The Mermaid's Tale

by D. G. Valdron

  I flinched at her words.

  “But still you struggle on,” she finished.

  Her hand cupped my face.

  “What have the Mermaids done to you?” she asked.

  “What unconscious cruelty? What soft horror has been worked upon you? Better that you’d never known their touch, better that you’d never heard their song. They’ve destroyed you without ever meaning harm. You cannot live as an Arukh with what they’ve done to you.”

  Her lips were close to mine, the distance of a soft kiss, a softer whisper.

  “I can take it all away.”

  I flinched, staggering back from her. Breaking the rhythm.

  “No,” I said. “No. Leave it. Leave me.”

  I fell to my knee. She came up behind me.

  “Poor little monster,” she whispered.

  The soft compassion in her voice, free of hardness or mockery, cut through me like a knife.

  “Just kill him,” I said. “Anything, anything, just do it.”

  “Will you give me all your names?” she asked, advancing as I sank to my knees.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” I wept. “They were never mine to start with. Take them. Take them all. Just do it. End it.”

  “Kill him? Do it? End it?” she whispered, cradling my jaw in her hands. Kneeling I stared up at her face. “All these urges, all these desires. What is it that you really want?”

  “Arr... Arra...” I struggled in her grip, but she held me fast.

  “No,” she whispered. “No. You must tell me.”

  “Make it stop. He hurts,” I blurted. “He makes the world hurt. He makes everything hurt. Just make it stop.”

  And then she was gone. I slumped forward as she twirled slowly, a few feet from me. Slower and slower, but never quite still. On my hands and knees I stared at her.

  “I will not kill him,” she said finally. “Though he needs killing, it is not in my magic to do. There is no magic in murder, only empty death. But you’ve learned that already, haven’t you?”

  I groaned miserably, rising to my feet.

  “BE STILL!” she commanded. I froze immobile. A crouching monstrous statue.

  Unable to move, I watched as she approached closer and closer. She touched me again, and I looked into the eyes of her true face. I saw myself drowning in her eyes, helpless to look away.

  “Poor beast,” she said gently, her fingertips closing my eyelids. “I’ll not do as you wish. But I’ll make you a gift...”

  And if she said anything else, I didn’t hear it.

  I woke in the gutter, the side of my face resting in mud. Coughing, I rolled over.

  A Giant was squatting, watching me.

  I scrambled away, hissing at her. She didn’t rise. Instead, she extended her arm, stretching out with that immense reach that Giants have.

  “You’re very thirsty,” she said, handing me a skin.

  I grabbed it. The hand slowly withdrew.

  It was true. I was thirsty. Immensely thirsty. I drank. Water.

  She watched me gulp the water down, face impassive. From the corner of my eye, water spilling down my throat, I stared at her.

  “Thirsty little beast,” she said. “Good thing I was here to watch over you. Anyone might have come along and cut your throat. You are all out of... friends. It’s not safe for you to sleep.”

  “A sleeping Arukh is never safe,” I replied.

  “Too true, now more than ever. The Trolls have pronounced their Interdict and all the peoples will bow to it sooner or later. No one will defend you. A worthless little Arukh is a pointless thing to fight over, after all. You should run Arukh, run from here and hide for the rest of your life from the sight of anything with two legs. Lacking a name won’t save you. It’ll just spill more blood.”

  She stood, unfolding into the sky and strode off

  “But you don’t really care whose blood spills, do you?”

  Astonished, I watched her go, vanishing into the distance on her long strides.

  Nothing left now. Nothing at all.

  I skulked in garbage, living among the rats and carrion crows. Hiding and watching. Sometimes going out boldly.

  Two days later the Horsemen came for me.

  It was twilight in the Goblin Market when they came. Four horses galloped thundering up from either end of the market, their fur-clad riders whooping and swinging ropes. I watched in amazement, not quite realizing what they were after until they were almost upon me.

  I scrambled and sprinted away.

  The rope of the closest Horseman fell and tightened around me. I snarled and grabbed it, tearing him from his horse.

  He screamed and cowered as I ran toward him. I stepped onto his back, springboarding onto his mount. It reared in protest as my weight settled on it, but I had been born to Vampires and learned to ride before they had cast me out. I wheeled the beast around. One of the Horsemen was riding up to me. Our horses collided. I straight-armed the rider off his mount.

  Three more Horsemen appeared at the other end of the market, to join the remaining two bearing down on me. I wheeled and galloped toward the far end of the market. If I could find my way into the Goblin warrens I could make it into the Downriver. I would be safe from the Horsemen there.

  I could hide with the Kobolds for a short time if necessary. It would take them a little while to gather the resolve to cast me out.

  Abruptly, a half dozen appeared in front of me. The horse reared. Ropes fell short as I struggled to control the beast. I galloped away again. They closed in from both sides.

  I rode across the market toward the Dwarf borders. If I could make it that far, I could take them through Dwarfish peripheries into the heart of Vampire realms, if they dared to follow me. The Vampires would see them as their enemy. They would rouse even in the light. All I had to worry about was surviving. A rope looped around me.

