Tragedy (Forsaken Lands)

by Cooper, Sydney M.

  Heal, gods damn it, heal.

  When she opened her eyes she was in Garren Kwas+0">Hea's arms, his body as stony as his face. Veni was on the ground, pushed up under one of the tables with Les. Aia watched in awe as Teveres went at Drei in a flash of colors. Drei, who was smaller and more agile, ducked under him, her laugh ringing through the air. Teveres was on the offense, the other Kaldari leaders parting to watch the ordeal. Drei held her own dagger, deflecting his advances, spinning around his attacks.

  He was healed, but he had not killed her yet. Something was wrong.

  "What have you done?" Garren's breath tickled her ear.

  Aia just shook her head.

  Teveres successfully backed Drei into a corner, but from where Aia was watching, it was what Drei wanted. She was yielding to him, allowing him to drive her against the wall. The moment he had her pinned and was about to go for her arteries she shouted, and the female snakeskin-bearing Kaldari and the willowy wood-bearing Kaldari took hold of his shoulders. He writhed against their grip, his face red with exertion. He managed to cut Drei across one cheek in the struggle.

  Drei's laugh was deep in her belly. She was playing with him.

  "You are everything I heard about," Drei applauded. Teveres was breathless, his muscles relaxed against the too-efficient hold of the Kaldari leaders. "Your father trained you with a knife. He should be proud in his grave."

  "What the hell did you do?" Teveres screamed at her.

  Drei touched her cheek where Teveres had cut her and delicately licked the blood from her fingertip. "The crystal from Torvid's Rest is ebonstone, the crystal of the one god. Children of Elseth stole our history, except what our leaders wear." She tapped the strange glittering stone shard tattoo over her left cheekbone. "The demon magic of the Children of Elseth cannot touch me. Now we have enough for many warriors. We will protect our people. We will take Nivenea."

  Everyone was silent, all eyes on Drei. She clapped her hands together and spoke to the Kaldari who accompanied them to the temple. The braided man and woman collected Veni and Les. The two of them fought against the Kaldari to no avail.

  When Garren began pushing Aia in the same direction, Aia looked up at him. "What did she say?" Aia breathed, "What are you doing?"

  Garren spun Aia around to stand next to Veni, facing Teveres. Alarmed, Teveres pulled against the hold of his captors. "What is this, Drei?"

  Garren and the two Kaldari warriors bound the hands of all the prisoners. Aia, Les and Veni stood before Teveres exposed, surrounded by killers on all sides. Aia clasped her hands together tightly so Drei would not see her trembling.

  Drei stood so close to Teveres that their lips might have touched if she were taller. "You will learn obedience today, son of Dayle." She nodded towards the remaining Children of Elseth in the room. "Choose one."

  His skin blanched white. "You don't want to cross this line."

  His size="+0">"Drei-" Garren spoke up and moved forward, but Drei held out a threatening hand in Garren's direction.

  "Choose one to die, or they all die."

  Aia's breath caught. "No," Aia said, her voice cracking. "You can't do this, this is crazy. Teveres, this is crazy!" Beside her, Veni was crying, sobbing softly. Les did not move.

  "I won't do it," he rasped. "I won't play this game. If you want to punish me, then punish me. Kill me, do anything you want. Leave them alone."

  Drei removed the sword from her belt and spun with a dancer's grace to slash Aia across the right side of her chest. Teveres cried out as Aia fell to her knees. Her heart stopped, her hearing went dead, and the whole world went numb.

  When the blade touched her chest she was convinced she was about to die. It took her a moment to realize that the wound only pierced the skin. It was strange how far she had come and how far she had fallen from the day she tried to take her own life. She didn't want to die - but she was losing the luxury of that choice.

  "You do not care for your life," Drei said calmly, backing away. "I will not give you peace in death. If you die, they die. Choose, now."

  Aia stared up at him, but he was far away in his head and did not see her. He moved toward Veni.

  This is wrong. You don't have to do this. There has to be something else, Aia pleaded with him.

  "Teveres, I'm sorry," Veni sobbed. "I'm so sorry. I forgive you, just please, don't do this to me. I want to go home, Teveres. I want to see my father. Please don't do this..."

