by Jon Kiln
“To Peregrin,” Rothar whispered, and Stormbringer slowly trotted back out into the red desert, careful not to let his beloved master slip off of his back.
Chapter 30
A bleak and evil dawn was breaking over the red desert. Peregrin had roused the men over an hour ago, and the party was tensely awaiting Rothar’s return.
“He should have been back by now,” Peregrin muttered to Stone. “He would not want to be out in the open when the sun began to rise. He never exposes himself like that.”
Stone was chewing a piece of dry bread and scanning the crimson horizon, silent and stoic. Even at such an early hour, waves of heat were beginning to bend the distant terrain. The contrast between the frigid mountain above them and the scorching wasteland before them was striking. They stood at the spot where fire met ice and awaited the return of their dark companion.
A whistle came from above, where Gamble crouched on a rocky outcropping. The marksman pointed out into the desert. The men below traced his gesture to a spot on the wavering horizon. A tiny, dark figure materialized out of the mirage, growing slowly as it moved carefully towards them.
“It is Stormbringer!” called down Gamble.
Peregrin leapt onto his horse and spurred him hard. Racing out over the red clay, Peregrin strained his eyes to see if Rothar was aboard Stormbringer. No hooded head stood above the horse’s ears, and the animal’s saddle bags seemed swollen and cumbersome. Stormbringer loped along with his head low, exhausted from the night’s ride.
As he rode closer, Peregrin could see that it was not saddlebags that were flopping at the stallion’s sides, but it was the body of a man - the limp and wasted body of Rothar.
Peregrin reached the horse and rider and circled tight before pulling up alongside. He was relieved to see that Rothar appeared to be breathing, and there were no visible wounds on his body besides a nasty little cut on his head and abrasions on his hands and knees. It almost looked as though Rothar had crawled halfway across the desert, except that his hands and knees were a chalky white, showing no trace of the red clay on which they now rode.
“Rothar! Rothar wake up!” Peregrin reached over and shook his friend. “Can you hear me?”
Rothar mumbled incoherently but did not move. Peregrin took up Stormbringer’s reins and trotted the horse back to where the huntsmen waited. When he arrived, Dewitt and Trevitt helped him take Rothar down off of Stormbringer and lay him down on a bedroll. Stone wet a cloth and pressed it to Rothar’s face and forehead.
“What is wrong with him?” asked Dewitt. “His body seems whole and unbroken, yet he is so depleted.”
It was true. No one had ever seen the mighty Rothar in such a state. He was sweating and shaking, mumbling and twitching.
“One thing is for certain,” said Peregrin. “He found something. Come, help me get him back onto his horse, we are not safe here. We must head back.”
“But, what of the mission?” protested Stone. “What of the others?”
“We cannot go on with Rothar in this state,” countered Peregrin. “Besides, he surely holds information that we need before venturing into the desert. We have to know what he knows. Come now.”
Reluctantly, the men obliged. Rothar was carefully placed on Stormbringer’s back and wrapped in woolen blankets before the group set out to again cross the frigid mountains.
***
The solemn huntsmen pushed onward through the blistering cold winds and blinding snows, but Rothar felt no cold. In his mind, all was aflame. He was trapped in a feverish dream and the horrors that his mind produced were as wicked as hell itself.
He was running in loose red sand, his feet kicked and skidded, but he made no progress. Above him, an obsidian sky was alive with gore and sacrifice. Flying horses split the air, raining blood down upon the desert. Other bodies tumbled through the air as well, human bodies, screaming in agony and scattering entrails. The whole scene was ringed in fire.
Rothar scrambled about the gruesome terrain, feeling exposed and haunted and repulsed, looking for a way out. Every time he came near the ring of fire, however, he would be shouted back in by contorted faces and voices filled with rage.
He recognized the faces, every last one of them. They were the visages of men he had killed. As they crowded around, separated from him only by the flickering flames, they screamed vile things to him; enraged threats and promises of things that would be inflicted upon him in the afterlife.
Somewhere deep inside, Rothar felt that he was in a dream, but when he tried to will himself back to consciousness, he only sunk deeper into the sand. The shouting grew louder and melded with the moans and neighs from the sky to form a horrid cacophony. One voice screamed louder than all of the rest, rising in a tortured crescendo that was lost to a godless sky. Rothar was startled to realize the voice was his own.
Chapter 31
Taria had been surprised to find how free she felt in the King’s City, unencumbered and unknown.
With her hood pulled up and her face downturned, she moved like a ghost through the affluent streets of the upper city. She watched from a distance the growing looting and rioting that was terrorizing the nobility that lived in lavish homes along the tree lined avenues. Not an eye turned towards the shadowed and nimble Southland woman as she moved through the streets like a stray cat. She had not realized how stifling the castle had been, although she had only spent a few hours within it’s walls.
She supposed that her aversion to the castle was a part of her nature. In all her life, she had never known royalty to fortify itself within walls of stone, in fact, no one in her world had lived behind solid walls. In the badlands, everyone had a tent. The size of your tent reflected your standing in society. The fact that the King of her new “home” lived in such a massive edifice made her feel even more out of place in the King’s City. Taria wondered if she would ever feel truly at home again.
