Interlude - A Dark Watching

She watched the boy on the horsa ride into the kingdom, and once she was able to overlook the strange coverings he wore, she noticed something else about him that made her heart jump.

He was a Dark. To her, it seemed, he was also lost.

From her hiding place on the balcony of stone building that had been built as a church once but had long ago been abandoned; a place she often went to be alone, she could see for miles in all directions. It was an odd sense of power, that, and she often pretended she was sentry, protector of the city of Triga. Lately, however, things had gotten bad, and she’d had to spend more time in her hiding spot than she’d wanted to. She no longer pretended she protected the city that had betrayed many of her people, instead she longed to leave it.

Now, as she watched the boy ride his horse up the main road, she began to worry. He doesn’t know. He’ll be killed. Indeed, the boy was riding directly toward the castle, where knights with orders to kill Darks on sight waited.

Get off the road, boy. Into the alleys, where you can hide. Hurry! They’ll see you!

Seeming to hear her, the boy pulled back on the reins and the horsa slowed. When it came to a stop on the side of the road, the boy got off. And stood there, looking around in amazed puzzlement.

For the streets of Triga were empty, merchant stalls abandoned and windows in houses closed with boards. He was, she saw, a lonely figure in a dead city; one that had been thriving only weeks before.

He doesn’t know, she thought again. He’ll walk around and one of them will see him, and he’ll get killed. I have to do something. The boy, although directly up the road a hundred yards or so, was too far away for her to shout. She’d have to go to him.

Quickly she bounced to her feet and ran around the balcony until she found the small cubby she’d used to climb out. She pulled herself through the hole and raced down the spiraling staircase she’d climbed more times than she could count. When she reached the base of the staircase she passed the altar made of stone that swirled (and so old it cracked in most places) and flew between the columns that marked the entrance to the church. Taking a cursory glance up the road, to where the boy stood, she noticed he’d wandered out into the middle of it and was looking toward the castle. Archers, she thought, archers will get him. An arrow through the throat.

She weaved her way through a small alley to reach the one that ran behind many of the houses and parallel to the main road, the one that the residents of this kingdom had used for throwing out their excrement until a week before. The smell was overpowering, but she weathered it. She was running parallel to the road now, panting with exertion and sweating with fear. Finally she reached the passage between the old conciliary building and the learning place. She took the left turn, padding up the passage until she had a partial view of the road again. The boy was standing there, and she opened her mouth to shout.

“Horsa boy! Get out - ”

As she rounded the corner of the conciliary building, she was able to see the rest of the road. And that the boy was not alone, but rather standing opposite a group of knights on horsaback, knights who now looked at her in surprise and then interest.

One of them, the one in the front, said something and the knight in back took his horsa around and galloped toward her. She tensed, as panic took her in full form, and prepared to flee.
“Move, girl, and I’ll kill you where you stand.” The knight’s voice was rocky, and she hesitated, uncertainty freezing her. It was all the time the knight needed, and he grabbed her by the hair as he rode past and dragged her along the ground beside his horsa. She screamed, in fright at first but then in pain, the real, excruciating pain that told her her hair was going to rip the top of her skull off, or her whole head. She had fallen backwards when the knight had grabbed her, was now being dragged on her back, little stones and rocks digging into the meaty places under her shoulder blades and along her spine. I’m dead, she thought. I’m already dead, my body just doesn’t know it yet. Her throat hurt, and vibrated strangely, and it was her screaming that did it.

She heard a muffled shout from a thousand miles away, and her hair was let go. She fell to the ground, rolling, and before she blacked out she saw something impossible.

The knights were flying.