by Quil Carter
The demigod… that stupid demigod…
“My remaining fingers are already a loss,” Malagant said, looking down at them. Teal was doing his best to knit his flesh back together, with more vials of burning tonics and salves that turned Malagant’s flesh orange.
“If we can get you to Anagin… we might have a chance,” was Teal’s quiet reply. He let out a breath, sweat was beading off of his brow as he concentrated on stitching.
Oh right, my father, the healer. Maybe I would have a chance, if they didn’t kill me from infection by then.
Malagant closed his eyes, trying desperately to push the fog away from his brain. The pricks and pulls of pain as Teal worked on him were the only things keeping him in reality.
His swirling, dizzy mind seemed just as numb as Teal’s. He wanted to figure out what had just happened to him. He remembered Taugis attacking him with his sellswords, he remembered Sorah.
But what he remembered most was Taugis sawing off his fingers, screaming in insane anger when he realized Korivander had given Malagant the last bottle of Kova’s Seeve. He was demanding to know where Ben was… demanding his sapphire pendant, thinking so firmly and insanely that it would redeem himself in his father’s eyes.
“Mel?” Teal said.
Malagant opened his eyes, and saw his friend staring back at him. He was holding something strange in his hand, in the other was a small queer round thing. It looked orange.
“Yes?” Malagant blinked hard. He didn’t know if he had fallen asleep or just tuned out again, but he felt a bit more with it. He looked down to see his fingers and hands completely stitched now. They looked horrible, like an elfling lass’s first needle work, but his remaining six digits were there and his thumbs, swollen, hot to the touch, and a mixture of red and orange, but all there.
“I want you to take something… you’ll be doing this three times a day.” Teal handed him the small orange thing. It almost looked like a round lentil bean. “Swallow this.”
“What is it?” Malagant asked curiously. He brought the bean up to his face and looked at it. It had marks on it.
“It’s called a pill. This is going to stop your wounds from getting infected, hopefully,” Teal said. He quickly stuffed a bag full of little beans into the back of what Malagant realized was the stapler, then put it into his backpack.
“I’ve never seen this before…”
Teal hesitated, before getting up and throwing his backpack over his back. “It’s… it’s earth medicine. It’s called penicillin, that’s all I can say.”
Malagant’s eyes widened. He got up with Teal and looked around to see their camp was packed up, probably all resting in Teal’s canvas pack now. Without argue he swallowed the pill. It was tasteless down his throat, and quite easy to swallow. He wanted to question Teal more about it later, now was not the time.
With Teal sticking close to him, to help him whenever he stumbled, they walked back to the bonfire.
Wordlessly, they grabbed the sapphire pendant from Taugis’s burnt grasp, stiffness already settling into his body; his intestines cold and moist in the grass around him. It was a grisly scene, but they had no time to clean it. All they did was roll Taugis off of the cliff, and collect his jewellery that had fallen when Sorah was running. Taugis was still recognizable, the sellswords weren’t and they had no time to dispose of all of them.
“Where are the horses?” Teal asked when they had started to walk downstream with the canyon. Teal was keeping close to the canyon ledge; on the off-chance he had missed Ben. Malagant stayed well away from it, he was stumbling and waves of dizziness often overcame him.
“Killed them,” Malagant said quietly.
Teal looked behind him, back to the camp. “Even… yours?”
Malagant’s eyes met Teal’s; it took him a moment to understand what his friend was asking. He was asking if Taugis or the others had their horses with them.
“He… he didn’t have it with him, nor Taugis,” was Malagant’s answer. “They might have some tethered into the woods but… I don’t know. I don’t want to look for them; they would get spooked by the canyon ledge anyway and we’ll need to cross soon.”
Teal nodded and continued to look down the canyon. “You’re right.” His face was still detached and emotionless. Malagant was struggling with whether that was a good thing or not. Perhaps Teal shutting down for the time being was what was best. Though he didn’t know; he was a healer for physical injuries, matters of the mind, especially Teal’s, was beyond him.
