Regenerated
A Short Story by Carolyn Kephart
Cela always hoped she’d find Jorgen again someday…but was this really Jorgen? A tenderly bitter tale of love and giant lizards, first published in Quantum Muse.
5.0 out of 5 Amazon stars: Great Story!
“A fascinating story that definitely makes me want to see
more from this imaginative author.”
-- Red Adept Reviews
Copyright 2011 Carolyn Kephart
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Regenerated
No one ever really got to know a rashak, and Cela had never made an attempt. She patched them up and they paid her if they had money, giving exactly what her services were worth, neither more nor less. However much agony they might be in, they never showed it. Their flat wide-mouthed saurian faces remained stonily impassive even when the pain ebbed, and their gratitude was equally effusive.
Irksome though the rashaka were, Cela could not help being impressed by at least some their traits. True, they were almost pathologically inscrutable. Vowed to stern and unforgiving gods, they lived in continual self-denial. They had no written language, little if any spirit of inquiry, and more than a few disgusting habits. But none were better fighters, formed for war and the hunt, tireless in strength and highly resistant to wounds thanks to their massive, manlike physiques and scaly hide; their uncannily keen senses and formidable stamina were legendary. Their loyalty, when they chose to bestow it, was beyond question or reproach. They were also never violent unless goaded, a trait which was not generally known nor entirely believed by humankind, most of whom made every effort to avoid them. Cela's lack of prejudice was atypical, and thus she and Koth had met.
She had been out in the far hills one day, foraging for rare herbs and enjoying the last of hot high summer, when she discovered a rashak male finishing up a battle with a rout of drabbs, the vicious near-men who roamed that lawless part of the land. Stupid and weak, drabbs never hunted save in packs; yet for even four of them to consider themselves the match for a rashak was a foolish, fatal error. Still, by the time the last drabb fell, the rashak was covered in blood -- the almost black blood of his race. As Cela watched, he dropped to his knees without a sound save a slight hiss, and shut his eyes, his head bent, his great shoulders drooping, his thick tapering tail motionlessly curled behind him. Cela realized that he was either calling on his gods for strength, or resigning himself to death. When she approached, he barely seemed to notice her, save for a momentary flaring of his nostril-slits that in a single breath determined that she was human and female -- and a healer, from the aromatic herbs she carried. But then he drew another breath and caught it, and his shoulders straightened and his eyes opened very fast, fixing on hers. Startled by the stare, Cela controlled her dislike of his reptilian features, looking away as she reached for her satchel's clasp.
"I intend no harm. Permit me to aid you," she said to him, speaking the formal tongue that united all the rashak tribes. She knew only a few phrases, and spoke them badly - there were gutturals and clicks that she would never get right - but still he understood, and shook his head as he looked away.
"You should leave. Just go." He had replied in the common tongue, rasping and hoarse but almost without accent, quite as if that were his native language -- unusual, since rashaka usually bothered to learn only the rudiments, and let gestures and grunts fill in for the rest.
"Payment isn't necessary," Cela said with a touch of impatience, knowing it could only be lack of money that made him refuse her help. Warriors of his kind spent every copper they had on their gear, and his was, she noted, of the highest quality, and rather more showy than rashaka tended to favor. She did not say more, since it would be a waste of words.
He hesitated yet again. "I need water. And food."
Cela was provided with both, and gave him what she had. As she set about healing him, he ate and drank with undisguised greed that made clear how long he had gone without, and why the drabbs had managed to inflict such damage. Taking a little jar of salve from her satchel, Cela anointed the rashak's lacerated skin -- or rather his scaly hard hide, rough and cold under her fingers. Soon he was close to whole again, and his powers of regrowth would do the rest.
"Good work," he said, glancing at his arm, that had been cut to the bone. "I've seen few better."
"I thank my teachers," Cela replied, a little startled by the extravagance of the compliment.
His opaque eyes scanned her with an attention that rashaka seldom deigned to confer upon a mere human. "It hasn't made you rich."
Cela glanced down at her mannish near-rags with a shrug. It had been a very long time since she had cared about her looks, but to hear a rashak comment on them was ... strange. "That salve costs a fortune to make," she said, staring at the now-empty little jar.
The information didn't seem to impress him. "I'm called Koth."
