After the Fall (The Narrow Gate Book 1) Read online

  AFTER THE FALL

  THE NARROW GATE PREQUEL

  By Janean Worth

  AFTER THE FALL (prequel in THE NARROW GATE SERIES)

  Copyright 2015 by Janean Worth and Author’s Art books

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, xerography or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, Janean Worth and the publisher, Author’s Art, www.authorsart.com

  For my own mother, who is simply the best. Thank you for being the wonderful person that you are.

  Chapter One

  The door to the cottage bucked wildly against the leather hinges, banging against the wooden frame and showering Kara with dust from the daub and wattle ceiling as she rushed to answer the summons.

  Already filthy from her day of cleaning for Mrs. Malmont, the dust falling into her hair from the shabby ceiling didn’t bother her as much as the racket caused by the pounding. After a day of putting up with squalling toddlers and Mrs. Malmont’s constant nagging and screeching, Kara just wanted a few moments of silence and a little something to eat to ease the gnawing hunger in her belly.

  Who could be coming to visit at this time of day, anyway? And for what purpose? No one ever came to the tiny tumbledown cottage that she shared with her mother. Kara grumbled her irritation as she removed the sturdy wooden bar that held the door closed, then jerked open the heavy leather-bound door.

  Maude, her mother’s good friend, who was forced to work at the Sovereign’s House alongside Kara’s mother, stood on the threshold. From the expression of fear and anguish upon Maude’s face, Kara knew immediately that something terrible must have happened at the House.

  “What is it, Maude?” Kara tried to control the tremor in her voice, her petty irritation at the interruption to her afternoon solitude now gone, replaced by an anxious fear that clawed up the inside of her throat and threatened to choke her with its intensity. “Where is my mother?”

  Maude’s face twisted with emotion at the question, her red-rimmed eyes filled with tears and her mouth flapped opened and closed several times as if she were trying to speak. The elderly lady knotted her chapped hands into the stained apron that she wore over her threadbare dress, as if the action could wring her own words from her mouth.

  Kara’s anxiety turned to terror as she watched Maude trying to form words. Seeing the state that Maude was in, she almost didn’t want the woman to find her voice and blurt out the words that Kara was sure were coming. In that second, Kara wanted desperately not to know what Maude was there to tell her.

  After scrubbing her eyes with the back of one work-worn hand, Maude swallowed hard and found her voice.

  “I’m sorry, child, but your mother is dead.”

  A grief-stricken scream welled up within Kara, but she would not let it pass her lips. Anguish filled her chest until she though that her heart might explode from the pain of it, but she stood silently before Maude and waited for the rest. Somehow, she knew there was more bad news coming.

  “She was,” Maude’s voice quivered and she gulped again, as if holding back sickness. “She was mauled and killed by a rampaging Tracken at the House.”

  A Tracken! Kara had never seen one of the beasts, but the creatures that the Sovereign forcibly kept as pets and companions to the Enforcer patrols were supposed to be fearsome beasts. The animals were known for their savagery and for their skill at tracking prey.

  Kara swallowed hard, trying to keep another cry behind her teeth. The thought of her beautiful, gentle mother being ripped apart by such a monster and killed in that manner was too much to bear. She forced the imagery from her mind, fearing that she would loose all self-control and dissolve into a wailing mess in front of her mother’s friend.

  Maude glanced over her shoulder at the narrow empty street that ran in front of the run down cottage, looking left and right as if searching for someone. Fear sharpened the older woman’s features then, and she leaned closer, whispering now, though there was no one around to hear.

  “Your mother was a friend, Kara, you know that. That’s why I snuck out of the House to warn you before the Enforcers get here. They be coming to get you now that you’re a Stray, Kara,” the woman’s voice was sharp with fear. “They be coming, and I came to warn you first. You need to run, child.”

  Kara shook her head mutely, her mind unwilling to take in this extra burden on top of the knowledge that her mother was now dead. She couldn’t fathom being a Stray, even though her newly orphaned status made her one. She couldn’t run, even though she knew that Maude would not lie about something so serious. It was all too much to take in. Her mind seemed to be frozen, caught in a strange combination of inertia and lethargy. Maude stepped closer and grabbed Kara’s shoulders in a harsh grip, her bony fingers, strengthened by the hard labor she was forced to do in the House, dug into the Kara’s soft flesh as Maude gave her a good shake.

  “Are you hearing me, girl? Best you be leaving, now, Kara. You need to take what you can carry and run. Without your mother, you’ll be a Stray, and it will be life in the House for you too. I risked my own life, and that of my own children, to come warn you because your mother was a friend. A good friend. And I’d have wanted her to do the same for my own children as I’m doing for you now.”

  The pain in Kara’s shoulders focused her somewhat, snapping her back to the moment.

  “But, Maude, where can I run to? There’s nowhere in GateWide that the Enforcers won’t find me. Nowhere.”

  Maude’s features firmed with determination, her red-rimmed eyes going steely with determination. “That’s why you have to leave GateWide.”

