Chapter One-- The Runaway

“Please!” Kayla found herself half shrieking, half whispering to the cranky old woman behind the old wooden bar. She hated the way her voice sounded when she did so; it was not a pleasant sound. She couldn’t help it; she was desperate. The woman had the good grace to look pitying, but still shook her head. Kayla felt tears stinging her eyes, but swallowed hard to hold them back. I will not cry, she told herself. Not where anyone can see. No one’s going to hire a sniveling child.

“I’m sorry, kid, but we just can’t use you. I got a girl coming in later, and she… well, you don’t sing the kind of songs she does, I’d say.” The woman shook her head again with a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll give you… half off a room, just because I feel bad for you, but I can’t do any better than that.”

Kayla bowed her head, sighing and slumping her shoulders. Half off would have been great… but she didn’t have any money. She had run out two days ago, and hadn’t slept or eaten since. So much for the kindness of strangers, she thought bitterly. She didn’t want to start stealing, not if she didn’t have to… but it was starting to look like she would, and soon. Her emergency money had run out too fast; she had expected to get work at least once or twice already.

Taking a deep breath, she faced the woman, wishing her eyes were dry as she did so. “Thank you, but I think I’m going to try elsewhere.” So saying, Kayla shouldered the small harp and turned towards the door to leave the dark common room of the tiny inn. She would not miss it, any more than she missed any of the others she had left the same way. It was not a life she particularly wanted, singing in a tavern. She just didn’t have much choice.

“Good luck,” the old woman said, though not even she really knew if she meant it or not. The poor girl had probably already looked everywhere else in the little town, and gotten much the same answer. There just wasn’t any call for a young girl to sing in a bar if she wasn’t going to sing bawdies, no matter how pretty she could sing otherwise. The girl hadn’t even been that pretty, the innkeeper thought, though the adolescent clothing hadn’t helped matters at all. If the kid dressed more like an adult people would take her more seriously. But then, the innkeeper thought, she probably didn’t have anything better to wear; that kid was a runaway if she’d ever seen one. She wondered idly what the girl was running from for a moment, before an actual patron calling for her distracted her from her thoughts of the child.

“Hey, can I get another ale here?” shouted a rude man from the corner. The innkeeper winced at the cry; it was him again. He had shown up three days prior, and in that time had done nothing but irritate her customers and terrorize her staff. She wished she could throw the ale in his face, but he was a Mage. It wasn’t worth it.

Not that she was a coward—she had picked fights with the biggest, ugliest thugs that tried to stiff her on the bill—but a Mage was different. Other patrons might threaten her with bodily harm, or make noise about burning the inn down. A Mage, though… she shuddered. She appreciated all that the Guild had done for the world; she had an enchanted till behind the bar, for security reasons, that she had personally bought from a Mage. In her rare dealings with them, she was never anything but utterly courteous. She never wanted to find out what a Mage might do if she was not.

Putting her thoughts aside, the innkeeper took the rude Mage his latest ale. At least they had good money, she told herself. There was always that.

“Who was that girl?” the Mage asked her as she set the mug down.

“Who, that child that just left?” she responded, answering her own question before she had finished asking it. To cover herself, she kept going. “Just some young girl with aspirations of being a singer,” she said. The Mage scoffed.

“Musicians,” he said with a scowl, taking a long swallow of his ale. When he put the mug back on the table he glared at the innkeeper, who scampered off when she realized she had missed her cue to leave. “Worthless vagabonds,” the Mage muttered to himself.

Just outside, Kayla stopped to catch her breath. She had spotted the Mage as she was leaving the common room. That was close, she thought wildly. Too close. She couldn’t afford to be recognized, and while she couldn’t remember that particular Mage’s name offhand, he would more than likely recognize her if he got a good look. She couldn’t risk that happening. She would not go back. She couldn’t.

Breath caught, Kayla headed away from the inn. Not towards the town, though; if there was one Mage here, there might be more. They could be looking for her. She might have given herself away already. Instead she headed towards the woods. There was most likely nothing in the woods she couldn’t handle; much as she might not want to think about it, she did have Guild training. The forest looked downright tame compared to the one back home, where the Guild did its combat training. She would be fine in the woods for a night, Kayla told herself. She headed resolutely into the welcoming blackness of the trees; there would be no Mages in there to look for her, to drag her home. It would be safe there.

Of course, she had thought she would be safe in town, too. She had been gone from home for two weeks now, and had traveled as fast as she could manage, as far from the Guild as she could. It had been slow going; she was on foot and not used to traveling. Before she had left home she had never been far from the Guild headquarters, and had always traveled in style. This was different… she much preferred having a coach and luggage and company, but now she had little choice.

Kayla had always thought of herself as a practical girl. She had taken only clothing suitable for traveling, had worn her sturdiest walking shoes, and hadn’t brought much along with her other than her cloak and a purse full of money that she had been saving. She had meant to use it to buy a new focusing crystal when she received her apprentice placement. She figured that it would be better spent in getting her away from the Guild, now that the old purpose was no longer an option. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been a lot. She had never really needed money before; her father had always provided for her. Yet another luxury that was long gone, she thought bitterly.

