by Aaron Bunce
The dalan buildings grew larger and more numerous, until the path led them under a massive stone archway, its ancient, pitted surface covered with large, unfamiliar runes. A square lay beyond, the ground cobbled in what looked oddly like tree bark. A cylindrical structure sat at its center, two dozen raised pathways curving out into the surrounding forest from its many, elaborate archways.
“This is the Romigod, the god road,” Altair said, stopping just before the tall, cylindrical building. “We built it from the rubble of the first god road, built in the heart of the land you now live. It took a generation to craft, using the timber of the sacred Stonewood trees. It is a tribute to the home your people have desecrated, and a remembrance to the people we once were.”
Luca tilted his head painfully, his eyes crawling up the sleek building. Something, a memory, stirred in his mind. He remembered a road, a forest clearing, and a dark, crumbling structure. The horrible creature was there again, lumbering after him down dark corridors. The building and its sleek form, as if it were grown rather than built, broke another memory free from the fog.
Bright lights flashed as leaves and sticks slapped against him. He toppled through the air, a searing pain flaring in his arm and then his leg. Luca cried out as his body popped and snapped, but it wasn’t the memory. Pain tore through his arm as the bone separated. The dalan men, their faces previously emotionless masks, almost dropped him, their faces contorted with confusion and alarm.
Luca screamed, his belly cramping so hard that he nearly became sick. His voice cracked and broke, but he continued to wail, bruises suddenly darkening the skin on his arms, legs, and face.
“Rin kada le’ a dureen?” one of the dalan soldiers barked, his voice rising in alarm.
Altair appeared suddenly, the smooth skin of his face giving way to worry lines. He directed the two soldiers to follow.
“Hurry. We must have him away from this place, before the magic tears him apart,” Altair directed.
Luca was aware of his body moving, only because of the pain it caused. One of the dalan soldiers hefted him aloft, another pair of hands appearing from nowhere to support his head and legs. He didn’t know where the other hands came from, but he couldn’t see anyone standing near him.
They passed quickly into the ground floor of the cylindrical building, the ground curving up and around, before Altair led them through an arch and onto one of the elevated pathways. The memory resurfaced, and he was falling again, this time into water. It was dark, cold, and suffocating.
Luca tried to cry out to his mother and father. The thought jolted him – his father was Henri, and his mother, Genevieve. He could remember his parents, but not just that, he could remember his home. He had a home.
Any warmth he felt from this revelation was quickly washed away by more pain. He was remembering, reclaiming himself, but breaking apart at the same time. It made him want to cry, but he found that he couldn’t; so instead, he called out for his friend.
“Emma!”
They passed by figures on the roadway. Some looked impossibly tall and slender, while one appeared no larger than a child, its eyes big and face covered in wild-looking hair. Luca moaned his friend’s name, and held out a limp arm to them, but they fell away, treating him as if he were a tainted animal – all except for the short, fur-faced figure.
Animals. Their howls filled his dreams – screeching, clawed little beasts with orange lanterns for eyes. They wanted to eat him. Luca heard them again, screeching and howling. A sharp pain in his leg pulled him out of the fog and he realized that the noise wasn’t in his head at all.
The path arched down through the trees, the sound of rustling water making the hair on his arms and neck stand on end. A waterfall appeared through the trees, spilling over moss-covered rocks and into the crystal clear water of a lagoon.
Straight ahead, the path led onto a pier, the raised walkway hanging over the mouth of a narrow river. The animal screeched and snarled again, Luca shifting just enough to catch sight of the source. It wasn’t an animal at all, but a girl, her hair a tangled, snarled mess, and her clothes rumpled almost beyond recognition. An impossibly tall man stood over her, a dozen arms protruding from his grotesquely long thorax. Luca thought he looked like the centipedes he used to look for, digging around and upturning rocks in his mom’s garden.
“Emma!” he winced in recognition.
