The Chosen of Anthros Read online

  “But how would they know that?” Leona asked.

  “Exactly our point,” Fen said. “They would have had to test the theory.”

  “And we are only speculating at the fact that they may have enough blood already stored to open all of the scepters,” Rowan said.

  “That’s why Daniken wanted me,” Abagail said to herself.

  “She was trying to kill you to open Celeste’s scepter,” Leona said.

  “It takes the dying blood,” Rowan said. “We assume that the dying blood doesn’t have to be fresh in order to do it.”

  “What’s more, we’ve heard that many of the dark elves already have their scepters open,” Fen said.

  “So maybe they aren’t telling you every time someone arrives on Agaranth or when someone’s power awakens,” Abagail pointed out.

  “We’ve thought of that too,” Rowan said.

  “That’s part of the reason we encourage our harbingers to spend so many nights in New Landanten. Maybe they can hear something from a drunken dark elf that they shouldn’t.” Fen splayed his hands out wide as if he could only hope.

  “But what about the light elves?” Leona asked. “Are you sure you can trust all of them?”

  “No,” Rowan said, shaking her head. “There are only a few we trust, two of which brought you back here.”

  “Skye and Celeste,” Abagail nodded.

  “Exactly right,” Rowan confirmed.

  All of this was making Abagail’s head spin.

  “I’m sorry, this must be a lot for you. We can get into all of that later. You should really settle in before you start joining too many parties up at New Landanten. Please know that not every novice harbinger knows about this and only a few are spying for us. So keep this to yourselves,” Fen said.

  “Are we two new spies?” Leona asked with a smile.

  Rowan nodded, and Fen smiled.

  “If you’d like to be,” Fen said.

  “I very much would!” Leona nodded excitedly.

  Abagail nodded as well. Something more was coming. The dreams she’d been having made her feel like a dark cloud was just on the edge of the time mankind had left, and if she could help stop that dark cloud from engulfing all of the nine worlds, she’d do what she had to.

  “That can wait though, for now, I want to formally welcome you to Haven. You’ve been told what your jobs are, and you will do those at various times through the day as your training schedule allows.”

  “How long does training last?” Abagail wondered.

  “And what happens to us after training. Do we go to live with other races, like the dwarves, or do we stay here?” Leona asked.

  “After you’re training you can choose your assignment. We may have suggestions based on your skills, and there might even be special cases and ventures you’re needed for, but that will be determined when you complete your training.

  “Your training doesn’t stop here. Once you’ve mastered your skills here, you will go out on circuit with your mentor. For a year you will be gone, and they will teach you without the safety of Haven to live as a harbinger. We will see then how well your training has taught you.”

  “And what will we be doing in that year?” Abagail asked Fen.

  “Tending to outlying villages, hunting for more plague bearers, putting down darklings and killing whatever harbingers of darkness you run across.”

  “That’s a lot,” Leona said. Her face was pale and her hands balled together in her lap.

  “But we don’t let you go out on circuit until we are sure you are ready,” Rowan told her.

  “You’ve come here on your own, you’ve faced many things,” Fen said. There was a note of wonder in his voice that they’d made it at all. “If it wasn’t for the fact that you are untrained and Leona didn’t even know until last night that she was a harbinger, I would think you could go on circuit now.”

  “But you can’t,” Rowan said as if she were cutting off any argument before it could start.

  “You can’t,” Fen nodded with a smile. “And you have much training ahead of you. Please know that my door is always open to you if you have anything you need to ask, or anything you want to report.

  “I wish you luck with your studies, and welcome to Haven.”

  It was indeed a busy day. Abagail learned the middle section of Haven, where it seemed most populated, was where the trainees and their mentors lived. The top level was designated for official buildings: homes of the council members and even the council hall.

  The second level was more functional. This was the level where they dealt with the day to day upkeep of Haven. There was livestock kept there for food. The level served other functions as well, like the storing and chopping of wood for heating. Rowan took them over to a large brick building with a glass roof and many windows through which Abagail could see all kinds of plants; vents along the walls helped to keep the flow of air into and out of the greenhouse in check.

  While they didn’t actually go into the building, they got a really good feel for it just from peeking through windows. Before they left the greenhouse, Gil joined them.

  “Where is Rorick?” Rowan asked.

  “I left him at the barracks, he wanted to get started, so they are setting him up with a trainer today and maybe even some guard duty shifts.” Gil shrugged. “I don’t really know. You know how that place makes me feel. When Ephram said he’d take over showing him the ropes, I hightailed it out of there!”

  Rowan nodded and turned back to Abagail and Leona.

  “And now the classrooms,” Rowan said. “While we don’t teach like regular schools, we do have specific buildings for the different kinds of training we do here.”

  The classrooms were individual round buildings called yurts set around a circular courtyard. The noise of students sparring in the central courtyard under the watchful eye of a gnarled looking man and snippets of conversation and laughter from students sat around on benches between buildings was near deafening here.

  “How do you ever concentrate enough to get any work done?” Leona wondered.

  “The actual buildings are wyrded to be soundproof.”

