Bloodless

by Roberto Vecchi

  Such was the force of the blow that she tumbled backward hitting the ground with a thud. She laid, unmoving, except for the slow rising of her chest, blood leaking from her nose. Jinola flew into a rage after she saw her sister hit the ground. The wound in my thigh prevented me from capitalizing on her emotion driven, uncoordinated attack, but I could still defend myself. Because I was now facing only one of my sisters, the dynamics of the battle changed and my superior physicality was beginning to assert itself. I could feel the blood leaking down my leg, but the wound was not severe enough to completely limit my mobility, though if the confrontation continued for much longer, its toll would eventually be taken.

  But the truth of it was that I had momentarily gained a sizeable advantage as long as I dealt with only one. With each passing second, however, time was progressing toward the moment when Hithelyn would regain her consciousness and my leg would fail. I had to end this battle, and end it quickly. I feigned a misstep on my wounded leg and dropped down to a single knee. I momentarily left my guard down providing a small opening in my defense. Jinola took it without hesitation, as I had hoped. As she advanced with a slide-step and stab toward my other thigh, I summoned all of my strength and supported my entire weight on my wounded leg as I spun the opposite way she expected. She was caught off guard. As my spin ended, I had positioned myself close enough to grapple her to the ground and dislodge her blade. Without waiting for what was sure to be a frenzied spasm of rage, I hit her in the back of her head with the butt of my dagger knocking her out cold.

  “Well now,” I heard a seductively dark voice say, “It seems we are at a stalemate.”

  I looked up to see Vismorda holding a blade to Kinarin’s neck. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be unconscious. The only signs that he was still alive were two slight trickles of blood, one dripping from his right eye and the other from his right nostril. I did not see any cuts or lesions which worried me because it meant the slowly dripping blood had its origins internally, and that was never good.

  “Stalemate,” she said again, “that means we are at an impasse. You know, something that prevents us from progressing further in our current situation. You do know what that means?”

  “Yes, I know what that means,” I said.

  “Well, how do you propose we resolve this,” she paused, “dilemma?”

  “What dilemma is that?” I asked, as I pulled Jinola over to where Hithelyn still laid.

  “I have something you want and you have something I want,” she said as she used Kinarin’s hair to raise his head.

  “You want me to trade my sisters for him?” I asked, still in disbelief.

  “Well, since you have suggested it, yes. I find your proposal adequate,” she answered.

  “Why would I even begin thinking of trading my sisters for him?” I said.

  “Because, young one, I will kill you if you do not,” she threatened.

  “How do I know you will not kill me anyway?”

  She said nothing for a short moment as if her pause was caused by an answer she did not want to admit. “Because I owe him a debt,” she said reluctantly and flatly though I thought I saw some affection pierce her steel cold gaze when she looked at him, his body still limp in her arms.

  “What debt could you possibly owe him?” I asked because I did not believe her.

  “One you cannot begin to understand. Now, I am beginning to tire and have considered rescinding my proposition. If you delay much longer, I will find another way to fulfil my debt,” she said as she adjusted her stance to accommodate the task of holding Kinarin.

  What a position I was in. How in the world could I rationalize giving away what I had fought so hard to gain? They were my blood, my sisters, no matter how far they had ventured away from the contents of my memory and into a future bereft of redemption. I had vowed to rescue them from the evil they were submitted to at all costs, including the most expensive cost of them all, death. Had I been able to trade my life for theirs, I would have done so readily and gladly, but if I was to die by her hand, with Kinarin in his current condition, there would be nothing and no one to stop this woman from reclaiming my sisters as her own. So, as it was, my continued life was their only hope of eventual redemption to even the smallest portion of their former innocence. In this moment, my life had to become the focus.

  “Well, boy?” she said, sarcastically emphasizing the second word, “Are you prepared to trade?”

  “I will rescue them,” I said in part to justify what I had previously thought to be unthinkable.

  “Perhaps, but not today,” she said with a slight grin.

  “No, not today, but soon,” I said as I began backing away from the unconscious bodies of both Jinola and Hithelyn. Vismorda set Kinarin down gently and backed away. As she did, I saw her face grimace as she put weight on her right leg. She had a very large gash opened on her inner thigh, not deep enough to cause her to avoid all weight bearing, but certainly enough to warrant a compromise if one was available. Could she still best me in combat? Probably, because my wound was beginning to take its toll as well, but it was certainly not a risk she was willing to take. We both limped toward our respective quarries, neither of us taking our focus of the other. When she reached my sisters, she bent down and stroked each of their cheeks the way I had seen my mother do whenever they had fallen asleep on those rare occasions my father allowed them to prolong their bed times. Something viscerally abhorrent welled up within me at the scene of another woman caring for my sisters as much as my mother had. As if her arrogant existence degraded everything my mother had stood for.

  “You will never be their mother,” I said, hoping to open some deeply hidden wound.