She shimmied up another tree and sat on a comfortable branch and watched as, nearby, a group of rioters was ransacking the contents of a fine, large house.
This is really no different that any other day in this life, she thought. The rich steal from the poor until the poor have nothing left, and then they set out to take something back. But when the rich steal from the the poor, it is called business; when the poor take from the rich, they are beaten and arrested.
Taria climbed down from the tree and walked on. She let her feet carry her wherever they wished to go. She kept to the shadows and back alleys, and if anybody noticed her, they did not seem to care. The world was coming unraveled, and the only good thing about it was that it afforded Taria so much freedom.
She stopped at Rothar’s house and built a small fire in the fireplace, warming herself, for the night had grown cold. She ate a little, slept little, and rose again before the sun was up. After stowing a few rations in a bag and taking up her bow, Taria set out again, only this time she traveled away from the city.
Entering the Banewood, Taria transitioned back into the survival mode that had kept her alive all of those years in the desert. Her senses became heightened and she strode stealthily through the underbrush, dodging Quietus vines and scrambling over downed trees. This is more like it, she thought.
She did not know where she was going, but followed her heart. In time, she came to a small clearing that was split in half by a peacefully babbling brook. Near the water, there was a large rise in the ground, marked with a crude wooden cross. Taria went and sat on the mound, studying the marker. An inscription had been hastily caved into the cross with a blade.
“Here lies Brath. Thief. Hero. Bastard. Friend.”
Taria read the words aloud and came to stop abruptly at the end when she realized who’s grave she was sitting on. It was the man who’s head she had held for Bakal. Even now, the mere thought of the Southland chief brought a chill to her spine and an ill feeling to the pit of her stomach. She had to remind herself that the fiend was dead. Bakal may have lived within walls of canvas, but he
himself had been hard, through and through.
A piercing call shattered the silence. Looking up, Taria saw a falcon circling high above, beneath the ancient canopy of the Banewood. How the bird had found her, she knew not, but Peregrin’s falcon descended and landed softly beside her. She untied the scrap of paper from around the bird’s leg and read:
Rothar is afflicted. We are returning to the King’s City by the Fawn’s Trail.
-Peregrin
Taria’s heart froze. Afflicted? What did that even mean? She jumped to her feet and immediately rushed off though the wood. She wished she had stolen a horse from Castle Staghorn, but she had wished to depart quietly. Taria felt confident that she could find the Fawn’s Trail. She had traveled on it with the huntsmen during her short time with them.
The Fawn’s Trail cut the Banewood neatly in two, east and west through the forest. It was thusly named because it was a subtle trail, those unfamiliar with the Banewood would likely not even notice it. Taria did not know how long it had taken the falcon to find her, but she was certain that if she reached the Fawn’s Trail and headed east, she would meet the huntsmen - and Rothar - on their return.
To get her bearings, Taria selected the tallest tree she could find and climbed to the top. From her vantage point in the crown of the tree, she could barely make out the peak of the tallest tower at Castle Staghorn, assuring her of which direction was due west. Turning to the east, Taria had to shield her eyes against the rising sun. She blinked to remove the dark sunspots from her vision, but the spots remained. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly again, and when she opened them, the spots were larger. Taria gasped, she was not seeing spots in her vision, but dark orbs in the sky, and they were heading right for her.
Taria scrambled a few feet back down the tree, getting below the top of the canopy and nearly losing her footing in the process. She regained her balance and clung to a mighty limb, feeling her heart pounding in her chest as a low humming sound reached her ears. She remained motionless as the floating orbs blocked out the sun and droned overhead.
Moving only her eyes, she inspected the impossible objects. Massive, spherical structured with canvasses in browns and reds patched together over what seemed to be a giant framework. There were at least half a dozen of the infernal contraptions, and at the bottom of each one hung a wooden box about the size of a large coffin. From the top edges of the boxes Taria could see men’s heads poking out, eyes gazing down at the ground or off into the distance.
When the last of the flying objects had passed over, they continued on and the humming faded to silence. Taria willed herself to climb back to the top and have one last look. She could see the orbs, shrinking into the distance, headed directly for the King’s City.
Chapter 32
Allette felt as though she had walked every passageway of Castle Staghorn three times over, and it was only just mid morning. Her search for Taria had begun in the middle of the night, when she awoke from a terrible dream to see that the Southland woman was gone, and her bed had not been slept in.
At first, Allette had just assumed that Taria was restless and had gone out to stretch her legs, but after a couple of hours of roaming the halls, Allette had begun to panic. She had asked every refugee she came across if they had seen Taria. Surely, something as exotic as a Southland woman could not walk these halls unseen. Several people reported that they had in fact seen her the evening before, but said that she seemed to be contently roaming the grounds, and no one saw where she had gone.
Now, with the sun climbing higher in the sky, she felt fear grip her chest as she considered the possibility of what she must do. With Taria missing she had no choice but to report the disappearance to King Heldar.
