Solace Lost

by Michael Sliter

  He lunged, arms out and with his hand reaching for her neck. Merigold dodged to the right, simultaneously pulling out her little knife dagger and swinging it at him. She struck only air, Saren barreling right past her, evidently not expecting any resistance. Instead, he hit her leg, losing his balance and tumbling forward. Right into the cellar opening, where he fell more than ten feet to the hard-packed clay ground.

  Meri rushed to the edge, looking down. The man was already struggling to his feet, though slowly, obviously in pain. Meri acted quickly, grabbing the ladder and heaving it upward with all of her strength. She cleared several feet and then felt a great force connect with the ladder from below, so that it jerked down toward Saren. She was pulled down to one knee, but narrowly avoided being thrown completely off balance.

  No! Instead of continuing to pull, Meri shoved the ladder down as hard as she could, heard a grunt, and then hoisted upward with everything she had left. The ladder ripped free of Saren’s grip and—praise Yetra!—she managed to pull it clear from the cellar, staggering backward several feet in doing so.

  “You fucking witch! Merigold! You fucking witch!”

  Meri moved slowly back to the opening and lowered her gaze toward Saren, seeing his handsome, hideous face in the low light.

  “Drop that ladder or I’ll kill you. I will make you suffer.” He limped a little to the side, still staring up at her. It was almost as if he actually expected her to drop the ladder to him.

  Meri was still holding her dagger, the rough cloth digging into her hand. So many times, she had pictured driving it into his neck, watching the blood spurt out of his arteries. Hacking at his knees. Piercing his manhood. Listening to him scream while she watched the blood drain from his vile, despicable body.

  For a long moment, Meri felt a strong urge to allow Saren out of the cellar so that she could exact her vengeance. Thoughts of his pain were all that had kept her going during her captivity, all that had kept her sane as he and his friends abused her. But, perhaps leaving Saren here, in the dark, was better retribution than a painful but short death at her hands. He could experience the pure hopelessness that she had, knowing that there was no way out. Maybe she would return to feed and water him occasionally, prolonging his time in the cellar. Or, maybe she wouldn’t.

  Besides, there were still Paul and Chad to deal with…

  “You bitch! Listen to me! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Merigold ignored him. She had nothing to say to the man. Instead, she slammed shut the cellar door, locked the chains and removed the key, and pushed the bed back over the ingress. Saren’s shouts grew dimmer and dimmer as she worked, muffled by the heavy, wooden planks and the bed. He was barely audible, just an echo of a nightmare.

  No one had ever heard Merigold’s cries for help.

  She opened the door to the outside, and the sun touched her skin for the first time in so very, very long. Birds were chirping, bugs were buzzing, and the wind was rustling through the deep, varied greens of the trees and bushes. Everything was unchanged. Everything was different.

  Meri took an uncertain step into the world, legs shaking, tears running unbidden from her squinting eyes. A beam of light worked its way through the foliage, warming her face, and she shrank back. She gave a great, gulping sob then and dropped to the ground just outside the door of the cabin, curling up and hugging her knees, her filthy hair covering her face. Dear Yetra, she was free.

  Dear, dear Yetra.

  Chapter 15

  It was nearing dusk by the time Merigold found the lakeside path approaching Dunmore. Her home. She must have spent several hours on the ground outside of the cabin, feeling a tirade of competing emotions, but she had eventually begun the slow walk back. She’d been uncertain of the path; Saren had led her to this place in the night, and so much had happened since then. But she knew the sun, and even through the foliage and the clouds, she was able to navigate south until she reached the lake. She’d to pause often and rest, though, so unused to the exertion of walking outside of her cellar.

  At first, it had been one foot in front of the other, stepping over occasional roots and ducking under occasional branches, avoiding sharp sticks and stones on her toughened, but still bare, feet. Her mind was overwhelmed with the immensity of her escape, the vastness of nature. She felt so… exposed… and she had to resist the temptation to curl back up. Return to the dark. She could hardly believe that she’d used to think her world too small, too confined. She hadn’t known what it meant to be truly confined.

