by Bruce Blake
Elyea tugged Khirro’s sleeve, pulling him away from the scene, guiding him over the top of the hill. Before cresting the rise, he looked back and saw the beast collapse to her knees beside the slain giant. When she noticed the ragged flesh where his head should have been, she wailed toward the branches above, her monstrous voice filled with sadness, then slumped across the corpse, sobbing.
When the giantess passed from their line of sight, they bolted into the forest, the beast’s anguished wails following on their heels, tugging at Khirro’s heart.
An hour later, they still heard the wails of the giantess, distant and fading. She made no attempt to follow.
“Not yet,” Ghaul said when Elyea commented about it.
“Ghaul’s right,” Shyn said. “When her grief has been slaked, she’ll thirst for revenge. We best put many miles between us before that happens.”
“But which way?” Elyea asked.
“South still,” Khirro said without hesitation. The others looked at him, unused to his confident tone. “The ruined village is only a day from here. The tyger told me.”
They stopped walking and stared at Khirro.
“What tyger, Khirro?” Elyea asked, the first words she’d spoken to him since he rejected her and, despite their tone, they lifted a weight he hadn’t realized he carried.
Khirro sighed. “A tyger visits me in my dreams, tells me what to do.”
Athryn grasped him by the shoulder, eyes gleaming behind black cloth mask. “When did you first dream of this tyger?”
“A month ago, I guess.”
“Since the journey began? Since you have had the vial?”
“Yes.”
“What does this tyger look like?” Ghaul asked. “Is it pink with wings? I might have seen it, too… when I had too much mead.”
Khirro ignored him. “It’s huge, with paws as big as my head. Its fur is white, with black stripes. He comes to me as a friend.”
“He is,” Athryn said taking his hand from Khirro’s shoulder. “Each man’s soul takes the form of an animal, Khirro. That is what you see in your dreams.”
Khirro raised an eyebrow. “The tyger is my soul?” The thought instilled pride in him-the soul of a tyger.
“No.” Athryn shook his head, dashing his conceit. “It is Braymon’s soul which comes to guide you.”
The vial radiated warmth against Khirro’s chest, as though agreeing with Athryn’s words. They stood silently; the distant wails of the giantess had ceased.
“I’m not one to argue with a man-eater,” Shyn said, sweeping his arm across his body, gesturing for Khirro to lead the way. “South it is.”
Ghaul shook his head but said nothing as Khirro took the lead.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The branches overhead offered little protection from the deluge. The ground turned to mud, sucking at their boots as they walked, slowing their progress. By Khirro’s estimation, it was mid-afternoon the day after they fled the giant’s encampment, but it might well have been evening for the lack of light penetrating the trees. No one spoke as they tramped through the muck, the patter of rain on flora and armor and clothes conversing with the splash of boots in mud the only words.
So far, there had been no signs the she-beast followed them, but they pushed on as though she did. Both Shyn and Ghaul were convinced she’d come after them; since they agreed so infrequently, Khirro assumed they must be correct. They also agreed the giantess would be able to track them, given they’d seen no wildlife since setting foot on the cursed earth of Lakesh, yet the giantess returned to camp with a deer over her shoulder.
Khirro knew they neared the ruined village, felt it in the pulsations of the vial against his chest. It would be a relief to find a familiar place, one he’d seen in dreams and when the Shaman showed him the way, but he wondered what kind of people had lived in a village in the haunted land. The thought raised goose flesh on his arms.
Ahead, the seductive wiggle of Elyea’s hips was gone, suppressed by her attempt to keep mud from pulling the boots from her feet. Khirro shook his head. He didn’t understand women at the best of times, and she was no normal woman. Was she attracted to Ghaul or simply seeking physical satisfaction? How could he possibly fathom the motivations of a woman thrust into the life of a concubine before her first bleed?
She views her body as a commodity, something to trade for food, to earn a living with. Or maybe to say ‘thank you’ with.
He hadn’t thought of that before. What if he tried to say thank you to someone for saving his life, only to be rebuffed? She had good reason to feel slighted, for going to Ghaul, and for not speaking to him, if that was the case. Thinking this, he hurried forward, the broad leaves of a bush slapping his face and dumping water down his collar as he fell in to walk beside her.
