Stain

by A. G. Howard

  She had no irises, just pupils the color of swirling mud that spanned the entirety of her eyes. They offered a panoramic view and insights into the depths of a soul, but poor protection from brightness. And her translucent eyelids aided little in that respect. Of course, for an immortal creature who hadn’t a physical need for sleep, there was no real reason to begrudge her lack of traditional eyelids. It was the memory attached to losing them that caused her woe.

  Serpentine briars slithered around her bare ankles and feet, gnawing at them with fang-like thorns in an effort to drag her off the path. She kicked them away, untouched. Her hide resembled an acorn’s cap—brown and rough with scales—and was near impenetrable.

  Some said the same was true of her heart. Impenetrable.

  She rumbled a laugh to distract from the ever-present twinge in her chest. If only the fools were right.

  Using the skull impaled upon her staff to knock away the snapping briars that curtained the entrance, she plunged through, out of the ravine’s cloying stench and into the fresh air. Her hood shaded her eyes as she adjusted to the sunshine. Lifting the hem of her cloak, she made for the hilly outskirts of Eldoria’s township.

  The castle’s highest ivory tower rose in the midst of a clearing, draped in soft white clouds. The usual golden banners that flapped atop each turret, emblazoned with a red-and-orange sun and an orange soaring bird, had been replaced with solid navy flags—mourning the great king’s death, honoring his noble life. Sentries, wearing long capes in the same navy fabric, were posted on regal blood-bay stallions at the gate and around the great white wall surrounding the castle. Traditionally, black might have been a more appropriate color, but Eldoria refused to use anything that would pay tribute to Nerezeth’s own black-and-silver banners.

  Out of sight in the distance, soldiers practiced maneuvers—archery, hand-to-hand combat, and sword play—in preparation to return to the base of Mount Astra, where Nerezeth’s iron stairway descended into the earth. When all the roses’ roots had been ripped up under King Kiran’s command, the ground beneath became unstable. Now, with all the rain from the past several days, a muddy avalanche had sealed off the stairway and trapped the Nerezethites in their icy domain.

  This unexpected event bought Eldoria time enough to reinforce the battlements, and shore-up the walls of the outer bailey. But it was only a temporary reprieve; Eldoria’s infantry planned to tunnel their way in. The distant scuff of hooves in the dirt, the clang of swords and shouting men, crackled on the air and drowned out the chirping birdsongs in the trees as proof. Retaliation for King Kiran’s murder had been ordered by Lady Griselda. A king’s blood for a king’s blood.

  Orion, the king of Nerezeth, already laid abed dying. What good did it do to hasten the inevitable? Crony, of all creatures, knew the benefit of patience in these things.

  She was troubled by how the war had been stirred anew. How King Kiran’s soldiers hauled away the lavender blooms. How they uprooted the one symbol of peace between the two kingdoms without considering the consequences.

  Crony and her ilk would need to be wary now; they could ill afford to be captured with Lady Griselda as regent. The king’s sister bade no tolerance for anyone magically inclined who didn’t serve the castle. And, as Crony had learned lifetimes ago, there were sacrifices to be made when under the employ of any one kingdom. Thus, she dared not pledge fealty to any but herself. In the absence of King Kiran’s fair trials for all prisoners, such a refusal could warrant death. Or, in an immortal’s case, unrelenting torture.

  The danger was an acidic burn on the back of her tongue.

  A flash of vivid color caught Crony’s eye as she rounded a hill. She ducked beneath an outcropping of shrubbery, cringing when bits of glass in the bag at her waist chinked together. Parting the branches, she peered at the red-and-silver fox a few feet ahead, seated on his haunches and licking his paw. A flock of swans took to the sky, soaring on their daily sojourn to the Crystal Lake. The fox snapped to attention and watched them. One might think him hungry for flesh, but his craving was for flights of solitude—the wind streaming beneath hollow bones and fringed wings.

  He called himself Elusion; Crony called him Luce. In their true ethereal form, sylphs were air elementals imperceptible to the naked eye. They stirred up trouble, enjoying the fruits of their mischief from an aerial view. Luce, however, was cursed aground, and could only take his bestial and human forms now. When Crony met him over twelve years ago, he’d been shunned by his own kind for losing his wings to the sylph elm in the royal gardens.