As they walked along the canyon ledge, Malagant watched the statues go by, one after the other. The Dragon’s Promise was passed, as large as the canyon itself and carved out of a beautiful deposit of grey rock. So smooth Malagant used to imagine using it as a slide in his youth, sliding all the way down the dragon’s tail into the river below.
Further on was the Maiden’s Regret, which was a ladyelf holding the shield of her lover. When it rained, the rain water would form rivers of tears trickling off her face. Her face was forever looking longingly at the sky, always looking, always waiting. Malagant’s father told him a story that she was once a highborn lord’s daughter, who shunned kissing the cheek of her betrothed before he went off to war, all because of an argument over their wedding. Predictably he died in the war, and all she got back was his shield with his House emblem on it. She had commissioned the carving herself with the shield, as a warning to never send a loved one off with anger in their hearts, for you never knew if they would return.
Malagant hoped Teal didn’t know the story behind that.
They silently walked on. Past the Twisted Jare, past the sunmage Fedron, his hands wrapped around a flame of fire, dyed red every spring by the old mages of Gidon. A mage’s guild tower a few leagues east. Then finally, after hours and hours of walking, they approached the Throat.
“I climbed here,” Teal said. Malagant almost jumping at the sound of his friend’s voice. It had been so quiet, just the river below them, and a few buzzing insects enjoying the morning.
Teal looked down at the basin below them. Schrael’s Throat was worn into the middle of the canyon, a large sink that pooled the canyon water like a lake, before sending it back down the canyon through a narrow channel. The water was black and the legends around the Throat nightmare-inducing. It sat in the middle of the canyon like a grave site, seemingly catching and trapping any living thing that dare find themselves in the basin.
The edges of the Throat were smooth, worn by erosion and time, but not only smooth, also slippery, under slime and churned river foam. No living thing could get out of the Throat and worse yet, the bodies would usually get trapped in the lake until they disintegrated with rot. Stories were told of hundreds and hundreds of bodies floating around the pit during the Black War, entangling each other like swollen grains of rice. Split open by rot, leaking fluid and blood into the basin, turning it a dull and slimy brown. So numerous the flesh clogged up the Throat’s exit, making a dam of decaying corpses. So they just collected and collected until the river swelled and spilled over the plains.
These stories he knew were true, they were his father’s. He had fought in the plains of Lazarius with Cruz. He had not only seen Schrael’s Throat swallow and spit out the dead elves, he had even been in the pit left for dead, saved only by his knowledge of Evercovian sheomancy…
Malagant shuddered. Suddenly he wasn’t too eager about seeing his father. He had forgotten some of the horrible stories he would tell them. Usually passive-aggressively when Malagant or Josiah had done something to displease him. Burnt dinner? Story about sheomancy. Nicked his sword? Story about swimming through a hundred corpses while the pit of the Throat moaned and cried, like Schrael himself in the Stillborn Cave. Their screams at night from nightmares was Anagin’s smug reward when his sons annoyed him during the day.
No wonder he and Josiah used to sleep in their father’s bed at night.
Malagant cursed his imagination and walked up to his friend. He still h
esitated as he stood next to Teal. The image of Ben’s dead corpse floating lifeless below them was too much of a reality for him at the moment.
Malagant looked down, and breathed a silent breath of relief with what he saw, just churning black water. No corpses, no Ben.
They kept walking. After the Throat there wouldn’t be another carving for quite a few leagues. A sculpture of the gods if he remembered correctly, though the name was lost on him.
“Malagant!” Teal suddenly cried after another hour of walking. Malagant’s heart stopped as his friend pointed below him. “His cloak, his cloak!”
Malagant looked down, terror gripping him. He scanned the riverside, only a foot or so before the canyon started again. It took him a moment to spot the grey travelling cloak. It was almost the same colour as the riverside.
“We have to get it!” Teal cried. He got down on his knees and started trying to climb down the crag’s face.