Noticing him, Emma leapt and clawed, fighting like an animal to break free, but the horrible centipede-man held firmly to her shackles.
“Quickly with them into the boat. Lay the boy on a blanket, and tie her hands to the tiller. Guide the boat down the river with ropes from either shore and cut it free into the slack tide. Once she is beyond our border her mind will return. They cannot…no, will not, endanger this place,” Altair said, directing the soldiers.
Luca cringed as the soldier descended stairs – so many stairs, each one jostling and bouncing him. He was lowered into a boat next, the thick blanket gently holding his aching body. The boat rocked back and forth, the air filled with Emma’s feral noises. Part of Luca flittered back to a boat – a large boat.
The Kingfisher…Captain Tovy’s boat, he thought, the memory connecting. This recollection didn’t bring him pain, but a warm, reassuring feeling deep inside.
The boat rocked one final time as Altair’s soldiers climbed out, and then they were moving, sliding through the water. Trees branched high overhead, their twigs and leaves woven together, the sunlight glimmering and flickering through.
Luca tried to ignore all of it, but there was too much pain to block out. Emma howled and snarled, wrenching and chewing on the ropes binding her wrists to the boat. He was faintly aware of two figures moving amidst the trees on either side of them, urging the boat along with ropes. Something moved to his right, but Luca couldn’t turn his head far enough to see it proper.
With a grunt, Luca squirmed forward, until he could lay his head on the side rail. Something was moving through the trees. He could hear it.
“Stop!” someone cried, their voice echoing amongst the trees. The two men holding the ropes dashed forward, the boat surging violently in response. Luca toppled sideways, tumbling from the blanket in an awkward sprawl.
The quiet river valley instantly became a confusing mix of noise. Underbrush rustled, twigs broke, angry voices bellowed in strange languages, and in response, Emma howled and screeched.
Luca flopped forward, rolling back and forth as the boat rocked and moved, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push himself up. Someone stepped into the boat, and he heard Emma turn frantic, before going strangely quiet.
No! They’re hurting her! he realized, and fought with renewed courage to roll over and push himself up.
“Stop! Leave her…be. I’ll…I’ll,” he said, the pain taking his breath away.
“Help him up,” someone said, their voice deep and rhythmic, yet strangely feminine at the same time.
Strong hands turned him over, and he nearly became sick as the separated bones in his arm grated together.
“Please…put me down,” Luca moaned, the pressure on his body almost too much, but they wouldn’t stop. The memories surged forth again, and he was lifted up into the air, the beast’s sharp claws digging into his arms.
The world tilted. Everything was upside down – boat, trees, and then sky, before finally turning right side up. A group of tall dalan stood on the riverbank, the men that had been previously pulling the boat along now on their knees. They wore blades on their hips, but they were still sheathed.
Emma stood a short distance away, and she was no longer screaming or fighting. A short dalan stood next to her. In fact, he appeared to be Emma’s height exactly. He wore a pair of ratty, green trousers, but the rest of his body was bare. A pair of large, colorless eyes peeked out of the mass of brown hair covering his face. Luca thought he looked strangely like a man mixed with a dog. Yes. It was the short figure he’d seen on the path.
The dalan s
tepped out of the boat, holding him high to clear the water, and strode easily to the bank and climbed out. A strange figure stepped out from behind Emma. Luca didn’t know how he’d missed her, his first instinct to curl up and hide, but again his body painfully rejected him.
“I’m sorry. My appearance must be unsettling to you. It has been the turn of so many seasons since I was around your kind,” the strange woman said. It had been her voice that had rung clear above all others. “Bring him here.”
Luca floated forward, his bottom lip quivering, despite his best efforts to stop it. She looked more beast than woman, her chalky skin white like freshly fallen snow. She looked frighteningly similar to the monster in his dreams.
