Of Liars and Thieves

by Gabriela Lavarello

“I would mind my tongue, if I were you, thief,” Tedric warned, and Lorian’s eyes drifted casually to where Tedric’s hand rested on his sword hilt.

  Nora froze in place, and Tedric barely avoided falling over her, cursing as he stumbled sideways and brushed against Aeden. She shot him a glare and was about to open her mouth when a low growl emanated through the darkening forest. Nora pricked her ears toward the trees to their right and let out a growl of her own.

  “What was that?” Krete asked in a whisper.

  Aeden brought up her hand in a quick demand to remain silent, her pointed ears flicking and listening for the sound. Tedric heard nothing and yet Aeden’s face paled as she listened.

  “We need to go,” she hissed, and turned in the opposite direction from where the sound had come.

  “Wait a moment,” Tedric interjected, placing a hand on her surprisingly muscled shoulder. “Shouldn’t we investigate the sound? It could be a beast.”

  Aeden swiveled to face him again, bristled and ready for an argument. She gave Tedric a venomous glare and shrugged off his hand before she spoke. “Listen here, warrior. These are my woods, so I’ll decide if we will or will not wait for a creature that may very well be the beast we are meant to capture.”

  “Don’t we want to find it if it is the beast?” Tedric retorted, his cheeks growing hot.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  Aeden sighed in obvious annoyance but didn’t answer. She had frozen again, her eyes half closed as she listened to the sounds of the forest. Tedric silently damned her and her heightened hearing abilities. A few moments passed in still silence as they waited for Aeden to move. Tedric tightened his grip around his sword hilt. It was all he could do to keep down the frustration and anger at being undermined by a thief and a common fairy. His grip of controlling missions and giving out orders had disappeared since coming into companionship with this strange group of individuals, and he suddenly missed the nine familiar faces of his men, his trusted warriors who followed his commands without a question.

  “It’s gone,” she said finally, and Krete let out a short breath of relief.

  Aeden brought her attention back to Tedric and placed her hands on her hips. “To answer your question, I said no because it is getting dark and creatures more sinister than even the shapeshifter come out to play at these hours. We have better chances of fighting and capturing the beast when daylight comes.”

  Tedric didn’t answer, but nodded instead. He had barely known this woman for an hour and she was already driving him mad. He should not have let his eyes overrule his brain in agreeing to let her and the gnome come on the mission. His brain was now screaming at him to tell her they had changed their minds and the agreement was broken.

  “Where is she taking us?” Lorian whispered as quietly as he could, nodding toward Aeden’s cloak-clad back.

  Tedric kept his eyes trained on her and shook his head. They had been walking again for some time, and the silence had consumed them in a bitter glove. The pit of anger toward Lorian had subsided enough, and Tedric found that he could finally speak to the thief without wanting to hurt him.

  “I’m not sure,” Tedric began, “but joining our missions together is going against everything I have learned in training.”

  Lorian shrugged. “We would have crossed paths no matter what. She and Krete are on the exact same mission as we are, no matter how odd that may be.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “I’m right about most things,” Lorian replied, and Tedric snorted.

  They continued onward, the small furry creatures that scuttled through the forest now beginning to settle into their homes upon the trees and within the ground for the night. The birdsong and other animal calls had dulled down into a tranquil silence. The sun, or whatever amount of it that was able to penetrate through the dense forest, had completely faded now. Tedric was beginning to wonder if they would have to create torches to light their path when the mossy areas of the forest floor suddenly lit up with a soft yellow glow.

  Lorian cursed under his breath as he stepped on one of the moss patches and it changed into a bright orange, no doubt blinding him. Aeden turned and smirked at Lorian’s surprise, her angular face illuminated in the soft glow of the moss.

  The forest had changed into a glowing oasis, with every patch of moss that Tedric could see now lit up in different shades of yellow and orange. The trees were now nothing but shadows as far as he could see, the ancient giants looming over their heads. The forest looked like something out of a dream, and even against everything he believed, Tedric found himself watching the softly lit forest in awe.

