Chapter 61

Follow Your Light

Femira felt the warmth of a campfire on her face, her nose filled with the sharp scent of the smoke. Her eyes twitched and her body stirred, pulling her from sleep.

Her muscles ached as though she’d spent the day running up the steps of the Pillar and her head throbbed like she’d spend the night snorting skaga. Stiffly, she rose up from her sleeping roll. It was twilight. The sun had already disappeared behind the hills but its light was still casting shades of red and purple on the clouds. The small campfire blazed unhindered by the winds, despite the branches on trees nearby being flipped about wildly. Landryn must be close.

Her mind flashed to her most recent memory; passing out on the beach after she’d killed the kragal. The kraglings scurrying across the beach and Landryn’s arms catching her.

She laboured to her feet. She was still wearing her black uniform. The camp was set up on the cliffs overlooking the beach and she could see in the gloom of the twilight; the dark mass of the collapsed sea arch.

A short distance from the camp, a lone silhouette of a man was shovelling dirt into a hole. Femira approached, the air was so still inside of Landryn’s bubble, a direct contrast to the howling wind that passed overhead.

“You’re awake,” Landryn said as she approached, “I wasn’t sure how long you’d be out for.” there was a sombre tone in his voice. There was a cairn of rocks above another patch of freshly churned earth. Femira didn’t need to ask. She knew whose graves these were. Wordlessly, she took the shovel from him and began filling the rest of the dirt in the pit. You don’t use runewielding when burying your comrades. In Keiran, they burned their dead, too many scavengers in the desert would dig you up. The Altareans had been like the Reldoni, they buried those that deserved respect, those that didn’t were thrown from the cliffs to the crashing waters. Like her brothers had been.

She didn’t feel any joy over killing the kragal. There was an emptiness to the achievement that Drad and Selyn weren’t here to enjoy it with her. It had been just under two weeks, but an indescribable kinship had been built with them in that short time. They’d fought together, camped and shared meals together. The thought of returning home to Epilas without them made her stomach clench. It had been different before, in the aftermath of the battle against the stormguards at Innish Head. They’d buried their fallen comrades and headed home but Femira had barely known the people that had died. Selyn and Drad hadn’t been her friends, but they had been a team. She found that her eyes were watering.

“Drad served with me against the Reinish,” Landryn said, sadly, “his cousin Ferath and I trained together as boys… He’d always wanted to be a soldier. Even when his father was pushing him to train with the Palace surgeons, he wanted to serve in the military…”

“He was a good healer,” Femira added. Some healers only healed your wounds just enough that your body would recover easily on its own. Drad would spend the extra effort making sure the wound was completely healed, the skin smooth again.

“I didn’t really know Selyn,” Femira said, “she was kind of… distant, at first… but I thought, maybe, we were becoming friends.” The hole was filled, and Femira began arranging the stones in a small cairn.

“The dead with the dead,” Landryn said, his tone turning impassive, “the living with the living.” He turned his heel and returned to the camp. They shared a quiet, sullen meal from the provisions in Drad’s pack. It was bland compared to the spicy dishes that the man had used to prepare for them. Landryn volunteered for the first watch so that Femira could rest some more.

She didn’t feel like she could sleep but Landryn insisted. He claimed that the exertion she’d placed on her edir alone would be enough to be assigned bedrest for a week. She reluctantly agreed, but found that the moment she laid her head against her bedroll she was immediately asleep.

Landryn woke her gently as the dawn was beginning to crack.

“You’ve been up all night,” she rubbed at her bleary eyes, noting the pale blue of the horizon. The campfire had long since burned down to embers.

“You needed the rest.” He wasn’t wrong, her body felt like she’d been showered with rocks… which she had, she realised.

“It was incredible what you did,” he said, “I… I don’t know how to thank you for saving me. I’m not used to others coming to my rescue.”

“I don’t feel like I saved anyone…” she replied, “it was my plan… it’s my fault that—”

“—Stop,” there was a gentle forcefulness in his tone, “there’s nothing to be gained from that path, trust me. The dead with the dead.”

“If I hadn’t been so cocky, if—”

“—Then it wouldn’t be just Drad and Selyn’s bodies buried. I would be mine in the dirt too and yours, and gods know how many more that would’ve fallen victim to that monstrosity. What you did was heroic, Annali, never doubt that.”

The flare to her ego momentarily overshadowed the guilt she’d been feeling, Landryn’s praise igniting in her a fevered hunger. He held her gaze with his beautiful dark eyes. Misandrei and Garld’s praise were like a drug; doses of gratification that she craved and sought out. But Landryn’s compliments made her feel different. It felt like fireworks going off inside of her. She could feel a flush rising in her cheeks. She jumped up from her sleeping mat before he could notice. The morning air was damp but Landryn’s ever constant air bubble ability kept the cold chill of the winds at bay.

