Chapter 10
The Burdens Borne

Whether it was the blood soaking into the floor or the evil glow of Wraethe’s eyes as she raged against Pile’s and Toaaho’s attempts to restrain her, Nurom Misuer’s red hue seemed to burn throughout in the warehouse. Boruin stepped over the fallen child, infected with the rage that still hung like a thick fog across the room. Boruin fell upon the heap covering Wraethe, digging down until his hands clutched the woman’s face. He squeezed until her eyes met his own.

“You will still!” he commanded. She snarled back at him, but she stopped writhing. “Get her up!” Boruin added.

Pile and Toaaho stepped back as Griant took her in his two fists and hoisted her up to face Boruin, her feet dangling just above the floor.

“I share some of the blame for this. I dared bring you out of the jungle even though I know your cycles, but you let your discipline slip in trade for blood!”

“And it is beautiful!” she growled. Boruin slapped her across the face, smearing the dead blood splashed on her cheek.

“‘The rites must be served or you must take my life. I will not live as a killer, soulless and feral.’ Those were your words. Do you recall?” Boruin asked.

“You cannot fathom what I recall; every thrust, every filet of flesh carved by my sword, every scream and choking cry. They sing to me–yours, too.” Boruin struck her again, and Wraethe smiled through the wide split of her lip.

Boruin backed away to a sword’s distance. “You led me to the jungle on our first cycle of Takata Shin,” he reminded. “You said it would lead you to rage that would be spent best in the wilds. Now I’ve seen Takata Shin’s lust in you, and Nurom Misuer’s rage. I will keep my promise if you do not keep your own” He placed the tip of his weapon on her throat.

“The boy, Boruin,” Toaaho whispered.

“Yes, even the innocent are not spared in your thirst,” Boruin spat at Wraethe. “It is inhuman.”

“No, Boruin. Look at the boy,” Toaaho said again. The child was on his feet, the ragged tear of his shirt bloodless. His eyes were on Wraethe, his face hard. Boruin’s anger drained as if he were blasted with cold. The boy was never without some smile or content expression, but now there was no emotion in the strange child’s face.

Pile stepped back, crossing hexes toward the boy. His voice shook. “Yuin, he’s dead and doesn’t know it.”  

The boy came forward and tugged at Wraethe’s dress. She squirmed as Griant lowered her to the floor, her eyes like a penned habback’s before the butcher’s blade. Her head tilted back, and she screamed at the boy’s blank face.

“NO!! DON’T LET HIM TOUCH—” The boy placed both hands against her breast. Wraethe’s eyes withdrew as if the sun had appeared out of the black night. She slumped to the floor, and the life left her body as she slept.

Boruin pulled the boy back, felt his small form. There was no puncture through his lung, no rip in his skin where the steel had exited through his spine and into Boruin’s thigh. He suddenly felt the pain of his own wound and the wet blood running down into his boot. Boruin sat down hard, drained of everything.

It seemed too dark in the warehouse, and Boruin realized the red moon had finally passed over the horizon.

“You did not tell them she was Ainghid Fas?” Griant asked.

“No.”

“A what?” Pile asked.

“A demon,” Toaaho answered. “Murderous wraiths. They drink the world’s evil, make it their own.”

“A demon today, yes, but her rites have kept her well,” said Griant. “The high-born Fae do not turn so easily.”

“Fae?” All three men said together.

“Certainly. A one as strong as this could be no less than a Moir, a queen of the Dreamlands,” Griant said.

Boruin scoffed. “How can she be? Look at her face, her fingers; she looks nothing like them.”

Griant’s shoulders shrugged like two hills rolling. “All the more strange, but it matters not how she looks. She is a Moir, nothing less.”

“Rutting Fae! I hate those bastards,” Pile muttered. “And this thing!” he said, pointing a hex at the boy. “What is he?”

“Something else,” Griant replied as he hoisted Wraethe over his shoulder. The rilk turned and left the warehouse, the boy behind. The others helped Boruin to his feet, then they followed.

The sun was high above them before Griant laid Wraethe down in the dirt. The rilk had led them far north of the city on old logging roads and game trails. It had been a hard march in the dark, but no one had followed. The open valley below them stretched for miles to the south. Nothing moved but black deer through a sea of wind-stroked grasses. Boruin took another drink from the stream they’d stopped to rest by. His leg throbbed, and he changed the wound carefully. He had been cut before, and he knew the muscle would heal.

