“I couldn’t sleep,” Eder said, by way of explanation.
“So we’re talking now, are we?” Kane replied, bitterly. “I thought you had demons to wrestle with or something.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Eder looked briefly down at the ground and bit his lip.
“I thought the praying was so you didn’t have to think.”
“Don’t be like that. You’re owed an apology.”
“Go on then.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, it’s just… it’s difficult.” Eder gestured to the brand on the side of his neck. “The Halls of Correction make everything about this harder. I just needed some time to think.”
“And what have you been thinking?”
Eder shifted his weight forwards, coming up onto his knees and leaning alarmingly closer to Kane.
“Put your sword down and I’ll show you,” he said, and Kane felt a rush of adrenaline surge through him, breathing life into all corners of his body.
“I thought you said-“ he began, determined to show he could resist just as well as Eder could, in case this was some kind of test.
Eder waved a hand. “Forget what I said. We can continue where we left off. Just put your sword down and come over here.”
“I don’t underst-“
Eder rolled his eyes and darted forwards, taking Kane’s face in his hands and pressing their lips together. Kane felt the heat deep in his belly roll forth, although it was a hungrier heat than before, threatening to consume him as it pulsed through his body. Eder’s tongue slid between his lips, and his mind went white with the overload of it all. His hand slipped on the hilt of his sword, sending it tumbling down onto Eder’s knees.
In an instant, the kiss was broken, and he heard a hiss of pain from Eder, who had leapt backwards, lightning fast.
Except it wasn’t Eder.
Crouched before him, balancing on her toes with one hand on the earth, was a creature unlike any he had ever seen before. Her face was humanlike, but strangely flat, with little in the way of a nose but high, sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hair was long and cascaded down in a mess of curls, interrupted only by the long, pointed ears which emerged from the sides of her head. She was beautiful, in a savage and inhuman way, dressed in assorted furs and skins, scraps of pretty patterns, none of which covered any substantial amount of skin. There was a necklace about her neck, of large, gaudy wooden beads, each carved with a different design, blurry and indistinct in the darkness. On her muscular thighs was a livid burn mark, which looked to be healing before Kane’s eyes.
He looked again at her face, and her eyes, oddly human in such alien features. Even though it was too dark to see any colour in them, he somehow knew they would be a mossy green, and it all clicked.
“Damn,” said Sophia. “That was going rather well, don’t you think?”
“You’re a Sidhe!” he exclaimed, regaining his grip on his sword and scrambling away from her.
Sophia’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “You’re half right,” she said. “Does that mean you don’t want to play anymore? I was quite enjoying myself.”
Without waiting for an answer, she shook herself like a dog and when she had finished, Eder was there in her place, in the same position.
“We can play like this if you’d like.” When she spoke it was in Eder’s voice, and Kane almost cried out. “I had hoped you’d find me fairer but if your tastes run this way I can cater to that too.”
“I don’t- what are you talking about?”
“Poor little soldier,” Sophia pouted at him with Eder’s face, mockingly. “All confused and scared. I can make it better for you, all you have to do is just-“ she licked her lips, “-lie back and let everything happen as I want it to.”
“Why me?”
The image of Eder disappeared, drifting away like mist to reveal the half-Sidhe underneath.
“Oh, I didn’t pick you specifically, no, you’re just a side dish,” she said, rising to her feet. “I think I’ll save you for later, though. I have more important things to attend to.”
She turned away from him, towards the tents, towards the real Eder. Kane scrambled to his feet in a panic, and raised his sword to attack, but found himself abruptly stopped in his tracks.
It took a few moments before he realised the Sidhe song had returned, this time a low, soothing melody from a single voice. Sophia turned to look over her shoulder, with a smirk, and blew a kiss to someone Kane couldn’t see. With immense effort, he turned his head a fraction to see the source of the song.
