Prince of Bryanae (Bryanae Series)

by Jeffrey Getzin

  Then there was a third thud, and the sound of something soft falling to the floor.

  The Warlord entered the room again.

  “Someday you’ll realize that this was for the best,” he said.

  “What …? What …?” Waeh-Loh couldn’t finish the sentence. “What did you do?”

  The Warlord looked at her the way one might a somewhat stupid child: a look Waeh-Loh had received her entire life.

  “I couldn’t have a son with pointed ears. When you’re rational again, you’ll understand.”

  Waeh-Loh felt dizzy, light-headed. Surely, he couldn’t be saying what it sounded like he was saying. Surely not. Nobody could be that much of a monster.

  “When …?” She modulated her voice to its most gentle, most subservient levels. “Please, when can I see my son?”

  “As soon as we make him,” the Warlord said.

  He knelt onto the floor beside her. With one hand, he began to unfasten his pants.

  Waeh-Loh’s brain just shut off. Her eyes rolled back in her head and the back of her head slammed into the stone floor.

  For a while, she looked at the stones that comprised the ceiling. They were quite lovely, and she began to count and classify the stones. But then the Warlord’s face occluded her view. She strained to see around him, but he had pinned her to the ground.

  He was lifting her gown, parting her legs.

  No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening. Her baby was fine. She was fine. Her father was still alive. The Warlord wasn’t here. The …

  No, that’s not true. Your baby’s dead, Waeh-Loh.

  As the Warlord slid into her, an incredible surge of grief and rage swelled up within her heart. She felt it fill her chest, spread throughout her face, extend through her limbs to her fingertips and toes. Yet the Warlord continued to thrust into her as if he were unaware of the fire that blazed beneath him.

  Couldn’t he feel it, this inferno that filled her to overflowing? The fire that threatened to cause her eyes to pop, her chest to explode, and the veins in her arms to burst? The rage, the fury, the realization of all that had been done to her and hers, bubbled and seethed in her. Her arms and legs began to shake and shudder.

  It was coming. It was about to happen. And the Warlord had no idea.

  Her teeth began to chatter. Her fingers were vibrating so much that she had to roll her hands into fists to control them. So much rage and hatred … so much fury and despair … so much …!

  SNAP.

  The sound was barely audible. In fact, Waeh-Loh was certain that only she could hear it. It was the snapping of some thin remaining strand that had held within her. Suddenly, that strand had broken, and the fury within her was allowed to flow.

  She looked up calmly at the face of the madman on top of her, his face contorted with lust and effort. She felt nothing for him. Nothing at all. Not hate, and not fear. Nothing. He was just something to be dealt with.

  Waeh-Loh wrapped her legs around his lower back.

  “Stop it,” the Warlord said. “I can’t thrust with your legs there.”

  She wrapped an arm around him too, under his armpits. He wrapped her other arm around his head, holding him close. He was speaking, but she didn’t hear him.

  No more. The words were so clear. So clear that she thought them again: No more.

  No more. NO MORE.

  The Warlord twisted, trying to gain some leverage for his arm. Perhaps to hit her? Who knew? She didn’t care. She lunged for the side of the Warlord’s neck and clamped on with her teeth. She bit into the flesh and twisted; twisted and bit.

  NO MORE.

  She felt his fists thudding on her head and shoulders, and they were like the sound of distant thunder: promising threat, but too far removed to do any harm. She felt no pain.

  NO MORE.

  She tasted blood and grinned. She bit and twisted; twisted and bit. She knew the Warlord was howling, but she couldn’t hear him.

  All she could hear was the sound of her heart beating.

  NO MORE.

  The blood was flowing faster. The Warlord’s flailing became more panicked, less powerful. She didn’t care. Because she would have NO MORE of it. She had had enough. More than enough, really.

  NO MORE.

  The blood poured from the side of the Warlord’s neck. Her face was covered in its sticky, salty tang. Her world smelled of copper and corruption, and yet she continued to bite and twist, twist and bite.

