Healing Wounds in Arabarb
By Charles Matthias
For a Lutin, Yajgaj was oddly gentle with him. He didn't say anything
more to him as he guided him through the halls of the castle, down
three flights of stairs to where there was an obvious mildew scent to
the walls. Lindsey wondered how close they were to the river door,
but didn't have the heart to ask. Pharcellus had escaped with Quoddy
and Machias. Right now that was all that mattered.
Still, he felt so raw and numb that he couldn't have cried if he
wanted to. And he did want to.
"You go to Baron Calephas now. He not kill you," Yajgaj told him in a
strangely soft voice. "Yajgaj know that."
Lindsey looked back at the Lutin as they came to a solid, iron door.
In a timorous voice he asked, "Do you want me to feel better?"
The Lutin paused and studied him intently, yellow eyes narrowing with
a scrutiny that made Lindsey feel strange more than afraid. He looked
him up and down for a moment, ran his hand through Lindsey's hair,
and stared at his ears and face, and especially eyes. "Yajgaj want
you to go see Baron now." He tapped the tip of the guisarme on the
iron door three times, and then rested his free hand on the bone
knife at his side. In a very quiet voice he added, "These not for you."
Lindsey blinked, but he ceased wondering as soon as the iron door
creaked open and the almost mundane looking Baron Calephas stood
there staring down at him with his soft blue eyes. "There you are.
Did Gmork get anything useful out of him? It didn't sound like it down here."
Yagjag tapped the wooden end of the guisarme on the floor and shook
his head. "He not talk to Gmork. Then big dragon show up and kill one
of Gmork's whelps. We chase him away; we'll find him and kill him if
he comes here again."
Calephas's expression widened in surprise for only a moment before
resuming its contemptuous cast. "A dragon? So that's what it was. I
told him to take those damn birds two months ago. Never mind. Come
in, Andrig. Is that you're real name?"
Lindsey nodded as he stepped inside the room. Yajgaj waited in the
doorway behind him. The room beyond was pristine and nearly every
stone shined as if polished to glass. A broad oaken table with
beakers and bottles stacked in complex rows lined the wall to his
right. Behind this stood the tiger Keeper he'd seen in Calephas's bedchambers.
Chained to the left wall was what must have been a boy about his own
age. But the boy, naked as he was, was not a boy anymore. His flesh
had been warped in strange ways, producing odd deformities in nearly
every part of his body. From his backside something like a sickle
jutted out, and a long tail stretched between his twisted legs that
were pressed out from the side rather than descending straight from
his back. His face was contorted into a mock snout from which dangled
a long red tongue. His eyes were red and vacant, while his side was
covered in a million overlapping scabs a rich purple in hue.
Lindsey stared at the boy for one moment before his mind was able to
comprehend what he was seeing. Then he thrust himself backward only
to bounce off the Lutin's chest and fall to the floor as he started
to scream. A hand grabbed him by his collar, lifted him up and shook
him until he stopped. "I know you're an adult, Andrig. Stop screaming."
With a shove, Calephas tossed Lindsey into the corner next to the
table and the door. "You call yourself Andrig. I once had an Andrig
in my service but he betrayed me and turned me over to the
Metamorians living in Glen Avery. Are you that Andrig? Did you stay
there and let the Curses do this to you? Gmork says that it is
another spell keeping you young, but I know the cleverness and
craftiness of the Keepers. Who are you really?"
Lindsey glowered at him but said nothing. After watching Gmork's pup
devour Strom while still alive, he knew that nothing Calephas could
do would shock him any worse.
"Well, in that case, I suppose I may as well make use of you." He
moved to the far wall and undid the chains holding the boy in place.
The boy slumped and quivered a little, but did not try to get up.
Calephas grabbed him by one arm and dragged him out into the middle
of the room. He stroked across the smooth and twisted face, gently
placing his lips against the boy's still human forehead, before
letting him slump against the floor.
He turned to Lindsey, grabbed him by the wrist, and yanked him over
to the wall. Lindsey struggled a little, but Calephas was far too
strong. Soon the boy was shackled to the wall and could only watch.
