Other-Song, Chapter Eight: Death in the Forest
The eighth chapter of my novel-in-progress
Other-Song is a serialized fantasy novel-in-progress. It’s a tale of disenchantment, of abusive technology, of heresy, and of a world hidden in plain sight.
This is the eighth chapter.
In the first chapter, “The Last Party, The Last Song,” Lurian, bastard son of the Hornynal family, serves at a party hosted in honor of his brother, Trendal, attended by the Queen’s nephew, along with many other nobles. The Fel’lal musician he hired for the evening, his friend Tri’aln, plays “the last song” on the instrument, which destroys it. Just before it is destroyed, the lights in the hall suddenly flash brightly and every glass in each guests hand shatters as Lurian looks at them. He is then ushered out by the queen’s nephew through the darkness, who speaks cryptically of a heretic.
In the second chapter, “A Bastard and a Heretic,” Lurian waits outside until all the guests have gone, and then sneaks back into the house to gather things in order to leave. Details of his life unfold: her mother had seduced her husband’s brother and then framed him for rape — a plot to gain control of Horynal manse. While packing for the journey, his mother yells at Lurian from the other side of the door, and then curses him as a “heretic.”
In the third chapter, “The Question of the Wells,” Lurian, traveling without light, becomes lost on the paths near his childhood home and twists his ankle. Stumbling about in pain, he passes out for a short time before continuing on and encountering a strange well. In a series of remembrances, significant parts of his childhood related to questions about the nature of such wells unfold. His older brother, Trendal, claimed the Fel’lal sacrificed children there. The drunken house cook, on the other hand, claimed the Fel’lal made insignificant offerings to them. Later, Erol, a nervous tutor, just before being fired, cryptically confirmed their were offerings at the wells but not of children. Thirsty, and recalling Tri’aln’s dismissive assurance that the wells were just full of water, Lurian drinks from it.
In the fourth chapter, “The Herb-Merchant’s Guests,” Lurian awakens in a strange house with no memory of the previous two weeks. He learns from the other guests — Rylan, Katrin, and Rhi — that he was “prophesying” on the paths after drinking from the well. Tri’aln had found Lurian and brought him to the house of a local herb-merchant, who then drugged him so he could sleep off the effects of the well. The other guests in the house are all friends of each other; Rylan, the son of the herb-merchant, is particularly insistent that Lurian returns with them because of what he believes Lurian can do: “will.” Despite the strange circumstances and their evasion of his questions, Lurian agrees to join them on their return journey to the city of Thalyrest.
In the fifth chapter, “A Matter of Academic Interest,” Tri’aln arrives at the home of a man, Terrance, who is currently visited by two other friends. The three men are quite drunk, and Terrance is very angry with Tri’aln for showing up unannounced. From the ensuing conversations, it’s learned that what happened at the Horynal manse is now quite known, and Tri’aln is wanted by the Enforcers. She convinces the men to help her leave the city in return for wyrd-stones, to which the men seemed addicted. Agreeing, they help her past a guard only to find out that Tri’aln never intended to make good on her part of the bargain.
In the sixth chapter, “Of Witches and Nuns,” Katrin, Rylan, Rhi, and Lurian prepare for the journey to Thalyrest. Lurian and Rylan are to disguise themselves as female Solacebringers and Katrin helps them with their costumes. Rhi discusses her misgivings about Lurian’s presence to Janyr. Lurians prophetic babblings have confirmed to Rhi an earlier prophetic vision about her own lover’s death related to the same figure he mentions: “the nightwitch.”
In the seventh chapter, “What Happened on the Road to Thalyrest,” the four are accosted and attacked by Enforcers after encountering actual Solacebringers on the road. A wounded Katrin was able to escape, hiding behind a rock. Rylan appears to have died, Rhi is dying, and Lurian has fled into the forest. Recalling how they came to this point, Katrin decides to interrupt one of the Enforcers who starts a “Calling” to force Lurian to stop fleeing. Convincing the Enforcer that she has a contagious plague, Katrin stabs the man in the leg and is further wounded, falling into unconsciousness.
Chapter Eight: Death in the Forest
He’d put down a horse once. Once, and never again, no matter how urgent the animal’s pain.
That first and last time, he’d vomited all he’d eaten that day before even beginning. And he vomited again before taking the knife his father had forced into his hand, shuddering, shaking, retching again and again until only bile issued from his aching throat.
