CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

“There is great courage in failure—so long as failure is not the end.”

~ Keleth Stellarion, Seventh Age

A low hum swelled in the air. Mount Arax convulsed. Fletcher, Roxanne, and Seba tumbled down the slope, landing in a heap. Smoke unfurled from the volcano’s mouth as a spasm rattled the earth. A plume of scarlet lava jettisoned into the sky. Blinding liquid oozed over the lip of the plateau.

“We’re going to die,” Seba said in a hollow voice.

“Keriya . . .” Fletcher stared at the burning summit, horror-struck. “She needs us. We have to . . . to find a way—”

Roxanne grabbed Fletcher’s hand. “We have to run.”

No sooner had she helped him to his feet than another explosion knocked them flat. Fletcher looked pleadingly at her. “Can’t your animals help? What about the phoenix you met? He’s a fire wielder. You can call him. He’ll come.”

Roxanne’s eyes were wide and anguished as she looked at him. “I don’t think anyone’s coming to help us, Fletch. Not this time.”

Keriya shot up in bed with a strangled cry. She took a few steadying breaths, fighting to suppress the horror of the dream that haunted her every night.

The window tempted her near, and she stumped over to survey the oasis city of Pergran. Mudstone buildings, most in want of repair, huddled together along cobbled streets. Caimos and Seema ran an inn called The Golden Veil, which was one of the tallest establishments in town. From her attic room, Keriya could see beyond the city walls all the way to the boundary of the growing fields, prominently marked by a series of angry red posts and barbed wire.

“Good thing I’m awake early,” she murmured.

She shuffled around the room, collecting her threadbare wool dress, her worn-out shoes, and a leather satchel stocked with provisions. Lastly, she went to the corner and grasped her ancient sword.

The weapon was coated in a thick layer of age-old filth. She couldn’t remember where she’d gotten it—she’d struggled to remember many things over the past two months, after the accident that had turned her world upside-down—but she knew it was valuable. Powerful, somehow.

A sound from the hall startled her and she turned, yanking the grimy blade from its equally grimy scabbard.

“Ra’s sake, Kayah!” Seema said as she entered the room. “Put that horrid thing down before you take someone’s eye out!”

“Sorry.” Keriya sheathed the sword with shaking hands.

“I know it’s your off-day, but we need help in the common room.”

This cut into Keriya’s plans, but she could hardly complain. Since she was leaving today, she figured one last morning of work was the least she could do for the people who’d nursed her back to health. She nodded and gently laid the weapon on her pallet.

“There’s spare clothes in the cabinet,” Seema added, eyeing Keriya’s shabby brown frock.

Keriya wasn’t fond of the revealing garments the Jidaelni favored, so she went downstairs in her old dress. She donned a washcap and a pair of dark-tinted glasses—

sunshields

, Seema called them—before heading into the common room. The sunshields were for the benefit of the patrons; people here were superstitious, and most assumed she was from some hostile foreign country.

When she entered the seating area, she saw soldiers in mottled, sand-colored uniforms scattered among the regulars. Keriya went to an empty table and cleared the plates.

It had been a morning like this when she’d begun plotting her departure from Pergran. The inn had been packed with soldiers on that occasion, too, and Keriya—who’d learned quite a bit of the Jidaelni tongue by that time—had eavesdropped on their conversation.

“You’re lucky you’re only heading to the capital,” one man had said to his fellows. “We’re being transferred to the Syrionese Border Outpost.”

“It’s cause of the Moorfainians, I’ll wager,” another had speculated in dark undertones. “Antigonus Leech is planning something, mark my words. We’re reporting to the Xamarai to receive additional battle training.”

The conversation had piqued Keriya’s curiosity, which was a welcome change from her baseline of numb detachment. After asking around, she’d discovered that the Xamarai were elite warriors who had a military school on the other side of the growing fields. Their land was private, and civilians were forbidden from entering by royal decree.

Today, Keriya would cross into that forbidden territory. Though her stomach clenched in painful anticipation, she was pleased that there were no aches in her joints as she worked. She’d healed as much as she needed. Now it was time to move on.

When the morning rush was over, Keriya retreated to her room. She left a gold lucrum coin on her pillow for Caimos and Seema—a thank-you and a farewell. She buckled her sword around her waist, grabbed her satchel, and donned a hooded cloak to hide the weapon before she left the inn.

