by Jesse Teller
Though Brock moved well and knew no fear, he was a child to Bounder. The gargoyle reached behind him, and with two great paws, gently pulled Brock off his body. He held him high before a hammer flew from the door with a whooshing sound, and a great explosion broke against Bounder’s hip. Stone shards flew. Jocelyn saw Flak walking in with a fistful of hammers.
Bounder tossed Brock at Flak. While the men tumbled and fought for their feet, the gargoyle swept her up in his arms and turned for the balcony. Flak tossed a hammer to Brock, and they closed.
She was facing the other way, and did not know how she saw them coming, but she did. They hammered onto Bounder, but he ignored them. He stepped outside and crouched.
Flak hit him in the head, knocking off a horn before Bounder flexed his legs and leapt.
They soared into the air and arced away, sailed over houses and great buildings. They flew over city blocks and streets, and came to rest on the ledge of a building outside the ghettos of the progetten people.
She fought to speak as Bounder looked down at her. “Do not speak, Blesstest. I am taking you home. Save your strength.”
Two more leaps and they were out of the town. They were in the trees outside and they were moving. Bounder could run faster than an arrow could fly. He turned his feet for the fog and sprinted.
*******
The wind rushed past her ears at a loud gush as Bounder ran. He did not tire. He did not slow. As the sun came up, he burst into the fog and kept moving. Within an hour, the sound of hoof beats, and Backkus was beside them.
“What happened to her?” the horse man asked. She could hear all his men running with him and wept at their devotion.
“I do not know. I only know she is sick. If the Blesstest cannot help her, then she is dead.” He hugged her closer and picked up his speed.
When the sun went down, the fighting started. Things of nightmares and myth crawled out of the ground or swooped out of the sky. Bounder shifted her in his arms then caught a monster out of the air. He squeezed, and she heard bones snapping and breaking. As a beast rose up before him, Bounder leapt and soared for a long time. He landed in front of the horse men, then kept running.
The beasts came and screamed and fought all night. A few times, Jocelyn was almost hit when an arrow from a horse man killed her attacker, or Bounder moved and smacked them to quick, brutal death. They came into the forest and Bounder leapt. They soared into the air and exploded out of the canopy of trees. They arced for miles before landing in the grasses. He leapt again and landed at a crouch atop the great face in the ground at the emerald’s center. He held her to his lips. She smelled his breath on her face, dusty and dry. He kissed her and set her on the gem. He leapt away, then she was surrounded by light.
She lifted into the air. When she got there, Bounder picked her up again and headed for The Vault. He hit the stairs and leapt them hundreds at a time as he made for the door.
When the gate was opened for them, he entered The Vault and ran to the Pit. She felt that old fear coming over her again. With a great leap, Bounder flew into the air to land on a platform of air and light. He dropped to his knees and, hugging her tight with one hand to his chest, crawled with the other and laid her at the feet of a dais. He slinked away and leapt to the ground, then she was alone with the Blesstest.
The girl touched her forehead and the pain eased. She waved a hand over her, and Jocelyn felt movement in her body again. She stood and walked to her goddess, dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the tiny child. Jocelyn sobbed. She sobbed for her loveless marriage. She sobbed for her loss of Steppen. She sobbed for the nation, that after seven years, still had not completely accepted her, and she sobbed for the death she suffered. Jocelyn wept and the Blesstest held her.
When the tears had dried up, she sat on the floor with the little girl and shook her head.
“How did I die?” she asked. “What killed me?”
“You are not dead, Jocelyn. You are away. You must find a reason to go back, a reason to embrace your life again.”
“Why do I need to embrace my life? I never lost it.”
“No, but you lost him,” the child said. “Your husband is not your own anymore.”
Jocelyn felt cold when she heard the words. She felt as if she had been told her dinner was old or her wine had soured. A trivial thing had happened, and she fought to care about her life, why she had lost it and how.
“How did I lose his love?”
“His queen has been born. You were his princess. Now is the time of the rise of the queen, and he will feel her approach. He will begin to pull away. He will grow restless and angry. He will learn to hate you and will seek ways to escape you.”
“Who is she?” Jocelyn said. “I know of no queen.”
“Her name is Roe Flurryfist. She will grow to be his heart. She was born yesterday, and she is coming. She is coming to save her nation. She is coming to take your child, and she is coming for her man. Nothing can stop her, and there is no hiding from her. In her path, there is nothing but blood and pain, and she will break you if she finds you with him. She is your death. She will show you no mercy.”
“Why?” Jocelyn asked. “Why does she hate me so? Helena did not have a child today. No Flurryfist will be coming from the mountain, and Flak is twenty-five. How could he love a woman born today? She is too young.”
“I speak no lies. They are beneath me.”
“She comes for my child? I do not have a child yet.” Jocelyn shook her head. “Why does she want what is mine?”
“Roe is elemental. She is of fire and stone. Of wood and wind. She will have what she wants, and there will be no denying her. She will slaughter you because you have tasted her man.”
