Ravinor

by Travis Peck

  She tried yelling out to them, as she had done with Lerius, but to no avail. She could hear herself scream out their names, but the two did not give any sign that they had heard her. She tried to force herself to get closer to see if she could touch them, but all she managed was to hover impotently above them, unable to come closer than a few yards away. Moira felt the desperation for the two well up inside her. She wanted to get them out of the dream before they were drawn into the hallway where the Shadowman would intervene; her task would be impossible then, if it wasn’t already.

  Moira steeled herself for one final push. She sensed that the scene would change to the hallway soon. She felt a thrumming encompass her. A hum that reverberated through her ethereal body; her imagined teeth and bones felt infused with the strange vibration. Moira focused on the two figures jogging through the tall grass beneath her. The thrumming in her grew stronger and stronger. The vibrating, pulsing force was now painful as the strange pressure built up. She strained to hold it at bay, strained to hold fast onto whatever force it was until she could no longer endure it. Then she could not restrain it.

  “ULIGAR! MAYI!”

  Her voice boomed through her own mind, and also through the ravinor dream, as every person caught there raised their heads to the sky. She felt a thrill of excitement for successfully contacting the victims, but unless she could save them from the dream, it would prove to have done little good.

  “GO! GO FROM THIS PLACE! GO BACK TO YOUR BODIES AND BE WITH YOUR CHILDREN!”

  The two figures turned back the way they had come, but there were no means of escape in that direction. The ravinor dream only moved one way—forward. Some unseen force resisted their movement, though Moira saw nothing but more tall grass. It was like a window that kept them from going back to their bodies. Then the window started to move, pushing the husband and wife forward against their will. The two screamed as their feet made furrows in the grass, and they tried to resist the irresistible force.

  Moira had to do something. Her cloudy right eye gave her a clue. The hum rose in her again, and the mysterious force welled up inside her. She saw small tendrils of arcing white light flash out in front of her; the arcs became more frequent as the hum increased. The strange window that was pushing the two backward seemed to flicker in and out of view. As it reappeared, Moira’s afflicted eye detected a wall of dark, yet reflective, energy just behind the clear window. Suddenly it was gone, and the grassland returned. Her special eye still saw the dark mirror, and now she knew what she had to do.

  Once again, she held the thrumming power at bay until it threatened to overwhelm her; she veritably crackled with white lightning now. Her bad eye detected nothing but a bright white glow on the lower horizon of her field of vision. Her good eye saw nothing out of the ordinary. Her teeth and bones, insubstantial as they were, began to ache from the vibrations, and she released the power in a rush.

  Instead of crying out this time, she closed her good eye and focused on a specific spot in the dark mirror where she believed she should release the energy. A dizzying dance of arcing energy coursed from her hands as if she were calling forth lightning. All the energy crashed into the darkness, and there was an explosion of light visible only to her cloudy eye.

  A concussive force slammed into her and buffeted against her for only a moment, then it quickly dissipated. The release of energy left her feeling bereft, but she exalted when she saw—from both eyes—that there was a large and jagged hole in the window. Her good eye saw it as a dark void inexplicably standing in the sea of tall, green grass. Her cloudy eye saw it as a white sphere of light; arcs of energy radiated from it like a tiny sun. Remnants of the dark mirror remained, surrounding the white sphere. She knew the darkness was fighting against the crackling orb of light.

  The hum grew in her much more quickly this time, and she expelled it with less effort.

  “ALL OF YOU MUST GO NOW! FLEE FROM THE RAVINOR DREAM!”

  And they did. Every man and woman ran and leapt into the opening she had created. She had done it! Moira grew more elated as each person ran back into the physical world where their bodies still resided. She gloried in her feat, but even more so, she felt intense joy that they would rejoin their loved ones again as humans and not as ravinors.

  Her joy was short-lived as the dark mirror snuffed out the crackling orb of white light. She felt another presence join her. It was a dark and heavy presence that took no form, but she felt the oppressive weight of it as if a mountain had just settled across her shoulders. She gasped as she struggled against the astonishing force that threatened to crush her ethereal form into nothingness.

