Into the Raging Mountains Read online

  With a direction stirred specifically by his oncoming hunger pangs and his survival instincts, Ilion attempted to rise. It was not graceful. Any gathering-trained priest would have scoffed at his ungainly actions, but he struggled on.

  His pinned arm began to ache with the return of feeling, and the release of pressure from the staff's awkward placement. Turning slightly, he was able to gain first his elbows and then his arms. Blood rushed back into veins that had almost bled out, veins that channeled the heart's blood pumped with renewed conviction. Half rising on his knees, supported by the staff planted firmly in the center of the bed, finally he was able to lift himself.

  *

  Alizarin's leg was released from its imprisonment. Scooting off the bed, away from both Ilion and Theress, Alizarin stood, still holding the sparkling amber glow. Checking her shoulder where the dagger of night had struck, she was not surprised to find that there was a new mark on her skin. Slightly star-like in the pattern of scarring, there was the remnant of a deep wound long since healed.

  Shaking her head in wonder, looking closely at the shining light from the miracle gemstone, she took in the whole of the room and their dire situation.

  *

  Ilion followed her.

  Rising from their would-be-deathbed, he felt a renewed sense of kinship with the fascinating woman. The light held the monster clothed in Theress’s skin immobile, though that solution was only temporary at best. After all, how long can they all sit in one room waiting for the fight that was sure to come?

  Ilion turned to Alizarin, asking solicitously, “Are you well, then?”

  “Yes. Praise to the Gods. Or maybe I should say praise to the light?” she answered, chuckling.

  “I know this has all taken a great deal to understand. Do you think you are ready to make a move for the door?”

  Nodding her agreement, Alizarin half turned to go, reaching back onto the bedcover for her dear cloak. Pausing, she searched the ground and the bed nearby, all the while brandishing her open palm toward the perilous statue. “Ver?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where's the sapphire? My mother's sapphire?” Looking on the bedcover, she continued, “I must take it to Him. I can't leave without it.”

  Ilion nodded, and looked as well, examining the bedcover. “Alizarin, just stay still. Keep the beast off our backs. I'll find it.”

  A few moments later, he had success. “Aha! Here, it is!”

  Picking it up from under the pillow where it had fallen, he handed it to her waiting grasp, though not before they both saw a beam of blue light fly from the stone and fill the room, eclipsing the topaz's light. Once it was placed into Alizarin's hands it glowed strongly, and there she stood, one stone in each palm.

  *

  My very own light show! Alizarin laughed to herself, grateful to be alive. She backed away from the bed precisely with succinct steps, surefooted and determined. Focused, with her life literally hinging upon her next few actions, her eyes never left the glare of pitch black that emanated from her light-bound captive.

  When she got to the doorway, she was surprised that Ver was not already there. She listened for some sound to tell her of his location. There was nothing. Afraid to break the visual contact between the yellow stone's glow and the transfixed monster if Ver was not safe, Alizarin had no choice but to wait. Ver had regained control of the honeycombed staff.

  On the edge of becoming impatient, and acutely aware that danger still lurked around every corner, Alizarin hoped to gain a few meager moments before Theress was loose again. She looked around the room and located a tall-backed chair. Pocketing her blue stone back to the safety of her recovered purse, she dragged the cumbersome wooden-spindle-carved seat to directly outside the door. Mindful as she was to keep her hand in plain and direct sight of that fearsome woman-thing, the task was not quickly done.

  Still, Alizarin planned it out in her mind first to increase her slim chance of success: stand in the doorway, jump back, slam the door closed, and jam the back of the chair under the doorhandle. She was pretty sure she could do it, pretty sure it would be enough, pretty sure it would work and she could hobble out of the doomed house ahead of the impending disaster.

  A voice called, “Ready?”

  She nodded, ready to act on her plan to barricade the room with the monster trapped inside. Yet she was still shocked when Ver struck. A gaping hole appeared in Theress's side, right under her ribcage. Roughly the size of a large apple, it almost seemed to blossom there, growing in devastation. Against a captive prisoner? To strike so hard, to attempt to kill the helpless, it revolted her even as she logically understood his motives.

