Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4)

by Emanuel, Ako

  “Have you ever encountered anyone with the di’rito’ka to match your av’rito’ka?” he moved back up and murmured to her. But she could not hear over the roaring thunder of pleasure filling her, nor could she have answered around the gasps and cries of voluptuous rapture. “Or the lor’rito’ka to overshadow your av’rito’ka? Do you know what someone with that kind of power can do to you?”

  She moaned, and perhaps she heard him, but he kept the pleasurable contractions coming, making them stronger gran by gran, so that soon they straddled the border between pleasure and pain. He turned her over again and held her down by the neck, making the contractions spread to her other muscles; she began to twitch and jerk beneath his hands and her cries changed in nature and in volume, but were muffled by the pillows and the material of the pallet.

  “Fekniri, you enjoyed the pain you inflicted upon me. Believe me when I say that I take no joy in what I inflict upon you.” He stepped back as her thrashing grew more violent, and her cries cut off as the muscles in her neck became swollen. Soon each thrash lifted her almost completely off the pallet. Soon each thrash was accompanied by the snapping of bone. Soon each thrash flipped her about like a bone-less doll. And still they continued, until she was a pulverized, shapeless sack. Then they became weaker and weaker. After a san’chron she lay still, no longer recognizable as even a thing that once lived. Blood oozed from various places, though whether they were joints or not was hard to tell. Her head was only identifiable by the mass of tangled, bloody guinne.

  Gavaron stared at the remains. Then he took his armor down and strapped it on deliberately, keeping his eyes on the dead Train’Marm. When he had slid the last of his weapons into place, he lifted the dead thing as tenderly as if she were still alive and asleep, carried her back to the Stables.

  The other inhabitants woke up at the ringing sound of the clopping of his hoofs. The sound should have been muffled but each hoof-step rang true, and each head turned as much as possible to observe this new development. They watched from the corners of their eyes as he carried the former Stable’Marm. He gently tied one of the choke chains in the middle corral around what might have once been her neck. Then he hoisteds her up for all to see. The shapeless mass swung slowly from side to side. He stood watching it, his face still, and all the others watched him. The body swung like a pendulum. He watched it, following it with his eyes, one muscle in his jaw twitching as she might have twitched in her death-throws. For ten ten-grans he watched and the others watched. Then his face contorted and he reared up and spun, transferring all the energy of his initial movement to his back hoofs, striking the body with all his might. It flew apart with a spray of blood and gristle and bone fragments. He trumpeted a purely equine scream of fury, rearing up again, an apparition covered in blood and Cribeau scales, his gauntleted fists raised to the cloud-pregnant skies. Then he was rampaging around, kicking in stall-doors, ripping off harnesses and tethers, which rotted at his touch. The freed mounts, Katari all, milled around at first, confused, having been captive so long that the will to do anything on their own had left them, all except Tema and those he had been able to contact beforehand. He trumpeted again, Stallyn to this meekened Herd, his anger and fury drawing them to him instinctively. He led them to the other parts of the menagerie, where Fedoa and Cribeau lived in cages with thick glassine walls, and Rhundi flapped flightlessly in gold cages suspended. Even lor’ugawu skulked in their own little enclosures, and there were giant Uj’Urja, wilting and panting in the un-accustomed warmth. There were even Minoa in huge glass enclosures full of water.

  Gavaron trumpeted a challenge and threw his ‘tunned voice to all the captives, pulling away the last of the dampening cages on their minds and av’rita.

  *:Hear me! I will free you, all of you! Those of you who would fight, come to me! Those who would not, flee, to freedom!:*

  He went to each glass wall, touched it, then kicked it with his back hoofs. They shattered, but he toughened his hide and suffered only minor scratches. The Katari lowered the cages and he touched them, and, warning each captive to stay to one side, kicked at the other, making the cages shriek open.

  He freed the sophants first, the pre-Av’Touched second. Some fled, but most stayed with him, helping him free all the creatures in the place.

  At the last set of cages in the labyrinthine zoo, they met up with the Queen. Behind her were four other Queens, all masked, all smirking.

  “And what have we here?” the smooth, hated voice said behind the motley Herd. Most of them froze in terror, but Gavaron whirled to face her and her milling packs of shadow-creatures that made even the lor’ugawu cower.

  “What are you doing out of your cages? And you, my ‘prize,’ do you know how long it took me to acquire all of these fine specimens? You have undone ten-cycles of hard work. And you shall pay the price.” Shrouding nets of av’rita-restraints looped around him, trying to cut off his sense of the living world.

  He laughed, shearing through the nets, and throwing off the last straggling bonds that clung to his thoughts. He reached out to the minds of his Herd, holding them, shielding them from her twisted thoughts and mind traps. He filled them with his rage, his hatred, and they became a solid mass at his back, a unified group with one goal: kill the one who had ruined their lives. The other four stood back, not lending any aid to her.

