The Godseeker Duet

by David A Willson

  It took hours to clean her dirty skin, brush the tangles out of her ratty hair, and find appropriate clothes. But the maids couldn't wash away the grief as her concerns remained on the welfare of those she loved.

  When the maids were done attending to her, Nara gazed into a looking glass. Adorned with trails of ruffles, the stunning green gown matched her bright-green eyes. The fitting of it pinched at her waist and exposed her collarbones, but it was beautiful, nonetheless. A tiny green gem set on a pendant was draped around her neck on a silver chain. She didn't recognize this girl in the mirror. Not even a little.

  A servant escorted her downstairs and across the large, cold palace, but so many days in bed had deprived her of strength and her legs ached with the effort. She walked in the odd shoes and bulky dress through the maze of stone corridors and knew that she would lose herself here if not guided. Beautiful paintings adorned the walls, accompanied by tapestries and silk window hangings. For all the grand nature of the place, it seemed lonely, dark, and without love.

  The servant guided her into the foyer of the keep, but instead of continuing into the attached throne room as directed, she moved toward the front of the foyer. Two large, solid-wood doors stood open; an armored guard at each side carried a spear. When she approached, the guards closed the doors, then returned to their stoic poses. She would not be allowed to leave.

  She turned around. The servant was beckoning with a wave of his hand, inviting her to enter the throne room. She took a step, then paused. The king awaited her upon a throne. The chair was ornate, inlaid with gold wire and adorned with plush purple cushions on the seat and arms. Its occupant wore a sleeved surcoat with an animal embroidered on its breast. A purple, hoodless silk cape was clasped about his neck. The crown on his head looked garish. Awkward—as if it had been poorly fitted to his head or simply didn't belong there. He was hawkish and small, and nothing like how she had imagined her father would be.

  A grand table rested on the stone floor tiles in the middle of the room. Many important-looking men were seated there, speaking loudly and drinking from large cups. Each was dressed in finery—clothes that, if sold, could probably feed a family in Dimmitt for a year. Gwyn was among them, dressed elegantly as well in a fine linen pantsuit, swords still upon her back. Servants scurried back and forth with food and wine. Tapestries and the severed heads of dead animals were mounted on the walls. The room was big, cold, and loud.

  "Come," the king said to her from across the expansive room. As he stood, the others grew quiet.

  Nara feared the walk across the grand room alone, the focus of so many eyes. As she stepped forward, she sensed them drinking her in. The lust in some of their eyes was an assault upon her person and she squirmed inwardly, but she refused to let it show. After several pained moments, she arrived in front of the king, just as Kayna walked in from a side entrance to join her.

  "Look at the two of you. Beautiful, I must say," the king said. "Treasures, for sure."

  Nara thought about the mother she had never met, the mother who had surely died in childbirth. How might the woman have looked in this place, dressed as they were? Did she have red hair, like Nara? Was she beautiful?

  In front of this man, despite her expectations, Nara now found that she had no desire to ask about her family. This place would never be her home. She sought escape from these people, not explanations.

  "I've arranged for your tutors to come in a few days," the king said. "And clothes will be purchased so that you can wear more than the one dress, no matter how good it looks on you. Dinner will be later tonight, a feast to welcome your homecoming, and I expect you to present yourself well. If you need sleep before then, take it."

  The man offered no hug for his supposedly long-lost daughter. No kisses. No tearful rememberings. Such coldness emanated from him and Kayna. What dark souls occupied these people?

  Or was it that simple? If he were her father, and such a rich and powerful man, why had he left Nara in an orphanage and raised only her sister? He had then sent trained killers to capture her, to attack Mykel. His soldier had rammed a sword through his own daughter's shoulder. Where was the queen and why had she married this man? She knew from school that the Great Land had a queen, but had heard nothing of lost princesses or a king. None of it made sense, and she refused to accept this man in the role that he claimed.

  And what about Mykel and Bylo? What had happened to them?

