[Mkguild] Justice in Vengeance Refrain (6)

[Ryx]

            Listening intently with acute ears the vixen waited until she heard 
the door below close before moving.  She had spied two of the three she sought 
only that morning where they sat speaking with the master of the house over 
their cups.  Getting into the manor had been a simple task as there was a 
considerable gap beneath a postern gate that allowed her to slip through in the 
dark unseen.
            The local feline population took immediate affront to her presence 
within their domain but she was easily able to intimidate them into full 
retreat, hissing and spitting.  Following her quarry had proved more difficult 
once they had withdrawn to the main house so she had been forced to conceal 
herself in a bush and wait.  Fitfully she slept, plagued by snippets of 
unpleasant dreams harkening back to the dissolution of her first house and her 
subsequent sale to a servant courier.  That woman had proven to be a 
particularly vile caretaker whose sole interest in the profit she could gain 
from her new slaves.
            Not that she had ever entertained the illusion that she was, or had 
ever been, anything but a well treated slave.  All of her caste fell under the 
management of the house to which they were granted.  They had no rights beyond 
proper care so long as they served dutifully and skillfully.  The woman into 
whose charge she was sent after her first house released her spared only enough 
to maintain the health and beauty of her slaves, and eventually sold them once 
their profits had dwindled.
            With some care she had managed that in a commendably short time, but 
her lot hard hardly improved with that sale, either.  Hauled aboard a ship with 
a dozen others of her caste she suffered through a long and unpleasant journey 
on ship and over land to the distant alien kingdom where she was stuck.  From 
there she was traded off to a train of successively less pleasant owners who, 
lacking any knowledge of her culture or the placement of her caste within it, 
used her for their own ends with little concern for her health.
            The worst of them, by far, was the man who his slayer had dubbed 
Sideshow.  He was, indeed, a freak who would have been more appropriate within 
the rolling prisons than afoot lording over them.  He, at least, had some 
worldly knowledge and understood the worth of the woman he had picked up for a 
pittance from a petty lordling in Brekaris.  Under his often brutal hand the 
woman had learned to bend, in spirit, far further than she had ever thought 
herself capable of in the past.  She debased herself to appease his unpleasant 
appetites, even when he carted her into the cold north and chained her with a 
dozen others to suffer the twisted magic of that land.
            That transformation brought nightmares of its own but she had long 
ago grown to accept it.  Sideshow had shown her how to use her new form in ways 
none of the others that served him, free of the wagons, had ever been able to 
accomplish.  For those skills she was spared much of his brutality, but had ever 
awaited the chance to be free of him.  In the years she suffered him she had 
never found any escape, until his past caught up to him.
            Justice came and wrought its swift, brutal price of blood upon him 
and those who served him.  For that she was in debt.  Her caste demanded it, and 
for this one she would heed the training she had been raised to.
            Uncurling from the crook of the door she glanced down the stairwell 
and then up.  It was an incongruous place to detain anyone, but the two had led 
her here and here she would find him.  Taking up the small bundle she had 
brought from the wagons she padded silently up the stair, pausing at each door 
to sniff at the gaps, until she came to the one that held a familiar scent.  
Setting the bundle down she splayed flat upon the floor to look under the gap 
between the heavy wood and the floor.
            She spied the man immediately, slumped against the far wall upon a 
cot as if dead.  He twitched and writhed, trapped in some dark dream, but he 
slept on.  Nosing the bundle under the door she squeezed herself through the gap 
and entered his cell.  Padding to the cot she reared up to put her front paws 
upon it and gazed at her new Master intently.  For him her life, her service, 
unto death.  He cried out and thrashed against the cot, slumping over onto his 
side and curling himself into a pitiable ball.  He wept, and she wept with him.  
Whatever torture took place within his dreams were beyond her ability to aid, 
but his flesh was within her power to aid.
            He was a wreck, his naked torso purpled with bruises and slashed 
with cuts, many of them coarsely mended.  She had something that would aid that, 
gifted to her in Sideshow’s last dying moments.  Her brutal master had gazed up 
at her, unable to move for the ruin wrought upon his breast, but likewise unable 
to die.  Given time he would heal, but she knew the secret of his miracles, and 
snatched it from him even as she saw the horror dawning in his desperate eyes.  
She watched that last spark fade and lamented only that it faded so swiftly; no 
promise of lingering pain that the magic would grant him while he healed.
            But he was, well and truly and with utmost finality, dead.  The last 
thing his eyes saw was his servant, his pliable, affectionate, most loyal of 
servants, bending over him with a last parting flash of teeth.
