Wish and mercy, p.37
Wish and Mercy, page 37
part #1 of Nightwalker Series
“This is definitely where an apothecary lives,” Centa said. “These bundles aren’t fully dried yet. They couldn’t have been picked more than a few days ago.”
“You should touch them!” Meeka cooed. “They’re all poisonous!”
Phio looked back at her as he investigated. “How do you know that? You’re not even from here.”
“The bittermile up there?” She cocked her head in its direction. “It grows in Vandroya too. A lot of these do. We’re not that different of a climate. Just warmer.”
Phio shifted Mariette to one arm and pried open a journal. “You seem cold as ice to me.” As he flipped through the pages, he grimaced. “It looks like this whole book is one recipe. There’s probably a hundred ingredients in it!”
“What’s it for?” Centa asked, going through drawers of a desk.
“It’s a poison.” He skimmed the words all the way to the end. “Whoever lives here was trying to make a catch-all poison for daemons. They didn’t finish it, though. Too bad.”
“There’s more poison formulas over here too.”
Phio set the journal down and clutched Mariette tight with both arms. “Centa, I think a Poison Mother lives here.”
“You think so? There’s only a few of them this side of the Undina Loch. I wonder which one it’d be.”
“Hey, remember when Adeska used to talk about Rori’s old mentor? She used to go on and on about how sketchy she was. She suspected she was a Poison Mother, didn’t she?”
Centa sighed and rubbed his temples. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here. I’ll show you how we’re getting to Suradia.”
They left the house and said their goodbyes to Montague and Honua, taking only one saddlebag from each to make the rest of the journey easier. With a simple command, Centa had Honua off into the woods to find home. Waving and shooing tearfully, Phio at last got Montague to follow. Then Centa led Phio and Meeka down a winding path away from the house and to a well.
Phio stared at it and shook his head. “No. No.”
“I’m sorry. I knew you wouldn’t be happy about it.”
Meeka laughed. “A well? You guys are gonna take a well to Suradia? Even if it went anywhere, and I doubt it does, it’s going to be full up since this storm!”
“Not this one!” Centa told her. “I don’t think it was ever a well. Years ago, I would use it to meet up with Adeska. It’s a tunnel all the way to Suradia.”
Phio shook his head vehemently. “Not a damn chance.”
“I know you’re claustrophobic—”
“Do you? Because a dark underground tunnel doesn’t seem like an option you’d give to a claustrophobic person!”
“You’re claustrophobic?” Meeka tilted her head back and bellowed with laughter.
“You know as well as I do that all the roads are going to be flooded!” Centa said. “And we just sent the horses away, so it’s not like we could try and tough it out! There are more clouds headed this way, so everything is only going to get worse. This is the only way!”
Phio groaned into his hand. “I never should have come with you. I knew something like this would happen!”
Centa took that as acceptance and started to pull rope and anchors from his bag. Meeka stood beside him, smiling.
“We rappelling down? That means you’re gonna untie me, right?”
“Absolutely not.”
“What? How come?”
“We’re rappelling. You’re falling.”
She started choking on her words. “You’re just going to push me down there? I’ll break my legs or something!”
He shrugged. “I don’t care about your bones. Don’t be a spy.”
“I’ll run! I’ll run right now! I’ll do it!”
Humming to himself, he hammered the anchors into place outside the well. The dirt was soft, but the stones piled up around it had been still and strong for eons.
“Most people don’t announce that they’re going to run,” he told her. “Most people just do it. You’re all bark, Meeka. You should be ashamed.”
She let him know how furious she was by stomping and calling him every name she could think of, some of which he hadn’t heard before. Once he finished securing the anchors, he looked up at her and sighed.
“Calm down, you’re rappelling with me. You’ll be tied to my back. But if you kick, bite, or are in any way annoying, I’m dropping you. Understand?”
She pursed her lips. “Fine.”
Phio, nerves shot, went down first with Mariette secured to his chest. She looked up and waved at her father as they descended. Centa leaned over the lip of the well and heard Phio’s boots hit the ground with a splash.
“How’s it look down there?”
“I hate it!”
“Yes, but—” he tried not to chuckle at his friend, “—but how’s it look, Phio?”
“There’s a couple inches of water. Smells a little stagnant, probably from the first storm that rolled in at the end of Rustaumn, but there’s a raised walkway on each side that runs the length of this thing. It’s still dry there if we need to rest later.”
“Perfect. Get a torch lit, I’m coming down.”
Phio rubbed his face. “Can those anchors hold both of you?”
“We’re about to find out.”
“Just let me go down by myself!” Meeka hissed. “I don’t want you dropping me or falling on top of me if those things come loose!”
“If I let you go by yourself, the second you get down there, you’re going to try and fight Phio, I already know. Small, scrappy guy; you think you can take him. Well, you can’t. Trust me, Meeka, he hits a lot harder than I do, and I am not in the mood to haul your ass all the way down this tunnel when he knocks you out for being an idiot.”
