by Kim Fedyk
Arleth thought about Absalom’s explanation of the Black Thorn assassin group. It had seemed perfectly reasonable, although she now knew from Neve’s brother that there was no such thing.
“But Val is one of our oldest and closest friends. We sent him to Tocarra in order to bring you back with him, before Absalom could get to you. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to do this, and so you were left thinking that he was the villain, while Absalom portrayed himself as your saviour.” Selene practically spat out those last few words, not because she blamed Arleth. Not in the least. It was perfectly reasonable that she would trust the ‘King of Oherra’ over a vagabond she had no idea about. Just on the reputation of his name alone, not to mention how manipulative and charismatic the traitor was when he wanted to be. No, she said those words so vehemently because she hated Absalom with a pure unadulterated fire.
Arleth however, was thinking at that moment that she was somewhat of an idiot. Neve’s brother had told her there was no such thing as the Black Thorn, and she had believed him, but she hadn’t questioned who it was that had chased her. To be fair, that had been an overwhelming day, with the splitting women in the courtyard, being questioned by Absalom and then of course all the information that Neve’s brother told her. But she still thought that it should have prompted at least a flicker of a question in her mind.
In addition to that however, Arleth now felt quite foolish at being afraid of Val. “Well he did chase me across the desert and through town while holding up his dagger,” she said, trying to explain herself into some dignity.
Aedan burst into laughter again, “You ran at her for miles with your dagger, and you don’t know why she would be afraid of you?”
“I was running, I had my dagger, I couldn’t very well not run with it.” Val said defensively.
Aedan was about to make another jab at his friend, when a child’s scream echoed through the cave. Aedan and Val turned instantly to face the source of the cry, instinctively crouched in a defensive position, weapons already drawn.
Unbeknownst to them, while they had been talking, a sizeable group of people had formed. They had come out of their tents, most of them likely drawn by Val’s initial outburst upon finding his friends still alive. At the front of this group was a small boy of about four. His short blonde hair was dishevelled and his pale, freckled face was splotched with red. Tears poured down his face as he screamed and pointed a chubby arm in front of him. His mother was trying desperately to quiet him down, but she was having no luck. Other children, drawn by the sound started pushing their way through their parents’ legs to see what was going on. One by one, they each caught a glimpse of Zeeshan and added their tears and screams to that of the first boy. In little over a minute, the situation had erupted into complete chaos. Parents were running over to their children, trying to calm them down, while they themselves looked with barely disguised fear at the unknown creature in front of them.
Selene opened her mouth to try and calm the situation, but she was not fast enough.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU?” Roared Zeeshan, “I’M NOT A FREAK SHOW!” He advanced a few paces towards the crowd menacingly, raising one huge paw, claws outstretched.
The children instantly stopped crying, they were staring, open-mouthed, frozen in terror at the creature advancing on them. The adults however, reacted quickly. Both the men and women pushed themselves in front of the children and brandished weapons Arleth hadn’t even seen them carrying. The two guards that had been talking to Aedan and Selene moments before; now rushed in front of them, weapons drawn in an effort to form a protective barrier around their leader.
Zeeshan however, only took a few paces before he stopped in shock and slumped down heavily on the ground. He burst into tears and buried his head in his paws. Selene rushed over to him, motioning for everyone to put away their weapons, which they did reluctantly and only after a few minutes had passed.
Selene crouched in front of Zeeshan and touched his paws, trying to get him to move them away from his face.
“Why.. What... Why has this happened to me?” Zeeshan said miserably, in between sobs. At Selene’s touch, he had reluctantly moved his paws away from his face, but he was still looking down at his lap. He was utterly ashamed. “I’m a Talywag, I don’t have outbursts, I don’t roar, I don’t, I don’t...” he raised one paw in front of his face “I don’t have paws, and claws and fur.” He burst into uncontrollable crying. Selene rubbed his arm sympathetically, the pain she felt for him evident in her eyes. When his tears had quieted down a bit, Selene put her hand under his chin and raised his head up to face hers. She wiped his tears away with her hands and smiled gently at him.