  The horror of that statement shocked Kara so much that she stepped back from the woman, wrenching her shoulders from the tight grasp. Maude had gone mad!

  “I can’t leave GateWide. It offers the only safety from the wilderness and the beasts. You know that!” Kara couldn’t believe that Maude had even suggested it. Everyone knew that only danger and death lurked outside the gate.

  Maude threw another worried look over her shoulder, checking the street again, and then she straightened and backed away from Kara. “I cannot force you to flee, Kara, and yes it sounds like madness, but, believe me, it is your only hope. If you won’t believe me, then believe your mother. I know she told you more than she should have about the House, so you know how it is for Strays there.”

  Her mother had warned her. And it was those remembered warnings that convinced Kara and coaxed her into action.

  “I can’t stay no longer. The Enforcers will be here soon,” Maude said as she backed the rest of the way out of the doorway. Throwing one last, concerned look Kara’s way, she turned to go.

  “God be with you, Kara,” she whispered as she fled down the road.

  Kara’s heart clenched painfully in her chest again as soon as Maude was gone. She was alone, truly alone, for the first time in her young life. After her father’s death, she’d at least had her mother. And now she realized that there was no one else who loved her. No one who could protect her. No one who cared if she lived or died. She was a Stray now, in every way.

  Kara quickly gathered her ratty rucksack, the one she used to use to carry her books to the tutor’s house when times had been better. Then, the sack had been new and fine, but now it was worn and ugly, showing wear along the leather seams. Still, she was grateful for its comforting bulk as she began to fill it with what few possessions she had.

  Chapter Two

  K
ara scuttled from shadow to shadow, trying to make her way to the Gate without being seen. The Gate would close at dusk to keep the beasts at bay during the night, and with dusk being only moments away, if she didn’t make it out by then, she would be trapped inside until morning. Morning would be too late to make her escape. As soon as the Enforcers found her missing when they came to collect their new Stray for her servitude in the House, they would search GateWide until she was found. She’d be captured and taken to the House before first light, and she knew that she would pay dearly for her attempt at escape if that happened. Her mother had told her of the punishment enacted upon Strays who tried to escape their forced service to the House.

  The activity in the normally busy streets was waning as dusk approached. With each minute that passed, the crowds thinned and the chances of making her escape from the settlement unnoticed grew tenuous.

  She darted around a small two-wheeled cart that held a pile of hand woven rugs, crouching in its shadow for a moment while she eyed the Enforcer at the Gate.

  From a conversation that she’d overheard while she had been cleaning Mrs. Malmont’s house earlier in the day, she knew that Trion was on guard duty at the exit tonight, which was a lucky break for her. Everyone in GateWide knew that Trion was one of the laziest Enforcers, which is why he often got stuck guarding the exit side of the Gate. No one ever wanted to leave the safety of the walls that surrounded GateWide to venture into the endless wilderness that was all that there was outside the Gate since the Fall – at least not without an armed party of Enforcers to accompany them for protection - which made guarding the exit the perfect job for one who was as lazy as Trion.

  Kara hoped that he would be feeling particularly lazy today. She needed to be able to slip out of the Gate without drawing attention to herself, and if the guard at the Gate remained alert, she’d never be able to do that.

  She crouched behind the cart until the muscles in her legs began to ache, watching Trion as dusk drew nearer and nearer. When the man’s eyelids began to droop as he leaned against the huge timbers that supported the wall, she darted from her hiding place and headed for the Gate. Her lengthening shadow chased her, evidence that dusk was mere minutes away. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, the small rucksack of the few possessions she’d been able to rescue from her cottage bumping against her back. She reached up and pulled the strap tight against her body, unwilling to chance that Trion would hear the sack’s contents bouncing around as she approached.

  She kept an eye on Trion as she sprinted across the hard-packed earthen road that led to the unknown outside the safe walls of GateWide. Thankfully, the man was paying attention only to the insides of his eyelids, and she was able to run out of the Gate without him sounding an alarm.

  Breathing hard as she rushed from the Gate, she leapt off of the hard packed road into the tall wild growth of grasses and weeds that bordered both sides and then ran adjacent to the massive wall that surrounded GateWide, keeping close to the huge structure to prevent the sentries atop the wall from seeing her. The sentries sat in their watchtowers or walked along the top of the wall randomly. There hadn’t been an attack against GateWide by man or beast in all the years that Kara had lived, but the Sovereign still insisted that there be sentries to watch.

  When Kara had run a few meters from the Gate, she hunched against the massive stone-and-timber wall and tried to catch her breath as she waited for full darkness. It would be harder for the Enforcers to see her after dark, and she wanted no one to notice as she fled into the wilderness.

  She would much rather face the mutated beasts that dwelled there in the wilderness than to face life in the House. She could clearly remember many of the stories that her mother had told to her, and those stories were frightening enough to make her take her chances in the wilderness.

  Her breathing quickly slowed back to normal tempo, and as she waited for the sun to finish its descent past the horizon, she leaned against the wall and tried not to let her mind retrace the events of the day. It was better to think about the future, about what was yet to come and the things she would have to do to survive, than to allow herself to dwell on the events of the past, which she could not change. She knew that. But still, the horrific events of the day kept replaying themselves over and over in her mind, flashing past like a set of pictures in a book when the pages were thumbed through very quickly.

