by Jim Galford
“The laws of Corraith were butchered to serve the needs of people like you,” growled Phaesys, knocking one of his captors in the jaw with his shoulder. The others continued to hold him down. “The city fell and its laws went with it. You are not a god and do not deserve to be treated as such.”
Shaking his head, Desphon looked to the other nobles, who smiled back at him with mild amusement.
“Thirty lashes each day was my command for the older one,” Desphon said dispassionately, gesturing to Feanne. “The same is the girl’s fate now, as well as thirty for the mother. Ten for my son. Any that do not survive are to be buried without marker. Do not go easy on any of them.”
Still rubbing at his throat, the headsman stepped behind Feanne, tossing aside his axe. From his shoulder, the large man drew the chain, letting it drop in a long trail on the sand with a clatter.
At first, Oria thought that they were going to use the chain to tie down Feanne before bringing a normal leather whip out, but her eyes widened in surprise as she studied the chain itself. On one end, a thick wooden dowel was wrapped with leather to make a handle. On the other end, the metal chain was barbed with jagged metal bits. The weapon would be effective at dropping any person, but thirty lashes was almost assuredly a death sentence. Ten might even be enough to make the victim bleed to death, or break bones.
Not hesitating, the headsman drew back the chain with a long crackling noise as it whistled through the air. Then, with a snap, he sent it crashing across Feanne’s back with a sickening spatter of blood. The blades hooked and ripped as they raked across Feanne’s once-fine fur, tearing as much as cutting.
“One,” called out a woman near the headsman that Oria recognized as a healer. The woman looked nearly sick as she wiped a streak of blood off of her face.
Closing her eyes, Oria tried to shut out the sound of that whip as it struck repeatedly. Soon, her mother’s screams were added to the noises she tried to block out of her mind, but she could not find a way. Even if Oria lived through the day, she doubted those screams would ever leave her.
“Ten.”
More than once, warm wetness hit Oria, even twenty feet or more from where her mother lay. She could not bring herself to open her eyes, or she knew that she would start crying. As it was, she was hysterical in her own head, wanting to run shrieking from the scene, just to get away from the sounds.
“Twenty.”
Her mother’s cries had stopped. Oria wanted to look, to see if Feanne was still breathing, but could not bring herself to see the horror that she knew waited. That and knowing that she was next.
“Twenty-nine.”
A distant cry brought Oria to her senses, making her ears turn about, trying to find the source. It was somewhere behind and above her. Whatever made it was getting closer…quickly.
“And this will be thirty…”
The jingling of the chain began again, as the headsman wound up for another strike, but that faint noise Oria had been listening to now became a roar that echoed through the small valley.
Opening her eyes and looking up, Oria watched as Estin fell from the cliffs above, his long tail making him unmistakable.
When he landed, it was between Feanne and the headsman, coming down with an impact that Oria would have expected to kill him outright. A sort of static charge came with his landing, making Oria’s fur stand on end. Estin’s impact with the ground seemed to release that charge in a painful buzz through the air itself.
The chain whip’s barbs struck across Estin’s shoulder and arm, clattering off without so much as a scratch.
Apparently unharmed, Estin rose to his feet, roaring angrily at the headsman. A second later, the hooded man lurched as though giant hands had clamped down on his body and wrenched in a dozen directions, snapping his limbs and torso violently.
Oria’s jaw dropped at the sight of the headsman’s broken body collapsed limply at Estin’s feet. She had never seen anything like it and never believed Estin capable of such violent magic. He was a healer, she reminded herself.
Then Estin turned and Oria realized that this was not the male she had grown up with anymore. Something had happened to him.
Estin’s eyes glowed with an inner fire that reminded Oria of her own mother’s when she changed into the massive fox-beast, but the similarities ended there. Around him, what Oria at first thought was a cloud of rising dust swirled…she then realized that she was seeing disembodied faces, as though ghosts whorled around him as he moved.
Estin’s fury radiated through him, not just in his demeanor and roars of rage, but in the white flames that arced across his claws and teeth as he charged the soldiers, knocking the nearest to the ground. In seconds, he had torn the elf apart, ripping his chest open in the process.
In the chaos, soldiers clamored to protect Desphon and the other nobles, attempting to get them back into the caves as Estin rampaged through the armed men.
Possibly to save Desphon and possibly to save themselves, the soldiers holding Oria ran for the caves, leaving her unguarded.
Oria twisted her hands, ripping with her claws into the ropes that held her wrists, tearing at the strands as she got up and ran toward her mother, who lay in a wide swath of blood, unmoving. The ropes finally gave just before she reached Feanne’s side.
“Mom!” she cried, trying to find somewhere to touch Feanne without putting her hands on open wounds. There was nowhere that was not shredded and bleeding. Bone stood out in spots.
Hysterical, Oria cried, throwing herself to the ground by her mother’s head, weeping. Whether Feanne was alive or not, Oria could do nothing. Soon, she would be dead either way. Estin was the only one who even might be able to help her and he was unapproachable in his current state.
“Oria,” said Phaesys, grabbing her and pulling her up, “I need you to run!”
