by Shelley Cass
The whole capital was surrounded in a huge rock wall with massive gates at each divided city sector. Thousands of streets filled the areas inside the gates and around the castle, and the small houses lined within those streets looked neat, but sombre. The streets were deserted, the houses dark and brooding. There hung a feeling of permanent suspense, of silent fear in the atmosphere. This was a natural state for a population that had to tiptoe fearfully around its easily displeased master.
The roads were of dirt and the rainy season had turned these to sandy coloured mud. That mud clung to every surface, and the splashes of it from carts along the roads had to be painstakingly removed from every house by every family. The gloomy tidiness had to be maintained.
On the stark walls around the castle there blew ragged flags, flapping about like wraiths. A crimson hand print was painted onto the darkness of each flag, like a warning sign.
Inside the castle were giant function rooms, bedrooms, ballrooms and throne rooms of brilliance, but they lacked warmth. It was long since those halls had held functions or gatherings. The servants who dusted the darkened, empty rooms barely noticed they were places of opulent richness and finery any more.
Even the sparsely scattered torches lit along the walls threw off little light or warmth. The dank atmosphere of the buildings seemed to consume them.
In a particularly foreboding, out of the way room that adjoined the King’s own chamber, Darziates was sitting in a high backed, intricately formed steel chair. His flawless face was framed by startlingly white-blonde hair, and had strong, striking features that would have made him unnaturally handsome. Except his eyes were too impartial, as hard as granite, and made his face disturbing to behold.
The Sorcerer King had the body of a soldier, and held himself regally, his hands on the throne’s armrests as he regarded a short, terrified man in front of him.
This man’s nose was pointed and his patchy goatee and tufty hair were the colour of carrots. His nose twitched and he was kneading his hands. He wore a brown robe and hood.
“How did this failure happen Agrudek?” the Sorcerer asked, his voice soft, but still echoing in the stony chamber.
The small man, the King’s scientist, flinched. He smoothed his rough, brown cloak nervously. “I-I’m not sure, Sire.”
There was a pause as cold, calculating eyes held Agrudek’s for a moment, and unbidden, images of Agrudek’s family were planted in the small man’s mind. Agrudek quivered, certain that the King had forced him to see his family as a warning of what was at stake.
“Try to explain to me why those Awyalknian boys are still breathing.”
“Sire, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again …”
Darziates stared down at the man cowering in front of him. The Sorcerer was impossibly still, and not a sound of life echoed beyond the stone walled room.
Agrudek became paler, the blood draining from his face.
“It must be the spell we used to make the creatures. We – we don’t have it right yet, Sire. But please, please Sire, we will.”
The darkness inside the Sorcerer on the throne made it almost impossible to breathe. Being so near such wrongness made a man’s pulse race.
“The Evexus were to be designed with intelligence. I gave a plethora of energy to raise the shadows from the Other Realm to form them.”
“Yes, revered majesty … I’m terribly sorry, I just … just need to make some adjustments in their design … Sire …”
A montage of Agrudek’s family ran through his mind again and he swallowed carefully.
“It’s just that … my honoured Dread Lord … the Evexus followed the boy’s scent. To a wood. And … attacked there.”
“Yes.”
“Somebody interfered, Lord … found a way to kill the Evexus experiments … really not my fault Sire … please ... don’t hurt my family, Majesty … ”
“Who caused the interference, Agrudek?”
“I’m not sure Sire, but it has to be a man of great skill to be able to best two Evexus, Sorcer … Sire, Majesty, Darziates.”
“Four days. Modify the experiments. Make them smarter. End the ‘attacker of great skill’ and bring me the runaways. Otherwise, I must torture your family and mutilate you.”
“Yes … magnificent King … thank you so much my Lord …”
“Hush.”
“… Yes Sire …”
“Leave.”
Agrudek nearly ran from the room, scuttling and stumbling backwards at the same time as bowing. He walked quickly through the imposing halls; his footsteps echoing, and he exited with little relief. He looked over his shoulder at the dark castle that even at night cast a shadow across the streets. Shivering, sure the King still knew what he was doing, Agrudek started down the muddy road to his modest new house. He flew silently through the rooms and quietly sobbed with relief to see his wife and two daughters nearly perfectly intact.
Only a small token on the table made obvious how real the King’s threat had been. One of his daughter’s plaits had been left pinned to the kitchen table by a large knife. His family had slept through and not realised the danger.
He swallowed nervously and crept into every room of his home to double check that his daughter’s piggy tail had been the only thing harmed. Then he took the knife from the table, put it out of sight and exited the house. He walked down the deserted street, his eyes darting about and his head constantly twitching to look over his shoulder. He stopped outside a workshop, and taking a deep breath, he pushed the way into the prison-like laboratory that the King had made especially for him.
He stepped over dark shapes and discarded gadgets, and brushed hanging tools and shiny articles aside.
The objects he was to create were not gadgets or creations of science or rationality. They were monstrosities. Life forms wakened by the strange power of the King and controlled by the logic of Agrudek’s science.
