The Go-Between Read online

  A young man cursed three hundred years ago for a selfless act of bravery…

  A scarred young woman shunned by society for an accident that wasn’t her fault…

  A manipulative god…

  A prince trying to thwart an assassination attempt…

  And a dying king trying to secure the crown for his son and stop a revolution…

  The Go-Between

  Book 1 in The Nilaruna Cycles

  Andrea Ring

  Table of Contents

  I. MAJA

  II. PRINCE KAI

  III. MAJA

  IV. THE KING

  V. PRINCE KAI

  VI. NILARUNA

  VII. THE KING

  VIII. PRINCE KAI

  IX. SAPHALA

  X. NILARUNA

  XI. MAJA

  XII. PRINCE KAI

  XIII. NILARUNA

  XIV. PRINCE KAI

  XV. NILARUNA

  XVI. MAJA

  XVII. THE KING

  XVIII. PRINCE KAI

  XIX. NILARUNA

  XX. PRINCE KAI

  XXI. SAPHALA

  XXII. NILARUNA

  XXIII. PRINCE KAI

  XXIV. MAJA

  XXV. NILARUNA

  XXVI. MAJA

  XXVII. NILARUNA

  XXVIII. PRINCE KAI

  XXIX. MAJA

  XXX. SAPHALA

  XXXI. NILARUNA

  XXXII. PRINCE KAI

  XXXIII. MAJA

  XXXIV. SAPHALA

  XXXV. PRINCE KAI

  XXXVI. NILARUNA

  XXXVII. THE KING

  XXXVIII. SAPHALA

  XXXIX. PRINCE KAI

  XL. NILARUNA

  XLI. SAPHALA

  XLII. PRINCE KAI

  XLIII. NILARUNA

  XLIV. PRINCE KAI

  XLV. NILARUNA

  XLVI. SAPHALA

  XLVII. PRINCE KAI

  XLVIII. NILARUNA

  XLIX. THE KING

  L. PRINCE KAI

  LI. NILARUNA

  LII. PRINCE KAI

  LIII. NILARUNA

  LIV. MAJA

  LV. THE KING

  LVI. PRINCE KAI

  LVII. NILARUNA

  LVIII. MAJA

  LIX. THE KING

  LX. NILARUNA

  LXI. PRINCE KAI

  LXII. MAJA

  LXIII. NILARUNA

  FAQs

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  I. MAJA

  Awareness of an intruder prickles over my skin, and I shiver.

  The new Go-Between approaches. I close my eyes and merge my mind with hers.

  Cold, it’s so cold. Why do I have to come here at night, crossing the rapids of the Swifty over that fraying rope in the dark, the spray soaking my legs to my thighs, as if the rope weren’t slippery enough without being wet? And no torch. No torch! Who thought that was a good idea? I don’t care if the old man doesn’t like it. If I break my leg on the way up, he will not even have a Go-Between.

  Silence. Except for my feet crunching dry leaves on the path, my occasional blunder into a bush or a tree branch. The high priest told me no animals reside within a league of the cave, but I didn’t believe him. I have to stop and listen. There must be at least a cricket.

  Nothing. My labored breaths. My heartbeat pounding in my ears. Nothing else.

  That’s the fork, right up ahead. Lit by the moon peeking through the branches of two oaks. The fork is clear, as he said it would be. I must go right, up the face of the mountain.

  Oof! Darn rock in the path! Mother told me to wear my leather slippers, but Father insisted on bare feet. Bare feet, two moons past harvest! I thought he was crazy at the time, but there’s no way I could have crossed the rope in slippers.

  No sound now. No more trees, so no more leaves. My feet padding along on dust and rock. My impatient sighs.

  The rocks on both sides of me seem to rise as I climb, until I’m almost in a tunnel, and the moon overhead casts crisscrossing shadows over my path. I must be close.

  I hunch my back, bow my head, and ignore the burning of my thighs and my ever-present limp as the path steepens. Crazy old man. Crazy old town! Why don’t they just move him? We have a spare room since Peter…we have a room. I could take better care of him if he were nearby. If I were going to take care of him.

