'At other times, I do what is deemed necessary by those who deal with matters of import. When I am asked to prepare meals, I am a cook. When I am asked to move the herds to where they are safe, then a shepherd I am. I am whatever Ionracas, and my kin, require me to be.
Ionracas, the Giantess had mentioned the name before.
'Who is this Ionracas', asked Wist, 'some sort of General?'
'He is my Glaine,' replied the Giantess piqued. 'Before this all began, he was loved by Giant and Human alike. But in war, he found his true calling. He is sharp of mind, and of tongue some may say. He leads a large portion of our army and many hopes and lives rest upon his shoulders. He fights for the love of the land - as do we all. For the love of the land and for the love of... the people.' She had begun to say another word. A private word full of intimacy and secrets, but it was too delicate to be spoken before strangers.
'So, you are taking us to him then?' asked Nikka. 'To Ionracas for judgement?' Haumea nodded, and Wist growled, 'I have had enough of being judged. Either he will help us or he will not.'
Tyla returned from the stream, and he brought a fresh breeze with him. The air carried the scent of blossom and a hint of autumnal rains. Wist looked to the east where clouds gathered.
'We should move,' said Haumea, 'else we will get caught in the rain'
-*-
The clouds advanced quicker than Wist could have believed. The wind had picked up, but it didn't explain the speed with which the rain caught them. It began with spots at first. Then large, opulent beads of water had fallen, as if the overburdened sky repented its greed. The rain was now so heavy that the grass beneath them threatened to turn to slurry. Haumea looked set to continue, and Nikka and Tyla were prepared to match the Giantess stride for uneven stride, but when Wist fell for the third time, Nikka called them to a halt. The Cerni spotted a couple of trees partway up this valley, so they struggled towards the two oaks and waited for the rain to lessen.
As the rain pelted down, Wist saw Tyla shudder. This time he was sure of it. 'What is it Tyla? Something's troubling you. Is it this place, the rain, all this water, what is it?'
The Lyrat's face creased and then he tried to resume his normal impassive expression, but his mien refused to obey. Wist expected Nikka to interrupt him now, but the Cerni stood with Haumea at the other tree, within earshot, but pretending otherwise.
'I,' began Tyla but his face contorted again, as if someone else fought him for control of his body. He mastered himself and then started once more. 'Last night. Last night when the dark sun appeared.' Wist blinked. He hadn't thought of it in that way. He'd assumed it was a moon. He nodded, hoping to prompt Tyla to continue. 'I felt something grab at me. Something that I have not felt...’
‘That I have not felt since my bond with Faric was severed.'
Wist felt his heart pound. Could Faric have returned from the dead? What if Tilden had brought him back?
'I felt something reach out and grab it. At first, I feared attack. But the touch was familiar.'
'Faric? But how?' asked Wist.' He's dead! You know he's dead.'
Tyla winced again and Wist felt a stab of shame for prodding that wound, but he had to know.
Tyla shook his head. 'Not him.'
'So, you feel it now, just like you did with Faric?'
Tyla nodded. 'It is as if my bond has been...reborn.'
'But if it's not with Faric, then who?'
The Lyrat turned to face Wist, his face full of unspoken fear. 'It is Aviti.'
'Aviti!' spluttered Wist through the rain. 'I thought she had...When the boat sank.' Relief and guilt washed through him. Without another passion to fight it down, it threatened to overcome him. 'How can you be sure?
'It is her,' said Tyla. 'She is east of here. Quite some distance east.'
'I can feel her now. She is in pain. She is in agony.'
The Lyrat's bond with his Pair Faric, thought Wist. The bond that had been severed by the mad Heirn priest, when Tyla had received the second of the scars on his face.
'How, how could she?' asked Wist. 'How did this happen?'
'She is alive?' boomed Nikka. He had moved away from the shelter of the other tree and now stood before Wist. The water poured down his ebony skin. He opened his mouth and shouted for joy. He laughed with pure exaltation in his heart and Wist was shamed by him. It should be him out there in the rain, shouting to the heavens.
