Tellie did not realize he meant her till she felt the heat of his gaze begin to wither her skin. Gasping in terror, she looked at him, then to Errance, and then back to the floor. I should have told him before! He should not have had to know like this, she thought desperately. But there had been no time, no time, and this certainly was not the time. “I…I…”
“See here, mister.” Kelm’s voice broke the condemning hush. “From what I understand, she wasn’t even there for the elf king’s death. Personally, I still have my doubts—”
“Silence, whelp!” The Voice’s teeth snapped, the bars of a cage slamming shut.
He dismissed the children in the same moment his gaze left their faces and returned to Errance. “Perhaps you have no questions, no doubts, because you know. You know better than anyone.” Fingers lashed out and caught Errance by the chin. The Voice bent down, close. “He’s gone…gone to a place you cannot ever follow.” The whisper curled into steam, ghostly and fading. The demon’s pale fingers curled against the prince’s cheek, as gentle and kind as a father’s caress. “Poor boy….” the Voice whispered. “All alone.”
Then his arm whipped back and struck the elf as if to shatter bone.
Tellie yelped and clung tighter to Kelm as the prince staggered and collapsed to one knee under the blow. She willed him to remain as unscathed as from the guard’s fist, but even he had called himself a plaything for the demons, and he remained on his knees, head bowed. And yet—her heart leapt in eager hope—and yet even from here she could see his eyes glittering with the same defiance, the same strength.
Circling behind, the Voice caught his hair at the scalp and pulled back till his chin nearly pointed to the ceiling. “Just as well, though,” he said, lip curling. “I wonder if your father would even recognize you now. Such a sweet thing you were when we first met, but so pathetic. Pale and bruised, blood and tears streaming down your cheeks. Such fear. And now…now…I do believe that is hatred in your beautiful blue eyes.” He looked horrifically pleased, like a little boy who just mutilated a creature and was very proud of it.
Errance had met his tormenter’s stare without waver, no matter the strain of his neck, but now his eyes fluttered shut, his throat collapsed in a labored swallow, and his shoulders shuddered.
For just that one flitting second, Tellie saw that frightened young prince long ago, saw the same blood now trailing from his mouth. And she snapped.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” she shouted.
Both their heads lashed towards her, stunned.
Tellie paled, and her breath left her as the Voice’s eyes narrowed. For the first time he looked at her. Not as a pawn, not as a joke. But at her. His consideration chilled her core.
Errance looked from the Voice to Tellie and back again. Then he spat out a stream of words, strange and beautiful, but spoken with such viciousness that Tellie flinched.
The Voice looked again to the elf, the surprise on his face increasing. “Well, then,” he scoffed. “Who knew you could still speak your native tongue? And what a nasty thing to say with such an exquisite language. Precious little prince, you aren’t so pure and perfect anymore, are you?”
Kelm grabbed Tellie’s wrist, and she gave in to his tug without a struggle for her knees trembled like jelly. She knew that whatever Errance had said, he’d said only to remove the Voice’s attention from her. She was terribly grateful to him and terribly furious at herself.
“An obvious diversion, of course, but lucky for her,” the Voice continued, somehow giving Tellie a pointed look without turning his gaze from Errance, “it worked.” He raised his hand, the prince’s hair still caught fast, and pulled him to his feet.
“Now then, Your Highness,” the Voice said softly, slipping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him towards the far wall. “Shall we go and celebrate your rise to rule? We must have a coronation ceremony later, of course, you can hardly be called a king without one. For now, shall we mourn the death of your father? I have memories to share I’ll warrant you’ve never heard.”
Don’t let him go in there, Tellie’s mind whispered. Do something. Don’t just let him be taken there. But she remained as still as the stone upon which she stood.
The wall opened as they approached. And for a moment, a dark red smoke spilled forth….and then it was not smoke, but the gentle mist of a spring morning. And beyond the door rolled a green land of forest and glades, all sunlit and sparkling with fresh rain. If there was any land that looked as paradise imagined….