  A chunk of flesh came off in her mouth, and she spat it out. The blows on the side of her head had stopped. Only feeble punches at her shoulder now.

  NO MORE.

  She bit and twisted; twisted and bit. Even when the flow of blood slowed to a mere trickle, she continued to bite and twist, twist and bite until she struck bone.

  She couldn’t bite through bone, though she gave it a brief try just in case.

  Waeh-Loh rolled the Warlord off her. His eyes bulged, and his jaws were locked in a fierce rictus as though he were trying too hard to grin at some pathetic joke. His head hit the stone floor, and she felt a moment of fear, but when he didn’t react, she grabbed his head by the hair and began smashing his skull into the floor until she was quite sure it was destroyed.

  The Warlord’s skull was hardly recognizable as such. If she had to find his ears, she wasn’t sure where she’d even start.

  NO MORE.

  Chapter 94

  The Warlord had an axe. That would come in handy. He also had knives. She took all the weapons. You never knew when they might be needed. She grabbed her heavier night gown, threw it over the bloody mess of her current nightgown. She made no effort to clean the blood from her face.

  She ran barefoot from the room. Down the hall, past her dead baby, laying there un-mourned. Poor baby Kral-Sus. Poor baby. Mother has become broken.

  She was broken, yet she felt a degree of clarity and peace such as she hadn’t felt in months or maybe years. The pain was there, oh yes, it was there all right; but it was somehow detached from her, as though it had spiraled off into the abyss of her soul like a boat severed from its mooring, leaving only the functional part of her still attached.

  She padded down the hall, leaving bloody footprints behind her. A guard saw her, started to question her, saw her bloody face. His eyes widened, but then she split his skull with the axe.

  Damn thing stuck in there. She had to pull on it with both hands on the grip and a bloody foot pressed against the ruin of his face, but eventually she worked it free.

  Run run run.

  A door opened. Tee-Ri’s face peered out. Their eyes met.

  Waeh-Loh grinned.

  “Hello, Mother,” she said.

  Tee-Ri shrieked and slammed the door. As Waeh-Loh shouldered it, she heard furniture being moved against it.

  Oh well. Some other time then.

  She ran and ran until she found herself in the main hall. There was her father’s workshop.

  Without stopping to wonder why, Waeh-Loh entered the workshop and picked up the dowel he had been working on the day that the barbarians invaded. The dowel was the last thing he ever made. She clutched it as though it were the last hold onto his life.

  She left the workshop and now she approached the castle gate, her axe dangling from her hand. The four barbarian guards said something to her but she couldn’t hear it. She just kept walking towards them.

  One of them gestured at her, pointed at her bloody face. They were shouting: at her, to each other, who knew? She didn’t care. She just kept walking towards them.

  Weapons were nervously brandished. She just kept walking towards them.

  NO MORE.

  Ultimatums and last warnings were issued. She just kept walking towards them.

  Then they had delayed too long. Waeh-Loh shrieked and was upon them. She kept chopping at them long after they were dead.

  She was free.

  Chapter 95

  She fled to the woods, to the safety therein. During
that night and for the next several days, the barbarians were everywhere, scouring the terrain looking for the girl who had murdered their precious Warlord.

  Waeh-Loh hid near the top of a very tall tree. The rains came, and she clung to the trunk, shivering miserably. Her only items of comfort were the axe she cradled in her lap and the dowel, which she stroked like a talisman.

  Waeh-Loh saw but did not see. She heard but she did not hear. She had separated herself from the events in the castle, at Kardán, and pretty much the entirety of her life before she found herself in this tree. Her wet hair draped across her face, and she wrapped her arms around herself and cried, her tears mixing with the rain. She cried because she was wet; she cried because she was cold; she cried because she was miserable and couldn’t remember why.

  She had to get out of here, leave this place. Ignis Fatuus would never be safe for her. She knew this without knowing why. She had to leave and never come back.

  If she ever came back, she’d die.

