DarkFyre Ch. 23

It was a sky to reach up and touch. To be drawn into. To lose oneself in, for a night, or a lifetime.

The night was filled with the chittering and shifting and quiet calls of nocturnal things prowling and sneaking, shifting and slithering through The Reach. There were Shadow Specters and Black Divers, the nighthawks that made their homes seemingly everywhere south of The Teeth, from the Johake Grasslands to The Reach and beyond. They pierced the sky with sharp, sudden screeches before the wind whistled high and vibrant where they pass by, small and sleek and on the hunt. The horses snorted softly where they slept on their feet a short ways away, dreaming equine dreams. The fire popped occasionally, and the air was filled with fresh burning wood and the wafting smell of bubbling soup.

A good night.

A perfect night.

Except her love lay a few feet away, dying.

Silmaria choked back a sob, even as the tears rushed down her cheeks, soaking into her pelt. She curled her knees up to her chest and rocked slowly on her heels, her arms wrapped about her drawn up legs. Lord Rael was wasting away. He was worse this time, Silmaria knew. His fever and infection had progressed quicker, and he seemed even more drained and racked by sickness than he'd been in the cave.

She doubted he would last another full day.

The moments tick by, ponderously heavy. Each moment arrived weighted with tension as she waited for her Master's Mending to quicken, each moment passed crushing with the burden of disappointment.

It wasn't fair. To lose him now, after they'd been through so much! After so many miles, dangers unending, and enough heartache to lay the most stoic man low. It wasn't right that after finally finding love in his arms, that she should lose him now. She was hurt, and confused, and he was supposed to be there to make those things go away and to protect her. He was supposed to care for her and love her. She was lost without him, and worst of all she doubted what he'd done, and he was dying, and her guilt and shame swirled in with her sorrow and grief, mingling, making it all the more potent. And as much as she hated herself for it, she couldn't help but doubt still.

And all this, for what?

For a traitor-madman, who had no more answers than sense.

After a time, either a flickering instant or an unnoticed eternity, the Gnari woman swallowed her sorrow. Set her jaw hard, as she'd watched her Master do so often. She let her pain overtake her sorrow, then. Let it burn inside her, hard and needling her insides until she was raw with it. The pain was easier than the sorrow, or the loss to come, or the confusion.

She clung to her pain, focused on it, and Silmaria began to pray. She didn't know to whom she sent out her wordless entreaties; she'd never held much stock in The Circle of Twelve. The old gods? Though they were the gods of her long lost Mother and the Father she'd never known, Silmaria held no bond with them, either. In the end, it didn't matter. The Twelve. The old gods. The Highest Holy. Hell, the fucking stars themselves, even. She would pray to the birds and the sea, the earth, the ether, the fire boiling her soup over if it made a difference!

Please, she thought, a silent call to all things of power in the world. Spare my Master. Give him strength to pull through. Give him strength to Mend. If there is anything of the Twelve or the old gods or goodness and purity and life worth living, let him live.

Or, said a small corner of her heart, a dark little hollow where a small lump of hate had festered, Give me the strength to bring the cowardly bastards who have wronged us to their end. If they take my Master from me, then let me take everything in all the world from them. If there is any justice left in the world, do not let their wrongs go unpunished.

If any gods, old or new heard her plea, they kept their counsel silent.

The stars glimmered and shone, blazed with brilliance, but no more and no less than usual.

Nothing stirred or moved, and no voice issued forth to her demands.

Nothing but the rhythmic, mesmerizing crackles of the fire, quiet and comforting. It was all she had.

For just then, it was enough.

***

The scream that ripped through the night was a loathsome thing, the kind of sound that makes a quivering knot wrap up so tight in the pit of your stomach that it feels like something must surely rupture under the pressure of it. A shiver-shake sound. A raucous horror-call, the voice of the unspeakable given tremulous tenor. Agony souring in the gut and vomiting forth from lungs too full of suffering to contain it a moment longer.

Silmaria came awake with a scream of her own. Though gripped by heartache and worry, she'd been simply too exhausted and fallen asleep sitting up beside the softly glowing fire. Now, frightened and disoriented, she groped for her short sword before she realized the horrid screaming was coming from Rael.

