Page 186 of The Eye of the Fifth
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The Agni Lands, Zarynth.
Gedeon.
Flight by hawk was significantly less comfortable than flight by dragon. On Tanwen’s back, Gedeon’s legs gripped unyielding scales. On the hawk’s, he struggled to find a hold on slippery feathers over its soft, warm blooded body.
It was a relief when the great bird finally began its descent, and when he and Kyra slid off its back some five minutes after, both of their legs wobbled from having to squeeze them against its body with such vigor. He could not blame it for pecking him haughtily on the arm once they landed.
It could not follow them, for it would draw too much attention. Gedeon ordered the beast to be on its way once it had hunted. They had been lucky enough that the bird recognised his bond to Naal, agreeing to fly them across the world, obeying the will of an Eternal warrior.
Luckier still that none from the order had followed. Though Gedeon had his shadows to thank for that. Even Nysari the Hunter would not be able to track them through that darkness.
It came at a price. Exhaustion lay thick over Gedeon’s mind, body and soul as they trudged through the barren lands on the border of Agni territory. The aftermath of Sekun’s curse still haunted him, and the barrel of magic he had sorely missed was taking its sweet time replenishing after their journey. So, they moved by night, under a cover of darkness that Gedeon didn’t have to wield.
It dawned on him every day what Naal would make of his treachery. He’d had every intention of keeping Kyra in Phaenon, but the momenthe had looked upon her face, the moment he had seen the desperation, the immovable tenacity in those green eyes, he’d known it was a lost cause. Known that she would find a way to Zarynth to save her sister, with or without him.
She’d made her case well: her chance of survival with him was far greater than without.
And Gedeon would betray Naal Westerra over and over again if it meant keeping Kyra alive.
When they tired each night, they shimmied themselves into the smallest of cracks where the ground protruded like a beast’s claws, rocky terrain that protruded from the desert sands, providing them with good enough cover to rest their heads when the sun lifted its own.
Kyra rarely spoke to him at all. Dust and sand lay thick on her skin, and sweat constantly dappled her hairline, even at night when the dry heat was not as harsh. A body not used to Zarynth’s climate would struggle to regulate its temperature, let alone one that had spent weeks atop the highest and coldest point of Droria.
Gedeon himself found it difficult to adjust. He had only just melted from the block of ice he’d become a few weeks back.
Kyra’s quietness had not bothered him too much. Only when he scented an escaped tear or two when she’d thought he was sleeping, did it ache him to console her. To talk to her. But each time they laid down to find rest, she did so with her back deliberately to him, as far away from him in the rock chasm that she could be.
Gedeon would not push conversation if it was not wanted.
By the sixth night, his power had rekindled enough to shroud them in shadows once more. Right on time too, for they had finally reached the outskirts of the Agni slave camps.
Tents of permanence in perfectly lined rows haunted the barren landscape, the streets between them teeming with slaves.
Many of them Agni natives. Amala’s people.
He idly wondered if the fledgling’s family were amongst those trudging through the dusty roads, their ankles chained. Miners, builders, bladesmen and wielders. The four categories that each slavewas assigned to once their talent was realised. There was a fifth, though it was not openly spoken of. Rearers, as Amala’s mother was, their sole purpose to continue breeding in the hopes that their babes be born with the ability to wield magic over all else.
A sour taste filled Gedeon’s mouth.
In all his years, he had never seen what had become of the Agni Lands with his own eyes. His mother had always discouraged it, needing him in the castle, fulfilling his duty as teacher of the fledgling wielders that were reared here.
Had she kept him away because she’d known that if he had actuallyseenthe slave camps, he would never have approved?
Or would the ignorant Gedeon of then have seen the camps and not been bothered by it?
‘This is horrific,’ Kyra said at his side.
Gedeon, having just finished donning himself in the button down brown jacket of the dead slaver at his feet, grimly murmured, ‘It’s about to get worse.’
It had been a necessary kill. An unconscious man would eventually wake and talk. A dead man would not. Most slavers were volunteers, and for the cruelty he clearly thrived on, he’d deserved to die.
Kyra hadn’t said a word when Gedeon swiped his sword along the man’s throat.
Together, they dragged the now naked man (who had been alone on guard duty on the outskirts of the camp) toward a large cart dumped carelessly outside the cage-like fence surrounding the entire perimeter. Limbs and lolling heads were visible through the horizontal cracks in the wood. Gedeon’s eyes watered at the stench of the rotting corpses, and a glance at Kyra, with a hand over her nose and mouth, told him the smell was assaulting her the same way.
Aside from the stench of decaying bodies, the dead did not appear to affect her at all. He found himself wanting to learn what had hardened her heart to the sight of death at this scale.