The singer turned out to be a human woman, scrawny and dressed like her mistress in bits and scraps, with dying flowers adorning her braided hair. She was not alone, flanking her were another eight men and women like her, from a tall, powerfully-built man with a crown of holly jammed tightly on his brow, to a girl who barely looked older than Kane, her ribs deeply shadowed and her bare breasts flat from malnourishment. They all looked to have been ill-treated; scars and fresh wounds speckled their exposed skin, and they all bore the same expression: a dreadful emptiness, their focus entirely on Sophia. Kane felt a stab of pity for the band of lost-looking Changelings.
“Do you like my pets, Kane?” Sophia asked. “Aren’t they pretty?”
Kane cranked his head round to her direction with difficulty. “What have you done to them?”
“Lots of things,” she replied gaily. “They’re Changelings, after all, that’s what they’re for. Perhaps they’re not so fair to you but to me they’re truly beautiful.”
“You’re a monster, Sophia.”
“Oh yes,” she said, and he was disturbed by the gleam in her eyes. “One of the terrible monsters you’ve heard stories about all your life.” She tilted her head, birdlike, to one side. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No,” Kane replied defiantly, knowing it in his heart for the lie it was.
“That’s good,” Sophia’s answering grin revealed sharp, pointed teeth. “You’ll learn eventually, and if there’s one thing I do enjoy it’s teaching fear.”
She resumed her progress towards the tents, and stopped before the three structures with her hands on her hips, seemingly mulling over the choice.
“Decisions, decisions,” she murmured, “Who do you think I should wake first? Your beloved Eder, perhaps? Or your best friend Terrell, now that would be fun. I know, I’ll save myself the bother of choice.”
She sang a brief melody of her own, a discordant counterpoint to the Changeling’s song, which freed Kane’s limbs for the merest of moments before trapping him again.
“What in the name of the gods-“ Terrell was the first to emerge, and upon seeing Sophia cursed and reached for his knife. He looked up and met her eyes, and Kane saw his face go slack. His whole body swayed forwards, an involuntary convulsion which overbalanced him onto his hands and knees. There was no indication of what passed between them in those few seconds, but after a short moment Terrell let out a strangled sound, which could have been a cry of ecstasy or a shout for help.
Sophia broke their locked gaze first. “Too easy,” she said.
“Foul she-demon!” Sampson had been awoken by Terrell’s shout, and hauled himself out of the tent in a whirlwind of blankets and rage.
“Ah, good evening, little would-be priest. I was wondering if they’d managed to lose you en route yet, but apparently you are as tenacious as you are irritating.”
Sampson spat on the floor, and he looked like he might fling himself at Sophia and strangle her with his tiny hands. “You heathen witch! You spied on us, abused our trust and stole our sacred Elixir! You defiler, you deceiver!”
“Your sacred Elixir, indeed,” Sophia scoffed. “Stolen magic from long ago does not a divine gift make.”
“Blasphemy!”
“Sampson, you’re boring,” she said, and waved her hand. Sampson’s outraged yelling ceased, and as hard as he tried, he could not make any sound come out. His face grew redder and redder with the effort.
“That’s what happened to Cahaya,” Kane was hit with the realisation all in one go. “That’s why she thought she was a mute.”
“Very good, Kane,” the half-Sidhe clapped her hands, and skipped away from the tents to approach him. “I’m surprised that sort of deductive reasoning hasn’t been beaten out of you in the Citadel. You and I are going to have a lot of fun together.”
So saying, she reached out to tousle his hair affectionately, until he felt her fist clench, pulling his head back.
A bowstring twanged, and an arrow grazed Sophia’s cheek, opening a line of darkness that trickled blood down her face. The skin surrounding it blistered, too rapidly to be anything but a reaction to the steel arrowhead. She let go of Kane to raise her hand to her face.
“If you lay a hand on him again I will send the next one through your eye,” Eder said, the effect of his words spoiled by the slight wobble on the last syllable.
“How very interesting,” Sophia licked her own blood from her fingertips and smiled. “The little rabbit grows claws. The things I can smell on you, Eder, all your delicious uncertainties. Even you don’t know what you’re going to do or discover next, don’t you find it exciting?”
