by kubasik
"Yes, I know, but ..."
"What kind of life are you living? What is this sex with blood? What is this pain for affection?"
I'd never, ever spoken of the matter with anybody. Never put it into words. Not even with J'role. Garlen coming out and naming those years of confused feelings about J'role's sexual desires — and my cooperation — threw me into complete confusion. This time, though, she waited. The screams had died away, though I could still see the reflections of the battle in her silver armor. If Crothat still held my head in his lap, I was no longer aware of it.
"I ... It is something J'role started."
A part of me had hoped that by throwing the blame, Garlen would let the matter be. She waited for me to go on.
"I didn't like it at first. But in time … He seemed to like it so much."
"Wait, what was that part before about him liking it? 'But in time' what? In time what?"
"In time I liked it."
"Out of curiosity, out of my own desire to find out if you'll ever listen to me unless I put in one of these dramatic appearances, have you ever admitted this to yourself? Or has it always been a matter of J'role victimizing you, forcing you into something you don't want to do ..."
"But I don't want to do it ...”
"But you like it! You just said ..."
"I like it while I'm doing it. But if I wasn't doing it, I wouldn't miss it."
She knelt down before me now, the pregnant belly close to my flesh, her large face only a foot from mine. I was a child against her. A child caught in a web of deceptions I'd created to justify why the sweet meats were missing, a deception I couldn't untangle to keep my story straight.
She said softly, "You can't even say the words, can you? You name givers have this wonderful language given to you by the Universe, and you hop all around your mouths with 'it' and 'thing' and other imprecisions. Obscurity is your last refuge in the face of the Passions in your soul rising up to confront you." I stammered something inconsequential.
She dismissed it. "What do you do to him? What is this 'it'?"
"I hurt him."
"Yes?"
"Bite. Cut him with fingernails, Draw blood." As I said the words, I felt my passions begin to rise.
"You taste it even now, don't you? You want to do it. Despite what you said."
"Yes."
"What do you want to do to him?"
"Hurt him."
"Yes?"
"Humiliate him."
"Yes?"
"I want him to know .”
"Yes?"
"What he does to me."
"He cuts you?"
"Yes."
"Yes," she echoed.
"He doesn't cut my flesh. He leaves me. He cuts me."
"Yes. What do you want to do?"
"Hurt him."
"That makes you feel better?"
“Yes."
"Yes?"
Tears began to well up at the corners of my eyes. "No. No, it doesn't make me feel better.
It makes me even with him. We're just clawing at each other. Not better. Even. Even in our pain."
"Yes.”
” Yes."
"What makes you feel better?"
"My boys."
"Yes."
"Myself, learning my magic.”
"Yes."
"Helping the people in my village. Building Horvak's furnace. Figuring out how the Universe is made, using that knowledge. Helping people."
"Yes."
"Making."
"Yes."
"Protecting."
"Yes." I reached out my hand to hers, touched it lightly. 'I don't, know how to heal. I want to heal myself. Something's gone terribly wrong."
"Yes." She paused, looking at me kindly. A bit of sadness. "There's a choice coming. Be ready."
She vanished.
4
My flesh was whole once more, though the skin was pink where I'd been burned. I had only a moment to enjoy the lack of pain when Crothat threw me from his lap with a scream. A spray of blood rained down on me, and the troll dropped to the deck with a heavy thud, his large eyes open and lifeless.
Reflexes took over and I rolled across the deck and put my back up against the ship's rail.
A quick glance at Crothat revealed two heavy crossbow bolts protruding from the back of his head.
I looked up and saw his killers. One of the Theran ships had risen slightly — just enough to get a clear shot over our rails. The ship had only just started its rise. I realized that my conversation with Garlen had taken little — if no — time at all from the battle around me.
I had little time for reflection. The two crossbowman — a female elf and female dwarf —
grinned at me as they cranked their weapons, readying them to slip in bolts and fire them at me. I thought for a moment about casting a spell, but decided against it. The encounter with Garlen had unnerved me, and the risk of calling a Horror into my head was too terrible to contemplate. I desired a new magician's robe so much! What good was magical knowledge if it only led to potential disaster?
I scrambled to my feet and rushed toward the stern of the ship, keeping the Stone Rainbow's central castle between me and the rising ship. The sound of clashing blades came from ahead, and I drew my dagger from its sheath.
As I turned the corner around the castle, I saw several badly charred trolls lying on the deck. Some dead. Some still dying. Others, trolls from my ship and elves and humans from the Theran vessel, lay bleeding. J'role and four trolls had positioned themselves at the ship's stern, keeping their backs to it. Seven Theran sailors, all armed with swords, had them pinned in place. The sun, level with the fleet battle now, cast the rising ship's shadow across the fury of swordplay.
I rushed forward, moving silently as J'role had taught me. "Screaming a war cry," he once said to me, "is for those big enough to frighten without needing to scream a war cry.
