by Nhys Glover
“What you deal with every day would drive a weaker person mad. But you are not weak. And just knowing you exist... You have no idea how much that knowledge lifts me. I have waited so long for you, for the promise of love your gentle soul can give me. So alone. I have been so alone. Sometimes I think it is I who is insane, if such were possible for one of my kind.”
The pain in his voice made me want to comfort him. He had told me these things many times before, told me how long he’d waited for me, how much he loved and needed me. How just by existing I gave him hope in his darkness and despair.
It made no sense. How could this beautiful being care about me? The whole world knew the truth. Knew that I was little more than skin and bones. That I was a madwoman unable to function in the world beyond my cavern. It made no sense that he could have been waiting for me for millennia. Or, if he had, how disappointed he’d be when he finally met me. I was no man’s dream come true.
As if sensing my thoughts, his huge feathered wings closed around me more protectively. One grazed my cheek, its softness such a contrast to the hardness of the body that pressed against mine. Not for the first time, I wished I could eat more and put on flesh to cover my bones. If only for him. If only to make holding me more pleasurable for him.
He tensed. I knew what that meant. It was coming again. I had been slipping into that other nightmare world too often these days. The increasing horror I saw there brought with it such dread that not even his arms could protect me from it.
“Stay strong. Remember I’m here and I need you. Don’t give in to it. Be strong for me,” he whispered desperately as my focus shifted.
Gone was the golden place I dwelled in when I slept in his arms. In its place was a dark stone cellar. There was light, but it came from torches that flickered redly and sent malignant shadows dancing across the walls. I could smell the foul odour of death and decay.
“What has happened to our men?” demanded a harsh-faced priest in a midnight-blue robe. “They should be back by now with the girl.”
Though I knew it wasn’t me who turned my gaze down to the scrying pool, it felt as if it was. I watched as the mist-covered water swirled and curled, teasing me with brief glimpses of what lay beyond it.
I focused my mind harder, though I didn’t want to, and the mist began to dissolve away. A long, dark corridor appeared. In its darkened confines, five priests fought a young man and woman. Two priests were knocked out, one wounded too badly to get up, but the other two successfully subdued the couple and dragged them away.
The mist clouded the mirrored surface of the water yet again. When it cleared once more it was to reveal two men writhing on the ground, their blue robes wrapped so tightly around them they appeared cocooned. Two priests. The ones who had taken the couple. I couldn’t understand why they were asleep. Where were their captives?
The mist slid insidiously back, obscuring my view. I couldn’t tell where the priests slept, other than I knew it wasn’t in a bed. The ground looked dry and hard. No place to sleep.
“Where?” the hard-face priest pressed, though he knew it was forbidden to interfere with the Soothsayer’s trance. It was a sign of his anxiety. Things were not going as well as they expected.
The Seer didn’t even flinch at the command for information. She was lost to the world around her. Lost to the world in the pool. I too was lost. Always lost.
The mist had cleared again and I saw the couple sitting in the shade of a tree, as if they were having a relaxing picnic in the late afternoon sunshine. Not that I knew anything about picnics, having never experienced one myself, but I knew of them. And as the man had his tunic off I felt I had intruded on an intimate moment. Why were they relaxing like that when they had to know the evil priests would be after them? Mayhap it was a trap.
“They were captured but escaped. They can be found beneath the mountains not far from the old home of the priest who led the raiding party. Be aware it may be a trap.”
The old woman’s voice always shocked me when I heard it. I expected it to be my voice coming out, as it was me who was seeing through her blind eyes. It was even my thought that it was a trap. I shouldn’t have given her that forewarning, I realised with a sick jolt of comprehension. But when I was pulled in to her visions I had no power to keep myself separate from her. My every thought could be hers, just as hers could be mine. Which I wished with every fibre of my being was not the case. Her thoughts, her memories, were as hideous as she was.
The demanding priest jerked a nod and turned to go. As he strode stiffly away I felt myself being released. I collapsed back onto my own narrow pallet against the stone wall of my cavern. My comforter was gone, along with his golden bower.
I heard the sound of approaching footfalls. Who was coming to me? My quarter moon supplies were not due for another day. Or that’s what I’d estimated. Time had a strange way of stretching and knotting so that the passing of that quarter moon could sometimes feel like no more than a day or as much as a sun. Only my supply of food gave me any indication of exactly how much time had passed. Of course, sometimes when I was caught in visions I could go days without food, so it was not a foolproof method of estimating time.
But if I was expecting no one, could this be simply another dream... another vision? I could often wake from one and find myself in yet another. Was that not the way of it when I left my comforter and entered the hag’s world? And once in her world, did I not then slip into whatever world she conjured with her scrying pool?
Yes. Yes, this might simply be another vision. But if so, I needed to see it through.
Using my aching limbs, I scrambled to my bare, dirty feet. I never bathed. Why bother when no one ever saw me? If sometimes I couldn’t even stand my own stench, it mattered little. Nothing mattered much except my comforter. And when I met him I was clean and beautiful and loved.
