The storm had moved off, it's battling flashes and responding explosions reported its increasing distance from the massive bridge above, obscured in the moist darkness.
Refraining from traveling through the shadows, Charlan made her way up from the bottom of the ravine. Though steep and still slick from the storm's fury, she launched herself ever upward with powerful thrusts of her legs. She would gather herself for the leap, enjoying the coiled power in her limbs, then throw herself into the chilled darkness. Eyes closed, mouth perked with a smile, she sailed soundlessly through the night.
Pausing, she considered what the night had yielded.
A search of the river and its banks had produced no sign of Lady Kyla. She and Ascwin had made a thorough examination for some distance. They discovered no sign of her. Not a hair. Not a scent. The murky waters must have claimed her.
Her mouth dehisced as a chuckle sprang from her throat, exposing her gleaming teeth. The open night gobbled up the sound. Silence reigned again, settling regally back into its unruffled throne.
Lady Kyla was dead. Lord Markham had followed right behind her. And Masis Domrae was in the perfect state to be influenced.
If only all my plans had worked this smoothly, thought Charlan, I'd have complete control of Haimlant by now.
With a quick nod of her head she began to spring from foothold to foothold, as assuredly as a mountain goat, leaping a couple dozen feet at a time. Breathing as evenly as one strolling along a city street, she rose up along the craggy rock face. She soared through a layer of fog and burst through the other side to find the bridge looming there, a massive growth of a structure flowing between the two sides of the canyon. Barely stopping, Charlan sprang off a thin lip of stone. Coming to the apex of her arc, she simply stepped onto the rocky beam with not even a bend of her knee.
Above, filtering through the lattice work supports, both Mani and Mona shone down. But still their light made the night skeletal, sharpening the shadows and making their prospects bleak.
Hopping from the low, square ledge, Charlan just stood for a moment on the bridge, the opposite side some yards away and the suspension beams high above well outside the height she could jump. Truly, a structure only conceivable in the imagination, solid and firm, as though having sprung into being from the mind of some god in an instant. She had not known the person responsible for the Work she now stood on. It could have originally sprung from the mind of a distant relative, it had the solid lines and commanding presence that her lineage had been most noted for.
Charlan's mother had first instructed her in Works.
Perfection was the expectation. Nothing else would do. That lesson was made painfully clear. Molding her talents to conform with the family's reputation, her mother and, occasionally, her father had instructed Charlan in lesser works. With time came greater Works—rooms, buildings, and other structures. None had impressed her parents.
Then a young man had entered the picture, a youth eager to praise and genuinely impressed by Charlan. Starving for affirmation, hungry for affection—a childish need—she grasped onto those tender expressions. Their son, Andsek, had resulted from their time spent together, time manufactured by sneaking, lying, fabricating, and manipulating. For a while, her pregnancy had been kept hidden, but as with all things that progress the inevitable came: discovery. Both the pregnancy and the lover, in one fateful moment, exploded on her parents. They in turn exploded back upon the young, expecting couple, tearing them apart, sending Charlan off to some backwater in Haero to have the child and exercising their parental prerogative to have the boy executed.
With gritted teeth and a growl, Charlan chased the lingering pain into her mind's very darkest recesses. She had been a fool for drudging the memories back up. What was the past but a foundation for greater things? What was pain but evidence of weakness in need of correcting? Sorrow was for fools and weaklings.
To Manu for all I care with Works! Charlan's eyes narrowed, still roving the bridge's proportions. Haimlant will be mine!
One of the deckhands, bearing a lantern made his way along the bridge, headed back toward the rail-ship. A whistled, quavering tune wobbled out from his glowing bubble. His lifelight trembled as his eyes darted about. He headed straight for Charlan. He stopped short when he finally saw her standing there.
Manu, her face ever ruddy, crested the horizon and tugged on Charlan, enflaming her hunger, deepening its intensity, slipping past her control.
"Lady Telias?" The man asked, drawing close to her. His frame visibly relaxed as recognition came. "Oh, Lady Telias, did you find any sign at the bottom of the gorge? No one could possibly survive such a fall, could they? I searched a ways back, but no luck. I'm afraid we lost..."
Charlan's hand shot out crushing the man's throat.
His rambling words gurgled off as his hands tore at her own, trying feebly to free himself. Mouth agape, eyes bulging, the man's lifelight, shook, running itself into its corporeal limits as though to escape.
Here, let me free you, thought Charlan, bringing the man's reddening face closer, eyes locking with his.
She drew his lifelight into her, allowing it to naturally flow to savor the sensation—not quite a taste or a scent. A deliciously shuddery sensation that set every inch of her to tingling with warmth and euphoria. A sensation that came and went in an instant.
Surprisingly pure for a man his age, thought Charlan, not quite satisfied, as she tossed the now corpse over the edge.
In her mindeye, a brief flicker below the bridge's lip made her pause. But nothing remained in her mindeye. Not a glimpse. Not a glimmer. She shrugged, moving off. Her mood had to account for not draining every last bit of lifelight from the deckhand. Sloppy, possibly, but the fall would certainly remedy any error made on her part.
Clapping her hands together, rubbing them furiously, Charlan strode off, energy thrumming through her.
It was time to put that boy's grief to good use.
*DON'T FORGET TO VOTE*