Vivatera (Vivatera Series Book 1) Page 4

  “Silence, little Naomi,” Malindra whispered. “My love will always be with you, my little Everstar—my star that shines forever.”

  Fear overcame every impulse; Naomi didn’t move an inch.

  Very little explanation given . . . very few words exchanged.

  “The illusive Malindra. Thief! Coward! I demand you hand over what you have stolen.”

  “You are the thief, Lockwood! You have stolen precious lives from this world.”

  “The stones were traced back to you, old woman. Prolius had contact with you in his last days. We have a witness.”

  “You have no witness. Prolius gave a gift and you will never have a witness of that!”

  “You are so pitiful, woman. Still hiding secrets, but we know all and nothing can save you.”

  “Do what you must. In the end, you will still lose. Search out your secrets, but one you will never discover.”

  Blue powder illuminated the room. Naomi heard the scuffling: shouts and cries from every direction, clanging of metal on metal, then the crash. The smoke cleared. Naomi could see the face of Malindra’s attacker standing tall over her body.

  “Malindra.” His voice was hard and sharp with pain; she had hurt him, Naomi could tell. “You are useless to me.” With that, he stabbed her deep with his blade. Blood soaked through her clothes and saturated the floorboards.

  Silent, dirty tears stung and streaked down Naomi’s face. She tightened her knees to her chest as she watched blood slowly drip down the wall and puddle in the dirt.

  “Search everywhere!”

  Naomi couldn’t remember much of what happened next: a lot of noise, emptying of drawers, boxes, everything turned out. She clung to her scarf and imagined them away.

  Hours went by while the murderer rifled through all the old woman had owned. Naomi sat stiffly and silently, waiting, as she pressed her hands to her eyes and sobbed.

  ~*~

  “Naomi?” A voice awoke her to her senses. “Naomi? What’s wrong?”

  Naomi, her face lined with tears, saw Reynolds staring at her in the daylight. Quickly coming back to reality, she wiped her eyes and stepped back to the pace of the hike. “Sorry.”

  “Wait.” He stopped her with his arm. “What happened? Tell me, please.”

  Naomi closed her eyes, embarrassed to have been caught crying. She glanced back to Reynolds’s face and sighed. “I saw . . .” She changed her mind. “Just memories.”

  “Memories?” Reynolds leaned back. “Huh . . . memories.” He turned around, quickening his pace, but then stopped. “And where are your boots?”

  Naomi felt caught.

  He turned, shaking his head. “It’s slippery; you might want them on.”

  Naomi feared putting her wet feet in those old crusty boots, so she slipped them in her pack and silently followed.

  They had progressed deeper along the side of the ravine a few miles or so. Traveling grew hard, but Reynolds kept a fast pace. Thistles and briars bunched together, scraping her skin and blocking what natural path existed. Slick stone walls dotted with caves of all sizes hemmed them in. The wind whipped around, making an eerie whistle, unsettling Naomi’s already shaken nerves.

  They went on and on. The sun did not penetrate the depths where the two fugitives hiked. The sky grayed and large clouds mixed together, threatening a storm, swelling with energy. Tiny trickles of rain fell, penetrating the dry ground. Within minutes, drops pelted down on them, saturating their cloaks and slowing their travel.

  Naomi felt miserable. The rocks of the canyon became slippery under her feet; the dirt changed to mud and filled the cracks between the rocks, and Naomi’s bare toes felt the squish of it. Maybe she should have listened to Reynolds and worn the boots.

  Then she slipped but grabbed a branch of scrub oak. Beneath her—a gaping drop of smooth rock. She stretched her hands for a better hold but slipped more, her balance precarious as she clung to the smooth stone.

  Reynolds kept moving forward, not realizing her difficulty. Naomi slipped off the rock and fell into the abyss below, her scream silenced by the pelting rain.

  ~*~

  Reynolds knew they were being followed, and unfortunately, he knew who, and why. He had feared this for the past few months—that she might search for him.

