Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Or a meal.
The hollow space behind my sternum is howling for Merc like a dog abandoned, and you’d think there wouldn’t be room for any other emotion. Fear, however, is also riding with me, and I think of the other times I’ve had waves of anxiety. This seems worse than all of them combined.
There’s no shaking, no sweating, no head spins or panting, though. I’m a frozen block of nothing but instinct on the back of this spectacular horse. Oddly, he seems to understand that I need him to keep track of where we are. He scans from side to side, his tail swishing with impatience, his hooves light in his quick, smooth gait. At least the roading, with its two tracks for carriages, becomes drier and easier for him. Out here, in the flats, the storm fall has already been consumed by the ground and the persistent sunshine.
Then again, with his energy, I’m not entirely sure this stallion couldn’t trot on air.
Off in the distance, a mountain range looms, and given where we are proceeding, I know it’s the Rozars. The jagged peaks are not high enough to bear snow on their summits, but they’d still be the perfect nesting grounds for dragons, so the point about staying off their inhospitable flanks is sound. Approaching them, it’s as though I’m closing in on a gate constructed purposely by nature to keep the Outpost on one side … and the Kingdom of the South on the other.
The inhabitants of the former were not wrong about the flooding, though. Over to the west, a rushing waterway—that might well have been the sweet, apple-tasting stream prior to all the rainfall—is covering a swath of meadow that’s ten times as wide as my entire village. Including the moat. The river parallels the road, and the current is heading for the Rozars. Assuming that the passes between the peaks are narrow, there will indeed be no chance of me getting through.
But Thale is right. I need to know myself, and it won’t be much longer.
I measure my progress by the trees that ring the bases of the elevations. Thanks to the stallion, we are making fast work of the distance to the forest, and soon enough, my eyes can sort through the various types of leaves and boughs.
I tell myself it’s going to be a little safer when I get there.
I’ll have some cover.
Of course, so will anything that might hunt me.
This is the back-and-forth my mind is trapped in as I come to the fork in the road. I pull up on the reins, and the stallion jogs in place.
The way to the right is well traveled, the road packed into its twin tracks, no weeds in the center. To the left, pavers that are weathered enough to be ancient are choked with tufted undergrowth and brambles.
“Shh,” I murmur as I look to the right. “Lavante, settle, please.”
The stallion tosses his head as if in argument, but then his hooves go still—and that’s when I hear it. The roar of water.
Staying focused on the right, I follow with my eyes the traveled lane into the tree line, and though I can’t see the flooding, I know that somewhere, up ahead, there’s an intersection between the road and the river. And going by the sound? There will be absolutely no passage.
But what of the other way. The barrier.
The Crystal Gate.
Reining the stallion to the left, I send him onto the other route. He doesn’t care a bit about the weeds, and seems to like picking his feet up high to get over the hairy green seams of the old pavers. When we reach the tree line, I pull him up again and stare into the forest. The darkness that lurks there, even in the bright daylight, chills me, and the enormity of what I’m doing rushes up from all directions.
I am alone. With a bag of royal coins, a priceless weapon, and a horse that any thief would like to steal.
I glance over my shoulder. The Outpost seems so far away as to be on the other side of Anathos. All I want to do is return there.
“Always forward, never back,” I whisper as a mantra. And yet I can’t go any farther.
Even as I order my heels to give the signal, as my hands churn against the reins, as I lean forward in the saddle … I remain stuck in the mud, even while my steed is fully capable of continuing on the stone beneath his shod hooves.
I need help, though. I need … courage and help and—
My hand moves on its own, going up to the straps on my shoulder. The next thing I know, my pack is in my lap, the reins are tucked in under my knee, and I’m opening the neck.