by Dawn Peers
Eden surveyed the mess. A pool of blood continued to spread from the second man, who lay where Eden had pushed him. The first mercenary still lay where he had crumpled, his body curled up almost in prayer, the mace sticking up and completely embedded in his skull. The amount of blood coming from him was grotesque, and Eden covered his mouth at the sweet and sticky scent.
Casting his eyes over to Ross, it seemed to Eden that the massive man had now moved. Eden scuttled over on his hands and knees, pawing at the chamberlain's shoulder to see if he could rouse him. Ross's eyes fluttered, but they didn't open all the way. A scream brought Eden's eyes to the door. The maid who had been in his father's apartments was looking in on the scene with utter horror. Her voice echoed off the corridor walls. Eden tried to calm her. As men ran in to the room, they recoiled in shock at the scene they found. A drunken Shiver followed the last of them. His father may have been a drunk, but there was one thing in his life that he had always been able to respond to. Violence.
"Don't just stand there," he bellowed "someone get a bloody healer!"
As two men rushed off, pulling the hysterical maid with them, he yanked Eden to his feet, tugging at his son’s tunic.
"What have you done, son?"
46
Quinn didn't know why, but she was walking through fog. She was parallel to a river she did not recognise, which ran through sand and onto a beach. She was walking towards the sea, she knew instinctively, despite never having seen the sea before. There was a whistling noise, which might have been from the birds overhead, though it didn't seem entirely natural. There were other shapes moving around her. They seemed human in form, mostly, though there were some other creatures around her, four-legged and loping through the dimness. She called out three times, but no one around her responded. The shapes just kept moving, drifting around. The closer she got to the beach, the more shapes there were. They seemed to be milling around, like an impatient crowd waiting for the call of the executioner.
Stepping on the sand of the beach, Quinn was expecting to see softness underneath her feet. Instead, there was a hard crunch, and pain shot up through her feet. She looked down to see bones, and now looking up, she could see the sand around her had turned to the skeletons of the dead, broken up and discarded along the shore. She opened her mouth to cry in terror, but no sound came out. This landscape did not appear to bother any of the apparitions around her. Quinn started running, trying to get off the beach and back to the sandy riverbank she had been on before, but the beach of bones was now endless, stretching as far as the eye could see. Apparitions seemed to part before her, happy for her to keep running, to keep exhausting herself. As if they had already done this, and found it futile. Content to drift, and to let her learn her own lesson the hard way.
Eventually exhausted, Quinn fell to her knees. She found herself staring in to the empty eyesockets of a skull, bleached and long dead. Its maw was open in a death grin. The top row had all of its teeth missing. Quinn looked up as a shadow fell across her, and found herself looking now at an apparition that was more solid than the others. It had form; arms and legs, and a head of sorts, though this kept changing. It was a man at first, then a woman. Then a child, young and androgynous. It held out a hand to her. The voice that came to her felt like talons being scratched across and along the inside of her ears. "Here is not for you, yet. You have not brought us the right gift. Take this. Return."
A hand reached out to her, and dropped in her hand what looked like a simple lump of black coal. In her hand, it started changing colour, growing to a fierce burning red, before changing to brilliant white. It should have been hot, Quinn thought, it should have been causing her pain, like the voice of the spirit. It wasn't, though. It was simply burning through her. She felt its heat travel through her body; up her arm and across to her heart, through her lungs and down to her belly. It lingered there for a time, before suddenly spreading out across her entire body. The spirit was briefly illuminated, oddly, Quinn thought, from the light that was glowing within her. Then the light began to fade, and so did the apparition. Quinn found, suddenly, that her voice had returned. "Wait! What gift?" she called; but nothing came out of her mouth but light. In that last stream of brilliance, Quinn erupted in to darkness.
47
She woke with a start, wanting to bring her hands up to her neck to feel where Elias had strangled her. Instinctively, she kept still. She had done enough passing out and waking up in her short life to know she had been carried elsewhere. She was not on her familiar bed, nor was she on the floor of her room. She was upright, of all positions, and her legs dangled in mid-air. She was cushioned though, and supported, so she reasoned she had to be in a chair.
