The wind stopped and Ilgrin released Seteal, allowing her to rock onto her back. His eyes ran over her slender body and down to her slightly extended stomach. He realised then that she was pregnant, but didn’t have time to contemplate the situation. He turned back to El-i-miir to find Caleb had already snatched her into the air. The silts must’ve thought she was responsible for the wind.
Ilgrin leapt into the night sky. El-i-miir’s scream told him that she’d regained consciousness. A silt’s body hit the earth with a sickening thud. One by one the others did the same. They were in flight and then they were dead, falling through the air. Only Caleb remained. And he was El-i-miir’s captor. Ilgrin lunged into the air only to discover a newly repossessed Caleb heading back to earth. His landing was clumsy, which was forgivable considering El-i-miir’s lack of experience in flight. Ilgrin landed and took the woman into his arms.
Caleb’s legs fell out from under him as he died and fell on his face.
‘What happened to them?’ Ilgrin stepped over for a closer look. He gazed at the bodies all around them and slowly spun in terror. He’d miscounted earlier. Caleb wasn’t the last. ‘El-i-miir!’
A sword slashed forward, pierced El-i-miir’s back and came out through her stomach. She looked down, hands hovering above the blade. Behind her stood a young silt, his expression one of relished vengeance. He sneered and tore the blade free, preparing for a second strike. It was one that would never come. His eyes rolled back and he fell in death.
El-i-miir landed on her knees. Ilgrin rushed to her side. Her face became white and she shook uncontrollably. She fell onto her side. Ilgrin got to his knees.
‘Oh, Maker, no,’ he sobbed.
‘Ilgrin,’ El-i-miir wheezed. ‘Don’t do it. You have to promise not to do it.’
‘Why?’ Ilgrin breathed, inches from her face.
‘It’s too much,’ El-i-miir sobbed. ‘I could never forgive you.’
‘But you’re dying,’ Ilgrin pleaded. ‘Let me.’
‘It’s not worth the cost.’ El-i-miir’s eyes began to close.
‘Don’t do this,’ Ilgrin barked, stood up and slammed his fist into a tree. ‘What am I supposed do?’ he shouted at nobody.
‘Do it.’ A clammy hand wrapped around Ilgrin’s wrist and squeezed reassuringly.
‘You?’ Ilgrin stared at Seteal as he again hunched over El-i-miir protectively. ‘Of all people, this is coming from you?’
‘Do it,’ Seteal repeated without expression. ‘The longer you wait, the worse it’ll be. You know that.’
‘She doesn’t . . . didn’t want me to,’ Ilgrin said, realising El-i-miir’s chest had ceased to rise and fall. ‘And you shouldn’t either.’
‘She’s not very dead,’ Seteal pushed. ‘If you act now, the whisp won’t necessarily be too large.’
‘Any amount of evil is too much.’ Ilgrin shook his head.
‘Listen to me, you idiot,’ Seteal snapped. ‘She doesn’t want you to save her life because you’re going to die instead.’
‘What?’ Ilgrin gasped.
‘You’re going to die, Ilgrin,’ Seteal said without compassion. ‘I had a knowing. You’re going to save her life and then you’re going to die.’
‘The whisp,’ Ilgrin said softly. ‘It’s going to kill me.’
‘That’s the choice you have to make,’ Seteal replied. ‘It’s the one I already know you have made.’
There was no further hesitation. Ilgrin put his hands over El-i-miir’s body and immediately they began to tingle. Then they burned. The wound in El-i-miir’s stomach shrank and sealed up. El-i-miir’s colour returned, she took a breath and her beautiful blue eyes popped open. They looked at Ilgrin revealing a mixture of sorrow and betrayal. Her quivering lips parted and she rolled onto hands and knees. She coughed twice and again looked at Ilgrin.
‘Run,’ she choked out. Then the black mist poured from her nose and mouth. It wafted from her pores and oozed from her tear ducts.
‘I love you.’ Ilgrin stepped back as the darkness began to fill the clearing. He turned and leapt into the sky. He beat his wings as hard as he could, but knew there would be no way to outrun a whisp. Had it chosen him as a target, it would not rest until satisfied.