  She befriended him because he made her smile—a courageous feat, considering her smiles could wilt flowers. And his otherworldly nature meant he assisted her dark occupation without complaint. They had a kinship, as his sins were as grim as her own.

  Or so she let him believe . . .

  No one in this sun-smote land knew of her gravest misstep; but there was one who had shared the experience and held that secret close, living beneath her feet in Nerezeth.

  The fox’s unnatural scent—a mix of animal dander, man, and flying creatures—wafted toward Crony on the warm breeze, tickling her flat, slitted nose. Sensing her, he looked up—his orange eyes lit to embers of intelligence. His long muzzle parted on a grin that could double as a sharp-toothed snarl.

  Crony slipped out from her hiding spot. “Good diurnal to ye.”

  “Huh. Took you long enough,” the fox answered. No matter which form he chose to wear, the same baritone, silken voice always greeted her. “There’s only so much time can be spent preening parasites from one’s own tail.” He gave said ‘tail’ a swoosh and stood, shaking grass and dirt from his fur until he shined like a polished summer apple.

  “Aye.” Crony stepped around her four-legged companion, her staff playfully batting the pendant around his neck—a talisman of protection formed of her own hair. “But we both know yer a fair bit too calloused for any parasite to latch upon.”

  His silvery whiskers wriggled. “If that were true, you’d never have burrowed your way beneath my skin.”

  Crony smiled, and the shin-high grass feathering her steps withered at the sight. She’d been the cohort of death for so long, there was a residue on her.

  The fox sauntered soundlessly to catch up at her ankles. “I see you finally grew a tail of your own. Always knew you envied mine.” The direction of his amused gaze indicated the squirrel’s remains in her belt.

  She snorted. “If ye can’t save the critter, ye salvage the remains.”

  “Nicely done. Winkle should be interested in a trade.” That said, the fox’s triangular ears perked and he sniffed the air. Having a nose for gore and death made him a harrower witch’s ideal partner. “Our prey is just over the other side of the ridge there. Fresh meat, but ripening fast in this swelter.”

  Crony nodded. The sun beat down, hot and unforgiving to those who spent most days in ash and shade. Yet even shade couldn’t offer an inkling of the peace they once had. Over seven hundred years gone by, and still she could remember the cool brush of moonlit air scented with jasmine and carrying the chirrups of crickets. Night had been her sanctuary—night and all its creatures.

  Now Eldoria had only the day. The second twelve hours were no different from the first, save that singular softening of the sun after its east-to-west diurnal course, before it reversed its trajectory across the sky.

  Eldoria’s citizens liked to boast that they were superior in their winnings. For surely Nerezeth grew cold in their eternal winter; surely they thirsted and starved without the promise of bountiful harvests, cascading waterfalls, and burgeoning spring foliage. What could possibly be sown, harvested, or admired in that icy, shadowy terrain? Did that not explain why there were smugglers carrying sunlight to Nerezeth, yet no one here ventured into that dark land to steal their moonbeams?

  Yes, how little Eldoria needed the night.

  Crony’s jaw ground against her cheek. How easily Eldoria had forgotten those early years, when so many fell t
o madness from lack of sleep and sought out shade in the Ashen Ravine, giving their spirits to the cursed forest and becoming shrouds—half-life silhouettes that craved the flesh they once had. How easily Eldoria had forgotten that this was why King Kiran’s royal ancestors initiated the cessation course: a nine-hour curfew set upon the entire kingdom, requiring by law that after the daily flash of dusk people were to retreat indoors, where heavy drapes blotted out the light, so they might rest and slumber. How easily Eldoria had forgotten the moon’s calming breath and the nightingale’s restorative song.

  Until now. With the birth of the child princess and her peculiarities, Eldoria had been forced to remember. And everything had been upended.

  “This way,” the fox said, his long, pink tongue lolling from the heat.

  Together, Crony and her companion trudged a steep, rocky path dividing a field of fragrant purple heather. She followed as he vanished through a weeping willow’s fringe, then caught sight of his tail, the tip glistening like a plume of silver smoke.

