Chapter Three
Rayna
Rayna landed in Eldertree park. She felt the world forming around her as the worn and dirty marble of a fountain emerged in front of her, appearing as if from a curtain of fog. The full weight of her body settled as everything returned to normal and she fell to her knees, utterly exhausted. Her heart was still pounding from her fight with Adrick, Remei’s laughter still ringing in her ears. Jumping always drained her, and she had been on the verge of exhaustion even before the fight had begun. To have Jumped away from a fight, farther than she’d ever Jumped before, having barely shaken off not one but two of Adrick’s mental assaults… it was more than she’d thought herself capable of. She coughed, spitting thick, acidic saliva from her mouth, then collapsed against the edge of the fountain.
The park was dark and quiet. Only half of the gas lights were lit, since no one was supposed to be in the park at night anyway, and there weren’t that many lanterns to begin with. Eight of the lamp posts were positioned equally around the perimeter of the fountain plaza, and a handful of lights lined the walkways that led to the plaza from other parts of the park. She sighed and leaned her head back, looking up at the gaudy, worn-out fountain. It was an homage to some ancient nobleman or other, and it was not running. She could smell the stagnant water pooling in the basin. She had never liked this statue, mostly because it reminded her far too much of Father. The larger-than-life ancient hero - sitting proudly atop his rearing steed, sword pointed victoriously into the sky - could have been Father’s brother. They both had the same chiseled jaw, the same flat, wide nose, the same broad shoulders and barrel chest… no one had ever told her, but Rayna could tell just by looking that Father was related to this man. The name plate had long since worn away - through neglect, vandalism, and the natural progression of time - but she’d heard that this man had long ago conquered the city, wresting it away from the savage plainsmen and bringing to its people the enlightenment of the Empire. He renamed the city Villamont and for the last several hundred years it had remained an important border outpost for trade and military transport. Rayna coughed again, partly from the water’s stench and partly from her weakened state. She pulled her eyes away from the statue, trying to suppress her coughs in case there were any guards nearby. After a minute the fit passed and she closed her eyes, sighing deeply. She was so over this: the constant struggle to prove herself, the never-ending training, the taunting and isolation. She was done.
She had tried to escape from Father before, but, if she was being honest, those attempts had been half-hearted at best. Life with Father was better than life on the street, there was no doubt about that. He provided her with food and shelter, education, and a sense of purpose. He gave her a family, of a sort. But it was a false family, a family where she had to compete for Father’s affection in a desperate struggle to avoid his wrath. And so she had tried to get away, tried to find herself among her people… the people of the street. She wanted to escape and find her sister, and, against all hope, perhaps her mother as well.
But he always caught her. His Shade Hunters were just too good, and she could never keep them off her trail for long. They would catch her, sometimes beat her, and drag her back to Father, humiliated and diminished. Then, she would spend the next several days locked in her room and forced to study etiquette or some other equally boring subject while being denied training with the rest of the Hunters. She would not see Father during those times, though it wasn’t as if she saw him all that often anyway. It had happened so many times: an endless cycle of escape and punishment, almost like a game they played. They had played it so often that each knew the rules and the moves the other would make, and the chase had almost become rote. But then, earlier that night, she had stumbled upon that cursed room in the basement, and suddenly, for Rayna, the game became real.
She opened her eyes and sat forward, groaning. The cramps in her arms and legs had passed, but the tightness and soreness remained. She gingerly pulled off her backpack and removed her canteen. It felt lighter than it should have and she frowned. She unscrewed the cap, which was barely tight, and sure enough, she only got a couple of drops of water out of it. She laughed - a short, frustrated sound that had no mirth to it. She pulled the pack to her side, loosening the top flap and feeling around inside. Her blanket was soaked. She sighed, dropping the canteen back inside without bothering to put the cap back on, and closed the flap, jerking on the buckles a bit harder than was probably necessary.
“Remei,” she muttered, not quite sure if she was cursing herself or the shade. Remei had always known how to get under her skin, almost from the first day that she and Adrick had arrived at the house nearly four years ago. At that time, Rayna had been about a year younger than Remei. Or, more accurately, about a year younger than Remei had been when she’d died. Rayna had seen shades before, but had never really spoken with one or gotten to know them. So, she had been excited at first to have one living with them. It hadn’t taken long for Rayna to discover Remei’s true nature.
Rayna shook her head and closed her eyes, slumping back against the fountain. Well, she would have to find more water as soon as she could. She’d never been past the city walls, but there was the river and the mountains, which meant streams. So even if she stayed off the roads like she was planning it shouldn’t be that hard to find places to refill her canteen. The bigger concern was her wet blanket and spare clothes. It was going to be a cold night without them. But as long as she kept moving, she would be fine.
