A frozen blackness sliced through my flesh. Wind whipped at my clothes, threatening to tear off the skin beneath. The pain was worse than I remembered, worse than it’d been in the touch. My flesh was bitten with frost. Fear grabbed my throat and regret flashed through me.
I fell onto a hard surface in a heap, the solidity of it striking me. My pain escaped in a grunt that dissolved into a moan swirling in my ears. Dizziness spun sickeningly around my head. For a moment, I thought I would vomit.
Through a haze, I saw the golden key fall. Audrey caught it on her palm.
“You alright?” She pulled me up by the back of my collar.
“Yeah,” even though I doubted. But I nodded as the room spun.
Audrey placed the key on her finger. “Really?”
“I’m alright,” I said, and felt more sure this time. The room had stopped spinning.
The air was thick with warmth and rich with humidity, scented with spices that could almost be tasted on the tongue. A window opened glassless onto the starlit night, letting in a pale light. The room was built of stone walls; the floor too was stone and covered with an ornate carpet. On either side of the window, drapes waved in a hot breeze. Audrey brushed back the drapes with a gesture of her hand. I joined her at the window, a strange landscape opening before my eyes.
Stars illuminated the night in a bath of silver, washing the land with a glow the way the sun might bathe the day with light. Hills of sand and rock curved across the landscape. Above, a flock of birds flew over a crescent moon. The pallor of the moon split the black sky in an arched blade of white silver.
Twisting through the sands, rivers flowed lush and deep, the waters thick with waves that reminded me of the sea. Trees rose from the rivers, heavy with green fronds. The birds flew closer, and I saw they weren’t birds but a flock of winged creatures that resembled Audrey’s white beast. Below, orange lights were scattered across the dark – lights from dwellings.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Look,” Audrey said. As she pointed, the moonlight fell across her arm and lighted her skin into a pallor. Her eyes were speckled again with flecks of silver, twinkling strangely in the shadows. She seemed as surreal as a ghost. “We’re in Moreina, close to the border,” she said.
“Where’s Nakada?”
“Somewhere here. Maybe she knows the people who live here. Or she’s been breaking in to use this gate.”
“We’re in someone’s house? We’re trespassing?”
“We are trespassing. We should go,” she said, turning briskly. “A flock of hines is flying towards the roof. We can catch one if we hurry.”
“You mean those flying beasts?” I whispered, as we hastened from the room into a corridor.
“Yes!” Her reply was impatient and I hesitated to ask more. She pressed her back to the wall with her arm on my chest, pushing me to the wall beside her.
We edged along the corridors, Audrey looking before we turned every corner. She grabbed my wrist and we sprinted down a hallway towards a large window at the end. The window extended far on either side, lined with pillars. Beyond, the black outlines of enormous leather wings were distinct as a flock of hines flew past.
Audrey’s shield flashed. Spikes fastened to her shield like needles in a clear pincushion. Armed guards ran down the corridor, shouting in a guttural language.
Audrey expanded her shield in a burst. The spikes flew off, flying back towards the guards. Audrey wrenched me away, nearly tearing my arm off as we fled.
Another volley of spikes struck the shield that Audrey held in a great curve behind us. Snarls broke out. I turned, looking through Audrey’s shield. Gigantic cats were sprinting at us down the hallway. They resembled black cheetahs, snarling like Dobermans with their fangs visible in the pale light.
“Siks!” Audrey cried. At first I thought she had cursed, since I had cried out a word that sounded very much the same.
She expanded her shield so the spikes on it exploded in a shower towards the siks. The spikes struck them and the cats fell back with snarls that dissolved into dog-like whimpers. Other siks overtook the fallen ones, sprinting after us, fast closing the gap.
Audrey threw me ahead onto a flight of stairs. “Get up the stairs!”
I ran as she pushed the cats back on her shield, slicing them with her blade. She stabbed one in the throat then bounded up the steps towards me, the cats’ whimpers fading.
“Get down the hall! They’re still coming!” she shouted. I could hear the growls of siks mounting the stairs behind us.
We ran through a hallway into a wide room. Beyond the tall windows, the flock of hines flew through the night. In front of us, resting on a thick rug, was an enormous shape in silhouette, basking in the moonlight.
“Jump over it!” Audrey cried.
I prayed the shape was just a statue. But as we neared, it sprang to life, an enormous lion with a gaping mouth of fangs. Audrey pulled me up in a flying leap over its jaws. Its claw ripped the back of my shirt to shreds and I felt the weight of its paw as it brushed against me. The beast’s roar thundered in my ears. We landed right at the edge of the windows, the hines flying below us.