            Returning to the bundle she shifted smoothly, from small vixen to a 
form far taller but still, by the people of this foreign realm, short.  Kneeling 
naked she unwrapped the bundle and drew out the chain she had snatched from 
around Sideshow’s neck.  From that chain dangled a simple ring of polished 
steel.  It was unadorned and bore no stones to make it worthy of a thief’s 
attention, but it was far more precious than any that Sideshow had borne upon 
his fingers.  It was the secret of his survival, enabling him to overcome the 
most pernicious of diseases or the most lethal of attacks.  It did only one 
thing, but it did that very, very well so that not even a scar remained where a 
blade had laid its keen edge.
            Returning to the cot she knelt beside it and took up one of her 
savior’s hands but immediately released it with a surprised yip.  It felt wrong, 
terribly wrong, so much so that she had dropped it in fright.  Cautiously she 
leaned forward to touch the back of his dangling hand and felt something most 
incongruous; fur.  Her brows furrowed and her ears twitched but she did not 
recoil from the strange sensation.  Gently grasping his hand he turned it over 
and ran her fingertips across his palm, feeling calloused pads and fur, all the 
way out to his fingertips where she felt claws.
            Claws!
            Somehow he was not as he appeared.  Under the guise of human flesh 
and voice and scent he was not human.  Was he some sort of demon, he wondered, 
or avenging angel hiding in the fragility of mortal flesh?  An Oni of her 
childhood tales, come to walk the lands of man for whatever purpose only an Oni 
could understand?  With a short hiss of breath through her nose she pushed that 
aside; he was her Master now, be he whatever he was, she belonged to him for 
good or for ill.  Letting the chain slide from the ring she held his hand steady 
to slip it onto one of his fingers.
            It was loose, for Sideshow’s fingers had been thicker than this 
man’s, but after a few moments it seemed to fit perfectly.  She did not perceive 
the change but saw that, after a few moments, it fit his finger as neatly as if 
crafted for him alone.  Gently she laid his hand upon his breast and stroked his 
brow with a delicate touch.  He moaned out in some slumbering horror and flailed 
aimlessly with his hands.  One struck her weakly upon the cheek but she only 
savored his first touch however clumsily it was made.  With a bow she offered a 
brief prayer to the gods of her childhood, far away and near forgotten, before 
returning to the bundle and tying it securely once more.  Slipping it out of 
sight under the cot she shifted back down to her smaller vulpine form and 
slipped under the cot as well.  Curling about herself she laid her chin upon her 
paws, her tail over her muzzle, and waited.
~~
            The night was dark but loud, muffled cries reached his ears from the 
world beyond but they were not easily discerned through the drum of rain on 
stretched canvass.  Cold steel lay against his chest and he felt a fool for its 
presence but he could not bring himself to cast it aside.  Suddenly a shadowy 
form slipped into the tent silently, bringing a clutch of surprised fear to his 
heart.  Water coursed from the ink-black cloak that swathed the intruder and, in 
a flickering flash of lightening he saw the face.
            Horrible face, both terrifying and cold in its stern mein.  The man 
made no motion but he could see weapons in his hands, sword and dagger 
respectively, and they dripped blood as black as the cloak over the gleam of 
polished steel.  A horrified cry wrenched itself from his breast and the man 
reacted with a speed that belied perception.  Both hands came up toward him but 
not to brandish those bloodied blades.  Rather the man thrust out his hands, 
palms open but for finger and thumb holding each hilt, toward him.
            White hot agony exploded through his breast and the world vanished 
into darkness.
            Malger lurched upright with a horrified cry and clutched at his 
chest, breath heaving as he scrabbled against the cot trying to discern where he 
was, or if he was even alive.  He could still feel the sharp, stabbing agony of 
crushing pain clutching at his ribs but realized a moment later that it was only 
his heaving lungs igniting spasms of pain from his multitude of injuries.
            With a pained moan he dropped back onto the cot and scrubbed at his 
face with his hands.  Whose horrible memory was that, he thought, for it was not 
one he had ever witnessed before.  The emotions that pulsed through it were no 
less intense for his not having shared them with the poor soul who survived that 
murderous attack.  For several minutes he lay there staring up at the grate 
above and tried to still his rapid breaths but he found it difficult.  His 
stamina was pushed to its limits and beyond from lack of worthwhile sleep.