  “No, I will not. But I will be so much more,” she said and then whistled loudly. From the darkness came two horses as dark as the midnight sky. Their snorts were heavy and their coats glistened against the pale light of the moon and stars. I watched as this woman, this evil existence, lifted my sisters on to the backs of the beasts securing them in place. Again, she mimicked the tenderness my mother had shown after they had inadvertently injured themselves on one of their grand adventures. After she mounted her own steed, she rode up to where I was standing above the fallen body of my teacher and said, compassion lining her eyes, “Fret not, young one. Your sisters will be well cared for. Something you are ill equipped to do.”

  “We will meet again,” I said as threateningly as I could, tears beginning to well in my eyes.

  “Yes, we will. But until then, see that he survives to play another day,” she answered and then turned and rode into the night with the horse bearing my sisters close behind.

  I did not move. Not until both horses could no longer been seen by the light of the moon, not even until their hoof steps faded into the abyss of my life, did I end my stillness. But when I did, I looked down to see Kinarin helplessly still, his blood drying around his eye and nostril. His skin was pale and his breaths were intermittent, no doubt a sign of the trauma he was currently battling. I knelt down beside him and felt his forehead with the back of my hand just in case he had been poisoned. Though predominately a tactic of assassins, I did not want to dismiss it because surviving a poisoning often depended on how quickly the antidote was administered. However, the cool touch of his skin allowed me to breathe just a little easier.

  I began examining his body for other signs of injury, hoping I would be able to apply bandages and slow any residual bleeding. But aside from a few shallow cuts, there was nothing that required immediate attention. Even though the moon was brilliantly glowing its full potential, the night was dark and full of shadows. When I bent more closely to examine his face again, I saw swelling and faint bruising around his right temple. I also saw a similar skin pattern developing around his right eye. I opened his eyelid to further inspect the severity of his injuries and saw that the white was now red and marbled with an eerie gray. I gently felt around his eye socket and with one of my bolder palpations, I felt a slight crunch.
Though I had nowhere near the expertise of a physician, I did not need it to understand that he might be still battling for his life. Time was now paramount.

  I quickly stood up and scanned the circumference of my visual field, but did not locate our horses. I called out to them, but received no auditory indication of where they were. After a moment of desperation, I stilled myself, closed my eyes and extended my hearing as far as I could into the night. But the only sounds I heard were the faint chirping of insects and the occasional call of an owl, no doubt on the hunt. At once, I understood what had happened, and in reality, it did not surprise me. After all, had our roles been reversed, I would have stolen Vismorda’s horses thereby disallowing her the chance for pursuit.

  I looked up to gain my bearings and realized that for the first time in my life, I was completely alone. Standing in the open, washed in the moonlight and power of the darkness encircling this moment, I felt infinitesimally small and insignificant, as if all my efforts had been for naught except to sustain my vanity and pride. Who was I to think anything I was bent upon doing would amount to any amount of success? My cheek stung, my wounded leg was throbbing, and my hope was dissolving.

  They say the barren sands of the Endless Dessert was the genesis for all concepts of desolation, and while that may be true, I found that my soul was rivaling its nature. I looked down to Kinarin’s unconscious body, knowing he desperately needed my assistance, and saw into the future. I knew he would die. I knew I could do nothing to help him. I extended my dread into the futures of my sisters and, in that moment, I saw them fully embracing such an evil that they would never again become who I had remembered them to be. But the worst of it all, I saw into my own life and knew, without any doubt, that everything I was, everything I did, indeed, the very essence of all foundations of me, were nothing more than nothing itself. I was nothing, impotent to all potentials and void of all possibilities except to continue with my miserable existence, I had become the embodiment of the Endless Dessert. For in its existence, the only thing it could offer anyone unfortunate enough to trek through its forever rolling sand dunes and infinitely oppressive heat, was a respite from life. And that is what I had offered to everyone. By the mere inclusion into my hopeless world, I too, just like the dessert, offered only death.

  I looked toward the stars again, hate and tears in equal portion flooding my eyes. I yelled. I screamed. As loudly and as long as I could, I bellowed until my voice shattered against the pain in my heart. I breathed deeply, stretching the capacity of my lungs to inhale enough wind to fully sate my anger. With its expulsion, in a primal, defiance-laced howl, the cracking of my voice was so severe that my throat began to burn. But I did not care about trivialities such as pain. Not in this moment. So, I yelled again and again and again. I yelled until I could yell no longer, tasting blood from a throat so raw that even my slowing inhalations hurt.

  As I wiped a trickle of blood from my lips, my thoughts focused squarely upon my father. I wondered if he yelled as I did when he died. Was he as full of hate as I was? Did he question his life’s path as I was now when he felt the wolf, or whatever it was, bite down on his skin? Did he share in his resentment toward me the way I did? Forcing his memory from my mind, because I was not worthy to remember him, my mind found another focus, and it was worse. My mother. How she must have hated me. I could not imagine any other emotion she could have felt as I plunged the dagger selfishly into her. I remember seeing her eyes filled with tears as she recognized who I was and I, her. Her piercing eyes. As I closed mine, they were all I could see. Soft, gentle, caring, loving, those were the only emotions her eyes had showed me even in the midst of my betrayal.

