Errance’s expression sickened, and he swallowed hard, but he tilted up his chin and spoke without waver. “Others have tried that before and their efforts failed. My light cannot be found in my body nor can it be consumed.”
The demon’s eyes turned back to him first, rolling with dark glee. “Oh, Your Majesty. Yes, it is not in your flesh, in your blood, or even in your mind. No, it is something deeper. Something woven into the very fabric of self. It is a part of you.” His teeth bared in a carnivorous grin. “And you, precious, are MINE.”
He lunged, hand out-stretched like the jaws of a striking snake, caught Errance’s throat and slammed him to the wall. The prince choked and struggled as he was lifted off the ground, clawing uselessly at the arm that held him.
“I gave you,” the Voice hissed, “every opportunity to come to me willingly. I have suspended this so that you may survive. But now you will learn my power. Fool! Have you not known until now who I am?”
The pupils of his eyes pooled out, clouding like ink in water. Veins rose black and thick under his skin, and then darkness began to bleed from his being, spiraling in tendrils of wind. The ribbons of darkness whirled without focus for one moment, then turned to the prisoner pressed against the wall. They darted forward and vanished into Errance at his heart, and the brand burned there flared in shadow. Something like smoke could be seen curling under Errance’s skin, spreading out in ravished hunger.
Not a single cry escaped Errance’s lips, but his eyes were squeezed shut and his mouth stretched open in soundless agony. Such a dreadful silence it was, broken only by an infrequent gasp of desperate breath and a deep, underlying thrum.
Tellie stood rooted where the Voice had left her, staring in disbelief and horror. She did not know for certain what was happening, but it was surely a war of will. And as Errance’s body became slick with sweat, she feared it was a war he would lose. She had to do something, small and useless or not, she had to stop this!
Not one guard moved to stop her as she sprang forward, for they were all cowering in the corner in awe of their terrible master. She did not know what she would do when she reached the Voice, only that she must distract him, and if that required ripping off his cloak or climbing atop his head, then she would do it.
She slammed into a wall.
Reeling backwards, hand to face, she stared in confusion at the path ahead. Not a single barrier could be seen and when she stretched out a hand, she met no glass or anything solid. But the second she tried to step through, resistance met her with solid force.
There are some places where both the mortal world and the Unseen become nearly one. Rendar’s words floated back into memory. Tertorem…of course this would be such a place. And if the veil between here and the Unseen was so very thin…
Closing her eyes, Tellie willed herself to feel other forces, other threads of reality, weaving invisible around her. Surely here where they converged so strongly, she might slip through.
She felt a loosening, a thrill akin to dropping a heavy burden. She felt as lightweight as a feather, and she didn’t even notice how carelessly she let her body fall to the ground behind her.
Eagerly, she leapt towards the Voice, then paused. She was forgetting all the lessons Rendar had taught her. Combat darkness with its opposite, drive it back with light. She thought of every pure beauty she knew, of every love that lasted, of every hope that shone. Delicately, she probed her mind forward towards the Voice, determining to stand between his power and Errance—
An abysmal force snatched hold of her mind and sucked in like a vortex consuming all that drew near it. She tried to dig into anything beyond his reach, but the terrible presence filled the entire room in choking smoke. She could feel her own body aching from the strain of her spirit, and she sensed life draining out of her as if her throat had been slit.
No. No, she had to be strong; she had to free Errance from this terrible, consuming power. Dizzy with racking pain, she struggled forward, but something grabbed her and pulled her back. The maelstrom of darkness stuck to her like glue, and she screamed as she was jerked out of it.
“Tellie!” a voice cried.
She writhed in the stranger’s grasp before realizing the voice was not unknown. Opening her vision to the world again, she stared up at Rendar. Relief pulsed through her. “Rendar!” she gasped. Light as a feather, she clung to him in fear of blowing away altogether. “You’re here. We—we can do it together. We can defeat the Voice—he must be stopped.”
He took her shoulders with such firmness, she stared up at him in surprise. “No, Tellie,” he said.
She blinked, unbelieving. “What?”
The pain in his eyes was that of an open, bleeding wound, but he shook his head.
She wrenched against his hold. “No! No, Errance is hurting, we’ve got to stop the Voice.”
“Not this time, Tellie. This is beyond you. This is beyond me. We cannot help.”
“I can do this!”
“Not this time,” Rendar shouted. “You must not put yourself in this! You are barred from the Unseen.”
Rendar vanished. Tellie found herself lying on the ground, the stone stretching out before her eyes in a grey, cracked plain. Her head ached abominably from where it had struck the ground. She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, arms chaffed and burning. But she fell back to the ground an instant later.
For Errance screamed.
A raw, anguished cry pulled from his stomach by a hook. It was a sound like that of something ripping, on the verge of giving way and toppling ruin. His body arched against the wall, trying to escape the darkness coiling within him.
And then suddenly the Voice let go, and the black ribbons withdrew into their master. Errance dropped to the ground with a thud. Choking on pain and blood, he doubled against the wall as if he could hide in it.