  “There’s no specific function to any building,” Gil said, brushing a lank lock of brown hair from his eyes. “But some of the buildings have kind of gravitated toward one purpose or another over the years. Some teachers prefer one spot to leave all of their work supplies, so you have this building closest to us that’s for wyrded working. That building on the other side is where Huginn and Muninn like to do their training.”

  “This building here,” Rowan pointed to the one closest to them that Gil indicated was for wyrded working. “This is the one where you will be training most, Abagail.”

  The day came and went in a blur of activity. They had their schedules and knew where they were supposed to be and at what time. They had even enough time to meet the people they should report to the following day when it came to their non-schooling chores.

  Abagail wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to function the following day. After all of the orientation she was tired enough she nearly fell asleep while they were taking in dinner at the dining hall.

  “So what do you think?” Leona asked. “I can’t wait to get started tomorrow,” she said around a mouthful of potatoes.

  “It should be rather busy,” Rorick said.

  “And what about you?” Abagail asked. “Do you have guard duty tonight? Gil said you might.”

  “Well, I’m not officially on duty yet, but I’m supposed to meet with this girl tonight. She wants to show me the nighttime side of what the guards do. No guard duty yet, but just kind of an orientation.”

  “A girl huh?” Leona asked.

  “It’s not like that.” Rorick chuckled, but his blush made it seem like Leona knew precisely what it was like.

  Abagail fidgeted a little, trying to ignore the rest of that conversation as well as the desolate feeling welling up inside of her. It hadn’t been too long ago that
Abagail made him feel that way. She kind of always wondered when this day would come, when Rorick would move on and forget Abagail. She just wasn’t ready for it to be so soon.

  Rorick left them after dinner. Abagail smiled and wished him good luck even though she felt like she was going to be sick at the thought of him spending so much time with a girl that made him blush. They were headed back to their home when Leona spoke.

  “It’s not like you don’t have someone that you fancy too,” she said.

  Abagail rolled her shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Abagail said.

  “Uh huh, of course you don’t,” Leona nudged her.

  Abagail couldn’t help but smile at her. “It’s just…”

  “That you thought Rorick was yours,” Leona said. “I know, I thought you guys would always end up together too. Then this plague happened.”

  Abagail nodded. “And it changed everything.”

  “Come on,” Leona said, linking her arm with Abagail’s. “I will make you some hot cocoa.”

  That one gesture from her sister was almost like the best hug Abagail had ever gotten. She followed Leona into the house and sat down at the table while her sister toiled away with making hot cocoa with milk from their ice box.

  “But you know,” Leona said staring out the window up the path they’d just followed home. “It could be a blessing in disguise.”

  “How do you figure?” Abagail asked, looking up from her study of her finger nails.

  “Now you don’t have to think of a way to tell Rorick to get lost when Skye wants to make things official.”

  “Oh dear All Father,” Abagail said and laughed. “There’s nothing to make official. He picks on me and it makes me uncomfortable, end of story.”

  “Yea, okay.” Leona smiled at something she saw outside the window. She places a pan of water on the stove beside the pan of milk. “You might want to tell him that.”

  “I will,” Abagail said. “As soon as I see him again.” Abagail frowned. “Why are you boiling water?”

  Leona started to laugh. Abagail opened her mouth to ask why she was laughing, but she got her answer before she could ask the question.

  “Settling in to your new place?” Skye asked, stepping through the door without knocking. Abagail jumped, not expecting the intrusion. It must have read on her face because Skye blushed a little and motioned to the door. “Elves find it rude to knock, we are used to just entering.”

  “What if no one wants your company?” Leona asked and grinned at the purple-eyed elf.

  A smile split his face, and Abagail felt her stomach do flips. She grunted a little, wishing his presence didn’t have that kind of effect on her. At one time, Rorick had that same effect on me, she reminded herself.

  And that jerk knew he was coming! Abagail shot a glare at her sister and Leona only smiled back as if she didn’t know why Abagail was glaring at her.

  “Well, who wouldn’t want my company?” he asked Leona, shutting the door behind him.

  “Probably Rorick,” Leona responded.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Abagail asked.

  Skye frowned. “What is it?” He looked over Leona’s shoulder at the steaming pot.

  “Hot cocoa,” she said. “But we have herbal tea as well.”

  “That should be fine.”

  “Another custom you can’t ignore?” Leona asked. “Can’t drink milk like you can’t eat meat?”

  Skye laughed, and itched the back of his neck. He sat down at the table.

  “Lucky for you I saw you coming and figured you’d want tea.”

  “What do you normally drink?” Abagail wondered, ignoring her sister.

  “Normally wine.”

  “That’s all?” Abagail wondered.

  “Here you go,” Leona said, setting the hot cocoa before Abagail and a cup of hot water before the elf. She placed a tin of loose tea leaves beside it.

  Abagail inhaled the cocoa deeply. It reminded her of home when her father would make cocoa for them on snowy afternoons and they would read by the fire.

  Leona took that moment to disappear up the stairs with her cocoa, but not before she shot her sister a wink.

