Song Of Mornius

by Diane E Steinbach

  “This is better, I think. See?” Gulgrin, talking mostly to himself, dragged the heavy replacement across the stone and dropped the woven straw into the frame. His robes rustled by her ear as he knelt.

  “I must prepare you for the communion,” he told her, his voice both gentle and sad. “That’s what he said. The others might not want to partake if you smell.”

  She tensed when water dribbled across her skin, Gulgrin’s soft cloth dabbing at her tender scabs.

  “You’re so hurt,” he whispered. She held herself rigid while the rag did its work, drawing blood from injuries she had almost forgotten. “I know the suffering part is necessary to strengthen Erebos. But this . . .” He choked.

  She winced at the reek of corruption from her various wounds, the painful ruin that remained of her burned chest. “You, my dear, get to control how quickly we do this,” Mens’s voice echoed in her head. “Each time you’re forced to inhale, I get to cut you a little more!”

  A sudden, stabbing pain jerked her back to the present. Writhing, she screamed. “I’m sorry!” Gulgrin gasped, jumping to his feet. “I didn’t mean to— Oh, Felrina!”

  Once more he raised her up, laying her back on the bed. “I won’t retie you,” he told her. “There’s no need anymore. They’re coming for you, Priestess. I promise, all this will end soon!”

  For a moment more, he clutched at her, grinding the splinters of her broken wrist. “I’m sorry,” he breathed into the silence as she twisted in pain. “I must go!”

  Felrina shivered at the chill air on her skin. Gulgrin backed away. She sighed as the dancing flame went out. Dazed, she absorbed the novice’s words. Shortly the door would reopen, and her attendants would be there, ready and willing to finish their work.

  Her chamber was becloaked by night. This is better, she thought. Mens works in the light.

  “Move!” a voice cracked.

  Felrina struggled to focus. The resonating quality of the speaker’s scorn seemed familiar somehow, yet it was neither Arawn’s spirit in her mind nor Erebos’s roar of thunder. She lifted her head from her pillow, blindly scanning the blackness.

  “He’s left you untied,” snarled the voice. “It’s your one opportunity. Don’t waste it!”

  She fought to move, to drag herself up on the mattress until her bare feet touched the stone. She gasped when a vision appeared in front of her, the gray figure of a warrior knight, its outline ablaze with green fire. The grim specter pointed imperiously at her wadded-up clothing. “Cover yourself!” he commanded. “I am here as your guide.”

  “What?” She gagged at the sour taste in her mouth. A wave of dizziness took her, and then with a shudder, she reached with her shattered fingers for her leggings.

  “Argus,” said the ghost. “You are nigh unto death, and so I am visible to you. Your condition has forced me to be aware of you. Perhaps with your help, I may save a friend. If I can lead you out of this dung-hole you’re in, that is.”

  Felrina cried at the pain as she wriggled into the sleeves of her tunic, shaking the fabric down over her mangled skin.

  “Quickly!” Argus said. “I feel it. Death is coming!”

  She shakily slid her mangled toes into her boots and paused, staring at her crumpled leggings. “I d-don’t believe I can!”

  “You must!” spat the ghost. The specter drifted to the door. “Hurry!”

  Doubled over, she staggered toward it. Beyond the door, the narrow passage was empty, the uneven floor littered with bits of straw. The image of the knight bobbed near the ceiling, his beady eyes glinting red. Felrina sagged in the doorway and wiped at her mouth. She froze, staring at the smear of crusted crimson it left on her hand.

  “Do you want to be flayed alive?” The ghost hovered, his eyes blazing in the darkness—twin fiery furnaces of contemptuous heat. “I’ve seen how he works. Humiliation will be his final triumph. Think of the joy you’ll bring to his face as he peels off your skin, or what’s left of it, in front of all your peers!”

  She ventured into the tunnel on her sore and bloody feet, hissing when the drag of her garments tore at the cauterized flesh where her breasts had been. Already fresh blood saturated the front of her tunic and coursed in warm trickles down her skin.

  “Faster!” The ghost gestured. “Trust me!”