And that was the end of it. She huffed and let him secure her to his back and even cooperated as he lowered into the well, praying the stunt wouldn’t end with her back broken. The rope protested their weight. The anchors especially protested their weight. For a second, they slipped down several feet in one quick, wobbly motion, and she thought it was over. Centa did too—she heard him let out a breath when the rope steadied. The rest of the way down went as smoothly as it could. Phio handed a torch to Centa and helped get Meeka off his back while Mariette stood on the walkway, picking up little pebbles to throw into the water.
Meeka barely had any breath left in her. “Thanks for not dropping me.”
“Thanks for behaving.” Centa wiped his brow and removed the last of her binding. Her arms were free. “Don’t do anything stupid. You’ve got nowhere to go but the same place we do.” He waved the rappelling rope that he had unknotted and retrieved, and she complied.
Centa let Mariette ride on his shoulders, and they journeyed in silence.
***
“Girls! Get back here! Quit wandering off!”
The old man’s voice from atop his horse carried through the evergreens of the Wistwilds. When all he heard in response was giggling, he sighed.
“Come on, you two. Quit this nonsense. You’re too old to be acting like children! We must get to Davrkton before the next storm!”
His hair had once been thick and dark, but all that remained that way now were his eyebrows, which were furrowed in annoyance. He scratched his stubble as a forceful wind mussed his stark white hair.
“Girls!”
“Sorry Father!”
They came out from behind the trees, leading their horses by the reins. Twins, each fair-skinned with dark, straight hair and high cheekbones. They weren’t older than twenty, and they weren’t identical. One seemed a little bored as she returned to her father’s side, adjusting the axe strapped to her back before mounting her horse. She was taller than her sister, and her shoulders were broader and boasted muscle. Her hair was pulled up high and out of her face in a ponytail that reached down her back with a slight wave.
“Sola!” her father barked at her. “I expect no less from your sister, but you are the one I thought was responsible.”
“Oh, come on Father,” the other girl said. “The time spent was well worth the look!”
Where Sola’s movements were rigid and precise, her sister’s were enthusiastic and dramatic. She swept her ponytail over her shoulder and tucked her bangs behind her ear. She gave her father a glittering smile that took up half her face.
“Scara, what do you mean?”
“You want to see?” she asked. “Sola and I can show you! It’s disgusting; you must see it!”
The man looked at his more sensible daughter, and she shrugged weary shoulders. “Bodies.”
“What? Show me!” he snapped. “Is that what young women giggle about nowadays?”
Scara patted the whip at her waist. “I giggled more when I got that boy’s ass from across the bar. Do you think that’s more appropriate?”
Her father grumbled and dismounted. “I was thinking you could take up a knitting circle or something.”
Sola looked up in thought. “I like to knit.”
“Yes, and you also like to break bones!” Scara grinned as she helped her sister down.
They went back into the thick trees and bushes. It wasn’t long before he could smell in the air that the girls were right. But it wasn’t just the odor of dead bodies. It was the wet, heavy stench of what was inside of them.
“See? Look at all of them!”
When they arrived, he was mortified. The longer he looked, the more bodies he could see. Not bodies, he corrected himself. Body parts. They were not all where they belonged. Many of the bodies had been torn asunder, their bodies devoured.
“Sola and I thought it might have been an animal at first. But we know better than that.”
“It wasn’t an animal,” Sola said firmly.
“It probably wasn’t even greenkind,” their father said, crouching down by one of the bodies. “Greenkind use blunt weapons mostly, but if they have a blade, it’s a dull one. Orcs and goblins do, at least. Trolls and ogres are more likely to rip bodies apart like this, but—” he inspected the many different wounds, “—claws opened this man’s stomach, and a knife opened his throat. A sharp one.”
“There’s a stone hovel over there,” Sola told him, pointing several yards in the distance. “We didn’t look inside.”
“We were going to, but you started nagging us, Father.”
“Scara, be quiet!” He put a finger to his lips. “This is serious. It’s not some little game of yours. Something in these woods ripped these people apart!”
“Could be a trap,” Sola said.
Scara scoffed at them both. “A trap? So what? The three of us can handle it.” She murmured some less polite things that her father didn’t hear.
He worked a coin purse free from the body’s belt. “This one’s from Vandroya.”
“They all are,” Sola said. “Isn’t that peculiar.” She said it with such disinterest that it didn’t sound like it was peculiar at all.
“Alright.” He stood back up and shook his head. “Let’s have a look at this hovel. Gods, it looks older than these woods.”
Their horses stayed outside, grazing peacefully, unfazed by the carnage around them. The man and his daughters stepped carefully into the worn stone building. Sola took a simple rowan wood wand from a sheath on her hip and summoned a petty magic flame to its tip. The shadows of two empty chairs bolted to the ground were sinister, dancing on the walls in the lambent light.
“There’s a man. And there’s his arm,” Scara chirped. “Ooh, and look, a man all in one piece!”
“I think he’s still alive!” Her father scrambled to Peyrs, who twitched feebly on the ground. “Son, what happened? Can you speak?”
Scara sat down next to him, and Sola hovered above with her petty flame.
