by Mok, DK
“We requested a ransom,” said Haska, her voice smooth and resonant. “A simple thing, costing nothing but a little pride. In exchange for your life. Can you guess their reply?”
Valamon could feel the world sinking beneath him. Yes, he could easily guess their reply. He kept his expression neutral.
“Your family has forsaken you,” said Haska. “Your empire has forsaken you. Your own mother is happy to let you die.”
“There’s a difference between ‘happy’ and ‘willing’,” said Valamon, although in this case he wasn’t sure there had been.
“How does it feel, Prince of Talgaran, to know that you live only at my mercy?”
Unsurprised, thought Valamon. However, he suspected this answer would lead to digits or limbs going missing.
Haska took another step towards the bars, and Valamon resisted the urge to step back.
“Tell me about your father,” said Haska.
Valamon could recognise a loaded question, and this one strained under the weight of an arsenal.
“He’s the king of Talgaran.”
“Tell me about Talgaran.”
Valamon wondered whether reciting the Talgaran Geopolitical Almanac would increase or decrease his life expectancy, and concluded that Haska had probably already decided his fate, regardless of his answer.
“Talgaran is the largest-known extant empire on the eastern plate, reaching from the Halo Mountains to the edge of the Fens—”
Haska’s gauntlet suddenly lashed between the bars, gripping Valamon tightly around the throat. He pried desperately at the serrated steel fingers, to no obvious effect.
“Do you love your father?” said Haska.
Valamon felt it wasn’t particularly fair to be asking questions without actually allowing the prisoner to breathe.
“Of course,” he croaked.
He felt the gauntlet tighten around his throat.
“What if I told you that was the wrong answer?”
Valamon held her gaze, although purple lights were starting to flash across his vision.
“I don’t have another.”
Partly because, at this point, her fingers were crushing his trachea. He suddenly felt the pressure release, and he stumbled backwards, choking for air. Haska stood motionless at the bars, like a menacing statue in the firelight.
“Don’t worry, former Prince of Talgaran.” Haska turned to leave. “You won’t be with us much longer.”
Morle stood in the doorway, her quarterstaff tucked in the crook of one arm. She watched silently as Seris placed several pairs of socks into his knapsack.
“While I’m gone, you’re the youngest,” said Seris, “so you have to answer the door at night. If they come in during the day, Petr can look after them. But if someone has to go somewhere, it has to be you.”
Morle looked at him with sad eyes, and Seris tried to concentrate on rummaging through his clothes drawer.
“If Petr gets up before you, make sure he’s wearing socks,” he continued. “And if he wants to go out, make sure he’s wearing pants.”
Morle stared disconsolately at the floor, and Seris felt a painful ache in his chest as he tied the corners of his knapsack. He couldn’t help feeling that he was abandoning them—all they had was each other, and he was leaving.
Morle had been seven when she was abandoned outside the temple, barely able to walk and covered in bruises. For the next ten years, she’d failed to utter a single word, watching everything with haunted eyes edged with hostility. Under Petr’s gentle care, she had eventually become a cleric of Eliantora, but the wary detachment never completely vanished. For twenty years, Seris had been her conduit, dealing with the outside world so she wouldn’t have to.
“You’ll do fine,” said Seris gently, slinging the knapsack over his shoulder.
Clutching her quarterstaff, Morle followed Seris down the stairs into the kitchen, where the scent of roasting chestnuts filled the air. Petr pulled a fragrant tray from the oven and beamed at Seris and Morle.
“I’m salting pistachios next,” said Petr. “By the way, Roker asked if we could check on his daughter tomorrow; her heart’s still playing up.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Seris, helping Petr into a chair.
Roker’s daughter had been dead for eight years. Roker had been dead for fifteen.
Seris crouched beside Petr, waiting for the old man’s attention to wander back in his direction.
“Petr, I’m going away for a little while.”
“Are you running some errands?”
“Yes. I won’t be long. If you need anything, Morle will be here.”
“We’ll be fine.” Petr patted Seris’s arm. “You worry too much.”
Seris smiled wanly and gave Petr a gentle hug.
“Take care.”
As he walked down the lonely hall to the front door, Seris tried to commit every detail of the homely temple to memory. He remembered the day he’d arrived, carted into town on the back of a vegetable wagon along with the other orphans. He’d been among the lucky few, the pitifully few, who’d been rescued from the ruins of conquered realms by kindly strangers. They’d been dropped off at various homes, shops, and workhouses, and Seris had been left here. A much younger Petr, and a nine-year-old Morle, had welcomed him into their lives.
He remembered the first sense of Eliantora, like the taste of blood in the water.
He remembered the day Morle had spoken her first word, trying to coax him out of a childish despair. It had been “pie”.
He remembered the very first time he’d healed someone. The day Petr had suffered his first heart attack.
Seris exhaled slowly and gave Morle a small smile.
“I won’t be long.”
Her eyes said “liar”. Her mouth tilted in a faint smile.
“Remember.” Seris patted Morle’s quarterstaff. “You break it, you heal it.”
Seris pushed open the door, and Morle grabbed his hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Morle softly. “When you stop being afraid, you can do things you never thought possible.”