“No, Teal, it’s too steep… we’ll–” Malagant lifted his hand to grab Teal, but as soon as he outstretched it he recoiled. His hand was swollen, hot to the touch, and throbbing. “Stop, please. I can’t grab you, so you’re going to have to bite through your emotions for a second and please, on holy Anea, listen to me.”
Teal looked up at him, his eyes wide and his face ashen with grief.
“He’s not in the cloak; it’s just a cloak…”
“I have to get it,” Teal whimpered.
His friend locked eyes with him. Malagant understood Teal’s feelings, but it would take him hours to get down and hours to get back up. More so with a waterlogged cloak.
Unless…
“Get my fishing rod,” Malagant said finally. Teal and Ben might’ve mastered hibrid fishing, but like his father he preferred the normal way.
Teal contemplated this for a moment, before relenting with a sigh. He hoisted himself back onto the canyon ledge and got the rod out of his backpack.
“He’s without his cloak,” Teal said quietly, his voice going back to the eerie flat tone he had used after he had killed Sorah. “He’s going to freeze, if he didn’t drown.”
Malagant had a response for that, but he didn’t want to say it out loud before he had a chance to look at the cloak. False reassurance would do for now.
“It’s warm out today, and he’s used to cold. Hibrids are forest elves, used to cold and wet.”
It would have to do…
For a quarter hour he sat with his friend, their legs hanging off of the canyon side. Teal with a fishing pole in his hand, and Malagant beside him trying to figure out how to eat with bandaged hands and a swollen jaw.
With a hiss of victory, the line became taut. Malagant looked down to see the grey cloak snagged in the fishing lure. Teal gave it a jerk and started wheeling the rod. It was a strange sight. Malagant loved fishing; some of his best memories were fishing riverside. Now as the two of them sat, with the tight line, it was just morbid.
The cloak was extremely heavy with water; Teal gave one last grunt before he hoisted it up and swung the rod. Then he grabbed onto the cloak and pulled it onto the plains.
When the two of them saw the cloak, they both had different responses.
Teal’s firm, emotionless face crumpled. He bent down on his knees and gathered the wet cloak onto him and hugged it, tears streaming down his face.
Malagant though, took one look at the wool cloak, and laughed.
Teal’s green eyes burned into him; he swallowed a sob and looked at Malagant like he had pushed Ben off the cliff himself.
Malagant knelt down; his fingers gently touched the severed clasps. He laughed again and shook Teal’s shoulder.
“Look! Look!” Malagant said with a big smile. Teal looked at the broken clasps, but he didn’t understand what the elf was so happy about.
“Teal, the clasps were broken off of Ben. He ripped his cloak off because it was waterlogging him. He survived the fall… he, he was strong enough to rip the clasps off so it wouldn’t weigh him down.”
Teal looked at the clasps; he sniffed and held the small silver chains in his hands. “Why isn’t he ashore, Mel?”
Malagant got up; he gently took the cloak from Teal and started putting it into his friend’s backpack. “The river is fast, he could be swept leagues away… but… we’ll keep looking until we find him. If we get to a canyon town, we’ll state a reward. We’ll find him.”
“We won’t go to Birch until we find him, right?” Teal got up, his entire front now soaked with water.
Malagant nodded. He put the backpack on himself, and continued walking. Ignoring the warm, throbbing pain in his hands and the red dizziness that seemed to envelope his entire body.
“We won’t leave until we find Ben.”
38
The raven perched itself on top of a jagged crag. It tilted its head back and forth before letting out a squawk. Moments later another raven flew down from the canyon. The first one ruffled its feathers, and hopped along the rocky canyon ridges, before flying down to the pale, soggy heap below.
The raven hopped towards the heap on stick-like legs and pecked at it. It cawed to the others and started to pick at the heap’s water-bleached arm. The others joined it.
Suddenly the heap convulsed. With a frenzy of black feathers and a startled caw, the ravens burst into the air. Many loose feathers fell to the ground as the ravens abandoned their prize and flew off.
Like someone had pressed a foot against his chest, Ben began to cough up water. He remembered coughing before but somehow water still seemed to be pooling in his stomach.
