THE MARK Read online

  “We’ll get some rope.”

  “It’s too late. It’s all going to catch. It’s too late.”

  Seeing she wasn’t getting anywhere with the innkeeper, Chris turned to her companions. “Did anybody see a well?”

  All of them shook their heads.

  “He’s right, Chris,” Digs said. “We need to go. Now.”

  She hated to admit it, but he was right. It was getting more chaotic by the minute. The villagers were starting to realize that the fires weren’t going to be put out, and people were rushing back into their homes—even some of the burning ones—to carry out whatever they could. The rest of them were running to the gate, the guard refusing to open it, even with the village in flames around him. A warning rock thrown at his head finally convinced him to open it.

  “What about Narento and Erah?” Micah asked.

  Chris had been so focused on the gate that she hadn’t thought of the older couple who might not be able to make it out on their own.

  “Do we have time?” Megland asked. She too was watching the gate.

  “They’re not that far,” Chris said, already running off and up the hill toward their house. When she made it there she was winded and sweaty and had to stop to catch her breath. Digs caught up with her, gasping, coughing because of the smoke. The neighbor’s house was on fire. Some embers must have landed on Narento’s roof because the entire left side of his home was engulfed.

  Chris ran to the door and banged on it then immediately went for the knob. It was locked. Digs banged on one window then another until he spotted Narento and Erah in their bedroom. He wrapped his cloak around his fist and punched the glass, breaking it. The couple didn’t move when the glass shattered and fell to the floor.

  Digs hurriedly laid his cloak on the bottom of the pane, and he and Chris climbed into the smoke-filled space. Chris ran to Erah’s side of the bed and shook her while Digs went to Narento’s side.

  “Erah!” Chris shouted. She accidentally inhaled a lungful of the thick, black smoke and coughed. Pulling the top of her dress up to cover her mouth and nose, Chris shook the sleeping woman again.

  “There’s no time!” Digs yelled. “We have to get them outside!”

  He dragged Narento to the window and hefted him through it before following. Chris was surprised she was able to carry Erah. She was so light, almost hollow-boned like a bird. Her thin hair hung down as Chris carried her outside then laid her on the ground.

  “Erah?” Chris said, kneeling next to her. She wasn’t breathing. Placing two fingers on the side of the old woman’s neck, she couldn’t feel a pulse. Chris wanted to drag her away from the house. The heat was so intense. But there wasn’t any time. She balled her left hand into a fist and covered it with her right on the center of Erah’s chest and started compressions.

  “What are you doing?” Digs asked.

  “CPR,” she said before pinching Erah’s nose closed and blowing into her mouth. Afterward, she told Digs to do the same thing she was doing, except to Narento. She didn’t know how long they did that, compressing and breathing for the couple, but after a while Digs placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “What are you doing? Keep going!” she yelled. The heat from the house was overwhelming now. Flames were starting to lap out of the bedroom window.

  “We need to leave,” Digs said.

  “We can’t just leave them here.” But she had already stopped. She used the back of her sleeve to wipe sweat from her face and looked at Erah. She was still in a kind of perfect way. So was Narento. They were gone.

  “We need to leave before we can’t get out of the gate. It could catch as well,” Digs said.

  Chris’s heart ached as she took one last look at the couple on the ground then ran with Digs to the back of the house where Narento’s horse was stabled. The mare was in her stall, but her eyes were wide and panicked as she whinnied and moved about in the small space.

  “Do you know anything about horses?” Digs asked, grabbing the saddle from its hook.

  “Give me that, quick,” she said. She tried to soothe the animal before putting on the saddle but it was no use. The horse’s nostril’s flared, no doubt smelling the thick smoke that hung over the village. Her ears folded back on her skull every time someone screamed, and she wouldn’t stop stomping around her stall.

