Risen

by Sharon Cramer

  As though on cue, the one-eyed leader—Yeorathe they had called him—struck him hard on the back of his head with his fist. It made Risen’s head spin and nearly sent him flying from the horse. The headache that was already there pounded mercilessly now.

  Another—Odgar, Risen heard him called—snarled at Yeorathe. “Have your fun, but cost me resources, and I will take your other eye and eat it for my breakfast.”

  Yeorathe laughed cruelly, evidently unafraid, and Risen watched in silence as the man jogged his horse up to the other. They were a calculating pair, the two of them, and they gave Risen a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, a very bad feeling. Still, Risen could hazard no good explanation for why he and Sylvie had been taken or why they were spared. What he told these warriors was true, they were only children. But their captors could not know how special these two really were.

  Risen readjusted himself on the quarters of the horse as the soft drizzle died, replacing itself instead with driving sheets of rain. He frowned knowing that a downpour such as this could obliterate almost all of their trail. He prayed to any god who would listen, and to the universe, that his father had figured out where he’d gone, would discover that he’d escaped to find Sylvie, and that they were taken.

  Why hadn’t he told Niveus? At least told her? Father would eventually ask her what she knew, might have figured it out that way. In retrospect, he would have done things differently; he regretted his mistakes as the ache in his flanks worsened.

  But, ironically, the miserable change in weather would offer respite. As the rain continued, it ran down his loose locks of hair in rivulets, dripping steadily in small streams off the ends. Tilting his head to one side, he gathered several of the locks between his lips and held them carefully there. Then…he drank.

  Some time later, when he neared Sylvie and caught her gaze, saw the misery in her eyes, he wordlessly showed her what to do. She knew straightaway, and gathered a stray strand of her own hair between her lips. In that way, they continued to survive.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  †

  Ravan slid from his horse for the sixth time and knelt, scanning the forest floor, passing his hand over the long dead leaf beds. He picked up a barely broken twig to inspect it closely. It infuriated him that the burden of tracking the children was so slow, so tedious. It’d been nearly two hours, and he was just realizing that the children’s footprints had been overcome by men on horses, and the children’s trail had disappeared altogether.

  For the longest stretch he tried to abandon this notion. What would strangers want with children? And one of them a crippled girl? But this was a question of insanity, for he knew better than most the capacity of men to hurt a child. He’d been one of them, one of the broken ones exploited for profit.

  His heart fell. Risen and Sylvie were taken. They were on horseback—of this he was certain. It was not the earthen stretches or the forest floor that would become most difficult to track. Those would be easier. It would be rock that would confound him. If these strangers crossed rocky ground, rain would remove the subtle signs that he depended on to follow them. Then, he would be left to circling the entire expanse, struggling to see where they came off the rocks on the other side.

  He raised his head and studied the fading dense stand of trees that stretched off into blackness in front of him. Please let them stay on soft ground, he thought to himself.

  It was daunting, not just for the task at hand but because it was his son that he chased. Never had he felt this kind of fear before. Never had he hated someone unknown to him so completely as he did these men, and his heart swelled uncomfortably in his chest. The red veil threatened to wash across his eyes, begged to take his vision from him, to make an animal of the man.

  He swallowed and squinted so hard, focused so intently on the darkening light of the fading forest, that his vision blurred. It didn’t help that the rain was falling so heavily now. The only encouraging sign was the absence of one thing…blood.

  Velecent scanned the dense undergrowth as well, but his eyes were not nearly so keen as his friend’s. “Do you see any sign of them?” he asked outright. “I don’t, not a mark of them. Just the horses.” The warrior tossed his light brown locks from his eyes and prepared to remount his warhorse.

  “They were here,” Ravan indicated the small thicket, “and here.” He pointed at apparent nothingness on the ground in front of him. When Velecent eyed him as though he’d gone mad, Ravan explained, “This is where Risen and Sylvie last walked. They were taken from this spot and are headed,” he pointed toward the Northeast, “this direction, on horseback.”

