AN: This chapter (in fact, all the chapters up to Chapter 12) were actually written last year, but neither typed nor posted because I decided to give this story a long (possibly fatal) break. Now, due to the urgings of a friend, I am posting again. However, I am not editing, and so excessive melodrama (a major reason why I stopped this story in the first place) is still here. You have been warned.

Chapter 9--Liv

I woke up very late, well after Nate. It had taken me hours to go to sleep the night before. Even though I had told myself to put the battle out of my head, scenes of it had kept repeating over and over: the white, gasping face of the first man I had killed, his hands scrabbling at my sword, the gush of blood from the bandit leader….

I sat up quickly and threw off my blankets. I would not think of that. I had decided the night before to at least act like my normal self, even if I felt the whole course of my life had changed. I looked enviously at Nate, who was poking at something on the ground with a stick and whistling “Jingle Bells”. He certainly didn’t seem to attach much importance to killing a man. His video games must have wiped out all decency from his mind. Or maybe he was just a better actor that I was.

He looked up, feeling my gaze, and grinned impudently. “Good morning, lazy,” he said. “If that was supposed to be beauty sleep, it didn’t work.”

I stared at him. “How can you be this insensitive? Don’t you get it? I mean, we fought, and we killed, and I know that I should try to get over it and get on with my life, but this isn’t the kind of thing you can deal with in a day. How can you be making jokes at a time like this? How can you be this way? Are you made of wood?”

Nate seemed taken aback by my outburst, but his expression changed and he looked at me very, very seriously. “Liv, I feel the same way as you. I’m feeling the same panic and pain as you. But it’s all so…unreal. I mean, look at us. We’re just ordinary kids from an ordinary town who do painfully ordinary things all the time. It’s impossible that we killed those people, because we just don’t do things like that. It’s much more reasonable to believe that it never really happened. Forget reasonable--it’s the only thing that could be true. Nothing else…nothing else is possible. Nothing else is real. That’s how I can get past…well, all of it.”

“But Nate, it did happen. You can’t just ignore that.”

“I’m doing a pretty good job of it now.”

“Forget it.” I turned towards my pack and got out some bread and cheese. Nate watched me for a moment, and then got out food of his own.

After I finished my breakfast we started back down the path. By midmorning the bare, rolling plains had given way to lightly wooded hills, and the deeply rutted road wound through gullies that were carpeted with the dead leaves of years past. We stopped for lunch on a huge mossy boulder that provided a convenient seat. The day had become hot, but the stone had been constantly shaded for centuries by the towering trees around it, and was cool almost to the point of being uncomfortable.

Barely an hour had passed since lunch when we came upon a small village--only about ten buildings--standing in a space cut out of the forest. Around the edges we could see the rough-cut stumps of trees in varying stages of decay. Nate looked at me. “Let’s not stay the night here--I mean, if that’s all right with you.”

“I agree,” I said. I didn’t want anyone else to see our money and decide that we were easy targets. “We should ask for directions to Lomarth, though. There’s another road coming out of this village over there, and we don’t want to make the wrong turn.”

Nate admitted that this was a good idea, and so we approached two old men sitting in the shade with two pungent pipes. After we got them to understand out question (both seemed to be a little deaf) they chuckled. “Oh, it’s the easiest thing in the world! Just follow that path until you get to Stillwater and then turn north. It’ll be the first city that you come to.” The one with the larger pipe eyed us curiously. “Why are you headed there? It’s bound to be dangerous, what with Seth’s army turned that way.”

Nate glanced at me worriedly. “Oh, so they are definitely going there next? We’ve been away from towns a lot recently.”

“Yeah, he’s going towards Lomarth,” the old man said, sucking on his pipe. “My grandson’s boy just came back from Takaina, and he met a messenger there who had actually seen the army on the move.”

“How soon will the army get to Lomarth?” Nate asked urgently.

The old man crinkled his forehead into a frown. “Oh, a week, maybe. Nine days at the most. You could probably get there in four or five days if you pushed, but it would be a close thing.”

“We should go now, then,” I said determinedly. “Thank you for all your help.”

The next four days of travel were largely uneventful. The woods gave out very early on the second day, leaving us to walk among neat fields of grain or long rows of vegetables. I had never seen farms up close before, except out the windows of a speeding car, and I was interested by how many different kinds of things were grown.

There were towns scattered along the road, as well, none very large. By unspoken agreement we didn’t stop at all, except to inquire whether we had gotten to Stillwater at last and to buy a little food when we needed it. We had learned a painful lesson about flinging money about.

