Days Of Light And Shadow

by Greg Curtis

  DAYS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

  Greg Curtis.

  Copyright 2012 by Greg Curtis.

  Kindle Edition.

  This book is dedicated to my mother Ruth Curtis and my sister Lucille Curtis, my biggest supporters, harshest critics and all round cheer team, and without whom this book would not have been written. It’s also dedicated to my father Allen Curtis, gone too soon but not forgotten.

  Chapter One.

  Elwene knelt in quiet prayer at the Altar of Rose Fury. Supposedly she was trying to feel the spiritual power of the Mother upon the spot, but mostly she was simply enjoying the warmth of the spring day and the sweet aroma of the flowers. Maybe they were the same thing.

  A gentle whisper of a breeze carried the sounds of the distant forest while above blue tufted geese flew through the skies above, honking their strange, sad song for all to hear. And on the ground a few leap rabbits were busy hunting for tasty treats, unconcerned by her presence.

  They were cheeky creatures, too bold by half, especially in the Grove where they knew they were safe, and if you weren’t watching, you could turn around to find your lunch gone. Some had even had their lunches snatched out of their hands as the little thieves struck while leaping past them with all the magical speed they were famed for. But that was no great hardship in this place of plenty. Maybe it was even a reason to give thanks to the Mother for the endless wonder of her world. And for her touch on this special grove.

  Elwene didn’t truly know if the Mother heard her quiet words, or if she cared, but in the end Gaia was life and the rest didn’t matter. It was enough just to feel her presence all around and dwell in that pleasure. And Wildwood Rose Grove was filled with her presence. As had been all the other wild groves she had visited over the previous weeks.

  Often she wished that her brother knew the same joy, but Finell didn’t and she feared that he never would. Since their parents had died in a tragic riding accident and he had been elevated to High Lord, he seemed to understand little but power and anger. And because House Vora had been seen as the ascendant house thanks to their ancestors’ enlightened rule, and the laws of primogeniture, he had the first in large measure. Meanwhile grief had granted him the second.

  It was as if with their parents’ deaths, they had both been transformed. Elwene had found her calling, and maybe in a few more years she would enter the priesthood, in time becoming an elder. Sadly Finell had found the darkness of pain and grief instead, and the need to lash out at others. And it wasn’t helped by that black hearted advisor of his. Between the two of them they had transformed Elaris into a much darker place.

  Soldiers walked the streets everywhere, their silver chain blackened with pitch to make them seem more frightening. And a prison, a place of darkness and fear, had been built in the very heart of Leafshade. A dungeon as many claimed, built into the broken hill that had once been the city’s gold mine. Why did they need such a place? They had never needed one before. But the two of them had swiftly provided the answer as Finell enacted increasingly harsh laws. Laws that penalised those that were not of the seven great houses, especially if they were not of elven blood, even though most were innocent. The dungeon was filling fast.

  Elwene didn’t understand why her brother had turned in such a dark direction. It was as though he blamed the poor, the outsiders and the mixed bloods for their parent’s deaths. But there was no reason to. It was simply an accident. Finell would not speak to her of his heart though. He spoke to her of very little. Though they lived together in their family home, the last remnants of their immediate family, and saw each other daily, Finell seemed more a stranger with every day that passed.

  He was no closer to the rest of their family. He loathed their Uncle Tenir, probably because he was the First of House Vora and so in some respects his master. But Finell hid it well. For a while she’d hoped he was becoming closer to Uncle Brettle in Heartwood Grove. The two were closer in age than others in their House. He’d even spoken about going out hunting with him one day. But then Brettle and his wife Claudine had been trampled to death by a rampaging fell ox and that hope had quickly died.

  Some days it seemed that fortune did not favour them. That House Vora was slowly dying. Illness and disease stalked their elderly. Misfortune preyed on the rest. It had just been another sad chapter in their house’s never ending book of woe. But still to suffer another terrible accident in the family, so soon after the death of their parents. It must have crushed Finell, Elwene thought. But even before that when their grandmother Varla had passed after a short illness, he had been damaged.

  As she often did Elwene said a small prayer for her brother as well, in the hope that he would one day return to the light, and with him the realm. But she wasn’t hopeful. His road had become too dark for too long, and his return would be hard.

  “Lady Elwene!” The sound of her attendant crying out her name distracted her and surprised by the commotion, Elwene looked up to see Terra running for her. Running hard.

  The sight annoyed her briefly. It was wrong. People didn’t run in the sacred grove. This was a place of tranquillity, a place where a woman like her could spend some quiet time in contemplation and study. It was not the sort of place where people ran and screamed. And yet something in the way she screamed, in the rush of her sandaled feet upon the ground, spoke to Elwene of fear. But what was there to be afraid of? Nothing in this place surely.