  “How do you know that it is Sylvie?” his friend wondered. “I understand the heavier child’s print is your son’s, but how do you know they have the girl?” Velecent was perplexed.

  “The prints—the gait of the lighter child—is uneven.” He glanced up from his assessment of the ground. “Sylvie is unsound.”

  His first in command nodded. “Ah, I think I knew that. But why?” he wondered, “Why children? What would they want with them, and one of them lame?” He pointed into the blackness of the thick forest. “Why waste their time when they could just…just…” He appeared suddenly sheepish for the thought he almost put into words, and let the question remain unasked as Ravan shot him a scathing glance.

  “Say that aloud and you will regret that you did,” his leader cautioned.

  Velecent and Ravan were friends, had developed a slow burning kinship over the last ten years. The younger man had a keen sense of humor, laughed easily, and fought viciously. They were oddly opposite in many ways but were drawn to each other in a rare fashion. Ravan required beside him men whom he could trust. He knew, from many years of experience, that this was not easy to find and even more difficult to return.

  This man, however, had demonstrated his allegiance repeatedly, on and off the battlefield, and their friendship had deepened. Risen seemed entirely enamored of this first knight as well, engaging him when he least expected it in ambush. Velecent nearly always feigned surprise, most often fell as though he was undone by the boy. Once, he laughed heartily as he gently defended himself with his sword, surprised to see how adept the boy really was!

  Through the years, Ravan had become very comfortable with his younger friend, and Velecent was nearly always at his Lord’s side, for Ravan had grown to trust him implicitly. One day, Velecent asked without warning, “Do you consider me your friend? Like a brother, perhaps? Or maybe a close cousin?”

  He said it with some humor to his voice. This had prompted the opposite expression of what he obviously expected, sparked a darkened countenance on the face of his master and friend as though he’d pinched a nerve.

  “Friend? Yes, of course. I have none closer. You should know that, but I have only one brother, and his soul is risen in my son.”

  “Your son?” Velecent had laughed. “Risen? You think your brother is…” but then he caught himself short. “Of course,” Velecent murmured, dropping his eyes beneath his brown locks, never to approach the subject again.

  All, including Velecent, had heard tale of an earlier time, of years before when a mercenary and a giant had come to the castle—bodyguards for the despot ruler, Adorno. And all had surely wondered about the giant, what had become of him, his friend. But such things were nearly impossible to speak of with Ravan. He preferred his past to remain private on many fronts and guarded it like so many lost shrines.

  And, of course, over time most had heard of the twin, the priest who sacrificed himself for his brother. Perhaps Velecent wondered curiously of this brother of Ravan’s, the one who’d died and, Ravan believed, been born again in his son. It was no secret that Risen was the veritable image of his father, and Ravan was a twin. But his son was his own! Surely he recognized this?

  Velecent peered off into the darkening forest. “So we ride?” he offered apologetically.

  “Yes, we ride.” Ravan swung back onto his steed, and off he and his band
of men set into the creeping dusk. After a good, long while, the mercenary pulled up and sighed. His heart was heavy. He was having difficulty keeping fruitless worry at bay. Also, he’d sent word to Nicolette that he was leaving but hadn’t been able to tell her goodbye. Who knew for how long he would be gone?

  It didn’t matter, really, for he had no choice. It was simply what he must do, and logically he knew that Nicolette would understand. The terrible battle was already won, and his legion would make certain that his bride and domain were kept safe until his return. Of that he had no worry. Even so, it’d been a long while since he’d not slept next to her.

  It bothered him a greatly that their progress following Risen was so slow. He tried to push the torment—the unreasonable bite of impending panic—from his mind and focus on tracking his son. This he was superbly designed for, calculating losses and wins, deciding strategic advantage and what should be done next, casting emotion aside, and getting to the task at hand. He was suited poorly for it now, however, for he’d lost his son. There was little reason in the wolf that threatened to crawl up his back and into his mind, devouring his thoughts completely.

