The Warden

Chapter 3

            It had been some time since Kyla had seen a bolae match. Several centuries in point of fact. The last match she had actually gone to as an enthusiastic spectator had been one of her son's matches. Cheering and booing, hissing and laughing, she had roared with the crowd as her son made the final wrap, winning for his team, the Shrieking Banshees.

            The Shrieking Banshees, she scoffed, what a stupid name.

            But still she had belted out encouragements with the rest of the frenzied crowd with every ebb and flow in spite of the stupid name. Her middle had churned, frothing with the tumultuous energy surrounding her. At one point, she had almost run onto the field, ready to pummel the referee for making a bad call against her son.

            Before her pride. Before his arrogance. Before she did what she had to do to fix her folly. Yes, before. But before could never come again.

            Stomach as flat as her face, Lady Kyla circled the massive bolae field, ringed in by the towering stadium of trees.

            The Domrae brood had intrigued her. More specifically the Domrae boy had piqued her interest. After four centuries of wandering and searching a feat not easily achieved.

            Of course, he fell outside the realm of possibility. He had a family. Families distracted. Distractions got you killed.

            No, he disqualified with that one mark against him. Though some of his companions might pass a preliminary examination. However, they too had families, so it seemed unlikely. Werold and Wilo may have brought her to this corner of Haimlant, finally, but their aid had ended there. For now, she had to depend on her own devices, and, since all her old methods had failed, she might as well work a bit counter-intuitively for the time being.

            Peeking out from between the massive oak trunks, Kyla perused the mounted players of both teams as they trotted about, a few practice bolas spinning between the wheeling players catching the whirling instruments deftly about their forearms. Huffing as the players came in and out of her view, Kyla wedged her face as far between the rough bark as she could before she growled with frustration. Tearing her head back, the bark scratched at her skin, stinging as it went. Only a grunt accompanied her fingers as they probed the angry, raised lines along her cheek. They would disappear in an hour or so, courtesy of the cursed Manu. Almost unbidden her eyes went to the skies, seeking out that foul moon, falling back earthward just as fast, since the creature never showed her face in daylight, not like her siblings.

            One day... Kyla leapt off the ground, latching her fingers into the oak's substantial girth when she reached the apex of her flight. One day, what? – scurrying up as nimbly as a squirrel – You'll fly up to the sky and slap the Trickster for her treachery?

            Springing into the crown of the tree, Kyla folded her legs beneath her as she sank down, tremors pulsing out from her constricted chest with each breath. Clenched teeth and eyelids, a deliberate breath, settled her—for that moment—but the mischievous moon kept fluttering in the back of her mind, a pesky moth flitting about a flame in need of extinguishing with damp, crushing fingers. Those mental fingers trembled. Hesitating. Uncertain. The flame would continue. For now.

            No one occupied the spectators' booth that sat just beneath her perch, but many of the other boxes and seats surrounding the field held spectators, family and friends of the athletes trotting their mounts about the playing green. All sat in cool, verdant shade, as the gargantuan limbs stretched high above their heads, each twig burgeoning with leaves. Whoever had Worked this arena had stretched the branches to their maximum length, leaving only an oval opening for Wilo to illumine the trunk-walled space.