9. Sage

CHAPTER 9

Sage

I twisted, Pylos's grasp painfully pulling at my hair, and bashed my still-sheathed short sword against his hand as hard as I could. With a yelp, he let go and I dove through the ring after Sawyer.

The magic of the ring tingled over my skin, sweeping from my head to my feet as I passed through, then my head and right shoulder slammed against something solid.

The world lurched around me, flickering to darkness for a second before clearing to a slightly-spinning, cloudy day.

Large, uneven stones crowded to my right, partially covering the ring and blocking most of the path in front of it. To my left was a sharp drop, too close to the ring to have been there when the ring had first been built, and above towered white-capped peaks. A stinging wind swept down the mountainside, gusting over my skin in a sudden, shocking contrast to the oppressive summer heat in Herstind where we'd just been.

Sawyer grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. "You have to get away so I can connect to another gate before Pylos gets?—"

The light in the ring shuddered, and Pylos rode through just as the magic vanished.

My pulse lurched. He'd made it just before the original connection had broken.

His horse reared, dancing uneasily in the suddenly tight space, and he fought to control the beast as my mind raced.

I couldn't win a fight against Pylos. He was bigger and stronger than me and an experienced soldier. We had to leave. Now. Except with the space around the ring so tight, there was no way we'd be able to enter another address and go through without him following.

It would be best to run and hide. Which was a horrible plan. We didn't know the area, and I hadn't even gotten a good look around us to know if running was even an option.

No. I was going to have to fight him and I was going to have to win.

And the first thing I needed to do was get him off his horse. He had a greater reach than me with both his longer sword and arms, and on top of that, being mounted gave him a serious advantage.

I lunged for him just as Sawyer leaped in as well. Except Sawyer flapped his cloak at the horse's eyes, sending the food he'd taken from the kitchen flying in all directions.

The horse reared up and Pylos jerked back to avoid my grasp. Then his eyes widened with sudden surprise, and I realized he was off balance.

With a scream, I swung my still-sheathed short sword against his hands, breaking his grip on the reins and he fell off the horse, crashing onto the uneven rocky ground, and tumbled over the cliff's edge.

His wild, desperate scream cut through the silence, making my stomach lurch, and my thoughts stuttered at the abrupt end to the fight.

It had happened so fast.

One moment we were struggling for our lives. The next it was over.

On instinct, I grabbed the horse's reins so it wouldn't bolt and hurt itself, and, with Sawyer's help, fought to control its head until it stopped panicking. A grim part of me wanted to check for Pylos's body to confirm he was actually dead, but it was foolish to try without calming the horse first. And even as I thought that, I realized my arm burned and white light was forming in the center of the ring.

The horse heaved against our grip, but we held tight until it calmed, huffing and shaking its head, still distressed but no longer panicking. I pressed a firm hand over its nose, and murmured soothing words, as Sawyer gathered the food that had fallen out of his cloak then turned to the ring, fully lit and ready to take me to the Gray.

"You have to step back," he said between wracking coughs as he wrapped the food and his old boots in his cloak so he only had one thing to carry. He held the bundle out to me and an apple to the horse. "I've got Bayard."

I took his cloak and gave him the reins, then climbed over a large rock and around a few others to reach a wide, flat strip that curved around the edge of the mountain. It had probably been the road leading from the ring to Gastow, but the magic in the ring vanished before I reached the curve and could see what lay beyond.

As much as I was curious, we needed to go through the gate before anyone else came through — and as much as I hadn't noticed anyone else with Pylos, I wasn't going to bet he was the only one who'd seen where we'd gone.

Sawyer pressed the words in a pattern I didn't recognize, not taking us to one of the few ring patterns I was familiar with, which was probably good. Edred knew the patterns I did, but he didn't know all of the patterns Sawyer had memorized. And while Sawyer hadn't travelled through the rings a lot and likely hadn't been to wherever we were going, he probably remembered some detail from a book or a tale someone told and had a good guess what we might be stepping into.

White light blossomed in the ring and I hurried back to Sawyer, reaching him by the time the light fully filled the ring. We stepped through into another clearing, almost two hundred feet away from the tall stone walls of a town that had to be three times as large as Olinon.