            After a time he pushed himself upright and leaned back against the 
cool stones of the cell wall.  The evening light was wan under unseen clouds but 
the rain had passed at some point while he was trapped in other people’s 
remembered pain.  Most of all he felt the absence of Nocturna keenly, as painful 
in its intensity as any of his wounds if not moreso by a large degree.
            “Why?” He croaked hoarsely, his throat raw from screaming in his 
sleep, “Why have you turned your back on me, Mosha?” he asked the silence of the 
cell, but there was no answer.  Reaching to his breast, still naked after 
Elvmere’s attentions that morning, and took up the pendant of Nocturna he wore.  
He raised it to his lips and pressed them against the cool metal.  “I miss you.”
            He felt his eyes drifting heavily closed as he sat there but he was 
unable to stay the inexorable weight of sleep pressing heavily upon his breast.  
When the shadows of light sleep slipped over his eyes he saw again the strobing 
flash of light upon a man’s cold, merciless face.  His hair was as black as his 
cloak and what was once a neatly trimmed beard was wildly unkempt.  Blood 
streaked the pale flesh and the glow of a lightening flash caused his dark eyes 
to flicker when they came to bear on him.
            With a start Malger awoke, jerking his head back reflexively only to 
slam it painfully against the unyielding stone of the cell wall.  He lurched 
forward with a grunt and clutched the back of his head.  Even awake the visions 
plagued him.  He feared for his very sanity and, for a moment, wished for the 
peaceful surcease of death.
            Some time later a knock at the door roused him from another 
half-awake nodding with a grumbling groan.  His head added its fresh ache to the 
general discomfort of his body.  “Malger, it is Elvmere.” The lock thunked and 
rattled as a key worked to release it.
            “Go away, Elvmere.” Malger groused irritably, “I am in no mood to 
suffer your prodding a second time.”  His chest heaved as he tried to breathe 
but no matter how hard he tried he could not find his wind.  His body felt flush 
but not feverish, the effects of sleep trying to win out over wakefulness.
            The door pushed open at last and the priest awkwardly made his way 
in while trying to hold up a serving tray.  “I only bring food and water, 
Malger.  You must eat.”  Leaving the door standing open the priest, young in 
body due to the fey touch of Metamor’s curse but old in true years, carefully 
set the tray down onto the small tool that served double duty as a table.  He 
quirked a brow when he looked back to Malger.  “That is odd.”
            “What?” Malger found he was achingly hungry but he also found that 
he had no will to actually suffer the effort of lifting food to muzzle.  

Elvmere turned to face him, crouching to be on eye level.  “I could have sworn 
your bruises were considerably darker this morning.”  He did not, however, make 
any move to examine them by touch.  The illusion was actually more accurate in 
revealing them for under his fur they would be not be visible.
“They’re bruises.” Malger sighed as he looked down at himself, noting that they 
were indeed somewhat less malignant looking.  “They fade.”
Elvmere looked at him for a few more moments and then shrugged, “I guess they 
do.”  He shook his head and turned to the tray.  “You said your appetite was 
weak this morning, so I did not think you would want anything particularly 
heavy.  I just brought some soup, more broth than anything really, and bread.”  
He looked across to the minstrel, “And I won’t go anywhere until you finish.”
Malger grunted and rolled his eyes while his stomach growled hungrily.  “Where’s 
Muri?”
“Still supping with the Earl.  Two of Grimmam’s men came with us from the 
caravan, if you recall?  They’re in attendance as well and speak in your 
favor.”  Spooning soup from the tureen into a bowl he held it out toward him.  
Malger cupped it between his hands, muzzle watering at the savory boquette of 
flavors, but they shook and a little spilled over the rim of the bowl.  Elvmere 
leaned close and steadied it before taking it back.  “Here, let me.”
Neither of them noticed the small form huddled under the cot watching them with 
gleaming golden eyes.
“How do they speak of me?” Malger huffed after managing to choke down a 
spoonful.  The broth was not unpleasant in the least but his palette rebelled at 
the thought of food.  His stomach was only more argumentative, striking him with 
a wave of nausea so severe he had to push Elvmere’s hand away with a groan.
“You refrained from slaughtering them.” Elvmere replied gently with a look of 
concern.  He held the spoon until Malger’s nausea settled and offered it again.  
“You must eat, Malger.”
“I would like nothing more, Elvmere, but it only sickens me.”
“You will have to suffer it.  We do not wish you to perish by starvation.”
“Ah,” Malger clenched his gut against the grumbling of his stomach and forced 
down another spoon of broth.  “Only to die to the headsman’s axe, aye?”
