Recommended reading on WriteHere: Razing Spirits – http://wh.tl/150915-15
Source: Razing Spirits
Tag: death
Safyra
‘Defeat’ is not the same as ‘Destroy.’ Recommended reading on WriteHere: Safyra – http://wh.tl/150912-10
Source: Safyra
Soyala and The King
Away from his castle, his grounds, his servants and councilors, the king, in plain riding clothes, unadorned with signs of royalty, rode a dappled gray mare down an unfamiliar path.
The path was pleasant enough, even and smooth, if a bit more gravel than dirt, surrounded by thick forest on both sides.
The treetops soughed under a gentle breeze, and random birdsong carried on it to the king’s ears. He would have enjoyed it more, had circumstances been different, and the one he lost was there to share it with him.
His countenance reflected the weight of his burden, and the frailty of his strength.
Through a small break in the trees, he saw a seemingly secluded alcove, serene looking, and full of stones to sit on while looking at sun speckled water of the quiet river running through it.
He thought he would rest there, to remember there was yet beauty left in the world, and to quiet his racing thoughts.
He tied the dappled mare, which blended in with the light shadows and the spots of sun that eluded the thick boughs and wide leaves to warm the ground below.
This forest is old, and yet, I’ve never seen this part before.
“Whose land is this?” he said to himself.
“It is yours, majesty, and mine, and the mare’s you ride.”
He whirled around, startled by the silent approach and sudden words of a woman who stood some distance away, too far, he thought, for him to be overheard.
Her gown, more suited for royal court than ancient forest, trailed behind her, her honey-gold hair bound in a matching green band, and her green eyes were bright and pretty, and for some reason he couldn’t fathom, a little disconcerting.
“I apologize for startling you, your majesty.” She bobbed a perfect curtsy. “I intruded on your private thoughts…and your grief. Would you like to be alone?”
He gazed at her longer than was polite before he said:
“Who are you, and how is it you’re here?”
“I am Soyala, and I live here.”
“In this place?”
“In the forest, yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from the forest, because I’m of it.”
His expression darkened.
“Are you mocking me, child? You’re speaking in riddles.”
“No, your majesty, I would not mock you. Riddles are to be solved, and there is no mystery here. I have answered you truthfully, but I’ve angered you.
“I will leave you. I would not have your sorrow vented on me for relief.”
She turned to go, and began to walk out of the natural alcove.
“Wait! Soyala…wait.”
She stopped, but did not look back.
“I’m…sorry, to have been so brusque with you.”
She faced him then, her own expression somber, but still open.
“I’m sorry for your loss, your majesty. Was she a good wife to you?”
About to answer her, he realized he never told her about his wife.
He didn’t know how this woman, having proclaimed to be of the forest itself, knew of his queen’s death, but he’d already asked enough questions, and wasn’t up for any more of her cryptic non-answers.
“Yes,” he replied, his voice growing husky. “She was a good wife indeed.”
“For that, you must be thankful, are you not?”
He turned from her and stared out at the slow moving river, speckled with sunlight, spotted like his dappled mare and the sunlit trees.
Time has no power here, and there is light and shadow everywhere.
“I was pleased, and happy. Yes, I am thankful.”
Soyala came and stood beside him as he watched the water.
“When the sun changes position,” she said, “so does the light, and so do the shadows. Often, we find ourselves in one longer than the other, but eventually, we pass through both for different reasons.”
She looked at him, and he bowed his head, unable for a moment to look at her, but feeling a strong, inexplicable connection; there was a quiet power about her, like the river, like the forest, a persistent force like the primeval trees surround them, seasoned and honed by things outside themselves, yet exerting their own influence on the shapers.
I am no ruler here.
The mare gave a soft whinny.
Soyala turned and smiled. “She grows restless, your majesty.”
She turned back to face him. “So does your heart. It is moving, even now, from grief’s shadows, into the light, but you’ve been reluctant to walk in it again.
“There is no dishonor, and there will be no forgetting.”
“How…how do you know this?” His voice thickened again; she’d broken a barrier within him he didn’t know was there.