Walking into the forest reminded her of home, in a strange way. She had always loved the forest that circled the Guild headquarters; it was the only place where she could go that she could be by herself, no one expecting anything of her. It had always been peaceful. When her father bought her the small harp that was now among her only possessions, she took it down to a small clearing in those woods to practice. The hours spent just learning to play were some of her happiest memories of her time with the Guild. That was kind of sad, she thought.

This forest was not very much like the one at home at all, Kayla realized. That one was always welcoming, always comforting. This one was cold and dark… rather like the rest of the world, she was now coming to realize. There was no one to look after her anymore… and the world was a lot less friendly than she had been led to believe. Kayla knew very little of the politics of the Guild, of what the rest of the world thought of the Mages. That was something she might have been taught, as an apprentice.

The deeper she got into the forest the darker the woods got, and the more and more aware Kayla was of just how little combat training she had gotten from the Guild. She was only sixteen, after all, and a girl, and her specialty was illusory magic, not combat or defense or attack, and she had never actually been apprenticed, and why had she felt ready to face these woods alone? Her thoughts were racing. She should go back to the town, she knew. Only she couldn’t remember which way she had come from; she had made a few turns, following a path, but somehow the darkness of the forest was seeping into her mind, and she was having trouble thinking. That was not a good sign. She knew, somewhere in the part of her brain that was still functioning, that there were things in the woods that would lead travelers astray. Horrible things.

Her pace slowed to a creep, but Kayla made herself keep walking as she craned her neck in every direction, trying to keep an eye out for anything and everything that might be lurking. She looked ridiculous, she was sure, but then it was dark enough that anyone looking wouldn’t be able to see in any case. The forest was not the eerie kind of quiet that she had been warned meant danger, but the incidental sounds of life sounded utterly sinister to her in any case. Behind her and to the right a twig snapped; whirling about to see what the cause was, Kayla caught her foot on an exposed root and tumbled ungracefully to the ground.

“Who’s there?” a voice called. A woman’s voice, and not beautiful or ethereal enough to be a siren or anything dangerous. It was definitely a human voice, Kayla thought, and she could have wept for relief. She had opened her mouth to respond when she realized that a random woman in the dark and scary woods was not likely to be the kind of person she wanted to run into… she could be a bandit or a gypsy or a pirate or something! Kayla knew that was a silly thought; there were no seas or major rivers around, what would a pirate be doing out here? Still, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the idea. Obviously her mind was still befuddled by some effect of the forest.

“You might as well come out,” the voice said in a nonchalant but oddly threatening tone. “You’re breathing louder than a dog in heat.” The voice was right above her in the dark.

“Is there any news?” The worry in the man’s voice was sharp, like the edge of an obsidian knife glinting in a dark room. He had his back to the room, staring into the a cold and empty fireplace, but no one among the half a dozen men gathered there asked him to turn; they knew that his grief was greater than he wanted them to hear.

“No, sir. We’ve got people looking all over, but no one seems to have seen her.” Several of the men gathered shifted their feet uneasily; they hated having no news to bring. There was not much else to say, though, so they contented themselves with shuffling their feet and fiddling with their elaborate robes. There was no need for them to be in ceremonial garb, but for the most part they felt safer in them than in street clothes. None of them would admit it, but their leader frightened them of late.

“She can’t have gone far, not without a horse. We’ll find her, sir.” That was the youngest of them, the one with the least rank; the others turned to glare at him. They didn’t like him speaking for them, but they didn’t want to disagree, no matter what they believed. To disagree would invite their leader’s wrath.

“If she left on her own,” the old man said, still staring into the unlit fireplace. None of the men responded. It was possible the girl had been kidnapped, of course. But they could only come up with one answer as to who had done it, if it had been done, and none of them wanted to think on that. Far better to believe that she had simply run away than to think… Suddenly their leader turned to face them, his eyes dark and serious.

“I know you want to find her,” he said softly. “I do too. I want to know that she has simply run off and will be coming home any day now. But I will not deceive myself. She may even now be in the hands of the Warlocks, and that is not something I will accept. I want to know, and I want to know now. Minh!” One of the men gathered in the room looked up sharply at his name being called.

“Yes, sir?” he asked. His voice was oily as his black hair, and it seemed to grate on the old man’s nerves—he cringed slightly at the man’s response, and sounded as though forcing himself to speak.

“You are the best at this kind of thing. Find out if she has been taken by them, and what has been done.” The old man would not mention spying or any other such dirty arts, but he knew that Minh felt no qualms about them, and he was desperate. He had to find her.

“My lord,” another of the men started, one older even than the one that led them, but he was silenced.

“Adli, I do not like it any better than you. But I have to know.” Old eyes met old eyes, and after a moment the one called Adli simply nodded. They would not rest until Kayla was found. But Adli did not intend for Minh to be the one who found her.