She listened for voices. They came rushing into her, as if her hearing had been temporarily taken and was now restored. She heard Sammah, of course. She heard Maertn, too. He was crying. Why was Maertn crying? Was he sad? Did he know what Elias had done to her?
"I can't help her,” Maertn sobbed. Why did she need help? She was awake. She could breathe. She would be okay. Was Sammah hurting Maertn? Was this it? Had he found out all their plotting? Was this the end of them, after all?
"You have to! You did it before, so do it again! Look in her head and move the cloud!"
"There isn't anything there!"
"Do it again!" Quinn flinched as she heard flesh slapping flesh. Maertn cried out. Quinn bit the inside of her cheek to keep from shouting. Whatever was happening, it was not as Sammah expected it. He thought she was as before. He thought she needed healing in her head, but she was fine. Quinn felt light hands resting on the back of her head. They had to be Maertn's. They trembled. What was Sammah going to do to her friend, if he was still unable to heal her?
"I can't do it, Sammah. There is nothing there to heal. She is...she isn't like before."
Quinn felt the hands being yanked away from her. "Then you aren't the healer I thought you were. You're not good enough Maertn. You disappoint me. Elias!"
After Maertn's yelp, Quinn screamed. It was a genuine enough sound, and enough for Sammah to call off his hound. Quinn panted, hoping to make it look like she had just woken in shock, and looked around the room.
"Where am...what happened? Father...why did Elias try to kill me?"
Sammah, his face split with a smile, almost jumped towards her. Quinn! I thought he had for a time. I thought Maertn wasn't doing his work properly. It seems that you are simply just a bit more resilient than I first thought. No, no, Elias won't do that again, will you Elias?"
The mercenary shook his head.
"See, see how sorry he is. No Quinn, you'll be fine, but you've been a naughty daughter, haven't you? You've been telling all of your friends who you are, and now they know what I am, and what I can do. So it may be the case that you're all going to have to die. Well. Most of you. Ross…” Sammah waved his arms around "he's already done. And your little plaything, I will kill him too if you don't do what I need. Him…” Sammah pointed at Maertn. "He is safe as long as he can heal you." Sammah walked over and grabbed Maertn roughly by the chin, shaking his head around. "But he's been very, very naughty and he's not allowed out of my sight again. I will definitely be doing something about that. After all, healers don't need to walk."
As Maertn opened his mouth to yell, Sammah jammed a cloth in it, muffling his screams. Sammah jumped over to Quinn and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose as Elias approached Maertn. He swung a smooth branch of oak as if it weighed nothing. Quinn couldn't watch. She closed her eyes and felt more than heard the impact of the club as it crumpled Maertn's legs. She reached out to him. She felt his pain; it was immense. Her own screams, restrained by Sammah, grew with it. She tried to draw them from him, take some of the pain. She felt Maertn ease; was she actually helping? She opened the channel wider, mentally spreading her arms to him. The pain of his legs flowed in to her, and Quinn knew that if she hadn't been sitting already, she would have fallen to the floor. In her mind, she felt Maertn's own
collapse, and as he fell unconscious from the pain the connection between them dropped like a stone thrown in to a canyon. Sammah whispered in her ear, his voice dancing.
"I've told you before, Quinn. Do not defy me. I am not afraid to hurt you. I am not shackled by the barriers of love or caring."
Sammah released her and Quinn opened her eyes. Elias remained by Maertn, who was groaning on the floor. Sammah waved his hands around as he danced through the room. "He'll be fine. A bit of a limp. He'll never be a runner. Natural healers though, they do recover from things, ever so quickly Now Quinn, back to you. Because you—you are what this is all about. You know that now, don't you? You know that you're special to me. Do you know why?"
"Because I'm an empath. You've always told me that."
