"But the Elyldan grew tired of their sort. They grew capricious and jealous of their kin and when the dark being I will not name came among them, they were easily swayed to His will.
"They made themselves the instrument of His dark intention and without them, He could not have succeeded where all Creation would have desired that He fail.
"Afterward, the dark being was punished, and the Elyldan fled with their part of the power He had promised to them for the gods, once done with the master, did not deign to take notice of His servants.
"Thus it was that they named themselves Estril as they fled the realm which would become that of men. And thus it was that the Donglin race took it upon themselves to punish the Estril for their part in the fall of the last Fire Drake in all of Creation."
The Estril lord, Raffiran, and High General in the Great Wars, could not tear his gaze away from the story playing out before him in the dark waters of the cauldron.
Horror held him as all that he had ever believed of himself and all his people came tumbling down, the foundations of all that he had known shattered.
He could have claimed all of it false. He could have closed his eyes to unleash his power and burn the humans and their foolishness to the ground.
It might have been the wisest choice then.
However, it would have also been the choice of a coward, because all that the old woman said and all that he saw fairly ached with truth at its core.
He recognized all of it from deep within himself.
Our power, our sacred fire, is a stolen thing.
"BEHOLD, Lord!" the old woman's voice cried out.
"Your kinsman."
The images from so many centuries, or even millennia, in the past shifted and there stood Mesrin, leering back at him without seeing him.
What Raffiran saw disgusted him and it was that image that, at last, ended the glamour holding him until then.
"Wait," he said, "You must show me where he is, cursed humans."
Raffiran readied himself. While he felt sure he could find him on his own, the old woman could surely shorten his time in that world and suddenly that was all that Raffiran wanted — to get as far away as possible from humankind, and do so as quickly as he could.
"Aye, Lord," she said as she took the cauldron from the old man.
The two humans stepped apart to reveal a large barrel standing on its end just behind them, the top end open wide.
She poured the contents of her cauldron into the barrel and with a wide sweep of her rag-covered hand, she said, "Look within Lord. His whereabout are written there."
Raffiran's instincts flared a warning once again.
But he had never imagined what he would encounter with these two humans and now that he had, he wanted nothing more to do with them.
The remedy for it all was simple enough. He would discover Mesrin's location, then destroy the two old fools at once.
He approached the barrel then looked within.
"I see nothing," he said.
"Closer, Lord — the divination will not succeed except from deep inside and requires that you look as closely as you can."
The Estril bent down, peering into the darkness while inside himself he readied his power. All of his focus was on seeing Mesrin’s whereabouts, then on flash burning the old couple to ash the instant after.
He looked, then he did see something in the darkness.
At the barrel's bottom, he saw golden skin gleaming back at him.
"Mesrin, you fool," he muttered as he focused his will on what he saw, desiring to discover from just where the image came.
"Closer, Lord," the old woman urged.
The Estril bent lower still, until he was practically bent in half with his head inside the barrel.
He heard a whispered word.
"— now —"
Two pairs of hands gripped him by the ankles, then heaved upwards.
The result being that Raffiran tumbled headlong into the barrel.
"The lid!" Capucine shrieked.
Nestor clapped it down as the Estril's momentum folded his legs neatly inside like a jackknife.
They both felt the fire blooming within the barrel.
The fire-hardened oak would not resist for long.
The water the old woman had dumped from the cauldron felt as cold as ice, and Raffiran sputtered as it kept entering his mouth while he tried to shout out in his fury.
Strangely, his thoughts kept scattering, and images of a dragon being slain by a horrid black creature kept racing through his mind.
No! I must stop this foolishness. The humans must be destroyed.
His power kept slipping away from him, but finally, and largely by chance, Raffiran kicked his legs out and the barrel lid fell off, clattering.
Sunlight poured in and his thoughts cleared.
Nestor and Capucine had just set their shoulders to the barrel when suddenly the lid came off and the Estril's feet appeared, kicking furiously in all directions.
Immense heat rushed upward toward them.
Enough heat that the water-soaked rags they had covered themselves in billowed steamed.
Another instant and they would be boiled alive before being incinerated to ash.
Nestor bent down, disappearing from view, as if to cower from his imminent demise.
He popped back up like child's devil-in-the-box toy, in one hand the barrel lid, in the other the pail of blue paint.
Flames roared.
Barrel oak creaked and groaned.
Then Nestor did the only thing he could think of.
He flung the pail of paint into the barrel, then clapped the lid down once again.
Capucine's eyes grew wide as the flames that had been seeping out along the wooden barrel slats were suddenly snuffed out and accompanied by a bellow of pain.
"Now, dearest!" Nestor shouted.
The two of them heaved and the barrel fell over on its side.
A swift kick from Nestor set it moving and the steep slope down to the river did the rest.
