She glanced up at the sky. The day was dragging. Sunset had been hours ago, but the afternoon twilight seemed to be lasting forever. Her basket was less than half-full, but that wouldn’t matter, not if she and Joran were to escape that night. The thought brought both excitement and fear in equal parts and she forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down as she looked around nervously, before picking another berry.
Joran was right. Despite knowing that no one was watching her, that the weight of the Touch stifled any real curiosity in those affected by it, it was hard to quell the paranoia. She glanced at Tia again and then turned back to the berries in front of her.
It was the silence that first alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. The Realm of Twilight was usually alive with the sounds of birdsong. Ylsriss straightened and looked about her, trying to pinpoint the source of her unease.
The terel berry field was really just a collection of small clearings that were connected by gaps in the trees. She caught a sudden blur of movement and then a woman screamed. It wasn't a scream of fright or surprise. It was a scream of pure terror and indescribable pain.
Ylsriss could see something thrashing around in the bushes. The screams ended almost as quickly as they began, but they were followed by a visceral growling, and the terrible sounds of cracking bones and ripping flesh, as whatever it was devoured the remains of the woman it had killed.
The other women ran through the berry patch, screaming, heedless of the scratches they were receiving from the thorns. The Touch might make them pliable, but it didn’t override something as primal as the survival instinct. Ylsriss didn’t move. Her eyes were still fixed on the thrashing bushes.
The creature emerged from them and then pounced, reaching out almost lazily to hook one of the fleeing women with its claws. It seemed to be a thing of purest darkness. Even the claws that extended from its paws were ebon. Its eyes burned a flaming green, but what caught Ylsriss’s attention the most was the dark streak that extended out behind it as it leapt. It was as if the beast left a trail of mist behind it as it moved. A mist which seemed to be slowly catching up with it again and coalescing with its form.
The thing emerged from the bushes again, blood dripping from its powerful jaws. It was some kind of cat-like creature, although its head had a definite canine quality to it. Ylsriss didn’t stop to study it. This time, she fled. It wasn’t really hunting them, she realised. It didn’t stop for long enough to eat its prey. It was just killing. She sped along the rows of bushes rather than through them, as the other women had. They were low, little more than waist-high, but they offered some chance of concealment.
The bushes ahead of her shook wildly as the cat-thing landed, crashing into the leaves and branches. It moved casually, almost slowly, its eyes burning with a cruel intelligence as it turned to regard its new prey. The long streak of darkness extended from its pelt, back over the bushes.
This time Ylsriss screamed. She couldn’t help it. The thing sat back on its haunches, flinching away at the noise, then almost seemed to smile at her terror. It tensed, ready to spring. Even as she turned to run, she knew it would catch her. She threw herself forward through the bush in front of her, falling to her knees as she tumbled through the stubby branches. She tried to clamber to her feet, but then felt the wind of the beast's passage as it leapt completely over the top of her. There was a wet thud as it landed. She closed her eyes tightly and waited for the end.
It didn't arrive. After a moment, she opened her eyes again. The cat lay on its side, a long arrow shaft protruding from the top of its foreleg, just behind the shoulder joint.
Ylsriss stood and looked around. It had to have been Joran. None of the other men could have hoped to make that shot. She searched the bushes looking for him, but then her gaze fell upon the fae as he strode towards her.
He was one of the tallest of the fae she had ever seen, over a head and a half taller than her. A bow that was even taller than he himself was slung over his shoulder. He knelt down beside the cat, ignoring her completely. His hand stroked the beast gently and, as he did, she realised it was still breathing, painful and laboured breaths. With one swift motion, he grabbed the arrow and forced it deeper. The cat jerked once and then was still. The fae closed his eyes tightly for a moment and his lips moved silently.
“Take this.”
Ylsriss blinked. “What?”
“The bow. Take the bow.” He thrust it at her, then hauled the cat up onto his shoulders and stood with a grunt. Now that it was dead, the creature looked even bigger than it had before and it hung down to his knees. “Take me to your camp,” he ordered, looking at her expectantly.
“Yes, Blessed One.” Ylsriss suddenly remembered herself and dropped her eyes, adopting the subservient manner of the other women in the camp.
They did not speak on the trek. It would have been out of character for a slave to speak to a fae and he was clearly not interested in talking to her. She watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye and he looked at her curiously on more than one occasion.
They passed the first of the huts and went to the centre of the clearing, near the wellpumps. He dropped the cat to the ground, where it landed with a loud thump, and then held his hand out for the bow.
He waited in silence as the women of the camp assembled. They flocked to him like moths to a flame.
“A magnificent beast, Blessed One,” breathed Tia, admiration clear in her tone.
He glanced at her and smiled. “A shade-cat. One of the largest I’ve seen. Certainly the largest I’ve seen since the ret…” He cut off, stopping abruptly and frowned at Tia as the women on either side of her whispered for her to be silent.
“You will skin this creature for me,” he said to the group. “I will return in three days for the pelt. Be extremely careful with it. I do not want any of it to be wasted.”