The Voice, skin grotesquely stretched over his skull, wheeled away with a savage roar. “Take him away!” he barked at the guards. “Take him and the girl and lock them back in their cell!”
The guards remained rooted in horror so before they could snap back to themselves, Tellie forced herself to her feet and ran to Errance’s side. This time, no wall barred the way, and she fell to her knees beside him.
His quivering skin shone sickly pale and changed from white to green to blue in moments, and when she brushed aside his slick hair to see his face, dark veins bulged out on his temple and brow. “Er-Errance?” she whispered, softly touching his arm but he jerked away.
The guards came then, roughly taking him up, and another seized her by the shoulders. She submitted without a sound for she saw that they were bringing her wherever they took him and that was what she needed—a chance to be with him alone.
So close! So close and yet still too dangerous! The Voice of His Darkness prowled in the hall, breath whistling between his teeth like wind through a cracked window. He spun and stalked to the throne, slamming into it with such force that a less study seat might have broken. Seventy whole years had not been without its purpose. For the allotted time, he would have patience. But that time was over, and his patience withered. From the beginning he had known that if the prince could not be coerced, another possibility existed. A chance he'd lingered in using for its risk was high.
Everything about a person could be found knitted in their spirit, and somewhere in the Prisoner’s complex fabric hid his celestial light and the power it wielded. But one cannot reach in and rip something out without damaging everything around it. The Voice knew well that the act would destroy the elf prince—a pity, but an acceptable one—but it also could possibly destroy the power as well. And if that was lost…all would be over.
The prince’s grasp on his gift was still too strong. The Voice ground his lip between his teeth, calculating. As he’d said, any one of His Darkness’s demons would eagerly return to the care of the Prisoner, and that certainly could lower Errance’s morale…but it was all so repetitive. He needed something new, and while he thought
of it, he needed Errance kept in discouragement and exhaustion and that meant…
The slightest movement drew his eye to the source with a snap, pinning Daran to his place like a fly on a needle. The man blanched under the hellish glare, raising a hand to his face in futile defense.
“You.”
“Your Lordship?”
Tilting his head, the Voice steepled his fingers to his lips. “My hunter who brought in the prey. But you never had your chance to break the legendary unbreakable Prisoner. He made you look quite the fool, I imagine. They all do, don’t they? The strong, the beautiful, the fortunate…how they lord it over the lesser and how you would love to grind them into the ground. You have your chance now. I don’t care how brave that boy thinks himself. Pain wears everyone down. When I am ready to summon him again, I want him completely incapable of resisting.”
So that he might uproot his power like a sprout from fresh soil. And as long as the gift could be gained, so what if the body died?
30
oOo
Ever since Tryss left, the chema village had been overcast with a spirit of fear and sadness. Fear of the shadow that stretched over their sunlit trees in the morning and sadness for the home they were pressed to flee from—the only home that many of them had ever known. And many missed Tryss, wondering if they had seen the last of their children’s guardian eagle.
But no one expected Tryss to return so soon and in such a manner.
She came storming into the village on foot, accompanied only by the boy Kelm.
It was not the entrance she’d originally planned, at first only thinking to arrive as soon as possible and thus landing in the fire pit clearing on The Daisha. But The Daisha would hear none of that, insisting she would be shot and screamed at, and anyway, her appearance would only distract from their true plight.
It was amazing how fast The Daisha had flown and how quickly the ground they’d covered in days was eaten up in hours by the straight course of her wings. But it was still too long. Too long and too terrible. She was sick with horror, and poor Kelm looked ready to faint, so pasty grey was his skin.
The village children spotted them first and dashed throughout the village, shrieking the news of the arrival. In moments nearly all the folk were crowded around, crying out questions and greetings. But Tryss could hardly see them, could hardly feel them as more than gnats biting at her skin. She pushed her way through the tangle until she found her grandfather, the Ancient, who was the only one in the gathering who looked sad because he already saw what no one else did.
“They’ve been taken,” she gasped. “Taken to Tertorem. I need to speak with the council.”
An uneasy silence fell over the people as they understood this was not a happy return. One by one the council members stepped to the Ancient’s side and looked with somber eyes upon her.
Somehow, even though her breath was still short and her mind lay in shattered fragments, she told them all and how it had ended. When she was through, tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she vowed to stay strong. “Please. I know we’re not warriors. But we have to rescue them.”
Throughout her speech, the elders had remained silent. Ominously so. She’d hoped the passion of her plea would rouse them so that they were nigh interrupting her to head off into battle, but instead they just stared and blinked with sorrowful eyes, even her father.
Sighing wearily, the Ancient stood. He came forward and took her hand. “My dear granddaughter,” he said. “It is said that there is no way through those grey mountains, save by the Darkness’s will.”
“I don’t believe it,” she snapped. “There has to be some way. Are we not followers of Ayeshune? Are we not descended from the chemas of ice and cold who live in the North Mountains? Can we not become invisible in our surroundings?”
“What then, Tryss?” another elder asked. “If by some miracle, we did pass through the ring of mountains, what would we do next? We do not know the workings of that dark demesne.”