Audrey dragged me over the side and we fell past the wings of hines, plummeting towards the sands. I thought we would fall to our deaths before we landed heavily on the back of a hine. Relief flooded through me. Then the beast tilted in its flight. Panic drowned away the relief as I slid backwards along the animal, grabbing vainly for a hold. I slipped over its wing, clutching frantically at nothing, terror slicing through me as the night opened endlessly beneath.
A hand reached out and pulled me onto the creature. “Legs on either side of the neck,” Audrey instructed.
“Thanks,” I said, breathless, my heart still pounding in my chest. “Following you was definitely easier in the touch.”
The brown tiers of the Moreinen house were disappearing behind us. The lion was at the window, its paws on the ledge. In the moonlight, its coat shone a deep red, its thick mane maroon, like a chestnut stallion. The cat blinked at us as it faded small into the night, the hines flying below it along the wall. We flew away from the rest of the flock, and soon the whole house vanished into the distance. Beneath us, the lights of the city shrank into a dotted array of oranges.
We soared higher through a scented wind. A luxuriant humidity embalmed my skin in moisture and made me feel sleepy with the heat. It wasn’t long before the last of the city disappeared under pale lines of cloud. Stars opened above. Wisps of white cloud ran cold through my fingers.
Beneath my hands, the beast’s hide was tan and its head was crowned with curving horns. Audrey bent over the animal’s neck and steered the creature across the sky.
“Where’d you learn to ride like this?” I asked, making conversation.
“I have one. You saw it, but it’s white. It’s a type of hine,” she said. “Hines are common in Moreina. Most wealthy Moreinen houses have them in flocks. But mine is an elbine, a white hine unique to Hallia.”
We sailed through the air in silence, then I asked, “So what about Nakada?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure who she is or what she does in Moreina. I’ve never found out her true Moreinen identity. Nakada’s not her real name.” She looked at the stars spread across the night. “I’ll use the stars to navigate us to Alhallra. The journey shouldn’t take long, if we outrun the guards,” Audrey said. And my heart sank.
“You mean the guards at the house? But I thought –”
“What?”
“We outran them.”
Audrey laughed, almost like an adult amused by a child. “Kevin, I probably shouldn’t have brought you. The guards are behind us. They’ve always been behind us. They’re coming.” She leaned against the long neck of the hine and we sped faster. “Hold on,” she said. “We’re almost at the border.”
“What’s at the border?”
“More guards.”
My heart started racing again, and with its pounding I wished
desperately to be back in the warmth of California. The familiarity of home seemed too far away.
Orange flames broke through the expanse of stars, shining through the clouds like lights through fog. As we rode forward, the fog parted, revealing a series of tremendous towers rising above the clouds. Their long lines stretched infinitely, lit with flames. The structures were like mountains, their tanned walls shrouded by the moonlit mist.
“There’s the border,” Audrey said.
She flew us higher, the air becoming cold with the altitude. I let my breath out in a shiver.
“We’re going to fly over the towers?” I asked.
“Can’t, the air’ll be too thin.”
As Audrey urged the hine on, I clutched at the creature, my legs squeezing the animal’s sides to keep myself from falling into the infinity below. The beast growled in a way that vibrated through its body.
We flew among the towers. The lights from the windows streaked past in blurs of orange.
When I looked back, I saw the house guards gaining as they pursued us on hines. In the towers above, the border guards were close, their skin auburn in the moonlight, their eyes dark beneath the bronze of their helmets. Some had black stripes, like a tiger’s, curving below each eye.
Trumpets sounded.
“Brace yourself, Kevin. They’ve alerted the tower guards to arrest us,” Audrey said.
The trumpeting reverberated. Through the dying echoes, a clear and fresh trumpet sounded in reply. Over the horns of our hine’s head, I watched as a flood of guards descended from the tower walls. They leapt onto their hines and flew towards us in an enormous wave, heaving in a dark swell.
Audrey gave no indication of slowing down – she seemed to be readying herself for a fight.
“Maybe we should surrender,” I urged.
“Trust me.”
At our accelerating flight, a horn blared, and to my horror their hines bent back their heads in a gesture I’d seen before. The entire front row of hines spewed black balls of flame that shot towards us.
The fire exploded against Audrey’s shield. The heat blazed against my skin. The force of it threw us back and we spiraled downwards. We twisted, wheeling as if we rode a terrible rollercoaster. Our hine roared, its wings pounding the air as it struggled to stay in flight.
The black fire fell away from the shield, disappearing in smoky wisps as our hine regained control, rising higher. A wall of guards still blocked our path into Alhallra; they were so close I could distinguish their individual features. Audrey turned us around. We were being driven back into Moreina.