She opened her eyes and slowly began to massage her legs. They were stiff and sore but at least she felt she could move them again without too much pain. Regardless she couldn’t wait around for too much longer. The Hunters were still looking for her, and she was pretty sure that eventually they would guess she had come here, to this park. They had all been here before, after all, for training exercises with Master Jan, and they all knew that Rayna could only Jump to places she knew very well or that she could see. So she had to get moving again, though she would have preferred to rest longer. She still had to Jump past the walls.
Villamont had been an old city long before the Albarian Empire had pushed its way east, conquering the great Fire Lake and unlocking its mysteries in the process. Though Rayna had spent her whole life within the city, she was well aware that Villamont was one of only a handful of cities in the Empire that had walls. Most of the other walled cities were also along the edge of the northern mountains and the Fire Lake, and they had all been built by the plainsmen in ages past. Back then everyone fought with everyone else and the raiding between tribes had been brutal. So they had built walls around their cities, setting wards upon them to prevent twins such as Rayna from using their powers against them. The walls around Villamont could repel any known form of magic, yet no one knew how they worked. They just knew that they did, which is why no one had ever dreamed of tearing them down. They were far too valuable to destroy.
And that was Rayna’s largest concern, and her biggest gamble. She knew she wouldn’t be able to slip through the walls. That was actually a fairly easy skill to block. Father had set those wards around her rooms back at the house ages ago. So she would have to try and Jump, and since she had never been outside the city, she would have to be able to see where she was going, and that meant one of the lesser gates. They were little more than iron bars on hinges, with a handful of guards keeping watch. They were small, hardly large enough for a cart and horse to pass through, and were always locked except for when they were actually being used. They would have wards set on them as well, just as the main gates did, but at least she would be able to see beyond them. And, hopefully, that would be enough.
Rayna had been told, many times, that her skills were exceptionally rare. There were other mages who could make themselves intangible, but it was almost unheard of to be able to change the properties of other things, like Rayna could. She could only do it to things she was actually touching, and she could not affect organic items like people or plants, but anything else she could manipulate almost at will. She could make a knife as intangible as mist or strengthen a rock to the point that it was unbreakable. But for as unique as her skill was, what was truly remarkable was that Rayna had learned how to Jump. And that, as Father and even Master Jan had said, was what made her truly special.
She had almost worked the kinks out of her legs when she felt a slight… itching… at the back of her mind, and she sat up, fully alert. It was Adrick, searching for her. It was very weak, and he probably hadn’t been able to single her out yet. She only noticed it because she was used to his presence and had been expecting it. She stood, testing her legs, and slung her pack over shoulders. She stretched, cracking her neck from side to side. Adrick was probably a mile, maybe a mile and a half, away. She had picked that particular bend in Alder Lane since there were two or three different places she could have Jumped to from there, and was pleased that Adrick had guessed wrong at first, giving her the time she had needed to recover after their fight. But of course, that would just mean that whenever he did find her he would be all the more angry at having been fooled. That concerned her, since it seemed as though he’d had every intention of actually killing her a while ago. What little restraint he may have had during that fight was certainly gone by now.
A voice from behind made Rayna jump. “Please miss, can you help my brother?” It was a very small voice, that of a young child. She whirled around and immediately understood why she hadn’t heard him approaching. He was a shade, a boy of about five or six, though he looked so skinny and underdeveloped that he could have been eight, for all she knew. She sighed. It was always like this with the street kids. It was hard enough for most people to feed their own children, and so there was very little left to take care of the orphans who ran rampant on the streets. Although, it was fairly uncommon for twins to make it to this age without getting picked up, either by the Empire or a street gang. Regardless of who found them, they would be taken off the streets and have some chance of making a life for themselves, either in the Mage’s Academy or the criminal underworld. That’s how it had gone for Rayna and the other Shade Hunters, anyway.
She regarded the little shade for a minute, then shook her head. Adrick was getting close and she only had this one chance of escaping. After tonight, Father would never let her out of the house again. That was, if she survived. “Sorry,” she said, cinching the straps of her pack tighter. “But I’m in a hurry.”
She turned to go, deciding then and there to head for the gate that was in the opposite direction from where she guessed Adrick was. It would take her a bit longer to get there, but would keep more distance between the two of them at the same time. The little boy glided toward her, clasping his hands in front of him and looking up at her with pleading eyes. Rayna stopped, frowning.
“Please, miss. I think he just needs some water. He’s only right over here,” he said, pointing to the other side of the plaza.