Elyea looked at him as he matched her stride, her hair subdued by the rain except for a stray strand stuck to her forehead, directing the flow of water down her cheek. Khirro looked at her, at the water running down her face, distorting the freckles scattered across her cheeks and over the bridge of her nose. For the first time, he noticed her slight overbite and the bump on the bridge of her nose, but her eyes remained unchanged: emerald, intelligent. She wasn’t as pretty with her hair tamed by the rain, but somehow more beautiful, more real.
“I’m sorry,” he said looking at his feet.
“For what?”
“For the other night.”
She put a finger under his chin and raised his head so their eyes met.
“It’s all right. I couldn’t give you what you needed and you couldn’t give me what I needed. Maybe one day.”
A smile tugged the corner of Khirro’s mouth; his cheeks burned with embarrassment at her words and her touch. Sensing his discomfort, she moved her hand away and returned her eyes to the front. He did the same.
“You were right about Emeline,” he said, boot splashing in a deep puddle of muck. “I need to let her go. She was never mine.
“I know.”
He shook his head. “I just don’t know what happened.”
Elyea paused for a breath before responding. “Did you rape her?”
“No, I… I don’t think so.” He trudged along, expecting her to comment, to chastise him, but she didn’t. “We drank too much. I passed out.”
“Then you probably didn’t. In my experience, men don’t often forget their first time, no matter how much they drank. Nor do they perform well under those circumstances.”
“But if I didn’t, then who?”
“Could be anyone.” Her tone turned sour. “Maybe your father. Or hers. That would explain why they blamed you and sent you away.”
Khirro didn’t want to think about possibilities like those-they were somehow worse than being accused of rape. But Elyea was right that he’d likely never return to his village, and Emeline had said she didn’t want to see him again, so why spend time yearning for a dream never to come true? He stole a glance at Elyea. There were other women in the world, after all.
“Up here,” Ghaul shouted from ahead where he’d been scouting, his form a dark silhouette amongst gray trees a hundred yards away, ghostly arms waving over his head. “I’ve found the village.”
The village turned out to be eight broken down huts, uninhabited for an unimaginable number of years. Only one had enough roof left to provide cover from the rain which continued pounding down through the night. Water streamed in through a half dozen holes, muddying the dirt floor, forcing them to huddle in one dry corner. Athryn stood in the doorway taking his watch while the others tried to find sleep.
Khirro shifted on the hard floor, back pressed against the uneven stone wall. Elyea lay in front of him, her breathing soft and steady, already asleep. He felt her lying close, her breath stirring his hair, the smell of her wet clothes filling his nostrils. He wanted to caress her, but fought to control the urge. This was neither the time nor the place. The gentle hills of her shoulder and hip were a dark silhouette against a gray backg
round; his imagination filled in the details. In his mind he saw her strawberry hair, the swell of her breasts, her soft, white skin sprinkled with freckles. His breath shallowed as a tingling began between his legs, radiating into the bottom of his gut.
One touch wouldn’t hurt. She won’t mind; no one else will know.
The sensation in his loins made him brave. He reached his hand toward her waist slowly, carefully. Elyea sighed in her sleep, startling him, and he pulled his hand away too quickly, smacking his elbow against the wall and sending pain shooting up his arm. He hissed a curse between his teeth. The impact made his fingers tingle-a distinctly different feeling than the one in his pants. He lay still, waiting to see if she’d wake, but her breathing remained rhythmic.
Khirro took a breath of his own, wondering what he was doing. Not so long ago, he thought Emeline would be the only one for him, now barely a thought of her came into his head. He tried not to wonder what had actually happened, it was easier to accept blame than imagine possibilities like Elyea had suggested. At least in accepting responsibility, it made sense for his parents to give him up to the army while hiding his brother. If he’d done what Emeline accused him of, he didn’t have to ask the harder question: why did they want him to leave?
