Raising Evil

by Liam Reese

  “What..?” the leader gasped in astonishment. Emmerlin could feel him trying to move but tightened her grip, pinning him in place, as Senechul advanced on the remaining man. He stomped on the puddle of guts the other man was still trying to repair, bringing a moan of despair from him.

  “No, please!” the final man begged, dropping his sword. “Arcen made me do it!”

  He held his hands out before him in supplication, a pointless gesture that Senechul destroyed with a flick of his wrist, severing most of his fingers. He screamed, pulling his ruined hands back into his belly and sobbing.

  Senechul lanced a stab at his shoulder, plunging his sword deep into the muscle there. He rolled his wrist and wrenched it back, inflicting maximum damage before hacking at the man again. This time, he smashed his blade down in an arc that split the other man’s skull with a thump. The would-be thief slammed forward, face hitting the ground, as his brains started to ooze from the hole in his head.

  Emmerlin turned to Arcen, whose face was an ashy color in the firelight. His hand still held the knife he’d been about to kill her with, but he was powerless to use it. His eyes rolled madly around from one dead comrade to the next, watching as Senechul dispatched the man whose guts he had spilled with a chop to the back of his neck.

  “Told you,” Emmerlin said. “Didn’t I?”

  “Who are you?” Arcen asked in horror.

  “Well, he’s called Senechul.” Emmerlin pointed at her guard. “And I’m a little girl who bested you easily.”

  She grinned at him as Senechul approached. “Now I’m going to have you cut out your eyes,” she added sweetly.

  “What? No!” Arcen howled as he watched the tip of his own knife turn towards him and slowly creep forward.

  Vainly he struggled to stop the blade, panting hard with the effort, but nothing he did had any effect. The weapon crept inexorably towards his right eye as Senechul stacked more wood on the fire.

  When Emmerlin finally brought the blade against his soft orbit, his scream rolled out of the clearing and into the night.

  Voices came to her as she floated in a void of nothing. Darkness surrounded her mind, and movement was impossible. Still the voices whispered into her ears. Sometimes she thought they were familiar, people she had known, while others sounded completely alien to her.

  “...healing well..”

  “...infection...”

  Time passed as she floated, visited by the ghosts of family and friends, all with a kind word or smile for her.

  Dark green canvas flapped over her head when her eyes finally flicked open. A gentle, warm breeze sent ripples and waves through the cloth, mesmeric and soothing. She watched the cloth as it danced before her eyes, smiling at the simple beauty of the display.

  Her pleasure was disturbed by a face that hove into view above her, a young and kind face with a smile. “Afternoon, General,” the woman said.

  Khaleen turned to see she was in a field hospital, empty of patients at the moment apart from herself. Rows of cots had been laid out neatly, with bandages and various general healing items beside each one. She tried to sit up, but her vision swam and she laid back down.

  “Careful, General,” the woman said, propping Khaleen up with an extra pillow she grabbed from the next bed. “You’ve had quite a shock to the system.”

  “What happened?” Khaleen whispered, struggling to recall why she would be injured.

  The nurse nodded to someone Khaleen could not see and perched on the edge of the next bed. “The story I heard was that you fell and dislodged the arrowhead in your leg. That cut its way out, doing horrible damage.

  “There’s a Waravalian doctor here who’s developed some amazing techniques to actually sew up wounds inside the body. He removed the arrowhead and repaired the muscle damage with strands of your own hair.”

  “Removed it?” Khaleen gasped. “They told me I’d die if they took it out.”

  “That was a long time ago, General,” another voice said from behind her.

  When he came into view, the round-faced Waravalian looked at her, taking her wrist and concentrating. He wore tight-fitting white clothes and a bandanna that pulled his long hair back. Kind eyes radiated intelligence as they locked onto her own.

  “Years of damage had caused the arrowhead to become encased in scar tissue,” the doctor said. “So when you fell, it was forced to the surface. I took it out and put you back together. Slevward’s the name,” he added.

