Prisoner of Fate Read online

  Meg listened to the dialogue while she ate, but she remained uninvolved despite Andrew’s efforts to coax her into the chatter and speculation, and as soon as she finished her light refreshment she retreated to her room. Gratefully alone, she sank into the blue fabric armchair beside the window and stared outside, deep in her thoughts.

  Whitewashed stone buildings with red-tiled roofs faced into the street across from her stay-house, the comfortable residences of middle-class Andrak citizens. She used the Sunrise stay-house when she visited the Andrak capital, Lightsword, because it was centrally located, but this would be the last time. Her search for her lost son, Treasure, was fruitless. She had exhausted every clue, every possibility of finding him, and though she realised a long time ago that she would never find him, she returned to the capital every summer to search in the hope that a miracle would restore Treasure to her.Remnants of the dream still plagued her. Years before, when she relinquished the power of the amber and its inevitably terrible consequences, she had expected that her prophetic dreams would stop and she would be normal, but they did not stop. She still dreamed of standing on a parapet with people facing an approaching storm, dreamed of travelling east into the sunrise, dreamed of many things that had not yet come to pass. She knew that some of her dreams were dreams of no consequence, but because so many others had taken shape in her life, though rarely as she expected, seeing her daughter, Emma, in a dream worried her. The shadows consuming her daughter were terrifying. She had to go home.

  She retrieved her crimson travel bag from the top of the cream wardrobe. From the bathroom, she collected her brush and the jar of hair dye, stopping to check that her bobbed hair was still black to the roots. Although fifteen years had passed since she’d escaped from the Central Andrak Peacekeeper authorities by flying over the Great Dylan Ranges in Luca’s dragon egg, and the search for the foreign red-haired murderess had gone cold many years ago, she retained her stolen identity as Rees Feond. She’d spent too many years of her life running and hiding, and all she wanted was for Emma to grow up without living in fear. She even patiently waited for three years after her arrival in the town of Marella, to avoid risking discovery by the authorities, before she began the frustratingly painstaking search for her son, Treasure.

  With a sigh, she grabbed her spare clothes, stuffed them into her bag, checked that she had all of her belongings and left the room. Downstairs she skirted the common room and the other guests, who were still talking over warm herbal teas, and entered the foyer, where a serious young man with near-seeing lenses sat at a desk waiting for people to give him purpose. Meg asked him for her bill, paid it and exited the stay-house.

  The few trees along the street were dropping their autumn foliage, bronze and brown and yellow leaves forming a thin stream in the gutters, the bare limbs embracing the sky. The clouds were perpetually low, a phenomenon that she’d never fully accepted since arriving in Andrak because the skies of her Western Shess homeland were nearly always blue and endless, broken only by storm clouds in the short, cold Shahk cycle. The season the Andraks called winter lasted too long for Meg and the adjoining spring and autumn seasons were not much warmer. She missed the long, hot sun-filled Fuar days when the grass burned yellow and the skies were eternal blue.

  A tooting horn drew her eyes to a horseless carriage that popped and sputtered around a corner into the street, steam hissing from its backside as it carried its four intrepid riders on its spindly frame and three wheels. All brass and steel, with an outlandishly oversized pair of purple sofa-like seats perched above a tiny, dark metal single-piston steam engine, the horseless carriage trundled past, its passengers and driver waving as if they were the sideshow that everyone had stepped out of their houses to see hiss and rattle by.

  The steam-powered carriages had started appearing on the streets two years ago, startling Meg the first time that she saw one. Their unreliability and propensity for accidents were already legendary, but people were fascinated by them and more were evident in Lightsword on this visit. Andrak inventors were constantly experimenting with sources of energy, seeking the magic of steam and improving the production of the fascinating wire-lightning that was rapidly replacing volatile gas pipes and lights.

  As the noisy vehicle vanished down the street, Meg waved to a conveyor who was waiting outside the stay-house for customers. ‘I want to catch a coach to the west,’ she told the driver as she climbed into the two-seater carriage. The driver nodded, touched the rear of his roan horse lightly with his whip and the wind caressed Meg’s face as the conveyer clip-clopped along the cobbles.

