Awakened by Magic (The Four Kings Book 1) by Katy Haye (6)

Chapter Six

I gasped a breath and sat up, wide awake. I was exactly where I expected – at the edge of the forest, beside the lake. I was also alone. And my cheek hurt where the guard had punched me. I looked around as I moved my jaw to assess the damage.

Within sight there were exactly zero handsome men pretending to be kings of legend.

Of course not. It was a dream. My fevered imagination had sought something to help me out of the mess I was in, and for some reason it had decided mythical kings and a detour to a castle no one had seen in five centuries were just what I needed.

No. I was on my own. My heart was a cold, lumpen ache in my chest. Everything I’d done to keep Essa safe, and just like that all my plans and precautions were ruined. I wanted to run down the path the guards would have taken with Essa and wrench her back from them, but I had enough sense to know that would be pointless at best and suicidal at worst. A glance at the sky showed that a couple of hours had passed while I slept. They would be miles away by now. I needed a plan. And a horse.

I brushed dirt from my clothes, taking a step towards the forest path before I froze. I turned my hand up, watching for what had caught my attention. There was a mark on my palm, three wavy lines exactly where the king – if that’s what he was – had stroked his finger against my skin.

It was a dream, and yet he’d left me with a mark. I ran my finger over the lines. Fire and ice collided in my veins. To reach through sleep and find someone... That was powerful magic. What if the kings really could help me?

I shook myself, hurrying towards Myledene. I didn’t need help. At least, not from dreams. Or myths.

~

The village was as it had been when I’d left that morning. It felt wrong for nothing to have changed, as though Essa’s loss should create a wound in the community that would make itself obvious the moment it happened. But no one made an impact like that. Life went on. Most of the village wouldn’t even realise Essa was missing, not until they needed her help and came to buy a potion or ask her advice.

I paused outside Damos’s hut, practising the words and the smile I’d use to persuade him to help me. Then I knocked on the door, waiting for the gruff voice to call a welcome before I stepped inside.

Damos was Myledene’s wood-worker. As I entered, he regarded me from the other side of his lathe. His aged face fell automatically into the creases of a smile. “Kyann! Fair welcome to you.” His mostly grey hair was peppered with tiny curls of wood that had flown up from the bowl he was making, and his pale eyes shone with pleasure to see me.

For an absurd moment I felt the urge to confide, to tell him of the soldiers who had taken Essa and appeal for his help. For a moment, pain and need and the desire to have others support me carved a hole in my chest.

And then sense returned. Damos was an elder, responsible for the well-being of the whole village. He might side with the Emperor’s men. He might agree that Essa should go. He might be grateful for the village to be rid of someone who could only be a danger.

I cleared my throat and a lie slid out, as sweet as honey on my tongue. “Essa asked me to collect some herbs for her. They only grow at Riversedge. It’s too far to walk. Could I borrow Kicker?” The lies rang confidently over the air between us. It was as though they’d been waiting, knowing that the years of peace in the village couldn’t last. Now, life had returned to the normality of danger, and my false words were ready to cast a shield around myself and Essa, cutting the pair of us off from everyone else.

“Of course.” Damos smiled the unguarded smile of someone who’d never felt unsafe. The smile I’d lost when I was ten. “I’ll come and—”

“No!” I forced a smile when he looked startled. I was prepared to deceive someone who’d been a friend, but I couldn’t bear him to push his kindness in my face. “I can manage, I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Kicker and I are old friends.”

He waved a hand, finding nothing amiss in my request or my behaviour. “Off you go, then. You know where everything is. She’ll be glad of the exercise. And a change of scene.” He laughed as though he’d made a joke.

I managed a nod. Damos was still chuckling as he turned back to his lathe and angled his chisel against the wood. The rasping scrape of his chisel on wood accompanied me out of the hut to the pasture where the horse was cropping the grass. It wasn’t theft, I swore. I was borrowing the animal. With luck, I’d have her back to Damos within a few days.

