by R. E. Fisher
Instead, what he observed was the old man holding the little girl’s wrist as they both ran away as fast as they could, the little girl crying out in confusion, fear, and sadness. She looked at her new friend—the one who had restored her sight—not knowing why the men had attacked her. Lavalor was disappointed that he had no one else to feed upon.
Tetra felt her sudden series of pain subsiding and managed to climb to her knees, seeing Lavalor protecting her. Then she saw the bloody body of the young man lying next to her. Tetra watched as what little blood that flowed from his wound was greedily sucked down into the sand he now lay dead upon.
Angered at the boy for attacking her, she felt a moment of enjoyment over the fact that he lay dead. She looked at the now-glowing blade that hovered above her kneeling form, protecting her. She was astute enough to know that she and the madman had somehow become tied together, but she was unsure of the reasons or the explanation. Her brief satisfaction over the boy’s death was pushed aside as she forced herself to gain control of her own thoughts and feelings.
Sickened by the result of Lavalor’s actions, she stumbled to her feet and grabbed Lavalor by the hilt, forcing him back into the sheath at her hip as he fought against her. She ensured that he stayed there by holding him within it, her hand gripping the pommel.
Dazed and not wishing to see Lavalor harm anyone else, she envisioned the campsite that Telerex had set up, not needing a portal as the mages did. She set aside her usual loathing of having to use her magic for something so trivial as travel, and she arrived at the campsite. Upon arriving and still feeling dizzy, she tried to take a step toward Telerex. Instead, she collapsed onto the soft grass, unconscious.
Telerex woke, feeling the magic that Tetra had used to return; he saw her lying still on the ground with the rose behind her ear. He rushed over to her, picked her up, and carried her into the tent. He gently placed her on the blankets that he had laid out for her earlier, but as he slid her from his arms, he saw that his right arm was covered in her blood. Rolling her over, he spied the wound at the base of her skull. He cleansed it; seeing that it was serious enough to warrant stitching, he did that as well. The whole time that he cared for her, he also wondered what had happened to her.
Ecstatic from his brief battle, Lavalor ignored the two as he realized he could wield himself. He didn’t know how he had done that, but he had done it well enough to taste blood. After centuries of nothing, now he could taste blood! He had never envisioned the ability to do that when he had chosen this new body. Lavalor also realized he was going to have to be careful of showing that ability—at least until he had more control over the woman. If Tetra knew that he could do that, she would most certainly drop him into the ocean somewhere.
Tetra awoke within the tent while Telerex cared for her. She looked around, unsure of what had happened.
“Welcome back, my lady,” Telerex said, relieved to see her awake.
“How did I get here?” she asked the dragon.
“I’m not sure. I had thought to go look for you, but figured you would have asked for my company if you had wanted it. I had fallen asleep, but you appeared at the campsite and collapsed,” Telerex answered. Still full of questions, he asked her, “Where did you go? What happened? Who hurt you?”
Tell him! Lavalor suggested, wishing to see the dragon’s anger manifested at the village.
Tetra felt a small urge to tell Telerex what had happened, but she chose to dismiss the urge. Immediately a sudden compulsion to go ahead and tell him overwhelmed her as she succumbed to Lavalor’s “suggestion.”
“I went to the village. I felt the need to learn more about the people of this realm,” she replied.
“What happened, my lady?” Telerex asked again, this time a bit more sternly.
Leaving out the details of what had happened between herself and Lavalor, she explained what she had seen while in the village and how she had felt compelled to help the little girl. She told Telerex of the vision she had been able to gather from the young girl’s mind as she was attempting to heal the child’s vision. She explained how she’d learned that the father had discovered the girl’s mother prostituting herself—in front of the infant child. He had attacked his wife and the man who had paid her, but the man was extremely well-versed in the art of self-defense; he had disarmed him quickly and left. In his rage and now having nothing but his fists, he had beaten his wife to death. She lay on the floor of the ramshackle shack in a spreading pool of her own blood. In a panic, he prepared to leave and packed a saddlebag, knowing that someone would come looking for him. It was then that he heard his daughter crying. He turned to the child, and with all the hate and rage that still filled him, he thought to kill her, too. Instead he chose to abandon her, leaving her lying within the blankets on the bed and leaving it up to the gods as to whether she lived or died.