Outside, Pergran was waking up. On the corner, one man hoisted a crossbeam into place using nothing but his own strength. Across the street, the baker was feeding fires in his brick ovens with coal. A woman tended the wilting flowers in her window box, watering them by hand. The grocer organized his wares, an assortment of desert fruits he’d grown and harvested, all without the use of any magic whatsoever.

Once, Keriya had been obsessed with magic. Now it felt like a far-fetched fantasy, something she’d imagined to make the world seem brighter, better than it was.

There were no wielders in Jidaeln. The few times she’d made the mistake of mentioning magic, she’d been met with derision or fear. People spoke of dangerous foreigners in connection to magic—and Keriya had quickly learned she’d be safer if she never brought up the subject again.

Oddly enough, she was comforted by the magicless state of affairs. No longer was she the only girl in the world who couldn’t wield—now she was like everyone else. There was no one around to make her feel inferior. She was almost ordinary.

A nasty punch of shock jolted her from her musings. Three heights in front of her stood a young man with umber skin and black, spiky hair, browsing a stand of Syrionese silks. A name surfaced on her tongue—a name she had forgotten, a name she would never forget.

“Effrax?” she croaked. “Effrax, is that you?”

Effrax turned away from her, threading through the morning crowd. Another panicked jolt thundered through Keriya. She couldn’t lose him—she needed to tell him something important.

“Effrax!” She ran to him and grabbed his shoulder. “It’s me, I’m—”

She bit off her words as she spun the boy around. Those mean, watery eyes were certainly not Effrax’s, nor was that round face or crooked nose.

He angrily shrugged out of her grasp. “Unhand me, urchin! Who do you think you are?”

“Sorry. I thought you were someone else.” Keriya ducked her head and continued on.

She often recalled things from her past with some sort of visual prompt. Her friends’ names and faces had returned to her because she dreamed of them often, saw them dying horrible deaths. The visions were so clear, so insistent, that she was starting to fear they were more than night terrors.

When she reached the city wall, the gate guard scowled. “Miss Kayah. Going out alone again?” His tone screamed his disapproval. “Make sure you’re home before curfew.”

He went into the watchtower to open the gates of Pergran. The stone doors creaked outwards, and Keriya ghosted into the arid air of the growing fields.

The only interruptions in the golden sea of sorghum grass were plot markers denoting where one field ended and another began. Workers toiled in the irrigated plots closest to town, but as Keriya walked further the crowds thinned, then vanished. She passed the final plot marker and veered off the dirt road, making her way to a distant hill.

Beyond the hill lay a charred crater in a shallow valley. The scar in the land had barely begun to heal—only now, two months later, had fountain grass dared to creep in at the edges. This was where she’d fallen from the sky.

Keriya removed her sunshields and stared at the crater, shaking her head. “What power can transport someone halfway across a planet?”

It was like someone had unraveled her memories, sliced them up, and strewn the pieces haphazardly across her mind. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here, she wasn’t sure what ill fate had befallen her friends . . . and she couldn’t remember what had happened to the young dragon who’d been destined to save them all.

Memories of him were the most obscure. She’d extracted glimmers from her shattered brain—a flash of bronze scales, a pearly-fanged smile, an afternoon playing in a snowy forest—but guilt pressed on her whenever she thought of him. In her heart, she knew something terrible must have happened.

“It’s Necrovar’s fault,” she murmured to the crater. “It has to be.”

Keriya remembered

him

vividly. His demonic face leered at her from the depths of her nightmares. He was the cause of her pain. It had been her job to fight him, and she had failed.

Every fragment of recovered memory was drenched with the underlying knowledge that she’d been given a hopeless mission—after all, how could a girl with no magic be expected to kill the most powerful wielder in the history of Selaras? The answer had come after she’d eavesdropped on the soldiers: she had to learn to use her sword.

A breeze whispered over the hill, brushing her long hair past her cheeks. Tawny grass rippled beneath the azure sky, beckoning her onward. With a stout nod, Keriya left the crater and followed the wind away from Pergran.

Today she would find the Xamarai. She would ask for sword training. The blade had saved her from Necrovar—that was a feeling more than a memory, but Keriya didn’t doubt the truth of it. The ancient weapon was her only hope of victory. Once she’d mastered it, she would return to Allentria to defeat the Shadow.