The man walked around the collapsed boy in half circles, always
keeping Lindsey in view. "You see, I have been performing some
experiments. This boy has provided much important information to me
so that I might perfect my potions. Very soon, and I mean, very soon,
I will have it perfected. You, I hope, will be the last child I ever
need to test my potions on."
He nudged the still quivering but unresisting boy with his foot.
"This one, well..." he glanced at the tiger, who handed him a large
metal hammer. Lindsey shook his head and struggled against the
chains. The boy glanced up with red eyes at the hammer as Calephas
lifted it over his head. The Baron did not smile. "I don't need him anymore."
Calephas swung the hammer down onto the boy's twisted head, crushing
it down into the floor. The body and especially the long tail jerked
upward then fell back down twitching. The Baron lifted the hammer
again and swung once more, into his chest this time. Lindsey screamed
until his throat was raw. But Calephas kept swinging until the body
was a ruined crumpled mess that did not move at all.
He leaned the hammer against the wall, while the tiger carried to him
a rolled-up carpet. Taking the carpet in both hands, he threw it over
top of the unrecognizable corpse, spread out the ends so that they
were flush, and then laid down, using the lumps as if they were a set
of pillows. "Now," Calephas continued, "you say your name is Andrig.
Who are you really?"
Lindsey yanked his arms against the chains again and again, but he
couldn't even make them groan. He spat and tried to turn his face
away from the utterly calm and calculating man. "You monster! You're
going to burn in Hell forever. Forever!"
Calephas sighed and gestured to the tiger. "We don't need this sort
of useless posturing. Weaker, please procure for me some of his blood."
The tiger, with head bowed low, took a small glass dish from the
worktable and held it firmly amidst the sharp claws of his left hand.
He then strode silently on leather pads next to the struggling boy
and bending over, grabbed his arm with his right hand. He extended
his thumb claw, slitted eyes fiercely holding Lindsey's terrified
gaze, before pricking him sharply. Blood began to dribble from the
wound, and then into the glass dish. And though the pain was slight
compared to many wounds he'd endured, he still gritted his teeth as
the numbness spread across his arm.
When the bottom of the dish had been covered with his blood, the
tiger pressed the wound shut and held his arm tightly for several
long seconds. A faint growl lay beneath each of the beaten Keeper's
breaths. Lindsey stared at him, feeling a sudden certainty that he
had seen this Keeper before. But no name came to him. He was too
terrified to think that clearly.
Once the wound stopped bleeding, Weaker carried the small dish over
to the table and set it down. He then backed off to his corner to
wait Calephas's next command.
"You may be wondering why I care about your blood," Calephas said as
he rolled back to his feet and climbed off the blanket. He walked to
the table and after picking up a small vial, he proceeded to drop
some blue liquid into Lindsey's blood. "I need to know," he said as
he swirled the liquid and blood together, "where we're starting from."
Calephas was standing so that Lindsey could watch and so he did, not
feeling as if he could do anything more. The mixture quickly turned a
vibrant purple before fading into a more solemn gray. The Baron could
not conceal the look of surprise on his face. It melted into a very
bitter laugh. "Well that perhaps explains some things. Interesting."
He set the dish aside and turned to the Lutin still standing guard.
His voice cracked with impatience. "Yajgaj, retrieve the old man from
the dungeons. I have need of him."
The Lutin nodded and quickly departed. Calephas stared after him for
several seconds, lost in his own thoughts, before he he turned to the
chained boy completely naked. His eye slid across Lindsey's body and
he shuddered as if an eel were swimming across his flesh. "If I had a
few months to devote to you little boy, I could break you like I've
broken Weaker. You are stout, but you are weak. Weaker here once
killed a Keeper by tearing out his neck with his fangs. Now, he is mine."
Lindsey scowled at him but kept his tongue behind his teeth.
Calephas smiled. "Gmork has nothing to do with Weaker's loyalty. And
if I had time, he wouldn't have anything to do with yours. But... I'm
afraid I'm going to have to kill you once I'm finished with you."
"No bargains?" Lindsey asked. "No threats of reprisals?"
"No." Calephas shrugged and reclined on the carpet again. "Why
bother? I'm not interested in you for what your tongue can tell me.
