Chapter 7 The Bondsmith
The Bondsmith
The heat inside the tent—or what I assumed was a tent—was nearly unbearable.
It was all-encompassing, suffocating. The air was so rife with it that it felt like an actual weight on my chest, constricting my lungs and forcing me to take shallow breaths.
Sweat rolled constantly down my temples and neck, through my hair, and down my back in rivulets rivaling the creeks that coursed through the woods near my home.
I was shocked that I had anything left to sweat.
Every few hours, someone would enter my tent, kneel before me, and shove a cup of brackish water in my face. Inevitably I would choke, both from the taste and the assault on my tired and worn throat, spilling the precious liquid down my chin to soak the front of my dress.
Eventually, that wet spot near my breasts would dry from the oppressive heat, and I would lose the momentary cool reprieve it brought.
Time passed in slow motion and all at once. Whether from the physiological effects due to the intense heat and lack of sustenance, or the sensory deprivation induced by the rough blindfold tied tight around my eyes, I couldn’t say for certain.
Long ago, I stopped trying to loosen it against the wooden pole my hands were bound to, instead choosing to keep my eyes closed. The blindfold forced me to rely on my other senses completely, something I hadn’t practiced since before the Sundering.
The longer I sat on the hard earth, my muscles screaming in protest, the more acute my hearing and sense of smell became. I knew the difference in gait for each of my jailers simply by listening to the crunch of sand underfoot as they approached my prison.
Their unique smell was another identifying factor.
The Matriarch—or one of her generals—clearly had tried to reduce their scents as much as possible because the residue of lye clung to each, stinging my nose when I tried to breathe deeply.
When they first approached me, I nearly gagged on the scent of lye, sweat, and body odor.
Over time, my nose adjusted, but I still took small, cautious breaths, never wanting to empty my stomach of what little substance I was provided.
But, underneath the masking scent of lye and sweat, were undercurrents of something more personal.
Citrus and spice. A Pleasure Mage.
Clove and geranium. An Earth Mage.
Clearly, there were two guards assigned on rotation.
Over time, I became accustomed to the heavy thumps of the Earth Mage’s gait and the shuffling of the Pleasure Mage.
Neither ever spoke, an order from their Matriarch, no doubt. Stories of my abilities were wild and untamed, though never fully accurate. There were many folk tales of my ability to corrupt a person simply by knowing the sound of their voice.
I internally snorted at the thought. Either the Matriarch was dumber than anyone had thought, or there was an undercurrent of evil that ran beneath her skin.
Because if she didn’t believe the fables about me, then she purposefully refused me sound—a form of torture in parts of Elyria.
Sound deprivation, even for short periods of time, could really fuck with a person’s mind.
Make them think they hear voices in their head.
Cause paranoia and, eventually, psychosis.
Aside from the crunch of sand, the rough pull of fabric on skin as the tent flap was opened, and the sound of water sloshing in the cup that was forced into my mouth, I heard no other sounds.
No rustle of animals.
No laughter of children.
Certainly no identifying voices.
Days, weeks, months passed like this.
At first, I tried to reach Meru, but it appeared that my connection to the home of the gods had been disrupted. When my attempts to transport my mind there didn’t work, I tried reaching out to my father directly—something I’d only ever done once before.
But my connection to Fate was woefully silent.
I was alone and growing weaker by the day.
I thought someone would come to demand information or my assistance, but no one ever appeared.
Only those two guards and their distinguishing scents.
Eventually, I slipped into a constant state of near slumber—that hazy point where I wasn’t quite asleep but not fully awake either. I imagined speaking to my daughter for the first time as a mother, and not as the teacher she knew me to be.
I replayed the moment where I watched the only man I ever loved die in front of me while I restrained my daughter, preventing her from saving the one person who actually showed her the love of a parent.
Even if she never knew that he was her father.
Now, I would die here, and she’d never know her true parentage.
Never know that I loved her with the force of a thousand suns. That her father did as well.
Never know how proud of her we were.
Despair took me, and I threw myself into its waiting arms.
Content to die, I relaxed the barriers on my mind completely, and was suddenly pulled out of my body.
“Daughter.” Fate’s voice was strained. I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. In fact, I couldn’t see anything.
