by A. Evermore
She looked up, but the shadow had gone and a dense fog now surrounded her. The only sound to be heard was the gentle breaking of the waves upon the shore. The fog was strange, it had a greenish tinge to it and something about it felt quite wrong and unnatural. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. She was being watched. She looked down at the amulet in her hand. What if that harpy is nearby? The thought made her sit up.
A loud cawing croak followed by a cackling laughter from several throats came from somewhere overhead. She got unsteadily to her feet staring upwards into the impenetrable green-tinged mist. She had heard that cackling laugh before, and there was not just one voice this time. Just because the harpy hadn’t harmed her before didn’t mean they wouldn’t now. Human women were considered as competition when it came to men and harpies killed human women without a thought.
Cirosa backed away from the shore and the remains of Rance’s boat and fled through the fog. It was so thick she would have lost her way, but she followed the shore until she saw her own footprints leading back up the beach. She followed them back to the path and took the long zigzagging steps up the cliff face as fast as she could. She did not slow until she reached the top. Her breath came ragged in her throat and her legs were heavy as lead.
She chanced a look behind her and wished she hadn’t. Her heart lurched into her throat. In her climb up the steps the fog had caught up and there were things moving in it across the beach; large black lumbering shapes, scores of them. Flying a little ahead of them were many harpies. The dim light glinted off their slick feathers as they wheeled and cawed like seagulls following a farmer’s plough, only they were many times bigger and hideous to look upon.
The witch birds must have seen her, and they could have flown quickly to attack her, but for some reason they did not pursue her yet. She wasn’t going to hang about until they reached her. She ran into the trees towards the temple that gleamed white and pure through the leaves ahead. She saw no one as she hurtled through the temple grounds. She slammed into the heavy oak door. It was stiff to open, as if it didn’t want her inside. She shoved it open aggressively and shut and bolted it from the inside, hoping it would provide protection from whatever was coming in that awful fog.
She should warn the priests and priestesses. They could run and warn the nearest villages that the island was under attack. But there was no way she was going back out there and risking her own life. Cold sweat ran down her back and her pulse pounded deafeningly in her head.
They couldn’t or wouldn’t actually get inside the temple would they? She glanced at the huge arched windows lining the white walls, inlaid as they were with thin stained glass. This was no fortress. It was never built to keep anyone out, but rather let them in. She herself had put the bolt on the inside of the temple door, before then it had been left open and the weather made a right mess of the inside with rain and leaves and sand from the beach.
That bitch has not only murdered Rance, but brought the wrath of the Maphraxies down upon us! She has brought the enemy to our very doorstep, the Goddess’s Sacred Isle itself!
Cirosa peered through the corner of a window, but saw only trees partially hidden in the rolling fog. The cawing of the harpies came louder, they had to be directly above. She clapped her hand to her mouth and felt her bladder go weak. She tore away from the window and ran to the black and white marble flower decorating the floor. Her voice shook so much she could barely formulate the magical opening command. She gasped it louder again. This time it worked, but the exertion of the magic immediately gave her the usual splitting headache, leaving her swaying for balance.
The petals began to lower down one after the other into the dark tunnel. Once the room had stopped spinning quite so fast she stepped into the darkness, the lantern barely driving back the dark. The secret staircase closed behind her and she stopped to steady herself. For some reason the tunnel to the sacred Mother’s Chamber hidden deep below the temple felt foreboding, almost malicious, and her heart pounded so loudly she was sure it was echoing around her. It is just fear of the harpies and those awful things in the fog.
‘Blessed Mother please protect me,’ her weak voice trembled in the gloom, the first prayer she had ever thought to say for herself.
Whatever the Immortal Lord had offered her she did not want it. He would sooner kill her than have her join him anyway. But what about the power? No, she could not leave her temple; her duty was here, to the goddess, whether or not she spoke to her.
‘Please protect me,’ she breathed again, hand gripping the cold damp wall of the tunnel. ‘Whatever he has to offer I do not want it.’ Of course the goddess would save her, she was the High Priestess of Celene, she would be the Oracle, the goddess would not let her die at the hands of the Maphraxies.