“No, Tren,” his father had barked, his voice edged with laughing malice. “Lurian will do it.”
His brother hadn’t offered to kill the horse for Lurian out of pity, though Lurian had wanted to thank him anyway. Trendal could be as grown-up as he wanted as far as Lurian was concerned. Growing up involved killing horses, so Lurian had wanted none of it.
His father had forced the knife into his hand, slicing through the glove Lurian wore to ward off the cold of that bitter autumnal night. It would have been better had his hand been cut, too. At least he could have used that as an excuse not to continue.
Lurian had stared at the knife, then dropped it.
His father punched him.
Lurian picked it up again.
The grey mare wanted to kick, wanted to run away from the scene before her, wanted to be away from the trembling boy with the knife and the swollen cheek and the blood in his teeth. Lurian could see she did not want death, only an end to pain, an end to the weight crushing her broken leg.
And all Lurian could offer was his knife against that agonised bellowing whine panicking the other horses. She strained to look towards her tethered foal, birthed only six months before. Nearby, her blinking grey-and-white sister made no sound in her stall, merely watched.
The grey mare stared, the other horses stared, his father’s eyes burned.
“You're making it worse, Lurian. Put her down.” Trendal's voice betrayed none of the reason of his words.
Lurian didn't turn to him, wouldn’t meet his jeering smile. “You do it.”
His father kicked him this time, enough to send him sprawling, hurt, to the ground.
Then his father sighed. “You’ll do it eventually. Dinner’s probably getting cold, Trendal. Lurian, you get to come out when she’s done.”
Lurian didn’t try to follow them out of the stables, didn’t protest as he heard the massive bar lowered against the hooks in the door. And though he was horrified when he heard his father snap shut the rusty lock, his equine audience did something he wished he could have.
They all calmed. The crippled mare still whined, but lowly now, struggling less and less against the horror of her condition and the violence of her husbands. Perhaps she even understood his tears for her. Perhaps it was enough for her that at least another being shuddered and sobbed, sharing the moment of pain.
Hour upon hour passed without so much a noise at the door, no mocking or even curious call from his father or brother. Even had he killed her immediately, they had meant to leave Lurian in the stables all night.
Better, than, that he had not relented until later. The grey mare tried her legs less often now, collapsing each time from the exhaustion of pain and fear and incomprehension. Finally, just before dawn, Lurian, through tears, kissed her once in the darkness before piercing her throat. She shuddered only a little, her questioning eyes glinting lightly in the moonlight that filtered dimly into the stables.
Lurian had said nothing to his family for that next week, but his silence had been in response to their cruelty, not in response to the horse’s death.
This time, though, he really could not speak. No moonlight reflected from the lifeless eyes of the two men in the gloaming wet forest. No door to be opened in the morning, no congratulatory slaps on the back from men he’d rather kick in the teeth. No retreating to his room, no taking meals in the kitchen with the wine-drunk Mayna.
Unlike the grey mare, the men to whom the wet and rigid corpses before him belonged had not calmed. Nor had they, unlike that mare, slept and then woken only briefly to meet death. But they’d been as surprised as she, had met his eyes with the same confused, far-off stare.
Lurian had been staring back at them, maybe for an hour or so, waiting in the rain falling relentlessly from sky and leaf upon him. He was waiting for them to wake up, waiting for their eyes to open to him, to stare with accusations he deserved.
As his own breathing marked the seconds and then minutes, as the flow of time away from the moment of their deaths carried him farther away from that possibility, he waited instead for the third Enforcer to come and bring him his own death.
The plummet of rain through the trees, the quiet rustle of his clothes and the movement of his chest with each shallow breath had been the only noises he could hear. Then, he heard a voice calling for him, but it sounded somehow false, a noise falling upon his mind and not his ears. It didn’t seem real, any more than the two dead men he stared at seemed real.
He did not think the woman now standing next to him, angrily shaking his shoulders, was real, either.
“Get up, man, get up!”
The chests of the dead enforcers did not twitch and expand to fill their lungs, nor did the trees grow mouths, so Lurian could fit neither the voice nor the words into anyone or anything to whom they might belong.
“Lurian! I need your help!”
The voice shook, his shoulders shook. Perhaps the wind, which he had once thought could speak, had noticed him. Maybe the wind had arrived through the labyrinth of trees to be the first witness to all the world of his crime. The wind shook him, shook his mind, shook itself with the horrified plea. It wanted his help, needed his help. The lungs of the men could not take it in, but maybe Lurian, who had evicted it from their chests, could take it instead.
