Vulture

by Rhiannon Paille

  “What about my energy?”

  “The tea should take care of that. Until then I’ll have someone escort you to your room so you can rest.” Talina moved to the open doorway; it didn’t have an actual door on it. She paused.

  “What did you do with the Flames?” She meant to ask Klavotesi about them before she so rudely passed out on him. So far lessons hadn’t been very successful, but she had learned a lot. Talina paced back into the room, taking a seat in a wicker chair beside the bed.

  “I sent a message to High King Tor regarding our urgent need of his presence,” she began, her brown hair falling over her shoulder as she leaned forward. “Your kin will be safe. He will come and take them back to the Great Hall himself. Until then, they will stay here with me.” She tapped a telltale foot on the floor and Kaliel followed her gaze, noticing the floor boards separated by tiny lines. She didn’t say anything but she thought there was something significant about the way Talina tapped her foot on the floor. She shifted in her seat.

  Kaliel nodded, twisting her hands in her lap. “I’ve never seen you in the castle before, but everyone speaks very highly of you.”

  Talina smiled. “I know. Elwen deals with the affairs of the village and the villagers. I deal with the affairs outside of the village.”

  Kaliel furrowed her brow. “You mean…?”

  Talina glanced around the room. “I speak with the other Lands of Men, and we trade things.”

  Kaliel put her hand on the big comfy blanket thoughtfully. “That’s remarkable.” She never knew anyone as svelte as Talina. It was a wonder to be able to compare her to Atara and Desaunius and find her nothing like the two of them combined. The woman’s mystery continued to float around Kaliel’s mind as Talina pushed off the chair gracefully and swept towards the door.

  “I shall find someone to help you.”

  “Can you find Pux?”

  Talina glanced over her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s much too busy. I’ll send Klavotesi once I’ve briefed him on your condition.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she disappeared down the hall.

  Kaliel slumped back into the pillows carefully, putting her hands on her stomach. She was going to ask Talina if she could see the Flames. She knew the copy of the prophecy was tucked into the secret compartment and she wanted to look at it again. That copy was complete, with symbols on it that could explain what all of this meant. A cramp raced across her gut and she winced, really unsure how she was ever going to stand living in a body that wasn’t her own. Children. If this body hadn’t been so damaged in the battle, it could have bore children. That thought was completely foreign to her, despite how natural it was for the people of Terra.

  * * *

  21 - Folki and Snorri

  Krishani pulled Tyr across the gravel-studded ground, panting from the chase, and glanced at the glaring sun. It beat down, casting hot rays on the surface, lighting the land up like a torch. Tyr slid down the rocky incline and tread along the thin path through the mounds. It wasn’t until Krishani saw a door pressed into one of those mounds that he realized it was a village, and unlike the single farmhouse it was very populated. Dozens of doors littered the sides of dozens of shallow hills. Curiously he slipped off Tyr, his mouth feeling sandy and parched. He pulled the horse by the reins as the sound of laughter pierced the air. He held a hand up to his brow and squinted into the distance. A group of maybe eight children raced over the hills. Up and down their little heads bobbed, showing off shorts and dresses, strings and flags on the ends of sticks. He froze until they crested a hill and one of the taller boys stopped, his knobby, tanned knees banging together. He pointed at Krishani. He had a shock of blonde hair and eyes as blue as oceans. The other children had curly blonde or orange hair, tans or burns in the blistering sun. None of them were wearing shoes or sandals. They huddled together, pointing until he pulled Tyr forward a step and they backed up, gripping shoulders and upper arms, hiding their faces.

  “You have to forgive the children. They’re not used to strangers,” someone said behind him. Krishani whipped around to see an old man with a face like leather–his cheekbones saggy, wrinkles crinkling his eyes and lips. He was lanky, wearing a full-length burgundy tunic and belt, with a hunting dagger strapped in by his hip. He had a brocade of animal hide spread over his shoulders, and his deep orange hair was speckled with gray. Krishani didn’t say anything. He forgot to keep his hood up, and sweat slicked his face. His clothes were sticky, the wool tunic underneath the stifling cloak not giving much room to breathe. It was intensely stupefying under the sun, something he wasn’t used to on Avristar. The man went to clap him on the shoulder but Krishani shifted out of the way and regarded him with hard eyes.