Tetra had seen that the girl had lain on the bed for several days, crying out in pain from malnutrition and thirst. The mother’s friend—the one who had told her how to earn extra coin—had come by the house, bringing food to the family. She had found her friend lying dead on the floor and the child near death as well. The baby’s body was covered with insect bites, and Tetra believed that her blindness had come from one of them.
Tetra explained that she had learned all that in mere moments as she was healing the girl’s eyes, and then she had felt the impact of a blow. She told Telerex that she was unsure of what had happened after that, only that there was a dead boy on the shore of the lake.
“Mistress, I have told you not to trust the lesser beings that reside here! You never know how they are going to react! If I have learned anything from them, it’s that there are good and bad among them and you never know who is which,” Telerex stated angrily. Not angry at Tetra but at those who had harmed her, he realized that the one who had hurt her now lay dead.
“She was a child. I couldn’t let her go through the rest of her life unable to see the beauty around her!” Tetra replied.
“Yet you cannot go around righting all the wrongs in the world,” the dragon answered.
“I must, if I can. I can help people!” Tetra said with emphatic conviction.
“My lady, forgive my boldness, but that isn’t why the gods put you here. You are not their caretaker or shepherd. They must go through this world as they are fated, or as they choose. That is what the gods desired when they tasked you. Without the suffering, they would never appreciate their bounty, should it come to them. Without pain, they would never fear anything. Without fear, they would never pause to contemplate. There are too many examples of this with the lesser creatures and beasts. Do you not see that?” he asked. Pausing for a moment, he added as he softened his tone, “And ultimately, without fear or desperation, joy, happiness, thankfulness, or caring, they wouldn’t—or maybe they couldn’t—worship, which is what they were created to do. Was it not?”
Tetra looked at her friend, realizing the truth of his words. Expanding it a bit further for her own sake, she thought that perhaps it was the absence of repercussion—good or bad—that had led the Elfaheen to their downfall.
Lavalor had listened to the exchange; his own pain having dissipated, he found himself disappointed in the calmness and reason of the weakling dragon. This is what happens when women raise a dragon! How naïve they are! Lavalor thought.
Chapter 14
“Hold none above yourself other than the lord your god Delanesh, for they are weak and thou art strong!”
(W.De.1.4 - Book of Waters, Tenets of Delanesh, Chapter 1, Verse 4)
Dmitri looked at himself in the mirror. His wounds had begun to heal, but the scars were going to be a constant reminder of his ordeal. He sat in the chair next to the low fire and pulled the blanket he had draped around his shoulders closer. The darkened room reminded him of his cell, but the bright sunlight still hurt his eyes. When he had been able to, he’d gone to the heavy velvet curtain and pulled it open. The shock of daylight caused him to shut his eyes
. He slowly got himself acclimated by squinting his eyes open and closed. Once he could see clearly, he realized that the window had no glass and that he was high above the ground—eighteen to twenty meters above it, he estimated. He saw below him a sand-filled courtyard with a high stone wall, an old blacksmith’s forge, and some stables standing between him and the desert that lay beyond it. He had always thought that a desert would be hot during the day, but he was wrong. The sun was high overhead, but it was cold; it had to be only ten or twelve degrees Celsius.
Looking at the surrounding desert, he wondered how long he had been in that cell. As far as he could figure, it had to be close to six weeks. He’d be able to know better if he could get his hands on his watch. After the fourth beating at the hands of the two shadows, he had lost it. That beating had resulted in the long, thin wound on his cheek bursting open. It had bled for hours. During the days that followed in that darkened cell, the wound had become infected and inflamed. The pain was excruciating. He became feverish and delusional. The two figures never asked him anything, nor did they make any noise while they beat him. He could still hear the questions that the voice had asked between the beatings, and god, did he answer them. He answered every single one of them. He answered them because they hadn’t had anything to do with his plan. Not a single question about the war. There were questions about the murders he had committed and his airplane. There was one question about the big mushroom cloud he had visualized above D.C., but that was it. He didn’t know why he continued to answer the questions that popped into his head, but he kept doing so.
