Days Of Light And Shadow (49 page)

“There will be a new high lord appointed soon?”

“In time Your Majesty.” Which meant that she didn’t know he realised.

“Then send to him, whoever it may be, that Irothia still demands reparations for what was done. Removing one royal brat does not change that.”

“It shall be done Your Majesty.” Luree bowed to him in acknowledgement.

“And send to him also that Finell’s last demand will be ignored as shameful. Humans do not stoop so low. Elaris will make arrangements to collect their diseased soldiers and take them home as quickly as they can. I do not want them in my lands.”

“Of course Your Majesty, and I thank you for your justice and mercy.” Luree bowed even lower. And he gathered she was pleased with his decision. Maybe one of those foul hearted soldiers was kin.

“If I may be excused.” She surprised him with that. Court was due to start shortly, and all the realms liked their envoys to be present. What could be more important? And he had decided against killing her soldiers, so why did she still look so glum? Naturally he asked even though he was getting sick of asking.

“I must visit with each of the three local families of what was once House Vora and explain to them that they are no longer of a house. That they are nameless beggars.”

“Go.” He gestured with his fingers for her to leave, and after another quick bow she did just that. But as she left, a tiny figure in a simple white robe heading one way while others in all their finery approached from the other, he couldn’t help but know a moment of sadness for her. And maybe even for those she was intending to see.

He was king of Irothia, and his duty was to his people, no one else. But sometimes even an enemy’s suffering could be a cause for sadness.

Chapter Seventy Five.

It was dark in the prison, but Trekor didn’t truly mind the dark. Not that sort of darkness anyway. And this was nothing like the pitch black of Finell’s evil dungeon. It was clean and warm, and the prisoners were fed and allowed to bathe. And above all, they were not tortured. What troubled her was the terrible darkness of the souls of the prisoners.

One hundred and twenty five men and women, all of them filled with only a single thought. The need to go out and kill humans. It was more than just a command laid upon their lives. It was a disease that ate their very souls. A disease of violence and hatred, of fear and evil. And above all a disease of the Reaver. A disease that had not been seen in a thousand years.

She shuddered a little as she turned back to the others, and saw in their eyes that they knew the same horror.

“We are ready?” Of course they were. They had come prepared to enter the prison with the blessed water of the Mother. But she wanted to make sure. They nodded silently, no doubt all with the same worries in their hearts as she had. Would it work? And if it did what would be the outcome? The writings from so long ago were limited in what they said. Time had forgotten most of them. A thousand years of decay had stolen much of the rest. And what remained spoke of things less than perfect. Of people left less than whole after the ridding of the demon.

But it had to be done. Even Iros understood that. It was why he had given them permission to try. He wanted these soldiers gone and as they were, they were too dangerous to transport. They would attack those who returned them home.

“Bring the first prisoner please.” She gave the order, and the guards immediately rushed to obey. It was amusing how quickly they would obey a woman with two huge crag cats by her side. But that was the only amusement she would know in this place.

They opened the first cell door, and then with ropes and chains leapt on the prisoner inside, bringing him directly to the ground as he screamed like an animal and lashed out at them. They didn’t let him up until he was bound hand and foot, though even then he struggled and hurled his invective at them. She guessed that they had experienced the unreasoning savagery of the watchmen before.

Soon though they had the struggling prisoner up and on his feet and were half carrying him to her, all while he struggled desperately to lash out at them with everything he had.

“The flask.” Elder Yossirion already had it waiting for her, the blessed water already poured. He handed it to her, and she wondered how he kept from spilling it when his hands were shaking so. But he wasn’t alone. The other priests and healers were the same. All of them were filled with horror and fear. Most of them looked as though they wanted to run. What stood in front of them was an offence against the Mother. An affront against life.

“Child, this is of the Mother.” But her words meant nothing to him. Less than nothing, and he struggled furiously, only a single thought in his mind, harming the humans. Harming her too. Soon he would be wanting to eat them. If they did not act in time he too would become one of the shuffling abominations. A soulless creature knowing nothing more than violence and hunger.

“Hold him.” She didn’t want to give the order. It was wrong on so many levels. But he was struggling and wriggling so hard in his bonds that there was no other way. Two more guards quickly gathered him around the head, one from behind, his arm around his throat, lifting his head up, the other using a belt knife to force his mouth open.

“By the blessings of the Mother.” She upended the flask into his open mouth, and watched as much of the water made it into his mouth. More of it dribbled down his cheeks, and had his head not been tipped back so far she was sure he would have spat the rest out. But he couldn’t. And in the end he had to swallow it or choke.

He swallowed.

Nothing happened at first. The man swallowed the water, obviously suspicious, perhaps believing it poison, but he couldn’t prevent it. Then the transformation began.

It was in his eyes first, as they opened wide, seeming to take in the world as they never had before. Like a baby seeing for the first time. Next it was his face, and the slowly dawning expression of horror that appeared on it. And then it was in his mouth, as his throat started convulsing as if the words were choking him.