  "I'm sorry, too." He looked at the floor. In the half-second it took for him to look away, Veni shrieked, clutched her abdomen and crumpled down next to Aia. Teveres stumbled to the side to grip a table, struggling to breathe.

  Aia struggled against her restraints, the ropes burning into her wrists.

  "Unbind me!" she shouted at Drei, "Do it now!"

  Drei's brow furrowed. "He did not obey."

  "Yes, he did," Aia spat. "He chose the child."

  Drei's self-satisfied expression was driving Aia to homicidal levels of frustration. Drei shrugged and spoke few words to the Kaldari guards, who in turn cut the ties on Aia's hands.

  Veni was muttering words, but Aia did not register them. Instead she gently laid Veni down flat. She had already begun to bleed.

  "You're going to be fine," Aia told her. "The pain is a miscarriage. The fetus is gone, but you're not going to die of this. It's alright."

  Veni quieted, tears streaking down her face. She nodded in acceptance of Aia's Kncegn="justihelp. Aia immediately began examining Veni's unfortunately thin abdomen. The emotions were running high all around her while she worked. It was a blur of white noise that she pushed aside. Aia couldn't control what people were choosing to do all around her, but she could control this. Healing was what she did best. She palpated Veni's womb, felt her pulse, timed her breathing. Everything else fell away.

  Outside her sphere of concentration there was shouting. Garren was yelling at Drei, who was yelling right back at him. The Kaldari were all on edge, and she was getting waves of anger and hatred off of Teveres which made her skin prickle. There was a scuffle involving Teveres and some of the others. The two guards from the temple went down - they died instantly, just before Teveres was capped again. The only one left standing who did not wear the ebonstone was Garren.

  Aia was about to reach for her medical bag when she was again hauled up by the shoulders into Garren's arms.

  Drei gave her orders to her people. Teveres stood frozen with his eyes on the floor, looking paler than Aia had ever seen him. Les faded into the background.

  The wood-talisman man picked up a weakly protesting Veni and walked with Garren down the hallway into one of the lodge's dark, windowless guest quarters. Veni was heaved onto the bed where she curled up, her pain overwhelming to Aia's senses.

  "Garren," Aia said as Garren shoved her into the room, "what's going to happen to us?"

  The wood-talisman man slipped out of the door. Garren's blue eyes were shadowy. He turned to leave, but glanced over his shoulder. He drew Aia's satchel from the folds of his cloak and tossed it on the bed beside Veni.

  "Be ready to leave," he muttered.

  Alone with Veni and her own seeping chest wound, there was nothing to prevent her from healing. She was tired, in pain, and terrified. She had no power over the situation at large, but in that room, she could control Veni's future. She eagerly went to work doing what she did best, if only to block out the rest of the world going to hell around her.

  * * *

  Every minute the ticked past increased Les's anxiety. After Aia and Veni were dragged off, he and Teveres were corralled in quarters beside them. Their restraints had been removed, but the door was locked. They could hear the occasional chatter from the guards at their door, and from Garren, who was in deep discussion with Drei down the hall. Everything being said was said in Kaldari - no matter how hard Les listened to the words, they meant nothing to him.

  The lone bed in the room was untouched. Teveres leaned up against the wall next to the door in
complete silence. Les had seen the eyes of a dead man before, the way they saw nothing, the soul behind them gone. Teveres's eyes were the eyes of a dead man, with only the reassuring rise and fall of his chest as he breathed to differentiate him from a corpse.

  Without any other outlet for his anxiety, Les paced the length of the room. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets to keep from fidgeting, but str Ktinforuggled harder to prevent himself from speaking. His thoughts were racing with one central question - why didn't he choose me?

  Teveres didn't have to kill the baby. He could have killed one of the people he just met, but he didn't. Les was thankful in a most selfish way, thinking of what would have become of Cadde if he had died out in Torvid's Rest with nothing to show for it. He valued living, but he did not understand why he was living. If he could have asked, he would have.

  It was quite clear that such a discussion would be unwelcome at this juncture.