Tellie’s mouth dropped open, and despite the warning screaming within, her feet stumbled forward. She forced herself to stop when she saw Errance halt.
The Voice looked back at Errance, brow raised in mock curiosity. “What now, Prince? Surely it’s a sight for sore eyes.” He laughed and jerked him from his defiant stance like one jerked a balking horse. “Come along.”
“What about them?” the warden suddenly said.
Pausing at the very threshold, the Voice of His Darkness sent the man a look that would have withered an entire world. “What about whom?”
“The children,” the man said, pointing a trembling finger.
Tellie and Kelm shrank together, willing their very bodies to become as small as dust on the air.
“The children,” the Voice repeated. Then he shrugged. “What are they to me?” And without another glance, he thrust Errance ahead, and the walls closed shut behind them.
8
oOo
As the wall closes, the vibration of its force courses through my body. That is why my heart shudders; it is not because of fear. Fear, ha, that is a weakness, and pain has purged such things from me. Yet as I look into my captor’s dark eyes, another shudder runs through me, this one without reason, curse it. This is the seventh time we have met since that night long ago. He had always come to pawn me off to the next Master. He has never taken the role of Master himself.
Not until the cage door clanged shut behind her did Tellie realize she’d been taken back to the cell. The guard snapped the lock into place with fumbling fingers, took the torch, and left the dungeon to the darkness.
After a dazed moment she huddled down into the corner, noticing that the guard had been in too frightened a state to chain her.
“Kelm, are you there?”
“Yes,” the boy replied miserably. “Golly, this is a mess.”
“They took him. And I did nothing. What are they doing to him?”
“Better not to know,” he said with a shudder. “But…but…he can take it, I think. He is an elf, after all.” The fear in his voice changed to admiration. “The first elf I’ve ever met! Did you see how he stood up to that villain? Barely flinched.”
“Yeah,” she said, a bit more dreamily than intended. “I saw…”
“Well,” Kelm said after a moment’s pause. “You needn’t say it quite that way.”
“What way?”
“Like you’re smitten.”
“Kelm!” she squeaked. “I am not! He’s just…just very impressive.” But she blushed scarlet and thanked the fates he couldn’t see her. “Anyway,” she continued, uncomfortable and subdued. “We shouldn’t be talking like this when they’re h-hurting him.”
She rubbed a hand down her stiff neck with a sigh, and her fingers brushed across the thin thread against her skin.
The moon medallion. It had quite left her mind in all the excitement. She clawed for the delicate strand and pulled it out. There it shone in front of her bleary eyes, almost a perfect circle of light.
Kelm stirred. “Do you have a candle?” he asked incredulously.
“It’s that necklace I found,” she breathed. “The moon medallion.” She sank back against the wall, the necklace cradled against her chest. Perhaps it was her imagination, but it almost made her feel warmer. Why hadn’t that dark villain taken it from her when he had the chance? Why had it come to her at all?
“Kelm,” she said very softly, very uncertainly. “What do you think about God?”
The boy coughed. “Pardon?”
“I mean, I’ve sort of believed in him. I was always taught to pray to him. But the elves actually seemed to believe in his existence as a guiding force in the world. And they have a name for him and everything. I mean, I’ve heard that name, but they use it so personally. And since we seem to be caught on the wrong side of spiritual things, well…” Her throat thickened as she talked as if the shadows wanted to suffocate her. She swallowed, relieved to discover she could still breathe. “What do you think?”
Kelm gave it lengthy consideration. “Well, I’ve always respected him, but like you said, it’s just sort of an engrained behavior. It’s the popular religion of West Orim, but you find many other beliefs and gods in the east, north, and south. Still, there is something special about the stories told of Ayeshune. There’s a lot of hope to it, a promise of redemption from darkness.”
“The elves believe in him,” she said again. “And they are still alive from the beginning of the world. They would know better than anyone who the real God is, right?”