He stopped struggling unexpectedly, his body went loose, and his legs stopped supporting his weight. He would have fallen to the ground if the guards hadn’t been supporting him.

Then he screamed.

He screamed with all his might. With every measure of strength he could muster. He screamed as though the gates of the underworld were opening up before him and he was being pushed through them. He screamed and he would not stop screaming.

Trekor stared at him. They all did. Worried that something truly terrible had happened to him. That he was dying before their eyes. Because it was a death scream that sprang forth from his throat and filled the entire prison. The final and most terrible scream a man might make just before he died in terror. But he didn’t die. He wasn’t dying. He was just screaming.

“Child.” The elder tried to calm him, tried to ease whatever was wrong with him, and she failed completely. He didn’t hear her. He didn’t even see her she guessed. What he saw, all that he knew, was something inside him. A memory maybe. An hallucination. A fevered dream. Or something worse. He didn’t see her. He didn’t see the cats. He didn’t see the guards holding him or the other priests. He didn’t even see the prison where he had been held for so long. His vision was of something completely different.

Knowing that there was nothing else that could be done, the elder let him continue screaming. She couldn’t stop him anyway.

Eventually he stopped by himself. His throat, torn ragged from the sheer power of his screaming, stopped working, and silence was restored to the prison. But then, when his screams had finally ended, came the crying.

Huge body wrenching sobs of pain. Grief, pain and shame and maybe something even worse, all trying to tear themselves loose from his flesh, to rip themselves free from his very core. It was lucky the guards were still holding him, because without them he would have fallen to the floor, and he might never have risen again.

Trekor stared at the others and they in turn stared back at her, none of them knowing quite what had happened. None of them knowing what to do about it either, save to let it run its course. But she knew it would not be a short journey. It would not be easy. And it might not end.

And after him there were so many more who needed to drink the blessed water.

Chapter Seventy Six.

The town prison was a dark place. Too cold and grey for Iros’ liking by half. Not as he remembered it. And it was also too full. It had been designed mostly to hold the town drunks for a night or two, and a few other prisoners awaiting their trials. As a young man he had spent a few nights in its stony embrace sleeping off his drunken brawls, and as he recalled he hadn’t found it particularly comfortable. But there had never been a thought of it holding prisoners for any longer than that. There hadn’t been the need.

Like the elves his family had always preferred some form of indentured servitude as a reparation for crimes to simply locking people up. For thieves and the like it allowed them the chance to repay their victims, while at the same time, it allowed the victims and the rest of the town to see those who had done wrong, repaying their victims. It was quite a just system. And for those who committed more terrible crimes, the terms of service could be made longer and harsher. Some, murderers and the like, would never complete their sentences, and they would be watched over by guards as they worked. There would be no escape and no repeat of their crimes. But there were very few of them. Greenlands was a peaceful land.

But they had never had a war and never intended the prison to hold the prisoners of that war. They had never really prepared for a war. And so every cell was full, and all of them with angry elves. Elves with such hatred in their souls that they could never be allowed out, even in chains. They would attack. They would bite and claw and kick like wild animals. They would scream and howl with undying hatred. And they would not stop. Just being there, seeing the hatred and ferocity in their faces, hearing it in their cries, told him that there was something very wrong with the watchmen. Something dark and evil. Something of the demons.

With that in mind, and while still awaiting the king’s instructions to release the prisoners as part of the proper prisoner exchange, he had let the elders work their will on them. He had hoped that they might at least be able to persuade them to leave the land in peace when the time came. Not a lot more perhaps, but that would be something.

But the reports from the guards who had come running to inform him of what was happening, spoke of something far more terrible happening within the prison’s cold stone walls. They spoke of screaming, of prisoners in pain from being tortured in some way. Things he couldn’t believe of the elders, but reports he also couldn’t ignore.

“What happened here?” Iros didn’t like being in the prison. He hated it with a passion born of dread. Even a normal prison with barred windows and properly trained guards. With the rule of law. But sometimes when a man had responsibilities, he had to do what he hated. And after all the terrible reports coming to him from the prison, he had to know what was happening. Especially when he’d been the one to give the elders permission to try and help the prisoners.

This did not look like help.

The prisoners were down, dozens of them, lying on the cold stone floor, weeping, screaming, curled up like babies. It looked like torture, just as the guards had said, something he was far too familiar with. But unlike him none of them were wounded. None of them bled. None of them had even had their clothes removed. Instead it was their minds that had been beaten.

“Lord Iros.” Yossirion turned to him, his face a mask of horror. As if he had just seen something too horrible for words. And yet he was one of those who had done whatever this was to the prisoners.

“What have you done?”

“Freed them.” Two simple words, and Iros knew he was telling the truth. The truth was all he knew.

“This doesn’t look like freedom.”

“But it is. When such terrible evil has been done. When souls have been ripped nearly completely free from the bodies of men. When memories of darkness and brutality still live in the soul. This is what is left.” Trekor answered for her friend, but her wrinkled face looked no happier than his. If anything she looked even more shocked.

