Meuric

by Meuric- Beginnings (epub)

  “Water,” she croaked.

  Meuric moved to the table and poured some water into one of the shallow bowls. Onóra sat up and groaned as she suddenly became aware of the throbbing that had started at the back of her head without any warning.

  “I will never drink again,” she swore passionately. Her face was ashen. “Not even watered down mead or wine. It is the curse of the gods.”

  “Spoken like a true person not long of age,” mocked Meuric approaching her with the dish.

  He handed it to Onóra who clutched it with two shaking hands and drank plentifully. Twice more Meuric had to fill the bowl before there was any sign of the young woman’s lack of fluids being appeased.

  Unsteadily she set the mug on the floor and looked up at Meuric for the first time that morning. He, in return, was very much aware that she was still naked beneath the bed blanket but she did not seem abashed in any way. He looked at Onóra just as she looked at him and could see that she was obviously sizing him up. She smiled.

  He was tall for a Kel’akh man, some four cubits in height, was both broad and muscular with a narrow waist and toned legs that Onóra clearly appreciated. Next, her eyes followed the black swirl-shaped tattoos covering patches of his skin down the length of the left-hand side of his body, which was typical of any native person of adult age within the free Kel’akh Nation, except for the colour. Black was the sign of suffering a great loss.

  Meuric did not need his magick to read the thoughts behind her green bleary eyes. How could his tattoos become so faded if he was only a few years older than her? She knew that the colours in a tattoo usually took many years to diminish and should have only been added, at most, ten years before.

  Unconsciously, Onóra looked at her own deep red tattoos, the traditional colour of the Kah’al region. They covered parts of the left-hand side of her body and still looked considerably fresh even after four years. She smiled at him and began to hum to herself, pleased she had caught someone who was both handsome and obviously powerful.

  Meuric instantly recognised the theme. It was an old melody about a forbidden love and the shade of a man who was always in search of it. Meuric could see a sliver of light that surrounded Onóra begin to flare. He could feel the touch of magick lightly press against him as if it were a physical force.

  “Do not try to influence me, woman,” said Meuric suddenly with a slightly smug half-grin on his face. “You won’t be able to.”

  “He is the Hand of Death,” uttered Onóra suddenly in a voice that was not her own. “To face him is to die.”

  Meuric froze. His heart began to hammer in his chest but quickly he calmed himself. He examined the serving girl and saw that her eyes had become glazed over and that her face was now expressionless. He knew that she possessed the Gift of Barding but had no idea until this moment how powerful that Gift actually was within her.

  Meuric examined the scene. The voice that had passed through her lips had been male and ageless and seemed to have no definable accent. He stepped in closer to her and knelt. In detail he studied her face. The pupils in her green eyes were extraordinarily large as she stared straight ahead unseeing.

  “Onóra,” he whispered gently. “Onóra… can you hear me?”

  There was no response. The serving girl’s lips moved once again. “I am a goddess. I am the Daughter of Malevolence. No mere mortal, even a Knight Protector, can kill me.”

  The voice this time belonged to a woman. Again it sounded ageless with no indication of any inflection though it was angry.

  “This one can,” answered the male voice from Onóra’s mouth, the same one as before.

  Meuric saw her eyes come into focus. At first she seemed startled at not being able to see him in front of her and then flinched as she suddenly noticed him kneeling to her right.

  “How did you get so close to me without being seen?” she asked.

  Meuric smiled at her but did not answer. He sat on the bed next to her. Onóra seemed totally oblivious to what had just transpired. She reached out and touched his unblemished body, which was unknown for any warrior to possess.

  “You have a beautiful voice and a quick mind,” he commented changing the subject. “Have you ever considered being a Bard?”

  “I leave in a few months to be tested at Ee’ay,” Onóra answered rather proudly. “My father will be taking me.”

  Meuric nodded. The island of Ee’ay, home of the Oak Seers, was in the Tarn Ke’re. It was where those living in Kel’akh would be tested before progressing on to Wardens Keep. Kel’akh was renowned for its bards and metal and wooden artisans, those who could create magick through the objects they fashioned. More commonly these traders were known as Men of Art.

  “You begin your testing a little late,” commented Meuric. “I know that it is uncommon but not unheard of.”

  Onóra smiled at him. She cocked her head to one side. “Do you realise that you do that, I wonder?”

  Meuric looked confused. “Do what?”

  “Your accent,” she giggled. “You speak as if you had lived here your whole life but last night when you spoke to your friend you sounded just like him.” She paused and her face became serious. “Do you even know your own voice anymore?”

  Meuric frowned. “What makes you say that?”

  Onóra thought about it. “I do not know. It just came out.”

  “You have a good ear,” said Meuric quickly. “I have travelled so much over the last few years that I probably have learned various accents without even realising it.”

  “What is it that you do?” asked the servant girl.

  “Hireling,” was the Knight’s reply. She nodded at that and Meuric felt that she was satisfied by that answer. “So tell me of your Gift. I felt it last night as you sang.”

  “You felt it?” she exclaimed, a little surprised. Meuric nodded. “Last night I could not read you. Why was that? That only happens to those who know how to protect themselves from magick. You must be powerful indeed.”