A nervous thrill coursed through her as she approached the boundary. Her footsteps faltered. What if the Xamarai turned her away? Would they deign to teach a lowly peasant girl? There were a lot of things she hadn’t considered when she’d concocted this scheme in the safety of her attic room.

She paused at the fence. This was an ill-conceived plan. It was something the old Keriya would have come up with. The old Keriya would have likely considered it brilliant.

“And I’m not the old Keriya,” she whispered to the wind, as if in apology. “I’m not that person anymore.”

You’re not

, said the voice in her head. Hearing the voice came as something of a shock. That part of her personality had lain dormant in the aftermath of the accident, silenced beneath the weight of her trauma.

But neither are you Kayah, the best dishwasher in Pergran.

“Then who am I?” she said aloud.

She’d been speaking to herself her whole life, albeit under the guise of conversing with inanimate objects. It was what lonely people did . . . and she was very alone now. She had no family, no friends, and no Shivnath to tell her what to do or tangle the threads of her fate.

Her hands clenched involuntarily as her thoughts turned to the powerful dragon god. Did Shivnath know what had happened? Did it matter? Keriya was finally free of the Allentrian guardian’s influence, free to make her own choices. She could give herself—and the world—a fighting chance.

“I have to try,” she whispered.

She’d been angry once, resentful, bitter, hungry for revenge . . . but this wasn’t about revenge anymore. It was about

some

thing, to be sure, but Keriya couldn’t explain what made her square her shoulders and slip through the loops of barbed metal wire. Maybe if she’d had her memories, she’d have known. Maybe not even then.

She’d walked about a league past the fence when an angry cry reached her ears. Two riders appeared on the eastern ridge.

“Halt, trespasser!” The riders were mounted on large, bipedal lizards with stunted arms and strong back legs tipped with ivory talons. The animals’ faces were lupine in nature—pointed ears and manes of dark fur ringed their heads, and they bared sharp fangs around leather bridles.

Keriya raised her hands in surrender, but it was too late. The wolf-lizards slowed a few heights from her, and their humans produced silvery-white whips. With a metallic buzz, the whips sliced through the air. With suspiciously alarming accuracy, they lashed around Keriya’s wrists. The riders swiftly circled her, ensnaring her, pinioning her arms against her chest.

“Stop,” she cried. “I mean no harm—”

“Silence,” snapped one of the men. He spurred his wolf-lizard, and Keriya was wrenched forward as the riders trotted away.

They dragged her north for two hours, ignoring her pleas and explanations. By the time she and her captors crested a steep slope marked with wooden pikes, her throat was parched, her arms were cramped, and her feet were throbbing. Despite her growing panic, her eyes widened in awe when she beheld what lay on the other side of the hill.

Below sprawled a vast, flat valley. A thick sandstone wall circled its perimeter, festooned with barbed wire. There was only one entrance: a massive black gate flanked by ornate watchtowers.

Within the confines of the wall was a town, or something akin to it. The biggest structure was a long, low building of black marble crouched at the far end of the valley. Its western corner rose into a clock tower seven stories tall, each marked by a ring of red slate tiles. In the open space amid the buildings, hundreds of people toiled in the heat. They wore loose tan robes, secured at the waist with belts, that had short sleeves and pant legs that cinched below the knee.

Keriya had found the Xamarai.

Or rather

, she thought, as the riders yanked on the chains to pull her forward,

they found me.

The massive gates creaked open to admit the trio. Once inside, she surveyed the valley. Most of the trainees were young men. There were some who looked older, and a group of boys who looked quite young, and . . .

Her stomach sank, twisting with unease. There were no women in sight.

The metal whips loosened and retracted, returning to the riders. A rough hand took their place, grabbing Keriya. At the uninvited touch, a forgotten memory catapulted to the forefront of her mind, a recollection of shadowy fingers clamping down on her. She turned and found herself staring into a pair of dark, angry eyes.

“How did you find us? Speak, if you value your life!”

Suddenly that face was covered in blood and its owner was crouched on the ground, holding his hands to a gash that stretched from jaw to nose. Shouts rang across the valley, and Keriya dimly registered the fact that her sword was in her hands.

“Now it’ll be death for you,” the young man hissed, his tan face flushing with fury.

She was shaking, wondering where that violent outburst of hers had come from. The man’s mouth widened in a nasty smile as a fighting staff was drawn against her neck. Her sword and satchel thudded to the hard-packed dirt as her hands were caught and yanked behind her back to be tied together.

