Soul Marked: After the Fire Book 1

by C. Gockel

  Closing his eyes, he sends apparitions as far as they will go, but the swamp distorts their view, and their eyes deliver only misty blurs.

  He huffs in frustration, and then reminds himself to count his blessings. His magic has worked upon this dry hillock. He’d healed his leg, and, more surprisingly, he’d been able to transfer Elvish to Tara … although he had hallucinated during the transfer. This time of an open window. He’s never had the gift of sight, but it isn’t that uncommon. It isn’t the ability to see the future—not even the Norns see that—it is just the gift of seeing possibilities. Was the vision in her little yard a premonition of her coming back for him during his imprisonment? But this recent vision … an afterimage maybe?

  His stomach clenches, and he realizes she’s being very quiet.

  “Tara,” Lionel says. There is a whisper, a soft breeze, and a thunk. His eyes go to a spot not a half hand’s-breadth from his right ear. A wicked-looking crossbow bolt has embedded itself in the tree trunk.

  “Contain your magic, Lionel of the Queen’s Palace, and climb down from the tree,” says a voice below. “If you don’t behave, we won’t kill you, but we’ll make you hurt.”

  Peering down, Lionel thinks he makes out Tara below, hands above her head, and at least ten elves around the tree. Some hold crossbows; others hold “guns.” Lionel grits his teeth, guessing the bolt’s position wasn’t a miss. “I’m coming down,” he says.

  Descending carefully, he hears the coos of hippalectryons beyond the small hillock. Tara looks up at him, opens her mouth, snaps it shut, and shakes her head again. In front of her stands an elf with long white hair, a human weapon in his hands. He’d seen human “guns” on his first trip to Midgard. This one’s shorter and slimmer than the weapon he remembers. For some reason, he doesn’t find that comforting.

  “What have you done to her?” Lionel demands, letting himself drop the last few body lengths.

  Naleigh steps out of the shadows. “What have you done to her? We heard you use her name in the cell—did you compel her to act against us?”

  “I did not compel her to come back,” Lionel says hotly.

  Naleigh roars. “You made her attack us!”

  “I did not—”

  Naleigh gestures with his hand.

  The Dark Elf with white hair whispers, “Tara Lupita Gibson, you may speak.”

  The white-haired elf had compelled her to silence with her name! Had the other elf overheard in the cell? Given freely, a name was more potent, but this elf was obviously strong enough that even stolen—

  Dropping her hands, Tara snaps in Elvish, “He did not compel me to do anything! I saved his life on my world, risking my life and my freedom. You came onto my property, abducted him and me, dragged us both through this stinking swamp, and are threatening to kill him!” She throws up her arms. “Well, no way am I going to let you do that! His white-elf butt is mine and you can’t take it!”

  Lionel’s mouth drops open and so does the jaw of every elf in attendance. Had he thought her naive? It is obvious that he misjudged her. He feels his heart speed up. She’s within her rights to claim him, so why does he feel so betrayed?

  Taking a step back, Tara puts her hands on her hips, nods, and then he hears her gulp.

  There are whispers among the Dark Elves. “Did she trick him?” and “How does she speak our language?” Also, he hears, “What an idiot … enslaved to a human!”

  The white-haired Dark Elf looks at Lionel. “Is this true? Does she own your life?”

  He swears he feels every elf’s eye on him, and probably the eyes of their hippalectryon mounts and every swamp creature in the vicinity. His skin heats and his lips twist. He wants to rebel … he wants to lie. He opens his mouth, and he thinks that maybe he can lie. At his side, his hands form fists. Elves aren’t like the other races; they may obfuscate, dodge and evade, conceal, twist, baffle and bewilder, but they don’t lie, and he is an elf.

  He grinds his teeth. “Yes.”

  “You admitted you owe her your life?” One of them, a woman with a scar down her cheek, asks.

  Lionel inhales sharply. If he’d only not admitted it, there would have been no bond of word.

  “Aww …” another woman says. “I think he just thinks she’s pretty and wants to be her slave.”

  “Do you think he became an abomination to please his mistress?” another elf whispers.

