Chapter 3 - Levi
The road to their right turned dark, cobblestone by cobblestone. The grass between the stones wilted. The shrubs and trees at the roadside withered and turned brittle. Leaves fell from dry branches and crumbled to dust long before they would have hit the ground. The remains of rabbits and birds—some picked-clean skeletons, some infested with maggots—lined the road like the most abhorrent parade. The fire Doran had lit turned black and fell to ashes.
Levi had killed Elder Pios, had burned down the last of the Dread King’s cultists together with Doran, but it hadn’t made a difference. The world was still dying. Naavah Ora had gone somewhere they couldn’t follow. Ash sat in prison, sentenced to death.
Nothing they’d achieved had made a difference.
He dropped the pebble he’d picked up—to mark the day he’d left the cult’s influence behind for good and moved towards better things with Doran—and balled his hands into tight fists. Why fight when it wouldn’t change anything? Why collect pebbles by the seashore when the waters would boil and disintegrate?
‘Levi?’
He looked up, right into Doran’s warm eyes, and the death around him disappeared. The grass was green again, the leaves still attached to their trees.
But the animals’ rotting bodies remained, as did the strange feeling in his chest. Something was still broken.
You’re mine, 840. You can’t hide from me.
He feared it wasn’t his imagination whispering into his mind but him. The Dread King—Ceallach. Scared, too, that he still wasn’t free after everything he and Doran had achieved.
Doran placed two fingers under Levi’s chin and raised it until he had no choice but to meet Doran’s eyes.
‘Don’t look at that,’ Doran said.
Levi hadn’t realised his eyes had wandered back to the corpses again, but now he was looking at Doran, he breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was fine—at least for now.
All but that strange feeling he couldn’t shake, no matter how much he bathed in the warmth of Doran’s eyes. All but the whisper in his head.
‘Hey,’ Doran said. ‘Look at me. Are you all right, Ginger?’
He couldn’t tell Doran about the wrongness he was feeling. Doran had enough to worry about with Ash in prison.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just wondering where Naavah Ora is and if Ash is okay.’
It wasn’t a lie. Dunhă, the realm of the dead Naavah Ora had gone to, fascinated him more than anything else. It was a shame he’d never see it, but he wasn’t a Suf’afir like her. He had no way inside. For twelve years, the cultists had indoctrinated him, groomed him so he could one day die as a sacrifice. When Doran had saved him, Levi realised how much more there was to the world and that he could go wherever he wanted. Even home.
Did pebbles from Dunhă look the same as Vaskan pebbles? Maybe he could ask Naavah Ora to bring him one if he ever saw her again. She had promised it, but the sadness in her eyes had told of different vows.
Doran stoked the dying embers of their fire. ‘Ora is in Dunhă. Ash has to be okay or I’ll kill him when we find him.’
‘I know she’s in Dunhă, but don’t you want to know where in Dunhă?’
His ma had told him stories about the Sorcerer’s Lights that brightened the Hjevan nights when it was cold enough. Stories about spirits and souls on their journey to whatever came next—Dunhă, if Naavah Ora was right. How could he not be curious? He’d be the one telling his ma stories now, if Elder Pios hadn’t sacrificed her like a down payment for Levi’s life.
Levi ran his hand over the grass until he felt the pebble he’d dropped against his palm. Elder Pios was dead, that part of Levi’s life over and buried like he’d once buried his childhood. Naavah Ora was fighting to defeat the evil Elder Pios had failed to unleash—the same evil Levi would have been sacrificed to if Doran hadn’t stumbled into the ceremony and ruined the Elder’s plans. Levi no longer believed that the Dread King—or Ceallach, in some countries—had led Doran into the clearing that night to test Levi’s resolve, but he was grateful that things had happened this way. He’d be his own warrior, not some dead king’s who raised the dead and corrupted the world. He’d be Doran’s warrior, too, but on his own terms.
Levi cut his palm and rolled the pebble in his blood.
Doran’s eyes widened. ‘What are you doing?’
Levi smiled at him. ‘Now it’s my pebble.’
‘You could just have put it in your pocket.’
Levi smiled wider. He liked that he could surprise Doran sometimes.
‘My da always said that some things are worth bleeding for.’
‘Ancients, Ginger, I don’t think he meant that literally.’
Levi shrugged. ‘It feels more right this way.’ He got up, walked to his horse, and took the reins with his uninjured hand. ‘Shall we?’
Doran looked like he wanted to say several things, but he swallowed them all. He shuffled some dirt over their fire and joined Levi by the horses.
‘Let me see.’ Doran held out his hand, and Levi placed his into it. ‘Do you want some jewelweed?’
‘It doesn’t hurt.’ Thanks to Elder Pios’s indoctrination, he hadn’t felt smaller physical pains in years, and larger ones didn’t bother him as much as they should. Thanks to Doran and Naavah Ora, he was finally doing something good with that gift. Sometimes, he bound his possessions to himself with it. The daggers Doran had gifted him had been the first, but sentimentally, this pebble was just as important.
‘At least let me mash some into a paste so it doesn’t get infected,’ Doran said.
Something inside Levi warmed and chased the last of the strangeness away. It was nice to have someone care about him—not about his skill as a warrior, not about his blood, but about him as a person. The whispers had stopped too. They only ever came out when Levi was alone. Doran’s voice was sunshine on a foggy morning, and the whispers never survived once he spoke. It was the times they didn’t talk that were difficult, when the whispers promised endless pain and a dark purpose he thought he’d burned to the ground along with the cultists.
Doran’s forehead creased with worry. ‘Levi?’
He swallowed. ‘I know how to look after a minor cut.’
Doran let his hand drop but didn’t turn to his own horse. ‘You don’t need to do this anymore. You don’t need to bleed for some higher cause or whatever nonsense they fed you.’
‘I’m not. This is for me.’
He picked up Doran’s hand and smeared his blood over Doran’s palm.
Doran frowned. ‘Levi—’
‘Now you’re mine too.’ Heat spread through him before he’d finished speaking, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his blood on Doran’s hand. It felt official, like the vows children made with innocence and interlinked fingers.
For a moment, Doran stared at him without saying a word. More heat spread in Levi’s chest; making Doran speechless was every bit as fun as Doran made it look whenever he did the same to Levi.