by Will Bly
Kay leaned back. “Works for me.”
Irulen scratched at his nose. “Same.”
Farah slapped her hands down on her thighs and stood. “Settled.” She took a step away and halted at the sound of Kay’s voice.
“Wait.” Kay stood up. “There is the small matter of rape.”
“Rape?”
“Among the accusations. He raped a woman, allegedly.”
Irulen stood. “You think he did?”
She shrugged. “How could I have an opinion?” She gestured to the man. “I don’t know him. None of us do. But if he...” She fell silent. Sorrow tugged at her eyebrows.
Irulen put his hand to her arm. “Yeah, sure. We’ll turn him in. Let’s ask him about it, though, at least.”
Kay nodded.
They made their way around the fire to where the strange criminal sat tethered. The fire warmed Farah’s back as she watched Irulen stand over the scoundrel. The man flinched as he was spoken to.
Irulen used a hand to brace himself against the tree. “We want to know something.”
“Ye—yes, anything.”
“The charge of rape.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what?” Kay’s eyes flashed with anger.
“I never raped anyone. In fact, I’m quite sure I’ve physically harmed less people than you lot.”
“The accusation just blossomed randomly? Why would they place a bounty on an innocent man?”
“As random as a dandelion in a field of lava. No, perhaps not so randomly, but the accusation was a result of angry parents. Anything that transpired was more than consensual, trust me. Her flower blossomed three times, if I remember—umph!”
Kay’s foot pressed against his crotch. The movement had been so quick he was left with no time to respond. Farah’s eyes ran away from the potentially violent scene. She found Irulen’s face. He was wincing at the fragile grapes underfoot.
The crook wriggled like a bug pinned to parchment. “Look, listen, just listen—it was love.”
Kay leaned forward, applying more pressure. Desperation tore the man’s eyes open. “Really. I swear to the spirits! She was a local girl. I was the enigmatic traveler. I was casing the place—the town treasury. She was in the market place and had these big blue eyes.” He pointed at Irulen. “Kind of like your man-friend here.”
“Irulen,” the wizard said.
Farah, feeling excluded from the interrogation, jumped in. “What was her name?”
“Lara. Such a pretty, smart girl,” He smiled slightly, his voice lowered. “She made me want to be a better man. Her family, though, wanted little to do with a wayward wanderer like myself.” A sigh followed, then silence.
Kay applied more pressure, twisting her foot.
“Ow, ow! It is a typical story from there, one you’ve heard many times before. Her father found us consummating our love for each other—for the third time that night. I barely escaped with my life. The father, being so unsatisfied with the amount of pain he was able to inflict on me before my escape, registered my bounty. He doesn’t want me in jail, he just wants me to pulverize into dust. What we did was consensual, but her family lied to protect her honor, and her honor is worth protecting. So I have not publicly refuted the fact.”
Kay hadn’t yet removed her foot, but the man’s face sat lax and straight. A pensive, retrospective look, Farah thought, but is it true? Or is he selling us? Something told her the truth lay somewhere in between.
Kay finally backed off and turned to Irulen. “What do you think?”
Irulen shrugged. “There is no way to tell if a man’s being truthful with a foot on his pearls.” He reached out an arm to stop Kay from having another go at the man. “That being said, it all sounds reasonable enough. God knows I’ve had my experience...” Irulen’s voice trailed off.
“Oh, do tell.” Farah found her thoughts pouring through her mouth again.
Kay raised an eye at Farah’s interest.
Irulen’s eyes darted back and forth. He smiled. “I’m sure there’s little interest to be found in my old war stories. I was young and foolish once. The end.”
Kay laughed. “You were young and foolish! When, last night?”
Irulen returned the laughter, but a shift in his stance suggested to Farah he was growing uneasy. His eyes met hers for the most split of seconds. The fire felt hot on her cheeks, forcing her to turn from it for a moment.
Irulen scratched the back of his head. “Well, uh, the point is that families get protective of their girls, you know. Relatives can be… a little bit overzealous.”