Long curls of hair formed in front of him, framing a panicked face out of air to remind him of something.
Of someone.
“Lurian, listen. Kat and Ry are still by the road, and there’ll be another patrol really soon. I can’t drag them — you have to help me carry them.”
The wind shook the trees, shook pooling water from heavy leaf and bough, releasing the rain to finish its journey to the ground where he sat, suddenly seeing her.
“Rhi?” he tried, shaking.
“Yes. Help me, Lurian. Here,” she said, standing and offering her hand. “We’ll hide those guys — maybe bury them later, though that’d be too kind. Oh! You’re frigid, man.”
He stood on his numb legs, recalling the mare’s agony, and almost fell. “They’re — they’re dead, Rhi. I think I killed them.”
“No, they’re not. Rylan’s just knocked out, and Katrin’s… .” She stopped, holding his arm tightly, following his gaze. “Oh, them. Yes. They’re dead.”
His mind turned again, a little faster. “I think I killed them.”
“It’s okay Lurian. You saved our lives. Come on — we have to hurry.”
He followed her, his blood returning slowly, his body warming with the effort of pushing through branches and bramble, returning back on the path he’d taken blindly to flee the men who meant death. Rhi held his arm when she could, though she released it whenever she needed her own to steady herself. She didn’t hold him with her other arm, instead holding it away from her oddly.
“Rhi —“ Lurian said, jolting. “You're arm’s broken.”
She turned to him briefly. “Yes. Thanks for coming back.”
“Coming back?” he started, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve never, I mean… .”
“Killed someone? Neither have I, or any of us except my sister. And she killed a lot when we were kids. I’m sure she’ll sympathise.”
If there was an insult there, Lurian couldn’t read it. He took her good arm now, pushing ahead of her and holding branches out of her way. She let him lead them through the woods willingly, glad of the rest.
“Over there, I think.”
“No,” Lurian replied. “Look, there’s one of my scarves — they fell out when I was running.”
He heard her manage the briefest of laughs when he cupped his hand where had once been a stuffed mound on his chest. “What happened?”
She answered a few moments later, pulling away from his grip to check her broken arm. “The other Enforcer tried to Call, but Katrin rushed him. She’s got a scary head wound I could only do a little about. But she stabbed him in the knee, and I knocked him out.”
“I thought — I mean, weren’t you hurt more? You were screaming like you were about to die.”
Rhi nodded. “It hurt like hell, Lurian, but I was over-acting. I was hoping Rylan was, too. He’s fond of playing dead. But he was really knocked out. Look!”
She pointed with her good arm to the clearing, and Lurian strode ahead of her, almost running towards the place he had abandoned his friends before stopping, abruptly.
A figure, drest in the same blue and grey that he and the others wore, looked up with interest at the tumult through the trees rushing towards her. One of the Solacebringers they’d met that morning, quiet recognition meeting Lurian’s surprised expression, nodded her head and beckoned him closer.
“They’ll survive,” she said when Lurian approached her. “This Enforcer, though — what did you give him?”
“Give him?” Lurian repeated, incredulously. “I didn’t… .”
“Murtweed,” came Rhi’s reply from behind him. “Enough for five days.”
The Solacebringer nodded, quietly. “I see. Yes, that would work.”
“What's murtweed?”
The woman's voice was a little stern. “Hexe’s trick, and assassin’s. But useful here, though I wouldn’t normally say that. Still — there’ll be a patrol within the hour, I can already hear the night-tolling. Where were you really going?”
Rhi answered her, while Lurian went to his wet but unharmed horse. “To Thalyrest, really. Why did you come back?”
The woman shrugged off the question. “We can carry him into the trees with no problem, but we’ll need to be careful with her. We can drag the Enforcer — oh. Your arm’s broken."
Rhi nodded and let the Solacebringer touch it. The beginnings of a sigh morphed into a wincing moan as the woman wrenched her arm into a different position. Lurian watched, then looked away, instead turning his attention to moving the drugged man. He was too heavy to carry, so Lurian tried to drag him by his feet across the wet grass.
“I can help you a bit after this,” the woman said as Lurian struggled with the dead weight. “And then we can move the other two.” Then, turning to Rhi again, she said, “your arm won’t be better for another hour or so. No weight on it until then.”
“Thanks,” Rhi answered evenly. “And thanks for coming back.”