He glanced around the village. “Are your glyphs all renewed?”
The women looked at each other, whispering quietly. “There is a single moonorb, Blessed One,” said one.
“Bring it to me.”
He fingered his bow as he waited. The weapon was fashioned from some form of horn, leather and a white wood. His eyes fell on Ylsriss, as if he had felt her watching him and she dropped her eyes to the ground, bowing her head and fighting to hide the sudden panic.
The woman returned with the moonorb and he took it in one hand as he traced his other over the glyphs. He closed his eyes and a look of concentration came over his face as a thin green mist, barely visible in the dim light, trailed from his fingers and sank into the glyphs, which began to glow brightly in response. It only took a moment and he handed the device back to the slave woman.
“Three days,” he said, with a nod down at the cat’s body, and then he left without another word.
Ylsriss let her breath out explosively. The creature had been curious about her. Could he sense something? Did he know something?
“Did you see the way he looked at me?” Tia gushed, taking her upper arm.
“What?”
“He smiled at me, Ylsriss. Didn’t you see him?”
Ylsriss forced herself to smile. “I didn’t, Tia. You think he’s taken a liking to you?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, do you think he might have? Oh Lord, please say he did.” She clasped her necklace through her tunic.
Ylsriss turned away then, barely able to disguise her disgust. She made her way to the hut. The others could go and collect the baskets. In a few hours, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
***
She looked at the runeplate carefully. It was formed from a single slab of black stone with the glyphs etched into a section close to one end. “Do you think it will work?” She looked up at Joran who was keeping watch at the door.
“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try. We’d be much better off if we didn’t need to try and make a fire. Hurry up, though. The sun’s almost up.”
Ylsriss examined the plate again. It wasn’
t very thick, only a thumb’s width, so it ought to work. She lifted it out of the setting and lowered it to the floor, placing it on top of the rock she’d set there. She put one foot on the end with the glyphs and then stamped down hard on the opposite end with the other. The runeplate shook under her, but refused to crack. She looked over at Joran, helplessly.
“Let me try it. Come and watch the doorway.” He switched places with her and stamped down hard. There was a loud crack as the thin basalt sheet snapped.
She jumped and whipped her head round to look at him for a moment, before peering through the gap in the curtain.
The jagged diagonal fracture in the runeplate was perilously close to the glyphs. Joran stepped back carefully and crouched to examine the runeplate.
“Does it…?” She trailed off.
“I don’t know yet. Hold on.” He moved his fingers over the weakest of the glyphs. The light bloomed for a second then sputtered, wavering and flickering before it went dark again.
“Try again. Try a stronger glyph.”
He scowled at her and touched a different series of inscriptions. This time, the light bloomed strongly and stayed on, and Ylsriss could feel the heat as it radiated through the small section of the plate.
He smiled at her in triumph and quickly deactivated the plate. She grinned back at him. “Stick it into the pack. The sun is almost up anyway. We should go.”
“Last chance to back out,” he said, his tone serious.
“I think we just passed that point when we broke the plate.” She took the pack from him, then watched as he took up the other one and his bow. A small quiver filled with horn-tipped arrows hung at his hip.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They stepped out of the hut and moved along the side of it at a steady pace, although they didn't break into a run. It was unlikely that anyone would pay them any real attention, but a man and a woman going off together when they should both be working was peculiar enough. They didn’t need to make it worse by running.
Ylsriss fought against the temptation to either look around or start to sprint. The short walk into the forest seemed to take an age and she breathed a loud sigh of relief when they eventually passed into the shade of the trees. She met Joran’s eyes and they shared a tense smile. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and sped off without waiting for him to answer.
They ran hard for ten minutes. Neither of them was in especially poor condition, but life at the slave camp didn’t lend itself to fitness and they were soon forced to fall back into a walk, their chests heaving.
The fae would be inside, away from the magic-draining touch of the sun while it was in the sky. This gave them an hour, at least, when there was almost no chance of them being caught.
They walked as fast as their breathing would allow, then settled back into a jog, a pace they could both maintain for hours. As the sun began to sink and the sky returned to twilight, they slowed and she looked back over one shoulder. She could see nothing of the camp, just trees and ferns. For now, at least, they were free.
***
She moved into the bedchamber hesitantly, his insistent hand on the small of her back, urging her along.
“This needn’t be unpleasant for you, Tia.” His voice altered. He sounded like Harn, all of a sudden.
She turned in shock. There he was. The sweet young man from her village.
“Harn!” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
The vision flickered and vanished as the fae revealed his true form again, wearing an amused smile. “I can make this easier for you, should I choose to.”
The Touch lay thick upon her emotions, manipulating them, calming her fears and inflaming her lust. “You don’t need to do that, Blessed One,” she breathed in a husky voice.
He grabbed her roughly by the throat and kissed her, and she moaned into his mouth, a gasp of both pleasure and shock. The fae threw her backwards onto the bed, his hand ripping away the necklace from her throat as she flew.
