“Errance,” she called. “Will you catch me?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
For just that moment, her surprise surpassed her fear, and so she slipped off the brink and plummeted.
Happily, the fall was not nearly as far as she’d feared. No, the landing was much worse.
Her feet sank into water, thick, sticky water. She lost her balance and flailed wildly. For a horrid moment, she thought she was going to fall backwards. Just in time, she caught herself against the wall and stood there shivering. Heaven help her, even the stone was sticky.
The trapdoor above thudded shut, and immediately afterwards came a splash, a squelch, and a yelp from Kelm.
“All right,” Errance said. “Go.”
Tellie didn’t move. “I don’t think I can do this…” she breathed.
Water sloshed at the elf’s movement. “You will come or you will be caught,” he said. “And you will beg for death long before the end.”
“What would they do to you?” Kelm asked curiously.
“Nothing they haven’t done already,” he answered, words cut between a vicious smile.
At that, she stepped forward. For him, if nothing else. She could not slow him down, and she needed to bring him back safely to his home. Home. Her home too perhaps. And those thoughts compelled each step.
After several minutes of listening only to the sound of each slurping step, Kelm spoke up. “How about a marching song? It’s not like anyone could hear us down here. And we must keep our spirits up. Hey ho, to the abbey we go, to confess our sins, and forgo our woe…”
After the fifth marching song, Tellie began to wonder how a repetitive ditty could lift anyone’s spirits. Maybe if progress could be seen, the song would wile away the time, but without any end in sight, the verses just went on and on and on and—
“Kelm,” she said faintly. “Maybe we can just have quiet?”
“Oh. Sure.”
They continued on down the dank passage. There was no time in that realm devoid of light. Tellie began to understand how Errance had survived seventy years. All of time passed and then vanished into an unreachable vacuum. No step could be taken back, not one could be brought sooner. They simply walked, sometimes at an ascent, sometimes at a descent. It could have been minutes or hours or days, there was nothing to measure it by but the beat of her heart, and that passed a count beyond reckoning.
The first hope that time still existed came with the realization that the water about their feet picked up pace. They were on a slight slope in the passage where the walls began to narrow. Simultaneously, the water became higher till she was waist deep in the sewage. By this time, she had ceased caring. The movement of the water grew ever quicker, till it was starting to pull at her limbs. She slipped and fell completely under.
The muted sound of gurgling water enveloped her skull, the thick liquid coiling around her limbs and dragged her downward. She wanted to scream. She couldn’t. Not without getting a mouthful of sewage. So instead she threw out a panicked arm.
A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. She panted, her hair clinging to the skin. The hold remained tight around her wrist, and she recognized the calloused fingers as Kelm’s.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she gasped, teeth chattering.
She heard a strange sound, a muffled snorting. “Are you laughing?” she demanded.
“No!”
“You are!” She nearly shoved him but stopped at the possibility of sending them both into the slough.
“Enough,” Errance hissed, and they obeyed at once.
The tunnel took a sharp turn, and bright white stabbed their eyes. Tellie covered her face with a cry, pressing fingers hard into her temples as if she could somehow suppress the pounding ache. She heard Errance swear softly, but hardly cared.
“Daylight,” Kelm gasped. “That’s daylight.”
Hesitantly, she looked again, and through the squirming spots in her vision, she saw the passage slope in a steep decline to a small door filled nearly to the top with bright water.
She braced her hands on either wall to keep her feet as they descended, for the current was growing stronger. Fifteen steps. Ten. Only when she heard the rushing roar outside did she finally understand that the sewers emptied into a river.
“Errance,” she choked. “I can’t swim!”
Then the current sucked her off her feet. Her body swept out the exit, bringing her shoulder into sharp contact with a wall. She was in the river, shards of light slashing across her vision. Thrashing her arms and legs against the raging water, she searched for the surface. She should come back up, shouldn’t she? She needed air! But all she could see were churning bubbles, and she gasped in panic only to choke on water. The river spun her like a doll, but in that helpless floundering, her hand broke the surface. She fought upwards, but another current sucked her back down to the depths. Needles began to prick behind her eyes, and her head throbbed in terror and desperation for air.
