Guardian of the Vale Read online

  A throat cleared behind them; Alayne turned to the source. Marysa stood there, her eyes wide with fright. “It wasn't only one lonely EA company, Alayne.”

  Daymon didn't pause to ask. He sprinted to the top of the hill, Alayne on his heels. At the crest, Alayne dropped to the ground next to Daymon, horrified to see a halted company of soldiers, at least fifty, she guessed, stopped in their camp. Two soldiers kicked over their hastily covered fire ring. Several turned speculative glances to the surrounding trees.

  Bryce's weak cough behind them rang off of Alayne's eardrums, and suddenly, the world was on fire.

  Literally on fire.

  And Alayne was the one doing it.

  The soldiers ran up the hill toward the sound, but their clothes burned in great waves of flame, and Alayne couldn't stop it. Hatred poured through her, and the flames leaped higher while the soldiers dropped with agonized screams. Water-Wielders among the company pulled at the elements for relief, but Alayne's grasp on the entire element harp was too strong. She held the strands, struggling with them, horrified to realize that no matter how hard she tried to control the elements, they were creating their own swath of destruction.

  More fire fell, and then, when the soldiers had all collapsed in their pyre, the water element—the one with which she was most comfortable—snapped from her grasp, bringing a wall of water from inside the earth, splitting the crust, flooding the ground with a well of liquid. Vines and roots leaped free of the ground, tangling across the struggling bodies, pinning them to the ground, holding them beneath the water, and then a roar of wind swept from the north. It slammed into the water, and a tidal wave of bodies, trees, water, and still flickering fire rocketed to the south, carrying all the mangled remains out of sight and into oblivion.

  Still the water didn't stop; more and more flowed from the earth, a torrent, a flood that reflected the Vale's power. The element harp vibrated wildly, every element on it singing high and shrill, a chaotic mess that she'd unintentionally created. She'd lost control, and she couldn't end it.

  “Alayne.” Daymon's voice sounded distant. “Alayne, that's enough now.” His hands gripped her wrists, but Alayne couldn't stop.

  “Alayne, look at me.”

  Alayne stared at the flood. One remaining soldier had caught on a tree, the trunk rammed between the man's legs. His sightless eyes stared at the leaf cover overhead, his face a burned massacre.

  “Layne, seriously, look at me.” A tinge of desperation colored Daymon's words. Something snapped inside Alayne, and she jerked her hands from the element harp. Her fingers burned with the vestiges of her touch on it.

  Water soaked into the earth, leaving a muddy mess.

  Utter silence surrounded them. The students, where they stood along the hill and beneath the trees further down, stared at Alayne without moving, terror cloaking their faces. Daymon still held her wrists, his eyes close to hers. Alayne finally forced herself to meet his gaze, and the concern she saw there shot a shaft straight through her heart.

  Tears overflowed, and she pulled away from Daymon, huddling into a crouch, sobbing.

  Daymon's hand lightly rubbed her back. “It's okay, Layne, we're safe. You're safe. You saved us,” he murmured.

  Alayne choked as she shook her head, her words muffled into her knees so only Daymon could hear them. “I couldn't handle it, Daymon. I lost all control. The Vale did it. It killed that entire company in a horrible way, and I couldn't stop it.”

  Daymon's silence was enough to pull her attention to him. He looked dazed.

  Alayne flung the water elements from her cheeks and fully faced him. “Talk to me, Daymon. How did this happen? Tell me, please.”

  Daymon's jaw tightened. His gaze drifted to the ground, and he said nothing for a long moment. “I'm not sure,” he said at last.

  Alayne felt lonelier than if he'd said nothing at all.

  Chapter 2

  Alayne swiped her black steel blade once more over the whetstone and blew across the metal, her breath fanning the edges. She gathered her sleeve and brushed it across the knife, the black blade reflecting her fingertips as they felt the razor edge.

  Taking careful aim at a knot in a tree twenty feet away, she pulled the knife behind her ear, stilling her body and her breath in one moment and releasing the knife the next. It spun end over end, thudding into the center of the circular target.