  “You spook easily, boy. Where are you from?” the man continued, holding his hands out so the boy could see both of them and know he didn’t mean him any harm.

  Krishani turned to Tyr and pressed his head against the horse’s mane. He had been traveling for weeks, eating berries he deemed weren’t poisonous, and drinking from pure streams of clear water. He caught himself a salmon a few days ago, sparked a fire, and cooked it until it was almost burnt through. Krishani didn’t have any trouble surviving in the wild by himself, but he hadn’t seen anyone alive in weeks either. The other four villages were skeletal remains–rocks pushed over, straw houses burned, people on the ground letting out their last breaths of life. Vultures blotted out the sun, and clouds threatened to erupt. He had been drenched more than once and trekked through soggy forests for hours with his chafed hands on Tyr’s reins. Anyone who was half alive was dead by the time he left.

  All of them were afraid of him.

  “Come now, we have a duty to feed the wanderers,” the man said, walking past Krishani. The man looked at the hill of children frozen in fear and stuck his fingers in his mouth. A loud whistle roared across the land and the children jumped and scattered. “Get out of here!” he shouted as they retreated across the rolling hills. The man turned back to Krishani.

  “My name’s Folki,” he said as a toothy grin spread across his sagging tanned cheeks. Krishani nodded. He threw his hood on over his head and took Tyr by the reins. Folki led him down the sloping dirt road further into the village. All kinds of children played outside between the hills. A dozen more doors in dozens more mounds of dirt met them on the way. Folki stopped when the path rose steeply into the mountains. He padded across the grass and tapped on a door Krishani hadn’t noticed. It opened and a burst of noisy voices hit Krishani’s ears. Folki motioned for Krishani to follow. He grasped Tyr by the reins and went to pull him inside after him when Folki frowned.

  “You don’t know the customs here, do you?” Folki said it like it was a question but it was more of a statement.

  “No.” Krishani shook his head and glanced at the ground.

  “We let the horses run free,” Folki explained, pulling something out of a pocket. He slipped it around Tyr’s neck and handed Krishani a thin piece of metal with holes in it. “When you want him, you call him back to you. No matter where he is, he’ll come,” Folki assured. Krishani let the reins go and turned over the smooth metal in his hands. It glinted gold in the afternoon sun. He slipped it into his pocket as a loud crack sounded. Folki whipped Tyr on the hind with a piece of leather and Tyr was off running. Krishani watched him race over the hills. His stomach lurched, worried he’d never see the horse again. He turned back to find Folki descending stone stairs into a large cavern.

  Krishani followed him into a gigantic mess hall. It was cooler, and that immediately made him feel better. Torch lamps hung off the dirt walls and roots dangled from the ceiling. Long wooden tables stretched from one end of the room to the other. Between the tables were stone pillars, holding up the ceiling no doubt. Folki moved swiftly through the crowd, weaving past both women and men, half of them with disarranged faces and blobs for bodies, the other half slender and plain looking. They yammered on in a dialect Krishani couldn’t understand. It wasn’t like any of the lang
uages he was forced to learn on Avristar.

  A hand on his shoulder made him sit at one of the tables, and when he swiveled around there was a drink in front of him. He didn’t have time to figure out who had put it there. It was the same sweet smelling liquid Elwen called mead. His previous aversion melted as dehydration took over. He gulped down the first glass, and then another. He pressed his forehead into the table, feeling the weight of exhaustion in his body.

  The people were alive and well, some of them dancing with each other, others playing games in the corners. He felt and heard the beating pulse of their hearts, life coursing through their veins.

  “This one looks half dead,” someone said.