Kay shook her head. “Over—what?” She sighed.
“In a way it means excessive.”
“Just stop.”
“Very well. But I believe him. Enough to not relieve him of his testicles. Not yet, at the least.”
“That makes one of us.” Nevertheless, Kay removed her foot from the scoundrel’s nethers.
“I did say ‘yet.’ I have no reason to trust him, though for now let’s keep him in one piece.”
Leofrick, who had seemingly waited for his moment, jumped back into the conversation. “Yes! Please… One piece… Besides, I will be useful to you. I’m an adept mushroom farmer, for starters. I can show you the trade—good for cooking. Do one of you like to cook? Do you have a cook?”
The group fell silent. No one seemed to know how to respond.
Leofrick frowned and moved his gaze from face to face. “What? Did I say something wrong? My apologies. If there is any way I can make it up to you...”
His words faltered over the empty air.
Farah couldn’t help but remedy the situation. “Yes—you did say something that touched a nerve. Our cook… he’s in some trouble, you see. We’re going to help him…” She looked from Kay back to Irulen. “But Leofrick is right, isn’t he? We can use a cook, and the silver…”
Kay spit on the ground. “Like demons I’d eat what he cooks. He’ll poison the lot of us.”
Irulen mulled it over. “We could always make him eat the first bite of whatever he cooks.”
Leofrick chimed in, “Well, I was hoping one of you might say ‘We could try trusting him!’ But I find such terms agreeable enough. Perhaps, in time, you’ll feel differently about me.” His smile flashed in turn to each of them.
“This tires me,” Kay said as she drew her blade and menaced the captive. “The bounty says dead or alive, you know.”
Leofrick outstretched his bound hands in a defensive posture.
Kay raised the dagger high in the air and drove it downward with deadly speed.
Chapter 8: King Rat
Quinn sat in the darkness, lost in a vacuum of space and time, but at least now he had a friend. Ratsy the Rat. Ratsy because, well, Quinn never fancied himself creative. The name Ratsy suited his furry companion just fine, especially since Quinn wasn’t even sure about its gender. He spent a long time gaining its trust. It felt intrusive to check its private parts. As used to the dark his eyes had become, he couldn’t make out the underparts of the creature. And using his hands would simply be out of line. No, Ratsy’s gender would wait for better days, like it mattered anyway. Maybe once I find out, I’ll call it Ratzetta or Ratzo. Quinn smiled at his new-found innovation. Darkness is the inventor of all things.
Quinn leaned his head back against the wall—something he came to be thankful for—and closed his eyes in thought. He wondered if Ratsy would eat him if he died. He was pretty sure rats ate each other, so why not him? Quinn: the human who gave food in life to Ratsy would give food in death. The gift that kept on giving. A mountain of Quinn-meat. Well, good. To oblivion with everything else. He hoped Ratsy raised a family on his flesh. A rat dynasty to rule over this shithole for generations to come.
Hail King, or Queen, Ratsy! Signed, your ever-devoted servant, Quinn.
Once mighty, now frail.
Once a holder of fortune, now devoid of any worth.
Once a charmer of bar maidens,
&nbs
p; Designed to drive people like me insane.
Such a feeble thing, the brain, and I wasn’t too bright to begin with.
So what am I now? What will I soon be?
Nothing. I’m nothing.
But he still held worth. He was worth something to Ithial. Ithial would’ve killed him otherwise. Why else would he waste the bread and labor keeping him alive and watched over?
A pawn? A joke? A toy? Do I serve many roles?
He lost his thoughts. He couldn’t get them back. He remembered how frustrated he felt earlier in his captivity, but that seemed a long time ago. Too long ago to be angry about. A trickle of wetness ran down from his scalp. He pressed a palm to his face. His skin felt moist, and he didn’t know why. Did Ratsy pee on him as it skittered around him before? Did he cut himself and bleed somehow? Was it just humidity?
His fingers worked along the blemishes of his face. His digits washed over each mound of grit like a wave. His skin was at once dry and oily. He wanted to rip it off, tear it all off, right down to the polished white bone.