  They had left the prince’s glorious procession far behind. No soldiers would ever venture through the ravine, not even to find Naomi. But having a Louving tracker following—a dangerous one, too—brought a new level of trouble.

  He had known the day would come when he would take Naomi away, but he hadn’t expected it yesterday. He had been unprepared . . . for everything.

  Energy surrounded Naomi—a pull so strong it caught him off-guard, like a magnetic force gripping all his secrets. Why did she have to ask him questions he couldn’t answer? Not now. He hoped not ever.

  The rain provided a good cover; he could mask their tracks, their scent. The continual pelting soaked through the layers of clothes, and the travel became miserable. He only hoped Naomi could withstand it.

  A faint cry came from behind him. Reynolds turned, his stomach dropping. Naomi was gone.

  His eyes went wild. He had lost her.

  Forcing through his panic, he closed his eyes and searched for the magic. He could perceive it all around him. She had to be close. He saw her as bright as the sun in his mind and knew where she had fallen.

  Reynolds ran back, searching high and low, his heart pumping in a rhythm he didn’t understand, fast and intense. A patch of ground looked as if it collapsed under the saturation of the rain. His eyes followed the mud trail down to the bottom of a sink hole. There he found Naomi looking stunned but aware.

  “Naomi!” Reynolds yelled, waving his arms.

  The fall was daunting: nearly fifty feet. It should have killed her.

  She flagged back, alive and unhurt. How could she be okay? This girl became more confusing by the minute.

  Reynolds took off running, evaluating the breaks in the landscape. The wind had carved away layers of stone, exposing the natural beauty underneath. Hollow pocket caves wove in and out of catacombs, but there were no breaks, nothing that would take him down.

  Further along, cracks formed from a rock slide down the ravine. A particular slice looked promising. Reynolds took it and began to work his way to her. The crack opened up to a wide chasm, and he knew he could get to her from there.

  Keeping her hidden within a solid location proved easy; traveling through a waking magical world with her at his side became insanely challenging.

  But he had to keep the secret.

  Inside the deep cavern, puddles of water swelled around the exposed walls, and the air felt humid from the lack of circulation. The sound of the beating rain amplified in the rock, and its drumming filled the air like tribal music. Reynolds pulled out sunsparks and lit them at his fingertips, guiding his way through the narrow paths.

  “Naomi!” he yelled, his voice echoing off the red sandstone a dozen different ways.

  Reynolds followed the light in and out of different tunnels. Holes, created over years of exposure to water, followed down the entire length of the cavern, and every so often a filtering cascade slipped in from the rain.

  “I’m here!” he heard her voice resounding down a large opening.

  At last, he found her, curled up in a small muddy bundle, a brown crust covering her skin and hair. She sat quietly near a wall, picking pieces of dried mud from her arm. No harm had come to her—nothing broken, nothing bleeding.

  “Naomi.” Reynolds exhaled her name, relief washing over his face. He looked at her state and shook his head. “I hardly believe it. Are you all right?”

  Naomi didn’t respond, just looked at him with a humiliated expression; the mud had even caked on her eyelashes.

  “You’re quite a sight.” He grabbed a cloth from his cloak and soaked it in a stream of rainwater. “Here.” He handed it over.

  “Thanks,” she muttered. She rubbed it over
her face and body, removing the dirt and freshening up her skin. A few good wrings in the water and she started to look like herself.

  Reynolds took a moment and found suitable brush for burning. His fire provided little warmth but helped dry Naomi’s soggy, muddy clothes. Naomi stood and tried to rinse out some of the mud in the dripping rain before coming near the fire.

  “There’s no sense in trying to get out until the rain stops,” Reynolds said. “This place is nice and secret. Hungry?”

  “Yes, please.” He threw her some bread to munch on. “Thank you for the fire. I like fire.”

  “Do you?” Her comment made him wander in the deep recesses of thought. He felt her pull again, like filling his lungs with sweet air.