  I snarled and pulled at it, but the horse and rider on the other end simply moved with me. I started to reel him in as I galloped, pulling my knife. Another rope fell over me, pulling tight. Then another. I held hard to the horse, it reared and almost fell as I was pulled off.

  I landed hard and struggled to my feet, trying to reach for my knife. More ropes settled around me, around my wrist. Horses strained in different directions. I felt my shoulder pop out of joint, and grabbed my wrist with my other hand. For a moment, all I could do was stand there, pitting my strength against the horses as they pulled.

  “Arrah,” I snarled desperately. “Arrah!”

  A horseman rode up to me, brandishing a wooden cudgel high in the air...

  My head hurt. I was aware of voices buzzing.

  I shook it, trying to clear the pain away. A dull hot throbbing radiated from my temple. I felt dried blood on my face, tight against my skin. I pried my eyes open, one eyelid thick and sticking with dried blood. I looked around, trying to focus. A wave of nauseau came on gently, like a tide, my I could feel it in my throat, in my belly. It passed but a moment later it returned.

  They were staring up at me. Faron, the mad Princeling, Taz the Arukh, an old woman, a young woman, a couple of riders, and a gray bearded man thick of body.

  My wrists and ankles were on fire with pain, all kinds of pain, red pain, sharp pain like knives, shooting pain that lanced up from my joints, and the dull throbbing aches. I had been tied, dangling upright in a wooden cage that seemed built around my body. The cage rested on a wooden framework, Humans were heaping kindling wood and dry brush underneath it.

  “See what we do to our enemies,” Faron called. His madness darted behind his merry eyes.

  I looked around. We were in a great hall, so huge that it lacked a roof. The sun was bright in the sky. Before me and around me were benches and tables. I could not see it, but I could smell ox flesh cooking on lesser fires behind me. Lesser fires.
r />   Mine would be the great fire.

  I struggled.

  They laughed.

  “Your masters thought they could bring us down. They used you to try to strike at the heart of my family. You will be our lesson to them tonight at sundown,” the old man yelled.

  The two women had wandered away, doing womens’ work as Humans marked it. The men jeered and laughed as I exhausted myself. I was poor sport, Arukh do not last as long as Humans. Eventually they wandered away, except for the Arukh, Tashifar.

  He watched me for a while, and then climbed up the wooden frame to my cage.

  “Taz,” I whispered.

  “Tashifar,” he corrected.

  “I have gold,” I told him. He watched me levelly.

  “I have the gold you gave the street shaman, the gold the Selk gave me. It’s yours.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “Not here,” I told him. “Set me free, and I’ll tell you.”

  “I cannot,” he replied.

  “Why not?” I wheedled, “You know I have it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want it? Don’t you? You want the women it will bring you? Whatever you desire, whatever you hunger for? Wealth and luxury? You want it don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What will it cost you?” I asked. “Slip me a knife to cut my way free. Give me a place to hide. See that I am unseen. No one would know. You could do that?”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “Then do it,” I whispered.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I hissed in frustration.

  “Because...” he looked around nervously, there were only a couple of women in the courtyard, attending to preparations. He pulled himself closer to me, so that our faces were only a foot or so apart.

  “I am of Shad-Niggurk, do you know of it?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He continued. “A Vampire city in the north, perhaps the northernmost of the cities but for Zighochinay.”

  “It was in the spring when the hordes of Horsemen came down from the north, the Humans rose. The city began to burn, first in places, and then the whole city all at once, with a flame that touched the sky. The Vampire lords had made some Orcs to fight for them, the city bordered the Goblin lands. But the city at our backs was burning, and the enemy laid siege at all sides.”

  “The lords sent a great army of Orcs out the front gates. They all died. But the lords were clever, while the great armies fought, they escaped with a small force. I was part of that force, the best of us.”

  He grinned with remembered pride.

  “I was struck on the way out. A Human laid my head open.” He tapped his scar. “I tried to ride, but I fell behind. Eventually, I lost the horse and wandered until I knew no more.”

  I watched him intently.

  “These people found me. They cared for me. They made me well. They took me into their homes and shared their food with me. They gave me a name. They made me one of them. I will not betray them.”

  “You are Arukh,” I hissed. “Do not forget that. They will not.”

  “They are my people,” he hissed back. “They gave me my life. I will not let anyone hurt them. Any of them.”

  “What about Lerel?” I whispered, “You let them hurt her.”

  “What do you know of Lerel?” he snapped.

  “She liked you, and you killed her.”

  “I did not. It was...”

  “Him,” I finished.

  He was quiet for a second.

  “I was sorry that she died,” he said quietly.

  “You know he doesn’t care about you,” I told him.

  He didn’t answer that. We both sensed it was true. The mad Princeling was an empty vessel. He cared nothing for anyone. He merely pretended.

  “But they do,” he answered after a moment. “They care. I protect them. They are my people.”

  He looked unaccountably sad.

  “I’d heard of you. I thought you would understand.”

  The prospect of being burned alive, I decided, did not improve my perspective.

  “Then set me free,” I whispered. “I promise, no harm ever, to him or any other of your people.”

