Page 20 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Chapter 4
SHE WAS FIRE
Hallie
HALLIE’S BREATHS CAME HEAVY, AND her pack dug into her shoulders. No other sounds followed them down the tunnel or the stilted mountain path to the ruined village. She had no idea if anything was left of the cavern or the soldiers or anything at all.
The soldiers were dead. Hallie had killed them.
Somehow.
She refused to look at her hands. If she didn’t look at the blood, she could pretend it wasn’t there.
The memory of undoing that soldier thread by thread was harder to ignore.
“You did what you had to do,” Niels said as they rounded the last bend of the overgrown trail through the trees. He’d wrapped his upper right arm with a bandage and a few herbs he’d kept from her father’s stores. The bullet had only grazedhim in the tunnel, like he’d said, but he still winced every time he jostled it. “Once you’ve calmed down, we’ll go back and help.”
Calmed down. Like she’d lost her temper, not taken a body apart without a weapon. “I’m fine.”
Niels was the seasoned fighter. He’d been patrolling and conducting sneak attacks on the Cerls for months. This was Hallie’s first time doing anything of the sort. She didn’t count the battle in Myrrai when Zeke died; she’d really only run then. This time, she hadkilledsomeone. She felt dirty, like her hands were stained with something worse than blood, like they would never be clean no matter how hard she scrubbed them.
Helping had been her idea, but…she’d killed those people. If she went back, she might have to kill more.
“They were after me.” Her words were measured. She couldn’t afford anger or frustration or crippling guilt. Not now. “It’s better if we keep going. We’ll probably lead them away from the others.”
“And why exactly are we leading them to Ravenhelm?” Niels looked warily at the ruins beyond the trees.
Ravenhelm was something of a legend in the Nardens, a ghost story one told around the dinner fire. Though only a half-day’s ride away on a very sturdy horse or a mule, very few visited. The burned-out homes and overgrown town square served as a warning of how quickly a town could be wiped out if they were caught unaware.
Legend said the only survivor of the attack that had razed Ravenhelm was a young boy who managed to kill the Cerl commander with some sort of weapon. Some claimed it had been a simple crossbow, others a flashpistol; several of the older folk who’d lived in Stoneset at the time swore the boy took him out with only a pickaxe. Stoneset’s bard rarely told his version, but it was quite fanciful—complete with a glimmering sword.To hear it told, the boy could have been King Arthur, drawing Excalibur from the stone.
Stories often outgrew their britches in the mountains.
Hallie never knew which version to believe, if any. The only record of the attack lay in oral tradition. Sure, there was probably a military record somewhere, but the attack had been more of an embarrassment for Jayde. It was also one of the many precursors to the Great War years later.
Sticking her hand in her pocket, she found Kase’s goggles and squeezed them, soaking in renewed strength from that small piece of him. She could do this. “That’s where the Passage is.”
Apparently, she’d left facts, logic, and reasoning behind and entered the realm of ‘follow the magical visions in your head.’ The scholarly side of her brain called herself a stars-idiot.
“Passage?” Niels asked skeptically.
“It’s how my great-grandmother got to Jayde.”
“Passage,” he repeated. “Like a…door?”
Always with that doubt.
“An archway,” she corrected. “I think. Not sure what it’ll look like now, as it’s been several decades.”
She squinted at the village. It could hold the archway as it had appeared in Hallie’s mind, but the likelihood of that was slim. Many homes were empty husks, aged with time and withered vines. Some were missing entire walls or roofs—as if some vengeful god had smashed it with a fist. The cobblestones below were so overgrown with moss, only a few determined ones poked through the hardy foliage.
She couldn’t tell what Niels was thinking, but he must’ve thought her mad.Shecertainly did, after all.
Niels paused and rechecked his pistol for bullets. He loaded three more into the chamber. “Hope I don’t need to use this again.”
Hallie looked down at her weapon. The electropistol was easy enough to use. It had one step: pull the trigger. She just needed to aim and pray she hit close to her target. She just didn’t want to think of what her target might be. But was it any better than using her Essence power?
She wasn’t sure.