A patch of moving darkness blotted out the stars behind him. The whisp was coming. Ilgrin panted and cried as he beat his wings to the point of agony. He needed to go faster. Faster! The only sign that the whisp was getting any closer was the fact that increasingly greater numbers of stars were vanishing behind him. The cold slithered up Ilgrin’s legs and along his body. The whisp crawled over his flesh, toying with him, a cat playing with its food. Then there was only darkness. Ilgrin could hear himself breathing, otherwise all was silent and black. The mist had enveloped him completely.
Quite unexpectedly his toes became warm, then his legs and body. The mist overtook him and continued on its journey. It hadn’t been pursuing him after all, merely travelling in the same direction. Ilgrin headed back to where he’d left the others, flooded with relief.
‘Seems like you were wrong.’ Ilgrin landed before Seteal and El-i-miir.
‘Oh, thank Maker,’ El-i-miir rushed into his arms.
‘Maybe it’ll come back.’ Seteal frowned.
‘I don’t think so,’ Ilgrin replied. ‘It passed right through me . . . or I did through it. Whatever! My point is that it didn’t fuse. So you,’ he wiggled a finger at Seteal, ‘were wrong!’
‘I’m often wrong,’ Seteal said dismissively, ‘but the knowing is never wrong. My interpretation of when may have been incorrect, but you will someday die to save her.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Ilgrin grumbled, ‘can’t you let us enjoy this small victory without being a constant downer?’
‘Don’t enjoy yourself too much,’ El-i-miir said quietly. ‘We’ve still done something terrible here.’
‘This is true.’ Seteal glared at Ilgrin and shook her head.
‘You encouraged me to do it!’ Ilgrin threw out his arms defensively.
‘Only because I thought it was going to kill you,’ Seteal replied with a shrug.
‘Really?’ Ilgrin stared at her in disbelief. ‘I still mean that little to you? What a bitch.’ He turned away.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Seteal said defensively. ‘What I meant is that if it killed you, at least you’d be choosing to give up your life for someone you love. Now it might go off and kill a baby.’
‘Well, that’s how this works, Seteal!’ Ilgrin spun around and shouted at her. He felt his face flushing blue with rage. ‘And who the torrid are you to talk to me about killing innocents? What about them?’ He waved his arms out at the bodies all around them. ‘What’d you do to them?’
‘I did what was necessary to save us from certain death.’ Seteal lowered her eyes, abruptly becoming very subdued.
‘Seteal?’ El-i-miir approached cautiously. ‘What did you do?’
‘I severed them from the canvas.’ Seteal cringed.
‘The what?’ El-i-miir shook her head.
‘When I’m projecting, I don’t see as I would see ordinarily because I don’t have eyes,’ Seteal said distractedly. ‘It’s as though everything is woven together in some strange way. Far-a-mael once said my pupils were too dark to see through. Well, I guess how I see the Ways is kind of like how a blind man might interpret his surroundings by feeling rather than seeing.’ Seteal kept her eyes on the ground and continued to ramble. Ilgrin was beginning to think she was trying to lead them off-topic. ‘When I project, there exists a canvas composed of infinite strands. Everyone and everything is there. We are all strands in the weaving. Each strand is composed of thousands of smaller ones and so on.’
‘Why are you telling us this?’ Ilgrin demanded, having heard enough. ‘Perhaps you could tell us how upwards of a half dozen silts have died without being touched.’
‘Far-a-mael taught me how to severe the strands in the canvas.’ Seteal shifted her feet uneasily. ‘He got me to pra
ctise on a wall once. It was only a tiny strand and so a crack appeared, that portion of the wall having ceased to exist.’
‘You cut them out of the Ways?’ El-i-miir gaped.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Seteal said. ‘I only cut a tiny strand on the first one, hoping to disable him, but apparently all the bits of a living being are important to their survival. Once I’d made the first slice, all of the rest began to unravel.’
‘But you killed off the others just the same,’ Ilgrin stated.
‘I was trying to save our lives,’ Seteal said forcefully. ‘You’d both be dead had it not been for me!’
‘Oh, don’t get us wrong,’ El-i-miir reassured her, ‘we know that what you did was necessary. It’s just that . . .’ El-i-miir turned to look at Ilgrin.
‘What?’ Seteal enquired irritably.
‘Well . . .’ Ilgrin took over from El-i-miir. ‘You are very dangerous.’
