DarkFyre Ch. 22

"Who put these runes on you, Ricard," the Knight asked, though he knew what the madman would say already.

"Sren," Ricard rasped through dry, blood caked lips. "Sren, my Holy Lord, he of the twelve. Sren of the Tower, where he is ever watchful, ever mindful of the roads and comings and goings in the world..."

"Why would Sren want me dead?" Rael interrupted the man's tirade.

"Why does a god ever want a mortal dead?" Ricard mused, and would have shrugged were he not bound so tightly. "Because you're a threat."

"How could I possibly be a threat to a god?" Rael asked. He felt foolish, asking the demented Brother questions to which there could be no sane answer, but part of him clung to the hope that he could tease out some thread of truth in the fools ramblings.

Ricard loosed a cackle of laughter. "You're right! My mistake! Maybe Sren wants you dead for a different reason, then. Maybe you're cursed! Or he just decided to do it for the fun of it! Gods are fickle, you know!

"Or maybe," Ricard went on, "Maybe you fucked one of his daughters! It happens, you know, Sren has lots of them, little she-bastards he makes with the mortals who come to visit his Tower seeking his shelter and succor. You never even know who they may be!"

Rael narrowed his silver gaze at the man. He knew, just then, that he didn't want to hear what would come next, and he gripped the hilt of his sword until his knuckles turned white.

"It could be her, you know," Ricard said, nodding over Rael's shoulder to where Silmaria approached them from the darkness. "There's just something about her, don't you think? Something different. Something special. She could be the half-holy little she-bastard that has the whole of the twelve questing for your head! And she'd never even know!"

***

Silmaria stayed away as long as she could stand.

Rael had expressly forbidden her from coming near while he talked with Ricard, ordered her to wait on the other end of the copse of trees, out of sight. She'd done as she was told, obeying her Master because she trusted him, and because obeying was what she did.

She tried to busy herself at first. She tended the horses, both of whom were beautiful creatures of strength and endurance and intelligence. Silmaria was no equestrian; she didn't know much about horses aside from how to ride passably well, and the general ins and outs of their care. But even she recognized the beasts as unique and exceptional creatures. She hoped they would be able to keep them on their journey forward; she wanted to get to know the horses better, to learn of them, and they could prove absolutely invaluable on their journey forward.

Silmaria tied their leads to a nearby tree on the offhand chance they decided to wander, though they seemed content enough. She stripped off their saddles and rubbed them down with handfuls of grass, scrubbing at their coats, and left them to graze at the thin grass and bits of scraggly shrubbery around the tree. She wished there was more plentiful greenery for them to enjoy, but right then, this was the best that could be managed.

There were tasks to be done, still. Camp needed to be set up, and she really ought to get some of their supplies out for cooking some food; both she and Lord Rael desperately needed to eat after all the chaos of the night.

But she was too upset to be hungry. Too upset, and too worried. So Silmaria climbed up into one of the trees and found a spot to settle in a crook between two sturdy branches. She pulled her knees up to her chest, and waited, staring out into the darkness of the night without really seeing anything.

She was scared. Scared for her Master. Scared for what was happening, over in the trees just a hundred yards away. She could hear their voices, muffled by distance, and the occasional, chilling bark of Ricard's laughter. His voice sounded totally different. The tone and pitch of it made her pelt rise with unease. When he began to wail and scream, Silmaria flinched, and she shuddered as his shrill laughter mingled horrifyingly with his screams. She did not want to think about what it was her Master did, or what it cost him.

Most pressingly of all, though, she feared for Master Rael's health. Even as he drug Ricard off to the other side of the clearing and forbade her to follow, he looked awful. His face was drawn and sallow, and even as pale as the man usually was, he seemed colorless just then. Blood was crusted all over his clothes and his body, seeping from more wounds than she cared to count. His posture spoke of fatigue unto death, and she knew only his stubbornly defiant will kept him on his feet at all. She'd said her thanks to the gods that Ricard had been unconscious and then bound and secured before he began to come to; she felt sure that even he, weakened and injured and no fighter to begin with, would have been able to fight off her warrior love just then.

