“I missed her,” he said, staring at his feet.
“Uh huh,” Uther said, folding his arms over his chest disapprovingly.
“Uh huh, what? What? You’re some kind of fucking seerer now?”
“Riken, you’re like a damn book.”
“As if you can read.”
“Can read you.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Riken said, weary of the exchange and hungry for the quiet of sleep.
“Just be careful with her.”
“I don’t plan on being anything with her.”
“I’m serious, Riken.”
“So am I, Uther,” Riken snapped, mocking his friend’s authoritative tone.
“You didn’t see her afterward,” Uther said, quieter now that the rest of the group had finished raising their tents and were making their way to the fire. “You were nowhere to be found, off in some whorehouse somewhere, as usual. I did, though. She took it rough.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, is what I’m saying. I won’t have her go through that again. Abby’s a good girl behind those high, hard walls of hers. She don’t deserve that. Not again.”
“I never meant…”
“The fact that you can still stand of your own volition and eat solid food says I know that. It wasn’t in you, no matter how much you wanted it to be. I get that. I’m just saying, don’t go down that path again. You know this time. Seven Layers, you should’ve known it back then.”
Riken didn’t appreciate at all his friend knowing so much about him that Uther could lay his soul bare in such a frank manner. His offended pride screamed out, telling him to rage at the man, insist that he mind his own fucking business. His practical mind, though, the one that enjoyed things like breathing or seeing the next sunrise, grasped the need to hold his tongue.
With a host of vulgarities and unfair accusations swirling about in his head, the only thing that came out of Riken’s mouth was, “I’m hungry and tired. After those two are satisfied, maybe we can resume this enchanting discussion.”
Uther, having said his peace, disregarded any further comment, and they joined the others around the fire. The big man took a seat on a log next to Abby, which suited Riken just fine. He had no desire to sit next to either of them at the moment.
“I’m just heating up some stew tonight,” Payton said, stirring a black pot on a grill over the fire. “No need to waste any of the meat right now.”
“Whatever,” Riken said. He’d suddenly lost appetite for food as well as conversation. “I’m going to bed. You guys fill your bellies and get to sleep. No fucking around. I want an early start on the morrow.”
As Riken retreated from the circle, making eye contact with no one, Dexter laughed and asked, “What? Some kind a creepy-crawly skirting around in his frillies?”
Payton and Tawny joined in the laughter as Riken jerked the flap of his tent aside. If there was supplementary jesting at his expense, he didn’t hear it with his head wrapped constrictively within his bedroll and the multitude of unpleasant memories churning inside his head. He still wasn’t asleep when Uther entered the tent sometime later, though he pretended to be. He didn’t need a repeat sermon.
Who was Uther to talk to him so? He didn’t have all the facts. If he had, he might’ve seen fit to give Abby an equivalent tongue-lashing. It had been as much her fault as his. Well, perhaps not wholly equal, but she had some blame in it, didn’t she? Riken decided, at least for now, he didn’t really give a shit in the Seven Layers. At this point in his life, he was fed up with his past haunting him. For just one damnable night, couldn’t his demons give him a reprieve?
The answer, it turned out, was a resounding nay.
It began like all the others – Amana playing with her giant pinecone in the clearing. Sometime between him saying it was time to go and the first bestial rumblings from within the dense brush, the dream he’d dreamt a thousand and more times over altered.
“Have I ever lied to you?” Riken’s dream-self asked.
“Nay,” his dream sister said.
“Have I ever denied you anything?”
“Nay.”
“Then why the need to ask?”
“Just because,” she said.
“Hurry up already. It’s getting cold. Mumma’ll be worried out of her gourd if I don’t get you home.”
“Coming,” she said, but tarried as usual. This time, though, her eyes set not upon a large pinecone, but at a spot just over Riken’s shoulder.
Even within the hazy claws of his dream, Riken knew something was different, wrong. He heard the soft crunch of pine needles behind him, and turned slowly as if in water.
“It’s untrue, you know,” a figure behind him said, too cloaked in darkness to see clearly.
