Welcome back to Silvanus and Empire! As we learned in the last chapter, magic is afoot in the forest of Silvanus. While the denizens of Annex fret and fear for their lives, Lyrinn has been given a crash course on the Silvani language, with a bloody, exhausted Caddoc lying at her feet like a beaten dog. Let's see how things are unfolding from his point-of-view...
Silvanus and Empire
Chapter Thirteen
image from pixabay
Caddoc couldn’t breathe. He could feel that demon bitch’s heel in the small of his back, grinding against his bruised spine, and wanted nothing more than for her to die. Slowly and painfully, he thought, coughing in the dirt as the monstrous girl leaned more heavily upon him.
The older Silvani had begun to chant, and Caddoc had to fight back a wave of sudden nausea as she did so. The words were strangely hypnotic to his ears, and though he couldn’t understand them any better than the language of the Wildfolk, some still-functioning part of his brain was telling him that these words were different, somehow, and wrong. The nausea faded with the woman’s chanting, and he strained against his captor’s foot to look up and see what was going on.
Suddenly the pressure in his back abated; he managed to take one ragged deep breath before he was pulled up by his hair and felt his tormentor’s knife against his throat once more. Lyrinn screamed again and he was dropped, hard. His head bounced on the hard-packed dirt and he mumbled something, unsure of even what it was he was trying to say.
Toeing the line of consciousness, Caddoc slumped down and drifted in and out for a moment. He didn’t even stir when his captors began to poke and prod him, but thankfully they left him be. Lacking the strength to move, Caddoc still managed to squeeze an eyelid open in time to watch in helpless horror as Lyrinn drink some sort of steaming potion. The only thing he could do is make the tiniest of whimpers in the back of his throat while he watched Lyrinn drain the cup and then waver drunkenly for a few moments.
The cup slid from her nerveless fingers and Caddoc watched it fall, spilling the remainder of its contents at Lyrinn’s feet. He was just within the spill area, and the sharp smell of cinnamon flooded his nose as hot blood splashed his face. It dripped down his forelock, ran in a slow rivulet along the bridge of his nose and pooled in the corner of his left eye, clouding his vision. It then began dripping slowly into his open mouth. The tincture burned upon hitting his tongue, and he swallowed reflexively. The blood mixed with the dirt on his face and quickly turned to coppery-tasting muddy grit. All he could think about was Lyrinn, and for long moments as he lay there with the stink of hot blood and cinnamon in his nose he tried futilely to clear the potion from eyes so he could see. He didn’t hear her speak – all he heard was the Silvani language.
Finally his mind began to clear; after a few more moments he could understand what was being said. They must be speaking Imperial Standard to communicate, he thought. Lyrinn’s voice cut through the fog in his head: “No, I don’t believe you,” she was saying. “How do you know about my birthmark?”
I didn’t know she had a birthmark, Caddoc thought dully. Why does it matter? He wondered what it was shaped like. Like a toadstool, perhaps? Or an eye? If he had possessed the energy at that moment he would have laughed.
He missed the first few words of the older Silvani’s reply. It must have been her who had answered Lyrinn – Caddoc just seemed to sense it – but he didn’t fail to hear her proclaim to be Lyrinn’s mother.
“No,” Lyrinn said. Caddoc felt like agreeing with her. “You can’t be. It’s impossible.” She sounded incredulous.
Caddoc let his bloodsoaked eye drift closed as exhaustion began to take him. The nightmare march he had been forced into all night had pushed him to the brink of exhaustive collapse, and the sadistic little girl with the broken blade had seemed all too eager to carve his heart out the way she had cut the heart of the baker’s wife from her chest. So he had run until his feet bled, cut on sharp rocks and fallen branches, his legs torn and scratched by briars and thorns, his lungs burning for air.
Caddoc was so tired he was hallucinating now – even though his eyes were closed, he could still somehow clearly see both Lyrinn and the woman who claimed to be her mother. It was if their images were somehow painted on the backs of his eyelids, moving and speaking. He could both see and hear everything of what was going on excepting the other two younger Wildfolk.
The older woman looked at Lyrinn. “I know you must be feeling very confused right now—“
“Confused? Confused?” Lyrinn’s voice rose in pitch until she was nearly shrieking. “You send these… these killers for me in the middle of the night, where they murder my master and his wife, make me watch them cut out their hearts, threaten the only friend I’ve ever had with the same, drag him and I through trackless forest for hours, and you think I’m confused!?”
“It’s no sin to kill the Stonehearted,” another voice said gruffly. Caddoc couldn’t use his mind’s eye to see who it was, but he recognized the voice easily enough – the witch with the jagged blade. “In fact, it’s a sin to leave one alive when you’ve opportunity to kill it.” Caddoc could practically taste the young woman’s desire to gut him.