For my part, the melancholy that I felt about killing never fully faded, although it receded to a large degree into the back of my mind. I tried not to let it affect my mood, but I couldn’t seem to shake it. From the looks that he gave me when he thought I wasn’t looking, I could tell that Nate was still worried about me. Before I probably would have been angry that he thought I couldn’t take care of myself, but now…now I just didn’t care.

We reached Stillwater, a larger town on the edge of a small lake, late on our third day after talking to the old men. Nate had a brief moment of panic when he realized that we didn’t know which way was north, but I solved it by asking someone which way Lomath was. Nate’s stunned expression cheered me up for an hour or two after that.

Up until now there had been very little traffic on the road, only the occasional farmer’s cart drawn by stolid oxen, but once we left Stillwater we met a steady trickle of carts heading in the opposite direction from us, no doubt fleeing Seth’s army. There were a few carts filled to the brim with household furniture and children that must have belonged to hysterical refugees, but more were loaded with food and driven by women (wearing tunics and leggings similar to mine, I was proud to note) with small children sitting next to them. There was much less traffic towards Lomarth, and the vast majority was hard-faced men bringing only their weapons.

The amount of travelers was not large enough to prevent us from finding a good place to camp, and so the evening of the fourth day since talking to the old men found us sitting by the banks of a rustling stream, eating dry, spiced meat in the gathering dusk.

“So, we should reach Lomarth tomorrow early,” Nate said contemplatively. “Got any ideas on what to do then? I mean, we can’t just go and say, ‘Excuse me, can we please hold the Amulet? We’re on this funny quest, and we really don’t have anything to do with Seth.’”

“Good point,” I said. “Well…we could go in, guns blazing, and blast our way through anyone who tries to stop us.”

“Um…no.”

“Then that leaves the stealth approach.”

Nate looked at me skeptically. “The Amulet is sure to be heavily guarded, Liv. No way are the two of us going to get through whole castle by ourselves.”

“Do you have a better idea?” I asked tartly.

“Not at the moment, but I’m sure I will before we get there,” he said stiffly.

“Dream on,” I laughed. I stood up and put my leftovers back in my pack. “I’m going to bed, okay? Goodnight!”

“Goodnight,” he answered broodingly.

The next morning I woke up just as the sun was cresting the horizon, and kicked Nate awake. “Come on! We have a lot to do today!”

He groaned and rolled over. “You know, you sounded just like the man in green just then. I bet you were a slave driver in a former life.”

“Come on, get up!” I said, disregarding him. “We need to get to Lomarth as soon as possible. If you haven’t come up with a miraculous plan, we’ll need plenty of time to spy out which way would be best to go.”

“All right, I’m up,” said Nate. “And no mocking my brilliant plan! Even if it doesn‘t exist yet.”

The road was not that busy so early in the morning, and we made good time. By midmorning we could see the tops of the tallest buildings in Lomarth. Although it was obviously a fairly large city, the skyline looked oddly small. There were no grand skyscrapers--the tallest towers were perhaps five stories tall, and most buildings were only one or two.

We stopped on a hill just outside the city to eat an early lunch and to decide what we would do next. I was in favor of going to the castle directly and trying to get the Amulet as soon as possible. I wasn’t sure exactly what Nate wanted to do (I don’t think that he knew himself) but it seemed as if he wanted to go into the city and insinuate himself into someone’s entourage and then practice espionage and sauntering. At this point in his explanation he was just using big words to disguise the fact that he didn’t know what he was doing.

“Nate, we’re going with my plan,” I said, after ignoring several minutes of increasingly muddled talking. “Because you don’t have one. Are you done with your meal? Good. Come on.” It was getting more and more amusing to annoy Nate. I took that as an improvement on despondency.

Lomarth had no walls, somewhat to my surprise. I would have thought that a city that had something to guard would be more obviously protected. But then, weren’t amulets supposed to guard their owners? Perhaps they relied on that. Was magic even possible in this world? I had seen nothing to suggest that it was, and I was disinclined to believe that the rules of nature would suspend themselves just because we were on a different planet. Then again, there was the fact that we were here at all….

The citadel of Lomarth was clearly visible, for it was the tallest building of the city, and so we were able to get there quickly even though the streets were narrow, twisty, and very confusing. The castle itself had a low wall around it, but the main gate was open, and people freely flowed in and out.

“Wow. This will be easier than I thought,” I murmured. “We could probably get a long way towards the Amulet before being stopped.”

