24. Caspyn
Chapter 24
Iheard the creaking first.
The sound was familiar from all the panel wagons I had traveled in with the Wave Walkers when moving from Qit to Qit, or from every time I had needed to stow away in a farmer’s carriage to get past the guard at the gates of Turin. But to hear it now, right after I had died, seemed an odd thing. Everything my mother had told me said that the endless gardens that the Goddess tended for the afterlife were full of bliss and beauty, not pain and the smell of blood, sweat, and food left too long in the rain.
It also seemed an odd thing to be in quite as much pain as I was, having just died. Of course, with all I had done in my life the gardens of the Goddess would not have been tended for me. Which meant that this was the dark underworld that was cultivated by the sister. My mother had warned me of this place, and now I had arrived.
I attempted to shift my weight, to open my eyes, to do anything to see what this underworld was and why it hurt so much, but pain lashed through me with the slightest motion and I let out a sound that was half wince, half shout. The loud growl echoed against the creaking of the wagon, an angry horse answering in distaste.
“Easy there, you don’t want to tear anything.” The smooth male voice was as calm as the waves in the middle of the night whispered over the creaking, warm hands immediately pressing against my abdomen, right where the pain was.
Right where that harpoon had cut its way through me.
“I’m mighty glad you survived that, friend, but you move too quick and you’re going to ruin all of Lyani’s hard work,” his voice remained calm as his hands pressed against my wound, the warmth of his touch flooding over everything and shaving down the hard edge of that pain.
I tried to shift again, to look at whoever was next to me, but one movement sent pain cutting and slicing through me again. That time I truly cried out in agony.
The man tsk’d slightly, although the horse whinnied as if he was the one giving reprimands. The low mumbles of the driver hissed through the creaking wagon as he tried to calm the beast.
“You should have known better. Here.” The stranger’s hands moved from my abdomen to my shoulders as he pushed me down, shifting me right into the position I had been attempting. My eyes pulled open painfully as though they had been glued in place.
The roof of the wagon came into focus first, the painted wood illuminated by a lantern that swung on a hook causing a sway of light that was both hypnotic and nausea inducing. The bright glow of the flame sent ribbons of light and shadow dancing around each other with each sway, revealing the wagon’s walls that were lined with what looked to be pack rolls and bags upon bags of dried goods, enough food to feed an army. Now I knew where the smell of damp grain was coming from. The hypnotic glow of the small space was warm and welcoming, the wagon well-kept even if it had a stale aroma of dust and grain mixed with my blood.
The man whose warm hands were still pressed against my wound, that warm heat of him radiating over my body, was hovering over me. He looked half starved, with angular features that were made sharper by the chin length blonde hair that curled around his face, his brown eyes somehow both muddy and bright as he flashed a smile full of teeth that were impossibly white and straight.
He looked like so many of the Fae that I had hunted and killed for so long, except even with him so close I felt nothing from him. No tingle of warning, not even the faintest of buzzing as I had felt with Theadore. If anything I felt a warming that washed over everything, more like I had been placed too near a fire. It was only him and that ridiculous smile as warm as the light that danced over the roof of the wagon.
“Where am I?” The words creaked against a dry throat as I forced them out and he turned, the warmth leaving as his hands did.
“Here, drink,” he pressed a rough-hewn mug to my lips, cold water splashing into my mouth before I could even fully process that the water might be laced with something.
Although I doubted it, no one who went to the trouble to heal you would also drug you. Besides, I could still feel each branch of my magic, the tendrils of them as weak as I was, but still there. Barely.
Whatever wound I had received had nearly drained my magic completely.
“Where am I?” I asked again, the second the cup left my lips. Thankfully the words didn’t hurt to say that time.
“You’re safe, trust that. Although a thank you wouldn’t be amiss.” His smile stretched, the look jovial even though there was a darkness behind his eyes that time, a warning I was sure no one was foolish enough to disregard.
I would have, but I found myself saying the words anyway.
“Thank you,” that time the word was a croak turned into a gasp as he turned and I saw his arms. He wore no tunic, and no cape. He was dressed only in worn breeches and a sagging sweat-stained shirt that was rolled past his elbows.
Although his face was angular and looked half starved, his arms were corded with muscle, the flesh sun tanned and absolutely covered in tattoos of swirling gold. The lines glittered as though the ink that was used to pen them there was still drying, the spirals of ink catching the light as it swayed. I had seen these tattoos before, and I knew exactly who was fool enough to cover themselves with them.
Lightens.