“This isn’t Meru,” I mused, convinced I was hallucinating the whole experience. After months of trying to contact my father, now, when I’d accepted my final fate, he chose to intervene.
That was so very like the meddling asshole.
“No, it’s not,” Fate said. “Meru is . . . damaged.” He sounded pained to admit it.
“Damaged, how?” My gut sank rapidly at the thought. If Meru was damaged, my siblings . . . no. I wouldn’t think about that. My runes were strong. They would hold.
They had to hold.
“The mountain has cracked. The land is rife with Destruction. The skies twirl in an endless storm. Even I cannot fix it or control it.” There was anger in his voice, which I expected. But what chilled my soul was the stark fear that Fate tried to mask so well.
If Fate was afraid, then the fate of Elyria could very well be on a path that wasn’t salvageable.
“Solace?” I asked, terrified of his answer. “Kaos?”
My questions were met with silence, and I wondered if our connection was severed.
“Gone,” was his terse reply.
“How?” My question was a broken whisper. I was angry at Fate for ignoring my pleas for help these past few months, but that anger was quickly pushed aside in light of this new information. My siblings were free in Elyria once more, more powerful than when they last left.
My blood ran cold.
“How?” I repeated, my voice colder and harder than it’d ever been when speaking to Fate.
“I couldn’t get to her in time. Couldn’t direct her down a different path. She did it. Destroyed your runes. Released the gods.” Fate was rambling and not making much sense.
“Who? Who released them, Fate?” An urgency pressed through my tone as I felt our connection strum and falter.
He was still rambling, either not hearing my desperate plea, or ignoring me once again.
“WHO?” I shouted into the void, but he didn’t answer.
“They’re coming, daughter.” Fate’s voice was urgent and hard.
“I’ve sent one of my Children for you. You must get north, and quickly.
Things are moving faster than even I could have put into place.
Solace’s and Kaos’ return, while expected, came earlier than I predicted.
It’s . . . thrown the universe out of balance.
My Children are not ready, but they will be.
They must be. And I need you in the north to make that happen. ”
Ah, so his concern was for his machinations and chosen Children. Not for me, of course.
Minute cracks bit across my heart at the thought that I was really just a pawn to my all-powerful father.
“Very well,” I said. I felt, rather than saw, Fate nod his head.
“Good, Bondsmith.”
Our connection shook again, and I felt my soul being pulled back toward my body.
“Be safe, daughter,” I thought I heard Fate whisper, but my body was pulled from the in-between before I could confirm or deny it.
Returning from the cool and general freeness of the in-between to the stifling heat and my bruised, entrapped body was a sickening feeling, and I dry heaved at the warring sensations.
My body was wracked with tremors from the aftereffects of communicating with Fate, and I leaned my head back against the wooden pole. It put a different kind of pressure on my hands and shoulders, but I couldn’t find it within me to care.
Besides, if what Fate said was true, I had much bigger imminent issues than my sore and broken body.
I waited in that position for what felt like hours, straining to hear any kind of sound, to smell any change in the wind.
But there was nothing.
I began to think I hallucinated the whole conversation with Fate.
Then, all at once, it felt like sound exploded outside of my tent.
The whinny of horses and the squawk of chickens were coupled with shouts and the general incessant chatter of people. The crunching of sand under the pounding of feet as people scampered about rose above all other noises.
It was like a bubble had burst, letting in the noises of the rebel camp that existed just outside the flap of my prison.
Vaguely, from somewhere deep in the reservoirs of knowledge, I realized that it was a sound bubble that had surrounded my tent for the last few months.
Clearly, the Air Mage that had conjured it was needed elsewhere now—or dead.
The cacophony was almost too much for my ears, and I tried to duck my head between my legs in an effort to stifle some of the noise.
I cried out as I pulled my knees close to my body and extended my neck downward.
The sheer agony in my body was almost too much to bear.
My breathing was ragged and shallow as I fought rising nausea and unconsciousness.
Through the pain and noise, I heard the soft tell of the flap of my tent opening. I automatically froze, straining to hear the cadence of footsteps and taking desperate sniffs of the air to discern which of my captors was here.