Agrudek made the hateful empty shells for bodies, like giant dummies used in weapon’s practice for the soldiers. But these empty shells had levers and steel inside to create a framework and joints, to mimic the real insides of a body and to allow strength and movement. When Darziates got to them however, the evil that was poured in to fill these models took on a life of its own. The bodies warped, with the evil inside clinging to the framework and making the body its own. The steel and materials used to make a pretend skeleton, were suddenly fused to life. Spikes and claws protruded grotesquely out of each body, with the evil unable to be cleanly contained in the shell, and a hideous light filled the eye sockets as a gruesome reflection of the new spirit existing within.
Agrudek pushed away thoughts of what these shadow Evexus creations could do to people. Instead he fixed firmly in his mind the faces of his daughters, with noses like buttons, wispy curls of carrot coloured hair and smiley, gapped grins. He pictured his wife, roly-poly and brimming with love.
Keep them safe, Agrudek told himself. They were all that mattered.
Then he rolled up the sleeves of his brown robe, ignoring the tears on his cheeks, and looked at the shadows all about him.
Agrudek shivered.
There was enough shadow in his heart to create an entire army of Evexus.
Chapter Sixteen
Kiana
In the distance behind us the woods lit the whole night. Shadows were cast before us that danced and swirled and leapt like demons from the Other Realm, but the air was not tainted by smoke in a sign that the flames might have begun to follow us.
I set us a steady pace to leave the area I had earlier sprinted across, trailing beside the stream that would lead us all the way back to Gangroah. And I observed the overwhelmed boy on the bay next to me, seeing that he was entirely blanched of colour, even underneath the ash powdering his face.
“My name is Kiana,” I broached the silence. “I have a cottage not too far from here where we can tend your friend.”
It seemed like an effort for him to break from his stunned reverie. “Well
met. My name is Noal,” he managed. “I greatly appreciate the aid,” he added resolutely. “So does Dalin,” he said, and swallowed visibly as soon as he gestured toward his comrade.
I kept my reservations to myself as we neared my land, but the boy slung over the saddle in front of me hadn’t shown any signs of life.
“This is … your cottage?” Noal, asked in a startled voice, with a little vigour at last touching his tone.
“I purchased the property only recently,” I explained, lifting my eyebrow as I glanced back at him from where I’d been double checking Gloria’s cottage was dark.
I steered us down to my gate and across the wild yard while Noal continued to regard me with surprise.
“You live by yourself?” he questioned in puzzlement, hinting at the oddity of a young lady living without others, and roaming the lands by night.
“Here we are,” I guided my bay to a stop outside the front door. “Let’s get your friend inside.”
He helped me to drag his comrade from the saddle and through the unlit cottage, into my newly cleaned bedroom.
“Could you light any candles you see around the place?” I handed him a box of matches. “Try to get a fire started in the fireplaces too.”
Compliant and appearing glad to be useful, Noal lit the candles around my room and then left purposefully, giving me a moment to focus on the stricken boy – Dalin.
He had still not stirred with even a flicker of the eyelids so I put my hand close to his nose to feel for the light fluttering air that would brush my hand if he was breathing. It was either too weak for me to feel, or he wasn’t breathing, and I quickly put my head to his chest to listen for a heartbeat.
The layers of clothing were too thick, so I unclasped the cloak at the boy’s neck and felt my eyes widen as I noticed that a layer of frost had stiffened the collar of the boy’s clothes. I untied the cords of his shirt and listened once more, waiting, scarcely breathing myself so I could hear clearly.
I frowned – and then, there it was. A weak thumping that was so faint I could’ve missed it. The boy was barely clinging to life, and only with a weak grip.
“Gods,” I winced, rubbing at my throbbing ear from where it had been pressed to his chilled skin. He was unnaturally cold all over and I recalled with a grimace that those fiends had spread cold like poison through their touch. Perhaps the ice had spread through the boy’s body, pumping through his veins.
In the flickering light I noticed an inky blue ring circling the boy’s wrists and throat. Lifting his chin showed me the marks were unlike any kind of bruises I had ever seen. They spread around his neck with feathery patterns, as if a design had been painted onto the skin. I touched the mark curiously, but snatched my hand back hastily with my fingers pulsing as if I had been burnt.
I pulled my sleeve back to look at my own wrist, where the beasts had clamped me for a time. Then I lifted my tunic to look at my waist. I had blue marks from their touch too, but they were already fading because, though my struggles had seemed to stretch for an eternity in their hold, my entrapment had been only brief.
In comparison Dalin was literally freezing inside and I had to find a way to purge the cold from his body, to prevent him from being frozen completely into a sleeping death. I couldn’t set the poor boy on fire as I had the beasts, but I could attempt to concoct some kind of scorching fluid that could quench the ice inside, setting a kind of fire alight within him.
“I’ve lit everything I could find to light,” I heard Noal’s tentative voice from the doorway, as if echoing what I’d been thinking. “Do … do you think Dalin is going to live?”
“I believe your friend has been affected by the power of those two beasts,” I answered, and Noal gaped, aghast.
“He’s trapped under some evil spell?” he wrung his hands anxiously.
I held up a placating hand. “It appears that the chill from the attackers has made him too cold to function, so we need to warm him again.”