He laughed and imagined those serpentine stooges coming in here with their great glowing eyes, just to see his naked skull smiling back at them. If he lived through ripping his own face off, he’d be sure to make his skull-smile chatter. Maybe they would laugh. He wondered what that would sound like, hissing and gagging. like a human choking on mucus. Still, he was curious.
Just then a loud explosion ripped through the hallways. Then another, and another. Quinn lept to his feet. Irulen, is that you? Boom, boom! The explosions grew louder and closer.
Quinn huffed and scratched his cheek. “Well, this is the end then.”
Boom!
◆◆◆
The trees passed in front of Quinn’s face. His head rested on a pillow, a cold comfort against the rumbling of a harsh-wooden cart. Even still, he had not experienced such head-comfort for some time. The trees disappeared, and he fell once again into a vacuum of time and space.
Every so often he surfaced for the shortest of whiles, only to be again submerged by the undertow of an unseen ocean. He would hear Merlane’s voice, clearer among the many others things churning through his mind, saying things such as “Sorry about the explosive entrance. Rest, you’ll need the energy, sleep.” Not that Quinn needed any convincing, but Merlane’s mantras kept his mind in a simple place—a place apart from the swirling doubts, turmoil, and rage. He was in a place beyond all of that, a place where a soul sheds its inessential possessions, the place where the soul retreats to heal.
His placidity was aided by the fact that his rat friend from the dungeons made it out with him. As the pendulum swung from reality to unreality, he watched his furry friend munch happily on a piece of cheese as it sat in a small cage near his head. Quinn couldn’t remember the thing’s name, but he was sure it would come to him soon enough. He never envisioned it as being albino, though, with light-pink eyes. He figured everything in that dungeon was either dark, black, or pure shadow, nothingness. An unfamiliar feeling stretched across his cheeks as he reached a hand toward his best friend in the world. Quinn realized he must be smiling. The darkness was unwilling to let go, however, and took him once again.
“Rest,” urged Merlane from above. “Rest all you can.”
◆◆◆
Who knew how long it had been. Quinn’s eyes were too tired to open. Beneath his lids, however, his mind woke.
It was Merlane’s voice he heard. “Awareness stirs behind closed eyes. Good. But leave them sealed tightly. You are safe, for now. I threw them off our trail, though Ithial likely knows our destination.”
“How long was I locked up down there?” Quinn asked.
“Not very.”
“That’s hardly an answer, is it?”
“I’m not one for straight answers, am I?”
Quinn sighed and slapped the floor of the cart. No, you old bastard, you aren’t.
Merlane laughed as if divining Quinn’s thoughts. The aging merchant fell silent a moment, then spoke again. “Your captivity, was it as bad as it looked?”
“It was dark.” Quinn squinted against the daylight. Darkness that I’d never known before.
Merlane’s face sagged, solemn and still. His mouth moved. “I know that sort of darkness.”
Anger pulsed against the walls of Quinn’s chest. Like hell you do. It took Quinn a long moment to swallow the offense. The car grinded on, hooves clopped softly.
“I felt,” he said finally, “that I had been tossed back in the ocean—back to that night where everything changed, my mouth full of seawater, my limbs aching and weak, and my eyes irritated and unreliable under a dark night sky. The moonless night. I was back grabbing at pieces of shattered wood, trying to gather enough to float… splinters tearing at my flesh. My blood mixing with the blood of the sea. My ears filled with the screams of the dying.”
Quinn paused, unable to speak as if a mage held his mouth shut with magic. So much remained to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Merlane obliged him with patient silence. After a series of moments long and short, Quinn squeezed out another sentence. “And then there was the silence… the worst sound of all.”
“Perhaps you never left the ocean behind. Perhaps you never will. The thing is—that day when the ocean swallowed your naivety—you escaped the water, but you never stopped drowning… only now you drown in alcohol and drugs, self-loathing and guilt. The dungeon’s darkness only made you face what was already there: the familiar pain of your soul. It is up to you what happens now. You’ve been gifted a raft, a means of change—will you sink or swim? A time draws nigh when you’ll have to choose. To forgive or resent: yourself and others. Irulen.”
