A Hero's Curse Read online

  Rogue Bard Books

  A Hero’s Curse by P.S. Broaddus

  Copyright © 2016 by P.S. Broaddus

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast, and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For information regarding permissions, write to:

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  Morganton, NC 28680

  Published in the United States by Rogue Bard Books

  Visit us on the web! www.psbroaddus.com

  Cover and map designed by Rebecca Weaver. Interior illustrations designed by Danny Kundzinsh. Edited by Lisa Rojany. Layout by Nikki Georgacakis.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Broaddus, Parker S.

  A hero’s curse/by P.S. Broaddus. – 1st ed.

  p. cm. – (Unseen Chronicles; 1)

  Summary: The fantastical adventure of Essie Brightsday, a young blind girl who is propelled on a perilous journey to find her realm's missing king.

  ISBN 978-0-9965446-2-7 (e-book) — ISBN 978-0-9965446-0-3 (tr. pbk.) – ISBN 978-0-9965446-1-0 (hrdcv) – ISBN 978-0-9965446-3-4 (leather)

  [1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Blind—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction. 4. Cats—Fiction. 5. Friendship-Fiction.] I. Title.

  2015945047

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  First Edition

  For Charis Mercy

  my first reader

  Chapter 1

  You have an important part to play in this world of color, Essie,” Mom whispers in my ear.

  I try to hold her. To keep her here, but Uncle Cagney and Dad peel me away.

  I try to think of something to say that will make them stay, but my parents’ footsteps die away as they hurry down the dry dirt lane. It is the pathway that spills into the valley road, the one that connects our farm with the rest of the Kingdom of Mar—and the labor camps.

  Uncle Cagney gives my hand a squeeze. I have no tears. Just emptiness. I hold my breath as long as I can to listen to the crunch of their feet on the road.

  Then they are gone.

  My lungs demand air, and I gasp. Uncle Cagney tugs on my hand, walking me back up to our empty home. Only the front door hasn’t been boarded up, and that’s to be secured when Uncle Cagney and I leave. Inside the small front room he sets me on the chest that holds our family’s treasures: Mom’s red dress, Dad’s insignia from his days as Kingdom Champion. I curl into a ball and try to understand what is happening. Tig hops up, tucks in next to my head, and starts to purr. Not because he is pleased, but because he knows it comforts me.

  I can’t make sense of the chaos. Nothing fits. So I go back to before. Just a few hours ago. I walk through it again. Life was routine.

  Tig and I were walking the rusty, suspended pipeline from the River Mar to our fields, checking for leaks by finding damp spots on the ground.

  This part of the pipeline is one of the closest points to the Valley of Fire. Here the ancient lava flow pushed out farthest into the valley. Now all that’s left is a sharp tangle of deep red shards reaching hundreds of feet high. At least, that’s what I’ve been told by Tig and Mom and Dad. If you listen to the whispers in town, the lava cliffs do more than provide the rich dirt our realm flourishes on. It’s an impassible fortress that bottles up the top of our kingdom and harbors deadly creatures. That’s why no one else farms up here. Talk like this used to scare me a little, but I rarely think about it now.

  Of course, we never get closer than a few hundred yards to the base of the jagged walls pushing their way out of the ground like the teeth of some enormous monster, intent on devouring our whole valley.

  Tig and I complained about the drought, which is normal. Everyone has complained about the drought for as long as I can remember.

  We argued about last night’s hunt. Which is also normal. At least, it’s as normal as it gets for a one-of-a-kind talking cat training a girl how to stalk prey in the dark.

  Then we crested the low ridge between our house and the river.

  That’s when I noticed something different. As we walked down the ridge toward the house I could taste the difference in the air. Hear it float on the breeze. Visitors are rare this far up the valley, this close to the lava flow.

  It was Uncle Cagney, and for one more moment the world stayed unbroken. Uncle Cagney’s calloused warrior hands caught me and spun me through the air. He forgets that I’m twelve already. He called me by the pet name he has for me, “Lady Ess,” and told me to rub the top of his head, “the shiny,” for good luck.