His face crinkled in consternation. “Dalin is … very important to a lot of people.”
“For now to help you could try getting him into fresh, warm clothes,” I suggested, and he nodded, so I retrieved all of the packs from the mournful looking horses outside, crooning to them and wishing I could tend to them immediately. But instead I delivered Noal his bags, and moved into the kitchen to open my own travelling pack, at once catching the rich scent of its contents.
It contained a precious stock of healing herbs, plants, powders, balms, and creams – all cures I had created or found on my journeys. A collection my mother would have been proud of, and that I was sure I could make a tonic out of for Dalin.
I hung my large cooking pot on its hook to boil water over the fire, then selected the herbs I knew to work well in heating the blood. After finely slicing them, I chose roots and plants commonly eaten to fend off colds and other sicknesses, and shredded them finely. Thoughts of my early healer training with my mother swirled about in my mind as I instinctively mixed some other assorted ingredients into the pot, and then boiled everything together into a liquid. I tossed in a variety of spices and a dash of alcohol, and wished that I’d found a plant called the Rupta berry that grew in the Great Sylthanryn Forest. They were so potent when mixed properly, that magician performers could create explosions with them.
But I pushed aside all doubt. My mother had trained me exceptionally well, and on my travels I had helped to heal many injuries and sicknesses, including my own.
I felt my arms prickle then. And the back of my neck. As I imagined that I heard a content voice humming, just as my mother had always hummed in the kitchen of my childhood. There was the illusory sound of someone else’s knife rapping on the chopping board behind me, but I didn’t turn because I didn’t want to see nothing, and lose what was for once a nice memory.
The sound of my mother humming became clearer and filled my heart with light. I could hear father whistling outside and yearned to be riding with him and our chestnut mare, Star. The smell of herbs tickled my nose.
“Everything you do is important. Every breath keeps you alive. Every sleep rests you for a new day. Every planted seed grows to feed a life.” I heard my mother’s voice speaking now, as best as memory could reproduce it. “The herbs you use could save a life. One pinch more or one pinch less could hold the balance. You can end the suffering of any living thing. You can feel it when everything is right. You’ll know.” The voice became fainter. “You could save lives, Kiana,” she said at the last. And I began my chopping again in real life, this time in tune with the rhythmic sound in the memory of my mother’s knife as she left me.
I could still hear and smell everything from that memory, feeling for a few moments that I hadn’t been alone. Even now, she was teaching me.
“That smells magnificent,” Noal said, looking famished as he sidled into the kitchen and I slid the last ingredients into the pot.
“I tried to warm Dalin, but I became cold too,” he continued then, disturbed as he inspected his blue tinged fingers.
“Stay by the fire for a while,” I instructed.
But the frown didn’t leave his face as his eyes started to wander around the room.
“I’m going to see if this will help.” I motioned to the pot over the fire, filling a wooden cup from it. But there was no answer, and I registered a change dawning on Noal’s face.
I saw his eyes alight on the foreign herbs, leaves, and pungent smelling roots scattered over the bench, alongside my medicine bag brimming with other healing ingredients.
He stared at the pot bubbling away. Then at the sword still at my waist, the knives I had laid on the bench and my bow and arrows dumped in the corner.
“What’s in that exactly?” he asked pointedly, peering over the rim of the pot.
“Something that should put some warmth into the veins of your friend,” I replied, watching him carefully. “I’m ready to try it.”
“No,” Noal shook his head then, becoming hard faced.
“Perhaps we should just see if he wakes up by himself.”
I stood straighter. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
My brow lifted then as he backed up a little. “I think we should go. Thank you for your help,” he answered evasively.
I tilted my head to the side, discerning what he was feeling. “I don’t mean to poison Dalin,” I stated flatly.
Noal crossed his arms in response, obviously summoning great courage to confront me, when I was beginning to understand that he was suddenly suspecting me to be somebody terribly dangerous.
“What kind of girl lives by herself on wild land, with a collection of potions? What lady roams the woods alone, starts fires, carries weapons and lures strange young men home with her?”
There was a tainted, sick feeling in my throat as Noal mistook me for the most vicious woman to have ever lived. And I could understand his mistake – Darziates had sent two magical beasts. Maybe the King of Krall had also sent his Witch. The Witch with long dark hair and pale skin like mine, who was a fabled mistress of dark magic and no doubt had her own bubbling pots and bags full of herbs and plants.
My face softened.
“I’m not a Witch Noal,” I told him. “I’m not an evil Sorceress, I’m not even a seductress out to lure young boys back to my cottage. And I’m most definitely not about to murder your friend.”
“Why should I believe you?” he didn’t relent. “I’d never seen monsters outside of old book sketches until a few hours ago, but obviously they’re very real and for some reason after us.”
I looked at him earnestly. “Noal, if I was going to enchant you I would have done so, and I would have hardly saved you if I wanted you dead. This is not an elaborate plot to trap you.”
The air rushed out of him in relief, and his stiff posture relaxed to lean across the bench. “Thank the Gods,” he gasped. “It wouldn’t make sense.”
“I breathe and bleed just like you,” I showed him the scrapes and cuts along my arm. “I am flesh and bone just like you.”