I shook my head. I could lie to Damos, but I wouldn’t lie to myself. Even when I found Essa, even when I rescued her – because I wouldn’t allow any other outcome – we wouldn’t come back here. Time for somewhere new, somewhere safer. Somewhere no one knew us.

Ten minutes later, Kicker was saddled and bridled. My bag of emergency supplies was in a saddlebag, with a couple of flasks of water in the other. My last act before I left Myledene was to place a flower in the shrine to the goddess. I whispered a prayer for her to keep Essa safe until I could find her. After that, I jumped up and scrambled into the saddle, clicked my tongue and turned Kicker on the path out of the village. I didn’t look back as I crossed the boundary into the forest. I wasn’t sad to be leaving the place I’d called home for eight years.

I was sad I’d been enough of a fool to think anywhere could be home.

~

The forest was unchanged, serene and watchful. Personal catastrophes meant nothing to the trees and the animals. I swallowed, because the forest around Myledene might be safe and familiar, tamed by the villagers. But further away, it grew wilder, more dangerous. So I’d best catch up with Essa before we reached those sorts of places. I pressed my heels to Kicker’s flanks to keep her at a trot. Her name was a joke. She was as docile as any animal I’d ever met. The problem would be keeping her moving when she’d rather stop and eat.

I didn’t know how fast the soldiers would travel – whether they’d take Essa straight to the citadel and the Emperor’s palace or take detours to ruin other people’s lives, but they’d be a good distance ahead of me either way.

I listened carefully as we went, straining my ears for anything out of place. The horse’s hooves sounded alien in the still forest, but I knew the soldiers would announce their presence even more rowdily.

As we passed the side of the lake, I remembered my dream and the king of air, Vashri. I wanted to believe it had all been a dream, but the mark on my hand was clear enough. A guardian. The guardian, if the king of air was telling the truth. Ridiculous. I’d pushed the stories to the back of my mind, but I remembered enough to know that the guardian was supposed to be as strong in magic as the kings themselves. And I’d thrown my magic away. I couldn’t be the guardian.

I glanced down at my hand, scratching at the mark on my palm. The kings were real.

The four kings were real.

I’d spent so long condemning them as figments of my mother’s wishful imagination and yet they truly existed. They were late, but still in time to defeat the Emperor. Provided they found someone to be their guardian. My hand itched again.

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully. Occasionally rabbits darted into the path – and then away when the thud of hooves shook the ground. Birds fluttered in and out of the leaves overhead. Once, a furry, slow-moving bomble ventured out from the undergrowth – then waddled back to cover when it heard us. I wished I were travelling to gather herbs when I followed the path that led around the village of Riversedge, the roar of its waterfall a distant hum. I wished I were on an errand for Essa, nothing on my mind except the quality of the foliage I picked.

The sun was already hidden behind the trees, bright and dappled, by the time I stopped to rest and eat a portion of the food I’d packed. I tipped my head back to swallow a mouthful of water and squinted against the sun, shifting so I wasn’t facing it directly. A coarse caw of crows snagged my attention and I stared up at the sky above.

A dozen of the birds circled overhead, shrieking their cries. They dove and spun around each other, a dance that kept individual birds moving while the group stayed in the same place. I frowned. There was something on the ground that interested them. It was probably a piece of carrion. But if they weren’t landing to feast, that meant there was a living animal there, too, a danger the birds had to wait out before they could eat.

But perhaps it wasn’t an animal. It could be a person. Or several.

“I’ll help you, Kyann.” Vashri’s voice echoed in my head, so clearly that I spun around, expecting to see him. I was alone.

The birds cawed, as though arguing that point. The king of air – could he control animals of the air? Either way, I wasn’t going to ignore this sign of something different in the forest.

Hurrying to shove my water flask back into the saddlebag, I untied the rope I’d used to hobble Kicker while I ate. “Hie!” Flinging myself into the saddle, I dug my heels into her sides, goading her into a startled canter.