  It was routine by now, knife-play, but the smooth motions and mindless practice comforted her. Daymon had been unable to explain the earlier episode with the Vale's takeover of the elements, and Alayne couldn't stop herself from thinking of the helpless feeling of killing an entire platoon of soldiers, whether they were after her or not.

  She retrieved the knife and polished it once more with satisfaction. It was likely the finest creation she'd ever made from the elements, and she treasured it; it reminded her of home. She had made it in Skyden and practiced blade-throwing almost non-stop with it the previous summer.

  She swallowed a lump in her throat that swelled as soon as she thought of her parents.

  Ryanna James passed her with a bubble of water balanced on her open palm. “You ready to go? Daymon says we're breaking camp.” She glanced across the glade at Daymon and then back at Alayne, her gaze dropping to the blade in Alayne's hand. “What are you going to use that for?”

  “Nothing right now.” Alayne slid the knife through her belt loop. She needed to create a sheath for it. The blade's sharp edges were taking their toll on her jeans. “I'm ready.” She glanced across the camp at Marysa, who knelt next to Jayme's deflated form on the ground. Her jaw tightened.

  Two weeks and still no change. Jayme lay on his back, his empty eyes staring at the sky. He responded if spoken to, even carried on a coherent conversation if someone tried to draw him out, but beyond that, he showed little sign of life. It was as though someone had wandered through the rooms of his internal workings and turned off all the lights. All zest, spark, and personality were gone, like an empty cocoon which had already released its butterfly.

  Alayne supposed it made sense; if someone had controlled her mind for an entire year before being ripped away from it, she would likely have felt similar. But as days went by and there was little change, her worry increased. At first, Alayne had tried to stay by Jayme's side, to bathe his feverish skin with cool water, but each time she sat next to him, the tension that had lined his face was too painful to ignore.

  The closer Alayne drew to Jayme, the harsher his breathing. The wild emptiness in his eyes horrified her, though she wouldn't have admitted it to anyone. The last few times she had tried to help him, he had screamed when she'd drawn within a few feet of him, and she had hastened away, embarrassed by his reaction and terrified that their group would be discovered by bounty hunters. She knew all the students pitied her—her former boyfriend couldn't stand to be in her presence.

  She hated it.

  An unspoken agreement between Alayne and Marysa allowed Marysa almost full-time care of the patient, since Jayme's fever skyrocketed if Alayne came anywhere near him.

  “Why won't the Vale heal him?” Alayne had asked Daymon in frustration one evening as she'd stared at her hands. “Of all the people I need it to heal, surely it could be Jayme. The Vale has always followed my wishes before. Why wouldn't it now?”

  Daymon hadn't answered, a trait that Alayne had come to accept about him. If there was nothing to say, he wouldn't fill the empty spaces with meaningless words. As time wore on, Alayne valued this more and more.

  Besides, the answer was not clear. Every wounded thing Alayne had touched up until then had healed. The mountain lion during the examinations her first year at Clayborne, Daymon, even Beatrice Pence after a different mountain lion had attacked her, or Malachi on the same mountain range outside of Clayborne. Their scars had healed badly, but they had healed. Were the after-effects of Shadow-Casting so different?

  “You want to know my theory, Layne?” Marysa had asked that morning. She'd plowed on
without waiting for Alayne's nod. “I think that Shadow-Casting, since it has to do with the mind, may be above the Vale. Well, not necessarily above, but on another dimension. The Vale is sort of the master of the elements, right? But Shadow-Casting takes it another step, goes deeper, right into your mind and controls it. So maybe the Vale can't heal that. For what it's worth, I don't know, but that's my two cents anyway. It may just take time.”

  Alayne had licked her lips. “And what if he never recovers?”

  Marysa's sky-blue gaze flickered sadly to where Jayme lay inert. “Let's just hope that he does.”

  A hand on Alayne's arm brought her back to the present. Daymon stood next to her. He nodded toward the north, where, through a break in the trees, she could see black storm clouds circling the mountainous horizon. “We might have a wet trek.”

  “How far out are we?”

  “Another eight miles, give or take.”

  “And the scouts? How far in did they go?”

  “Just far enough to glimpse the Capital gates.”

  Alayne shook her head and sighed. “I never thought we'd see the day when the Capital enclosed itself in four walls. News reports before we left Clayborne said that several City Centres around the Continent were considering walls or implementing them.”

