The Swarm Trilogy (29 page)

We weren’t the only ones headed up. Our twosome turned into a small parade of people, all following Chase higher. I searched the faces, but didn’t see Mags among them. I wanted so badly to find her, but she’d made it clear she couldn’t handle dealing with me now. Maybe if she gave me only a moment, she’d understand I hadn’t meant for Aric to die. I’d done everything I could to get Trevin back to her.

But she didn’t materialize with the crowd.

Chase paused at the top, where the stairs ended in a doorway. No platform to stand on, just one door leading into one tiny cottage.

He raised his voice. “All of you go down. I’ll get answers and bring them back.”

Silently and slowly, the crowd turned and headed back.

“Does everyone always do what you say without question?” I asked Chase.

He knocked on the door and looked at me over his shoulder. “Everyone but you.” The door opened from the inside. Chase held out an arm. “You first.”

I stepped over the threshold, not knowing what, or who, to expect. An old woman hunched over a table, her long gray hair streaming down her back, nearly to the floor. Her hands, long and wrinkled, grasped a shabby wooden box.

“Welcome, child,” she said. “Is the medicine working well for you? Is the vertigo gone?”

“It is. I would love to thank the person that made it for me.” I stepped fully into the tiny room. Unlike Chase’s room, this one was filled with light from the sky. Completely open to the elements, this cottage had no roof. Along the wall, dozens of herbs hung upside-down in bunches. “Oh! Did you make the medicine?”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving my face. I studied hers in return. The wrinkles were set so deeply into her face I wondered if she had the muscle tone to smile. “Yes. I made it for you two days ago.”

I glanced over at Chase. I’d only been there since yesterday.

“Chase told me you were coming.” The woman waved her hand in the air. “So, I made it up right away, assuming he’d give it to you when you got here.”

“He didn’t. He waited until this morning.”

The old woman clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Chase, you are just as stubborn as your father. You always think you know what’s best for everyone else. You should be more like your mother and let others decide for themselves.”

“If I would have given her the draught when she arrived, she would have probably found a way off before morning. She can’t leave yet.”

“You know better than most that no matter what you do, life will take care of itself. Stop trying to protect her and let her make her own decisions.”

I waved my hand between the two of them. “Hello? I’m still here. Stop talking about me like I’m not.”

The old woman laughed. Her wrinkles moved out the way to reveal a large, toothy smile. She held out one gnarly hand to me, still clutching the large container in her hand. “I’m Johna, the leader of this tiny little village in the sky. I’ve been here for nearly twenty years. Waiting for you, mostly.”

“Me? Why not just come get me if you’ve been so close? Why wait for me to come to you?”

She laughed again, her guffaw sending shock waves through the room. “Yes, I can just imagine it. Three babies arrive for adoption into the Fithian community as a peace offering. I’m sure they would have let a crazy old woman nobody knew take one of them. No, child, you needed to come to me.”

“Chase brought me here. I didn’t come of my own will.”

“Didn’t you come into the forest with a baby, in an attempt to find its mother?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, but—”

“And Chase helped you accomplish that goal, correct?”

If she wasn’t an old woman, I might have slapped her. “Yes,” I said, my teeth gritted.

Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head. “You are a hothead, aren’t you? It’s a good thing Chase blocked your magic or we’d all be in trouble.”

“I’d never use my magic to hurt anyone,” I insisted, folding my arms across my chest.

“Ah, but you have accidentally, haven’t you? Isn’t that how your sister died? Your anger boiled over, the flame grew so intense, and you accidentally released a blast of wind at her.”

“How do you know that? Are all of you spying on my every move?”

Johna shook her head. “Of course not, a young girl like you, with a handsome suitor like Bryden deserves her privacy. I have spies who tell me the things I cannot see for myself.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Chase said, “but can we talk about what just happened. Who’s down there? So few people ever come this way and I’m concerned. It’s not like there’s a road, or even a path, down there. Someone’s snooping around.”

Johna’s smile disappeared, replaced by a very serious set of pursed lips. “I don’t know. I saw only one man. He had a sword on his hip, but he was moving slowly, carefully observing the ground. I think he was looking for tracks. There may be dozens of them out in the forest looking for Lianne.”

“We erased any clue that Lianne had been through this place,” Chase said. His firm stance showed that he had complete confidence in himself. “They won’t find anything.”

“And yet, he searched directly below us for nearly an hour.”

I raised an eyebrow. I’d sat encased in Chase’s arms for that long?

“He finally moved on,” Johna said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned. He knows something or he wouldn’t have spent so much time in one spot.”

“I didn’t miss a thing,” Chase insisted. “There’s no way he can know we’re here. Only one person has left the community since Lianne got here and she’s not in a place where she can tell anyone.”

“Did he tell you your friend is gone, Lianne?” Johna asked.

“Mags? She left?” My surprise must have shown across my face, my eyes wide, my mouth in a circle. “Where did she go?”

“We couldn’t allow a baby here for long,” Johna said. “We offered to put an enchantment on the child so it wouldn’t cry, but she refused so we had to ask her to leave.”

“You asked her to leave?” I wanted to scream, but I knew I couldn’t to protect the community. “Did you just dump them in the forest? Then that’s why that man found something to see down there. I can’t believe you would just drop her there without even letting me say goodbye!”

My hands formed fists and my arms shook. I plastered them to my sides, trying to control the rage flowing through me.

Johna raised an eyebrow. “It appears she has quite a temper, even without the magic stoking it.”

“Don’t analyze me.”

“Quite right, I’m sorry, child. No, we did not just dump Mags in the midst of the forest. She’s moved on to another place. It’s very safe. We drove away the Malborn when Chase was just a twinkle in his mother’s eye.”