  I chuckle at that. Silly little girl.

  And she freezes as my laugh rumbles into the night.

  Great stones! He’s laughing? The old man is laughing? But he’s alone, he’s supposed to be alone. Who laughs by themselves?

  I have to get this over with.

  She appears in the doorway of the cave and stops, hands groping for the wall.

  “Two paces to your left,” I say.

  She hesitates for a heartbeat, then reaches for the wall, leaning against it for support. I’m in her mind, so I know she’s scared out of her wits, and trying not to show it.

  “Bit of a climb,” she says, voicing the bravado she doesn’t feel.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She has the audacity to snort.

  “About that,” she says, straightening up and turning her face to my voice. “I’d like to discuss moving you.”

  I raise a thick eyebrow at her, but of course she can’t see me in the dark.

  “First day on the job and already looking to make changes. Perhaps we should start with introductions.”

  Alarm bells ring in her head, and she knows she’s miss-stepped.

  “My apologies,” she says, bowing her head. “My name is Nilaruna.”

  I have to catch my breath. “The first light of dawn.”

  She nods. “My family calls me Nili.”

  “I am not your family.”

  She nods again.

  “Welcome, Go-Between. I am Maja, Hermit and Protector of the village of Dabani.”

  Nilaruna laughs.

  “Am I amusing you?” I ask her.

  “I thought my job was to protect you,” she says.

  “Your job is to assist me. There is a difference.”

  “If you live like a hermit in this cave, how can you protect anyone?”

  “I can leave any time I choose,” I say. “I choose not to.”

  “And if Dabani needs your help?” she asks. “What will you choose then?”

  “To do my duty.”

  Nilaruna walks five paces straight into the blackness.

  “Stop,” I say.

  She takes two more steps before obeying. “I vowed to end this farce, Maja. Nishta was my friend.”

  Ah. The last Go-Between. I didn’t know her well. Nishta fell into the rapids on the way to her third visit here, and I was in her mind the entire time. I spoke to her. I comforted her. I tried to tell her how to climb out, but she was too paralyzed by fear to move. I wept for her, a girl too young and innocent to die.

  “I am sorry for your loss,” I say.

  “She fell into the rapids. Did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you save her?”

  I clench my jaw and it pops loudly.

  “Your duty is not to question,” I say.

  “Your duty is to protect!” she screams.

  I stand and lean against the back wall of the cave. “We are at an impasse, then.”

  “Impasse? Is that what you call it? Twenty-two girls in my lifetime. Twenty-two Go-Betweens. We’re supposed to last fifty moons.”

  Nilaruna pulls a knife from the pockets of her trousers and clenches the hilt tight in her fist.

  “What have you been doing to them?” She takes two more steps toward me.

  “You do not understand of what you speak. Put down the knife,” I say.

  �
��I understand you are old,” she whispers. “I understand that if you couldn’t protect the Go-Betweens, perhaps you cannot protect yourself. And besides, given the odds, I understand my fate.”

  “I would never harm you,” I say.

  “Did you say the same to Nishta?”

  And Nilaruna lunges for me.

  ***

  The new Go-Between cannot see me, but she has surprisingly honed instincts. Her knife is two paces from my face before I stop her with a flick of my wrist.

  “Stop,” I whisper.

  She stops, muscles quivering from her adrenaline high.

  “Drop the knife.”

  The knife falls from her grasp and clatters on the stone floor.

  “Sit.”

  Nilaruna’s knees buckle, and she falls in a heap to the floor.

  I lean forward and study her.

  She has a boyish figure swathed in loose-fitting linen trousers and a billowy pullover tunic. Manly clothes. Poking from beneath her trousers are her small dirty feet, heavily calloused and marred by cuts and scrapes, including one deep puncture wound on the heel of the left. Her fingernails are blunt, worn down by manual labor. She is obviously not accustomed to servants, and this seems to be the most attractive thing about her. Until I notice her eyes.