  She patted her nail-knife at times, finding comfort in the hard, cold metal and the rough handle. There was scant comfort in thoughts of coming home.

  Saren had denounced her as a witch. Paul and Chad believed him, and had gone so far as to violate her alongside Saren. Had others in town accepted these rumors, or was this just how Saren had convinced his friends to… enjoy her along with him? Meri had heard whispers about Ragen making deals with dark powers, and some people even refused to patronize his establishment or do business with him because of them. Some would instead hawk their wares at the intersection of Dunmore’s unnamed path and Hunesa Road, while others would travel to other villages, or even Rostane and Hunesa. Ragen never spoke of these people but, through her own subtle interrogations, Meri had found out well enough that they went to such pains because they didn’t trust her father.

  Even Ragen’s generosity and openhandedness didn’t protect him from rumors in this superstitious little village. Merigold, who was quiet and introspective—and far less giving than her father—would have no hope of shaking off the reputation of being a witch. And, dear Yetra, who knew what would happen to her as a result? Meri had heard from some Rostanians that, in a small town called Umberton, someone had burned down the house of a woman thought to be a witch. They had blockaded the poor woman in the house first to be sure that she’d burn. Meri had been sickened just to hear of the barbarism.

  Yetranian teachings explicitly forbade the use of dark magicks—the power of Pandemonium on earth—and all Dunmorians were devout and literal churchgoers. People who used magic were thought to steal the souls of others. Steal the soul of the world, even. Such people were to be persecuted and driven away. Killed, even. The Book of Amorum did not explicitly say this, of course. But it could be inferred from the parables contained within, and Taneos made no bones about interpreting the verses to their flock. Many of these parables involved violence, particularly as a method for destroying magic and restoring Harmony.

  Meri herself had been devout, attending services every week, listening to the words of Taneo Marsh and the messages of his teaching. And, she was afraid of dark magicks just like everyone else. But, maybe her exposure to all of the different folks from different parts of the world at the Duckling had made her more open-minded, and she always found that instigating violence upon those with different beliefs, or upon those who sinned, was contrary to the messages of Harmony preached so often by Taneo Marsh.

  But that was no matter. Meri had been devout, but somewhere across the course of her torturous imprisonment, she had stopped praying to Yetra for help. Oh, she’d still called out Yetra’s name, but she had come to realize that it was now a near meaningless exclamation rather than a prayer. There was nothing that she could have done to merit the kind of punishment she had experienced. Yetranian teachings said that a balance would be maintained, and evil would beget evil. But Meri’s abuse had been a violation of both her body and her spirit. Nothing that she had ever done, or ever would do, could warrant such treatment. Meri swore to herself that she would never again attend a Yetranian service, assuming the village would welcome her—the witch—back at all.

  Faith will be rewarded. A simple statement by Deontis. But, he was wrong. The whole damn book was wrong. Merigold vowed to wipe it from her memory.

  The dimming, carrot-orange glow of the setting sun was such that Merigold wouldn’t have noticed the blood except that she slipped on the unexpected wetness and went down
on her sore knees and one hand. She stayed down for a moment, hanging her head and building up her resolve to continue on, until she noticed that her hand was thickly caked with sticky, deep red mud. She stared at her hand blankly for a moment before realizing, with a start, that it was not merely dirt on her hand. She jumped to her feet and frantically examined the ground, seeing a mostly-dried, brownish-red stain, rehydrated and made slippery by her sweaty feet, knees, and palm.

  Merigold remembered that Saren was streaked with blood, and had said something about his parents being dead. She hadn’t thought much about it, being focused more on staying alive in the face of his rage and, after that, the overwhelming reality of her escape. But here, this was blood! And on the path, the eastern outskirts of the town. Saren’s parents lived clear on the other side of Dunmore. What had happened here?

  Merigold felt a sudden desperation accompanied by a familiar sick feeling in her stomach, a shaking in her legs. She increased her pace toward Dunmore, ignoring the sharp edges of nature that cut into her bare feet.

