The Bond of Blood

by Kody Boye

  “It was Odin,” Miko said. “He asked me to take you as my assistant and rescue you from the monastery.”

  Parfour broke into tears.

  With little time to react, Odin opened his arms and accepted the boy into his embrace.

  “'Thank you,” Parfour sobbed, burying his face in Odin’s neck. “Thank you, Odin—thank you.”

  “You don’t need to thank me,” Odin whispered, setting his hands on the young man’s back. “I’ve wanted to save you since we got on the island.”

  The boy screamed.

  A murder of crows exploded from the trees.

  It took all of Miko’s will to pull the boy from Odin’s grasp and cast him into a deep sleep.

  “What the hell did they do to him?” Nova asked. “It’s like they threw him into a ring and told everyone to have at it.”

  “That’s probably what they did,” Odin sighed. He looked up just in time to see Miko set the boy on Nova’s bedroll, but said nothing in regard to the young man’s ordeal. Instead, he took a deep breath, expelled it, then reached up to run a hand through his hair, all the more troubled at their current ordeal. “I still can’t believe he screamed when I told him that. My ears are still ringing.”

  “Anger is expressed in many ways,” Miko said, frowning when he brushed a piece of hair from the boy’s face. “Some hurt one another, others scream and cry until their purpose has been met. It’s only natural that he would react this way. He’s been abused for months, maybe even years. Be thankful he didn’t do something more drastic.”

  “He’s going to be okay though, right, sir?”

  “He’ll be fine. The only thing I’m worried about is his eye.”

  “Is there anything we can do for it?” Nova frowned.

  “As it stands, no—I don’t think so. We’d need cold water if we were to bring the swelling down, but the only way to get that would be from the ocean, which wouldn’t work anyway because the salt may harm his eyes. Even if we did go and get it, we’d have to deal with purifying it… which would require a fire… and might draw the monks.”

  “You don’t think they’d try anything after what we pulled, do you?”

  “I highly doubt it, but there’s no reason to put ourselves in danger, and especially not Parfour. As far as both I and the monks are concerned, we’re nowhere near the beach, nor do we intend to be.”

  “What happens when the Anabelle comes?” Odin asked. “What’ll we do then?”

  “The monks would be pressed to attack us while there’s a crew of fishermen nearby. Beal’s pride’s been hurt enough—he’ll leave us be when the boat comes.”

  “And until then?” Nova muttered.

  “Until then,” the Elf sighed, “We can do nothing but wait.”

  No one said anything.

  Nearby, bathed in the glory of night and the light of the almost-full moon, Parfour shivered.

  In the back of his mind, Odin knew the boy dreamed of nightmares long past.

  They watched the beach through the night.

  Barely able to sleep and startled at each and every movement, Odin lay awake, watching the slow rise and fall of Parfour’s chest while listening to the low wheeze of Nova’s breath. Behind him, the older man readjusted his position and pressed his chest against Odin’s back, likely trying to reap warmth from his body.

  On a night without fire and nothing to guide them, Odin shivered, thankful for his friend’s closeness.

  Shrouded in darkness, each shadow became a movement, each snap of a twig the whisper of the wind a man watching from the darkness. Arms poised with weapons, faces lit in sneers, it would take but a moment for them to jump from the shadows and sink their blades into their backs, cutting from the world lives that had horribly wronged them so. It would be glorious, Odin knew, for people who robbed from others were horribly-wrong, even when it seemed their rights were just.

  Forcing the image from his mind, Odin closed his eyes.

  He opened them almost immediately.

  Shifting, Miko raised his head, black hood a harrowing visage in the darkness. “You can’t sleep,” the Elf mumbled, clearing his throat to smooth his raspy voice. “Can you?”

  Odin said nothing.

  It doesn’t matter if it’s dark, his conscience chastised. He can still see you.

  “No, sir,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

  Miko raised an arm, beckoning him forward.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’ll wake Nova.”