  Heartbeats later she looked beyond Terra’s frantic dash to the tree line at the edge of the glade, and it was then that she understood her desperation. Brigands!

  It couldn’t be, but even as she watched she saw them emerge from the depths of the forest on their horses, brandishing their weapons, and galloping for the assembled priests and elders engaged in their rituals. They in turn were only just beginning to realise that something was wrong. But reactions dulled by years of prayer coupled with frozen disbelief stopped them from taking to their heels. They needed to. No one in the grove carried a weapon. It would be considered an insult. And their magic was limited. They were priests not warspells.

  Then the first of the riders reached them, swinging his sword wildly as he rode through a group of priests huddled together in fear and disbelief. His blade struck down and several priests fell to the ground. Two died instantly and a the third lost his arm before he completed his run. Blood sprayed in a gory fountain from the terrible wound, drenching the starched white linen of his robe, before the priest fell to the ground, either dead or dying. They were only the first.

  More brigands, descended on the priests like a pack of wolves, and Elwene watched in horror as people fell everywhere. She could hear the screaming too. Men and women, many of them elderly, frightened and confused, screaming in horror as they ran in all directions. But they couldn’t escape. They were too slow. Far too slow. The brigands were on horseback, and charged down those who ran. With war cries on their lips, they made sure no one survived.

  She realised that it was a sport for them, the brigands shouting to one another about each new murder, celebrating their evil, as if it was a victory in a childhood game.

  There was no escape for her companions. The brigands were intent upon murder. They knocked them over with their weapons, and then when they were down, their horses trampled them with the steel shod hooves as they rode over them again and again. Some few made the distant trees, but they were few, and many of them were wounded. And even there they weren’t safe. Several of the bandits took aim at them with crossbows, bringing them down like wild animals for the pot.

  Terra was taken that way. One moment she was running toward Elwene, screaming in terror, the next she had fallen face down into the grass, a crossbow bolt in her back. Elwene could see the lo
ok of horror and disbelief in her dying eyes, just before her face hit the grass.

  “Mother bless your children.” Still kneeling in front of the small shrine at the far end of the valley, Elwene uttered her frantic prayers, as she abruptly realised that she had to run too. She remained alive only because she had not been noticed, kneeling as she was, some distance from the rest. But that would not last. Already she could see some of the black armoured brigands looking her way, and soon she knew, they would come for her as well.

  Terrified, Elwene fled for the trees, expecting with every stride to feel the pain of a crossbow bolt embedding itself in her back or an axe cracking her head in two. She had never been the fastest runner. She had never had either the need or the desire.

  “And where might you be running to my lady?”

  The brigand came from out of nowhere. She heard his mocking voice, turned, saw his steel clad arm reach out for her and tried to dodge. But she was far too slow and he had her by the throat before she could even scream. She hadn’t noticed, as she’d watched the others being slaughtered by brigands coming from the southern end of the glade, that more had been creeping up on her from the north.

  “Leaving us so soon?” He laughed some more, a dark and terrible sound more suited to a troll than a man. But he was surely as large as a troll, and just as powerful. And he stank like one as well. But worse than that, his men laughed with him, enjoying their game, and she knew that they had dark plans for her. The sister of the high lord, she understood that it was no coincidence that they had come for the priests here and now. They had really come for her.

  The black clad giant gathered the front of her robe in his steel clad fist, hoisted her up enough that she couldn’t fall to the ground and started dragging her back to the centre of the glade where the dead piled high, laughing with every step. Laughing as he told her exactly what he intended to do to her.

  Elwene screamed, or she tried to, but his armoured fist bound the front of her robe tight around her throat, blocking off her precious air, and all that came out was a gurgling sound. And though she used her fists against him, they were equally useless. He was dressed from head to foot in black metal and chain, and flesh could not stand against it. All she did was hurt her fists. But that didn’t stop her trying.

  Soon, though it seemed like an eternity had passed, he had dragged her all the way back to the middle of the glade and the stone altar that was its heart. She could see the bodies all around her. Her friends and fellow priests, respected elders, decent elves, their bodies broken and torn apart as though by wild animals. The cloying smell of the blood made her gag. The beautiful green grass was covered in it. The priests’ perfectly laundered white robes were drenched in it.

  The brigand lifted her up, one handed, and smashed her back down on the alter stone, hammering her into it so hard that she very nearly passed out. But he wouldn’t have cared if she had. Neither would she. It would have been a mercy.

  Holding her down against the cold stone with his hand around her neck, he tore her robes off her, yelling wildly with every piece of linen that came away in his hands. Soon there was no more, and she was lying there on the cold stone in front of him, naked.

  “No.” Somehow she managed to squeak out the word, but it made no difference. He just laughed, even as he loosened the draw string that held his britches up.