  She started noticing odd sights.

  She had traveled this path before, and was familiar with the surroundings. On her left was one of her favorite trees—an old, great weeping willow. It was very climbable, and she recalled scaling it with Sandra, back before she had moved nearly full-time to the inn. They had shared some laughs, and Sandra had told her some of her naughty stories.

  Now, the tree stood dead. But not in a way that trees usually appeared dead. This wasn’t a situation where a tree had slowly decayed, its leaves and branches falling to the ground over time while the trunk still stood strong and true. Rather, the leaves on the willow were mostly still attached but were now a dusty-looking gray, as if they were turning to ash. The bark, peeling off the trunk in thick, heavy clumps, also showed a graying tinge, and the trunk was beginning to uproot, falling toward the water.

  Merigold hastened to cover the final distance to Dunmore, fear lending strength to her liquid limbs. She rounded the last bend into the clearing that designated the edges of the village, trying to steel herself for what might be ahead.

  Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

  Dunmore, to her, was a beautiful place. The rows of raised, whitewashed houses, with a splash of color here and there. The bigger chapel, crowned with the enormous iron bell that Ragen had funded as a service to the town. The flowerbeds and well-trimmed hedges, maintained lovingly all down the main row of the town by the mayor’s wife, Florence Marsh. And, most of all, the people. The simple, hardworking people of Dunmore.

  This time of the day, with the sun just descending behind the trees, mothers would be calling for their children to take their evening meal. Men would be returning from their labors, shouting out to each other with ribald jokes. Some would be heading to the tavern while others headed home with their families. The sound of yelling, laughter, and labor would normally be filling the air.

  There was no sound now. Merigold next realized that she should have heard the town a long way off, even before she’d come across the blood. Instead, it was silent. And the scene now before her was one of absolute devastation.

  The greenery of the town was ravaged. Florence Marsh’s hard work was now a pile of grayish ash, blowing into the air and filling the vista with a strange, pallid fog. Even the grass, in places, was black and gray, with the ruin tending to occur in a circular pattern, like pox on a child.

  But the bodies. The bodies were what drew Merigold’s eyes as she brought her hands up to cover her face.

  There were corpses scattered throughout Dunmore. They were tossed across the path, on the decks of the houses, on the steps into the chapel. As Meri approached the square, she struggled to regain that empty, dissociated feeling that she had mastered during her imprisonment. The sight in front of her was so absurd, so grotesque, the blurred emptiness took her before long. And in her self-imposed stupor, she noticed that the corpses were very different in appearance.

  Some bodies appeared untouched, as if the person had decided to take a nap in the village green. Merigold recognized some of these. Mrs. Polen, fallen on her own porch, wearing her favorite red skirt, the one embroidered with flowers. Florence Marsh, lying bent over a dead hedge, shears lying discarded on the ground nearby. And Lynns West, a little girl of seven years’ age. A running, singing child, worried about nothing aside from making her parents happy and keeping her dog well-fed. She lay curled up right near the middle of the green, apparently untouched, but gone nonetheless.

  Other bodies were so mangled and mutilated that they were unrecognizable to Meri. They appeared to have been torn apart by an animal, ripped by sharp teeth and rent by claws. Walking slowly toward the center of town, Meri noticed one corpse on her path where the face was shredded, and she could see bits of flesh and other matter strewn about. Merigold couldn’t escape into herself deeply enough to block out this sight, and she vomited what little was left in her stomach, acidic bile burning her throat and mouth. She knelt near an intact bush, heaving until nothing was left inside of her, leaving her feeling even weaker than before. So much death. So many friends and acquaintances, gone.

  Sandra! Merigold jumped to her feet and took off toward Sandra’s house at a shambling run, avoiding circular patches of dead greenery and giving bodies—shredded or not—a wide berth. She checked each for a mass of silky strawberry-blonde hair, but thankfully didn’t see any. Her own filthy hair slapped against her face as she pounded across the ashen grass.