It was the pink, hand-shaped scar on his arm that troubled him. It anchored the runes to his flesh. For the first time they did not spin across his body in their odd way. He tugged gently, trying to ease the dark tattoos across the burnt skin. The pain was scorching, blood rising from the scar. They were set as stone, and not even the rune on his wrist would drop down into his palm. Boruin had always distrusted the runes, feared their power; but now that the magic was out of reach he felt naked, stripped of his last resort.

Griant crouched in the dirt beside Boruin. “I must ask you of Wraethe. My warren will not welcome her,” he said, still polite but without the gentle tact he’d shown before.

“I know little of her, or of myself. Just the last twenty year –but nothing beyond,” Boruin answered, surprised at his quick and open response.

“You did not know she was Fae?”

“I knew only what she told me. I don’t think she even knows that. If she does, she shows extreme patience around Pile,” Boruin said as he saw the young man listening in. Pile moved under a cedar and lay against the trunk, his arm over his eyes against the light.

Griant took a slab of slate from the stream. His strong fingers, which Boruin had seen crush a man’s skull not a half-day earlier, divided the brittle rock into the thinnest layers. The delicate work distracted his hands as he spoke. “My people do not like the Fae. No, that is a light statement,” Griant corrected himself. “My people despise the Fae, would crush each one slowly under the settling mountains.”

“And you?”

“The same, save for my position. I am a peacekeeper, one who travels many paths. I do not bend to my inclinations. My warren is different.”

“But you are bound by contract, as are they,” said Boruin. The rilk nodded.

“Then I’ll tell you of Wraethe if you will tell me of the boy.”

The rilk sat still, examining a sliver of slate as if its grain were forgotten words that concealed answers. “The boy is different, neither child nor man. He hides as a Duine, but he is not Fae,” Griant answered after a long moment.

Boruin stared at the stone face, waiting for more. It didn't come. “That is pretty thin. No rutting surprise that he is different. Why doesn’t he talk? Why can he see my runes?”

“I can not answer that. I do not know.”

“Who hid him in the jungle? Who was his guardian?”

“We don’t know.”

“Why did you not bring him back? Why was that left to us?”

Griant turned to the man. “Left to you, Boruin. And I do not know why, save that to our contractor you are as important as the boy.”

“Who is the contractor?”

“You asked of the boy. That is all,” Griant answered.

“You’ve given me little.”

“I know little,” said Griant. Boruin nodded, disappointed. He had gotten next to nothing out of the arrangement and was about to expose his own past in return–a task he was loath to do.

“My first memory is of Wraethe,” he began. “I was lying in the dirt on the highway to Ouilainne. She was wiping my face with a wet cloth. I knew her name, and she knew mine. There was no horse around, no turned wagon. My head didn’t hurt, but I could not remember anything of the past. I only knew her name,” Boruin said again.

“When dawn came she seemed to sleep, but it was something more. I moved to wake her, and my hand seemed to move through her body like it was shadow, like she was night. She rose at my call, walking behind me until we reached Ouilainne.

“When the sun dropped and Diun rose, so did she. Her days pass as if dreams; she’s hardly able to remember anything that happens during the sun’s watch. She has awakened in the sun, but it takes too much out of her. She sleeps in the light and wakes with Diun. I protect her days, and she guards me at night.”

“Is that why you love her?” Griant asked.

Boruin stared at the stream and let the reflection of the sun hold his attention as long as it could. “I loved her before I felt her touch. Save for her name, it is the only thing I know as true from before.”

“And you will not act until your mysteries are solved,” Griant said.

“For a man of stone, you are very intuitive.”

“I am a good diplomat.”

Boruin took to his feet. He hated to talk like this, but it had made his way clear. “She does not know she is Fae. She would not believe it. If your warren is opposed to her, then they are opposed to me. I will travel no further, and the boy will remain with me until the contract is fulfilled,” Boruin said, wondering if he had the strength to back such a promise.

The rilk betrayed no judgment with his words. “I will inform my warren,” he answered.

*****

For four days they followed the rilk north. His heavy feet thudded across the ground with the steady pace of a bard’s metronome. The sun rose and fell and Wraethe slept through it all, carried over Griant’s shoulder like a sack of grain. It was as if the boy had folded her up neatly and stored her away. Her dark veils buried her deep, even the distant glow of her blue eyes absent.