  “TRESPASSER! WHO DARES TO ENTER MY REALM?”

  She heard the accusation as if voiced through a thousand throats.

  “BEGONE!”

  The weight vanished. She was shocked by its sudden departure. Then she was slapped—hard. She felt her form dissolve, and she screamed at the pain of it. Moira tried to hold herself together but was failing fast.

  “I…SAID…BEGONE!”

  This time it was not a slap. It was the full weight of the mountain she had felt pressing down on her before, but this time it was if the mountain was a club and it was swung by some colossus from the heavens. She screamed again, not able to think of anything but the excruciating pain.

  Moira woke thrashing on the floor of her bedroom floor with the blankets from her bed tangled about her flailing limbs. She was in the midst of a silent scream, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She still felt the remnants of the pain burning at her skin, both on the surface and beneath it. Her heart galloped madly as if she had sprinted up and down the stairs a hundred times, and she took deep, panicked breaths.

  She was light-headed and dizzy; her limbs were heavy with an exhaustion she had never known before. The panic slowly ebbed away as her breathing and heartbeat slowed down. The tiredness, however, did not abate. Moira did not even bother to crawl back to her bed. Her tired eyes gave in and closed as she drifted off to sleep. No ravinor dream this time, just sleep.

  Two thoughts came to her as she drifted away. One was exultant; the other, dreadful. I saved twelve souls from the queen and the Shadowman! But now he knew that she was there and did not like her trespassing in his domain. She wondered if the Shadowman would kill her the next time.

  Chapter Eleven

  “TAKE A BREAK, CRALLICK,” Garet called down to him from the wall. “Rogair, you can stand down as well for now. Get something to eat and check on your children. They will be busy down there for a few candles, I would suspect,” he said, giving a gesture toward the grisly mound of dead flesh outside the wall, though neither man could see it from down on the ground.

  Crallick nodded and explained to the confused farmer exactly why the ravinors would be occupied while he led the farmer back to the house. The retired sergeant hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was famished, it had not exactly been an easy day. And they still had most of the night left until dawn.

  Crallick knew that the mastiffs would stay out by the gate for as long as the ravinors remained outside, so he collected a large water bucket and set it down for them; he would feed them a little later once Myrna cut something up. They deserved a nice feast after their help today. Without them, he and the Ayersons would never have made it.

  Aelpheus drank first while Amalia and Tyrant stayed by the gate. The two mastiffs sat with their hackles up and silently focused all their attention on the gate as if their eyes could bore through it to the intruders beyond. As soon as Aelpheus was done drinking his fill, Crallick gave him a quick scratch behind the ears and was rewarded with a teeth-filled mastiff smile and a sniff on his hand before the huge war mastiff returned to his self-appointed task of guarding the gate.

  Once Aelpheus resumed his post, the other two mastiffs trotted over to the water bucket and gulped down water until it was empty. Crallick examined Tyrant’s haunch where the long gash stood out red against the tawny hair. He filled a bucket partway and rinsed away
the blood. Tyrant flinched the tiniest bit when the water hit the wound but didn’t move about or whine.

  Crallick gave both Amalia and Tyrant a thorough petting, thanking them for their assistance. He would’ve done the same with Aelpheus, but the pack leader only let Garet, Myrna, and the children show him that much affection. The two smaller mastiffs were less particular about who could pet them and how much. Once watered and scratched, the two mastiffs went back to the gate to join Aelpheus.

  Crallick tracked down his mount next, they didn’t have the time to properly tend to the stallion upon their arrival with ravinors chasing them, and led him to the stable. He unsaddled him and rubbed the big stallion down; he was still damp with sweat from outrunning a coven of ravinors. He also gave the tired horse a bag of the good oats, he deserved that much at least.

