by Lawrence, J.
“Yes, I do.”
“She was up the street last I saw her.”
Thaniel peeked out the only window in the shop. There was no sign of her, or the First.
“Hey, you two.” The shop-keep, a clean shaven man wearing a wax stained apron, barked from behind a counter, “Buy or go.”
After they slid out of the shop and ducked into the adjacent alley, Jorel turned to Thaniel with a solemn expression in his eyes.
“Listen, Thaniel, there’s something you need to know about Elycia.”
“I know what you are going to say.”
“No you don’t.” Jorel pursed his lips, shaking his head. “Turns out, she’s like you.”
“Jorel, what are you up to?”
“Nothing, I swear. She’s an inborn too.” Jorel swallowed before he inclined his head in Thaniel’s direction, “Like you.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” He threw his hands up, “One minute we’re talking and the next the old man pulls out his bag of rocks and poof… He says she’s an inborn.”
“Did she touch the meldstone?”
“I don’t really get it, but there’s no place to hide in that wagon. I couldn’t help but…”
“Did she touch the meldstone?” Thaniel repeated.
“Of course she did. That’s how they… you train.” Jorel peered into Thaniel’s face and asked, “Hey, you look sick. You okay?”
“Just tell me everything.”
“Like I was about to say, I heard everything but it all was a bunch of nothing happening as far as I could see. But this is the gist of what Telazno said.”
Turned out his friend had been paying attention. Jorel explained that whatever they were doing was a lot easier with that meldstone Telazno had. He did his best to summarize what the old man said to her but a lot of the details were slipping through as Thaniel kept hearing Ghile’s story in the background of his mind.
“… with enough time using the meldstone,” he explained, “an inborn could learn to deflect the energy the space tried to obliterate them with. The point was, use the meldstone, or else.”
Thaniel stared at Jorel.
“What? I told you it’s a small wagon. I was bored.”
“I don’t know who to believe.” Thaniel started, “But one thing’s for sure. The three of us are sticking together. I don’t want to go back to Ontar.” Thaniel set his jaw. “I’m taking Elycia to Navillus.”
“That’s just it. She doesn’t want to go to there anymore. She’s going to Di’Ghon.”
“What?” Thaniel craned his neck over the top of a pile of netting.
“Listen, those guys aren’t such bad company. Gabril’s a Circle. The old man has powers… like you, and her.” Jorel gulped, looking uncomfortable as he went on, “Anyways, if it comes down to it, they aren’t going to just let the First or that ramphyr take you without a fight. That’s gotta stand for something.”
Harkanin’s wagon rocked into place at the end of the alley.
“You found him.” The wiry old trader said as he set the brake and jumped off the side. Harkanin slunk over and gave Thaniel a heavy slap on the back.
“Actually I found him.” Thaniel said.
Harkanin’s eyes got a little wider and he looked around.
“Where’s the…?”
“Ramphyr?” Jorel finished for him. “I asked him that already. You’re not going to believe who he says he’s been with.” Jorel ran his finger in little circles along the side of his temple.
“I’m startin to think there’s a lot more you’re not tellin and not just about the ramphyr. Starting with… Why is the First after you?”
“It’s a long story.” Thaniel glanced back up the alley, “You want to hang around here while I explain?”
“Damn boys.” Harkanin swore.
“What did I do?” Jorel quipped.
“Gonna get me killed yet.” Harkanin plopped up onto his drivers plank and took up the reigns of the horses in one hand. With the other, he reached under the plank and jerked something free. Instantly, a small door opened on the underside of the wagon.
Thaniel and Jorel grinned at the trader, who had always claimed he paid too much tribute to Ontar. The secret compartment was a perfect way to hide your more valuable wares from the tax collector’s eyes.
“Don’t ask. Just get in.” Harkanin mumbled.
Thaniel hesitated.
“Where’s Elycia?”
“I saw her not ten minutes ago running up the street.” Harkanin wiped slick moisture off his forehead with one hand while he motioned them under the wagon.