“Father, he’s dehydrated.” Scara motioned to the canteen hanging from her father’s bag. She eyed the room’s every detail in the dim light, narrowing her eyes. The smell of blood and rot was strong, but it was laced with a curious herbal scent. Her eyes stopped at a length of frayed, broken rope on the ground by one of the chairs. “Something bad was happening in this room before everyone was torn to pieces.”
Sola smiled at her. “Not exactly a casual place to spend your time, is it?”
The water mostly dribbled down Peyrs’s chin, but he took a few generous gulps before coughing.
“Anything else wrong with him?” her father asked.
“Oh, definitely.” She snapped her fingers in front of Peyrs’s face a few times. He could only respond with a grunt before looking away. “His world is surely spinning right now. I bet he hit his head a bit too hard on his way down here. Or maybe it was from that wicked punch! What a bruise you’ve got on that ugly mug of yours, stranger. And let’s see, there’s probably some—” She pressed down hard on his torso in different areas until he cried out. “Broken ribs! I hate to say it, stranger, but you’re going to have to grin and bear it if we’re gonna get you to a doctor.”
“Doctor?” Peyrs forced the word out, feeling pain light up all over as he was becoming more and more awake.
“We’re headed to Davrkton. I’m Ayvar Garva. These are my daughters, and you’re lucky—without their annoying curiosity, we never would have found you.”
“Davrkton.” Peyrs had barely enough time to consider it before he passed out again.
Scara clapped. “Oh, good! He wouldn’t have liked riding on a horse with broken ribs, not at all. So, who is he riding with?”
“I’ll take him,” Sola said. “If he wakes up, I’ll just knock him out again.”
“Sister, he has a concussion, please don’t do that.”
Ayvar mounted his horse as his daughters bickered. He led the way back to the road to Davrkton.
***
The gray above deepened as the day was coming to a close. Ilisha breathed in deep, the scent of rain in the wind. She knew he was looking for her; she could feel him in the trees around her. She gazed down the cliffside, waiting for him, watching the current of the swollen river below.
“Ilisha?”
She let herself grin for only a second. “Yes, Aleth. I’m here.”
His steps were quiet and nimble—if she hadn’t known what his presence felt like, she might not have known he was there at all. He joined her but couldn’t focus on the river. He stared blankly out to the horizon instead.
“Talk, boy.”
“You were right when you said things were going to get worse before they get better.”
“It’s barely begun. Don’t tell me it’s worn you out already.”
“Barely begun?” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting his shoulders fall. Ilisha patted his back. “It’s not the kind of pain I thought it’d be. It’s not the kind where I just grit my teeth and will it away. It stays. Nothing I do makes it go away.”
“My offer still stands if you don’t mind being a frog.”
“I don’t know how you looked after me for so long. I owe you so much.”
“You did save my life. I’m only sorry that I couldn’t keep looking after you as you got older. There were so many things I should have been there to stop.”
When he looked back down, his face was bitter. “Yeah well, the things that hurt the most were the ones no one saw coming.”
“And what of this one? What’s pulling you down right now? Your anger is making you sick.”
“I have to be angry, Ilisha! If I’m not, I fall apart!” He yelled it into the horizon. “I’ve given myself so much time to try and sort it out and get over it, but nothing fixes it!”
Ilisha took his hand and they sat at the cliffside, watching the storm come for them.
“Who, boy?” She put her arm around his shoulder and felt him exhale.
“Home.”
“It hurts you to call it that.”
“It’s not my home, but it should be.”
“That’s not why you’re angry.”
“It is.”
Ilisha smiled just a little. “I’ve never had a son before. I suppose I do technically have many children, but it means something different for the fae. I’ve never had anyone to look after, to protect, to teach, love, and watch grow like this. Not until you. I have learned more than I ever thought I could about this Realm, from you. So if you think for one second that I can’t figure you out—”
She stopped and heard him laugh a little through his nose.
“Fine. Why am I really angry?”
“It doesn’t matter. Your anger isn’t the point. Tell me about your family again, Aleth. One last time, I promise.”
“What else is there to say?” he asked. “They hate me. Rhett tried to kill me.”
She rubbed his back. “At this point, you know why they felt that way. You know it was only because you are a nightwalker. But you didn’t always know that. No, in the beginning, you thought it was real as anything else, and that’s what you’re carrying around still. How can you not? You never got closure for that. Maybe with enough time, you would have been well enough, but something has happened that’s stirring everything up again.”
Part of him still wasn’t convinced it was only because he was a nightwalker. Even before the accident, it felt like Rhett had never wanted to be around him. For the first time, Aleth wondered if what he was even mattered. Maybe Rhett would have hated him anyway. He would have hated all of them. He was the brother who was like a soulless snake in the bushes, waiting for someone to come too close, waiting for someone to take down, no matter who it was.
And then, for just a second, despite it all, he felt like he was on the same side as the rest of them. But they had all turned on him too. He shook his head.
“I tried so hard to make them not hate me, Ilisha.”
“Tried so hard to make them do what, now?”
He sighed. “To make them love me.” He hated the way it sounded. “I didn’t do anything! They had no reason to hate me. But they did anyway.”
“So you hate them back.”