  There, at the fox’s front paws, a knight lay dying, half-hidden within a thicket of elderberry trees. Mud-smeared greaves stretched across his shins, their metallic surface catching glints of light. Crony trailed the heavily plated legs deeper into the brush to where his helmet and breastplate, embossed with Eldoria’s sun-sigil, were cast aside. The rest of his armor lay bent and crumpled on the grass—as useless to him now as the lavish white gold from which they were forged. Splatters of dried blood marred the bright metal and formed a crust across his ebony skin. Crony swatted at some gnats grazing upon his wounds.

  “Curious.” The fox panted. “The three guards who accompanied the king were accounted for. Two knighted for their bravery.” He licked away some drool dripping from his muzzle. “One laid to rest in the royal cemetery.”

  “May-let someone miscounted.” Crony knelt close enough the salty-sour stench of infection overpowered the perfume of greenery surrounding them. “Or, may-let this man had his own set of orders, apart from the others.”

  The fox’s ears perked higher. “So, either he’s a traitor, or an unsung hero. I’m guessing the latter. I remember him from my time at the castle. He’s the king’s first knight. An honorable man, even in his youth.”

  A large, jagged hole in the knight’s chest spewed out fresh blood with each cough of his heart. His skull had caved with some blunt trauma and squashed his eyelids permanently shut.

  Crony’s own eyelids grew heavy. She found herself wishing for the thousandth time that upon closing, hers could offer sanctuary—an oblivion of blackness. Instead, the filmy flaps merely softened her view. It was her curse, to never stop seeing the world: its hatred, its bitterness, its mistakes.

  Her companion circled the body, a graceful skim of red and silver, then licked the dying man’s right ear, the only part of his head which remained as perfect as a babe’s.

  The fox’s gaze turned up to Crony, keen and challenging. “Won’t you chase away this one’s death, should he prove a hero? Isn’t that worth another chance at life?”

  Crony knew the fox wasn’t asking out of altruism. His heart was not pure enough, elsewise he’d be soaring in the air where he belonged.

  Luce wished for entertainment, to see Crony perform the one talent he knew she possessed that she’d never used. It didn’t matter how often she claimed none had proved worthy of the miracle of resurrection, Luce insisted one day someone would.

  He didn’t know what it would cost her when that day should come, and why she held fast for the proper time.

  Crony moved the breastplate away to kneel next the knight. “This man lived his life full out.” She nudged her fox companion aside, setting down her staff and drawing back her hood. Her braids fell across her shoulders. “Ye’ll not be seeing the trick today, cur.”

  Luce barked a laugh. “Me, a mongrel? I’m wounded.”

  Red glitter and silver smoke enveloped his form. His ears and muzzle shrank, his vulpine features blurred then cleared to sharp cheekbones and a masculine countenance; the burst of magic wound about him, transforming his fur to coverings that stretched to accompany the shift of ribs, forelegs, and hinds to a man’s torso, arms, and legs. He stood, shaking out his mop of red hair.

  A sly spark ignited in his orange gaze. Along with his pointy white teeth, his eyes and ears were the only part retaining any canine qualities. Otherwise, he was inhumanly human in the way of all air elementals: youthful, fine-boned as a bird, tall and slender, with luminous skin and delicate hands. The only things missing were his feathery wings and the ability to walk the line between spiritual and corporeal—the very trait that had contributed to his exile in the first place.

  Luce smoothed wrinkles from the fuzzy white shirt, red jacket, and breeches that had earlier served as his hide, kept intact by a trick of glamour. He bowed at the waist, the braided talisman swinging from his neck. “Fair Lady Cronatia. May I present my gentlemanly side, here to serve?”

  Cronatia. No one had used her given name for centuries; the sound of it made her nostalgic. The fact that Luce had guessed without her ever sharing it made her shake her head in an effort not to smile. There was death enough already in this thicket without withering the plants. “Dapper or no, ye still smell of dog.”

  “Ah, but now I have opposable thumbs.” He wriggled his long, elegant fingers.

  “D’ye remember how to use ’em?” Crony arched a brow and smoothed a cloth across the dying man’s chest, so as not to be distracted by his exposed pulse.