“I’d think so,” he said. “It’s a pity then that the elves have hidden away so long that many people have dismissed them as myths as well.”
Tellie did not reply, and the dark closed back between them with malicious swiftness. The medallion fell forgotten from her grasp, and she sank into the swallowing void with little thought. After all, she was so tired, and slipping into sleep would free her from this endless…
The prison door hammered against the wall. She jumped at the sound, and immediately tucked the moon medallion into her apron pocket. Again, the light of a torch came flickering down the passage, but only three figures followed this time, and the man in the middle hung upright only by the mercy of his captors. The guards brought the prisoner to Errance’s cell and locked him back in shackles, then retreated without a word. The light faded away and the door banged again, the crash echoing through the passages with despairing doom.
“Errance!” She scrambled to the bars, trying to see some difference in the black curtain before her vision. “Are you hurt very much?”
No answer came. But the silence was now shattered by a faint and rasping sound, like a crusty piece of paper torn again and again. She listened to it, puzzled, for several minutes before at last understanding the source. She should have recognized it at once, but then, it had been so long since she’d heard the final breaths of the dying.
No, no, she could not have found him now just for him to die. Pain tearing through her heart, she clung to the bars and anxiously waited for each hoarse swell.
Then she became aware of the smell. This too was both horrid and familiar. Her memory flew back to the time when while at the orphanage, she had been sent by the Madame on an errand to the butcher’s shop. She had not been able to find the butcher and had gone in the back of his shed to search for him and—oh! Carcasses of animals hung everywhere, and upon a table, a deer cut in half, red liquid pooling off the table onto the floor, filling the air with the sinister, sordid smell of blood.
Her hands clamping over her mouth, Tellie scrambled back from the cell. Her foot caught on her skirt and she fell flat on her back. The momentary pain distracted her from her churning stomach, and the bile that had been threatening to spew out sank back down. She shuddered and tried not to breathe in the aroma. Blood. She hated the smell of it, she hated the sight of it. The boys and even some of the girls at the orphanage had accused her of being weak, but no amount of teasing ever convinced her to get over the horror of blood.
“Kelm,” she whispered and reached through the bars in desperation for her friend. Her heart leaped as his fingers twined through hers, and then his breath was warm upon her cheek. She did not need to speak her fear for the shuddering breath filled the silence around.
“Kelm,” she said again, voice very small. “I don’t want to die. My life seems so very empty.”
The boy shifted beside her, his hand gripping hers a little tighter. “Why…why, that’s a silly thing to say, Tellie! True, you’ve had a rough go of it at times, but there’s been plenty of brightness.”
“Like what?” she said. “I haven’t done anything worthwhile.” This darkness consumed all knowledge of beauty and peace.
“Well, well,” Kelm said, clearly struggling. “Well, you met me! I made you spill your bucket of water, but I filled another for you. You had some blue flowers in your hair. And there was the time I helped you get the bee nest from the forest. We ate the comb on the miller’s roof.”
Tellie did remember then, and many other moments of sunshine and happiness besides. But that felt so long ago now, and so pointless if only to end in this dungeon. Just for a few moments of her life, she had felt true purpose in the elf king’s commission. Now that chance drained away like sand through an hourglass. And as hours of their lives passed, they listened together to the elf’s breath fade, sputter, and then finally perish.
“He’s dead,” Tellie said with a hiccupping sob. “Oh, they killed him!”
Errance laughed.
The harsh sound broke on a cry of pain, followed by a hiss of anger. “A happy thought,” he growled. “Sadly, no.”
Both the girl and boy yelped in a mix of terror and delight.
“But you stopped breathing!” Tellie protested.
He coughed, a thick and wet cough. “I started breathing quietly. Now hush. I need time.”