  She tottered, taking one painful step and then another. She groped after his light as it ducked into a hole in the tunnel’s wall, a low opening opposite her chamber. “I know this cleft.” Felrina sank to her knees, peering through cobwebs at his elusive light. “It collapsed years ago. There’s one that’s still intact below. I could get there if I dropped through the floor.”

  “No, this way!” the specter commanded. “Hurry!”

  She squirmed into the dusty shaft, using her wrists to lift the cobwebs out of her way, letting them flop back into place behind her. “I tell you, it goes nowhere. I’ll be t-trapped in here.”

  The top of her head bumped a jumble of roots, dislodging the soil to patter onto her neck. With difficulty, she raised herself, lying aslant over a slab of smooth boulder. As her vision adjusted to the darkness, she spotted a cranny in the wall, a jagged, weeping fissure. Poking her head inside, she glimpsed a flicker on high, a tiny green speck the size of a pea.

  “I hate tight spaces.” She twisted her shoulders in, taking care to keep her weight on her knees and the heels of her hands. Painfully, she hitched her way up the damp stone, the angle of the gap thrusting her onto the shards of her fingers, compounding the damage as she smashed against the slimy moss coating the rocks. She hunched and quietly sobbed. “Let me die.”

  “Or do you want revenge?” The ghost’s verdant light flashed brightly in front of her. “Do you?”

  Hiccupping, she lifted her head, spying high above her the faint sliver of a starry sky.

  “Hear me,” the ghost said. “You cannot survive the cold up there. Not for long. I needed to get you away from him, but now you must hide and be silent while I fetch my friend to finish this.”

  Felrina thrashed upward with her elbows, straining toward freedom. “Erebos dwells within this rock. He’ll sense I’m here!”

  “No,” said Argus. With a flash of green, he darted past her. “Consider your bare legs, my dear. You’d freeze up there long before I could bring any help.” He flitted up swiftly, leaving her far out of reach of his trailing light. “I’ll hurry back,” he called as he shrank to a speck in the inky sliver of the open sky. “Empty your brain. If you don’t think, Erebos can’t hear you!”

  Covering her face, Felrina ground out words. “How can you know that?”

  “Because I am dead!” His voice was rapidly fading. “That makes me painfully aware of the Destroyer’s ways. Now be still!”

  Felrina drew into a tight ball of misery, imagining herself just as hard, cold, and unyielding as the stone.

  Chapter 42

  AVALAR GLARED AT the Thalian Knight’s disembodied face. Argus, the rest of him glowing faintly outside her double-sized tent, poked only the front half of his head through the canvas wall to see her. She burrowed deep into her pillow of folded furs. “Go away!” Her mat was cozy and warm beneath her; blissful sleep pulled her down. “Why are you here?”

  “Your leader is worried about you,” Argus said, his green radiance hurting her eyes. “You must leave this valley behind, for it torments you.”

  She scowled. “I do not abandon my friends!” His grayish visage bobbed gently as he stared unblinking. “Stop watching me!” she complained, then rolled away from him and onto her side. “Let me be!” She thumped her pillow, glaring into the shadows.

  “Time to run to the mountain,” he sang. “You know you will, oh yes you will! For thou art mighty, a warrior brave and true!”

  “You do not frighten me, Ghost,” she told him. “Every day I endure much worse.” She shuddered as the intensity of his light gradually brightened the floor in front of her. He was floating over her tent now, his glimmering face—the only part o
f him she could see—protruding as it traversed the ceiling.

  “Those are old memories you speak of, not ghosts,” he remarked, his mustached grin lowering to her level once more. “I am the real thing. You know, dead but, ooh so spooky, still here?”

  She sighed and sat up, flopping her elbows over her furs. “What are you saying? Make haste so I may sleep!”

  “I’ve located the slaver who killed Camron,” he said. “Does that interest you? Finally you have a chance to avenge his death, but you must hurry, as fast as you can! At present, she has no staff for you to contend with. It’s just her, the bitch who slew your friend!”

  Avalar pulled back as Argus pressed in close. “If you do this,” she warned him sternly, “quicken my blood so I lust for battle, I may not be able to stop. Some males of my kind grow immense when their blood is hot. They believe they must kill when this happens lest they die.”

  “This is your heart’s desire, is it not?” he asked. “She is on the mountain, the same one Terrek is trying to get to. There’s no need for bloodlust. You’ll be scouting ahead to make sure the way is clear! I can always return in the morning to fill Terrek in so he knows.”

