Solace Lost

by Michael Sliter

  Saren didn’t say anything; he just kissed her fiercely for another moment. It was perfect. Just what she had always imagined. Until she was bitten by a mosquito. And another. Then, she became more aware of the strong taste (and smell) of beer and liquor in Saren’s mouth. And a third mosquito bite! She pulled away and swatted at her leg.

  “Come with me. I know a place,” he said, taking Meri by the hand and leading her further into the woods.

  They continued walking for nearly an hour, taking small paths that Meri did not know. Stepping over roots and ducking under branches, Meri was starting to get tired and sweaty. This was not quite the romantic setting she had envisioned. Her careful cleaning process was undoubtedly undone by now, and she had built up quite a collection of bug bites and small scrapes on her bare legs and arms. Having made the mistake of wearing sandals (she hadn’t expected to be walking several miles in the dark), Meri was now sporting a stubbed toe and a rolled ankle. Saren no longer strictly supported her, but had her by the hand, pulling her along. He seemed completely unbothered by the walk and the intrusion of nature. Of course, he was wearing boots and was nearly completely covered by durable clothing, not to mention the fact that he was more accustomed to these paths and the outdoors in general.

  Twice, she almost turned around, almost told Saren to lead her back home. But, she couldn’t find the nerve.

  Those journeys most fraught with peril tend to yield the richest rewards. Though the path didn’t quite reach the level of being perilous, Yearen’s aphorism would hopefully apply. That chapter had an aphorism that would apply to any situation.

  They finally came to an almost undetectable clearing—something that Meri might have missed, had not Saren paused and turned—with a small cabin nestled under some willow trees. Hidden, really. Built in the old style of stacked and interlocking logs, it was old, moldy, and certainly abandoned. But, as Saren opened the door, Meri realized that it must still be in use. From the light of Phanos leaking into the windows, Meri could see that it was relatively clean on the inside, although it smelled of dampness, and unlit candles were scattered throughout the interior. There was a small kitchen area, apparently stocked with food and water. And there was a thin mattress sitting in the corner, covered in a grimy-looking, white-and-green knit quilt, similar to the ones they had at the inn, although much dirtier. Saren went around the room, lighting one candle from his lantern and then using that to light others in succession.

  “What is this place?” asked Meri, stalling a bit as Saren walked toward her, setting his last candle on a simple wooden stand next to the bed. Flickering lights illuminated the single room now, and Meri was almost certain she saw a rat skitter behind a cabinet.

  “It’s an old trapper’s cabin,” said Saren, obviously not wanting to elaborate.

  “Really? Tell me more!” The bed, that thin, uneven straw mattress, did not look particularly inviting. And, because of the heavy moisture and increasingly-evident smell of mildew, Meri was worried that it would be full of bugs, as well.

  With a sigh, Saren went on. “Before Dunmore was primarily a fishing and foraging village, the area attracted a lot of fur trappers who made a living off of the beavers and muskrats in the wetlands. Since the egg trade has become the major source of income in Dunmore, there are fewer trappers around, and, if you know where to look, some of these cabins.”

  “Really? Wow, how did you find it?” asked Meri, knowing the history of Dunmore’s trade probably better than Saren. Her father’s business touched essentially every part of the economy for Dunmore and most of the surrounding villages. She’d heard of these cabins, hidden in the woods and wetlands primarily so that these trappers could avoid paying taxes.

  “We went out exploring and found it.” Again, he showed no desire to elaborate.

  “Who was with you? When did you…” Saren silenced her with a kiss, pulling at her shawl and tossing it aside. Dear Yetra, she was covered in sweat from the walk, and she was feeling simply disgusting. Saren must be tasting the sweat off of her upper lip! In the same way, she continued to taste whatever booze he had sucked down before coming to see her.

  His hands were on her bare shoulders now, and he started walking her sideways toward the bed, his mouth still intertwined with hers. Now his hands were on her hips, her behind. She almost fell, her ankle hurting, but he held her up, hands continuing to explore her body, becoming more and more rough, grabbing and grasping.

