Searching the Darkness (Erythleh Chronicles Book 2)

by Catherine Johnson

  SEARCHING

  THE

  DARKNESS

  Erythleh Chronicles: Book Two

  by Catherine Johnson

  FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

  Searching the Darkness

  Copyright 2015 Catherine Johnson

  All rights reserved

  Catherine Johnson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Catherine Johnson:

  Powerless

  What Price Freedom

  The Kairos Series (MC Romance):

  Blood in the Water. Book One.

  Bones by the Wood. Book Two.

  Breath on the Wind. Book Three.

  The Erythleh Chronicles (Fantasy Romance):

  Lost in the Dawn. Book One.

  Searching the Darkness. Book Two

  For Susan, in recognition of her heroic efforts to improve my grammar.

  For the Freaks, who are the most excellent set of enablers a weirdo could have.

  And for my sister, who won't read a book without reading the last page first, but I love her anyway.

  Chapter One

  The coarse-haired head of the goat hit Elthrinn's thigh with enough force to make her grunt. The nudge was violent enough to cause her to take half a step sideways. The stumble unbalanced her. Grain sloshed out of the shallow bowl that she was holding in the crook of her arm. The unexpected bounty caused the waiting chickens to become quite psychotic. There was flurry of clucking and pecking and flapping, so much so that Elthrinn had to step back to avoid losing a toe in the melee.

  "Ulli!"

  She received no answer to her call.

  "Ulli!"

  Still more silence. Elthrinn sighed, unsurprised. The seven year old boy was probably hiding up an olive tree, harassing pigeons with his catapult. She sighed again. If he succeeded in bringing home a couple of birds for their supper, she might forgive him for neglecting his chores.

  Elthrinn finished scattering the grain from the wooden bowl, taking care to spread it over the ground so that the chickens would not peck at each other in their impatient excitement. She ignored the insistent headbutts of the goat until the bowl was empty. She grunted as she caught the fraying collar of rope tied around the goat's neck.

  "Come on, Bexus."

  The goat made one last attempt to knock Elthrinn off her feet, then permitted her to lead him away from the clucking and scraping in front of the coop. Elthrinn tugged at the collar, ensuring that Bexus followed obediently at her side, until she reached the pen that the goat called home. Originally the obstinate animal had been tied to a stake, but he had continuously eaten through the tethers, regardless of whether they were rope or leather. Now Bexus had a pen, a space to call his own.

  Most of the time, the animal was content to lord it over his patch of dirt and grass. Today he appeared to want affection. He had slipped the fastening on the gate and escaped. Elthrinn pushed the goat into the pen and fastened the gate shut behind him, taking care to leave no slack in the ties. She reached for the second bowl, the one full of kitchen scraps, that she had placed atop a stone wall, out of Bexus' reach. There was no right or wrong decision to be made, if she fed the chickens first, Bexus would escape and interrupt their feeding. If she fed the goat first, she would be almost deafened by the indignant squawks of the fowl.

  Still, life could be worse. These were trifling difficulties that she faced.

  Elthrinn went about her daily tasks, as always, battling with the dichotomy of an adolescent's natural state of discontent, and the knowledge that she had a home, a place of safety, for which she should be profoundly grateful. If dealing with a set of half-mad animals was the price for that home, she would pay it a hundred times over.

  The list of chores was tedious in its repetition, but ultimately satisfying in its monotony. Her grey mare, Neul, was always pathetically grateful to be released into the pasture each morning. The musty smell of the stables, which imbued her hair and clothing during the time she spent mucking them out, was the smell of home. The never-ending battle to protect the vegetable garden against winged pests and rabbits was frustrating, but there was something rewarding about watching the green shoots develop into edible produce. Elthrinn felt great pride when everyone complimented the sweetness of the carrots that she'd nurtured, or the crispness of the lettuces that she'd watched over like a hawk.

  Elthrinn could have dawdled over her tasks, and drawn them out until supper time, but she preferred to make quick work of them. That way, a few hours of each day were hers and hers alone. She didn't bother to go looking for Ulli; his mother would find him soon enough, and he'd be set to his own list of duties, probably in the house where Serwren could keep an eye on him.

  They had been living in the country for almost four years now. Elthrinn was well aware that the house they called home belong to Serwren's husband, Consul Bornsig. In truth, that should have meant security, it should have been Serwren's house as much as anyone's, but Elthrinn was uncomfortably aware of the tension in Serwren's marriage. Bornsig was a fat, repulsive, old man with beady eyes and wandering hands who never failed to make a lewd comment to Elthrinn or to say something disgusting or disparaging to Serwren.

  At night, Elthrinn woke, screaming silently, tortured by visions of being dragged from the small stone house by armed guards. She would bite her pillow until she could control her terrified sobs, but it would be hours before she could regain sleep. Life was changeable; there was no point in getting comfortable. Becoming complacent only brought heartache. Elthrinn had learnt painful lessons that one must always be ready for change.

