Day 4

Harvey Logan

They followed the little snot out of the main dwelling. Twice Harvey hinted at the risk. The damned cocktail-maker was too absorbed by his success to pay any heed to Harvey’s words. The bastard Royalblood was worse. His only acknowledgment was a noncommittal grunt. Didn’t they see what was happening? The girl was leading them somewhere. If not from his own experience, then from other miserable fools’ accounts, Harvey knew how such entourages usually ended.

They ended bad and neither idiot understands it.

It was the bread and butter of low-level gangs in the Red Cities. They used children to lure good-hearted fools into a trap. In most cases, people ended up with a slit throat, and only sometimes, when Garhala had mercy, a victim got out alive but poorer. From what Harvey had overheard in the Butcher’s band, some tribes weren’t much different and the jungle bandits have used such methods excessively.

“Giliad,” Harvey muttered. A drizzle appeared and the sky darkened since they started to follow the girl a half-hour ago. He could hear fast-flowing water – stream or streams – although they were nowhere in sight. The world around was one of a nightmare, marshes, trees submerged in water with a thick coat of green stuff on the surface. Sometimes it rippled, making Harvey’s heart race. “It’s a trap.”

“Nonsense,” the innkeeper said, self-important all of sudden. He’d gotten lucky with the drink and now he looked down on Harvey. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d have done so. Besides, they liked my beverage.”

Harvey huffed. How could he be so stupid? With a Royalblood by their side, the wildlings hadn’t wanted to risk a direct confrontation. But didn’t they manage to catch Giliad in the first place? The longer Harvey thought about it, the less he was sure about his own conclusions.

“Maybe they were afraid of him?” He pointed at Giliad.

“Maybe.”

The innkeeper’s indifferent reply caused Harvey's insides to boil.

“Think, idiot! What does she want from us?” He said it way louder than he wished but didn’t believe she could understand his quick words. The snot barely spoke the imperial language.

For a good moment, the innkeeper walked silent, carefully making steps. The ground started to be treacherous with all this water around. Eventually, he agreed with Harvey. There was nothing they could help her with. A heavy weight fell off the conman’s chest only to find a new one there. Giliad was not interested in backtracking. He’s a halfwit, Harvey realized. There’s no other explanation.

Soon, the drizzle turned into rain and then into a downpour. Visibility dwindled to barely a span the ground in many places was completely submerged. They waded in the water, not speaking. Perhaps afraid to voice the perils living within. Harvey kept close to the innkeeper who in kept close to Giliad. How did the girl manage to stay upright in the rainstorm was beyond Harvey. There’s something terribly wrong with her. Why do I always run into people like them?

As if the rain wasn’t enough. A mist began rising. The conman wished to see trees to ascertain himself that they were still within a forest’s grip and not in the middle of one of those treacherous shallow lakes that adventurers warned against.

Drowning in his own thoughts, Harvey hit the innkeeper sending him forward. Both men fell with a splash. The level of water was no higher than to their calves, but the bottom didn’t feel like sludge. It wasn’t normally submerged. Doesn’t this forest has seasons? One of the seasons is pretty rainy. I hope it isn’t the beginning of it.

“Only … strong … follow.”

Although the noise of the rain was all they could hear, somehow, the girl’s faint voice reached them without an issue. What does it mean – only strong follow?

The answer came in the form of tangible pressure. Each time Harvey or the innkeeper made a step ahead, the sudden ‘wall’ of rain pushed them back.

“If I’m not back within an hour. Return to the Rain Tribe,” Giliad said and pressed ahead. The rain immediately hit, but the strength of Royalbloods wasn’t a myth. Soon, the idiot was out of their sight.

“This is textbook stuff,” Harvey said and when the innkeeper showed he couldn’t hear him, Harvey shouted it at him, then added. “We’re dead, Garhala have mercy!”

Giliad

Something in the back of Giliad’s head questioned his decision to follow the girl. This rain was unnatural. Too strong even for a thunderstorm, whenever Giliad made a step it answered with powerful opposition. It is in their name – the Rain Tribe.

