Page 7 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
The boy swallowed his hatred best he could and opened his eyes. “Harlan…Harlan Hale.”
Chapter 1
UNDONE
Hallie
THE FLASH PORTRAIT WAS ONLY eight years old. But to Hallie Walker, those eight years might as well have been a lifetime.
The day she’d purchased it was frozen in her memory like a portrait itself; the mountains had finally welcomed summer like a childhood sweetheart, the snows melting on all but the highest mountain peaks. Thanks to the thaw, traders and peddlers of all sorts made their way to the cleared Narden Pass, wagons weighed down with all sorts of baubles, sweets, and gadgets from Kyvena.
The Summer Market days were the only time Hallie could almost imagine leaving the close and quaint village she’d known all her life. The promise of adventure had hung thick in the air like the spicy perfume coming from one wagon, singing as sweetly as Stoneset’s resident bard with his soft, soulful tenor.
Though her family always had food on the table, she could never afford anything too fancy from the dust-swept merchants. Instead, she’d trailed her fingers over soft leather book spines and tested all the latest trinkets and vowed that one day, when she was owner of the inn, she would allocate enough to buy at least one book a year.
It was a good dream; she was certain the people of Stoneset would appreciate a little library to use that didn’t belong to the schoolmistress. Mistress Jules would lend out her books from time to time, but she was from the capital and came from money. Marrying one of the miners had helped, but general mountain suspicion wouldn’t allow complete trust in an outsider.
That day was different, though. Papa had given her and Jack spending money and told them to use it wisely. Jack’s version ofwiselywas to buy a bag bursting with crinkly-wrapped peppermint sweets. Instead of a coveted copy ofLittle Womenby Louisa May Alcott, Hallie had chosen a flash portrait for Papa—it was his birthday, after all. The peddler had complimented her on being such a sweet, thoughtful girl. How wrong he was.
Hallie had only remembered the occasion at all because Mama had declined to join them at the market in favor of baking a cake. So Hallie had wrangled her brother for the flash portrait and forced him to smile. What the peddler hadn’t captured was Jack’s teasing insults under his breath or Hallie pinching his side in retribution after the flash.
Eight years, a lifetime—yet she remembered it as if it were yesterday. Though she’d longed for the book back then, she was thankful now that she’d chosen the portrait, gazing at it as she adjusted the gas lamp in her father’s tent.
If only she could return to that balmy summer day, sweat clinging to her brow and the world at her feet. Instead, she shivered in the chill of the present-day hidden cavern. Even withthe days lengthening and the snows melting, her father’s old tent didn’t offer much warmth. Neither did the cot in the corner, nor did Kase’s stolen military jacket slung around her shoulders.
She grabbed the framed portrait from the nearby crate, her best attempt at a bedside table, wishing the memory alone could chase the cold out.
The chill ran down to her very bones; the heat that had nearly killed her days earlier was gone. On the one hand, it was a blessing. When she’d bid Kase and her father goodbye, she’d been certain it was final. What limited control she’d gained over her newfound power was tenuous, after all. But once Kase left her with his goggles and the memory of his kiss, that power had fallen away, draining into her core and disappearing entirely.
She was empty.
She didn’t understand it one bit, and the journals her father had given her—penned by her great-grandmother—had been mostly useless. Sure, they had hinted at a way to Myrrai, and the lingering scrap of the Lord Elder in the power that had once thrummed in Hallie’s veins had confirmed it, but other than that, the tale they told made little sense.
After Navara had made it to Stoneset, she had fallen in love with the blacksmith and become the town medic. If Hallie hadn’t known Navara’s lineage, her life’s tale would have seemed no less ordinary than any of the women Hallie had grown up with in Stoneset.
The remaining journals were dominated by logs of Navara’s patients and their ailments. A few pages here and there detailed her day-to-day feelings. A few included her hopes and dreams—the wish that her son and his wife would decide to have children soon made frequent appearances.
But the final journal was written in Yalven, and Hallie had only been able to translate half of the first page. The dialect wasodd. However, what little she’d translated proved to be rather grim.
Navara’s son had contracted what was colloquially known in the Nardens asThe Fogs. The disease was common among Zuprium miners, a deterioration of the mind that worsened the more one was exposed to the raw metal. Leading medical professionals in Kyvena had theories about why this was so, but none of them seemed substantial.
Though Stoneset’s medic had treated several cases of it in Hallie’s childhood—or managed them, rather, seeing as there was no cure—since Navara’s time, the disease had decreased slightly thanks to new regulations. Every male was still required to do some work in the mines, but on rotations. Niels had decided to volunteer before his assigned time because his family had needed the money.
Jack had never worked the mines, but he’d still died in one.
Regardless, Navara’s final journal read like a descent into madness, even if she hadn’t worked the mines and contracted The Fogs herself. Maybe treating it so long had affected her somehow, and the final straw had been her son succumbing to the disease—Hallie’s grandfather, a man she’d never met.
Perhaps that proximal madness was why Navara hadn’t been successful in finding a cure.
Hallie looked back at the flash portrait once more before setting it back on the crate. Half the reason her parents had saved so fastidiously for years was so that Jack would never have to do time in the mines. Hallie would’ve gotten married young to Niels and prayed he deteriorated slowly enough for them to have a long and comfortable life together. It affected everyone differently, after all; some would not fall prey to it for decades, while others would succumb in weeks. It was a game of chance; a horrid one, but a reality of the life they lived.
Hallie eyed her pack, where the journals were tucked away. Papa had told her that the end of Navara’s life hadn’t been pretty. From what she could tell, he’d been right.
Her great-grandmother was supposed to inherit this power, not Hallie. She hadn’t had a choice—she’d been forced to take it from the Lord Elder. Like the miners didn’t have a choice but to poison themselves to protect their families.
Was this her version of The Fogs, her mind deteriorating thanks to something she hadn’t chosen? Had running from her fate only made the ending of her life so much worse?
Either way, Hallie had been holed up in Papa’s tent for three days with only her past, her thoughts, and a dead woman’s inked ramblings for company. If she wasn’t mad already, it couldn’t be far off.