He didn’t know how long he had been by the riverside, only that he was cold, weak, and could barely move.
Ben rolled to his side and opened his eyes. He was on the side of a raging river, the Jarron above him, closing around him like a beast’s gaping jaws. Or perhaps the cracked lid of a coffin, closing over him. The canyon seemed narrower now, and the ridges on either side curved inwards like claws.
Ben wrapped his arms around himself, but his body was too numb for him to feel them. They did nothing to warm him; cold against cold wasn’t going to keep him from freezing to death.
Mustering up every ounce of energy, Ben moved himself. His limbs felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each and his body even more. He endured though and managed to crawl himself up to a small groove in the canyon. It wasn’t the best shelter but it would do. It was away from the damp rocky ground of the riverbed, and covered enough to shelter him from the elements.
Ben wiped his nose and curled up tight against the canyon rock. He had never been so cold, so wet, and so helpless. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands against his goose-fleshed and water-wrinkled arms; trying to ignore the sickening reality that was threatening to condemn any hopes he had of his friends finding him. He knew from the narrow split in the canyons, and the thinning river, that he was far away from where he had fallen.
He didn’t know how long he had been in the water; it had seemed like an eternity. Ben had fallen down waterfalls, been bashed up against rocks, and caught in spinning torrents. He knew he must be injured, at the very least he had the dagger wound from Taugis. Hopefully nothing life threatening. But if it was, he held onto the hope that he would be dead already if that was the case.
His cloak had saved him in the beginning. The woollen cloak had entrapped a bubble of air as he had been swept down the river. He had grabbed onto it for dear life using it as a shoddy life preserver. Before the second waterfall had deflated his cloak and he’d had to rip it off.
Ben looked up from the groove in the rocks and towards the bank, hoping that perhaps the cloak had washed up beside him, but it was nowhere to be found. He was bare and exposed, the scars from the jare bright pink against his milky skin. He was only wearing his leather jerkin, trousers, and boots. His weapons were back by the bridge, even his dagger was gone.
“Well, if the elements don’t kill me… the creatures in Alcove will,” Ben muttered to himself with a sigh. He rubbed
his hands together to try and warm himself. His fingers were starting to normalize but they still looked like the hands of a dead person.
Ben tucked his hands under his armpits and pulled his knees up to his chest. He wanted to crawl out of the groove and make some sort of marker to try and alert his friends so he was easier to spot, but he was too tired. Like a huddled animal he lay, trying to preserve as much warmth as he could. Surprising even himself, he slept.
When he finally woke up enough to consider himself fully awake, he was freezing cold and shivering badly. The damp wet had seemed to have soaked into his bones, no part of him felt warm. If it wasn’t for the soft thrumming of his heart he would’ve assumed that he was dead. He certainly felt like it, and if he didn’t get warm soon he knew he would be. The rattling cough he had developed during the night was only pushing that belief further into reality.
He had woken up on and off during the morning, too frozen and damp to even think about moving. The sparse bits of light flashed on the water, making small orbs of light dance on the canyon side. As he watched it, trying to lull himself back to sleep, he kept jerking up in his spot confident he had heard Malagant and Teal. But as his ears craned and his heart leapt, the voices would fade and all he would hear was the rushing river.
When midday came, the sun came as well, though under the narrow scar that was the canyon the sunlight barely touched the sides of the river. Ben was stuffed up, coughing, and sorer than he had ever been in his life. His back was hurting now too, leaning up against the groove in the rocks had angered his knife wound and he no longer had the luxury of his adrenaline blocking the pain.
Ben got up and managed to walk to the river’s edge. He looked up and around, hoping fate would bring Teal looking down on him. Hollering for Malagant to come and get him, but the ridges were empty, just blue sky and wisps of green grass could be seen.
“Not as steep as before though,” Ben whispered to himself. His voice seemed to make him feel less lonely, and perhaps more alive than he felt at the moment. “I can climb. Eventually, I can climb it.”