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  “I’m glad we’re together now,” he gently added, but all he heard in reply was the even breathing of an apparently sleeping girl.

  “I’m glad we’re together, but my heart is still broken over Ari. You’re the only person in the world I know now. All our carnival companions are dead. There’s no one back in Frame to miss me; if I die I won’t be missed,” Alec slowly continued in his softest voice. He felt that he had to talk, to work out verbally all the terrible emotional waves that thrashed about inside him. “I didn’t realize how lonely I could be until I had Ari to lose.

  “I’m glad you’ve got family you can go back to when we get out of all this. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we survive and that you get back to that family, and I hope you’ll make up whatever squabble you had with them and let them know how important family is.”

  The covers rustled, and Natalie rolled again, back against Alec. “We’ll help each other get back, and when we do, you’ll have me as a friend forever, Alec,” she startled him be saying.

  “I thought you had fallen asleep,” He whispered.

  “You don’t talk about yourself very often do you, especially your feelings,” the girl replied. “You shouldn’t feel so afraid to say things like you just did. They were the most important words I’ve ever heard, because I know you were telling me the absolute truth. And you were thinking about my welfare,” she reached an arm up, and placed her hand on his face. “Thank you. You are a special friend, the best I’ve had since I left home.”

  Her hand lingered against his cheek. He hesitated, then placed his own hand against her face, feeling the soft warmth of her skin. He felt her jaw move.

  “Thank you, Alec,” she said as her fingers slid off his face. “Just lie here next to me tonight, and let me feel safe because my friend is with me.”

  Alec slowly drew his hand from her face, rolled onto his side, and began to breath the slow, even measures of someone falling asleep. Even as his body succumbed to the exhaustion of the day, his mind tried to find its balance among the emotional peaks of the most trying day he’d ever lived, and it found that balance in the pressure of the body lying next to him.

  Chapter 5 – Departure from Riverside

  The sound of a footstep woke Alec. He opened his eyes and realized after a moment where he was. He saw that the moon was no longer in sight through the hole in the ceiling, though the starry sky was still draped in darkness. And he heard a noise below them on the ground floor of their building near the river.

  A flicker of light coming from the staircase showed that there was someone with a candle downstairs. Alec lay very still.

  A low rumbling noise sounded from below. After a few moments, Alec realized there were words in the sound, that the sound was the deep voice of someone talking below. He raised his head to look over at Natalie. She was still asleep, lying next to him. He reached over, touched her gently, and held his finger to her lips when her eyes opened.

  “That ingenaire killed our best soldiers,” growled one voice.

  “But at least he killed himself as well,” another responded.

  “No, he didn’t die; he vanished from the spot a second before the explosion. He hurt himself using that much magic at once though. We’ll have to track him down and kill him. He must be the strongest ingenaire left in the lands towards the sea,” the first voice responded. “Wait here for the squad to return, and then lead them down the river to search for the ingenaire. He’s weak and won’t move fast, and there’s no one to help him. Kill him if you need to, just don’t let him evade you.

  “I’ll take the rest of this troop west into the mountains to prevent anyone else from coming to Riverside. We don’t want the Dominion to be aware of our actions, so we’ll need to keep sweeping witnesses away for the next three moons. We’ll leave at first light, and your squad should be here by noon. After you dispose of the ingenaire, come west up the road and find our scouts.”

  Despite his fears, Alec felt his heart leap with joy; Ari was still alive, and probably down by the river. He must be under the bridge, where he told us to meet him, Alec told himself.

  The sky began to lighten as dawn emerged. Another noise from below caught Alec’s attention. It sounded like movement downstairs. He saw the flickering light grow weaker on the stairwell wall as it moved away from the stairs. Noise coming from outside told him that the leader of the two had exited the building, and then a sudden stamping and ringing indicated to his surprised horror that there were many more lacertii outside.

