Chapter 4 - section 3

I strode away with every ounce of dignity I could muster. I took the dirt road away from the village, away from the tents. My head was held high and my bare feet made soft slapping sounds against the packed dirt. With the sun setting, the ground was growing extremely cold, but I wasn’t about to show a single sign of weakness where Cullen might have eyes.

Inside, my heart was thumping double-time and my breathing had to be more rapid. The reactions indicated my anger as much as my fear. Although I loathed to think he could be right about anything, Cullen was when it came to my need for thought. I had to figure a way of getting out of his plans so that it didn’t end in either of our deaths.

That possibility made me hesitate mentally for an instant. Killing him would solve a lot of problems. If it came down to it, I really didn’t doubt my ability to do so. That didn’t mean that I wanted to, however. That he so casually would discuss killing me was enough to make me wish to swing the opposite direction and refuse to contemplate the reciprocal. I didn’t want to be like him. The only thing we had in common was our father and I wanted to keep it that way.

We had been called by Dad. A meeting of all the children was a rare occurrence, but the call wasn’t one that any of us would disobey if we had any choice. Dad was powerful and his displeasure was not a pretty sight to endure. Ties of blood were no immunity from his ire.

The last summons, indeed the only one to my recollection, happened about fifteen years ago. Dad’s lands had been breached by shadows and he needed strength beyond his own to best the swarm that threatened. Vicky was only ten and I was twelve. There was so much about the entire situation that I didn’t understand. It had all seemed like a great game, another training exercise, until we saw the soldiers and their bodies return.

If we had been called, it was something important. And my message wasn’t meant to reach me. Unwittingly, Cullen did me a huge favor by letting me know about it. I wouldn’t put Vicky’s disappearance past him, but I truly believed our brother’s ignorance of that fact. He was dangerous, but not that clever.

The town was lost beyond the hills by the time night’s darkness crept in. It was so agile that I didn’t even realize how late it was until the path I followed curved and I didn’t. I came face to face with a large tree. Absent any advance visual warning, I just barely managed to halt before smacking my nose into it. Given that the thick trunk probably belonged to one of the seed pod trees, I counted myself fortunate at the near miss. I was feeling addled enough without adding an otherworldy coconut contusion to my woes.

I considered my options. I could glimmer using the path, but it would place me in another location with unknown dangers, no allies, and no guarantees of food or clothing. On the other hand, I didn’t know the dangers of these woods at night; I had no way of obtaining more food or clothing beyond my current prescribed covering; and worst of all, remaining here would leave me near Cullen and his army of pig-men. The last probably should have been a lesser consideration, but I was still angry enough that it turned into the deciding factor. The sooner I left, the sooner I could get away from that ultimatum-tossing, arrogant prick of a half-brother.

I huffed righteously, wrapped my llama skin tighter and focused my mind’s eye on the boundary of the road. It’s an intense exercise of will to turn a normal boundary into the kind I needed, but the exercise is much easier when it happens to be the only real boundary in the vicinity. A physical line created by others is always more effective than one you have to imagine or create yourself. The dangers of using a weaker barrier are multitudinous. You can commit yourself to entering uninhabitable environments. Unfriendly was really the worst that I wished to deal with, but my leap into Cullen’s recruitment world was one born of necessity rather than conscious focus. With the next movement, I could start my way towards the Mistlands again, if I was careful how I visualized the crossings. I took a deep breath and stepped across the path.