“I mean that sincerely,” I added, shouldering my pack. “Thank you, Glenda.”
CHAPTER 3
In Which I Am Very Scared of Death and Feel Very Small and Shaky and Would Like to Bite at My Hand so as to Focus on the More Manageable Sensation of Pain, except that I’m Certain Glenda Would Look at Me Funny.
Ihadn’t always been afraid of death. Or at least, not so obsessively.
It was like complaining of a disease—‘I wasn’t always stumbling about and covered in sores!’—except that it existed only in my mind, where nobody could see it to spit in disgust. Why I proved weak enough to catch this fear while others seemed immune, I didn’t know.
The moment of infection . . .ThatI could pinpoint with certainty. It happened during a childhood tutoring session on the Descent. I was sitting in the shadowy depths of our manor’s great hall, while outside I knew it to be sunny and warm, my eyes not quite focused on the man across from me.
At first, I struggled to pay attention. It didn’t help that my tutor-priest spoke wetly, like he was holding a mouthful of saliva. I already knew the broad strokes of his lesson: the ancients, with their heretical devices, pumped poisons intothe air and water, and instead of seeking a solution, they simply retreated indoors, leaving the outside world to rot and die. You might imagine that watching all this, God would grow rather fed up, and so He did!
One day, He snapped. Or rather, He Descended. Like a parent storming into a child’s room with a brush, He purified the world, blasting away the blasphemous devices with their gaseous emittances, and banishing the knowledge that had brought them into being. With blue skies and fertile lands restored, His true believers inherited Larnia, and all was paradise, forever and always.
At least, that was the version of events taught to young children. Having recently turned six, and thus passing some necessary threshold of sentience, my teacher could now detail how the ground had cracked and churned beneath the ancients’ feet, and how all who looked skyward saw Him. How, in reshaping the landscape to His Design, vast chasms formed and sealed, the raw fire of Larnia’s core exposed. And how, though all survivors received His Design, not all chose to abide by it, necessitating the hasty formation of the Church of Order, to keep the world on its ordained path by way of sermon and sword.
And despite my tutor’s squelching delivery, and the worn familiarity of our hall, all those ancient deaths linked to the inevitability of my own in a rapture of emotion, like a saint awakening to religion.
The diseased knowledge entered me that every person burned or crushed in the Descent was once a fully realized human being. And that very little, aside from time and luck, prevented me from joining them and becoming similarly nameless and forgotten. From becomingnothing.
Digesting that all, I excused myself from the lesson politely, walked up a flight of stairs, hid inside a wardrobe, and got properly hysterical.
From that day onward, the Fear would descend periodically like the maw of an animal. Caught in its teeth, I’d curl up and sob.
And now, I had not years, but hours before my greatest fear came true. My skull felt tight, tingling, as though in the grip of a hand. Even the whistling of birds overhead sounded mocking. “Are we close?” I asked, hearing my own voice only distantly.
Glenda rearranged the pack on her shoulders. Despite her small size, she carried more than I did—a testament to her elven strength. I’d wasted precious time fretting, wondering why the Order hadn’t drugged me, or at the very least, marched me with a proper escort, but when understanding finally hit it was unwelcome. The short girl walking at my side had nearly a century’s practice in warfare and magic. Add to that her elven sight, speed, and instinctive ability to track . . . If it came to combat, I’d be greatly outmatched. If I fled, she’d be on my ass like a wolf after a three-legged doe. They may as well have hauled me to the spot in shackles.
Besides, the Order probably had precautions in place. Spy animals, hidden troops, spells waiting to be triggered . . . They wouldn’t do it halfway. Not for something this important.
“We are,” Glenda answered, and I started.
My mind buzzed with increasingly ill-advised schemes. She’d said she loved me. Clearly, she didn’t love meenough, given that she planned to butcher me like a goat, but that could change. Perhaps a passionate dalliance on the forest floor would tip the scales in my favour?
I didn’t particularly want to—but then again, I didn’t particularly want to die.
And she liked melike that, she had to. She was always cooing about my looks—about my eyelashes, for God’s sake—and now this love confession. Yes, I had a good shot. All that remained was to execute this plan with maximum skill and charisma.
“Hey,” I said, all light and sexy-like. “Why don’t we take a load off?”
Glenda, who’d been walking ahead for some time while I dragged my feet, glanced back. Her eyes looked sore and red from crying.
“Stop and rest,” I clarified. “Or stop and . . . ah, other activities.”
“We have a schedule to keep,” she said, but something in my face must have convinced her to pause. “If you’re not feeling well, we can rest. Sorry, I sometimes forget how quickly humans tire.”
“I mean. There aresomeactivities where I never tire.”
“Certainly. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Glenda removed her pack in a fluid motion and sank to the ground. She frowned at me. “Cameron, why are you undressing?”
I paused with my shirt half-off, my arms trapped in the sleeves above my head.
“Are you feeling overheated?”
“Yes!” I shouted gratefully. “It’s a hot summer day, isn’t it? And I was just thinking, well, it might be more enjoyable with our clothes off.”
I didn’t typically take the lead in these things. It felt cosmically mean that my life now depended on it.