  It was their lives or the monster's. Even locked temporarily in a room, the frightful beast was not containable and the fight that almost killed them both would rain on their heads again, utterly devastating in its outcome.

  She knew why he did it. She just hated that he did.

  “Oh, Ver. It's awful,” she whispered. A tear fell down her cheek, staining her dress collar.

  Chapter Thirteen

  True Friendship’s Price

  Alizarin? Alizarin, is that you? What goes on here?” a new voice called through the shadows.

  Surprised, she turned, looking down the hallway to the approach of a man. Rethendrel! She felt shock, then doubt. What do I say? Was he a beast too? Or still her friend? A man or a monster? Or both?

  “Alizarin?”

  She looked at his eyes as he walked towards her. Alizarin waited, judging. She wished the cloak that was tied around her waist was instead resting lightly on her shoulders. Had Rethendrel succumbed to the disease that festered and bred in this country farmhouse? Formulating a tale in her head, she struggled with the right words to say to a man she would have thought her ally. Grateful that Ver was literally out of sight, she could only watch and guess what to say next.

  “Where is everyone? It’s near time for dinner and there are abandoned fields, empty places, and vacant bunks.” Running his fingers through his lanky hair, he sighed, “Do you know where they are? This whole farm seems deserted. Odd, I tell you, odd.”

  The words just came out, almost blurted, “Top of the evening to you, Rethendrel!”

  His face wrinkled in slight annoyance that she did not answer his question, but still, it was a sweet, familiar pattern that always began their conversations. A note of a smile lifted his troubled eyes. “And the rest of the day to you as well, Alizarin.”

  Noticing the warm light blooming in her hands as she turned slightly towards him, Rethendrel stopped in surprise. His trader eyes took in the glow and the size of the stone. “Whoa! What’s in your hands, there?” he said.

  “That’s a treasure, Alizarin. Where did you get it? Why is it glowing? I’ve never seen any give off so much light. Mighty pretty. Mighty pretty.” He appraised it, considering. A stray thought surfaced, “Shouldn’t you put it somewhere safe? I’ve a locked box you can use if you want.”

  Alizarin’s shoulders shrugged, half an answer, half a question.

  Looking around, Rethendrel’s gaze searched beyond Alizarin’s face, into the darkness of the room beyond. “Theress? Is that you, dear? Theress?”

  Brushing past Alizarin, who made no move to stop him, Rethendrel walked into the bedroom without any apparent fear or concern.

  “Theress? Darlin’?

  Alizarin could only watch as Rethendrel walked towards the nightmare that wore his wife’s face.

  “You alright?” he asked the unmoving creature.

  As Rethendrel reached Theress’s side, he stepped into the line of sight between beast and stone. He reached for her, alarmed at her lack of response. He only had just begun to make out her form in the scarce light emanating from Alizarin’s hand when he obviously noticed the terrible hole of emptiness that marred her side.

  Alizarin could see the puzzle, alarm, and fear assembling like rallying soldiers for the call of war on the battlefield of his face. He looked back at Alizarin, stunned
.

  Alizarin moved closer to the room to give Ver more of the topaz light. She did not know what Rethendrel might do, or whether he was in danger, but she feared Theress’s attack would be renewed at any moment.

  There was a disgusting, sucking sound. The open wound in Theress’s side closed slightly as an invisible power was removed. Alizarin knew that Ver had pulled the staff loose. Walking away from the side of the monster and her loving spouse, he probably skirted the edges of the room.

  Rethendrel’s face was marred by the cast of growing anger.

  Gaining the advantage of the doorway, Ver brushed past Alizarin’s guiding light, careful to touch her gently on the arm as he passed. “Clear,” he whispered.

  Clear? Clear? Turmoil and sadness filled her mind.