He wandered around his new cell, looking through the drawers in the large mahogany dressing table. There was a huge cabinet that served as a closet of some sort, but it was empty. He had been stripped nude after the first beating, his flight suit never returned. Looking down, he saw that he was wearing some sort of peasant garb with soft leather boots. The black trousers he was wearing had a thick red stripe down the side, and there were no pockets; they were secured with buttons. Hadn’t these people ever heard of zippers? The coarse fabric of the dark green shirt he wore made him itch. He found himself rubbing numerous locations on his chest and back to stop the itching. The room also had a large bed with a see-through canopy. Each day, twice a day, a dangerous-looking man wearing a sword entered the room, placed a wooden tray on the dresser, and walked out. The food in his new cell was better; at least it wasn’t worm-ridden. He had been in the room for a week without talking to anyone. He had stopped thinking of his situation as a dream or a nightmare, and more as a full sensory delusion. He figured that all those crazy fuckers in the insane asylums must live like that. Each of them in their own little world, confused as to whether they were the hero or the villain. He wondered where his world had come from. He had never found movies portraying castles or monsters very interesting. The only one that he had enjoyed was Hamlet, the one with that English actor. That had been drama. The scene with the skull always moved him. What would he have done? He had been out of his home long before he’d realized that he was also capable of such wicked deeds. He always imagined himself capable of teaching his father a few serious lessons about how to treat people. However, his father had died from liver disease, just after he murdered the postal woman.
He was becoming well enough to feel restless, and he paced the room for hours. Robin Hood, as he had come to call the man with the sword, opened the door and entered, carrying a dinner tray. He glanced over at Dmitri sitting in the chair, watching him. After placing the tray on the table, he turned back toward the Russian. His mouth began moving, but it was a split second later that Dmitri heard what he was saying. It was like a poorly dubbed movie. “After you eat, the twins will come for you,” he said as he walked from the room.
Dmitri began to shake uncontrollably, with no idea why. He began to look frantically for a way to escape. He rushed to the window and ripped the curtain down. He had expected to see the opening and jump, but what he saw caused him to fall to his knees, sobbing. The window had been bricked up at some point during the last few hours. It looked as though there had never been a window there. His fear of the two men began to cause him to panic. He rushed to the heavy wooden door; it wouldn’t open for him. He looked at it again, realizing that there was no lock. He grabbed the simple wooden door handle with both hands and yanked with all his might. It didn’t move at all. It didn’t even rattle. It was as if the door handle had been set in stone.
Eod sat at his long table, smiling. Ancient tomes were spread out before him and the chamber was bright, lit with both candles and torches. It was going well. As best he could determine, this man had come from the youngest plane of existence. Right next door. How they had opened that door was unknown, but it was said that there had only been one other man to come from there. He had risen to become a king. His ideas of government had been semi-successful, but since orcs didn’t vote, they had failed. He had been killed, but his kingdom survived. In fact, it had become the human capital. He had been smart enough to see through Peladine’s plan and had rejected the use of the magi outright.
But his mind was wandering. This man called himself a Soviet; it meant nothing to him, but it seemed to matter to this prisoner. He had arrived in a mechanical device called an airplane. A curious machine, to say the least, and a wonder as well, Eod thought. It was built with what they called science. That’s what this weakling had called it. His mind had been easy to invade. The discoveries Eod had made of his realm boggled the mind. The more he asked questions about some of the things he had gleaned, the more the prisoner had been able to block out his mental trespasses. The prisoner had guarded something he had referred to as his “plan.” Eod was curious about what could be done with this man, but realized he had to stay away from his “plan” for the moment. This man was unstable, and he was being treated in a manner that would cause him to become even more so. Normally this manner of investigation worked well in determining one’s motives; but in this case, this prisoner had already been infected with a sickness of the mind. He was a murderer. That in and of itself didn’t bother the mage. The fact that he killed defenseless women for pleasure did.