She took his hand, and interlaced her fingers with his.
“Because light and shadow, your majesty, are merely timeless, but love…” she looked into his eyes, “love is eternal.”
“Love…is eternal,” he whispered back.
The mare whinnied low again, gave a small stamp of her foot.
“Come,” Soyala said. “I will escort you to the road, your majesty.”
*********************
“Young lady, I am somehow in your debt. I came here to mourn, but you lightened my burden, my heart.
“If you ever need anything…”
“I am grateful for your kind, generous offer, but all I need is here.”
“Then, farewell, Soyala.”
“Your majesty.” She bobbed another curtsy.
He walked the mare down the road a bit, and looked back to see her watching.
He raised his hand once more, and she raised hers, smiled, and slowly faded before his eyes.
He brought the mare to a stop.
As he wondered at her disappearance and the true nature of who he’d just met, he suddenly realized one other thing:
He never told her he was a king.
Trace (5)
The morning found him rested, his hands pain free, and his stomach rumbling as he washed up and set out his clothes for the day.
He’d be talking to the royal brats today.
When they said they were leaving, Trace put a spell across their room doors so that once they closed them, they couldn’t be open.
He also wanted to talk to Arrick; the boy had kept looking past his shoulder at Lydia, as if surprised to see her. He would have chalked it up to curiosity if Arrick hadn’t suddenly turned pale.
Lydia had to have given him a dirty look.
To his credit, the boy quickly took up the slack, but not before Trace noticed, and he figured if he noticed, then so did Lydia.
He wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, especially, if he were to be honest, after she ‘helped’ him, so he hadn’t let on that anything was amiss, but she knew something.
He thought about confronting her, but it would be best to lure her in, so he decided to stick with his plans of questioning the heirs.
No doubt they’d be angry, but he’d make them see they almost made a big mistake, one that might have cost them their lives too.
*****************
The captain of the guard, with two others flanking him, was waiting for Trace.
“Good morning, Captain.”
“It won’t be for you, taint, if I have my way.”
Trace stopped walking.
“And why would that be, Captain.”
“If you’ve harmed them…”
“The only way they’d be harmed right now is if they did it themselves. I locked the doors, nothing else. I needed, and still do need, to ask them some questions, and they were going to leave.”
The captain’s brows arched in surprise.
He didn’t know, but he’ll want answers too. Good. I need all the allies I can get.
The captain turned to his guards. “Stand aside, then.”
They did, but they didn’t like it.
Of course, their jobs are at stake now, just like Lydia’s.
The sense of menace in their stare was almost palpable, but he would ignore them, so long as they made no move toward him.
The doors to the children’s rooms opened, and they came storming out, furious, a million commands spewing from their lips to arrest, behead, flog, draw and quarter, flay, whip, beat, and hang him.
“Your highnesses, please!” He put his hands up, pleading for them to be quiet a moment. “He only seeks the murderer of your parents. The kingdom belongs to you now, whether you want it to or not.”
“Leaving would have put you under suspicion,” Trace said. “And the captain, as much as it would have pained him, would have hunted you down as fugitives. Better if you answer my questions now, in his presence, so there’s no mistaking what’s being asked and answered.”
He looked at the captain.
“Fair enough.”
He turned to the heirs. “He’s right; I would’ve come after you.”
“Well,” Kiharu said, taking a breath, “I’m hungry. I was unable to have anything brought in to me for a snack.”
He gave Trace a meaningful look, but there was a hint of amusement in his eyes.
He likes toughness.
“Are we feeding him too?” Anjallay asked.
“He’s our guest.”
“I’ll take my breakfast in my room then.”
“You will not. You will sit with us like a proper queen, and you will answer the mage’s questions, as will I.”
He is tough.
Trace felt the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.
*******************
The servants had laid the breakfast out, still hot, or at least, warm enough.
Trace glanced around to see if Lydia would come find him, but he stopped, realizing, Kihari was observant, and would pick up on it.
Trace gave him some attention, looked him over.
He was tall, but not large. His face was all angles, his brows thick, as well as his hair, which was well groomed, if a little long.
