He fell. She must’ve knocked him out. She couldn’t defeat all these men, however.
She kept low, making her way along the shadowy wall toward the door. A man lunged for her, and she darted away, sprinting for the door. She pulled the handle, but it didn’t move.
Locked. They’d been locked in!
Returning to the back of the room, she screamed Dorhen’s name. He supposedly waited outside for her. He’d said he had always watched the convent. She screamed it again. Hopefully, Sister Scupley and the remaining priests would hear all the commotion inside the convent. But Dorhen…he would hear her. The thought of his nearness gave her an irrational sense of confidence. She would have to make sure he heard. The large windows were too high to access. Glancing around frantically, she considered items to throw at the window. She couldn’t risk throwing her washing bat at a window and losing it.
She lifted her chest of drawers, which spanned about as wide as her shoulders, and threw it with all the strength she could gather. Glass shattered and rained all over the floor.
“Dorhen!” In addition to her shouting, he should hear the chaos through the open window now.
Girls sprawled on the ground, kicking at the grabbing hands and bleeding from their noses.
“How’s the bloody portal comin’?” one man shouted at the men with the jeweled gloves. They ignored him and continued their chant in a hasty rhythm.
Vivene writhed on the floor, being hog-tied. Kalea ran over and banged the man’s head before he could finish knotting the rope.
“Somebody catch that bitch!”
Kalea sprinted. “Dorhen!” She ended his name in a squeal, dodging some hands.
She roared in disgust when she made it to the farthest corner and found one of her friends with her hands tied behind her back, pinned to the floor, being raped. Kalea cocked her washing bat and hit the man as he worked his hips.
Bang! Some wood behind her took abuse.
Hands grabbed Kalea’s hair in her hesitation. “You don’t like that? Well, guess what!”
Bang!
The man slammed Kalea against the wall. The washing bat parted from her hand.
Bang!
She screamed and thrashed as he seized her hands and fought them out of the way, using the rest of his body to suppress her. His erection poked her hip, just like Kemp’s had done.
Bang-crack!
“Hold still, bitch!” Using her hair, he forced her to stand straight against the wall, her head smacking against the stone. Stars whirled around in her vision, blinding her. In her daze, he ripped her chemise and tore at her braies underneath. So much for being a chaste and pure Sister of Sorrow.
Right as he forced her legs open and aligned himself between them, he dropped her. The jolt knocked her lungs empty.
Dorhen had broken into the room!
He bashed the man’s forehead against the wall beside her. Lifting Kalea from the floor, he ordered, “Stand!” She shook and swayed like a newborn deer.
“Take this.” He handed her the washing bat. With a hand on her shoulder, he guided her toward the door, pausing to punch a charging man with that mysteriously superior elven strength he’d also used to fight Kemp. Near the door, the gloved men’s golden poles spouted sparks from their gleaming surfaces.
Dorhen took her hand again right as she spotted poor sweet Rose, also squirming and crying under a violent man. Kalea pulled away and struck him with her bat.
“Kalea!” Dorhen shouted. In her achy daze, she couldn’t swing as hard anymore. Dorhen pushed her aside and grabbed the man as he lunged for an angry counterattack, then threw him into the wall. “Get to the door!”
Kalea grabbed Rose’s hand and helped her up. Dorhen pushed her forward and stopped again to fight off a sneering man with a knife. Kalea turned and hit him as Dorhen seized his knife hand and the two wrestled.
“Go!” The hit dazed the man long enough for Dorhen to wrench the knife away and stab his neck.
They made it to the door. By then, word had reached all the men of an elf in the room. The gloved-men’s golden poles flared bright, blinding them for an instant. A string of lightning stretched from the top of one pole to the other, and another hole appeared in the air between them.
Kalea and Dorhen were about to step over the wreckage of the heavy green door when someone grabbed his hood and yanked him backward. Dorhen shoved Kalea over the wooden obstacle, and she tumbled into the hallway.