  “I have learned a few tricks from you, bitch-Queen. I am free of your tethers. You no longer control me or those who are with me. Is that what you fear? Why do you cower behind your made-up creatures? Could it be that you hide behind these nih’macha because you haven’t the courage to face me yourself?”

  She yawned behind her mask, waving his words away. “What a quaint, male notion. What an animalistic idealism. You see, this is why your kind will never dominate, and why wuman Queens will rule the world. How you hate me! How you wish to feel your hands around my throat, throttling off my last breath! And oh, how you will spend the lives of your fellow ex-captives to reach that goal! No, it is not I, but you who hide behind others. These creatures of mine were made - they have no soul, no memories, no loved ones grieving for them. Whereas your army was each and every one of them birthed painfully to some weeping mother, nursed and nurtured to adulthood. I see you have the blood of my best Stable’Marm on your hands. Will you add theirs, too?”

  Through his rage-haze, he saw the twisted sense of her words, and the trap that lay in them. As Stallyn, he led the Herd, and they would follow him, right off a cliff. Had he freed them just to get them killed because of his own lust for revenge? Was he that much worse than she?

  No, she has to be stopped, so that she will never be able to do this type of thing again, he thought, coldly. And he would have to do it alone. He began moving his Herd back with his mind alone.

  “You dare enslave us?” he rumbled, his voice deep silver with hatred, yes, the same hatred she baited him with, and with righteous fury. A weapon. To such as him, the earth itself was more than just a medium. It was a weapon.

  He reached for the stone, the stone beneath their feet, and a surprised shriek to his right ended in a thin gurgle. A thin spire of stone, crystal sharp and razor clear, had skewered one of the Queen’s blurring creatures where it crouched.

  “You dare to treat me and mine as mindless chattel?! You dare to spit in the face of the High Queen and the Goddesses Themselves?!” His fists clenched so hard that the joints crackled like splitting stone, and two more of the creatures died in mid-leap. The ground began to heave and roll like a table lifted and shaken.

  “You and all your foul works shall crumble and rot, and leave not even dust to show your passing!” he thundered, and with a great heaving sigh the villa and grounds began to disintegrate, eroding away as if eons had passed in grans.

  The Queen gazed about her at the destruction, unconcerned, then turned back to him with that malicious, gloating smile. The other four retreated, however, and with four av’tun flashes, were gone.

  “My dear, beautiful
mount, if you think that I am the only one to make such a collection - why, then, you must not be as intelligent as I gave you credit for. Not only am I not the only one, but I learned from the best.” She seemed unfazed by her abandonment by her compatriots.

  He shut out her words. She was trying to get him to charge in blind rage. And she was stalling so that her creatures could get in around behind them. It did not matter if there were other zoos, other menageries. He was here in this one. He intended to get out. He reached to the Queen and began to rip the pearl stuff from her. She began to shriek, in pain and, almost it seemed, surprise. The eve-mare creatures, held by her will, were unleashed.

  *:RUN!:* he sent, and led them away, back the way they had come. The ground his Herd trod upon was stable, while all around them the world became fluid. He made the faster members take the front, and the slower and stronger ones bring up the rear, and he stayed at the very back. The shadow creatures converged from all sides, so that they had to fight for every step to freedom. It was a fight of pure survival, pure instinct, no weapons besides those the Supreme One had bestowed upon them naturally, no tactics except those that they were born knowing and those that the hardness of life had taught them. Gavaron laid about with his hoofs and fists, breaking necks when he could, stabbing with his elongated horn when in close quarters. He could not use the earth now, not without risking hurting his Herd. Others lashed out with huge paws and blood-red claws, stabbed with hooked beaks, crushed with muscular bodies. There were no collars here to sever - these creatures were pure evil in and of themselves, and only death stopped them.

  When they finally broke through to the wilderness, he had lost half his Herd to the blurring beasts. He sent the others to find their lives, and turned back alone, to face the one who had come between him and his promises. Bleeding, she faced him with a terrible wrath showing plainly on her face. The blurring creatures ignored the escaping others and centered on him. That was fine. That was just the way he wanted it. The earth rose in waves to his command.

  Blood will flow in rivers and pool into seas, he remembered. Here and now, he meant to keep that promise.

  the darkness turned...

  CHAPTER XVI

  the light turned...

  “This is grave news, my Daughter and Heir. Your illness saddens my heart. I have received a correspondence from K’lad’mi confirming the Priest Ejai’li’s assessment of your condition. However, I will need a third verification from a more familiar source before any sure measures can be taken. I am relieving you of your stewardship for the duration of your illness; you are to turn over all duties to the Second Voice immediately and confine yourself to bed-rest and minimal activity. My First Voice will be returning to rule in my stead. When I receive a full report of your circumstance, then we may discuss the most advantageous course of action...”

  Silonyi pulled her eyes away from the neat script of her mother’s transcriber. Mother is confining me? She isn’t summoning me to the Ritious City? How can this be?

  She sank to the pallet surface, the papi’ras slipping from numb fingers. This has to be a mistake... but somehow she knew it was not. Because of what I did and what happened, Mother is going to - to let me die...