Your blood has done that for me." His blue eyes ran across Lindsey's
flesh one more time, lingering in places that Lindsey wished he could
hide but couldn't twist against the chains enough to conceal. "It is
a pity. You are such a handsome boy. Ah well."
And as they waited for Yajgaj to return, Calephas raped Lindsey with his eyes.
----------
Four wolves and a creature that resembled a wolf but still had the
vestiges of human form, loped through the forests, relying on their
nose and ears to guide them through the night dark woods. The alpha,
gray of fur and larger than the rest, led them on their chase.
Through dense brambles and across fields of pine needles freshly
unearthed after a long winter's blanket of snow, they ran on all
fours and apart from the strange amalgam that was the fifth, they
were indistinguishable from real wolves.
At several points the alpha would stop, tilt his head back and sniff
the air curiously. His golden yes peered into depths visible even in
the night, strands and traces of magic that were disturbed in the
dragon's passage. And then, noting the changing winds and the
changing flow of energy, he would lope off in a slightly different angle.
The ground rose steadily the further east they ran, until they
reached a plateau overlooking the Arabas. The pines clustered densely
before abruptly thinning into a wide meadow with short cropped grass
and wildflowers. All five beasts pressed their noses to the ground as
they smelled the dry pungency of the dragon's scent. They circled
around for a moment, before the alpha looked to the others, and in
gnarled speech, growled, "He landed here, changed to his human
disguise, and kept running. We will catch him."
His muzzle resumed its beastly shape and the five of them continued
on their way through the thick forest. Now that their prey had taken
to the ground, they could follow him more easily. He had a head
start, but on weak human legs he was no match for their gait. The
youngest of them, the one that could not quite become a full wolf in
form, often had to slow himself to keep from getting too far ahead.
That one was viciously eager for the hunt to come to its end. He
thrashed through the underbrush and tore bushes from the ground in
his wake until a disapproving glare from his alpha told him to move
quietly. And that he did with such sudden alacrity and dexterity that
his alpha and father felt a swell of delicious pride.
The path took them deep into the woods, always following the course
of the river eastward. Even in human disguise, the dragon possessed a
reservoir of endurance beyond the capability of any man. His path
took them through crumbling stone, dense thickets, fallen trees, and
twisted sloping ground that kept them from running at full speed. Yet
their pursuit was unwavering, and each of them hungered to see this
dragon dead.
The stars turned in their courses as they kept running, until even
the few lights of Fjellvidden were long lost to sight and no scents
from that city could ever reach them. The youngest and the one
twisted in shape yipped suddenly and jumped on top of a large rock
blocking their passage east. He shook his head and looked down at his
brothers and his father. "This one is smart, Father," he said in his
yipping speech. "He's leading us away from home."
Gmork stopped and rose into a more man-like shape. He gestured for
his youngest to climb down and for the others to stop. He lifted his
snout into the air and sniffed, trying to follow not just the
dragon's human scent, but also the dragon's magical effluvia. The
trail continued, and while he knew they were gaining, it would be
hours yet before they captured him at his pace. The wounds he'd
inflicted with his spells were not serious enough to kill him, only
to bring him out of the air long enough to kill him.
But apparently not even that.
"That he is. But he won't leave Fjellvidden completely," Gmork
glanced between each of his four pups and then back at the night sky.
Midnight would be upon them soon enough. The men from the northern
tundras would be arriving tomorrow to aid the Resistance. They had to
be crushed as quickly as possible. And that meant learning where
Andrig and the bird's last ally was hiding. The woman who dressed as a man.
But women smelled differently than men. Gmork's jowls flecked with
spittle. "We will return to the castle and feast on that murderer's
body. Then, you four will join the forces scouring the city for our
enemies. But in pairs. Two resting at the castle and two in the city.
A few hours of rest and then you will swap. I do not want any of my
pups to die because they were too exhausted to notice a danger. There
is time. Our enemies will not survive tomorrow."
His eyes stole to his youngest, who licked his jowls greedily and his
golden eyes burned with beastly delight. With a bolt, all five of
them began running back the way they came, every one of them loping
on all fours.
----------
May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love,
Charles Matthias
!DSPAM:4dbc141e261982041213656!
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