Rayna groaned, gritting her teeth. “Look, kid. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’m gonna be a shade myself. I really don’t have the time. Find someone else.”
“I tried, but everyone ignored me. Like always. And now everyone's gone.”
Rayna sighed. “They weren’t ignoring you, kid. You’re a shade. They can’t see you.”
The little boy cocked his head to the side and looked at her, confused. “What’s a shade?”
Rayna scrunched her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Seriously?” She sighed and looked down at him. He was truly pitiful. The oversized tunic he was wearing had so many holes in it that he might as well have been naked and his hair was long and matted… it had probably never felt a hairbrush, and certainly not scissors. It was a miracle he had survived as long as he had. She wondered how old his brother was. Probably not much older, by the look of it. She sighed, then glanced to the other side of the plaza, where he had pointed earlier.
“He’s over there?” she asked.
The shade smiled, and Rayna knew that she wouldn’t be able to turn back now, not after seeing such genuine relief and happiness on his face. It was probably the first time he’d smiled in a long, long time. “Yeah!” he said, turning and floating across the plaza. She noticed that he went around the fountain, instead of over or through it as Remei would have. She followed him and soon came to a spot under one of the darkened lampposts. The edge of the plaza was lined with hedges that hadn’t been trimmed in years, and the shade bent down and crawled through a small gap between two of them. Rayna crouched low and pushed her way through the tight tangle of branches, wishing that the hedges had been dead so she could have slipped through them instead. But soon enough she was through and found herself in a small hollow, almost like a cave amongst the overgrown bushes and trees. The shade was standing over two small bodies, hugging each other as they lay in the grass. She blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Barely any of the gaslight was able to penetrate the double barrier of fog and trees, so it took a minute, but soon she could tell that one of the boys' tunic was identical to what the shade was wearing, and she closed her eyes. She shouldn’t have been surprised. This was always the way it was with the street kids.
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She took a deep breath, then slowly opened her eyes and crouched next to the boys. She reached out and brushed the hair from the face of the shade’s body, not surprised to find that his skin was ice-cold. She stared at him for several moments, blinked away a tear, then turned to his brother. This boy’s hair was just as long and matted as his brother’s was, and his body every bit as skinny and small. But he was still warm, though clammy and feverish. His breathing was shallow and ragged.
Rayna loosened the straps on her pack and slipped it off, then pulled out her blanket. She gently pulled the two boys apart, the shade watching, curious but not saying anything. She sat and pulled the living boy onto her lap. She adjusted him so that he was cradled in her arms, his head tilted back slightly, and she took a corner of the blanket - the one that was the most wet - and squeezed some of the water onto his cracked lips. He didn’t wake, but his mouth twitched at the welcome moisture, and so she kept working water into his mouth for another minute or two, until she felt Adrick’s presence again.
She scowled and stood, wrapping the boy in her blanket like she had seen the poor mothers do with their children, surprised at how thin and light he was. He felt like he would break if she so much as sneezed on him. She strapped him to her front and bounced a couple of times, testing to make sure he was secure. Satisfied, she grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulders, then looked at the shade. He met her gaze with curious, trusting eyes. She turned away quickly, before he could notice the tears forming in her eyes again. “Come on,” she said, pushing her way through the trees, heading out of the park.
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She couldn’t slip through any walls, not while carrying the child, so she was forced to stick to the streets and alleyways as she made her way toward the gate. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to move around like a normal person, and she was growing more irritated the longer it took. Master Jan had forced her to sneak around the city without using her power many times during training, but even then it had been different. In those cases she always knew that, if she really had to, she could still slip away and hide. But that wasn’t an option now, not with the little boy strapped so securely to her chest. She sighed and pushed on, the dark outline of the wall just barely visible up ahead. At least it had been a while since she’d felt Adrick probing for her, not since she’d left the park, maybe ten minutes ago.
The farther she got from the park, the nicer the city became. She had left behind the endless, monolithic apartment blocks and was now jogging up a tree-lined side-street with large homes set well back from the walls and wrought-iron fences that separated them from the street. She wouldn’t find any children dying amongst the hedges here. This was where the rich people lived: the merchants, scholars and sycophants who had built their fortune buying and selling gas. Father’s house was in a similar part of town, except there Father’s was the only house on the block, and there were guards at his gate. Here, there were no guards aside from the occasional dog, and even those had the sense to be asleep at this hour. A spirit-light drifted lazily across the street, its soft glow barely penetrating the darkness, and Rayna frowned. She wasn’t normally an envious person, but this was almost too much. Peace, security, wealth, and even the blessings of the departed… some people had it all, leaving nothing for anyone else. She adjusted the straps on her burdens and made her way down the street, trying to stay out of the glow of the street lights.