  Then a crack started. It was in Dad’s voice. “Cagney, we don't have time.” It was strained and anxious—not completely unusual—but also a new kind of sharp and commanding.

  In the whirlwind of activity that happened next I caught only snatches: Fabricated taxes. Brogan’s mercenaries forcing hundreds to the labor camps. Uncle Cagney just ahead of them.

  I had no solid place to stand in the crumbling. Mom and Dad would turn themselves in. Mom explained that hopefully this would keep the hired thugs from burning our farm and from taking me, too. Not even criminals want to come this close to the Valley of Fire—not if they can help it. Uncle Cagney and I would get the animals to neighbors over the next week, and then I would leave with him.

  “Later, we might have something left,” Mom said. It meant now we have nothing. Not even each other. Dad didn’t hug me. He put his hand on my arm, and I could feel the usual tension and awkwardness in his whole body.

  Then he squeezed my shoulder. “Be brave, Brightstar.” That’s the most physical affection I’d received from Dad in a long time, and only he calls me “Brightstar.” But I pushed away from him. I wanted him to hold me, to never let me go, and all he could do was barely touch my arm. I turned toward Mom and found her wearing her roughest dress. I buried my face in the folds. I heard the low rumble of voices between Dad and Uncle Cagney, and felt Mom’s hands brushing my hair. Tig curled around my feet.

  Then they were leaving, and the rest of the shattering under me gave way to nothingness.

  Curled in a ball on top of the trunk I stop trying to understand what happened, but I can’t avoid the scenes running through my mind over and over. Tig continues his rumbling purr next to my head. I want to tell him thank you, but there is too much in the way to make the words move from my heart to my tongue.

  Long before today, my world was one of darkness and isolation. Not because I have descended to the burning World Core where the great explorer Tangerine Menalo said the darkness is so complete it even makes the fire black.

  I am blind.

  Chapter 2

  Being blind isn’t all bad. Uncle Cagney says it’s not uncommon for other senses to take up some slack if you lose one. So I get to touch colors. The smooth feel of silk reminds me of high, clear voices and red. Rough wool bags remind me of rich brown dirt and deep gravelly tones—like Dad's voice. The feel of Tig’s thick coat reminds me of water flowing over smooth rocks and yellow sunshine—I suppose because he’s always warm. I haven’t ever had to see my morning hair. I don’t have any idea what a molting arcus vulture looks like. And I can hear, smell, taste, and feel like no one else in my family.

  It helps if you have a coach who can teach you to interpret the smell of the night, feel the direction of prey, and taste danger on the breeze.

&n
bsp; Tigrabum has a long gray coat tipped with black at the end of his ears and tail. Mom has said he must be the largest cat in our Kingdom of Mar. He loves catching grasshoppers and anything else that moves but despises having his belly rubbed. It’s “undignified,” but if I sit down with him I usually end up with a lapful of cat. He has stayed with our family since I found him as an abandoned dusty ball of fuzz nearly eight years ago, and he lets me call him “Tig.” He also speaks our language, Lingua Comma.

  At some point I must fall asleep on the trunk. Uncle Cagney puts a blanket over me and leaves me. I toss and turn all night. Tig complains and moves to sleep above my head.

  I wake up. Or do I? The day feels like more of the same—gnawing, groaning, darkness. Inky blackness inside and out. I have pitied myself many times over the years; sometimes because I’m hurt, but mostly because I deserve to feel sorry for myself. Today is different.

  Mom and Dad are gone. They now live and breathe the dust and pain of the camps, and I feel alone and helpless to do anything.