She informed a uniformed soldier of the situation, who instructed her to sit and wait in her chambers as he relayed the message. Even the soldier seemed worried by the news, and Allette suspected that the castle guard had been given special instructions to watch over Rothar’s woman. Her disappearance would not bode well for them.
Esme came into the room. It was the first time Allette had seen her awake since the night before.
“Where is Taria?” asked the young girl.
Allette sighed and hugged the book of remedies. “I wish that I knew, Esme. It seems that she slipped away in the night.”
“But why would she do that? Doesn't she want to be safe?” Esme asked.
Allette thought for a moment before answering. “I think she does want to feel safe, and I think that is why she left. Taria seems to me to be a woman of great ability. I doubt there is much in this world that she fears, but I do not think she felt at ease here.”
Esme cocked her head to one side. “Who could feel at ease here, besides royalty?”
Allette laughed lightly. “You are wise beyond your years, Esme.”
Esme smiled and settled down on the floor to play with some dolls that had been brought for her at the Queen’s request. Allette thought about how the fine china dolls were probably the most valuable thing the little girl had ever played with, and for a instant she imagined that she understood Taria’s determination to leave the safe confines of Castle Staghorn.
At that moment, the soldier she had spoken to before appeared in the doorway. He looked dejected and a little shocked.
“His Highness has been informed,” was all he said, and he walked away.
Allette looked at the floor. She had done all that she could do for now. She opened the book of remedies and continued to study.
***
Harwin entered the throne room hesitantly. It was the first time he had ever been summoned into the cavernous chamber alone, and he felt rather small, for such a large man. The King sat alone on the platform, Queen Amelia was nowhere around. King Heldar saw Harwin and beckoned to him.
“Come forward, noble Harwin,” spoke the King.
Harwin felt himself flush a little. To be called noble by the King himself was quite a thing. In the moment, Harwin felt a renewed awe at Rothar’s ability to walk in both worlds. His friend was very much at home in Witherington, and yet his frequent visits to the castle never daunted him, and his rapport with King Heldar was so easy.
Harwin approached the throne and bowed deeply.
“Your Highness, how may I be of service to you?”
Heldar waved off the bow. It seemed he had never quite acquired a taste for the gesture.
“It has come to my attention that our dear Taria has… how shall I put it… taken leave,” spoke Heldar.
Harwin’s brow wrinkled with concern. “Oh my, that is upsetting.”
“Indeed,” replied Heldar. “I have dispatched as many men as I can spare to seek her out and bring her back to safety. I wanted to inform you so that you might keep your eyes open for her as well.”
Harwin nodded. “I see.”
King Heldar must have heard something in Harwin’s tone, because he asked, “What is it, Harwin?”
Harwin hesitated and cleared his throat. “Well, your Highness, I have only just met Taria but from what I have heard about the woman from Rothar, you are wasting your time in searching for her. If she does not want to be found, she will not be found.”
The King sighed and stared at the air beyond Harwin. “I was afraid that may be the case. At any rate, I have men out there looking for her.”
“With all respect, sire, those men might be better used in Witherington. It has gotten quite bad there.”
“It has gotten bad everywhere,” replied Heldar, suddenly irritated. He then paused and collected himself. “Very well, I will send word that my men are to contain the violence in Witherington, but you must promise me that you will try to find the woman.”
“I promise, your Highness.”
Chapter 33
Peregrin rode at the head of the line as the huntsmen again entered the Banewood, heading west. The ragged group was relieved to be back on familiar ground, and they removed their soggy overclothes as they rode.
The journey back
across the Andrelicas had been even more grueling than the first, as the men had been forced to travel more slowly with the still unconscious Rothar balanced on Stormbringer’s saddle. Now, as they rode towards the head of the Fawn’s Trail, Peregrin sensed that some of the men behind him were not pleased with his decision to return so soon.
Peregrin could not bring himself to say it aloud, but the condition of Rothar upon his return told him much about the fate of his missing brethren. If Rothar, the King’s finest assassin, came back across that desert not only defeated, but without blood on his blade, then the abducted huntsmen were most surely dead.
He knew that Stone in particular was sore about not going on in pursuit of the others, and Peregrin understood his emotions. Stone’s oldest friend had been the leader of the scouting troupe that was lost. However, Peregrin was not at all interested in getting any more of his brethren killed. While he had every intention of returning to the red desert, and soon, he would not be foolish enough to do so without Rothar.
Stone spoke softly to Dewitt at the back of the line, and Peregrin heard every word perfectly. When he reached the peak of a rise in the trail, Peregrin stopped and turned his horse around. From his vantage point, he could see every man in the convoy behind him.
“Do you not think that I grieve for our brothers?” Peregrin spoke loudly, leveling his gaze at Stone.
The contingent was silent, so Peregrin continued. “I have pledged my life to this family, and I would die defending it. But why would I lead you blindly into the mouth of death?”
Stone finally spoke up. “You know not what lies beyond the red sands!”
“I know enough,” Peregrin shot back, pointing a finger at Rothar, draped neatly over Stormbringer’s back, muttering softly.