Legends of the Exiles

by Jesse Teller

  He sat with her, and he ate. She nibbled on the food he brought, then threw most of it away when he left. Food was a thing she denied herself. He begged her to eat more, and she pretended to. She liked the way hunger made her feel. The emptiness of her stomach mimicked the emptiness of her life. She waited until he left before she climbed the ladder in the dark and wrote.

  I will never love a man like I do that one. I will never let a man love me as he does. My desire for Breathos is pure. I only want to be owned by him and own him myself. I will never have him, and he is all I want.

  It is freeing to want nothing I can ever have. Like falling from a great height or bleeding into a warm pool of water. When nothing matters, and you have to give up on everything, you feel untethered. You feel released, like an arrow that, once loosed, floats into the sky instead of racing its path. It has nothing to prove. No deed to accomplish. Nothing holds it accountable. You can ask nothing of it because it has already acted out of its character.

  Wanting nothing comes like that. No one knows how to communicate to the person who wants nothing. They can only stand and stare. It is so foreign to the way men and women think that it is nearly monstrous. So, if wanting nothing makes a monster out of me, then I will stay here. Stay locked in my lair. I will stay here and growl, tucked away in darkness until death is mine.

  But for now, I don’t even want death.

  So I wait.

  *******

  A few days later she heard a crack in her cave. She turned her head in the direction of the sound and saw a rock rolling slowly to a stop. She stood over it in a breath, noticing its perfect smoothness. She looked at the tree line and saw Breathos. He waved and waited. A hulking shadow stood just out of recognition in the forest behind him, and fear rose up within Ellen. She fought hard to swallow.

  “We have visitors in the village. One of them wanted to come and talk to you. This is me warning you he is here.”

  “I want to see no one right now, Breathos. Please do not be cross with me, but send him away. I want no visitors.”

  The shadow stepped forward, and the man stood nine feet tall. He had golden hair and a strong face. He was enormous in the way an idea was big. And she knew her king chief when she saw him. She took to her knees and bowed her head. As she looked at the ground, she fought back her anger.

  “Ellen Black Knuckle, I have come to treat with you. But I will not enter your home without your bidding. Tell me to go away and I will—”

  “Did you bring him?” She fought to keep her anger in check, but it was rising, bubbling up like lava, splashing up around her and bringing with it rage and a need for destruction.

  “I brought no one here with me. I was brought by Breathos. We three are alone,” Borlyn said.

  “If you brought him to this village, then I will leave it. I will take what supplies I can carry and break out into the wilderness. I want to share no hills with that monster.”

  Borlyn sat. He crossed his legs before him and laid his mighty hands on his knees. She looked up to see his face grave.

  “They are making the preparations for the feast.” His voice was strong and clarion like a horn. “If you must leave, then you can do so, but first I will hear the name of the one you hate so much.”

  “Ghean is my enemy. He is vile the way a snake is vile that creeps into the bed with you at night and waits for its moment. He is vile the way the smile of a murderer is vile.” As she fought back the tears, Borlyn waited. He said nothing and let her continue. “He destroyed my life. He stole my innocence, and he killed me.”

  When she could say no more, she stood. She walked away, deeper into her cave, and stared at the man outside it sitting in the sun. From the shadow of his bangs, she could see dark blue fire staring back at her.

  “I drove him from my side like a man will drive vermin,” Borlyn said. “I only wish I had known what he was doing before it was done. When I found out he was sexing young girls, I beat him within an inch of his life and sent him away. I warned him to get off of my mountain before I loosed my hounds on him. He is now either dead or gone. Either way, he is out of my reach. I cannot avenge you. I can only grant you the succor of absolution.”

  She wept. She felt the strength run from her legs, dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around her body, and sobbed.

  “I’m dead. He killed me. I am his victim, a girl slaughtered by his thrust.”

  “You call yourself Dead Girl. It has been told to me. Breathos has deigned to call you by this title, but I will not. I see life before me and will not humor it by calling it otherwise. You live. And while you live, hope remains. Only death destroys hope. No other villain in this world can do that. So, if you want me to see you as dead, then take your life. Otherwise, come before me. Sit, eat and drink, and let us spar, you and I. Words will be our weapons, and I will fight to defeat you and bend you to my will.”

  She fought her way to her feet and glared at him. “What will is that?”

  “I wish to take you from this place for a single night. To take you, when we are done talking, to the village, where you will sit with me while my brother takes his brand and becomes a man.”

  Ellen stepped closer, looking at him carefully.

  “Why would a Flurryfist travel this distance to take his brand here in the Stonefist village?”

  “This is my first attack,” Borlyn said. “I have swung at you with curiosity. Sit with me, and I will answer it. Sit with me, and our battle shall begin.”

  She picked up a stone. It was almost more than she could bear, but she could carry it. Breathos made to help her with it, but Borlyn called him back.

  “Breathos Steeltooth, you have made your introductions. I thank you for them. But what happens here today must be pure. She must be free to say what she wishes to me without the fear of your judgment. So, I beg of you, man, please leave us to our battle.”

