready,” she told her cage mate, but he did not seem to hear.
A painful roar thundered through the camp, shuddering the ground. A lucky swordsman had landed a blow on Bakku. No, not luck. Koertig. Only he would have shown no fear in striking Bakku. The beast called out again, this time a cry of defiance not suffering. Two thin shadows ran past the cage and away from battle. The panicked soldiers dropped their spears, tossed their helms, and kept running.
“Cowards!” she yelled to Koertig’s gutless lackeys.
Swords and spears clanged and men shouted. The beast called back and heavy thuds landed in the dark. Victorious shouts were now calls of pain and anguish as men were overwhelmed in the dark. Then the ground shook in growing waves.
He was coming.
The Aurling was coming for her.
There was no going back now. She was out of the Ward, out of Millthrace, and soon to be out of this cage. She had begged for a magical messenger for so many nights, and he was finally here to return her to her true home. She would be ready.
A child screamed.
It was Edwin.
The giant shadow burst into the clearing. It clumped barefoot over the fires and engulfed the cage. Enormous hands tore the iron prison off of the trailer. Her stomach tumbled and Edwin screamed again as they soared through the air before settling gently onto the ground. Bakku’s bloody face glistened in the red firelight, and his deep iron and copper breaths blew against her. A bloody gash above his eye glowed a hollow white, and faded softly as the wound sealed itself. Gigantic fingers grasped the bars and tore them open. She slipped out of the cage.
“Go!” Bakku yelled, and turned back towards the battle.
“Go?” she shouted back. “I can’t just go! You were supposed to rescue me!”
Bakku grabbed a wheel off a broken carriage and flung it into the darkness. Soldiers grunted and fell.
“Go!” he yelled again, and pointed away from battle.
She stood dumbfounded. There were already soldiers in the woods in every direction. Even those who had fled the battle would happily hunt her down and return her corpse to Koertig, begging his forgiveness. She shouted back, “We go together!”
The soldiers had regrouped and came through the woods. Bakku barked a frustrated roar and crouched down low next to the girl. “Up!” he growled. She scurried up his shoulder and clung to his neck. Bakku spun around and rose to his full height, whipping the girl around as he turned. She grasped at burlap, desperate not to slip off. She pulled herself to sitting on his broad shoulders and saw from an eagle’s view the destroyed camp as soldiers crashed through the trees.
“Go!” she yelled to Bakku, and without hesitation he ran. He pushed through the dark woods, running straight through the heavy brush. The soldiers followed but not closely, as speed and fear were Bakku’s weapons tonight. She slipped on his bloody neck, and pushed herself back up with her legs. He raced away from the campsite and up the mountainside.
A lance flew past the fleeing couple and pierced a nearby tree. Bakku spun around, nearly sending her flying. Koertig hurried after, with Reeve and another not far behind. Of all the soldiers, only Koertig showed no fear of the storybook ogre. He tore an iron-tipped spike from the hands of his fellow soldier and launched it at Olen. It flew but half a heartbeat—though a lifetime it seemed—and smashed into her chest, right over her heart.
Just days ago she had been diving for coins in a hidden pool under Millthrace, and dreaming of riding the Skywheel and eating red rock candy. Just days ago she had been in the Millthrace market trading apples and onions, and eating warm tarts. Just days ago she had a home, a mother figure, and countless sisters. And now she sat on the shoulders of a giant, lost in the woods, facing Millthrace’s greatest soldier.
When he had flung the spear, her black clothes had rippled. A shell of iron had covered her chest and head. Blue emblems decorated her plate. Once again she wore Koertig’s thick shell. The spear crushed the plate like an old tin tub, sending her falling backwards to the ground. She landed with a clanging thud, knocking the air out of her chest. Her armor fell away to rags.
Earlier she had heard Bakku’s rage in the darkness, but now she saw it. The creature raised his long arms above his head and exploded a roar that sent boulders rolling down the mountainside. He pounced on Koertig and grasped the sergeant in his massive hands. With one horrible twist Bakku tore off Koertig’s right arm at the shoulder.
“No!” she coughed out, grasping her chest with one hand and reaching out to Bakku with the other.
