The Taking of Talora Ch. 02 - Talaine

Author's note: While it isn't strictly necessary to read The Taking of Talora to follow the events in this story, I would still recommend it for some background.

As always, please note the tags, and steer clear if any make you uncomfortable.

Talaine sat at the vanity table in her room regarding the envelope before her. The wax seal bore no insignia, and the only writing on the envelope was the letter 'T', but still Talaine recognized the long, slanting penmanship of her old friend, Priscilla. Besides, who else would have sent her a covert missive? She had few correspondents, and only one had been tasked with supplying secret information. Her heart sped up, wondering what Priscilla would have made of her message. Perhaps she had forgotten Devar, had perhaps purged herself of his remembrance in a way Talaine imagined she herself never would.

It had been three years to the day since Talaine last saw her brother. She could not forget the date; it had been his eighteenth birthday, after all, and the keep had been bustling with preparations for the feast they would hold in Devar's honour. Her father, Lord Rusten, had been in high spirits despite his failing health, for finally he had seen his heir grown to manhood, and could rest easy in the knowledge that his people would be well governed should the worst come to pass.

They had been in the dining hall, the family seated at the high table on the dais with their honoured guests, while others of the household and visitors of lesser rank filled the benches and tables below, their voices raised in a jumble of laughter and spirited talk. They had brought up the finest wine casks from the cellar, with no hint of the watered-down ale that usually graced their tables, and Talaine, then sixteen, had been made silly with over-indulgence. She giggled at something Priscilla said, for her brother's betrothed had been equally intoxicated, a new experience for the both of them, and everything had been so very funny on that bright afternoon, when it seemed wonderful to be young, and alive, and a fine lady.

Presently Talaine picked up the envelope, considering its heft, her fingers tracing the wax seal. Was there something inside? Almost it seemed that, as long as the message remained unopened, hope would prevail, and she need not face the crushing disappointment she had known time and time again in her search for her brother.

Her mind picked up the memory, willing her to watch the events unfold once more, and in instant she was back there in the dining hall next to Priscilla, laughing while Devar watched with mock disapproval from his place near their father. It had been time for the toasts, then, and Talaine had often wondered, in the years since, whether the monster had been watching them all along, and had chosen that exact moment to make his entrance all the more dramatic.

As it was, Lord Rusten had risen to his feet, Talaine's mother, Talora, beaming up at him as she handed him a goblet for the toast.

Silence had fallen in the hall, all eyes fixed on Lord Rusten and his family on the dais. Months of illness had stolen the flesh from his frame, but he was still every inch the lord where he stood at the head of the table, broad shoulders bedecked in a rich mantle of cobalt blue, one large, pale hand curled around the fine goblet his wife handed him.

'I bid you welcome, one and all,' he had said, and his voice carried easily in that large space. Cheers of 'hear hear' met his words, for the lord and his family were well loved. Rusten waited for the noise to settle, his eyes fixed with warmth and pride on his eldest child, the young man who so greatly resembled him in spirit, if not in appearance.

The hubbub had only just died down when it suddenly roared to life once more, and for a moment Talaine had not heard the horror therein, so that she joined her voice to the others with an enthusiastic cheer of her own. But the exclamations of alarm and disbelief grew and drew her gaze to the far end of the hall, where stood a nightmarish thing.

She knew it for it what it was, even before the word 'troll' met her ears. Taller than most men, the creature was clad in a robe of shimmering silver, with hair of green and black tumbling in loose, dirty tangles across his shoulders. Above a long, jutting nose, eyes of glowing blue regarded the assembly.

'My thanks for your warm reception,' said the troll, with shocking clarity for so base a creature. The only response to his arrival, surely, should have been an armed charge as every capable person sprang to slay it, yet no one moved. In another instant Talaine understood why, for she found she could not set down the wine she had been holding, could not turn her face to look at her father, could do nothing but watch as the creature came closer with long, slow strides, his gaze seemingly fixed on Talora, the lady of the house.