“It is nothing. Our mother commanded it. She immediately saw your falsehood, but did not tell the others, only me. She saw the patrol and expected trouble for you, though I do not think this is what she envisioned.”
“I'm sorry about the mockery,” Lurian heard Rhi say in response. “It was foolish.”
“It was convincing,” came the nun’s reply. “And quite a few of us are sympathetic to your cause.”
“And many of us are sympathetic to yours. My name’s Rhi, by the way, and that’s Lurian.”
Only the pattering of rain, a light wind, and the sluggish lapping of the river in its bank broke what seemed to be the heaviest silence Lurian had ever endured.
The mendicant answered, finally, with a question. “You have a sister?”
“Mara, yes. You know her?”
The woman’s measured voice suddenly broke into shaking excitement. “I know of you both, yes. I intended not to give my name, but nevermind all that now. Melys is kind to our prayers, indeed. Rhi, I’m Sister Enyth.”
Lurian watched the two women embrace fiercely, feeling more confused than ever.
“I can't believe… .”
“I’ve always hoped… .”
“Are we still in a hurry?” Lurian called back, hoping to get a break from dragging the Enforcer.
They both turned, the middle-aged Enyth and the younger Rhi, and laughed. “Leave him,” Rhi called. “Let’s get Rylan and Katrin now, then we can take off his armor and move him further into the woods.”
“Okay,” he answered. “You’ll explain all this later, right?”
The two women nodded, their faces wet with tears.
Carrying Rylan and Katrin into the woods was more difficult than had been dragging the man, but it didn’t take nearly as long as Lurian feared. Once they’d finished this, Enyth led the Enforcers’ two horses into the wood, while Rhi shuffled her feet to mend the long swathe the dragging had cut into the grass.
Just as she’d finished confusing their movements in the grass and joined them in the wood, she stopped, suddenly, hushing Lurian with a low warning: “They're coming.”
“Should we hide?” he whispered.
“Too late to run. Stay low.”
They both pressed themselves as close to the ground as they could, Rhi gingerly avoiding using her wounded arm to balance her weight. Even still, she winced slightly, but made no complaint.
Lurian didn’t hear them for another minute, and had almost gave voice to his sudden doubt. But then he heard them, the clopping of shod horses against the stone road, the glimmer of lantern-light in the rain, the jocular grumble of wet and cold Enforcers upon horseback, eager to return to firelight and food inside walls and under roof.
They passed them without notice, without even glancing off the road.
Once they were gone, Lurian and Rhi dragged the drugged Enforcer further into the woods, laying him next to the two dead men. Lurian stared at the men, their chests completely caved-in, their open eyes covered in coagulated blood and bulging from their head.
“What happened to them?” Lurian asked.
Rhi’s glance at him felt strange. “You said you killed them.”
Lurian felt cold. “I thought I did. But look at them — I didn’t do that.”
Rhi’s silence made Lurian feel even colder. She seemed to be waiting for him to speak more, but he didn’t have anything to say.
Her voice felt gentle when she spoke next. “Lurian … what do you remember?”
“I was running away from them, and then I fell over there,” he said, pointing to the root he’d tripped over. “They were really close, and they were going to kill me. And then everything got really slow, and then they fell down and they were dead.”
Rhi nodded. “That’s the important part: they’re dead. How it happened doesn’t matter right now, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and tried not to think more about it. But the memory wouldn’t leave him so easily.
It had been like like the moment in the manse when he watched all the wine glasses shatter and the wyrdlights burn out. Time had slowed, and he had watched. But it hadn’t been him.
Or had it? Though Rhi had said it didn’t matter, he could tell something was off about the way she was acting around him. She thought it was him, and maybe thought he was lying. He’d done nothing, though, except watch as it happen. Yet he’d felt he’d killed them, was certain he had, but couldn’t explain why.
Footsteps through the underbrush and a voice interrupted his thoughts. “Your friends will be fine. There’s a farm not far from here, and a Fel’lal work camp outside it. We can put them on the Enforcers’ horses and lead them to the camp. It’ll take only an hour or so, I think.”
“And then," Enyth continued, speaking directly to Rhi, “I think I’ll come back with you to Thalyrest, if you’d allow me to join you. I’ve wondered about you for what, now, twenty years?”
Rhi laughed, then hugged the woman. Lurian watched them and tried to let their warmth thaw the deathly cold he felt inside himself.
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