Cahaya and Davena emerged from their tent cautiously, Davena rushing to attend to Sampson, who was coughing and spluttering in complete silence, as Cahaya stood with her hands folded before her. Her blind eyes had alighted on Sophia, probably by accident but Kane had a momentary feeling she was looking straight at her former chaperone.
“Cahaya, stay back,” Terrell said, hauling himself up from the floor.
Sophia looked from Terrell to Cahaya and back again, and rolled her eyes.
“Another one? Really? By earth and sky and moon, you’re unstoppable.”
“Why are you here, Sophia?” Cahaya asked, calmly and quietly.
“So abrupt and to the point, young Miss Cahaya,” Sophia said, and there was a tension in her voice which Kane had not heard before. “Are we not enjoying the social occasion?”
“No we are not, Sophia. What do you want with me?”
“Lots of things,” she replied, through clenched teeth. Sweat beaded on her brow.
“You set me on this path, for good or for ill, and now you come to disrupt our progress. What do you want?”
“Your suffering!” Sophia burst out, the words torn from her against her will. “As I have suffered so should you! Thrice you ask and so I answer!”
There was a ringing silence after she spoke, even the Changeling girl had stopped singing. Sophia drew herself up with immense dignity, her face flushed with colour.
“That’s enough. You’ll have no more out of me,” she said, and her voice was deadly quiet. She looked down at Kane, sighed, and stalked past him to her group of Changelings. The man with the holly crown stepped forwards, and she kissed him on the cheek, winding her hands into his hair. His eyelids fluttered closed, and his whole body leaned towards her. Kane looked away, feeling like he was witnessing an intimacy he shouldn’t be privy to.
“The game is ending,” she sighed, pressing her forehead to his, as the holly pricked at her skin.
“Your will, my lady?” he asked, in a deep, hollow voice.
“Kill them,” she said, in a voice like silk, and released him. A moment later, there was a shimmer in the air and she disappeared from sight. A few seconds later, Kane heard Sampson’s coughing resume, as though it had never been muted.
The Changelings drew various weapons of flint and stone, looking quite as menacing as steel in the shadows. They advanced, and Kane adjusted his grip on his sword, shifting his weight in preparation for the inevitable attack.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, as a last-ditch attempt at avoiding the fight. “We have no quarrel.”
They continued, closing the gap with deceptive speed. Kane waited, until his only choice was to strike or be struck, and parried the first stroke without thinking. He heard Eder’s bowstring, the young half-naked girl lurched backwards with an arrow in her shoulder, and the fight was on.
All of his training and the brief skirmish with the starving bandits had been poor preparation for this fight for his life. The Changelings fought with a wild energy, uncaring of their own lives in favour of ending his. Their jagged flint blades struck sparks from his sword, illuminating the darkness in brief flashes.
He eventually took down the lead Changeling with a vicious slice across the lower back, feeling his blade grate against bone, then spun to jab the stomach of the woman who had been singing. Her mouth opened in a perfect ‘o’ of surprise, her wide eyes the mirror of his. Some of the dead flower petals drifted down like snowflakes, dislodged by the violence of his thrust, and for a moment he could see every single one hanging around her, suspended, stopped in time. She frowned, confusion written into her features, as the flint blade fell from her hand. He wrenched the sword back as she fell to her knees, and found himself face to face with another Changeling.
It could have been Eder’s father, or his older brother. The shape of the chin was same, the cheekbones sloped towards the same delicate lips. The thrust Kane had been gearing for stalled, and he would have had his head struck from his shoulders by the Changeling’s flint knife had not a longsword come out of nowhere and embedded itself in the skull of his assailant. Kane cried out, an involuntary noise of shock and distaste.
“You can’t hold back, Kane, not this time,” Terrell bared his teeth at Kane, in what could have been a grin or a grimace.