  Avalar hugged her knees. “Are you a soothsayer now, Spirit? No one knows my heart’s desire. Mayhap not even I.”

  Argus shrugged. “Camron’s slayer,” he said. “The woman who slit his throat. If you do not come now . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Still groggy, Avalar reached across her leather pad for her sword and gear.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  THE RHYTHMS THROBBED in Avalar’s ears, the thumping of her feet over the fields and the crack of ice on the streams she crossed. The rocking motion of her body, the sink and surge of her strides, were all that mattered as she trailed Argus’s light. She ran through a darkness tinged crimson, a taste like steel in her mouth, and always Camron’s smile beckoning.

  Wails rose from the faraway river. Still the slaves were calling to her, for she had abandoned them. I must go back, she realized. But then she glimpsed her friend shimmering faintly in the specter’s green light. It was Camron’s ghost she wanted to avenge—his spirit she wept for.

  “Hold up, now!” Argus cried, swooping from the treetops. He stretched out his arms, his sleeves rippling. “Giant, wait!”

  She slammed to a stop. “How much farther, Ghost?” she panted. “How long must I run?”

  “I won’t lie to you,” Argus said. “You are too slow. The woman will be gone by the time you get there.”

  “Gone?” Avalar echoed. “What? But my blood craves battle! I told you before, I cannot stop! Not before I reach my enemy! Show me where, Ghost! You must!”

  Argus floated before her, shaking his head sadly. “This was wrong of me. I plotted this thing to lure you from the valley. But I see now you are too young to control your passions. I have hurt you. I’m sorry!”

  “You say this is falsehood?” Infuriated, Avalar flailed her fists. “There is no foe?”

  “No, there is!” he yelled back. “But in your tent, you dawdled, didn’t you? I had to sing and practically dance to get you to move. Now this is the price you pay!”

  “Wait!” Avalar blinked, staring up at the Skywhite mountains, their silhouettes black beneath the first frail glints of dawn. “There is a way I can reach her! Mayhap not fast enough, but we can try!”

  The dead knight flitted toward her. “Is there? Do tell!”

  “Yes.” Avalar snatched a breath. “Ponu,” she whispered. She concentrated, visualizing with all her might the winged elf in his sleeveless tunic. “I think he will come if I say I am ready.”

  Argus frowned. “Ready for what?”

  “They all want me home,” she said. “Even you, it seems, want me somewhere I am not! If this is what it takes for me to strike a blow for Camron, I will do it! Even this I will do! Hear you, Ponu? I am ready!”

  An oval of brightness struck the snowbank. Avalar covered her dazzled eyes. His magic arrived first, a portal of incandescent strands woven from his staff, from which Ponu stepped forth, smiling crookedly. He flared his wings and bowed.

  “I am at your service, my dear,” he said as the magical door dissipated behind him. “What is your need?”

  “I have decided I will go with you to Hothra,” she announced. “But only if you will aid me now.”

  Ponu’s smile held. “All these cycles, Grevelin’s daughter,” he said, “and still you see not what is in my heart. We are friends; no exchange of favors is necessary. Show me where you wish to go.”

  Avalar glanced at his staff. “But . . . your magic.”

  Ponu grinned. “It is wise to be wary of strange forces,” he agreed. “But do you truly fear I would ever hurt you?”

  Avalar grasped his hand. Ponu smiled at her fingers engulfing his and lifted his staff. “Now, Spirit,” he said to Argus, “you must guide both my sight and my magic. Think of the place you require this giant to be.”

  As the Thalian Knight moved to hover above the elf, Ponu shut his eyes and bowed his head. He stiffened as horror crossed his face, his body shaking with anger at what he saw. He glared at the ghost. “It isn’t far,” he gritted. “Avalar, now!”

  The forest slipped from her sight. A jumble of images flipped past her like pages in the wind, the places that were or could possibly be, the times to come or the times that had passed. For the span of one breath, Freedom Hall loomed above the sea, the stars mirrored in the crystalline sweep of its roof.