The Nobleman was writhing in his blankets more violently than ever. It was clearly no fever that caused his outbursts, however; Rael's blankets and bedding, his clothes, and his flesh were all wreathed in silver-white flames. The fire burst in great blazing gouts from his wounded flesh, crackling and hissing and shining brighter than all the stars above. Rael's howls of agony continued as the fire consumed him, burned away his bedding, his clothing, his flesh, consumed him from the inside out. His hands gripped at nothing and his face was a terrible mask contorted in sufferance. The sinews along his thick neck stood out starkly, veins defined and distended as if pumped full with liquid fire.

"Master," Silmaria said in a trembling voice. She wondered if anyone had ever been so relieved and so horrified all at once. "Hang on, my Lord, just hang on!"

Silmaria reached for his tangled blankets but quickly drew her hand away, the heat pouring off the bedding and the man both too intense for her to get close. She desperately wished there was something she could do, but until the Mending played itself out, she was helpless.

A sharp neighing brought Silmaria's attention to the horses, who were beginning to shift and stamp restlessly. She hurried over to the mounts and patted them, murmuring reassuringly to them. Though rigid and tense, the horses didn't bolt as Silmaria assured them and soothed them as best she could. She pressed her face into Nemiah's mane, her arms around the horse's solid neck, drawing comfort for the beast as she waited for the ordeal to be over.

It seemed a lifetime or two before Rael rose, naked, on quavering legs, and the Mending was complete. He sported new scars where his wounds had been, fresh additions to the multitude. His body, though nowhere near as gaunt and sickly and failing as it had been during his fever stage, was more slender and drawn than Silmaria had ever seen it in health.

When the Nobleman regarded her his silvered eyes were those of a wild thing, disoriented and hostile.

Silmaria stepped forward slowly. Rael tensed, and he bared his teeth.

"Master, it's me," Silmaria said gently.

Rael responded by snarling like a beast, and lunging near on top of her.

Silmaria stood her ground, though her heart was fit to crack a rib from the inside with the way it pounded within her breast.

"It's me, Master," she said again, and she held her hands up, just a bit, with her palms open and turned upward. She met his eyes and struggled to be calm, but firm. "It's Sil. I am yours, my Lord. I am your servant, your companion, your love, your servant."

The wild thing in man-flesh before her stared down at her, primal, fierce. Yet she could tell by the leanness of his body and the way he shook ever so slightly that he was exhausted and utterly drained by the Mending. Rael began to circle her. He was full of wariness, and uncertainty, on the edge of snapping into an animal rage at any moment. He was lost in this primal aspect of himself. He was fearsome, and spent. Depleted beyond all reason, and supremely dangerous.

"You are Rael," she told him, keeping her voice even and calm, almost soothing, but with an undercurrent of strength. Weakness would do her no favors here. "My Rael. You are my Master. My Lord. My love. My man. My warrior and my protector. My kind, comforting strength. My stoic guide and teacher.

"You are a Knight of The Dale," she went on, her words a steady, soothing stream. She wound her words into a cocoon, wrapping them around the almost feral Nobleman, letting her words form a foundation for him to hang his identity upon. "You are a man of swords and leather and steel, pens and books and ink. You are a man of learning and intelligence. A soldier, and a leader of men. You are a man of violence, and of reason, and of love."

Rael had stopped circling her, then. He stood in close to her, looming over her, and the heat radiating from his always warm body was still intense enough to make her break into sweat, even without touching him. The fierce Knight leaned in and drew in her scent.

Silmaria wondered, for a moment, if he were going to take her as he had last time. She could not stop him, of course; and she would not have wanted to. She was his, and she loved him, and she would gladly give him the comfort of her body to help him come back to himself if that was what he demanded.

But he did not take her. He simply stood there, staring, with a scowling, uncertain look creasing his brow. So Silmaria continued her quiet litany, watching him all the while.

"You are a tender, caring man. A man who sacrifices and gives to others, even those beneath him, because that is what you believe is right. You are a survivor, my Master. You are indomitable of will, and unbreakable of heart. If not for you, we would both be dead many times over."

Even displaced under the layers of whatever unreasoning presence overtook him after a Mending, Rael was still there, deep down. And just then he seemed to find an anchor in her words. Silmaria slowly sank to the ground, tucking her legs beneath her and letting her tail curl about her waist.