  By mid-afternoon, Elthrinn's day was hers to do with as she wished. It was the second moon of Taan, and out in the country, away from the fresh sea air of the coast, it was ridiculously hot. Elthrinn could still feel the sweat dripping down her spine from her exertions to eradicate the weeds from the earth between the rows of carrots and radishes.

  Elthrinn picked up her skirts and walked away from the village.

  There was a spot, a good walk away, far enough away to be private, where a crystal stream clattered over mossy rocks into a shallow pool. It was a place that Elthrinn often visited, because she could strip and cup the icy water over her body until she felt refreshed, without fear of being spied upon. She would leave her clothes spread out over one of the rocks that was warm from the sun. Although she often cringed putting on clothes that she knew had been soaked in her sweat, at least by the time she redressed, they were dry and she no longer smelt like a sow's belly.

  Having bathed and recovered some sense of self, Elthrinn wandered even farther from civilisation. There was a spot, a favoured place of hers, where she could sit atop a shallow cliff and look over a small gorge that led deeper into the countryside of Felthiss. Much of the land around the village of Senthirr was flat, and perfect for growing wheat and corn. The fertile slopes of the gorge were planted with trees that bore olives, avocadoes and citrus fruit. The aroma of the trees was as pleasant as the scenery.

  As she always did when she had time to let her thoughts dwell where they would, Elthrinn spared a thought for her brother. Not a day passed that she didn't think of Jorrell. He'd been the first person that she loved who had abandoned her. Well, technically the first had been her mother who had died in child-birth, but Elthrinn hadn't known her mother.

  Elthrinn remembered her brother
vividly. She remembered the way he would throw her into the air just to make her laugh, the way he would tickle her mercilessly until she cried real tears. She remembered the way that he had patiently sat with her and helped her to read books that she hadn't understood, or the way that he would explain famous paintings to her until she saw the deeper meaning that the artists had intended, rather than the superficial lines and colours. She missed the way he had loved and cared for her.

  Elthrinn's father had been the next person to abandon her. He had died one night in his study. She had walked in one morning, hoping to gain his consent to study a new subject with Consul Ellspith and had found him slumped over his papers. Those damnable papers, the shackles of his life as a consul in the Forum of Felthiss. Elthrinn hated the Forum; it had taken her father away from her long before the gods had stolen his life back.

  After her father's funeral, Dimacius, the First Father, elected ruler of Felthiss, had made her his ward. Elthrinn had not been surprised by such a development, she had been aware of the close friendship between her father and his peer, but Elthrinn would be forever grateful that Dimacius' daughter, Serwren, had stepped forward and had offered to become her foster mother, of sorts.

  Elthrinn had not wanted to live in the palace, it was too grand a place, it frightened her. Dimacius was stern and unsmiling. His son, Erkas, Serwren's twin brother, smiled enough for both of them, but his smiles had chilled Elthrinn to the bone, without her knowing precisely why. Elthrinn knew why now, or she thought she did, She thought she understood the threat that had been implicit behind Erkas' overly sweet, friendly facade.

  Elthrinn didn't have a great deal of actual experience when it came to matters of the heart, or of the flesh, but she devoured stories and poems avidly. From them, she had gleaned an understanding of love, of lust, of duty and of danger. She suspected the world was not such a simple place as the one she read about, but since the boys of the village kept her at arm's length, assuming that she was some sort of spoiled and brattish princess because she had once lived in the city and had never pushed a plough, she had never had a chance to test her theories.

  The thing that scared Elthrinn most, more than the thought of losing her home with Ulli and Serwren, more than the thought of being dragged back to Thrissia, was the dim and murky fog of her future. She had no idea what she was destined to become, what she wanted to be destined to become.

  Elthrinn hated and loved the people who had abandoned her in equal measure, and she knew that she could never settle with that conflict inside her. She often wondered if it would ever be resolved, and she didn't feel that she could be a whole person until she could find that closure. Unfortunately, it was a nirvana that she was unlikely to attain. Jorrell was gone, far across the lands and oceans of the world to the other side of nothing. Her father was in the ever after with her mother, and neither saw fit to communicate with her in visions or dreams.

  "I used to sit and watch the world like that, once upon a time."

  Serwren's soft voice startled Elthrinn from her introspection. She hadn't heard her guardian approaching.

  "Did you find any answers?"

  "No." Serwren took a seat on the stony ground by Elthrinn's side, taking a moment first to brush some of the sharper rocks out of her way.

  "Did you stop looking?"

  "No, but I started to look in a different place."

  "Ulli?"

  "And you."

  Elthrinn paused for a moment, not knowing how to respond to that comment, and wondering how to ask a question that she hadn't yet framed in her mind.