  Krishani looked up only to see a large, round face with a fat nose and rubbery lips on the other side of the table pointing at him. Whoever it was had fat hands with stubby fingers and a stomach as big as Hernadette’s cauldron. A tangle of dirty blonde hair piled on its head, hairy warts on its face. Krishani never thought he’d seen anyone uglier in his life. He was too tired and dizzy to recoil from the stench pouring off the creature’s armpits. Instead he let his head hit the edge of the table again. Someone sat down. It wasn’t the fat one but someone skinnier.

  “I think he’s dead. Or death, something like that,” Folki said with fascination. Krishani recognized the old man’s raspy voice.

  Krishani lifted his head and folded his hands on the table. “I’m not death, or dead,” he said evenly. His stomach growled and he glanced around the shadows of the room to find out where exactly the mead came from in the first place. Too many misshapen bodies blocked his view to see anything, and after a few moments of distress he stopped looking.

  “Is he lost?” the other one asked. His voice sounded like he was talking under water.

  Krishani shot it a withering look. He didn’t want to tell them he had been following the Horsemen for weeks and lost their trail a day ago. He didn’t want to tell them about the transporting stone that made him dizzy the more he used it.

  “This is Snorri,” Folki offered, jabbing a thumb towards the creature. “He’s harmless.”

  Krishani nodded, attempting not to look at it. He spread his fingers out on the table. The right one was almost completely black, whereas the left one was the same pale white he was used to. It was no secret he still wasn’t very good at being the Ferryman. Vultures always attacked, and they always took someone. Even if he saved most of the villagers, he missed a few. The few became the many, and the many were etched along his skin in the black winding marks, mocking him, reminding him of what he’d become.

  “Seems bland to me,” Snorri said, inspecting him.

  “I’m hungry,” Krishani grumbled.

  “Right!” Folki scrambled from the table and scurried away while Snorri continued studying him like he might taste good. Folki returned moments later with a platter of food. Krishani grabbed a few berries and a slab of white meat. He stopped listening to Folki and Snorri as they speculated about what he was and what he might be doing there. They reminded him of Pux and some of the girls from Araraema, gossiping about stupid little things. Their voices faded into the cacophony as Krishani filled his stomach. He felt marginally better by the time he was done, and that was when Folki banged his hand on the table.

  “Ferryman!” Folki exclaimed.

  Krishani’s eyes shot open. He was hoping they weren’t going to call him that. He glanced around at the others waiting for them to begin staring, persecuting, judging. None of them seemed to hear Folki. A fiddler walked by their table, jigging as he sawed across the strings.

  “Don’t call me that,” Krishani said, remembering the cove.

  Snorri leaned his elbow on the table and brought his face down to eye level with Krishani. The putrid rotting smell of dead animals wafted out of his mouth. Krishani leaned back slightly, wanting to escape the brute, but his gaze was fixed. “Don’t those Ferrymen use boats?” He stood and smacked Folki on the shoulder. “I heard they use boats.”

  Folki stroked his beardless chin and cocked his head to the side. “I heard they have wings.”

  “No! That’s the Valkyries, and they’re all women,” Snorri exclaimed.

  “They do the same thing, snatchin’ men’s souls outta the sky an’ all,” Folki said, wagging a finger at his friend.

  Krishani rubbed his hands on his thighs and cleared his throat. He wanted more of the mead but nobody brought anything. He had to admit it was refreshing to be around people, and these ones didn’t seem concerned about death.

  “You do that part right? Take souls to the other side?” Folki asked, leaning in.

  Krishani nodded. “I do that part.”

  “Do ye take the coins?”

  “What coins?” Krishani asked.

  Folki shrugged in a noncommittal way. “Some of ‘em charge, that’s all. Want to get safe passage to the other side? Yeh need to pay the Ferryman.”

  Krishani felt a little sick to his stomach. He hadn’t stuck around Elwen long enough to learn the customs and practices of the Ferrymen. He wondered if there was a scroll or something that could tell him all the rules. He tapped his foot on the ground nervously and reached into his pocket for the stone. His hand moved around the whistle and he contemplated it. The whistle would bring Tyr to him, maybe. The stone would take him to Tyr, and that was probably better. He closed his hands around the smooth, flat stone. Even though he knew disappearing from the middle of a hall was probably not showing the best manners, he didn’t want to stick around. They knew things about the Ferryman he didn’t know. He glanced at Folki and Snorri.