  “It’s meridiem,” Aeden said quietly. “You don’t have it in your realm?”

  “No,” Finriel called scathingly from across the clearing, “we have witchlight in our realm, not glow in the dark moss.”

  Tedric cocked his head to the side as he considered the witch. She’d been too far away to be able to hear Aeden, and yet she had heard her. Tedric wondered if she too had heightened hearing abilities along with her healing powers. Aeden looked over her shoulder and gestured for them to follow her toward a thick patch of bushes a few yards away.

  “Here,” she said, and waved her hand at the companions again as she squeezed her way through the bushes.

  Tedric glanced toward Finriel, Lorian, and Krete’s approaching forms and shrugged before pushing his way through the tight bushes. Tedric blinked in surprise as he emerged into a small clearing of soft grass within the clustered brambles, the sounds of the forest somehow muted. In fact, there were no sounds at all, save the soft song of crickets within the bushes.

  “This will do,” Aeden said, and made her way to the middle of the clearing, reaching into a pocket within her cloak.

  Once their other three companions had stumbled into the clearing, Finriel and Aeden made a fire from a few dead branches they’d found in the bushes, while Tedric pulled out the bread, cheese, and apples that seemed to never diminish in quantity and handed everyone a portion.

  He sat down next to Aeden, and a loud crunch filled the clearing as she bit into her apple. Every fiber along the side of his body that was closest to the fairy bristled from her radiating warmth and soft jasmine scent. Krete sat farther off, nestled up next to an already dozing Nora.

  “So, which creatures do you have to capture?” Krete asked after they had finished their food in silence.

  Tedric looked at Lorian and Finriel, and he suddenly felt foolish for not having asked that question the very second the Red King had handed them their mission. Krete seemed to notice their blank looks and smiled faintly.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he asked in amusement, and Aeden smirked as she picked at the piece of bread she had not quite finished.

  Tedric shook his head. “There was no time. We were only told that we had to recover the beasts and take them back to Keadora.”

  “Are you serious?” Aeden snorted. “Your mighty Red King didn’t tell you everything you needed to know before throwing you out into the wild?”

  “How dare you question my king. He gave the amount of information he believed was important for us to know,” Tedric snapped, though a strange feeling of shame washed over him even through his retort.

  The Red King truly hadn’t given them much information about what they had to do at all, only that they were meant to capture the beasts and the storyteller. Tedric pondered this with growing frustration. He’d never been given such vague instructions in his years as a member of the Ten, especially not for a dangerous quest such as this one.

  “No, he didn’t,” Finriel continued, breaking through Tedric’s thoughts. “Though he did bring us to the Crimson Castle and hand us the quest barely a day before we left.”

  “King Sorren did that as well,” Aeden grumbled, glancing away from Tedric.

  “Besides,” Tedric said with renewed strength, “how could King Sorren have possibly known which beasts you were meant to cap
ture if the pages given by the villager were blank?”

  Aeden turned to look into his eyes, and he tensed as she replied sweetly, “The villager claimed that he watched the beasts exit the pages with his own eyes.”

  “Likely story,” Tedric grumbled.

  Krete and Aeden exchanged a look that Tedric could not quite discern, and Krete spoke quickly when he noticed Tedric watching them. “Did your king at least give you a map? King Sorren did not supply us with one of those.”

  “Of course we got a map,” Tedric muttered. At least the Red King had given them that much.

  “Could we see it?” Krete smiled.

  “How would you know where to go if you didn’t get a map?” Lorian asked as they all leaned forward and watched as Finriel opened the map and the ink bloomed before their eyes.

  “We were sent to find you first, remember?” Aeden replied, and Tedric fought off a shiver at the intonation in her words, but Lorian simply grinned in response.

