by Jeff Wilson
Edryd stopped for a moment, concentrating in order to locate the position of his pursuers. He had gained considerable distance on them, and they seemed to be confused. That is when he remembered the concealing effect of the shroud. He was hidden from them, and they had lost the trail. If the draugar couldn’t find him, they might return to the cottage. One of them had returned to the road and was already doing so.
Edryd could not let that happen. He worked his way back to the road, and once there, he inspected his shroud. He couldn’t see it, that was how it worked, but he could see its flaws. He tried to pry open one of the growing fissures, but he didn’t have any idea what he was doing and the shroud tightened in response. Edryd relaxed and began to build a reserve for another attempt. Something began to happen as he did. He began to feel a pressure build up inside the shroud, something that agitated a piece of the dark buried deep within him, and his aura began to escape through widening gaps in the concealment.
The nearest of the two draugar reacted immediately. It made a direct line for him. The other draugr, the one that had gone back to the road, reacted a second later, moving with great speed towards him. Terrified, Edryd ran as fast as he could. He didn’t want them to lose him again, for he still needed to pull them further away, but he certainly didn’t want them to catch up either.
The first hints of the morning sun were beginning to brighten the outlines of the imposing mountain peaks that dominated the mainland across the causeway. Edryd realized that this was where he was running, to the causeway. Draugar hated the living world and the light of the sun, but there was something they feared even more, and that was the ocean. He wasn’t sure it would stop them, but he might be safe if he could make it out onto the causeway. That is if it wasn’t submerged in the tide. If it was, he would have to try to swim across.
Keeping his footing while running in almost total darkness required all of the attention Edryd could spare. He would have to slow down, probably stop altogether, if he was going to divert the focus he needed to accurately determine where the draugar were now, but overcoming his fear, he forced himself to do so. The creatures had both stopped at the spot where he had briefly forced open his shroud, and were now following the traces his boots had left upon the road. Knowing that they would soon determine his route, Edryd began to run again. These creatures were faster than he was, and he would need to be far ahead of them before they figured out where he was going.
As he ran he could feel them drawing close. They had sped up their pursuit. Edryd did not dare stop again. There was no longer any cover and he could not risk slowing down. He had to reach the causeway. His body was healthy, recovered fully now from the illness that had weakened him, but he was running too hard. His lungs were burning and his muscles were protesting the desperate strain that was being placed upon them. Fear pushed him on. His enemies were close now, and the causeway was several hundred yards away.
If he could shape, he could do something to impede them, or even fight them off. He tried, feeling closer to being able to touch and hold the dark than he ever had before, but it slipped away. That was something new to him. He had never before been able to touch it at all. The dark slipping from his grasp was an achievement, one he might have celebrated at another time. Right now it was perfectly useless. Speed was the only thing that could save him.
Seawater splashed up around him as he ran out onto the causeway. The shallow depth of water put even more strain on his already overworked legs as he continued to run. He knew that he had to keep going, and get farther from his pursuers. Edryd did stop running once he reached what he estimated was the middle of the causeway. Catching his breath, he looked back toward the island of An Innis, believing he was now in the safest place possible. In the growing light he could see a tall draugr menacing the shoreline, stopped at the water’s edge. It had worked.
That is it turned out, it had worked in the way that ineffective half measures often do. Not all draugar had such an overpowering aversion to the sea. An Ældisir had followed him out onto the causeway, struggling not so much with the water, as she was with the wind. How he knew any of those things, Edryd wasn’t sure. He couldn’t physically see the ghostly creature at all, nor did he understand why he immediately thought of it as being female. He knew that she was very close to him now, and this left Edryd with a narrow set of options; he could give up, or he could run.
Chapter 20
Held in Darkness
Trying to catch up to the three thralls, Esivh Rhol transitioned his healthy young grey into a canter. In the process, he left behind a tired collection of guards struggling to keep pace on foot. His was the only horse on the island. It was an impractical thing in a confined and isolated place like An Innis. Esivh Rhol was on principle though, a fan of impractical things.
The Ard Ri was considerably less enthusiastic about the orders in response to which he had been forced to put the animal to use. The draugar had pressed him into service at this early hour as a guide. He had not been asked for help, it had been demanded of him, and this interfered with the illusion that he was something apart from and above everyone else.
The heir of both House Edorin in Nar Edor and the Elduryn fortune in Ossia, was however, an interesting individual, and Esivh Rhol saw the opportunities that lay before him. Capturing and controlling Aisen, the famous Blood Prince, would raise the prominence of and the respect with which the Ard Ri of An Innis was known throughout the world. That is provided the draugar did not immediately spirit Aisen off the island. It would also help if everyone ignored the part where such a famous rogue Sigil Corps captain had hidden himself here for three months, entirely unsuspected by Esivh Rhol.
When the Ard Ri caught up with the thralls, they were in the middle of a disagreement.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
One of the three men turned to answer as the other two continued to argue.