  There wasn’t much time left. Embers from the house could jump to the barn at any moment. Chris laid her hand on the animal’s neck, closed her eyes, and tried to block out the sounds and smells around her. Her hand drummed a steady beat on the horse’s flesh, and eventually she could feel the pulse beneath her hand start to slow. The mare’s breathing calmed and she was finally still. Chris took the opportunity to secure the saddle, tugging on it to make sure it was secure. Digs grabbed the only other horses in the barn, a couple of brown mares. They sidestepped and strained against the reins, but he managed to lead them out.

  Minutes later they were outside The Middles’ gate, and Chris looked back at the village as she and her friends rode away from it. She watched the flames that reached ever higher, the entire town serving as a pyre for a loving couple she’d only just begun to know.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Once upon a time, at the bottom of the world there was a castle. No one has seen it in many generations, but some still know it is there. To reach it you follow a dark star, turn away from the northern star, the star that most follow, and go south. The star’s a deep lavender haze just above the horizon, like the scarf of a woman drowning for the night. Some say if you keep focused on it, if you can avoid all distraction and keep the scarf the woman waves whilst she sinks in sight, then the true castle of Kellet will be revealed to you.”

  The woman next to Chris, the one who was telling the story, had a gap-toothed grin. Chris could see her face in the dim torch light. She seemed kind but reeked of smoke. She had tried to save her cats from the fires, but one of them had clawed her arm before dashing out into the street. Blood flecked her sleeve. Occasionally she checked her wound, brushing back her wiry gray hair as she did. The way she gently pulled her crinkled waves until they draped over her shoulders reminded Chris of Erah, and it made her heart ache all over again.

  “That’s a nice story,” Chris said after swallowing the lump in her throat.

  “But it’s not a story,” she insisted. Chris looked back at the woman’s friends, another elderly couple riding a donkey. They saw her looking but didn't wave.

  Nothing had been organized outside the village’s gates. People had just fallen in with each other. There was no committee and no consensus. Tragedy had struck and they all needed somebody. So they clumped together, and when a few people started moving the rest had followed.

  The line was moving south. It was the only way to go, really. The chasm formed by the tunnel collapse was just another silent companion at that point, riding their flank to the west. They would have to keep shoulder to shoulder with it until it tapered enough for a safe crossing.

  “It’s the story of the beginning of the Middle Lands,” the woman continued. “They say the southern castle is beautiful beyond belief, walls that shine with the brightest light. It’s cool in the summer because of the waterfall spray and warm in winter because of the goodness within.”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  The enthusiasm with which the woman had been speaking drained away. She finally matched the rest of them: travel-weary and sad.

  “I have not,” she said. “I know no one who has.”

  “So maybe it’s just a story.”

  The woman stopped walking. “What is life without hope?” When Chris didn’t answer, the woman shook her head then left to rejoin her friends. Chris noticed the way her presence seemed to stir them. They reached out and touched her shoulder, rolling back her sleeve to check the wound on her arm, doing the things a loved one would do. Chris thought of Hannah, Narento, and Erah. Not to mention her own sister and father. The names of those she lost just kept accumulating. She s
canned the crowd for Megland and Micah and found them near the back of the line, their horses keeping pace with each other while they talked.

  She had been mulling things over ever since The Middles. It was easier to view the whole thing as a kind of puzzle to be solved rather than having to deal with the tightness in her chest, the pressure behind her eyes. She thought about the fact that ever since she’d arrived on Kellet things had gone wrong. People that otherwise would have lived the rest of their lives in relative peace were gone. There was Hannah’s capture, then Narento and Erah, and who knew how many others in the fires in The Middles. She was starting to wonder, what if it had something to do with her? What if she was the reason for all the horrible things that kept happening?

  At first Chris wondered if what the salesman in the shop had said was true, if the blade that she carried was actually cursed, but then she remembered that Hannah had been killed well before she bought the blade. The more she thought about it the more it seemed that she was the common thread. Something about her presence was setting the world off.

