resistant to heat. What was he doing? She felt compelled to look ahead; he was using her to figure out speed.
The horses were going close to thirty-five miles an hour. That was dangerous on this kind of road. Then she remembered that they were altered by magic. Now he was shutting down organs saving energy. Even her own body was changing. The muscles in her hands clinched around the reins. The wind was building as the shouts of the men behind them were growing fainter.
Then the burst of energy came. Massive amounts of magical and physical energy ripped out of Legon and into the horses. They were starting to accelerate, and she felt herself being pulled back but being held by the sticking spell. The wind was strong at forty miles an hour. More and more energy poured from him. Now fifty, then sixty. The trees were starting to blur as they hit seventy miles an hour. A town was fast coming up, the Queen’s banner flying at the edge. But at seventy-five miles an hour, the town flew by them, the guards never having time to figure out what was going on.
Now eighty, and the acceleration finally leveled off. The sound from the hooves was just one continuous noise. After a bit they slowed back down to sixty, but still they kept going. The horses were tiring fast and so was Legon, but still he put more and more into them. Finally she sensed him losing consciousness and worry crept into her mind. If Legon passed out then the spells helping the horses would fail and the animals would be left running at sixty miles an hour. They would fall for sure. They slowed gradually at first and soon they were close to what they could do on their own. As they slowed to fifteen miles an hour, Legon passed out and Sasha unstuck from her saddle. The horses were not completely spent, and she knew that there were still plenty of chemicals in their blood to keep them going for a few more hours.
“Arkin, should we keep going?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“Yes.” He didn’t say any more and she was no longer able to connect with his mind. This worried her too. Kovos’ death was sad. She knew that it would hit her soon and then she would lose it, but Arkin took their safety as a matter of personal responsibility.
They trotted along the road with no one talking. She glanced at Keither, who was looking at the back of Pixy’s head and not making a sound. He had been like his brother today, fighting the way he did. She was proud of him. As she thought this, her eyes began to burn and she tried to focus on logic. There would be time to mourn later.
* * * * *
Keither knew that he should be crying, but he wasn’t. He just didn’t have it in him. And Kovos wouldn’t have wanted it that way. He wouldn’t want people sulking over his death. He tried to calm his cluttered mind but couldn’t. The last thing he said to his brother was that he was selfish, which was something Keither knew to be untrue. He knew what his brother had done for him over the years; kept him from getting hit with arrows, saved him from being trampled by animals. It was too hard to think of the number of times Kovos had saved him from harm if not death. But what had he done for Kovos? What had he done for anyone? There wasn’t much that was for sure. He always had great intentions of helping, but when it came time to do it he wasn’t there. It should have been him that had been killed by the Iumenta, should have been him that had made the ultimate sacrifice for the group. All of the others put in effort, but he was just along for the ride.
Wasn’t that the way that he lived his entire life? He never thought about a trade, never cared to learn his father’s, never tried to do well at anything. About a week into their journey he had turned fifteen. They would have celebrated, but that was right after their run-in with the Royal Guard and by the time he thought of it he didn’t care. Still, fifteen years and nothing to show for it. Yes, he was young, but that was no excuse. By this age most of men in Salmont