  Minutes turned to hours. Conversations were beginning to quiet from beyond the door, and Teveres had slowly slid down the wall to the floor, sitting with his arms crossed over his knees. Les alternated between pacing and perching on the bed until he could barely hold himself together anymore. He stopped mid-pace, leaning against the foot of the bed. He regarded Teveres squarely.

  "What do you think they're doing?" Les's question was bold in the face of stillness.

  "Does it matter?" Teveres's voice was barely audible even with the silence outside. "There's nothing we can do."

  "There has to be something-"

  "There doesn't have to be anything." Teveres glared up at him. "We made a mistake. I... made a mistake."

  "You didn't know," Les ventured. "There's no way you could have known what that... stone... could do. We still don't know exactly what it does."

  "I should have known better than to make a deal with someone like Drei. I should have killed them all when I had the chance." Teveres's hands clenched, "Every last one of them."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "I couldn't. Drei and the others had the stone, and I can't kill the ones with the stone."

  "Garren didn't have any stone, though," Les felt bad pressing, but the question was too obvious not to ask. "You left him alone."

  Teveres was opening his mouth to reply when he heard a sound from outside the room. Two sharp inhalations of pain were followed by a brief silence just before Garren flung open their door. Veni stood beside him, looking stronger and healthier than Les had ever seen her. Aia was behind the both of them, two new Kaldari guards they had not seen before lay in pools of blood on the floor.

  Teveres jumped up, alarmed. Garren threw each of them their respective bags with urgency.

  "Run." Garren hissed at them.

  Les could hear the other Kaldari warriors coming from the bar Kfro="2area, shouting what seemed to be curse words as they ran. Garren took off at a run down the hallway, away from the front entrance.

  Les's heart had not beat so many times in one day for years. He liked to stay physically fit, but his past 24 hours had been filled with more life-threatening scenarios than he'd experienced in his whole life. He wanted to give up when he barreled out of the lodge's backdoor behind Teveres and Garren, to the garden where they had spent time training in the evenings.

  Garren had already vaulted up the slope of the mountain with Veni and cleared the fence like a demigod. Teveres, too, seemed to develop superhuman powers. For all his wounds and joints scarcely holding together, he pushed through the pain to scale the fence. He sat at the apex, resting at the corner where the fencing met the mountain. One boot pushed back the barbed wire coiled on the top. Teveres took Aia's hand and launched her over the fence to relative safety. Les groaned.

  The footsteps of the leader Kaldari drew closer. The adrenaline pumping through his body propelled him; he sprinted to the mountain face with just enough time. Teveres's hand gripped his tightly, and together they dropped down the other side of the fence. They hit the gravel below with a roll.

  Les thought he would never be vertical again as he lie spread-eagle on the ground. The fall knocked the breath from him and bruised all along his ribcage. Teveres grabbed Les's hand again and heaved him to standing.

  "Don't stop," Teveres encouraged him.

  Garren was halfway to the woods bordering the village. The Kaldari leaders were still in hot pursuit and gaining, having cleared the fence themselves. Les heard a whistle of air and watched an arrow fly past his ear.

  "Shit," Les swore. His legs were becoming sore and his chest ached from his stretched lungs.

  Garren spared him a glance, seeing the Kaldari coming up on them. There were only two, the woman with the snakeskin and the man with the wood. Garren came to a dead stop, pulled a blade from his side and took aim. The throwing knife caught the Kaldari woman in the neck. She went down hard.

  The man of wood did not stop - if anything, he became faster. Garren let Les and Teveres pass him by, following behind them into the tree line. Branches clawed at Les's face, the scratches raw in the cold autumn winds. He wanted to ask when they could stop. It seemed that there would be no end.

  Ahead of him, Veni and Aia were losing speed. Behind him, Les saw Teveres and Garren both stop about a hundred yards into the forest. The wood man was coming for Garren, his face twisted with anger, sword drawn. Garren met him with vigor. The clang of steel scared the birds from the trees.