  Digs caught up with her, matching the horse’s slow pace. Micah and Megland were on the other two horses they’d taken from Narento’s barn, but Digs insisted on walking. She was just about to ask him about the story of the southern castle when seemingly out of nowhere a cloaked rider thundered along the line, racing to the south. The crowd made way to avoid getting trampled.

  Chris looked around and saw the same expression on almost everyone’s faces: trepidation. The electric charge of nervous energy flowed in waves over the mass of refugees. Something was about to happen. The fire was just the beginning.

  Was this what war was really like?

  Digs looked up at her from where he walked alongside the mare and she could tell he was thinking the same thing. But after the rider sped by, some time passed, maybe minutes. It was hard to tell how long they had kept plodding along, putting one foot in front of the other, but Digs finally broke the silence.

  “Christina?” he said, looking up at her and then away.

  “Yeah?”

  “When we were in the barn trying to saddle the horse something happened, didn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” She was afraid she knew exactly what he meant.

  “When you were calming the horse down.”

  She just looked at him. He seemed to realize something and nodded. “Your eyes were closed.”

  “Yeah. I was trying to relax. Horses pick up on it if you’re nervous.” She shifted in the saddle.

  Digs took a deep breath. “I don’t know what it was, but when you started tapping something rippled under that horse’s skin from your hand all the way down the length of her, and when the rippling stopped, she was calm.”

  Chris hadn’t noticed anything while she was doing it. The chaos of the fire had made it impossible to think about anything else other than getting out of there alive.

  “It might have just been a shudder,” she said. “Horses do that all the time. They’re twitchy.”

  “You don’t understand. This was a wave. I’ve never seen anyone do something like that before.”

  She tried to sound nonchalant and failed. “Well, Digs, in case you haven’t noticed, Kellet is strange. If this horse did ripple then that’s actually one of the most normal things that’s happened since we got here. Seriously, I wouldn’t give it another thought.”

  He was quiet, but she knew enough about him by then to know that didn’t mean he was done. The matter was far from settled.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, hoping to steer the conversation away from magic. “The woman I was just talking to told me a story about a castle in the south. You ever heard of it?”

  “Which woman?”

  Chris twisted in the saddle, her stiff muscles threatening to cramp at any second. The crowd they moved in trudged onward, solemn sooty faces staring at the ground. Chris scanned them, looking for the gap-toothed woman or the donkey that carried her friends, but came up empty. Maybe they had stopped for a break or something.

  “Can’t find her,” she said, turning to face forward again. “Is the story about the southern castle true?”

  “It’s a well-known tale,” he said. “I doubt it’s true. Many want to believe it’s there, that there’s another way, a place of refuge where everyone’s lives hold the same value. It’s something many of us were told as we lay in bed as children. That out there somewhere is a place where all of this,” he nodded, indicating the caravan, “is no more. So maybe it is more of a wish than a story. Which is just as well. Death comes for us all in the end anyway, right?”

  The caravan continued its slow, steady pace. The horses clomped their rhythmic cadence on the ruddy turf, a muffled thud demarking each hoof beat. Everything around Chris slowed to the speed of molasses pouring out of a jar. Her mind went back to that night on Earth when she was in her bedroom, fat snowflakes falling outside her window, the house so quiet she could hear the refrigerator’s hum downstairs. Chris was so familiar with this particular moment that she could predict to the second when the car would pull into the driveway. She wiped the glass with the side of her fist, letting the condensation drip off her hand onto the windowsill.

  The cruiser’s lights were never on. She never heard the chatter of the officer’s radio. He just parked the car, making sure to close the door quietly, and donned his hat. His footsteps crunched the snow like he was walking on brittle-boned skeletons.

  He looked back over at his car, double-checking something, before stepping under the front door’s overhang.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  “Chris!” Digs yelled.

