I can’t breathe. I can’t—
I wake up to a hand around my mouth. It’s large and calloused, and I know exactly who it belongs to when it jerks me free of my little pallet in the stable.
Screams build up in my throat as my father’s men pull me back. It’s early, too early. The cock hasn’t crowed yet. Their hands grapple everywhere, holding down my flailing limbs, jerking me this way and that, carrying me out like a rabid dog into the blue-hued light.
“Ignore it! It’s not real!” one hisses to another, and I spare only half a second of surprise that my father would tell them why I’m so valuable. But thieves must know what to expect when stealing something that can fight back.
But that fear is their own. Not mine.
I add to it, pushing the darkness out, escalating my own terror in the process.
The man holding my legs flinches, but the one covering my mouth drops me like I’ve bitten him and reels back.
All my screams escape me, surging through the township of Dorys like a murder of crows. The fear heightens my senses, strengthens my limbs. Pleads with me to flee, flee, flee.
“Shut her up!”
I push my fear harder.
Men drop me. I scramble across the dry ground, trying to orient myself. Cry out for help.
Something, perhaps a boot, hits the side of my head. The world spins. The blue light momentarily turns black.
That’s the weakness of my power. I can instill terror into any man, but the minute I leave, so does the fear.
When my thoughts return to my throbbing head, I’m being manhandled again. One of my kidnappers grabs my breast—not in a sexual way, but in an effort to throw me onto the back of another’s horse.
No, no, NO. I will NOT go back, I will not—
“Leave her be!”
The sound of Cando’s voice—it’s his stable I’m sleeping in—is such a relief and a horror that I nearly wet myself. Relief that someone has come for me. Horror at what these three men might do to him, for my father’s men are armed and armored, and they ride horses, which are increasingly rare in these parts. Even Cando doesn’t have a horse. He uses his stable for goats and storage.
I crane to see. Cando stands there in his underclothes, a pitchfork in his hand. Elisher, his neighbor, is also present and half-dressed, but he holds a makeshift club, a heavy staff with nails protruding from its tip. They eye the kidnappers warily.
I send out as much fear as I can, pushing it out like sweat, seizing all three brutes. I’ve only just learned how to do more than one at a time.
Two of them stiffen. The third drops me, and I hit the ground on my knees, splitting the skin of one. Sensing an advantage, Elisher moves forward and takes a swing at one, missing widely. These men aren’t warriors.
And so I direct my attention to the horse. It whinnies and rears before charging east.
“No!” one of my father’s men yelps, while the other draws his sword, ready to fight Cando. I shove terror into him, and he nearly drops the blade. He turns to me, but instead of a hard look, he appears like a child beneath a grizzly beard, likely grown during his search for me. Just a boy, alone and afraid.
Just like me.
I choke on fright, but I am merciless, and the men begin to shake and weep. The legs of one grow wet with urine, and they flee Cando and Elisher, two on horses, one on foot, taking off in the direction of the lost steed.
I push the fear as hard and far as I can, until I’m sobbing and can no longer hear their retreat beyond the squat township buildings. Cando lowers his pitchfork. “Are you all right, Lark?”
I’m slow to return to myself. Gritting my teeth, I have to convince myself not to run. Coerce my heartbeat to slow, my breaths to even out. Persuade my mind that that fear isn’t real, though much of it is. But I’m not all right, for I know I must leave, because now my father’s men know where I am, and they’ll come back with reinforcements. An army these people could never hope to best. This is a small place with few people, as most townships are. Farmers and the desperate, not trained warriors. And I, a fifteen-year-old girl, can only do so much.
Had they hit my head first, before dragging me out of the stable, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, even scream. Next time, they won’t make that mistake.
I wake from a fitful sleep with memories of Dorys dancing behind my eyelids. I’d hoped that I’d find the Cosmodian I’d met as a girl when I’d moved to the township, but she wasn’t there. Still, the people of Dorys had been kind to me, until after that morning. Then they were suspicious. But humans are superstitious creatures. I don’t know if I could have stayed, even had I tried. Dorys is probably the human settlement closest to Cagmar, about sixty or seventy miles northeast. It sits in the middle of human land, as though its founders had left the long-dried river in an attempt to reach the canyon and given up halfway. Dorys always makes me think of sagebrush. There was so much of it there.
Silver light seeps through the narrow window above me, a predawn sky high above where I slumber, cradled by canyon walls. I smile at it before rubbing sleep from my eyes. As I sit up, a second blanket, thick with fur and heavy, falls from my shoulders. I gape at it, having no recollection of it. Unach must have had a change of heart . . . or my shivering was loud enough to bother her. Either way, my heart fills at the sight of the blanket, for surely where there is kindness, there is hope for me.
I fold the blanket and leave it by Unach’s door. I’m not sure what to do for breakfast. I have only what’s in my small bag, which is little more than a change of clothes. Eyeing the two closed bedroom doors, I slip into the crammed closet and change quickly, my cold fingers struggling with the buttons of my dress. Stepping out, I braid my hair over my shoulder.
Fortunately, I don’t have to wait long. I’ve just returned the rug to its place when Unach opens her door. She is perfectly put together and alert, her topaz eyes darting to the fireplace before looking over the floor. In this better light, I struggle to hide my awe of her. She stands over seven feet tall, equal to her brother. Her clothing reminds me of leather armor, and like the guardsmen on the bridge, she wears a thick belt around her middle, which emphasizes her small breasts. Her arms bear more muscle than any human man’s, and every bony nub and spike on her is polished and white.
She is terrifying and magnificent and every bit a troll.