Chapter Thirteen- Duty Calls #2
I frown and stare at the horse standing in the section of the stables reserved for the royals only.
This horse is off-limits, but he nuzzles into my palm and huffs a breath, as though content.
He is a Corsivin horse—rare and mighty and only allowed to be possessed by royalty.
They are marked by their near-glowing fur, perfectly curly manes, impeccable speed, and unrivaled agility, bred exclusively on one of the islands off the western coast. I sigh, if only knights were given horses with such impressive qualities.
“That’s Grave, Prince Aleksander’s one and only for the last ten years,” Luca—the young stablehand—informs me with a smile as he adjusts Zena’s saddle.
“I know who he is,” I speak low as I look into the horse’s eyes. I know if I look on his backside, I’ll see deep scars where the poor thing has been brutalized both by the Prince and by battle.
Zena, like the other dozens of horses, is a standard reddish brown-furred Tonn horse.
Still a magnificent breed, but not nearly as rare.
I look into the steed’s uniquely hazel eyes, and she seems to pause, looking back at me.
As if she notices that the color of her eyes matches mine and that we are the same.
A strange feeling swells in my chest before evaporating completely.
Luca told me she was eight when I arrived, so she is now just over ten years old.
“Careful, you just might bond with this one,” Luca warns and brushes her stomach.
He’s right. I would hate to bond with Zena only to abandon her when I flee the kingdom. Besides, knights bonding with horses is utterly unhelpful. If we have to hurry to another horse, we can’t have them kicking anyone who isn’t their chosen rider.
“I already have a horse,” I retort. It’s true, sort of. I bonded with one but had to give him to an old farmer in preparation for this mission. He’s a mutt and too old to be paraded around as a knight’s horse.
“You have one? What kind?” Elmerov inserts himself into the conversation and gives a carrot to his chosen horse, Orchid.
“Another Tonn, but he’s white and brown,” and it’s partially true. While my horse is staying with the old farmer, I have no family there. My real family lives deep in the Venomwoods, covered in scales.
Orchid chomps the carrot quickly while Zena eats an apple that Luca offers her.
“I’m sure he looks forward to seeing you again,” he offers.
As far as Elm and the other knights are concerned, I have a family home which I visit every other month.
In reality, I go to see the Serpents and Sylvithria.
My closest serpent brothers, Jacks and Cain, have chosen to remain in human form so my connection with them is deeper.
I haven’t gone to them in over four months now.
“They’ll both need shaffrons and crinets,” I tell Elm and Luca.
Elm nods and encourages Luca to grab the armor for the horses. Riftwraiths are vicious, but we don’t know what else we’ll stumble across in the dead of night.
When the horses gallop off of the castle’s property, Elm finally asks the question:
“So Prince Thorne, huh?”
“Don’t,” I grumble. “Clixinyer,” I cast the spell to speed up the horse. I hear Elmerov echo the spell on his steed and come up beside me.
“I’m not judging,” Elm smiles as though we’re teenagers making small talk about girls. “I pegged the Princess to be more your type.”
“I’m not screwing the Prince,” I don’t mean to sound so defensive.
“Fine. But maybe it would do you some good to screw someone. You’re acting like you have a stick up your ass lately,” he scoffs.
I glare at him for a moment before steering Zena down a narrow wooded path. She prances over roots and sticks far too loudly for my comfort.
“Nirath,” I cast on all of us. My temples tingle with the magic leaving my body to cloak us in silence, the familiar charring smell burning my nose hair.
“Whitmire has some great Pleasure Halls which are very accommodating to us Knights,” Elm grins proudly as he places his hand over his chest. I realize then that he’s young, so young. Not by much in age, but maturity. “They got guys, too!”
I want to tell him that I don’t prefer one biological sex over the other, but I want to tell him to shut up more.
“If you shut up, we can go to the Pleasure Hall of your choice after the Riftwraith is gone and the kid is safe,” I say to appease him.
We arrive in Whitmire, stiff and sore from the ride.
The fact that nothing was on the forest road to give us grief tells me that the Riftwraith is stalking about and chasing all other manner of creatures into hiding.
Despite the sweat on the back of my neck, I sit high in the saddle, showing no fear to the townsfolk who are peeking out of their windows at us.