I shifted as much as I dared, looking over the shelves until I saw the door at the back of the carriage where the large yellow sun had been painted on the door of the rickety old cart. A yellow and red sun, with a single curved branch in the center.
It was their sigil as much as the tattoos that covered each and every one of them.
“You’re safe friend, I told you to trust that,” his voice was still that endless calm, even though he had clearly caught sight of the way I had tensed, the way my heart was now racing.
I would have died from that wound if I had not been found, but to be found by them…
I had never been around any of them. But I knew enough, their devotion to the Goddess, the way they prayed and howled to the moon every night. The way they would send their women to bed traveling men for their seed ‘in name of the Goddess’. I was suddenly pressed with the urge to make sure I was still wearing my britches. By the cold and the feel of his hands against my flesh my shirt was most certainly gone. I shifted, thankful to at least feel the rough fabric against my ass.
My belt and blades, however, had been removed.
“Where are my blades?” That time I couldn’t stop the snarl. Didn’t even try.
“They are safe, as are you,” he said again, as though continually reminding me I was safe was going to make anything actually feel safe. He turned, his eyes lingering on me for a second before they shifted away, the sound of water being pressed and wrung mixing with the creak of the wagon.
“We have put them where all weapons of those who travel with us are stored, we don’t allow them with us, you see.” His voice was calm as he placed a cloth soaked in icy water over my wound.
“I am not traveling with you,” I tried to snarl, even as I winced against the chill and wet of the rough cloth. “You had no reason to take my weapons. I did not ask for this. Give me my blades and I’ll be on my way.”
I tried to shift my weight, to throw my legs over the side of whatever cot I was on and push him aside, find my blades and get out of there. Screw the Lightens and everything about them, I needed to get to the Queen. I wasn’t able to shift more than an inch before that pain lashed through everything again.
My scream of pain raked through the dank space, the horses whinny echoing in answer. A woman’s voice called from above my head, the words indiscriminable from the ringing pain that was rippling through my head.
“All is well, Lyani. I will call if I need.” Wood slid against wood, fabric was wrung through cold water and I winced as the rough cloth was placed over my wound again.
“You may not have asked for it,” he said as he wiped the fabric over my bare skin, the cloth somehow warm that time. “But without us you would have died. It is the Goddess who led you to us, it is by her will that you are still with us. It is by her divine fate that you have been saved.”
“I don’t need to be saved.” I cut him off, I didn’t want to hear more, especially with how his voice grew airy and awed as he stared at the ceiling. With my snap he looked down, that awed look he had been throwing at the sky turning serious.
“The hole in your gut says otherwise,” he wrung out the fabric again, the smell of blood spiking briefly. His brown eyes narrowed as though he was debating a question.
I already knew what it was.
I didn’t need him asking how that happened. I didn’t need him knowing anything about me. I was alive, I was awake. I could take care of myself. I didn’t need help, and certainly not from Lightens.
“I need my blades. Give me my blades.” The snarl that I put on so often was barely more than a whisper. He didn’t even flinch. He put the cloth on my abdomen again and sat back, the muscles in his arms bulging and flexing as he crossed them over his chest.
“Don’t you worry about them. They’re kept safe until you have need of them.”
“I have need of them now.”
“You can barely move. Why exactly do you have need of weapons for at this moment?” he mused, rubbing his jaw as his smile finally faded underneath the intense look he was giving me. I opened my mouth to respond, but he and I both knew I had no answer.
“Tell me, stranger, what is your name?”
“Caspyn.” I spoke the word before I could think better of it, my true name out for the first time outside of my Qit. I had never given it, not once. Perhaps he had laced the water with something.
“Good name. Strong name. Do you know what it means?” He leaned in. I refused to answer no, even if something was pulling me to do so.
“It means nothing,” the words growled out of me as though they had truly been pulled from me. “Names are just names.”
A pain lanced through my gut that wasn’t from the hole there. I had used that exact phrasing with Tilny just the other day.
“All names have meaning, yours has more than you know, in fact.” He paused, those dark eyes still looking me over as though he was going to find some answer on my flesh. “Your name means Light.”
I nearly laughed at that. Lightens were truly delusional. Did he see me? Nothing about me was light. Nothing about me would ever be light. Well, unless you counted the fact that I planned to snuff out the light of the Queen, destroy that power of L?t that they all had. That was the closest I would ever be to light.
“I was named after the lilies that grow on the river's surface,” my voice caught as saying her name snagged something in my chest.