Seteal stepped up to Ilgrin and looked into his eyes with a half-smile. ‘And don’t forget it,’ she whispered.
‘Please, Seteal.’ El-i-miir looked at the woman with a strange new fear. ‘Just . . . be careful what you go about slicing up in the Ways. You might accidentally end up cutting the whole world out of existence.’
‘I’ll meet you back by the fire,’ Seteal said without breaking eye contact. Then she turned and walked away.
There was a long period of awkward silence before El-i-miir stepped into Ilgrin’s arms. ‘It’s true, isn’t it,’ he whispered, heart sinking. ‘I’m going to die saving you.’ He felt tears wetting his chest.
‘No.’ El-i-miir stepped back, tears tracing done her cheeks. ‘Not for you. The knowing is linked to me and the man I love.’
‘What’re you saying?’ Ilgrin put a hand to his chest, hurt by what she’d said.
‘I don’t love you,’ El-i-miir replied.
‘You’re just saying that to try and save me from Seteal’s prophesy.’
‘No.’ El-i-miir covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. ‘You’ve broken my heart. How can I love you when the very thing I loved most about you is gone? You’re supposed to be a good man. You’re supposed to be perfect. Now you’ve gone and done this. You’ve resurrected the one you love at the expense of everybody else. You’re just another demon,’ El-i-miir wailed.
‘That’s not fair!’ Ilgrin cried. ‘I thought it would kill me.’
‘But it didn’t!’ El-i-miir shouted through a haze of tears. 'And I know I’m a hypocrite.’ El-i-miir threw up her hands and shook her head. ‘I affiliated a resurrection to bring back Far-a-mael, but you were supposed to be different. You were supposed be better than that. It was why I fell in love with you. Now . . . you’re just another monster.’
Ilgrin stared at El-i-miir and the makeup running down her face. The two simply watched each other. The gulf between them had become impossible to cross. ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel.’ Ilgrin opened his wings and vanished into the night. It was time for him to join the other monsters.
*
‘Seteal,’ El-i-miir called, hurrying up to the camp fire.
‘What’s wrong?’
El-i-miir spun around in a slow circle observing tendrils of light mapping out the paths strangers would soon be walking. ‘Someone’s coming.’
‘The bodies,’ Seteal gasped. ‘We have to get as far away as possible.’ El-i-miir went to throw some dirt on the fire, but Seteal grabbed her arm. ‘Just leave it. There’s no time.’
El-i-miir gasped and tried to stop, but it was too late. She saw the aura only as she slammed into the stranger’s back. A Jenjen soldier spun around and grabbed her. Another took a hold of Seteal.
‘Well, well,’ a third man strolled over with a menacing expression. ‘This one’s Elglair. Ha! I knew Far-a-mael couldn’t be trusted. Blindfold her. We can’t risk her causing us any grief. Not tonight.’
El-i-miir threw out a tendril of affiliation, but it was too late. Before she could focus on weaving it into place, she had a black material tied tightly over her eyes, rendering her blind. All she could do now was hope Seteal had a plan.
CHAPTER TEN
UNEXPECTATION
The Holy Tome lay open at Seeol’s toes, which he periodically warmed over the candle sitting beside him. He slid a claw beneath the page, lifted it, burrowed beneath it, and pushed it over. He scrambled to the top of the page to analyse its words.
Reading was difficult and Seeol found himself considering calling upon Ieane to help him. The girl was an excellent reader, but he decided against enlisting her assistance, as she always seemed so fearful in his presence. Ieane would jump about, bowing and apologising for things that didn’t matter. It made conversation rather dull. Still, she’d been a brilliant teacher and Seeol was grateful for her efforts. Because of Ieane, he’d developed at least a sketchy understanding of how reading worked.
Seeol flew over to his bed and landed at the foot. It reminded him of Seteal and the bed she’d used at El-i-miir’s house. That in turn reminded him of El-i-miir. How he missed her! He’d reluctantly come to accept that their abandonment of him had been intentional. They thought he’d been causing too much trouble, that he was too evil. Or perhaps they just hadn’t been very good friends because nothing bad ever happened to anyone on Jenjol. Not because of Seeol anyway. He’d loved his friends, but they’d cut him to the heart with such betrayal. And it wasn’t just them. As soon as he’d released Briel and Fes, they too had taken to avoiding him as much as possible.
