Days Of Light And Shadow (15 page)

Then something big and dark came out of nowhere to smash him in the face and he quickly forgot the child. He forgot nearly everything as he fell to the floor in pain, his hands instinctively going to his face. They came away covered in blood. Something was broken. He knew that. But he didn’t have time to wonder what as a figure entered the room and he saw the dark shape streaking for his face again while he was trying to get to his feet.

This time he managed to put out an arm to protect himself, but it wasn’t enough, and he felt the impact as the iron blade of the shovel sent him flying across the room.

A shovel! He was incensed by the thought that someone had hit him with a shovel. It just seemed so wrong. And yet as he tried to get to his feet and reached for his sword only to discover that it was missing, he would have given anything to have that shovel. It wasn’t to be. The woman, maybe the ugly child’s mother came out of nowhere, screaming at him like a wild animal, and he saw the implement in her hands, just before it streaked for him again.

This time she caught him around the shoulder, hitting him hard enough that something broke, and sending him crashing to the floor. Then while he was down on his hands and knees she hit him again, and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get up again.

He still tried, but each time she hit him again, and he fell back to the dirty wooden floor more broken than before.

In the end he just lay there while she beat him with the shovel, wondering how long it would be before it didn’t hurt any more, before the darkness took him home and he didn’t have to know that he had failed lord Y’aris. But he also heard the rage and hurt in her screaming. Her hysteria. It seemed so wrong somehow. As if she was somehow angry with him. As if he had somehow done something wrong. He didn’t understand that.

But then who really understood savages?

Chapter Twenty Two.

Herodan stood before the king wondering if he was ever going to get a decent night’s sleep again. Pulled out of his bed well before the cock crowed, dragged across the city once again, and as always without any explanation as to why. He was beginning to hate his assignment. He was beginning to hate the throne room.

“Your Highness.” He bowed low before the king as he always did, Luree beside him doing the same in silence, surely just as tired as he was. And they both knew the king wouldn’t give a wit for their politeness. Whatever had happened, he was going to yell at them.

“Silence elf!” The king bellowed at him, obviously incensed by something. So incensed that he even stood up and bellowed at him some more. That was new. Normally he just yelled at him from the throne. “Read this!”

A guard instantly carried the letter from the king to Herodan and he furiously started reading it, desperate to know what new atrocity had happened. Another village destroyed, more innocents murdered? That was all the news there seemed to be of late. But when he read what was written, it was even worse than he had imagined.

“Highness it cannot be!” And it couldn’t be. The high lord could not be so crazed as to burn the Irothian Mission and kill its staff. Nor to arrest and imprison the envoy. That was beyond crazed. Beyond a violation of the codes. It was shameful. It was more than shameful. It would disgrace all of Elaris. It would humiliate House Vora. Even if he was truly breathing the mist Finell would not do such a thing. Would he?

“Whoever sent this must be mistaken.” Or lying to make trouble, but Herodan couldn’t really claim that. Whoever the man was, a trader looking for a little extra gold in all likelihood, the king believed him.

“Silence!” The king bellowed at him again, in no mood for his denials. He never was these days.

“Read this and know why I take what that walking plague has done to be a personal insult.” The guard thrust another letter in front of him, and Herodan swiftly began reading what was surely the last message from the mission if what the first had said was true. And he was immediately sure that it was.

Sent by the envoy’s assistant it clearly stated that Iros Lord of Drake had been arrested for espionage, even as it exhorted the king to obey the ancient codes. Even without checking the broken seal to prove its origin, Herodan believed it. It was exactly the sort of message an envoy should send under such circumstances, which made it all the more difficult to understand what had happened.

He knew Iros of Drake only by reputation, but that was enough to tell him that he would never have committed espionage against Elaris. The man was known for his unwavering adherence to the law. So much so that he had been promoted early to the position of envoy. In fact if the man had a fault it was that he had no guile. He did not involve himself in the various intrigues of the realms. Neither in Tendarin nor Leafshade. He would not lower himself. Some in both courts found that directness annoying, Finell among them. Especially after his outburst in the Royal Chamber.

“Now send to your Sandara worshipping ruler this. The accusations are baseless. Lord Iros of Drake is a man of spotless honour. He will release my envoy immediately and unharmed. He will restore my mission. And if he does not do so, I will have him fed to the rats.” Herodan looked up at the king, horrified by what he was hearing. Fed to the rats? That was more than simply a terrible way to kill someone. It was an outrage. It was ample reason for blood feuds to be born. And it was something that had never happened to a ruler. Not in thousands of years of recorded history. Not even during the age of kings when wars had been fought ceaselessly.

“Highness -.” He looked up into the king’s eyes hoping to see some sign of jest, but there was none.

“You heard me. Now go!” The audience was over. Herodan knew that immediately the guards grabbed him by the arms and started dragging him from the room. It was almost becoming the normal way their audiences ended.

“And make sure you give that fetid little toad my words exactly.”

Chapter Twenty Three.

It was peaceful in the Grove, but in her heart Mya knew that the peace was a lie. Honeysuckle Grove was always a garden of peace, but the city beside it, was a house of anger and fear. She might only be a lowly servant, but she had eyes to see it with. The tall trees of the Grove merely hid the darkness from her sight.

