Chapter Forty

‘To win a battle and to win a war are different. The Wardens were dead to Krossis, and those he confided in. The group was in shatters and no known member yet lived. Yet, history has a funny way of bringing forth the unexpected.’ 

Two days were all that had passed since the mines. Alis was still sore and the sorrow of everything still weighed her down. Some moments she thought she would never be able to find happiness again. In other moments, she felt more determined to stop Pryce and Krossis than she ever had before.  

Alis looked up to the ever present gray cloud above her. It had been there since the day Creft pulled her from the depths of the mine. Now it swirled and moved, leaving fear and worry in its wake.  

“They are about to start,” Creaton said, stepping up beside Alis.  

His wound was still heavily bandaged, and he walked with a gait, but he would live. Creft had taken him to Alyn and the scholars at the university. They had fixed him to the best of their abilities.  

Alis looked out over the growing crowd in the Athana district. Krossis had gathered up most of the city into the district square. He had already spun a tale that rivaled the greatest of story tellers.  

He had declared Creft an enemy of the country. Claiming that Creft had worked with the Wardens to have the overseer kidnapped and tortured. The Wardens would have gained more fame and Creft would have been able to blame Krossis’s death on the Seer of Cros. However, Pryce was able to unravel the plans and stop the ploy. The Wardens were now dead and gone and the world could rejoice in knowing that they were safer.  

Krossis failed to mention in his story that the gray cloud hanging over the city was his work, along with Pryce, and the now dead scholar Taluva. Alis was sure this conference was to spin another web of lies to explain the cloud above.  

“Where is Creft?” Alis asked Creaton.  

Creaton finished overlooking the crowd. “He is still holed up in the tunnels. Says that the cloud above us is only part of The Judge and says that Krossis and Pryce won’t be satisfied with only a portion, but they may have trouble finding someone else who understood the book like Taluva did.”  

The cloud may not have been as dangerous as it could have been, but Alis still felt the pressure it put on the city. She reached up to her neck. She had lost the daliwin that Caid had started with her, but another vial hung from a rope cord.  

“Still going to go through with it huh?” Creaton asked, looking down at her.  

Alis nodded. She dropped the daliwin to the front of her shirt. She looked out over the rooftops and saw Pog and the other wardens who had survived the mines. Pog lifted a hand in the organized signal and when he dropped it again, Alis and Creaton dropped into the crowd. The overseer was wrong about one thing. The Wardens would live on.