Don’t let em kill me. I promise to do anythin you want.
The words were like invisible hands holding him back, stopping him from leaving Sitrell’s bedside. The Creator truly had answered his plea, but he didn’t intend him to go back to prison as payment for the debt. The rationalization failed to quell Yuiv’s guilty conscience and so he did what he always had done when afflicted with guilt, he ignored it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Sitrell as he slipped out of the partition. He glanced one more time at Valarious, who was still conversing with the other doctor. Yuiv walked toward the exit, crossing to the far side of the room and weaving in between curtained sections to avoid notice. He pushed out of the operating room’s double doors and was startled to find Valarious’ fat nurse waiting for him in the hall. She still had a stern disapproving look on her face, but it seemed tempered by remorse.
“I have a cot for you.” She motioned to a place down the hall where Yuiv saw a wooden fold out cot with a pillow and a blanket setup near the corridor wall, out of the way of traffic.
Yuiv gritted his teeth in frustration, his mind searching for an escape. He blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, “I’as gotta piss!”
The fat nurse frowned at Yuiv’s use of profanity, but said nothing of it as she pointed down an adjoining hall at her right. “The lavatory is that way.”
Yuiv acknowledged her direction with a quick nod and then rushed off, trying to look as though he were truly racing to answer a biological emergency. Halfway down the hall, he glanced back and released a pent up breath when he saw that the fat nurse had not decided to wait for him. Now was his chance. He doubled back towards the inter-floor ramps by means of a rear corridor and descended two flights to the first floor. To his frustration, a nurse now occupied the reception table facing the hospital’s front entrance. So Yuiv changed direction and wandered the first floor for several minutes until he found the kitchen, where he slipped out the servant’s entrance into a side alley.
It had finally stopped raining, he gratefully noted. Yuiv jogged around to the front of the building to where he had left the warhorse tied to a post. He found the beast placidly enjoying a bag of feed, no doubt given to it by a thoughtful member of the hospital staff. Yuiv smiled at the stroke of good luck, for he had been concerned about whether the horse had the energy to carry him out of the city. Although it still needed a much longer rest, the meal would at least give it the vitality to get him to the outlying suburbs where he hoped to trade the animal for a fresh mount. Another echo sounded in Yuiv’s head, giving him pause and inflaming his guilt anew.
I’as gonna be good if you saves me.
I won’t go back to prison, he countered, suppressing his conscience as he removed the feedbag, untied the horse, and climbed into its saddle.
As Yuiv wheeled the animal about, he started at the sight of a silent figure watching him from across the empty street. Although half-concealed by the dark, he could see that the figure was a child only a few years younger than himself, a street urchin by the looks of his tattered oversized clothes and noticeable absence of shoes. What was he doing out on the streets of Hirath just before dawn? If he were anything like Yuiv, he should’ve been asleep in some abandoned building or alley nook. The figure took a step toward Yuiv, his face illuminated by the light of the waning moon. Yuiv froze as he recognized Olan’s lifeless gaze. Impossible! The specter took another step toward him, and Yuiv willed his hands to snap the horse’s reins, but nothing happened. Fear paralyzed him, and he couldn’t turn away from Olan’s glazed stare.
“Go away!” he shouted.
The dead boy took another maladroit step toward Yuiv, an arm broken at an unnatural angle, rising to point accusingly at him. “No!” Yuiv screamed as he thrashed his head, clenching his eyes shut to dam frightened tears. He stayed like that for close to a minute, waiting in terror for a horrible destruction that never came. Yuiv slowly opened his eyes and was simultaneously relieved and perplexed to find the street in front of him completely empty. What had just happened? Had he only imagined seeing the dead orphan boy? Was he going insane? A sound from down the street drew Yuiv’s attention. It was a lone man galloping a horse toward the hospital. That must be Valarious’ messenger, Yuiv decided, and the captain of the Hirathi guard won’t be far behind. That thought stoked Yuiv’s adrenaline causing him to snap the horse’s reins and prompt it into an urgent gallop away from the hospital.
Dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky by the time Yuiv reached Hirath’s suburbs. He slowed the horse as a village well came into sight, a dozen or so people now milling about the street ahead of him, a handful of which waiting their turn to draw water. Yuiv reined in the horse, dismounted, and took his place at the back of a short line. He glanced toward the direction of the city, his hands still trembling from his frightening encounter with what he could only call a ghost. What was happening to him? First the voice, then the healing, and now a ghost?
Several minutes passed, and the line moved steadily until only one person remained between Yuiv and fresh water for him and the horse. It was an old woman, hunched and hooded by a grey wool cloak. Yuiv tried to be patient as the elderly lady took an inordinate amount of time, first lowering the bucket for what seemed like an unnecessary eternity, and then painstakingly winding the rusty crank to retract it, each labored revolution grinding on Yuiv’s ears and stoking his temper. After a couple minutes of torturous tedium, Yuiv curtly asked, “You’as need help?”
The old woman stopped winding the crank and rasped heavily as she kept her back to Yuiv.
“Hey, you’as deaf?”
Still the woman did not respond.
Fearing perhaps that she was having some kind of a fit, Yuiv’s frustration waned and he laid a concerned hand on her bony shoulder. “You’as ok?” he asked as he gently turned her toward him.
“Shards!” he swore and snapped his hand back upon seeing the woman’s face, or rather what was left of it. One of her eyes was missing, the socket having been smashed in, and most of the skin of her left cheek was torn open exposing sinew and broken teeth. Her other eye was glazed in death and her unnatural breath came in labored rasps.
“No.” Yuiv whimpered as he backed away from the dead woman. He bumped into a man behind him and whirled, ready to make a panicked plea for help. To his horror, he saw that the man was burned to little more than a charred skeleton.
Yuiv leapt away and spun to his right where he saw a young mother, with a missing jaw, walking hand in hand with a charred child. Horrified, he turned in the opposite direction and was met with the sight of a bloody teenage boy laughing with his friends, all completely oblivious to the fact that their bowels were dangling out of their lacerated stomachs. Again he turned, and was met with the sight of a headless man carrying two pails of water.
A surreal wave of cold washed over him as he realized that every single person walking about the street was some form of mutilated corpse. And then it struck him. He knew these people. They were not natives of Hirath but had been citizens of Lisidra, like Olan. They were the innocent victims of the Aukasian invasion, the people who had died because Yuiv had helped Leadren open the Sentinel Gate. I killed these people. As though summoned by that very thought, the gruesome specters ceased what they were doing and turned to stare at Yuiv, all raising maimed and broken arms to point accusingly as they lumbered toward him.
“No!” Yuiv screamed as they converged. “Leave me alone!” He dropped to the ground covering his head and screaming. Then they were gone. Yuiv looked up and instead of finding himself surrounded by accusing zombies, he saw only a half dozen regular living people staring at him in concerned confusion.
One man stepped toward Yuiv and proffered a hand. “You ok, son?”
Yuiv batted his hand away as he scooted backward and scrambled to his feet. Then, without looking back, he climbed up onto Sitrell’s warhorse, snapped the reins, and galloped away from the well and the group of puzzled onlookers.
<
br /> What’s happening to me? Yuiv urged the horse on faster and faster, little caring if he rode the animal to death. He just had to get away, away from Captain Klayon, away from Hirath, and away from the accusing stares of his dead victims.
Where will you go? asked the woman’s voice.
“Leave me alone!” Yuiv screamed, startling a young woman feeding chickens as he galloped past her front yard. He rode at a furious gallop for nearly half an hour, not daring to look at the villagers now crowding the streets for fear that they would abruptly turn into nightmarish ghosts.