And yet it was beautiful. The tall trees surrounding them, the endless flower gardens with their bright colours and sweet scents, all added to the impression of the Grove as a giant garden. Fire crested lovebirds nested in the trees, filling them with colour and song, while ducks and blue tufted geese swam in the slow moving river. Silver willows lined the banks of the river, their long tendrils of green and silver leaves, hanging down almost to the water, providing a little shelter for the leap rabbits as they nibbled on whatever grasses they could find. Truly the grove was a garden of great beauty as she’d imagined it would be.

There were few structures in it, and what there were could never be called houses. At best they were shelters. But the elders had houses in the city if they needed them, and when they chose to stay in the grove as they often did, they slept under the stars. They said it was soothing to the soul, and maybe they were right. She would have preferred a roof though. The blankets of woven reed they had been given were water tight, but there was still something comforting about a solid roof over one’s head. Not to mention walls to shield them from the sight of visitors.

Still as Nanara said, those who pleaded should not complain. And she was safe in Honeysuckle Grove, and nowhere else. They all were, and the grove was filled with refugees. Some of them were of her people, some of them were of the other peoples, and surprisingly many of them were elves. As Finell’s soldiers became more and more fanatical in their hunt for enemies, the people of Leafshade were taking refuge in the only place that they knew they would be safe.

Many of them had tales every bit as sorrowful as hers. Many, especially those of mixed blood, had dead relatives, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, all killed by the watch. Many more had their loved ones locked away in that dark mountain of crumbled stone that Finell called a prison. Most of them though called it what it was, a dungeon. A dark place where terrible things were done to innocent victims. And a place where torturers ruled.

It seemed that the high lord was engaged in a never ending hunt for traitors, and that anyone with even a trace of outsider blood was being found guilty without   charges needing to be laid. Anyone who spoke against him was also convicted. And all the rest were under suspicion.

Though the grove was large, extending surely a league across, and she hadn’t made a count, she would have guessed that at least a thousand people were now calling it home. Mya wondered how many more were soon going to do the same.

Not far from her Elder Yossirion was sitting on a fallen log, head slumped forwards into his arms, staring into the gently flowing waters of the river. But she would have guessed he saw nothing of them. His thoughts were far away. His brow was furrowed with worry. It often was. Even Saris understood his pain as she kept him company. She of course, had her own worries, about her missing master, and so the two of them, the elder and the pining jackal hound, made an oddly apt pair.

The elder probably didn’t want to be disturbed, but this was the first Mya had seen of him all day, and for once he was actually by himself instead of deep in conversation with the other elders. If she was going to get a chance to speak with him, this would have to be it.

Mya approached Elder Yossirion cautiously. Though he seemed like a good man, and he was always polite when he visited the mission, he was an elder and she just a maid. A human maid at that. But then the grove was filled with refugees from the high lord’s unending wrath, people the elders had taken in, and many of the others had human blood in them, so maybe that didn’t matter so much any more. What mattered was surviving.

She had only been in Leafshade for three years, and she’d been warned before she’d come that life among the elves would be hard for a human. But in the two and a bit years since Finell had come to power, even she knew that the city had changed, and not for the better. At first it had been small things. Open rudeness from the high born instead of looks of disdain. Restrictions on where she could go and who she could talk to. More recently though it had become far worse again, with watchmen on every corner, outsiders being beaten and even killed in the streets, and the people living in terror.

It was madness. Though she hadn’t heard the elders and priests say as much openly, she was sure that they must know the same. The high lord was mad. Driven to insanity by the demons of grief and anger. Held there by the demon of wrath. And blinded by the moon maiden’s mist. But knowing that couldn’t help. Nothing would help until the war was finally ended. That could be months or even years. And there was one who if he still lived, was in even worse danger than them. Lord Iros.

He was such a good man, a leader, and a friend. He had always stood by them. He had always helped them when they needed it, and when trouble had hit, he had been there for them. The thought of him being locked away in that foul prison was pure darkness to the soul.

“Elder Yossirion?” Mya approached him as respectfully as she knew how, expecting him to be gruff with her. He was gruff with everyone. “Is there word of Lord Iros?”

He looked up at her, surprised by the interruption. But he wasn’t gruff with her, he was gentle, and that maybe scared her more than anything else.

“No. I’m sorry child.” He even smiled at her like a grandfather at his granddaughter. “None of our priests can even go near the prison, and none can enter the Royal Chamber.”

“I see.” But she didn’t want to and that surely showed.

“He is strong. The Mother moves through him and will keep him as best she can.” The elder tried to comfort her, but there was no comfort any more.

“Some of the others, they have said dark things of the prison.” More than dark. They had spoken of the screams of those inside as terrible things were done to them. They had spoken of the smell of death surrounding it. And they had spoken of so many entering, and none leaving. The elder had surely heard the same.

“I know child. It is a darkness upon the land. A blight upon our fair city. But if any can survive it, it is Iros. You must keep hope.” He patted her gently on the hand. He was forever doing that as if she was a small child.

“Besides, Saris still lives.” He scratched the hound’s head. “She still eats. And she still waits. If he was dead I think she would know. And I fear she would die too. Of a broken heart.” As reasoning went it didn’t seem that convincing to Mya, and yet some part of her thought he might be right. The jackal hound was more than loyal. The bond between her and her master was closer than any she had ever known. So maybe that was enough of a reason to keep hoping. It was all she had.

“Thank you elder.”

Mya left him with a respectful nod, knowing that there was nothing more to be said. The time for words had ended. They could provide little comfort any longer. And she was certain that the elder knew the same as he turned back to the river and his thoughts of gloom.

Now it seemed that the only thing left to be done was to light a candle and offer a prayer to Silene.