“Shadow Herald”: Chapter Two
Crislie streaked down the beaten path, her tunic’s folds and dark curls flying behind her as she passed the lanes of barley and vegetables that marked the outskirts of Gadlin Town. Her elder brother gasped along a few paces behind. She could practically hear his reading glasses bouncing at the end of their twine loop.
“For the last time, slow down!” Evain called out.
Crislie’s reply came between bursts of breath and laughter. “Why? So you can win?”
“When did this become a race?”
“When I decided it was.”
“Gods! Can we sit for a breather, or—?”
Grinning, Crislie surged forward over the dirt, stirring up the puffy white dandelions dappling the path. Sitting in one place never sat well with her. She was more comfortable with the wind whistling in her ear and her feet skimming the ground.
When they reached the forest that marked the edge of Gadlin, the sky faded into a dapple of blue peeking out between leaves gilded gold from the impending arrival of both sunset and early autumn. One could hear the river from here, gurgling a gentle song as it wound through the woods. The path grew thick with twigs and mud.
Snickering to herself, Crislie hiked up the edge of her skirts to avoid getting them too dirty. “Keeping up, Ev?” she called back, whirling around at the river’s edge to face him.
Her brother — lanky, curly-haired, and now heavily winded — stumbled to a halt with his hands on his knees.
“It’s not fair,” he said between wheezes, laughing. “I should never have given you my old boots when you wore yours through. Should’ve let you run about in your socks. See if you’d go so fast then.”
“Imagine the look on Ma’s face if I hauled myself home with muddy socks and nothing else on my feet,” Crislie said.
“There’s a sight I’d hate to see. Speaking of those, it’s about to get dark. We’ll have to slip past the evening patrol so we aren’t caught breaking curfew.” Evain’s gaze sharpened as he stood. Coming here had been her idea. “If we return home under escort, Ma’ll be upset.”
A snort left Crislie. “But isn’t she always?”
“With you? Probably. If you would stop doing things like this, then maybe she wouldn’t be so cheesed off.”
“Maybe,” she muttered. “But if it’s you as well as me, then she’ll fuss all concerned-like over you, yeah? Won’t even raise her voice.”
Evain hesitated, closed his mouth, and shrugged.
Having made her point, Crislie plunked herself down on a boulder by the river’s edge.
As far as rivers went, Crislie supposed that Gadlin’s was nice, though she hadn’t traveled far enough to find other rivers to compare it to. Minnows flashed in the shallows and darted away from each shifting shadow in the clear, slow-moving waters. You could wade right across if you wanted to. But then, you might run into something on the other side. There, the untamed trees grew as tall as ten men, and gods-touched creatures leered from the wild.
Thankfully, no feyrie folk dared dance across the river that split around the town. If they set a toe out of their woods, or were bold enough to show their sharp ears on a trading road, there would be consequences. The Irongardhe knights would make sure of that. Bright blood would drip from magic-sung bones.
It made one almost glad that the knights governed Gadhi, even if they were horribly stuffy. Crislie peered into the dark oak and hawthorn and wondered, furtively, what evils would befall her if she gave in to curiosity and walked into the deep woods.
She entertained the idea more often than she ought to.
A yelp brought Crislie back to reality. Evain pulled one dripping foot out from the water, the source of his dismay. One of his shoes and one of his socks had been laid neatly aside over a rock.
“I think we’ve had our last wade of the year,” he told her, trying to shake the water off.
“What? No we haven’t.”
Crislie fearlessly hiked up her skirts and kicked off her own boots. Gritty pebbles and dew-laden leaves stuck to her soles. She stuck a foot in the water, then hastily withdrew. Gah! Cold! When had it gotten so chilly? Too early in the year for cozy winter cloaks, too late for splashing around. Stupid fall and its stupid early frosts. Sighing, Crislie began to shove her feet back into their shoes.
“Disappointing to run all this way, only to have the season thwart us, isn’t it?” her brother said with a wry chuckle.
“At least the air’s good for you. Can’t breathe in candle smoke and dusty papers all the time, Ev.”
As she rested on her boulder, leaning over the singing waters to fuss with the more stubborn of her boots, a strange sight caught her eye. The bushes to their left were full of broken branches. Dried sap crusted their splintered ends. Had some animal crossed over, trampling the undergrowth as it went along? Her heart skipped a beat. The path of destruction stopped just . . . oh.
Crislie’s hand fell slack, her uncomfortable boot forgotten already. Evain’s sudden inhale confirmed that he saw it too. Lying where the water licked the underbrush was a waifish stranger, half-sunken into the mud.
They were pretty bedraggled, to put it mildly.