  “No you won’t. Come, Odin.”

  He’s not going to let you get away with this. He already knows you’re bothered by what’s going on.

  Careful not to wake his bedmate, Odin squirmed out of Nova’s grasp, grimacing when the older man mumbled something under his breath. Odin froze—half in, half-out of the bedroll—expecting the man to wake up.

  When Nova muttered nothing more than gibberish, Odin sighed and crawled to his knight master’s side and glanced over at Parfour.

  “Is he all right?” Odin asked, drawing closer when Miko threw part of his cloak behind him.

  “He’ll be fine, Odin—you need not worry.”

  “What about his eye though?”

  “His eye,” the Elf sighed, “is not likely to recover. As sad as it is to say, he’ll most likely be blind the next time he opens that eye.”

  “The bastards.”

  “Do not anger yourself with such trivial things, my friend. An eye is an eye, a tooth a tooth, just as a life is a life.”

  “But he’s only fifteen, sir. There’s nothing you can do for him?”

  “Restoring something that is lost requires creating something new. Sure—his eye may be restored by natural or unnatural means, but just because something can be reborn doesn’t mean it should.”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you aware of what happened to the darker of my kind, Odin?”

  “Sure,” he said. “They were cursed because they were using magic they weren’t supposed to.”

  “They were cursed because they were trying to bring things back to life,” Miko nodded. “First it was innocent—trying to revive animals, plants, their familiars. But then… it became so much more complicated. When they learned how to use that dark book, Odin, they stopped reviving animals and turned to people. And when that happened—”

  “What, sir?”

  “When that happened, they didn’t bring back the people that died. They brought back parts of them, sure, but they didn’t bring them back.”

  “Them?”

  “Their souls, Odin. Their beautiful, eternal souls would not come back once freed from their mortal prison.”

  A hand crept up his back.

  Their beautiful, it whispered, eternal souls.

  The dead thing atop his shoulder stroked his cheeks, brought tears to his eyes, shakes to his chest—its rotting nails brushed the curves of his face and traced the lines of his lips, battling them with maggot-infested digits until they parted, allowing fingers, then passage for an entire appendage.

  When his mouth was fully open, a grisly arm slid into his stomach.

  Maggots traced his esophagus.

  Flies buzzed in his ears.

  Larvae squirmed beneath his tongue.

  His insides in knots, Odin swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. “The,” he said. Taking a deep breath, he blinked, shaking nervous tears from his eyes as they spilled down his face.

  “Go on,” Miko said. “It’s all right.”

  “The priests say you go to your family’s god when you die. Is that… I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine, Odin.”

  “Is that what you meant when their souls wouldn’t return to their body? Was it because they really had souls?”

  “You are very spiritually troubled. There is no denying that.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not chastising you for your lack of knowledge, because it isn’t your fault. I can’t place the blame on your father either, nor the woman who help
ed raise you. Humans can’t understand some things unless it is explained to them. The soul, though… our pure, beautiful, mortal souls, they do continue on.”

  “Is it true that Elves turn into Sprites when they die?”

  “I’m not of the authority to answer them. Were you to ask my personal opinion though, I would say that it isn’t unlikely. I’ve seen such creatures before.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Abroen. I’ve already told you this before, Odin, but there are things around us that no one will ever understand. We will most likely never know why the sky is the color it is or what the stars mean. We will probably never know what lurks at the bottom of the ocean, watching us with calm, mellow eyes. We will probably never know why we became the way we did or why we become the way we are. The most I can offer is a free mind and an unclouded opinion. I’ve never claimed I was right, nor have I ever claimed I wasn’t wrong. If I have, I apologize, for that wasn’t my intention.”

  “Sir—”

  “Yes, Odin?”

  “My question… Parfour’s eye couldn’t be healed naturally, without using dark magic?”

  “If such a thing is possible, I do not know, nor would I want to. The things we know we eventually use. Had I the knowledge of the dead and how to bring them back, I might not be able to keep myself from using it.”