For now, he was clean-shaven, but custom here dictated that if he ascended the throne, he would have to grow a beard.
Trace guessed his age around late teens, with intelligence in his eyes beyond his years.
If he took the crown, he would be reckoning force.
The girl was another story: she was beautiful, and she knew it, and gave off an air of haughtiness just looking at Trace. If she wasn’t careful, it could be annoying and lead her down some paths that didn’t need traveling.
Civil enough for now, having listened to Kihari about sitting at the table, Trace had no doubt that she would find a way to make him pay.
Her eyes were a pale hazel, and her black hair framed her ivory face, hanging in rich, inky ringlets frosted by the morning sun across her shoulders.
He reached for the pitcher of pear juice the same time he did, and he pulled back.
“Ladies, first.”
He tried a smile, but she gave him one of her haughty looks as she poured the juice into her cup.
Power was crackling around her.
Trace’s eyes widened, surprised as the connection between them was established.
She has power.
Yes, and we can read your thoughts as well.
“All right, then. Let’s stop the formalities and pleasantries,” Trace said out loud. “It’s clear you don’t care for your parents, I got that, but don’t you at least want to find out who killed them?
“Have you considered, even once, that you might be, could be, next?
“That’s why we were leaving,” Anjallay said. “That is, until you interfered.”
“And Trace,” said Kiharu, “who called you here to investigate? We certainly didn’t.”
“Your doctor. He’d heard of me, and sent for me.”
“How did he know you were here?”
“He didn’t, and I wasn’t. I traveled.”
“How?”
“Magic. I’m a mage.”
He let a little edge creep in; they were stalling, and he saw right through it, but he couldn’t figure out why. Still there was no harm in answering, but he learned that with royals, you had to bully them, sometimes at the risk of your own head, to get to the desired result, so he asked his next question.
“The night I met you, you were on your way out; where were you going?”
They didn’t answer.
“Did you have a place to go? Palace living tends toward softness, and your sister doesn’t seem like the woodsy type,” he smiled at her, and she gave him back a sarcastic one, but he thought she almost actually smiled, “So I’ll ask you again, where were you going?”
“We’d rather not say,” she said.
“I didn’t ask if you’d rather say. You were both prepared to leave; there was no surprise, no outcry other than the doctor calling me and controlling the panic. If you had a place that go, that means you were complicit in waiting for the murder to be carried out so you could leave.
“You do see how that looks suspicious, don’t you?”
The captain had gotten comfortable, sitting back with his arms folded, his eyes never leaving Kahiri, who was giving it some thought, but decided to evade the question.
“What would you have done if we left before you imprisoned us?”
“Like I said before: track you, find you, and do what we’re doing now, except I’d be a lot more forceful, a lot less nice. This is your chance to clear yourselves. You won’t get another.
“You need our help?”
“I’d like it. I have a lead, and I’d like your help in tracking it down. It will take longer if I don’t, but the result will be the same.”
She leaned forward, getting caught up in it, her curiosity piqued.
“You always get your quarry?”
“Most of the time, but not always.”
“What makes you think you can get this one?”
“I don’t know if I’ll catch them until I start pursuing them. There’ve been some close calls, but this is not the time for an interview. The longer we stay here, the further away they get.”
“You’re that confident you can find them?”
“If they’re not dead.”
“Tell us what you have,” Kihari said.
Since they revealed they had powers of their own, and the princess used hers to link them to Trace, things could go either way, but for now, it was a matter of expediency
“I’ll do better than that.”
Trace shared the vision, and for all that they said they hated their parents, their expressions grew tense with anger as they saw the murderer’s hands, almost lost in the folds of a bell-sleeved robe.
In them was a flask of something with a clear liquid which they poured into the wine cups, stirring it with a wooden spoon, the passing their right hand over it in an a pattern.
That’s new. I didn’t see that in the first vision, Trace thought.
***************
A low light pulsed in the dark wine, flashing like lightning, brightening the burgundy to bright red, like blood fresh from the vein. As it darkened and blended into the wine, they could all see the tendrils fanning out slowly, twisting and curling like smoke, dying out, and the wine looking like wine once more.