As I waited for the uninvited guests to arrive, I used the time to swallow down long, thirsty gulps of brackish water. I always felt dry after the hag had pulled me in. It was as if she drew the water from my body as she sucked the life from my soul.
A trio of tall young men cautiously made their way into the darkness of my cavern-home. After the sunshine outside, it would take their eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness. I was used to it, of course. So I had the advantage.
I used that advantage to take them in. If this was another vision it was an oddly familiar one. I knew this very odd collection of men. It was like some craftsman had been experimenting when he made these three. The first was tall and white; the second brown and a little shorter; the third was shorter again and black as pitch. Yet they were the same. Made from the same materials, just differently distributed.
I had no idea what that meant.
Sudden awareness overtook me and I staggered back to collapse on my pallet. I knew them! Gods, I had seen them before. All of them. Why hadn’t I realised immediately?
But that was easy. More often than not the details of the visions faded fast on waking. I held onto this one simply because these men had arrived so soon after the latest, and they spiked the memory. I’d seen these men on flying beastlings... airlings? I thought that was what they were called. And the couple in the pool today had been with them.
So this was another of the hag’s visions. She was following the trail of the other members of The Five. And that trail would lead to me.
No... No, No! She couldn’t be allowed to find me in the physical world. If these three found their way to me, her Devourers would follow. And it was bad enough that she had found me on the Nether Plane, and used me at her will. If she found me on the Physical Plane, she would have control of me completely.
“Seer, we come in peace,” the white man said soothingly. His voice reminded me of my comforter’s. Deep and smooth and infinitely gentle.
I tried to stand again but my legs had become too weak, the shock of their presence too great. Mayhap it wasn’t a vision. It was unusual for me to feel physical weakness in a vi
sion or on the Nether Plane where my soul roamed free. Or it did when the hag wasn’t capturing it for her own needs.
“We have come for your help,” the white one said, crouching down in front of me so as not to appear threatening. The others followed him like good little soldiers.
“You must be desperate to come to me here,” I said, my voice sounding like sand grated across fine fabric. “Are you really here?”
“We are desperate and we are here. We need someone with your talents... your magic. Our partners have been kidnapped. No one knows where they have been taken.”
I looked into his dark eyes, so at odds with his whiteness. But then, I imagined that was simply his pupils enlarging to deal with the darkness.
For a moment I weighed up my options. I could tell them what they needed to know, and they might be able to get to the couple before the blue-robed madmen, or I could plead ignorance. If I did the first, they would plague me with more questions, expect me to help them again. If I did the second, they would leave me in peace. And mayhap the hag would not find me.
But if the blind woman’s memories and the visions I saw through her were true, then my peace and physical freedom would be short-lived. Her master was about to destroy us all.
Was about to destroy my comforter.
That was what decided it for me. The whole world could end as far as I was concerned, but not my comforter... Never him. I would die a thousand deaths to save him more pain.
“The man and girl with red hair you seek are in the Badlunds a short way from the mountains. Not far from here, I think. They are free at this moment, but the priests in blue robes have been told of their location and will be on them soon. Will recapture them soon. If you go now you may have a chance of saving them.” It was more words than I had spoken aloud in suns, and my throat ached from the effort.
Yes, this was the real world. My discomfort was too real to be anything else. And my smell! Goddess, what must these handsome men think of me?
“Which way?” The middle coloured man asked anxiously, seemingly oblivious to my physical condition.
“Go west. Keep the mountains to your right shoulder. Not far. But hurry!”
They had already sprung to their feet as I spoke the last words and were running from my cavern. The white one was last to go, and he turned at the last moment to nod his head in acknowledgement. “Thank you, Lady Shardra. We are in your debt.”
I heard their racing footsteps going down the narrow path that led to the plains. They had been in my cavern for no more than a few moments, and yet they had been part of my life for a long time now, I realised with a start. Wisps of memories were returning to me—other visions—all from the hag. But up until recently they had not been distinct, identifiable beings. Until recently they had been just The Five, and the only face that was clearly discernible was the blue-eyed man.
The brands had marked them, connected them. It was the brands that the hag used as the thread that led her more effectively to the blue-eyed man. Something that distinct made the search easier. A bright blue-eyed man with dark lashes and hair was reasonably easy to find in the scrying pool, a bright blue-eyed man with dark lashes and hair, with a five-pointed star branded into his wrist, made it easier still. Ridiculously easy.
And since their rescue of the blue-eyed one, the others had become known too. The red-haired girl, the white man, the black man and the brown man. All clear and easy to find.
But not so easy to capture and keep, it would seem. I just had to hope that the couple would remain free long enough for their comrades to find them. If the Devourers recaptured them, there would be no chance for another escape. And their torture would be more than I could stand. No matter what my comforter said, I was not strong enough for that.
An odd Knowing came upon me then, and I shuddered. It would not be the last time I saw these men. By giving them what they wanted I had tied my path to theirs.
And yet, had that not always been the case, ever since the hag found me? Was it not she who had tied my fate to The Five, unknowingly.