“She’s in your homeland? But how could she find it on her own? I don’t understand.”

“We have ways of transporting people across long distances in seconds. It’s part of the way our magic works,” Chase said.

“Really? That’s incredible. Can I learn it too?” For a moment I felt some hope in learning more about magic. I’d seen it as a curse that had only brought pain and suffering to those I loved. I saw it as an evil tool my people used to control others. It hadn’t really occurred to me I could do something benign with it.

“Perhaps. We’d like to teach you, but Chase tells me you’re anxious to leave us,” Johna said. I opened my mouth to respond, but she held up her hand and continued. “Lianne, you are the bearer of great potential. It pains me to know your people bound up your gift when you were born, unleashing it only when it was useful to them. That’s not fair to you and it’s a gross misuse of your gift.”

I nodded, in full agreement with what she’d just said. “But Chase tells me there’s a bigger problem than my people invading Fithia. Will you tell me?”

Johna sighed and sat down on her chair. She was so vital, but her body was obviously very old. I wanted to know her exact age. I didn’t dare ask. “My people have had access to our gifts, what you call magic, for as long as we can remember. Many, many, many years ago we were invaded by people who called themselves the Malborn. They sought to exploit our gifts, and even found ways to breed their own gifted army. In our land, people with the gift have a spark in their eye - a magical twinkle only another gifted person can see. It’s what helped us identify each other, but still kept us hidden from our enemies.

“The Malborn found a way to breed children with the gift, who did not have the spark. It nearly destroyed our people. Chase’s mother saved us all from destruction.”

I glanced over at Chase. Instead of seeing a prideful smile, I only saw sadness on his face. For a moment I wanted to reach out and touch him, comfort him somehow, but I kept my arms at my sides.

“Your mother must be a hero,” I said. “I’m sure she’s very brave.”

“I don’t want to talk about my mother right now.”

“Yes,” Johna agreed, “that’s a conversation for another day. The problem is that while we expelled the Malborn from Serenia, we know they are after anyone who has the gift and can grace their people with it.”

“So they’re chasing after my people to try to breed with them? Creepy.”

“Not just any of your people,” Chase said. He took a step toward me. His hand twitched, as if he were about to reach out for me, but he held himself in check. “They want you.”

Chapter Nine

“Me? Why me? From what I learned from my sister, Sebrina, plenty of my people have magic. What makes me special?”

“It’s the nature of your gift. There are many basic things we can all do with our gifts, if taught properly. But each of us has something special that sets our gift apart from everyone else’s. Yours is based in fire.”

“Fire? But I’ve never done anything with fire. The few times I have used my magic, it manifested in a breeze of some kind. Or I once made a rock move.”

“Impressive,” Chase said. His sardonic grin told me it wasn’t. I resisted the urge to hit him and focused on Johna.

“That’s only because you’re using very basic elements of the gift. Once you’re able to unleash it properly, you’ll find that fire dominates as your greatest power.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. I hadn’t told any of them about the fire I’d felt in my gut from the moment I awoke on my sixteenth birthday. My anger stoked it, and only Bryden’s presence, his love, had been able to cool it down. Now that Chase had drained it, or blocked it, or whatever it was he was doing to me, I didn’t feel a thing. I was grateful, too, because the sensation of fire ripping through my body was unpleasant on a good day.

“I guessed based off one of Chase’s pictures.” Her eyes flickered over to his. “Has he shown you?”

“No, I didn’t show her that picture,” Chase said. “She only saw a couple of them on the top.”

“What’s in that picture?” I whirled around, facing Chase head-on. “I want to see it.”

“It’s down in my room, somewhere in the crate.”

“So, let’s go. I want to know what you saw.”

Johna’s bony fingers wrapped around my arm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “The future is a very strange thing. Chase’s mother also had the gift. Her visions weren’t always accurate. There’s no sense in showing you something that may never happen. It’s the message behind it that matters. You have the gift of fire. You may not understand, but you aren’t denying it.”

I turned back to Johna. I peeled her hand off my arm, and held it between both of my hands. Kneeling down on the floor next to her, I confessed everything. “When I woke up on the morning of my sixteenth birthday, I was filled with this inexplicable rage. As the day went on, it felt like fire was ripping my insides apart.” I choked on the tears that threatened to spill.

Johna stroked my hair with her free hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell us any more if you don’t want to.”

“Every time I got angry, I felt the fires stir. Sometimes it was worse than others. Once it was so blinding, I passed out.”

“You were just trying to protect everyone around you.” Chase placed a hand on my back. “Who knows what would have happened if you had let go. If your fire had gotten loose, who knows what, or who, you could have burned.”

I lifted my head, wiping the tears from my eyes with my sleeve. “Thank you, Chase.”

Chase pointed at himself. “Me? What did I do?”

“You drained my magic. I was bound to be angry once I got up here and realized you wouldn’t let me leave. You probably saved everyone by blocking me. What if I’d set this place on fire? It would burn down so quickly. I can’t bear to kill anyone else.”

That’s when the tears turned into a torrent of showers. I let go of Johna’s hand, stood up, pushed past Chase, and ran out of the cottage.

Before I could get past the first landing, Chase grabbed my arm. “Stop, please, Lianne. Don’t run away. Johna and I can help you learn to control it.”

“Bryden told me that too, but it didn’t work.” I jerked my arm from his grasp. “It took me years to learn to control myself while fighting. If it takes another ten years for me to learn to control this magic, then what good will it do me? I’ll be twenty-six! That’s practically middle aged!” I raged quietly, knowing that anything louder than a conversational voice would get me in trouble. The volume was low, but the venom was thick.