The staff was removed and she was shoved to her knees. Panicked and breathless, she knelt in the red dust. The commotion of training had ceased. The men were frozen, watching her.

Out of the throng stepped a brown-skinned fellow of middle age, every inch of him muscle. Close-cropped black hair ringed his square head, which perched above a stocky neck and broad, sloping shoulders. His robes were gray, edged with golden thread.

“Sullsai Hanso,” said one rider, “we found this woman trespassing in the southern quadrant.”

Square-head nodded a dismissal to the riders. They saluted him, pressing their fists to their hearts, before wheeling their wolf-lizards around and loping out of the training grounds. The black gates slammed shut behind them with chilling finality.

“Why did you trespass on our grounds?” Square-head asked Keriya.

“I came to ask for training.” She glanced sideways at her fallen blade. “I need to learn to use my sword.”

Square-head’s coppery eyes narrowed when he noticed the color of hers. “It would appear you already know how to use your sword,” he said at last, indicating the guard she’d attacked.

“I need to learn how to fight. And win.”

“Enough! Sullsai Hanso, we’ve heard enough of this.” Another gray-robed man stomped out of the shifting masses. His eyes were black and his mouth was a cruel, jagged line. Like Square-head, and most Jidaelni men, his hair was cropped to escape the heat.

“Look at her,” he continued. “She’s a Moorfainian spy, or worse. Put her to death and be done with it.”

“Peace, Airo. Before we kill her, we must be certain of her motives.” The square-headed man—Hanso—spoke over Airo. To Keriya, he said, “State your name.”

She opened her mouth to say

Kayah

. She’d adopted the pronunciation for sake of ease. But for the first time since she’d come to Jidaeln, it sounded wrong.

“Keriya Soulstar,” she told him quietly.

Hanso raised an eyebrow. Airo let out a derisive snort.

“Not a Jidaelni name,” said a third gray-robed figure who appeared at Hanso’s side, “but being foreign doesn’t mitigate her crime. I agree with Sullsai Airo—we’d do better to kill her.”

“From a political standpoint, it would be unwise to execute a foreigner,” said Hanso.

Keriya nodded a vehement agreement, but no one was paying attention to her anymore.

“If you don’t kill her, she should be made into a servant who will never tell our secrets,” said Airo, his suntanned face darkening. “Bring her to Scron and let him hang her tongue on a post as a warning. Let the world know what happens when outsiders cross the Xamarai!”

A bloodthirsty cheer rose from the spectators. Someone wrenched Keriya to her feet and shoved her into the crowd.

“Stop!” Her pleas were buried beneath the uproar of the tan-robed troops, who parted ways before her as she was pushed along. “I just want to learn. I won’t tell anyone your secrets!”

“What’s going on?”

A new voice cut through the tumult, silencing the shouts. Everyone snapped to attention and bowed, pressing their right fists to their chests. Keriya was pushed to her knees again. The force of the shove was enough to land her face-down in the dirt.

“Ansai Viran,” came Airo’s scratchy voice, “this girl has trespassed on our grounds.”

“She clearly isn’t Jidaelni,” said Hanso. “I don’t think we should do her any violence.”

“Why not?” said the newcomer. He sounded commanding. A leader, given that the other men were deferring to him.

“She claims she wants to learn the sword, Ansai.”

“Is this true?”

Only silence answered.

“I asked, is it true?” This time the voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip. Someone gripped one of Keriya’s ponytails and yanked her head up.

What she saw was not what she’d expected. The man before her was young, perhaps not much older than herself. He had light-brown skin, raven hair that fell in proud waves around his lean face, and blue eyes—she’d been in Jidaeln long enough to know that was an oddity. Ankle-length black robes covered his tall frame. How he could stand the garments in this heat, Keriya didn’t know.

“Yes, Ansai,” she stammered, hoping she’d addressed him correctly. “It’s true.”

The leader puzzled over Keriya, matching her stare for stare. People had always been mesmerized by her eyes—and had usually been frightened by them—but his smooth features betrayed neither fear nor judgement.

“You attacked one of my men.” His accent was different from anything she’d heard thus far—lilting, less drawling, more staccato. Maybe he, too, was foreign? “Why?”