  She waited in her tree for two more days after the hunting parties had ended. She spent that time starving and alone. Then, when night came again, she moved.

  She traveled only a few hours a night, when the night was darkest, trusting her keen elven eyes to see any barbarians before they saw her. She headed south-east for no other reason than the fact that she knew that Kardán was to the north-west.

  She walked, her feet bare, across stone and branch and leaf. Her feet bled but she paid them no mind. Behind her, she was sure, was something far more terrible. She couldn’t remember exactly what it was, but she knew it was awful. On those few occasions when memories threatened to return, she would collapse into a ball and repeat, “Nonononono” in a sing-song chant until the memories receded and all was well again.

  She discovered that she had erred in her bearings, and had traveled due east instead of south-east. She realized her error when she reached the East Sea Port.

  Again, she hid by day—this time, by creating a small cave out of rocks at the shore. She was cold and wet, but by now, she could no longer remember being in any other state. And as she half-slept clutching her dowel, she knew again that she was far better off here than where she had come from.

  Wherever that was.

  She wanted to slip aboard one of the great merchant ships but she would easily be noticed. Worse, she didn’t know where they were heading; perhaps to Kardán? She could think of no worse fate.

  Then she saw the skiff bumping against the dock and knew that it was her best hope. When night next came, she stole it. She didn’t know how to row nor did she want to alert anybody to her theft by the noise, so she clung from the stern of the small craft and paddled with her legs until she was far away from the tiny harbor.

  Adrift now, without any provisions or knowledge of geography or seamanship, she fumbled with the oars, heading towards the rising sun. She didn’t know where she’d wind up—or if indeed she’d wind up anywhere except dead—but she knew that wherever it was, it would be better than from whence she had come

  * * *

  As her hunger and thirst worsened, she abandoned her feeble attempts at rowing and allowed the skiff to drift. She lay on her back and looked at the stars in the night sky, and thought about things that had nothing whatsoever to do with her life. Anything else.

  The words “discipline” and “strength” echoed through her dreams and they gave her comfort. Her lips were cracked and her skin dry as parchment, and yet she allowed herself to drift. What was the point of rowing when you had no destination?

  She was not strong to start out with. She weakened daily. Perhaps she’d die. The thought didn’t bother her. In fact, she found the idea soothing.

  She slept for days at a stretch in a sun-blazed dreamless coma her body undertook in order to save what little of her remained. The sun burned through her eyelids, then it was night, and then the sun burned through her eyelids again. On and on, for days, weeks, or centuries. Time had lost all meaning to her.

  Then, one evening she awoke, freezing. Her teeth had been chattering so long that her jaw ached. As her consciousness faded in and out, she thought she heard an unusual sound. More than heard, really; felt, too. Her boat was bumping against something.

  She exerted all of her strength, and managed to turn over, and found to her surprise that her skiff had found its way to a rocky shore. With nothing to lose, she rolled side to side in her boat until it capsized and plunged her into the freezing water.

  And then, shivering as though one of the damned in the Icy Inferno itself, she crawled her way onto the shores of Bryanae. There she collapsed, too weak to move any further.

  * * *

  A human found her the next day. Waeh-Loh had lost consciousness again—possibly several times—and only awoke when the human started jabbering excitedly to her. Waeh-Loh rolled onto her belly and raised her upper body up onto her elbows. The human gasped when he saw her ears and eyes, and ran.

  Waeh-Loh wasn’t sure why, but she found that was funny. She fell prone again and laughed hysterically with her face resting in the mud.

  Later, the human came back with two others. They were armed with farm implements: one had a scythe and each of the other two had a pitchfork. Again, they jabbered at her.

  “What do you want?” she said in Kardic.

  They chattered and muttered at her, and to her, it sounded like “wonka wukka wonk wee wooodly wonk wuk.”

  “Do you speak Elvish?” she asked in that tongue. No, of course they didn’t. They had never seen an elf before. They stared at her dumbfounded.