Seris wrapped his arms around Morle and hugged her tightly. He tried not to throw mental curses at Falon as he strode down the temple steps, into the fresh night air. A pale figure stood across the road.
“Ready to go?” grinned Elhan.
Valamon was finding this to be a learning experience. For example, he was learning that it was extremely difficult to dig yourself out of a stone cell using a piece of damp straw.
Difficult, he told himself, but not impossible.
He continued scraping away at a seam between the stones, wearing down his nub of straw. At the sound of the dungeon door swinging open, Valamon quickly tossed his tool onto the ground, where it disappeared amongst all the other pieces of straw. At least he didn’t have to hide his implements.
Heavy footsteps clanged over stone, and Barrat strode into view, flanked by five mean-looking soldiers.
“General Barrat,” said Valamon politely.
“Your Highness. You’re being moved to a different cell. Will we need to use restraints?”
Valamon assumed this was a question in the same way that “Do you want me to send you to boarding school?” was a question.
“You’ll find me cooperative.”
One of the soldiers snorted and was silenced by a look from Barrat. The guards unlocked Valamon’s cell and escorted him towards a set of narrow stone stairs spiralling upwards.
“I don’t recognise the design of your armour,” said Valamon.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Although it resembles the style of the Eruduin.”
Valamon saw the briefest jolt of recognition at the word, but Barrat kept walking, his eyes steadily ahead.
“It does.” There was a note of warning in Barrat’s voice.
“Amazing metalsmiths,” Valamon forged on. “But their clan died out centuries ago, didn’t it?”
“Around the same time as the
rise of the Talgaran Empire. Strange thing, that.”
Barrat swung open a heavy cell door. The bars were twice as thick, and the floor was a single slab of rough granite. Valamon guessed that his efforts with damp straw hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Your new residence, Your Highness.”
THREE
They left under cover of night, slipping out of the capital along narrow alleys and rough dirt tracks. Elhan said little, and Seris was left following her shadow as she scampered past crumbling walls and over broken gates.
They reached the main road with plenty of darkness left, and by dawn they were well into the fields and farmland beyond the city outskirts. The reality of the quest was sinking in for Seris like a severe case of foot rot. He hadn’t left the capital in twenty years, and he was probably the least qualified person in the empire for this quest, aside from Petr, Morle, and possibly Elhan. He’d never been on an adventure. He’d never been in a real fight—wrestling with recalcitrant patients didn’t count. He’d never even played fighting games like “guards and prisoners” as a child. Instead, he’d grown up playing things like “heal the rabbit” with Morle, using a fluffy toy rabbit that was missing most of its stuffing.
The entire past week seemed surreal to Seris—from the knock at the door to the vast, sun-drenched fields they were passing now. It didn’t help that he hadn’t had a chance to properly talk to Elhan yet. Seris had expected them to sit down, discuss their plan, set some ground rules, and then head off when they felt nice and prepared.
However, after slinking out of the city, Elhan had continued at a fair clip, staying a good distance ahead of Seris. She’d pull ahead, then slow just a little, and Seris struggled to keep her in visual range. Even now, she loped alongside the main road, staying hidden in the tall grass between the scattered trees. At times, Seris felt as though he were trying to stalk some elusive animal, and at others, he felt as though some sinister creature were stalking him. By late afternoon, any novelty had worn off. He wasn’t going to chase her across the continent without knowing where they were headed.
Seris waited until he saw the rustle of movement vanish over the next hill, and then he sat down on the side of the road. He kneaded his calf muscles for a while, then after a thoughtful pause, lay down and pulled his hood over his face. He closed his eyes, vaguely aware of the whisper of waving wheat and the occasional clunk of a cow bell. The earth felt pleasantly warm, and his painfully blistered feet tingled as though he’d trodden on a tray of bees.
After a few moments, a shadow fell over him, and a foot nudged him in the ribs.
“I know you’re not dead,” said Elhan.
“I’m resting.”
“There’s an inn three miles down the road. It’s gonna be dark soon.”
Seris opened his eyes, and it seemed to him that Elhan loomed against the sky, like a cobra poised to strike.
“Where are we going?” said Seris.
“I said there’s an inn—”
“Unless Prince Valamon’s sitting there knocking back a pint, I’m guessing that’s a rest stop, not a destination.”
Elhan gave Seris a contemplative look, then turned watchfully towards the horizon.
“Away from the capital,” she said. “We have to keep moving.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“Can’t you just tell me? I’m sure it’ll be less traumatic that way.”
“But much less fun.” Elhan grinned, heading back towards the trees.
“Hey! You have to stay within earshot.”
Elhan stopped, looking at him as though he’d demanded she hop the rest of the way.
“I’m not going to run after you like a lost dog,” said Seris. “If we’re going to travel together, I’d like a little…communication.”
Elhan blinked slowly, and he had that strange feeling again that there were tiny things moving behind her eyes.
“Do you really want to make small talk for the next few months?”
“Months?” His mind burst into dizzy pinwheels.
“Unless Prince Valamon ran away from home riding a piñata, I suspect he’s far beyond Talgaran borders by now.”