  Keeping her arm aloft and taking care that it would fill the room’s gloom until the last possible second, they began to close the door. She could see clearly that when Rethendrel stepped across the pathway of light that bound the woman-thing, awareness had returned to the beast’s eyes. Alizarin’s last glimpse of the room was of Theress falling, collapsing toward the floor as Rethendrel caught his wife, crying out.

  With the swiftest of movements, Alizarin slammed the chair under the doorhandle and pulled up, creating a lock of resistance. She fervently hoped that Theress would be unable to follow them.

  Ver took her hand, and started to half-jog, half-walk away from the terror. Alizarin’s grip left his abruptly.

  “No. No, Ver. I can’t just go. I have to know about Baby!”

  Turning from Ver and the protection of his invisibility, she hurried down the hallway. A lifetime passed in the few steps to the site of invoked, blackened power. Broken door remnants greeted her, haphazard wooden remains that had been thrust rudely aside by a being much stronger than Alizarin. The interior of the room was covered in blood and spilled dull-black wax, still warm. The puddles intermingled.

  A human form lay tossed aside in the corner, partially clothed. Like a small girl’s doll, she was splayed on the floor: a broken plaything, useless. Alizarin went to her side, raising the battered and torn body from its discarded position. Lifting her up, holding her shoulders, Alizarin cradled her friend. Most of one arm was gone, with two large tears in the bodice of the dress through which Alizarin could easily see the devastating rips that marked the bird-monster’s preferred means of hunting and disabling its prey.

  A wordless sorrow gripped her. The flow of blood within her heart was so constricted by the devastating pain of loss, it truly hurt. With a cramping, clenching sensation, Alizarin’s heart and mind mourned her good friend. “Oh, Gretsel, I failed you. Somehow, in some way, I could not do enough. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know, did not want to know that you carried such heavy burdens.” Hugging the mangled body, uncaring of the blood marking her already stained dress and apron, Alizarin wept.

  Ver stood in the dooropening, watching. Guarding her farewell, his eyesight ever on the approaching hallway, his ears trained to hear the slightest sign of footfall.

  Gretsel’s blue lips moved slightly, forming words.

  Startled, Alizarin could barely hear anything. She leaned close.

  “All for Londer .… All … for …” Alizarin could hear her struggling to take in one last breath. As her wounded body bled out onto the floor, Gretsel opened her eyes and looking up at Alizarin, whispered, “Baby …”

  Her head lolled back, still as stone, stiff in death, torn and discarded on the floor. Alizarin could only cry for a bitter moment. Such a waste. Such an awful waste. Was there no mercy from the Gods? No undoing of the great poison that her friend had willingly unleashed?

  From the doorway, Ver stood uncloaked, watching the final moments. As the dead body collapsed in on itself, becoming smaller, less somehow than the living person had been, he called to Alizarin. She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. He held her weary attention for a moment more and then deliberately turned the direction of his gaze to the rumpled bed.

  Alizarin’s face lit.

  She took care to lay Gretsel’s empty body down gently, placing the remaining arm across the ragged chest, closing the blank, staring eyes. Alizarin’s hands touched the hair on the crown of the dear head in parting, almost the stroke of a lover, truly the farewell of a friend.

  Gaining her feet, Alizarin did not have difficulty locating Baby.

  Partially covered in the crumpled sheets and bedblankets, a little face peeked out, seemingly in the gentle hands of slumber. At first, she was terribly afraid Baby was dead, so quietly did he lay. Drawing back the blankets a tad, his downy hair stirred with the rub of the fabric and his eyelids fluttered. He did not awake, but turned his head away from the disturbance. Asleep!

  Unspeakable joy welled up from the fountain of Alizarin’s heart, gushing outward, filling her entire body so that she began to literally shake with the surge of happiness. Hands clasped together in a soundless clap, she covered her mouth to stop the shout that demanded to be heard: Alive! Looking at Ver, she could see his reaction to her discovery, as a slow beaming smile emerged from within his heart and lit his face.