  "That will be all for now," the king said, waving his hand in dismissal.

  Nara moved to speak, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kayna put a finger to her lips, shushing her. Nara scowled at her twin, undeterred.

  "Where are Mykel and Bylo?" Nara said to the king.

  His eyebrows rose. "That is no concern of yours. You live here, now. And you won't see them again."

  "Did you kill them?" She couldn't bear to think of it, but she had to know.

  "No," he said. "They live. And will continue to live as long as you behave yourself and don't cause any trouble."

  What a horrible man. Why would any father treat his child this way? She couldn't accept that he was any relation of hers, and she would not believe it for a moment. But she needed to play along if she wanted Mykel and Bylo to stay alive. Finding them would require cleverness so as not to alert this monster on the throne. Or her twin.

  Nara sighed and dropped her head in a feigned display of defeat, then turned to leave the room using the side exit. She would remain captive for now. A beautifully dressed, pampered prisoner in a giant castle surrounded by soldiers. But she had magic if she could figure out how to use it. She would find a way to Mykel and Bylo. They would leave Fairmont.

  And they would never return.

  32

  Pain

  Mykel awoke to find four strong men coming into the cell to grab him. Why they needed so many to handle his emaciated body was puzzling. They dragged him down a hallway into a small room where implements of steel hung on pegs hammered into the stone walls. Some tools were sharp, some were jagged, and others looked like clubs or hammers. A steel table sat prominently in the center. It was a torture room.

  Dei, help me.

  They tied him to the cold table using leather straps. When they left the room, he struggled against the straps, but they held fast.

  A few moments later, a door that was out of view opened on creaky hinges, followed by the sound of shuffling footsteps. “Good morning,” a voice said. High and raspy, the voice rankled Mykel, but he gave no response.

  “I have an assignment. A research project, I suppose you could say. Would you be my assistant?” The sound of a metal implement scratching against a stone wall behind him grated on Mykel’s nerves even further, raising a fearful curiosity. Terrified, yet eager to look at what was coming for him, he resolved to give no victory to his captor. He kept his eyes locked on the ceiling, hoping to preserve what remained of his dignity.

  “Quiet, eh?” the man said. “We’ll see how quiet you are in a few minutes.”

  Mykel succumbed to curiosity, shooting a look at the man as he came to the table. He wore a dark shirt and trousers, and although his balding head still bore some hair, it was thin, white, and grew only in a few patches. A pale-skinned face was pockmarked with red sores and he flashed a grin, revealing many missing teeth. To call him a man would have been generous; he looked more like a ghoul.

  The sores led Mykel to believe him to be a victim of some sort of ailment, and he experienced a flash of pity for the creature. Mykel guessed him to be in his forties, and wondered if the pale skin and sores were the result of his time in the dungeon or instead a reason to be hiding here.

  The ghoul lifted his hand into view, revealing a small, brilliant blade. Mykel shuddered. No matter what Anne had said about pain no longer being the same for him, she couldn’t have expected him to endure this.

  “This is one of my favorites. Razor sharp. I figured we would start small.”

  The man poked at Mykel’s left shoulde
r with a thumb, as if testing a piece of fruit before purchasing it at the market. Then he drove the blade deep into the flesh. The pain lanced down Mykel’s arm, and his entire body seized in response before he gritted his teeth and summoned the strength to quiet his groans.

  “Muted response. Great pain tolerance. Impressive. But there is a nerve right here—”

  Another stab, but far more intense, as the man shoved the blade under Mykel’s left bicep, then moved the implement against the bone of his upper arm. Mykel uttered a loud cry, and tears came to his eyes.

  “That’s better,” he said, licking his lips and clicking his tongue to make an odd sound. “At least I can be assured that you feel the pain, even if you can heal the wounds. And you seem to bleed normally.”

  The blood from his shoulder and his bicep began to pool on the cold table, and Mykel could feel the warm wetness spreading. He was tempted to heal but didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction. But if he didn’t, he might lose too much blood.