  Alec considered moving to the window to look outside, but the memory of all the debris and clutter on the floor assured him he’d never make it across the room without making noise. Instead, he lay silently.

  Minutes later the sounds from outside the window began to grow fainter as the encampment moved out. An occasional scraping noise from downstairs let the two refugees know that the assigned soldier was still waiting downstairs.

  Natalie leaned close to Alec and whispered into his ear, “We’ve got to find Ari and get away before the soldiers search for him.”

  Alec turned his head and looked in her eyes for a moment, then leaned over to whisper in her ear. A plan was starting to form in his head, even as the tickle of her hair on his lips distracted him; his fingers gently cleared the hair away from the delicate curve of her ear. “If we can kill the one below and hide his body before the other soldiers arrive, we can look for Ari without being hunted.” He explained his plan.

  Moments later, the two fugitives inched their way apart in the building. Natalie began to move cautiously towards the front window, to make sure that no other lacertii were left outside. Alec hid behind a beam next to the top of the staircase.

  Slow minutes passed as they moved carefully to avoid making any sound among the fallen roof debris and the other ruins in the room. When Natalie got to the window she cautiously peeked over the ledge at the street below. Two or three smoldering campsites showed that there had been troops in the street below them during the night, but none were now in sight. She said a silent prayer of thanks, then turned and signaled to Alec that she was about to proceed.

  The slight girl picked up a piece of roofing shingle near her and let it drop to the floor. It made a loud crash as it landed on some broken shards of pottery. They immediately heard a chair slide across the floor below and footsteps on the staircase. Natalie promptly moved over a few feet to leave the line of sight from the staircase.

  Alec grew tense as he heard the footsteps approaching the top of the steps. The soldier paused momentarily, then spotted Natalie, who crouched down as though she were trying to hide; the swarthy creature stepped in front of Alec’s hiding place and moved towards the girl.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Alec plunged his knife into the lacerta’s kidneys. He pulled the knife out to stab again, as the creature howled with pain and started to turn towards him. Alec stabbed again, before the heavyset lacerta flung his arm and knocked Alec’s hand away.

  The lacerta doubled over for a second, then straightened up and pulled out its own knife. Alec tried to back up, but a pile of debris behind him tangled his legs and he fell on his back, face upturned, watching the injured, angry soldier start to swing his knife downward.

  As Alec yelled in alarm, Natalie’s sword flew from behind the creature and sliced its arm, deflecting the knife away from its lethal trajectory. It stabbed the floor inches from his right shoulder then dropped from the scaly hand, as the soldier fell on top of Alec, too wounded to stand. Without hesitation, Alec grasped the weapon and finished the soldier off with his own knife. He lay silent, scared, and thankful for salvation. “That’s twice now you’ve saved me,” he told Natalie, looking up as he rolled the horrific body off him.

  Natalie and Alec looked at one another for long moments, as Alec reflected on the narrowness of their escapes from harm. Finally, Natalie broke Alec’s train of thought, “Let’s hide the body and go find Ari.”

  “Alright, lets drop t
he body out the window, then we can drag it away from this place, so they don’t find it,” Alec replied. As he spoke he grabbed the feet of the dead soldier and dragged it towards the window. With Natalie’s help he heaved it over the ledge to the ground below.

  They went quickly downstairs and out the door. Alec took the legs of the soldier and Natalie pulled a board behind them to obscure their tracks. After fifteen minutes, Alec saw a chance to hide the body. “How about down there?” he asked, pointing to a basement window along one alleyway. Natalie nodded her agreement, and Alec slid the body down through the broken window.

  When the task was done they began to trot towards the river. They moved as quickly as possible, mindful that more of the soldiers would be arriving in the city soon. Even more, they both desired to find Ari, and to flee with him to some place of safety.

  Finally, after passing between two burnt warehouses, they came to the riverfront. Stepping back into the shadows of the buildings, both the youths looked up and down the river. The bridge was in plain view a quarter mile down stream.