  Breathos looked at her as she dropped the stone before Borlyn and shifted it slightly. She nodded at Breathos, and he turned. She sat on the rock, elevating herself a foot before she sat. She could not look Borlyn in the eye, but she was a foot closer to his height.

  Borlyn laughed. “Very good, Black Knuckle.”

  “Do not call me that. My father has shunned me. He has banished me from his side for the work of your man. So call me some other word of power. Pay me in this title what respect you would, and I will judge if I wish to continue or send you away.”

  “I call you Survivor. I call you Righteous Rage. I call you Warrior,” he said. “You choose what name I use from these, and I will call my respect for you well grounded.”

  “Righteous Rage then,” she said. “Answer for yourself. You have wronged me. I would have your response to this challenge.”

  “A spider comes from behind you,” Borlyn said. “It crawls out of your cave and under your rock. It slinks its way to me, sticking to its shadows, and while you talk of my guilt, it bites me. Are you to blame?”

  She paused. She looked him in the eye, then closed hers. He wanted her to give something away, to grant with this concession some sort of pardon for him.

  “I have not trained my spider to attack you,” Ellen said.

  “You have not, but it came from within your home. It came to you as a shadow, nothing more, and you did not see it before it bit me. If its bite is poisonous, and I lose my life, are you to be banished from the mountain for killing your king chief?”

  She was stepping into a hole here, but she did not see how. “If I did not train it to bite. If I did not throw it at you, or in some way wait for it to crawl for you. If it was not working under my command, then—” She froze. She knew she had lost this first bout.

  “Then how can the blame rest with you?” he said. “You can apologize. You can say it was not your intention for a thing from your home to kill me. You can strive to provide me with relief from the bite and medicine to heal me. But you cannot take responsibility for the bite or the spider. Nor can I.”

  “You surro
und yourself with criminals. You surround yourself with fiends,” she hissed. “And you wonder that people around you get hurt.”

  “All mankind is surrounded with villains. You cannot be called into question for growing up with your father, a villain who banishes a sore loved one from his care. If this man tries to kill me, can you be blamed for having known him your entire life?”

  She was losing too much ground. “Then if you are not responsible for those around you, what are you responsible for?” she asked.

  “Myself. My nation. Justice. Honor. I am bound by my seat to grant pardon where I see it fit and vengeance when I deem it necessary. I am responsible for caring for those in need and fighting the wars I see before me.”

  “You wish to fight wars?”

  “Every day.”

  “Then you have changed a bit from the man who once spoke of learning and art.”

  “Have I?”

  “You have if you are so driven to war.”

  “I fight a war right now. This is a just war, a battle I would not run from or shirk. This is my kind of war, a war for love, for peace, for tender hope. No, Righteous Rage, I fight a war even now. For your soul, for your love, for your future,” Borlyn said. “I see no need in conquest for the sake of glory, unless it be for the cause of inner peace, or vindication of self.”

  “You are maddening, Ragoth King Chief.”

  “I am no king chief,” Borlyn said.

  “Then what are you?”

  “I am a caretaker. The title I wear is king chief, but my duties are not for the reigning. My duty is safe passage to the hands of a true king chief,” Borlyn said. “A Redfist king chief. For that is my goal, to one day serve a Redfist in his mountain home. Until I can realize that dream, I can only fight wars of peace and love. I can save this place for him and his line, and I can send him those that need him most.”

  “Would you go to war for him then?” Ellen asked.

  “I would. And if I lie wounded on his battlefield, because he is just, he would come out and carry me off the field. But Righteous Rage, if he found me fit for fighting, and lying on the field for fear of the fight, then his anger would be great and justified.”

  “Wounded you would be,” she said. “Then why not lay the field and wait for death or saving?”

  “Wounded, a man or woman can still fight, can still turn a battlefield, can still win a day. Those that lie the field should either be unfit for battle or dead, not laying the ground calling themselves dead out of fear and pain.”

  She jumped to her feet. She pointed her finger in his face and screamed. “What do you know of it? You know not the battle I have fought. You know not the wounds I have taken. You know nothing of my life save what you can get with riddles and rumors. Come stand before me now, mighty chief, and accuse me of laying a field when my life is over and I have no future.”

  Borlyn stood. He folded his hands behind his back and stepped into her cave. She followed him before jumping in front of him and planting her feet.

  “My home! And you have no right to barge into it,” she snapped.

  “My mountain. And you are granted the rights by my might. Without it, the Furies would have you, the Bloodblades would own you. My mountain, this is my village. This is my land and this is my cave. This is all mine. I have granted you leave to live a life in my cave. But you have asked me to accuse you of laying a field. I imagine that challenge is still here for me to answer.”

  She snarled at her feet before looking back up at him. “Yes.”

  “If I am to make that accusation, I must see your life. I must see you living. Decide by what I see if you are pretending to be dead out of fear, or if you are indeed the Dead Girl you claim to be. Call off your challenge or step aside, Righteous Rage. Do you concede to my victory, or are you ready for my next attack?”

