by Aaron Bunce
“That is enough,” he said, leaning over the end of the gallery to whisper something to Lord Desh.
“You stand accused of crimes of the most heinous nature. You will answer for acts of brutality, and savagery, as banned in the articles set forth by your Council Lords,” Lord Desh stated importantly. “I was roused from my chambers last night. I spoke at length with Captain Teague. Time I could have spent at rest!”
Lord Desh looked pointedly at Dennah and then shifted irritably in the large seat. “You and your…companion here have been implicated in the deaths of a score of innocents. Town guardsmen, farmers, a town elder, members of your own caravan, not to mention several soldiers from this very fort, all murdered in brutal and unnatural ways. As is customary, you are afforded the opportunity to answer to these charges with your own voice, and be judged. Do you understand this?”
Dennah nodded her head solemnly, the tears welling up in her eyes.
“Very well, I will hear the events in your words,” Lord Desh stated and raised a hand. Shuffling parchments that lay out before him, the crier stood and cleared his throat.
“You were posted sentry outside the murderer’s door. Is this correct?” the crier asked.
The fact that the crier referred to Roman as the murderer took Dennah off guard and gave her a moment of pause.
“I was,” she stated simply.
“Captain Teague has made claim that he personally found that the murderer had been released from his chains, and your post abandoned. Is this correct?”
“No, not abandoned. I was…” Dennah started to say, but her mouth suddenly grew horribly dry.
“You were what?” the crier asked with a slightly mocking tone.
Dennah swallowed and licked her lips. She felt the knot on the back of her head where Banus struck her throb. Her skin began to crawl and a host of memories and sensations rushed back. They were memories she tried to lock away. To deny at all cost.
The crier licked his lips and leaned forward, the sheets of parchment crumpling under his hands.
“I was attacked,” Dennah blurted, hoarsely. As soon as she spoke, the crowd in the gallery erupted.
Lord Desh smashed his cane against the platform, the hollow thud cutting through the excited chatter.
“Attacked, you say?” the crier asked, a hint of doubt playing at his voice.
“Yes, I was attacked,” Dennah repeated. Despite her best efforts to sound strong and confident, her voice felt horribly weak.
She felt the room expand above her once again, as if she had grown suddenly very small. She instantly resented all of the men sitting above her, staring and mocking her. She doubted they would believe her, no matter how painful the truth was. No matter how honest she was.
“And who attacked you?” Lord Desh asked.
“Men from my caravan guard detail,” Dennah responded defiantly.
“And how did they attack you?” the crier asked.
“They hit me on the head. When I woke up I was in a barn. They tied me up and…” Dennah replied, her throat closing up.
The shackles locked around her wrists suddenly felt very tight and she felt a stab of panic grip her chest. She pulled one arm and then the other, laboring to catch her breath while the crowd in the gallery grew louder, feeding off of her panic.
“Yes, Captain Teague has spoken of this barn. The barn that was set aflame, where they found the bodies of three men, burned and mutilated so badly none could identify them. This is the barn of which you speak?” the crier asked, prompted by a look from the constable.
Dennah nodded.
“And what did these men do?” the crier asked, and as he spoke, the gallery went very quiet.
Dennah heard the man speak, but something inside of her rejected the question. Her thoughts grew cloudy and she abruptly wanted to think of anything else. She flashed to thoughts of her parents and home. She remembered the glow of her mother’s oven and the smell of her homemade sweetbread every morning. There were her older brothers, wrestling in the grass outside her father’s workshop. They were chasing after her then, having grown bored with each other. She was climbing the large oak tree to escape them. She was screaming at them to stop, to leave her alone. They wouldn’t stop, so she screamed louder.
The memories swirled in a confusing jumble and then she was staring at the crier, and Lord Desh, and their wide eyes and shocked faces. She tasted blood and felt the pain where her lips had split open. She wasn’t just thinking of home and screaming at her brothers; she was screaming at the constable…at all of the faces in the gallery gawking at her.
