Maybe thebalasin the moat will give us some protection.
For my two decades of life, I have stayed cloistered inside Greensward’s wall, only venturing out to gather the plants and roots I need. Otherwise, I don’t even leave the pub unless I have to. I’ve never felt safe, even within our village, and as I think about what’s stalking us? The news from the other territories on Anathos seem like forest fires of danger ready to consume me: There’s been talk of animals, and even people, being attacked in the settlements that ring the various royal courts. I’ve heard so many fearful whispers at the end of the night, travelers sharing that which they refuse to acknowledge in the light of day.
The milkman is right. We are being hunted here, the wall that protects us both a defense and a target. But he’s wrong that the Fulcrum has been weakened because of magic. I’ve been wielding a sliver of that sacred energy my whole life, and I refuse to believe there’s been any bad repercussions—and everybody in this pub who ignores me feels the same way, too. Even Mr. Cavenish.
They hate that they’ve had to rely on me, but though I am a shunned orphan, I have learned one solid truth: There’s nothing people will not do for their family.
No, the cause is something else.
And that’s what we need to fear, even more than the demons, which are but the preamble to a much more deadly enemy.
TwoA Mouse Among Rats.
I wait for the trio of men to get farther ahead of me, and then I ghost along in their wake, following the eerie clanging of the cowbell. My cloak soaks up the icy rain as if parched for cold water, and beneath my ratty leather soles, the cobblestone lane is slick as a mossy riverbed. The row houses that crowd up on both sides of our main thoroughfare have their shutters tightly shut and their doors bolted for reasons other than the bad weather, but their chimney flues are open, tendrils of smoke eaten by the wind.
When a distant creaking travels to my ears, I glance over my shoulder. The bridge that crosses our moat is being hauled up, and when the planks lock into place at the squat towers, the pair of sentries descend from their duty. That the men head to the Gauntlet is no surprise, and I wish they would stay where they were.
For all the good they could do with their pitchforks.
They are just civilians, like the rest of us. Our village is on the very fringes of the Prosperitus territory, and there are no royal guards here, for we are but a worthless trading post. That’s why our wall is unrepaired and we have no protectors.
We must take care of ourselves.
Refocusing on my own journey, the lane before me is cast in a palette of grays, and wisps of fog curl and flatten in the downpour like restless phantom limbs. All I hear is water, dripping off roofs, splashing underfoot, tapping on my hood. Except I’m listening for other things. I’m looking for… other things. It’s unlikely the sentries missed an entrance through the front. What if a demon came over the top? What if they possess dark magic, so that which is solid is nothing but air to them? And how did they get out…
Just as we have our wall, the continent of Anathos has the Fulcrum. The difference is that the latter was conceived to keep things inside and it was supposed to last for eternity. The Book of Time provides us with the story of the Great Containment, how after the Dark King gathered up and perverted the natural magic of the continent, and used it to subjugate the populations of all the compass points, the Savior came and rescued our ancestors from torture and tyranny. Working in secret, she extracted the tiny quantums of energy still left in the landscape, and then she seduced the evil overlord into a fissure in the ground and created the swirling force field that imprisoned him and his army of demons—
I stop and look over my shoulder.
Then I glance to the sky. With the cloud cover, I can’t see that star that appeared months ago, so bright that it eclipses any others in its vicinity. I have to agree with the others. Its presence carries a portent of doom, somehow.
When I twist back around, Mr. Cavenish and his escorts turn a corner and disappear out of sight. For an instant, I feel like I’m the only one alive inside our wall, everybody else dead, the tedious, lonely life I trudge through gone and replaced by something so much worse. Anxiety seeds along my nerve endings, my hands and feet blooming with numbness, and I try to reach through the wave of panic and cold chills to connect to the world around me. I, too, have a turning, churning core, and I fall into its whirlpool of dread and terror at the slightest topple—
I shove my hand into my cloak’s pocket and feel the bundle of herbs.
I can’t afford to stop, and I certainly can’t turn back.
Scurrying forth, my eyes bounce around at all the doors that are closed to me, all the windows covered. With each house, I pierce the veil of the clapboard walls and see inside. Never have I gone through the front entries or been welcomed as a guest at the meal table—I’m always snuck in the back, brought inside in secret, used for their purposes.
After which, I am worse than a stranger. I’m someone they know to their soul and wish they didn’t—
My feet freeze once again. It’s hard to figure out what’s a genuine warning instinct and what’s fear. But when a shadow in my wake shifts away into the fog, I know my eyes do not deceive.
Something in the street is tracking behind me.
I tremble under the cold weight of my cloak, and feel cracked nails prickle the skin of my nape, a warning that I’ve never felt before—
Hide.
That word, spoken in that assertive voice, takes the place of any otherthought in my brain and all of the rushing anxiety in my blood. Throughout my life, the command has haunted me, as if it’s the proper name given to me by whoever birthed and then abandoned me here.
Grabbing fistfuls of sodden wool, I set in to an escape, all kinds of horrendous creatures with fangs and claws populating my mind and leaping free of my imagination to pursue me. Except maybe the threat is more prosaic than a demon. I’ve overheard stories in the pub of traveling men who seek to inoculate themselves from the Pox by a rutting. Even though I wear the drape for a different reason, I can’t escape what it means to everybody else.
All the lanes in my village channel into the market square, and if I can make it that far, there are places to hide in the empty vendor stalls, and also a watchman who makes rounds. He might help me because he has a daughter, and if I scream, perhaps I sound like her?
And I am not unarmed, I guess. I have my little knife tucked into my waistband, and through the jostling of my sloppy strides, I find the hilt with my hand and don’t waste time looking behind me again.
As I sense the presence fall into the chase, I trust the instinct more than my eyes in the darkness. Closer to the square. Closer.Closer—