  Luce’s thin, pretty lips lifted to a sharp-toothed smirk as he gathered up the rest of the fallen armor and shoved it into a space between a large rock and some tall weeds. It was his job to take anything of value off their corpses-in-waiting, so the treasures could be carried to the ravine once Crony finished her task. Today’s was the best haul they’d managed in years. The white gold could be melted into bars or coins, and used for currency on the dark market.

  Stirred awake by the preparations, the knight whimpered.

  Crony touched two pruned fingers to the man’s lips, his salt-and-pepper whiskers tickling her skin. “Ye be two gasps from the grave,” she said with a gritty voice that was made to rasp a dying soul like a cat’s tongue—a chafing comfort. “I’d ask ye don’t waste them.” He tried again to speak so she pressed her palm across his mouth and nose, subduing him with her scent of myrrh and decayed flowers. Just as she worked in death, she smelled of it also. “Anything ye need be sayin’ can be shared with the skellies in the boneyard. I’ve important things to do. Shushta now, and save yer breaths.”

  Crony untied the bag at her waist and laid it on the ground. She withdrew a paper-thin triangular plane of glass to hold over the knight’s mouth. “It be time to remember. Let the most important moments of yer life pass afore yer eyes.” He exhaled, his breath fogging the clear surface. Crony blew a breath of her own across it then trapped them together by placing another glass triangle atop the first. It sealed with a white snap of magic. She did the same for the man’s last breath and wrapped the trinket, tucking it into her bag. As for the first memory she’d preserved, she held it close while whispering an invocation over the knight’s dying form to release his spirit.

  A sullen mood overcame Luce as he waited for the man’s life to fully slip away. Then, without preamble, he shoved his hand into the knight’s chest and tugged at his heart. The organ released with a grisly, sucking pop. Blood drizzled from the dangling valves and veins—red and sticky on Luce’s human hands. He licked it off hungrily, his gaze averted from Crony’s. She turned her back to give the sylph privacy, knowing how he despised the predator he’d become—a beast that craved the nourishment of raw organs and blood and flesh.

  Air elementals supped upon sunlight and moonlight and became drunk upon rain and wind. In his invisible ethereal form, Luce had once whispered into the ears of earthbound beings, tricked them into thinking he was their conscience, coaxed them into losing their inhibitions and doing things—not
against their nature—but against their better judgment. He hated being tied to the earth and its rules now, no longer capable of such chicaneries. Even more, he hated having lost his immunity to time’s passage. Sylphs were not immortal, but their airborne lifestyles kept them young. Without flight, he could only outrun age by feeding upon death.

  Crony ignored the squishing and gobbling and walked toward an opening in the branches where strands of sunlight filtered in. She held up the knight’s first captured breath in its glass frame, waiting for an image to reveal itself.

  Luce sighed deeply from behind—more a sound of disdain than content. She peered across her shoulder. He wiped his face clean with a sleeve then scattered leaves and soil atop the empty hole in the knight’s chest, as eager to cover up his gluttony as he was the corpse.

  “So, what do you have then?” Luce stood, all levity gone from his expression.

  Crony turned back to her trinket. The sylph’s height allowed him to look over her head and around her horns.

  “A glimpse of a cherished childhood?” he asked, close enough his warm, blood-scented breath brushed her temple. “The love of a beautiful woman?”

  Within the sandwiched planes, a multitude of monotoned shapes danced in slow motion. Crony brought the glass closer. “Patience, me doggish dandy. The image still be forming.”

  In this raw state, a captured memory could only be seen by her eyes and heard by her ears. Even after she gave life to the tableau so anyone could watch it unfold across the glass, only her magic could bridge the moment to another’s mind and imprint it there, making it their own. At least in this kingdom. There was one other with magic enough to manage a memory animation or weave. But Crony hadn’t had contact with them in centuries.

  Brushing off the melancholy thoughts, Crony concentrated on her prize. She hoped Luce’s guesses were correct about their dying man’s last memories. Happiness was the most lucrative. The patrons who came seeking her wares were covetous souls, always yearning for the satisfaction they’d never had.