  Abagail blushed. Was she really that obvious?

  “Elves don’t tend to get drunk like humans think of it.”

  “So how do elves get drunk?” she asked, setting the mug before him and taking a seat beside him. Even from that distance she could feel the energy radiating from him, playing across her skin like heat.

  “Is this an opening line of a joke?” Skye asked.

  Abagail smiled at him and looked to her hands. “No!” she laughed. “It’s a real question.”

  “Not something stupid like, ‘how do elves get drunk? By sipping sap from the five fingered grass.’”

  “Do you guys smoke that?” Abagail wondered. “I’d heard rumors.”

  Skye started laughing. “Our ancestors did. Some of our shamans still do, but not generally, no.”

  “So how do elves get drunk?” Abagail insisted. She took a sip of her cocoa. The heat and the sweetness were perfect and seemed to infuse every muscle, relaxing her from head to toe.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Probably poor choice of words. We don’t get drunk. Wine is to elves like juice would be to you.”

  “Oh,” Abagail said. “I like the taste of wine. I wish it had little effect on me.”

  “If you like wine, then you have to try elvish wine,” Skye told her.

  “Yea? I’m assuming it’s not like juice?” Abagail asked.

  “Well, it is pretty sweet, but you probably wouldn’t make it through one glass.”

  “Is that a dare?” Abagail wondered.

  “Would that make it more inviting if it were?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Well, come hang out in New Landanten some night,” he told her. Skye smiled slyly at her.

  “I might have to do that,” she told him. Having him invite her to New Landanten reminded her of the meeting with Fen earlier in the day. It was a sobering thought.

  “You should. The sooner the better.”

  “So where is Celeste?” Abagail asked.

  “What, I can’t stop by to see how you’re settling in?” Skye asked. He winked at her. Abagail felt her face flush and she looked down at her hands on the table. She couldn’t help but stare at her right hand, covered in a glove, proclaiming to all that she was marred; imperfect. Skye laughed. “She’s on assignment.”

  “Another harbinger?” Abagail asked, trying to calm the emotions running through her body.

  He shrugged and took a sip of the tea. “Might be that, or we might have found where more harbingers of darkness are holed up.”

  “They have little establishments?” she wondered.

  “Not really,” he shrugged. “It’s not that common to see them working together. Can you imagine if they were? Wow.”

  “Why, what would that mean?” Abagail asked, sitting up straighter.

  “Well typically they are the hiding kind. They live alone, terrifying the locals and feeding on children.”

  “What?”

  “That’s kind of a joke. I don’t know if any of them actually feed on children, but there is an air of misfortune that follows them. Some of them become like Fortarian and decide to rule over wherever they live.”

  “Okay, so they don’t get along?”

  He shrugged. “That’s part of what we are trying to figure out. Why aren’t they living more clustered together? At this point we think it’s good they are living separate. If they lived closer together then that might mean something big is about to happen.”

  “Like what?” Abagail asked.

  “How am I to know?” He laughed.

  Abagail smiled.

  “So how are things going here?” he asked. “Rorick acting better?”

  “Yea, he seems to be less tense now that we are in Haven,” Abagail told him.

  “Leona settli
ng in okay? She vanished rather quickly.”

  “Better than I expected,” Abagail said, casting a glance at the stairs. “What about you?” She asked, looking at Skye.

  He fingered the rim of his mug and wouldn’t meet her eyes. But his smiling face was gone, and she could see there, traced in the subtle lines of his pale face that he wasn’t as good as he put on.

  “You miss Mari, don’t you?” Abagail asked Skye.

  He nodded and tried to smile, but it came out more like a smirk.

  “Were you a couple?” Abagail didn’t want him to see how eager she was to know the answer to that. She tried acting subtle, toying with a scar in the surface of the table like his response didn’t matter. She hoped she succeeded.

  “No,” he said, and then chuckled. “Mari and I were certainly not a couple. When we first met I thought we could have been, but as we grew closer, I realized that we were only going to be friends.”

  “But you loved her?” Abagail pushed the words out around the lump in her throat. Her stomach sunk so fast she thought she was falling.

  “Not like that,” Skye said. “As a sister, yes, but not as a lover.”

  Abagail nodded. “But that’s just as hard.”

  “Harder maybe,” Skye said. “I really wouldn’t know, she was the first person I’ve lost that I was close to. I’ve never had a lover to lose, so…”

  “Oh…”

  “Anyway, I have to go check on the fey tomorrow, would you like to come along?” he asked.

  “I have training all day,” Abagail told him.

  “Well that’s fine, they don’t really start coming alive until twilight anyway,” he said. “So your excuse is irrelevant.”

  “It wasn’t an excuse.” Her eyebrows furrowed together and her back straightened.

  Skye laughed at her, and clasped her gloved hand. Even though there was fabric separating their skin, she could still feel the tingle of his flesh on hers. She stared down at where their hands were connected.

  “You’re easy to get going,” he said. He followed her eyes down to the glove. He slipped his hand away. “Does that bother you?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just that no one is really willing to touch my hand now.”