by Kim Fedyk
This was unbelievable news, but for some reason, maybe it was the sincere look in Aedan’s eyes, she believed that he was telling her the truth. Arleth looked closely at the man sitting in front of her. He did look a lot like her she had to admit. They both had the same dark hair, olive skin and violet eyes. She had never before seen anyone else who had the same violet eyes that she had. When a young Arleth had questioned this, Neve had always told her that her violet eyes were unique. Only a few people in the universe Neve said, would have violet eyes like she had. Arleth had smiled at this and had felt very special.
It wasn’t just Aedan’s physical features that resembled her own though. It was his whole persona. She couldn’t explain it but she felt drawn to this man, connected to him in some way. Looking at him crouching in front of her, smiling gently at her when she caught his eye, she knew that he was her brother.
But if Aedan Amara was her brother that meant that she was an Amara too?
“So my real name is Arleth Amara?” She said it carefully, feeling out how it sounded.
“Yes,” said Aedan smiling. “You are Arleth Amara. You come from a long line of kings and queens who have ruled Oherra going back many generations.”
Arleth had a million and one questions she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t given a chance to ask even one more.
“I hate to interrupt,” Selene said with sincerity “But don’t you think we should get out of the hall. I mean you just escaped from the dungeons Aedan and both of us are not exactly welcome guests here.”
“Right,” said Aedan. Thankfully, Arleth seemed to believe him and Selene was right, they couldn’t risk being in such an open place for long. He would answer the many questions he was sure Arleth had, and tell her more about their past when they had reached a safer place.
“Are you ok to stand?” Selene asked, reaching out her hand to Arleth.
Arleth wasn’t sure, so she grabbed on to the woman’s hand for extra support. “Thank you.... Selene?” That was the name she thought Aedan had called her.
Selene nodded at her, “Yes, I’m Selene Ayan. Come on we have to get going.” Selene turned and started to walk away down the hall, Aedan was right behind her.
“Wait!” Arleth called as loudly as she dared and ran after them a few steps. They stopped walking and turned back around to face her. “I have to get my friend. He is a prisoner in that room right there.” She gestured in a general backwards motion. “I can’t leave him behind.”
“Your friend...?” Selene said slowly.
“Yes, Zeeshan. He’s a Talywag from Occa....or at least he was...”Arleth paused for a moment thinking. “Now though, I don’t know if he would still be considered a Talywag... But anyway he is chained up in that room right back there. If we don’t save him he will die here.”
When Arleth mentioned that her friend was a Talywag, both Aedan and Selene stared at each other in worry. What was a Talywag doing locked up in Iridian Castle? Absalom and Rogan had never had an interest in them before, what did they want with them now?
“Ok let’s go rescue him.” Selene said as she started walking back towards Arleth, “Take us to where he is.”
“Wait, the chains are very strong. With both of our strengths pulling on them, we couldn’t get him free. We will need something to break them with. I was going to get a knife from the kitchen...” Arleth trailed off – Selene had just walked right past her with a complete disregard for Arleth’s warning.
Aedan put a hand on Arleth’s shoulder and smiling, turned her around. “Don’t worry, chains won’t stop Selene.”
“No but they are really strong.” Arleth protested.
Aedan smiled even wider, “Just wait and see.” With his hand still on her shoulder, he pushed her gently down the hall.
Up ahead, Selene stopped walking, waiting for them to catch up. “How far is the room?” Selene asked, when they had caught up to her.
“It’s only a few more feet, just around that bend,” Arleth said, still doubtful that this slender woman would be able to free Zeeshan without a weapon of some kind.
Selene nodded and continued down the hall at a steady, but cautious pace. After a few seconds, she abruptly stopped. With a small gasp, she put her hand up to cover her nose and mouth. She had just reached the door to the room, which Arleth in her haste to find something to free Zeeshan with, had left slightly open. The horrid stench of the room had been allowed to drift out into the hall, catching Selene off guard.
Arleth, coming up beside her quickly realized that the smell did not lessen with familiarity. She too let out a small gasp and covered her nose with her hands. How did I spend so long in that room? Arleth thought to herself.
Looking up into Selene’s face, Arleth was surprised to see that her expression was not one of complete disgust. Instead, it was mingled with a profound sadness.
“Aedan...” Selene said gently, turning her face to look at him. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“I know,” Aedan replied coming over to stand by Selene’s side. He grabbed one of her slender hands and held it in both of his. “I remember.”
Arleth was confused. How could they have such a reaction to the smell of a room they hadn’t even gone inside yet?
“What’s going on?” She asked.
Selene and Aedan both turned at the same time to look at her. But it was Aedan who spoke first.
“10 years ago, Selene, I and a small group of our companions travelled north. We were about your age then and we had heard chilling tales that the armies of Rogan and Absalom had wiped out the five northern cities in less than 3 weeks time. It is referred to now as the Northern Annihilation. It was an unprecedented, horrific attack and our mentor, Bain, insisted that we go to see the destruction. Among other things, he wanted us to witness first-hand the monsters we were fighting against. What we saw will forever be burned in each of our minds.... Every last city was burned to the ground, not a single person left alive. Hundreds of bodies lay littered on the ground, lying where they had been slaughtered. No one had survived to bury their fallen comrades, the sun beating down on them. And the crows...” Aedan trailed off, lost for a moment in his horrendous memories. “But what really struck us was the smell, this smell. And when we realized what it came from...”