  The bridge was an impressive structure, built with a strength they had not expected to find in this wilderness. Its stone piers raised it well above the riverbank, and the approach from either end was a long sloping ramp that extended well above the flood level of the river.

  “Let’s get down to the weeds along the bank, then work our way towards the bridge,” Alec suggested, wanting to keep as hidden as possible while hunting for Ari.

  As they walked among the weeds, Alec nearly plunged headfirst into the river, not expecting to find that the plants covered a sharp drop in the bank. “Wanting to go for a swim?” Natalie laughed as she grabbed his waistband to pull him back.

  They began crouching towards the bridge. Alec grew aggravated by the burrs and nettles that tore his skin, and the insects that buzzed in his ears. Natalie’s foot slipped into a hole, twisting her ankle, but she insisted she was fine. He noticed that she limped slightly, and worried that she might not be able to run.

  Minutes passed slowly as they moved stealthily. When they came within one hundred yards of the bridge, they heard the sounds of a group walking. Alec realized it was probably the arriving squad of lacertii soldiers. The two teens stopped and squatted motionlessly in the weeds as they heard the lacertii talking loudly while crossing the bridge from the far bank.

  “We got the easy end of the job boys,” one raspy voice began. “All we have to do is go to town and find orders to patrol the perimeter. What is there to patrol in an empty town?”

  “How about the wine cellars?” asked a dry voice.

  “We may need to make them secure first…,” A third voice replied as the group of soldiers moved out of earshot into town.

  “With military discipline like that, we may have a chance to escape,” a voice calmly whispered in Alec’s ear, and Ari placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  Alec and Natalie both jumped, whirled, and then hugged the ingenaire simultaneously. “Ari!” “You’re here, we found you at last!” “Thank goodness!” The two youngsters exclaimed.

  Chapter 6 – The Rising Stars

  “Actually, I found you, but who’s going to quibble?” the ingenaire nonchalantly replied. “It’s good to see the two of you still alive as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew you could get here. Tell me what you know of the situation here, and then we’ll move into the mountains.” Just like that Ari, assumed control of the group, and the two teens gladly relinquished authority to the powerful ingenaire.

  The explanations from the two tumbled over one another incoherently. “Wait,” Ari commanded. “Let’s try this again. Natalie, you’ve a nice voice, so you tell me first what happened, then Alec you’ll have your turn.”

  Natalie stuck her tongue out at Alec, and then began to recount their activities and all they had seen or heard. While she talked, Alec studied their companion. Ari’s face looked drawn, as though he had suffered some terrible pain, and his complexion was slightly gray. But his eyes were still alert and he reacted to the things he heard Natalie expound on. When she was finished, Ari turned to Alec. “What do you have to add to that?” he asked.

  “She told the story pretty well,” Alec admitted. “Being around those carnival story tellers must have trained her how to tell tales!”

  Ari abstractedly nodded in agreement. “You’ve bought some time for us since they aren’t going to have anyone looking for us today. Let’s cross the river and find a place to hide in the mountains. We can’t use the bridge here, but there is a shallow ford just down river. Let’s head that way.”

  Ari took the lead. Alec noticed that he walked stiffly, with a noticeable limp in his right leg, as he led Natalie with her lesser limp, while Alec brought up the rear. Alec remembered the conversation they’d heard that morning, with one soldier claiming that the ingenaire had used so much magic he was likely to be injured. I hope it’s not bad, Alec thought.

  They shuffled through weeds until they were on the outskirts of the town. Ari stopped, sat on the riverbank and began to remove his boots and roll up his pants. “I’d suggest you do the same,” he recommended. Alec and Natalie did so, then walked across a sand bar and waded a step out into the river behind Ari. The old man looked intently up and down the river, then seeing nothing that worried him, began to walk across the rippling water. At the wide ford the water only came up to Alec’s calves, and they quickly crossed the river’s cold current, then moved up into a grove of trees on the far shore.