Ayeshune! she silently screamed. Please! Please!
Her hair pulled taut and her body jerked back against the current. An arm clamped around her waist, and she felt herself surge to the surface. The moment her head burst free she drew in shrill gasps of air.
Next thing she knew, she was sprawled over something secure and solid, violently choking up water. Some part of her mind recognized that her feet still hung in the strong current, but she was no longer at the mercy of the river, so that hardly mattered. After the silence in the prison, the roar of the water felt deafening, even muffled by the water clogging her ears. Worse still was the brightness shining red through her closed lids. No, she would just stay here and breathe and not think, not until she could move without shaking apart.
“Tellie? Tellie?”
A boy’s voice—Kelm’s—reached through the thick fog enveloping her mind, forcing her eyes to flicker open in a painful squint.
She was draped over the thick branch of a tree that had fallen into the water, and Errance slumped upon another branch nearby. Kelm’s voice drew her gaze upwards to the bank where he stood at the base of the tree, balancing between roots. Dark-soiled banks rose steeply on either side of the river and thickly foliaged boughs arched overhead, slicing the sunlight into perfect rays of gold. She glanced over her shoulder to the side they’d come from and there the bank steepened into a cliff that rose higher than she could see.
Again, she looked to Errance, who still had not moved. Between the glistening dark ribbons of his hair, she could see raw stripes of lacerated flesh.
“Errance?” she croaked. He was the one that had pulled her out of the river, of that she had no doubt. “Are you alive?”
He shifted his arm ever so slightly across the log in response.
“I’m alive, if you’re interested,” Kelm called, tripping across the log and reaching down. She clasped tight hold of his wrist, and with a tense struggle, pulled free of the water’s hungry mouth. The tree trunk bobbed in the rapids, and it was a relief to clamber onto steady ground. With a sputtering laugh, she dropped to the earth and rolled over to stare up into the swaying canopy. Kelm plopped beside her, that cheeky grin wrinkling his nose.
“There,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you it would work?”
“You never actually promised that,” she corrected. “But I’m so glad it did. Even if that was—” she gulped down the sick tang coating her throat “—the worst experience of my life.”
She faded into silence and studied the leaves stirring above. She had never seen such large and thick leaves or the rope-like vines tangling the wandering boughs. Warm moisture hung in the air, as unlike the cold cells as could be. And there was a deep humming noise, so loud she could hear it even above the water. Thousands of small whirling insect wings and clicking chirps rolled into one thick melody.
“Kelm,” she said after a long pause. “Where are we?”
He craned his head this way and that, biting his lip betw
een teeth. “Well,” he said very slowly. “I have no idea.”
Wonderful. Lost in both world and time. She squinted up at the sky and found the sun hovering directly overhead. Mid-day, then. How long had it been since she’d entered Tertorem? A few days? A week? Forever?
A thought occurred to her and she pulled out the moon medallion. The moon was waning now. So it had turned completely full at some point which meant…they had only been there two nights? Was that all? It had felt like an eternity.
It was then she heard Kelm whisper the exact same swear word Errance had said earlier. She whirled on him, planning to give him every inch of the tongue lashing he deserved.
But when she saw Errance, all words failed her.
He stood upon the bank, swaying, face tilted up to stare at the blue sky and the green leaves. What might have gone through his mind as he stood there free, no one could fully know, but in those few moments all wonder and fear flickered across his face. The dappled light and the glistening water upon his skin and hair adorned him fairer than any king’s finest jewels and silks. In many ways, it should have been a beautiful sight.
But all was ruined by the sight of his afflictions.