  Meuric smiled but it was forced. “Not really,” he lied. “A Man of Art living at Ee’ay made me a pendant that protects me from those trying to read my mind or my feelings. It cost me a pretty coin but well worth it in my line of work. I assume that you inherited your Gift from your mother otherwise it would have been your father singing last night.”

  Onóra nodded. “My mother was a Bard and we used to travel from place to place throughout Kel’akh. That is why I have not begun my studies sooner. She died three seasons ago as we travelled through Kel’akh.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” said Meuric softly. “What was her name?”

  “Ariana.”

  The former Knight Protector nodded. “I remember her. I actually saw her sing twice. The second time she came to me and questioned why she had not been able to read me much like you could not.” That particular time had been twelve years before but he kept that knowledge to himself. “She was amazing. Much like you were last night.”

  Onóra gave her thanks and continued. “Only my parents knew of my Gift at that time even though everyone in the village now suspects. She called it having an empathy with all living things. Whenever we sing it is like we can tap into a person’s soul. My mother had it as did her mother. My father decided to come back here, the place of his birth, and take over the Travelers’ Inn from his father when mother died.” She frowned. “Why am I telling you this? I don’t even know you.”

  Meuric allowed the question to go unanswered. He reached out with his magick and a scene flashed in his mind. He was being robbed as he slept. A female hand was lifting his purse. She had planned to steal from him the night before, he realised. Admittedly they were drunken thoughts but… He stood and crossed to the opposite side of the room, possessing both the body of an athlete and all the grace of a cat.

  Meuric crouched down next to his crumpled clothes and from his hidden purse withdrew three gold coins. They had the Emperor of Roz’eli’s head engraved on them much like the one he had
handed to Onóra the night before. Carelessly he dropped the money onto her crumbled clothes that lay next to his.

  “I am not a wanton Woman of Companionship,” she stormed, her voice somewhere between outrage and excitement.

  “I know,” answered Meuric.

  He moved forward and leaned over Onóra. His eyes were now the colour of polished iron with as much warmth as the metal. All of a sudden she looked very afraid and vulnerable. She seemed awfully aware that she was naked with nothing but a blanket protecting her. She pulled it up high over her breasts.

  “If you were to steal any of my money I would have had to hunt you down,” said Meuric, his voice severe. “And kill you.” There was no remorse in his voice.

  Abruptly the cold gleam vanished from his eyes and once again that mischievous glint was there. He smiled and all tension left his body. He leaned forward and kissed Onóra, gently at first and then more passionately. She hesitantly responded, fear still in her veins, and Meuric could feel that her body was still tense. He moved leisurely downward kissing her neck, her breasts and finally her firm stomach. His arm reached up, gently pushing her back. Onóra obliged and lay back. He moved lower still and paused for a moment, his lips and nose brushing her pubic mound and she caught her breath. Lower again he moved. His tongue tenderly probed inside of her. She couldn’t help herself any longer and moaned.

  In that moment Meuric felt the last of Onóra’s apprehension leave her.

  XXI

  Meuric lay on his back as he stared up into the ceiling, one arm folded behind his head. His other arm was lazily draped over the sleeping form of Onóra. The scenes of Ah’mos echoed once again through his mind.

  Again he could see families being crushed beneath flying boulders while others were stomped to death as they fled for their lives at the harbour. He thought about the killing of Qadir and his mystifying encounter with the Dark Druid. He even considered briefly the man he had grabbed roughly, Rabi, and his pretty young daughter. He hoped they had both survived the sacking of the town. He sighed deeply even though he was already, physically at least, deeply relaxed. Being with Onóra had seen to that. Meuric closed his eyes and slept.

  He stood in the centre of a room that he did not recognise. There was no mistaking the style of furniture or décor of western Kel’akh. From outside he could hear the sounds of a battle raging.

  Only a few paces ahead of him stood a female figure in a tattered grey and hooded cloak, pulled tightly over an even more frayed green dress. She stood in silence but from beneath the shadow of her cowl Meuric could see her red eyes gleaming ominously. He knew instantly what she was of course. She was a ben-sidhe, a Woman of the Mounds, whose very presence portends danger and whose voice means death.

  Meuric folded his arms defensively and he could hear the creak of toughened leather and the sway of weapons arranged across his body. A smell of decomposition seeped from the figure and touched his nostrils but he refused to be moved by it. He had been a warrior for too many years now and had long ago ceased to be affected by such sights. Looking to her feet he noticed an inky dark mist in the shape of tentacles seep out, before it dissolved away only after a short distance. He glanced down to his own feet and noted that he once again was wearing the dark uniform of a Knight Protector.

  “Why did you not warn me?” accused the woman angrily.

  Meuric frowned. He knew that voice. It sounded so familiar and yet seemed to contain a gravelly tone that was foreign to it. Meuric said nothing. He simply waited for the mysterious woman to identify herself. As if reading his mind, bony and festered hands reached up and pulled back the hood.