  For an instant she saw the boats bobbing in Hothra’s harbor, guarded by the greater ships anchored beyond. She saw a landscape from her memories—a place of sunshine and fertile fields. She gasped at the sight of the mines, a brief, terrifying impression that Ponu dispelled with the flick of a gesture. Then he mastered his staff, his powerful mind bending its patterns to his will.

  Rock dominated her vision, layers of red-brown slabs forming a high, craggy hill. Gnarled skeletons of bluebark thrust in every direction, their roots entwined in small clefts and fissures.

  Avalar staggered on the uneven ground, setting off a slide of tiny stones until Ponu caught her. When she had regained her balance, he released her and descended a short distance to where the ground flattened out.

  Confused, she started to follow. “Ponu?”

  He faced her with his wings furling along his back. “I will not be a part of this. Do what you came to do, Giant, but I do not approve!”

  “Here.” Argus motioned to a cranny by her feet and vanished inside. Avalar knelt to look. The crevice shone emerald deep within, its damp walls flickering where the dead knight bobbed.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Now try again!” As Argus ascended slowly, a soft groan came to Avalar’s ears, followed by a scuffle of heels scraping stone.

  She comes! Avalar thought. Drawing her sword, she clambered erect. Gradually the noises increased, the rasp of the woman’s breathing amplified by the fissure’s cramped space.

  “Almost there,” Argus cajoled. “You can do it!”

  “Why is she underground?” Avalar asked him. “This is not what you—”

  She broke off when a clawlike shape appeared out of the cleft, barely recognizable as a hand. It batted feebly, groping at the empty air. Even in the dawn’s light, Avalar saw how damaged the fingers were, how twisted and terribly broken.

  She sheathed her sword as the woman emerged by painful inches from the cleft, her bruised and shattered body covered with blood.

  The human began to roll as her hips exited the hole, and Avalar caught her. Dazed, she carried her enemy down to where Ponu crouched.

  The winged elf rustled his wings. “This is what you came to fight?”

  “I did not know!” Avalar snapped, laying the woman at his feet. “The ghost did not mention—”

  “Help me,” the human rasped. “Is somebody there?”

  Avalar shuddered, her magic in her blood aching to kill. Here, at last, was her hated foe. But helpless, she was quick to remind herself. Sorely
hurt. I am a giant. We protect!

  She waited for Ponu to take charge. Instead, he stood motionless, his gaze on her face.

  Blood sank into the snow beneath the tortured body between them. The bare skin of the woman’s knees was horribly burned. Argus floated into view, and as he approached, Avalar saw through him to Warder’s Fall, the leagues of shattered hills that would never be whole again.

  “You sure you don’t want to dillydally a bit longer?” The spirit pointed imperiously. “There she is! Kill her!”

  “This is not what you promised!” Avalar snarled. “There is no worthy battle here. This woman is dying!”

  “When exactly did I promise you that?” Argus flitted near, his hawk-like features stiff with rage, hacking at the human’s neck with a make-believe sword. “This is Felrina Vlyn, the bitch who slit Camron’s throat! Now finish her! For I cannot! All her victims call to me. They don’t just cry for justice, they demand it!”

  Avalar struggled for calm. “My blood is up; I must do battle. I followed you to wage combat! I cannot smite the helpless! I am a giant! This is not what we do!”

  Strike her anyway!” roared Argus. “Hear me, since you can’t hear her victims! Her dead are haunting you as we speak, and they are begging for retribution! You must slay her, Giant!”

  Avalar glared down, her hot blood seething, her forearm an extension of her sword’s hilt. The branches glinted pink above her, touched by the first light of dawn, and yet still she waited, an avatar of ghostly justice. “Rise,” she said at last. “Stand and let us finish this, Felrina Vlyn.”

  The woman lay in a heap, her mangled hands twitching weakly. Avalar stooped, doubled her fist in the cowl of the human’s robe and hauled her up. “Stand!” Avalar commanded. “You must try! Defend yourself!”

  Head lolling, the black-robe dangled in her clasp. “Help me,” she moaned. “He’s trying to k-kill me.”

  “No,” said Avalar darkly. “That task has befallen me. You have the scent of death already, Felrina Vlyn. The stink of old blood and corruption. This whole mountain reeks of it. Tell me this, Slaver. What manner of creature attacks its own kind?”