  Entering the house, he saw that Myrna had served an impromptu meal of bread, cheese, and some dried venison. Everyone was seated around the table. The Ayersons were tucking into the meal with a vengeance. As he took a seat, he winked at Shiya, who seemed recovered from her earlier encounter with the ravinors and was blissfully unconcerned about the other creatures outside their gate. Crallick didn’t see Osbar at the table, and he knew that he was still standing watch from the roof. Mistress Ayerson was seated with both her children still clinging to her, frightened from the chase, and understandably so. It had been a close scrape, to be sure.

  He noticed Myrna was on edge as she bustled about refilling cups and doling out more helpings whenever she spied an empty plate, trying to keep her mind occupied. Barsus wasted no time and wolfed down his food and went back outside to join his father. Crallick grabbed a loaf of bread and a large serving of the hard yellow cheese and went up the stairs to Garet and Myrna’s bedroom. He knew it would be next to impossible to keep the young lad from being as close to the action as possible, but this way, they knew where he was, not sneaking off to get into more trouble.

  “I got one! Did you see, Uncle Crallick?” Osbar asked, his voice high with excitement as he crawled down from the roof.

  “I sure did, lad. Your father saw it too,” he said, smiling at the boy’s enthusiasm. “Eat this, I’m sure you’re hungry by now. I’ll take over keeping watch while you eat.” Osbar quickly gave up his bow and arrows in favor of the bread and cheese. The bow looked comical in Crallick’s big hands, but he knew that Osbar was taking his vigil seriously; he really had helped save his father, so he would keep up the appearance that Osbar’s post was essential to the defense of their home.

  After a few moments, Crallick saw that Osbar was nearly halfway done with his meal. “Take your time, lad. No guarding until your meal is finished, all right? And before you start again, go downstairs and get some water in you.” Crallick waited for an affirmative before giving Osbar a pat on the shoulder and walked back down to the main living area.

  As he walked back into the kitchen, Myrna pushed a piping hot mug of kof and a small loaf of bread into his hands that she insisted he give to Garet posthaste. Crallick smiled and took the proffered mug and loaf and headed outside. The night was cool; he guessed from the position of the full moon that it was nearly a quarter way to dawn. The light from the moon was as bright as he had ever seen it, and he thanked the Giver that it was so.

  Crallick climbed up the ladder with the meal and kof for Garet. His former captain was standing still and studying the horizon in the distance to the north, where the town of Haelle lies beyond the Ayersons’ farm.

  “Sir.”

  Garet turned. “Crallick, don’t.” His old captain hated it when he reverted back to the old way of addressing him. Under the circumstances, though, it only seemed natural.

  “Sorry, sir,” Crallick said with a grin. Garet stared daggers at him for a second, then his own face broke into a smile.

  Shaking his head, he took the mug of kof and tore into the loaf of bread with a large bite.

  While Garet ate, Crallick took stock of the gruesome scene below. The ravinors were nearly finished disposing of their dead. The ground below looked like the floor of a charnel house. The ground was so saturated with blood that there was a pool of it up to the ankles of the surviving ravinors. The corpses of the dead were down to bones and a few remaining ropes of tendon and red, stringy meat.

  The ravinors had gorged themselves to the point that their stomachs were distended and could no longer hold more meat. They might not be hungry for another candle or so, Crallick thought wryly. One particularly stuffed ravinor leaned over and vomited at its feet. Even Crallick—despite having seen many a battlefield—nearly responded in kind when he saw the gory red mess that spewed from the creature’s mouth and splattered into the ankle-deep blood.

  Garet watched silently and finished his meal, casually sipping his kof as if it were an everyday morning.

  That’s why he’s the captain, Crallick thought. Garet had always been calm in the face of danger and had pulled off many improbable victories for the Styric Empire because of that cool-collectedness. General Aelpheus himself had relied heavily upon Garet and his famed cohort. The First Cohort of the Third Legion, boasted five hundred of the most highly decorated, and the most dangerous, men of Queen Amalia’s forces, with Crallick as its sergeant; Garet’s right hand.