“Running? Was someone chasing her?”
“I don’t think so. She was headed up towards Telazno, on the dam.” Harkanin waved them on. “She probably learned another trick with that stone of hers.”
“She has one of the meldstones?” Thaniel felt himself tense inside.
“That’s what he calls it…” Jorel said.
“Telazno gave her one.”
“If she’s with them, she’s safe.” Jorel said, “Which is more than I can say for us.”
“Yes, get in before we all get caught.” Harkanin barked. “Oh, and slam the door. It sticks open sometimes.” Harkanin said as he made believe he was checking one of his wheels.
As Thaniel climbed into the small compartment under the wagon he turned to Jorel.
“You really think she’s safe with him?” He asked.
Jorel shook his head as he slammed the door.
“Hopeless.” He muttered into the dark.
Chapter 45
Next
Keriim shoved a rag down her throat and bound up her hands behind her back. With one arm he hurled her into the air and slammed her down on the neck of his horse. He vaulted up onto the animal’s back, landing solidly behind her just as the other two soldiers reached them. Elycia gasped in pain when his armor plate thumped against her back. The beating he gave her before he trussed her up was merciless. She had no doubt it would have been the end of her if he hadn’t seen the other two soldiers coming.
Keriim laughed, enjoying every one of her pain induced flinches. He seemed to be drinking it in with as much fervor as she saw in Ghile’s or rather, the ramphyr’s face when he sucked the lifeblood out of the ox. This man truly was a real living monster.
Regardless of the fact that he was the only thing keeping her from falling to the paving stones below, she strained with the effort of trying to throw him off balance. She might as well try to push over a brick wall. Keriim had both of his arms around her. He gripped the front of her blouse with one hand and the reins of his horse with the other.
Without warning, she swung her leg over the horse’s neck and tried to slip off to the left. Keriim grasped her breast with a fist of iron. Pain shot through her chest as he effortlessly yanked her back up straight.
“Don’t let any harm come to her.” She heard one of the other soldiers say with a sharpness that told her he was definitely in charge.
“Please do that again,” Keriim whispered. “I enjoyed it.” He gave her another painful squeeze for emphasis.
Without stirrups, staying on the horse amounted to squeezing its neck with her thighs and relying on him to catch her when she slid to one side. Knowing how he intended to right her, Elycia determined to strangle that horse with her legs before she slid out of position again.
Yet not two breaths later, the horse veered to the left and she felt herself start to teeter to the right. As if on cue, his hand came up again, sending a spiking stab of pain across her chest. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. If it wasn’t for the wad of cloth shoved half way down her throat, Elycia would have screamed until her lungs ripped out.
The three soldiers rounded a corner. There right in front of them was Harkanin’s brightly painted yellow and green wagon.
“That’s him.” One of the soldiers yelled.
The horses leaped forward, closing the distance in no time at all. With a mounted warrior
in front and one on each flank, they left Harkanin no choice but to pull up the reins and stop in the middle of the street.
“Trader.” The soldier in front let his horse dance in a circle. His voice was deep, like it piped from some great war horn or something.
Harkanin had been slowly driving his wagon up through the middle of the town. With his cowl down over his head she wouldn’t have known it was him if he wasn’t driving his immaculately painted yellow and green wagon.
“If you want to buy something, you’ve come at a bad time. I sold it all.” Harkanin’s eyes slid across their faces.
“Did you come from Ontar down the pass?”
“Of course I did. I was there two weeks ago. Got some cinnamon tea and weaved rugs from up there, but, I’m sorry… I sold it already. I’ll be bringing some good leaf from down south in a month or so if you’re still about.”
“So that wasn’t your stuff dumped outside the keep then.”
“Why would I do that?” Harkanin shot them a dumbfounded look.
“We are looking for a boy from Ontar. His name is Thaniel.”
“Thaniel, the messenger? I know him.” Harkanin offered. “But what’s that got to do with me?”
“He left Ontar about the same time you did.”