Crislie faintly recognized their headscarf — fastened at the bottom with a loose knot and an ivory bead — as an uen. Traders from the dry climes of Ullua wore uen to keep the sun off of them. The waif’s was coming undone. Underneath the lilac fabric, they had dark brown skin, an angular nose, and half-closed eyes of a dull violet. A torn traveling poncho and a loose sirwal covered the rest of their body, both of which were dashed with burs and mud.
Squinting at the face, Crislie came to the uncertain conclusion that “they” were probably a scruffy “she.” She hadn’t once met an Ulluan man in any of her chats with the traders.
The stillness of this scene made Crislie’s skin crawl. It was as if she’d stumbled across some fey gravesite. Only with that thought did she notice that the dirt at the waif’s feet was splotched with something darker than water.
This realization broke the spell of shock. Crislie took a deep breath, knowing that she had to do something. How long had this poor girl been left here like that? Not long enough for one of the evening patrols to find her, that was certain. It couldn’t have been more than a day at most.
“Hello?” Crislie chanced as she rose to her feet.
The waif didn’t stir.
Evain lowered his voice to a grave whisper. “Crislie.”
Ignoring him, she crept closer to the bloody patch of soil, dread beating in her chest.
“Crislie, for the love of the absent gods, don’t touch that corpse.”
“She’s shivering.”
It was such a slight movement, but enough to confirm that she still clung to life. Slowly, Crislie pulled aside the undergrowth obscuring her, snapping twigs and dry vines.
The waif’s uen caught on a branch and pulled away from her head. Inky hair spilled out, resting on her shoulders and mixing with the leaves. Except that it wasn’t really hair. Feathers trailed from her scalp, downy plumes slicked down with mud and sweat.
Evain muffled his surprise behind a polite cough. Crislie cast him a similarly startled look over her shoulder.
“You don’t think this is a feyrie? Right?” she whispered.
Evain shook his head, still keeping his distance. “Her ears are blunt, and her blood looks human enough.”
So not a fey. But no ordinary human, either. Crislie pushed more branches out of her way, mind reeling. As she did, a haggard whimper arose from the stranger. The violet eyes fluttered and rolled up to meet Crislie’s. Shock registered within them. In a flash, the waif struggled to her feet — then shuddered and collapsed again, grabbing her sloppily-wrapped ankle.
“Vak!” she exclaimed with a hiss of pain.
“Absent gods!” Crislie muffled out in kind, one hand still clamped over her own mouth.
The waif’s voice strained with emotion as she struggled to sit up. It sounded like fear. “Whoever you are, you need to leave me be,” she begged, hunched over her ankle. Though it was tricky to tell with the fabric of her “bandaging,” which was suspiciously akin to that of her thick, dark poncho, it was definitely soaked with blood. Once it got on the waif’s hands, it was a lot easier to see.
Though she couldn’t make heads or tails of this feathered girl nor what had happened to her, it was obvious that something had gone very, very wrong here. “Leave you?” Crislie asked. “Really? That’s your first thought? You look awful.”
A sigh heaved out of Evain as he plodded up to them. “Much as I hate to admit it, my sister’s right. You clearly need help.”
“No, no! This is fine.” The waif inched away as she spoke. Soon enough, she had her back pressed against a tree, still curled over herself like a cornered owlcat. “My well-being is none of your concern. I have recovered from worse, and the best thing you can do for all three of us is to pretend that you never saw me.”
A skeptical look passed from Evain to Crislie, mirroring her own knitted brows and frown.
“C’mon, it won’t be any trouble,” Crislie coaxed. “We could take you to the priestess. Illia’s a decent healer. Or, we could fetch one of the knights? It’ll be a pain to deal with the Irongardhe after curfew, but I reckon they know a bit about treating wounds.”
The horrified drop of the waif’s jaw at the word “Irongardhe” said everything.
Evain fumbled to reassure her as she shrank from the offer. “Forget everything Crislie said. No knights, no priest. But we can’t leave you here like this. Look, you’re bleeding, okay?”
“The bleeding has stopped,” the waif replied stubbornly. “That is old blood. It barely hurts, and I will heal fine on my own.”
Crislie thought for a moment, watching the waif clutch the still-damp bandaging around her ankle. She raised an eyebrow. “We’re not that easily fooled.”
“No, I suppose not. Still, you will not want to take me in.”
“Why?”
The waif looked away, seeming to wrestle with herself.
“You can tell us.”
Finally, an exasperated shrug lifted her shoulders. “Because I am a Herald. My presence will only bring you ill will and arrest, and I am quite tired of bringing terrible things upon nice people.”
Crislie blinked. This was a reasonable explanation for the girl’s strangeness, but one that brought even more questions than it answered. Everyone knew of Heralds — those rare few who the gods spoke to, spoke through, and saw out of. A Herald was a god’s highest servant. Gadhi was ruled by Herald-Regent Ilaina, servant of Gardhe, god of iron, forging, and sunlight. Ullua was ruled by its Matrius, Herald to the starlit goddess Alluari.