"Ah good, they hadn't told you any of it after all. I was afraid that had been a lie, and I had no way of telling without your special talents. No Quinn, you can be so much more than that. And today, we're going to find out if that is possible." Quinn's mind flashed back to the spirit on the beach; that she didn't have the right gift. Her hackles rose. "Remember how I told you that you'd never be able to read me? That was a lie, Quinn. You can read me, if you want to, you just have to really try."
"I remember how that felt, Sammah. No. You're right. I'm never going to be able to read you."
"You can, Quinn. Just try. Don't you want to try? You're so powerful, little girl, and you don't even know how much. Why don't you just try? Be brave, like your friend here. Look at what he's going through just to make you safe. Don't you want to make the most out of your powers, like Maertn does?"
Quinn shook her head. Maertn groaned. It sounded like a no, but she couldn't be sure. She reached to him, but he was hazy, his mind only giving her distress and pain.
"I don't want to feel pain like that again, Sammah."
He cocked his head to one side. "Okay, let's think of this a different way. You hate me right now. I can't understand how that feels, but I know the way that hate is meant to work. I have killed a friend of yours and I have crippled your best friend. That means you should hate me. You have the power to beat me, Quinn. You could start to read me. You could start telling if I am lying or not. Then you would be able to tell everyone, that yes you are the Satori, but no you are not a murderer. You could tell everyone, that you could tell the truth of me on trial."
"Why would they believe me over the word of a baron? How would they verify my truth over yours? It makes no sense. And why would you even want me to do that? No. It's a trick. You're deceiving me."
Sammah rolled his eyes. "Then let's do this the hardest way. Honestly Quinn, you do make things awkward for me." Sammah waved his hand and Elias drew his sword. He rolled Maertn over with one foot, and held the blade to his throat. "Read me, Quinn, or I will have Maertn killed."
48
It was a bluff. It had to be. Everything they had found out so far told them that Sammah needed both Quinn and Maertn. Was that a risk she was willing to take? No. Maertn's life was not hers to give. Quinn nodded her submission to Sammah. "Ah ah, not the normal way, Quinn. Put your hand on my arm, and read me."
Despite herself, Quinn hesitated, her hand halfway between the gap between her and the Baron. Sammah rolled up the sleeve of his silken shirt, exposing his hairless olive-skinned arm. He waggled it around, imploring her to hurry up.
"Elias, wake up the healer. I'll need him soon."
Quinn understood the implications of those words the same time she opened the thread up to Sammah. It was too late. That flow of energy was unstoppable, and when it reached her father, Quinn's eyes opened wide, her body lancing with the hottest agony she had ever felt in her life. She felt warmth stream from her eyes and nose, and she sensed it trickling down her ears. Her throat constricted, unable to cope with the pain. Her mind went white with heat and, inexplicably, Sammah began to glow.
49
"Bastards need to do more than that to kill me. Let me go. Come on. We need to... Sammah's apartments. We need to get to Sammah."
Shiver shrugged. "We'd already sent the militia to Sammah. He was sitting there quietly with his healer boy and his retinue. No problems there."
"Eden will tell you. Where's your lad?"
"We had to arrest him. He's in the gaol."
"What? He's your son!"
Ross tried to sit up and winced at the pain that lanced through his shoulder and across his collarbone. He collapsed back down to the bed.
"Sammah wouldn't let us release Maertn. Torran had a look at you instead. Can't do anything, he says. Just bruises. Nothing broken."
Ross set his jaw. "It feels like everything is broken. Why is Eden in the gaol?"
"We found him next to you, covered in blood, with two of Sammah's guardsmen dead. We haven't mentioned it yet to Sammah, being as he looked so damned calm when we went in to see him. We wanted to find out what happened from you, first. Now. What happened?"
"Sammah! Sammah happened. He's going to kill the king, Shiver, though you knew that anyway. Your son can help stop him. Just...just let him out, okay?"
"I can't do that, Ross."
"Look, you ignorant fool, no one but Sammah knows how deeply you're in the mire with him. I don't count, I'll promise you that I'll keep my mouth shut. If you help us now, all the plotting you've done will be ignored, do you hear? Vance cannot convict you for a crime you haven't done. So help me out of this bed before I do something I regret. And get your son out of the damn gaol!"