  I know about the camps. We all do. I haven’t ever been clear to the bottom of our valley to our capitol city of Plen, but the valley folk talk. The camps were announced last fall as “work projects” outside Plen. They were our interim ruler Brogan’s idea. At first it sounded great; half the kingdom was already wondering where they were going to get food since the drought has gotten so bad. Hundreds flocked to the capitol to sign up for temporary work contracts in the camps. But then word got out about what they were building: weapons, magical ones, on a mass scale. Brogan sells at least some of the weapons to the Hasarrii, a fierce tribe of spiderlike creatures across the sea.

  Dad says selling weapons to the Hasarrii makes Brogan a traitor. But he doesn’t say that in the valley market. Brogan has too many mercenaries and informants everywhere. Just about anybody will turn in a neighbor for a loaf of bread now. Getting turned in means getting sent to the work camps. As for the camps themselves, they have turned into graveyards. Mysterious explosions shake the camps almost every day. “Too many farmers trying to handle magic,” Dad says. So many people died in the first couple of months Brogan started drafting workers with taxes due and keeping those who signed up longer than their commitment. Now it’s almost impossible to get out of the camps once you’re in. I can’t understand why my parents would have willingly gone to the camps, even if we do have taxes owed. It’s insanity. It’s a death wish.

  All day I find myself catching my breath to shush Uncle Cagney or Tig as I listen for the sound of my parents coming back up the road or, my mind suggests cruelly, the sound of messengers coming to report my parents died in an accident.

  However rotten I feel—for myself or my parents, I can’t always tell which—it’s impossible to retreat into myself like I want. Uncle Cagney and Tig see to that, but in different ways.

  Tig won’t let me retreat because he knows me. He knows the deep isolation I feel when Mom is overprotective and Dad avoids me. He knows the isolation himself—he doesn’t know who his parents are or where he’s from. He’s different from other cats. He’s bigger than any domestic feline, faster, stronger. He thinks differently. He’s tried to explain it to me. It has something to do with protecting and the way he feels bound to me instead of looking out for himself. And of course there’s the Lingua Comma oddity. He’s different, a loner. So we watch out for each other. Not just on the outside, but on the inside, too. He is my friend, my hunting tutor, and most importantly, my eyes.

  Uncle Cagney on the other hand has always been the best storyteller I know. To hear his stories is to leave myself behind. Nothing has changed. His tales are as wild as ever, and he never fails to find some adventure to fill the hours. Dad said that after they fought together as kingdom protectors Uncle Cagney turned pirate, but Uncle Cagney insists it was just merchant trading. Part of me is thrilled at the idea of getting Uncle Cagney to tell stories away from my parents. Too often he has started a story or wandered into a subject that has been cut off with a tongue clicking or a sharp cough from whichever of my parents is in the room.

  As we do chores and put new timber along the bottom of the hay shed he rumbles through innumerable adventures and battles—some ancient, some more recent—all in a world far from our little farm. I feel like being distant and quiet, but as he describes marches around the Valley of Fire with hundreds of heroes, of rock basilisks, and dragons, and spies, and no water to drink, and a battle far to the west in the Gray Wastelands for a place called Stone Forest, I interrupt in spite of myself. This is forbidden ground. These are the stories that don’t get told in our home.

  “The Battle for Stone Forest? Was that after Dad fought at Cauldron’s Crater? They’re in the same region right?”

  Uncle Cagney ignores most of my questions. “Not really much of a fight at Cauldron’s Crater,” he replies dismissively. “But it’s good to see you’re listening!” If there is one thing Uncle Cagney likes better than telling stories, it is telling stories to an interactive audience. I can imagine a grin cracking his whole face and his eyes crinkling up, like my fingers would feel when I used to try to read expressions with my hands. He is always grinning when he tells a story.

  “What happened at Cauldron’s Crater?” I repeat. “I’ve heard a little about the Battle for Stone Forest. King Mactogonii led the protectors against a daemon to the west of the kingdom and they lost . . .” I trail off, to let Uncle Cagney pick up the story about the daemon who is causing the drought that is killing our kingdom.