“Kelm’s been there.”
“Outside the dungeons?”
The tears burst past her will and started rolling down her cheeks. “We have to do something!” she cried. “You all decided to help Errance before! Why, because he was the prince of Aselvia? Because he might be able to find us a new home? He is more than that, he is a friend and a person in desperate need. And Tellie, a child! How could you possibly stand by and let them remain in Tertorem?”
The Ancient pulled her shaking form into an embrace. Bowing to the other elders, he led her away from the mute, staring crowd. “Ah, my dear, tender one,” he murmured. “If there was anything I could do, I would do it. Alas, this body fails me. But I cannot decide for the rest of the tribe. You have presented your plea to the council. They will discuss and weigh the cost of it.”
“The men of our village must help,” she said angrily. “Aren’t two lives—even one—worth saving?”
“Do not judge them harshly,” he soothed. “You must try to see it from their side. You ask for the lives of two at the cost of most our men. Without the men, our people will diminish and perhaps disband altogether. You ask for the lives of our entire village. And they believe it would be in vain.”
Tryss stared at him, shaken. Slowly, she lowered her head and nodded. The decision of her tribe was not hers to make. She was responsible for her choice alone—and she knew the decision she had made.
oOo
The cell door clanged shut, shaking her bones. But the moment Tellie found her footing after being thrust into the cage, she spun back around and grabbed the bars. This was not how it would end; this was not the fate for her life. “You won’t win!” she shouted. “You can’t keep us here forever!”
The guards walked off, not paying her the slightest attention. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t yelling at them anyways. She wasn’t quite sure who she raged at. The Voice. The Darkness. Anybody who bothered to hear.
She slumped against the bars, strength bled out. For now, she was here. And Errance was here in the same cell, so that was all that need matter at this time.
His soft moan brought her around, and she was kneeling at his side the next instant, feeling for him in the pitch black. When she found his head and shoulders, he jerked back as if from branding irons.
Tucking her legs to the side, she leaned against the bars and tried to think over the thunder of her own beating heart. Strange that the guards had locked them in the same cell. They hadn’t bothered to chain them either. The men were shaken, she supposed. But it could be more than that. A flicker of hope flared to life inside her. Perhaps they weren’t so abandoned after all. “Are you with me, Errance?”
He didn’t respond.
For all she knew he could have lapsed into unconsciousness. She touched him again, and this time he was still, only the faintest swell of his skin giving evidence of life.
“Come back,” she whispered. “You’re strong, stronger than them.” She winced as she recalled the sight of him, white as death, collapsing to the floor. No, she would not think of that. She would think of his courage, of his determination.
But it was so hard to think of anything past this ever tightening prison, to remember what had been before. It seemed they had never left, that their great journey had only been a passing dream. Even the life that came before was ghostly, and all her dreams were waning. There had been a little stream she liked to visit in the wood, hadn’t there? The cook at the orphanage had sometimes snuck her an apple tart. Oh, but it was so far away. And anything in the future was stolen away, her family, her beloved long-sought family—
No. She’d had a family. For a little while. Not only her parents who had loved her so much that they died for her sake. But these people who she had journeyed with, they’d become a family without her noticing until now.
“Do you know, Errance, I always dreamed of an older brother?” She held her breath, waiting for the slightest inclination that he’d heard her, but there was nothing. Gathering her nerv
e, she continued. “I always dreamed he was great and strong and would come to my rescue, chasing troubles away. He’d ride up to the inn, scornfully wave the Nornes aside, and then we’d set off on such adventures.” She laughed. “I don’t suppose the Nornes seem so terrible now. But the truth still is…that you’re like that brother in so many ways. You’ve protected me again and again and led me on a path where only heroes tread. One thing you should know about this brother, just so you can live up to the role. He never gave up, no matter how hard things got.” Her voice wavered. “So you can’t either. Please, please, don’t give up now.”
Time inched by, and she paced about the cell, checking each bar and stone for weakness. At times it was easy to forget that Errance was with her in the surrounding cage. I wish Tryss and Kelm were here with me, she thought, not caring how selfish the wish was. Tryss would know what comforting thing to say, and she would hold my hand. And Kelm wouldn’t give up. He’d say something silly and make me laugh. Things always look so much brighter when Kelm is around. He was always there for her, even when she hadn’t wanted him. She wanted him here now. She wanted him by her side more than the entire world.
“Tellie…” Her name scraped out of a dry throat, but it sounded more beautiful than birdsong.
“Errance!” She dashed to his side, accidently jabbing a knee into his ribs.
“You…you are here?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here.”
He muttered something into the ground that she didn’t suppose she wanted to hear. Then he rasped, “He was in me. Clawing…shredding. In the very core of my being. He saw, he knew—everything. He was tearing me apart.” His voice broke in panic, words running into each other in their terror.
“There now,” she soothed. “He’s not here anymore. We have a moment of respite. And we’ll find another way out, I promise.”
The shivering of his shoulders abruptly stopped. “No,” he said.
Moonscript (Kings of Aselvia Book 1) Page 37