  As they dropped to the ground and pulled their boots on Natalie asked the questions that were on her mind, “Ari, I don’t understand anything that we’ve seen in the past two days. What happened here? Who attacked this town and why?”

  Aristotle closed his eyes with one hand pressed against the side of his head. “I think I know part of the answer, but there’s no point in passing along speculation right now. What I can tell you now is that we need to hurry our way down the river to get out of the mountains and back to the cities near the coast, maybe even to the King’s capital. Right now, let’s start moving down river and find a good place to camp for the night.”

  Natalie’s sack provided bread and dried meat for a bite of lunch as the trio walked along game trails, moving parallel to the river bank. Alec again noticed that Ari did not move well, although Natalie seemed to have worked the worst of the soreness out of her ankle. The boy also noticed the forest they were walking through was filled with large, ancient trees, whose mossy trunks rose high above the loamy soil to branches far above. It showed no sign of a past human presence. The unceasing sound of the river was off to the right, while the sounds of birds and insects were always present. The dappled sunlight coming through the forest canopy high above was gradually moving from overhead to the mountains on their right, telling Alec that they were heading south.

  Ari twice stopped to let the group rest in their afternoon journey, although Alec didn’t think their hike was particularly strenuous. He kept his concern about the ingenaire’s health to himself. As the sun finally touched the horizon’s edge, Ari called for a halt and led them off the path away from the river to find a camping spot for the night. In a glade of fir trees on the slope of a mountain they stopped and laid out their blankets to sleep.

  “Alec, you take the first watch, until the moon is overhead, then wake me. I’ll take the second watch, and Natalie can take the third. We won’t make a large fire tonight, because I don’t want to provide any clues that we’re out here in the mountains,” the ingenaire announced. Natalie nodded her head in agreement, and lay down on her blankets as the darkness rapidly increased.

  Alec built a ring of rocks around a spot he scraped in the stony soil, gathered kindling, and sparked a fire, keeping the flames small and shielded from outside eyes by the stones. He boiled water with a brass pan in his pack and crumbled tea leaves from the bottom of a small bag, then poured it into his leather drinking skin, and turned his back to the fire to settle in for his wa
tch in the evening.

  To his left he saw a bright star rising in a cleft between the mountain peaks, where a gap in the trees allowed him to watch a patch of sky. The evening star gave him a clock to measure the passage of time, at least until it rose and disappeared behind the trees. To his right the river’s flow was barely audible at their site in the mouth of a small steep valley coming down from the mountains.

  Ari was back, monsters roamed the mountains, his circus companions were dead, he had no idea where he was going or how long he’d live, and he’d seen deadly magic used to kill. But he was with Natalie, and for some reason, that one positive facet made the rest of their terrible situation just a little more bearable. Alec’s mouth gently smiled in the darkness as he recollected the talk the two had shared the night before. There had been little conversation during today’s travel through the woods, though Natalie had held his hand when they had stopped to allow Ari to rest.

  He took a sip of the bitter tea, which he hoped would keep him awake, and stood to walk around the campsite. His steps snapped small sticks, and he stopped, retreating to his seat near the others. At least he’d hear anyone else approach, he decided.

  A turn and glance showed that the evening star had risen almost to the top of the opening in the trees, and would soon disappear. Beneath it, a faint glow on the horizon promised that the moon would rise next.

  Alec listened to the sounds around him. The trees rustled slightly. A few insects croaked and whirred, and a bird hooted at a distance. Natalie and Ari were breathing regularly, with the rhythm of sound sleep. He turned slightly; “Natalie?” he whispered, hoping she was awake and would talk with him in the night’s stillness, but no answer came back from her sleeping form. On his other side, he heard Ari snort loudly, and then subside back into an irregular sleeping rhythm. Lord, please let him be alright, Alec silently prayed. With a healthy and strong Ari to guide them, Alec felt their chances of surviving and getting away from the nightmare at Riverside would be dramatically increased.