  Daymon shrugged. “Times have changed.”

  Alayne's lips tightened, and she touched the dagger in her belt. Daymon's gaze swung down to it and then back up to her face. “That thing's about to cut through your belt loop.”

  Alayne shrugged. “I haven't had a chance to make a sheath for it. Soon. I'd better do it before it drops in the woods, and I lose it. It's my favorite knife. It was one of the weapons I made in my sleep when I had nightmares back home.”

  “I know.”

  Surprise tinged Alayne. “I didn't tell you that.”

  “Your dad did.”

  The words penetrated deeper than Alayne knew Daymon had intended. She pasted a smile on her face. “Never could understand my parents' fascination with you. All you'd ever do was show up and eat all the food in the house.”

  “I protected their only daughter.” All traces of teasing were gone from Daymon's eyes. “Hey, Layne. We'll find them, okay?”

  Alayne swiped away the traitorous tear that had spilled down her cheek, angry with herself for allowing it.

  Daymon tugged her braid, and his dimple winked at her. “We need to stock up our weapons' arsenal. Remind me to give you nothing to do. You'll have us loaded up in no time.” The dimple disappeared again. “Planning to use your knife for any specific purpose? Kyle makes a good pincushion.” At Alayne's frown, he swiftly added, “Don't kill the guy, although I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it. You could do it someplace insignificant like his hamstring or something. Just enough so he remembers he should never have messed with you in the first place.”

  Both of their gazes swung to Kyle, who sat on a log inspecting the sole of his shoe. “You're funny,” Alayne said with only the hint of a smile. “Let's get moving.” She nodded to Rachyl, who waited near the front of the camp, her hand resting on her hip.

  At Alayne's signal, Rachyl raised one arm. “Okay, guys, let's roll.”

  The group moved forward, stalking through the trees on a steady uphill slope. Alayne glanced at Jayme as she stepped across a fallen log. Another Air-Master had enveloped him in a sheet of air, and Jayme glided smoothly on his back next to Marysa, staring placidly at the sky. His cheekbones jutted below shadowed eyes, nearly skeletal.

  Alayne sighed.

  Thunder crashed around the group, vibrating the ground where they crouched, sodden. Several pale faces flinched when the next streak of lightning flashed through the trees, followed almost immediately by a peal of thunder. Alayne turned her face to the sky, allowing the water full access to her forehead, cheeks, and neck. She felt a little sorry for anyone who was not a Water-Wielder; she enjoyed the feel of the liquid dripping off of her skin, gaining an almost electric charge from the cool moisture.

  She had thought about clearing the thunderstorm from their immediate area—for such a large thunderstorm, it would have taken a tight grasp of the element strands—but they were too close to the Capital. There would be civilians, there would be government officials, there would be Elemental Alliance soldiers, and Alayne and the other Clayborne students were fugitives. Extra care was essential to their survival. So the lightning and thunder continued unabated, and Alayne left the elements untouched.

  She eyed the massive city that spread across the valley below them. Sky-reaching spires crowded thickly through the sprawl. At their tops, any number of shuttles moved overhead, landing on and departing from their platforms. White buildings spanned the spaces between the enormous turrets. Marble statues, monoliths, and structures of all sizes dotted the cityscape. In the center of the city at the top of a mound, surrounded by squares, plazas, and lesser structures, Alayne recognized the high, marble pillars of the High Court, hundreds of steps on all four sides leading up to it.

  The size had never struck her on her family's MIU at home. Even where she crouched on the hill, the building dwarfed her. Its glass ceiling at the very top of its atrium reflected the lightning every time it flashed, blinding Alayne for a brief moment.

  In her mind, she was there again in her living room with her parents, staring at the MIU, watching the replay of Simeon Malachi's attempted Shadow-Casting of the entire High Court. Her mind journeyed through the past two years in quick succession: first, her arrival at Clayborne, her discovery that she was a Quadriweave, and the responsibility that burdened her with that realization. She thought of Chairman Dorner's death, the result of an elaborate plan to gain her loyalty to the Elemental Alliance, of Marysa's kidnapping, of Jayme's plunge over the falls because he came too close to her fight with Simeon Malachi. Her mind moved to the next year: the Elemental Alliance had grown in power, taking less trouble to conceal themselves, sending outright threats to Alayne. Alayne had survived thanks to the loyalty of her Guardians—Manders, Daymon, and others on the staff at the school. Pain knifed through her as she thought of Kyle. She'd thought he had been loyal, too.

