A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2) Read Free Page A

Even if it means keeping my homeland safe, I do not want to be a sacrifice.
    ‘I will watch, Princess.’ N’tombe’s dark face made her nearly invisible in the night.
    ‘I’m fine,’ I whispered.
    ‘Nevertheless, you must rest. Take my place. The soil there is warm.’
    I slid between Jed and Will. The wind sighed and called of sleep, and though I feared to dream I could not prevent my eyes from closing.
    ***
    I dreamed strange fragments; a woman in a white robe, her back to me. I called ‘Rosa!’ but when she turned, her face was mine. Screaming, I tumbled, falling from the tower onto a knife that ached in my chest and bled across my hands. I grabbed at it and it became but a heavy, hard stone, polished and precious.
    I sat on a stony beach, my hand on a dull green rock. Wood smoke stung my eyes, a woman wailed. Above arched a cliff, rimmed with green fronds from palms as tall as trees. A bird called, forlorn and lonely. It sounded like a small bell, tolling.
    A man laughed. ‘ Death shall not take you, lord, ’ and I fell again, tumbling and twisting, drifting like smoke across a dry plain beneath great mountains, capped with snow that gleamed in the moonlight.
    But the moon has not yet risen, I thought, and yes, this wasn’t the moon at all, but the eye of a great dragon that blinked slowly, a great half-eclipse of an eyelid.
    I heard another voice. ‘You come to me, my dear?’ It was old, and unused to talking.
    The creature smiled and huffed his breath, sending me tumbling again, whirling and twirling, falling onto a wall of daggers. And I woke then, tangled into a thornbush like a fly in a spider’s web. Two men stared at me.
    ‘You need to cut your hair,’ said one. I blinked, uncertain. Was this a dream?
    Will laughed, and I relaxed. ‘I’ll do it,’ he seized his knife, held it above my head. The morning sun gleamed on its blade.
    ‘No!’
    ‘What’s wrong? Dana, you panic so easily.’ He chuckled, set the knife’s edge against my throat.
    I seized his wrist, struggled with him.
    ‘Ow!’
    And there I was, straddling Will, his knife in my hand, while he blinked at me with sleepy eyes. ‘Dana! What are you doing?’
    Feeling sick, I put down the knife. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Your hair, Princess,’ Jed’s voice was a strange echo of my dream. He smiled but his eyes were alert, his sword drawn. ‘It’s tangled in the bush.’
    I begged to be put on watch, for then I had an excuse to sit wide-eyed, staring at the dark. But it’s impossible to keep awake forever, so I elected to doze on horseback. But even then I dreamt, strange fragments of dragons and towers and always, always, an ache in my chest, so strong that at times it stopped my breath. I grew heavy-eyed. Catching my reflection in a dawn-still pool, I saw dark shadows under my eyes. They looked like bruises.
    N’tombe watched me, anxious after I’d waken everyone with screams of a dragon eating my heart. She spun gold light out of the trees, wrapped it round me, and at night we lay together, two strange chrysalises. She slept, but I stared, saucer-eyed, at the stars. I sung snatches of song to keep me awake.
    ––––––––
    ‘Ninny-nonny-no
    How do you pass
    All the way into town?
    Silly Nonny-no
    Where did you go?
    The world’s turned upside-down.’
    ––––––––
    N ext morning we continued onwards. We traveled upstream, following the river. N’tombe pushed her awareness out, watching for scouts or soldiers and we stayed alert for the smell of smoke. Yet there was still nothing.
    On the nineth day of our travels – the nineth day since we’d left the Kingdom – we reached a series of waterfalls. The walls of the valley grew steep and the trees had been pruned into strange shapes by the wind. The rough path was too stoney for the horses, so we dismounted and led them onwards. Their hooves slid and clattered on the rocks. Finally, we reached the top of the valley and saw before us the