  The warm fire Finriel and Aeden had made gave enough light for them to see the lines of mountains and forests. Tedric scanned the map, half expecting for the illustration of a dangerous creature to jump out of the parchment and lunge for them, but nothing happened. Tedric raised a brow and kept searching, waiting for anything to happen at all.

  “Ah,” Krete said with an excited smile, the skin around the corners of his grey eyes wrinkling. “I haven’t seen one of these maps in many years.”

  Tedric blinked at the gnome in surprise. “You’ve seen this kind of map before?”

  “Oh yes,” Krete replied enthusiastically, “they were quite a common gift to gnome royalty from the Red King a very long time ago.”

  “So … how exactly can we discover where and what the creatures are?” Lorian asked quizzically as he gazed at the map, bearing an expression Tedric was sure mirrored his own.

  Krete reached into a larger pocket within his vest and pulled out two rolls of parchment. “Here,” he began. “These are the pages we were given by the fairy king.”

  He gestured for Finriel to place the map on the grassy ground. After she gently laid it down, Krete unrolled the pages and placed them next to the parchment so that the corners of each page just barely touched the map.

  “If what I’m thinking is true, the location and illustration of our creatures will appear at any moment.”

  As if Krete’s words were a spell, two simply drawn images swirled into existence at two different locations on the map. They all leaned forward to get a better look, and Tedric nearly laughed as he read the small description under each image. One was a drawing of the dragon that Krete had spoken about earlier. That was not the funny thing. No, facing the dragon would be perilous indeed. It was the drawing near the border of Proveria and Farrador, the elf kingdom, that made Tedric attempt to hold in his amusement.

  “An army of brownies?” Lorian voiced Tedric’s thoughts with the ghost of laughter in his voice.

  “You may laugh now, but the villager said that he watched these brownies pillage anything they came across,” Aeden replied darkly, brushing a strand of violet hair behind her ear.

  Finriel actually did bark a laugh at these words, and Tedric gaped at her in surprise. That was the first time he had ever seen her laugh, let alone smile at anything.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Finriel replied. “Brownies are the kindest creatures that I could possibly think of. They live to serve and worship people, not terrorize them.”

  Aeden simply waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I have traveled to three villages in Proveria that could prove otherwise. Countless homes destroyed, many villagers dead, need I go on?”

  Tedric fought away a shudder, and Aeden glanced at him with the ghost of a shrug. “Now do the same thing we just did with your pages.”

  Tedric tore away from her green gaze and watched as Lorian chuckled and withdrew the pages from his pocket. He unrolled them, placing them all slightly over the map, as Krete had done before.

  Three different drawings bloomed across varying locations within the realm. There was no desire to laugh or surge of confidence now as Tedric leaned in closer and saw what they were to face. Not too far from their position, a chimera was drawn with unnerving precision. So that must have been the growling that Tedric and his companions had heard.

  “I think we’re going to have to face him before we face your brownie friends,” Lorian commented, pointing a reluctant finger at the drawing of the chimera.

  Tedric looked back down at the map, his eyes landing on a frightfully accurate drawing of a rakshasa, a demon bound to myths and legends. Fear coiled in his stomach, and Tedric let out a strangled sigh. This storyteller had really meant it. These creatures had ceased to exist thousands of years ago, before even the great war had begun. Tedric only knew the drawings they were to face from legends and folktales.

  He shifted his gaze to the last creature drawn onto the map and frowned. He’d never heard of the scaled, catlike creature. As if the map had heard the silent question in his mind, a word bloomed underneath the illustration in slanted letters.

  “What in the Nether’s name is a nian?” Tedric asked as he squinted, making sure he was reading it correctly.

  “I’m not sure, but it doesn’t look like a very cuddly creature, if you ask me,” Lorian replied.

  Aeden shot him a look of exasperation and then took up the pages from the ground.

  Finriel shot a hand out for her to stop, shaking her head quickly. “Put the pages back.”

  “Why?” Aeden retorted.