The sun had fully crested the horizon by the time Yuiv reached the outskirts of Hirath, making him feel somewhat less fearful in the full light of dawn. So, noticing that Sitrell’s warhorse was showing signs of fatigue, he felt reasonably confident that no ghosts would harass him if he stopped to rest the animal. He trotted the horse a few meters off of the dirt road where he found a large willow. He dismounted and replaced the animal’s feedbag, watching it eat as he leaned against the tree. Almost unconsciously, he slid to the ground and sat, staring up at the horse in a kind of thoughtful trance. Where would he go? Being desperate to escape the Royal Guard, he hadn’t really considered where he would go once he got out of the city. Of course, he could never go back to Lisidra. That only left Kyros in the vicinity, but he wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the area when the Aukasian army left Lisidra and commenced their attack in earnest.
To his dismay, Yuiv realized that he knew nothing of the geography outside the province. He really didn’t know where he was going, and what of the horse? Yuiv was not a horse master by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, he hadn’t ever ridden one until his escape from Lisidra, but he did know that Sitrell’s horse was in no condition to carry him any further.
“Your horse doesn’t look so good.”
Yuiv started at the voice and reflexively looked to its source at his right. He gaped as he found a woman wrapped in a brown, traveler’s cloak standing next to the tree staring down at him. She was young, in her early twenties, with shoulder-length, blonde hair, fair skin, a gentle smile, and those eyes! Yuiv had never seen anything like them. They were a luminescent crystal blue, the same color as the Crystal Star. He faltered under her strange gaze, not knowing what to say. The woman had caught him off guard, for he had heard nothing of her approach.
She reached up to Sitrell’s horse and gently patted its head to which it nickered. “I hope you weren’t planning on riding him anymore today.”
“Why?” Yuiv asked, at last finding his voice.
The woman moved to stroke the horse’s mane. “Well he’s exhausted. He won’t survive being pushed any further.”
Yuiv continued to stare at the woman, “Who are you?”
She smiled down at him. “My name is Tyra.”
“You like horses?” Yuiv asked.
Tyra reached up and scratched the horse behind its left ear. “Very much so. In fact, my husband, Jalidar, gave me one as an engagement present. It wasn’t anything like this one, for we were very poor, but I loved Lek―that’s what I named my brown gelding.”
Yuiv thought he caught a look of sadness in the woman’s crystal, blue eyes as she mentioned her horse’s name. “If you’as hava horse, we can trade.” Yuiv glanced to the road but was disappointed as he saw no waiting mount.
Tyra glanced down at Yuiv. “Why would you want to part with this animal? He’s magnificent.”
Yuiv tore his gaze away from the woman’s oddly colored eyes, shifting his stare to a tree root protruding from the ground beneath his feet. “He’as not mine,” Yuiv confessed.
Tyra slowly nodded, “I see.”
“Look, I’as hafta get away from here.” Yuiv glanced again at the road. “You know’d where’s I’as can get a new horse?”
“Why are you running away?” Tyra asked.
Yuiv looked back toward the city. “I’as doned somethin real bad, an I’as don’t wanna go to prison.”
“Stealing this horse?” she asked.
Yuiv shook his head, “More bad.”
Tyra bent down and gripped Yuiv’s chin in her right hand and tilted his head up so as to stare straight into his eyes. He sat frozen, unable to move as the woman’s crystal blue eyes began to glow. That was when he felt it again, not like the last time, not from within, but as if radiating from her, the inner fire. Their eyes locked and it felt to Yuiv as though Tyra was seeing into his very soul, as though he were a book and she were reading his mind and heart like words on a page.
“I see confusion, sadness, hurt, loneliness and even some anger,” she whispered. “But not malice.” She let go of his chin and straightened. “You are not a bad boy, just misguided.” Another look of sadness passed over her face as she said almost to herself, “Not entirely your fault, though.” Again Tyra met his gaze, although this time he noticed that her eyes were no longer glowing. “What did you do that was so bad?”
For reasons that Yuiv could not explain, it just came gushing out. “I’as killed lotsa peoples.” He looked up at the woman, tears spilling from his eyes. “I’as didn’t know’d the Auk’s was there. He jes tricked me, an they’as camed through’d the gate, killin everybody, even girls and babies. An there’as lil boy that I know’d, dead cuza me. They’as all dead cuza me!” Yuiv pulled his legs up to his chest and buried his face in his knees, shoulders shaking as he wept.