“We went to each of the five cities, and at each one the destruction, the smell, everything was the same.” Selene continued the story where Aedan left off. “When we had reached the last city, we could no longer ignore the feeling that we were being followed. I cast out a few spells and within minutes we had located a small band of about one hundred ragged, men, women and children. They were the few, and only, survivors that had managed to escape the slaughter. Although the survivors were from all five of the cities, their stories were identical. Rogan hadn’t killed all of the citizens after all, but what he did to them... might even be worse.” Selene paused for a second and wiped a single tear from her cheek. She swallowed audibly and then continued in a steady voice. “Rogan rounded up all the men, women and children still alive, and taking them outside the cities’ limits, enchanted them all.”
There was that word again, Arleth thought – enchant. But what did it mean? Rogan had wanted to cast some sort of enchantment on her.
“What does that mean, ‘enchanted them all,’” Arleth asked.
“It’s a spell, a very evil dark magic that corrupts the user. It is something that I would never try. I am afraid it has become somewhat of Rogan’s speciality, his trademark so to say. It takes the very soul out of a person and makes it something different. It decays or rots the soul, causing the horrific but characteristic stench we now smell.” Selene paused for a moment, thinking. She cast around for a way to explain the spell in a simple way so that Arleth, someone who had no experience with magic, could understand. Having found something she continued slowly. “The outward appearance of the person is left, so they look completely normal. But inside they are nothing of what they were before. An enchanted person is just
an empty shell filled with the instructions put into them at the time of enchantment. For all intents and purposes they are no longer alive.”
Arleth shivered involuntarily. So this was what Rogan was planning to do to her! She suddenly felt very lucky that she had run into Neve’s brother when she had. If she hadn’t, she would have had no clue about this room, wouldn’t have been down here in the first place, and she would have been all too easy for Rogan to find and enchant.
“Rogan enchanted the men to be his soldiers and the women and children to be his servants.” Aedan explained. “Absalom has an army of men who would never fight for him if they were themselves, and a house of servants ‘designed’ to follow his every whim. We don’t know if there is anything left in them of the person they used to be. If they know somewhere deep in their mind what they are doing, but they can’t control their actions.”
Arleth gasped in horror and suddenly she remembered the servant girl who had given her the tour when she had first arrived in Oherra. “The servants are all enchanted you said?”
“Yes,” Selene and Aedan said together.
Arleth nodded sadly. “I thought they were just weird, not knowing their own names, not talking to me or each other. But they weren’t... they were.... I feel terrible for thinking such mean things about them. I had no idea.”
Selene smiled at her gently and put her arm around Arleth’s shoulders. “Don’t feel bad my dear. You had no idea, how could you know what they were?”
Selene drew away from her suddenly and held her at arm’s length. “Arleth, you said that the Talywag in this room is your friend?”
“Yes,” Arleth said slowly.
“So you were talking to him then.”
Arleth nodded again, what was Selene getting at?
Selene turned and looked at Aedan, but when she spoke it was more to herself. “This means that her friend is not enchanted. At least not fully. But Rogan has perfected his enchantment spells; he would never get them wrong, not now. And that smell, it is the rotting of a soul destruction, I am sure of it”
“Greken,” Aedan said suddenly.
Arleth looked around, expecting to see a Greken rushing towards them, but she didn’t see any movement in either direction down the hall. What was Aedan saying?
But Selene seemed to know exactly, “Oh my god,” she breathed, her eyes opened wide in horror. “You’re right.”
What was he right about? Arleth thought confusedly. There was no Greken around them.
“He is doing experimental combinations again. That must be it.” Selene turned to look at Arleth.
“Arleth, your friend... did he mention anything about an experiment or magic being done to him? Or maybe that he was different now in some way than he was before?”
“Yes,” Arleth replied immediately, remembering all too clearly, what Zeeshan had told her. She recounted the story that Zeeshan had told her of his transformation. When she was finished, Aedan and Selene looked at each other in worry.
“So he is doing the experiments again.” Selene said in affirmation. “But the last time he did those was when he made the Grekens and that was almost five years ago. Remember what our spy Jine had overheard then? The combinations had proven a lot more demanding on Rogan’s power than the straight enchantments. He hadn’t created much more than 50 of them, but he had been severely weakened for almost a full year afterwards. He wasn’t even able to perform simple spells for months. After causing such a heavy toll on his abilities, and no news of any new attempts, we always just assumed Rogan had given up.”
“Tobin was right to be so worried about this chamber.” Aedan replied. “He thought something was happening here that was different. And he was right.” He felt somewhat responsible. Thinking Rogan had given up had seemed like such an obvious assumption at the time. But now, he wondered, would this oversight prove deadly? If they hadn’t assumed Rogan had given up, could they have prevented this new wave of experiments?
