If the Walls Fall (Book One of the Ascend Trials) Read online

  If the Walls Fall eBook

  Book One of the Ascend Trials

  K. Malady

  Copyright © 2022 by K. Malady

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This novel’s story and characters are fictitious. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

  Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  For my favorites.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  GLOSSARY OF SÀRKANY SPEECH

  AUTHOR'S NOTE + BONUS SCENES

  SNEAK PEEK OF BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  Tonight is Halloween, and I’m dressed as the ‘girl who will get a date.’ Assuming I can summon the bravery needed to ask. So far cowardice always wins.

  “You didn’t need to walk me home,” I tell Dave when we arrive at the door to my dorm apartment, hoping to stall him for a few more minutes while I search for my courage.

  This is a practiced dance. Each night when I leave the student union, Dave escorts me home. Most nights I wear my boxy work uniform that removes even the slightest hint of curves, my almond skin splattered in pizza grease. But not tonight. Tonight, I dressed in my favorite t-shirt and jeans, styled my unruly chocolate brown hair, and volunteered to spend my rare evening off manning the safe-sex table for the school’s Halloween fair since I knew he was working.

  “You know why I do,” Dave says, his voice cracking as if he’s the kid barely out of puberty instead of me. “And we get some real fanatics on campus that wouldn’t appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “You mean encouraging sex out of wedlock?” My cheeks heat as I gesture to the knapsack that holds the few leftover condoms and pamphlets from the fair. Unsaid is that I’ve never used them before, or that I stole the joke from a bodice ripper I read three weeks ago—one that gave me the confidence and idea to show Dave how worldly I am.

  “Exactly,” he says as his feet scuff the pavement. “Add in how young you are and it’s not right, you walking alone all the time.”

  At seventeen years old, I’m not the youngest student on campus but am the youngest in my year, and the only one forced to live in campus housing until I turn eighteen as a condition of enrollment. Dave is the only guy I speak to regularly, and my feelings jump from infatuation to friendship and back each time I see him. When he learned how young I was, something I struggle to keep hidden, his chivalry kicked in and my chances for catching a boyfriend dwindled. But I’m armed with more than just condoms tonight. I’ve got a mind full of romance novels, and one of those plots has to work.

  I’ve imagined a hundred scenarios for my first date, each carefully curated from whatever book I’m reading at the time. On tonight’s walk, Dave doesn’t have a bouquet of belladonna and I wasn’t just released from confinement, but the base tropes can apply. We’ll be friends to lovers. Or opposites attract, since I’m not quite what Dave does when he’s not working security, or mentor/mentee because of the age difference—

  “Do you have plans for tonight?”

  My mind stalls as the list of plotlines spins away. I always assumed I’d need to ask someone out, once I mustered up the courage, since no one was lining up for me. I try not to swallow my tongue as my opportunity arises.

  “Just finishing my book,” I blurt, pulling my knapsack higher on my shoulders. “I’m completely free otherwise, just me. My roommate’s not supposed to be home for—”

  “Good, there’s supposed to be a storm.” He peers at the darkening sky.

  “You could come over and we could watch a movie,” I suggest, undeterred when he remains silent. I bat my hazel brown eyes like my roommate Julie does, pressing out my chest. She told me it was a “good way to emphasize your lacking assets, since your personality can be off putting.” Julie’s a jerk but with my flat chest and wide hips, I can use all the help I can get. Maybe I’ll pretend to trip and fall into his arms. That seems to work no matter the book.

  “My roommate’s boyfriend left some horror films here,” I add when his gaze remains on the sky. I can salvage this—this can still be my first date, a pre-date. Or even just a night with a new friend; I’m low on those too. I’d even take being his plucky sidekick. Anything over another night alone.

  “I need to check the windows at my boyfriend’s. But I’ll see you after your next shift,” Dave replies, giving me a strange look. “You be safe, kid.”

  A rock sinks in my gut as he yanks on the glass door of the building until it scrapes open. I slink inside, twisting my lips in defeat. After he checks that the door latched behind him, he waves goodbye and lopes away.

  I stare at Dave’s retreating back until he disappears before turning to the concrete stairwell. At least I managed to try this time. As my foot lifts to the first step, the world goes black.

  Spots dance in the darkness until a long hallway appears. It feels like a dream, that hazy floaty feeling where nothing is quite real. There’s a door at the end of the hallway, one that looks like the entrance to my Grandma’s house at the nursing home where she died—dented blue steel, sad and forgotten.

  Something tugs me towards the door, like a fishhook wrapped around my waist, which tightens and yanks.

  I wake up, face down and prone. It isn’t light behind my eyes or the feel of the earth below me that tells me something is amiss, but the smells. Instead of the normal dorm smell, it’s fresh. There’s no acrid scent wafting from the piles of dirty clothes in the corner. There’s no lingering scent of cheap spearmint cologne that Julie sprays on her pillow each night before bed, her awful boyfriend’s signature scent. Instead, it smells like earth and open air.

