Second Chapter is up!
Featuring
A visit to Daret by the Empire
A death warrant
Maylen hunting
An egg that hatches
Enjoy!
Maylen looked at Trevor. The burly, middle aged man had relaxed slightly. He was listening to the old man recite a list of supplies, as far as Maylen could tell. She heard him say 'gloves', and 'nephew'. What on earth were the gloves for? And was the boy really his nephew? The boy looked too young and the man too old to be nephew and uncle.
Maylen rolled her shoulders. She was stiff from holding her position. Around her, the other archers were calming down a little too, as the threat of any danger seemed to have passed.
Trevor signaled for an archer on one of the roofs. The man slipped off the roof and ran up. Trevor spoke to him quietly, and the soldier nodded and went into one of the houses.
The two men talked. At one point Trevor took a step back, as if shocked. Presently the soldier came back, arms laden with merchandise. They were passed to the old man, who handed a pair of worn but durable leather gloves to his 'nephew'; the boy pulled them on and flexed his fingers experimentally. The man then began organizing the goods into their saddlebags.
Nothing exciting happened after that. The travelers exchanged farewells with Trevor and urged their horses into a trot out of the town.
The archers left the roofs, and typical daily life returned. People slowly began filtering out of the houses and went back to their work. Soon the streets were bustling with people; vendors called out their wares, the blacksmith rang and clanged, and kids wound around carts and screeching adults' legs.
Maylen sat on the roof of her house, oblivious to it all. There was something strange going on, something that tied in with the strange attacks of urgals and bandits, and visits to her town by mysterious travelers. Something strange was happening, and Maylen desperately wanted to know.
About two weeks after the two horsemen came to Daret, a group of soldiers from the Empire entered the village. Standard procedures took place, minus the archers. The soldiers spoke to Trevor and showed him a poster with the likeness of the boy that had accompanied the old man into Daret a fortnight before.
After the soldiers left, leaving behind the poster, Trevor had a conference with a few of the merchants of Daret, which included Maylen's uncle. Uncle Theodore came home with a haunted expression on his face.
"The Empire has a tall reward on that boy's head," he told his family, "as well as a death sentence to anyone who has helped him or his companions. Trevor told the soldiers that he and his have never seen the likes of the lad. Saved our hides, he has, but it was close…" Maylen's uncle refused to say more.
That night, as Maylen settled under her sheets, Janie, the second-oldest child of the family, piped up, as usual. Janie was known as the chatterbox.
"So, we'd all be dead by now if it hadn't been for Trevor, huh," she murmured as she lay on her pallet.
"Pretty much." That was the youngest, Lily.
"Good thing he lied. I wonder if they've caught the boy yet. What did father say the boy's name was? Ragon? Eragon. I wonder how they got his picture. I mean, you'd actually have to take a good look at someone's face to draw a whole picture. You know?" She chattered on. Maylen rolled her eyes; it would take forever to get to sleep with Jaime one league away.
The second youngest, Maraline, was bent over a drawing tablet, sketching away. A candle stump at her side shivered its light over her face and the sketch she was making. Maraline was the quieter sister, some would say shy, but she simply had a way of making herself invisible in crowds.
Jaime continued to talk. "Who was that old man with him? Do you think that he's still with him? I mean, if I learned that someone I was traveling with was a… a thief or something, I would stop traveling with him right away!"
"Oh, I think he must have been more than a thief to have a prize like that on his head." Maylen commented sleepily from her pallet.
"Yeah, probably. Well, g'night…" within a few minutes Jaime was fast asleep. Lily's breathing slowed as well, and soon Maylen and Maraline were the only ones awake, the latter still sketching away.
Maylen couldn't find sleep. She lay awake, turning this way and that, trying to keep her eyes closed. Every time she closed them, the image of the boy on the rewards sheet sprung up in her minds eye, like a warning. Thinking and frowning, Maylen fell asleep long after Maraline snuffed out her candle.
After a few weeks the citizens of Daret calmed down about the rewards poster. A few urgal sieges were quickly snuffed by the archers. The girls continued with their lessons of reading and writing. Maraline persisted with her art, Jaime read her few books, little Lily charmed people on the street, and Maylen practiced archery in secret.
Maylen hated it.
I'm so bored, she thought moodily. I want to do something, other than just sit around and help father.
Maylen was lazily shooting a stump by the Ninor when one of her arrows splintered on a rock embedded in the wood. She swore quietly with one of her father's many-a-time used cusses and went to look at the damage. The arrow couldn't be fixed, she concluded, with that incision.
Maylen straightened and sighed. She leaned against a tree and listened to the river gurgle and bubble through the trees somewhere to her left. She was about to un-string her bow when movement in her peripheral vision made her stop. Slowly raising her head, Maylen beheld a small horde of deer picking their way through the tiny forest. One, a young doe, froze as it saw her. Maylen gently touched its mind, reassuring the creature. A few moments later the doe turned away from her and followed the other deer out of sight.
Maylen waited a little, then walked in the direction the deer had gone, being careful to stay quiet. Pausing every now and then to listen for them, she finally came upon a small clearing where the deer serenely chewed on the grass.
Crouching behind a bush, Maylen peered around the leaves and picked out her target: the doe that had seen her before. She drew an arrow and, rising just enough to walk, made her way around the bush. Then she slipped.
Maylen had stepped on a large, partially buried stone, slick from recent rain. She flung out her elbow to catch her fall and jarred her arm as she hit the ground. The deer, startled, pranced away through the trees. Maylen winced as a stab of pain ran up her arm when she struggled to get up. She cast out recklessly with her thoughts, trying to reach the deer, but they were long gone.
Furious, Maylen set about gathering the arrows that had fallen out of her quiver. As she did she glanced at the rock she had slipped on. Then she looked at it again.
The exposed part of the stone was of a color she had never seen in a rock before; a deep, almost translucent red. Maylen reached out to touch it – it was smoother than any rock she had ever felt… and slightly warm, too.
Maylen withdrew her hand. This was not a normal rock. Maylen's mother had always told her never to meddle with magic, but Maylen's curiosity got the better of her. She laid her palm on the rock; it warmed her hand.
Maylen was overwhelmed with interest, and she began to scrape away at the dirt around the rock. When she had dug it out of the ground, Maylen gingerly picked it up.
The stone was large and heavy, though not as heavy as she had expected. As she turned it over in her hands, amazed, Maylen felt a small prick against her palm.
Startled, she dropped it. Maylen heard a small peep, and jumped. The stone was now rocking back and forth on the ground.
Maylen stood up. Whatever kind of stone this was, she didn't like it. She was backing away when she saw a small crack appear on the surface. Surprised, Maylen leaned down and squinted.
Something was poking its way out! As the cracks widened and split, Maylen realized that it wasn't a stone, but an egg.
A small, pointed black tooth rapped and rapped until part of the red shell fell away. Then another, and another, until the whole side of the egg crumbled away, and a peculiar creature stumbled out.