'Ah Talora,' he breathed from where he now stood at the opposite end of the table. Talaine heard her mother's indrawn breath, but could not turn to look at her. She watched as the troll moved to her brother's side, her brother who sat frozen in the hold of the creature's power, unable to even look up at the horrible thing hovering next to him. The troll continued, his eyes still fixed on Talora, his words slow and almost soothing in their cadence, 'You are lovely as the day I had you. Do you remember? Has the memory of our coupling found you in your dreams, where my magic could not erase the recollection? You were splayed so deliciously on that altar when I filled you.' His strange, wide mouth stretched into a grin, showing long, sharp teeth.

Despite her revulsion, Talaine felt a strange thrill rush through her at the creature's words. What he was implying was unthinkable.

'How innocent you were, at first, how reluctant to part with your maidenhead. I did not even tell you my name. I am Neere, a king of the Atheer. Neere, who took Talora.' He chuckled softly, a sound that stirred all the fine hairs at the nape of Talaine's neck. 'Oh but how quickly your body begged for mine, how hungrily you drew the length of me into your depths that second time. I grow hard at the thought. Would that I could spill myself in you again after all these years, perhaps here, in front of your peers, in front of your husband.' He sighed. 'Alas, I have not the time, this day.'

His attention had been focused solely on Talora, but now swept along the length of the table. Abruptly his blue eyes fell upon Talaine, and widened, and his grin grew.

'So there is a new daughter of the house,' he murmured. He searched her gaze, then looked leisurely at the rest of her face, her neck, her breasts, lingering there as though he could see through the tight bodice and chemise.

'Leave her alone!' Devar shouted, his tongue apparently free though the spell that held him in place. Abruptly the troll turned back to him.

'Those are not the first words I thought to hear from my son's mouth,' he said wryly, and Talaine could not stop the hiss of disbelief she uttered. Surely he spoke lies, cruel and terrible lies!

Neere lifted a grey-green arm, inhumanly long, and in his hand appeared a silver mirror, springing into being out of nothingness. The gasps of disbelief that sounded around the hall assured Talaine that her eyes had not deceived her; the creature wielded magic.

'Behold your reflection, son of mine, and know yourself,' it said, and held the mirror before Devar.

Devar looked into its glass surface, his eyes widening in horror at what he saw therein. In an instant the young man who sat there bore another face: a grey-green countenance similar to the troll's, his untidy auburn hair turned to tousled strands of tawny green and black. Only the eyes still echoed what he had been a moment before, for they were his mother Talora's eyes, large and grey, and fringed with long, dark lashes that glistened now with the threat of tears.

'No!' Devar cried, from a mouth grown suddenly wider, long, sharp teeth showing. 'What trick is this? What have you done to me, monster!'

'The mirror has stripped the illusion you've worn these eighteen years. The face you see now, is your own true self. You are my son, as your mother can attest. Her memories should be growing clearer.'

A choked sob sounded from the end of the table where sat Talora, but Talaine could not turn her head to look.

'You are not the only one of your kind here,' Neere informed Devar, not unkindly. 'The seed of the Atheer can take root in even the most unfertile of soil, and many of my kind spent themselves in the women of this household that day near two score years ago. But I am the only one returned for my offspring, and so your brothers and sisters will live their lives with the continued illusion of humanity.'

'You lie, you vile thing!' Devar had cried, the tears streaming freely down his cheeks. The sobs at the end of the table grew more pronounced, and Talaine longed to comfort her mother.

'Enough, I grow weary of your denial. You have always known you were different, surely. Even the illusion I cast all those years ago could not block all your power as you were growing. It is time you discover what you really are. You will come with me.'

'No!' Devar had cried, but his body had not obeyed him; he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, then began to follow slowly behind the troll as the creature walked from the dais and strode down between the gathered revellers. Neere came to a halt near the entrance, turning to look back at the high table.

'Farewell, Talora,' he had called, but the lady was held by his magic and could give no answer, save for her wretched sobs as she watched her son being led away against his will.

It had been a full half hour before anyone could move again, and by then, the Atheer and his half-human offspring were long gone.

Presently Talaine set her nail to the wax seal and tore free the flap of the envelope. A handful of small green seeds scattered across the table, and she gasped as she rushed to halt their progress, then carefully gathered them into a pile before turning her attention to the letter. Her heart hammered with hope she could not supress.