  Someone says, “The clothes are revealing … maybe so.”

  “Even his jaw got bigger. He looks like a brute,” hisses another. “Half-breed.”

  Lionel feels bile rise in his mouth at the word.

  Striding between Lionel and the women, Tara snaps, “I didn’t say anything about him being a slave!”

  “But you said you own him.” Naleigh smirks. “If you want to hand him over, we’ll happily kill him.”

  Throwing up her hands, Tara cries, “No!” and Lionel isn’t sure if he’s grateful or bitter at her defense.

  Naleigh laughs. “An elf … or whatever … enslaved by a human! I think this is better than any sort of punishment we could concoct.”

  Rolling back on her feet, Tara’s wide-eyed gaze seeks Lionel’s. He looks away. He’d felt guilty about her abduction; now he feels like a fool.

  All the elves but the one with white hair laugh. Stepping toward Tara, the white-haired one says, “We have no quarrel with humans, and will give you aid, but not him. Choose Lionel’s life and we won’t help you return to your world.” He tips his chin. “Think carefully, Tara Lupita Gibson. This swamp has been poisoned by his people, and there are many dangers.”

  Magic twists through the air, and Lionel feels the compulsion behind the man’s words. Something shrieks in the night and Lionel shivers.

  Tara lifts her chin. “I won’t let you take him. He’s my friend.”

  Lionel glares at her. She’s just publicly humiliated him and admitted she owns him. They cannot be friends … He swallows. But she’d declared her friendship under compulsion. The contradiction makes him feel sick to his stomach.

  The white-haired man nods. “Very well.” Lowering his weapon, he turns to the others. “Her death is no longer on us, and his death is all but assured.” With a flick of his hand, the others back away, melting into the shadows.

  A minute later, Lionel is standing on the hillock with the woman who owns him. In the night, some monster of the Dark Lands screams.

  Crossing the Sorrows

  Tara watches the elves disappear. Her fingernails bite her palms. Inside she is in turmoil, a swirling mess of conflicting feelings. She feels like Jesus on the mountain. She wasn’t offered riches, but she was offered freedom, and she said no, because to abandon Lionel would be wrong. On the other hand, she has never been more afraid. The expression “paralyzed by fear” doesn’t feel like a metaphor but a literal truth.

  Swallowing her fear, and the urge to cry, she whispers, “What do we do now, Lionel?”

  “You own me, remember? Perhaps you should figure it out yourself.”

  At first Tara thinks the words are in jest. She huffs, almost laughs, and then her eyes dart to his face. His expression is stony. Feeling nauseous, she says, “You don’t believe that, that’s not possible …”

  His lip curls. “You just saved me based on your ownership. How could I not believe?” He raises an arm toward the darkness. “They believed.”

  Tara’s heart drops. She has to take deep breaths to keep from throwing up. “No … I just … I didn’t mean it … I wasn’t speaking ...” She can’t quite find the word for “literally” in Elvish, and stutters. “It was a metaphor.”

  Lionel tilts his head. She notices that his hair is no longer a solid gold curtain. His bangs on either side are singed and black. “It was the truth,” he sneers.

  “But no …” Tara protests. “It’s not, it can’t be …”

  Lionel’s pale face is as hard as stone.

  Tara blinks. It doesn’t matter what she meant. The elves believe she own
s Lionel. She puts a hand over her mouth. She knows her history; how sometimes free blacks went on to buy their own slaves. She’s accidentally stumbled into the same condition.

  She just manages to turn before she begins to dry heave.

  Lionel doesn’t even ask her if she is all right.

  Panting, bent over, hands on her knees, she thinks back to how this happened. It had something to do with Lionel having confessed his indebtedness to her saving his life. She bites her lip. “How do we undo this?”

  In the silence that follows, she hears a fish jump in the water. Her heart beat quickens. She hopes it is a fish.

  At last Lionel says, “I save your life, and then we are even.”

  Tara breaths out in relief. “Well, there, you’re done!” Smiling, she spins toward him. “You saved me from the village.”

  He glares at her, and her smile melts.

  “Are you trying to doubly indebt me?” he hisses.