Chapter Six
The sun was sinking toward the flat horizon, and the day was cooling, although not by a great deal. We had been given time to rest, to recuperate, but now we had to move. Waiting any longer would only keep us trapped dangerously out in the open. I had no idea why the Devourers hadn’t come for us yet, but we couldn’t hope that our reprieve would last much longer.
The first hint that our freedom was about to come to an end was the rumble beneath us. I knew that vibration. It was the thunder of hoof-beats. Many hoof-beats. So they’d come in force to get us, had they? We must be more of a threat than we imagined.
I looked across at Laric, who had been dozing fitfully all afternoon. He’d also felt the ground shuddering and knew what it meant. His bright-blue eyes, with their impossible lashes, opened and stared at me. I saw resignation in them.
“For what it’s worth, and because I might never get another chance to say this... I’ve always had a thing for you. From that first day in the tavern.”
“No you haven’t. You said...”
“I know what I said. With your mind-reading abilities, I would have thought you’d have picked the lies up.”
“I... I picked up that you weren’t going to hurt me when you threatened me. And that you were interested in Trace’s offer. But nothing else. I kind of tuned you out because you hurt my feelings.”
It’s funny how the truth comes out when you’re waiting for the end to arrive. There would be no escape this time. We’d try to fight, but Laric was in no condition to do much, and I couldn’t do a lot of damage either. We were outnumbered and that was the end of it.
“I could end it for you now,” he offered, reading my mind. “You don’t have to go through that torture.”
I shook my head. “I won’t leave you to face them alone. We’re in this together. The Two, if not The Five.” I smiled impishly at him, blinking back tears.
“I wish we’d had a chance... you and I. I wish life could have been different. But I guess I didn’t deserve different. I made my choices. And I’m sorry I hurt you that day. And all the times since.
“Digging at you was my way to show you I wasn’t under your spell. When really I was. Right from the start, I was. I stayed to watch the battle because of you... I risked being caught because I wanted to make sure you survived. When you dived off your airling into the thick of the battle I wanted to race down and...” He paused as if remembering the moment and his face showed desperation. “But I was too far away. The only time I’ve been more scared was when the Devourers had me... or were about to have me.” He gave a funny little grin, gesturing in the direction of the approaching beastlings.
“I wish things had been different too. You’re not so bad, when you’re not being a prick,” I tried for humour, to lighten the sense of approaching doom. But I failed.
Laric laughed anyway and clambered awkwardly to his feet. He wore what was left of his breeches, cut-off so I had more material to work with, and for easy replacement after I had finished my nursing tasks.
Before I had a chance to climb to my feet, he offered me his hand. Though I knew he’d put pressure on his ribs by pulling me up, I let him play the gallant one last time.
“We could hide behind the tree,” I suggested. “If they don’t know exactly where we are they might pass us by.”
The trunk was narrow. I would be hard pressed to hide behind it, no less Laric. But it was better than nothing.
We could see them now, a dark blur in the distance with a cloud of dust hanging over them. Laric led me to the far side of the tree and bent on one knee before me.
“Up you go,” he said with a jaunty grin.
I saw what he was doing. We couldn’t stand side by side behind the tree, but we could stand one on top of the other. He’d bent to let me get onto his shoulders.
I clambered up, grimacing with empathetic pain as I imagined what it cost him to bend low enough for me t
o climb up. But once I was seated and he’d stood, I had to add further to his pain by climbing to my feet, using the tree trunk to aid me.
Once I was up, Laric turned slowly so his back was against the tree and his body curling in as much as possible. His hips were narrow enough to be hidden by the trunk, but his shoulders weren’t. Curling them in while I stood on them was quite a feat for both of us, but when this was our only chance to avoid capture, we’d manage it.
The nearest branch on this side of the tree was about a half-stride above my head. I reached up and wrapped my hands around it to give me added stability and to reduce a little of my weight on Laric’s shoulders.
“You all right up there? You suddenly got lighter.”
“I’m sure there’s a joke you’re dying to make about my weight about now. Thank you for your restraint. And I’m clinging to a branch. Not sure how long I can manage it, but if it helps you...”
“Thanks, but you don’t have to.”
“Aye, I do. I spent a lot of time earlier this afternoon fixing you up, I don’t want it all undone so soon.” I tried to snap the words, but there was no real heat in them. Our shared confidences had somehow defused our antagonism.
“Glad you care.”
My lips curled up in amusement. It was insane to be amused when we were about to be captured and tortured by the Devourers, but I felt oddly light. Laric had always been attracted to me, had risked capture to watch over me during the battle. Would have rushed in to save me if he’d been close enough to manage it. That filled my heart with the kind of joy that not even the Devourers could steal away.
I heard Laric chuckle as he read my mind. “Why does love push all sane thoughts from a woman’s mind?”
“I didn’t say–”
“My admission of love, I was referring to.”
“You didn’t...” And then I realised that that was exactly what he was hinting at when he said he was under my spell.