  Blearily, I open my eyes and straighten the crick in my neck while trying to adjust to the bright light.

  It must be a vivid dream—a continuation of the fishhook dream that haunted me only moments before. Maybe this dream is a gift for my solitary brain, one where I’m the protagonist and find my true love. The book I’m reading has a similar theme—a woman wakes in the desert, and her kidnapper is a mobster (as they often are) who she falls in love with (as one does).

  I roll onto my back and sit up, dirt and dust kicking into the air, a bright sun shining above. There’s no handsome pirate-kidnapper in my sight line. My head is also pounding, which removes the prospect of ‘romance’ from this possible dream. Grass stains my jeans, and my fleece windbreaker is ripped at the elbow; d
irt smudges my nails, and the ground is dewy beneath me. I’m outside, in a mossy green field, with nothing else in sight.

  This can’t be a dream. Unless my charming love-interest shows up in the next two minutes, I need to face facts. I’ve been kidnapped.

  I live in my imagination most times, running through various silly scenarios, like the one in the book I’m reading, like the one I imagined with Dave last night. But I’m unprepared to live through any of those outlandish plots. I wrap my arms around my middle to self-soothe, something that helped me as a child when I was nervous, and lean my head on my knees, letting my dusty hair cover my eyes. Spots of worry invade my vision. I may have been uncharitable to those literary damsels in distress.

  After taking a few deep breaths, a child’s voice sounds inside my head, high pitched and lilting, with an accent I can’t place. It tells me to calm down and start moving. It’s reassuring but oddly reminiscent of that British slogan that made the rounds over the internet a few years ago. It must be my inner voice, that running internal monologue that constantly flits through my head, reverting to something more innocent to relax me.

  I listen to myself—calm down and start moving—but my childlike guide gives me no help on which direction to go. There are no roads, only an emerald green field with rolling hills in all directions. The hills behind me grow into a forest green mountain range where a veil of mist shrouds the peaks. Aside from the gray mist hazing above me, I’m engulfed in green.

  It’s certainly more charming than the yellowed brick building of my dorm and the view of the trash-filled alley from my window. After living in a suburb of Chicago in school, and in and out of my father’s apartment before that, this is the first time I’ve seen somewhere so… empty. There are no cities anywhere in sight, not even phone or utility lines.

  Phone lines. Phone! my inner voice cries, back to its normal pitch and dialect (a Missourian twang). My cell phone should be in my canvas tote bag, the free one I received from a University bookstore promotion. I whip around until I find the bag on the ground a few feet away, crawling towards it with a giddiness caused by adrenaline and nerves. It still has my phone, wallet, pen, six pieces of chewing gum, a dog-eared romance novel that I found at the thrift store for less than a dollar, and a dozen extra condoms and pamphlets left over from the volunteering event. Whoever forced me here stole nothing but my dorm keys.

  I shake off the agitation licking at the edges of my brain that demands I walk towards help. Instead, I pull out my battered flip-phone from my bag. The low battery light blinks but with shaking fingers, I put in the passcode, Mom’s birthday, and call 911. The numbers stare back at me, remaining unchanged even after I mash the green ‘phone’ button until my thumb turns white. I peer closely at the top of the screen. Instead of a half pyramid of bars in the corner, a mean little exclamation mark greets me. I toss the phone to the bottom of the bag with more force than necessary.

  I rest my chin on my crossed knees again. I’m in the middle of nowhere, with no communication and no way to get home. In short, I’m doomed.

  Twenty minutes and lots of sniffling later, I trudge towards the mountains, praying a town emerges from the open field. The field has grasses taller than my knees that swish in the wind, but the wildlife, if any exist, remains eerily quiet.

  Pain blooms in my legs after the start of hour three. When the strap of the tote bag digs into my shoulder, I ditch my excess weight: the pen, book, condoms, and pamphlets. I grimace at the litter trailing behind me but the condoms’ phantom encouragement from the night before vanished when I woke on the ground.

  Finally, an outcropping of trees rises from the hills, and behind them, buildings with shingle roofs. Beyond that, the smattering of white and gray mist recedes into the mountains. I break into a run until the buildings grow human sized.

  The wooden shingle roofs connect to modest stucco houses patterned with wood strips in the shapes of crosses or squares, each crammed together in winding rows. It looks like a real-life fairy-tale village, one the younger me saw with my parents in Europe, seemingly unspoiled by technology until a closer look reveals the cell phone stuck to someone’s ear. I stop the memory before it goes any further, banishing it to the recesses of my mind with other thoughts of Mom (back when Rick was Dad and not just father), because straying down that path brings tears. I focus on the town I’ve found, hope blossoming in my chest.