"Darling Husband —"
Nestor barely heard his wife as he watched the barrel go bouncing and jouncing down the river bank.
"Nestor!"
He looked back at Capucine at last.
"Whatever in the world is it, dear Wife?"
She laughed as she came to him and hugged him, then swatted at him with more violence than he thought was necessary.
"You're on fire, my lovely man," she said, laughing.
The barrel hit the water rolling and tumbling with the being inside it burbling and gurgling.
All thoughts of fire and vengeance had been extinguished for the Estril lord who had been fooled by his own reflection.
For the events that had happened during his brief time in the realm of men had been one truly unexpected thing after another, each of them more distasteful than the last.
And the last of these and the worst of these was the blue concoction they had thrown on him.
I am poisoned, he thought desperately as he reached over and over for his power and finding it practically extinguished.
Worse still, the taste of the stuff went well beyond awful.
Capucine and Nestor walked arm in arm back to their little cottage along a mostly forgotten road.
"Was it long enough, dear?" asked Nestor.
His wife shrugged.
"I don't know. Our paltry efforts won’t slow him down long. He’ll find his way again soon enough. No doubt about that, and that will just have to do."
"Aye," he replied, "What's done is done."
She sighed then pinched his somewhat singed arm.
"But don't think you can get out of painting the fence like that. I've got plenty of fixings to make up another batch quick enough."
Nestor took his turn to sigh.
"But I thought what's done is done."
His wife chuckled.
"As far as I can tell, it's the fence that's not done, which means neither are you
."
Nestor did his best to allow her the last word, but his own nature got the better of him.
"Oh."
"Yes … oh."
"But I only wanted to ask if you knew we'd need that paint before we knew we needed it —"
"Mayhap," she said, "And now no more but's, no either's, no if's nor hither's, thither's, and yon's. If you keep on, dearest Husband, why I might mix up enough fixings to paint the cottage, too."
The old man clamped his jaw shut as he knew he should. However, that did not stop an old rhyme from repeating itself one last time in his thoughts
Herb Witch, tickle me,
Stickle me, thin.
A poultice, a cantrip,
Pickle me, again.
Chapter Eleven — Silas
He heard movement behind him but did not bother to turn around.
Silas only had eyes for Melisse.
The masked Estril who had, no doubt, come back to torment him in some way or another did not merit his notice.
He watched, intent, searching for the least sign that Melisse would come back to herself. So intently that he barely registered the sudden intake of breath by whoever had entered his prison cell.
“Step away from that foul thing, human! You risk your ruin.”
The voice that had shouted was not one Silas recognized, and he spun about to see who had entered his cell.
That she was female was without doubt.
That she was no Estril was also perfectly clear.
“Who are you?” Silas breathed, “And why should I care?”
The creature inclined her head and curtseyed before him.
“Perhaps I should begin with what I am?”
Silas nodded, saying nothing, as he took in her slight, willowy form.
“I am of the Luz Mala, a race of beings with many branches, all of us originating in the world that has since become the realm of men.”
She moved with a grace that made her appear to weigh next to nothing at all.
“My name is Wisp and I have been sent here to aid you.”
The young man frowned.
“I doubt you can help me. Especially if it is your intent that I stop watching over someone from afar. In that, I will resist you until the last of my strength.”
Wisp nodded.
“I understand, however, that thing you are using is surely a danger not worth the risk.”
“What would you know of it?” he asked quietly.
“Among my people we have a long tradition of tales that go back to the first days of Creation. We gather once each generation and we repeat the old stories and we remember together what must not be forgotten.”
She shrugged as she continued, “Unlike these fools who name themselves the Estril, who know nothing of themselves and permit this kind of blasphemy in their own abodes.”
Her face grew more serious as she pointed a delicate finger toward the cauldron beside Silas.
“My people tell tales of things such as this. Tales, also, of a dark being who was rent — torn into pieces and scattered so far and wide across the cosmos that He could never bring His evil to bear again.”
She shuddered.
“These same tales speak of vessels much like this one — used to contain the remains of the Harrowed One.”
Silas stood, and his regard was grave when he spoke.
“Perhaps that is so. All that I know is it was presented to me by the Estril, and with it I can watch over someone who matters a great deal to me.”
He turned away from her, his back dismissing her as much as his next words.
“If you truly want to help me, then release me from this place and show me the way back to my world. Otherwise, be gone.”
He heard her sigh.
He also heard that she had not gone.
Silas looked into the cauldron, thinking of the eye that sometimes showed itself within its dark contents.
He shuddered, then willed himself to concentrate, to find Melisse and watch over her.
“I do not possess a key to this place. My entrance is only thanks to my inherent being. I can render my own essence so thin that I pass where even the Estril cannot. However, I see now that there may be another way for both of us to leave this place, though I am loathe to hazard such a thing.”
