Shadow Weaver (Back on Wattpad 2020!)

Chapter 7

The valley shimmers with light, surrounded by snow covered hills, moonlit blue and eerie in comparison. But I would rather the cold hills any day because below us lies the most lawless destination in the Carucan Kingdom. The only place where Uru Ana are openly sold to the highest bidder. This is where the poachers would have brought my childhood friend, Asmine, if our fathers had failed to rescue her. This is where the vast majority of glitter-eyed children stolen from the Sea of Trees end up before they disappear forever: The Hybourg.

At the heart of a vast sprawl of stone buildings, campfires, skin-homes and winding streets looms the huge closed market, built from the black rock mined in these parts. The Pit, as I have heard Tug and Brin refer to it, rises above interlocking squares and lopsided taverns, a windowless monster.

In the mind-world, it flashes and flickers with bright swirls of color—memories surfacing and crashing against each other. The vast number of minds crammed together overwhelms me. In another sort of world perhaps the effect would be beautiful, but in a realm of thieves and criminals the chaotic clash resembles a battlefield of motion and pain.

"So," Kel says. "How exactly are you going to save us?" He scowls, jaw locked, mouth pursed. I meet his gaze, sadness heavier than water filling up my lungs. When I do not answer he pulls his hand from mine. It's like a slap in the face.

I want to tell him I'm waiting for the right moment. That we have to stay positive, we have to believe that a window of opportunity will open for us. Timing is everything. But what if there are no opening doors, only doors closing behind us, and each time one closes we are shut further inside this dark, hellish world?

Tug unbound us after the incident with the King's soldiers. He suggested, as though the idea had just come to him, that it would draw less attention if it appeared we were a family hunting together. Kel would just have to keep his eyes down. When I said, for the sake of credibility, he should return my bow and knives, he confiscated my water ration. Brin proposed they skin the wildfowl, take only the furs and abandon the sled and carcasses.

Our captors are nervous, travelling light, ready for anything. Every time I've so much as twitched in the last three hours, Tug has been by my side, ready to stomp out mutiny.

During our trek here, they speculated endlessly on the presence of the King's soldiers so far north, when it is (apparently) well known that the King is south, embroiled in war on the Etean border. For all their guesses, they never came close to the truth. The soldiers search for the King's son, Prince Jakut, who came north last summer and whose escort was found slaughtered not far from here before the long-sleep.

"You think the King's army is there?" Brin asks. The four of us stand on a ledge of the mountainside, gazing at the steep drop below. It is the first time since they unbound us that Tug has allowed Kel and me to stand so close together.

"No," Tug says. "They might send spies into the Hybourg, but there'd be a full-blown riot if the army tried to ride through it."

In the moonlight, I take Kel's gloved hand. He wraps his little fingers around my knuckles and twists.

"They're going to sell me," he hisses.

My muscles clench and my breath grows faster. If Tug and Brin take us straight to the Pit, in less than an hour, Kel may be bought by some rich lowlife, and I will never see him again. I eye the knife in Tug's belt. The two men are staring down the mountain, absorbed by their reflections on what is going on in the Hybourg. My eyes flit to the wolf dog, head poking out from the top of Tug's rucksack.

Perhaps this is the window, and I need to give it a shove to get it open. Once we are in the town, we won't have two adversaries but thousands. Every man down there would maim, fight, perhaps even kill to get their hands on a prized glitter-eyed child.