It did not seem possible that he could be standing. The river had washed away some of the blood staining his skin, but that only revealed every raw bruise, tear, and break. She did not know what could have mangled his body and flesh to such a state, could not dream how such horror might be worked. Burnt black upon his chest were the words Property Of and below it was a strange symbol—a black ball clasped by a skeletal hand, a symbol she could only assume represented His Darkness. The words were emblazoned with enflamed flesh, both yellow and red.
Her eyes skipped over the unknown torments of his body and focused on his twisted right arm that he cradled to his chest. An arm that had grabbed either her hair or her waist, saving her life.
Shakily, she leaned against the side of the bank. She was going to faint. She could not look at that dreadful sight and not faint. Turning, she pressed her fists and brow into the earth, measuring each sickly breath. She had an imagination and she knew how to use it. She was…a great and masterful heroine, and she rescued broken men like this every day. Yes, that was it. After a threatening minute, her whirling head balanced and her stomach agreed to stay put.
She turned, trying not to look straight at him. “Do you know where we go from here, Errance?”
He jerked, startled from his entrancement with the golden sunlight. Without a word, without a glance, he started up the steep slope of the bank and headed into the trees the moment he gained level ground.
Exchanging alarmed looks, Tellie and Kelm hurried after him. His limping gait proved surprisingly swift and sure, and they were hard-pressed to keep up.
“Wait!” Tellie cried. “Should you even be moving?” There was an obvious answer to that, and an even more obvious answer as to why it didn’t matter. She looked behind and saw that the sight of the river had already been swallowed up by the trees and foliage. They were sure to be lost. More than they already were anyway.
He didn’t pause, and so they plunged deeper and deeper into the wild unknown.
As the roar of the river faded, the noise Tellie had heard before increased. It was a sort of music really—the hum of insects, the screech of birds, the harsh squall of a wild animal. Vivid, ravenous life pulsed in the blood of the land, from the tiniest gnat to the unseen predator stalking through the trees. The trees grew taller and the thick undergrowth lessened.
As they traveled, the ground moistened, but not until Kelm’s feet sank into mud up to his ankles did they realize that they were about to run into a bog. One could hardly tell by looking as the surface was covered in green and brown growth like the rest of the jungle, but it was a surface that liked to swallow heavy things. Unfazed, Errance turned to the fallen trees and cage-like branches as his new road, and he never once looked back to see how the children managed to walk along the slimy trunks. Tellie kept tight hold to the vines hanging overhead or else Kelm’s arm, and together they navigated the treacherous path across the soggy ground.
When the land at last turned firm and they descended back to earth, Errance had advanced far ahead of them. Just as Tellie opened her mouth to call for a moment of rest, he paused. Even from that distance, she saw how he swayed and only just caught himself against a tree.
“Let’s take a break,” Kelm called. “I think we could all use a breather.”
As if he hadn’t heard, Errance took another step.
And collapsed.
“Errance!” Tellie and Kelm screamed. They sprinted to his side and dropped to their knees. He lay face down in the turf and, heedless of his wounds, they pushed him over onto his back. His slick skin shone white as marble and shadows hung under every feature.
“Plagues take it, he can’t be dead now!” Kelm exclaimed. “He’s not dead! Is he?”
Tellie pressed her ear to the elf’s chest, knocking her head against his chin in her haste. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat, could only feel sticky blood. Fighting nausea, she dropped her cheek to his lips and was rewarded with the barest warm breath exhaling from his mouth and nose. She straightened with a dizzy smile. “He’s alive.”
Kelm whooped in relief, leaning back onto his heels. But a moment later his triumphant smile faded to concern as he studied the elf’s haggard figure. “What do we do?” he muttered. “I mean, how do we even touch him without hurting him? And do we just wait for him to wake up?”
“Don’t ask me, I’m no nurse!”
“What if he doesn’t wake up?” He became quite shrill with alarm. “I once heard of a man who hit his head and fell into an eternal sleep. Kept breathing, just never woke up.”