  They are difficult to see, given her face. The left side of her face is melted, as though it were made of candle wax. Her left brow hangs low over her eyelid, the scar tissue almost completely covering her eye. Her left cheek looks like the bark of a pine tree. The left corner of her mouth sags down in a permanent pout. Dear heavens, what pain she must have endured!

  But my gaze easily slips over the scar tissue and lingers back on her right eye. Her jade green eye. In the dark, the pupil has dilated wide, making the green that much more vivid. The green captivates me. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror, though I haven’t seen my own reflection for centuries. My eyes are the same shade. Or were, once.

  “I’m going to heal you,” I say, “but I must release you from my thrall to do so. Will you remain still?”

  I slip back into her mind.

  He can do magic! Holy heavens, no one ever mentioned that. I can’t stop him. This is it. I’m dead.

  “I ask again, will you remain still if I release you?”

  Nilaruna nods once, and I release her.

  Her breath rushes out in one long sigh, and she wraps her arms around her middle.

  “You have nothing to fear,” I say. “Your feet are a mess. Stretch them out in front of you and I will heal them.”

  She complies. If he starts to hurt me, I can kick him.

  I chuckle softly, and Nilaruna stiffens, but she doesn’t move.

  I want to touch her, this brave, unsightly little creature, and comfort her in a way I haven’t comforted another in centuries. But it is too soon, and I will not play my hand so early. So I gather the magic in my mind and release it from afar. When the warm energy swirls around her feet and starts to heal, I can hear Nilaruna sigh in her mind.

  Ahhh. Sweet gods. He’s really doing it. But why would he heal me? Why? He only wants me dead.

  “You have endured enough pain for a lifetime,” I say. The healing finishes and I draw the magic back into me. “Tell me how you sustained such injuries.”

  “Crossing the Swifty and climbing a mountain barefoot wasn’t such a great idea.”

  I smile in the dark. “I meant the injuries to your face.”

  “How can you see them?” she says, panicked. “It’s black in here.”

  “My eyes have long-since adjusted,” I say.

  Her forehead crumples under the pain of this statement. I thought he wouldn’t be able to see. One of my reasons for coming is gone. “Do not pity me,” she says.

  “How can I not feel pain for what you have been through?” I ask.

  She sits up straight. “You are Maja, Hermit and Protector, unmoved by human suffering.”

  “Says who?”

  “Then why didn’t you save Nishta?”

  I sigh my own sigh and raise my eyes to the ceiling. Such a simple question. Such a difficult question.

  “So your training begins, Nilaruna,” I say. “Repeat the ritual words, and I will answer your question.”

  She eyes the back of the cave from where my voice drifts, and her gaze seems to find mine, even in the black. “If you promise to answer my questions, truthfully, I will speak them.”

  “I do.”

  She nods to herself and shakily climbs to her feet. “I, Nilaruna, Go-Between for Maja and the village of Dabani, swear to perform my duties as Maja wills. I swear my fealty to Maja. Everything I have is his, every thought is for his safety and protection. I will confide in no one but him, until it is time to pass my knowledge along to the next Go-Between. Dabani will be safe. I will it so.”

  “I will it so,” I murmur.

  Nilaruna half smiles. “I cannot kill you now.”

  “Not unless you want the gods to intervene.”

  “But what if you try to kill me?”

  “You are my link to the village, my purpose for existing. I would no sooner harm you than kill myself. Why do you not believe this is so?”

  “Nishta,” she whispers. And then her voice grows stronger. “And the twenty-one before her.”

  I conjure a sitting cushion with my magic and place it on the floor next to her.

  “Sit down, two paces to your right.”

  Nilaruna sidesteps, and her foot catches the edge of the cushion. She lowers herself onto it.

  “I did know when Nishta fell into the rapids,” I say. “I did not know her well — we’d only met two times, and we did not have a strong connection. She was frightened of me, frightened of the trip up the mountain, frightened of what I might ask her to do.”