Rael stood unmoving for a tiresome long while before crouching low, and then settling back on his haunches, listening, his eyes unwaveringly focused on the movement of her lips. Silmaria spoke on, hardly even aware of what she said, simply letting her words keep the Knight's animalistic aggression at bay.

Her Lord was alive.

For just then, it was enough.

***

Rael's strange eyes flew open. His pupils were vast black pools, his iris' thin outer slivers of pale starlight. He sat bolt upright with his hands groping about for weapons, curling into fists. He heard a hot, harsh sound, the sound like small wet stones grinding together, slipping and rubbing and hard. After a moment, he realized the sound came from the snarl rumbling about in his chest and throat.

Ricard. That bastard. Traitorous. Mad. Deceiving.

Dangerous.

It was another moment before Rael remembered he'd cut the mad Brother down. His immediate memories were painted with confusion, hate, and even fear. All stemming from the ravings spat and sputtered like bile from Ricard's bloodied, grinning lips. The Nobleman's memories came in a slow trickle of recollection. He executed the man. He was defenseless, and viscous, and as dangerous as a cornered viper, small and coiled and ready to strike.

There was the terrible, frantic flight through the days that followed. His rapid decline and weakening, though he bent the fullness of his will toward pushing on. He'd known then that his wounds were festering, and his body too badly weakened from the battle to keep their frenzied pace up for long. But his fear of the inevitable pursuit catching up to them kept him driving Silmaria and the horses hard to put as many precious miles between them and the Tower Brother's compound as possible. Then, though he fought it with all his might, he succumbed and went sliding off into a darkness so deep it had seemed the very world had terminated around him.

A quick study of his flesh confirmed the Nobleman's suspicion that he'd gone through a Mending. His wounds were freshly scarred, burned away by the fires that used every bit of his body's reserves. Rael felt a fragile swell of energy and vigor, the sort of unsteady hale feeling one gets after emerging from days of illness. It was a strange blending of vitality and fatigue that made him mindful not to ask too much of his body too quickly. More than anything he felt plagued by a gnawing hunger that threatened to consume him as surely as the Mending had.

Willing himself to ignore the ravenous, uncompromising demands of his belly, Rael glanced quickly about in search of his Gnari love. He found her curled up a few paces away and sleeping so deeply that she'd kept sleeping right through his rough awakening. Her face wore the exhausted worry and hard work of getting him through the Mending.

As always, his memories were hazy at best during those first feral hours coming out of the Mending. Like always, he was stuck, stranded on that distant shore with its gray sands, and empty waves, and the bleak sky that opened out to the void at the edge of his mind. He'd stood on that shore with his senses bled dry. There was no smell, no sound. It was an awful, lonely place, a slice of existence locked within his own mind, while something else that was him yet not took up the whole of his existence. All was cold, and all was gray. And every time he Mended and the other piece of him that was not a man took over, the lonely shore was grayer, and colder, and less alive than before.

Then she was there. Silmaria. His Silmaria. The scent of her, familiar and cherished, yet stronger than ever before. He could smell a thousand nuances to her scent, little unperceivable notes and fragrances he'd never noticed before. He could smell the scent of her flesh and fur, a gentle, pleasant, clean musk that was feline and wild and somehow undeniably female. A fresh, earthy tone, subtle and warming, the smell of life and growing things. The distinct scent of her hair, like midnight lilies. The lingering copper of his own blood lingering on her hands. And the salt of her tears, dried on her cheeks, like fresh droplets from the ocean.

The smell of her melded with the sound of her voice. The sweet melody of her words, familiar and solid, a symphony to his ears, every note and tone, every word and syllable precious and meaningful and sweet, a beacon of light and life in the mundane miasma of gray nothingness he'd been banished to in his own head. Her words and her scent mingled, twining, coalescing into something real that he could hold to. It was her, his love, and she was there in that place with him. The texture of her kindness. The scent of her love. The flavor of her fire and the vividness of her laughter replacing the dust on his tongue. Her warmth surrounded him, a balm, a blanket, a boon that warmed him in this place of unrelenting cold.