“We could…if we knew anything about the layout of the castle,” Nate pointed out. “Liv, we don’t know anything about where we could find it or how heavily guarded it is or anything. We’ll probably end up just wandering around in circles until someone realizes that we’re not supposed to be there, and then we’ll be thrown out.”

“Don’t be so negative! Come on, let’s go.”

Nate shook his head, but he was right beside me as I slipped between two carts rumbling through the arched gateway. We followed them through the courtyard to a small door, a servant’s entrance, set in the side of the castle. The drivers of the carts started to unload their goods, and we continued on.

“Which way should we go, then, o exalted pathfinder?” Nate asked sarcastically.

“Umm…that way,” I said, pointing to another small door. It opened onto a stairway, dark from the lack of windows or candles.

“Hey, stairs!” exclaimed Nate. “A lot of them! Who would have guessed?”

I looked at him skeptically. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about stairs. Duh.”

I shook my head and started up the steps. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Nate. I don’t understand you at all.”

The stairs opened out onto a corridor, which we followed until it split into two. I randomly chose one, and we went on. “You know, this was a really stupid idea,” said Nate conversationally. “We’re already lost. Heck, we were lost before we even got in here, since we have absolutely no idea of where to go, but now we can’t even get out.”

“I know how to get out,” I told him, even though I had no idea whatsoever. I didn’t think he believed me.

At various points people passed us, and a few looked at us very strangely, but none stopped us or demanded to know what we were doing. Apparently it was common for dirty, travel-stained people with large packs and weapons to go traipsing around the building. Or maybe they just didn’t want to bother. In any case, we were able to walk as we willed.

I chose the way when we got to a choice, because Nate was too busy looking skeptical to do anything useful. To my pleasure, we started to get to larger and more ornate hallways. Surely the Amulet would be kept in some place of honor? On the other hand, if it were so valuable, wouldn’t it be hidden?

Then we turned a corner and I whispered, “Ha.” We were standing on a wrap-around balcony looking out over a grand hall. Above, two stories up, was a domed roof painted with a vast panorama of armored men and women throwing their swords into a furnace; two more stories below was a tiled floor, and a plinth. I walked over to the railing and leaned over to get a better view. The Amulet, which must be the thing on the plinth, was very small; I couldn’t quite see its shape. “Come on,” I whispered to Nate. “Let’s find a way to get down.”

“Don’t whisper,” he whispered back. “It hurts my ears.”

We crossed to the other side of the balcony, where there was a second door. Fortunately for us, there was a staircase leading down not far along the hall. We took this.

“Um, Liv?” Nate said as we walked, “Have you given any thought at all as to how we’re going to actually get the Amulet?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” I told him. “I don’t suppose we could just run in there, grab it, and run back out?”

“In a place where we don’t know our way around and everyone else does? I don’t think so.”

“Give me your brilliant ideas, then,” I said as pleasantly as I could. I was sick of all his fault-finding.

“One of us could cause a diversion, and the other one could grab the Amulet and surreptitiously go away with it.”

“And what happens to the one who caused the diversion when the guards or whatever look around, find that the Amulet is gone, and remember who it was that caused a commotion while it was stolen? We need both of us to get home, remember.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe there won’t be a guard there, and we can just take it and go.”

“That’s about as likely as Christmas in July,” I snorted. And indeed, when we got down to the great room we saw that there was a guard, standing nonchalantly by the wall. The room was even bigger than it had seemed from up above, and even more grand. I could see the Amulet now. It was a ring, with a ruby signet stone set in a heavy gold band.

“All right, what are we going to do?” I whispered to Nate.

“I guess your grab and run plan was the best idea so far,” Nate said resignedly. “I’ll take the ring, you can handle the guard. You can just knock him out, you know,” he added, seeing the look on my face.

“All right. For the record, this is a horrible plan, even if I did make it up. One, two, three…go!”

We sprinted across the intervening space, feet echoing on the tiled floor--and then, suddenly, the world sped up. The guard, who had whirled around, was suddenly running towards us inhumanly fast. He yelled something, but he spoke so quickly that I couldn’t hear what it was. I flung myself towards the Amulet at top speed, but the guard reached me before I could reach the plinth. I desperately reached for my swords, but he grabbed my hands and wrenched them behind my back. Nate reached for his dervish, which he had left looped over his shoulder, but by this time more guards had rushed into the room, moving at the same impossible speed. They grabbed him and held him fast.

Then, just as suddenly, the world slowed down again, and the guards moved at a human pace once more. I sagged against my captor breathlessly. “What was that?”