She desperately wanted to tell the child in front of her that everything would be ok, that he wouldn’t get this kind of reaction everywhere he went from now on in his life. But she knew she couldn’t lie to him like that. He wouldn’t believe her anyways. Instead she said “Zeeshan, remember how I said I could teach you how to control the snow bear anger in you? So that you would hardly even know it was there?”
Zeeshan nodded at her, the faint glimmer of hope appeared in his tear-filled eyes.
“Well,” Selene said, “How about we start those lessons right now?”
Zeeshan looked at her nodded. “Yes please.” He said quietly.
Selene smiled, “Alright then, come on.”
Zeeshan slowly stood up and Selene took a hold of one of his huge paws in her hand and led him away. As they passed Val, he looked at Zeeshan and then at Selene with a “Tell me about that later” look. Selene nodded discretely back at him. She planned on taking him to the combat training grounds which were at the far end of the cavern, past all of the tents. This would give them the space and hopefully the privacy that they needed. Unfortunately, the crowd was so large that it spread across the entire width of the cavern, and so Selene was forced to lead Zeeshan through them in order to get there. As they walked through, people gave them a wide berth and watched Zeeshan warily as they walked past. Selene rubbed his paw soothingly, but Zeeshan was too ashamed to do anything more than look at his feet resolutely as he walked.
Aedan watched the pair walk away. It was only when they had gone far enough that they were out of earshot, and the crowd was beginning to reform and relax again, that he attempted to explain what had just happened. They deserved to know what new army Rogan was creating; after all, many of them would end up finding themselves face to face with one on a battlefield or in a skirmish. And likely in the very near future.
“Please don’t be frightened by what you just saw. That ‘creature’ is a seven year old child named Zeeshan. A few days ago he was a Talywag.”
There was a collective murmur from the crowd as they took in this information.
“He was captured while he was playing in the Frasht Forest and taken back to Iridian. Rogan performed experiments on him in order to fuse his body with that of a snow bear. We believe that he is creating a new army of snow bear-Talywag combined creatures. Zeeshan was one of his first tries. He has been through a lot of pain and suffering over the last few days. But he is just a child.”
“If Rogan has experimented on him, how do we know he is not going to turn on us?” A man near the front of the crowd asked. A number of others voiced their agreement.
“Ya, how do we know he won’t attack us?”
“He looked dangerous to me.”
“Me too!”
“We know what Rogan’s magic does to people. It takes their souls, there is nothing left of them. We have fought armies of our former friends and neighbours who no longer remembered us. How can we trust this creature?”
Aedan answered this last question.
“These are very reasonable concerns. We have all seen the horrible effects of Rogan’s magic enough times to last us many lifetimes. However, this particular experiment done on Zeeshan was not successful. His physical body may look like a complete fusion between a snow bear and a Talywag, but something went wrong. He st
ill has his personality and his mind. You saw his reaction to his outburst.” Aedan looked around at the crowd trying to gage their acceptance. “He was ashamed. He is just a child and has gone through so much in the past couple of days. Imagine what it was like for him to not only have his entire life (and his body) thrown upside down almost overnight. But to then have that thrown in his face the moment he walked in here. That would be enough for anyone to get upset.” Aedan met the eyes of the adults standing closest to him. He was relieved to see that many of them were nodding in agreement. “And he is only seven years old!”
Aedan thought it was best not to mention that Zeeshan was still very much at war with his snow bear anger. He trusted Selene to help him control it. At the moment, he didn’t want another reason for Zeeshan to be even more alienated then he already was.
“Trust me,” Aedan said. “If I or Selene had thought, even if there was a slight chance that Zeeshan was fully transformed, we would have killed him on the spot.”