“My mother,” was all Oria could manage, unable to support her own weight as she stared at the carnage around her. Bits of fur and gore were scattered across the sands. Blood formed a trail behind Estin. “I…I can’t…”
“I will bring her, but you need to run!” Phaesys insisted. “I have some salve left from when I healed your wounds. It won’t save her, but it will buy us time. Now please run, so I only need worry about one person.”
A boom and crackle of energy made Oria look in the direction Estin had gone. Near the entrance to the crypts, a large crater stood, with a half dozen men at the edges, lying on their backs. At the center, Estin marched onward, dodging flames and stones thrown by wizards, as though he were beyond their ability to harm.
“Dad…” Oria whispered.
“That’s your father?” asked Phaesys, looking terrified. “I thought you said he was dead.”
Hoisting Oria to her feet again, Phaesys shoved her toward the nearest slope that would get her out of the valley.
“Just keep running!” he demanded, kneeling beside Feanne. “If we don’t join you, we’re dead. Now go!”
Stumbling numbly, Oria began running, unable to think for herself. Phaesys’ orders were all she could hear, but all she saw was her mother’s brutalized remains; that and Estin’s horrific change.
The hours passed in a blur as she ran. She did not know where she was going. Merely away. Away from it all.
Much later, Oria found herself standing in the middle of the desert with the sun low in the distance, panting for breath and still weeping. Blood covered her hands and feet—her mother’s, now dried. Sobbing, Oria collapsed yet again, too tired and broken to go on, staring at the caked black-red stains in her fur, smelling her mother in it.
Oria curled up where she lay, gasping for breath and wishing she knew what to do. She had wanted so badly to lead people one day, but in that moment, she needed someone to tell her what to do. Leading others was no longer a game she wanted to play at.
“Oria!” came a voice nearby, but Oria could not bring herself to even think whether she recognized it. She tried desperately to crawl away, but barely managed to
move.
“She’s here!” called out the voice, as someone touched her.
Screaming, Oria lashed out at the person near her, trying to defend herself. She tackled the male speaker, bowling him over. Rolling atop him, she clamped one hand down on his throat and raised the other to strike at his face, when she realized she was staring at her brother.
“Atall?” Oria gasped, letting her hand drop. “What…what are you…?”
She looked up, seeing that Phaesys was coming toward them, carrying Feanne’s limp body. Beside him, Estin—looking very tired, but more like himself—ran toward her, his face both overjoyed and worried. Farther behind the males, a female that looked a lot like Estin ran along, with Oria’s little brothers and sister following.
Estin slid to his knees beside Oria, grabbing her in a smothering hug.
“You’re alive,” he said into her ear, wrapping his tail around them both, as if his arms were not enough. “Thank the spirits. I thought I would never see you again.”
“Is mom…?”
“She’ll be fine with some rest,” Estin cut her off, burying his face in her neck. “You know I won’t let anyone kill my family.”
Without a word, Estin hoisted Oria onto his shoulders like she was a kit again and set off walking, with the rest of the group following.
For the first time in months, Oria felt whole again, looking between the family members that had returned to her life, then to Phaesys, who had stood up for her and her mother against his own father.
The only one that seemed not to fit was the new female. She stayed a bit behind the rest of the group, watching Estin, but saying nothing.
Deep down, Oria hoped Feanne woke soon. She would know the right questions to ask…and what to do with, or to, this new female, if needed.
*
That night was anything but comfortable. The group had returned to the family’s old den and Estin had begun cooking immediately—something that Oria dreaded and could see the new female did as well, which was a point in her favor—while everyone else had settled in.
It was during those first few minutes Oria realized that Atall’s left arm hung limply at his side. Blood and burns marred his shoulders, but he went out of his way to keep her from seeing it.
“What happened to you?” asked Oria, sitting down beside her brother as he attempted to wrap the wound with gauze in the shaded edge of the room. “Magic blow up in your face?”
“Yes,” he answered, smiling as though he were trying to cover up that he was in a lot of pain. “It just wasn’t my magic. One of my teachers tried to kill me when we were getting you out of there.”
Oria winced at that, then helped him tie off the cloth. “Can Estin…?”
Atall shook his head. “Not until he rests. Mother was the one who needed his strength and he couldn’t even heal her completely. That fight and trying to heal mom took a lot out of him. We were lucky we weren’t carrying him out, too. The amount of magic he used out there would have killed me to even attempt.”
Oria glanced over her shoulder at the adults. Everything about the three of them was awkward. Estin was tending to Feanne’s injuries, while trying not to look at the new female. Feanne was just barely conscious, her eyes never leaving Estin, though she had not said anything that Oria had heard yet. The new female also was not taking her eyes off of Estin.
To Oria, the whole thing would have been comical, if it did not involve her family.
Past the adults, Phaesys was play-wrestling with the kits, who had proven to be the most resilient members of the group. Oria could tell by looking at Phaesys’ face that he was happy to have something to do that did not require him to think or fight, at least not for real.
“What happened to dad?” asked Oria, watching Estin. If she had not seen his arrival in the valley, she would not have believed him to be any different than when she had last seen him. “I’ve never seen him use magic like that. It was terrifying.”