'Perhaps then the Mage has survived also,' Nikka continued.
Christ, Dregan. Wist hadn't thought of him at all.
'There is more,' said Tyla. His hands and arms shook.
'Something is wrong. Something with our bond. I can feel her.'
'But I can sense a taint or an ill in the bond. I cannot tell if it is outwith her.'
-*-
The rain fell for two more hours and then it departed. Tyla could tell them nothing more, so they started out again. They trudged through the saturated ground and followed the course of a stream.
After an hour of walking, the sun reappeared low in the west. The beneficent heat it had delivered during the day had receded.
'Will we be there by tonight? In Creidas - will we make it before nightfall?' Wist asked. When Haumea mentioned the place, he had assumed they would be there in a few hours, not a full day's march.
'Tonight? No, we will not make it by nightfall. The rain has robbed us of valuable hours and you small... people, well, you make little progress.'
'Give me a mountain and I shall show you speed,' said Nikka with the hint of a smile, although it appeared that he took more offence at being called a person, than of being sluggish.
'God-dammit, why does everything take so long?' Wist fumed as Tyla moved ahead of them to find a suitable spot to set up camp. He knew his complaints were futile, but the weeks aboard the ship built up an intolerable level of frustration inside of him. The Mage's promises of what he would achieve once they were off the ship had placated him, but now they were worthless.
How the hell could he find Tilden now? It all rested on that. The one fact upon which he had pinned his hopes; hopes kept buried even from himself. Now they were stuck in a wilderness as vast as the deserts of Tapasya. This one threatened to beguile him with health and verdancy.
Nikka sent a withering look his way, but Wist shrugged it off and went to find the Lyrat. After on a few moments of walking, he found him on the far side of a hill laying out bedrolls. Rather than speaking to him, Wist sat down beside him and turned his back on the setting sun. Nikka had followed him up the hill, but Haumea walked alone beside the valley.
As Nikka approached him, Wist saw black tendrils appear over the eastern horizon. Beyond the vast forest of eastern Pyrite, the dark snakes writhed in the fading light. By the time Nikka sat down alongside him, the penumbra of the black sun taunted him.
'It has arrived before the sun has set,' said Nikka. 'I had hoped we would not see it again. I had believed it was an omen; a portent.' The Cerni sighed. Wist had never heard him sound so unsure of himself.
'What do you want me to do about it?' said Wist.
'Do?' Nikka said. He looked more confused than annoyed with Wist's ill-temper. 'What can any of us do? Perhaps this Ionracas that Haumea speaks of shall have some ideas.'
'I cannot pretend that this dark sun does not disturb me. It evokes echoes of the Volni within my soul. It mocks my freedom. It sends me back to that dark time under the mountain; that limitless darkness where I dare not return.'
'And also, it shames me. I should be thinking of Aviti and Dregan. They were part of us. We must help them. We must find them.'
'Must?' said Wist, but he knew the truth of Nikka's words. He had accepted the charge of N'tini, Aviti's father and that of her brother. He had received care in their family home, and in return, his presence had set off a chain of events that started with the destruction of Aviti's life and of Mashesh her home. Yes, he knew that he not only must, but he should.
'But how?' said Wist, still struggl
ing to get his voice under control.
'How, is always the second step,' said Nikka. 'We must decide on our first step. If we know what we face, then perhaps we can tackle the second.'
Nikka shuddered as the black disc moved out above the horizon. The Sun was half-way down behind them, and its lambent light now felt insubstantial under the Sun's dark twin.
Wist turned to the west to try and catch the final rays of the Sun. 'She is moving north,' said Tyla staring past the dark sun. 'Or she is being moved north.' The uncertainty in his tone mirrored the doubt in his uneven face. His scarred brow was creased and knotted. Wist had to say his name twice to get his attention.
'Can you still feel this other... This wrong you felt last night, is it still there?' Wist felt uncomfortable questioning the Lyrat when he was in distress. Tyla nodded, but did not speak.