“Fifty gold for anybody that helps us bring him back.”
“Fifty gold?” Harkanin licked his lips, “I’d sell my mother for fifty gold.”
If she wasn’t gagged she would have spit in his face. Jorel liked the wily old trader more than Thaniel did, but Thaniel still had taken to the man. And here he was selling out the both of them at the first opportunity to save his own skin.
“The next time you speak it better be to tell which way he went.” The soldier reined his horse in further. “Or you can forget about the gold and I will rip out your tongue and feed it to my horse.”
Harkanin wiped at his brow. His eyes took her in for the first time. Recognition flared to life. For a fleeting instant her heart soared, as if somehow a single fat trader could best the three monsters that had her. Then as fast as he laid eyes on her, they slid away.
“Like I said, I’d sell anyone for that, but I haven’t seen him.”
Keriim’s horse suddenly danced sideways beneath her and she clung with all her might. It was no use. She was sliding off again. She winced in advance but there was no bracing herself against the crushing pain of his grasp. It shot through her like a flash fire as he pulled her upright. Her vision went white with shock. It felt like he ripped her breast right off.
“Search him.”
The pain must have made her giddy because as the third soldier leaped from his horse, she thought she saw the man vault six feet into the air and land on the wagon like a pouncing cat. She was definitely seeing things. He swung into the thing like an acrobat. The entire wagon tilted under his massive bulk with every step. He was the biggest soldier she had ever seen.
Elycia blinked twice, trying to clear away the pain that was obviously affecting her vision. The leader of the three seemed out of sync with the rest of the world too. Beneath him, his horse looked like a mere pony. The crescent bladed axes seemed like dangling toys as they rocked back and forth in their tiny hoops.
It felt like she was outside of her body watching as her head slowly dropped to look at the hand that still had her by the breast. Keriim’s hand was too big by a half. It was still flesh and bone, and still resembled a man’s hand, but was twisted into something more. Muscles rippled in a constant state of twitch. The skin was hard as leather. It was coarse and pitted, like the entire hand was covered in an inch thick callous.
It belonged to a monster, not a man.
Revulsion at what she saw caused her to involuntarily twist in the saddle in a vain effort to get away from the hand. She didn’t want it to touch her. It was wrong. Unnatural. Yet the more she shrunk away from the hand the more she was aware of the man behind her, attached to it.
Her screams, still deep in her throat, were blocked by the gag. Her eyes sought every wet shadow, hoping to see someone, anyone that would help her. Harkanin didn’t look her way. In fact he looked everywhere but her. The few villagers she did see had their heads down in a desperate attempt to keep from getting wet. It was that or they were deliberately avoiding the fact that three monsters had her tied up and gagged.
She kept her eyes on the wagon, expecting Lars Telazno and his dangerous friend Gabril to leap out of some corner of the thing and come to her aid. She’d seen what Gabril could do with his two swords. The man had reduced an entire pack of snarling wolves to sausage in mere seconds, all without breaking a sweat. If anyone could help her, it would be him.
The soldier emerged out of the back of the wagon with a shake of his head and leaped to the back of his horse in a single bound.
Harkanin’s wagon lurched away at the annoyed flick of the soldier’s meaty hand.
Hope shrank to dust as Keriim gave her another squeeze. He pulled her close, letting her feel the entire length of his hard body pressed against hers. There was something hard and bumpy right in the middle of the man’s chest.
What bubbled to the surface of her soul then was born on the breeze of desperation so complete that it could not be described. Her heart pounded in her chest, driving away all other sound. Her very essence screamed for rescue. However, the name she was calling out wasn’t that of the deadly Gabril and his twin flashing swords. It wasn’t the crafty old Lars Telazno who had mastered powers that she was only beginning to understand. It wasn’t Jorel, and it definitely wasn’t Harkanin.
The name surprised her, elated her, and sent a new wave of tears bursting from the corners of her eyes all at the same time.
The name gagged in the base of her throat was…
Thaniel.