“What is?” Amana asked.
“He does lie,” the figure said, drawing closer.
“Perhaps,” his sister said, “but never to me.”
Riken continued watching the approaching intruder as it drifted out of the shadows, and the pale sunlight seeping through the overhead blanket of branches shone on its cloaked head. The head was shaking back and forth.
“You’re wrong, little fawn,” the intruder said, its voice familiar now, feminine.
“Tell her, Riken,” Amana said. “Tell her you never lie to me.”
Riken began to open his mouth, but the intruder was suddenly next to him, holding a cold hand to his mouth.
“Don’t make it worse,” it said with a voice that drained all the warmth from his body. The inhumanly cold fingers trailed off his lips, and the intruder swept past him, coming to a halt in front of Amana. It turned, reached for the hood, and drew it back. Abby stared solemnly at him. “He doesn’t mean to, little fawn, but he does it all the same. It’s in his nature.”
“Nay,” Amana said.
“He said he would protect you, that he would never let anything harm you.”
“He never has.”
Abby’s cold hand touched Amana’s innocent face, sweetly caressing her cheek.
“He will,” she said, holding Riken with sad, hurt eyes. “And soon.”
Amana, too, looked at Riken, a thousand questions dancing in her eyes and on the edges of her mouth. He felt suddenly, uncontrollably ill, like his insides were eating themselves in route to his outer flesh.
“I don’t believe you,” Amana told Abby.
“You don’t have to,” Abby said. “Simply ask her.”
Crunching needles sounded again, and when he turned his heart sank as he looked upon a girl he’d only seen in an oil painting. Taking in the sight of young Sage Ullimar, Riken much preferred the painting’s rendition to the one his troubled mind conjured. She wore the same fine clothes, but now they were shorn and bloody, revealing bare skin assaulted by what looked like claws. Her pretty face was bruised, yellow blending with black, and her long, black hair had been yanked out in patches.
“He let them have me,” Sage said, her voice devastatingly serene. “He’ll let them have you.”
“I didn’t,” Riken said. He meant to shout it, proclaim his innocence, but it came out as a meek whisper.
“Worry not,” Sage said, bare feet carrying her to stand shoulder to shoulder with Amana. “It’s in your nature.”
“It’s not,” Riken said. “I haven’t failed you.”
“Not yet.”
“I won’t.”
“It’s in your nature,” Sage and Abby said in unison.
“And what exactly have I done to you?” Riken demanded of Abby. “Why are you even here?”
For a fleeting moment, Abby looked as if she might weep. It passed, substituted by blind indifference.
“You failed her too, didn’t you, Riken?” Amana asked, staring at him as if he were some stranger to be wary of.
“Don’t say that, baby girl,” Riken said. “I beg you. Not you. I’d have given my life for you. If I’d have known…I never…I would dig out my still-beating heart and give it to you i
f only I could. I swear it on my life.”
Amana let her eyes fall from Riken’s, and she tilted her face to Abby.
“Why does he speak so?” she asked.
“He mourns, little fawn,” Abby said.
“Why does he mourn?”
“Because wolves eat fawns,” Abby said, and the sound of Riken’s eternal torment rumbled in the brush behind them.
As ever, Amana smiled, the wolves broke through the brush, Riken screamed, then fell.
It should’ve ended there. Mercifully, it always had.
Mercy, it seemed, had taken its leave of him.
He felt Abby’s glacial hands on the sides of his face. She tilted his head in the direction of his sibling’s torment, raising him to his feet as she did.
“By the Father, Abby,” he whined, using every pitiful ounce of strength he had to try and wrench his head away from the carnage spilling before his eyes.
“Nay, Snowtear,” Abby said, so apathetic. “This time, you watch.”
And he did. Father and Son help him, this time he did.
Chapter Eighteen
How long have we been in here? Sage thought. Many days, for sure. Weeks, probably. She prayed it hadn’t been over a month. If it had, she’d horribly lost count.