The Fae was elsewhere, somewhere light and away from any moon. The sun baked down on her skin, warming the center of her chest. She felt a prickly itch as she began to sweat. Wraethe opened her eyes, staring as long as she could at the sun. Rings of green light danced in her vision as she broke from the fiery glare. Distant rolling hills and a river of white fire danced across the view at her feet. Wraethe sat up as her eyes cleared. The world was so alive in the daylight.

The sunlight fell almost like rain. She felt the drops land heavy and thick, soaking into her skin like oil. Birds and bugs flitted across the land before her. Life moved beneath the sun, dwelled in the sun. Where night was shadow–the realm of predators and lost creatures–the day was for life. Her soul tasted it all around. It enjoyed the humid flavor and began to drink deep. It was wrong to take without cause, but oh the feeling, so quenching, such mind numbing pleasure. She was Ainghid Fas, and life was her’s to take.

Wraethe sat and drank in the life around her while the sun burned and the land began to dry. The grass began to wither as its spirit drained. The trees grew brittle, and the river smothered. The hot air caught suddenly in her throat, too dry and thin.

The sky was now more white than blue, waves of watery heat swimming on the horizon. The light grew hotter. The animals baked away, the flowers melted into the earth, and Wraethe was on fire. The sun seemed near enough to touch. She screamed as the light pierced down into her darkest points and her whole being burned. She screamed but did not move. There was nowhere to go in all the flame.

*****

No door covered the mouth of Griant’s warren, and no sign hung over the entrance. Like all rilk warrens, this one was tucked away under the stone and dirt. The great creatures of rock, while not shy, were not social creatures. The dark realms of the underlands were their wandering grounds. They enjoyed the peace where the only noise was the rush of underground rivers and the groans of aging rock.

“I’m not much of a swimmer,” said Pile as Griant worked down the box canyon toward the base of the waterfall. A chasm swallowed the great column of water, a wide mouth drinking open-throated. The river disappeared into the chasm, spearing right through the granite and into the hard crust. Mist rose out of the small valley, brushing across the thick moss and ferns as it drifted up like a grounded cloud escaping back to the sky.

“There is no need to swim,” said Griant as he walked along the battered stones. His palm pierced the curtain of water. In the dimness behind the falls, Boruin could just make out a set of stone stairs descending into the earth.

They made their way down into the darkness, following the stairway by the scattered ribbons of light that fell through the water. The sun seemed to follow the column down and curve across the floor.

“Yuin, look at that,” said Pile, awed with the flow of sunlit water seemed to split and rise up the cavern walls. It curved across the floor and into the ceiling, sparkling with pale colors that seemed of both water and sun. As their eyes adjusted, Boruin could see the light’s source: veins of phosphorescent rock that ran across the cavern. The veins crossed the water and seemed to carry the light of it up through the stone around them.

“Would you say yours is a rich warren then, Griant?” Pile asked. A small, twinkling rock sat on a ledge along the stairway wall. Toaaho caught his arm as it began to reach out to the glimmering stone.

“Hands in your pockets before you make this even more difficult,” the Mana’Olai said as the gemstone wiggled off the ledge. Like a small tribe of colored stones, a wave of others detached themselves from the wall to join their companion on the floor. They skittered across the stone, ricocheting about with the clatter of hail on a tin roof. The rocks stopped their play and stood up; the little stone creatures, no larger than a thumb, were jewel-encrusted twins to the giant rilk.

“They are rilka, Pile,” said Toaaho.

Boruin didn’t think Pile was foolish enough to pocket one of the small rock creatures, but his untethered fingers could be another matter. “The rilk defend them, keep them safe. Do you see?” Pile’s fingers answered by slipping inside his pockets where they could do no harm.

When they reached the river where the waterfall hit the bottom of the cavern and shot towards its end, Griant asked, “Would you wait here, please?” He set Wraethe on a bar of smooth sand the water had beaten out of the rock and pushed to shore. The boy, eager to follow, swung from his fingers until the rilk set him in the crook of his arm. They crossed through the rushing water to the far shore.

“How far are you going to let him lead us without making him pay for our services?” asked Pile. Boruin opened his mouth to answer but was stopped short as an avalanche of sound boomed off the walls. The three clapped their hands over their ears as the sound of rocks breaking and stone grinding beat against their skulls.

Across the river, the inhabitants of the warren had arrived. The other rilk surrounded Griant. Judging from the noise, they had not wasted time in discussing Wraethe.