  She snatched up the letter and scanned ahead.

  “...If the Priest is correct, then we will pursue the best course of action once I have returned...”

  Her mother said nothing of ever going to the Ritious City. The coldness that dawned in her stomach spread like crystallizing water. What was her mother thinking? Doesn’t she care at all?

  It was almost beyond comprehension. Silonyi sat shaking, not knowing what the cold sensation would turn into: fear, despair, or anger. What was she supposed to think, to do?

  What have I been taught all these cycles? She had been taught that she was a tool in her mother’s designs, and a broken tool was discarded rather than fixed. She was a broken tool.

  I never thought she would really throw me away, she thought, bitterly, but she has. I am worthless to her. My life means nothing to her. For a gran she wallowed in despair. Then a spark of diamond determination flared in her. If I am a broken tool, then I must think like the broken tool that I am. I will have to go - go to the Ritious City despite Mother’s orders.

  But beneath the defiant thoughts was puzzlement, a sore perplexity. Why had she not been discarded before? On that eve when her mother had laid her memories bare and seen what had happened with the prisoner, why had she not disposed of her then?

  Maybe they were waiting to see if I’d been affected. Maybe it has been the decisions I’ve made since then that have put me into this position.

  Would waiting, then, redeem her? Or would it cost her her life? Or were the two one and the same?

  Perhaps I have betrayed her in some way. Perhaps if I waited, she would see that I am still loyal to her and she will be able to get me there in time. But somehow that did not seem quite right. That was not in keeping with her mother’s mode of operation - in as much as she could read her mother’s intentions. Then another thought dawned on her.

  Haven’t I been taught never to trust even allies? That if my life could either be in my hands or another’s, to always take it into my own? Maybe staying would be to fail in that lesson. Perhaps this was all a test of her mettle, especially after her most recent failures. For her behavior at the lorn had most definitely been a failure on her part. And she had been tested in similar ways before -

  She clung desperately to the thought, preferring it to the thought that her life meant nothing to her mother. Yes, I am being tested. Never as drastically as this, but to make up for the lorn, maybe she feels that a drastic test is needed. Maybe the whole thing is a test. Maybe even the Priest was in on it. Maybe there was a rite upon the chi’av’an to injure me in such a way that I would be forced into this position.

  Well, then, I shall prevail. I will prove that I am up to the task. She immediately began to plot, standing up to pace, looking at her predicament as a prisoner planning to escape would. And in truth, she was.

  If my authority has not been taken away yet then I can slip away before the warru get orders to stop me. But that would be too easy. She will put obstacles in my way to assay my worth. So they already have their orders and I am no longer autonomous. And my objective is the Ritious City. What do I need to get there? She went to a wide window to gaze out over the hillside that T’chi’la had been built into thousands of cycles ago.

  A guide. Food. Trading currency. Silonyi thought about the first requirement, and the obvious answer almost made her laugh. Him. The prisoner. Isn’t it convenient that he just happens to be there right when I would need a guide? More proof that this was a test. Yes, it is too convenient to have been anything other than planned. Now getting him out and making our escape will be the real feat. Silonyi sat down on a padded bench and considered. The De’en’nu was six turns away. If he agreed - when he agreed - that gave her six turns to help him build his strength back up enough to travel.

  Now, how to get to him, and how do I get him what he needs? Getting to him - that was easy. The billa’ja’ways. Getting him what he required - better food and Av’s light - past the guards was the problem. He was being fed, to be sure, but merely to keep him alive, not to give him strength and energy. And there was also the problem of his inactivity for so long. Would he be able to travel even if she did get him out?

  And the guards. They were bound under heavy rites of obedience to her mother alone. She knew because she had tried to go and see him again and the guards had stopped her.

  Someone cleared a polite throat behind her. She turned to see Imraja standing there.

  “Is there anything you require, Highness?” the second Voice asked. Was there something in her voice? An offer of help, perhaps? Silonyi speculated for an instant about asking for Imraja’s help, then decided against it.

  “No, Imraja, there is nothing I require,” she said, giving a tiny smile and a nod of polite dismissal. Imraja’s eyes narr
owed fractionally before she took her leave.

  No, even if the Voice did want to help her, and after the comment that Imraja had let slip, the temptation had been very great to ask, it was too risky.

  Silonyi turned back to her musings, though she felt very enervated. Not having the sustenance of the Rite of Solu, whichever one, was taking its toll. And I was worrying about him being able to travel. I might not make it.

  She wracked her brain till her thoughts began to go in circles. Then, it suddenly hit her. He had probably been planning escape for as long as he had been in the den’lains. And he was a warru, or so she surmised. He could tell her what would be required for a journey of the magnitude she was contemplating. She made up her mind then and there. After the eve meal, she would go down and see him. The sooner they started, the sooner she could be cured.

  ...Dim-lit halls turned to darkling haze, streaked with silver and summoned by a hissing whisper...