People like you and me should get up there as quietly and efficiently as possible, and kill them before they even know it.”
So I crept as quietly as I could. But quickly as well, for the Theran ship would soon pass the Stone Rainbows castle and spot me. J'role and the trolls from my crew saw me approach, but none revealed my presence by either word or facial expression.
I had just reached the backs of the Therans when the ship cleared the castle, and cries of alarm showered down from it. The Therans before me began to turn, but I plunged my dagger deep into the back of one of them, and he screamed out in agony and crumpled to the deck.
As he fell I tugged my blade out of his back. Strange, dizzying emotions overcame me.
Memories of bloody sex with J'role flooded my thoughts. One a murder, the other an act of sexual arousal. How? What had I been doing?
5
What had I been doing? Passions! So many ideas and questions I've washed from my thinking ever since the end of the Theran War when your father and I parted.
The massive letter from the dragon sits on my table, still unread, not far from where my hand writes these words. It waits like a Horror, coiled and ready to spring. It's as if I'm standing once more on the edge of Twilight Peaks, staring out across the ink black jungles at night, comfortable at the precipice, neither falling forward nor retreating in fear, but unable to move.
The dragon's letter threatens to knock me over the edge.
6
Crossbow bolts slammed into the stone deck, shattering and skittering on impact. One of the trolls jumped forward and took a bolt in the shoulder that would have split my skull.
He groaned heavily, ripped the bolt out of his flesh, scooped me up in one arm, and rushed me to the doorway of the castle for shelter.
The remnants of the crew numbered five trolls, J’role, and myself. That wasn't counting those who remained below on the oars — a mix of trolls and my original group.
A few more crossbow bolts slammed into the stone surfaces around us. The Theran ship sailed on. Black smoke billowed through the air
, many drakkars burned.
"We've got to end this," I said.
"Retreat?" several of the trolls asked in astonishment.
"No, no. Everything." I had no intention of retreating. And I realized I'd rather die trying to hurt the Therans than return alive having accomplished nothing. "We've got to bring the Stone Rainbow around and gain on the Theran ship. Can't let her escape."
I didn't even give the order to move, the trolls simply took it upon themselves to act now.
Several ran to the sail lines, others to rudder. "Come," I said to J'role. "Let's get to the cannon. We're closer now." We ran to the bow. A fireball hissed by my face, missing me by only a few feet, warming my flesh.
The rowers had slowed the ship's pace as we'd floated toward the Theran ships, and now as I ran I screamed, "Row! Row!" over and over again at the top of my lungs. "we need speed NOW!"
From below the troll rowing chant began, and the ship lurched forward, nearly toppling J'role and me backward as we ran. They'd drawn on magic to increase their speed, and it was working impressively. The sail swung wildly to starboard, picking up a gust of wind, and we rushed after the escaping Theran ship.
As our ship swung around, the other ships involved in the battle came into clear view. To my surprise, only two drakkars had actually caught fire. The crews of the ship were working madly to put the fires out, and it seemed as if they would succeed. Three undamaged drakkars hovered around the other Theran vessel. Several dozen trolls had boarded the vessel, and I could see that the fight was winding down. Rich red blood streaked the ship's gray stone. Bodies and portions of bodies lay scattered about. Trolls with terrible gashes in their flesh leaned against the rails, breathing in air quickly after their desperate fight. The only Therans I saw were the dead and dying.
More trolls were jumping onto the ship, healthy and ready to plunder. Of course, this meant fewer trolls who could help us with the ship the Stone Rainbow now pursued. I made a note to myself: if I survived I'd have a talk with Vrograth about priorities. Looting after complete and certain victory. Two of the drakkars did break away from the potential plunder, however, and began to float toward us to join the chase.
J'role and I loaded the cannon again, and as our ship's bow turned to face the fleeing Theran ship, I took steady aim. "Fire!" I said, and J'role touched the torch against the fuse of elemental air. The cannon fired and the fireball appeared with a tremendous hiss. I had tried to hit the ship's sail, thinking it the best target. Instead, in my inexperience, I'd sent the fireball rushing toward the ships rudder. This proved to be a stroke of luck, for the fireball slammed into the rudder, cracking a portion of it off. The impact also turned the device sharply, sending the sailor at the wheel to the deck as it spun.
The effect of all this made the Theran ship suddenly begin listing to port. Its sailors rocked back and forth, and some of them lost their footing completely. The sudden turn brought the ship perpendicular to the Stone Rainbow's path and allowed us to close tighter on the ship. I fumbled with the elemental fire coals, taking much longer to reload this time, for I was both excited and anxious.