Rael knelt beside her, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest and she slept. He reached out to brush away a curling tendril of midnight falling across her brow. Her pointed ears, laid flat to her head in slumber, flickered, but she remained asleep. Not for the first time, Rael wondered at his good fortune, to find such a strong, loving, devoted woman to share this journey with. To share his life with. Now more than ever, he would have been lost without her.

Quite literally, in this sense. It seemed as if every time he went into a Mending, he was lost within himself more and more deeply. The savage, bestial other aspect of himself came to the surface, stronger every time. Could he have come back out of it, this time, without her to anchor him and guide him back? Honestly, he didn't know.

And what of next time? What of the time after that? Rael didn't know how many Mendings he had left, before the whole thing consumed him utterly, and whatever that... thing inside him was, became all he would ever be again.

He had to tell her. Silmaria had to know. She deserved to know.

... But not yet. Not today. Today, it was too much.

Letting her sleep, Rael rose and went into their packs to find some clothes. He pulled on a pair of pants and stuffed his feet into his boots, leaving his chest and upper body bare to soak in the early afternoon sun's warmth. He tore off a fist sized chunk from a dry, crumbly wedge of cheese, took a strip of dried meat, and forced himself to eat both slowly, one bite at a time.

A small rise to the east afforded him a better view of the area around their camp, but only slightly. He didn't recognize the area their camp was nestled in, but then with how fever addled his brain had been recently, that was no surprise. There were rock formations rising on three sides, and the plains stretching out and away from them on the remaining side were flat and gave a clear view from their position. Their camp was settled in a gently dipping depression with a few thin-limbed trees at their backs. They would have seen any unwanted visitors long before anyone spotted them. Rael was pleased, impressed even. Silmaria had chosen well.

Rael went to where the horses stood at the foot of the trees. They were picking at the scrub of parched, unappealing grass nestled between the roots of the trees, gnarled little knots that fanned out like spreading gray toes. Both horses lifted their heads to regard him as he approached. The dappled gray horse dropped its head to the scant grasses after a moment, seemingly at ease. The ebon horse continued to stare at him with watchful equine eyes.

"Easy," Rael murmured to the black horse, which he recalled with some difficulty was a stallion, while the spotted gray was a mare. He came closer and slowly raised a hand palm up. The stallion remained alert, but was more-less docile. Rael gently laid his hand on the horse's warm, powerful flank. The horse allowed the contact. His midnight tail swished, whip-like.

"I barely remember the days after our escape," Rael told the proud beast, his hand slowly rubbing along the horse's gleaming black coat. "But I remember you carrying me without complaint. You flowed across the land like a black tide, as swift and effortless and dark as a midnight current."

The horse watched him with a liquid, attentive gaze brimming with intelligence. The stallion had a wariness about him still. But he seemed to like the petting, and Rael felt a bit of the tension go out of the taut, bunching muscles in the horse's shoulders as he moved his hand there. The mare seemed at ease completely, more interested in twisting some grass from between the tree roots than him.

"You and your friend are something else," Rael went on in a smooth, calm voice as he walked his fingers along the horse's withers. "Any stable master would give his right arm for even one of you. I'm no horseman and even I recognize you. You two are Vrien stock, through and through."

"His name is StarChaser," Silmaria said softly just behind his shoulder. Despite her arriving on silent feet, Rael wasn't terribly surprised. He was well used to how quietly she could move by then. Silmaria moved to his side and laid a slender hand along the dark stallion's rump, patting him soothingly. "The mare is Nemiah."

"Good names," Rael nodded. He moved his hand up to where the horse's neck met his immense head. The stallion acknowledged him fully for the first time, dipping his head to butt lightly into Rael's hand.

"You're a strong one, StarChaser," Rael smiled down at the horse.

"What's a Vrien?" Silmaria asked after a long, quiet moment.

"A breed of horse. They are bred far to the south, by the Elves in the Leftin empire. They are the most valued and sought after horses in all the land. They are stronger and faster and smarter than any other known breed, and possessing of great stamina. They are equally suited to racing and to war. Leftin Elves have been known to put entire villages to the torch if they find them harboring horse thieves. Vrien are sold, very selectively, and very costly, to outsiders. I don't even want to guess at what price a pair of them would fetch."