He looked at me with hard eyes. “The Amulet can protect itself. Or didn’t you believe in all the old stories?” He pushed me towards two of the other soldiers. “Spies from Seth, no doubt. Take them to the dungeons. One of you stay with me--there may be more.”

Nate and I were taken down several sets of stairs and forced into a bare stone cell with two hard beds, a chamber pot, and nothing else. Nate sank down on the bed, still looking shell-shocked.

“Well,” I said at last. “Now we know why Seth wants that Amulet so badly. If he could get control of it….”

“What happened?” Nate said wonderingly. “One minute everything was ordinary, and the next….”

“It was the Amulet. It must have made us slow down or something so that we could be stopped from taking it.” I shook my head disbelievingly. “I wonder if it was just because we got too close, or because we were trying to steal it?”

“It must have been because we were trying to steal it,” said Nate. “The guards were just as close, and they weren’t having any problems.”

“Not that it matters. We’re stuck in here either way.” I sighted and went over to the cell door. It was made only out of a grid of iron bars, but the squares were too small for me to get a hand through, even if I had had a key to unlock the heavy padlock and there had been no guard standing there. “So what do we do now? We can’t really get out the orthodox way. Do you have any ideas for escape?”

Nate let his head fall into his hands. “No. They didn’t take our weapons away from us, but we can scarcely cut our way through the stone walls, can we? Face it, Liv, we’re stuck. We’ve failed the contest. There’s no way we’re going to get out of here in time to get the Amulet before Seth does. We’ve lost the first quest, at the very least.”

With a sinking heart, I realized he was right. Yes, Seth would probably have as much trouble getting the Amulet as we did, but with an army at his back he would have a lot more help, and presumably a better plan. The slowing affect of the ring wouldn’t make much difference if all the guards had been killed.

I sat down on my bed with a sigh. “So, do you think that El and Matt are having as miserable a time as we are?”

Nate looked surprised. “I haven’t thought about them in the longest time, to tell the truth. I wonder who Matt got paired with. I bet he’s doing just fine, whoever it is. He can make friends easily.”

I remembered El and the jerky boy who she had been with. “Well, knowing El, she’s not making friends that fast…that girl needs to get some backbone.”

“Yeah, she really does,” Nate said sympathetically.

I bristled. “Don’t you dare insult El!”

“But I was just agreeing--”

“I said, don’t insult her! She’s doing just fine. I bet she’s not failing her first contest like we are because of some singularly stupid decisions on a certain person’s part….”

For an instant it looked as though Nate was going to blow up, but then he smiled suddenly. “Oh, come on, Liv. You know and I know that this mess is more than half your fault. I understand how insecure you are--” I spluttered in rage “--but you really shouldn’t take it out on me.”

“I--I am not insecure.”

Nate smiled sarcastically. “Yeah, you are. Wake up, Liv. You’re a jerk. You’re the meanest person I know, and you’re not funny at all.”

“But I--”

He sighed. “Just shut up.”

Nate lay down on the bed, back to me, and shut his eyes. I stared at him for a long moment. Oddly enough, I felt only the faintest glimmerings of anger. It was smothered in a dead, sick feeling. Nate had changed so much since we were kidnapped. At home he had been funny, sociable, always ready for a quip or a practical joke. On our travels he had developed a blustering temper, always flaring up and lashing out whenever I said the littlest thing. Now that anger seemed to have turned into something else, a caustic bluntness that I couldn’t tease or aggravate. Had I changed as much? Was I really a jerk? Had I always been like that, or was I just a jerk around Nate? Or was he just being mean to me because he hated me?

I sighed at stared at the depressingly solid stone blocks that lined the cell. Nothing was going at all the way I expected. When we were captured I had been afraid, of course, and worried about what would happen to me, but under all that was a current of excitement. I had thought that this would be an adventure, and that even if danger was involved none of it would affect me personally or deeply. But now…now I had killed someone, and we would most likely fail the first test, and Nate had gone from being my friendly rival to being…I didn’t even know what any more. Everything seemed to be crumbling.

I sat there for a while. There really wasn’t anything else to do.

Then there came a great clattering and clomping on the stairs. I looked around in mild interest, wondering if this was the changing of the guard. But the white-faced boy who rushed down the steps panting didn’t seem to be a very suitable replacement. “He’s here!” he gasped out. “Seth’s here, with more men than we thought, and every man is needed at once!”