  "How will I ever find out... anything?" she asked, exasperated by her own inability to articulate her thoughts.

  "Such as? I take it you don't mean how will you find out such things as how snow becomes water."

  "No. I mean, how will I find out what I'm supposed to do, who I'm supposed to be?"

  Serwren looked at her, as if trying to see something, something that Elthrinn was frightened wasn't there.

  "There's no one that can tell you that. Some of the holy men will tell you to consult an oracle, or they'll pretend to know themselves. People who want you to do their bidding will tell you that they have the answers. The only way to find out, is to be true to what you know is right. If you can be at peace with yourself, you will become the person you were meant to be."

  "That's a very vague answer." Elthrinn thought she had understood it, but she had been hoping for more exact guidance.

  "Your question was a very vague question."

  Elthrinn looked out over the valley and breathed deeply of the scent of the fruits and earth and the green life of the trees. The abundance of life laid out before her made her sad.

  "What happens next?"

  Elthrinn wasn't aware she'd asked the question out loud until Serwren answered. "What do you mean?"

  Elthrinn paused, trying to frame the concept into words. "What happens next, when we're done being here? It doesn't feel like we'll be here in Senthirr forever. I see the boys going out to help their fathers and brothers in the fields, and I don't ever see Ulli doing that. I see the mothers hanging out their families' washing in the sun, adding new swaddling blankets each year, and I don't see that in our future. Life goes on here, but where will our lives go?"

  Serwren was quiet so long that Elthrinn began to think that she'd imaged having spoken her thoughts out loud, and then she began to worry that she had voiced them, and that Serwren had been somehow offended by her implied dissatisfaction with their life. Nothing could be further from the truth, Elthrinn was as happy as she had ever been, but she was troubled by the lack of permanence she felt.

  She began to speak, but Serwren held up a palm to request silence. Eventually, Serwren spoke.

  "It's true, we can't stay here forever. I'd like to. Some days I pretend that we will, but I know, eventually, it must come to an end. Nowhere so perfect can remain so for long."

  "Will we go back to Thrissia?"

  "I will, I think I must, eventually. And I will take Ulli with me."

  "And me?" Elthrinn asked, trying not to sound like a whiny child.

  "I think your future should lie as far away from Thrissia as possible."

  Elthrinn felt a cold trickle of fear down her spine. "Why? Why can I not go back?"

  "Because I can't protect you there, and you need protecting. I can barely protect myself."

  "You gave me my knife and showed me how to use it." Elthrinn fingered the small steel blade that hung from a delicate rope around her hips. Most days she forgot it was there, but if she ever chanced to appear without it, Serwren would send her back to her room to collect it. Elthrinn felt glad of it when she imagined returning to Thrissia, to the company of Bornsig and Erkas, but she felt safer out here in the nowhere.

  "There are things that can happen to you that steel cannot protect you from. I would have you be safe from those things," Serwren replied cryptically.

  "How? How can I be safe from something I can't see to fight?" Elthrinn began to worry that she was misunderstanding the whole conversation.

  "By hiding," Serwren replied, equally vaguely. Elthrinn was about to ask her to clarify her comment, but then Serwren turned fully to her and took her hands. If Elthrinn had thought she had known fear before, she knew terror now at that gentle, loving touch.

  "You are sixteen." Serwren was almost whispering as if afraid their conversation would be repeated by the non-existent breeze. "You are considered of marriagble age, although not yet your own mistress. I would spare you from a match made on your behalf, by someone who has only their own interests, not yours, at heart."

  "You had an arranged marriage."

  "And my husband is in Thrissia and I am here, as far away from him as I can possibly be."

  Elthrinn thought she understood Serwren's disgust at Bornsig, although she was also sure it was much worse than she could imagine.

  "You think I could end up married to someone like Bornsig?"

  "Yes, I fear th
at will happen to you."

  "And I prevent that by hiding? Where? In the mountains?" Elthrinn looked down the gorge. It would not be so very bad to live in one of the caves that littered the hillsides, not in the summer, but it would be bitterly cold in the harsh winters.

  "No. By hiding in a place that no one would dare breach."

  Elthrinn was now thoroughly confused. Seeing her perplexed expression, and without waiting for a response, Serwren continued.

  "I think you should join the priestesses of Doohr in the temple at Dreec."

  Elthrinn stopped, almost literally. If she had been asked, she would have sworn that her heart had stopped beating, that her lungs had stopped inflating. Certainly her ears had stopped hearing the songs of the birds, the rustle of the leaves, the far off lowing of cattle. Her eyes ceased to see the vista in front of her. Serwren was asking her to swear her life away. If she joined the order of Doohr, Elthrinn would enter the temple and never leave it. She would know no-one but those who resided in its walls. She would never see or experience more of the world than this. Her life would be the monotony of prayer and sacrifice forever. Forever.