Arleth turned to stare at Aedan so fast that she got a bit dizzy. Was he telling the truth? In that moment when he and Selene had been staring at Zeeshan in the dungeon, were they actually contemplating whether to let him live or kill him?”
“I wouldn’t bring an enemy into the midst of our camp.”
This seemed to convince everyone. There was a general murmur of agreement and a succession of nodding heads.
Aedan took this as a success and continued on before anyone could change their mind.
“I am sure you have all heard by now that my sister, Arleth, wasn’t killed in Absalom’s attack 17 years ago, and is in fact very much alive.”
The lack of surprise shown by the crowd in front of him convinced Aedan that this was old news. He hadn’t made any type of public announcement when he had learned Arleth was still alive. But he had of course discussed it with his inner circle - Selene, Val, Bain, Winn and Graydon. They had spent hours discussing how best to bring her to them, both before and after Absalom had captured her. Aedan hadn’t discussed any of these plans with his army officers, but he had given them the general sense of what was going on. He knew from here, it would get passed on to the rest of the army, their families and in enough time, to the entire stronghold.
And it seemed he had been right.
“Well,” Aedan continued without further preamble, “Here she is, Arleth Amara.” He turned towards his sister, gesturing in her direction.
The crowd turned as one unit, seeing Arleth now for the first time. There was a second of silence as the throng took in the teenager in front of them and then it erupted into a buzz of excitement.
Above the general hum of noise, Arleth could make out bits and pieces of conversation.
“Oh my, she is as beautiful as her mother was,” said one elderly lady holding a sleeping baby in her arms.
“Yes she is,” her companion agreed, “But look she has the Amaran eyes like her brother.”
“Oh very right she does,” the first agreed.
Aedan walked over to Arleth, an apologetic smile on his face, “I’m sorry Arleth, but these are your people now too. Let’s go talk to them shall we? I’m afraid there isn’t really a better way to ease you into it. And if you don’t talk to them now, they won’t leave you alone all night.” He said this last bit with a wink, grabbing her hand before she had time to object and all but dragging her into the mass of people.
For the better part of an hour, Arleth was introduced to hundreds of men, women and children, learning so many names that she could never hope to remember even half of them. They complimented her, asked her questions, told her their stories and Arleth for her part smiled, blushed and offered thanks, complimented in turn, answered their questions as best she could and asked a few of her own. Aedan stood by her the whole time, jumping in when she needed it and helping to divert some of the more personal questions he didn’t feel Arleth should have to answer but felt she probably would, not knowing any better.
Arleth felt completely out of her league – she hadn’t spoken to so many people in her entire life. And now they were all being thrown at her in 60 short minutes. Not to mention that they were all treating her like Arleth Amara, a person she hadn’t come to terms with being and certainly didn’t even know how to be yet. And so at the end, she was completely exhausted.
Aedan, seeing his sister’s fatigue, held up his hands to the multitude of people still waiting to speak with Arleth. “Sorry everyone, I know you are all anxious to meet Arleth, but that is enough for one night. She has had a very long and tiring day and I’m sure she would like to get some sleep. There will be plenty of time tomorrow to introduce yourselves and get to know her.”
Arleth looked up at Aedan with a tired and grateful smile.
A few grumbles emerged from the crowd, but they, although slowly and reluctantly, listened to Aedan and started to move away. Ten minutes later the crowd had dispersed.
“Sorry to do that to you Arleth, I know that couldn’t have been easy. But you did remarkably well for your first time.”
Arleth was about to comment on how she didn’t feel that she had done anything even close to being remarkable, but she was interrupted by a man’s voice.
“Aedan! You are back!” A tall man in his late twenties was making his way towards them, against the retreating crowd. Just behind him was a younger man who Arleth thought looked to be about her own age. On first glance, it was easy to tell that they were brothers. Both were tall and thin with short dark brown hair, dark features and tanned skin. The older man had a short beard and a mustache, while the younger one was clean-shaven. Other than that, they were the spitting image of each other.