I didn’t get this the first time.
Trace felt a surge of alarm, a suspicion forming, and the face beneath the hood looked up.
Before Trace could see it, her eyes flashed and blinded them all.
They all cried out as they reacted, pushing back chairs and stumbling from the table.
The sudden cries and movement caught the captain off guard, jumping quickly to his feet and scanning the room, but he saw nothing.
Their vision began to return.
“Find them,” Kihari rasped, looking at the captain.
“She’s not here,” Trace said. “This happened days ago; she just added the details to what she wanted me to see. She must have felt the link somehow, and entered it. She manipulated it.”
Damn! I’ve got a Light witch to fight.
Without hesitation, he flung himself back through the collapsing link, risking dissolution himself.
She was in the forest, far from human eyes.
She’d teased him into it, letting him almost see her, but she didn’t expect him to risk traveling the sub-link; it was collapsing too fast though, so she saw him begin to disappear out of it, still looking at her.
As she began to see through him, she did finally look up, and smile, her small fangs gleaming, her large eyes the blue of a late summer sky, her hair a dull gold in the fading sunlight that came through her window.
Lydia.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
Nomad (2)
Trace (4)
4)
Lydia managed to secure Trace a room in the castle after all, but in the servants’ quarters, where no one would bother him.
In fact, she’d given him Walcroft’s room; the man was long gone, and would not be back.
No one would look for him, but Trace kept him in the back of his mind. Given what he’d said about magic, and him being a member of the court, even though a minor one, he might start trouble for Trace with those who’d want to curry favor with the new ruler, whoever that was.
Walcroft’s room was befitting his station; comfortable, but not opulent.
Used to sleeping in strange places on strange beds, he anticipated no problem falling asleep.
Trace had already incanted to make sure nothing was already inside it that would harm him, then did another incant to seal the room so that nothing could get in.
Trace sat on the edge of the bed, bounced the mattress a few times.
It would do for the night.
He rubbed at his temples, took a deep breath, and poured some water from the pitcher on the nightstand.
His hands shook slightly; it wasn’t the first time it happened, but he felt a fresh stab of alarm every time it did, and it was beginning to happen more often.
He had the night servants draw a bath for him, and he sank deep, letting the steam take him away for a time, letting it take away Lydia’s lingering scent from his body.
He smiled at the memory of her boldness, was caught off-guard by the ferocity of his pent-up need; he had not been gentle, and she, taking his cue, had responded in kind.
Their release on and into each other was so strong it was almost painful.
Where her fingers scratched, his bruised; she took the pain like a warrior, and their mouths and tongues locked in a heated side battle for long moments after.
When she finally broke away and opened those large blue eyes, they were glistening, and her smile was one of affectionate triumph.
Trace, it’s all over you. You need someone.
He got out of the tub, dried himself, unpacked and donned his nightclothes, and tried unsuccessfully to remember the last time he’d had a woman before tonight , much less with the intensity he’d taken Lydia.
He felt a twinge of receding sorcery; the pain in his hands from casting remained long after the scars receded.
Summoning, conjuring, incanting, all of it combined was beginning to take its toll on him physically.
The danger he was constantly in, the near misses of sharpened weaponry, of hot and cold bolts of magic, the narrow escapes, the beatings, both given and received, had their own psychic costs.
Constantly staying cool-headed when he wanted to scream and let the fear overtake him instead of pushing it aside, having to stand and face horrors tangible and otherwise, to resist the powers of demonic hypnotism and temptation, the seductive whispers for him to give up, give in, surrender and die in unparalleled bliss, or unparalleled pain, while others fled and took cover, abandoning him to his fate, was wearing him down.
Training with weapons, training with magic, the long hours spent in the dark before sunrise and after sunset, the reading, the studying, the conversations with things long departed that sought to teach, use, control or just take him, led him to begin thinking about the day he would no longer be able to continue doing this.
He’d already done it far longer than he wanted to.
Far longer than he should’ve.
He had more money than he’d ever need; royalty paid generously to bury their indiscretions.