  Deeper into the woods the group rode, weaving and backtracking. Ravan would track, misplace the trail, and re-find it, sometimes at a crawling walk. All the while, the rain came down, erasing in increments the very thread that connected him to Risen and Sylvie. To make things worse, when he could see the tracks clearly, the band of men who’d taken them was not walking tediously along as he was; they were moving along at a faster clip, farther and farther from their terrible defeat. The distance between them was widening. Ravan and his men were losing ground in hours, and he knew it.

  When nightfall forbade them to track, they stopped and camped. Before long a modest fire crackled beneath the broad expanse of a sheltering tree as the small troop of men tacked down the horses and set up the night’s patrol. Ravan would be up before dawn, his men up with him, prepared and ready to pick up the trail. Tonight, they would sleep, but he would not.

  It’d been a long time since he’d been on a campaign such as this, but the movement of the forest and the tide of the life within it were as familiar to him as it’d ever been. Reclined by the fire, his mind, ears, and soul took in the midnight expanse around him. He was wordless for a span, and his men left him to his silence, accustomed to their leader and his taciturn ways.

  “The horses are fed; the men have sorted out the night watch.” Velecent took a heavy seat onto the ground next to the mercenary. He glanced back and forth between his friend and the fire. When Ravan remained silent, he added, “We’ll find him, Ravan. I promise.”

  The firelight danced off the dark profile of the mercenary, his face grim. “We don’t know that. That is not a promise you can make.”

  Velecent brushed the comment aside. “No one tracks better than you. We’ll find him. We’ve done everything as we should. It is simply a matter of time.”

  “If we lose the trail,” Ravan tossed the branch he’d been poking the fire with into the flames, “our chase will run cold. That is the truth of it.” Then as an afterthought, “And we do not have Nicolette’s intuition to guide us.” He looked up at his friend, sorrowful terror in his eyes.

  “Hmm…I must agree on that one. Your bride is a weapon I’d prefer not to go up against. It would be good to have her on our side.”

  Ravan was then silent in his thoughts. It might appear that he was reclined, perfectly relaxed by the fire, but nothing was farther from the truth. His mind was afflicted with a chaos none could see.

  It disturbed him more than he would admit that Nicolette was not there. He was increasingly aware how much she could offer to the search, and he regretted that he’d not gone to get her first. Most critically, she would be able to, with her keen awareness, sense Risen’s presence altogether. He had no doubt that, given the precise moment, Nicolette would also know if his son was…gone. Ravan frowned. It disturbed him that he doubted he would feel it, would feel a moment as significant as the death of his son.

  Recalling that distant morning, twelve years before, he tried to remember what he’d felt when his brother died, when he lent a dreadful hand in the final destiny of his twin. Had he sensed it—the slipping of D’ata’s soul from this world to another? He certainly experienced grief, had barely held it together enough to convince the gravedigger that he was a surgeon in priest’s clothes, come for the corpse. His voice had scarcely held as he paid the man, and when he lifted the body of his brother and placed him carefully across the horse, he hid tears from anyone who might notice. But had he known, sensed the absence of him? Felt him slip from this world to the next?

  These thoughts pressed him further. He wondered if he’d felt his twin brother all along, his whole life? There was always that something missing that he never identified, that vacancy with a pressing urgency to fill. It’d all been so oddly vague until the night his brother had come for him, then…it disappeared.

  Could that have been what his soul missed? Ravan ruminated on this thought for some time. It gave him a small amount of comfort tonight, for he decided that it was. D’ata’s presence in the dungeon had fulfilled something, something he’d not been able to mark until that moment—a loss—the absence of his twin.

  He sighed softly. Yes, then. He’d sensed his brother’s presence, and surely a child would be just like that. Surely he would feel the absence of the soul of his son, should he be gone. And, at least for now…he did not.