By the door, Athryn shuffled his feet as rain continued to fall. Khirro reached his hand toward Elyea again, feeling it shake in the darkness. Breath held, he moved his fingers closer until they brushed flesh. He drew away for an instant, then touched the tips of his fingers to bare skin again. He thought of the gentle curve of her hip but as his fingertips kissed across warm skin, he found the flesh tougher than he’d imagined. And hairy.
“Not my type, Khirro,” Ghaul grumbled from the other side of Elyea where he lay with his hand on her hip. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
Khirro jerked away, banging the same spot on his elbow against the same knob of wall. He gritted his teeth at the pain and cursed to himself, then shifted to face the wall. The darkness hid his embarrassment and disappointment, but he still couldn’t face them. Ghaul said nothing more and his snores soon overpowered Elyea’s gentle breathing.
The tip of Khirro’s nose brushed the wall as he scoured his mind for soothing thoughts that might let him sleep. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and felt the warmth of the vial. Somehow, the curse thrust upon him by the Shaman had become the least complicated thing in his life. It didn’t judge him for being a farmer, nor for possibly impregnating a woman not his wife. It didn’t shun him for being a coward or a poor warrior. All it wanted was for him to take it to the Necromancer.
Hours later, when Athryn woke Ghaul to take over the watch, Khirro pretended to be asleep. Not long after, he managed to convince his body it was true.
No tyger spoke with Khirro in his dream. No one stalked him. Instead, he dreamed of a woman lying on a bed of straw, knees drawn up and belly full of child. Her face looked like Emeline one instant, Elyea the next. Khirro watched, panicky because he knew nothing about birthing a baby.
The woman screamed and cursed. Sweat streamed first from Emeline’s forehead, then Elyea’s. Her skirts were pulled up above her knees and Khirro peered between her legs at what his mother would have called her woman’s flower. It didn’t look like a flower. It bulged and undulated as the woman screamed again. He didn’t take his eyes from the spot between her legs to see if the sound came from Emeline’s mouth or Elyea’s.
Khirro blinked his eyes firmly and knelt between her knees, not knowing what to do but feeling compelled to do something. In life, he’d only seen women’s genitals four times: Emeline’s, which he didn’t remember; his mother’s when they bathed together in his youth; Elyea’s when they found her and again when she danced in the rain; and a girl from his village named Maree who made him pay with a piece of candy to see it when he was six and she twelve. He never had a close look at any of them, but none looked remotely like the one before him. It didn’t look like a flower but more like the maw of some toothless animal.
Emeline/Elyea grunted and strained. Khirro stared as the slash between her legs pulsed and stretched. He reached out tentatively, hand shaking, but didn’t touch it. Another scream filled his dream and a hand, small and brown, pushed out of the opening. Khirro pulled away. The tiny fingers searched the ground, grasping, dirt and straw sticking to wet flesh as it groped. The stubby fingers dug into the straw and pulled, freeing first a forearm, then an elbow.
Khirro fell back as a second hand emerged from the widening gash. If the woman still screamed, he didn’t hear as he stared at the two brown arms protruding from between her legs.
Why is my baby brown?
The thought disappeared as the hands worked to extract the rest of the child. The top of a smooth brown head appeared, stretching the woman wide. Traders had come to Khirro’s village once from the far south with dark skin and shaved heads, but not like this. The child’s skin was mottled gray-brown, like clay or earth or shit.
The head came through, then the shoulders. Blood flowed around the baby as Emeline/Elyea’s body split to the navel to make room and she screamed over and over without pausing for breath. The child pulled free, dragging wrinkled legs behind it, rolled onto its back and yanked the umbilical cord from its stomach, severing the connection with the woman whose belly it had just left. The cord whipped around, spraying blood like a snake with its head cut off. Khirro’s dream-self watched, unmoving, wanting to help but unable to. The babe rolled onto its stomach and pushed itself to its feet.
The child standing before Khirro swayed slightly on plump brown legs. It no longer looked like a babe but like a boy of perhaps four summers. Its entire body-arms, legs, head, face-were all the same gray-brown, its features indistinguishable except by shape. It stared at him, its wet-looking skin glistening in the strange glow illuminating the straw mattress but nothing else around them. Khirro extended a tentative finger toward the child’s shoulder. Emeline/Elyea had stopped both screaming and moving; Khirro knew her to be dead, or close to it, but couldn’t take his eyes from the child.