  Close up, it resembles a strangely detailed Renaissance Fair. Ribbons and flags wave from the windows, sounds of people and bells trill in the air, and the smell of meat and hops is thick around me. The women wear jewel-toned dresses with white aprons, some smeared with grease and dirt, others crisp and clean. The men wear black or brown leggings and long jewel toned shirts belted with twine. I reconsider—not a Renaissance Faire, but a medieval fair where actors mill about, all in character as they go about their day. Except—I don’t see any booths selling wares, instead it looks like the illustrations in one of my textbooks. There also isn’t a ticket area or any form of security nearby. I ignore this, choosing to focus on the fact that there are people, there is food. Which means somewhere, there is a phone and some help.

  I scan for someone, anyone, I can turn to for help, but the moment I catch someone’s attention, they flee from my reach. I collide with the first person walking slow enough for me to accost, a pale woman about my age wearing an indigo shift dress loosely laced over her substantial bosom and gray apron. She meanders down a dirt road (aisle?), holding a basket filled with something sweet smelling. My stomach and my mouth groan in tandem as the scent wafts towards me and I clench my fists to keep from snatching something from inside.

  “Hi,” I say, wide eyed and struggling to control the shaking that I’ve pushed off all day. “I need help. I need a phone.”

  “Sásche tlóh chàkres,” she says, lifting a single bushy eyebrow and trailing her gaze down my sweat-soaked and grimy clothes. I blink back at her, hope fading that she was a Faire actor overly committed to staying in character.

  “Do—do you not speak English?” I haven’t considered the possibility that I might be in a different country, assuming I woke up only a few hours after leaving Dave. A pressure blooms behind my eyes at the thought, the tears I’m holding back minutes from bursting out of me.

  “I said, don’t speak nonsense.” She bares her crooked teeth, clutching her basket closer and inspecting me with more purpose this time.

  The tiniest bit of relief replaces the panic oozing inside me.

  “You can understand me. I need a phone.” I cross my arms around my middle, keeping my traitorous hands from either grabbing her or the basket.

  “A… phone? I told you, don’t speak nonsense.” She juts out her chin and turns away. The string on my self-control tightens and all the panic and fear I’m holding in threaten to erupt.

  “Yes,” I say, snagging her bell-shaped sleeves and holding her in place, but she shakes out of my grip. “A phone. Please. I need a phone. Or a ride to a hospital, something. I think I’ve been kidnapped.”

  As if I’ve said the magic word, her eyes flood with concern while her hands loosen on the basket in her arms. “Kidnapped? My word, you poor dear,” she tuts. “Follow me.” Without touching me, she directs me down the road onto another street.

  An unsettling feeling washes over me as I follow her. My festival impression of the town wanes—the doors we pass don’t shake against the stucco like a moveable festival building would, and the outfits have a handmade quality rather than something mass produced. If this isn’t a Faire, I’ve found myself in another country, one that speaks English as a second language and lives in technological isolation

  “My husband,” she calls out after stopping in front of a single-storied straw-thatched home with curved wood slats covering the outer walls. A giant man ducks under the doorway, but the woman keeps her eyes on me. He dresses as she does, in a grease smudged indigo shirt but with leggings and an unruly red beard covering half his face. He gazes
down at her, clasping her hand and bringing it to his lips before narrowing his eyes in my direction.

  “My husband,” she repeats in a reverent tone. She gestures with a sharp shake of her head. “This dirty child speaks gibberish, but she bade me help.”

  The man looks me over as she had, stopping on my tight jeans for longer than is polite. Considering the woman in front of him could probably breastfeed without loosening a single lace, his preoccupation with my legs has me frowning and slumping over, using the windbreaker to cover my ample hips as best I can. One corner of his mouth ticks up when I do.

  “Her attire causes me a different sort of alarm.” He leers, his teeth as crooked as hers and yellowed. “She appears not as a child but as an Eósy sent to tempt the good husbands of Dalner. I recommend we call on the town council about a possible weakening in the walls near the Eastern Gate.”

  My limited self-preservation kicks in as I ignore the insult. I need help in whatever form, even if it’s from the ogling creep.

  “Yes—call someone. Anyone. I just need a phone… or take me to a security guard, even,” I say, running dusty fingers through my sweat caked hair. The woman gingerly takes my hand and tsks out of the corner of her mouth.

  “These are not the words of Dànna, my love,” she tells her husband. “Merely the ramblings of a lost fool.”

  The string on my self control snaps. I rip my hand from hers while the emotions I’ve avoided all day force themselves to the surface.

  “This isn’t funny anymore, this isn’t a joke. I don’t care if you’ll break character.” I grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard, getting an eyeful of bare skin as her bodice opens in front of me. “Get me a phone, get me to customer service, get me a cop. I don’t care, just do something!”

  The street empties quicker than the condom jar did when the freshman seminar let out. While I bang on the door the two strangers ran through, someone speaks through the walls of a stucco building nearby.