everything fell apart.”
“Like Severin,” I suggest.
He turns and glares at me, defensive and discerning like I’ve provoked him, though I don’t understand how.
“Severin isn’t the villain the others make him out to be.”
“Then why don’t you trust Sanctuary?”
“The mistress who rules it, if that’s even what she is. There is something foul in the air within that dead volcano. I could sense it the moment I arrived. Back home we kept birds in mines to let us know if something was wrong, but there is nothing in Sanctuary to warn the people there, no voice of reason to make them question their queen. I told Severin that he was deceived by a lie masquerading as hope, but he rejected my theories as nonsense. He was the last ranger I approached.”
“What about Wade?”
“He was difficult to find even before things went bad. I got a sense he never trusted people, including other rangers. How he made it among them before we came to this wilderness is something I never understood. But that didn’t matter anymore when those of us who survived the first few days here came together. We made a pact of brotherhood. All became rangers that evening, the women and children included.”
“Where would he go?”
“Not sure,” Yori says, “but I didn’t sense anything wicked of it. He just liked to be by himself. It got him into a lot of danger from what I’ve heard, but never anything he couldn’t handle. Of all the rangers that might have been enlisted in protecting you, you’re quite fortunate to have gotten Wade. Few of course would admit as much, but it couldn’t be truer.”
The comment makes me feel warm. I find myself making comparisons between Wade and my father now and again. Not so much because of things Wade says or does, but the aura he carries about him. Despite how he tries to make me feel like he isn’t overly concerned with what becomes of me, I sense an undeniable tenderness beneath his hardened shell.
“There was a woman, a soldier from Sanctuary, who told me about the rangers,” I say, breaking a quiet that had momentarily filled the misty air.
Yori looks at me, eyes suddenly raised and interested.
“And?”
“She told me that Wade’s past was cloudy. She made it seem like a lot of the surviving rangers did some terrible things.”
“Yes,” Yori admits softly, sensitively, like the thought of what his former companions did pricks his heart. “Bad things happen when you can’t tell friend from foe. There’s no justifying much of what happened, but if rangers did evil, it was only because evil was first done to them.”
He stops there, his mouth half-open like he wants to say more but can’t find the words. Maybe he’d rather spare me the sad details after speaking so warmly of Wade and the others. Like he is trying to scrape the scars of the past from his memory without tarnishing the nostalgia of friends and better times.
My father would do that when he talked about a friend from childhood, Gavin, who died when he was young. He always spoke fondly of the adventures they would have running away and spending their summer days out in the fields. This was years before he met my mother and became a prince, calm times filled with easy joy. But that was not the whole story.
I learned later from my mother just why he and Gavin would flee the city. Gavin’s mother was a drunkard in private and abused her children when she came back from socializing. My father therefore always kept a close watch on Gavin and helped him sneak out and escape whenever things got really bad.
It makes sense to me why people try to manipulate their memories. I feel sad imagining Kalepo like this, an isolated kingdom with people who at times seem lost and hopeless despite the prosperity they live in. Having seen the Ethereal Plains for myself, I wonder if it is really a good thing to keep them ignorant to the rest of the world. Then again, maybe it’s for the best considering the obvious dangers of this place.
Still, the thought of home brings a muted smile to my face, but then I stop myself. I’ve been trying not to think about it because I only end up hurting as my thoughts wander toward Mariam, the one piece of family I have left. I try to think of the way she was as a child before she became the jackal my sisters teased about, but I can’t escape what she’s become, the vixen who I followed into the catacombs, the wretch who stole my sisters from me, and as I think about it more, the demon who might have been behind my father’s death as well.
When I think about those last moments with my father, I become convinced that he knew it as well. Yet he didn’t revile her. I even saw him hug her once while he lay on his deathbed. It’s like he saw two of her, only one his daughter, and could somehow embrace that one he loved without acknowledging the other. It makes me wonder how he would want me to see her despite the evil that she so obviously hides within.