Rashaka never gave their names away lightly either, and at least initially used the first four of them. "Greetings, Koth," Cela replied, looking hard at him now.
"Greetings, Lady Celandra. And thank you." At her wide-eyed shock he gave the closest thing a rashak had to a smile. "You don't recognize me." Standing with only a little difficulty now, moving from corpse to corpse, with practiced brutality he wrenched off their long greasy scalps, which were worth money. One of the drabbs wore a jewel that had probably cost its original owner her life; this Koth appropriated with a hard tug, snapping the chain. For some time the rashak stared at the sunlit blue spark in his hard razor-nailed palm. "Take it," he finally rasped, holding the gem out to Cela. "You always said these were your favorites."
Cela's fingers closed around the jewel as her attention fixed on Koth's flat face, and its stare so widely spaced that it seemed to look clear past her.
"You used to tell me that my eyes were brighter," she replied, fighting to keep her voice calm.
He inclined his head in a way she remembered from someplace far, someplace deep in the past. "Yes. I said that."
She felt her grip on the gem loosen. "But -- I had thought Transformation was a fraud."
"It exists." His opaque gaze flicked. "Hard to find, costly to buy, and not easy to survive."
Cela remembered the rest of the hearsay, and spoke it dry-mouthed. "Nor is there any going back. It cannot be reversed."
His broad, thick-muscled shoulders barely shrugged, and he made no answer.
For a long time she could only stare at him, stunned by the change, trying and failing to find the man she had loved. "But Jorgen ... why?"
"The name is Koth." His thick-lidded eyes flashed coldly. "Human flesh is weak in too many ways. I knew I could be stronger. Much stronger."
Ah, but he was ugly -- that toad's head with its recessive planes and mottled scales and wide, lipless mouth. Unable to make any form of reply, Cela turned her full attention to putting her healing items away, and finding a bit of leather lacing to hang the gem around her neck. After a very long silence Koth spoke again.
"This place isn't safe for you." Another hesitation. "You are alone."
Cela wanted to say that she had been alone since he had left her, that she never dreamed they would meet again; that she was overjoyed, furious, and appalled to the depths of her soul. But far too much had changed, and she merely nodded a reply. For Koth, it was enough.
Since that time on they had been together, and from a strictly survival viewpoint it worked very well. Koth put himself in continual danger, and Cela coped with the consequences, across endless reaches of lucrative terrain. Cela's memories merged into the present and momentarily fixed on Koth, w
ho continued to sit in the meditative trance that prefaced every fight, communing with his adopted gods. She sighed, inwardly as always. Over the month they had spent together, she had realized hour by hour that whatever she once loved in Jorgen had burned to dust. The present moment found them in yet another breathtaking landscape they would only hunt in and hurry through, where in another time they would have lain down in the sweet grass and ... she bit her lip lest the sigh escape her as she turned away again, locking her attention elsewhere until the murmur of Koth's reptilian blur startled her more than a scream.
"I'm sorry."
Her attention never wavered from the mists now hovering up from the meadow beneath their safe spur of rock. She was required to keep watch, sitting absolutely immobile, during Koth's period of meditation. Silence was also expected, but this time she had to reply, whispering through frozen lips.
"Sorry for what, Koth?"
She fought to keep her voice calm, and to quiet her heart that was beating all but audibly. What she had waited so long to hear might be on the point of being said.
He hissed faint irritated regret. "That dagger was a bargain. I should have bought it."
Cela's emotions silently collapsed within her. Focusing again on the lovely curling tendrils of opalescent mist in the gold-grassed, pond-dotted valley below them, she noted those spirals that were most likely to jet suddenly upward and twist themselves into translucent, delicate, appallingly murderous gloamrippers. Night was coming on and several of the monsters were now taking shape, elegantly slim and feral, seeking to feed on whatever they might find, with a ravenous preference for flesh. Once they were killed, which would take some time and considerable risk, their hearts would fetch a high price. Automatically Cela forgot how beautiful the creatures were.
"There," she whispered, barely indicating the now fully-formed 'rippers as she spoke. Koth stared where she pointed, blinked acknowledgment, then rose and made his soundless half-slithering way down the hill to the ponds without a single word or backward look.
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