'It was not easy,' Priscilla's writing informed her. 'I have paid a small fortune to procure the seeds from such characters as I hope never to encounter again. But I believe your goal is worthy, and if anyone can bring him back, it is you. May fortune favour you in this endeavour.'

It was signed simply 'P'. Talaine allowed her candle's flame to lick at the corner of the letter and envelope, then dropped them into the cold hearth where they slowly flared and burned away to nothing, removing any allusion to the forbidden act she was about to perform.

What would her mother say, if she knew? Talaine had not had the heart to ask her, afraid that her mother's warnings might drain her courage, and she would need every last dreg of it to go through with her plan.

Talora had not been herself since that day, three years ago, when her son had disappeared. No one had accused her outright of the vile things the creature had claimed, yet their whispers and stares followed her, speculating and accusatory. And all the while her husband grew frailer, the loss of his son and the perceived betrayal of his wife a double blow to one already heavily weakened by extended illness. Within four months, he was dead and buried, having never witnessed the return of the young man he had once thought his own. And Talora had disappeared into herself, a thin, wan imitation of the woman she had once been.

For three years Talaine had sought a way to bring her brother home, convincing herself that his return would somehow restore the keep, and her family, to what they had once been. She had spent countless hours poring over ancient tomes in the library, desperate for any mention of the strange Atheer, weeping sometimes as the most ancient of volumes crumbled to dust in her hands, their secrets forever withheld. No one had helped her; it had seemed, in fact, that most of the household were avoiding her. She had heard them whisper, sometimes, that she had been driven mad by loss, or perhaps was another child of the sorcerer troll, her heritage finally revealed in her reclusive, obsessive behaviour if not in her appearance.

Desperately she had searched, finding vague mentions at first, and later biological comparisons that turned her stomach, yet nothing that told her where to go, or what to do. And so the years had passed, and the remaining books grew so few that she had all but given up hope of ever finding anything useful, until one night she had discovered an unmarked tome, hidden behind ledgers of old naval charts. The book had fallen open at her touch, and she read on the first page the looping proclamation: Rites of Summoning. Her heart sped up its rhythm; she knew without knowing how she knew, that she had found the answer.

She thumbed through strange graphs and illustrations, glyphs and sigils, until a sketch caught her eye, a careful rendering of a tall creature that she had seen in dreams ever since that day in the dining hall, when one just like it had stolen her brother away. It was a spell of summoning, forbidden as all such rituals were, and yet Talaine knew it was the surest way, perhaps the only way, to discover her brother's whereabouts. She had gathered the materials she needed, only hitting a snag with the strange green seeds which were forbidden to cultivate. In desperation she had written to Priscilla, who lived in Belgura, a port city that saw the trade of anything and everything one could imagine, irrespective of its legality. She could not begin to guess how her friend had procured the seeds, but she had, and now the small green pile sat before Talaine, fragile and small, but a symbol of hope. Already her heart felt lighter.

'Thank you, Priscilla,' she whispered, closing her eyes to savour for a moment the sense of relief. Finally, she had all that she would need for the ritual.

Talaine went to her bedroom door and carefully pulled it open. The hinges gave a long, drawn-out creak that seemed to echo down the hall, but she saw no one. Following her brother's abduction, the household guard had been tripled, and though grateful for the security of their presence, Talaine had soon grown weary of the men and women who shadowed her every move. They sighed and rolled their eyes as she made her daily trip to the library, where they stood in quiet boredom to one side, never helping nor intentionally hindering, but distracting her nonetheless. Yet after the first year, a few months after her father's death, the guard on the keep had been relaxed again, for it became apparent that neither Talaine nor her mother were likely to venture beyond the keep, and if the trolls should enter again, likely there would be little anyone could do to bar their way.

Presently Talaine thanked the gods for the lack of guards in the hallway, and for the fact that her room was in the west wing, farthest from the servants' quarters and her mother's chambers; she did not know how much noise the arrival of a troll might make. Since it was the anniversary of her son's disappearance, and also his birthday, Talora was most likely deep in a drugged slumber; her requests for sleeping draughts had become more and more frequent of late.