But what about the power? She would not be killed by the Maphraxies, she had the amulet after all. Had the voice not said: “I will have need of you again…” She would not be killed, what use was she dead? Maybe they would find her, maybe she would be rewarded, rewarded with powers beyond anything the goddess could offer. That power, it was divine, if only to feel it again…
Fear and guilt overcame her for thinking such thoughts in the sacred Mother’s Chamber. She had communed and dealt with the Maphraxies. For a moment she could not breathe and slumped against the cold stone wall, lantern swinging in the dark.
‘Goddess save me and avenge us for Issa’s foolishness!’ she whispered weakly, but her words were hollow and empty as they echoed in the dark passage.
The goddess is not here, she never has been. The goddess does not give a damn about me so why would she bother to protect and save me? The old bitterness welled up within and tears filled her eyes as the familiar loneliness descended and settled upon her like a soft blanket.
Above the sacred Mother’s Chamber the peaceful Isle of Celene swiftly turned into bloody chaos.
Chapter 27
The Elders
‘URG,’ Marakon swallowed, his head swum and pounded at the same time. He opened his eyes and his stomach heaved as everything blurred and moved. Blinking through bleary eyes he registered shards of light, sunlight, falling through leaves, palm leaves. Leaves like those found in southern Frayon. They were interleaved to form a roof held up by a wall of thin bamboo sticks.
Bamboo, like southern Frayon. I am home, or at least somewhere he recognised. He grinned in relief. Just a terrible nightmare, I must be wounded, delusional. The aches and pains that gripped his whole body reassured him that he wasn’t dead too. His side burned. Hot wet fabric covered it.
‘Leave it,’ a woman’s voice commanded from behind him, her voice was deep and so heavily accented he didn’t immediately understand what she said. He tried to see who spoke, but the world spun again when he moved. He dropped his hand and closed his eyes. A restless sleep descended upon him.
When he came round again he was covered in sweat. His hands and feet were now bound, albeit loosely. His sword was gone and probably all his knives. It was dark save for the light of a candle in a large jar. Voices came from nearby, a man and a woman’s, the same woman who had spoken before. They had a heavy lilting accent and often they spoke words he did not understand. It was too exhausting trying to understand everything they said in their hushed voices and he gave up, studied the ceiling instead. Whoever they were they did not trust him, and why would anyone trust an armed stranger bloodied from battle? His side still hurt like a demon but at least it was bound.
Another candle flared into life nearby and the man and woman came to stand beside him. They had fine delicate features, long black hair and brown skin, as far as he could tell in the dim light. The woman’s hair was curly and bound up at the back; a few shorter strands fell about her pretty round face. The man was a little older, his face was harder and his dark eyes mistrusting. He was tall, maybe as tall as Marakon, and his shoulders were broad and muscular. Marakon wondered if he was a soldier.
Both wore loose fitting cream-coloured shirts and knee-length
skirt or trousers to match. They stared down at him as they spoke to each other. Marakon felt like an exotic animal being looked upon in a cage. The only words he recognised were “eyes” and “ears”. He grimaced, his subtly pointy ears and violet-coloured eye had once again betrayed him. They clearly saw past his very human beard.
‘Where am I? Why am I bound?’ he said, his voice croaked alarmingly. He tried to sit up but the man pushed him back down firmly, as easily as if Marakon were a child. He lay there breathing heavily as the world spun again. The man and woman looked at each other and something passed between them. He turned and spoke slowly to Marakon, choosing his words carefully.
‘What are you doing here with a sword from the Old World and a wound made by Sea Devil poison?’ he challenged, his eyes were hard. The woman touched her companion’s arm reproachfully and bent to tend Marakon’s bandages. It seemed the man had chosen simple words he thought Marakon would understand, his accent was still difficult. They speak Frayonesse but strangely. They are unlike any peoples of Frayon. I think I am far from home…
Being a commander for so long Marakon was unaccustomed to being spoken to this way yet he could see no reason not to comply. These people may not trust him but at least they were helping him, they had tended his wounds. He wouldn’t trust a half naked soldier with a nasty bloody wound and a sword either. He tried to speak but his throat was too dry. The woman helped him to drink some water from a wooden cup. The man frowned at her but she ignored him as he slurped noisily.