  She barely noticed, as she ran, a very dead rat lying in the middle of her path. Meri skirted the corpse and didn’t give it a second thought.

  She reached Sandra’s house then, gasping from the exertion. She had rushed to get there, but now she paused on the threshold of the small cabin, afraid of what she might find. She wiped a stray tear away and opened the door.

  The house was more disarrayed than usual. Clothing was tossed about, but that was normal. More surprising was the broken couch and the smashed bottles of liquor. There had been a fight here. Meri scanned frantically for any trace of Sandra. There was a small amount of blood on some broken glass on the ground, and a crimson handprint nearby. Meri knelt and held her own hand up to it and realized that the print was far too large to be Sandra’s.

  She sat on the unmade bed, simultaneously relieved that she hadn’t found Sandra’s body and also frightened of what might have happened. Sandra had fought back, that was clear from the blood on the broken bits of bottle and the bloodied handprint. But, had she escaped? Had she been taken? Merigold didn’t care whether her surrogate big sister was a prostitute or not—she just wanted her to be safe.

  Exhausted from her ordeal, Merigold laid back on the bed, unable to fully process what had happened. She needed to get to the Duckling as soon as possible, but her limbs weren’t cooperating. There was nothing left. With hardly a struggle, Merigold unintentionally fell asleep on the bed of her best friend, the surrounding smell of expensive perfume mingling with a hint of copper.

  ---

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  Merigold sat straight up in the bed, her heart beating wildly as she took deep, gulping breaths. Was that the town bell? Where was she? The cellar ground felt so soft right now, so inviting…

  Wait. She wasn’t in the cellar. She was at Sandra’s house, sleeping in her bed. The bell was ringing, just as it would to announce the weekly Yetranian service. Merigold felt disoriented—was this whole thing just a dream? Saren, the cabin in the woods, the death in Dunmore… Had all this really happened?

  Merigold reached over and lit a candle on the nightstand. She noticed her hands—nails broken, skin rough and dry. She was still clothed in Saren’s filthy cast-offs, and she could smell herself over the lingering scent of perfume in Sandra’s home. The house was as mess. And her eye socket was throbbing, tender from where Saren’s fist connected with her face. No, she realized, it had all happened.

  But the bell. The bell was ringing. Someone must still be aliv
e in Dunmore.

  Merigold tossed her filthy clothes aside, discarding them in the corner of the room. There was a jug of water that she used to wash herself quickly, using a rag, trying to forget that this was hauntingly close to her cleaning ritual back in the cabin. She rifled through some piles of clothing on the floor until she found a dress that fit her relatively well, a modest teal affair. Lastly, she hastily raked her hair into some semblance of order, untangling several strands from around the sapphire studs she had managed to retain throughout her captivity.

  It was amazing how much a nap, a wash, and new clothes could change a person. She almost felt like herself again, if even for just a moment. But, she would need to face reality. Leave this house and see who was left alive. Get to the Duckling. Find Sandra and hope that Ragen was okay.

  Merigold opened the door into the much cooler evening air and stepped out into the night. Dunmore was illuminated by the twin full moons—the smaller blue Ummis and the larger, but less visible, white Phanos. The blue and white light filtered through the ashy mist that still hung in the village like a thin blanket, lending the evening a dreamlike trait. If only this were a dream…

  Merigold licked her lips and began hesitantly toward the Yetranian chapel and the hopeful chime of the iron bell.

  Chapter 16

  Hafgan Iwan glanced up impatiently at the twin moons, the white Gwyna and the blue Glasas—at least as they were known to his people. He had not yet learned what the humans called the moons, but now made a mental note to expand his vocabulary.

  The Wasmer saw the full moons occurring simultaneously in the sky as a good omen, and Hafgan badly hoped that the prophetic nature of the sky would hold true tonight. Not that he had much faith. This plan smacked of desperation; a last ditch effort to retain some measure of control, to secure a powerful ally. But it was not Hafgan’s prerogative to make decisions and determine strategy. He was to follow orders. At least for now.