  Khaleen felt the expression of astonishment on her face at the thought of the arrowhead being gone. The pain? The limp? Gone?

  A lump grew in her throat, and tears blurred her vision as a tsunami of emotion threatened to overwhelm her. Years of pain and disability had isolated her from having many friends, and never allowed a partner. Who would want her?

  Now, in her late fifties, she had a second lease on life, thanks to this Waravalian doctor. “Water, please,” she begged hoarsely.

  The nurse rose and left to get her a drink as Slevward moved before her. “You need rest and nourishment,” he said gently. “Your body needs time and energy to heal.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Khaleen managed, regaining her composure. “For everything.”

  “My pleasure entirely, Madam,” Slevward said with a beaming smile. “I thought you might like this.”

  He handed her a small box. Khaleen opened it, peering inside to see a chunk of rusted iron, twisted and worn. Its sharpened edges had been blunted over time, and its pitted surface was stained with her blood.

  “I can dispose of it if you’d prefer,” he said. “But I thought you might want to keep something that had been part of you for so long.”

  Khaleen looked up from the arrowhead that had made her suffer for so many years to the Waravalian who had removed it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll keep this, Doctor. Thank you again.”

  “I can’t guarantee this operation will restore full function to your leg. Years of damage from it cutting and grinding in there may have rendered it useless. Only time will tell. Hopefully, it will take away any pain you’ve been in.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Khaleen admitted, her emotions threatening to overwhelm her again.

  “Then say nothing,” Slevward said, his eyes cutting away almost shyly. “Ah, my king approaches.”

  Khaleen turned to follow his gaze, watching as Vetrulian and Collise dodged through the beds towards her.

  “How are you feeling?” Collise asked, concern plainly written on her features.

  “Like I almost died, Highness,” Khaleen replied, taking the offered cup of water.

  “As I said, I forbid you from doing that, General,” the queen said kindly.

  “What news from the camp?” Khaleen asked, turning to Vetrulian.

  “As soon as you’re well, we’ll talk about that,” the king said, frustrating Khaleen. She needed to know the situation within the mercenary camp, needed to know if they had attacked again, the potential range of that catapult, what they might be about to do.

  Any lapse now might give the mercenaries the advantage, letting them get away with drug smuggling and attacking the Waravalian royal family. There was no way she was about to let Queen Arteera down, either.

  “I’ll be up and about soon,” Khaleen said, frowning as doctor Slevward shook his head slightly, directing his gaze at the king.

  The general gritted her teeth before she said something unfortunate to the doctor who had possibly given her her life back, and forced a smile as she lay back on the cot. “I’ll see you soon,” she said again.

  Besmir almost instantly regretted his decision to follow Emmerlin. His body ached from the effects of Pariah and the days he had spent vomiting and howling in madness.

  Lack of food and drink had weakened his body, to the point where he had to concentrate just to stay in the saddle. He was panting and exhausted by the end of the day and all but fell from the horse when he finally called a halt.

  “Let’s cam
p here for the night,” he wheezed, as Merdon shot him a worried look.

  Besmir grinned at the expression. “Not dead yet, lad,” he said. “Not far off, maybe, but not yet.” He perched on a fallen tree, resting his back on the roots that had been pulled out of the ground. “You two get a camp set up, and I’ll bring in dinner,” he added, closing his eyes.

  His mind flew free of his weary body, flashing through the forest at the speed of thought, Life glowed around him in a million different forms, from the smallest insect to the deer that walked through the undergrowth. Besmir watched the stag protecting his pair of females while they grazed. Floating closer, he saw one of the does was pregnant, and smiled.

  With far too much meat here for the three of them, the king darted on, following the trail of a fox as he trotted through the forest. Soon enough, the fox entered a clearing where Besmir saw a number of holes had been dug. He darted down the first and straight into the mind of a rabbit.

