North by Northwest (storyline)/Chapter 2 (vignette)

Rheshay

“Keeper o’ the Ember Vale…” A voice crackled like grinding bones as it mocked from deep within the shadows.

She could never forget that voice, or that face, or that stench. But it wasn’t just the blood of their enemies that he was bathed in. Now she could smell her own. A people she vowed to protect against all odds and all threats. A people she fought and defended. A people she would die for. Soon she might just do that.

“Have ye nothin’ ta say?” Tyeid folded out of the shadows as if detaching from the darkness. His eyes were like sunken pools of a starless night, partially concealed by matted locks of reddish-brown hair. Ashen bone studs rose with his eyebrows when he spoke, and one clanked against his sharpened teeth when he grinned.

He grinned a lot.

She hated that and hated him.

Tyeid thumbed at the nightshade purple eyeball dangling from a cord around his neck. Twice he pulled it up to his mouth, licking it and smiling wide as he paced before her cell. Cage to cage to cage. That had been her life most often these days. But she cared little for her own imprisonment, so long as her people were free. Currently, that was not the case. Some were lost to the Hills of Koar, some entombed in Arachne’s embrace, while others hung in the balance.

“Keeper…” he laughed again. His dark eyes sparkled in that moment, so full of himself, so enraptured in delight. “There is still a place for ye. Take the blood. The shield is nae how we survive. We are ta be the spear.”

She would not answer him again. Her mind had not changed. The warchief would come for her. Hagga’s blood or not, his mind and heart were true for their people. She would wait, and knew that on that day, if Koar should have it, she would bite that grin off her enemy’s face and feed it to him.

A shuffling came from the shadows behind Tyeid. Figures approached, swathed in red robes, with their hooded cowl bathing their faces in darkness save for the glistening sheen of their eight ruby eyes. Shambling in chains behind them came several reivers, some warriors still bearing fresh wounds and some children with wide eyes trailing them.

Tyeid almost squealed when he turned around, slowly circling each prisoner as he inspected their faces, arms, and hands. He pointed to half of them, then motioned to the right, and they were escorted away. Those that remained, he motioned to the left, and they were dragged off.

“What is ta the left?” Rheshay finally spoke from the solitude of her cell.

“Oh! She speaks finally.” Tyeid grinned, his dark tongue flicking across the bone stud of his lip.

“What is ta the left?” she asked again, foolishly. She knew the answer.

“Dinner.”

Enisius

“Is this it?” The man’s voice cracked with age.

The wizard blinked in response. It was still never enough, it seemed.

“I have a collection a hundred mages would salivate over.” Enisius tried to foolishly reason with his father.

“The room is small, is all I’m saying.” Ferwin strolled along a wall, lifting a few trinkets off a shelf, turning them around as he surveyed them and put them back down. Immediately Enisius flowed to the shelf, rearranging every item his father had touched. Every single one.

“Little dusty in here too, don’t you think?”

“Dusty?” He looked around, squinting, inspecting, eyeballing for any speck of dust. Not a single one.

“It’s not like home, is all I’m saying.”

“This is home now.”

“That’s what your mother and brother keep saying. Just doesn’t feel like it, you know?”

“Do you want to go back?”

“That ain’t what I’m saying. You’re not listening boy. You read so much, you think so much, sometimes that’s a bad thing.”

“I do not understand.”

He truly did not.

“It’s okay, your brother gets it. Which is good. At least one of you do.”

“Can I help you?” He straightened more of his belongings. Dusted off a few. But they were already clean.

“How’s that reiver bolt coming along?”

That was not what it was called.

“Still storming the castle soon?”

He wasn’t literally, no.

“That lady in the forest sure is creepy.”

“You would need to speak to Elidal about that.”

“Ain’t my business, she just feels odd, is all I’m saying.”

“Can I help you?” He fought hard to hide his agitation. He was unsuccessful.

“Don’t get worked up boy, I just came to visit, and maybe give you some advice. This isn’t like back home. You mess up there, we eat less for a while, but we remake our profits in time. You mess up here, people die. We can’t remake people.”

That was not true. “My team and I have processed over one thousand and seven calc….”

Ferwin laughed. He shook his head. “Boy, there’s always going to be surprises in life. Hell, you were one yourself.”

“We were?”

“Not what I said.” Ferwin chuckled, “But you have to be ready. There’s isn’t a book on everything.”

Also, not true, but he let it go.

His father walked to the door and turned back. He touched his face. It felt odd, his father’s skin on his, his eyes upon him. It was as if Ferwin saw someone else and wished for someone else.

That he knew, was true.

“This could be a good thing, for your brother, for your mother. This could be home. It ain’t yet, but it could be. Don’t mess it up, is all I’m saying.” With that parting wisdom, his father left the room.

At once, Enisius rushed back to the shelf. Then the desk. Then the chairs. He dusted every spotless item in the room until night fell beyond the windows.

Haidan

His blood would deliver a people to freedom.

That’s what he was told. That’s what the heavens depicted in the blood of the intestines smeared upon the ground. That’s what was proclaimed from the mouth of a serpent, no, a spider. He was declared a savior for his brethren, the heir of a warrior and witch, one who would claim the mantle of warchief and define a new future for the reivers.

Now he was none of those things. But oh, there was blood.

A trail of it as he stumbled more than walked through the forest. It had been hours, perhaps days since the battle. Since the betrayal. It wasn’t even ironic. Arachne was known for such, why expect anything less from her servant. He still felt feverish. The sounds of the woods grew more and more distorted with each passing moment. Every time he blinked; new tears filled his eyes. Every time he swallowed; more blood filled his throat.

A lesser man would have succumbed to his wounds, or even the weakness of surrender. He was content to die, as all true warriors and leaders would one day, but he would not accept it on that day. He was blind to the web of his true enemy all around him, but he refused to let the spider prevail.

He slumped against a tree to catch his breath, to steady his thoughts and feet. From the forest he heard a snap. Faint as it was, it was still nearby. Haidan held up his hatchet, the handle almost slipping from his blood slicked grip. Metal, fist or teeth, he would go out fighting.

Her eyes were the first thing he noticed. Dark, vacant, but enthralling. She reminded him of a ghost, a great specter of the woods with skin paler than he had ever laid eyes upon. Pointed ears, he knew her to be an elf. What kind he could not tell, nor did he care too. But the lattice work of black veins along her brow, it took him back. He thought for sure an agent of Tyeid’s stood before him. His fingers clenched and he prepared to strike.

“I do not belong to any of your enemies.” The woman spoke, her voice quiet and serene like the calm of a storm. “But you know this, you see this and feel this. Because you are still a great man and a leader of a great people.”

It was seconds before he noticed his axe had even fallen. Its bloodstained shaft resting in the foliage at his feet. He grew weak in his legs, fighting back a bout of dizziness. In his vulnerability, the elven woman closed the distance between them. Her hand was already to his chest, palm against his exposed skin.

“Let me mend you, let me guide you. Your destiny is not written in blood, but in stars.”

Her voice trailed as he watched the ground rise up to meet him, as he landed with a thud, his eyes drawn to the scarlet smears along his weapon before darkness set in around him.