  There were only three passengers waiting for the coach at the station. Drawn by six horses, the coaches could carry up to twelve passengers—six inside and six on the outer sections. Meg had heard that the Andrak inventors were working on a steam-driven coach that could carry a hundred passengers, but none of the people who told Meg the rumours had actually seen the steam-coaches, and the coach drivers with whom she travelled across the Central Andrak plains and through the pass into Western Andrak did not believe such a vehicle could be built. ‘The inventors are clever,’ coach-driver Liam Haddrick told her when they stopped at an inn on the way to Lightsword, ‘but even they don’t have the magic to build a steam-coach to carry that many people. And who would want to be packed into a land vehicle with a hundred people anyway? Bad enough on a ship.’

  She hoped Liam was driving this trip, but the man who took her ticket, loaded her bag onto the back and opened the door to let her board, was new to her. The passengers were two women and an elderly man. She smiled politely as she took her seat beside the man, and immediately looked out of the window to avoid attention, but her ploy failed. ‘So where are you bound, love?’ one of the women asked.

  Meg turned her head, noting the woman’s plain grey dress, buttoned down the front, and her brown hair tied back with a white ribbon. ‘Marella,’ she said. ‘West Andrak.’

  The woman’s face hardened. ‘Haven’t you heard?’ she asked.

  ‘Heard what?’ Meg inquired.

  ‘The Ranu broke through the lines. They’ve taken Bordertown and Retreat and some of their troops are outside Claarn.’

  Meg felt ice in her veins. ‘When did you hear this?’

  ‘This morning’s paper,’ the woman explained. ‘The government’s rushing troops from all areas to stop the Ranu advance. They say it’s the first time in thirty years that there’s been a real crisis.’

  ‘Where are you going, then?’ Meg asked, her mind racing with her heart, wondering how close to Marella the war had come.

  ‘Just to Tenhills,’ the woman replied. ‘My husband has a mill there.’ She reached forward and touched Meg’s knee gently, saying, ‘I didn’t mean to give you bad news. I thought people knew.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Meg, forcing a smile as she turned away. She stared back out of the window at the small crowd in the station. Fathers and mothers, children, old and young, carrying their belongings in black bags, blue bags, grey bags, patched bags and cases, shuffled in lines waiting to board coaches to different destinations across the Andrak nation.

  ‘So what will you do?’ the woman asked.

  Meg smiled grimly. ‘I’ll go home.’

  The midday sun was drowning in white clouds as the coach rattled along the westward road. The old man was asleep, mouth open, his head wobbling in motion with the bumps and hollows of the road. Meg leaned against the wooden window frame, oblivious to the women’s conversation opposite her as she stared at the passing countryside, lost in her thoughts. If she had more money she could have hired a dragon egg flight to take her at least as far as the Great Dylan Ranges. That would have saved a day’s travel, possibly more, but she did not have the money. Working in Missus Tunbridge’s shirt factory, she earned enough to pay her rent and keep Emma and herself comfortable, and she scrimped to save the fares to travel east twice each year on her pilgrimage to find Treasure. When Emma married Tom Westborn last year, it seemed as i
f their financial situation would improve, but Tom joined the army and the women were left to fend for themselves again. With Emma pregnant, their money was precious and limited.

  The thought of her pregnant daughter alone with the Ranu army bearing down on the town of Marella revived the icy emotion in her stomach and she fought back tears as she stared at the rolling landscape. She never expected the war to become a threat. No one ever did. The war between the Ranu and Andrak was almost an institution—a constant event in people’s everyday lives. The front-line was a recognised feature of the landscape. What had fostered the change? Why was the war suddenly spreading east? Emma will have escaped, she reasoned. The people will be heading east to safety and Emma will be among them. She has Whisper and Whisper knows how to survive adversity. The bush rat saved my life countless times. Emma will be safe.

