The will of the Gods is far beyond men's understanding.
- The Canon
[Ophelia]
One horrific event ripped the faith from me, leaving my passion betrayed. Over a lifetime, I had been taught to never question the Gods' will. Now I wished nothing of it. But even a perverse faith was something to hold on to. Now with my soul hollow and listless, I felt an uneasy kind of mourning. Losing my religion was not so easy.
Damn the Gods! There must be something better.
I witnessed firsthand the Gods' disregard for humanity. Do not actions reveal the heart, like fruit the tree? Nemesis ignored my pleas, mocking me as she slaughtered with sick amusement. Both the Goddess and Cyril spared my life when they could have taken it, one because I did not matter and the other because I did.
Now a mere man defined my destiny.
No. Not a 'mere' man. There was something more, something the Moirai part of me sensed whenever he came close, something that caused me to shudder. A vague dark abyss concealed itself within him, a churning maelstrom waiting patiently for release. Could it be the Chaos?
Cyril looked everyway like a man, a handsome one at that, stirring a long forgotten primal desire within my human heart. With deep moss-green eyes, wavy chestnut hair, and a strong dimpled face, he would turn the head of most maidens. His sleeveless brown tunic displayed broad shoulders and muscular arms, likely shaped from many swings of a blacksmith's hammer. And there was a kind gentleness in his eyes, even in moments of deep grief or anger, when he had every reason to lash out, that, perhaps, his greatest beauty.
He rode on one of the three horses we took from the village, freeing the other animals. Kit rode with him, rather than on her own horse, the arm of a protective big brother around her waist. They did not look like brother and sister, though, Kit having skin like a moonless night and tightly curled black hair that sprang out in all directions.
We stopped once to collect a brown and auburn burro named Dash, such a strange name for the stubborn animal. But it eventually heeded Kit's wordless coaxing. The two seemed to have a mutual affection for each other.
The dusty road wound between grassy hills and clumps of trees that huddled near creeks and washes. The low sun at our back illuminated the white-capped Piso Dráckos Mountains far ahead on the distant horizon, the pointed peaks like the backs of dragons for which they were named.
For the first time in my life, my destiny diverged from the Gods. It felt both frightening and exhilarating at the same time. I broke the silence, save for the clopping of hooves and periodic protests from Dash. "Where will your path take us, Cyril?"
He pointed ahead. "Eastward, past the mountains into the Forbidden Lands."
Hairs stood on my arms as a racing chill invoked a shiver. I recalled as a young girl the nightmare inducing tales of monsters that inhabited the poisonous lands, of sharp claws that snatched and powerful jaws that crushed. While each village had different versions of the tales with different monsters, they all agreed on one thing: the mountains were deadly enough to cross, but no man faced the beasts and survived. The Gods had forbidden men to enter, hence the name.
"Do you know how to get through the mountains? What will we face in the Forbidden Lands?" My voice sounded more desperately shrill than I wanted it to.
Cyril shrugged. "As to the first question, I have a map. To the second, I hoped you could tell me?" He lifted an eyebrow.
Shaking my head, I replied. "The Gods did not share that information with me. All I know are the stories and that written in the Canon. It says the Forbidden Lands are dangerous and entry not allowed for our own good."
He huffed. "I have no regard for what the Gods consider 'for our own good'. They hide something. I am sure of it!"
My gut reflexively twisted with his words, which went against everything I believed, or once did. But what if they were true?
Pointing ahead past his extended shadow, Cyril said, "Soon it will be dark. Let us make camp among those trees ahead."
I helped Kit prepare a simple meal of corncakes and salted meat over a fire while Cyril set snares along a sandstone bluff, hoping to catch rabbit for future meals. The tasks seemed second nature to them, as if they often traveled the Lands.
After supper, I rested on my bedroll with a pleasantly full stomach, lulled by the flickering fire and nearby trickling stream. I watched as Cyril laid two arrows on a blanket and removed the metal projectile points. Kit also watched, sitting upright while petting a contented burro who laid at her side. From a burlap bundle, Cyril took out two knapped obsidian points and attached one to a shaft, using sinew and melted pitch to bind it. The mirrored surfaces glimmered with reflected firelight.
"If I may ask," I said, "Why do you change metal to stone arrowheads?"
Before he formulated a response, I reached over and grasped a black point from his blanket. Pain! It felt like fire! A jolt shot up my arm, shaking my entire body, and I dropped the point in a clump of grass. But nothing else, not the grass, the blanket before, nor Cyril's hand when he retrieved the point, showed any distress from contact. Just as strange, it seemed to more injure the Moirai part of me than the human part.
I examined the burn mark on my palm, gritting my teeth at the continuing pain. My other hand touched my throat to a similar earlier injury, where Cyril had pressed the edge of an obsidian knife. Seeing my distress, he poured cool water on the burn, quenching the heat. Taking up my hand, he smeared on an ointment retrieved from the leather bag beside him. As a blacksmith, he knew how to treat a burn. Several marked his arms and hands.
"Thank you," I said, looking up into those deep eyes. The pain subsided, as much from the medicine as his closeness and gentle touch. "What are those stones that they would burn me?"
Cyril let go of my hand. "I was told they were infused with the Chaos."
My eyes widened. "But you touched them without injury. Why?"
Turning away, he sighed. "So am I."
