One's Own Shadow (The Siúil Book 2)

by Randall P. Fitzgerald

  The sensation in her arm grew. Whatever cut was there ran deep, though it felt no longer than a fingernail. It had not been in her when she had fought at the inn before. She’d have remembered taking the wound. They must have put it in her. A way to administer their poisons. She would have been unable to swallow them, no doubt. And surely unwilling. Her thumb was the first to give her feeling. The edge of it, where her skin touched the clothes she wore. Lace, perhaps? Her sense spread out from the cut, reaching toward her thumb and washing ever so slowly toward a middle point to meet. She could feel her thumb clearly in her mind and focused her will on having it shift.

  Sounds began to trickle in. Muffled, as though heard through a down pillow or a pail of water. Her thumb twitched, the sounds came closer to audible, and her eyes cleared again. She could see the girl well now, and her eyes would move, even. The room beyond the cell seemed empty. Knowing was impossible as she laid, but the girl had not looked around the room, only occasionally at Aile.

  The words became clear enough to understand as she gained control of her thumb.

  “…said I was good for nothing, but I laughed, you know? I laughed at her. She does not know any potions. Not as I do. I learned them from a book. I hid it from her, you see? So she could not learn them also. That was years ago now, I know, but I feel guilty sometimes. We have known one another since we were girls. I make it a secret, but I feel Aile would forgive me. The Goddess is understanding, Fiar says so. You have not met him yet, but you will, soon. He said that he could not bear to meet you before the ceremony. He is so bashful sometimes. We have told him how beautiful you are, to tease him. Oh, you are so lucky. To be wed to the son of the King. I am jealous in my way, though I know there will be one for me someday.”

  The girl kept up, ceaselessly, moving from one meaningless topic to the next. Blood on the bandage showed the cut on her face to be long and fresh. It must have been the elf from the roof. She had not been sold then. Strange. The muscles in her forearm flexed at her command, but the arm would not lift.

  “Well, that ought to do it.” The girl came to her feet holding the mortar and walked to Aile’s side. “This part is unpleasant, I know, but we cannot afford to let such a special—”

  From the instant the girl moved, Aile had willed her arm to lift. She threw the whole of her mind at the defiant piece of her body. It twitched, and again. The girl had not noticed, busy rubbing a knife in the mixture and humming to herself. Finally, it lifted. The elf pulled the knife from the bowl and Aile found the unwilling arm with her mind. She commanded it now, barely. She made her thumb stiff and swung, hitching her shoulder as best she could. Her aim was true, thumb pressing into the soft meat beyond the girl’s bandage. The mixture and tool were dropped and the elf screamed out. She stumbled backward away from the bed, terrified, scrambling herself beyond the cage door and pushing it closed.

  “How? I used so much… Guards!” She turned and fled from the cell.

  Time was short, Aile knew. They would come soon, to restrain her. She could move her arm freely. The rest of her body was creeping back to her, from the very edges toward the center of her being. Poisons meant to keep a body asleep often fell away quickly. Her feet moved first, and then her knee. She flung the useless limbs sideways, to the edge of the mat she was laid on. If she could stand, she would be able to do more. She crawled, wrists flopping awkwardly. She had arranged herself to stand when she heard loud steps. She forced the muscles in her thigh to pull the leg forward, her foot planting. The other following. She pressed up, losing her balance. Aile stumbled back into the wall behind, barely keeping the progress she had made at the cost of a strong knock to the shoulder. She pushed away from the wall, coming upright properly for the first time just as shoes reached the floor to her left.

  Aile steeled her expression as the two elves with odd hair came to the door of her cell.

  “Be calm,” the taller one said.

  Unlikely.

  “If you enter this cell, I will kill you.”

  The taller turned, “Bring others.”

  “Stop.”

  The voice was aged and filled with authority. She dared not turn her head to look, worried that she would lose her balance in the attempt.

  “There is no need. Not until the ceremony.”

  Footsteps climbed the stairs and Aile kept her eyes focused on the men in front of her. They grimaced, looking at one another, and left without another word. The moment she was sure they were gone, Aile crumpled to the pad beneath her. Not much more than a sack stuffed with down and hay, if the noise it made was anything to go by. Her muscles ached as much as she’d ever known them to. It was the price of her consciousness, however. One gladly paid.

  Hours passed. The girl returned, sheepish and not nearly so talkative as she had been. Her bandages had been changed and she brought food.

  “I have… it’s supper.”

  Aile walked slowly to the girl, hiding shaky legs as best she could. The elf held the plate through the bars. Aile looked over it and slapped it to the ground.

  “I will not be poisoned.”

  “It is not…”

  The elf became sad at that and left with her head low. Aile went back to the pad. She worked her muscles firmly between her hands, hoping to bring them to some better state before next she saw elf faces. The cell and the room around it were thoroughly plain. A grain cellar, not some purpose built thing but it isolated her from the world well enough. The only cell was her own. They had dressed her in a gown of sheer silk and white lace. A strange thing on its own, but Aile had smelled the herbs the girl mixed. Given as they had been to Aile, the mash worked as a powerful sleep agent, but applied to the skin and left there, it served as a long acting calmative and hallucinogenic. A drug to make one docile, to brainwash them.