In unison, the tower guards drew their spikes, sending them in wave after wave of volleys. Soon, Audrey’s shield was so thick with spikes, I could no longer see through it to the guards behind.
We flipped backwards in a loop. The night spun in a jumble of mist and smoke. The towers tilted through the skies, their lights spinning with the stars like sparks in a kaleidoscope. I clutched the hine with all my strength, my eyes wide. For a brief moment, we faced the sea of guards again and caught a volley of spikes on the front of the shield. We finished the loop and the shield’s entire surface was covered in a solid shell of spikes, encasing us like quills around a porcupine. We were enclosed in a sphere of spikes so firm that not even a pin of light fell through it.
Audrey expanded her shield in an explosion. All the spikes sprayed away in every direction. The guards were pierced through, their hines plummeting in an array of smoke and collapsed wings. Human and animal cries resounded in ways that sent a sickness through my veins.
More guards were in the distance, riding towards us on hines, descending in another wave around the rise of towers. It seemed impossible to break across the border into Alhallra.
With a burst of speed, we fled farther into Moreina. A number of guards blocked our way, their hines’ wings beating the black air. The guards raised curved horns to their lips, blaring in unison, and the hines arched back their necks.
I braced myself for the onslaught of fire I knew would come. But Audrey closed her shield, the shine of it vanishing to nothing. I stared to make sure it was truly gone, but I had no time to react further. Audrey sent kyrion shields shooting from her hand. The shields enveloped the guards just as their hines launched their flames. Instead of bursting towards us, the fire filled the insides of the shields, consuming the guards and the hines within, burning in a horrific sight. The shields were engulfed in flames, entirely obscuring the guards trapped within. We flew past them, the shields falling in great spheres of black fire, screams issuing from them as they plunged towards the darkness below.
A nausea filled my mouth that I tried to keep down. “Did you have to do that?” I asked. I felt weak with the stench of burnt flesh, and a fear of her rippled through me.
“You can’t win battles without killing, Kevin.”
I cursed, bringing my hand up to shelter my nose from the sickening odor.
To our side, a guard was closing in, the wings of his hine stretching towards us. Audrey opened her palm and sent a stream of white fire leaping from her hand. He recoiled, veering his hine sharply away, curving through the night.
“Christ, what is that?” I shouted.
“Just matches,” she answered. She threw something back to me and I caught it. It was a small white marble, like a ball of wax. “You have to learn how to light it,” Audrey said.
She whipped our hine around so we scraped past the wall of a tower. We turned quickly again and just missed impact with another wall. Behind, guards crashed heavily into the towers with the sound of cracking bones and muffled cries. Some plummeted, wheeling in a splay of wings, while the hines of others limped on, wings beating lamely as they struggled to stay in the air. Other guards veered effortlessly, dodging the towers swiftly and continuing in a relentless pursuit.
Beyond the towers, the black Moreinen lands stretched open and promising, while behind, the guards narrowed the dark space of night that lay between their hines and ours.
Audrey reached into her back pocket and took out a silver disk the size of her palm. “Duck!” she cried.
I crouched as she threw the disk past me. It split into a multitude of spinning blades. The line of guards broke as they swerved, the curved blades slicing among them. The blades tore through the wings of several hines; the creatures screamed as they hovered in a crippled flight.
The blades came hurling back, spinning in silver crescents before they came together and melded into the disk again. Audrey caught it in her hand.
“My moonblade,” Audrey said. A smile curled the corner of her lip as she tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans.
We flew past the last row of towers, soaring into the darkness beyond. Behind, guards struggled on wounded hines. They disappeared into the distance as we flew on, and then even the tower walls vanished into a swirl of night and cloud. Only the orange glow of the tower lights remained; then they too faded, and the silver of the stars was all that speckled the night.
“Did we lose them?” I asked.
“No,” but she seemed to smile. “They’re far behind, though.”
The air warmed as we descended into the lower skies, and I could smell spices on the wind again. My heart was still racing even though we’d been flying calmly for a time. I tried to breathe steadier and I realized I was still clutching the Alhallren match in my fist. I gave it back to her.
“Thanks,” she said, casually. “I only have a few of these left.”
“What now? We couldn’t get across the border.”
“We need to get to Rei, the capital of Moreina.” She scanned the stars. “Good thing the sky is clear tonight. If we ride fast, we can beat the guards there.”
She gave a cry, and with a stroke of its leather wings, the beast pushed faster into the darkness of the Moreinen night.
Chapter 21