Three blocks from the gate the rows of tidy and impressive homes came to an abrupt end, suddenly replaced with quaint shops and offices. These were not the imposing stores of downtown, which were built one next to the other and reached six or seven stories high at times, but much smaller, neater… many of them had little gardens out front where customers could eat or do business at their leisure. Even the stable was attractive, set back amongst some trees and perfectly trimmed hedges, only a short walk to the small hunter’s gate. There were a few warehouses and a guard shack, but all in all it was a pleasant little business district, and Rayna found herself admiring how different it felt from the downtown markets she was more familiar with.
She approached the gate cautiously, sticking to the shadows. In this part of town, so far from the river and so close to the wall, there was almost no mist at all, and the moon had risen over the mountains about a half hour earlier. It was only a half-moon and it was still low, easily blocked by trees and buildings, but it was still there and she would have to be aware of its light if she was to stay hidden. She didn’t know if any of the guards on duty tonight were twins and she didn’t want to alert them until she had worked out a plan. According to Master Jan, most garrisons had at least a couple of twins in their ranks, and they tended to cycle through every available duty station fairly regularly. Twins weren’t exactly rare, but they were uncommon enough that it was impossible to have one permanently assigned to every post. And so they rotated, their officers trying to make the most efficient use of their powers. Not to mention that, regardless of whatever magical abilities they may have had, twins were the only ones who could see shades - a rather desirable trait in a guardsman. She frowned, thinking. Since she hadn’t known which gate she would end up at she’d been unable to work out a detailed plan beforehand. The little shade drifted up behind her and she held out her hand to stop him, gesturing for him to stay back. Fortunately the child understood her gesture and drifted back a couple feet, looking concerned but nonetheless doing as he was told.
There were two guards at the gate... that she could see. There was a small table set in front of the guard shack with a lantern on it, and one of the guards was sitting in a chair with his feet propped up on the table, nursing a cup of coffee and idly fiddling with the flint of his rifle, which lay across his lap. The other guard was leaning against the wall just inside the little tunnel that held the iron gate, standing in the light of a gas sconce, writing in a notebook.
Good, she thought, they’re both going to be night-blind. The relaxed demeanor of these guards couldn’t even compare to the more serious and attentive attitude of the soldiers stationed at the main gates, and was probably due to how quiet this neighborhood was. She had done well to choose this gate, it seemed.
She quietly slipped off her backpack and set it down on the sidewalk, and then carefully untied the blanket that was holding the little boy to her chest. She gently laid him down and rested his head on her pack, covering him with the blanket, which had begun to dry out a bit. He felt less clammy now and the little bit of water she had given him earlier seemed to have helped, but his fever hadn’t receded and his breathing was still uneven. She brushed the hair out of his face, then glanced at the shade, giving him a little smile and a wink. She put a finger to her lips, telling him to stay quiet, and then, after a quick glance at the guards to make sure they were still distracted, she darted across the street in order to get a better view down the tunnel.
She crouched low next to the stairs leading up to the front porch of a shop, more or less directly across the street from the gate. She ducked into the shadows and pulled her cloak tight about herself. The tunnel was only about fifteen feet long, with the gate located right at the center point. Even from this distance she could tell that it was securely locked. Not that she would have tried to sneak through the tunnel anyway, but still…
She could see the road on the other side of the gate, the moonlight and gaslight from a couple sconces she could guess were on either side of the tunnel giving her a fairly decent view. It was a narrow dirt road, hard packed, though she could tell that as it stretched away from the city it quickly grew more bumpy and worn. It was a hunters gate, rarely used in this day and age. Little wonder that the guards seemed bored. To the right of the road the land sloped upward, gradually rising toward the mountains in the distance, and trees were everywhere. She smiled, then carefully crossed back over to the boy and her pack.
The young shade was crouched next to his brother, hugging his knees to his chest and watching her. He stood up as she approached and watched as she gently pulled her pack out from under the boy’s head. She folded a corner of the blanket into a crude pillow and settled him back down, making sure that the rest of the blanket was tucked securely around him. It wasn’t yet winter, but it was fairly cold and his fever would only get worse if he wasn’t covered up well. She glanced around for a moment, frowning, looking for something she could use to get the guard’s attention, then reached down and dug a couple of decent sized rocks from a crack in the sidewalk. She slipped them into the pocket of her cloak and stood up, looking down at the boys. The shade looked at her, curious and trusting, and she wished that she could have given him a hug or ruffle his hair or something. But all she could do was smile reassuringly and gesture for him to stay where he was. She winked and then dashed back across the street to her hiding spot.