  Waeh-Loh remembered a woman she had met in the dormitory once, though she didn’t remember when or under what circumstances. The woman had taught Waeh-Loh a few words of her language, the Tongue of Men, she had called it. Waeh-Loh combed her memory for anything she remembered in that language, and came up with only one sentence.

  “I am called Waeh-Loh,” she said in the Tongue of Men.

  The farmers jabbered some more, and indeed the words sounded like they might be from the Tongue of Men. It was hard to tell.

  Eventually, one of the farmers nervously approached with both hands empty and in front of him. He pointed at Waeh-Loh and said, “Willow?”

  “Close enough,” Waeh-Loh muttered in Elvish and then fainted.

  Chapter 96

  One of the farmers lived a stone’s throw from the shore, and the three of them carried Willow there. They stood around the straw pallet where she lay, muttering and jabbering to each other, no doubt deciding her fate.

  Willow didn’t care. She had escaped, and that was all that mattered. She had been strong enough. She had had sufficient discipline to make it. She clung to her dowel, and slept.

  She awoke to someone lifting her head. A bowl of broth was pressed to her lips, and she took a few sips before she lost consciousness again. Later, she drank some more, and gradually her strength returned.

  The two visiting farmers had long since gone home, and the farmer whose hovel she stayed in was working the field across the dirt road from his home. This left her alone with his wife and young daughter.

  Their conversation was extremely limited.

  “Willow, I am called Dursana,” the woman said.

  “Dursana,” replied Willow.

  “I am called Dinthia!” the daughter crowed.

  “Dinthia,” said Willow, and Dinthia was delighted. The strange creature had said her name.

  Dursana soon left to perform her chores, leaving Willow alone with Dinthia. There was something about the child that irritated a sore part of her soul, that troubled the closed off section of her memories. Something that made Waeh-Loh simultaneously want to drive the child away with shrieks and blows and also hug the child to her breast and never let her go.

  Dinthia had not tired of the Identification Game.

  “Willow, I am called Dinthia!” she would say.

  “Dinthia,” Willow acknowledged, rapidly losing patience.

  “I am c
alled Dinthia!”

  “Dinthia.”

  “I am called Dinthia, Willow!”

  “Go away,” she muttered in Elvish.

  “Girwhy?” Dinthia said, trying to repeat the Elvish words.

  “Yes,” Willow said, turning onto her side and closing her eyes. “Girwhy. And stay why.”

  * * *

  After dusk, the farmer, whose name was Antheenio, returned home from his toils. He conversed with his family at great length.

  “Girwhy!” Dinthia shouted to him, giggling. “Girwhy!”

  Antheenio tousled his daughter’s hair, and the sight hurt Willow so much that she sneered. Affection was for the weak. If Willow had meant him harm, she could have used that affection against him. Foolish to display it so casually.

  Dursana had prepared dinner, and Antheenio helped Willow to the table. The food had a weird aroma unlike anything she had encountered before, but she was so hungry that she dove right in. She stopped, though, when she caught their stares out of the corner of her eyes.

  “What?” she said in Elvish, not that it did any good. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. Discipline.

  Antheenio said something that sounded like, “Ju na fooleen wubba wubba,” and extended his hand to her. Willow noted that the members of the family had joined hands and that only Willow was needed to complete the circle.

  Some religious ceremony of some sort? Willow didn’t care. She was hungry and the sooner she gave them what they wanted, the sooner she would be able to eat.

  She took the farmer’s hand and then, when offered, his wife’s hand as well. The circle was made whole.

  The family started murmuring some chant, and swayed to and fro. Willow waited with annoyance but did not speak. At last, they finished and it was time to eat.

  Willow had managed to down two mouthfuls of the strange orange hash when suddenly there was a tremendous burst of light in the center of the hovel, and a rush of air blew her hair into her face.

  Willow leapt from her chair without thinking and ran to the door of the hovel. She fumbled at the mechanism to open it.

  “Hold, elf!” said a man’s voice in a heavily-accented Elvish.