Kane redoubled his efforts, eviscerating a wild woman dressed in stinking furs so viciously he almost separated her body in two. He turned, surveying the rest of the camp, and saw Terrell wrenching his sword out of another body, as Eder peered into the shadows, bow at the ready. Sampson was covered in blood, and Kane rushed over, concerned, stopping a few feet away when he saw the knife in the boy’s chubby hand, and the savage expression on his face. Whoever’s blood it was, it wasn’t Sampson’s.
No Changelings remained standing, but there was movement from one of the bodies. Kane drew his dagger from his belt and cautiously stepped over.
It was the holly-crowned man, immobile from the waist down, his lifeblood leaking into the ground.
“I told you we didn’t have to fight,” Kane sighed, and set the edge of his blade against the man’s throat.
“You did,” the man spoke, with an ‘unk’ sound as the iron burned his skin. “You did.”
Kane jerked his hand away, unprepared for a reasoned response. “You understood? And still you fought?”
“You don’t know…” the man groaned. “It was her. She. She does things… to your head. The things she showed me… the things… she takes away your will. No self left.” He grabbed for Kane’s wrist and, still digesting the information, the boy was too slow to dodge. “Just scraps. Me. Alvar son of Eadgar. Kill me. For the sake of the gods, give me your mercy. Kill me while I’m still me.”
“I’m sorry,” Kane said, shaking his head, and the man’s eyes grew wild.
“Take these, as payment, as sacrifice,” Alvar took hold of Kane’s free hand and pressed something into it, slippery with sweat and grime. Kane almost dropped it but Alvar closed his fingers tighter, crushing whatever it was into his fist. “Kill me and I’ll die human. Better to die me than live as hers. Please.”
“I hope you find peace,” Kane said, laying his knife against the man’s throat. The hilt of the knife was slippery in his hands, the weight of it huge and oppressive.
“Earth and sky bless you,” the man whispered as he closed his eyes, and Kane flinched as he cut. Blood fountained, soaking Kane’s surcoat, his shirt, his breeches, his exposed skin. It spattered on his face, and he could taste metal in his mouth.
After a long while, he stood up, spine straight, and wiped his knife on a dry patch of clothing.
“Give them the rites, bury them if you can,” he said, and his
voice was steady. “I want to be out of here by dawn.”
“Their bodies should be burned like the heathens they are,” Sampson spat, bitterly.
Kane advanced on him slowly, and loomed over the small boy. “Give them the full rites, Sampson, they were humans like us once, before that… that monster corrupted them.”
He spoke coldly, carefully, because he knew if he allowed himself to feel anything at all, if he took the lid off the pot of emotions bubbling inside him, then he would break, and he wasn’t sure what the consequences of breaking would be. With great care and dignity, he strode away from the camp, towards a clear area of scrub, and threw up everything in his stomach, retching until his throat was sore.
He could feel something digging into his hand, imprinting onto the skin of his palm, and he uncurled his fist to see what Alvar had given him.
It was a small wooden rose, crudely carved and even more crudely painted. It looked to be of the same make as the beads Sophia wore about her neck, but he couldn’t fathom why Alvar had been so keen to press it upon him in his last moments. He couldn’t think of anything at the moment, his mind whirling with images and flashes of things he couldn’t be sure were real or not.
He knelt, for what seemed like an age, as his legs went numb and the blood on his skin dried to a tight, uncomfortable crust, staring down at the rose in his hand. He could smell the metallic tang of blood, heavy around him, polluting the fresh, clean air of the Borderlands.
He heard the grass shift behind him, and didn’t move. If it was Sophia, returned to kill him or take him, he didn’t know if he had the will to stop it from happening, so he remained still, his knife stayed in its sheath.
A hesitant hand patted his shoulder.
“It’s all right, Kane. It’s over,” Eder said, softly, and Kane burst into tears.
14. Into the Flames
“Beware! Ye pious ones, beloved of the gods. Beware! The Sidhe come in dissembling guise to penetrate thy homestead, spirit thy children to their forsaken lair and take the place of thy beloved at thy bedside.”
The Child Guard Page 15