  She was jolted back into the present. People were scattering, screaming. Behind them were riders in chainmail, closing in on the caravan, torches flaring in the night. Chris’s heart pounded in her chest as her entire system flooded with adrenaline. Quickly, she reached down, grabbed Digs by the forearm, and together they awkwardly got him up on the horse.

  She tried to think about what to do. She couldn’t find Micah and Megland. People were scattered everywhere. Chris watched as one of the riders chased down a woman then ran her through with his sword.

  “Micah!” Chris yelled but she couldn’t even hear herself over the screaming. Unfortunately, one of the soldiers in the distance spotted her and charged.

  There was no way her own horse could outrun the soldier’s after walking all night. Chris pushed her anyway, forcing the animal into a gallop. When she spotted the gap-toothed woman’s donkey disappearing into a far tree line, she trusted her gut and followed it.

  Guiding her horse through the forest, around the trees’ massive trunks, Chris didn’t dare look back. Her hands gripped the reins tight so they wouldn’t slide out of her sweaty hands. Digs’ heart thudded against her back.

  The trees were broad-leafed, their trunks so wide you could have hidden a tank behind them. Their tops soared into the darkness above. Chris just kept going, guiding the mare around obstacles, making sure to duck under low branches, trying to block out the screams and cries that echoed each other, a horrific version of mockingbirds sounding off, punctuating the night. When the sounds finally grew distant enough she pulled back on the reins and slowed the horse to a walk. Its brown coat was slick with sweat. Chris took several deep, shaky breaths and rhythmically patted its neck to calm it before she and Digs dismounted.

  Please, God, let Micah and Megland be okay. Let them be safe. Please.

  Once on the ground, she offered up a prayer for her friends. Hopefully Micah had the same idea and had taken shelter in the forest. Still, she kept the prayer on repeat in her mind while she walked. Just in case.

  Soft blue patches of light pooled here and there throughout the forest. Chris hadn’t noticed them while they were riding. She was focused on escaping the attack. But had it not been for those patches of light that illuminated the trunks and obstacles, she never would have been able to navigate the woods at night. Normally, she would have asked Digs about them, wh
at made them, but they needed to find a place to hide. There was no guarantee that Karniv’s men wouldn’t search the woods.

  “What about here?” Digs whispered, walking up to one of the giant trunks. The inside had been hollowed out. There was room for her, Digs, the horse, and then some. It wasn’t perfect, though. An entire side was open, leaving them exposed. They would have to just hope that no one came that way with a bright torch. There wasn’t time to search the woods for other choices. They needed to get out of the open as soon as possible.

  The two of them took shelter like Skywalker curling up in the viscera of a beast. The tree’s insides smelled of earth. It was the smell of decaying plants, a decomposing log on the forest floor on a hot summer night. It wasn’t terrible. It made her feel a little less exposed. The tree seemed to hug her, folding its bark around her. There was comfort there. Chris tied the horse’s reins to a root inside the tree so it wouldn’t run off or give away their location then sat beside Digs.

  “We had to leave them,” Digs whispered. “We had to leave them, right?” He was sitting on the ground, his back against the tree’s damp interior. His knees were pulled to his chest, hands pulling them close.

  It reminded Chris that he was younger than her, that for all of his knowledge of Kellet, he was still just a kid. The screams had finally died off, and the only noise was an owl that kept calling “why” at regular intervals. If there was ever a night for that question, it was this one.

  They sat together in silence listening for the sounds of pursuit. It was hours until they were certain that the riders weren’t coming for them. The sky had begun to lighten, and the shapes of the forest slowly coalesced until the blue nightlights dissolved and the sun took over. Only then did Chris get up and strip the saddle off the mare to give her a good rubdown. The horse rolled her eyes and softly snorted her pleasure.

  “Yeah, you’re a good horse, aren’t you? You know what? You look like a Molly to me. Is your name Molly?” Chris said, fighting the pressure behind her eyes. Crying wouldn’t help anything.