  Her reverie was shattered by the coach slewing to a halt and the driver yelling, ‘Get out! Look at this! Get out!’

  The women scrambled out of the coach door while Meg woke the old man who coughed and spluttered and struggled to get his bearings.

  ‘What is it?’ Meg asked as she alighted.

  ‘Oh, in heaven’s name,’ gasped the woman who’d told her about the changing fortunes of the war. Meg looked up. Drifting east, directly overhead, was an armada of dragon eggs, all stark white, almost invisible against the clouds except for the dark frames of the baskets beneath the white fabric.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ the other woman asked.

  ‘Ranu dragon eggs,’ the old man mumbled, shielding his eyes with his right hand. ‘That’s what they are. Ranu.’

  ‘They’re heading for Lightsword,’ said the driver.

  ‘This far east?’ the first woman asked in disbelief.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ the driver replied. ‘Something’s happened—something big.’

  ‘I counted thirty-five,’ the second woman announced.

  ‘I’ve only seen that many dragon eggs in one place at festivals,’ said the driver. He shrugged. ‘They’re moving very quickly. The wind down here isn’t strong enough to carry them like that.’

  ‘Should we go back?’ the first woman asked.

  ‘No,’ Meg said abruptly. The others stared at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I have to get home.’

  ‘We’ll keep going,’ the driver reassured her and nodded at the others. ‘Get aboard. Maybe someone in Broadplains will know about all this.’

  The last to climb aboard the coach, Meg gazed at the fast-moving dragon eggs vanishing into the background of clouds and knew the Andrak world was changing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘I’ll pay whatever it takes,’ Meg offered, masking her desperation, but still the dragoneer shook his head.

  ‘Lady, it’s not about money. The war’s gone mad. The Ranu are all over West Andrak. I couldn’t fly you there even if I wanted to.’

  ‘You don’t have to land,’ Meg pleaded. ‘Just drop low enough so I can jump out. You don’t have to go anywhere near the Ranu.’

  ‘Not interested, lady. I have kids of my own,’ the dragoneer concluded and he walked away.

  Meg saw the military captain, who’d told her that the Ranu controlled Central Pass and the only road through the Great Dylan Ranges, watching her with dark eyes, but she ignored his gaze and headed towards another dragoneer who was roping down his dragon egg. The young man looked up as he heard her footsteps. ‘I want to go over the mountains,’ she announced.

  The young man straightened and his sandy hair flopped loosely across his forehead, hiding his left eye. He flicked it aside with his right hand and smiled. ‘Really?’ he asked laconically.

  ‘Will you take me? I’ll pay whatever it takes.’

  He looked her up and down as if he was appraising her. ‘Show me your money,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have it all here. You’ll get the money when I get to Marella.’

  ‘Marella?’ the dragoneer asked. ‘I heard the Ranu are all over that town.’

  ‘Will you take me?’ she insisted.

  The young man chuckled to himself, shaking his head, and said with a lazy smile, ‘You won’t find anyone who’ll take you into Marella, missus. The Ranu are killing everyone they find. That’s what I’ve heard.’ He shook his head again. ‘And you don’t have the money, do you?’

  ‘I will when I get to Marella,’ she promised. ‘It’s true.’

  The young man laughed and bent towards the next rope, straining to tighten it as his red-and-yellow dragon egg tried to rise in the breeze. ‘Give up on it, missus. Lots of people have lost plenty. You won’t be alone.’

  Meg glared at the young man’s back, wanting to yell at him that he was too young to understand what was driving her—that her pregnant daughter’s life was at stake and that a young man was too stupid to feel what she felt—but she simply snorted angrily and stomped towards another dragoneer.

  She slumped against a weather-worn granite rock, letting her bag drop, and slid to sit cross-legged on the bare earth at its base, dejected. Across the valley at the entrance into the Central Pass, a dark-blue dragon egg rose towards the low grey clouds, chasing six others that floated on their slow journeys east, their windwheels working furiously against the westerly breeze. Soldiers marched along the road into the pass in regimented rows, six abreast, flanked by officers in bright green uniforms on horseback. Horse-drawn carriages transported the huge grey metal peacemakers that Meg had grown accustomed to seeing pass through her hometown on their way to the front-line, and ammunition and supplies wagons followed at the rear.

