Page 16 of Keeper of the Word (The Unsung and the Wolf Duology #2)

Chapter

Thirteen

ELANNA

“’ T is important,” Elanna heard Joss tell the guard at her door. ’Twas well past the midnight hour. “I know the ordinance. I may request a five-minute audience with a StarSeer between the sunset and sunrise. ’Tis the middle of the night. You cannot deny me passage without speaking to her first.”

Elanna, clad in her dressing gown, strode to the double doors of her chambers.

“Dame Joss, how may I help?”

“I come to request the Audience of Psocorroh, m’lady.” Joss’s bow was comically low, but StarSeers weren’t prone to smirking.

“Of course. Pray, come in.” Elanna shut the door on the guard. “What do you seek? You know that I cannot help in all matters, and even if I do See it, I am not permitted to tell you the day you fall in love or the day you die.

“Shall we go to the balcony? Five minutes is all you’re permitted.”

Joss’s head swiveled around the room. “Is there anyone else present, m’lady?”

“Nay.” Elanna wrapped her gown tighter around herself, hoping Joss would not notice her splotchy face from weeping. She hadn’t been able to help it. Unless she could think of another way out of Ashwin and to Asalle, their beautiful realm was destined to fall.

Oh, the darkness that shall cover this land.

“Lord Tolvar sends a message.”

Elanna was uncertain she could handle any more messages from Tolvar. It reminded her again how unaccustomed to being around others she was. How sheltered she was in Ashwin.

She nodded to receive the message.

“Sir Tolvar will escort you to Asalle, m’lady. Can you be at the outer wall of the garden near where you met this eve two hours before sunrise?”

Elanna stood stunned. She combed through her visions. Had she Seen this? Nay. But she had Seen herself in Asalle, had she not?

She had convinced him. Without the stars’ help.

“Possess you any travel clothes?” Joss asked, examining her up and down.

“Nay, what do I need?”

“Your most simple, sturdy gown, I suppose, a cloak, and a pair of boots if you possess them.”

Elanna nodded, repeating Joss’s words in her mind.

“And…nyxpaun.”

Nyxpaun?

Odd. Why would she need to bring an unusual herb with her?

“The Lucien Law has not truly been invoked,” Joss said.

“What can you mean?” Elanna asked.

Joss told her of Tara invoking the Law through a decision of her own making. The story was rushed, and Elanna could barely keep all the details of Hux, a letter, and mayhap a kinship between Tara and Commander Goodsell back in Garreth.

A knock sounded at the door. “M’lady?” The guard stepped in. “The time of five has passed.”

“Thank you, m’lady,” Joss said, grinning a little too forcefully. “For this…audience.”

Elanna’s eyes followed the guard who led Joss out. She held her breath until the door was closed. There was no time to consider all she’d just learned. She dashed into action.

Elanna stepped through the hedges. No one was there. Had they left her? A rush of panic flushed her cheeks.

Why was she to meet here? How were they going to leave Ashwin this way? There was no gate to the outside.

Footsteps approached, then Hux stood there.

“Good morrow, lovely lady. Are you ready to make your daring escape?”

Her shoulders tightened. Was she truly going to go through with this? Leave Ashwin? Betray her sisters?

“How can you be so calm?” she asked. Her hand, which held the strap of a rucksack she’d stolen from the kitchens, became clammy.

“This is not my first escape.” He grinned. “Though I must admit, my father’s wall wasn’t nearly as high.”

“High?”

At that moment, an abrupt plonk came from the wall. The end of a long rope snaking up the wall lay on the ground. Elanna peered up. Tolvar and Barrett stood above.

“You are not truly proposing?—”

“Fear not,” Hux cut her off. “Let us be on our way before those sluggish guards of yours catch on.” He winked, strode to the rope, lifted it, and waved it at her. “If you ever see Kyrie again, do thank her for the tip about this wall being unguarded.”

Ever see Kyrie again?

Elanna panted—her sisters. Leave without saying goodbye?

Little Maristel would ne’er understand. None of them would.