“What is all the rumbling about? It’s their contract, and they asked for us!” Pile shouted over the din.

Toaaho leaned in close and yelled back, “Some people have a higher standard than money. Their hatred of the Fae is deep.”

“Bahh,” said Pile as he turned to find some moss to wedge in his ears.

After a time the vocal rockslide settled and came to a halt. Griant and the boy waded back across the river.

“What’s the verdict?” Boruin asked.

“We have decided how to decide,” Griant replied.

“THAT’S AS FAR AS YOU GOT?” Pile shouted. Boruin plucked the moss from his ears.

“Gynphur will wrestle for the council. If they win, then the Fae leaves and the boy remains with us.”

“But you said I was wanted as well,” Boruin protested.

“True, so you may come or you may leave.”

“I’m not leaving Wraethe. Nor am I leaving the boy.”

Pile strained up on his toes to chide the giant stone man. “I thought you rilk were a fair bunch. Not even the four of us together are going to beat that bastard. Some deal there, diplomat.”

“I am to wrestle at your behest,” Griant answered.

“You will serve as our proxy, under your free will?” Boruin asked. Griant nodded and set the boy at his feet. “Then we accept your offer, with thanks.”

Boruin and his crew stood at the edge of the water. On the other side, the rilka raced around the floor, chalking out a large circle. Inside the ring, Griant’s opponent stood ready. The stone creature shifted from side to side, ready and eager to fight his own warrenmate.

Pile cursed. “I thought Griant looked tough.” Splintered rock covered the other rilk, Gynphur. It ran in a jagged fault line from the back of his fists to his shoulders then continued down his back like a mountain range. A rune on his chest was crushed, marred by some slamming force that had broken the hard skin and left him scarred.

Griant stepped into the circle and stood beside his opponent. The warren spoke, the sound a low rumble as they set the ground rules for the argument. The two fighters stomped to signal their agreement with the rules and turned to face each other. They slowly circled the ring, eyeing the other's runes and scars of war. They rumbled their challenges and then stood close, their heads pressed together. After a low final exchange they stepped back to the edges of the ring.

Gynphur spared no time, turning back at a full run once his foot had touched the boundary of the circle. Griant leaned into the attack. Their heads cracked together, the report bouncing off the walls like a stone ripped from a sling. They clawed each other mercilessly, grabbing for whatever spines or crevices might offer purchase and leverage.

Griant slipped under the other’s arm as the larger rilk pushed forward, trying to drive his opponent out of the circle. The rilka chattered, bouncing on the rock in an odd chittering applause, though it was impossible to tell for whom they cheered. The floor shook as Griant went off balance and caught himself, twisting in Gynphur’s grasp and slamming his foot down before him. Boruin took a careful look upward, wondering how much shaking the cracked cavern ceiling could take.

The two stone fighters grappled in the center of the ring while the rilka jumped with each impact like gamblers at the Nefazo dog fights. The other rilk stood still, watching without call or cry.

Twice the rilka rolled aside as the larger rilk pushed Griant toward the edge of the circle. Twice Griant slipped free, but the diplomat was growing slower. The larger fellow began to break his holds with less effort, and Griant stood lock-armed to keep his opponent away. Gynphur forced Griant’s knee down. He twisted his opponent, trying to bring the stone man down on his back. Again the diplomat tore free, and Boruin saw shards of rock tear from under Gynphur’s fingers as the hold broke.

The larger rilk roared and charged as Griant staggered back in pain. Gynphur slammed his huge hands down on the other’s shoulders and smashed his chest into Griant’s sagging head. He drove the shorter rilk again toward the edge, pistoning his legs and breaking chunks of rock free from the floor as he pushed.

Boruin watched as Griant began to tilt backward. Pile cursed somewhere behind him as their fighter backpedaled toward the edge of the circle. Rilka scattered out of the way as the two wrestlers ran for the edge. Boruin’s heart sank as they neared the line and Griant’s strength started to fail completely.

Griant began to fall, his feet suddenly twisting underneath him. Suddenly he turned and his feet bit into the stone before the line. The diplomat twisted and pulled his opponent with him, turning the wrestler off balance and over his back. Gynphur fell across the line and bounced off the rock and into the river. Boruin’s legs quivered as the floor shook, and Pile stumbled into him. Gynphur lay for a moment under the water as if cooling the blood that had risen in the fight. When he rose, he placed his head again against Griant’s, this time rumbling his admiration.