As if reading his mind, Selene put her hand on his left shoulder and squeezed gently. “We can’t know everything Aedan. And even if we did, we wouldn’t have been able to prevent Rogan from becoming stronger.” And then in a louder voice, “But he has become stronger, so we need to hurry.”
With that, she quickly pushed open the door and walked into the entrance. She cupped her hands together and muttered something. A tiny ball of white light appeared in between her hands. Carefully she removed her top hand, so that the ball of light rested in the palm of her bottom hand. She raised her now free left hand so that it was hovering in mid-air about an inch above the ball of light. In quick, fluid motions, she stroked the air above the light. As Arleth watched, the ball of light grew steadily larger until it was roughly the size of her head. This seemed to be the size that Selene wanted, for she paused her stroking and looked thoughtfully at the ball of light she had created. She bounced the ball of light gently on her bottom hand so that it hovered in the air in front of her face. Selene then put both hands under the ball of light, her palms facing up and blew on it as though she were blowing a kiss. The ball of light glided gently on invisible air currents up and forward to the ceiling at the centre of the room. Upon reaching its destination, it stopped moving and hung inches from the ceiling, suspended in the air.
Hanging from the centre of the room, the ball of light bathed the room in a gentle golden glow. It was now possible to see to all four corners of the room and Arleth was surprised to see that it stretched a lot farther back than she had originally thought. Something else she noticed with quiet alarm was that the arrangement of Zeeshan being chained to the wall in between two of those huge cylindrical jars was not unique. This pattern repeated itself all the way down the room on both the right and left side. Of course, right now the only prisoner was Zeeshan, but Arleth was alarmed at how many “places” there were. There was room for at least two dozen or more prisoners to be held here at the same time! Arleth shivered at the horrible destruction this room was designed for.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to stare?” Zeeshan’s deep voice cut through Arleth’s thoughts. She turned to the sound of his voice and saw Selene and Aedan stepping quickly back from the chained creature, their faces red with embarrassment.
“Sorry!” Selene spurted out. “It’s just, well,... we haven’t seen,.. I mean we don’t... ah.. hmmm.” Not able to find a nice way to say that they had never seen such a bizarre-looking creature before, she turned to Aedan in the hopes of being rescued. Taking the hint, Aedan started to open his mouth, but Zeeshan beat him to it.
“Yes I know,” Zeeshan said angrily. “You haven’t seen any creature like me before. I am a ridiculous mix of a talywag and a snow bear. And although I haven’t yet seen what I look like, don’t you think I know full well that my whole body is in ridiculous proportions. I know I still have my huge eyes and my flapping ears, but I can tell that my face is a lot bigger and hairy so I probably look like an oversized dinner plate. I have furry paws with talons, no hands anymore, what I am supposed to do with these?” He raised up his arms a bit in a futile gesture as the chains forced his arms to fall back down to his sides in a rattle of metal. But he continued on “I have a huge fuzzy body and this ridiculously deep growly voice. Don’t you think I know all of this! I don’t need two perfectly normal humans examining me like some freak show. Thanks but no thanks!”
No one said anything for a few moments. Arleth was too stunned by Zeeshan’s until now unseen anger and Selene and Aedan were struggling for the right words to say to sooth the situation. The air was crackling with tension.
Once again though, it was Zeeshan who broke the silence. “Please forgive me,” he said a lot quieter, “I don’t know where that came from; I didn’t mean to be so angry.”
Selene walked up to him and put her hand on one of his huge furry paws. “How old are you my dear?”
“Seven...” Seven, still just a child! Selene thought sadly.
“And your name.”
&n
bsp; “Zeeshan.”
“Well Zeeshan I am more sorry that I can tell you at what has happened to you.” The tears in her eyes gave proof to her claim. “I am a sorceress so when I saw you I was staring not out of shock or horror but because I was deeply saddened by what had been done to you. I can tell what horrible magic was done to you and I know the pain that it would have caused you.”
Zeeshan let out a choked cry at this and Selene nodded sadly and rubbed his paw in a soothing gesture.
“Unfortunately the magic used on you crossed more than just your physical appearance. It didn’t work all the way, luckily or you wouldn’t be here talking to me. But what it does mean is that your natural calm nature is now mixed with the disposition of a snow bear. I am sorry to say but your calm and serene personality will always be at war with the fiery temper of a snow bear. Outbursts like what just occurred won’t be unique.”
Selene looked up at the child when she said this. Zeeshan stared back at her for a second and then burst into tears. It was just too much for him to handle. Looking like a horrible monster was terrible enough, but also having his personality change, to become violent and aggressive, everything that Talywags were against, that was just too much to bear.
Still stroking his paw, Selene let him cry for a moment and then calmed him down. “There, there it’s ok. Your personality isn’t set in stone, you will now always have an aggressive tendency inside you; I can’t control that. But I can help you so that it remains deep inside. You can learn how to control that aspect so that for all intents and purposes you are still the same.”
Zeeshan stopped crying. “Really, you would do that for me?”
“Of course.”
“Even though I yelled at you.”
Selene smiled and nodded.
“Thank you so much,” Zeeshan burst into tears again.
Selene laughed gently, “But first things first, let me get you out of these chains.”