  “And now my lady.” He mocked her some more as he kicked off his britches, and his men laughed. “If you could scream a little more. There are still a few of your useless piss bearers hiding in the woods, and Y’aris wants them to see everything.”

  Y’aris? Even in her terror the name caught her attention. The dark robed little military advisor to her brother? She didn’t understand. And then she did. He was an evil little man. A dark hearted beast that walked as an elf, and no doubt he had plans for her brother. Terrible plans. And she understood one thing more in that final moment of painful clarity. If his servant was happy to use his name in front of her, then he had no intention of letting her live.

  Despite it being exactly what he wanted her to do, she screamed then, unable to help herself. It was a terrible sound that carried all the way through the forest to where the few terrified survivors of the attack were hiding, and they wept for her pain and humiliation.

  But worse than the screaming was what followed. The sound of a sword slicing through the air, through flesh and blood, followed by the soft thud of something that had once been alive hitting a stone altar.

  After that there was no more screaming.

  Chapter Two.

  The sun was getting lower in the sky, its yellow rays scattering among the leaves of the tall trees to create a beautiful riot of colour and pattern above their heads.

  Dura had always liked this time of the afternoon, especially since she’d joined the rangers and saw it most days from within the great forests instead of the floors of other people’s homes. It reminded her of the light from the stained glass windows in the Royal Chamber, save that there the light formed a picture. This was something different, a glorious madness that still somehow showed the great wonder of the Mother’s hand. She didn’t fully understand the intricate design of it, but then she was nought but a young maiden from a poor family with only a short time spent in the academies. The priests would surely understand it better. But even she knew that there was something in the pattern of green and yellow that was more than simple madness.

  She could have stared at the glory shining above her head for hours, but she knew better. The captain would soon notice and the punishment for her inattention would likely be chores. More chores. And she already had so many. Some days she wondered if life as a ranger was really that different from that of a cleaning maid. The life she thought she had escaped when she took the cloak. She made certain to keep her eyes on the trail instead and only to glance at the sky from time to time. Still she guessed Captain Maydan noticed even that. He missed nothing.

  The sound of a man screaming abruptly caught the attention of the patrol, and instinctively they all turned to it. Instead of setting up camp for the night as they’d been planning, the patrol pressed their heels into their horses’ flanks, and galloped for the sound as one. The captain didn’t need to give the order. Someone was in trouble and that was their bailiwick. Even the wolves knew it was their duty, and they ran ahead, howling.

  It wasn’t far to the victim. But still as they rode they all had time enough to wonder what it was that could make a man scream so terribly. As if his very soul was being torn from him. Every heartbeat that passed they knew as they raced towards him, was another one too many.

  Then they burst through the tree line into the clearing and saw the answer with their own eyes. Something, a man maybe, or maybe something else that simply walked as a man, had a trader down on the ground and was clawing him. Its fingernails, black like claws, were tearing at his flesh, and worse than that, there was blood around his mouth. Blood dripping down his chin from the pieces that he’d already bitten from his victim’s flesh.

  “Otters!” The captain called out to his troop as he drew his longbow, and heartbeats later he had an arrow lodged deep in the creature’s shoulder. It wasn’t a lethal shot, but it was the best shot he could make as they galloped towards the enemy while the creature was facing them head down over his victim. But it still should have stopped the creature, should have made it look up to see his attackers bearing down on it, long enough for one of the others to bury an arrow in its head. It didn’t. It just kept tearing at the trader, trying to eat him alive. Heartbeats later another dozen arrows were sticking out of it like pins in a pin cushion, and none of them made any difference.

  That was more than wrong. Even though none of them had found the creature’s head so many arrows lodged deep in its body should have killed it instantly, yet the creature didn’t seem bothered by them. It didn’t even seem to notice them as it went about its gruesome work. It just kept tearing savagely at its victim, biting him, tearing out chun
ks of blood red meat, hungry for the trader’s flesh. More than hungry. Ravenous.

  “Swords.” The captain gave the command, and just as they had practiced so many times, the rangers drew their blades and slipped off their horses’ backs in a single fluid movement. Thirty men and women advanced on the creature, covering the last few paces between them at a run. It paid them no more attention than it had the arrows, interested only in the man on the ground, in its prey.

  By chance Dura was the closest and she managed to put her spear straight through one of the creature’s arrow filled shoulders, lifting it up a little and driving it back from its victim. Suddenly she was unutterably glad to have been given the awkward weapon instead of a sword. Its length meant that she didn’t have to stand as close to it as the others.

  Hers wasn’t a perfect strike, but it was all it needed to be. The pike lifted the creature up off its victim and held it upright leaving it exposed. Swiftly the others struck, letting their blades slice through its flesh, separating its arms and head from the rest of it. It was only that last blow that finally seemed to stop it. Nothing it seemed, survived without a head.