Erdil
When the ice giant exploded, Avétk crouched over Emeline's slump body and dropped the axe next to him. Her face was paler than ever, the bones poking at the skin stretched over her face, a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her breaths shallow, her limbs limp. In spite of all this, she was beautiful, and as the ice showered down on him, around them, he looked once more upon her lovely face and swept away stray strands of her hair.
The ice particles tinkled and crashed, green light reflected off them and set the entire room sparkling with a rainbow of colours, mixing with the burnt umber of the cavern walls and the black of the shadows. The lights played like the Northern Lights in the air and touched Emeline's skin. His heart ached for her, for her pain and her beauty, and because he had failed to protect her. Even now, the sight of her thin blue lips stirred passion in him, not the kind he had felt watching a lusty barmaid, or the kind he'd experienced when first he had bedded a woman. This stirring was not only of the body but of the soul, and it had come upon him without his notice, so that now he would give his life and even is afterlife for her, no matter how strange their relationship was or how ruthless his curse became. The only thing that wasn't quite right for him, was that she seemed so much younger than him. Certainly, she had never shared her age with him, or with anyone, but her appearance was that of a youth, barely a few years older than Brushä, perhaps.
The last ice clinked down, and in the silence that followed Avétk sighed. This girl was too young for him, no matter what his blackened soul told him, curse the moon. He had to put these feelings aside, serve her as one vowed to her—the Girl Child of the Prophecy—not as a lover. This thought crushed him, but it was right, and he had done so little good in his life. Let her be the one thing he got right.
The passion in his chest turned to a burning ache, as if an arrow had pierced his chest, and it burned up into his eyes. One tear escaped and fell on her cheek, and he leaned in and kissed her. Just once. Surely the Fathers could grant him that one grace. He closed his eyes. Her lips were soft and supple, and cold as ice. The feel of her skin touching his jolted through him like lightning. His heart raced and he breathed in deeply as a fierce wave of desire washed over him.
Then their lips parted, another tear cut down his cheek. He turned his face away, and saw at last what havoc had been wreaked of the cave. Where before the ground had been near even—besides for giant stone structures—boulders had toppled, rubble had crumbled from the walls and the roof of the hollow, and ice, some of it melted, some of it shattered, covered everything. The smell of the air was crisp and fresh, like the smell after a thunderstorm. But none of it mattered. Avétk's melted heart was breaking all over again, turning to stone. To ice.
Determined to do right, at least this once, Avétk picked her up and walked back to where Ol'Finlug had been digging. The rest of the party gathered around, Ketiya wiping sweat from her brow and cleaning her knives on her pants. Before them a deep hole revealed a glowing orb. The Mage, his arm around Denirya, leaned forward and touched the end of his glowing staff to the orb. Deeper into the cavern a grating growled like a slumbering beast. A door. They followed Finlug blindly, with only the green light glowing from the Mage's staff to light their way, until they found an open doorway from which yellow light glowed. Their destination.
#
A voice chanted, rough and wizened, and the chant tugged at Emeline's consciousness. "Come to," the voice seemed to whisper and to growl in a language she did not know, "come to!"
And with a jerk, her eyes opened, and she felt, again, the fire in her abdomen where the Dark Woman had burned her with lightning. High above her was a rock roof, burnt umber and chiselled, with light cutting through it—sunlight—though from her angle she could not locate the gap from which it shone. She was flat on her back, and what she saw blurred and came into focus with waves of fever and weakness that ebbed and flowed. The unfamiliar voice continued its chant as she lapsed into sleep, and after a time reawakened. How much time had passed? The light seemed different, and the pain less. Much less. Her pupils shrank and she found she had the strength to sit up, feeling at her stomach as she did, but the hole was gone. Only tender skin remained, which burned when she touched it as if her body remembered that bright bolt.
'Avétk?'
His hand gripped her shoulder, and when she turned to see his face, imperfect as it was, her heart skipped a beat and joy filled her. A tear threatened to drip from her eye, but she blinked it away and smiled with tight lips. 'It's so good to see you.'
For a brief moment she saw the warmth she had come to love in his gaze, and then it was gone, and Avétk bowed his head. 'I am ever at your service, Child of the Prophecy.' He knelt at her side, but his eyes remained on the floor. 'Forgive me for failing to protect you, as is my duty and honour. I—' His voice broke. 'I've failed you.'