  And then something clicked. Something connected that had not before. In regards to my mother and father, I had never understood the nature of their choice, or that it even had been a choice, to give their lives so that I might live. But the power in my mother’s eyes, to remain calm and loving in the face of certain death, was nothing less than astounding. Her gaze pierced all fabrics woven together by my self-pity, all my despair, all my loss, all my failure, and allowed me to don a cloak of selfless love knitted by an existence without conditions. For that is what they were, conditionless. And they would want me to continue that conditionless expression of love to whomever and whenever I could.

  I looked down to Kinarin, his breathing still erratic and shallow, and saw a man who possessed the same degree of conditionless love as my parents. In the moment he discovered who I was, instead of killing me, as was directed by The Guild, he made a choice similar to my parents’. He disregarded the consequences that would have been placed upon him had his choice been wrong, and allowed me to live. But he did not just walk away and leave me to whatever dictates fate had chosen. No. He accepted me into his own life and provided me the tools to have a future, a future I thought I had lost. But what now? Was I to disregard his selflessness and leave him to his own fate, or should I choose to do whatever I could in this moment to allow him the chance to have a future? Who was I? Was I the young man my father had raised to always complete his chores fully regardless of my selfish desires? Or had I forsaken his teaching, and that of my mother’s, altogether. It was clear to me, by their selfless decisions, I had but one choice.

  With my leg aching, my lungs burning, my cheek stinging, and my hope dwindling, I nevertheless gathered what resolve I had remaining, knelt down beside Kinarin’s unconscious body, gathered him closely enough in my arms to drape him gently over my shoulder, and stood up. Pain lanced from my upper thigh to the bottom of my foot and I nearly dropped him. Though I stumbled, I gathered my strength and took one shaky step with my good leg. I may yet collapse from exhaustion, but that day was not going to be today. I took another step, and felt more pain the moment my injured leg contacted the ground. But it did not give; and nor would I. Though my will over these last long months, endless in their scope just as the Endless Dessert’s sands were unrelenting, had resoundingly cracked, it did not break. Another pain laced step. As I looked up to gain my bearings and decide upon a direction, I could see the beginnings of the dawn slowly creep over the horizon. Light was coming. I just hoped help would come with it.

  Drodon

  (Bound)

  She road hard. For at least twelve hours, she drove the horses beyond what they would normally have been able to tolerate. Because their endurances were enhanced by the power of her dark fountain, they were able to ride long beyond the limitation of their physical bodies. However, regardless of how much power she was able to imbue into the horses, they were still governed by muscles, lungs, and joints. And as such, they would soon fail if she did not give them rest. So, just a short while after the evening sun began its fateful descent into the constancy of the horizon, she slowed them to a halt and dismounted.

  Before checking on the horses, however, she checked on her two Raven’s, Malice and Vile. She had placed them into a power induced slumber hoping their bodies would heal more quickly. Though not as adapt as Mordin with imbuing her power into others, she did learn some elementary applications. Had he been the one to power the spell, she had no doubt her Ravens would have slept the entire journey if necessary, but such as she was, they were beginning to rise.

  Before untying the bindings securing them to the horse, she laid out her overcoat and cloak on the ground. With care, she eased each of the young girls, Malice first and Vile second, down from the horse and set them on the makeshift bedding. Though she knew they would wake soon, they still clung to the peacefulness of sleep. In their state of tranquil rest, had she not been instrumental in their training and witnessing first hand their progression into evil, she would never have believed either of them to be capable of even the slightest malevolence.

  Was this what she was like when she was young? Had she possessed the same tranquility when she rested? It seemed so long ago that she had almost failed to believe she was once anything different than the powerful, hate driven, female lethality she had become. There was only one b
eing in this world who could stand against her, and that because he was her master, the one responsible for her instruction. He had taken her from a normal life of dependency and created one of the most powerful women Avendia had even produced; a woman who would forever be independent and strong. And though she was forever grateful for his instruction and inclusion into his delicious truth, her gratefulness was not without a cost.

  In the beginning, before she was exposed to the awful accompanying pain, she clung to him as the defining and solid foundation of pure innocence. From the day she first met him and rescued him from near death, she felt a connection. And that connection grew, slowly at first, and only as a deep friendship. But it was not long before her emotions began to develop as he became more of the man she thought he could become. His reputation within the clan had grown from the seeds of his selfless deeds and his enigmatically youthful personality. He was everyone’s friend and assistant. Soon, there was no one who did not admire him and appreciate his talents. He was even recognized at a gathering of the clan council for his quick ascension into clan acceptance from his humble beginnings as an unfortunate outsider.

  But then things changed. He grew bolder in his persona, subtly influencing Oolos and his decisions. It seemed innocuous at first, just the words from someone with still fresh eyes who could see things differently than those who had spent their whole lives as gypsies. But because of his reputation within the clan, no one considered that anything of a more insidious nature was being birthed, or rather, grown. It was not long before Jesolin was included into Oolos’ inner circle, second only to Mordin, who was at odds with his brother more often than not. Though she was betrothed to Oolos, and knew that was the path her life would follow, she could not help but acknowledge the growing feelings she was developing for the young man with the white hair.