  The fear on Maude’s face. Her own pounding heart as her mother’s friend had delivered the news. The ache that had pounded behind her eyes as she’d longed to wail and cry and mourn the loss of her mother. Imaginings of her mother’s last few grisly moments. The last long look she’d had of their shared cottage before she’d darted out the door for the final time. The final, bittersweet glimpse she’d had of her mother when they’d parted ways that morning to go to their separate duties.

  Now, as Kara stood against the wall, the last light from the setting sun glimmered at the horizon and winked out, leaving the world covered in rapidly darkening shadow. Just meters away, she heard the sound of the massive Gate being closed, shutting out the dangers that lurked in the night. The enormous timbers used to bar the Gate thumped into place with a finality that had Kara gritting her teeth against the fear that rose in her throat. She was well and truly alone. Outside the Gate. And now, even if she changed her mind and asked to be readmitted, they would not open the Gate to let her back in until morning. If the beasts came to attack her while she stood at the entrance and screamed, they would still not open the massive portal to her. The Sovereign’s rules were absolute. Once the Gate closed at dusk, it did not open again until dawn.

  Kara pushed back the fear that knotted her stomach and wiped away the tears that thoughts of her mother’s death had caused. She looked out into the darkness, across the flat expanse of wild grasses and tall weeds, toward the line of trees that grew several miles away in the distance. And then she did the unthinkable. She stepped away from safety of the wall and ran toward the wilderness.

  Chapter Three

  Kara ran through the darkness until she felt as if her lungs might burst. Her breath sawed in and out at a frantic pace, and her legs burned with the extended forced exertion. Her only pair of badly worn shoes was no match for the uneven rock-strewn land, and her feet ached with the pounding they were taking, but she could not stop. She knew as soon as the first light of morning topped the horizon the Gate would reopen and the Enforcers would begin to look for her.

  She wasn’t sure how long they’d look for a Stray in the wilderness. She’d never heard of anyone willingly leaving the safety of GateWide before. Possibly the Enforcers would not search at all, but her instincts warned her that the Sovereign would be angry when her heard of her disappearance, and he would send the Enforcers after her just to ensure that she was found so that he could make an example of her punishment. From the stories her mother had told her, she knew that the Sovereign’s anger usually resulted in death for whoever had caused it. This knowledge made her sure that she’d better find a good place to hide before morning came.

  But where? Everything looked the same in the darkness. It all looked menacing and dangerous to her. She’d entered the outer rim of the forest several moments ago, and the towering trees looked just as menacing in the darkness as did the tangle of undergrowth that grew where the trees parted and allowed sunlight to nourish the plants below in the daylight hours.

  After several moments, she was forced to slow her stride as the towering trees and stunted bushes thickened enough that she could not easily pass through. She’d taken the four candles that remained of their meager stash, and the small oil lamp that they’d kept beside the fireplace, but she was reluctant to make use of either one because, unless she learned to make candles and lamp oil herself, the supply that she had now would have to last her forever. According to the lessons that she’d received from her tutor, the tutor that she’d been permitted to go to before her father had died, there were no other settlements other than GateWide. Th
e Fall had decimated the entire world, and the only descendents of the first survivors lived now in GateWide, behind the massive Gate and the protection of the wall, so there would be no one in the wilderness to help her learn how to do anything. And that meant that there would be no more candles or lamp oil unless she could make them herself. And that was a skill she did not know.

  After several more moments of stumbling around it the darkness, Kara realized that she might never need the lamp oil more than she did right at that moment. She had no idea where she was heading, or what lay in front of her, or the dangers that she might be stumbling into in the darkness. She stopped, listening intently to her surroundings for sounds of pursuit as she leaned against he massive trunk of a tree and carefully removed the oil lamp from her bag. She’d wrapped it in her mother’s shawl, and the material still smelled of her mother, the scent wafting up to sting Kara’s eyes with emotion as she unwounded it from the lamp. Carefully tucking the shawl back inside the bag, Kara removed a flint and the valuable metal knife that her mother had treasured. She felt around blindly in the darkness at her feet, gathering a few dried leaves and bits of forest debris and several longer twigs. Using the knife, she struck sparks from the flint, expertly flicking them onto the pile of gathered tinder. In minutes, she had tiny flames bursting to life at her feet. The sight gave her a pang in her heart, for, after her father had died, the duty of lighting the nightly fire had fallen to Kara, because her mother had had no aptitude for it. She’d always said that Kara had a knack for bringing life to the flames.

  Kara felt tears burn the backs of her eyes again at the memory, but she pushed them back and concentrated instead on starting the end of a small twig burning. She used the twig to light the oil lamp, then crouched near the tiny fire she’d made. She was tempted to stay in the spot for a while. The fire offered comfort and a lulling sense of false security, the brilliant flames giving off heat that chased away the deep chill that Kara had not even realized she was feeling until that very moment.