J' role suddenly cried out and I turned to find him grabbing his chest. Glancing back to the Theran ship, I saw a magician in a black robe decorated with silver raindrops sitting on the ship's castle looking for another victim. He saw me, smiled, and immediately began the gestures of a spell. I grabbed the torch from where J'role had dropped it on the deck and waved it toward the fuse. Then I dropped the torch and grabbed the cannon, hoping to aim it before it fired.
I jerked the cannon and lined up the shot on the magician, then pulled it up slightly, trying to compensate properly for the arc of the fireball's flight. Just as I did that, I felt my body tense terribly, as if my bones had frozen inside my flesh. Then my arms began to move against my will. I knew immediately that the magician had cast bone dance on me.
Put I tried to resist the spell and hold the cannon on my target. Sharp pain flowed through my limbs. Time stretched out, thoughts of blood and sliced flesh and passion and love twisting and warping in my head. If I could have surrendered to it, might I have enjoyed the control the magician exerted on me? That's what J'role did. Surrendered to me. To give one's self over to someone else meant no longer being responsible. There was an appeal in that.
Outside my thoughts, a mere moment passed. My hands, under the influence of the magician's spell, tried to twist the cannon back toward the ship, to fire it into my own crew.
Needles dug at me from the inside out as I resisted.
Seconds passed.
The cannon fired.
The magician scrambled up as the fireball rushed toward his ship. It would not have hit him in any case — my aim was not yet good enough. Instead it crashed into the mast, sending an elaborate network of fissures running up the stone pole. A splash of fire caught him on his robe and he dropped down to the ground and rolled on it to put it out.
7
"Faster!" I screamed. The strain of the cry tore at my throat.
"We'll ram them!" J'role shouted as the ship lurched forward once more. He was up on his feet again, the effects of the spell over.
"Exactly," I replied. Then I shouted back to the helmsman, "Bring us up!" Other crew members conveyed the orders until they reached him. The Stone Rainbow rose slightly.
"That's it!" I shouted, hoping my inexperienced calculations would prove correct.
"Prepare to board!"
The ship held its incline as we closed on the Theran vessel. We drew our weapons — I my dagger. I had only one goal: the magician. If the robe was not too badly damaged, I might be able to re-weave it to my own aura and finally be free to cast spells again.
Those trolls available for raiding gathered around J role and me. We formed a total of seven. Luckily the Theran crew had been sharply reduced by the efforts of the other drakkars. And one of the two drakkars that had followed us was making good time and would soon be with us.
But impractical or not, dangerous or not, I would leap over the side of the Stone Rainbow and attack. I felt the lust for conflict rising in me, and the sensation of the war dance filled my muscles. I looked forward, gasped. In the air, just beyond the Theran ship, floated the woman in silver armor, oversized and pregnant as always.
She smiled at me.
Thystonius? It seemed I should be able to distinguish the Passion of conflict from the Passion of healing, yet I kept imagining them as the same image. Were they the same?
For me at least?
I had no idea.
Crossbow bolts sliced the air before us as the bow of the Stone Rainbow slammed into the Theran ship. The mast shattered against our momentum and crashed to the deck, crushing the corpses.
I turned to leap over the side of the ship, expecting the trolls to already be on their way.
But they waited on my order. One of them gave me a toothy grin. "Captain?" he said.
I laughed. "Attack!" I screamed.
"ATTACK!" the trolls and J'role echoed, and we all launched ourselves into the air, suspended, it seemed, for a glorious moment as the sheer stupidity of what I'd done bubbled up in my soul and made me laugh again.
Then down to the deck of the Theran ship. I landed hard, surrounded by the gruff grunts of trolls doing the same. Their crystal armor and swords and maces glittered in the air around me. The shadow of the Stone Rainbow passed over us as the ship continued on, crewed only by the helmsman and rowers.
Therans rushed us, swords drawn, shouting oaths in a language I could not understand.
Elves and humans and dwarfs stood against us. They were good, very good. But I tell you this: a crystal raider doing what he loves best — fighting for spoils — is a fire in a sea of oil.
We drove the Therans back, forcing them to the port rail. Soon more of their number came upon us, rushing us from behind. Little matter. The trolls cut them down quickly, and I became ill at the sight of one body after another cut to pieces by the troll's weapon skills. Then a drakk
ar came alongside us. More trolls boarded. I saw panic in the eyes of the Therans. Each one wanted so much to live, yet realized only now that he might not see the sun set.
With my companions seizing control of the ship, I decided to seek out the magician. I feared the ship might soon begin to sink, and wanted to get the robe before I had to abandon ship. As the magician had yet to show himself, I assumed he was wounded from the fireball, perhaps seeking shelter below deck.
I waited until I saw a clear path through the scrimmage. The path was not straight, but with harsh twists and turns, I managed to clear it without a single Theran striking me.
When I reached the door to the castle, I found it unguarded, and took this as a good omen. Already my body prickled with excitement at the thought of gaining a new magician's robe.