And then she was there, kneeling next to him, a sympathetic hand rubbing his back. “You made a serious mistake, but you are not responsible for what happened to the people of Lisidra or Olan.”
Yuiv raised his tear stained face to look into her crystal blue eyes and found comfort there. “You sayed I’as not bad. How you know’d?”
Tyra smiled. “Because I know you, Yuiv.”
How does she know my name? Yuiv thought in surprise. For that matter, how did she seem to know what he was talking about? He hadn’t mentioned any of the particulars of what he had actually done to bring about the deaths of so many people, or the where and when of it. Tyra spoke as though she were thoroughly acquainted with what had happened to him.
“I know that you never meant for anything bad to happen to those people.” Tyra shook her head, “but running away from your mistake won’t fix anything.” She smiled as she stroked his messy blonde hair. “There’s only one way to set things right and you know what that is.”
“Go back to Sitrell,” Yuiv concluded to himself with a sob.
Tyra nodded. “More depends on your decision here than you know.”
“But I’as don’t wanna go to prison.”
Tyra stood. “Just do the right thing, and have faith that all will turn out for the best.”
Yuiv nodded, feeling content. He couldn’t explain it, there were a lot of things happening to him lately that he couldn’t explain, but he felt a desperate aversion to doing anything that would disappoint Tyra. So Yuiv scrubbed his eyes with his tattered sleeve and announced “I’as go back.”
Tyra smiled. “I’ve lent your horse some strength. He’ll be able to bear you back to the hospital, but after that, he needs a few days of rest, understand?”
Yuiv nodded as he stood. How did she know that? He removed the horse’s feedbag and packed it away in one of the saddle bags before mounting the animal. He paused as he took hold of the horse’s reins and looked down at Tyra, smiling as she watched him.
“I know you have felt alone ever since you can remember,” she whispered, “but I want you to know that you were never alone, not for a moment.”
Puzzled by the cryptic remark, Yuiv nodded another thank you before turning and prompting the horse into a trot toward Hirath’s village suburbs. Upon reaching the dirt road, he glanced back half expecting Tyra to have vanished, but she still stood watching him, a touch of sadness now dimming her radiant smile. Yuiv snapped the reins and the warhorse leapt into a canter. As he rode through the suburbs, he mused upon the oddities of his encounter with the woman: her glowing crystal blue eyes, the fe
eling of her radiating inner fire, her inexplicable knowledge of events, and something else. A strange familiarity about her, as if Yuiv had met her somewhere else before.
He had just ridden into the city-proper when it finally occurred to him what it was about Tyra that had resonated as familiar―her voice.
You can heal him.
The crown hurt Yaokken until he agreed to cease trying to remove it, and he went into seclusion seeing no one, not even his beloved Adariel.
Chapter 10
The Oath-bound Man
s the boy walked his horse back into town, Jalek lowered his telescope. Who had he been talking to? He had carried on a convincing conversation with thin air. Clearly, he was mad. Yet it made no difference, for there was no doubt in Jalek’s mind that he had spotted his quarry. The boy matched the description given to him by the patrol of soldiers that had been guarding Lisidra’s east gate on the morning of the alleged desertion.
Jalek felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of those soldiers, for he had been well acquainted with one of them. Malik had been his name. A young man who had shown unusual talent with the blade, a soldier who would have no doubt gone far in the ranks of the Imperial Army had Lorta not had him executed for failing to stop one of his deserting Imperial Guards. But who among the low ranking infantry would dare defy a member of the Imperial Guard? It had been a capricious judgment made during one of Lorta’s emotional outbursts. He has those quite frequently. Jalek frowned. Sometimes he questioned the young man’s fitness to bear the mantle of Aukae, though he would never speak those thoughts aloud. No, Jalek Larale was an Aukasian patriot and would be until his dying day. What did he know about ruling an empire? He had come from simple farm stock, drafted into the military because he too had shown talent with a weapon, in his case the spear, though he did not think himself as skilled a warrior as his older brother, Azanoth.
Heroes of the Crystal Star (Valcoria Book 1) Page 10