The crier blinked once and then twice as he collected himself. He glanced toward Lord Desh, who shifted upon his seat uncomfortably.
The crier resumed his questions. “They hit you. They took you to a barn. They tied you up, and?”
Dennah labored to take a breath, the blood trickling down her lip and into her mouth. It tasted horribly familiar. She blinked hard and fast, desperate to hold back the tears that threatened to break loose. The thoughts rushed forth, but they damned up and she found that she couldn’t get them out.
“Miss, you must say it,” the crier said, but his voice had changed, and when she looked up into his face his expression seemed softer, and he dropped his gaze to the parchments.
“I…I can’t,” Dennah whispered and shook her head, barely able to maintain her composure.
“Please, Miss,” the crier started, but Lord Desh cleared his throat and interrupted him. Dennah looked up and scanned the gallery and her gaze fell upon Captain Teague. His usually stoic façade looked broken. He turned his head and she followed his gaze to Lord Desh. The silver-haired constable nodded and tapped his cane against the ground.
“If you will not speak of it, fine. Your words, or silence, will damn you either way. I will judge your account by the truth of the law. But only after you are weighed,” Lord Desh said in a flat, deep voice. “Crow!” He gestured to a lone figure standing in a dark corner, behind the gallery.
Dennah hadn’t noticed him before, but once he moved she found that she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He moved like a solitary shadow, more form than figure, amidst a sea of winter light.
The Crow stepped into the white light cascading down, and seemed to pull the shadow with him, stretching it beyond its sheltered confines.
He wore a simple black cloak, trimmed in fine green thread. The heavy fabric was faded but clean, the hem hanging in tatters down past his ankles. The garment was drawn around the waist with a simple leather belt, fastened with an iron buckle. She figured the Crow for a man, but couldn’t rightly discern either way.
The Crow glided across the glossy stone, neither bobbing nor swaying. But appeared to float. The chamber went completely quiet. She couldn’t hear the murmuring, hissing babble of the gallery any more, only the surge of blood in her veins and gasp of her breath.
A thought pulled at her, and she longed to look away, to dispel her fear that she was now all alone in the chamber with the strange figure. Darkness pulled at the edges of her vision, the strange silence now lying over her like a thick woolen blanket.
Dennah’s legs started to shake and she crumpled to her knees. The Crow settled directly before Lord Desh, now just a man-shaped smudge against the bright backdrop. The room seemed to shrink. She could no longer see the gallery, nor Roman, battered and bound in his cage.
“Look at me, and listen to my voice, child,” the Crow said, his voice silky and deep. Dennah fought the urge, but found her eyes sliding up his dark robes, until they locked with his shadowy eyes.
The Crow spread his arms and seemed to split in two. A dark, featureless version floated towards her, while the original hovered before the constable.
“What is this? What is happening to me?” Dennah breathed, feeling the weight of silence grow heavier. It pulled at the words as they left her mouth and stole away the air as she tried to breath. The pool of darkness was all around her. It was above her and then she
looked up and saw him, like a shadow made of pure midnight.
Dennah shrunk back, pulling the chains tight and causing the shackles to bite into her wrists. She fell into his shadow and the chamber melted away.
“Listen to my voice. Let your truth find words,” the Crow said, his voice flowing over her from the suffocating darkness.
He was so close that she could smell him. It was a peculiar mixture of odors. She took in a breath and smelled damp and decay, like she was in a cave locked away from the warmth of the sun. She gasped, pushed that breath out and gagged in again, only everything changed. She smelled her mother’s kitchen, and the sweetbreads she had been thinking about only moments before.
“Focus on the fear, the pain.”
Dark, featureless hands pulled free of the darkness and reached out for her. She couldn’t pull back anymore. The chains would afford her no more flexibility. The Crow leaned in and she was caught off guard by his eyes, which shone like a blue-green sky reflecting on rippling water. She was pulled into his crystal clear gaze as pale, cool hands slid into place around the fevered skin of her neck.