If time was what Errance needed, it was the one blessing granted him. Time stretched endlessly in this void. For Tellie and Kelm, the void was a monster, consuming their mortal lives with no promise of anything but death at the end. Sometimes Tellie would touch her hand just to be sure that wrinkles hadn’t yet appeared on her skin.
When Errance spoke again, his voice had much changed. It was now controlled, calm, charismatic even. Such a far cry from before that Tellie almost wondered if the body next door had somehow been exchanged.
“So. You have a story, I suspect. I must ask, did they give you the script or did you have to come up with everything from the top of your head?”
Well. For being so wounded, he was remarkably insolent. Before either could answer, the elf spoke again, and now he carefully concealed pain and fear in his manner.
“You saw my father die?”
“No!” Tellie exclaimed. “No, Leoren only told me so. As I said, I met the elves and they told me about you.”
“And my father. You spoke to him?”
“Yes.”
After a dreadful pause, he asked, “What did he say?”
Tellie took a deep breath, reassured by the squeeze of Kelm’s hand on her shoulder. “He said I was to give the moon medallion to the next king of Aselvia.” And she held the necklace aloft.
Errance swore.
Tellie’s mouth dropped open in shock. Hearing humans swear was annoying enough, but hearing an elf swear was appalling.
Errance lunged against the bars, taut on his chains, and his hand stretched through, grasping wildly. “Give that to me!” he shouted.
She flinched back. “You needn’t shout so.”
He spoke through his teeth. “Give it to me.”
But her temper flared to life. “As far as I’m concerned, the next king of Aselvia does not swear.” Kelm snickered, but she ignored him. “Especially in the presence of a lady.”
The elf’s hand closed and drew back against the bar. He did not speak for a few minutes, and his haggard breaths gradually died down. “All right,” he hissed. “I apologize, your ladyship. But that is my necklace and…and…” He paused and took a deep breath. “Could I at least touch it?”
At the sudden pleading in his voice, Tellie’s irritation cooled, but she still gripped the necklace strand tightly as she held it out to him.
The instant his fingers brushed the medallion’s surface, the light dimmed and the moon turned grey. She stared at the medallion in surprise.
Errance’s hand drew back into the darkness. “You are right,” he said, s
ubdued and barely audible. “I’m not ready for it.”
Then as quickly as flint is struck, his fire snapped back into life, and he snarled, “The necklace was taken the same night as me. How dare you suggest my father had it?”
“Oh, but the dark men did have it,” she said in haste. “They showed up in my inn with it, but the magpie stole it away, and then Kelm and I chased after—”
“The magpie. The magpie?” His voice became very terrible, but she could not say if that was frightening or tragic. “What was this magpie’s name?”
“Why would a magpie have a name…?” Kelm began, but she was quick to interrupt him.
“Oh, oh, er…Farflight. No, not that. Fly…Flyfar! Your father called him Flyfar, I think.”
This was considered without response, and she held her breath in silent hope for his belief. She had to win his trust, or else how could she ever bring him back? If they ever had a chance to escape this miserable place, anyway.
“What else did my father say?” he whispered.
She searched desperately for something comforting, something kind. “He said…he said darkness could not last forever.”
Silence fell with the impact of a stone shutting a tomb. A tomb that could never be opened. A tomb hiding away a body as it decayed. A body once full of life and love. A love meant for him, now torn away for eternity.
She shrank away, and suddenly she sat no longer in a dank dungeon, but within an attic, curled up in the shadows. She was a child again, sobbing herself to sleep, because the undertaker had carried her parent’s bodies away. The only people who loved her were dead, and she was alone. Alone.
Then Errance spoke, sardonic venom laced through every word. “Your story is well conceived. I’ll let the Darkness know you were good little pawns, and perhaps he’ll think about using you again.”
“I say,” Kelm exclaimed, drowning out Tellie’s yelp of frustration. “That’s not fair at all. We’re locked down here, same as you, and we don’t want to stay any more than you do.”
Moonscript (Kings of Aselvia Book 1) Page 10