  The animal, with Besmir in control, crept to the edge of the burrow and peered out, looking for the fox. Seeing the red animal dart off after another rabbit, Besmir dashed for the forest and headed towards their camp.

  Besmir guided the rabbit back towards where his body sat against the tree, darting past Merdon, who blew life into a small fire, and Lyeeta, who was watching him with love in her doe-like eyes. The king sprang up and into his own lap, exiting the rabbit and returning to his own body in an instant. He grabbed the animal by the ears and chopped the blade of his hand across the back of its neck, ending it quickly.

  “Thank you, little one,” he muttered.

  Lyeeta gaped at him openly, and he realized she had never seen him use any of his powers, especially as she was new to the service. He grinned and held the rabbit out to her. The young guard took it and Besmir closed his eyes, dashing back to the warren for another rabbit.

  By the time he had the third animal in his hand, Merdon had cleaned and skinned the first two, filling the clearing with the aroma of roasting rabbit.

  “This is exactly how it was at the beginning,” the king said a little later. They had gorged themselves on rabbit, washing it down with wine the Ninse had provided them, and now sat warm and with full bellies beside the crackling fire.

  Lyeeta had cared for the horses with a deftness and compassion that endeared her to Besmir. She spoke to them almost constantly as she brushed their coats and made sure they were secure, fed and watered.

  “She’s sweet,” Besmir had murmured to his grandson.

  Merdon had wrenched his gaze from where Lyeeta was with the horses and stared at him. “Yes,” he’d said. “She is. But how did you know I liked her?”

  Besmir grunted a laugh and flicked a twig into the fire. “I’ve been watching men and women look at each other for years,” he said. “And the look you get in your eye when you watch her tells me everything I need to know.”

  He smiled. “It’s the same look your father gets when your mother enters a room.”

  Merdon nodded and went back to staring at the young guard. Now, they all reclined around the fire. “What do you mean, Grandfather?” Merdon asked.

  “All this.” He gestured to the forest. “Living off the land and just scraping by. When I first met your grandmother, she was living in a dirty tent with barely a change of clothes to her name.”

  “Really?” Merdon asked with surprise. “That’s not in any of the histories.”

  “No one wants to read that we met in a tent not long after her mother was killed and sister kidnapped,” Besmir said. “But that’s what happened. I collapsed from exhaustion, and hers was the closest tent to dump me in.”

  He spread his hands, smiling wryly. “It was a lifetime ago, but I remember it like yesterday. I’d brought a stag into the camp as a symbol of my commitment to rid Gazluth of Tiernon, and your grandmother was embroidering it into all my clothes while I recovered.”

  “What was she like back then?” Merdon asked as Lyeeta listened, rapt.

  “Half starved, dirty, poor and grieving,” Besmir said. “But she saw something in me, something she could believe in, and has stuck by my side through thick and thin ever since.” Besmir felt a pressure well up inside his chest. “Gods, I love her for that!”

  “This reminds me of the trips we used to take when I was a boy,” Merdon said, changing the subject. “I used to get on mother’s nerves the whole time leading up to it, and the night before we went, I never got any sleep.”

  Merdon grinned. “To go hunting with the king! Just the two of us in the forest; it felt like such an adventure, back then.”

  Besmir smiled at the young prince’s admission. He had not known at the time just how important those little trips had been, but was glad he had made time for them now.

  “I never got the chance to go with your father,” Besmir said. “He was never one for sleeping on the ground and living in forests. Always preferred his home comforts. And who can blame him, after what happened?”

  At Lyeeta’s frown, Besmir realized she had no idea about his son being kidnapped by a God and held captive by a demon in a desert.

  “Merdon can tell you the story,” Besmir told her. “I need to sleep.” He climbed wearily to his feet. “Don’t be up all night, you two,” he said, wagging a finger at them but smiling.

  The King of Gazluth stepped across to the pile of blankets on the ground and unrolled them, kneeling before climbing in. Merdon’s hushed voice lulled him into a dreamless slumber, the only image in his mind before he slept fully the face of his wife.