She did not add that she had, at last, been given leave to quit the Estril realm, but only after aiding the human in some unspecified way.
Silas froze.
“Tell me.”
He turned back to the female and noticed again that she was so slight he imagined he could see through her if he tried.
“I did not realize it until now, but I see why I have been sent here,” she said, deciding in that instant there would be no point in telling the prisoner just who it was who had sent her to him. The ardor in his eyes for someone else told her that he would not be moved by the mercy he had been shown.
“The Estril lord and High General Raffiran has left to search for his kinsman. Thus, the greatest barrier to your escape has been removed.”
She paused, searching his face for an answer to a question yet unasked, before looking in the direction of the cauldron.
“Have you mastered to some degree this object?”
Her wrinkled nose showed her distaste for the thing, but what she meant could not be mistaken.
“If you want to call it that,” Silas answered. “If I try hard enough, I suppose so, yes. Also, it helps if I remember to go barefoot.”
She drew closer to him and said, “Then prove it to me, human. If you speak truly, there is hope.”
He did not respond.
Instead, he turned to stare deeply within the dark depths of the cauldron and did his best not to think of the story of a strange being torn apart and stuffed into cauldrons like the one before him then.
The vacant eyes of Melisse appeared before him, then his vision of her drew backward to show her walking woodenly down a deserted corridor.
“I know this woman,” Wisp murmured, wondering, not for the first time, how she could have ever been so enamored of Mesrin that she had helped him in his lurid amusements.
“Yes,” Silas said, “As do I. In this moment, some harm I cannot fathom is being done to her.”
Wisp stepped closer, bending to look more intently at the vision of the woman in the cauldron.
“Magic binds her,” she said at last. “But it appears to be of a kind I have never encountered before.”
“How so?” Silas asked.
Wisp hesitated, choosing her words carefully.
“It is difficult to say, but it feels very old. Ancient beyond counting, even.”
Silas felt her stiffen at some realization.
“You know something, don’t you?” he said, readying himself to seize her and not let her go until she unveiled everything to the last detail.
“I do,” she said, to his surprise.
“I traveled in the company of an Estril who affectioned the realm of men as his playground. He gambled with his own power one too many times and at the last, instead of the mischief he sought, he was met with resistance.
“This woman did what no one else had done until then. She defied her own certain doom and in so doing she must have aroused the attention of ancient powers. There is no other explanation.”
Silas stood and turned to face her fully.
“What ancient powers?”
Before she could answer, the female who named herself ‘Wisp’ took a stumbling step backward at the same moment Silas felt his back buffeted by a wave of heat.
He spun back to the cauldron, and what he saw made him forget whatever he had been about to ask next.
Instead, his gaze was filled with the image of Melisse standing before the crippled nobleman in his contraption of a chair with his strange assistant at his side.
Fire raged in Melisse’s eyes as her power roiled around her body. Gone was the empty look in her eyes, replaced instead by undisguised anger at what had been done t
o her.
Silas was about to shout for joy when Wisp spoke so closely to his ear he could feel her lips moving against his skin.
“Rejoice not, human. Unless I miss my guess, she has incited the scrutiny of those for whom even she is no match.”
The vision of Melisse awakened to her sort at last turned into an inferno of flames that blazed so bright Silas could no longer distinguish what happened in that faraway place. He shielded his eyes, then looked away.
“Perhaps … perhaps not. In any case, I have seen enough,” he said at last. “If there is some means of doing so, then it is time to leave this place.”
“Agreed,” said Wisp. “Now take my hand and focus all your strength on the vessel and on the world of men.”
He took her hand, surprised to feel how soft and real she was despite her apparent insubstantiality.
“Together, we may be able to open a door that leads into your world,” she whispered.
Silas felt her power swell and where the magic of the Estril was brutish and crude, hers was one of cunning subtlety.
He concentrated, doing as she asked, lending her his strength, guiding her with his thoughts of home.
A bright line appeared. It gleamed like a knife’s edge as it stretched from the cauldron and across the prison cell.
“More, human,” Wisp said through gritted teeth. “Give me more of yourself.”
Silas did not understand what she said, but he understood her intent as he redoubled his efforts, pushing his thoughts into the breach that formed before them.
Suddenly, it grew thicker and was no longer a line, but an opening. Slim, barely enough for a man to slip through, but there was no longer any choice as the creature named Wisp tugged him along with more force than he had imagined she possessed.
“Now!” she shouted as she jumped lightly up and into the shining breach in reality.
“Don’t let go!”
Silas heard her but did not answer as he followed after her, jumping up and into the opening, only to fall once inside, the female’s hand still clasped tightly in his own.
They fell into color and into light, cartwheeling and turning over and over until Silas thought he would lose his mind.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 12