by Kim Wedlock
It was only as he moved to close it that his eyes fell onto the picture of the man and woman on the other half of the locket.
Petra raced around the corner with Rathen and Garon close behind, and he looked up at her in sheerest surprise. "Durhan the Bastion..."
She nodded, all but snatching it from his open hand and searching for any damage herself. "Yes," she replied, her beaming relief quite abruptly dulled by just a touch of intense anguish, and caught her own breath with a single, practised puff. "My father."
"Your father was Durhan the Bastion?"
"Who's Durhan the Bastion?" Rathen asked with a frown, and Garon and Anthis each looked back at him in surprise. "I remind you that I was banished for eleven years..."
"He was a gladiator," Petra replied quietly, staring down at the portrait. "In the Crucible. He trained me. We were very close..." She raised her chin, and her eyes were hard. Frightfully so. Rathen saw the sorrow around them, and the hunger for vengeance - the vengeance she'd sought for years, the vengeance she'd confessed to him after she'd discovered his own dark secret. The confession that had been eating her enough that it had grown, in her eyes, to the size of his own, and haunted her just the same.
"Until he was murdered." Rathen watched the edge of her jaw harden, and he struggled to put the facts together. "But...he was a gladiator? Was he not killed in the Crucib--"
"No, he was murdered." The violence lacing her voice clogged his words in his throat. "He was attacked in the street - mugged, assaulted, purposeless whatever it was meant to be. He had nothing to steal, no winnings on him, nothing, but dead all the same by a common thug or some deranged gambler who'd taken a risk, betted against him and couldn't handle the loss. My father...my father was a champion. And he was cut down in the street, stabbed in the back and then butchered...just...covered in cuts..."
Rathen stepped forwards and embraced her as her voice caught into ragged sobs. Garon stood stoically in silence, his face twisted in a muted scowl. Clearly, he already knew the story.
She sniffed and thanked him, but didn't let the gesture linger. She stood taller after that, stubborn and proud, her hand tight around the hilt of her sword and words spoken hatefully through her teeth. "The bastard had expected to defeat him in one blow, so he must've fought in a panic when he turned around. He won - but my father would have given far more than he'd got before he was left to bleed out. And the fact that no other bodies were found means that the bastard survived by luck alone. But I will find him."
"But what if he's already dead?" Rathen asked softly, though he knew before the words left his mouth that his attempt at reason wouldn't land at all. "What if he didn't die on the street but died at home instead? Or has already been caught--"
"I would have been told about it," she hissed. "I would know. He's still out there, somewhere, and I will put my father's spirit to rest myself."
The locket snapped shut between her fingers. The sharp, keening sound reverberated through the cold.
She turned around and walked away, tall, powerful, rigid against the anguish of her freshly opened wound. Rathen sighed sadly, wishing dearly that he'd never asked the question to begin with, then turned to follow her back through the snow at a respectful distance.
Half an hour later, while eating their thin but welcome stew in the smouldering shadow of an aggrieved silence, a rumble shook the camp. It was slight but certain, deep, colossal, and lasted for four frantic heartbeats. They looked across one another with wide eyes before Aria broke the silence.
"What was that?"
"I don't know," Rathen replied, already rising to his feet. They waited for a few minutes, but it didn't come again.
"Do you think it's Salus?" She asked, looking cautiously back in the direction she thought it had come from. "Pushing chasms?"
"It..." He frowned as he reached himself carefully out beyond the camp. "No. I don't think so... It is magic, but it's not... Stay here." He stepped away from the sheltered fire without another word. Garon was quick to hurry after him.
"I have a thought," he replied before Garon could ask his question, but didn't elaborate, and before long they found themselves standing at the edge of a forested chasm, a scar that stretched off far into the darkness yet stood narrower than others they'd seen - or perhaps that was an illusion cast by the hundreds of foot-thick roots that reached across the gaping void.
Staring at it, Garon quickly put the mage's guess together. "Hlífrún."