The common folk are made up of Quotidian Arcanists who have access to a lesser concentration of the Titan’s magic.
Those who serve the King only do so because of a higher concentration of magic in their blood and, like me, are known as Stygian Arcanists.
All of the magic kingdoms have the same distinction—people with higher levels of magic play a more prominent role in society, the rest are commoners.
Very rarely is someone born without magic.
Stonebound individuals can have a decent quality of life in Terramora, the kingdom of earth magic, as it is full of the lesser Arcanists and a high Stonebound population.
Stonebound people are simply magic-less, bound to the earth with no magic to shape it to their needs.
Most Arcanists would rather be dead than Stonebound.
“Please!” a distraught woman wails as she sprints to our horses with a wailing child in her arms, signalling that we are in the right place. This must be the mother of the lost child.
“Woah,” I stop Zena.
“My Joanna, she’s been missing all night!” The dark-skinned woman is inconsolable as Elm and I jump from our horses.
“Where’s the guard?” I ask.
“They’re in the woods, still looking, but I haven’t seen them in two hours!” She bounces and rocks her son.
“How old is the girl?” I soften my features to help comfort the woman.
“She’s seven, sir.” The lady rubs her nose on the back of her sleeve. Her clothes are tattered, her child’s clothes too small.
“And the girl’s father?” Elm asks.
“Dead, just a month ago,” she sniffles. “When the Bleakwood Mine collapsed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I place a hand on her shoulder. “We’re here to help. Where did you last see her?”
I watch as Elm begins to cast a spell which will allow him to hear everything up to about five miles out. It’s painful, but on a quiet night like this due to the Riftwraith, he might as well try. “Lino,” he taps his temple and closes his eyes.
“She got some sweet bread from the baker and went to play by the old well. Just there—” She points into the dark woods.
“How far is the well?”
“About a five minute walk,” she becomes defensive. “I am a good mother, doing it all alone and all,” she nods with sneer.
“I don’t doubt that,” I hold up my hands. “I will go see where the other guards are and look for your Joanna.”
The woman mumbles her thanks and hurries away back to her home.
“Elm? Anything?”
“Chortling and clicking, about a mile that way,” Elm points the opposite direction of where the child last went.
“That must be the Riftwraith; we’ll deal with that first. Perhaps he has the girl.” I swing myself up onto my horse and Elm follows suit.
The horses hooves thunder towards the Riftwraith, the smell of blood assuring me of that. Elm points us west, then north until we are close enough to hear screaming.
Riftwraiths are ancient creatures, summoned out of Xeusis’s own nightmares.
Some say they were born within the rift between the Titan’s eternal sleep and need to wake.
They served to terrorize Xeusis, though no one knows how they came to be.
Born of magic or hatred, it doesn’t matter.
Their rarity is inconsequential because when they rise, blood spills.
“Reese should have come,” I snarl as I dismount my horse.
“He trusts you,” Elm reassures me.
“He’s lazy and couldn’t care less if I die,” I retort as I draw my sword.
I’ve only ever handled one Riftwraith in my time in the Knighthood.
It was one of two who needed to be dispatched—the other was handled by Prince Aleksander and six of his best soldiers.
I guess my previous success warranted Reese’s trust in my ability to handle this one, despite the minor detail that the last one nearly killed me and left me so injured, I wished it had.
Elm shrugs and his steps fall in line with my own.
The creature chortles again when the screaming stops.
Not the screams of a little girl, but of a man.
My steps light, I ease around a large Bloodroot tree, sensing the Riftwraith’s presence.
The massive creature towers over eight feet tall, flesh dripping from it with a sickening stench.
I’m inclined to believe the stories—that they must be summoned from the grave by Stygian Arcanists—as I take in its rotting appearance.
It kicks the body of the villager who he just bled dry, sending it flying ten feet into another tree with a nauseating crunch.
Blood is pooled at the feet of the Riftwraith, a fact that evidently pleases it.
I jolt, horrified that the discarded body lands on top of two others. Both completely bled dry.
“It’s got blood,” Elm curses to himself.
“Now! Go around,” I give him the signal for a standard two person ambush which we can hopefully execute before it strengthens itself with the blood.