“Something is wrong,” he said to Esivh Rhol. “The Elduryn boy eluded them. He fled to the east, and our masters are pursuing.”
“I don’t see the problem, surely they will catch him.”
The three thralls exchanged worried looks, still mired in indecision.
“Áledhuir won’t be able to follow if Aisen makes it to the causeway,” the shortest of the three thralls pointed out. “Aodra will continue the pursuit, but she won’t be able to bring him back on her own. We need to provide support.”
“He lost them once, he could do so again and double back,” objected one of the other thralls, the one that had first spoken with Esivh Rhol when he approached. “We should wait and watch the road.”
“You three,” said the Ard Ri to the thralls. Ignorant of their names, and having no desire to learn them, this was the only way he could think of to address them. “Is that the woman’s place?” he asked once he had their attention. There wasn’t much light, but he thought he could make out the whitewashed infilling on the walls of the building. No one answered the question, it was the Ard Ri after all who was meant to be guiding all of them, but Esivh Rhol took their silence to mean that he was right. “I will tell you what we are going to do. We came out at this unseemly hour to see a hovel in the wilds. It wasn’t my idea, but we are nearly there now and I mean to see it.”
“But he isn’t there,” the small one argued. “There’s no point anymore.”
“There doesn’t need to be one,” Esivh Rhol replied. “We have to wait on your masters, whether they catch Lord Aisen or not. I would just a soon do said waiting indoors and out of the cold. We can decide what to do once we regroup together there.”
He didn’t wait for signs that he had any of their consent. He didn’t care much whether any of them followed either. To the extent to which he did care, he favored scenarios that involved parting ways with the unsettling trio of owned men. They were slaves. Slaves trained by Seoras in the practice of dark powers, but slaves nonetheless. They could have at least shown him a little respect.
Eithne was crying. It was
n’t something which the young girl did very often, but in this instance, Irial was having a hard time comforting her. For that matter, Irial could find very little to take comfort in herself. Cursing Edryd under her breath, Irial risked a quick look out the door. She saw nothing that could have been counted as the source of her protector’s concerns. Edryd had explained almost nothing before going out alone, and while it was clear that there was some sort of danger, he had not said who or what that danger was. It occurred to Irial that this was most likely because Edryd didn’t know himself, but she still resented that he had left her with no idea what to do.
“Is he going to be alright?” Eithne asked as Irial stepped back inside.
“Of course he will,” Irial replied, trying to sound reassuring as she wiped fresh tears from Eithne’s face.
Irial chose the best option she could think of. She barred the front door and decided to wait.
“Do you remember how to secure the doors to the bedrooms from the outside?” Irial asked.
Eithne nodded and scampered up a ladder to the loft above Irial’s room. Irial closed the door and Eithne began inserting bolts that secured the doors from above into holes bored through the top of the door frame and deep into the thick door. They repeated this process for Eithne’s room and then again for the room Edryd had been using.
“Grab your coat,” Irial said to Eithne. Irial began putting stores of food into a bag as Eithne grabbed both her little cloak and Irial’s warm shawl from where they hung near the door. Together they entered the room with the hidden tunnel entrance beneath the floor.
Irial and Eithne huddled in this last room, beneath a collection of drying plants which were strung over storage crates and pieces of unused furniture. They couldn’t secure this door in the same way that they had the others, but there was no need. They simply barred the door from the inside. To anyone that came upon them now it would look like the cottage was empty. Even if someone were to force their way in, she and Eithne could hide in the tunnel. In the worst case scenario they could escape down that tunnel and run. If nothing happened and no one came, they would wait until morning or until Edryd returned.
Urging Eithne to remain still, Irial began to listen. She felt neither alarm nor relief when she could hear nothing, just unbearable tension from not understanding what the threat was. Irial had seen fear in Edryd’s eyes, and if she was going to make a mistake it was not going to be a lack of caution. She was as prepared as she could be without knowing what was going to happen next. Had she known what was coming, she would have fled down the tunnel with Eithne right then and there.
Esivh Rhol was the first to arrive at the isolated hovel. Now that he was close enough to give it a close inspection, hovel wasn’t really the right word. The home was clean and well maintained, as well as relatively large and spacious. He was going to stick with calling it a hovel though. Compared to the luxury in which he insisted upon surrounding himself, it was an all but uninhabitable dwelling.
He decided to wait before making his presence known to whomever might be waiting inside. In part, Esivh Rhol did so because he was accustomed to having a servant on hand to announce him. It didn’t feel right doing it himself. If he had chosen to be honest with himself, which was something he never would have done, he would have admitted that he was also afraid of the woman who lived here. She had threatened him once and he had never forgotten it.
The thralls were all there a few moments later. Still, Esivh Rhol hesitated. He would have liked to wait for his men to catch up as well, but that was going to take several more minutes.