"How else would these woods be so 'fertile'?" He started as Garon suddenly drew his sword, and saw then what had provoked him. Some way along its length, the furthest they could see through the trees, was an abnormal mass of rocks and pebbles, speckled here and there with dark patches of moss and lichen, free from a shroud of snow.
And moving.
"Stendjur," Rathen surmised very quietly. "A young one."
"Does it answer to her, do you think?"
"Maybe, but I'm not willing to wander over and find out."
Slowly and ponderously, it drew up its bulk and moved to the edge of the chasm, where it appeared to stoop and examine the lacing roots. The ground shook with its heavy steps, but it was shallow, a surface rumble that lacked the strength of the first. After a long and apparently pensive moment, it moved away and settled itself back on the ground a short ways from the edge, and appeared quite suddenly as nothing more than a pile of highly natural and highly inanimate rock.
Rathen's eyes narrowed in thought. Was the stendjur guarding the rend? Or observing it? With the presence of wildlings and their cryptic magic, it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that the rumble had been the earth itself, dragging itself back together.
Preferring not to overstay their welcome, the pair quietly slipped away, and Garon promptly renewed his patrol with an eye for suspiciously compact mounds of stone. Rathen jumped some moments later when Anthis appeared out of the shadows.
"Vastal's Blood, don't sneak around like that," he whispered hoarsely, forcing his heart back down his throat. But he frowned when Anthis remained silent. Gradually, he noticed through the darkness the profound stillness of the young man; his expression was drawn and harrowed in the vague moonlight, his eyes wide and traumatised, his feet level as though he had no intention of taking another step, and his hands, trembling, hugged tightly about himself. It was as if he'd seen a ghost.
Rathen's pounding heart skipped a beat. "What is it?" He swallowed hard. "What's happened?" He stared past him towards the hidden camp, and as a blinding panic fuelled a surge of violent images, he moved to storm on past him.
"I think I know who killed Petra's father."
Surprise stunned his feet to a halt. He spun around, staring back at him in confusion. "What?" But Anthis said nothing. Slowly, painfully, the wide, tormented eyes began to form the answer.
Rathen felt his blood run cold. The truth struck him like the bone-shaking ring of a colossal bell. Again, just as it had happened in the desert, the young man offered no denial to his unspoken conclusion. "Oh, Anthis..." The two stood and stared at one another like statues of an ancient tragedy. "What have you done?"
Chapter 56
Garon looked up at the distant approach of faint but familiar footsteps and immediately forced a softness into his bearing. It was a trial every time that threw him well out of his comfort zone, but he was gradually finding his way through. When Petra finally strode out of the trees, however, her face was tainted with that same distress it had been since the return of her locket. Compassion found him a little easier as he stepped calmly out into her path. "Are you all right?"
"Fine," she smiled, looking up suddenly as if startled from her thoughts. But her smile was hollow, and her gait didn't break.
"Petra," he caught her gently by the elbow. The jerk with which she pulled herself free was much too sharp. He didn't address it. "You didn't have to tell anyone anything, you know."
"It's no secret."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know. L
ook, it's nothing. Really. I'm just fine."
Her smile hadn't moved. Garon considered her for a brief but intense moment.
Her face was a mask; she was trying too hard to feign cheer, and she was failing. Her injury was too deep and still too fresh even after half a dozen years, and instead of concealing it, her efforts were fusing into her anger and becoming something terrible. Her smile and cold, dead eyes were chilling. "Petra--"
"Leave me alone, Garon."
"No. If I leave you alone, I run the risk of making you think I don't care."
"But you do. So it's all right."
He didn't like the way she said it. It was almost spiteful. "Have I done something?"
"What ever could you have done?" She was impossible to read. On a phantom cue, she turned and walked away. "We're being watched, Garon. There's a patrol to see to. I'll see you later."
Confused and powerless, he watched her leave, and after violently racking his brain managed to turn up but one thought: he hadn't comforted her. That was all it could be. He'd let Rathen embrace her rather than reach out himself. But public displays weren't his way - she knew that. There was order to maintain. She understood why he distanced himself...didn't she?
