Empress of Clouds - Chapter 21

Chapter 21

           

            Brythia huddled between Delorick and Pagryus around the fire.  Slowly, she turned to warm both her front and back, pausing for a few moments for the benefit of each, and trying desperately to summon whatever patience would attend her.  She spoke to no one; indeed, an anxious quiet pervaded the scene.  Findelbres paced around the fire, sidestepping lightly to avoid Kiliordes in his trance, but exhibiting a nervousness Brythia had never seen in him before.  She alternated her gaze between the fire, the faerie, and the sky where she strained through the snow for some glimpse of the returning crow whose body Kiliordes had borrowed.  A task made more difficult by the Solstice’s early twilight.  She struggled to keep her eyelids open as she searched the sky.  Her earlier, unwitting nap had served to only make her feel worse and more in need of real, prolonged sleep.  Slumber.  Her body craved it.

            She faced the fire and stared into the orange-red embers in its depths.  Suddenly, she heard the loud caw from above.  She wheeled about just in time to see the crow alight on the road, and instantly sink several inches into the snow.  It looked displeased with the frozen precipitation on its feathers.  It hopped to a position in front of the immobile Kiliordes.

            In an instant Kiliordes leapt up, throwing much of the snow that had accumulated upon him back into the air.

            “I’ve found them,” he announced gleefully.  “They’re at an inn, about, oh, maybe six miles up the road.  They just got there.”

            Brythia wrapped her arms around him.

            Delorick who had been squatting by the fire, jumped to his feet and rushed to the horses.

            “Hold there, Delorick,” Brythia commanded.  “Wait a moment.”

            Everyone looked at her as though she had gone insane, but she knew exactly what she was doing.  Still, it was a gamble.

            “Why are we waiting, Princess?” asked Pagyrus in confusion.

            “A good question,” agreed Findelbres.

            Delorick simply stood by his horse with a look of perplexity on his face.

            “What is your plan, Brythia?” asked Kiliordes.  She stepped away from the fire and sat down, cross-legged once again, in the road.  She took her crystal from her pouch.  She looked up at the others with grim determination.

            “I am going to notch this snowstorm up a few intensity levels,” she said.  “Try and keep them there until we can get there.”

            “B-b-but won’t that slow us down and make it tougher for us to travel there?” asked Delorick.

            “Nothing is going to slow me down,” she said, and she meant it.

            Findelbres stepped forward.  “Wait,” said the faerie.  “I have something to tell you.  I think I have figured out where they are going.”

            This caused her to pause.  She looked squarely at him.  Her curiosity suddenly erupted violently.

            “Where?”

            Findelbres held her gaze.  “I think he means to take her to Faerie.  To our realm, though I can’t imagine why.”

            Faerie.  A new dread took hold of her.  Faerie.  Where few mortals have ever gone, and from where none have ever returned.

            “If that inn is the Tanslynt Inn, then they’re almost there,” the normally cheerful Findelbres added dourly.

            “Why didn’t you mention this before?” Brythia demanded, though she was able to keep her voice quite calm.  Inside she was boiling.  Her gaze was glued to him.  She knew she was glowering, but she could not help herself.

            “Well, I um...I mean... I wasn’t certain exactly where we were, not until just now.  Almost ten miles past the inn, to the left of the road is a field of ancient barrow tombs.”  He paused.  He looked uncomfortable, as if he were having an inner debate.  At length, he continued.  “There is a secret entrance to Faerie there, though it is our most serious crime to reveal this to mortals.  The penalty is banishment forever,” he added quietly.

            She barely heard his last sentences.

            “Then we must get to them before they can get to Faerie,” Brythia said.  She resumed her spell.

            Though she was an apt enough weather-witch to bring on a snow on an otherwise clear day, the task of increasing the intensity of a snowstorm was a relatively easy one.  Essentially, it wanted to be snowing anyway.  She ignored the others who were presumably breaking camp and concentrated on the white crystal in her hand.  She quietly began to hum the hymn of the snow sprites.  She focused her attention solely on the crystal and the hymn.  Inside the crystal, she envisioned a terrible blizzard.  She hummed her near inaudible melody, expressing a love of cold, of ice, of the snow sprites themselves.  At last, she sprang up with outstretched arms and cried out, “Krious.”

            She slipped the white crystal back into her pouch and walked over to Whisper.  The others were standing in readiness next to their respective horses, holding the reins.  She jumped into her saddle.

            “Gentlemen, I do not expect that you will be capable of keeping up with me,” she said.  “Especially after it really starts to snow.  Catch up as best you can.”

            She did not wait for their protests.  She gave Whisper a gentle kick and a hearty, “Yah.” and galloped away.

            The wind, which had already begun to pick up, was to her back; the snow was blowing horizontally now, but it could not keep up with the faerie horse.  It was as if she were racing the snow itself, and handily besting it.  She focused on her riding, though in truth the horse needed scant guidance.  The snow, which was kicked up behind them, rose as a cloud of icy dust.