  Suddenly, Meri found herself falling onto the thin mattress, hitting her hip hard against the wooden bedframe and letting out a yelp. Saren stood above her, working on the buttons of his shirt. Meri realized that her legs were parted, and her dress was nearly hitched up to her waist! She struggled off of the bed, rolling over her bruised hip and regaining her feet. This was all wrong! A bug-infested, thin mattress in a moldy rat-nest of a cabin, miles from her home, her body covered in cuts, bites, and sticky perspiration. Her ankle and hip throbbing with pain, and a boy who was being rather inconsiderate.

  Meri pulled down her dress just as Saren successfully unbuttoned and removed his shirt. As the candles illuminated his muscular and hairy chest, Meri nearly changed her mind again. But, this wasn’t how she’d imagined her first night. It just wasn’t right.

  “Saren, I’ve waited for this night for so long. And… I… wanted it to be perfect. Look at me. I’m a mess. And look at this place! We can’t do this tonight. It’s just not right.” Meri had finally found her voice, and realized she should have turned back when they were on the path, when she’d first snagged her ankle on that exposed root.

  “Meri…” Saren said in a somewhat cajoling tone.

  “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work! We are going to have to do this another night” said Meri, doing her best to be assertive.

  “Meri.” This time, as an imperative.

  “Please, take me home,” Meri said, pushing past him. Her fairytale night was over. Sandra’s picture of being with a man—with Saren—as vivid and… arousing as it had been… it couldn’t happen tonight.

  Suddenly, though, Meri was yanked backwards by her hair. Her painstaking efforts at creating a beautiful triple-braid saved her from losing a chunk of her scalp, but her head still stung all over. She would have fallen, too, had Saren not roughly caught her, spinning her around to face him. Squeezing her wrist with one hand, right on her fading bruise, his other hand was still clenching her triple-braid, pulling her head to one side.

  “You little fucking tease,” Saren hissed, meanness in his eyes. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? You led me on last year by the inn. And then you practically begged me to take you out tonight! I was going to say no, but I could tell you wanted it.”

  “Let go of me, Saren!” Meri demanded, struggling against his strength. “Do you know what Ragen would do to you…”

  The back of Saren’s hand came as a surprise, hitting Meri hard across the face. She saw starbursts, white and red, as tears came unbidden to her eyes.

  “Ragen,” he spat. “That dirty old shit. That fucking mad man. Do you even know what he did to me? Do you have any fucking idea? He saw us, last year, outside the inn. He saw you run away. And he attacked me, unprovoked, breaking my nose and wrist! Said if I ever come near you again, he would see me dead.”

  “I didn’t know, Saren!” Meri said, trying to shake herself free of confusion, tears running down her cheeks. “He didn’t mean it!”

  “You two, always protecting each other.” A tug at her hair, pulling her ear to her shoulder. More pain. “I was going to let it go, stay away from you, stay away from him. By the gods, I wanted vengeance, but no one would tangle with Ragen, the richest man in town. Ragen, the most generous man in town. Ragen, the whore-fucker.”

  Saren leaned in close, running his tongue along Meri’s neck, from her collarbone to her ear. She shivered, recoiling at the venom in his voice as much as from his touch. “But, I have a different type of vengeance in mind now. You, Merigold.”

&nb
sp; Merigold was stunned, disconnected. One arm was pinned to her side, and the other struggled uselessly against Saren’s iron grip on her hair. All she could do to lessen the tearing pressure on her hair was move in exactly the direction that Saren wanted. He continued to roughly kiss her neck, biting here and there, likely leaving marks if not drawing blood.

  “We wouldn’t be here if you had just left me alone. Or, if you had just followed through. Or, if your father wasn’t insane. But, now I’m going to make you mine whether you want it or not.”

  Merigold had a moment of clarity then, and struck Saren in the ear as hard as she could with her free hand. She instantly regretted it as he flung her to the ground by her hair and kicked her in the stomach. Meri tried to scream, but could do little more than squeak and cough.