“This one is not to be touched,” the older woman responded. “There are questions that must be asked of him. Lyrinn, if he truly is your friend no harm will come to him. Perhaps this would help convince you that we are not your enemy?”
“I still don’t trust you,” she said, glowering. She looked about her, glaring at the older Bloodhair for a moment before shifting her gaze to two other points. Caddoc still couldn’t see who she was looking at.
“You shouldn’t,” a male voice said, strong but young. “You have no reason to. And you will not, until we can wash the taint of living under the yoke of our oppressors off of your heart and soul. We have watched you, Lyrinn, my sister and I, for quite some time; we have seen how the Stonehearted treat you. Like an animal.”
“Like less than an animal.” Lyrinn slumped down to the ground, breathing heavily. “Like a criminal. All my life. Just for being who I am.” She choked back a sob.
Caddoc watched the older Silvani kneel down next to Lyrinn. She tenderly brushed a lock of hair away from the crying girl’s face. “You will not be treated such here, my child.” Child? Caddoc thought. I’m dreaming. Hallucinating. How can this be happening? Lyrinn let out a full, miserable wail of pain and the older Bloodhair pulled her into an embrace. “No longer beaten and crawling like a beast, dearest; you are among your own people now. You are safe. You are loved. You are no longer our little Lost One.”
Lyrinn reached up and wrapped her hands around the older woman, clinging tightly to her as one cry of anguish after another bled from her. “M-mother,” she whimpered.
“Yes, my child?” The older woman pulled back far enough to gently brush away some of the tears on Lyrinn’s face. Her own eyes seemed to shine with barely repressed tears herself.
“Will you tell me… about my father? About… about my people? And how I… came to be lost?”
“Of course, dearest. But not now.” She stood and helped Lyrinn up as well. “You are tired, and hungry, and in need of clean clothes. And your friend Caddoc over there looks like he has seen better days. Mousestep!”
The voice of his tormenter answered. “Yes, mistress?” Ah, so the Devil has a name, Caddoc thought. Mousestep. How ironically innocuous. He would have laughed bitterly if he had the strength.
“Take Lost One… excuse me. Take Lyrinn and bring her to camp. See that she is given whatever she asks for, but in particular, let her get some much-needed rest. She has had a long night.”
“Yes, mistress.” Mousestep sounded a bit sulky. Probably still irritated that she can’t stake me out in the forest and leave me for the vultures. He watched as Lyrinn was led off, and wondered when this hallucination of his would end.
Lyrinn’s mother waited until her daughter was out of earshot before speaking again. “Sight-of-Eagles, I want you to see to it that this… Caddoc… is not to be killed. You were right to bring him to me alive. Your father raised at least one child that could think clearly.”
“Mouse isn’t that bad, once you get to know her, Spirit-of-Vengeance,” the male voice responded. “She’s just… a little rough around the edges.” Spirit-of-Vengance? thought Caddoc. Sight-of-Eagles? Don’t these people have any proper names?
“Yes, well she seems to want to get to know this Stoneheart rather intimately. Why is she so enamored of killing this one?”
“Father has always said that it is human nature to want what you cannot ever have,” Sight-of-Eagles responded. “So he is not to be harmed? Who will question him?”
“Myself, and your father. Do you know when he will hold the Great Moot?”
“This evening.” Caddoc felt himself getting picked up and slung across the young man’s shoulders. He struggled, weak as a kitten. “It’s a wonder this one’s got any fight in him at all,” Sight-of-Eagles said, shifting Caddoc around a bit on his shoulders. “He’s tall, but there’s no meat on his bones.”
“This one is your responsibility,” Spirit said. Caddoc could see her, upside-down, from where he hung over Sight-of-Eagle’s shoulder, yet his eyes were still closed. “Call for Lyrinn when he regains consciousness; we will need her to translate. It disgusts me to hear their bastard tongue on her lips, but we must remember that she has gone through a terrible ordeal.”
“As you ask, Mistress, I have been instructed to obey. Come on, you ugly beanpole,” he said to Caddoc, “let’s go get you stuffed away. Gods help you when you awake, you’ll be in for it.” Caddoc tried vainly to squirm from his grasp but he just didn’t have the will to. “All right, none of that,” Sight-of-Eagles said as they began walking off, rapping him soundly on the back of his skull.
Caddoc’s head spun with the sharp blow and he finally began to slip into unconsciousness. His last thoughts were a chaotic swirl, but the one at the forefront of his mind was, If none of the Silvani speak my language, how is it I can understand them?