“Winn. Graydon,” Aedan said with a huge smile as he clasped each man’s arm in turn as they approached him.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you alive.” Winn said.
Graydon nodded, “We were all worried about your plan; more than we had cared to admit.”
“Haven’t I heard that before,” Aedan said with a grin rolling his eyes at the two brothers.
“Val.” Winn and Graydon said at the same time.
Aedan nodded.
The two brothers shared a knowing glance, “Well I’m sure Val has covered it then.”
Aedan held his hands together in front of him as if he was praying, looking at the two brothers pleadingly; a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Definitely,” Graydon agreed. He too was trying not to laugh.
Aedan let out an exaggerated sigh of relief and dropped his hands back to his sides.
“So, Aedan.” Winn said, instantly getting serious. “We saw Selene on the training grounds a little while ago, that’s how we knew you were back. She told us what had....happened.” Winn raised his eyebrows at Aedan in an expression meant to indicate Zeeshan.
Aedan picked up on it. “Ya, it wasn’t the best news we had heard either. We will need to take action quickly, let Bain and Val know that we will meet first thing tomorrow morning after breakfast. We have a lot to discuss.”
“Sure thing boss,” Winn said with a wink, his good spirits returning. “So.... you aren’t going to introduce us?” Winn turned to look at Arleth who had been silently observing this exchange up until now.
“I had rather hoped to avoid it...” Aedan said jokingly. “But if I must.” Turning to Arleth, “Please let me introduce Winn and Graydon Firwood. They are the lords of Jaya and two of my oldest friends. Winn”, Aedan gestured to the older man, “I have been friends with since we were both young children, and Graydon,” He indicated the younger man, “I have known since he was born.”
“He also forgot that we are ridiculously handsome, and insanely clever,” Winn said stepping forward and enveloping Arleth in a bear hug.
Arleth burst into laughter but it was drowned out by Winn’s chest in her face.
Winn smiled and pulled away from Arleth. “See she agrees. I like her already, she has good sense.”
Aedan just rolled his eyes
good humouredly.
Graydon, younger and not as suave as his brother, also gave Arleth a hug. But his was more awkward and as he pulled away from her he had to turn his head to hide his blush.
“So Arleth,” Winn said, “How overwhelmed are you right now?”
Arleth smiled at him, “Unmeasurably! A day ago I thought I was just another ordinary servant, and now...”
Winn nodded sympathetically, “I’m sure you are. It’s not every day someone is told that they are an Amara and inherit an entire stronghold of followers.”
Arleth shook her head in agreement, “No it most certainly isn’t.” Winn opened his mouth to respond when Graydon blurted out, “So are you on our side or what? Did you believe the lies that Absalom told you?”
Winn turned to his brother, his jaw dropping open, “Graydon!”
“What? We are all thinking it.” He replied indignantly.
“Okay then,” Aedan said cutting in smoothly. “Arleth has had a busy day, it is quite time she got some sleep.” He grabbed Arleth hand and led her away from the two men.
“It was nice to meet you both,” Arleth called behind her.
“Likewise Arleth,” Winn said. Graydon remained silent.
Behind Arleth and Aedan’s back, Winn shoved his brother’ shoulder, “What was that about?!”
“We are all wondering it,” Graydon repeated defensively.
“Of course we are. But there is a time and a place brother.” And then more gently, with a smile on his face. “I know she is a beautiful girl, but sheesh man, control yourself.”
“What! No!” Graydon responded too quickly, his face turning a bright shade of red.
Winn just smiled and kept silent.
Up ahead, Arleth turned to her brother as she walked beside him. “Why did Graydon say that?” She asked.
Arleth turned to his sister, “Graydon is young and can be hot-headed at times. He tends to say things he doesn’t mean without thinking. I wouldn’t give it any thought.”