  “So you let her drown,” Nilaruna says, her voice a knife through my heart.

  “No. Who she was has nothing to do with that. I entered her mind and tried to help her. I told her what to do, what rock to grab onto, how to shimmy out of her skirt lest it drag her down. She would not respond to me.”

  “You entered her mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “But…can you enter mine, as well?”

  I hesitate for a heartbeat. “Yes.”

  “So why couldn’t she hear you?”

  “She heard me,” I say. “She was too overcome with fear to respond.”

  Nilaruna pushes to her knees on the cushion. “But you are the Protector. You should have gone to her.”

  “I could not.”

  “Why not?”

  This is a secret I do not usually reveal until training is close to complete — a couple of moons away from now, at least. But nothing about this Go-Between is proceeding as usual.

  “The spell that allows me to remain Dabani’s protector also forces me to remain on this side of the Swifty. I can only cross it if Dabani is in danger.”

  “But what of her people? Surely danger to the village includes danger to its people.”

  “I wish it were so,” I say.

  “So you…did not wish Nishta harm?” Nilaruna holds her breath as she waits for my answer.

  “Never.”

  She grows silent, and I slip back into her mind.

  So Maja is not responsible. If he’s telling me the truth, though I think he is. I can usually tell when someone’s lying, and he’s not lying. But then…I tried to kill him!

  Nilaruna starts to shake with the remembrance of her deeds.

  “I understand why you thought I was to blame for Nishta’s death,” I say. “The tales of what I am capable of have obviously grown over the cycles. Once upon a time, a Go-Between’s death would not have been attributed to me.”

  “There are no tales,” she says.

  I cock my head. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said. Think about it — Dabani’s only link to you is the Go-Betweens. The ritual words claim that I must pass on my knowledge of you to the next Go-Between, b
ut that hasn’t been done in almost twenty cycles.”

  “Why not?” I demand. “Every Go-Between has sworn it!”

  “But…I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  Nilaruna growls in frustration. “Twenty-two Go-Betweens in nineteen cycles. Most of them didn’t last a full cycle. You had to know this.”

  “Of course I knew this. I’m not blind. I know when a new Go-Between arrives. I simply thought…”

  I sense her eyes on me again.

  “What did you think happened to all of them?” Nilaruna asks me gently.

  I shrug helplessly in the dark. “Marriage…or family hardship…the only two reasons a Go-Between can end her duties.”

  “You forgot the most important reason,” she whispers in the dark. “Death.”

  ***

  Twenty-two Go-Betweens have died in my service.

  Twenty-two young girls have lost their lives serving me.

  It cannot be.

  “How do you know this?” I ask.

  “It is well-known,” she says. “High Priest Sanji keeps records. He makes us memorize all he learns.”

  “Tell me.”

  Nilaruna sits back down on the cushion and stretches out her legs.

  “There isn’t much to tell. We take the oath not to confide in anyone, so there is very little known about our interactions with you.”

  “Then what did he have you memorize?” I say.

  She grimaces. “Their names. How they died.”

  “Tell me,” I repeat.

  Nilaruna leans back on her arms. “Ruth was the first to be released from service by death.”

  “Ruthie,” I whisper. “She loved a boy. I assumed they married. How?”

  She nods. “They were engaged. Happy, by all accounts. On the eve of her thirtieth visit to you, the two quarreled. No one knows what it was about. He pushed her down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”

  “No,” I whisper.

  She nods again.

  “But the boy…he was a gentle farmer’s son. Never spoke a harsh word to her. How can that be?”

  “My mother says we all have a dark side,” Nilaruna says. “Padma was next, released from service when her father slit her throat.”

  “What?!”

  “He claimed to catch her in the hay with one of the warrior caste.”

  “Never!” I say.

  “Arpita was strangled in her sleep. They never caught who did it. Kalima—”

  “Stop.”

  “—took a fever, and died three days later with a strange rash across her chest.”