CHAPTER ONE
I say we go back now. We haven’t found anything, and we’ve been out here most of the day. I’m sodden to the bone.”
I sighed, pushed back the hood of my damp cloak. Winter hadn’t yet turned to spring, and the Edgelands were wet and gray. It would be two more moons before the rain stopped and high summer dried us out like laundry on a line. At least until the snows came again.
“We’ll make one more round,” I said. “Just in case we missed something in the fog. And then back to the hall.”
Like all citizens who’d reached eighteen summers, we took our turns patrolling, looking for the reivers who roamed the Edgelands’ southern border with Intarha.
They made their living stealing what they could from us – sheep, grain, horses, tools – and selling it in their country.
The Edgelands was a challenging place, a crescent of tundra that cupped the northern mountains that held back the Broken Sea.
With care and planning, we lived just between feast and famine. Reivers upset that careful balance.
Voices emerged from the southeast through the incessant drip of water to the east.
I put my hood up in an instant; Graene did the same. We both pressed back against the trees, nearly invisible beneath the dark fabric. Our monochromatic world made hiding easy, so we listened and we waited.
More voices, now arguing about horses and borders and food stores.
“Reivers,” Graene murmured, and rubbed the tiny wooden pendant she wore on a leather cord – a squat, rounded carving of the god of hunters. Our realm, Terra, had gods for every occasion.
The voices moved closer. Still south of us and mostly moving straight.
I held up a hand, traced a meandering line across my palm.
Graene nodded her understanding. They were walking along the streambed below us, maybe foraging for food – mushrooms or thornberries at this time of year – or looking for tracks.
An animal they could stalk, or a human they could surprise.
We crept forward, looked over the edge of the gulley.
Not reivers. Soldiers. Thousands of them, in a narrow line that snaked through the land beyond the forest and stretched to the horizon. They wore leather armor, carried short swords, and marched in unison.
There was no need for an Intarhan army to come this far north. They never made good on their promises to control the reivers, and that wouldn’t have required an army this large anyway.
We’d heard rumors of fighting to the south, of conquests in two of the other Four Kingdoms by a man they called the ‘Golden King’. Even the greediest warmongers ignored the Edgelands; ice and stone and the little else we managed to hide from the reivers weren’t worth their trouble.
I guess that had changed.
“Back to the hall,” I said. My father was the Edgelands’ king, the third generation of his line to hold the throne. We had to tell him what we’d seen. We had to prepare.
We moved back from the gully and started running. The land between the trees was mostly flat, boggy in spots and speared through with stone in others – great boulders rising like they’d sliced through the forest’s skin. The world was quiet… until the sound of heavy footsteps echoed behind us.
My heart, already quickened by the run, pounded harder. And then the voice followed.
“You there! Stop!”
If they caught us, they’d kill us. Otherwise, we’d ruin their plan – the surprise attack they apparently intended against the village. We had to reach the village first, or at least one of us did. And Graene was taller than me, with longer legs and strides.
I came to a stop. “Go,” I told her, and pulled the bow from my shoulder.
“Dahlia—”
I took an arrow from the quiver on my back, nocked it. “I’ll give you cover.” She nodded, touched her pendant, and took off. She was gone in a heartbeat.
I was wet and cold and my cloak was soaked through. Rivulets of rain were now slipping down my back. But none of that mattered. Not when I held a bow.
I turned back on the soldiers who’d chased us. One in front, three behind him. All on foot, all in uniforms, minus the leather armor. Maybe these were rangers, scouting for the rest of the army. I raised the bow, aimed at the man in front.
And looked, for the first time, at his face.
Gods might have made it – honed the cheekbones, the brow, the mouth made for a woman’s pleasure. A straight nose between honey-colored eyes that would have suited the lions I’d seen in storybooks. His shoulder-length dark blond hair was damp with rain, leaving a wave of it across his brow.
His gaze met mine, confusion and surprise in his eyes.
And for three long heartbeats, we stared at each other.
A shiver ran down my spine, a sharp heat that for a moment chased away the chill of clouds and rain.
I wanted to touch his face, to push that lock of hair behind his ears…
and maybe let my hand linger on the breadth of his strong shoulders.
Those heartbeats passed, and logic returned. This stranger held a sword and had chased me through the woods. He was no friend of mine.
“Who are you, and what business do you have in the Edgelands?”
“We have business with its king.”
“Its king has no business with mercenaries. Drop your weapons,” I said. “Turn around and go back in the direction you came. Any other movement and this arrow will be the last thing you see.” I pulled back the bowstring a hairsbreadth more.
“You don’t want to do that,” said the man in front. He took a step forward.
Fear was like an Anima now – the remaining soul of a lost life – casting deadly shadows across the forest.
I had to work to keep the bow lifted, the arrow straight, but I did. “Last chance. Turn around and go back to the border or meet Oblivion.” Our world was Terra; Anima lived in the second realm, the Aetheric, until they departed for the third realm, Oblivion. The land of nothingness.
“As I’m sure you noticed, that arrow isn’t a match for my army.”
“Your army isn’t welcome here.” Winning, my father often told me, doesn’t require the complete destruction of the enemy. The enemy only has to believe their destruction is possible. “Arrows kill as easily as swords,” I said. “And at a distance. Last chance.”
They watched me, rain dripping down their faces, but were otherwise still as statues.
They’d made their choice.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Release.
The arrow whistled through the air and struck the man in front. He stared at me, then looked down at the arrow now lodged in his thigh. “Didn’t think you’d…” he began. And then he crumpled.
* * *
Chaos erupted. Two of the soldiers reached for their fallen friend. One gave chase. I ran, pausing along the way to take three more warning shots.
I was out of breath and dripping wet when I broke through the trees, the forest giving way to land cleared generations ago for the village that comprised the Edgelands’ largest community.
A chilling breeze poured down from the Two Sisters, still capped with ice.
The peaks reached up across the northern horizon, the long-frozen river of ice between them.
Foothills curled around to the left, meeting the thick earthen wall that surrounded the village.
The Great Hall, tavern, smithy and other necessaries sat within the wall, and wooden houses and tiny shrines were tucked into niches in the foothills.
Graene waited at the gap in the wall, the iron gate, with its symbols of the Terran gods of protection, open for traders or neighbors. She looked me over. “Arrows?”
“Four. One definite hit. I shot the others in a hurry.”
She nodded, raised her gaze to the treeline. “They haven’t followed you.”
“They will,” I said, with dread sinking heavy in my belly. “I think it’s the Golden King.”
“The Golden—” she began, and fear covered her face, too.
They’d reach the village and gods knew we didn’t have the strength to fight an army. I worried for my friends, my parents. And thought of the old tales, which said no good happened to the daughters of dethroned kings.
Bannock, the man who stood guard near the gate today, looked down from the top of the wall. “Your Highness. Graene.”
A man waited inside the gate, apparently having been talking with Bannock.
He was called Trevellyan, a rich merchant from Intarha who’d resettled in the Edgelands years ago in search of a new market.
He’d become one of my father’s counselors.
He was handsome, with dark hair and honed features, but that didn’t do enough to disguise his repellent personality.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and reached out as if to comfort me.
“Army,” I said, ignoring the gesture. “On the other side of the forest near the creek.”
He gave me a pitying look that managed to be condescending. “Just reivers, Your Highness. There’s no need for any army to come this way north.”
“Yeah,” Bannock said. “What would troops want up here?”
“The Edgelands,” I said. “Spread the word.”