In an instant Dennah’s fears, concerns, and anxieties washed away. She wasn’t smothered by darkness and fear anymore, nor could she feel the oppressive weight of the chains pulling her toward the ground. She spun end over end, the reality she knew swirling in a confusing maelstrom of darkness and fog.
I am dead…I am surely dead, she thought, but that thought, like every other, was quickly swallowed up by the mist.
No not dead, the thought slid into place, and it felt more real to her than anything ever had. She didn’t just believe it, but she felt that she must believe it. The fog took shape and then Dennah felt a strange sensation rip at her body. It felt like she had been shot out of a catapult and her insides were struggling to keep pace.
The sensation abruptly ended and the fog turned bright, and then she was in a hallway. The mist remained, hovering around her, softening the edges of her vision and melting together to form the solid surfaces of wooden planks and a plaster wall. More mist peeled away, exposing the flickering dance of solitary candles set in holders on the wall.
She felt solid, as solid as the floor beneath her. She recognized the hallway immediately. A floorboard creaked. It was a haunting noise that was swallowed up by the mist. A door opened in the hallway ahead of her and Blain Tivorian emerged from the dark room.
Dennah’s stomach turned over as the events played out before her. Her world was jolted suddenly and pain exploded from the back of her head.
She was consumed by the fog again, but only briefly, and then everything around her went cold. She felt it keenly against her skin, like needles poking and jabbing relentlessly. She felt the ropes around her wrists and ankles, and then she saw their faces. Banus, wretched Banus, hovered over her, his filthy drool covered mouth and wine-tinged breath burning every sensibility.
This time there was nothing Dennah could do to hide from the truth. She felt the scratch of their unshaven chins, and the scrape of callouses from their dirty hands. She cursed them, and their every disregard, but she was just as powerless to stop them this time as she was before. The fog swirled and Banus’ voice cut the air. It was a noise that assaulted her, debased her, and dirtied the very air around her. His arm went back, and when it came forward once again the air was split with a loud crack. Her back was split open by the pain, again and again. She felt everything inside and out, her voice breaking up in the same fog that melted into the crates and straw bales around her.
She was splitting apart, threatening to fall into a void, one from which there would be no return as the brutality continued. And then as quickly as it had started, the fog swirled around her and she was once again pitched in the cool, black nothing.
Light returned, but she hardly noticed. The floor felt cold against her skin, but it was not the reason why she shook and trembled.
“Stand her up,” she heard a voice above her. It was a peculiar voice, barely a whisper, yet it carried all the strength of a thunderstorm.
Hands cupped under her arms and she felt the chains grow tight as she was pulled to her feet. They did not let go, however. They remained there and supported her. Dennah forced her eyes open and clenched her jaw as tightly as she could, desperate to deny everything she had just been forced to experience all over again.
“Damn you…damn you!” she cursed everything, her voice trembling and week. She felt fouled and dirty.
The dark phantasm withdrew from her, drifting across the chamber until the two again became one. The strange figure trod up the steps until it stood on the platform next to Lord Desh. He stood straight, speaking to the constable and scribes. She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the ringing in her ears.
Dennah turned and looked up into Sayer’s face. He met her gaze, but wouldn’t hold it for long. There was something less forceful about how the two men held her up. They didn’t squeeze her arms like before.
Lord Desh cleared his throat as the Crow slid away from his seat. He released his grip on his cane and then slowly gestured to Sayer and his counterpart, waving an open palm held parallel to the ground.
The two soldiers released their grip on her arms and Dennah felt the weight of the shackles fall away as they were unlocked. She teetered and almost fell, but Sayer caught her.
“Bring her here,” Lord Desh said mildly.
Together, Sayer and the stalky soldier helped Dennah move toward the elevated platform and the seated constable. She felt her body shaking, but her mind, and body, had gone numb.