            She had to catch them.  If Dowbreth was allowed to escape to Faerie, it was likely that she would never see Tolian again.  The thought caused her insides to knot with worry.  She could not bear that.  She had to stop them.  She had to.  It was that simple.

            Despite the near whiteout conditions now raging with her own fierce fury around her, Brythia noticed something amiss as she rode furiously towards the Tanslynt Inn.  Redness.  The color seemed alien in the landscape of white.  Redness in the snow just ahead, not so far from the door to the inn.  She slowed Whisper and dismounted right beside the scarlet anomaly.  It was blood, a lot of it.  So much blood, that despite the frantically falling and drifting snow, it soaked the whiteness with crimson as fast as the flakes could fall.

            She took in the smell of blood as she stooped to examine the area.  Something was buried in the snow.  She brushed the snow gently away, her heart frozen with fear.  An image of Tolian’s face, bloody and lifeless, flashed across her mind.  She dug a little faster.

            There were three bodies.  She breathed in relief when she discovered that Tolian was not among them.  They were huntsmen, garbed in gray leather, bows hung at their sides.  One had a small clutch of winter coneys tied at his belt.  They had not been there long, for blood still trickled from the wounds.  The eyes and jaws had been removed, roughly hacked off in the case of the mouth and chin.  There was a large incision from their chests to their navels, the internal organs had been removed, and the arms severed at the shoulders.

            A quick scanning of the snow showed bloody footprints going back into the inn and another set of tracks, those of a horse of magnificent size, judging from their appearance.  Dowbreth’s horse.  She cast a look back at the door to the inn and up the road where the horse prints led—in the direction Findelbres had indicated the secret entrance to the Faerie Realm was hidden.  The mystery of the inn murders would wait.  She could not allow them to get to Faerie.

            She fought the elemental force to find her way back into the saddle.  She was off, the wind at her back.  She rode like a missile towards the barrows.  She could not be too late.  She begged to all of the gods.  She begged the Universe itself.  Please don’t let him take my Tolian away forever.  Please let me get there before they can get away.  Please.  I need her.

            There.  There was something ahead of her.  A large dark shape, a patch of green.  She urged her own faerie horse to even greater speed.  Faster, faster.  She was closing in on whoever or whatever it was, but only gradually, suggesting that the object was moving fast as well.

            She lost sight of them for a moment.  It seemed like eternity.  It was so hard to see.  Panic racked the druidess’ being.  No, there they were.  They turned off the road.  Into the barrow field.

            In a moment, she had reached the spot where they turned off.  She followed them.  The green of the faerie’s cloak flashed in the snow and wind.  Peering into the blinding whiteness, she saw her.  Her.  Tolian.  She was seated before Dowbreth, for clearly that was who it was, on a great faerie warhorse.  They sat there as if waiting for her.

            “Tolian,” she called.  She could barely hear her own words; they were blown away by the wind.  She pushed her horse to cover the distance between them.  Dowbreth held his horse patiently, waiting for her.  Now that she was moving against the wind, the snow stung her face.

            “Greetings, druidess,” called Dowbreth as soon as she was in earshot.  The violence in the rough tone sent a shiver down her spine.

            Brythia saw Tolian’s eyes light up and widen.  “Brythia.”  She struggled futilely in the giant’s grasp.  Her face was bruised and she had a black eye.  Her lip was swollen.

            Brythia unsheathed her sword.  “Let her go, or taste the bite of the Moonsword.”  She moved closer to them, slowly now.

            Tolian squirmed in the faerie’s grasp.  She shouted to Brythia, “No, he’s too strong.  You can’t...”  She turned to Dowbreth.  “You promised not to hurt her.  You promised.”

            “Now, now, Princess,” Dowbreth chided her with a vile hiss, “Fear not, it is not necessary for me to hurt her.  We shall let them do it.”

            The druidess looked about her.  She could see nothing through the blizzard.

            “This reunion has been quite touching,” noted Dowbreth, “but I fear that we have another engagement... in Faerie.”

            Tolian looked up at Dowbreth in shock and horror. 

            “Say your goodbyes, for you shall not see each other again,” scoffed the faerie.

            “Unhand her,” demanded Brythia.

            Dowbreth spat at her and rode between the adjacent barrow mounds.

            Brythia watched as Tolian, her face streaked with tears, disappeared in the snow.  Brythia called out to her, “Fear not, my love.  I will find you.”  But as Brythia moved to follow, arms grabbed her and pulled her from her horse.  Into the snow.  Disoriented.  Winded.  She heard Tolian call back, “Brythia, someone close to you may be a traitor.  Be wary.  I love you.”

            Brythia looked up.  Looming over her stood three figures.  At first glance, they appeared to be nothing more than snowmen, but another look assured her that was not the case.  Bloody arms hung at their sides.  Their heads were accentuated with eyes and jaws dripping gore.  She cast a look in the direction that Tolian had disappeared and then back again at her assailants.  They slid over the snow–to her horror, she saw that they had full use of their macabre limbs.  She gripped the Moonsword, swallowed hard, and waited as they neared.

 

Copyright 2004, 2015 Diana Hignutt