Dinavhek- The Fall
Page 30
“Leave this place,” Konrad said softly – no, ordered was more like it.
Adsuni shook his head.
“My father—”
“Your father is dead!” Konrad barked. “And you will soon follow if you do not leave this place immediately.”
Aasimah snarled at him, as if daring him to make good on his statement.
But Glanen, who had pulled himself up, would not stand for any more bloodshed. He waved Aasimah off, and the wolf grudgingly backed away a few steps.
“Father... how could you?” he asked softly. “After everything... after all our families have been through... How? The pr—Adsuni and I – were raised together!”
“Was it you?” Adsuni asked, his tone icy. “Was it you?” he asked again, when Konrad did not answer.
“My prince,” Glanen placed his hand on his friend's chest, halting him.
Horns blared, catching them all off guard. Glanen recognized that sound. The Knighthood! He knew, in his heart, that they were not there to support him and his friends. “My prince, we must go!” he cried, pulling his friend toward the door.
“Ah, so now you listen,” Konrad called from behind them. “And you will run, and you will hide. What will become of Dinavhek?” he taunted.
Adsuni resisted against his friend as he was dragged toward the door and began to turn back, but Glanen turned him around roughly. “No! There's no time!”
Aasimah, too, hesitated. While her friends ran through the door, she stopped and stared over her shoulder at Sir Konrad, who held his mangled arm close to his chest, grimacing from the pain.
“You'd better be capable of doing more than this, if you plan on keeping that prince alive,” he huffed.
The wolf's eyes narrowed, and the knight braced himself, expecting an attack.
Aasimah had no intention of risking her life for a chance at another bite. She left him there, bleeding profusely in the ruins of the palace she, for a brief period of her life, came to think of as a new home.
While the price and the knight fled through the courtyard, she followed after them. Again, she stopped and turned around, looking back at the palace with mixed feelings. Had it been a home, truly? Comfortable as it was, she did not choose to be there. And now, it seemed, that life of involuntary stability was at its end. Where would they go from here?
The wolf looked around her at all of the bodies piled up upon the ground. There were both Dinavhene and Takirari guards, there were civilians of Aranaot, and even a handful of people from Dre'shii. The wolf's head titled to the side as she studied one particular body from afar. She dared not tread any closer.
Could it be...?
Yes.
Though Aasimah did not dare linger, she knew that she had indeed seen Telma of Dre'shii laying quite still on the bloodied courtyard ground.
Epilogue
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“Damn, another one?” the prince asked as he watched Glanen slide the body of an elgnyr off the end of his sword. The monstrosity had impaled itself at an odd angle and was proving difficult to remove.
The knight grimaced as the distinct smell of rotting flesh filled his nostrils.
“I had no idea there were so many of these repulsive little creatures out here.”
“We've been traveling for weeks now – I think. We're so far into the wilderness now that I doubt they're being actively hunted.”
“When we take Dinavhek back, I'm sending patrols out here first thing. We can't have these wretched things about.”
The prince cringed and sat himself down at the edge of the water. They had managed to make their way to Trelaon Creek, which sat near the edge of the Dinavhene border into the southern reaches of Helisfar. From there, they intended to migrate further up until they reached 'Elashor Helisfar,' the land of the elves.
“We'll have a lot more to worry about than them when we get back. If we get back.”
“Don't say that,” Glanen admonished. “We'll take Dinavhek back. We can't leave our country, our people to the hands of those – those monsters.”
Adsuni winced.
“No offense,” Glanen added, his eyes darting over to the large black wolf that stood watch while they refreshed themselves at the creek.
The prince had taken his tunic and outer robe off, exposing a series of nasty gashes and bruises along his chest and back. Some of them were starting to heal over, having been sustained during the fight at the palace. Others were more recent and had not been properly tended to.
“My friend! You should let me do something about those! You don't want them to get infected, do you?”
“I can take care of myself. I've hardly done any fighting at all. I'm more worried about you, if anything.”
Glanen rooted around through his pouch, hoping to find something – anything – that could be used as a bandage. He thought he'd found something when he heard Aasimah growl.
He flinched, his hand reflexively moving toward his sword as images of the wolf tearing into his father came to his mind. Try as he might, the knight found that he just couldn't feel comfortable in her presence after that day.
He shuddered as his mind replayed that event. He could almost hear his father scream again. He could almost see the torn flesh, the bits of bone, the blood – oh, the blood!
Glanen panicked and dropped his bag.
Before he could react, Aasimah had launched herself right at him. Glanen cursed and ducked, fearing the worst.
Instead, Aasimah went right past him.