  Finriel and Aeden locked into a battle of glares, yet after a moment, Aeden huffed and placed the pages back onto the map. With a grumbled thank you, Finriel extended her hands over the map and closed her eyes. The pages and parchment began to shimmer and Finriel scrunched her face in concentration.

  “What are you doing?” Aeden asked in alarm.

  Finriel sighed and withdrew her hands. “I put an enchantment on the map so that we don’t need to touch the pages to it each time we want to discover where the creatures are.”

  “You can do that?” Tedric gaped, and Finriel raised her brows.

  “I can do more than just healing magic, warrior.”

  “Good thinking.” Krete nodded, interrupting Tedric right as he opened his mouth. “I do admire your skills, though you’re quite intimidating.”

  “I have another thought,” Lorian said.

  “Yes?” Finriel asked bitterly, her eyes not quite meeting Lorian’s.

  “Why don’t we each carry a page? It would be much easier if we were each responsible for one rather than two of us being responsible for all of the creatures.”

  Tedric nodded in agreement with Lorian’s proposal. “That’s a good idea. Finriel, if you will?”

  Finriel shrugged in return and Aeden took up her pages without a word. The drawings disappeared from the map in an instant as she handed one of the pages back to Krete, tucking the other into her cloak.

  Finriel took up the three pages and silently handed one to both Tedric and Lorian. Tedric brushed the thick parchment between his fingers, a new sense of unease sweeping over him. He didn’t have even a clue how they would put the monstrous creations back into these flimsy pages. He folded it gently and tucked it away into his cloak, deciding that he would think about all of that later. Tedric grunted and shifted back against the soft grass, his head suddenly feeling heavy with fatigue.

  7

  Finriel

  She couldn’t breathe.

  A strong hand gripped her throat, pushing her face against sharp stones under freezing river water. The cold was blinding and her throat burned as she screamed and choked against the water filling her lungs. She thrashed her legs in panic, her arms pressed behind her back with another hand. Light began to dance and burst behind her closed eyes, and all consuming pain began to numb her limbs.

  The hands yanked her head out of the water, and she choked and gasped in relief at the sensation of a warm breeze dancing acr
oss her face.

  “Come on, little monster,” the young man spat into her ear. “Show me your filthy magic. Make me fear you.”

  The boy laughed as she stilled, not responding to his jeers. But she wasn’t paying attention to the elf boy who held her life precariously in his hands. Her impending doom was not on her mind, instead, it was on the icy blue eyes of her best friend staring back at her from behind a tree.

  Please help. She tried to send the plea through her gaze as she looked at him, the hissing taunts and strengthening grip around her neck fading away. She focused only on those eyes. The way that when he was angry, they would somehow become overgrown with silver veins, and when he was happy, it was as if sunlight glittered upon the clearest of water.

  His young angular face was drawn as he weighed his options. Stay where he was told and watch her be tortured and maybe even killed? Or ignore her perpetrator’s warning and attempt to rescue her? But she knew as well as he did that he was no good when it came to fighting. She was always the one that got them in and out of trouble.

  Her friend stood up slowly, resolution set on his face. The hand around her throat tightened sharply, causing a wheeze to escape from her mouth. The lack of air was making her lightheaded, but she made herself focus on those eyes.

  “Are you going to try to save your friend? You aren’t any better, halfbreed,” the boy spat. Her friend’s shoulders tightened at the sound of halfbreed. She knew he hated when people called him that. He simply looked at her with a small smile, turned on his heel, and began to run. A sharp laugh escaped from the boy and vibrated against her back.

  “It appears as if your little friend doesn’t care about you enough to save you. What a pity.”

  Finriel bolted upright, cold sweat running down her back and hot tears streaming down her face. She wiped at her face furiously and glanced around at her sleeping companions. She breathed in a sigh of fresh forest air, relief washing through her to find four slumbering forms. Finriel never cried in front of others, and if she did, she made sure that anyone who saw her tears promptly forgot.