With the one remaining fingernail she hadn’t gnawed to its stub, she made marks on the side of the crate every time they were fed, which seemed to be once a day. Even on that, though, she couldn’t be entirely sure. A few times, Sage had judged by the extra ache in her gut, their captors had neglected the daily meal – usually damp bread and grimy water. So she might be off as many as ten days.
Surely no more than that, she thought hopefully.
“Mumma,” Tessa whimpered.
Through a little soft nudging, she’d learned all the girls’ real names, though it had taken a few days. Dove, it turned out, was Tessa. Fawn’s mother had named her Renna. Onion was Gabby; Mouse, Wilma. Brook, championing her dubbed namesake, hadn’t seen fit to speak, so Brook she remained. Having thought of them for so long by the temporary titles she’d given them, Sage occasionally lapsed. Only Onion seemed to mind. She didn’t care for the label. Sage didn’t blame her, and tried hard not to slip.
“I’m here, little one,” Sage said, squeezing the child’s shoulder. If the little girl knew Sage wasn’t her mumma, she didn’t let on. Perhaps her need for comfort in the midst of this dread clouded any misgivings in her fragile mind. Sage was thankful for the contact, for the affection, however misguided, so she went along with the charade.
“I’m hungry,” Renna said.
Nary a sliver of light penetrated their walls. Sage reached out in the darkness for Renna’s hand. “We’ll eat soon,” she said, feeling along the floorboards until she found the girl’s leg.
“I want to go home,” Renna said. “Mumma’ll be worried, and mad.”
“She won’t be angry with you, darling,” Sage said. “She knows you don’t mean to be late. She knows you’re a good girl. You all are.”
A tiny hand reached up and burrowed into her hair, twirling a long strand around its finger. Brook still hadn’t spoken, only wept, constantly. Sage sighed sadly. Of the five girls, she worried most for Brook. Even when they were fed, the little one would hardly eat more than a few bites, and Sage had to force her to do that. Under these continued circumstances, she didn’t think the poor child would last long.
“Who wants to hear a story?” Sage asked.
“Does it have dragons?” Gabby asked. “I don’t like dragons.”
“Nay,” Sage said. “I don’t like them either.
“They breathe fire,” Tessa said.
“So I hear, darling,” Sage said. “There are no dragons in this tale. Do you want to hear it?”
“Please,” Wilma said, and the rest of the girls agreed.
In their time of imprisonment in this damnable box, Sage had told the girls many tales. She’d recounted her memories of Freedom, where she’d lived for many cycles after leaving Burden. They seemed to enjoy hearing about the Saffrom Wall, and the extravagance of lively festivities within West Ilin Circle, where Freedom’s citizens congregated to cast off the drudgeries of daily life by holding weeklong parties, dances, and tournaments. She’d already recited a few of her favorite adventure tales three times over, but the girls had yet to tire of them, even if she herself would rather eat dry kelp than recount Tristan’s great battle with the tree rogs of Nokinri again.
“Tell us about Anna of Villa Manson again,” Gabby said. “I like that one. She was so brave and beautiful.”
“I have a different kind of tale today,” Sage said, thinking that if she had to talk any more about the valiant milkmaid from Villa Manson, she bite off her own tongue. At the age of eighteen cycles, Anna had staved off an attack from Eastern soldiers during the Three Race War for one harrowing night, giving her fellow village folk time to retreat into the mountains. Sage had always held deep admiration for the girl, and loved to recite the story in her own head. Now, after having obliged the girls’ fervor for the tale at least seven times in the last couple days, she almost wished young Anna had been trampled under the hooves of her milk cows along with the invaders she’d thwarted.
“What is it?” Tessa asked.
“It’s about a little girl leaving her home and everything she knows to travel to a far away Foundation in a strange new city,” Sage said.
“What’s her name?” Wilma asked.
“Her name was Sage.”
“Like you,” Gabby said
“Like me. Now gather round,” Sage said, draping an arm over Gabby’s shoulder, and slipping the other around Brook’s waist. When they’d all settled into comfortable listening positions, she began.