  “You little bitch!” shouted Saren, grasping his ear, unknowingly echoing Fenrir from a week ago, or a lifetime ago.

  Meri reached out and grabbed Saren’s leg, resolved to draw from him, to hurt him like she had Fenrir. To hurt him much worse. She managed to grab hold of his bare leg for a moment, and reached into herself like she had so often before, to draw energy from him, to pull whatever it was that she pulled. To take as much as she could.

  This force, this power, this energy. She had always been able to see it clearly before, like a vessel, glistening with color, contained within another person. Different people had different types and amounts of energy to pull from, and she could sense that, as well. And she would typically just skim a bit off of the surface at a small cost to her own reservoir, but ultimately gaining energy, strength.

  Now, Meri intended to draw as much as she could from Saren. But something was wrong! Something was blocking her. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t feel anything within Saren. It was like she was touching a barrel, or a broom, or something inanimate. And, even worse, she couldn’t even feel anything within herself. Her head hurt too much, and her stomach burned as if she had swallowed a searing hot coal.

  And her brief window of chance was over. Saren hauled Meri to her feet and bent her over the bed, her head hitting the bare mattress forcefully, causing her to bite her tongue. To taste blood. Saren tore her dress as he pulled it above her hips, her waist, bearing her flower to him, to the world. He had one of her arms twisted behind her back, jerking it upward to stop her struggling. Meri felt him ram himself into her without preamble, without warning. She flinched, choking back a sob, as he failed to penetrate her, and she heard him spit. He jammed his saliva-soaked hand roughly into her as she cried out with pain, tears renewed, running down her cheeks. And then Saren was in her, his manhood causing surprisingly less pain than his fingers, but the feelings of wrongness and the aches across the rest of her body more than made up for it.

  The last sight Meri saw before clenching her eyes shut was her hand, clenched in a fist in front of her, and the fading yellow ring on her wrist, once again flaring with pain from Saren’s harsh grip.

  Chapter 8

  By the gods, his shoulder was killing him! Being stabbed by an assassin and then having a man dig his fingers deep into the still-fresh wound, tearing stitches, stretching flesh, has that effect. When that man was your father, the pain should have been deeper. But Fenrir was still experiencing the physical pain far more acutely than anything emotional as he staggered toward the Plateau. He clearly needed to see a physician, and Martis Aieres was the only man he really trusted.

  His life was starting to feel a bit too cyclical at this point: once again, he was lurching through the city, his shirt torn and soaked in blood down to his boots. This was becoming an increasingly bad habit. Most strangely, Fenrir was also feeling the pain in his knee rather acutely. He had heard that feeling pain in one area of the body was supposed to lessen pain in another part. That was why people would dig their nails into their own skin just after stubbing a toe, or poke themselves in the leg with a knife when experiencing a particularly rough hangover. That logic didn’t seem to be applying itself to Fenrir, though, and he was a limping mess.

  He had done a lot of walking and off-roading, lately. Certainly more than in previous years, since the time that he’d left the Plateau. Or been asked to leave the Plateau, rather. Even as a guardsman, he’d done some patrolling, but most of his job had been standing still. Straight and tall, by a door, a window, or atop a tower. In a library. Mind-numbingly boring most times, particularly during the day at the posts where the nobles and other inhabitants of the fortress frequented. But at night or in isolated posts, Fenrir and his fellows had been able to let down their literal guard. They’d dice or talk or joke, leaning against the wall or crouching, sitting back on their heels.

  Truth be told, Fenrir had developed a knack for standing still with as little effort as possible. With the right fit, a man could simply occupy armor that was more or less a shell supporting itself. And with the right mindset, a man could completely lose himself for at least a few hours, either sleeping with his eyes open or floating contentedly in waking dreams. Fenrir would be the first to admit that he had little imagination, but every once in a while, he’d find his mind wandering, either on some grand military adventure or reliving some of his conquests, his extramarital exploits. Granted, he’d learned very early in his career that one did not want to think too deeply about such exploits in particular when one was wearing full ceremonial armor with a codpiece.