'What can you tell from it?' asked Wist, but the Lyrat did not reply. 'What can you tell? Is it close to her? Who is it?' continued Wist, but still without any response. 'Tyla, we can't help her if you don't even try!'
Passion flared in the Lyrat's eyes, but he buried it beneath a lifetime of self-control. 'You wish to know what I can feel?' said the Lyrat, his words laced with foreign venom. 'Behind her pain, there is control, or a desire for control. This other presence is cold. But I cannot tell where her emotions end and this other's begin.' The Sun disappeared as Tyla concluded and the dark sun drank up the residual light.
Tomorrow they would find out more. Tomorrow they could begin to make plans. For now, they would need to endure another night below the black sun.
4 - Contempt
A vortex of pain and confusion held Aviti as tight as a lover's embrace through the night. In the morning, when she woke, she was already on the move. She lay flat on the back of another cart, like the one that had moved her and Dregan. But where was the Mage?
Each jolt and vibration of the wood below her caused ripples of pain to shoot out from her shoulder. They radiated outwards from where she had been violated.
She forced her mind from thoughts of the night before and sat up. There was only a single Intoli that walked alongside her. This cart was different from the last one. This one was not pulled by a horse or mule, but by people. Two men, both weather-beaten and in terrible shape, strained at their yoke. Aviti shuddered when she realised that the men were bolted to a frame designed for mules. Her fingers found the bandages that covered the metal edge. Beneath it, her arm and shoulder felt as though a horse had crushed them.
Is that what they wanted to do with her? Tether her to some piece of machinery and use her as a work-horse?
She could not bring herself to touch the point where the bar had been inserted again. It was not fear of pain from disturbing the wound that stopped her. The agony of the act robbed her of consciousness, but she knew that any pain would pass. It was the memory of the violation that she abhorred. If she had not been drugged she could have immolated them with a thought, blasted them from existence.
She put aside her worries about her body, her physical integrity and thought for a moment. Below the pain and horror that lay on the surface of her thoughts, her mind was now unsullied by any dulling contaminant. But why? Why go to such lengths to negate her magic, to neglect it now? Perhaps they did not regard her as a threat to the single Intoli guard. She would catch this thing when the moment was right. If it tried to... if it tried anything, she would be ready. She would wait until they rested.
She had not been ready before. And when she had been aboard the ship, she had dreaded the thought of opening herself to the magic. Could this situation not be traced back to her failure to confront her own fears, to master her own desire? She castigated herself for her thoughts. This was not her fault. And neither was it Dregan's.
But where was the mage? Had he been subject to the same torture as her? Had he been present? Had he been forced to watch or was held elsewhere? Was he even still alive?
Aviti looked around her, but the men pulling the barrow were not interest in her and the Intoli who guarded her never looked in her direction. She tried to shake off the impression of surveillance, but it clung to her. It resurrected her feelings of violation and of loss.
Her fear threatened to spiral out of control. There were so many questions. What had happened to her? She thought of reaching out for the magic; burning her way out and running away.
But then she found it; the calm place that she needed within herself. She felt a link within herself, and she grasped it. It felt like an iron chain; an anchor for her soul.
A bond... A bond.
The realisation hit her and it threatened to resurrect her panic. So she concentrated on her breathing, like her mother had taught her when she was a girl and she had woken from a nightmare. Take in the air and blow out the bad dreams, she had told her. Just blow them away, one breath at a time, until it's just a memory.
Breath by breath her perception changed. Her heart slowed, and her eyes settled upon the track over which the cart passed.
The broken ends of Tyla's bond... she had grabbed them. She knew it. She sensed him now: his uncertainty, his purpose, his drive, and his conflicting emotions. She had thought he was complex before she had forged this connection with him. The Lyrat had described his bond with Faric to her, but she had struggled to understand his descriptions. Now she knew why. It was a nebulous thing, imprecise and indefinite, but there were things she could be sure of. He was hale and he was aware of her.