They continued to talk. Lord Desh grew animated, while the Crow maintained as an unwavering, unmoving shape before them. She heard her name, amongst other words, but it didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t care what they would say, or do. The damage had already been done.
“Show me,” the constable said loudly, breaking from his deliberation. The Crow respond, his voice too deep and melodic for her to hear. The scribes shuffled parchment and scratched fervently with quill and ink.
Sayer turned her around, so that she faced the door, the hallway leading to the parade ground, and the mass of people who wouldn’t fit into the gallery. The crowd watched her silently, their eyes wide and unblinking. Sayer’s surly counterpart grabbed her shirt and bunched it up in his fist and started to untuck it from her trousers.
“No! Don’t touch me!” Dennah screamed, something snapping deep inside. She threw her head back and wrenched her arm free from Sayer’s grasp but he slapped it down and hooked his free arm around her.
Dennah felt like a snared animal, and for a moment her instincts took over. She stomped, kicked, and tried to bite anything close enough. Several soldiers rushed forth and grabbed her arms, working to keep her still. Sayer pulled her in with his other arm, wrapping her fully into an embrace.
“Shh. Stop fighting, it’s okay,” he whispered into her ear, “It’s going to be alright.”
She felt the soldier pull her shirt free and then only the cold air of the chamber on her back. She heard the scribe’s scratching quills go quiet. The murmuring chatter of the galleries on either side of the constable took on an altogether different tone.
The panic broke apart. Defeated, Dennah buried her face in Sayer’s chest as the room full of strangers looked upon her, raw and exposed. They saw her bruised and battered flesh. They saw the welts, cuts, and contusions that marred her outside, like badges of the damage she carried inside.
“That is enough,” Lord Desh said, his voice now far less firm.
The soldiers pulled Dennah’s shirt down, yet Sayer did not immediately let her go. There was something tender in his embrace that she had not felt before, and for the first time in a great while she felt safe. In the moment, she didn’t realize that she had wrapped her arms around him, and when he initially tried to pull away she continued to hold on.
“Miss…Miss,” he said. “Dennah, you can let go. It’s going to be okay,” he said, and finally she was able to unl
ock her arms.
The other soldiers moved to turn her around and she looked up into Sayer’s face. There was something in his eyes, some pain that dulled the previous luster.
Lord Desh shifted on his seat, the cane now returned to his hand. Dennah looked up, ready to bear whatever punishment he levied against her. Be it cell, stocks, or noose, she didn’t really care. She just didn’t want to stand before them anymore.
“Dennah Thorben, I issue you a soldier’s dispensation,” Lord Desh said clearly and drove the cane down into the platform, accentuating the point with finality.
Before Dennah could even consider his words, she was pulled away from him. They walked her past the gallery of scribes and out through a small door.
“Wait…what does that mean?” she asked, bewildered, but the soldiers did not respond.
They walked out into a small hallway and turned abruptly to the right and then mounted a tight spiral staircase leading up. The men moved her into a hallway, either side lined with banded doors. All were closed except one, all the way at the end.
The stalky, dark-haired soldier led Dennah into a room, and Sayer followed her in. The furnishings were simple, but not without its own charms. There was a wooden bed in one corner, framed by small tables. One held an oil lamp, and the other an earthenware washbasin, not unlike the one her mother used. A small fireplace sat on the wall opposite the bed while a deep, iron bathing tub occupied a large portion of the floor.
“Have a seat,” Sayer’s counterpart said simply, motioning towards the bed.
Dennah, still horribly confused, skirted the bathing tub and stood before the bed. The soldier watched her, and shrugged his shoulders. “Or don’t,” he said.
There was a commotion in the hallway and then someone appeared in the doorway. Dennah saw a short woman donned in a heavy brown dress, her platinum hair pulled back in a simple tie.
Sayer hopped forward before walking out in the hallway where he towered over the woman. They spoke for several moments. When Sayer spoke his arms hung relaxed at his sides, while the woman seemed to speak primarily through arm movement.