  Onóra’s face was now as rotted as her hands. Her beautiful green eyes, once so bright and lively, were now red, dull and dead with no hint of the love of life she had once possessed. Her hair had fallen out in clumps reminding Meuric of those he had known to die of cancers. Her face was thin, stretched obscenely over the muscle and bone below. There were holes in the lower half of her face revealing the grey and blackened teeth.

  “Why did you not warn me?” she repeated. “Why did you not tell me of the vision you had that night?”

  Meuric now understood that he was trapped within a vision. It was a picture of the future; his future. He felt himself shrug. His lips moved but he had no control over his words.

  “To what end? I knew not the time of Kar’el’s destruction or your death. If I truly had known I would have warned you, Onóra.”

  She lifted an arm and pointed an accusing bony finger at the Knight Protector. Meuric could not help but notice that the nail was elongated to resemble that of a talon.

  “Know this, Knight Protector. Know that even the Hand of Deo cannot stand against me. Now tell me truly why you did not warn me. I had my whole life ahead of me, a future. Now all that is gone.”

  For Meuric, there was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice. Sadness touched his heart. Thoughts of those fighting outside the room filled his mind though he did not understand why. Energy filled the room emanating behind and to the right of the ben-sidhe. Before him now materialised a younger version of Onóra very much like the one who now lay in bed next to him in the real world.

  The Onóra of the real world looked totally bewildered. Her jaded eyes hurriedly searched the room in an attempt to discover where she was and what was going on. It was the back of the ben-sidhe she noticed first. She frowned not understanding what she was looking at. Meuric could see her trying to make sense of what had just happened to her. It was only a few heartbeats later when she first saw Meuric.

  She looked him up and down noting the dark armour and weapons and the battle-weary lines etched onto his eternally young face. There was obvious confusion on her face. Before her stood the Meuric she knew, but somehow different. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped, hearing that Meuric had already begun.

  “You would not have believed me had I told you,” he explained to the daemon. “In truth I had no idea when the attack was to have taken place and I had hoped that you would have been away with your father by the time it had happened. I am sorry, so very sorry. I was wrong.” He looked into the corner of the room where the young Onóra stood open-mouthed and stared directly at her. “I am also sorry for what has happened to you and what you have been turned into.”

  “My life has been wasted because of you,” hissed the dead Onóra. “Know that I will be paying you in kind.”

  The ben-sidhe opened her mouth and screamed. The wail echoed across the room like a wave splicing every nerve in Meuric’s body. He cowered slightly under the force, placing his hands over his ears. He knew that it did not stop with him though. Already he could hear the cries of the people beyond the room as the daemon’s cry filled the outside world. Even Onóra of the real world trembled under the scream.

  When the shriek eventually ended Meuric stood upright only to find the ben-sidhe smiling at him. Her rotted teeth set in stark contrast against the deathly pallor of her lips.

  “So dies here the Hand of Deo,” she quipped. “May you never know peace!”

  As if sensing something for the first time the ben-sidhe slowly turned towards the corner where the still living Onóra stood. Meuric wanted to speak out, to shout at the daemon Onóra, but trapped as he was in the vision he was unable to do so.

  Meuric opened his eyes.

  He was no longer in the dream but was once again back in the boarding room of the Travelers’ Inn. It was then that he saw Onóra sitting upright next to him. He could feel her body trembling, her breathing ragged. Tenderly he set a hand on her back. Reactively, she flinched then calmed. She drew in a deep shuddering breath.

  “I am sorry that I woke you but I just had the most extraordinary dream,” she murmured. “You were there dressed in this black armour and you were talking to a daemon I think. She may have been a ben-sidhe.” She laughed nervously. “You must be thinking that I am half crazed but it just seemed so real.” She turned to the former Knight Protector. “It was just a dre
am. Was it not?”

  Meuric hesitated. What should he say? Would she believe him? She probably would not. Perhaps he could encourage her to leave for her testing at Ee’ay sooner. He offered a thin smile. “It was only a dream.”

  She nodded at his answer and lay back. He knew that she was only half convinced. “Perhaps I should talk to my father this morning about leaving for Ee’ay earlier than planned.”

  Meuric’s strained smile became a real one.

  XXII

  Bradán stood patiently in the centre of a field surrounded by leagues of gentle sloping hills and lush open fields. It was beautiful here, he decided, with its green countryside and clear blue skies above. It reminded him very much of his own home in Kel’akh except for the obvious lack of woodland. There the Great Wood practically covered the whole of the realm. It was hard to believe that, only two day ago, he was in Ber’ek, having been transported to E’del through a magickal entryway the magi call a Doorway Narration.

  He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes revelling in the fact that he was alive. Somehow the air seemed a touch fresher, the grass just that little bit greener and the sky a more clear cerulean. He had fought a Knight Protector and lived. Something he had trained for a long time to do and the euphoria of the act still surged in his veins. But at the same time it saddened it. Another mindless death and for what, he began to ask himself more and more. Was he a family man? Was he a good man?

  No, he decided. The massacre that took place at Ber’ek would forever leave a black mark upon his soul, no matter what the Dark Druid had said to him. When his time came to enter the Otherworld Bradán knew that he would have to answer for it.