  He closed his eyes and flared health, just a flash, hoping it would stop the bleeding but not completely repair the wounds. He didn’t want to give the man a reason to inflict more damage.

  “Well done! You can stop the bleeding at will. I severed the artery, and it might have been your demise had you waited. Good choice. This project is going to move along nicely.”

  The man clicked his tongue again as he shuffled away, and Mykel heard the scattered sounds of metal implements on the other side of the door from where he had first entered. Upon his return, the man began poking and prodding at Mykel’s shoulder with something cold. It was less painful than before, but still uncomfortable.

  “In case you’re wondering, I’m just probing with a speculum. It spreads the flesh so that I can see inside the wound better. I want to know how much control you possess. You can stop the bleeding but—ah yes! You did it!”

  Mykel raised his eyes in curiosity at his tormentor’s examination.

  “You healed the incision in the shoulder capsule. Soft tissue such as this is difficult to repair; it has so little blood supply. Yet you did it instantly. Wonderful talent.”

  Was this man a torturer or a physicar?

  “Let’s see what you can do with bone,” he said. He grabbed what looked like a large hammer off the wall. A wicked grin crossed the ghoul’s face, and he brought the implement down sharply on Mykel’s left leg. The sound of bone crushing between hammer and steel table was accompanied a moment later by horrific pain, and Mykel cried out again.

  “There you go; let it all out, son. It’s okay to scream. I don’t mind a bit.”

  Amid the excruciating pain, Mykel’s hope drained out of him. His resolve to escape, to catch a soldier off guard, or find a weak bar in the cage seemed fruitless now. These men were professional murders. Mykel was just a simple villager. His ability to heal was of little value here. Moreover, their discovery of it had turned him into an experiment. He couldn’t grasp the protection rune. He had no weapons, and he was getting thinner every day. Somehow, he must find a way to endure. He must escape, find Nara, and leave this terrible place. Oh, if they had just run east, long ago. To the Yukan and beyond, never to be found again. No training, no magic, no dungeons. Just freedom.

  His thoughts were interrupted when the man brought the hammer down on his other leg, deforming it at an odd angle, bone poking through the skin. Mykel lost his resolve under the torture and flared the health rune fully. The wounds disappeared, his legs forcing themselves back into shape as the magic took effect, bone knitting, skin reforming.

  “Excellent!” The man dropped the hammer on the stone floor and moved to each side of the table, inspecting Mykel’s legs, one at a time as he clicked his tongue repeatedly. He poked Mykel’s shoulder with his finger where the wound had been. “Bone, soft tissue, muscle—you can fix it all. You are truly amazing, Cross didn’t exaggerate in the slightest. Thank you, thank you. We’re going to have so much fun together!”

  Bylo watched them take Mykel away every morning. There was no sunlight from which to judge the time of the sessions, but the sounds of birds outside suggested that it was early. Much closer, inside the walls, he would hear the screaming. When Mykel returned, he would bear new scars on his legs, his shoulders, and even his back. The scars were thin, but some were very long, and even in the half-light of the dungeon, Bylo could make out how serious those wounds must have been. Mykel said nothing afterwards—simply sitting with his back against the wall, staring at nothing.

  One day, Mykel returned in a panicked state, fiercely gripping his left forearm with his other hand. Upon being thrown into his cell, he crawled to the bars between him and Bylo, reaching out to Bylo as if asking for help, but then passed out. When Mykel collapsed, he was close enough for Bylo to inspect the damage. A jagged scar, red and raw, encircled his arm halfway between wrist and elbow. Had they amputated it? While he was conscious? The horror of it overwhelmed Bylo, his revulsion mitigated only by the fact that they allowed his healing power to reattach the limb.

  They clearly wanted to know how he healed and what his limits might be. It would only be a matter of time before they disrobed him and found the health rune—if they hadn’t done so already.