‘Thank you,’ Marakon said gratefully but she only nodded. He spoke in short clipped sentences, struggling to keep his breath but glad that the world no longer spun.
‘We, the Feylint Halanoi, were fighting the Histanatarns whilst we hunted Maphraxies, the immortals. My soldiers and I were attacked. I was wounded when the black dragons came. I don’t remember much else. I guess I was ship wrecked and I awoke upon these shores…’ he had to stop to catch his breath. ‘Where am I?’
‘Impossible,’ growled the man. The woman looked from him to Marakon with a worried frown. ‘No one can make it across that ocean, not even if they could get past that white monster.’
Marakon continued to struggle with the man’s accent and took a while to understand what he had said. “Across that ocean…” can I really have crossed the Lost Sea? He shrugged and frowned in confusion, ‘Until now I would have agreed with you. Where I come from we are not even sure if there is land beyond the Lost Sea and certainly not people such as yourself. Do you have a map of your land? I need to be sure where I am. This is unlike anywhere I have ever been.’
The man narrowed his eyes at him, measuring him and his words up.
‘He does not lie,’ the woman said gently, wonderment in her eyes. The man looked at her for a long moment and then relaxed his hard look as if her word was to be trusted completely. He turned back to Marakon.
‘And what of these Histan-a-tarns you fought?’ he stumbled over the word, ignoring Marakon’s question, eyes glittering with hatred. The woman looked at him, silently frowning. ‘Are they the sea devils?’
Marakon wasn’t sure how best to explain, ‘Small vicious fish-like people on fast boats?’
‘Sea devils,’ they both nodded, speaking in unison.
‘We have not heard of the other, these Maph-rax-iss?’ the man asked, struggling with the unfamiliar pronunciation, ‘unless you mean goblins or Incubi.’
It was Marakon’s turn to be surprised. Did they not suffer the immortals? Was this truly some remote land free from the tyranny of the Immortal Lord? How far away from home, in fact, was he? He knew the Maphraxies had not headed west into the Uncharted Lands, was this really where he was now? The man shifted impatiently.
‘The Maphraxies are… our most reviled enemies, of all of us, human, dwarf, elf… everything! All that lives fight these immortal beasts for they take everything and leave nothing. They enslave the soul to oblivion and the body, now devoid of life, becomes one of them; a hideous brainless immortal beast, mad with a hunger to destroy all life… They particularly like to take our children and steal their souls,’ Marakon stopped for breath. How could he describe in a few sentences those he had fought against his entire life? Those that had butchered his family and murdered all his friends to date?
‘They gave me this,’ he tapped his eye-patch. Seemed rather a feeble explanation for a lifetime at war.
The man and woman turned and spoke to each other quickly and Marakon, now a little more familiar with their accents, understood more of what was said, though there were some words he did not know at all. It was like a strange dialect of Frayonesse.
‘Can he be trusted?’
‘The Elders … spoken of trouble in the east…’
‘…plague so terrible … spreads over the land killing all.’
‘…fear it … come here…’
‘…they say the white monster is dead…’
‘We should not reveal too much,’ the man ended and motioned her to be silent. She scowled back at him. They still did not trust Marakon or necessarily even believe him.
‘The White Beast is dead?’ Marakon asked.
But the man did not respond. ‘We know nothing of these, Maph-raxies... But an enemy of the hated sea devils is surely an ally to us,’ the man said, somewhat to Marakon’s surprise. ‘We will unbind if you swear the oath of peace in our land and against our people.’
Marakon nodded weakly, ‘I come in peace. I have no idea how I got here or why I am alive whilst everyone else is surely dead. I am a friend to your people,’ he said it almost too quickly but the pain was returning again, in excruciating waves.