But as he approached, she changed. Her body became slender, her facial features drawing in, until she stood not beast, but tall, beautiful woman. Her face was long, with pronounced cheekbones and a short, straight nose. Long, platinum hair fell in waves over her shoulders. But it was her eyes that Luca locked onto. They, just as Cassendyra’s, shone colorless in the shifting daylight, like mirrors reflecting his own gaze back at him.
“Let this ease your burden, little one,” she said, lifting a thick, silver necklace up before her. Luca flinched as she moved towards him, the painful flood of memories making it almost impossible to discern between what was in his head, and what happened now.
“You must not fear me, child,” the dalan woman said, softly. Her voice was quiet, but strong. Luca felt a bit of his tension melt away.
Slowly, she lifted the necklace over his head and around his neck. The warm metal settled against his skin, the horrible ache throbbing in his muscles and bones instantly fading. Luca groaned, the sudden relief bringing tears to his eyes. The pain had become so consuming, so engrained, that he’d almost forgotten what it was like before it polluted him. The memories stopped battering his mind, too. He could still remember who he was, but a dark fog hung over everything else.
He lifted his arms to see if the bruises were gone as well, but dropped them quickly again, the broken bones still very real.
“I’m sorry for your pain, young one, I truly am. This necklet will provide you with some protection from the magic. It is not a permanent thing, however, but should grant you some time,” she said, warmly.
“Thank you, milady,” Luca said, clutching his arm and trying to smile through a wince.
The dalan woman smiled and laughed quietly, a flash of color flooding her eyes for an instant. “Please call me, Juna. My short, somewhat scruffy companion here is–”
“Poe,” the short, hairy-faced man next to Emma, placed his hand atop his head and bowed, cutting in.
“My name is Luca,” he responded.
“It brings me blessed joy to make your acquaintance, Luca. Unfortunately, like the light of day and the warmth of summer, our joy is not to last. I’m afraid that your presence here bodes ill for you and my kind, and will surely bring to bear chaos and anger. Allow me to ask some urgent questions – namely, how you and your friend came to be in this place.”
Luca sputtered for a moment, struggling when and how to explain their bizarre story, but a rustling of leaves interrupted him, as another group of figures materialized between the trees, Altair at the lead.
“Inferente!” he shouted, but stopped short as Juna turned to meet him.
“Matrona, I did not know it was you,” he said, quickly, placing his palm on his head and bowing, just as Poe had moments before.
“Altair,” Juna replied, flatly. “I have just met Luca – a human boy, and his friend, Emma, set adrift on a boat, here, within the protected shores of our home, where none but dalan feet have trod for an age.”
Altair glanced at Luca, then Emma, before looking back to Juna. His smooth, baby face didn’t betray any emotion – save for a momentary flash of brown in his eyes.
“Apologies, Matrona, but their presence was being dealt with. I assure you. These two entered our lands through a hidden portal on the eastern reach of the island. The totem’s magic alerted us. They were apprehended immediately. No damage was done, the portal was sealed and none were put at risk,” Altair said.
“And how were these children able to–”
Altair sighed dramatically. “Apologies, Matrona. But this issue is hardly worth your time.”
One of Juna’s eyebrows rose slightly. Next to Emma, Poe shifted uneasily between feet.
“Altair, my time is–”
“Matrona, I collected, and was removing these interlopers from our lands, as is my responsibility and in full compliance with my duty as warden. Now, please, trust that I have done, and will do, what is necessary to serve the safety of our people.”
A flash of white colored Juna’s eyes, along with a touch of red to her cheeks, but she did not break Altair’s gaze, nor did she move.
“Man-children…here. With no word to the Matron’s Assembly. Dubious…dubious! Questions. Concerns. Trouble,” Poe half-yelled, half-growled.
Juna nodded appreciatively, turning from Poe back to Altair. Luca struggled to tear his gaze off the small dalan, who didn’t only look doglike now, but strangely acted a little like one, too.
“Poe is right. My concerns continue to mount. Namely, how children were able to find their way here on their own? Why we had no knowledge of this portal, and most troubling still, why you didn’t notify us immediately?”