"You're sick, Ross. You must have been hit really hard. You need to rest. You're clearly mad with hysteria." Shiver waved someone over. Ross looked across to see one of Sammah's men looming over him. The man pinched his nose and poured a foul concoction down his throat. Ross choked, spluttering and trying to spit it out. It was useless, though. His choices were to swallow or to choke to death; he swallowed. The spiked tea worked quickly, Ross's eyes drooping and his voice losing its vigour.
"Eden...let him out...save...stop Sammah."
"No one is stopping Sammah, Ross. It's far too late."
With the chamberlain asleep, Shiver addressed the remaining men. "Now, will you please let him go?"
The three mercenaries all smiled to each other. The one that had drugged Ross held up two fingers to the others. Eden, held between them with his mouth gagged and his arms bound, struggled wildly. They were still in Ross's quarters. The guards that had first seen the murder scene were in the corner, limp and prone. Neither Eden nor Shiver was sure if they were dead, but they wouldn't be alive for long if Sammah wasn't stopped. The maid whose screaming had set everyone off was lying on the bed. She, too, had been drugged. Shiver had sent away the guards that had come running. Ross had fallen, he had told them, and Torran had been summoned to tend to him. The hysterical maid, petrified at seeing her master fall, had been dealt with. All plain answers to questions that weren't probed far. The men of Everfell were no longer used to dealing with violence, and they couldn't see a plot of treason even when one was waved under their nose. Sammah's men, however, were born for this kind of plot. They were carrying out their master's orders to the very word. Shiver knew which side was being weighed and found wanting, and it wasn't the contingent from Sha'sek.
Eden was pushed forward. The door to Ross's rooms was closed as two of the mercenaries left. One man alone stayed to guard them, leaving his weapons drawn. Eden stayed bound, and Shiver did not move to release his bonds. That would not have been a welcome gesture in the eyes of their captor. At that point, Shiver didn't care. He was alive, and so was his son. Everyone else could go and hang, as far as he was concerned.
50
Quinn looked around. She was back on the beach. The agony was gone, for now. But the light remained. She looked down. It wasn't coming from her this time. But there weren't any other spirits, and the mist had cleared. She looked at the ground. It was sand. All around her, just sand. No bones. She walked to the water's edge, and pushed in one toe. The water was warm and inviting. She started wading
in, and was up to her shins before she felt a tug back.
"No. Don't go there."
She turned around at the familiar voice. It was Maertn.
"It's nice in here, Maertn. Come and join me."
"I can't go in there, Quinn. I'm not even meant to be here. You're not, either. Come on. Come back to me."
He held out his hand. She wanted to take it, even went to start wading towards the shore. Suddenly a chill wind rose up. She dropped to her knees in the sea, letting the water come up to her waist. "It's cold out there, Maertn. I prefer it in here. It's warm. Safe. Come and join me, you'll see."
She waved him forward, but Maertn stayed resolutely on the shore. "You're not meant to be going that way, Quinn. Please. Won't you just leave? It's not water. Come back to me."
"What do you mean? It's lovely in here. I..." Quinn looked down again at the liquid lapping against her body. She saw, then, why it was so warm. She was bathing in a sea of blood; viscous and never-ending, it was clinging to her skin, staining and tainting her. Quinn shot upright, and the vertigo that hit her. That, coupled with the freezing cold air, made her want to drop straight back underneath again, back in to the hugging warmth. Quinn knew though, what that meant, where she was. The Beach of Bones. The Bloody Shore. She had been here before, this close to death, and nearly denied a crossing to the Otherlands. Only the damned came to the Beach of Bones. Before, she had made her own way out. This time, Maertn had come to get her. Maertn was trying to heal her, and she was resisting him.
Resolute, she put one foot forwards, towards the shore. Her legs felt leaden, as if each one was weighted down by an anvil.
"That's it, Quinn, come on. You can do this. Come back to me!"
"I can't, Maertn." Quinn began to panic, and with realisation came tears of dread. "I don't want to die. Please, save me!"