He crouched and lifted the leather thong, turning the carved wooden figurine around in the light of the moonorbs. “What is this?”
“It’s nothing, Blessed One,” Tia said quickly, clutching the remnants of her dress to herself. His attention had been diverted and she felt less sure of herself all of a sudden. What had she been thinking? Offering herself up to this creature! He wasn’t even human.
His head snapped around as she spoke. “It’s clearly not nothing, Tia. What is this trinket?”
“It’s a keepsake, Master,” she explained. “A carving of Our Lord, that’s all.”
“Your Lord?” The expression on his perfect face twisted into one of cruel amusement. “The Lord of New Days?”
She nodded and then frowned as he burst into helpless laughter.
“Have you pathetic creatures not realised the truth of this yet?”
Tia shook her head in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean, Blessed One.” She worked her way to the edge of the bed and perched there, holding her dress to her chest as a shield.
“This Lord of the New Days that you so revere, the one that will lead you to a better future. There is no such thing.”
“You’re wrong!” she snapped. The anger coursed through her, somehow slipping free from the pen it had been forced into along with the rest of her emotions, her true self.
“Wrong?” He laughed again. “Oh, you poor little rabbit. You don’t know easily we have manipulated you all. Did you really think some all-powerful god had come to save your race from itself? Didn’t you ever question just how fast this religion had spread?”
She shook her head, confused.
“Tell me, Tia, this 'Lord' of yours. Is he supposed to look something like this?” He flickered again and then he was a tall figure in black. Soft, velvet robes hung from his arm as he extended a hand to her, as if to lead her onto a path.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she began to understand what he meant.
He returned to his natural form again, a cruel smirk upon his face. “Do you know we managed to instil this ridiculous faith across most of the lands in your world? We wiped away your traditions, persuaded you to remove the horseshoes and iron from your portals and windows, the iron pennies from under the pillows of your children.”
She shook her head mutely. It was simply too much to bear.
“There is no Lord of the New Days, Tia. There never has been. There is only us. These gullible men that you call priests follow the thinnest of lies, learning the tenants of a faith we created with the briefest of whispers into the right ears. So desperate are your kind to believe in something that even now you send your children to us to be our slaves.”
“I don’t believe you,” she cried, rising to her feet and looking at him defiantly.
“Your belief is irrelevant. You are a tool. Your kind always has been. You don’t even know the best of it. It was one of your own kind that first let one of our number through the Wyrde. This religion was simply the next step. You let us free of our prison yourselves and then accepted the one we created for you with open arms.” He reached for her again but she skipped to the side, slipping past his outstretched hand.
His amber eyes grew cold and the smile slipped from his face. “I could have made this easier for you, Tia.” He was little more than a blur as he darted across the room to stand in front of her. “But, you know, now that we’re here, I don’t see why I should. You’re here to breed, human.” He spat the word at her.
She moved her arm without thinking, the slap aimed for the side of his face. He caught it easily, without even breaking eye contact.
“The livestock needs training, apparently,” he muttered. “Well then, if you won’t obey willingly, then I suppose I’ll just have to break you.” He threw her onto the bed again, and ripped her dress and his own clothing away in a moment, whilst he held her down with his other hand. As he moved between her thrashing thighs, she let out a whimper. He pulled her arms up above her head, somehow holding them in place with
one hand. And then he was taking her, and the whimper became a scream.
Chapter Ten
Devin looked back at the line of wagons and the villagers walking alongside them, as they climbed the hill. Widdengate had long since faded from view, but the dark smoke that stained the sky told a tale he wasn’t sure he wanted to listen to. The satyr was silent in its cage on the third wagon behind theirs. Obair sat beside it, his eyes a mystery.
On a whim, Devin hopped off the edge of the wagon and headed back towards the old man. Hannah glanced at him without interest, then dropped her gaze to her lap. She hadn’t spoken in days and, as hard as it was for him to admit it to himself, he couldn’t bear to be around her. It was easier just to pretend it wasn’t happening.
Obair shook himself from his reverie, as Devin climbed up onto the cart and sat beside him. Unlike the others, this wagon was not crammed full of villagers. Few were willing to be near the satyr and those who had originally been on the cart with Obair had either opted to walk or managed to squeeze themselves onto one of other wagons.
Devin nodded in greeting and looked back at the satyr curiously. It sat on the floor of the cage, scratching idly at the bed of the wagon with one clawed finger. It met his eyes briefly before looking back at the floor.
He glared at it. This thing represented everything that had gone wrong in his life, from his mother being torn away from him, right the way through to Khorin being killed. One had been taken alive, the other with a blade, but both had been stolen from him. He stared at the creature, willing it to look at him, to do something. It ignored him, comfortable in its indifference.
Khorin. The thought stilled him, took his anger and replaced it with a guilt as sharp as his rage had been hot. He hadn’t even really had time to process what had happened. The man had been the only father he’d ever known, and the void he'd left behind was as cold and bitter as the harshest of winter frosts.
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