  She stepped aside.

  He stopped at the wall of her writing, and frowned at it. With a sudden blaze of panic, she felt he might gaze upon it for but an instant and know every secret she held, every thought she laid bare. She fought against fear before he turned to her and shook his head.

  “This is breathtaking.”

  She felt her pride rising, and shoved it back down.

  “How long did it take you to create this?”

  “It is a trifle.” She felt suddenly embarrassed of her written language and could not look at it.

  “You know better,” Borlyn said. “I will not let you lie in this contest. So, tell me how long it took you to create your own written language.”

  “A year,” she said. “I had the need for a person to talk to. But I had feelings that could not be expressed to any one person, not even Breathos.”

  “No man could understand your pain. No woman would admit to it. You had no one to confide in, save yourself,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So, your mind set about the puzzle. And this is what you came up with.”

  “It is.”

  “Who else has done this thing?” he asked, waving his enormous hand across the landscape of her wall.

  “Who else has done what thing?”

  “Who else, in your life, has puzzled out the mysteries of the written code?” Borlyn said. “Let’s make this simple. Just in this village. Who else in this village has done this thing?”

  “No one.”

  “Then, the mountain at large. Who has done this thing for the Fury nation?”

  “They have no written record I am aware of.”

  “The Bloodblades or the Fendis. The Fendis have mastered the mathematics necessary to create great structures, but can they write it down? Can they leave this knowledge to their citizens by recording it and storing it away?”

  “Not on this mountain. But in the outland, they have a written word.”

  “A new one?” Borlyn asked.

  “What could you mean?”

  “When did they last have a new one?” Borlyn asked. “The cities down there have been built for thousands of years. The histories read for tens of thousands. There are wizards down there who have lived over a hundred thousand years. So how often do you think they invented a new written word?”

  “I cannot possibly know that.”

  “When they do, they are forced to rewrite every document they can,” Borlyn said. “Can you imagine they wish to do that often?”

  “No.”

  “Then how long do you imagine it has been since a new written language has been created?” He looked back up at the wall. “A hundred years? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?”

  She had not thought about it like that.

  “How many people in this world at this moment have done this thing you have accomplished? Not nations or languages, but living people. How many living people on this planet have done this thing you have done?”

  “Not many?”

  “Is it beyond the rationale to say a few?”

  “No.”

  “Is it beyond possibility to say one, that one other living being has written their own language?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you were to stand before them, would you call them alive?” he asked. “Would you say a dead man or woman accomplished this thing you have done, or would you have to admit they lived? That they had a mind unrivaled by most? Would you have to say this is a feat only the living could accomplish?”

  She had no words.

  “Then I call you laying on the field of battle. I call you a coward who waits and pretends to be dead until the hardship of battle has passed,” Borlyn said. “You sit here and you wait for a reason to end your life. You wait while those below you live. You wait up here in too much pain to walk out into the world—not unable. Not unable to fight. I saw you yell at me. I saw the fire of indignation rise up to consume me. I see a mind unrivaled. I see a woman powerful and righteous.

  “You stand before me now and show no shame for the life you are living, but it is shameful,” he said.

  “I am not ashamed of t
he things that happened to me,” she snapped.

  “Nor should you be. But you should wallow in shame for this half-life you are living up here. If for no other reason than your fathers and grandfathers fought to give you this cave. You ought to be ashamed to defile it with your fear and your half-life.

  “You have lost your bout with me,” Borlyn said. “You cannot defend your inaction. You cannot defend your life of hate, whether it be hate of self or the world. You cannot give me one good reason why I ought to allow you to sulk in this cave and waste away to nothing.

  “My brother Ruggamon Flurryfist has come to the Stonefist tribe to be branded, so his first act as a man can be to claim the bride Terala of the Forge. So, as you have lost your bout with me, I command you to dress and accompany me to this feast. You will sit with me. You will eat with me. You will talk with my captains and my countrymen, and when you are done with the party, I will give you a command you cannot resist.

  “I will find your obedience in this task I send you on, or I will drive you from this mountain as a coward before a righteous master.”

  Ellen had nothing to say. She went to get dressed.

  *******

  The faces seemed warped and exaggerated as they wheeled by, all looking at her as she moved through the dance. Ellen witnessed the revelry but was not part of it, walking the dance but not dancing. Their eyes were filled with joy. Their mouths pulled back into painful, leering smiles until they saw her. Then every face faded to fear or judgment. Every eye glared, and as she moved through the dancing tribe, those in her wake stopped their revelry and stared.

  “Ellen, you have come,” Borlyn said. The whole of the village turned to him set high on a platform at a table of honor. “I hoped you would. I have saved your place beside me.” He motioned to the chair sitting to his left, and she could only look at the distance as if it were miles away and see the sea of disapproving faces and marked confusion. To the left of her chair sat Breathos, his eyes fixed directly on her. She found within a breath that she could not see anyone else. She kept her eye locked to the Steeltooth patron and walked as if on a cloud toward him.