  Uncle Cagney smacks his lips, but then hesitates and changes course. “Well, mostly the Cauldron’s Crater mission was to scout out what we were up against . . . and sure it was before the Battle for Stone Forest, which is where most of the action was anyway,” he says evasively. “Not much to tell about Cauldron’s Crater.”

  “So Cauldron’s Crater was supposed to be a scouting mission? What happened? Why did heroes die?”

  Uncle Cagney is quiet for a moment. I don’t think he will give in, but then, “We found something. Killian, your dad, he saw it . . . something that changed him . . .” He fades off, grabbing another plank from the pile in front of us.

  “But what? What did Dad see?” I press.

  “But things went wrong. You wouldn’t understand,” he says, harshly enough for me to pull back a little. “Even I didn’t understand,” he mutters softly. “We were ambushed is all that matters. Evanhearst. Cronlin. Greashin. Bones and Brunch—all of us. Then we came home. Without ’em. First time as I can remember that kingdom protectors weren’t brought home. First time as I can remember something got the best of Killian.”

  I run my fingers in little spirals through the dirt. I was a toddler at the time. “How did Dad react when he heard I was blind?” I ask.

  I hold my breath. I know from snatches of conversation that this is when I went blind, while Dad was on mission at the Cauldron’s Crater. I was only two. I feel Uncle Cagney studying me, but I want to know: Is that why Dad hardly talks to me, barely hugs me? Because I’m blind? The old burning in me wells up—like it’s my fault, and I’m ashamed of being blind, but I can’t change it.

  “He took it poorly. I think he blamed himself for not being there.”

  I hear him turn and shoulder the new board into place and nail it down. Then he goes on to describe extraordinary ships he has sailed and faraway ports that he has visited.

  I wonder at his evasiveness. It’s unusual for Uncle Cagney to avoid a question; normally he would have grabbed at the opportunity to tell another story. Mom and Dad don’t talk about Cauldron’s Crater or the daemon that brought such destruction into our world. They rarely talk about anything that touches on life before the farm on the edge of the Valley of Fire. I don’t have the energy to pursue the subject, but inside I vow to ask him again in the coming days. I listen and hold Tig and miss my parents.

  Despite having been outside with Uncle Cagney all day I sleep restlessly again. This time the shadowy silhouettes of my parents are being for
ced to dig so deep into the ground that no light can reach them. Even their silhouettes disappear. I find myself forced to follow them, and just as I find them, I am suddenly granted my sight, only to find that there’s nothing to see but inky blackness.

  I wake with a start. Tig groans in his sleep, and I feel him roll over, taking up most of my pillow. I focus on my brightest and most colorful memory. I concentrate on Mom’s red dress. My fingers curl around the piece of silk she gave me, and my breathing calms. My red dress. I try to imagine myself in the red dress. In my imagination I look a lot like my mom. I wake to Tig licking my face. I sputter and push him away. There is no way to ignore a cat’s tongue on your face.

  Uncle Cagney helps me with my chores, and as always, he is talking, this time about growing up with Dad. “Of course, I was the big one in the family,” he says proudly. “Why when we were at the palace and Keira—your mother—”

  “What’s the king’s ‘First Champion’?” I interrupt. We’ve moved on from the hay shed to the horse barn. Ants love to eat the piece of timber that runs around the bottom of the buildings. Since we have removed the old rotten wood, we are now patching the hole with new timber.

  “Well, your dad was First Champion for a long time, I suppose he told you about it?” asks Uncle Cagney.

  “Not really,” I reply.

  “Oh.” He is silent a moment, and I can feel him studying me, weighing whether he should tell me, wondering why my parents have not told me anything about their lives. I guess he can’t see any harm in telling me, because he continues. “Well, First Champion is the king’s right hand, if you like. He commands the heroes in battle, meaning all protectors and the district guardians. He advises the king regarding all things having to do with the protection of the kingdom. He even deals with foreign emissaries and stands in for the king if the king is away or occupied.”