  His actual military experiences were limited, though. When he’d originally run off and joined the Rostanian military at sixteen years of age, he’d been inducted as standard infantry. Despite his prosperous mercantile roots, or maybe because of them, he’d been placed with a true bastard of a sergeant, Winston Alus, a dirty peasant promoted beyond his level of competence. Apparently, being a hero in the border skirmishes with the Wasmer qualified a man to scream at the top of his lungs at new recruits, beating them into shape (sometimes quite literally). Fenrir had been a quick study back then and received far fewer beatings, physical and psychological, from this sergeant than had others in his squad. The others had not taken kindly to that.

  Ultimately, Fenrir had washed out of the infantry because of his knee, about two years after he had started. The squad had taken many forced marches at double-time, and Fenrir had found himself unable to keep up. The pain had often been too much, and he would limp along gamely, throwing off the formation. The break in formation would result in reduced rations, extra drills, or additional duties, all of which were likely to draw the ire of his brethren, and the resulting abuse from his squad would weaken his knee further. Rather short-sighted, Fenrir had always thought.

  The final blow came when they were marching to the border with Florens. Fenrir’s knee gave out altogether and he was left behind by his squad, some of his comrades not even bothering to step around him. He ended up limping back to Rostane alone, with no food and no water, and meeting with Alus upon his return. The sergeant really was a complete bastard, but he’d been impressed enough with Fenrir’s fortitude that he’d done one genuinely kind thing for him: he had passed Fenrir’s name to Daren de Hosta, a Captain of the Guard at the Plateau. Alus and de Hosta had served together in some of those skirmishes with the Wasmer, although de Hosta, being of wealthy mercantile roots, had ended up with the cushier job at the Plateau. And thus, Fenrir had himself come to the Plateau.

  Surprisingly, reflecting on the varied causes of his knee pain had distracted Fenrir somewhat as he staggered through the city. He’d taken off his shirt and applied as much pressure to his wound as he could muster, partially to staunch the steady flow of blood and partially to look less like a ruffian. As it was, he was getting suspicious looks from honest city folk and patrolling city guards. Luckily, his insight into the protection occupation in Rostane helped him once again. It was unlawful for a city guardsman to detain a citizen unless that person was disturbing the peace. As long as his shambling, bloody presence wasn’t causing a fight or a riot, Fenrir was safe from molestation. Although, he did stick to side street
s (but not alleys), just in case he came across a guard who was less rule-bound than others.

  Martis Aieres lived in a quite well-to-do area in the shadow of the Plateau. Being a staff physician at the fortress, primarily working with nobles, Martis had amassed a fairly substantial fortune and had purchased a small castle of a house, complete with servants and one of the best cooks in all of Rostane. He didn’t have an office in the city itself since most of his work was onsite at the Plateau or at the estates of nobles, so Fenrir found himself staggering down Vineyard Lane. The stately boulevard was named for the grape vines lining both its sides, creating a great deal of ambience and providing additional privacy for the wealthy residents of the area. Expansive gardens flanked the road and the magnificent decorative roofs of the homes—estates, really—and could be seen peaking over high stone garden walls. Import taxes went toward the planting and maintenance of these grape gardens, the so-called beautification taxes. Fenrir had heard many tirades from his father about these taxes, how they took money from honest merchants to make the lives of worthless nobles better. And as inevitably happens with children, even those dead-set on being nothing like their parents, some of these feelings had taken root and lingered within Fenrir, and he felt his customary resentment as he limped by the gnarled, twisting vines.

  Fenrir’s timing was impeccable. He arrived at the Aieres estate just as his strength was finally giving out. Leaning his good shoulder against the rough, mortared stone wall for support, he walked down a thin, enclosed lane to the main point of ingress, which was a huge, oaken gate. He gathered himself, pushed off the wall, and stood tall, grabbing the iron knocker—shaped like a lion—and bashing it against the heavy wood. A small viewing window opened in the door almost immediately, indicating that a steward must have been sitting just nearby.

  “What business…” The sound of a throat clearing loudly. “Would a man of your, ahem, caliber, have at this location?”