“Well, I am dead now. She can do no harm to me.”
“You are not dead, and you have yet to give the world a hero,” the Blesstest said. “You cannot leave your world until you have.”
“I have tried to get pregnant. Flak has given me his seed and I cannot make it quicken.”
“The child cannot be born too early. The boy must come at the precise moment. His age will be important. He must be lined up with the events of the world just so,” Jocelyn’s goddess said.
“Then tell me when to mate with Flak and I will do it then. But do not ask me to take him in my body one more time for no reason,” Jocelyn said. “If he belongs to another, I will not get in her way.”
“It will be so.”
“How long do I have before she kills me?” Jocelyn said. “And how can Flak be happy with her if she has killed his first wife?”
“I do not have the answers to such questions,” the child said. “I cannot see your future, only the future of those around you.”
“Then I need to talk to Drelis,” Jocelyn said.
*******
They met at the hill where the vines began, and the Demontser and the Blesstest walked hand-in-hand into the forest they both loved so much.
“I hated you for a long time,” Drelis said. “I tried not to. It was not your fault. Not your fault I loved you enough to throw it all away for you. Not your fault I made the choice I did. But I blamed you anyway.”
“If I could take it back I would. I made a mess of things. I married the wrong man. He is mighty, much mightier than my first choice, but my Steppen would have made a hero of a son.”
“Your son cannot be a hero, Jocelyn, he must be a god,” Drelis said. “That is what you never understood. I was chosen for Blesstest not because I was a better person, but because I had no love.” She turned Jocelyn in the forest and pointed at a rock standing in the light of the sun. “I was that rock. Still am. Cold and unloving. You are like that tree.” She pointed to a tree with its roots in a brook. “You had a love. You came here with love in your heart for a man. You were to live a life after he was dead. Find your way through the sadness and the darkness. I had no love. I could have found the right man and learned to love him, chosen him as perfect and learned his ways. I was b
lank of love and could have loved anyone. You had Steppen. He is not right for birthing a god, so you were forced to choose a man you didn’t love, which led to your misery. And led to this Flurryfist storm of a woman claiming your man in blood.
“By denying your god when you were small, you damned yourself to a loveless life,” Drelis said. “Fear killed your future.”
“I was bleeding and dying when I saw that dark little boy. A man had come with a knife, and when I was but three, he had cut me. I was weak and dying. I was terrified already, and then the boy. I thought he was death.”
“A man had come to kill you?” Drelis said.
“Yes, a monster of a man, sick with magic, from the outland. He had stabbed me and carried me to my father. They jumped on him and beat him to death. They say his name was Herask.”
Drelis closed her eyes for a long time, thinking, but finally opened them and shook her head. “I have never heard this name.”
Drelis kissed Jocelyn’s hand and shook her head. “When I realized you would live a loveless life, I lost all my anger for you. When I realized that, I began to forgive you.” Drelis smiled at her. “How can I help?”
“You can help me find a way around it. Flak has to lose me before she gets there. I must be dead and gone of other circumstances before Roe comes to claim him. Otherwise, he will never be happy with her.”
“Let us find a way.”
They talked for days. Every aspect of Jocelyn’s life was discussed, and after a week, they found it. It was horrible and Jocelyn wept for weeks in the forest held by her friend. She knew she was a villain when the solution came to her, and she knew she had no choice but to carry out the darkness.
She kissed Drelis when the talk was over. They walked through the forest one more time before Jocelyn pointed to Bounder waiting at the edge of the fog.
“I must go,” she said, taking both of Drelis’s hands. She looked her in the eye and smiled. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Drelis said.
“I don’t know how to put it into motion,” Jocelyn said. “Our plan scares me.”
“I will handle the arrangements. I will reach out to Claymore and make sure it is done. He is an old lover of mine anyway,” Drelis said.
Jocelyn went to Bounder and they ran through the fog.
She went back to the camp where she had found Steppen so many years ago. He was sleeping by a fire, his beard wild, his hair streaked with white. She woke him up, and he sighed. He touched her hair and looked at her lips.
“Thank the Seven,” he said.
She kissed him feverishly, then he pulled her down on top of him.
She pulled her dress up over her head, and he gazed at her flesh. She felt him growing hard beneath her. Real need gripped her for the first time. He pulled her to him and licked her nipple.
She felt the flick of his tongue whip through her wild, stoking some primal hunger within her, never before awakened. She pulled his shirt off and stared at his smooth chest. She ran her fingers across his body, just then realizing Flak’s chest hair had always bothered her. Steppen was tanned and toned, and she wondered how he got so tan. He must train in the sun, bare-chested and proud. She clung to him, and he rolled her over onto his bedroll. He pulled his pants away and knelt above her, naked and hot.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She nodded and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him toward her. He was in her, and she wept.
He filled her up and took it all away again. For the first time in years, she was helpless, for the first time in her life unafraid. He slid into her over and again, and each time she gasped. She could not get used to the sensation of his body in hers. Could not get used to the feel of him, hard and pulsing in her.