What was this? She wanted to lift his chin, but something inside her stopped her, a voice saying that no sworn warrior would have his chin tilted up by a child, and that she, as the Child of the Prophecy, shouldn't have been finding excuses for him anyway. His proclamation echoed and fell into a long silence, and Emeline looked around at the others.
Ketiya, a knife in her one hand, an apple in the other, sitting cross-legged on a sturdy wooden table pushed against the far wall of what she now thought to be some kind of cave. Farin, frozen in mid-conversation with the hooded Apprentice who looked like an incarnation of death with the black cloak's hood hiding her face, seated near to an enormous black cook pot simmering over a fire against the wall behind her. The pot was so big they could probably chop up Giants and boil them for supper in it. Emeline's overactive imagination supplied her the images of huge, bloody chunks of human flesh dropped into boiling water. Ugh. And to the other side of the pot knelt a woman, old—perhaps as old as the Forest Mage, her grey hair frazzled, just past shoulder length, and her clothing stranger than any Emeline had ever seen.
Her mouth dropped open, but the woman smiled at her. 'You awaken at last.'
This was her, the voice that had chanted her to healing, the rough and tender voice of a woman with wisdom deeper than a well, but wisdom bought with loss and suffering, for there was that hint of ache to her speech. From a shadow which Emeline thought might be a way out of the cave, the Mage walked, his dark green robe as regal as ever, accompanied by another stranger. Probably the strangest of all, because he looked just like the Mage except that his skin was more leathery, and his clothing was brown and old just like the floppy hat he wore. They seemed to share a comradery; it was in the way they walked, with a similar gait, and the way their smiles tilted when their eyes met as they neared her.
'Holy Fathers, child,' the Mage exclaimed, 'at last you return to us! This—' he patted the man in the hat's shoulder, '—is Finlug, my brother.'
Her mouth hung open. 'B-brother. Huh.'
The Mage smiled affably and patted his brother's shoulder, but then the friendliness left his face and he knelt at her side. 'We have little time left, and we have travelled far and sacrificed much...' He looked past her, at the beam of light cutting at a slant from the roof down to a pillar on which lay something she immediately knew was more valuable than the crowns of all the kingdoms together. A book.
'Guiseila,' the Mage said looking at the strangely garbed woman, 'is she ready? Can we do this now?'
The woman smacked her wrinkled lips, her palms rested on her knees. 'We have no choice, we must do it now. Each moment the Darkness grows and our chances weaken.' Her neck cracked as she suddenly looked up, past the beam of light, her eyes swirling just like the Warden's had. 'Cannot you sense it gathering, amassing like that reddest day when the North bled? Even now the Ysberg kneels to her whims and a new red river cuts down its side like the tears of a mother's loss.' Guiseila's voice took on a ghostly tone, sounding eerie in the echoing cavern with its grating, aged rasp. 'Die tyd kom, en is nou, dat die profesie se gebeurtenisse begin, en die eerste van vier deure oopgebreek is. Die Meisie Kind verrys van die as van haar gelede en breek die deur van vergetenis.' The storm left her eyes, and she blinked twice while everyone stared at her.
'That, my dears, was prophecy at its finest,' the Mage said. He offered his hand to Emeline, and Avétk leaned back on his haunches to give her space. 'Come.'
She did, but when she stood her legs nearly buckled from under her, and before she could take a breath, Avétk was at her side, wrapping his arm around her waist to help her stay up. He grunted as she stepped lightly forward, ignoring the weakness in her legs. The Book looked like any other she'd seen, except bigger and older. The pages looked like slices of gold in the sunlight, and she found inside she hungered to read it. This was the Book of legends, and hadn't she craved adventure, a life with meaning, a destiny worth her life? Here lay the answer. She sucked in a breath and shrugged off the Mage and Avétk, who retreated. She hobbled the few feet left to the pillar, and grabbed onto it before she could fall.
The pages were blank.
#
One second Avétk was holding her frail body up, and the next she was gone. 'Emeline!' He and reached for where she had been, catching the air as if it was to blame, then turned, enraged, on The Mage. 'Where is she?' Spit flew with his words, but The Mage was as calm as ever.