  The night passed without another visit and the day beyond saw the girl make several more attempts at feeding her. There was no sense in risking their poisons. It was dusk when things changed their shape. The elves with the strange haircuts returned. Her Fire was still lost within her somewhere, held prisoner by the lingering poison. She stood, ready to do what she could with tired, feeble limbs that still only barely did as she asked.

  The key went into the cell door.

  “Try nothing. We do not wish to harm you.”

  Aile sat placid on the cushion, waiting. She would have one chance, most like. She had hid the mortar beside her, near the wall. She swung it hard as they came close, but was slower than she had expected. The attack was deflected, the target unperturbed. It was futile, she knew. She swung her free fist and it was caught easily. The limb was twisted around, put behind her, and the elf forced her against the wall.

  “Come!” He called.

  The girl with the patch appeared beside her, gobbing a familiar smelling paste at the back of her ears. Aile felt her meager strength drain and the stones in her vision began to shift. The speed of the world was odd, speeding and slowing with a will of its own. They dragged her from the cell and she was stripped of the white gown. For the first time, she was taken above. A wide field, empty but for four raging fires and gathered people in a circle at the center of them. She was walked past it all, taken to a stone table and laid on it roughly. Her limbs were bound. She could hear whispers from all directions. They waxed and waned in the night air. She could feel every exposed part of herself too sensitively. Her nipples grew hard in the cold air. The restraints at her wrists and ankles did their job. She could not pull free of them. The more she pulled, the less her body listened and only one thing stayed present in her mind. Hate. At the sound of every whisper it grew, and she instinctively reached out for the flames around her, unable to grasp them, to use them. She did not cease her struggle, not through the whole of her time on the table, even when a trio of elves came. All of them with skin blackened somehow… Soot? She narrowed her eyes at them. Two women, young. And a man. Thin, but f
it. He addressed the audience in the circle as the women undressed beside him and began to do the same with his own clothes. He spoke the Drow tongue… or thought he did.

  “Aile wish. We believe. Worship her happy. Make Aile love.” He motioned his hands over her. “I, this, love. I declare. Make mine. Make tree never. Vestments controlled.”

  The gathered elves cheered. It was gibberish, nonsense. He turned and Aile snarled, or tried. Goddess be damned, where was her Fire? A thin cock hung in the air over her, the elf women cooing at his side, staring at the pitiful member as though it were some lost gold idol, now found and glorious and magical. She’d not have let it near her for all the gold in the elflands.

  He began his gibberish words again as the first of the girls began to work the cock with her hands. He held his arms wide.

  “I seed intestines. Grow large. Grow love.”

  The faces he made were disgusting to watch. No creature who’d known a strange hand on their cock would make such a face. Pathetic. At least, the rape held no risk of being entirely painful, as so many had.

  The other girl, seemingly unable to contain her excitement cupped the elfman’s balls, squeezing them vigorously.

  “Hnng.”

  He winced and thin ropes of his seed loped onto Aile’s stomach. The elf backed away and turned.

  “The first complete!”

  More cheering. The girls came to either side of her and began to rub the sickly dribblings around on her skin, their eager, too-bright eyes peering past black masks. The feel of it made her wish to gag, but the paste on her ears would not allow it. When they had finished each of the girls stood, placing their hands together as if in prayer.

  “I dines!”

  More broken Drow. They leaned down to her and licked her stomach. More came, each proclaiming the same thing.

  “I dines!”

  She no longer worried how she would escape, nor that she would die, nor be raped. She only marveled at them as, in turn, no less than three dozen elves came and licked the dried crust of elf jism from her stomach before moving on. All of them smiling, rejoicing, and hugging one another when they had finished the baffling ritual. When all of them had done their task, they cheered, the boy waving them toward one of the fires. Music began to play as the men who put her on the table came to retrieve her. She struggled against them, but to no avail. The song the elves played was too fast, and not played quite right, but she knew it. A lullaby for children. The gown was placed back on her naked body and she was taken to her cell and shoved into it.

  Her mind was awash in the poisons and she could not hope to do much when the iron bars were around her again. Still, Aile scraped the drug from behind her ears and threw it from the cell, cleaning her hands on the pad. When she was done, she only sat, eyes fixed on the far stair, ears full with bad versions of old Drow songs and her tired mind wondering what madness she had just experienced.

  Part Fifteen

  w

  Z

  Socair

  Socair could not remember a time she had been more miserable. Rushed away from the battle the moment Meirge had made his proclamation of Deifir’s will. She’d been confined in a room in the inn, secreted away from everyone and guarded by Meirge’s most trusted only. They brought her food and drink and a healer who spoke with her coarsely about caring for her wounds properly. There was still a hole clear through her and when she had complained to the old man about wishing to fight, he’d squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, locking her arm and doubling her over in pain. She took the hint of it. For what it was worth, she was treated well. Meirge’s chosen had never ceased apologizing, calling her Treorai each time they came. A term that sent nerves running rampant through her stomach each time she heard it. Práta had survived, she was told, but could not come and see her. Not until Meirge allowed it. She begged them to bring her. There was so much to say.