The loss of life, for purpose or gain, didn’t bother the mage in the least. But to kill for pleasure was something reserved for orcs, ogres, goblins, trolls, and the undead. He had met those who would kill someone so slowly that it would take weeks for their victim to die. He had even been invited to participate in one such endeavor. It was an invitation to a noble’s house, which had been under the guise of meeting to discuss the possibility of usurping another noble for his lands. After their dinner, he had been taken down a long flight of stairs under the lord’s keep. As they neared the bottom, Eod heard the victim. They entered a room and Eod watched as the noble strolled over to the hapless young elf that had been captured. He was bound to a large wooden table that was stained a deep crimson. The noble laughed at him, turning and walking over to a small table where he picked up a little blood-encrusted, hooked knife from it. Casually, he returned to the table, all the while talking about what he wanted the mage to do. He looked up only once and asked, “I’ve always wondered how they can see in the dark, haven’t you?” and promptly shoved the metal hook into the elf’s pale-yellow eye, twisted it, and pulled the soft globe from the elf’s skull. The elf screamed in agony. The skin on his hands and feet had already been flayed back, exposing the muscle and bone below. There had even been a scribe drawing pictures of the elf’s anatomy as the noble performed the vivisection.
He smiled as he remembered what had happened to that noble after the elvish nation had found out what had become of their cousin. The book had been taken from the dead scribe’s hands; while the noble lived, he had been strapped to that same table. The elves had slit the noble open from neck to groin and shoved that book into the noble’s torso. Of course, they had been obligated to remove some of the noble’s less vital organs to accommodate the large volume. The elves had taken every precaution to ensure his survival as
they sewed him back together, minus most of his intestines, one of his kidneys, and one of his lungs. If he remembered correctly, the noble had lived five pain-filled years with that book inside him. The elves had made quite sure that the human would have to be killed in order for the tome to have value to any other human, also understanding that the noble would never allow this to happen. After all, the elves did revere life. If you were human, you didn’t raise a hand against an elf of the kingdoms without an awful lot of support.
Eod rose from the table and walked to the great hall. The room was bare of furnishings, with the exception of a single imposing chair that was made of a dark burnished wood, gilded with silver. The deep black cushions were more for decoration than comfort. The walls of the hall were covered with huge scarlet curtains that framed tapestries. The tapestry behind the imposing chair, which sat on a raised dais, showed Peladine sitting in a circle in a cave, surrounded by the Shadow Elves. His eyes were bright, and he formed a small sphere of fire that floated between his palms. Several of the Shadow Elves looked at the human with disapproval in their eyes, and others watched with a mixture of fear and awe. There was a slight similarity between the human mage in the tapestry and the one now sitting in the chair.
To the right of the room’s sole occupant was another tapestry that depicted Peirswraith sitting atop a white steed. The horse had no tack or bridle. The white robes of the magician flowed down past the belly of the horse. Standing next to the mounted mage was King Deron I; the mage was handing the king a scroll that was tied with a crimson ribbon. The ribbon was symbolic of Peirswraith’s betrayal of the Crimson Order. Rising behind the two men was a keep made of white granite. The roof of the keep was covered with a dome of glass.
In front of the mage hung the grandest tapestry of them all, next to the massive glass doors leading to a balcony that overlooked an expanse of water lit by the silvery light of the moon. The tapestry portrayed the First Conclave. There were red, white, and gray robes sitting within a tent that they had borrowed from the army that battled in the background. The army, led by Herol Demonac, was battling the evil and the undead. In the middle of the battlefield, a group of mounted warriors encircled two large demons. Numerous warriors lay on the ground around Jerrous and Vastia. It was apparent that although the demons were surrounded, there was still no way the warriors were going to survive. Still, they nobly went to their deaths. The various mages within the tapestry were all concentrating on two weapons that rested on a stone altar. Extending from the fingertips of each mage were bursts of energy that shot into the two weapons.