  Velecent remained quiet, evidently content to simply remain by his master’s side, a physical pillar of emotional strength should his friend need it. That was a good thing, Ravan decided, and the brief memory of one named LanCoste flitted across his mind.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  †

  Moira tapped on her mistress’s door.

  “Come.”

  Pushing the massive door barely open, the maiden peeked inside. Nicolette was seated near the window, her hand resting on the sill ledge. She did not turn around to see who was there.

  “My Lady, I have what you requested.”

  “All of it?” Nicolette’s gaze remained fixed upon the fading evening light outside.

  “Yes, all of it. As you wished.”

  This seemed to surprise Nicolette, and she turned slightly so that she could see Moira.

  Motioning for the woman to enter and close the door behind her, she asked softly, “You engaged Moulin with the task?”

  “I did, my Lady. He was pleased to help.”

  “And…” Nicolette let the question dangle.

  “He will keep everything secret—is sworn by me to do so.”

  The dark woman seated at the window only nodded. “Good. Then we must begin straightaway.”

  “What is it you require?” Moira asked with acute sincerity, her hand clasped desperately to the stump in front of her. “Anything…anything at all.”

  Nicolette’s eyebrow rose as though in mild surprise. “Let us hope that is not necessary.” Before Moira could ponder the unusual response at length, Nicolette added, “Please take everything to my study, the one on the North Castle grounds. That is where I prefer to work.”

  Nicolette’s study was really a small cottage, one that Nicolette had reserved for herself for “reading and such.” She’d forbidden any to disturb her there, and all—even Ravan—respected her wishes.

  Risen and Tobias had, on at least one occasion, tried to spy through one of the tiny windows but had been met by Nicolette when she exited the other side, walked around the small building, and taken them quite by surprise. She rebuked and shooed them away, and they never again intruded on her privacy. Once, however, Moira had seen Nicolette walk to the study with Niveus, holding her hand. Only once.

  “And I wish there to be a fire built on the hearth. Have Moulin accompany you, and let me know when all is ready.” She indicated the door as though she wished for Moira to leave.

  “Yes, my Lady.”

  Moira had an uneasi
ness in her stomach. She bowed out of her mistress’s chamber and went to find Moulin, nodding politely to the chamber guard as she left. Ordinarily, Moulin would be standing there, but with the pressing urgency of matters at hand, his presence was required elsewhere.

  Moira’s mood darkened as she trotted, skirts in hand, down the hall. It seemed, with Risen missing, that Nicolette was unusually calm and too willing to take time for preparedness. Shouldn’t they be hurrying as fast as they could to accomplish…what?

  She passed Niveus’ guarded door and paused. Within, the child was standing in place and spinning, arms up in the air, humming sweetly to herself. Moira would have stopped, would have distracted Niveus from this distant place that seemed to beckon to this extraordinary child, to take her away, except that she had no time.

  “See that she is covered when she falls asleep,” she instructed the guard, and he nodded that he would.

  Biting her lip, she took the stairs almost too recklessly, bursting onto the landing where she ran nearly smack into Moulin. He had the sacks of items. Moira whispered something into his ear, and he shot her an urgent glance. Off to the cottage the two hurried.

  * * *

  Having not been in the cottage since Nicolette first claimed it as her own, Moulin paused at the door. It wasn’t locked. There was no need for that. He’d once asked her if she required attendance within, and she’d declined, explaining that she would tend to anything there herself. Consequently, no one ever dared invade the privacy of their lady. Now, it just seemed wrong that they were entering without her, and he was uncomfortable with his task.

  Pushing the door open, the two of them filed in. The small room was just that, a single room with a modest table and chair and a large, cushioned chaise in the corner by the window. She had the window put in where it had been a simple shutter before. Evidently it was here that she liked to sit, and she could look out if she wished.