  The trebuchets had not been the end of the hippocamp push against Innecarnán and the fighting continued the next day, without her. She was told the forces fell under Meirge’s command and that the bulk of the work was done. That the horsefolk had finally sounded a retreat after midday. Losses for their side were heavier that second day. Unlike the first, it had been hours of unconventional fighting and desperate attacks. One of the guards posited that they must have been the more zealous of the horsefolk. The numbers they mounted were not of value and the evening had been spent flushing out camps and killing what they found.

  She had not found a moment of sleep or rest of any kind in the room. A different inn than she’d stayed in with Práta and Nath…

  Nath.

  The thought of the girl’s face still made her feel pity more than rage. But more, the image put a weight on Socair’s shoulders. Her childish, stubborn wish to be a savior had robbed a people of their leader and nearly robbed her of the only love she still knew. And at the end of such a selfish, foolhardy course, why had she paid so little? Práta lived, the battle was won for the moment, and, to confound reason itself, she was named Treorai. If the Sisters truly watched them, then they played strange games. Socair could find no other explanation than that, though, when her mind coursed over the days and seasons behind her. There was no meaning to it all that she could find. If the meaning lay in some higher place, she did not wish to know of it. The weight on her was enough without some divine expectation.

  She had finished her evening meal when a knock came at the door a bit earlier than she’d expected. They were fastidious about taking the dishes she left, but usually gave her more time. Socair had already tidied them on the table that sat in front of the room’s lavish couch. The entire room, beautiful as it was, held no comfort for her. Only, in the absence of distraction or conversation, reminded her of Silín and Doiléir and what they might’ve said in such a place.

  The door opened and the pleasant, familiar faces skipped away to some other place. She looked up, meaning to make small talk about the plates with whoever had come to take them, but instead found Meirge standing upright. When she met his eyes, he nodded to the guards at the door and stepped fully inside the room. They were left alone there.

  “Treorai, I—”

  “I wish you would not call me that, Meirge. I… I do not wish for some strange familiarity, but it causes me such discomfort… More than any other title.”

  “You will warm to it in time.” He nodded, satisfied with his response. His voice was calm, mature. It soothed her somehow. “May I sit?”

  “Of course.”

  She motioned to a chair and Meirge took it. A ridiculous question. Why would he not be allowed to sit? The thought was followed near as quickly by the memory of her asking the same of Deifir so many times. And of others doing the same. It was how one comported themselves to those who held authority over them.

  “I have come to provide an outlay of the days to come and to apologize for how this has been seen to. Deifir had concerns over your appointment. Specifically, how her Binse would react upon the news. It has been kept secret and the only word spread is that you took a grave wound in her defense. Come midnight we will ride from this place for the Bastion City.”

  “Práta—”

  “Will accompany us.” Meirge leaned forward in the chair. “I have not been so blind in my time in the Bastion as to think you would leave without her. Neither am I so cruel as to wish it.”

  “What will happen?”

  Meirge sighed, leaning back again. “Very little, at first. When you arrive at the Bastion, we will assume guard over you. Some days hence, you will be publicly avowed by the extant Binse, affirming they are completing Deifir’s will. Speeches, parties, and endless pieces of paper to put your name upon. And then a war.”

  “War… They have retreated, yes? How far? To where?”

  “Our scouts report a small contingent making south for Dulsiar. The bulk have broken east, moving for Glascroí, perha
ps, or some other city beyond. We expect there are forces still in Drocham, or bound for it by sea.”

  “The winds will take some of them, if they mean to cross the water. Bais is no time for sails.”

  “We should hope. The bulk will come from the east, I should think. Though some wish to trumpet this a thorough victory and hail an end to the war.”

  “Glasta?”

  “And others.”

  “Fools, the lot of them.”

  “We all were, Socair. You must remember that. We looked at you with unbelieving eyes and entire cities have paid the cost. Thousands have died because we waited to hear your wisdom. Even Deifir said it, when no other ears could hear. ‘She has conviction,’ she said. ‘But is it something more, or the burning fires of youth?’”

  Socair said nothing at that, only mulled the words. She had long understood what the cost of her youth was among those above her. Doubts that had moved from their minds to hers and clouded her judgment. Let her be led to places that had nothing to do with the threats that she saw so clearly before. Seventy and five years were not enough spent alive to know the shape of war, so went the common wisdoms so often offered to her.

  Another knock and Meirge stood. “You must not forget such truths, Socair. Had you led us, so many more would still live. And this war may have failed before it began.” He stopped at the door, talking over his shoulder. “You’ve a few hours until we ride, Treorai. Use them to ready yourself.”