Peasantry had offered him children, daughters, wives, livestock, a percentage of their harvests.
His sea travels had netted him casks of rare wines, well-aged whiskeys, flowered and fruited brandies and potent rum.
His coffers and larders were full, and would remain so for the rest of his life.
And he had no one to inherit any of it.
His brain, in spite of his best efforts, began racing with thoughts.
He reviewed what he’d seen of Lydia just this night: she was practical, tough, resourceful, sarcastic, which spoke to an intelligence uncommon in a serving girl.
Most of them just went with the flow, hoping that one day the hands that pushed them down onto their backs, onto mattresses, onto haystacks, into mud, the hands that shoved them up against walls of damp, cold stone and splintery wooden planks, would one day lift them to their feet and restore their dignity.
Bedraggled, beleaguered princesses-in-waiting, the lot of them.
No, Lydia was not among those at all.
In truth, he was flattered that she wanted to share his life, but he felt it was for the wrong reasons, although wanting to escape a life of harlotry was a legitimate enough excuse.
But he was a mage who walked in dark places; more often than not, blood was spilled, and sometimes it was his.
You need someone.
He heard the words reverberate in his mind as he drifted off to sleep, wanting to conjure a vision of their potential future together, but he was simply too tired to do anymore.
The darkness took him under, into a rare and dreamless peace.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
Making Warr (excerpt 1)
He was out of the life, but someone had questions, and couldn’t leave him alone….
The Marked Princess (3)
Play Dead
The audience grew silent as the houselights finally dimmed.
The darkness settled over them like a worn, well-loved cape across the shoulders, providing an intimacy and warmth in the small theater.
A single spotlight, silver white, hit the center of the stage, and in the middle of it stood a man with a knife protruding from his throat.
Rivulets of blood widened and thinned in time with his heartbeat, and his head was down, his black hair hanging limp and greasy in front of his face.
He looked up, and his eyes were gone, the crimson ruin of his sockets turned toward the audience in all their grisly glory.
Some screamed, some turned away, some fainted, but none left.
The actor shambled toward the front of the stage, and those in front shrank back from his grim visage as he seemed to look at them one by one, and smiled affably, for all that his lips were swollen and his teeth were gone.
“I can hear your heartbeats, feel the heat of your blood rushing to your faces; the tang of your sweat is in the air like bitter brine, mixed with perfume that smells like sweet tea.
“You, dear audience, are a study in contrasts. You fear me, but don’t run, because you’ve paid to see me here.
“Here I am. Are you pleased? Do you have your money’s worth?”
He waited, and some began to sob as they rose to leave.
He smiled again.
“So soon? You’re being rude. You haven’t met my wife yet. Honey?”
A woman emerged from the opposite side of the stage, her torso split, organs shining wet and red in the spotlight, her head at an odd angle, with a short piece of rope still wrapped in a thick coil around her neck.
“What crime did I commit,” she said, “that they treated me so?”
She went and stood beside the man, and they held hands.
She kept her free hand around her body to hold her organs in, and blood cascaded over her arm as her knee buckled, but the man held her firm.
“Can anyone help us?” she said.
The people in the back began to scream, and cries of “Let us out!” reverberated through the theater.
“They’re rude, honey. They want to go. Can you hear them?”
“I can hear them. Shall we release them?”
“I think we should.”
No one was left in a seat as the audience scrambled, screaming and crying, for the door.
“You haven’t finished watching the play; there are more of us,” the eyeless man said.
From the balconies and exit lobbies, other actors and actresses in dead makeup shambled toward the captive audience.
As they fled to the exits, they found the doors locked, and the cast, about one hundred in all, shuffling toward them, hands outstretched to tear, fanged maws opened wide as they salivated over their crumbling chins.
The man and woman called from the stage as the dead cast members began to tear the people to bloody strips.
“Thank you for coming,” the eyeless man said.
“We hope you’ve enjoyed our play,” the disemboweled woman said.
They took a slight bow, and came down the stairs to take part in the killing, the white spotlight following them as far as it could, before it went dark.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
Beyond Panic 