“No!” she yelled. Three men now wrestled with him. “Rose!” The girl wasn’t there. She must’ve been grabbed without Kalea’s notice. “Dorhen!”
He punched one of his three attackers with an unreal level of strength. “It’ll be all right!” he yelled back. Another man grabbed him from behind. “Meet me at the well in the forest!”
She clenched her teeth and sucked air through them. I can’t leave him! She would wait here to make sure he got free.
But another man came stepping over the wood shards. “Think you can leave, you little whore?”
Dorhen lurched forward, grabbed that man’s shirt, and hauled him backward. “Run, Kalea!”
She did.
The old well in the forest wasn’t as far away as it seemed. Yesterday, she’d walked erratically until she stumbled upon it. She knew how to find it now, since Dorhen had walked her back from there. She sprinted straight to it, splashing across the stream and over the pine needles in her bare feet.
As soon as she found it, she hid behind it in case someone happened to follow her. In the grass, she panted and retched, covering her mouth to stifle the sounds. She leaned against the well. Her feet took on a stinging numbness in the chill air, and her teeth chattered in terror. Periodically, she peeked over the edge to try to see Dorhen coming through the forest, though he might be running while invisible.
She returned to sitting and waiting, her stomach churning. The hours rolled on. She slumped over to lie on the grass until the sky began to lighten. Dorhen still hadn’t joined her.
Using the well for help, she climbed to her frozen feet. In the dawn light, she could see herself. Her crisp new vestal chemise sported a long rip from its hem to her belly button. Her braies remained intact, although they’d been damaged and loosened.
She paced. Looking toward the forest again, now visible in the brightening sunlight, she chewed her thumbnail. Why didn’t he come? He couldn’t have gotten lost, not the elf whose domain was the forest.
She let out a shaky moan. “Dorhen.”
The more the sun rose, the less she could wait any longer. Kalea went back to the convent.
Chapter 16
Her Ecstasy
By the time Kalea made it back to the convent, entering on tiptoe, the halls were silent and empty. Creeping along, her hand trailing the wall, she ventured into the shadowy corridor to the novice dorm. No screams, no voices, not even the softest footsteps stirred the stagnant air.
Her foot hit a piece of wood, and it skipped across several slate tiles. Ahead, the dim morning glow illuminated the wrecked doorway. Green-painted shards of broken wood still obstructed the portal. No one moved within the large room beyond it.
“Dorhen?” she called.
No answer. She stepped over a scrap of wood and around the largest piece. She paused. The doorknob on the largest piece appeared…melted. Most of the metal was gone, revealing the original hole bored through the wood.
The grey morning sun showed the room devoid of life. A jumble of bed mattresses and linens and overturned chests were strewn about the floor, disordered and abandoned.
Where did everyone go? Dorhen?
She stepped over the mess, scanning the floor until a bright twinkle winked from under the spread dirt of a broken potted plant. She dropped into a squat and brushed the dirt aside. It was a pale stone.
“This is Dorhen’s,” she said to herself. The stone he could make glow at night. She turned it from side to side, and a blue flash shot across the cloudy white surface in the light. “A moonsto
ne.”
Shaking her head in doubt, she scanned the room again. They were all gone, Dorhen with them.
She squeezed the moonstone in a fist and rushed out into the hall. “Dorhen!” she called, and then changed to calling for Sister Scupley. The vestals in the other building should wake up soon. Her padding feet echoed through the empty halls. Never mind their numbness.
She went into the sanctum. “Father Liam—oh damn! I forgot.”
A huge pile of wood, slate, and glass still heaped at the foot of the altar in the sanctum. No one had found the time to clear it away yet. She shook her head and frowned, placing the moonstone around her neck. An eerie mist was rising from the floor and rubble with the introduction of the sun. So much moisture damage would happen to the furniture, and it would take a fortune to restore the roof.