  Alayne stared at the High Court. My fault. If only I had used the Vale to end this before it began—

  “It's not your fault, Alayne. Stop blaming yourself,” Daymon breathed beside her, and Alayne jerked her gaze to him. She hadn't realized she'd spoken out loud. He leaned over a rock at the crest of the hill. His arms flexed as he lifted his weight onto his hands to peer over the city.

  Alayne cleared her throat. “So you're telling me we have to find your uncle in that?” She motioned toward the sprawl. “Do you have any idea where to start?”

  Daymon pushed off the rock, sinking thoughtfully into a crouch. “Just the seed of an idea.” He pursed his lips, considering the steep hillside that disappeared into a solid tree cover at the bottom. Beyond that, a wide, dusty road milled with peddlers who sold their wares outside the city gate. People lined up to enter the gates, all declaring themselves before the guards allowed them access to the Capital. Many clutched dusty bags or rolled up blankets. The EA's policy of detaining Naturals and Natural sympathizers had created social upheaval that had crashed the economy and left many people desperate and out of work. They came to the Capital seeking assistance.

  Alayne gestured toward the influx of people. “Maybe we can figure out a way in there?”

  Daymon shrugged. “Let's make camp here for tonight, and when everyone's settled, you and I can scout it out.”

  “The city?”

  “What else?” Daymon shrugged. “Let's get moving. It'll be dark soon.”

  Marysa's head lay heavy on Alayne's shoulder. Darkness blanketed the group; no one had thought it safe to light a fire this close to the Capital. They sat, silent and still, waiting until the first person should succumb to sleep. Marysa had been much less talkative during the cross-country trek to the Capital. A sense of reflection hovered over her, a silence brought on by a troubled mind.


  “You weren't able to contact your family, were you?” Alayne asked, her quiet whisper loud in the silence. “Just before exams?” The upheaval of that day was still fresh in Alayne's mind—the huge beds of water created by Capital Elementals, the escape from the watery beds and from Simeon Malachi, the disclosure of Kyle's betrayal, the discovery of her ex-boyfriend, Jayme, in the upper ranks of the Elemental Alliance, and the subsequent identification of Tarry as Commander Shane Beckyr, head of the EA.

  Marysa shook her head against Alayne's shoulder and then sat up. “Mom contacted me the week before exams. She and Dad were supposed to meet me in Grenton, because my mom wanted to visit a friend there. They weren't even planning to come to Clayborne. I'm sure they're worried sick by now, since I didn't show up, and they've heard nothing from me all this time.” She chewed on her thumbnail, her eyes awash with worry. “And you know that even though Mom and Dad are both Elementals—”

  “They're both Natural sympathizers, I know,” Alayne finished. Her tone mirrored the anxiety in Marysa's. She twisted her lips as she remembered Marysa's welcoming, talkative mother and shy, sweet father. “Do you think Katrina made it to see them before exams?” she asked, referring to Marysa's older sister.

  A silent moment passed before Marysa moved her lips. “I—don't know. I don't think so, Layne. I think she's wherever all the other Clayborne students were taken, and obviously, we don't know where that is.”

  A soft moan issued from the ground behind them, and Alayne stiffened. Marysa squeezed Alayne's arm. “I'll go see what Jayme needs.” She pushed herself up and hurried into the darkness.

  Alayne hugged her knees, wishing yet again that she could be the one to comfort Jayme. Surely, he would come around and remember all that they had shared. Marysa said he did remember, but when it came to his memories of Alayne, there was only a void, a black hole empty of any emotion.

  And physically, he burned with pain whenever she came near.

  Alayne rubbed the bunched muscles at the base of her neck. Surely, Tarry hadn't ruined him forever. Fury flamed inside Alayne as she thought of the slight, impish secretary who had sat under their noses for the last two years at Clayborne without so much as giving a hint of her allegiance to the Elemental Alliance.