Endure - Sara B. Larson Page 0,86
Antion still considered an enemy? I desperately wondered what the letter from Osgand had contained. I didn’t know where I was, or how to get to the capital city of Blevon, where King Osgand lived, but I was easily able to pick out the path the people of Antion had left — a wide swath of trampled grass and broken bushes. I was even able to find where they’d made camps from the mounds where fires had been built and the flattened grass where tents had been erected.
For four more days, I followed their trail, which wound over the hills and through the strange, thin trees I remembered from my last trek into Blevon, but never once spotted a single town. I wondered if Damian had someone helping him avoid them on purpose, or if they were just hoping they were heading in the right direction. Eljin could have guided him, but he had come with me. And now he was gone forever.
The deeper into the kingdom Nia and I traveled, the cooler the temperatures grew, especially at night. The ground also grew harder and drier, but not in the hot, parched way of Dansii’s. Blevon was a wilder kingdom, with thin grasses and tall trees that clumped together in bunches, most of their strange and brightly colored leaves littering the ground, rather than staying attached to the trees. I remembered Eljin’s story — that Blevon had been cursed because of Prince Delun’s atrocities in becoming a black sorcerer and attacking his brother to try and take his throne — and wondered if that was why it was so cold at night, and why the soil was like a massive, unending rock beneath Nia’s hooves the farther we traveled through the kingdom. It also led me to wonder if the even harsher climate of Dansii was yet another curse — an even more powerful one, because of their horrific, ongoing atrocities.
The hills that had started out as rolling, grassy knolls grew larger and larger with each passing day, turning into steep, rocky inclines that would suddenly pitch down again toward wide, gaping valleys where small streams gathered into paltry lakes that reflected cloudless skies. And surrounding the lakes were towns.
Towns that were abandoned — completely empty. We rode past silently as I fought a chill of dread. What had happened to make all these people — Antionese and Blevonese alike — leave their homes and flee to King Osgand?
A massive mountain range had begun to take form on the horizon a few days into our trek through Blevon, and I quickly realized the path I was following in the wake of the Antionese exodus was heading straight for them. I knew I was traveling somewhat northwest, and that made me wonder if the peaks I could see jutting up into the sky in the far distance were part of the Naswais Mountains, which divided the border of Blevon and Dansii, or if these were an entirely different range.
The path we were on turned into more of a rocky trail the closer we got to the massive mountains, and though the ground continued to rise and fall into peaks and valleys, we seemed to be moving up a steady incline. I imagined it would have been difficult to get such a large group of people and animals to move as quickly on the narrower road — I could only hope it would slow King Armando down. I was continually looking back, searching the sky for smoke or dust or any sign that he was getting close, but so far, there had been no sign of him gaining on me and Nia.
After six or seven days in Blevon, with food options growing scarcer and scarcer, I could feel myself weakening again. I needed to hunt, but I didn’t dare take the time, too afraid of King Armando drawing closer. Nia bravely pushed on, but we were no longer galloping. Instead, Nia plodded up the steep inclines and then braced herself as her hooves threatened to skid down the declines on the other side of the summits we traversed.
The night of the seventh day, the air was bitingly cold. My fingers were almost numb as I clutched the reins, and Nia’s breath plumed into clouds in front of her face as she huffed her way up yet another steep incline. The mountain peaks were close now, so close; if I’d had to guess, I was fairly certain we would reach them in two