“Lord Esivh Rhol, Ard Ri of An Innis, demands the attentions of the inhabitants of this home,” he said in a loud clear voice after he noticed that the thralls had been impatiently waiting on him. This declaration sounded pompous even to Esivh Rhol, but he attributed this to the fact that he really should have had a servant there to do this. But there was nothing to be done about it. The thralls were not about to perform this function for him.
One of the thralls, either the short one or the one he had first spoken with, or it might just as easily have been the third thrall since in truth Esivh Rhol couldn’t really tell any of them apart, began to slowly work his way south around the perimeter of the home and disappeared around the corner. The thrall was reacting to something, but Esivh Rhol could not tell what. The other two thralls remained near him, off to one side of his horse.
“I demand that the owner of this blight of a hovel open up at once!” Esivh Rhol said in his most commanding voice. “If you refuse we shall force the door open.” His demand, backed up by the threat, was met with silence.
“Can you get through the door?” Esivh Rhol asked one of the thralls.
The thrall smiled in response, apparently confident that he could. The draugar servant struck the center of the door with what Esivh Rhol took to be a gloved fist. It was actually bare skin stained with dirt and grime that adhered to the coating which was left on his hands from tending to Áledhuir. The impact produced a loud crack and a shower of wooden splinters. The thrall looked disappointed as he surveyed the damage. Esivh Rhol was disappointed to. All the thrall had managed to do was to gouge a small depression into the center of the door. It was going to take more than this to break through.
The thrall made another attempt. This time he chose a more effective spot, close to the left hand side of the door. He struck with the flat of his open hand this time, and with more force than before. The section of door frame that held the bar support disintegrated and the wooden door swung in on protesting hinges. They were in.
Elek had partially circled the building, in an effort to sort out an anomalous distraction. He had felt someone or something inside that house when they approached. That someone or something had since moved below the surface, retreating there when Esivh Rhol had loudly proclaimed their presence. Elek couldn’t quite be sure what it was, as the feeling wasn’t very specific. It was a bit like his ability to know exactly where Áledhuir was at all times, or his ability to feel the other thralls, only this was much weaker.
If it were just an ordinary person, he wouldn’t have been able to notice, as he wasn’t nearly that skilled. It was mobile, whatever it was, and moving in a southerly direction below ground. That meant it was either a shaper, or if not that then some less gifted person moving an object of power. Elek didn’t imagine it would be Aisen. That would have required him to accept that the target of their pursuit had managed to completely fool his masters.
Making an estimate of the direction this person was taking, Elek tried to get ahead of them. In doing so, he stumbled across the hidden crevice that was the exit for the tunnel. It was still dark above the ground, but it was darker still inside the opening that led down into the earth.
Elek cupped his blackened hands together and summoned light after the fashion in which he had been taught by Aed Seoras. The blue white light produced in this manner, continually pulsed in an irregular rhythm and sparked violently in the air. Elek grinned. The constantly shifting shards of light looked intimidating and dangerous. Elek didn’t care that this effect was due to the fact that he was too weak a shaper to maintain a controlled light. He felt that this was so much better than what Seoras had actually taught him to do.
Intending to intercept whatever or whoever was trying to escape them, Elek slipped through the narrow opening. Preceded by the unstable floating illumination he had summoned, Elek worked his way along the tunnel.
Eithne sensed it first, but Irial soon saw the unnatural blue light reflecting off the tunnel walls. It would have been impossible to miss. They could either confront whatever it was, or head back. It was an easy decision. In a panic, Irial and Eithne hurried away from the light, which was quickly growing stronger as it drew closer. They escaped the approaching threat by returning to the barricaded storeroom. Irial and Eithne pulled the ladder up behind them to prevent anyone from following.
They were now in no less danger than before, for behind the door only a f
ew feet away, were Esivh Rhol and half a dozen other men making a fearful noise while trying to break into one of the other rooms. The first door, the one securing Irial’s room, took them several minutes, refusing to give way even under the force of repeated shaped impacts delivered by the thrall. But it couldn’t hold up forever, and when the door came apart, its secrets were revealed.
The next two rooms were breached without difficulty. Two of Esivh Rhol’s men went to work on the next door over, one of them up searching in the loft and removing the bolts that secured Eithne’s door, and the other making a rapid search of her room once he managed to gain entry. The thrall who had forced his way into the cottage, and also broken through the first room, headed across the open hall to Edryd’s room. Esivh Rhol felt a little alarmed as he watched the bolts rise up into the air in the loft above the door as the draugar servant looked on with focused concentration.
The other thrall was trying to do the same to the last door, but without success. Failing to realize that there were no bolts inserted into this door, and hence the futility of trying to locate and extricate them, he became frustrated and confused. Unable to understand what was different about this one, he pushed against the solid wood, and found resistance that confirmed that it was secured with a bar across the width of the door. He began to shape the dark, trying to seize hold of the obstruction and lift it clear, but it was secured in place.
“Seldur,” he called out to the other thrall, “could use your help over here. This one isn’t secured the way the others were.”