“I know that good people can lose their way and do terrible things, but can they ever come back?” I ask Yori, my lips quivering with a small measure of emotion.
“Without a doubt. I don’t think anyone can be too far gone for a return journey, though it sometimes feels impossible. Coming back isn’t just about removing the bad, but about replacing it with something better. You cannot vanquish evil and simply hope that goodness will fill the void, for goodness is like a tree that must be nourished to grow, and evil a weed, one that grows wherever nature allows it.”
These are the words I want to hear, and so I don’t say anything more. I just close my eyes and dream that I will see Mariam again someday, that the darkness inside her will somehow have died and that we will be sisters once more. It is wishful thinking, I realize, but it is something I want to indulge right now. I think my father would want me to.
“There’s Wade,” Yori exclaims, finding his feet and walking over to the cliff before throwing me a glance.
“If something happens, use this to escape.”
He removes a long coil of rope from his bag, but instead of tying it to an anchor and using it to get down the cliffs, he sets it on the ground and hops over the edge. He is going down the canyon walls without any assistance whatsoever.
I rush over and watch nervously as he quickly makes his descent to Wade. In little time at all, he gets there, slipping a few times on his way but recovering elegantly as always. He then looks up at me and waves, and I can’t help but feel confident in what he and Wade are about to do despite my anxieties over what will soon come stampeding into this place. I look at Wade and the feeling becomes even stronger. If there’s anyone who can take down a draeg, it’s them.
A long time passes. I’m not certain exactly how long without the sun, but it feels like several hours at least. I glance down at my left arm where I used to wear the watch my father gave me. If only Mariam hadn’t stolen it.
At that instant, I remember something I had forgotten, what Wade said to me after he got me away from the Necromancer. He was upset about the watch, that I wasn’t wearing it. I was going to ask him how he knew, why it mattered, but in the silence he then enforced, it slipped out of my memory.
There’s a lot Wade still isn’t telling me, but I’m having an easier time dealing with it because I feel I can trust him. As much as I want to know everything about him and what exactly the growing darkness is that’s worrying him, I’ve come to accept that small bits of information are much easier for me to handle than getting big chunks. I’m still coming to terms with what Anastasia said about the world stones, about where the creatures and beings of the plains really come from.
During the late afternoon, at least that’s when I think it is since I’m starting to catch on to the subtle changes in lighting and tint that occur as the daytime progresses, I start to hear faint rumblings in the distance. It starts weakly but grows steadily until it becomes a pounding like a blacksmith hammering on metal and stone. The draeg is coming, and fast.
Its roar echoes down the far pass of the canyon, a cry like a lion’s, only rougher and louder. It carries on the wind and the heavy, damp air like a thick fog forcing its way down into my lungs, taking away my
breaths. I quake as it comes into view, barreling down the narrow canyon as though it is giving chase.
My nerves entirely overcome me as I stand petrified and stare at the draeg, so terrifying in its size and might that it seems surreal, like something I imagined from a nightmare I need to wake up from. Even down on four legs, the top of its head peaks up nearly a quarter of the distance to where I am. How could it not simply leap up on its hind legs and snatch me?
In sheepish hesitancy I begin to cower and delay trying to get the beast’s attention. It stops near the pool, lashing its head around frantically as though it has lost track of what it was pursuing. It could very well leave soon if I don’t do what I was put here to accomplish. Yori and Wade are counting on me.
“Up here!” I call out as loud as I can, but it doesn’t look up.
I do more of the same, screaming all sorts of things, but nothing seems to work. Either it can’t hear me above the water from this height, or it simply doesn’t care to. I need to think of something else.
My eyes scan the summit where I stand, and I quickly get another idea. I walk over to the edge where a large rock is resting and grunt as I push and send it crashing down near the draeg. It looks around confused, but not up. I find another and do the same, this time crashing a blow onto its neck.
“That’s right,” I