“What makes you say that?” said Seris sharply.
Elhan smiled, and it made Seris’s skin prickle. It was as though parts of her face were moving, but not quite in the way that they should.
“We can talk about it at the inn.”
Seris looked towards the sinking sun. The capital was barely a smear on the horizon now. He winced as he hobbled after Elhan.
“Can’t you do something about your feet?” Elhan looked at him with probing eyes. “Cleric, heal thyself?”
“It doesn’t work that way. A river can’t replenish itself.”
“So if I hit you, you can’t fix it?”
“If you hit me, I’ll run away.”
“Worked for you last time.”
Seris scowled. Elhan dipped in and out of the treeline, casually watching him.
“What else can’t you do?” she said. “Can you raise the dead?”
“No.”
“Can you re-capitate people?”
“Refer to the previous answer. And that’s not a word.”
“It should be, since you can do it. They’re just not alive.”
Seris stared at Elhan as she skimmed alongside the road. He decided he really wasn’t ready to ask.
“Can you cure diseases?” said Elhan.
“We can make them not as severe, sometimes.”
Elhan looked unimpressed.
“Doesn’t sound like you can do much.”
“We can stop bleeding,” said Seris. “We can knit bones and heal some injuries. We can take away pain.”
“It sounded better before you joined up, didn’t it?”
“It’s better than doing nothing,” said Seris firmly.
Elhan shrugged.
“It’s nothing you couldn’t fix with bandages, needle and thread, or a big rock.”
“A big rock?”
“A big enough rock solves most problems,” said Elhan as they crested a low hill.
Ahead of them, the paddocks and pastures ended, turning into prickly woodland. Just before the road plunged into the trees, a cluster of dwellings sat on the dried farmland, surrounding a modest inn. The inn stood two storeys tall, with dull white walls criss-crossed with dark wooden beams. Seris looked warily at the ramshackle houses and the stubble of yellow grass on the fields. A headless scarecrow stood in a patch of desiccated melons, and he wasn’t sure if it was intended to frighten birds or people.
As they approached the inn, Seris suddenly became aware of some logistical complications that life at the temple had unfortunately left him unprepared for.
“Um, now might be a good time to mention that, as a cleric, I have certain lifestyle restrictions,” he said.
“If this is like where you have to remain undefiled and chant a lot, I’m cool with the first bit, but not with the second.”
“Actually, we’re forbidden from carrying currency. Eliantora doesn’t think we should want things that aren’t given freely. Sometimes we barter a little, but mostly we rely on charity.”
“Not mine.”
She paused and then stared at Seris.
“You’re serious,” said Elhan flatly.
“It’s never been a problem in the capital…”
“Is there anything else you can’t do that I should know about? Like washing dishes or heavy lifting?”
Seris bristled.
“A few, but nothing that affects you.”
“Go on,” said Elhan.
Seris sighed and shuffled through mental notecards.
“We can’t drink anything intoxicating. Eliantora says it destroys the mind and changes the heart. We can’t wear white, because it makes Eliantora uncomfortable. Cream is acceptable. But not bright white. There are colour swatches. We’re not allowed to eat sweet, sticky things, because Eliantora says it ruins
your teeth—”
“How sweet and sticky does it have to be? Are we talking treacle pudding or plums?”
“There’s a long list. In a thick book.”
“What happens if you break the rules?”
“Eliantora gets upset and breaks your mind into tiny little pieces. She doesn’t mean to; she just has…issues.”
Elhan looked mildly appalled. Seris was tempted to launch into a defence of Eliantora, explaining how when she’d been mortal, millennia ago, she’d been relentlessly bullied by the other sorcerers and persecuted by the merciless Eruduin kings. But right now, Seris was more tempted by the thought of sitting down and putting his feet into a basin of something very cold.
“No, there’s no chanting,” he continued briskly. “And yes, we can have relationships. It’s just more challenging when you can’t carry money, sing, or eat cake.”
“Eliantora doesn’t like singing?”
“Or things that click in regular time.” Seris pushed open the door to the inn.
Although the inn had been quiet, it suddenly reached a whole new level of silence. Beer mugs stopped clinking, clacking dice rolled to a stop, and a small monkey stopped playing his zither. Elhan strolled over to the bar, oblivious to the stares that followed them. Seris decided that the scarecrow had not been for avian visitors.
“I’d like a single room,” said Elhan to the barkeep. “My manservant will sleep on the floor.”
“Manserv—” Seris began, but decided that, since she was paying for the room, he could let this one go.
Several dented copper pieces clattered onto the table, and the barkeep dropped an iron key into Elhan’s hand. Seris had expected the quiet chatter to resume at this point, but the inn remained in flinty silence. All eyes were on Elhan as she headed for the dim stairs, and Seris followed nervously.
“Are all villages like this?” he said.
Seris’s memories of life outside Algaris were hazy. Everything beyond the edge of the capital was just a nebulous elsewhere, quite possibly full of hostile farmers.
“Only if you’re with me.” Elhan turned the key in a flimsy pine door. “You walked in with me, so you walk out with me or not at all. I don’t make the rules; I just try to break them once in a while.”