  “Things are better left unknown then.”

  “Yes, my friend. They are.”

  The boat sailed in almost three days later. Breathtaking in structure and grand in appearance, it rode the waves and coasted the sandbars with the utmost of ease, dwarfing everything in the immediate area with its presence. Like a giant, lumbering warship set loose from the greatest country in the world, it spread its sails as a swan would its wings, carelessly gliding the current as it prepared to dock at its final destination.

  Larger than anything Odin had ever seen, he shivered, drawing his arms to his chest as a gust skirted through the trees.

  This isn’t the Annabelle, he thought. It can’t be. It didn’t have three sails a year ago. How could it? There’s no way for them to control the sails. It…

  Before he could finish, the boat shifted.

  Cast in the sun’s glory, the figurehead that could only be the Lady Annabelle looked upon him with her pale eyes. Clutched within her grasp was a flag, bearing the sign of the sea and everything it could be.

  It’s… her. It’s really her.

  “Sir!” Odin cried. “Look!”

  He had no need to point.

  The moment Miko turned from his place at Parfour’s side, the realization that they were finally going home struck Odin harder than anything in his life ever had.

  “Looks like we’re going home,” Nova said, pushing himself to his feet. “Miko? The boy?”

  Setting a hand over Parfour’s face, Miko mumbled something under his breath, then cast his wrist in a smooth, circular motion.

  Pink fire exploded from his palm.

  Gasping, Parfour shot upright and into Miko’s arms. “Wha-What-Where ah-ah-I ah-I’m not—”

  “It’s all right, Parfour. You’re safe. You’re with us, remember?”

  The boy said nothing. From his exact vantage point, he would be able to see directly into the Elf’s hood without a shroud of censorship.

  “It’s all right,” Odin said, stepping forward and falling to his knees beside his friend. “He’s taken care of us for all these years. He’s not going to hurt you.”

  “He’s an Elf!” the boy cried.

  “Yes, Parfour,” Miko smiled. “I am.”

  “But I thought the king said—”

  “If your king is truly ignorant enough to believe that Elves haven’t set foot into his lands since the Great Dispute, I pray to the gods to help him.”

  “They’re shouting for us,” Nova said. “Are you guys ready?”

  Odin looked from Nova, to Miko, then finally Parfour.

  Eye swollen but free of despair, the boy smiled and nodded. “I’m ready,” he said.

  Odin nodded. Without a doubt in his mind, he stood, buckled his sword at his side, then reached down and slung his pack over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  “It’s about bloody time!” Jerdai called out, grinning like a fool as they made their way toward the beach. “I see there’s four of you now!”

  “Yes!” Miko called back. “There is!”

  Odin grimaced. Casting a glance at the end of the beach, he watched the monks’ home with wary eyes as his knight master and the captain of the Annabelle conversed. The activity wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. With a ship nearly the size of the monastery sitting stagnant in their waters and two men loudly engaging in dialogue on their beach, it’d be surprising if someone didn’t know what was going on.

  Quivering at his side, Parfour tripped and stumbled back into Odin.

  “It’s all right,” Odin whispered, gently pushing the boy away from his chest. “Is your eye okay? Did you hurt it?”

  “No,” Parfour mumbled. “It’s fine.”

  “No one is going to hurt you, Parfour. I would die before I let someone hurt you again.”

  “Really, Odin?”

  “Really.”

  The young man burst into tears.

  Bringing him into a one-armed embrace, Odin looked up just in time to see two familiar faces peeking over the railing. Though he offered no words of greeting, he raised his hand to acknowledge the mage brothers’ presence. They, too, responded with a wave, though the look on their faces was evidence enough that they knew of the activity happening on the island.

  Looking at his knight master, Odin took a deep breath, then split away from Parfour, who quickly wandered to Nova’s side in his absence.