There are no safe places to live, Dorhen had once said. He was right. That elf was wise, and she had been too blinded by her institution to see his logic. In here, they weren’t even safe from the damned ceiling. Not to mention magic doorways with raping men charging through…
Unable to look at the travesty any longer, she turned away, but stopped at the uncanny sight of a person in the mist. He remained visible after she blinked her eyes and squinted. With a gasp, she stepped forward. The brightening sunlight bouncing off the airborne mist droplets created rainbows, and as the rainbows crossed each other, the image of a robed figure was created.
Kalea went lightheaded as her mouth dropped open. “My Creator! My Creator!”
She ran forward and dropped to her knees at the foot of the rubble pile. She could see Him from this angle too. He wasn’t merely an illusion. She bowed her head. She would have kissed His feet, but she couldn’t find them; they weren’t apparent in the shadowy rubble.
“My Creator,” Kalea said again, too humble to raise her eyes.
“Look at me.”
She obeyed. How could she not?
“I’m not the Creator. In fact, I’m weakening by the moment, so pay attention.”
“You’re not? Who are you?”
His veiled head bowed over her from his towering height. The veil concealed his face except for a hint of bone structure that appeared whenever the soft air pressed the ethereal fabric against it.
Kalea’s heart froze. The figure’s smooth, long hair cascaded past his shoulders. Blue hair. She stood up and stepped backward, ready to shield her face from whatever the spirit would do to her.
“What’s the matter, my girl? Don’t you recognize me?”
“Where did he go?”
“You mean Dorhen? Dorhen is gone,” the figure said, his voice loud as if in her head. He made no movement.
“Wh-what have you done with him?”
His shroud whipped softly in a rhythmic frolic. “Brought him to you. But now he has ripened.” A hand from within the robes tossed something red. A pear. She lurched and caught it in her cupped hands. As soon as it touched her skin, it wrinkled, its vibrant red distorted to a queasy black that continued to shrivel smaller and smaller, leaving nothing behind but the stem. “It can be in your hands now.” The spirit’s hand disappeared into his robes.
Kalea’s mouth hung open as she shook her head. “I think he’s been kidnapped. Where is he now?”
“I tried, my girl. I used the best of my collected energy to bring the Sufferborn up, to groom him, to clear his slate. Despite my work, he was flawed and let his guard down. I’m set back, and now he’s useless to me.”
Kalea dropped to her knees again. “I want him back. Don’t you understand? I love him! Please tell me where he is.”
“Your pleas are like a surge to my essence. Is it your wish to have the Sufferborn, then?”
“Yes, please!”
“Out of pity, I would grant your request. Pity and longing. And though there are other things I could do for you, you want him. A foolish thing I did, to think I could use him as I’d planned. Fine.” By now, his image had faded under the sun’s diligent work in drying the mist and dew. “It’s in your hands, but his days are numbered now. Remember my words and act fast before he falls into oblivion, never to be seen again even by the few who have seen him.”
The figure stepped forward, and though her good sense told her to shrink away, she couldn’t. A nagging curiosity and desperation for answers kept her attention plastered to the specter. She held her eyes open, resisting the urge to blink for fear he might vanish before she could learn something.
“Where is he?”
“He’s north. Take the road north. As you walk, search for a weapon like this one.”
He raised one arm, unfurling a wide grey sleeve from which he unsheathed a sword. Its shining blade glistened like silver from pommel to tip. Heavily decorated, its swirling reliefs and human-like figure lying on the Y-shaped cross section demanded any onlooker’s attention. He flipped it over in his hand to show the figure’s absence on the other side. Instead, the word “HATHROHJILH” was inscribed on the blade. The illusionary sword disintegrated, and he showed his empty hand before letting the sleeve fall back over it.
“Stay close to this sword,” the figure said. “It goes toward the Sufferborn. If you find him, stay close. Don’t leave his side.”
Kalea teetered on wobbly legs. “What happened to him?”
“There’s no time. Here,” the figure said, “don’t forget this.” From his sleeve, he revealed her washing bat. She’d lost track of it sometime between last night and now.
