The Sword and The Mountain (Kathardra book 1)

“Lessa. Leeesssaaaa. It’s time to wake up”

“No.”

“Lessa. Get out of bed.”

“No.” The bed was warm. It was welcoming. Nobody was beating her with a stick in the bed. Nobody was staring at her like she was a sideshow in her bed. But it was hard to sleep once someone was talking to you in your head.

And now a hand was shaking her shoulder.

She pulled the blankets away from her face and glared at Zar.

“Lessa, wake up. It’s time to go.”

“I don’t like you right now.”

He winced, “Sorry.”

“Fine.” She glared at his back as he left her room. Pulling the blankets down was a huge mistake. Her arms hurt. Sitting up was an even worse mistake. Her abs hurt, she didn’t know if she was able to hold herself up. And her legs, her legs were as tight as logs.

With a mighty groan, Lessa stood up. The stretch that followed was almost reflective. Every step she took was a struggle.

She moved slowly, getting dressed, and getting her boots on, she didn’t think she was capable of moving faster than a sloth today.

She emerged into the main room of the tent and Zar was waiting for her at the table, food laid out for her to choose from. Along with a mug of tea, she would be required to drink.

A groan escaped Lessa’s lips as she used her arms to lower herself onto a free chair.

“That’s bad huh?” His expression was sympathetic, but Lessa didn’t care.

She glared at him across the table. He did this to her.

“Malek tea will help you recover faster.”

“Unless it’s going to magically heal me…. Wait, can you do that?”

He shook his head. “No, sorry, not for sore muscles. It’s better to let them heal naturally. You can heal them with magic, but if your aim is to build strength, healing with magic impedes the process.”

She accepted his answer with a dissatisfied grunt. Seemed pretty useless.

The tea wasn’t as bad today, she took stacked ham and cheese on a piece of fluffy bread and took bites in between gulps of the tea.

Zar was clearly anxious to get going, he watched her take the last few sips of her tea standing behind his chair, hands white-knuckling its back.

“Let us be off.” He said before she even put the mug on the table.

He was at the door holding it open before she even stood. Stiffly.

“You’ll start feeling better once you get moving.”

The sun was just starting to bring the sky from the deep blacks of night to the gray of early dawn. The air was brisk and dew collected on the grass, their tracks clearly laid in it as they made their way to the dirt road.

“Do we need to start this early, every day?” Lessa could hear that she sounded petulant. But it was too early to care.

“Once you progress far enough we won’t need to train every day. Just most of them.” He was way too cheerful for the sun not even being up yet.

“Lovely.” Her breath fogged the air as she mumbled the word.

They reached the clearing in the woods way faster than Lessa would have liked, faster than she thought she could have. Zar was right though, her muscles were already starting to feel looser.

With regret, Lessa picked up her stick.

She had not thought it was possible, but she had gotten worse. She was so weak from her beating the previous day that she had trouble lifting her stick. And everything hurt.

“Higher, block higher Lessa!” His voice was sharp and commanding as Lessa tried to lift her stick high enough to deflect his stick. “If you don’t block high enough, you do not give yourself enough room to actually deflect. You might get hit anyway.”

In addition to Zar giving Lessa unnecessary tips, Storm pushed a visual into Lessa’s head of what her incompetent block looked like.

“I know!” She didn’t mean to yell but getting all instructions twice was wearing on her. And she was just too tired to lift her arms high enough. Her shoulders screamed each time she tried to lift the stick. It was so light, but she could barely get it above her head. Let alone use it to effectively push away Zar’s own mock blade.

“Come. Again.” Zar curled fingers to gesture her toward him.

After a steadying breath, Lessa came toward Zar. She attempted a half-hearted swing toward him, it was sloppy, she knew it. She could feel the bad angle even as she followed through it.

“Lessa.” She hated that he could use her name as a scold, as she was attacking him, and he blocked her lazily. “Were you even trying? Again.”

She ground her teeth, hands on hips paced away from Zar. She was tired. She was battered. She was being held captive by a dragon. She was hungry and she just wanted to go home and sleep. Not in a tent on a glorified cot. On her own bed. In her own home. She wanted to see her brother and her dad. She even wanted to see her mom who had been yelling at her for fighting the last day she had seen her.

The irony almost made Lessa laugh.