Nate and I sprang to our feet. The guard cast a wary look at us. “But the prisoners--”

“They’re locked in, aren’t they?” the boy said impatiently. “Come quickly! The castle’s overrun!” He dashed back up the steps, two at a time. The guard bit his lip uncertainly, the followed.

“Watch out!” Nate said. He picked up his dervish and swung it around his head to smash into the metal of the door, right by the hinges. It buckled in with a crash. Twice more Nate slammed the spiked ball into the door. On the third try the hinges screechingly tore apart. Nate shoved the door hard, and it fell twisted onto the ground.

“Come on,” he said, stepping over it. “Maybe in the confusion we cat get to the Amulet before anyone else does.” He didn’t really sound as if he believed it himself, but hey, what else could we do?

As soon as we mounted the stairs we heard the clanging of steel and the anguished or enraged shouts of men. We turned the corridor and saw a tangle of fighters, four in blue-lacquered armor and one in the livery of the castle. The four enemy soldiers were moving slowly, like we had when we had tried to steal the Amulet, but even the ring’s power couldn’t eliminate the numerical advantage that they had. The sole castle defender was holding his own, but not by much.

“Come on,” I whispered to Nate. “The big room’s this way.”

We climbed a flight of stairs and tried to remember the corridors that the guards who had taken us to the dungeons had used. Everywhere there were soldiers, and although the attackers were slowed down considerably by the Amulet’s power, there were so many of them that it didn’t make a difference. The closer we got to the hall the more fighters there seemed to be, until we could no longer follow our chosen route without pushing though them--and pushing past people with sharp bits of metal waving about is never a good idea.

“Um…let’s go that way,” I said, pointing to a side corridor. “We’ll probably be able to rejoin this hall after a while, and it should be less crowded.”

And it was less crowded. The only person there--at least, the only living person--was a tall, muscular man in the blue armor of Seth’s army. Around him were scattered the lifeless bodies of warriors from both sides, and blood flowed sluggishly from a wound on his shoulder. He saw us and growled, raising his sword.

I froze. He was going to fight us, and I knew that I couldn’t stop him from killing me. I feverishly ordered myself to draw my swords, but I couldn’t. Nate glanced at me, and must have seen my terror clear on my face. “Pull yourself together!” he yelled, but I only heard him as if from a great distance. The warrior started forward, but Nate was too busy looking at me to see him, and I had no strength to warn him. At the last moment he turned, but already the man was too close for Nate to use his dervish. He dove for the ground, but the man’s sword scored a long gash down his sides. Nate cried out in pain. I stared at him wide-eyed, knowing I had to move but unable to.

The blue-armored warrior looked down at Nate with hard eyes and drew back his sword for the kill. Suddenly I felt something inside me give way. I stumbled forwards, my twin swords singing from their sheaths. The man brought his arm up to stop me, but I swept his sword away and hit him on the side of my head with the flat of my blade. He stumble, swayed, and fell to lay still on the ground.

Nate got up shakily. “Well. That was close.” He kept his hand pressed to his side, where the cloth of his tunic was beginning to be stained with red.

“Are…are you all right?” I asked in concern. “I’m sorry that I didn’t…but I just couldn’t….”

“I’ll be all right,” Nate said. “I…I think that it’s not very deep. I…it didn’t really hurt that much.” His face was very white. I tried to remember everything that I had ever learned from ER. He was probably in shock. Well, there was nothing I could do about it.

“We’ve got to hurry,” I said. “Come on.”

We ran--stumbled--down the corridor and around the corner. I recognized this hallway--yes, there was the doorway to the chamber where the Amulet was kept. “Almost there,” I called to Nate.

“Good!” he gasped out. His hand was pressed to his wounded side, and his fingers were stained with red.

Just one last sprint and we would be there. We burst through the doors, and my heart almost stopped. Across from us, just entering the other doors, was a man who could only be Seth. His armor, instead of being lacquered blue like that of his soldiers, was black shot with veins of silver, and in his hand was a long sword covered almost to the hilt in blood. It was his face, though, that convinced me. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five, but I suddenly realized what was meant by ‘an air of command’.

My eyes darted to the Amulet on its plinth in the center of the room. It was almost exactly between us. If I could only get to it first…he was more dangerous, so surely it should slow him down more….

I bounded into the room, and the sounds of fighting behind me sped into an indistinguishable blur. Seth didn’t move. I was closer that he was, he could never get it before me, we were going to succeed--

And Seth walked to the plinth, unhampered by the Amulet’s effects, and took the ring.

We had failed.