  “Ho Taz,” a voice called. “Romance on the funeral pyre? It must be that Goblin blood in you.”

  It was the Prince. Tashifar climbed down so fast he almost fell. He scuttled away. The Prince cuffed him in a good-natured way. He looked up at me.

  “Comfortable?” he inquired.

  I snarled.

  “I know what you are,” I spat.

  “Indeed,” he answered. “I am free. You are not.”

  He began to climb the scaffold.

  “Tonight, I’ll be drunk. You’ll be cooked. How do you like that? I like it.”

  He reached his arm through the cage, fumbled with my loincloth. I squirmed as his fingers entered me, twisting and blunt. My dry loins contracted, but could not prevent him from doing as he chose.

  “I’ve never had an Orc,” he told me conversationally. “I wonder what it would be like? You’re such brutal creatures. I might have had you. But the Elders wanted it done in a traditional way.”

  He sighed.

  “You had the Mermaid,” I hissed at him.

  His brows knit.

  “That again? Why do you care? Why do you haunt me over a death or two, when the world is full of it? You have killed before, yourself, haven’t you?”

  I said nothing. He forced his hand farther into me and twisted. Pain ripped through me and I heaved in my bindings.

  “I said: You’ve killed before? Haven’t You?”

  He was enjoying himself. My head twisted to the side. I caught a glimpse of a young female figure.

  He caught my look and turned his head. He twisted.

  I grunted, I could feel a scream tearing out. It made no difference to him, he was equally happy to have my admission or my pain.

  “I kill,” I grunted and lied, “but not in like or dislike. I just kill because it needs doing.”

  He laughed at that.

  The girl drifted closer. Surreptitiously watching us. Busying herself with chores.

  “So do I. It’s not the killing I like. It’s the doing. It’s what comes with the killing.”

  His hand withdrew from me as he glanced at the girl.

  “We are not unlike. After all, it was just a Mermaid. What did it matter?”

  “Monster,” I snarled.

  His face darkened for a moment, and then he laughed.

  “Monster? I’ve never hurt my own people. Not like Orc who slit each other’s throats for a piece of copper and defile their own dead.”

  He pulled himself farther up.

  “You want a monster? Look at my sister there. Did you know that she had a baby once? One day she took it to the river and drowned it before anyone knew, before anyone could stop her. Now, no man will have her. Who wants a wife that murders her own babies?”

  I spat at him.

  He reached into the bars to cuff me, but stopped when he saw my teeth. Instead he just punched me in the gut. I heaved gasping for breath, dry heaving. I coughed, but nothing came up.

  “Once, you put questions to my father,” he said. “I’ll give you your answers.”

  “They will fish for us, or they will die,” he said.

  “They will drive beasts for us, or they will die,” he said.

  “They will sing when we tell them, and if the song displeases us, they will die.”

  “And if they do not fear death,” he paused, “we’ll make something for them to fear.

  “You ask what good is a kingdom which is only a mound of skulls? Why, don’t you know that every kingdom sits on a mound of sk
ulls! That’s what a kingdom is!”

  “You talk about Mermaids. Who cares about that? Selks, and Kobolds, and Vampires: Who cares about any of them? They aren’t my people. They aren’t people.”

  He glanced at the girl. She was close now.

  “Maybe afterwards,” he whispered to me, “I’ll go fishing for Mermaids again. Would you like that? I like Mermaids, don’t you? Maybe I’ll take them, one at a time, every single one, until there are none left. Would you like that? Maybe I wouldn’t have bothered, but you inspired me, you need to suffer. As you burn to death, I want you to know that it was you that killed the mermaids, all of them. But for you, I might have let them live.”

  I snapped at him, my jaws clicking shut. He drew back startled. I lunged straining my good arm, wood creaked and then squealed. He stepped back, a wary look crossing his features. I leaned my whole body forward, the bindings cutting into my flesh. Wood groaned and stretched. I pulled harder, my heart thudding in my chest, my face going thick and red. Everywhere I could hear creaking as agonized wood contested my strength. I could feel the bars bending, twisting. My muscles bulged and ached, sweat ran down my body. Still I pulled. Rawhide and rope straps stretched taut to the breaking point. So close.

  Not enough. I fell back, panting.

  He laughed merrily.

  He began to climb down, but hauled himself up again.

  “They say Orc feel no pain, that Orc can’t be hurt, can only be killed. I guess we’ll find that out.”

  “Maybe when the fire gets going, I’ll put a torch right up inside you, right up inside your woman parts. That would be a new thing. Would you like that? Would you tell us if it hurts?”

  For a moment his eyes gleamed with something flat and hungry.

  He let himself drop, and strolled jauntily off. As I watched he gave a little jerk towards the girl. She flinched, afraid. Not normal play there, there was real fear below.

  The courtyard was empty except for me and the girl. She continued her chores, sneaking the occasional look.

  Finally, she climbed the steps up to the cage door, splashing oil from a bucket onto the wood beneath. She had a gourd slung around her waist. She watched me frankly, as she tipped little splashes from the bucket.