Only at this very moment, did the gravity of her plight fully hit her.

She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t do it. She had to stay safe behind these walls.

Her impulsive fleeing from Ashwin had been an affair that could not be repeated.

The outside world was too much for her. ’Twas too much .

Hux placed his palm on her shoulder. “I shall be with you the entire time.” His dark eyes on hers gave her solace. “Besides, you cannot save the world if you dare not journey into it.”

Elanna nodded blankly, her focus up, up, up.

Hux tied the rope to her waist and instructed her to hold it tight and keep her feet toward the wall while Tolvar and Barrett towed her to the top.

“And most important.” Elanna turned wild eyes on him. “Do not forget we found you in a tree. This is merely a bit higher than that.”

“Stars help me,” she breathed.

“I imagine they will.” Hux waved up at Tolvar, who began yanking the rope.

Elanna lifted off the ground, clutching the rope in her hands as she was hauled up.

At first, it was easier than expected, but ’twas not long before the rope burned into her palms. It slipped from her hands once, causing her body to jounce against the wall; both Hux and Tolvar swore. Her hands regripped the bristly rope.

She was almost to the top of the battlements when a dozen guards charged through the hedges toward the wall below.

“Hux!” Elanna yelled, searching for him in the shadowed garden. He wasn’t directly below her as he’d been moments ago. “Let me down! I must help him.”

“Not on your life!” Tolvar yelled. “Barrett, with haste!” The rope jerked to the top so fast, Elanna’s stomach lurched. The firm stone felt strange under her feet. Below, guards yelled as Captain Nathel directed orders. She couldn’t find Hux amongst the commotion below.

“With haste!” Tolvar said. “Guards will flood this wall any moment.” He scooped up Elanna as if she weighed nothing and moved her to the opposite side of the wall, where she spotted Joss and Gus below, holding the end of the pulley system they’d devised.

“Elanna!” Tara’s voice broke through the din of knights. “Elanna, cease!”

“Ignore her,” Tolvar said, but Elanna had already returned to the garden side. Tara, Kyrie, and Casta stood there, Maristel in Casta’s arms.

“Elanna! What are you doing?” Casta called, adjusting the child on her hip. Maristel outstretched her arms to Elanna, her face wet with tears. “Come down. Let us speak together. We will help?—”

“Do not do this,” Tara interrupted. “The stars command we remain in Ashwin. You know this!”

Elanna caught a glimpse of movement behind the group below. Was that Hux?

“Elanna, we must go!” Tolvar shouted in the background.

“Stars command us?” Elanna asked. Something began to burn in her stomach. “As the stars command the Lucien Law, Tara?”

Tara was quiet, but Elanna could sense her comprehension of the words.

“The stars command me to go to Asalle. And I am aghast that any of you would pause to question me. I am fourth of our sisterhood!” Her voice shook and echoed off the castle wall.

“An equal part of a framework of Five. My voice is no less significant than any of yours. Farewell, sisters. Until we meet again.”

She moved to Tolvar, out of their eyesight. Footsteps sounded from either side of the tower stairwells.

“Elanna! Do not do this!”

After ensuring the rope was still taut through the opening in the parapet they used, Tolvar verified the rope around her waist was still knotted securely, hunched over, and instructed her onto his back.

“Keep your arms tight around my neck,” he commanded, wrapping the slack of the rope around his fists and stepping to the edge. Barrett was already halfway down the wall.

“Elanna!”

Knights pounded out of the towers, racing toward them, swords drawn.

“Forgive me!” Elanna yelled behind her.

Tolvar stepped off the edge and swung them around—Elanna giving a yelp—and positioned his feet against the wall .

“Tighten your grip,” he said, pushing his feet off the wall with force and descending several feet. “And do not look down.”

But ’twas too late. The ground was so far away. The three knights gripped against the tension of the rope.

“Oh stars,” she said, burying her face in the back of Tolvar’s neck. She closed her eyes, their bodies bouncing over and over as they rappelled down, and she tried to block out the noise of the knights yelling over the parapet.