  Teveres joined the fray without hesitation. Dodging the long blades, he went for the leader's back. The man was caught between two opponents, and Garren's long blade seemed to be more important until Teveres landed the first stab just below the man's lowest rib, spraying blood on the forest floor.

  There was a shout of rage when the Kaldari spun K Kathe to face Teveres. Accepting the opportunity, Garren pulled back his arm, and in one swoop sliced the man's head clean off. The woods suddenly went quiet.

  Les was stunned motionless. He had never seen someone beheaded before. The man's dark braids were matted with blood, face shadowed as it lulled to the side. The abandoned body toppled over, useless.

  Les swallowed deeply and ran his hands through his hair, reminding himself to keep breathing. Breathing was important. The man who lay on the ground without his head couldn't breathe anymore, after all.

  Teveres leaned over with his hands on his knees, catching his own breath. Veni and Aia stood shoulder-to-shoulder, staring openly at the gory scene. Garren wasted no time. He cut the shirt from the Kaldari in a dissociated, methodical manner, revealing a heavily tattooed chest underneath. He located a patch of dark stone shards, knelt to the ground, removed yet another blade from his side, and hacked the stone-speckled flesh from the dead man's body.

  More blood, more gore on the forest floor. Garren was completely dethatched from the task he was performing. It appeared to be no more emotionally trying for him than skinning a rabbit.

  Les did his best not to be sick. He looked away and tried to think of better things, of his beautiful wife at home in Pelle. What would she think of him, thrown in with the Kaldari and a man who killed people faster than he could snap his fingers? What would his parents think? He pressed his back against a nearby tree, staring up into the canopy. It was all he could do. Apparently, it was all anyone could do.

  His thoughts were violently interrupted when Garren threw a canteen at him, nearly hitting him in the face. Across from him, Teveres slumped against his own tree, again gazing off into the distance. Les took a long swig of the water, heaven to his parched throat.

  "Why did you do that, back there?" Les asked, watching as Garren carefully reorganized his gear. "Why did you help us?"

  Garren looked up at him, slightly annoyed. "I did not do it for you. I am for myself."

  "You risked your life for us. You saved us back there, that was... that was unexpected."

  "A brave man would have saved the life of the child." There was no pride in Garren's voice, no confidence.

  It was at that word - child - that Teveres seemed to sudden
ly spring to life. Les felt a pang of sympathy when Teveres dove to the side of his tree to vomit. It had become easy to see Teveres as nothing more than a bloodless, emotionless killer. It was worse to imagine that Teveres had any kind of humanity left in him. Veni turned away from him, hands covering her face.

  Though Garren was content to ignore Teveres, perhaps to spare him the shame of watchful eyes, Les couldn't stand by while Teveres suffered alone. He hunched over with his hands painfully clutching his thighs, his previously corpse-like stare replaced by an eerie, haunted expression. Up close he looked like a victim of the fevers, his complexion an unhealthy gray and sweat beaded on his forehead.

  Aia hesitated, caught between Ven Kt bon i and Teveres, afraid to touch either of them. She knotted her fingers together nervously.

  "Are you alright?" Les spoke in a lowered voice, tuning out everyone else around him.

  "I'm fine. I'll be fine." Teveres spoke just above a whisper.

  Les forced one of the signature half-grins he learned from his father, a master of self-delusion through humor. "So this is how a fine person acts, eh?" He offered up the canteen, silently wishing it was less water and more alcohol.

  Relief on so many levels rippled through Teveres's entire body. Les nodded at Teveres's quiet but humbling appreciation. Sipping the water seemed to comfort him, if only momentarily.

  The question of the morality of caring about someone who killed so freely and so often would have to wait. Les couldn't begin to consider why he still regarded Teveres as a friend worthy of compassion. It led him to a dark and uncertain path.

  "What now?" Aia spoke up, her voice soft.

  "I will go where I go, and you will go where you go," Garren replied, his back to both of them.

  "You're leaving us here?"

  "I left my people. You followed me. Where I go, you may not wish to follow."

  If Les had any energy left in his legs, he would have approached Garren to confront him. Instead he leaned forward from where he sat. "We can't just let Drei take Nivenea. We can't sit here and do nothing-"