  “What?” Tara protests, throwing up her hands.

  He dips his chin, and one of his nostrils, still delicate—though perhaps not so delicate as it was before—flares.

  She licks her lips. “What am I not understanding?” she says.

  His eyes narrow.

  “I really don’t get it!” she says, flummoxed.

  He huffs.

  She stamps her foot.

  He crosses his arms.

  Throwing her hands in the air, she exclaims, “Can you explain it to me in some way that you don’t wind up doubly indebted?”

  She hears another plop in the water.

  He sighs. “Were you really in danger in the village?”

  “Well, after I went back and rescued you—” She closes her eyes. “Oh.” She’d saved him not once, but twice.

  Tara’s thoughts are spinning in a vortex. She takes a stab in the dark. “It isn’t the deed … it is the acknowledgement of the deed that creates debt?”

  “Of course,” says Lionel, but he sounds a little less certain. “Isn’t that true on Earth as well?”

  “No,” she says. She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Well, some people might say it does, but they’re wrong. You should save your fellow humans—”

  She waves at Lionel, and his eyebrow arches.

  “—or fellow sentient beings, because it is the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing?” Lionel asks, his voice laced with incredulity. “And how is that determined?”

  “What causes the least pain and suffering to all involved,” Tara says, but her voice falters. She’s pretty sure that not reporting Lionel would have put her in the crosshairs of her fellow countrymen. Closing her eyes and rubbing her temple, she says, “Look, I just want to undo this without you feeling you’re indebted to me. You’re free. You owe me nothing.”

  Lionel snorts. “As you’ve pointed out, humans can lie. How can I believe that you aren’t lying, and won’t call up the debt when it suits your fancy?”

  Stamping her foot, Tara mutters, “Oh, for …” Stifling a curse, she stares at him a moment. Lionel glares back at her. Something shrieks much too close, and she thinks she sees him shiver. This is important to him, even if she thinks it is ridiculous. “Look,” she says. “I’m going to make a special promise, a promise that by long and time-honored tradition I am honor bound to keep. It’s called a pinky promise.”

  Lionel rolls back on his feet. “A pinky—”

  The critter in the swamp shrieks, a little closer this time.

  They don’t have time for this. “Copy me,” Tara says, hand up, pinky outstretched. Lionel does, and Tara takes it with her own tiny finger. “Lionel of the Queen’s Palace, or South Vale, or wherever, I, Tara Lupita Gibson, do solemnly absolve you of your debt to me. Pinky promise.”

  Lionel pulls away and looks down at his hand. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have compelled me to save you from the creatures rapidly approaching from the swamp. I can leave you now.”

  Tara hadn’t been aware how cold the night had begun, but it suddenly hits her like a blow. “You’ll leave?”

  Lionel tilts his head and smiles cruelly.

  Tara shivers. “Well, that is your right. I thought maybe we’d have a better chance getting out of this together.”

  The shrieking creature lets loose a scream that is so close that Tara swears she can feel it on the back of her neck. She looks up at the tree branches, and hopes it can’t climb.

  “You really meant it,” Lionel murmurs so quietly Tara almost doesn’t hear. Tara’s eyes snap to him. The cruel smile is gone. In the night, the creature shrieks. Lionel backs away from her, looks to the shriek … and vanishes.

  Tara stares at the place where he stood. “Lionel?” she calls out. She hears footsteps retreating down the hill and then nothing but the sounds of the night. She feels like she might be sick again, but instead, she jumps up, catches the first cold-slick branch, and pulls herself up.

  It’s hard to climb in the dark and cold, but Tara manages to get a good twenty feet above the ground. Settling into the crook of the tree, wrapping her arms around herself, she sits there, shivers, and almost cries. She is the epitome of sticking your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong and living to regret it … but she’s not going to live to laugh about it, and hell, she won’t make a Darwin award either because no one is going to know where she is.

  “Come down!” the whisper in Elvish startles her so much, she almost slips off her branch.

  She peers through the shadows to the ground, and barely makes out silver-white hair and light eyes.

  “Lionel?” she whispers, her heart leaping, and then settling in her chest at a place that isn’t quite right. It wasn’t very mature of him to leave her like that.