  Leaning into the room slightly he whispered, “You know we have to go.”

  It was a moment of clear decision.

  Without a second thought, she scooped up the discarded traveling bag that she and her friend had packed for their sunrise walk, ages ago. Throwing in all the basic necessities that had rolled out of the opening back into the sack, she sped around the small room gathering any extras she could find. The main problem was milk for such a little one. She certainly didn’t have it. It was imperative that she find something soon, preferably before they left the Corded Farmhouse proper.

  Alizarin knew that the feeling of relief when safety was found would be worth almost nothing if she could not manage to save Baby too. After all, if she left him, who was left to care for the fat, little, goofy thing? Betrayals abounded in this desecrated place, but not on her part. She would not deny Gretsel’s last words.

  Bundling the still sleeping infant tightly against her chest, Alizarin placed the bag of supplies for him across her shoulder. She nodded to Ver, who had been waiting and watching with a deep furrow across his eyebrows. “It’s just so chancy. But the only way I see us getting out of here is past their door.” No need to ask of whose door he spoke. “Keep baby quiet as you can, and we will try to move out of here.” She nodded.

  Ver vanished, then grabbed Alizarin’s waiting hand. Cloaked with the help of the staff, they began moving back down the hallway, towards the terror of darkened, distorted nature that was momentarily, temporarily imprisoned.

  *

  Walking next to Alizarin, he thought wryly, Nightmares never stay truly contained. They seep, and seep, and creep up onto our waking world. This old farmhouse was no different a setting for battle than the desecrated temple of his long-forgotten childhood dreams. Except that the nightmares and creatures of blackened purpose were very real within these wood and plastered walls, real and intent on his friend’s and his destruction.

  Ilion did not doubt he would die should he have to face another fell bird or even the severely injured one he had contained. He had no weapon to stop its preternatural attacks. He couldn’t help but admire its elegant efficiency, even though the damn thing kept trying to kill him.

  He had a feeling that he had seen something similar somewhere before, maybe in a wall carving or an old manuscript. The hazardous nature of the attacker, and the dire wounds its claws and beak bestowed all had a familiar reference for him, just not one he could put a finger on.

  It will come to me. Hopefully, soon enough to make a difference.

  Lately, he was always on the run and getting knocked around with alarming frequency. He clearly needed some new skills and much better equipment if he was going to outlast the hunters that seemed to surround his steps, on and off the farm. Although I am not going to complain. At least I have the staff, and know how to use some of its potential.

>   Ilion had always worked with the certainty that the ends do not justify the means, although it had cost him quite a few employment opportunities within the Dressarna community. It was a simple concept that he had been taught in word and deed since he could remember. Take care of the person first and the task will take care of itself. If only life were as easy as his childhood teachings had made it seem.

  His mind started to think of locations they could run towards, things that might set them on a stronger pathway through the gloom of the present. All the while, Ilion lightly tread a step ahead of Alizarin and their newest companion, holding her hand, extending the staff’s shield of protection. They neared the imprisoning door.

  They skirted around the still-propped chair, moving forward with great care, always ready to fight. Tensely watching the doorway for devastation emerging, they were pleasantly surprised to make it past the troublesome spot with no hint of provocation given.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Ilion couldn’t help smiling. This was going to be much easier than it had appeared.

  Baby stirred. He looked around, shifted a little and contentedly burped. Loudly, the rolling sound echoed back down the empty spaces, burbling down the hallway.

  Alizarin only had time to look towards Ver before the stillness was shattered. They could not see much, but the force of the door hitting the opposite wall, the leaning chair slamming into the ceiling, and the accompanying sounds were unmistakable.

  Running before the chair had even landed, they did not dare stop to look back.

  The screech of anger, the cry of fury, the caw of destruction burst out of captivity and came after them with a vengeance.

  There was no time for talk—no time for thinking. Just run. Run as fast as I can, as far as we can, out of the constrictions of the house. Get out! They ran, and the monster flew after them with a deadly desire.