Talaine pushed the door shut again, satisfied that no one would disturb her. Nonetheless, she drew the deadbolt into place, wincing at the heavy scraping, but no sound came from outside to indicate that she had drawn anyone's notice.

She set about her work, slowly drawing the symbols on the uneven stones of the floor. Several times she had to wipe at the lines with a wet cloth and redraw them to be straighter, or the loops rounder, but after half an hour she stood back, satisfied.

She had prepared the potion months before already, before she'd known the difficulty she would encounter with the green seeds. The potion ingredients alone had been tremendously difficult to acquire, and had taken two seasons of careful written inquiries and clandestine trades with peddlers who visited the keep.

Talaine raised the small vial so the light could penetrate its contents. The strange purple mixture had darkened in the months since she'd first put it together, and for a moment she wondered whether it might have turned poisonous, if indeed it hadn't been poison to begin with. She acted before the new fear could still her hand, unstopping the vial and raising it to her lips, before tossing back the concoction in one big gulp. She gagged at the taste but held it down, closing her eyes and forcing herself to breathe deeply while the strange, prickling bitterness faded from her tongue.

After a minute, she rose again to fetch mortar and pestle from a shelf in the corner, then set them on her desk, where she carefully began to crush the green seeds. Once cracked, they oozed a thick green sap, so that the mashed seeds soon became a sticky glob that clung to the pestle. The smell that rose from the bowl was strange, somehow sweet but pungent, and Talaine felt her stomach turn as the smell combined with the memory of the potion. She willed her thoughts to focus on the task. She must keep pounding the seed mixture until it grew dry again and began to flake, and by then the potion would have sufficiently found its way into her bloodstream.

It took longer than she had anticipated. Half an hour passed, then another. Talaine felt light-headed and strangely removed from herself, but knew she could not stop. She might never have this chance again.

Finally, the mixture was as the book had described. Talaine rose to her feet and staggered a few steps, overcome with weariness or the effects of the potion. She shook her head, fighting to banish her weakness, then sank to her knees with far less grace than she had intended, her limbs growing numb. But she had forgotten the knife. Groaning, she stood up again, careful not to smudge the pattern she had so painstakingly drawn on the floor, then found the knife where it rested in the corner of her desk.

Once more she dropped to her knees in the middle of the symbols. Taking a deep breath, she set the blade to her palm and drew it swiftly across her skin, wincing at the sharp pain that blossomed in her flesh even as her blood seeped into the gash. She held her palm over the mortar with the seed mixture, watching as her blood mingled with the green. For a moment it seemed to boil, large bubbles of green-flecked crimson forming at the surface, before the two substances fused, becoming a brown sludge. Into this Talaine pushed her finger, wincing even before she'd made contact, but then the sludge was on her digit, cooler than she'd expected and with no painful effects.

She began to draw the final symbol, being careful to use as much of the mixture as possible as she smeared the pattern of interlocking glyphs and strange runes. Her body seemed to tremble, though whether with weariness or fear or something else altogether, she could not say. Finally the last of it was done, and with her hand still resting against the floor, she breathed a deep sigh.

A finger was under her chin, tipping her head back. She looked up into the monster's large, grey-green face, and would have screamed, but his coarse-skinned fingers closed about her mouth and jaw with ease.

'Surely, you do not wish to wake the keep,' it said in a low, rough voice, and Talaine almost choked on the pungent scent of his skin pressed against her lips and nose. Mutely, she shook her head.

It was kneeling in front of her, and for a moment she thought it was the one that had taken her brother, the one that had called itself Neere, but when it released her face and rose to its full height, she knew it to be another.

It was tall, all of seven feet, but standing straighter than that other one, with less of the trollish stoop about its bearing. Still, this one seemed older, its hair more liberally streaked with silver and white. Its shoulders were broad, bedecked in a robe as that other one had been, though this one wore cloth of olive green with patterns that shimmered and seemed to writhe before her eyes. She wondered for a brief moment what that form might look like under the robe, but then caught a glimpse of something dangling where the fabric parted slightly below the belt, and a blush suffused her as her mind relabelled the creature a 'him' rather than an 'it'.