“Young Sage loved books. Mostly, she loved ones with stories of brave people traveling to all points of the world and discovering sights of such wonder that it made the eye tear up to behold. She read these tales to herself at night, snug in her bed, confident that one day she would be the adventurer in her own tale. She would see every marvel Cryshal had to offer with her own eyes, instead of dreaming them up from the pages of some book.”
“Her very favorite tale involved a man named Heiman Jilt. Mon Jilt was the world’s greatest Illusionist. He’d studied the ancient scrolls at his Foundation for long cycles, formulating a very grand Tish’Ret indeed. Once his time at the Foundation was complete, Mon Jilt spent an amazing seventy cycles questing.”
“That’s too long,” Wilma said. “Papa says so.”
“For most, aye,” Sage said, her smile lost in the dark. “But not for one as great as Mon Jilt. He completed his questing, a feat that took him to places of such majesty and danger that I would assume few have ever retread his steps. Following the culmination of his Tish’Ret, he became the greatest illusionist in the history of our world, surpassing even the Trueborns of old, at least in that singular fibra.”
“Could he make mountains?” Gabby asked.
“Aye.”
“And waterfalls in the desert?” Tessa chimed in.
“He could,” Sage said. “He could conjure anything your little minds could think up, and much more, to be sure. His greatest illusion, young Sage reread the account of so many times it was burned into her brain, was during the Bloodless Battle. You know of what I speak?”
“I do,” Wilma said.
“Me too,” Gabby and Renna said in unison, producing soft giggles from the group.
“Then you know the Liechen invaders marched in the thousands on the budding city of Kellington, which would later become Freedom. You may also remember hearing that Kellington did not fall that day, or any. The true reason, you do not know. Most didn’t, I’m sad to say, at least not for some time afterward, because Heiman Jilt was a humble man. He never told a soul how he sat in a crumbling watchtower overlooking the city as the roving hordes made their thunderous approach toward Kellington. Though he could have, and I certainly would’ve, he never spoke of how he engaged his co
nsiderable fibra and conjured a vast army of illusionary soldiers to intercept the Liechens. While the frightened people of Kellington hid in their homes or fled north to the ocean in fear of the Liechens’ wrath, Mon Jilt’s host of specters descended upon the unsuspecting invaders. In the span of a single hour, the entire Liechen raiding party, some twenty thousand men and women, were incapacitated by Mon Jilt and his imaginary army.”
“He killed them all?” Gabby asked.
“Nay, little one. An Illusionist’s conjurations can do no real harm. Even the most authentic blade fabricated from their mind can draw no true blood. Nay, Mon Jilt wrought no harm on the Liechens that glorious day, but he did stay them. He did save Kellington.”
“Then how?” Tessa asked.
“The Liechens didn’t know their people weren’t dying from their fake wounds, not at first. They fell like saplings in a devastating windstorm to the illusionary defenders. The ones that could, fled. The ones who’d fallen, well, they awoke some hours afterward, terrified and confused. Liechens have never had much knowledge of the Fibras, at least not for many, many cents. They feared their unexplainable defeat had come to pass by writ of their gods, as if they’d done something horrible to incur such wrath. They retreated back into Mythstone Forest.”
“They left behind a battlefield stained with not a single drop of blood, and Kellington stood unscathed, on chart to soon become the great city of Freedom under the proficient hands of Christian Drake.”
The girls were silent for a few moments.
“That’s why they call it the Bloodless Battle?” Renna asked.
“It is,” Sage said.
“If Mon Jilt never told of his part, how did you know?” the girl asked.
“Mon Jilt had a young nephew named Teni,” Sage said. “He was there that fateful day. He watched the entire ordeal from the cover of the city gates. The young man kept his uncle’s secret for many cycles, but after Mon Jilt passed on, Teni transcribed the man’s contribution into a book. No one doubted Teni’s claim, knowing his uncle’s superior gift as an illusionist, and the account of Heiman Jilt’s sacrifice spread throughout the land.”
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