A merchant from the Southern Isles in a bright, colorful tunic, a beautiful contrast to his dark skin, watched us step through. Beside him was a draft horse harnessed to a half-full cart, the contents hidden beneath an oiled blanket, but I knew from the one time a Southern Isles merchant had visited the keep when I was a child, he probably had colorful silks and sweet-smelling oils.

The merchant's expression was bored, but his gaze followed us as we turned away from the town and headed down the road until the last of the magic had flickered out of the ring and it was his turn to use it.

I hurried us along as quickly as I could without it looking like we were running from something. I didn't want to risk the binding spell reawakening the ring before the merchant could use it.

Thankfully, the fire in my arm only flickered for a moment after the magic in the ring had gone out then dimmed completely and the ring remained asleep. The merchant entered his pattern, light once again filling the circle, and stepped through, his draft horse lumbering behind him, pulling the heavy cart.

The moment the merchant was gone, Sawyer led me and the horse off the road with the confidence of someone who knew where he was going despite the fact he'd never been wherever we were.

We pushed through the underbrush, weaving between large trees, leaving a trail that even an apprentice huntsman could follow. It made my pulse pound despite knowing that no one knew where we'd gone.

The ground started to slope, but not enough to make it difficult for the horse, and then the underbrush opened up, revealing a narrow, rocky bank and a small stream. Sunlight sparkled in its quick-moving water and birds chittered at us, telling us we'd disturbed their peace.

We were a good couple hundred yards from the road and with thick bushes crowding behind us, along with the rise at our backs, we were well out of sight. There was still a chance someone would come to the stream to fish — or in the case of children, to play — but we were as out of the way as we could get without actually crawling into a cave.

"How did you know this was here?" I asked, as he loosely wrapped the horse's reins around a thick branch, giving it enough slack that it could munch on the leaves in front of it or drink from the stream.

"It's on the Caldensian maps," he said, still struggling to breathe from our wild escape but thankfully not coughing as much. He sat on the bank and took his cloak from me. "We should eat something."

I stared at him. "You looked at that map at least four years ago."

He quirked an eyebrow and gave me his driest look, reminding me that he remembered the strangest things despite however long ago he learned them.

"Here." He picked up the half-eaten loaf of bread, ripped off a chunk, and handed it to me.

"They'll feed me at the Black Tower." I sat beside him, setting the rucksack and weapons on the ground beneath my feet, and stared at the stream. "You won't know the next time you'll be able to eat."

"They might not feed you if they find out you're a girl."

Now it was my turn to give him a dry look.

"All right, probably not," he replied and he, too, turned his attention to the stream.

We stared at the water, an awkward silence filling the air around us.

In the blink of an eye, everything had changed. Life hadn't been easy for us at the castle, but we'd known what to expect, knew that Edred would lose his temper over the smallest things, or that Udara would keep two tarts in the kitchen for us instead of sending all of them to Edred and his men. We knew the heat of Herstind in the summer and the wet cold in the winter.

It was all we'd really known. I'd had a few more glimpses of the rest of the kingdom, travelling with our mother and father and then just our mother a little bit, mostly to the capital, but Sawyer had only had a handful of years when he'd been old enough to remember leaving Herstind and had only been to the capital once before mother married Edred.

And while Sawyer had read about the world outside of Herstind March and probably remembered every little detail, there was a huge difference between what was in a book and real life.

The memory of Pylos's scream as he fell to his death sent a shudder racing through me. I'd dreamed of becoming a Sayorian Shieldmaiden, first when I was younger and then as a wild plan in the event Sawyer's attempt to get Herstind from Edred failed.

But shieldmaidens were warrior women. They fought in battles, protected the people and the Queen of Sayoria. They killed people. I hadn't really known what that meant until now. Could I really survive as a member of the Black Guard? If the Shadow Gate opened, I'd be expected to fight and kill, and now that I was sitting still, with time to think, the fear and shock of what happened trembled within me.

I'd killed someone.

And I'd do it again if it meant protecting Sawyer.