Quinn groaned loudly. “Don’t presume to sway me, peddler. It is no requirement of mine to forgive anyone at any time.”
“Oh I disagree, it certainly is a requirement of yours. You may not think so now, but you are beholden to something deep inside yourself—a special place that nothing, not the ship wreck, nor betrayal, nor your captivity could touch. A special place locked deep inside that holds your very self—your story, the story that defines you.”
Quinn groaned again, but not as loudly.
Merlane smiled and continued, “Now this special, deep place inside you is surely buried in dirt and grime, but I’m sure you’ll uncover it again in time—I even brought you a shovel—figuratively speaking.”
Quinn cocked an eye. “What do you mean?”
“Look inside that sack in the corner to your right.”
Quinn reached over a pile of toys and trinkets to grab the indicated bag. It was lighter than he thought and almost sprung from its place as he pulled at it.
Merlane reached back with his right arm. “Careful! Careful now.”
Quinn took the caution to heart as he felt a familiar shape fill his hands. His spirits lifted as he loosened the top of the bag and pulled the thing forth. A fiddle—not his fiddle, sadly, but one very much like it. Nearly identical. A smile tugged upwards at the corners of his mouth as he fished out the bow and a block of rendered pine-tree sap. He ran the bow up and down on the block until the horsehair of the bow had just the right amount of grip to it. He sat up, chinned the instrument, and pulled the bow above and down onto the strings.
Something kept him from playing. His arm tensed with the desire to pull the bow across the strings, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make music.
“Gah!” he exclaimed as he slouched, placing the fiddle and bow beside him. A drop of water fell onto his lap. “Of course!” He laughed bitterly. “Of course it rains!”
“Not rain,” Merlane said poignantly, still looking forward at the road.
“Huh?” Quinn brought his hands up below his face. Droplets splashed into his palms. “Am I crying?”
Merlane shrugged his shoulders.
Quinn grabbed at the moisture streaming down his cheeks. I am, gods, I am crying! He didn’t feel the crying, however, as if his body acted compulsively without lettin
g his mind know what it was doing. He felt so detached from his feelings, unfathomably lost in a pool of apathy, that he pitied himself, and willed himself to let it all go. He grunted audibly and pressed against the spiritual constriction. His eyes went fuzzy, and darkness flooded his vision.
◆◆◆
“Forgiveness is a funny thing, easy to consider... but hard to give.”
“I haven’t even thought of forgiving him.”
Merlane waived a pointed finger about in front of Quinn’s face. “I know better than that.”
Annoyance crept into Quinn’s veins. He already regretted moving to join Merlane on the front of the carriage. He had to listen to the old man yammer enough when laying down in the cart. Now the man was insatiable in his desire to chew Quinn’s ear off.
Quinn shook his head. “Oh, you don’t say? You know better… Merlane, the know-it-all merchant, says he knows better. Must be all that traveling you’ve done, I bet. Left you smart and worldly. And spiritual-like too… a regular monk.” Quinn folded his arms and forced a smug smile.
There was no response.
Quinn cocked an eye and leaned in to look at his old friend.
Merlane’s grip on the reigns tightened as he looked onward. The brim of his hat seemed uncharacteristically low about his eyes. A shadow draped itself along the rims of his cheeks.
Chapter 9: Hanging Garments
The trees did not yet have blood on them. They were tall and looming. It seemed to Ithial that most of the branches stretched toward him in a warning manner. Go back, they said to him. There’s nothing good here. You will live to regret this. Go back! He pushed back against the urge to retreat. He had to bury his fear, or his companion would leave in a fright.
Efram’s wavering eyes already betrayed a level of discomfort. “The Blood Forest? Why would we want to go to a place like that?”
They wouldn’t. Ithial thought, but responded, “There are answers there—the location of the Crystal Caves, for one. The Scroll of Shadows says the Blood Forest is a step that needs to be taken.”