Steppen was not as gifted a lover as Flak had been, and she realized he had never given himself to a woman before. She pulled him closer and let him have her. When he slowed, she wrapped her lean legs around him and pulled him back in.
She felt her orgasm building for a long time. She let it come, slowly let it calmly take over her entire body. She kissed his chest. She gripped his ass as she pulled him deeper inside her.
“I have only loved you ever in my life.”
She heard the words around her in the air, unaware if they had come from her or him. She was losing track of it all now, losing her grip on the world around her. She realized then she had never felt an orgasm before, not like this, not this powerful. Flak had brought her to climax, but never had it gripped her so.
When she came, she screamed out into the night. She heard sleeping beasts in the nearby forest roar and scurry. She collapsed back, staring up at him as he entered her over and over again. He looked at her as if to ask if she wanted him to stop, but she knew he could not, desire overtaking him. A man so long guided by discipline and honor was now losing all of it, now feeling it all slip away slowly or fly off in a rush.
She stroked his cheek. “More,” she said. “I want more.”
He gave and she took, and when she had come again, she rolled him on his back and rode his body like a wild animal, running free from her life and all she had ever known. She let his sex carry her away as she spurred it forward.
They rushed off together, and when he finally finished, she laid gently on his chest, and together they wept.
She slept in Steppen’s arms. When she woke up, he was gone. She never saw him again.
*******
She went home to Flak. She told him about her gift. About her goddess and her Bounder. She told him all of it except Steppen. Told him about Roe, told him about Peter. Told him everything except her terrible plan.
He cried and vowed he would never marry again if something happened to her. He swore on his honor and all the things she told him not to, but at the end of their four-day conversation, she wore him down. She had to prepare him to be lover to a queen. She had to get ready for the plan of the Demontser and the Blesstest to rock the citizens of Tergor to its foundation.
V
10 Years Before The Escape
Flak had sex with her only one time in the past ten years. She told him the day had come, that she was ready to have his giant of a son, and he had taken her into his bed again.
It had been short and fast, and afterwards, he left to drink with Whelter. They had been gone all that night and into the next day. When he came back, he had not spoken to her. The seed had quickened, and she had grown the boy in her belly.
Flak walked before the cart and horse. He walked with Erick Flurryfist, Betten the Steady, Brenden Beastscowl and Whelter. Jocelyn reached out to grab Helena’s hand as they rode, and she let out a slight groan. Her body clamped tight around the baby and the pain lasted for a minute. It had been the fourth such pain since the day before. Ellen told her many times it was far too early to worry, that the boy was not due for a month and this was simply distant rumblings, but Jocelyn knew better.
Ellen looked over her shoulder as she snapped the reins. “Faster?” she asked. They had all stopped second-guessing her. They knew she knew things they did not.
She shook her head. “We have time.”
Rachel shifted places with Helena and wrapped an arm around Jocelyn. The woman’s presence comforted her. Rachel had given birth to four children. At the age of thirty, Jocelyn was pregnant with her first child and knew she needed Rachel’s strength and experience. Rachel hugged Jocelyn tight and smiled at her. “We are going to be fine. The weather will hold and we will be back before any real snow hits us. You just relax. Do you need anything?”
Jocelyn shook her head and they kept riding.
They arrived at the gate and an overwhelming calmness came over Jocelyn. She had been told of the Gates of Teggegor as a child, but never expected to see them. When told the Redfist children were brought to the mountain for delivery, she felt the thrill, but nothing could have prepared her for the two snarling wolves of Gregor’s first-born son. They reached the gate and a group of men opened it for them. One of them
stepped out of the breech, and Helena squealed. She jumped from the wagon and ran to the man. They hugged, and she took him to talk with Erick.
“I think that is Trex,” Ellen said. “Helena has been talking about him for years. Would you like to meet him?” she asked.
“If I have to,” Jocelyn snapped.
Ellen pulled back and nodded. “You don’t have to. We will take you in and set up your tent.”
“Go meet the mighty Trex. You can see to me when you are done.”
Ellen stood looking at her. She wanted to say something, but Jocelyn shooed her away. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re gonna be more than fine,” Whelter said as he slid his arms under her and picked her up as if she were a child. She looked at his face and kept herself from spitting. He smelled of some kind of oil or meat. Whatever it was, it was unpleasant. He had a face she could not stand to look at, and she wondered how Rachel could stand to look up at it as he sexed her.
She let him carry her into the gate of the mountain, and she was taken to a tent already set up.
“Did they set this up for us?” she asked. It would not have surprised her. She was Fendis, and these men had to be excited about seeing her.
“No, Betten set it up. It only takes him a blink to set up a tent,” Flak said. “We will move the pillows in there, and you will be comfortable.”
Erick walked past with an armload of pillows, with Brenden following with blankets. She looked at Flak.
“Can he put me down, please?” Jocelyn said. He knew how much she loathed the man.
“No, no, no, I’m not putting you in this snow. I will just hold you until your tent is ready. It’s no trouble,” Whelter said.