But what truly out of place, walked ten feet ahead of him, like a vanguard, unafraid of the incoming force. This rain that so happily resisted Giliad’s advance didn’t affect the girl. Giliad didn’t wonder how did it work. He knew very little alchemy and this had to be alchemy. There was nothing natural in this.

As shocking as it sounded, he reached the point it felt like cutting through the wall of water. Neither Zuma nor the bandit would withstand the enormous pressure…

The girl vanished.

Giliad’s first thought was that she fell underwater and so he dashed forward. A solid wall met his face and he stupidly opened his mouth. Water got inside and for a second he was drowning in the rain. Then the pressure disappeared. The rain and the mist were gone … almost.

The sight ahead of him took the breath out of his lungs better than the water he’d swallowed a moment ago. Was it a lake? It had to be but what was around it, looked like a moving wall of rain and a mist. Is this the eye of this strange rainstorm? The sky above was gray, no change there. The girl stood three feet to his left. Her sad eyes met his.

“What is this?”

“The Heart of Rain.”

He blinked, surprised as her answer came without previous hesitation and in a clear imperial language, although with an odd accent. Was the bandit right? Were they tricked?

The mesmerizing beauty of the endless lake surrounded by the hurricane-like rainstorm made Giliad humble. Who could guess that such a miracle exists so close to Cape Town?

“I don’t know what it means,” he told the girl after his excitement cooled.

“Goddess lives here.”

Giliad smiled in the face of her words. Yes. He’d heard that one before. Many tribesmen he’d come across believed in gods dwelling here or there. He’s never seen a god or a goddess because they were a fabrication of fearful minds. If people couldn’t explain something, they said it had a divine origin.

Tayyi had been very ambivalent about this matter. He’d hated gods, especially the Imperial Pantheon, and yet, he was a superstitious man. In Tayyi’s world was no place for divinities.

So how could Giliad explain a mile-long lake embraced by a storm inside a rainforest? The Fifth Region had many strange places – the Emerald Lake, Western Marshes and the most mysterious of all, the unconquered High Forest. The only place free even from Royalbloods. Could this be another such place?

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the girl asked, and her sad eyes lingered for a little longer on Giliad, awaiting his answer. Yes, it was beautiful but time has come to learn her motivations behind bringing him here.

“What do you want of me?”

She kept staring at him as if not being able to understand a word all of a sudden.

“You don’t like it?” a velvet-like voice asked to his right. Giliad’s reaction was so fast that no ordinary human could dodge it. He didn’t mean to strike but all of this … it spooked him. His hand met something wet and went through it. Brain… But when he took hold of himself, he found the woman—a stunningly beautiful woman—unharmed. What was that I just hit?

Her skin was pale like bleached bone, which contrasted with the dark brown skin of the girl who brought him here. Her long blonde hair had a blue tint and plastered to her body like a second skin. She wore a single piece of an outfit. A thing dress that did a poor job of covering her female parts. Giliad turned his eyes away.

“Are you disgusted with me too?” she sounded offended.

Containing his shock was not an easy feat. This woman had no place here, in the middle of the jungle. She…

“Who are you?”

“Oh, that’s rich … and rude. You refuse to answer questions but have the audacity to present your own?” She spoke the imperial language very well but possessed the same accent as the girl.

Giliad grunted, a little embarrassed.

“Yes, it’s beautiful and no, I’m not disgusted by you.”

“Do you like me then?” she asked quickly and Giliad sensed her closer although heard no steps in the water.

“Your turn.”

She huffed, again offended, but complied.

“I am your new goddess.”

Giliad’s head snapped toward her and his senses suddenly heightened. There was something wrong with her … her hair, its ends … they seemed to melt with the water around her calves.

She smiled.

“Begone, little one.”

The girl darted back into the storm.

“Let’s play,” she said in a jovial tone, and out of nowhere, a wall of water smashed into Giliad.