How could she feel proud of what she’d done? When the cost had been the lives of two people that had trusted her. They’d believed that she could hold the creature down—she’d believed it. But she’d been wrong… and now Drad and Selyn were dead.

Landryn didn’t seem to think it was her fault. But he was a Prince—and a military commander—he was used to playing with the consequences of life and death. People died because of his decisions all the time. Not hers… She looked down at her hands. She wasn’t supposed to be here… she wasn’t supposed to be thinking like this. Her breaths came in short. The flush didn’t leave her face and she felt herself growing hotter despite the morning chill.

“Annali?” Landryn looked at her with concern.

“It’s hot,” she gasped.

“Breath,” he said, soothingly. He placed a hand on her shoulder and she felt her body tremble underneath it. People weren’t supposed to die because of her.

A knife sliding into an eye socket.

“Sit back,” Landryn instructed her.

She could barely hear him. Her vision swam, Landryn’s face blurring. A myriad of faces flashed in her mind. Drad and Selyn listening to her plan on the cliff tops. Her mother scowling at her on a ship. Her brothers’ bodies bouncing off the cliffs. I hadn’t even been there. Femira hadn’t been the one to get caught, she hadn’t even been on that job… Had I? She hadn’t seen the stormguards throw her brothers off the cliff, but then why did she have such a vivid image of it in her mind? Had she been there and somehow blocked out the memories surrounding it?

She was dimly aware of Landryn’s arms around her shoulder, rocking her back and forth. The image of blood flowing in gutters forced its way into her mind. And she was crying… She’d cried then too.

“Breath… Listen to my voice,” she heard Landryn’s voice from far away. Blood was being soaked up by the desert clay and there were bright red eyes searching for her. So many people slaughtered… because of her. Because she existed. Shadows of memories danced on the edge of her mind. She realised her hands were shaking. No, no, no. A deep part of mind stirred, memories she’d shoved into the far away recess of her psyche long ago.

Her brother—much younger than she remembered him—dragged her by the hand, running towards a river. Blood running down the gutters and their mother ahead of them. “They’ve come for you,” her brother’s voice was high, “come, Fimi, run!”

“Fimi,” Femira breathed. That was what Rashav used to call her. Fimi and Rashi. She was choking back sobs now as Rashav’s face came into clear definition in her vision. But he was gone… he was dead. Both of them were. Rashav and Kamal… Her brothers who’d always protected her.

Her mother was screaming at Kamal to untie the boat but he pretended to fumble at the ropes… He was waiting for Rashav and Femira. He refused to leave without them. Behind her, an ochre-skinned man in golden armour and red eyes, callously cut down every person she’d ever known.

“Leave her!” her mother had wailed, “he will kill us all!”

“Fimi! Rashi! Run!” Kamal screamed to them. She remembered Rashev lifting her over his shoulder and being thrown into the boat. She remembered watching the smoking huts of their village disappear behind them. She’d been too young to understand what was happening then.

She’d known what karasi—a bastard—was. She knew it was a vile and loathsome thing to be shunned. She knew that her mother was punished because Femira was one but she was far too young to understand why. The way that her mother looked at her when they were on that boat floating away from their village was a manifestation of the contempt the woman felt for her. Femira was the physical evidence of her mother’s sins and she’d hated her for it. From that day onward, Femira was no longer her daughter. She’d been orphaned, and Rashav and Kamal had been tasked with raising her.

Femira didn’t know how long she’d been crying for but when she finally felt reality returning to her. She felt Landryn’s arms around her, rocking her gently back and forth.

“I… I’m sorry,” she choked.

“Everything will be ok,” he said reassuringly, “you are new to this. But it does get easier, I promise.”

“Should it?”

“Death is the only certainty in our work,” he spoke with such solemnity that she couldn’t help but be drawn into him, “we must overcome death and it’s hold on us so that we can protect our people. Only then, can we truly be the shield that holds back the darkness.” She nodded along with him. She wanted to be the shield. She wanted to be the reason people lived. She didn’t want anyone else to die because of her.

“We have a duty,” Landryn continued, “we are the chosen; the soulforged. It is our purpose to fight where others cannot.” She knew at that moment that she would follow Landryn wherever he would go. That he was her commander, her prince and her leader. His mission was her life. This was her purpose. This was what Rashav and Kamal would have wanted for her.