He breathed a long, weary, helpless sigh. There was little he could do if she didn't. But beyond the others' prying eyes, he could at least try to comfort her now. Better late than never had to ring true at some point.
...But what if she didn't want it?
Anthis didn't breathe any easier with distance between himself and the camp. He had hoped, foolishly, to flee from his guilt, but it had followed him like a hungry dog. Like a shadow. Like his own skin. He had imagined their stares, their hatred, he knew he had, but even out here he could feel their eyes on him, hear their whispers. Supper had been agony, and he couldn't bring himself to look at Petra nor bear to remain within reach of that oppressive sorrow, knowing that it had been caused entirely by his own hands.
He stumbled over another root as he ran blindly through the trees. He felt sick to the depths of his stomach, as though his guts had decayed to pulp.
He'd explained everything to Rathen, and he had listened without vocal judgement. He'd thought, perhaps, that he was beginning to understand, but he didn't say a word once he'd finished.
He wasn't sure what he'd hoped to gain from the admission, but his guilt had remained unmollified - as so it should. But the matter wasn't so black and white, either, and he knew that Rathen had at least seen that much, otherwise, surely, he would have said something...
Anthis squeezed the strap of his satchel to still the incessant shaking of his hands. He felt himself begin to sweat again at just the thought of that dark and disappointed stare, a stare that had made him feel now as strongly as it had then that he was under the scrutiny of a high bailiff, as though Rathen had the power and the right to judge and to punish. And absurd as that was, he'd found himself desperately seeking his ruling, whatever it might be.
But he'd received nothing but the horror of hearing himself say aloud that he had murdered their friend's father, and of seeing Rathen's own disgust sink in with terrible permanence.
His stomach convulsed. He braced himself against a tree and wretched over the snow.
She had to be told. And he had to be the one to do it. He knew Rathen well enough to know that he wouldn't intervene, but also that he wouldn't stand by for long. The guilt of knowing and holding the secret would weigh on him, too, and he couldn't risk losing what few opportunities he had to soften the blow. If she heard it from someone else, she wouldn't get the whole story.
The whole story. How could he possibly break that to her? And what would she do when he did?
He staggered and wretched again.
He knew what she would do. Even if he caught her in the most rational mood, even if he explained it with perfect composure and reason, he knew what she would do. The only question would be whether she'd use a sword or her own bare hands.
No. He had to escape. Just for the moment. Just for the night. He had to get away.
The tangled woods flashed by as his feet pounded wildly across the undergrowth, his frozen fingers clutching desperately around his satchel. Guided by some vague notion of his only chance at distraction, he ran and stumbled until he fell at last into the disconcerting air of magic, the same quiet, uncomfortable taint that had loured upon him at every other ruin. The sudden shift into preternatural danger was all that soothed his frenzy.
Half-cautiously, bushes and saplings were brushed aside, and he ducked beneath the clawing limbs of ancients. He stepped slowly, feeling for any more roots or worse hidden beneath the snow, and listened closely for any changed beast that called this place home. He found nothing. The ruin was as overgrown as the rest of the woods, layered with the same thin mantle of snow, just as cold, empty and silent. But its atmosphere was far removed from the vibrancy of the surrounding nature, and imposed itself upon him grimly. Beneath that weight, nothing around him sat right. In his distraction, he only vaguely noticed the fragments of a moon spread across the underside of the laden trees, their faces and etchings identical to that which hung in the sky, a perfect likeness, just as silver, just as bright, as though it had been deliberately plucked and shattered.
He gasped suddenly and his jittery heart vaulted into his throat as the ground gave way beneath his foot. He jumped back as the snow sank along a crack, dropping slowly with the litter beneath it.
A chasm. It shouldn't have surprised him. And neither should his concern have been for the ruin itself, but once he discovered that this highly-treasured and studied site of Doru, the God of Mind, was unrecognisable even beyond the snow and magic, it stole away his entire focus.