“That doesn’t help at all,” she said crossly. “Do you know anything useful?”
His brow wrinkled. “Er. I once heard that a man kissed a dead woman and she came back to life.”
“What? No, that’s just a fairy tale!”
“I tell you, it’s true. He was some sort of doctor, and he knew a type of kiss that could breathe life back into the body.”
“Well, I don’t know that kind of kiss, and I am most certainly not practicing on Errance!” She felt her face burn hot just thinking about it.
And then out of the jungle, a women’s voice called, “Are you hurt? I’m coming!”
oOo
Yador, former warden of Tertorem, lay dead on the ground amidst the shattered ruin of his ambitions and dreams. Whatever deal he had signed with the devil had fallen through, or perhaps it had reached fulfillment if he had only read the fine print.
The Voice lifted his gaze from the ruin of the body to the cowering men beyond and slowly smiled. “Does anyone else believe that the Prisoner has escaped?”
Shuddering, the men murmured dissent.
“Then know that he is not free. No one enters this realm and no one leaves it but by My Darkness’s consent. Now go.” He swept them out the door with a mere gesture and turned to the throne, skimming his fingers across the smooth stone.
To be certain, he had lifted the binds constraining his Prisoner some time ago, but the former prince had shown no interest in challenging the single guard sent to bring him to torment again and again. It was delicious to see him so resigned to his fate, but still, he needed to stir up some desire for escape in him.
But the sewer passages?
The serenity on the Voice’s face morphed to fury. The sewers—a small mortal detail of his demesne that he had never built. No, some other, perhaps even Yador, had ordered the thing constructed. Which one of the prisoners had the insolence to come up with that sort of escape? His pride was wounded to the quick for them to have found a passage out unprepared by his hand. Anger simmered inside him, threatening to erupt.
He was in control, this was his kingdom, and no quivering captive could waltz out on their own whim. Well, no one else would escape that way anymore, he’d made sure of it.
Taking a deep
breath, he smoothed a hand down his face. He’d always prided himself on seeing the humor in bad situations, especially in bad situations, and now that he reflected, it really was quite funny. After all, he had planned on letting them go by a far more pleasant route. In the end, the result was the same. The Prisoner had flown the nest. Let him spread his wings, let him soar to new heights.
Let his feathers snap.
10
oOo
Sunlight. I think…I think it was real. The faintest of memories tell me so, and it was so different from fire or the false light when….But it’s gone again. So why love it if it cannot last.
“There.” The young woman finished wrapping the bandage around the child’s arm and tied it off with a dainty bow. “And a kiss to make it all better,” she concluded with said parting gift.
The little boy looked up at her with a sort of awe as if the airy kiss on his bandaged elbow really had expelled all the pain. “T’anks!” he said, then ran off hollering to find his abandoned playmates.
The young woman hardly finished pushing herself up from the jungle floor before she was hailed again, this time by a mother of four. “Tryss!” the mother called, wiping sweat from her brow. “Could you perhaps keep watch over these hellions as I do the washing?”
“Well I—” Tryss began.
“Actually.” A figure stepped in front of her and she could not help but smile at the command with which Master Holivari carried himself no matter how short his stature. “I need Tryss to find me some talith leaves at once. I am afraid you will just need to find someone else.”
Tryss dipped in a bow, trying to hide her relieved and excited smile from the disappointed mother. After all, she was willing and able to watch the children of her village, and it was a role expected of her and something she excelled at. But beyond that, she trained in the healing arts under the Master, and he knew that she loved nothing more than a chance to go off into the jungle on her own and just—just breathe.
The buzz of delight hummed in her ears as she darted back to her hut and grabbed her bow and quiver and knife. The jungle was a dangerous place even for her kind and one never could be too careful. And then she was sprinting for the wilds, soon deep within the humid fronds and dangling vines.
Moonscript (Kings of Aselvia Book 1) Page 12