“The demon possessed them. He owned them. He owned their very souls. And then he made them do unutterable things. Deeds that they can never forget. Now that his presence is gone from their flesh, this is what remains. Horror, shame, fear and guilt written large across their souls. It is all that they know.”

“Oh merciful Divines.” Iros knew that he needed their wisdom. Staring at his former enemies, he knew that he needed it all. “You cannot keep doing this.”

“And we cannot stop either. We cannot leave these soldiers possessed. We cannot allow a demon to continue to live in their souls. To eat them from the inside. In time they would become abominations. This way at least, they are free.”

“Free to suffer.” Sophelia was suddenly beside him and Iros welcomed her warm presence as she wrapped an arm around him in the cold stone prison. “This is monstrous.”

“Yet it is still the best that can be done.” The elder did not seem to be backing down, even as her patients or victims kept writhing on the ground in misery before her. “Ask them.”  The elder pointed at the men they’d freed from the demon.

She was right though he wished that she wasn’t. He didn’t want to ask the men anything. He wanted to let them be and hope they recovered from whatever had happened to them. But Iros knew he had to. The ones, the only ones who could give him the answers he needed were those lying on the ground. Those who had already suffered whatever horror the elders had cast on them.

“As you say.” Carefully he unwound Sophelia’s arm from his waist and approached the nearest of them. A man lying in the ground, curled up like a baby, sobbing. He went down on one knee before him.

“Soldier.” He spoke quietly and still it was too loud in that place. And when the man didn’t answer him, he reached out carefully with a hand, worried that broken and bound as he was, the man might still try to bite him. He didn’t bite him though. Instead the soldier screamed out at the instant his fingers found his shoulder, a sound of something more horrible than death. Iros waited until it had passed.

“Can you hear me?”

“Sweet Mother yes.” The man heard him, he even understood him. But he didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t uncurl. And he didn’t stop sobbing.

“I am Lord Iros of Greenlands. I am your gaoler.” If his words meant anything to the man he didn’t know. Certainly the man didn’t do anything different. He didn’t reach out to try and kill him as he would have before. He didn’t accuse him of anything. He didn’t insult him. He just lay there, sobbing like a broken child.

“It is my duty to care for you. Not to torture you.” And in that moment it truly was. Once, not that long before, he would have happily killed them all. Ripped their beating hearts out of their chests. But no one could wish harm on such a broken creature. Not even him.

“I need to know. What the elders have done for you. In freeing you. Do you wish them to undo it? To return you to how you were?”

“No!” The man screamed his denial with all the power he had. His body contorted strangely as every muscle, every fibre of his being went into that scream, letting it tear through the entire prison. And then he screamed some more. Iros let him continue, there was nothing else to do anyway, and waited patiently for him to run out of strength. It took far too long, but eventually the man returned to his wretched sobbing.

“Soldier?”

“No! Please no!” This time it wasn’t a scream. He didn’t have the strength left within him to scream. He didn’t have the voice. But it was a denial. He did not want to return to how he had been.

“Tell me how I can help you. How I can help your brothers and sisters.”

“Free them.” It was barely a whisper forced over a throat ravaged from the screaming, but Iros understood him. He wasn’t sure he believed him. But he understood him.

“You would rather be like this than as you were?”

“Yes. Kill me. Please. Anything. But please don’t let that thing come back.” The man was broken in some way, his soul shattered, his will in pieces, and yet as he looked into his eyes, Iros could see that single truth in them. Terror. He wanted never to return to how he had been.

“The Divines be praised.” Iros whispered it as he rose to his feet and turned to face the elders once more. He needed the comfort of the words even if he doubted that the Divines listened or cared.

“Can these people be helped? Will they recover?” In the end it was the only thing that mattered. He couldn’t condemn people, even his most hated enemies, to a life like this.

“Some.” Yossirion looked at the floor as he spoke, unable to face him, or the truth. “In time they will regain something of who they were. The fear will recede. The guilt and shame will take a smaller place in their hearts. But they will never be completely whole again.”

His words given he kept staring at the floor, and Iros realised it was his turn to say something, to make a decision. And he couldn’t. It was a failing, a weakness, but he couldn’t see the right path in front of him. He needed the wisdom of Nanara and had instead only ignorance and doubt. He looked at his wife and saw the same lack of answers in her eyes. So instead of making a decision he tried simply to delay it, and knew that he fooled no one.

“This ends for today. There will be no more freedom given. The guards will take these soldiers back to their cells, and they will be treated with kindness. And in the morning we will return to see if they have made any progress.” He doubted it though. People so badly wounded did not recover. And he fully expected to find in the morning that many had committed suicide. Maybe all of them.

And would that be such a terrible thing?

“Come.” He gathered his wife’s waist in his arm and started escorting her out of the prison. “You should not be here.”

But as he led her out into the sunshine, Iros knew it wasn’t just Sophelia who shouldn’t be there. None of them should be. This wasn’t a place for good people. It wasn’t a place for anyone.