Perhaps the earthen Romne, wild gods of the seasons, had a Herald too. But given that the Irongardhe forbade Romne worship, Crislie knew very little about them, except that they aligned themselves with the feyries.
Maybe there had been more Heralds in the past. There’d once been more gods too. Many more, in fact. But everyone knew the story of the Immortal Reckoning. Intent on forging himself into Rhimn’s sole ruler, Gardhe rallied his followers to slay the many gods who used to live alongside him. All but Alluari, who fought him to a standstill, and the Romne, who evaded him even now.
Crislie had heard a couple different versions of the tale. That of Gardhe’s noble ascension, giving his people their northern empire by punishing the lesser, vainer, weaker gods who could do little for humanity . . . and then the one Ma told in private. That of a jealous sun setting fire to everything he could not rule.
Either way, to meet a Herald was tantamount to meeting a god, much in the same way that wandering into a god’s holy grounds would press upon you the awe of their presence.
Or, that was how it was supposed to go.
Honestly, Crislie didn’t feel much besides pity as she regarded the downtrodden young woman before her. “Huh,” she said. “Whose Herald are you?”
“It’s not that hard to figure out,” Evain decided.
“Really?”
“At least not for me.” He turned to the waif. “I study under the town’s record keeper. I’ve archived plenty of the Irongardhe’s wanted posters, and you know, ‘Shadow Herald,’ they offer a grand reward to anyone who can hand you alive to the Regent. Why do they want you so badly?”
The waif flinched. “Why are you asking?”
He held her skittish gaze. “We won’t turn you in. But I want to know what sort of deity we’re about to help. I don’t want to harbor anything malicious.”
Crislie nudged him. “Does she look like she's got a single malicious bone in her body, Ev?” She barely seemed to have a spine.
“It’s her fabled ‘dark goddess’ that worries me.”
“So there are more gods out there?”
“I only know mine,” the waif whispered. “Silamir, she is called.”
The name was entirely unfamiliar. Hence, Crislie found herself caring less about the abstract god, and more about the pretty, meek girl in front of her.
“My goddess, ah, keeps to herself,” she continued. “She only bothers me, and not very often, you see. The Irongardhe would hunt her regardless of our intent. It is really them that one should worry about, if you must take me in. The worst Silamir can do is—” She cut herself off, staring woozily at her feet. “Well, it would be foolish to harm a benefactor, would it not?”
“Good enough for me! Since you’ve got a wanted poster and all, we should get you out of here before the knight apprentices come patrolling.” Crislie gestured up the path. “We’ll bring you to our house to clean up and rest. It’ll be a little better than hiding in the bushes, won’t it?”
The waif bit her lip, mulling the offer over. “And you will not turn me in?” she said, eying the two of them very carefully.
“Of course not! I swear on my ma’s needle.”
“So do I,” said Ev. “I’m sorry for being suspicious, but one of us has to have a little caution, and it’s never Crislie.”
A sputter left Evain as Crislie elbowed him again.
The waif’s eyes leapt from the two of them, to her wound, to the mud. Crislie began to worry that she would utter another stubborn “no.” But eventually, she uncurled, open-armed and vulnerable. “Then at your insistence, I shall go along with you.”
Relief widened Crislie’s grin. How could it take so much arguing to get someone to accept help?
Before she could offer the waif a hand up, however, Evain pulled her aside, voice low. “Wait. You know Ma’ll have a fit about us bringing in a fugitive without even consulting her, right?”
“We’re not taking her to Ma. We’ll bring her to the old house.”
“Da’s?”
“Yeah.”
Evain narrowed his eyes, then sighed. “That’ll do.”
The waif cleared her throat, shyly bringing their focus back to her. “Excuse me, but, if we happen to be done bickering now, may we get this over with?” She flicked a stray feather out of her eyes and pulled her uen haphazardly over her head. It slipped right off again. “If I am to be honest now, I fear that I cannot stand up on my own. And the world is . . . furry? No, fuzzy.”
“Sorry,” Evain said. “One more thing first, miss. Your name?”
“Navaeli. I call myself Navaeli.”
Cute name.
Beaming, Crislie wrapped an arm around Navaeli’s shoulders. The waif balked at first, but soon draped her arms around Crislie’s neck in turn, as if trying to find the most polite way to siphon off body heat. Her skin was clammy, and her frail limbs were wracked with shudders. Just the effort of standing drained the color from her face.
While Evain helped Navaeli fix her uen so that it hid her feathers again, a dozen questions reeled through Crislie’s mind. She bit them back. Doubtless, Navaeli wasn’t up to answering them yet.
“This isn’t hurting you too much, is it?” Crislie asked, steadying her as best as she could.
Navaeli replied through clenched teeth. “May we make haste?”
Hobbling, they started down the path.