The knight heard a shrill, panicked cry – the voice of a child.
“Argh! Lemme go!”
“Aasimah!” Adsuni called. Unnecessarily so, as the wolf was already backing off.
Glanen turned around to see that it was none other than Rascal, the boy he rescued from the jail, lying face-down in the forest floor. He rushed over and helped the boy up, taking care to remove as much dirt and leaves as possible.
“Anikasi's Light,” he murmured. “Boy, what are you doing here, of all places?”
“Don't call me boy!”
Glanen thought back to his argument with Roshan. Suddenly, he felt positively overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of their situation. He began to laugh.
“Hey, don't laugh!”
Rascal's face scrunched up with indignation, which just made the knight laugh even more. Before he knew it, he was doubled over, having given up entirely on any attempt at controlling himself.
“What's wrong with him?” Rascal asked as Adsuni approached.
“He's... we've been through some things.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Erthe was nice enough, I suppose. The people fed me, and there was this nice old man that taught me how to play with message stones. But it was just so boring!”
“You gave up a safe home with food and a warm bed because it was boring?” the prince asked, aghast.
Aasimah yawned and began licking her paws. Now that she could no longer speak, she had little interest in wasting time listening to others do so, it appeared. Adsuni wasn't sure how long she was supposed to stay shifted for, but he was beginning to worry that she hadn't changed back in so long.
He remembered how traumatized she had been after killing her first bandit. Monster or not, he suspected that her actions in the palace might have hurt her in more ways than just the physical.
Perhaps staying in wolf form was merely her way of hiding. With no room in a palace to call her own, retreating into wolf form was the only way for her to hide.
“Well, no, that's not the only reason.”
“What's the other, then?”
The not-boy looked back and forth between Glanen and Adsuni before turning to address the knight.
“I heard about what happened. I... I heard you were dead, so I went looking for you. I even check bodies around the city. Some of the other knights died, so I thought – I thought they were you, until I looked at them.”
All traces of mirth left Glanen's face.
“What? How?”
“Lots of people aren't happy that the king's gone. Some of the knights fought back, but they didn't win. I heard some farmer say he thought he saw a knight walking through the forest, so I came here.”
“That was very foolish of you,” Glanen said once he recovered from his shock. “You shouldn't have done that, you had a home!”
“It wasn't home. It was just a house. So, where are you going?”
Glanen looked to the prince for support.
Adsuni scratched his chin and thought about it for a moment before answering the duo's questioning stares.
“Well, we don't have many options. We'd have to cross through the entire country, all the way to the opposite end, if we wanted to get to Toluduna. The first thing Kharqa will do is take over the ports, so sailing's out. There's no way we'll go through Takirar—”
Aasimah whined at that. Adsuni glanced at her, hoping she might transform back into a person again and explain herself or, even better, weigh in on the matter.
She did not.
Instead, she curled up into a fluffy ball of danger and laid her head down.
The prince sighed and continued on. “Realistically, our only option is Helisfar.”
“Do you think the elves will help us?” Glanen asked with a skeptical frown.
“No, not really. I do think they're just a little less likely to kill us on sight, though.”
“Even though your family led a genocidal rampage against the beast-folk that spread into a continental war and nearly led to an invasion against them?”
“Well, when you put it like that...” The prince smiled and shrugged.
“They'll kill us,” Glanen warned.
“They let my father in. My father, King of Dinavhek, sworn enemy of the non-humans. Sure, they rejected his plea for help, but they still let him leave with his life.”
“What?”
“Oh, right, you weren't there when – it's a long story. Look, we don't have very many options here. Do you have a better idea?”
Glanen looked down at Rascal, then to Aasimah, then back to the prince. He heard Xanthus snort and kick up some leaves as if in protest at not being included.
He shook his head and laughed for the second time that day.
“To Helisfar, then.”
“Land of the elves,” Adsuni said, his tone betraying his eagerness at the idea of meeting a real, living elf.
To Helisfar, indeed.
About the Author
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Tal'urra developed a deep love of fantasy early in life, having filled numerous school journals with tales of dragons, heroes, and magic. Now, she happily writes such stories from the comfort of her home in Los Angeles, California.
When she is not busy with writing, she can often be found crafting all sorts of things, from jewelry to plush dolls.
That, and carrying on arguments with her cat, who feels the need to dunk anything small and soft into her water dish.
Tal'urra can be found on Twitter at @tal_steelfang.
Copyright
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© 2019 Tal'urra Steelfang.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact Tal'urra Steelfang.
Cover Illustration by Brittany Wilson
Editing by Elizabeth Hartlieb
Print ISBN: 978-0-578-54440-3