Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
“I am Sorrel.” I lift my chin even though my face is hidden under my hooding. “That’s my name.”
His voice softens again, and I feel the syllables he speaks flowing over my skin. “Like the horses that run wild and free by the ocean.”
My eyes flare wide. “What…?”
“I have been to all the corners of Anathos. And some places no one should go. The most beautiful sight ever I saw was of the coastline where the wild horses hoof over the surf, and the ocean spray becomes their mane and tail.”
My dream. The one I have told no one about.
Abruptly, my head aches, and for reasons I’ll wonder of later, I stammer, “Sometimes I have visions in the night of horses that run on the beach … their hooves pound through the surf and their manes tickle my face while we race along the ocean’s edge…”
He holds the aged penny between his thumb and forefinger, the stub of his pinkie cocked. “They have no black upon their coat, nor white. They are pure copper, and when the sun shines upon them, they gleam as this coin did when newly forged.”
And then he speaks my name: “Sorrel.”
When I refocus, he’s right in front of me, having moved without sound. I want to meet his eyes so badly I shake, but I keep my stare locked on his throat.
“Take this.” He presses the copper into my palm and curls my fingers into a fist. “For your services down below. We will see about what comes later.”
As I unfurl what he’s wrapped tightly around the coin, I’m confused. It was tarnished, but now the metal gleams as if freshly minted … exactly like the coats of those horses I visit in my dreams, and struggle to recall during my waking hours.
“What magic is this,” I whisper.
“There is no magic.”
My eyes lift to his lips, and everything disappears. The light behind me and the darkness around him, the Gauntlet and my village, the territory of Prosperitus.
Anathos itself.
“You lie.” My words are mostly breath. Which is a curious feat, for there is no air in my lungs.
“Look at me,” he commands. “You can’t really see anybody without meeting their eyes.”
Something in his tone awakens me out of the stupor, and I drop my stare to the copper. It abruptly appears as it was before, the surface dingy and dull.
“Never,” I mumble. “I will never look at you.”
“Is my injury so ugly…” His hand rises, as if he’s brushing his scarred cheek. “That it disgusts you.”
“No.”
“Now you lie,” he drawls. “Both my eyes work quite well, you know, in spite of what the one appears, so my ugliness is well familiar to me.”
“I’m under a Pox cloak,” I snap back. “Your physical appearance and any of its imperfections don’t matter to me.”
“So look at me properly and prove it.”
By way of response, I hold the penny out. He does nothing. “Take this back.”
“It’s yours.”
“No, it’s not. And I’m not going to be indebted to you or anyone else.”
“The services that earned its worth have already been tendered.” He sweeps his hand off to the side. “My meal and ale have been delivered quite readily. And I have been delivered to this room.”
I drop the coin, which bounces on the bare floor. It’s still chiming as I leave him in the darkness by himself.
Yet I am the one who is alone as I flee everything that he wants, and all I must deny:
Hide.
Six
My One and True Friend.
“Sorrel, your desire to cheat Death of its due is going to be the death of you.”
It’s the following morning, and I ignore that haughty proclamation for the pretense of stocking a small hearth with more hardwood. The kettle is almost ready, and I have the last of my dried unslee leaves in the base of a tin mug. As I measure the dwindling stash of oak logs, I know I need to gather more when I go harvesting outside the wall.
“Did you hear what I said,” the former Lady Marehomen of Prosperitus demands.
“Stop deflecting.” From under the hood of my cloak, I glare across my shoulder. “You’re going to drink all of this, and you’re not going to care if it’s bitter.”
“I will drink some of it and I will complain the entire time.”
Over on the pallet, my elderly friend, Mare, lies swaddled in mismatched blankets that I’ve collected from the lodging house’s stock and snuck out to this abandoned shoe shop. Lying there, so frail, so drawn, she’s as an infant newly born into the world, incapable of caring for her most basic needs, relying on me to come when I can. Every time I show up here, I run the risk that we’ll both be discovered, but she’s a burden I can’t put down. No one else in the village will care for her, and my conscience carries enough already.