  “Come down,” he whispers in a rush. “It’s dangerous. We have to go quickly.”

  She can’t lecture Lionel right now. She has to be grateful he had a change of heart. “Okay, I’m coming,” Tara replies, half-climbing, half-slipping down the tree. Hanging from the final branch, face to the trunk, she can’t quite keep it inside. “You shouldn’t have left me like that,” she says, dropping to the ground. They have to stick together. They can’t have petty fights in the swamp.

  “I won’t leave you now …” he whispers, his voice almost a hiss.

  Tara turns around and takes a step back. Lionel’s features are shimmering, as are the clothes he is wearing. Everything about him is blurry and indistinct. “In fact, you’ll never escape me,” he says.

  He smiles, revealing gleaming white pointed teeth.

  Lionel drags a foot along the ground, cutting a narrow channel in the soft earth. Maintaining his invisibility, he recites an ancient poem about death, danger, and despair. The poem focuses his mind on the task at hand—creating a “fairy blind” around the little hillock where he and Tara will have to spend the night. He can’t leave her … he would be within his rights of course, but she is so … hapless? Genuinely naive? She had him in her power and let him go with a pinky promise. No elf he knew would have done so, even a peasant. They might not hold him to the debt, but they’d lord it over him for centuries.

  Shaking his head, he continues his task, making sure the circle he is carving is unbroken. Any creature that approaches the demarcation will be filled with fear and foreboding, and feel the need to turn aside and go elsewhere.

  Reaching the end of the poem, he straightens. The circle isn’t quite complete, but he’s hungry and exhausted. He tightens his hand on the silken cord of his keychain, pulls the magic to him, and feels his senses sharpen. In the water, the creature that had been issuing the hideous screams veers away.

  In the tree, he hears Tara say, inexplicably, “I’m coming.” Before he can think about it, the ripples of the creature in the water’s wake reach the end of the blind, and it swings back toward the hillock. Lionel begins his recitation again, hopping and dragging his foot parallel to the creature’s new path with renewed vigor. The monster swims off, and Lionel falters, half in relief and h
alf just because his body feels foreign to him. Even with his leg wound completely healed, it’s an effort to keep from stumbling. He starts again, and stops abruptly when his toe encounters strange footprints in the mud. Lionel pauses, and feels the heat of magic against his neck in the direction of the hillock’s apex and Tara.

  Tightening his grip on his key, he spins and races toward her. He sees a hominid shape with white hair, and feels the heat of illusion on his face. Out of view, Tara screams and he thinks he sees her strike out with a fist. The creature bats her hand away with a laugh. With a snarl, Lionel lurches up behind the beast on unsteady legs and wraps a forearm around its neck.

  There is a split second when Lionel’s brain screams, “What are you doing?” The creature’s neck is thicker than the illusion, cold, and wet. Hair like wire bites into Lionel’s face.

  The creature tries to throw him forward, but Lionel wraps one of his newly long legs around it, and refuses to let go. Key clasped in his hands, he wills all the cells of his muscles and sinews not to relent. The creature reaches back and sharp nails dig into Lionel’s flesh. The beast rears back, and then forward, trying to throw Lionel … but Lionel’s leg holds fast, and the momentum from the creature’s attempt pulls its own legs out from underneath it. Lionel growls as his forearm and leg are pinned underneath its mass. Pain makes Lionel angrier, and he wills his muscles and sinews to contract, squeezing the creature’s windpipe tighter. It flops beneath him, rolls them over, and they tumble down the hillock together until the monster is on top of him. Lionel hears an uneven roaring in his ears. He doesn’t feel pain or fear anymore, just fury. He flips the creature over and uses his torso to grind its face into the mud. It occurs to him that the roar he is hearing is his own heart. His newly long limbs are shaking, and he’s flooded with heat.

  “Lionel, are you all right?”

  Tara’s voice above him makes Lionel realize that the creature hasn’t so much as quivered in minutes. He doesn’t let go, but slides a finger up to where its pulse should be and finds … nothing. He spreads his consciousness, searching for life. There is none.