  “I really should be going. Next time you see me will be the day you die,” he said as he gripped the stone harder and felt the familiar disorienting pulse behind his eyes. A flash of light blinded him. When he opened his eyes, Snorri was looming over him, an awkward expression on his disfigured face.

  “That was really funny,” Folki remarked.

  Krishani’s stomach dropped. The stone hadn’t taken him anywhere; it plopped him in the same spot he had been sitting in for the past few hours. He pushed up from the table and stood staring at the two of them.

  “Did you do something to me?” he asked, his muscles tensing, on guard. He completely meant what he said about Folki and Snorri–when he saw them again, they would die. They shook their heads, holding the same bewildered expressions. Krishani darted through the crowd to the door. He needed to find Tyr and he needed to go. He wouldn’t be the man on the white horse that brought death, not this time.

  He took the steps two at a time and burst into the open fields. The sky was a black mess of clouds, dark ones that swirled creating shapes of swords and axes in their maelstrom. Krishani tripped and fell on his face. He scrambled back to his feet and rummaged around in his cloak for the whistle. Holding it to his lips he blew on the end of it. It let out a high pitched squeal that made him drop it and grasp his elongated ears. The sound reverberated against his temples, making his head swell with vertigo. He ambled onto the path as villagers poured out of the mess hall. They were shouting ‘storm!’ and racing to their homes before it hit. Some were calling out the names of children where others wielded tools Krishani didn’t recognize. He supposed they were moving everything inside before it got snatched by the storm.

  “The flood is really bad,” Folki said, appearing next to Krishani, his arms crossed. He followed Krishani’s gaze into the distance and slowly uncrossed his arms, his mouth dropping open.

  Krishani knew why the stone didn’t work.

  Flaming hooves marred the white dirt road with darkness. The four of them galloped across the land, cloaked in black with faceless masks. They gripped swords in their steel-covered hands as their demonic beasts for horses snarled and snapped at the villagers. Krishani watched them stab, slice, and massacre the villagers.

  Nobody was fast enough.

  With all the shouting, the dozens of doors thrown open, women and children flooding the streets to see what all the commotion was
, they were dead. A blaze burst further up the road, fire snaking across tops of mounds, writhing to the mess hall. Krishani stood dumbfounded, watching everyone die. He watched Folki and Snorri pick up a shovel and an axe lying haphazardly beside the mounds. As the first Horseman approached they swung their weapons in the air. A sword came down on Snorri’s neck, severing his head, while another sword in the same Horseman’s other hand punctured Folki’s gut. He grasped his stomach as the Horseman drew the blade out. Folki staggered backwards.

  There was no time. Everyone was dead in minutes–children on the hill, villagers tucked away in the mounds, people in the mess hall.

  Every single one of them.

  Krishani saw Tyr out of the corner of his eye. He sped across the burning mounds, dodging flames and treading lightly over the blackness. He dipped into the shallow valley and neared the dirt road like a hero coming to save the day when the Horseman that killed Snorri and Folki pulled a dagger out of his belt. He tossed it in Tyr’s direction, striking him between the eyes. Tyr was too shocked to stop. Legs continued moving until he tumbled over onto himself, getting mixed up with the hooves of the snarling beast the Horseman rode. Black hoof marks fell across the shining white piebald coat of the horse Krishani befriended his first night on Terra.

  White hot tears of rage gathered in his eyes as he watched the demonic horse mutilate his beautiful stallion. Krishani clenched his fist and set his jaw. He was about to bolt into the fray when another Horseman flashed in front of him, a blade dragging across his chest. Krishani didn’t have time to think. The last things he saw were the shiny silver smile of the Horseman, the bloody body of Tyr, and the sky, full with Vultures.

  He slipped, the land disappearing as poison seeped into his skin.