“Be’yeste–” Altair said, but Juna cut him off this time, her voice deep and full.
“Common tongue.”
Altair growled low, before saying, “The assembly has always afforded me the authority to act as necessary and with impunity. Pardon, Matrona, but it doesn’t matter why they are here, only that they are removed and the breach in our defenses remedied. These children are not ‘our people’, nor should they be trusted. The defense of our realm, our people’s safety is my duty and my duty alone.”
“They are children, not invaders. And you would cast them out to sea, not of their right minds, with little hope to survive?” Juna asked, meeting Altair’s emotionless gaze for what felt like an eternity, the air between them growing thick with tension.
Luca felt the man holding him shift his weight nervously.
“Their people swarm over the mainland like vermin, burning, chopping, murdering each other, and molesting everything within reach. They broke our covenants, desecrating our crypts and holy places. They are the children of honorless thieves and liars, and should feel fortunate they haven’t already been thrown into the sted å glemme. The dark places would welcome them. These ‘children’ are just the first. More will come.”
The strange word dislodged something in Luca’s mind, a thought, made visible to him once again now that the pain was gone. He wanted to slap himself, if not for the pain he was sure would follow.
“No! I didn’t want to come here…I didn’t want to go anywhere. She brought us. Cassida… no, Cassendyra promised me that she could heal my injuries – make me whole again. She promised me, in her tent in Pine Hall, that if I retrieved her trinket, the Yörspring, she would help. She brought us here. She told Altair something about the Nym…something she felt, and that something bad is going to happen,” Luca interjected, cutting into the conversation.
Juna’s head tilted ever so slightly to the side. She glanced quickly at Luca, but turned right back to Altair. “What is this? The Nym? The White Fox?”
Altair’s eyes flushed brown, his mouth tightening to a thin line. His expression turned sour, almost sinister for a heartbeat, before his usually cherubic face returned. “She is mad, Matrona…spouting gibberish. She attacked my men with blood magic, so we subdued her and took her someplace safe.
“Take me to her. Now!” Juna said, her eyes flooding white and her voice booming.
Chapter Thirteen
Eyes
Roman whipped back and forth, the ground swinging and spinning dizzily above him. They were moving one moment, and in the next, he was bouncing painfully, hanging upside down amidst scratchy
branches, trying to regain his wits.
The dark form scrambled upwards, sending broken twigs and pine needles raining down over him. Roman twisted about trying to move his arms, but they were stuck fast – worse yet, the sword lay in the snow somewhere below. He’d barely turned when the creature reared up and leapt again. He saw the ground flash, blowing snow, and then more branches.
Roman bounced painfully off the trunk of a thick tree, his shoulder absorbing most of the impact. Stars washed before his eyes, but he fought to maintain control. His head bounced off a knobby branch as he surged upwards, straining to break free and wrap his arms around it. The strange creature climbed up, tugging painfully on his ankle. The bindings pinning his arms stretched but refused to break, the rough bark grating against his back and arms.
Roman grunted, twisting about, trying to pull himself up, to break the bindings and fight the creature’s hold, but the branches whipped against him like clubs. They finally broke free from the dense branches, the world swaying upside down, murky clouds bubbling in the sky. He finally saw the creature properly, a jolt of revulsion and fear crawling over him.
It was shaped like a man, but its figure was all wrong. It looked twisted and broken, like it had been pulled apart and put back together wrong. Sharp, ridged armor covered its shoulders, forearms, and thighs. A strange, shell-like helm covered most of its head and face, the surrounding skin melted and fused to the dark, glassy metal. The creature raised its head to the sky and let loose a startling cry, its voice a warped, frightening sound.
Roman strained against the bindings, and then it hit him. He wanted to kick himself. The fire snapped loose inside almost instantly, filling him with intoxicating warmth and power. He pushed the heat out, focusing on his arms, until his clothes smoldered and sparked to life.