‘Holy Spirit.’ Ieane’s voice cut through his maroon curtained door. ‘It is time.’
‘Already?’ Seeol glanced at the mind-boggling symbols on the clock-face across the room. ‘Am coming,’ he replied, flying to the small doorway and landing before using his beak to nuzzle through. He leapt onto Ieane’s gloved hand and she immediately proceeded along the dark corridor. ‘Did they find them all?’
‘The food you asked for?’
‘Yes,’ Seeol hissed excitedly.
‘They were able to gather several red beetles and the green lizard you described,’ Ieane’s voice wavered nervously, ‘but we couldn’t find the flighted yellow insects.’
‘The green lizard,’ Seeol gushed ecstatically. ‘It’s my favourite. And they are very sneaky and hard to catch.’
‘You’re not mad?’ Ieane asked.
‘Why would?’
‘Because we couldn’t find the yellow insects.’
‘Why would I be mad?’ Seeol shook his head. ‘You got me yummy treats!’
‘You are truly merciful.’ Ieane’s voice was filled with awe.
‘Will you coming to dinner?’ Seeol enquired, made nervous by the idea of attending Far-a-mael’s imposing company without a friend.
‘I will be there to serve you, my Lord,’ Ieane stepped through an arched doorway to make her way across the courtyard.
‘Holy Spirit,’ Phil Yas called, sprinting across the courtyard, his face covered in sweat. ‘Come quickly.’
Seeol leapt from Ieane’s fingers and followed after the man. ‘What is it?’ He enquired, landing on the Phil’s arm. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he replied. ‘We found Elglair spies in the woods. ‘Far-a-mael is not to be trusted.’
‘You’re telling me?’ Seeol made an attempt at humour. ‘Where is they now?’
‘I left them with my soldiers,’ Phil said reassuringly. ‘They’ll be showing the ladies a good time. I can assure you of that,’ he finished with a wink.
‘Ladies? Good time?’ Seeol was confused. Why would Phil’s men be having a fun time with the enemy? ‘Oh no!’ Seeol screeched upon the realisation of what Phil was implying. ‘You is hurting them.’
Leaping from Phil’s arm, Seeol flashed over the wall and through the city streets. He reached the woods, his wings aching as he beat them ever harder to weave between branches and duck around trees. Lead by the sounds of wicked male laugher, Seeol arrived at a patch of woods where two bodi
es laid sprawled on the grass. The men leant over their painfully familiar captives like predators guarding their prey.
‘I’ll take the Elglair,’ one of the men chuckled. ‘You take the brunette.’
‘Please,’ El-i-miir squeaked, ‘don’t do this.’ Her eyes were blindfolded.
‘Not a problem,’ the man replied to his friend, ignoring El-i-miir to lean over Seteal, struggling with his belt all the while. ‘I’ve been in service so long I couldn’t have cared less if you’d given me a dog to fuck.’ Seteal was unconscious. Seteal was unconscious!
‘Stop!’ Seeol cried, tumbling and skidding to a stop in the leaf-litter. ‘Not her,’ he shrieked. But it was too late and the world sank into deathly silence, the distant wind whispering its sinister tune. An invisible force tore the man away from the earth and sent him screaming into the sky. The soldier’s journey peaked when he was no more than a speck in the distance.
The second soldier yelped and leapt away from El-i-miir, but his fate could not find redemption. He stumbled backward and struck a tree, his eyes flickering as his soul was extinguished. The body hit the ground, an empty vessel without pants.
‘Oh, Seteal,’ Seeol called out in dismay. He knew well why the men had met such a cruel completion to their lives. He didn’t feel for them--they’d attempted such a rotten act--but he feared for Seteal. She’d become so effortlessly capable of murder. She was becoming increasingly detached from right and wrong, and Seeol feared she’d be unable to find her way back. How many lives had she taken? There were at least three Seeol knew of. ‘My Lord!’ Phil Yas burst into the clearing, panting and leaning heavily on his knees. ‘What happened?’
‘You must leave.’ Seeol narrowed his eyes furiously. ‘If ever this happens again by a man he must leave. You must leave!’
‘You’re shunning me?’ Phil spluttered. ‘But I didn’t do anything.’