When War Calls(16)

With a quick turn he was away, racing far from them before they had a chance to grab him.

‘Wimp,’ he heard Ardim say after him, but quietly enough so that he would not get any attention from the houses they were passing.

Adrenalin pounded through Jaden’s veins, making him run faster and causing the feeling in his legs to vanish. He knew he couldn’t run from them forever. He was too tired from the match. Eventually they would catch him, but they would be tired, too, so the first chance there was, he knew he had to lose them. He leapt up on top of a wall, deciding going up would be his best chance. He used the wall to grab at a ledge, which he climbed to get on the roof of a house. He ran across the flat and jumped to the next house. The house after that was too far for a single jump, so he climbed down quickly before they could see him racing through the gardens. They would never have attempted to follow him over the roofs.

‘Where is he?’ he could hear one of Ardim’s team calling out, no longer cautious of drawing attention to themselves.

‘Not here,’ came the reply.

‘I think he’s over there!’

Jaden ran around the grassy areas and through ferns and trees until he reached the plantations. Having worked in the fields almost every day, he knew the routes he could take to confuse his followers, and soon enough he was out of their reach, climbing up the eastern mountain, high through its dense foliage that scratched at his arms and legs, and to a cave that only he knew about almost at the top. This was his sanctuary for such times, or when he simply needed a rest.

They would be looking for him below, searching the entire village before growing bored and abandoning the hunt. It could take up to three or four hours for this to happen, but there was nothing else to do but wait.

Lying back against a smooth stone, he looked up at the stars. The rings were still shining brightly. They put him at ease, and as he forgot about Ardim searching for him below, he drifted into an exhausted sleep. He would deal with Ardim in the morning.





Chapter Four





Some memories are better left forgotten.





January 10, 997 R.E.





Jaden remained asleep on the cave’s floor, his dreams revealing a haunted landscape he had never before witnessed. Shadows of clouds moved rapidly across the dry, swollen surface, pushed by the same harsh, blistering winds that made the hills wail their terrible melody. The sky glowed with a sickening orange, broken only by the black of the storm clouds above him. He was alone in this tortured place, without even a sign of civilisation for as far as the eye could see.

The only things alive seemed to be the ashen grasses beneath his feet, but they barely clung to life. They longed for moisture, teased by the clouds that would not rain; forgotten by those giant ghosts that floated so close and yet so far away. The grasses had known the need of their cure since first rising through the earth, enjoying tastes of what little was given, but they had become hardened and untamed, forced to survive in this savage, barren wilderness.

It was here they had come to know their creation. It was here they would come to know their end.

Like the grasses, Jaden was here for something—something he needed to survive. But if the grasses were simply in need of moisture, for what was he searching? What was his need?

Jaden could understand their existence, as it was not so different to his own. Like them, he was at the mercy of the natural world, and he too relied on his ability to adapt. With each step, he could feel the dry blades fold beneath his feet. They would bend as far as they could to survive, and then they could collapse, beyond repair. It did not seem right for him to walk upon them with this new found kinship, but he consoled himself in knowing that nothing would last forever, and all that was before him was already doomed. The little water about would disappear, the dirt would be poisoned, and the sun would scar the ground so that nothing would grow again. There seemed little purpose in going on to face such adversities when absolute demise was a certainty. But somewhere in the grass’s mindless existence, the urge would stay their hearts, and they would find peace, living in one moment, one time, satisfied by ignorance.

Jaden walked on. Like them, he would not give up.

As he reached the top of a hill, there was a prickling at his consciousness—the same he had felt at the waterfall. There was energy moving about him, spears darting in and around. It was the same sharp movement he had asked Alyssa about. But now they were only a faint whisper in the back of his thoughts. There was a more urgent matter in this desolate place, something strange and alien. He could sense death in the emptiness, a horrific fate awaiting him and those like him. It was something he had to find, to bring back, to stop the evil that roamed free around the world in its absence. The spirits of old were taking hold and protecting what was no longer theirs, in a time and place that nothing seemed to remember. He had to find what it was—the key, the relic—that was once held by his ancestors. He would sacrifice everything he had for it, to restore harmony to a reality of terror and mayhem, so that beauty might be known once more on the planet. This could have been what he was here for; his cure, his need.