The cart continued to bump along the dirt track as Aviti tried to let this revelation sink in, tried to accept the fact that she would never be alone again. She drew comfort from that fact, but it also daunted her. How could she measure up to Faric, the fearless desert man whom Tyla idolised? And what would Tyla learn about her?
As she tried to probe the connection between them, a dark, empty pain forced her to recoil, like finding a viper amongst the grain. It had felt like lost hope and bitterness; just like when the Waren tried to claim her and Wist near Mashesh.
What if that was within her? What if she felt what Tyla saw in her; that hunger for power; that lust for the ecstasy that the magic provided? Could he see into the depths of her poisoned soul?
Aviti thrust the bond from her mind and looked outwards. And the Intoli was there, examining her.
-*-
The sky was dull by the time they stopped for a rest, but the billowing clouds held no fascination for Aviti now. They must have held enough rain to have fed her father's farm, the animals and the household for a year, but that life was gone. So she sat on the ground and let the gentle precipitation soak her face and hair. The slight chill it raised in her brought with it a gradual focus.
The two men that pulled the cart were unfastened from the yoke and allowed to stretch their legs. Their pale skin was stained with filth with from the road.
Aviti assessed her situation. If she overwhelmed the Intoli, she could set the men free. Then she would make a break for the trees. After that she would need to improvise. At least her father would be proud of her today.
'Eat,' said the Intoli, throwing a parcel of food at her.
'You can talk then, ' said Aviti, failing to conceal the bitterness she felt. The Intoli exhaled, making a noise that sounded like a snort. Then it turned away and walked off in a swirl of blue and white fabric. So she examined the food. It was simple food: bread, cheese and biscuits. She considered that it may be drugged, but why take the chance that she would not eat it. Also, she may be days before another meal. Better to run on a full stomach.
She forced the food her mouth, devouring it as fast as she could manage. Before she finished, shame caught up with her. So she took what little remained to the men who had pulled her cart. With their eyes full of terror, they backed away from her. So, she left it on the ground and withdrew. After some uncertain shuffling back and forwards, the braver of the two wretches snatched her offerings and retreated, sharing his spoils with his fellow. As she sat down, Aviti smiled at the Intoli.
>
The Intoli walked towards her, its elongated face and features unreadable. It was taller than her and Aviti scanned it for a weapon. It had a bow across its back. It would be too large for Aviti to use, but she could use it as a long bow. She could hunt with it. She could use it to survive.
'Why?' asked the Intoli.
Aviti blinked as she tried to understand the blunt question. Then she said, 'They are people. Humans, like me. Do you not see how they suffer?'
'They are not like you,' said the Intoli.
Fury rose from the pit of her belly. Not like her? Because they were men? Because they were pale? She had had enough of this. So, she grabbed at the door within her, the one that would give her access to the magic. She was done with restraint. The pain of the violation was too recent and too sharp, to allow restraint.
And there it was, rushing through her, filling her up, seeking an outlet. In a moment, she would annihilate this abomination and anything else that would try to stop her.
Then the bar in her shoulder turned the ecstatic moment to anguish. The magic turned to poison in her veins and she dropped her contact with it immediately. She was on the floor again, writhing in agony.
Once the pain had subsided and she had regained the control of herself, she opened her eyes. The Intoli stood over her; fist extended, containing a bar of brass or gold. It pulsed in sympathy with the bar in Aviti body, both of them matching her heart, beat for bloody beat. She had expected to see a grin on the Intoli's face, but instead it looked pained.
The Intoli told her to get on the cart, but she refused. She would not force those poor slaves to carry her. As well as sparing the men, she needed time to think. Unwilling to force another confrontation, the Intoli waved the men away. They plodded back the way they had come.
So Aviti shambled along behind the Intoli, pushing herself to ignore the pain in her shoulder and the aches from the shipwreck. She forced herself to face her future. She used her indignation as fuel. Who were these creatures to enslave her? What gave them the right to violate her flesh?
The Redemption of Wist Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3: The complete collection Page 34