But she was too tired to laugh.

She tossed the stick to the side and sat down in the tall grass.

“No.”

She curled into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her legs and her forehead on her knees. She would not cry.

This was all too much but she would not cry.

“Lessa?” Storm asked, uncharacteristically concerned.

“What do you mean no? Pick it up.”

“I mean no.” Her mood snapped from melancholy to fury in a second.”

Rage flooded her body with adrenaline and Lessa launched to her feet.

“I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask for any of this! I don’t want to be some hero. I don’t want to learn how to use a sword. I clearly can’t use magic.” Zar’s eyes went wide at Lessa’s ranting. He backed away from her animosity as it might burn him. “I don’t want to share my thoughts with a lizard with wings! I just want to go home!”

She finished with her eyes on Storm. The dragon was the source of her anger, Zar wasn’t the one forcing her to stay here.

Storm leapt to her feet as fast as Lessa had just moments before, the meadow was only so big and Zar pressed himself toward the trees making room for the dragon that was swelling with anger.

Lessa did not move.

The dragon opened her maw, nearly as wide as Lessa was tall, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth as long as Lessa’s hand.

She roared like thunder. It hit Lessa in the chest and reverberated through her ribs. Pain shot through her ears and she only did not clap her hands over her ears because her anger prohibited it.

“I am not a lizard!” The thought collided with Lessa’s brain like an avalanche. Storm’s howling roar quieted to a deep rumble that scrambled Lessa’s belly as she continued. “And you are not going anywhere. We need to be here. I can feel it from my scales to my bones. And you could too if you opened your mind.”

For a moment they stood in stasis.

“What do you mean?” The shock of the statement stilled Lessa and she neglected to communicate with Storm in silence.

“Where do you need to be Lessa?”

“I-”

“No. Where do you need to be? Here or there. Search your bones.”

With reluctance, Lessa did as she was told. She searched her ‘bones’.

Would she really be able to go home? If Storm actually did take her home, then what? Would she be able to go on with the rest of her life knowing there was a portal to another world in her front yard?

“Storm. I’m not a hero.” Lessa dropped her head in defeat against Storm’s snout.

“No. You are not. And no one ever said you have to be. Ask Zar what the prophecy said.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“Zar?” Lessa called out to where he was standing among the trees. This had to be the strangest argument he had ever seen.

“Yes?” He only took a few steps forward, clearly still distrusting Storm after watching her outburst.

“What does the… legend say again?” It made her sick to ask.

“That a sword maiden will ride into Kathardra with a black sword. By her hand alone will the royal family be restored to The Mountain seat.”

“You see. That doesn’t say anything about being a hero.”

“Huh.”

“Is everything… Are you….” Zar’s eyes bounced from Lessa to Storm as he slowly came further into the meadow.

“I’m fine,” she breathed out.

“Look, Lessa.” His fingers raked through his hair. “I am sorry this has all happened the way it is. I don’t mean to trap you here.”

“You aren’t.”

He looked confused.

“She is.” Lessa thumbed over her shoulder toward Storm.

He was even more confused.

“Zar, even if you were willing to let me leave, Storm wouldn’t.”

His brow furrowed as he looked at Storm in a new light, and then he shook the expression away.

“Even so. I am the one who opened the portal. I let those men through. It was an accident. But it was still my fault. I should have been more careful. Had I acted with caution this all might have gone better.”

Lessa shook her head vigorously and swiped her hand through the air. “At this point what’s done is done. Had you not been there I don’t know what would have happened to Brody.”

“Had I not been there Brody never would have been taken.”

For a moment they stared at each other.

“I think we can agree that it could have been better.” She offered a smile to ease tension. But it was forced and didn’t help. The corners of her mouth fell again. “But I think you absolved yourself of any unfortunate decisions when you also rescued us.”

Lessa had not realized how much this was weighing on Zar before now. He was hiding anguish.

“Zar. You can let it go.”

His jaw clenched and he nodded at the ground.

Lessa scooped her toe under her training blade and launched it upward. She caught the handle and swung the blade at Zar.

He smoothly brought his own stick up to meet hers. His eyes rested on her for an extended moment...

“I think you’re supposed to be turning me into a ‘swordmaiden.’”

A grin spread across his face and he swirled his stick around hers, easily redirecting her mock sword.