“You weren’t as spent as you looked after all,” said Toaaho as Griant escorted them across the river.

Griant’s chuckle was like stones rolling around in his throat. “Never let your opponent know your true measure. It is no different in war than in diplomacy.” He turned as the leaders of his warren approached, translating as they spoke.

“Griant has won the Fae passage, though it is neither his nor our desire to allow this. She will be considered enemy if ever she is deemed a threat to rilk or rilka. There will be no warning and no leniency.”

Boruin stepped forward and bowed low. “It is understood. She will act as an honored guest. You have my word.”

Pile leaned to him. “How are you going to keep that promise?”

“With you and Toaaho holding her down if necessary,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“You may wake her, child,” Griant said. The boy moved toward Wraethe. The rilka gathered around their own rilk, each a measured distance from their giant companions. Boruin knew they all stood on guard and ready.

The boy placed his hands on Wraethe’s chest and the life flooded back into her face. It came as agony, a scream of pain ripping from her throat. For a moment Boruin seemed to see burning flames behind her eyes before they faded to blue and sunk in sleep beneath her cowl.

“Did you see the smoke?” Pile whispered.

“No,” Boruin replied.

“Out of her mouth when she screamed. Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know, Pile.”

“This is getting weirder by the day. Why don’t we get them to pay up and be done with it while we are all still healthy and only Wraethe’s lost her mind?”

Boruin didn’t answer. He knew Pile was probably right, but that had rarely stopped him before.

*****

Belok stepped from shadow to shadow, keeping his head down. The trade council had done him the courtesy of not expelling him from Priyati, but their pigment marked his forehead. The putrid green ink was only a thin dash across his brow, but everyone glanced at it. The shame was almost unbearable.

“Twelfth generation merchant. A seat on the Ouilainne Trade Advisory. Backwoods rutting no-name guild. No respect for my station, no respect for the ways of trade,” Belok mumbled his lies, stumbling on a tilted cobble and cursing it. He took to the back avenues that wound behind the shops, avoiding the smirks of the other merchants.

The Nefazo merchant stopped at the darkest inn he could find, determined to drink himself stupid and then return to the road after the ink brand had faded. He smoldered in the back of the room until the patrons slowly left and his drunken tongue became too much for just his own ear.

Belok weaved across the floor to the one remaining customer and dropped onto the stool beside him. His rant continued in midsentence. K’Juin listened contentedly, though he did not speak Nefazo. The Easlinder nodded where Belok paused and dipped his head to his flagon, his stomach too full of ale to raise it to his lips. Long after Diuntyne, the innkeeper fell asleep by the hearth as Belok complained over K’Juin’s snoring form.

“Then out of nowhere the rutter comes in and steals the contract. I mean, I had it in the purse. They were suspicious, but I have a way with the trade. My tongue was smooth like jui leather, a fact I don’t have to tell you,” he slurred. “Where was I…? Right! So, Boruin comes in with that undeveloped miscreant, Pile, and claims it is his contract. Now that is an outright falsehood! Check the Terre Haute Contract Registry files and you’ll see it subcontracted by the honorable Belok Toufoune to Boruin Pig Rutting Shit Eater.” He paused for a drink; his fumbling hands sloshed half the ale out of his flagon before slapping it back down on the wet table.

“Where was I…? Right! So, Boruin comes in and this backwoods Undurlund dainty says ‘Well I don’t care a bit about governmental trade agreements. We’re giving the contract to this fellow! I don’t care if you brought the boy to us!’ as is lettered in the contract mind you, ‘or not. Can you give any small bit of proof to make this complete illegality rational to us?’ So Boruin raises up his fist, like something out of a bloody Jacques play, and I swear on my father’s seal—blue fire! Blue fire springs off his arm and all sorts of runes made of light go spinning around his arm like a bunch of damn trained fleas. A rutting mah’saiid sales trick, I don’t need to tell you, and the Undurlund fool goes for it. ‘Well you are all fine and good in my book the man says—’”

“Tell me more about this man,” the voice dropped smoothly over Belok’s shoulder. Belok spun to confront the speaker, but the inn was empty. When he turned back around, he found a finely dressed man sitting across the table. His beauty was a well Belok wished to fall in. The man smiled and filled Belok’s flagon from his own. Belok smiled back.

“Who? The Undurlund pig sticker?”

“No, the Pig Rutting Shit Eater and his fiery runes,” said the Monarhig.

End of chapter.