All the while, Elanna couldn’t ignore the tightness that grew more strained and stressed the closer they came to the bottom.

The light that stitched her and her sisters together was fraught as they separated.

She’d experienced its overextension when she’d left the first time, but it seemed like a nudge compared to what now inflamed in her.

When they were on the ground, Elanna collapsed to her knees and gripped her chest.

“M’lady?” Joss ran to her side.

The cord of starlight burned. ’Twas as if her ribs might burst apart. She tossed herself onto her back and gaped up at the stars.

“Help me!” she groaned. Her focus on the night blurred.

“What is it?” Tolvar knelt beside her. Behind him, the others gathered the horses that Elanna hadn’t noticed when on the wall. Rasa pawed a hoof into the grass, snorting.

“Give me a moment’s peace.” Her legs writhed as if trying to break free from being bound. Sweat coated her forehead.

New yells broke her concentration of the tension flaring up and down her body.

“Damnation!” Tolvar yelled. Knights on horseback were rounding the south wall.

“Gus, take Rasa. Barrett, leave Hux’s horse here.

” Elanna was shifted into Tolvar’s arms and placed in front of him on Valko’s saddle.

He kicked the stallion into motion, and they galloped to the north toward the Ashwin-Askella border.

“Breathe,” Tolvar repeated gently. Elanna kept her eyes closed and centered herself on his voice. The thunder of hooves behind them died away. “Breathe.”

A kernel of a memory swelled into her mind.

Daved, kneeling down to her, using the same word when she became too overwhelmed.

The sting of the tightness gripping her did not extinguish, but Elanna dug deep within herself—praying to the stars as she did so—and shoved the sensation elsewhere.

Elsewhere. The place that stored memories, feelings, and thoughts she could not carry on the surface as a StarSeer.

Little by little, the clutch of tightness convulsing within her diminished into a tug. Elanna could not banish it entirely, and truly, she had no desire to do so.

Sisters. I am sorry.

But it no longer seized her. A calm cloaked her, and she opened her eyes.

To her surprise, it was full morning, and they rode along the main road. She squinted in the sunlight. Tolvar’s hand touched her forehead.

“Your fever is diminished.” Relief was inlaid in his voice.

“Fever?”

“You’ve been thrashing around for the last few hours. I worried you’d fall.” He gave a distinct whistle. Valko and the others dropped from a canter to a trot. Tolvar turned in the saddle to search behind him. “Still nothing. That is two hours since we’ve marked them.”

“You do not truly think they gave up their chase?” Joss came to ride beside them. “They all rode Ashwinian Lusters,” she said, referring to the breed of horse special to Ashwin.

Ashwinian Lusters—sometimes referred to as the roans of Ashwin—were rare horses whose coats were an evenly mixed pattern of colored and white hairs, giving them a speckled appearance.

Close up, a roan’s coat might be mistaken for a constellation.

They were the fastest horses in the Capella Realm.

Most remarkable about them, however, was they tired at a significantly slower pace than other horse breeds.

Legend said it was because the stars gave them their stamina.

Only Rasa, a blue roan, and Valko, a bay roan—the first Luster that Elanna had ever seen not belonging to an Ashwinian or a knight of the Order of Siria—were of that breed in their traveling party.

She noticed the knights’ horses foamed and were smeared in significantly more sweat than Rasa and Valko.

“I would certainly doubt it,” Tolvar responded. “But you witnessed what I did, Joss.”

“What was that?” Elanna said, clearing her parched throat.

“I do not know if you’d believe us.”

She smirked. “I am a StarSeer, Sir Tolvar. Try me.”

Tolvar remained quiet.

“Sir Tolvar?”

“I find I cannot quite muster the proper description. ’Twas as if a shower of light rained a curtain between us and our pursuers.

Stars, ’twas bright. Blinding. It blocked them long enough to give us a strong lead.

Then it disappeared, and we have not detected them behind us since.

” He paused. “That was when your fever began.”

Elanna took in his words. The Light of Siria. She had not truly called upon the power of the brightest star, had she?