  After several more days of Mykel’s torture, Bylo began to regret carrying the boy from the announcement ceremony in the first place. If he had abandoned Mykel in Dimmitt, he would have been given a quick, merciful death at the hands of the church–a far better fate than this. It wouldn’t last much longer for either of them. Mykel couldn’t endure endless torture, and Bylo’s own condition was worsening as well.

  It was a quiet evening in the dungeon, many hours after Mykel returned from a session, when he spoke to Bylo with promise in his voice.

  “I have it.” The words came loud and strong, disturbing Bylo from a fitful snooze.

  “What?” Bylo asked.

  “Protection,” he said. “I can grab it every time now.”

  The rune! So that’s what the boy was doing during all the silence. He was practicing. In his head! Bylo felt like a fool for ever doubting him. He should have had more faith in the young warrior’s resolve.

  A sense of hope arose in Bylo, dancing on the periphery of his consciousness. It nagged at him like a child in the back of a classroom raising her hand with eagerness to speak. Were there options here?

  “If you have developed enough skill to use both your runes—” Bylo stopped himself, remembering something Anne said, then clumsily reached for his foot. The small vial remained tucked inside the cloth of his sock, forgotten. Anne had seen this coming and had already planted the seeds of their escape.

  Joy surged in his breast, accompanied by gratitude. Under his breath, he whispered, “Anne, you come straight from Dei, you beautiful, grouchy angel.”

  Bylo looked at the guard, who watched them from his post at the end of the dungeon corridor. They would have to wait until tomorrow when they would be alone.

  Mykel made a curious face at Bylo. It became even more perplexed as Bylo moved closer, reaching through the bars to squeeze the boy’s shoulder.

  “Young man, how would you like to become a bear?”

  Late one evening, at least a week after arriving in Fairmont, Nara was standing on a high parapet atop an inner castle wall when Gwyn approached. Each using a vision most people did not possess, they looked down upon a courtyard devoid of activity.

  Nara greeted her without turning to look. “Hello, Gwyn.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill us?”

  “That wasn’t my mission.”

  “You’re a watcher, aren’t you?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I’m learning to see more clearly.”

  “Apparently,” Gwyn said. “In more ways than one.”

  “And you’re horrible.”

  There was a pause before Gwyn answered. “I know.”

  They gazed soundlessly upon the courtyard, eyes wandering to
the windows in the keep. One such window opened, and a figure crawled out on the sill. It dropped from the opening, even though the rise was easily fifty feet, then became caught up on a gust of air. The figure lowered to the ground.

  “She goes out often, doesn’t she?” Nara asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When she comes back, she glows brighter.”

  “And probably knows we watch, young lady.”

  “She kills people, doesn’t she?”

  Gwyn said nothing.

  “Are you afraid of her, Gwyn?”

  “I just met her recently. I’ve been away for a long time, and the king kept her talents hidden.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Yes, Nara, I’m afraid of her. You should be, too.”

  “Perhaps. But I think it’s more that I’m angry with her. Disappointed.”

  “Your father kills too. You should fear them both.”

  “Yes. It’s a family tradition,” Nara said. “One that must end.”

  “Big words.”

  Nara swung around to face Gwyn and took a purposeful stride to close the gap between them. Gwyn’s hand moved toward her weapon.

  “What’s it to you if I start acting like someone who can fight? Someone who can make a difference?” Nara let out a low, angry huff, but continued to stare accusingly at Gwyn, eyes locked. “Unlike you, I’m doing this for the people I love rather than people I’m afraid of. That’s it, isn’t it, Gwyn? You’re scared. You hide behind kings and swords and pretend to be our friend only so you can bring us harm. Do you love anyone? Have you ever? Have you let anyone love you? Maybe someday you will, and you’ll know what it’s like to sacrifice for others, to give of yourself.”

  Nara turned slowly back to the empty courtyard. Quietly, she continued, “And to lose them."

  Gwyn dropped her arm back to her side.