“Don’t know,” admitted Atall, staring at the bandage on his shoulder as blood began to stain it. “We found some old ruins and I blacked out. When I woke up the next day, he was ranting about Turessians and then came running for you and mom.”
Oria watched Estin and Feanne for some time. Atall, in turn, mostly watched the kits, who had settled down and were napping against Phaesys.
“I’m sorry for hating him at first,” Atall said a little later.
“Estin?”
Atall smiled and shook his head.
“Him too. I meant Phaesys though.”
Nearby, Estin and Feanne settled down on their bedding, though Feanne had to sleep on her side due to the remaining cuts that Estin had been unable to heal. When they did, the new wildling retreated to the far side of the room and bedded down as well, hiding as far in the shadows as she could.
“Who is she?” asked Oria, nodding toward the female.
Atall lay down on a blanket of his own, wrinkling his nose in pain as he shifted to keep from bumping his shoulder.
“I don’t know who she is to dad,” he said, closing his eyes. “Her name is Lorne. I know she has eyes on him, but I don’t know what he’s doing…or done.”
Oria bit down a growl, but decided it was Feanne’s problem to deal with, not hers. Trying not to glare at Lorne, Oria got up and crossed the room to her own bedding pile. It had been months since she had slept there and now the torn and battered pile of old blankets and small fur pelts seemed like someone else’s.
She sat down on the bedding, glancing over to where Phaesys was trying to get comfortable after the kits had left him to nestle with Feanne and Estin. Phaesys stopped trying to fluff the single thin blanket he had, giving Oria a half-hearted smile when he noticed that she was watching him.
Oria motioned to Phaesys, gesturing him over.
“What can I do for you?” he asked softly, coming over to her and kneeling such that he actively kept his head below her own.
“You’re not to blame for what happened,” Oria told him, recognizing the behavior for what it was. “We’re all alive.”
“Not all of us,” Phaesys answered, glancing toward Atall. “I heard what happened.”
“I’m sorry about your soldiers…”
Phaesys shook his head, then looked over at Estin and smiled. “Even as angry as he was, he only hurt the men that tried to defend my father,” Phaesys said. “No one who’s loyal to Norum or the city itself was killed. My father’s personal guards…they didn’t fare as well.”
Oria lay back on the blankets, thinking through what had happened throughout the day and even the weeks prior. As soon as she reclined, Phaesys began to get up.
Reaching out, Oria caught him by the wrist, pulling him back down.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Stay here. Please. I’ve spent weeks hiding from everyone. I don’t want to be alone.”
Phaesys sat back down beside her, clearly uncomfortable as he glanced toward Feanne and Estin and then over to Atall. His large ears flattened back and he looked longingly toward the single blanket he had been ready to lay down on before she had called him over.
“This isn’t appropriate,” he said softly. “I should probably not even be in the same room…”
“Phaesys, I just watched my mother get whipped more or less to death, saw my father kill about a dozen people who were trying to run away, and this is the first time in weeks I’ve been able to try sleeping without worrying that someone will put a knife in me. Just lay down.”
Cautiously, Phaesys settled down near her, but made sure to stay at least an arm’s reach from her. “Your mother…”
“Is right over there, so you need to stop being afraid of me. If my parents weren’t going to allow this, we’d already know.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Oria.”
Rolling onto her stomach, Oria put her face close to his. “Then what? Am I that awful that you want to get away from me?”
Phaesys flinched a little at her words, but l
ay down more comfortably.
“I adore you, Oria,” he said, his voice barely audible and his eyes darting repeatedly toward Estin and Feanne. “It’s just that we can’t…”
“I didn’t ask you to do anything and certainly nothing that requires permission from anyone,” she countered. “All I want is someone near me while I sleep. I want to know I’m safe and someone cares about me…and doesn’t want to kill me. Can I ask that much of you? I might even promise not to make you break any stupid promises to your future wife.”
Smiling weakly, Phaesys nodded and put an arm tentatively around her.
Oria nuzzled into Phaesys’ arms, finding in them the warmth and security she had been hoping for. She settled her face against Phaesys’ chest, listening to his heart pounding.
“I’m turning four in about two months…” she said, hiding her grin from him.
Phaesys tried to hop to his feet, but she held him down.
“Stop, stop,” Oria ordered him, shoving him back onto the bedding. “I’m kidding. I just had to see what you’d do.”
“Feel awkward and wonder in what way your mother will murder me?”
“Keep wondering,” she told him, as Phaesys finally settled in again. “She won’t kill you until she feels better, so you have at least a day.”
*
The next morning, Oria woke slowly, having slept deeply for the first time that she could remember since Estin had vanished. Happily, she rubbed her face against Phaesys’ shirt, the warmth and scent of having him so close comforting her as she nearly drifted back to sleep.
She suddenly became aware that she was being watched.
Lifting her head, Oria checked Phaesys, but he was just starting to wake, his eyes still closed and his whiskers twitching as he stirred.
Oria turned the other way and found Estin squatting at the foot of her blankets, calmly watching her and Phaesys. His eyes were narrow, but she was not sure that he was entirely angry. He was evaluating them.