  “I like the sun. I like being warm.”

  The pull relaxed a little, yet she didn’t seem to feel it. She probably didn’t even recognize that she did it. Reynolds looked at her, amused.

  She stared back. “Are you laughing at me?”

  Reynolds returned his eyes to the fire. “No. I promise, I’m not laughing at you.”

  “Is there something wrong with me?”

  “No. Really. You’re just fine. . . . But, did you ever figure you have a . . . charm?”

  “Charm?”

  “Yes.” Reynolds hated himself for saying it. A flush of stupidity covered his face. “Just forget it.”

  Naomi’s mouth turned into a little wry smile. “You’re confusing,” she said, moving closer to the blaze.

  Reynolds ruffled his hair again. “So are you. Any regular person would have died falling from that height.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’ve fallen before?”

  “Of course. But I like trees. I like to climb. There is a hazard to that.”

  “Did you get hurt?”

  Naomi’s cheeks turned pink. “Why don’t we talk about you instead of me?”

  She withheld telling him something, a new twist. He thought he kept all the secrets. He couldn’t help but be impressed. “What do you want to know?”

  “What are you hiding?”

  A queer smile crept into the corners of his mouth. “Everything!”

  “Why? What’s the danger? You never answered that question.”

  Reynolds mused. “You’re right, I never did.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “You’re keeping things from me, so it seems fair.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know a lot more than me. Your dreams can tell you anything.”

  “But most of the time I don’t know what I’m seeing until later. That’s hardly helpful.”

  “You should work on that.” Reynolds sighed. “You should know that I keep things from you for your protection. Does that make sense?”

  Naomi nodded. “It’s best that I don’t know that there are dangerous dragons, and monsters, and things that might hurt me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m not afraid of getting hurt.”

  This girl is persistent. Thoughts ran through his mind and he questioned if he should speak them aloud, but her charm held him again and he started saying things he shouldn’t. “But there is a difference between hurt you and hunt you.”

  Naomi stiffened. “Hunt?”

  “You don’t understand anything about hurting. What does it matter, if you’ve never gotten hurt? But being hunted has serious consequences.”

  Naomi looked astonished. “So, that’s the danger you wouldn’t tell me?”

  “Possibly.”

  “But if it’s my life, shouldn’t I have the right to know why I would be hunted?”

  “But that’s the thing.” Reynolds carefully selected his words before responding. “Are we only talking about your life or lives of others connected to you?”

  “Are you talking about Zander?”

  “He’s not the only one.”

  Naomi looked more confused. “But I don’t know anyone else.”

  “Not yet, but that will change.” Reynolds didn’t mean to flinch when he said the words. The idea of taking her to the Willows still felt dangerous. “Do you know anything about elemental magic?”

  Naomi’s hands went up to her face. Worry covered her brow, and she shook her head.

  Reynolds took a deep breath and whipped a hand through his brown hair, thinking of what he should say, what he should tell her. “That’s what you’ll see at the Willows——the difference between the illusions and realities to each magic.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so dangerous.”

  Reynolds blinked at how naïve she was. “Illusions of magic are brought out by being touched by something magical—some kind of element that leaves what is called a Stain of Magic. Jeanus showed you this kind of magic.”

  He lifted up the stick he had been working around the fire. The tip seared red hot and mesmerizing, Naomi’s face lost in the light. “There are realities of magic: pure elemental reactions. Many cannot tell the difference, but there is a big difference. If you could imagine spark next to lightning, you’d know.”

  Then the spell disappeared. Reynolds smarted at the girl across from him. She had done it, charmed out the information. He sat back in wonder, unable to hide the astonishment on his face, though Naomi didn’t look like she knew she had done anything at all.

  “So, what does that have to do with me?”

  Reynolds thought about what to say. He felt like he would tell her everything but abruptly stopped. A small rumbling interrupted his thoughts.

  “What is that?” Naomi asked.

  Reynolds got to his feet, scoping the cavern floor. He swore under his breath and ran to her. “Quick!” he yelled, and grabbed her arm.