  She called to mind the Royal army she had accompanied against the barbarian chiefs more than twenty-five years ago in Western Shess, the lines of long-haired, bearded men carrying spears, swords clanking against their metal and leather armour as they headed for battle, bows and quivers over their shoulders, and wondered what those men would make of the foreign soldiers in this world. Very few Andrak soldiers wore armour, and then only breastplates, and they were generally clean-shaven. They carried Andrak peacemakers strapped across their backs, the long, thin metal weapons that fired metal pellets, and they wore short swords in scabbards on their hips, although none carried shields. The thundermaker weapons that were slowly being introduced to warfare in Western Shess when Meg escaped were similar weapons in concept to the Andrak peacemakers, but her experiences in Andrak showed that the peacemakers were a superior form, capable of hitting targets accurately over distances greater than four or five times the range of the best Shessian thundermaker. The Andrak didn’t need magic to win battles. They had potent firepower and good strategies. But now their Ranu enemy had suddenly become more potent.

  She watched the second-last dragon egg fill with hot air, its multi-green fabric expanding. No one would take her into West Andrak. The soldiers refused to let her through the Central Pass. The dragoneers ridiculed her. She would have to do it alone, through the mountains, along unknown paths. She had to reach Emma to make certain that her daughter and grandchild-to-be were safe. She would do whatever it took to get to Marella, and if the Ranu held her daughter captive she would do whatever needed to be done to rescue her.

  In the fifteen years since ridding herself of the burden of the amber crystal, she had rarely regretted the decision. She’d hoped to meet A Ahmud Ki in Se’Treya, and returned there on occasions before exorcising the amber from her chest, but he had utterly vanished so she lost the need for conjuring magic portals. She was often tempted to restore her power to aid her in her search for her son, but she remembered that the amber also always brought enemies against her, and her dark memories were enough to make her decide against using it. When Emma fell gravely ill, aged sixteen, and nearly died, she considered embedding the amber to apply its full healing powers, but she remembered that she could heal just by being in contact with it so she retrieved the crystal sliver from the jar where she stored it and held it in her hand while she cured Emma. After Emma recovered, grateful th
at its power had served a good outcome and equally grateful that she could resist its lure, she had returned it to the green jar. Without the amber, she could live a normal life. With it, her life was in perpetual turmoil.

  Now, though, slumped against the granite, isolated and desperate to get home to Emma, she wished that she had the amber. She bitterly cursed herself for being so selfish about her powers that she had denied her daughter’s safety. A portal and she would be in Marella. She could save her daughter no matter what the Ranu did. Instead, she was helplessly at the mercy of men who wanted no part of her crisis and a mountain countryside through which she had never travelled, except by coach through Central Pass and once over the top in a dragon egg.

  She sighed and wondered how long it would be before the afternoon sun would briefly appear from the clouds to drop beneath the mountain peaks. When would the last dragon egg take flight? ‘So,’ said a voice, and she turned her head sharply to discover a lithe young man leaning over her. ‘How long do you intend on staying out here?’

  ‘I thought you were leaving,’ she retorted, recognising the sandy-haired young dragoneer who’d mocked her.

  ‘I am,’ he replied.

  ‘Then why have you come to annoy me?’

  He laughed at her barbed remark and squatted beside her. ‘I’m going over the mountains at first light in the morning. I’d go at night, but I’d freeze in this weather.’

  She eyed him warily. ‘I thought you said it was too dangerous. The Ranu are everywhere.’

  ‘True. I did say that. And that’s because it is dangerous.’ He chuckled to himself, and Meg put the manner down as an annoying personal habit. ‘But you said something about money and, frankly, I could do with some.’

  Meg’s heart quickened. ‘You’ll take me?’

  ‘We’ll take you,’ he replied, and three more heads appeared above him beside the rock.