“Don’t grouse so!” Elvmere admonished, spooning up more broth.  “The Earl has 
listened to Murikeer and I, and Grimmam’s men as well.  Grimmam’s son came, if 
you recall, and tells the Earl that the caravan master pushed him at your 
blade.  He says you took a blow to avoid striking him down.”
Malger nodded and brushed his elbow against one of his more severe gashes.  
While he could not remember the source of each injury, that had been one of the 
more painful and stood out from his foggy recollection of the fight.  Only his 
foes stood clearly in memory; what they had done years past to another but 
recalled as clearly as if Malger had suffered their touch, and the moments that 
brought them before his blades.  “I was not after him.”
“Nor any of them.” Elvmere held the spoon steady to let the minstrel sip from 
its edge.  Malger felt his gorge rise up but choked it down with the thin, 
savory broth.  “I watched, Malger.  In horror, but I watched.  You did all you 
were able to avoid striking any of the soldiers.  So far as I saw you only 
injured one of the two who came with us when you bit his nose.”
“He still has it?”
Elvmere chuffed a soft laugh, “He does, though with a new piercing.”
“Perhaps he will find a decent decoration for it.”
~~
            The head of the quarrel was simple iron, but more than deadly enough 
for such a simple device.  He could see how the iron was discolored from age, 
dark pits of rust standing out on its metal surface as clearly as craters on the 
moon.  His heart was in his throat, both in fear and his hasty flight from the 
young man holding the crossbow upon which the quarrel was knocked.
            Slowly his eyes came up from the tip of death held steady upon him 
and met the man’s eyes; gray eyes, hard and cold while beneath them a victorious 
smile pulled at the corners of a humorless mouth.  “You’ll look good on the 
floor of my estate.” Thorne hissed tauntingly and clenched down on the trigger 
of the crossbow.  The bowstring cracked loudly, hurtling the bolt down its slot, 
and fear exploded through its target along with a wild surge of energy.
            The bolt wavered in its brief flight of perhaps a half dozen paces, 
bobbling and then shrieking past his ear close enough to brush his fur.
            “I killed you!” Murikeer lurched up in fright and tried to run but a 
sudden savage grip on his arm forestalled him.  He turned to lash out at the 
restraint but a hand pushed against the center of his chest swiftly and 
strongly.  His wild swing came up short, missing Elvmere’s nose by an inch.  He 
caught himself before he attempted a backswing and simply let his arm drop.  
After a moment Elvmere released his other arm and settled back onto his side of 
the huge bed.
            “These dreams are one fright after another.” Murikeer hissed as he 
scrubbed at his face, feeling the fur of his fingers though his eye only saw 
pale human flesh.
            “Aye.” Elvmere turned and dropped his legs over the opposite side of 
the bed to sit up.  He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and let out a huff of 
breath.  “Malger’s suffering moreso than we, I fear.”
            “Eh?” Murikeer stretched and glanced toward the casement; sunlight 
peeked past the drapes.  He had been long into the night with the Earl, his men, 
the two from the caravan, and others sharing war stories.  For the most part 
Murikeer said little until Thomas braced him to show the Earl the illusion of 
Nasoj’s towers falling to destruction.  “With his injuries, and not eating, I 
can little doubt.”
            Elvmere shook his head and looked back over his shoulder, “No, 
worse.  What does he do, Murikeer?  What has he told us he does?”
            “He dreams?” Murikeer’s brows furrowed, “He walks the dream realm?”
            “Aye.  And he shares.”
            “Oh, ah.  He shares memories.  He takes from that sharing the 
emotions of the memories.”
            “He shares horrific memories, Muri.” Elvmere stood and stretched 
before shaking himself and adjusting the loose linen of his leggings.  “Instead 
of sharing memories of pleasant things, he takes the horror from others’ 
memories.  If we’re suffering nightmares of our own memories, imagine what he 
suffers?”
            “Ouch,” Murikeer winced.
            “I don’t think he’s slept even as well as we have since coming here, 
and we have not been sleeping well at all.”
            “Did he eat?”
            “As much as I could force him to, but that was far too little.  I 
will take more food up to him shortly.”  Elvmere spoke through the simple 
broadcloth of his shirt as he drew it on.  “Who did you kill, if I might ask?”
            “Thorne.” Murikeer touched his eye patch.  “The man who murdered 
Llyn.”  Throwing back the coverlet he stood and took his shirt from the hook 
upon which it hung. “He was my pupil once, long before he came to attack 
Metamor.  He tried to kill me when I changed.”