  They had been in the same cohort for over twenty years, both starting out as privates. They were corporals the last time they had been the same rank, and then Garet rose quickly, though he had never been ambitious. He had risen due to his uncanny ability to survive despite the odds, or perhaps because of the odds. When he was not faced with danger, Garet was merely competent, an able officer. But when his life or the lives of his men were in peril, he rose to the challenge.

  Myrna had finally convinced Garet to let the general and Amalia handle the empire’s interests and to hang up his sword and raise the family he had been apart from for far too long. Crallick thought it was about damn time. The prospect of staying in the First without its heart and soul held little appeal to Crallick; not to mention that he was more than tired of all the campaigning and the dangerous missions that they drew because of Garet’s reputation.

  Crallick knew that Garet had always felt guilty any time he left his young bride with their first son. Too many namedays went by with him gone. Then Osbar was born, and it only served to double the captain’s guilt. When Shiya was born, Garet never stood a chance.

  His captain’s first girl had him wrapped around her finger before she could babble out a single word. After that, Myrna didn’t have to convince her husband that his military career needed to be over. So it was that the two had walked into General Aelpheus’s headquarters and resigned. The general was upset, but he knew how much Garet had risked over the years, and with another child to worry about, the general feared that the captain’s heart was no longer in it, and that was a danger to his men.

  “I suppose you’re out too?” the general had asked Crallick. He had nodded in answer. Aelpheus laughed, “I wouldn’t expect anything less. It has been an honor serving with you gentlemen. Take care of that wife of yours and those three children now. And try to keep this one out of trouble,” the general added with a gesture toward Crallick. “Stop by tomorrow morning. I will have something for both of you.” The general saluted, and the captain and sergeant smartly returned it, then turned on their heels and left the room.

  Crallick thought it had gone well; he hadn’t been sure if the general would let them resign. But he had and ultimately seemed understanding of Garet’s decision. The two men returned to the city’s quarter that housed officers who had families and told Myrna the good news.

  Crallick was happy for them, but he didn’t know exactly what he would do with himself now. The soldiering life was all he had known since he had ran away from home so many years ago. He had never looked back. Returning home was not really an option. He had sent a few messages to his family and received a handful of replies over the years, so he knew his parents had passed the year before. He was also informed that
his older brother had sold the dairy and had moved away. That was all the family he had, and he was in no hurry to find his brother—they had never gotten along as lads—and his older brother had played a large role in why he had left home in the first place.

  He had sat silently while Garet and Myrna discussed their plans of what they would do next. He was lost in his own ideas and feeling less certain that resigning was the correct choice. Shiya crawled over to him, and he absently picked her up and started bouncing her on his knee. She gurgled and waved her arms around as only a baby could.

  Then Osbar ran up to him. “Uncle Crallick, we’re moving away!” he said, though at the time he had difficulty saying the r in his name, and it came out as Cwallick.

  “I did hear that! Are you excited?” he asked the young boy.

  “Yes! You’re coming with us, Uncle Crallick!” Osbar said excitedly.

  “No, lad. You, your brother, your sister, and your mother and father are going away,” Crallick had said, trying to explain the situation. “Just your family.”

  “But you’re family!” Osbar yelled and began to cry.

  Garet spoke, “Easy Osbar. Of course your Uncle Crallick is coming.”

  “Why wouldn’t Uncle Crallick come with us?” Myrna chimed in, the question clearly an invitation for him to join them.

  Then all the uncertainty over his new life washed away when he picked up Osbar while still bouncing Shiya on his knee. His eyes were watering, for the first time in a long while. It must have been the dust kicked up in the high summer wind. He laughed and swung Osbar around with one arm while keeping a hand on Shiya lest she become too rambunctious with her bouncing and fall off.

  The three ecstatic adults began planning their destination until it was nearly dawn. Like most military families, they were quite skilled at packing up at a moment’s notice. Crallick purchased a wagon and two large draft horses to haul it and pulled up to the house just as the sun was coming up. A few candles later, the cart was packed and all that remained was to pick up some supplies and see the general one more time, and their new life would begin.