'Right here.' He indicated at a space next to the pillar on which the book lay. Emeline appeared out of thin air, and Avétk rushed to her, mindless of everything else. Kneeling beside her, he swept the hair that hung like a veil around her face away, and she met his eyes, but her eyes were not her own. Storm clouds swirled in them, and her pale skin had taken on a yellowish hue. It looked as if she was about to say something, pushing herself up on her arms, but instead she wretched on the floor to Avétk's side.
'What's happening to her!'
'Don't worry.' The Mage folded his arms. 'She'll be fine.' He watched her like a man watches the dice being rolled, having fixed them to roll in his favour. It made Avétk angry. He reached to help Emeline up, but with her head down, she pushed his hand aside and rose to unsteady feet. Stumbling, she toddled towards the old woman, and collapsed in her lap.
The woman—Guiseila—did not look surprised, and she curled her arm in support around Emeline's back the way a mother would a child, stroking her head soothingly. 'Let her rest, now.' She looking at each person in turn. Avétk last, and her gaze lingered on him until he nodded.
How was it Emeline had chosen to sleep in the arms of a stranger instead of his? He'd vowed to serve her. But then, it was best for them both that she had, even if it hurt him. She was not his to want at and long for. She was her own; it was best that he put his feelings for her aside. Still it stung, he had thought she trusted him. With dark thoughts swirling in his mind, he headed for the shaded corner furthest from everyone and dropped to the earth, leaning his head back to look at the light coming from the hole high above in the ceiling. From this far away, it seemed to be sunlight, but it wasn't possible. He had been in this cave long enough for at least a day to have passed, and the light never moved or changed. He closed his eyes and tried to forget Emeline, but that left only corpses and death and violence to think on. Just like his bloody dreams. Joheyn burst into his mind, guts spilling from his body, and Avétk cringed at the sharpness of the memory. It had been his first kill, one he would always regret. Perhaps the worst of them all because he had been a friend, and so young.
Something touched his shoulder, he jerked and struck out.
'Hey,' Ketiya said, 'careful there Clove.' Avétk swatted at her again and she ducked.
'Don't call me that.'
'I thought you'd like it. Better than vagabond, isn't it?'
He glared at her balefully.
'And it's past tense.'
'Yeah, if only it was.'
'Hey.' Färin walked up and bumped shoulders with Ketiya. They shared a look, like the look boys gave each other before they flung mud at passing wagons.
'Prince charming,' Ketiya smirked and tucked her thumbs into the tightly bound straps at her hips. 'Welcome to the shadows.' Her raspy voice dropped an octave and the lording looked suddenly uncertain.
'What're you doing here?'
Avétk laughed. For a rich man, this boy was more gullible than he'd have expected.
'I was just saving this here Cleaver from the darkness in his thoughts.' She jabbed a thumb at Avétk. 'Got anything to add?'
'In my experience, the darkness isn't the thing to fear, it's the light that takes from you all you think you are.'
Avétk was stumped. Ketiya's mouth hung open. He'd expected a shallow joke, perhaps a jibe at his mood. But never such wisdom.
'The light, you say? I've never heard that one before. Aren't the Fathers seated in light, bathed in glory? And they're good.'
'That's what they say, but what I saw—felt...at least in the darkness I knew who I was, what I was, even if that was not all I had hoped.'
'Yeah, I know the feeling.'
Färin sat against the wall next to Avétk, and Ketiya joined them, crossing her legs and flicking a dagger from its scabbard straight into the air. She caught it with ease and smiled at them. 'So, what do you think she saw?'
'I was wondering the same thing,' Färin said. 'I heard that when you read The Book, you get your heart's desire.'
'I heard that the Fathers write in their own hand and show you the thing you need most to succeed in life.' Ketiya leaned closer conspiratorially as she said this, and Avétk was reminded of the countless times she and he had sat by fires as she told stories. 'Perhaps you should take a look.' She shoved Färin's knee. 'You might see how to wield a sword.'
'I happen to be a grand wielder of swords of any kind.'
'What about an axe?' Avétk got to his feet and went to fetch his axe where he had left it. That had been tardy. He wiped dust off its head as he walked back to Ketiya and Färin, then held it out to Färin. 'Here, have a go.'
PS
O-M-G. Man, I know I take forever to post these each time, but I am excited to hear your honest thoughts? Something you didn't like? Anything you did? Oh, oh. Before I forget. This chapter is dedicated to one of the three awesomest authors EVER who has now joined Wattpad. Go read his stuff. srsly. Why ru still here?
© Joy Cronjé 2015