  Emmerlin woke wrapped in the hot embrace of a royal guard. The sun had already begun its climb into the sky, and the day was wasting away. Senechul moaned when she pushed her way out of his arms, but rolled over and carried on sleeping.

  Unbelievable!

  He could be up and ready to fight in a second if he heard a strange sound in the night, sword in hand, facing anything that might threaten. Yet she could shove and push, kick and pinch him, and he never woke, just carried on snoring.

  Emmerlin shook her head but smiled. He does look peaceful.

  The mutilated corpse not far away was a different matter. Emmerlin had made him scream until he was hoarse, his throat no longer capable of making a sound as she stripped his skin off and held burning wood against the flesh beneath. She had left him one eye to see what she was about to do; the remains of the other had slowly dribbled down his cheek as the evening progressed.

  Eventually, she had grown tired of listening to him wheeze and moan, crushing his throat and breaking his neck with a blast of raw power. Within seconds, she had thrown herself at Senechul, adding the pleasures he could bring to the pleasures of killing and torture.

  “Wake up, lazy!” she shouted now, dragging the blankets off his body.

  “Really?” Senechul whined. “I’m still tired.”

  “Up! It’s late.”

  She watched his muscular frame as he rose, naked, from the bed they had shared. He was powerful and strong, but she could easily destroy him with a thought if she wanted to.

  Abruptly, something exploded inside her mind. A vision of her father, his face a terrible mask of rage and retribution, stalking her. Panic grabbed her chest, robbing her breath as she backed away.

  His eyes burned into hers, judging and condemning her as he advanced inexorably towards her. One of his hands rose slowly before him, and flames leaped towards her, bathing her in fire and agony. Emmerlin screamed, falling to the floor and thrashing.

  “Emmerlin!” someone cried. “Princess, what’s wrong?”

  Strong hands shook her, the pain bringing her back from the illusion to stare up into Senechul’s worried face. “He’s coming,” she said, in a sickly, scared voice. “Coming to get me.”

  “Who?” Senechul asked.

  “My father,” Emmerlin said, shaking. “The king. Besmir.”

  “Well … yes,” Senechul said. “You thought he would. I thought you wanted him to come, you know, so you could...” The gua
rd glanced at the mutilated body covered in flies a few feet away.

  He doesn’t understand.

  Had her father planted something in her mind when he had forced himself in? Emmerlin had no idea, but the thought of facing her father suddenly filled her with utter terror, and for a split second she considered abandoning her plan and running away.

  I could be happy with Senechul, couldn’t I?

  No. There was no way she could just abandon all her plans. She would be Queen of Gazluth and see her father dead at her feet.

  Emmerlin took in a deep breath and sat up, taking Senechul’s hand to help her to her feet. “I don’t know what that was,” she said. “I’m better now. Let’s go.”

  Yet while she helped him pack up their supplies, and used her power to throw the four corpses into the woods behind the clearing, she could not shake the image of her father’s face from her mind.

  He faced a God and lived. What chance have I got?

  13

  Khaleen winced as she tried to roll out of the cot, her right leg apparently unwilling to obey her commands. She managed to sit up and then swing both legs around until she was perched on the edge of the simple bed.

  The outside world was tantalizingly close; bright sun shone down on green fields where her army was camped. She had to get there and see what was happening.

  A dull, general ache with occasional flashes of pure pain set up in her thigh, and Khaleen doubled over in an attempt to make it stop. I thought the pain was supposed to have gone.

  She looked down at the bandage on her leg; fresh blooms of red blood dotted it like flowers. Curious, she started to unwrap the bandage, winding it around and around her leg until her leg was bare. Horror and revulsion made her gasp when she saw what the doctor had done to her.

  The wound ran almost all the way from her knee to her groin. Puckered and bright red, hundreds of small knots were tied in the skin, strands of her hair that were holding the wound closed.