  They moved lightning-fast through the hollowed tunnels. Reynolds knew he pushed Naomi to her physical limits. She didn’t know what rushed behind them, but he did.

  The water started very small, running like a little river around the ground, but it came fast and high. Mud and debris mixed with the water like a cauldron of mire—an unstoppable force.

  Naomi saw the rising water and panicked; her fingers wrapped tighter around Reynolds’ arm.

  Reynolds moved up a ledge and lifted her up effortlessly. “Climb!”

  Naomi looked at the wall of rock above her, blinking a few times to understand what he wanted her to do. There were only tiny lipped ledges to stand on. “I can’t.” She shook her head. “I can’t, Reynolds.”

  “Trust me,” he repeated. “You can. Just like climbing a tree. Hurry! Go!”

  The water came through the tunnels at an unimaginable speed. The force it moved could hollow out the cavern in its entirety.

  Reynolds stayed close but watched from below as Naomi took hold of a ledge and tried to lift herself up. Her feet dangled for a hold, but soon found one, though very small. He could see the panic as she moved from one to the next. Her hand slid to another hold as she swung her leg up, catching another foothold. Only one more ledge.

  The span between the ledges was wider and trickier than the others. He watched as Naomi held onto the wall like a spider caught in the daylight. It would take a leap to reach it, and he could see her fear. But not much could be done. He sent up words of encouragement, climbing like a monkey as quickly as he could to help her.

  Naomi’s grip began to slip. She jumped, but her hands hit the ledge. She missed and began to fall.

  Reynolds reacted, quick as a cat. As the water rushed underneath them, rising higher and higher, he wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her inches from the water. “Hold on to me!” he yelled over the torrent. He moved her onto his back and she held on with a grip of iron.

  Reynolds moved swiftly up the rock face, gripping holds no one else would dream of using. Naomi gripped so tightly she nearly choked him.

  They reached the ledge and continued upward, not stopping until they saw the trees. Not until then did Naomi loosen her grasp.

  Reynolds slid her off his back. “Are you all right?”

  Na
omi didn’t speak, still in shock. She started to sob.

  Reynolds wrapped around her like a security blanket, pulling her little frame close.

  Her force over him intensified and sent his mind swimming. It felt like invisible tendrils gripping his chest, wrapping tighter and tighter. Its hold grew stronger than in the cavern, the binding hold fastening around them as he held her near. He felt he would snap if he let go. Such dangerous magic exuded from her tiny frame, and Naomi didn’t even know she had done anything to him.

  Reynolds released her and stood back.

  Naomi just stared at him.

  He shook himself and swore again. Glancing back at Naomi, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “The light is almost gone. We need to hurry.” He glanced at the girl and walked away, only to turn back to ask, “Do you have your boots?”

  Naomi shook her head, glancing toward the mudslide.

  Reynolds hung his head and grimaced. “Come on.” He held out his hand to her. She grabbed it, and together they walked carefully through the ravine.

  Chapter Three

  An Invitation

  Naomi had created a disturbance. The parade continued, but the prince looked agitated. From the height of the cart, Zander could see the plan of action as the blue hoods went after Naomi.

  But why? Why her, and not anyone else?

  It had to be the scar. The prince sat with the other girl behind him, the mark visible on her neck, clear as anything. It had to be linked. This girl must be special for him to be protecting her . . .

  . . . but Naomi would get hurt.

  Zander thought in those few seconds of what he had to do.

  “Sto . . . p!” he tried to shout. But no one would listen to him. No one ever did.

  He looked around. The meat. He grabbed the salted jerky nearest him and threw it. A few of the pieces hit the guards, but none cared.

  Something bigger, he thought.

  Zander grabbed some of the larger pieces. His father might be mad, but compared to losing Naomi, it didn’t matter. A few of the pieces hit the guards. One looked upset, but seeing the scrawny boy who had thrown it, he turned without reacting.