She crouched low, but didn’t try as hard to stay hidden this time. The guards weren’t looking toward her at all and she wanted the freedom to move quickly if she had to. Her stomach flip-flopped a little as the reality of what she was about to try settled in. This was the moment of truth, and she had no idea if it was going to work or not. If it didn’t work she could end up splattered on the sides of the wall or stuck deep inside it forever or any number of other horrific outcomes that she tried hard not to imagine, but couldn’t help thinking about anyway. But if it did work, then she would finally be free to live her own life, her own way. And somehow, that was almost more terrifying.
The other, more realistic, possibility was that she would just bounce off the wall, instantly attracting the guards. They’d catch her and start asking all sorts of questions, and Father would eventually get involved. She shuddered to think about that, so instead, she envisioned her Jump. She picked a spot on the other side of the wall, right up against the treeline. It looked fairly flat and clear of any bushes or other things that she didn’t want to land on top of (or inside of), and pictured herself leaping up and over the top of the wall. That was the key, to try and direct herself over the wall and not through it. She wasn’t sure if that was really how it worked, but somehow it felt right to her. She had Jumped many dozens of times before and usually she would just picture herself moving in a straight line from one point to another, but tonight she had the distinct feeling that approach would lead to disaster. She took a deep breath, pulled the stones from her pocket, and tossed them across the street, toward the boys.
The clattering of the rocks on the pavement caught the guards attention and they both looked up. The guard who had been nursing his coffee set his mug down and stood, and Rayna could now plainly see the silver mage’s insignia embroidered over his right breast pocket. He glanced at his partner, then unslung his rifle and took a few steps into the street. Rayna waited, hardly breathing, while the soldiers took up their positions, their attention focused on the opposite side of the street from her.
“Who’s there?” the first guard called out, “Curfew’s on, you can’t be out this late, you know.”
Rayna looked at the shade and met his eyes. He was crouched next to his brother again, nearly impossible to see in the shadows. She nodded at him, then gestured toward the guards. The shade cocked his head, not understanding what she was getting at. She sighed, then nodded toward the guards again, a bit more vigorously this time. Then he smiled, understanding, and stood up, floating toward the guard who had by now almost completely advanced across the street.
“Please,” the shade said, looking up at the guard, “help my brother, sir? I think he’s sick.”
The guard jerked back, surprised at the sudden appearance, and Rayna grinned. This was working out better than she had hoped, for both her and the little boys.
“Ho, there! Shade!” the guard shouted, “What are you doing here?”
At the first guard’s shouts his partner sprinted forward, sweeping around with his rifle as he peered into the dark. Rayna could tell that he couldn’t see the shade, so he was probably trying to locate the twin that was certain to be nearby. Then his eyes fell on the sick boy, laying on the sidewalk and wrapped in the blanket.
“Oi, over there,” he said, pointing. “What’s that?”
“Please,” the little shade said again, drifting back toward where his brother lay. “Help my brother.”
The first guard looked at his partner, frowning. “The shade’s just a little kid, says his brother needs help. That’s probably him there, in that bundle…”
His partner also frowned, then shook his head. “Yeah, well, where the shade goes the mage follows, ain’t that right? Just ‘cause the shade’s a kid, that don’t mean his twin is. Ain’t no tellin’ what’s in them blankets. Could be anything, right? The old Duke don’t pay us nowhere near ‘nuf for that kinda trouble.”
The first guard shook his head and turned back to the shade, looking him over. “Just keep your eyes up, and hope I don’t tell the Captain what you just said.”
“What, like you’ve never groused ‘bout your pay? Yeah, I’ve heard ya. Besides, just ‘cause I ain’t lookin for trouble don’t mean I ain’t ready for it,” he said, looking up and down the street again, sweeping his rifle back and forth.
“Unless it’s a sick little kid in a blanket?”
“You're the twin, mate. You check it out.”
“Mereologist,” the first guard muttered, “how many times do I gotta tell you that?” He slung his rifle over his shoulder with a sigh and walked the rest of the way across the street, then bent down and scooped up the little boy.
Rayna smiled. If he survived the kid would be sent to the Mage’s Academy, where, in exchange for a lifetime of servitude to the Crown, he would live a far better life than most commoners could ever hope for. Hot meals, a warm bed, and a good paying job once he graduated. And all it would cost him was his freedom. She didn’t hesitate any longer. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and Jumped.
END OF CHAPTER THREE