The slanted stone walls had shifted with the cracking of the earth, some crumbling into a worse state of disrepair while others had fallen completely, their timeworn carvings swallowed by the ground and baring new faces covered in moss, lichen, soil and fine roots. A few walls were nowhere to be seen at all. The needless destruction ripped apart his shaken nerves.
In a fit of desperation, he fell upon the wreckage, gathering the shattered fragments despite the bite of the snow, pushing upright the tilted stones without an inch of success, lifting with all his might the tragically toppled walls. He tried to sketch out what he could still see, and what he couldn't he dragged from memory, all the while turning himself obstinately away from the hopeless truth of the matter.
The ancient inscriptions, the centre of the most heated academic debates, the only such record of creation known in the southern world, was lost.
But he refused to give up. The cold stung, the force exerted on the sharp and shattered rock cut his hands, the chill and torment tightened his breath. But his own insurmountable guilt wouldn't let him abandon it. Every cut, frost burn and dropped stone added to his self-punishment.
His guilt had forced out of his mind the fact that its every face had been copied out by hundreds of historians over hundreds of decades, the figures of gods and of various peoples, transcribed and interpreted throughout the third era, then transcribed and interpreted again. There were abundant ideas with abundant support, so many that even the Temple was disinclined to choose but one as gospel, the vague series of images of all the gods' faces looking down upon smaller, near-identical figures, then upon men that looked like animals, and then, finally, upon the elves.
Some believed that, before Vastal and Zikhon's hatred, the pair had left half of Their power behind so that They could step down and live upon the fragile world, where Vastal soon began to create in Her boredom, and Zikhon began to destroy out of jealousy. Over time, She created increasingly stronger creatures as custodians over all else She'd made, culminating in the elves, before departing to regain Her full power and hold back Zikhon's tirade Herself.
Others said that Vastal created a copy of Herself, which changed itself into a beast to be different from Her, then divided itself for company and began to walk on two legs, first appearing as an animal
and eventually becoming the elves. But it had divided its power too far and only Vastal could protect its many bodies from Zikhon's disgust.
Some that Vastal had created the elves, and that Zikhon had created a terrible plague that changed a great many of them into feral beasts, but enough had survived to live on and flourish in spite of Him.
But perhaps they were all wrong. Perhaps the first elves, the beast-men and subsequent elves were all different creations; the first elves were more akin to gods, made too close to Their own image, rich in magic if to a lesser degree, but they were too familiar, they didn't grow or learn or change, and they became dull to watch. And so the beast-like 'wild men' were created to be the far opposite of Themselves, but they were too slow and primitive and were eventually abandoned in disgust. The elves that came next were the perfect balance between primitive and omnipotent, and held the gods' interest until the eventual gift of magic ended in offence and obliteration.
As well as being too complex for the masses, Anthis's theory was hailed as one of the more ridiculous; that Vastal could be capable of disgust was in itself disgusting, and the idea that the first elves - dubbed hatefully by his mocking peers as 'lesser gods' - possessed such powerful magic and transcendency was declared as blasphemy. But after his recent discovery that the various faces of Vastal and Zikhon were in fact separate gods, and that none of these gods were exclusively good or evil, it became increasingly plausible that they could have suffered the same kind of arrogance the elves eventually did. All-mighty creators that made something too familiar, then too different, before settling at last on the middle-ground.
And while everyone else shrugged the beast-men off as having either died or changed into elves, his was the only theory that had worked the origin of men into the equation. If the beast-men had indeed been abandoned out of disgust and left alone and ignored while gods focused on the prettier elves, then it was probable that the elves would have placed themselves above the beast-men, too. Just as they had above humans. In the passage of so much time, was it not possible that these wild men might walk a little straighter and learn to talk, like children did? And elven oppression would have introduced them to culture and civilisation, which they would have slowly adopted for themselves beneath that oppression. And 'lesser gods', though he loathed the term, also lent itself to Vokaad's existence and reinforced his desperate hope that the Sulyax Dizan was not killing for nothing.