Chapter 46
Outstretched
The wagon swayed to a sudden stop. Both he and Jorel were straining their ears to make out the muffled conversation outside when someone crashed down on the upper deck above them. The force of the man’s landing shook the wagon so much that Jorel and Thaniel crashed against the hard walls of the tiny compartment. Dusty rays of gloomy light speared between the joints in the floor boards and around the now barely open trap door. It let just enough light through for Thaniel to see Jorel holding his eye with one bloody hand and the barely open trap door with the other.
The wagon axles creaked with every step of whoever was rummaging through it only inches above them. Peeking out from Jorel’s fingers was the edges of a bloody gash that ran across his eyebrow and cheek at a rakish angle. Blood dripped off his fingers onto the door he was poised over. It pooled there for a moment. But then in a disastrous moment of terror, the wagon lurched as the soldier stepped to one side. Blood ran over the side of the door.
From a crack just below his face Thaniel could see it spill onto the slick stone street below. More fell in steady heavy drops. Most of it landed on a low spot where a trickle of water running down the street washed it away almost instantly. It ran right for the horse’s hooves beside the wagon. Some didn’t. Instead, like a crimson sign in the sun, it stood out on a high spot, where the small rivulets of run-off never touched. If the wagon hadn’t been there, the ever-present heavy mist coming off the huge water wheel would have probably washed it away. Thaniel didn’t know which was worse. Either way, once the soldiers saw the blood they were finished.
Thaniel was afraid to breathe. His ears strained to catch a snippet of the conversation between Harkanin and the soldiers, but the roar of the great water wheel drowned out any hope of him hearing anything else. From his vantage point Thaniel watched the pink water flow under the horse shoes only a few feet away.
The wagon lurched into motion.
Thaniel let out a sigh.
Once they were a ways away he took his eyes off the street below. When he looked up, Jorel was struggling to keep his eyes open. There was a huge knot on his forehead that looked big enough to burst. His eyes closed in a very long slow bli
nk, like his eyelids weren’t working right, and when he opened them again, only the whites shown in the semi light.
Without warning, the door flew open and Jorel tumbled out of the hole. It happened so fast that Thaniel never had a chance to even reach for him. Thaniel wiggled his head out of the hole.
Behind the wagon, Jorel rolled, belly to back. Blood trailed wherever he went. His head was a crimson mess.
Thaniel slipped out of the door and fell onto the street with a grunt of pain. The wagon never slowed. Thaniel shouted for Harkanin but knew even as he did it that it fell on deaf ears. This close to that water wheel the man wouldn’t have heard him if he was sitting next to him. The immaculately painted rig lurched up the street toward the main tannery building, the trap door swinging open below.
Thaniel turned back toward Jorel. He was still rolling, although he was moving even faster now, and with every revolution he tumbled closer to the edge of the street. The blood drained from Thaniel’s face. The street they were on ran right along the edge of the gorge. Where the pavers stopped the gorge fell away almost at a sheer drop. Just a few feet past the edge, the water wheel towered into the sky. For a moment the sight of the thing caught Thaniel off guard. From far away it looked like it was hardly turning, but this close, it was a daunting sight. Something that big shouldn’t move that fast. Giant paddles whizzed up out of the gorge at alarming speed. The sound of it was deafening.
Jorel was heading right for it.
Thaniel bolted, slipped in Jorel’s blood, and hit the stone hard. He scrambled back up, feet churning. Jorel was only a few feet from the edge.
Thaniel ran with everything he had.
He knew it was hopeless. In his peripheral vision he could see men on horses coming. If he made it to Jorel before he rolled over the edge of the cliff, he would never be able to carry him up the street faster than three men on horseback.
But it was Jorel.
Thaniel leaped for him, hands outstretched.
Chapter 47
Cool Trick
Jorel’s lids fluttered open and the world seemed way too bright. The light felt like knives in his eyes. On top of that, it was really cold. Everything hurt. His head pounded like an excruciating drum.