And so, Silmaria waited. She waited, and she stewed, and she agonized over her Lord's condition, and the things he did that she didn't want to see and didn't want to know. It would be okay, she told herself. He did what he had to do, in search of the answers they so desperately needed. Cruelty was necessary sometimes. She knew that. Had known it as a hard truth for most of her life.

That didn't help her feel any better about the work her kind Master's harsh hands did that night. She just wanted it to be over, and then they could leave Ricard and his malice far behind them and be long gone before he or his brethren could muster their forces to find them.

So she waited. Silmaria reached up to brush the thick tumble of her hair from her eyes. She caught sight of the fur on the back of her hand matted with dried blood. Her Master's dried blood, smeared across her grasping hands when she'd helped him down from his horse. Then she couldn't stop thinking about his blood. On her hand. On his clothes. In his horse's coat, where she'd had to scrub it away with her handfuls of grass.

She fought the impulse, the fear and the anxiousness, as long as she could. In the end with a hundred terrible possibilities racing through Silmaria's mind, it was too much. She could stand none of them a moment longer. The Gnari dropped from the tree and walked with a false-calm she didn't feel over to where her Master interrogated the traitor Brother.

Initially, Silmaria was relieved when she saw that Ricard was still bound and Rael sat upright still, apparently unharmed. Then relief turned to a tight, queasy knot in her belly when she saw the blood soaking into Ricard's robes. She beheld the ruin that was a man, and felt her gorge rise.

Oh, Master... what have you done? What terrible thing has your answers driven you to?

"...And she'd never even know!" Ricard was saying, and his words ended in a coughing, cackling laughter that. He was looking at her with his fanatical, unnatural burgundy eyes, staring right at her and into her. Silmaria didn't know which made her feel more unclean, his gaze staring right through her, or the state her lover had put the man into.

"Shut your mouth, Ricard. Shut it or you will speak no more, I swear it," Rael said in a tone of quiet rage, the sort of rage that was vastly more terrifying than any explosion of white hot anger.

But Ricard just laughed all the more, long and cruel and free. Then his face suddenly went empty, and his disturbingly hollow eyes focused, and he was looking at her, staring through her all over again, his piercing gaze meeting her eyes and no matter how she tried, she could not look away.

"My god will find you, Lordling," Ricard said, though his gaze never left hers. "Sren will find you. He will find me. He is ever able to find his chosen. It's only a matter of time. And even if not, what does it matter? He'll find her, of course. He knows all his children. Every one of his bastards. She'll lead him right to you, and when he finds you, he'll cleave your skull from your shoulders, and take her, too. Gods are meant to be with their own, after all. She'll be his, and they'll make more beautiful divine bastards together."

Silmaria had no idea what the lunatic was talking about, but she felt a surge of uncomfortable dread rush through her anyhow, a spike of all-too real, primal fear that she couldn't name or understand.

Rael came to his feet shakily, and it broke her heart how unsteady her unshakable Lord was just then. He looked over at her with eyes full of uncertainty.

Silmaria watched him, confused and afraid.

"She'll writhe for him, you know," Ricard said with a devious little sneer. "She'll writhe for him, god-struck and willing, and beg to make more little godling bastard babies, just like her..."

Silmaria would have been horrified by his words, would have been outraged, and sickened, and demanded to know what the sick, broken man was talking about.

But she never had the chance. His words didn't even fully register past the sound of her own screams when Rael quite literally cut Ricard's hateful words short by lopping his grinning head from his shoulders.

***

I want to say a big 'thank you' for all the encouragement and positive feedback that I received after my long absence before the last chapter. A lot of you expressed relief that I hadn't disappeared and let the story die! I'm deeply appreciative to my readers and their support, and even though this chapter took me longer than I would have liked, I'm just glad it wasn't as long as last time.

As some of you know, I wasn't very happy with Twenty-One. I am much more pleased with this chapter, and I hope that it showed an improvement to all of you, because to me at least, it feels worlds better.

As always, all questions, comments, critiques, and other forms of feedback, good and bad, are welcome, encouraged, and needed! I love to hear from you guys and grow this story into a bigger and better thing with all of your help! Thank you everyone for continuing to read and enjoy with me!

On to the next!