He passed out with a final thought: they did not know who the Maphraxies were, what a blessing.
Marakon awoke to the sound of birds singing and bright sunlight fell once more through the leaves above him. He felt much stronger and with that returned strength came a renewed sense of urgency. He had to find something, something important, if only he could remember what. Perhaps these people knew. They spoke of the Elders, they sounded wise, maybe they could help him.
He sat up, pleased to find he was no longer bound, and the young woman came alone into the room. She held a steaming bowl of food and it smelt wonderful. He could not remember when he had last eaten and he hungrily took it. She passed him some strange thin dark-brown bread and he dipped it into the spicy broth. She waited silently whilst he ate and took his empty bowl and spoon when he had finished.
‘I am indebted to you,’ he said between mouthfuls. He noticed his sword had been placed in the corner of the room next to the bed. A measure of their growing trust, he thought admirably, or the power of the oath he had sworn.
‘So you know of Frayon, of Drax and the… “Old World”,’ that is what they had called it.
‘Our legends say we lived in a land beside Frayonesse, separated by an ocean, long before the Lost Sea and the White Beast came. I guess that is why our language is similar,’ she smiled. ‘Our language is sacred to us, we are careful to make sure it remains unchanged since the days of our ancestors.’
Marakon nodded, apart from words and accents and pronunciations the underlying language was the same. Jarlain continued.
‘Our land was called Unafay and they say it was a land of abundance, beauty and great people. We lived far more advanced than we are now,’ she looked into the distance wistfully. ‘But then they created Dark Rift and things changed and declined over thousands of years. Then the demons came. Our land was destroyed and we were forced to flee west away from them. Our land exists no more.’
Marakon looked at the floor, memory stirring in him. “In the Valley of Death terrible things happened.” That strange old man had spoken of this land, the place where Keteth created his Shadowlands. No, that was a dream.
‘I would love to see the Old World,’ she said, bringing him back to the present. She was looking far away as if dreaming of what the Old World might be like. ‘What is it like there?’ she asked with a
quizzical look. ‘We still tell myths and stories about the Old World but… it’s not the same as knowing.’
Marakon wondered where to begin. ‘It’s, well, diverse. Hot and humid in the south with some trees and plants similar to here though not as big. Atalanph, the furthest southern country is mostly a hot dry desert.’
‘Desert,’ she frowned?
He smiled, ‘Can you imagine sand, like that next to the sea, and no plants or trees just endless hills of sand? The trees only exists beside rivers, of which there are few.’
She looked into the middle distance then shook her head, ‘I can imagine it but I do not like it. I cannot imagine a nice place with no trees. There is a place like that here. An awful place, cursed. We call it the Drowning Wastes, though we do not know what happened there and never go there.’
‘The Drowning Wastes,’ Marakon mouthed and a shiver of fear (or was it excitement?) ran down his spine. ‘It is cold the further north you go until you reach a frozen desert. Water frozen and the whole place is filled with white mountains where few trees can grow again. In between there are many different trees, unlike the ones here. There are many lands and many people,’ he hesitated, suddenly feeling horribly sad, ‘or there were. The Maphraxies are destroying us all,’ he finished. Sad for his home that was taken from him, sad for the Draxians who were all destroyed, even sad for the elves who were forced to leave. It must have shown for she looked sad too, as if feeling his pain.
‘What happened to your eye?’ she asked lightly, changing the subject.
He scratched his patch habitually, ‘A Maphraxie bastard took it. Not blind, but... changed.’ He didn’t know what compelled him to do so then, maybe he was keen to prove he was a friend and that he still had an eye, but he lifted up the patch.
She stared at it stricken. The air around them changed from sunny and light to heavy and cloying. The colour drained from her face and she fell back against the wall with a gasp, dropping the empty bowl and spoon. His eye felt hot and it seemed she stared right through him. A deafening sound of metal grating upon metal filled his head and he struggled to breath the thick air. She tore her eyes away and the noise stopped. With a great effort he let the eye patch fall again. His heart pounded and sweat ran down his back. Had she heard that terrible noise as well?