Koertig clasped his bloody shoulder and watched confusedly as thick blood spurted through his fingers. He dropped to a knee, still dumbstruck, seemingly disbelieving what he saw. Bakku saw she was alive and looked back to Koertig apologetically, seemingly shocked and remorseful at what he had done. He opened his wide palm and let the dead appendage fall as the sergeant fell away.
“Bakku,” she said, though it hurt to speak, to breathe.
He stumbled back to her, looking often at the injured soldier guiltily. She reached up to Bakku’s bloody hand. He scooped her up and grabbed his burlap sack. Then he placed her over his shoulder and ran away, sprinting uphill and dashing straight through mulberry and honeysuckle. She watched over his shoulder as he ran. She watched the forest floor as a man she had always hated, if only because he had always hated her, lay dying. Koertig had called the little girls rats and tossed them in the river when he caught them being less than perfect ladies. He had kicked them aside with his pike whenever a higher class gentleman or lady had passed close by. He had been the true terror of her younger years, this man the older sisters had found handsome, but it hurt deep inside her chest to watch his breathing fade and his head fall to its side. The rest of the guard gave up the chase and surrounded their sergeant as Reeve rushed in and fell to his knees, trying desperately to stop the bleeding.
***
Edwin cowered in his cage, his hood pulled tightly over his eyes. For a third time now he had seen the Nerikan beast, and it had gotten more frightening each time. When it had first escaped its cursed burrow, it had appeared worried and lost. Now, its face splashed with crimson beads, it was fearless and mad. It had lifted him and his cage as if they were but a child’s toy and set them on the ground. And when it had torn apart the iron bars, Edwin had been certain his fate was that of the Mayden Faire hog.
The creature had stolen away poor Olen and pounded up the mountainside. The remaining soldiers had followed. But still Edwin sat in his cage, his head in his hands as he rocked back and forth, waiting for the guard to return and finish him off. He thought perhaps even the Mayden Faire hog had not suffered as he. He mumbled a song from his younger years, from before the time his aunts took over his stewardship. His voice soft and reedy, “The only way to Mayden Faire, is with a fairly maiden. And if the lass shall lay you bare, then bare you shall be—”
School boy chants, he thought derisively, and chased away the song. The truth was, he finally admitted to himself, he was still not ready to die. He understood and accepted his fate and hoped someday to be at peace with everyman’s destiny, but not today. So many wasted years, he thought, studying and scribing in drafty hollow halls, turning brittle pages in ancient tomes, his clothed finger sliding over script only the learned could decipher. And when mouthing the words in some forgotten folio, and chittering with delight at some unexpected aphorism, he would then find himself most alone with no one to share in his amusement. It was this loneliness that kept him alive, this need to share his life before he could let it go.
Softly crunching coals cut off his thoughts, and he raised his head for the first time since the attack. The soldiers were gone, but a tall dark apparition sauntered through the camp, stepping carefully over still-orange embers as if pacing hallowed grounds. It was the sergeant’s horse, Tasker, and it was Edwin’s four-legged ferry to freedom. Distant shouts echoed deep in the woods, but the camp was quiet. Again his wits and perseverance had guided him to liberty. With a tentative step, Edwin put one foot on the ground. No one objected, so he stepped out of the cage completely.
I did it, he thought proudly, then exclaimed, “I escaped!”
Tasker reared up at this voice in the night, neighing in surprise. The great steed then turned aside, kicking his hind legs at the ground and dashing away into the woods.
Edwin stood alone in the ruined camp, just nodding his bald head. Yes, he thought to whoever could hear his thoughts. Yes, indeed. Why stop torturing poor Edwin now? Have your fun, get your laughs, enjoy the show.
He pushed away from his cage. Torn trees and abandoned gear littered the camp. A large mule lay dead. A man’s legs splayed out underneath. “Heavens!” he exclaimed and backed away, bumping into the venison hind-quarter still skewered on the spit. He tore off a king-sized chunk and bit into it like a boor. Voices in the woods approached, so he quickly shuffled off in the other direction. He passed a toppled supply cart and plundered a rough blanket.
“Round up!” a voice in the dark yelled out, calling the troops.
He reached blindly into the cart’s strewn goods and snatched a small bag. Then with bag and blanket and a hunk of meat, the wayward Observer scurried away into the haunted woods. He shot through the reaching black arms of shadowed trees and thought only of distant Ulm, and how he would never leave it again.