            Elvmere murmured a consolatory sigh with a nod, “He failed, you did 
not.”
            “Would that he had succeeded and Llyn would still live.”
            “Mayhap, but mayhap not.  He became one of Nasoj’s pawns and joined 
the attack on Metamor that may have lead to Llyn’s death in other ways.  Do not 
trouble yourself for things beyond your power, Muri.” Elvmere said gently.
            “Aye.”  Murikeer pulled on his own shirt and tucked it under his 
belt after adjusting his own leggings.  “Let us look in on our master.  His 
weighing out comes on the morrow.”
            “A nightmare that plagues me with every waking moment.”  Falling in 
beside Murikeer they left the room.  A couple of guards sat on chairs just 
outside the door and offered brief nods and smiles in greetings before joining 
them.
~~
            The village was little more than a charred spot left on the earth; 
not a building stood, not a sheaf of grain remained unsigned.  Smoke hung 
heavily over the cold ruins under a leaden gray sky that hinted at rain.  No 
animals wandered the ruins, their corpses lying alongside those of their once 
masters.  Malger staggered among the skeletal beams of smoking wood and 
coughed.  His mistress had been here, coming on some errand for her husband the 
Raj of the kingdom.
            Not my mistress, not my land!  Malger struggled to escape the 
clutches of the strange memory.  The writing on what few shreds of fabric or 
pottery he saw was not familiar to him but he could read it nonetheless.  The 
cut of the fire savaged timbers was nothing like anything he had seen before.   
He knew not where he was but the name came to his mind unbidden; Tokanyi, a 
settlement of one thousand souls.  It had been a peaceful settlement of farmers 
and artisans.  At the far end of the charred wreckage he could see what remained 
of the pagoda that his mistress had visited.
            No, he felt the fist of pain that clutched at his heart as he 
staggered toward the collapsed heap of burnt wood where his mistress had been 
staying.  She had sent him on a small errand at one of the settlement’s outlying 
farmsteads a day away by foot.  Even such a distance away he had seen the fires 
that ravaged Tokanyi lighting up the night.  The storms that settled over the 
lowlands toward the morning had slowed his return flight considerably but he had 
slogged through the mud with horrified tenacity.  No, not me!  Someone else, not 
me!  Not my mistress!
            “Mosha!  Nocturna, hear me!  Why do you not answer!” He cried out 
into the smoky ruin but only the name of his mistress escaped his lips.  Ash 
blackened mud sucked at his wooden sabot as he reached the stone rim of the 
patio that had once graced the front of the pagoda.  Now the carefully laid 
stone only supported fallen timbers and charred bodies of man and beast alike.  
He stumbled through the ruin until one corpse, of the numerous sprawled about 
like negligently discarded toys, brought him to a halt.  On one blackened, 
skeletal wrist the gleam of bronze caught his eye.
            Few nobles would deign to wear something so common as bronze, but 
his mistress had cherished the simple bracelet given to her by her husband when 
he was little more than a wandering noble brat looking for a home to conquer.  
He fell to his knees with a mournful cry that ended in a choked expulsion of 
startled breath when the corpse’s eyes flicked open.
            “You do not belong here.” The corpse rasped with a sepulchral hiss.  
“This is not your dream.”
            Lurching back Malger fell onto his rump on the cold grass.  Heavy 
smoke drifted across the charred ruins and, when it cleared, they were gone.  An 
orchard stretched out around him but the corpse remained.  Slowly it sat up with 
a creak of burnt tendons and dry bones.  “This is not the path you seek.”
            “No… Nocturna, do you answer me?”  Malger stared, aghast, at the 
charred husk of a once-woman and yearned to see his goddess, his love, in those 
sparkling golden eyes.  “Mosha?”
            “No.” the corpse shook its head, “I am not she.”
            “Who, then, are you?” There was a strange, subtle sweetness on the 
air that tickled his nose.  He could not place it, but it was far less 
unpleasant than the sweet stench of charred flesh and reek of burnt wood.  White 
blossoms drifted lightly on a gentle, cool breeze.  The grass under his hands, 
and rump, was damp with morning dew.
            A rictus line broke across the skeletal face, “Your guide.”
            “By the dark gods… my guide?  To where, some charred hell?”
            “To life.”
            Malger chuffed and frowned, “I am not yet dead.”  He sat forward and 
wrapped his arms around his knees, strangely nonplussed to be speaking with the 
charred memory of someone’s lost mistress.  “Though I wish I were.”


      

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