Kalea tiptoed closer. She reached out, and he dropped it over her open, trembling palms. Veins of its rough old wood grains now shone like silver, clustered brightest along the handle.
“What did you do to it?”
“Keep it close to you. As you should stay close to him.”
Her eyes scanned the figure, tracing over his obscured face. She moved closer, clutching the bat’s handle. “Who are you?”
“Because you charm me, I’ll tell you we are without names. Those who aren’t born are not given names. But as some have seen me, I have been called ‘Raining Cloud.’ By the Norrian tongue, the words are ‘Arius Medallus.’”
She repeated in a whisper, “Arius Medallus…”
Venturing close enough, she lashed toward his draped veil. Her hand entered a shower of mist. The wind blew into the sanctum, scattering the droplets creating his image, and he vanished.
With his image gone, his voice spoke once more in her head. Walk fast. Dorhen’s time is over. But you may see him once more if you wish. Until then, pray hard he says ‘no’ to Wik’s enticement.
Kalea stood alone again, clutching her washing bat, now glittering in the sunbeam. Snapping out of her gaping awe, she rushed outside to the courtyard and through the door to the east building, shooting past sleepy vestals on their way to the dining room.
“What in the world are you doing?” one asked, but she ignored the woman. They hadn’t heard the attack from their quarters.
An older vestal caught her arm in the hall. “Kalea, what in the world are you doing, walking around practically naked? The new priests might see you when they arrive!”
“Sister!” Kalea replied. “Where’s Sister Scupley?”
The old vestal wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you remember? She left with the novices last night. They’re being transferred to another institution to alleviate us in this famine.”
“Transferred?”
“Don’t you remember? Father Liam wasn’t the only person who transferred.”
“The novices were attacked in their beds!” Kalea shouted.
The woman’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Marauders raped and kidnapped my sisters, and my elf is missing too!” Kalea yanked her arm away and stormed back to her path, shouting more of the news. “There was an attack! Listen to me!”
Veiled women stepped around corners to gawk at her.
“We were attacked!” She didn’t stop to answer questions, but walked on, showing her bruised body and torn chemise to an
yone who would look. “Go to the novices’ dorm and see the remnants of your so-called transfer!”
The vestals took her up on it, rushing toward the door to find out what she ranted about.
In her new cell, she opened the wardrobe and found a few hand-me-down habits. She sneered and shook her head and put on her old washing chemise along with the blue kirtle; it fit her body slightly looser now because of all the meals she’d skipped. With her basket already packed, she could make a hasty exit. She tied her bat to her old leather belt, donned her cloak, and slung the basket over her shoulder.
Big, wide eyes on faces framed in identical veils stared at her as she strode back through the convent, allowing her leather shoes to scuff along the floor at any volume they chose.
One vestal returned from the west building yelling, “Deceit! Deceit!”
Stupid, clueless old bags. They lived on the far side of the convent from the novices, the two groups hardly interacted, and they had been deaf to those long minutes of violence that befell their own people. They were two different classes. The novices all waited to make that leap into the higher class. Kalea’s chance had come early; otherwise, age twenty-five was the customary age to become a full vestal.
And hapless Father Superior… He was up to something. Who knows, Sister Scupley might’ve also been involved in the planning. Or maybe she had left the convent in blissful ignorance like Father Liam. If only he knew what had happened to the innocent girls he had helped raise…
Perhaps she shouldn’t be so angry at the vestals; today would make them wiser. Several of them noticed her laywoman’s clothing and asked about it. She didn’t answer. She wouldn’t take the time to answer questions about the raid either. She offered whatever answers she could get out along her way outside.
“They lied to you,” Kalea told one woman. “Maybe Father Liam lied too. I don’t know, and I don’t have time to wonder about it.”
She walked out the door, cloak on, basket hanging off one shoulder, and washing bat at her hip. If anyone tried to stop her, she’d fight.
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