For the first time, the man didn’t smile, it was as though he somehow understood. As though I admitted more than my attachment to the damn flower. Shifting my weight, I tried to escape the gaze that was digging into me, if only there was somewhere to go that wouldn’t cause me extreme pain.
“Gorgeous flowers. Legend says that those flowers swallowed the sun on the night the sister faced the Goddess to destroy the world, and it is only because they saved the sun that we still have light in our world.” He waited for me to answer. I gave him nothing more than a snarl in return.
“Have you seen them?” he said after a moment and I forced myself to shake my head ‘no’ in response. “You will. I have a feeling you will.”
I was sure he wanted me to say something, to give some response, but I laid there, a twist of warning coiling up my spine as I stared at him and his damned smile.
“You know, we have a story about Light–”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I cut him off with a snarl. If I had thought that would stop him, I was a fool. He sat back in his chair again, those tattoos glittering as he folded his arms over his chest.
“There is a story that was told by an old woman, about how three pillars of light will rise up and face one another to make a new world. About how one pillar will banish, one will fall, and one will save.”
“Let me guess, you are going to tell me I am one of those pillars.” I nearly spat the words, not even bothering to hide my laugh. “My name meaning light means nothing more than that my mother liked a pretty flower. Names mean nothing.”
I used a different phrase that time, but that twist of loss still sprang through me.
“If you say so.” The man needed to stop smiling. “But I think you will find out the truth of that on your own.”
There was no pull of magic or Fae from him that would warn when danger was prowling closer, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. Something was off about him, but not just him, all of them. Anytime I had gotten close to the Lightens I had known something was off. That feeling was only stronger now.
Damn Lightens.
How could I have let this happen? I never got injured, in all my years I have never been cut any deeper than bone and thanks to my magic had healed within days. But this… I tried to move again, the man shaking his hand and replacing the cloth as I yelled out in pain.
“Rest, you cannot heal without rest…”
“You don’t understand….” I grit the words out as I tried to sit, he placed his hands against my collar bone and pressed me back down. He didn’t place more than a pinpoint of pressure, but even with that slight touch I couldn’t move.
“Tell me what I don’t understand,” he said, that friendly tone deepening as he leaned over me, that light touch still against my collar bone.
“I need to reach the princess; I need to see the Queen.” Again, it felt as if the words had been pulled from me.
“You need to reach the princess. Interesting.”
I tried to move, thankfully it didn’t hurt that much that time, but with the way pain coiled around my spine I knew I wouldn’t be able to get off that wagon let alone travel more than a few steps without help. Even then, I couldn’t go anywhere without my weapons.
“I need my blades.” I was back to snarling.
“You will have them when you leave us,” he waved his hand to the side as though it was nothing. “But you cannot leave us yet.”
“I can.” I winced in yet another attempt to rise, my damn body having to make its own point.
“Perhaps. But I propose another option.” He paused, again I said nothing. “Travel with us while you heal. Help with the horses, the wagons, whatever we need. Call it a payment for helping you. Then when we reach our destination, I will retrieve your blades and you can be on your way.”
He sat there, leaning in his chair with that damn grin plastered on his face. He knew I had no choice; I could barely move as is and with my magic as weak as it was, I was truly trapped.
“What is your destination?” The words snarled through my clenched teeth.
“The Temple of the Sister.” He leaned closer at my answer. “I hear there is to be a wedding. I dare say you might find both of what you seek there.”
His eyes darkened as he sat, staring into me. I had only seen that look once before, in the Fae King right before he had struck. Still, there was nothing from him. Nothing but the insanity of a religious zealot.
“Why should I trust you?” I snarled, pushing his hand away that time and sending water sloshing over his stained breeches. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“I am called Ryndle,” he said, leaning back over to wipe at my wound. “It means Truth.”
I nearly laughed at that. Somehow the name seemed fitting with how he was able to pull answers from me. Pull truth that I had never given.
“Truth as in you tell it, or truth as in you steal it?” I made to push his hand away again, but he shifted back before I could, the smile that had been plastered on his face shifting to something devious. The look was gone in one swing of the lanterns’ light.
“I told you, Caspyn light bringer. Names have meaning. It is how you choose to wear them that their power becomes clear to you. Perhaps when you accept your name you will see that. But for now, you may make of my name what you see fit. For me? I dare say it means you can trust me.”
“Why? Because I have no choice?” My attempt at a laugh came out as a growl.
“No, because fate has led you to us.”
I didn’t shift fast enough to hide the shock and pain that lanced over me at that.