D. MacHale - Raven Rise

A second knight galloped up and stopped next to the first.

“Is it a Lowsee scout?” the second knight asked.

“No,” the first knight answered. He dismounted and walked cautiously toward me. “He is too light-skinned to be a Lowsee.”

What the heck was a Lowsee?

“Dead?” the second knight asked. He didn’t even bother getting down from his horse.

The first knight knelt down to find out. When our eyes met, his opened even wider in surprise.

“You!” he exclaimed, as if he recognized me.

“Who is it?” the second knight asked, finally getting off his horse.

“You are hurt,” the first knight said, actually sounding worried about me. “We will get help.” He stood up straight and called back to his advancing army. “A stretcher!” he called. “Hurry!”

By this time the second knight was staring at me too.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It is Pendragon,” the first knight answered. “We owe this man our future. Without him, we would not have the weapons to attack the Lowsee.”

The second knight shot me a quick, surprised look. “This is the man who unearthed the tak?”

“It is,” the first knight answered. “He has changed the future of all Denduron.”

It was the absolute last thing I wanted to hear. I had become the merchant of death.

I closed my eyes and let darkness fall.

Itfelt like my shoulder was on fire. It really did. I actually thought it was burning. I forced myself to wake up, thinking I had to find some water and put out the flames. I wasn’t on fire of course. I was feeling the effects of a foot-long double slash that ran across my shoulder onto my chest. I cracked open an eye to try and get my bearings. Disoriented? Yeah, you could say that. I stole a quick glance at my arm to see there were no flames, only a clean white bandage that wrapped my left arm to my side like I was a half mummy. Oh, right. The quig. Ouch. I twisted my head one way to see that I was in a hut. A big one. I was on my back on a cot. A long string of cots were lined up next to mine. All were empty. I twisted my head back to the left to see even more cots lined up. Looking past my feet toward the opposite wall, I saw still another row of cots. Also empty. It seemed I was the only guest in this very big hospital. “Would you like some water?”

I shifted my gaze to the voice and saw a young girl headed my way with a pitcher and a cup. She may have been pretty, with long dark hair tied up into a practical knot, but this was no candy striper. She wore the lightweight, black leather armor of a Bedoowan knight. I nodded. The girl knelt by the cot, lifted my head with one hand, and brought the cup to my lips. I took a small sip. I didn’t want to choke. It felt great. It was like washing away a coating of sand inside my throat.

“That’s enough,” she said as she gently lowered my head.

“Thank you,” I croaked. “Uh, where am I?”

“The hospital,” she answered. “You were lucky the advance force found you.”

I reached up with my right hand and felt my burning shoulder.

“One hundred and twenty stitches,” she said, as if reading my mind. “You lost a lot of blood. How did it happen?”

How the heck was I supposed to answer that? I decided to tell the truth. Sort of. I was tired of playing games.

“Wild animal,” I answered. “He lost more blood than I did.”

“Why were you up on the mountain?” she asked. “Sightseeing.”

She gave me a strange look. I shrugged.

“No matter,” she said dismissively. “You are here now and you will survive. Your wound is already showing signs of healing. It is quite remarkable actually.”

I shrugged again. It hurt to shrug. I stopped shrugging.

“Why is the hospital so empty?” I asked. “Hard to believe that I’m the only sick guy around here.”

“It will not be empty for long,” she answered solemnly. “This ward was built to treat the wounded.”

“Lotta cots. Expecting more patients than normal?” I asked, confused.

She frowned. “It is what happens in war.”

“War?” I shouted, and sat up quickly. Just as quickly, I wished I hadn’t. My head spun. I wasn’t healing so fast after all. I dropped back down and closed my eyes, trying to hold on to consciousness.

“Rest,” she said professionally. “We will move you once the wounded begin to arrive.”

I think I slipped in and out of reality awhile. For how long I didn’t know. Images of the advancing Bedoowan army kept dancing through my head like a feverish nightmare. There was going to be a war. The Bedoowan knights who found me on the mountain were an advance team. Who were they going to fight? The knights talked about using tak, which meant the worst had happened. By digging out the tak to defend Ibara, I had given Saint Dane a second shot at Denduron. The turning point of the territory was the discovery of tak. By destroying the tak mine, I had only shifted the turning point. Worse, I feared that I had begun a chain of events that would be felt throughout Halla. Denduron was on the verge of a war. Dados had returned to Ibara. What else was happening? What would it all lead to? The answer was obvious.

Convergence.

History-changing events were being influenced by events on different territories. It was the ultimate mixing of worlds. The destiny of each territory was no longer its own. This was Saint Dane’s Convergence. I was the one who was given the task of stopping it. Instead, I was the one who started it. It made me wish that the slash from the quig had been a bit higher and hit my throat.

I was vaguely aware of people hurrying in and out of the large ward, preparing the cots for the wounded. Every so often somebody would check on me. I didn’t care. I wanted to die. I think a night went by. Maybe two. Ilost track of time, which is kind of an understatement, sinceIhad actually lost track of time the very first momentIstepped into the flume whenIwas fourteen. What made me finally rejoin reality was the feeling that somebody was standing over me, watching. Unlike the many caregivers who came and went, this person didn’t move. He kind of hovered there, as if waiting for me to say something. It gave me enough of an uneasy feeling that I willed myself to crawl from the darkness where I had been living. When I focused, I was surprised to see Rellin, the chief miner of the Milago. But something wasn’t right. He was wearing the armor of a Bedoowan knight. Stranger still, this armor had bright yellow stripes on both arms. It looked like a fancy-dress version of the familiar black armor.

“Welcome back, Pendragon!” Rellin exclaimed warmly. “I was afraid we had lost you.”

Rellin sat down on the cot next to me. I did my best to focus on him.

“I want to hear about your adventure,” he exclaimed. “Did the tak serve you well?”

It took me a few seconds to understand what he was asking. When I came to Denduron with Siry, I told Rellin that we needed to unearth more tak to help a tribe on the other side of the mountain. I didn’t mention that the people happened to be on the other side of the mountain… on a territory called Ibara.

“Yes” was the only answer I gave him. I didn’t want to tell him just how effective the tak had been.

“I am glad,” he said with a smile. “And I am glad that you have returned to us.”

“There’s going to be a war?” I asked.

Rellin smiled. He actually smiled. You’d think that somebody on the verge of war would be kind of, oh I don’t know, nervous? Sober? Tense? Not Rellin. The idea of going into battle made his eyes sparkle.

“The Lowsee are threatening our very existence by hoarding triptyte,” he explained. “Without it, our village would go dark. And all because they are greedy for glaze. What is more important? Light or wealth? They have chosen wealth. They will suffer for it.”