“I was hauled here by two hostile riders.” There was more snap in her tone than was prudent. She forced herself to add, in a calmer voice, “I was frightened.”

Sounds of scorn drifted through the masses, yet the ansai remained impassive. “You weren’t sent by anyone?”

She shook her head.

“And you have your own weapon?”

She nodded. He regarded her for another moment, then untied his belt and shed his dark robes, revealing a pristine white uniform. A thin blade hung at his waist and he wore a single metallic gauntlet on his right hand. It was segmented to allow for dexterous movement, and fitted to his body like a glove.

“If this girl wishes to train in the elite ranks of the Xamarai, she will be put to a test,” he announced. “Let her fight me, and we’ll see what she’s made of.”

Airo sprang forward, screaming and waving his arms like a windmill. Hanso and the other gray-robed man began arguing. The students conferred amongst themselves. Ansai Viran had but to raise his hand, and the chaos subsided.

“If she passes, she will be bound as an indentured apprentice of the Xamarai. If not . . .” His gaze fell on Keriya like a hammer on an anvil. “Then we must deduce that she is lying about her motives for coming here.”

No one moved. The silence was somehow worse than the screaming had been.

“Apprentice Jaidon,” said the ansai. The boy whom Keriya had attacked scuttled forward obediently. “Fetch her sword.”

Jaidon’s mouth twisted in distaste, but he reluctantly jogged to retrieve Keriya’s weapon.

“Curse your blade, wretch,” he hissed, throwing it on the ground in front of her and spitting before disappearing into the mob.

The bonds on Keriya’s wrists were cut. She rolled her shoulders and rubbed her hands before reaching for her sword.

Hanso stepped forward as Keriya stood. “This match is between Viran Kvlaudium, Ansai of the Xamarai, and the trespasser Kayah So’stah.”

Keriya tensed. She hadn’t felt this alert, this present, this

alive

since before the accident. Across from her, Ansai Viran drew his weapon with his left hand and assumed a fighting stance. She assumed hers, eliciting derisive laughter from the crowd.

A stray recollection sparked in her brain like a tiny fire in a pile of damp leaves: she’d fought shadowmen with this sword—fought, and won. It was the only familiar thing in a world that had changed irrevocably. It had protected her before, and it would do so again.

“Begin!”

The ansai swept forward at Hanso’s cry, the sun flashing on his gauntlet, his blade carving a graceful arc over his head. Keriya lost her footing as their weapons clashed with jarring pain. Before she could recover, he struck at her other side. She barely managed to deflect the blow.

He moved in circles, pushing her one way, then another. Her arms burned with the effort of holding her heavy sword, and her body screamed in protest as she twisted and turned.

Shouts and jeers rang in the background, but she couldn’t be distracted by them. She was fighting for her life, and she didn’t know how much longer she could last.

Then it happened. The ansai swung his sword at her from the left. Instead of countering, Keriya lunged beneath the blade and swiped at his unguarded torso. She had no idea whether she’d hit her mark, because the move forced her into an awkward dive. She rolled and scrambled to her feet, prepared for anything . . . except for what she saw.

The ansai was standing still, examining his torn robes. A shallow cut ran down the left side of his muscled stomach. His eyes glinted as he raised them to her, and she thought she saw the edges of his lips twitch upwards.

Pressing her advantage, Keriya rushed in. The ansai retreated slowly, fending off her attacks as she hacked at him. Another thrill shot through her, a frisson of excitement and desperate hope. She was the one in control now. She was winning!

Unexpected pain made her drop her weapon. She collapsed, clutching her side. When she drew her hands away, they were covered in blood.

The ansai towered over her, face blank, sword pointed at her throat. He’d broken through her defenses so quickly, so easily, that she hadn’t even seen how he’d done it.

Winded from the exertion and dizzy from the heat, it took a monumental effort for Keriya to grasp her fallen sword. She felt she had no strength to stand, but she managed it. Meeting the ansai’s cold gaze with as much defiance as she could muster, she raised her blade. Her abdomen ached in protest of the movement. Her arms shook and she swayed on the spot.

The ansai made no move to continue his assault. He stared at her appraisingly before announcing, “You have passed my test.”

Keriya blinked. Ansai Viran was growing fuzzy.

Everything

was going fuzzy. Before her world dissolved into darkness, a smile crept across her face—the first time she had smiled since she’d come to Jidaeln.

She had been deemed worthy.