With my head crooked against the hard-cold rock, my eyes slowly begin to droop, and my consciousness departs. My thoughts first travel to Avlym, to my mother and Alice. I also wonder whether they’ve revealed everything to Robyn or if it’s safer for her to be kept in the dark. She knows Orrian, or Guy rather, better than most of the village, but that’s still very little and there’s no telling what Becker has chosen to reveal. It’s also possible that he will have made up something completely new, a lie to get the villagers to turn against us, anything to get as many others to join the manhunt as possible.
I don’t think Robyn would ever be turned against me, I don’t know if I’d be able to take it if she did. The two of us have known each other since before I can remember, which is hopefully considerably too long for her opinion of me to be changed by Becker. I wish she was here with me now, or better yet, that I was safe and at home with her. I long for her warm smiles and subtle teasing jokes, I feel my soul beginning to tear in two at the realisation that I may never see her again. I have known how I feel about her for so long now, years even, ever since I really began to see her for who she is. Not that I’ve ever acted on my feelings. I have been such a fool. The life we could have started together if only I had told her. She might have even felt the same way, although I doubt it. I could have stayed in Avlym with her, grown old together, but now she only smiles at me in my mind’s eye.
My imagination runs wild with the possibility of never returning home, I can easily see my disappearance becoming another legend told to children to warn them against venturing into the forest. Maybe I’ll just become another name for the village to mourn. Orrian would likely be remembered as the forest demon who had tricked me away from the village, never to be seen again. The colony would probably love that, painting themselves as the heroes of the story who had come to warn us against the strange boy but had been too late. The story of me being taken would be used as a lesson to others for why the colony should never be lied to.
With my thoughts of Robyn and home drifting into a depressing silence, my thoughts choose to torture me further and I think of my dad. How would he react if he saw me now, eating the food of the men who killed him? Had he even known that his killer had been human? Or like the rest of us did he not see the attacker and thought he had been felled by a spirit of the forest. Would he have been disappointed in me, given present company? These thoughts have been my company since first discovering Orrian’s identity and I wonder now if they’ll ever leave me.
Yet despite these mortifying concoctions of my imagination, it is the uncomfortable thoughts of Faelyn to which I drift off, the slender man a few years older than myself had created some incredible tension between himself and his king. Orrian’s confidence and leadership is shocking compared to the mute survivor who had stumbled bloodied into Avlym that night, but I pray he fares well against the older man should they lock horns again. Faelyn doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’s going to step aside and relinquish his power easily. Sitting up there, high above the ground, he had immediately taken charge of the situation upon Orrian’s arrival, I can only hope that his power over these people isn’t great enough to outweigh their loyalty to their true king.
With these depressing thoughts of usurping as my only company, I slowly retire into my slumber beneath the gentle heat and soft crackling above me.
CHAPTER NINE
“Up,” Jaq stands over me as I rub the sleep from my eyes.
The torch above has long since smouldered to embers, leaving me to wake stiff both from the morning chill and the crookedness of a night with my neck against the wall.
“They want you,” Jaq continues once I have risen to meet him.
As it turns out, I had been left to rest whilst Orrian and his people spoke privately, the discussion was now well under way and it is time for my summoning. We climb several slopes and steps but are still far from the top when we branch off into a previously hidden tunnel. A guard is positioned before us and if one didn’t know what they were looking for the guard can almost completely hide the entrance to the obscure passageway.
The tunnel is once again part of a larger more complex system, one which I would instantly get lost in, but Jaq and the clamour of many disagreements fighting over the top of one another guide me towards our destination. After several minutes we eventually round one last corner into a claustrophobic roughly hollowed out room.
Unlike the rest of the cavern, ignoring the steps, this area seems man made, as if orders were given to create a space where certain individuals could confer without the ears of the rest of the survivors. Only a single torch is attached to the far wall, leaving most of the room in an eerie flickering shadow, it occurs to me that a group could spend days in here
