CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
“It is not what you do on the worst day of your life that defines you.
It is what you do on the day after.”
~ Beledine Arowey, Second Age
Twelfth Age, Year 608
Eventually her senses returned. She heard voices and felt a touch on her shoulder.
“She’s coming ’round—”
“Ra’s teeth, get away from her, Caimos!”
Her eyelids fluttered and the world came into focus. Two suntanned faces hovered above her, belonging to a balding man and a portly woman.
“What’s your name, child?” said the man.
“Don’t speak to her—look at them eyes, would you?”
They spoke with strange accents in an even stranger dialect. Some words were familiar, some were from the old language, some were incomprehensible.
“Hush, Seema! Come girl, we mean you no harm. Tell us what happened.”
The man slipped an arm beneath the girl’s shoulders and pulled her into a sitting position. She groaned as pain rippled across her body. Her head lolled limply to one side.
“Lord of Fire, she’s bleeding something awful. I say, Caimos, don’t touch her!”
“She won’t last the night like this.”
“Then leave her. Suppose she’s Moorfainian?”
“And how’d a Moorfainian get inland?”
The man put another arm under the crook of the girl’s knees and lifted. She coughed and choked as he jostled her to the bed of a wooden cart. The woman flitted after them like a nervous bird.
“There,” said the man, placing the girl on the weathered planks. “You’re safe. Now, let’s try again. What’s your name?”
The girl stared into the cloudless sky for a long time. The man and the woman watched her, waiting. Finally, she closed her eyes in defeat.
“I don’t remember.”
When next she opened her eyes, she was on a lumpy pallet in a modest room. The peaked ceiling was crosshatched with rafters, making the space seem smaller than it was—though it wasn’t large to begin with. A cabinet crouched in one corner, sporting a washbowl full of blood-darkened water.
“How do you feel?” The man leaned into view to peer at her. Kind eyes sparkled out of his face. Those eyes reminded her of something. Someone.
“Here, don’t cry.” He dug in the pocket of his vest and pulled out a cloth to dab at her cheeks. “What hurts?”
“Everything,” she murmured.
“Aye, we saw the lightning strike as we were returning to town. We went to investigate—Pergran can’t afford a fire, not in this drought—and found you. What hurts
most
?”
Her throat tightened. “My heart.”
“Can you breathe?” he asked. His expression was concerned, open and warm. Who did he remind her of?
“Not my heart.” She raised an aching hand and laid it on her chest. Her dress was in tatters. A patch of rough, uneven skin met her touch. “My soul.”
“Hmpf. Talking of souls. You sure she’s not Moorfainian?” asked a sharp voice. The portly woman was also present, kneeling on a cushion by the door, mending holes in a blanket.
As the adults argued about Moorfainians, a sword caught the girl’s attention. It rested upright in its dirt-caked scabbard, propped against the wall. She reached for it with burnt and bloody fingers. As she strained sideways, she saw small, spade-shaped red leaves plastered over the lacerated flesh of her arms.
The man noticed her movement. “That yours, then?”
“Unnatural for a girl to have a weapon,” the woman declared.
“We thought the metal might’ve drawn the lightning—but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky when it struck,” said the man. “Can you tell us what happened?”
A sob caused the girl’s torso to spasm, which in turn caused a fresh wave of pain to radiate through her. Her wounded heart and leaking eyes were remembering things her brain could not.
“I don’t know what happened,” she whispered.
“She speaks awful strange,” the woman observed, giving her husband a meaningful glare. “Foreign words.”
He ignored her. “Any detail. Your name?”
The girl glanced at the sword, and something surfaced from the depths of her damaged mind: “Soulstar . . . Keriya Soulstar.”
“I’m Caimos Cairi, and this is my wife, Seema. So, Kayah,” he said, blending her name into something new with his drawling, non-rhotic accent, “where’s your home?”
Keriya couldn’t remember anything before she’d been born from light and agony. “Where am I now?”
“Pergran,” said Seema.
“Maybe if I saw it?” Keriya suggested weakly. To appease Seema, she dredged up words from the old language. Interesting that she remembered how to speak, but knew nothing of the past few months—years—of her life. “On a map, if you have one?”
Caimos gestured to Seema, who stood and bustled off. She returned with a large book, which she gave to her husband. He thumbed through it until he found what he was looking for.
“The Dor’av province. Here’s Pergran.”
The book was an atlas, but nothing about the Dor’av province looked remotely familiar. Keriya didn’t recognize the printed runes, either.
“Sorry, but . . . is there anything else?”
Caimos raised an eyebrow but obligingly flipped the page.
“This is all of Jidaeln,” he explained, pointing. “There’s Pergran, the capital, and the Weln and Sayrune rivers.”
Keriya shook her head, at a loss.
“Told you she wasn’t Jidaelni,” said Seema.
“Don’t mean she’s Moorfainian, neither,” Caimos returned, moving on. “What about this? A map of the Western Shore. Here’s Jidaeln, there’s Syrion and Moorfain,” —he shot a pointed look at his wife— “and down there’s the southern countries.”
Keriya remained silent. Seema looked relieved that she hadn’t recognized Moorfain, but a crease appeared between Caimos’s eyes. Slowly, as if he wasn’t sure why he was bothering, he turned one more page. He gave Keriya no prompts this time.
“That’s Jidaeln?” Keriya asked, tapping a small outline on the right side of the map.
“Yes.”
“What’s this?” she asked, her hand leaving the continent, traveling west.
“The Waters of Chardon,” he told her, sounding nonplussed. She moved her hand across the ocean onto the left page. Her fingers brushed a series of inked lines.
“And this?”
“Shouldn’t be in the atlas no more, if you ask me,” Seema sniffed.
“That’s Allentria,” said Caimos.
“Oh.” Keriya let her hand fall to the bed. She stared at Allentria, which looked impossibly far away from Pergran. Halfway across the world, if this map were to be believed.
“Bunch of blood-burned dregs,” Seema was saying. “No honor in any one of ’em.”
“Nothing looks familiar?” Caimos asked Keriya.
“No.” She rolled away from him and slid her feet onto the dusty floor.
“Here, lie down!”
“I appreciate what you’ve done,” she said, “but I can’t reimburse you for your kindness because I have no money. And you won’t find anyone to return me to, because I’m alone.”
Even as she said it, she knew it was true.
She approached her sword, but her legs were too weak to support her. She would have fallen had Seema not caught her around the waist. Keriya stifled a grunt of pain.
“You’re in no condition to walk,” the older woman snapped.
“Why are you helping me? I can’t give you anything,” said Keriya, allowing Seema to settle her on the pallet.
“Our family manages,” said Caimos. “We’re only doing what any proper-minded folk would. When you’re better, you can earn your living. Ra knows we could use an extra pair of hands ’round the tavern, once your hands are healed.”
“I know how to wash dishes,” Keriya said slowly. Hadn’t she worked at an inn once, long ago? Yes . . . she had worked there with—
But she didn’t want to pursue that line of thought. She shied away from it, nausea roiling in her stomach.
As Seema propped her up with pillows, Keriya caught sight of herself in a small, oval mirror that rested on the floor beside the cabinet. Two fuchsia eyes glinted like droplets of discolored blood in her pale face, which was covered with half-healed scabs. White hair hung limp and lifeless around her shoulders. Her cheeks were sunken and her expression weary. She looked down, losing the staring contest with her reflection.
“Dishes will do fine,” said Caimos.
Keriya closed her eyes. Caimos and Seema withdrew, leaving her to rest. More tears leaked between her lashes, though she didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember anything.
No, that wasn’t it . . .
She didn’t
want
to remember.