I held my breath. He was the evil they taught me to fear, the enemy of men and Gods. But nothing about him seemed evil at all.
My Moirai senses tingled, interrupting the questions forming in my mind. I touched Cyril's arm and whispered. "Four men approach from upstream with dark hearts. I feel their threads."
In a flash of motion, Cyril grabbed two metal knives with triangular blades from his bag and jumped up. He signed something to his sister, causing her eyes to widen.
"Watch over Kit," he commanded me with an urgent whisper, then dashed out into the darkness. I extracted the glass long-knife from my shoulder bag, the one Athena had given me to slay Cyril, and crouched at her side. Having had no formal combat training, I hoped I would not have to use the weapon.
"Well, look here what the Gods provided," a voice cackled as four figures emerged from the darkness. "These two will be a suitable offering to Ares."
Another chuckled. "And to our purses."
I shuddered. An offering to Ares, the God of war, usually meant enslavement or death. I held up my knife in weak trembling defiance. That brought more snickers.
As they approached the firelight, I could make them out. These men were the vermin of humanity. Three of them, with greasy matted hair, soiled ill-fitting clothes, and bits of food trapped in their beards, looked the part. One held a chipped long-knife and two brandished rusty swords. They stepped forward, sneering. The fourth, a young man without facial hair, trembled in the fire-cast shadows of the others.
I stood and held up my knife. A dark bearded man holding a sword, apparently the leader, laughed, baring yellowed chipped teeth. "Stupid whore! What are you going to do with--"
Thump! The leader's eyes widened and jaw dropped. Teetering, he fell forward, crumbling face down onto the ground, Cyril's throwing knife extending from his upper back. The other men froze, gazing down at their leader, as if uncertain what to do.
I caught a glint of steel in flickering firelight as another blade whizzed past from the darkness, catching the other swordsman in the shoulder. He yelled out a curse, snarling as he yanked out the bloodied knife and tossed it aside. "Get him!" he commanded his companions.
Cyril stepped into the light, narrowing his eyes while pointing his obsidian knife toward the men in challenge. One man charged with knife held high, shouting a battle cry. The other young man froze in place with widening eyes, his heart not in this fight.
I knew not who would listen, but I said a silent prayer for Cyril.
My eyes snapped to the enraged, injured man. Crimson rivulets streamed down one arm and dripped to the dry soil. With a crooked snarl, he raised his sword and slashed the air between us, left and right in menacing bravado. Jumping in front of Kit, I held back a hand, imploring her to stay behind me. Fear gripped my pounding heart, such as I had not felt since a young girl.
Growling, the man rushed, bringing down the sword against my extended glass long-knife with a vicious swing. The blades met with a resonating clang. The force of the rush pushed me back. Tripping on a rock, I landed on my backside beside Dash.
"By the Gods!" the man mumbled, examining his broken sword, half the blade had fractured into pieces. He must have expected my glass knife to shatter instead. A greedy grin came to his face. "I shall have your weapon, whore, and you as well!" Pointing at Kit, he growled, "And that little one shall make a good pet."
The man stepped forward, discarding the broken sword and pulling a curved knife from his belt. I crab-walked backward, dragging my glass knife across the graveled soil. He advanced, his grin growing wider. Heat on my back stopped my retreat, trapping me between the fire and the man.
"Ophelia!" Cyril shouted, still engaged in his own knife fight and unable to assist me.
The man jumped forward, stomping on my wrist, pinning it and my knife to the ground. His weight pressed down, grinding my hand into the grave, and I cried out from the pain. Leaning forward, the man waved his knife in my face. Sour breath made me wince as he snorted.
"Run, Kit!" I yelled, but then realized she could not hear me.
I jerked as Dash let out a blaring bray. The burro turned and kicked with its hind legs, catching the man in the ribs with a hollow thump and sending him tumbling to the ground beside me. The knife fell from his grip as he grimaced from the blow.
Seizing the opportunity, I rolled and thrust my blade into his side, once and again, making a sound much like a butcher cutting meat from a carcass. The man turned his head to me, laying his cheek down in the dust and opening his mouth wide, but only a faint gurgle came out. Shuddering, I watched his eyes glaze as death made claim.
My gut twisted. As Moirai, I had ended many lives. With each snip of a thread, a heart stilled, death distant and impersonal by the Gods' will. But this was close and personal. I turned away, praying that the image would not etch itself in my memory.
Cyril came back into the firelight, his opponent now a motionless heap on the ground. He raised his obsidian knife at the young man at the edge of darkness, the only bandit still alive. The man's face paled and he dropped his knife, then sprinted away into the night.
"Ophelia, are you hurt?" Cyril helped me stand. As he drew near, I took in the heady scents of battle, blood and musk.
"I am well. Just my wrist."
He took up my injured wrist with his hands. "It is swelling. Let me bind it."
Again, his touch soothed me as he wrapped it with a band of cloth. Kit came to his side, hugging him, and they exchanged signed words.
Cyril smiled, ruffling the fur on the burro's head. "So Dash is a hero!" A grin came to his face, and he signed to Kit while speaking to me. "You might say Dash is kick-ass."
Kit slapped her forehead and pinched her eyes closed.
"Because you are also the hero." I kissed Cyril on the cheek, letting my lips linger. "I shall excuse that lame pun."