His finger touched the child’s shoulder and sank to the first knuckle in the mottled flesh. Gray-brown eyelids blinked across gray-brown eyes, but the child made no other reaction. Khirro withdrew his finger. It came away covered with mud. Fleshy gray-brown lips parted revealing mouth, teeth and tongue the same color.
“Dada.”
Khirro woke with no memory of his dream of the mud child, only a heavy feeling of dread perched on his chest. Eyes still closed, he felt the wall close to his face. A chill at his back told him Elyea must have already risen. He breathed deep, forcing the constriction from his chest, and thought of wanting to touch Elyea and of encountering Ghaul’s hand.
Did he tell her?
He hoped not but, no matter how long he lay here, it wouldn’t change it. Better to get up and face it.
The dawn light cast little illumination into the hut as Khirro opened his eyes. Rain no longer beat on the broken roof, yet he still heard water flowing. They hadn’t seen the lagoon when they arrived, but Khirro knew it was nearby. It was the towering waterfall he heard.
As he edged toward wakefulness, Khirro gazed at the wall inches from his nose. No wonder banging his elbow hurt so much, the mortar hadn’t been smoothed when they built the hut. Bumps and valleys covered its surface leaving it rough and unfinished. He moved his head back to get a better look.
At least the bumps aren’t jagged, that would have really hurt.
He looked at the gray-brown wall constructed of dried mud-horrible workmanship that somehow still stood after so many years. Even a farmer like himself could have built it better than this.
The random bumps and valleys coalesced as Khirro blinked the last vestige of sleep from his eyes. Thoughts of masonry practices fled his mind and his dream rushed in, filling the void: the woman, the horrifying birth, the mud child. The same gray-brown eyes stared at him from the wall, the same mottled gray-brown face, its mouth open in a frozen scream.
<
br /> Khirro scrambled away, bumping against Athryn asleep on the floor. The magician stirred, perhaps said something, but Khirro didn’t notice. Farther from the wall, able to see more of its surface, other faces became visible-dozens of them.
“Hey,” Khirro called struggling to his feet.
“What is it?”
Athryn woke instantly, hand on the hilt of his dagger. Someone stood in the doorway: Shyn or Ghaul, maybe both. Khirro didn’t look.
“The walls,” Khirro whispered as though not wanting to wake the children sleeping within. He pointed with a quivering finger. “The walls are made of children.”
He felt the others beside him but didn’t look at them. Instead, he stared at the wall composed of face after face. Some of the younger ones looked placid, calm, but expressions of pain and fear twisted the others, silent screams mortared in their open mouths. Khirro’s jaw dropped, but his eyes stared, seeing the faces while the children stared back, blind. The smallest was no more than a babe, the eldest perhaps seven or eight summers old. Their faces horrified Khirro. Corpses didn’t wear such expressions-these children had been alive when sealed in the mud.
The hand on Khirro’s shoulder made him jump. He’d forgotten his friends were there.
“We must go,” Shyn said, his voice low, controlled. “This place is evil.”
Khirro looked at him and saw sadness in his eyes, and in Athryn’s, too. Ghaul’s face remained stony.
“Where’s Elyea?” Khirro’s voice sounded small to his own ears, like all the energy had been sucked from it.
“Bathing at the lagoon,” Ghaul replied.
“Gather everything. I’ll get Elyea,” Khirro said.
He spun toward the door and took one step before more faces staring at him, more bodies supporting the walls, stopped him. A hundred anguished children pleaded to be set free from the walls by the door.
Khirro turned his gaze to the floor and hurried out into the ruined village, a sickly feeling clawing its way out of his gut and into the back of his throat. He glanced at the other huts as he passed and saw more of the same: innocent faces-invisible in the dark and the rain when they arrived-glared at him from every surface. Where the baked mud was broken, bones showed: smooth tops of yellowed skulls, pointed ribs, shattered thigh bones.