  “Sir,” Odin whispered, setting a hand on the Elf’s cloaked arm. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Odin, as is Jerdai.”

  “What’s wrong then? Why aren’t we getting on?”

  “Because in his current position, Jerdai is trespassing if he lowers the ramp onto the beach.”

  “Then how the hell are we supposed to get on the boat?”

  “Jerdai plans to draw the ship away from the island, then have the brothers send a smaller boat via magical means.”

  “But there’s four of us, sir. How would we—”

  “One of us will have to wait.”

  The quiet chatter amidst both the group and the men on the boat ceased. Parfour—whom, up until that moment, had remained fairly level-headed—let out a brief sob.

  “We can’t just climb up the ropes if they toss them down?” Odin asked. “That’s not trespassing. It can’t be.”

  “The way the treaties work, any physical contact from anything on a boat onto an island can be considered trespassing regardless of its bearing on the island itself. Were Jerdai to toss a rope down for the four of us to climb up, it would be considered an inappropriate act—which, from a court’s point of view, can be just as bad as trespassing.”

  “But Parfour—”

  “If a boy is leaving the care of someone who’s been deemed his legal guardian without permission, that’s illegal. If we’re assisting a boy in escaping his legal guardian, that’s kidnapping, which is also very illegal. No one would believe his story if he landed behind bars first.”

  “But we’re already—”

  “Better to risk doing one thing over another.”

  Dammit.

  Cursing, Odin turned to look at Parfour, then at Nova, who simply shrugged and let out a troubled exhale. “Well,” the older man said, sliding an arm around Parfour’s shoulders, “we’ll do what we have to.”

  “You can’t lift him up with your magic?” Odin whispered.

  “If the monks are watching,” the Elf said, “They might have reason to follow us to the mainland and say that I was selling the boy to a group of pirates.”

  The weight of the world on his shoulders and a flame of hate burning in his chest, Odin growled, b
alled a hand into his fist, then nodded, tempting his anger even more by forcing himself to quell the fireball in his heart. “Tell them to send a boat, sir. I promised Parfour no one would hurt him.”

  “Send a boat!” the Elf called.

  Jerdai nodded.

  Lifting their hands, the mage brothers sparked magic from the ether and began pushing the boat away from the beach.

  Moaning and groaning, the ship pulled away, scarring the beach with its presence.

  The Lady Annabelle stared at them.

  Whether it was a trick of the light or something else entirely, Odin thought he saw a tear slide down her face as she slowly faded into the distance.

  “Parfour,” Odin said, setting his hands on the boy’s trembling shoulders. “I want you to listen to me, all right?”

  “Uh… uh huh. Yeah. Ah-I’m luh-listening.”

  “They can’t pick us up here because they’d be in violation of the land ownership treaty. They can’t even throw a rope over the side for us to climb because it might be considered an act of aggression.”

  “But how could they be truh-trespassing? They let you on the island. They—”

  “Just because they let us on the island doesn’t mean they’ll let us off,” Miko said, raising a hand to block the mid-afternoon sun. He watched the boat fade into the distance, the lower half of his face twisting into a grimace. “It won’t be much longer now.”

  “Until what, suh-sir?”

  “Until the mages send a smaller boat to the island.”

  “But I thought—”

  “As far as anyone would be considered,” the Elf said, “the boat ‘simply floated onto the beach.’ If we’re leaving of our own free will in an unmanned vessel, they can’t say we were doing anything suspicious, nor can they say we boarded the ship on their land, since we’ll be boarding the Annabelle at sea.”

  “You’re technically kidnapping me,” the boy mumbled, “aren’t you?”

  “Technically, yes. Metaphorically? No. We’re not. Under the current circumstances, I highly doubt a judge or man of honor would see our taking you off the island as kidnapping.”

  “I guess.” Sighing, Parfour turned his head down and drew back against Odin, only briefly looking up to watch the boat fade into the distance. “Odin,” the young man whispered. “Can I ask you something?”