Paragon - Book I

The Trek

She can hear Iaves work on the blades, the swoosh of metal against stone ringing through the room with every inhale and exhale. It's the eve before their hike into the wilderness. They will reach Fort Morgalth by sunfall, tomorrow.

Allayria's bag is packed and she lies on her cot, staring up at the ceiling. She's running through the plan again, through the steps and the contingencies, mulling over the body language she will have to take on to pass as a Jarles guard for the day.

Meg sits in her corner, counting out the supplies, and Ben—well, Ben's flat out asleep.

"He's always like this," Meg says when she sees Allayria glancing in his direction again. "He sleeps like a babe the night before an important job. No matter what it is, no matter where we are. He just rolls over and is out like water on fire."

"I wish I could do that," Allayria says. "I feel too jittery to sleep."

"Yeah, I like to tell him it's his freak superpower. Instead of giving him a Skill, the powers that be gave him the ability to sleep through a war like he was napping on a bed of springtime flowers."

"You'd think it's a shitty superpower," Iaves interjects, setting aside one knife and picking up another, "until it's 2 a.m. the morning of and you're not getting a wink but he's gently snoring next to you."

"I wonder how he does it."

"Total lack of self-doubt," Meg answers and Iaves laughs. "Either way, we should try to follow suit."

"It won't do us a lick of good."

"Thank you, Iaves."

The half-hearted attempt at getting some shut-eye is as successful as Iaves had predicted. Allayria manages to doze in sluggish spurts, sliding onto sleep and then jerking out as another scenario spindles out in her mind. She keeps forgetting the mission hasn't even started yet, and has to roll over to look at the splinters of moonlight between the window frame and curtain to confirm they are still in Solveigard. She wonders if Keno is as restless as they are, or if he sleeps more like Ben.

In truth, it's difficult to picture Keno sleeping at all.

She exists in a cloud of fog when they slump out of bed in the morning. Her lights are off, her windows shuttered down, all her levers and gadgets are clocked out except for the distant, inner click-ing that seems to be pushing her through the motions.

Slouched over porridge, she finds it difficult to string fragments of sentences together, and when Iaves wordlessly hands her a cup of coffee, she takes it. She hates coffee.

Whereas the three of them seem to have been given the unspoken task of prepping for the journey the night before, Ben is now herding them out the door. He moves at inhuman speed to Allayria, flying through breakfast, rifling through the bags, rousing them one by one. A hand on their shoulders, an amused: "Can you stand, or will Rex have to drag you to Morgalth?"

They meet up with Keno, who is wrapped up in a thick, dark cloak, standing at the outskirts of Solveigard. Like Ben, he seems immune to the drowsiness of the early morning and he glances behind them as they head off.

They are taking the eastward road, and as the morning drags into the afternoon they enter land of which Allayria has no knowledge. The trees here are thick and dark, twisting in intricate, seemingly agonizing ways, and the grass is straw yellow, despite the summer heat. Even the birds here don't sing the way they do in the other parts of Keesark. Squirrels with soot-black fur scamper across tree limbs and Allayria watches as Rex follows their paths with keen blue eyes.

Even now, she has never been this close to Jarles territory in her life. As the daughter of diplomats, on the few occasions she went home she slunk around long enough to know the Jarles were a problem before it became apparent to everyone else.