Chapter 41 Aylah
AYLAH
A ylah walked the camp, observing the teeming mass of humanity and armor toiling and preparing. The atmosphere was jovial as they crossed the Sapphire Mountains and marched toward Racliffe. Everywhere she went, eyes glanced her way. Far too many contained unhidden lust.
Are the camp followers not enough for you? she thought as she walked. For so long, she had considered herself immune to caring. These humans were little better than animals, so why take offense when they looked upon her beauty and thought the thoughts they were born to think?
Aylah smiled at a nearby soldier, nightmarish images flashing through her mind. No. She was not immune, just numbed.
“Are you well prepared for the next battle?” she asked the man. His banner marked him as from Grenab, one of the last little kingdoms to pledge their banner to Queen Isabelle’s protectorate.
“I’d be better prepared if I had a kiss from a pretty lady,” he said, and laughed as if he’d told the grandest of jokes. Aylah brushed a hand through her hair, cut short around her neck, and then trailed her fingers lower, barely brushing her breast.
“Just a kiss?” she asked.
The man was not laughing now. He glanced to the other soldiers with him, who were locked in conversation and ignoring him.
“Truly?” he asked. He sounded nervous. Aylah studied him. Handsome enough, with wavy brown hair, and young, maybe just approaching his twentieth year. His smile was ugly, though, his teeth crooked and yellow.
Aylah put her back to him and then glanced over her shoulder. She’d chosen this particular camp for a reason. They were directly beside a nearby copse of trees, a rare possibility for privacy in an army that had swelled in ranks to number over twenty-five thousand.
“Care for a walk in the woods?” she asked, and then proceeded without waiting for an answer.
As expected, he dropped what he was doing and followed.
Aylah carefully stepped through the thickening brush, her boots much too light for such terrain. She wore only a plain pair of trousers, a loose wool blouse, and a thin belt with a dagger buckled into a half sheath. No armor. Every time she imagined donning some, she shuddered at the thought.
Fighting for these humans? No. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
“So, uh, what’s your name?” the man asked as he hurried to catch up. She slid through the forest, silent as a serpent. He tromped like a cow.
“Aylah.”
Deeper into the forest. They must not be disturbed.
“Aylah. That’s a pretty name.” She held her breath. “Not as pretty as you, though.”
She hissed it out through her teeth.
“Thank you,” she said.
The forest was made of salwood trees, their wide leaves both a vibrant yellow and extremely thin, so that as Aylah walked underneath, it felt like she passed through a land of gold.
Dew sparkled from atop the scattered bushes, adding to the illusion.
She paused to touch one of the salwood trunks.
They were a pale red, and unique to the eastern lands of Kaus. Her fingertips traced the bark.
“Here is far enough,” she said.
The soldier stood there, awkward and silent. His neck had turned redder than the tree trunks.
“Ground’s not exactly soft,” he said at last.
She pressed her hand to his chest and pushed him against one of the salwoods.
“We won’t be on the ground.”
His breath caught in his throat. His eyes widened. Lust overwhelmed him, forming a bulge in his trousers, but he was also nervous, perhaps even afraid. However he expected this to play out, this wasn’t it.
Aylah leaned closer, and she let the radiance pool within her eyes.
Her fingers curled around the sides of his face, imprisoning him with her touch.
Of her gifts, this was her weakest, a pittance of the power possessed by Eder or Calluna.
This young man, however, was already enraptured, his heart open to her, eager for her acceptance.
Silver threads passed between them, unseen by him, but vibrant spider’s silk to her.
They latched on to his mind and burrowed in deep.
“You will not speak,” she commanded. “You will not flee. You will not resist.”
A second command pulsed unspoken through her feet into the earth below.
Vines sprouted around the base of the tree.
They looped and tangled with each passing second, curving like snakes to bind the soldier to the bark.
First his legs, then his waist, his arms, and last, three coils tightly encircling his neck.
True to her desires, he did not protest.
Aylah drew her dagger.
“This will hurt,” she said as she placed the blade to his face. “But you will not scream.”
She cut him, long, deep, and slow. It started just underneath his eye, then curved along his jawbone, slicing his cheek in half.
Blood poured down his face and neck, and yet he made not a sound.
His eyes, though. She could see the fear in his eyes.
They bulged wide and darted about, like those of a caught rabbit.
Aylah watched the blood flow, all the forest darkening around her.
“You can’t scream,” she whispered. “Screaming makes it worse.”
She pulled the dagger back and then slashed his chest, cutting open his shirt in the process. A second slash, then a third, each one a little lower. Flaying him, so that his ribs would be exposed.
“You can’t fight back, or they’ll punish you.”
A fourth cut across his abdomen. A bit of his entrails threatened to spill forth. A command, and the vines wrapped over it, keeping him upright. Keeping him alive.
“You can’t speak. You can’t argue. They don’t want your words.”
She jabbed the dagger into his shoulder and then carved along the bone, careful not to sever anything major. Even with that care, blood splashed across them both, staining her blouse and trousers. But it wasn’t her blood. Not hers.
Her control over him started to weaken, and so she ordered more vines to latch across his mouth, gagging him.
Tears trickled down to mix with the blood, and he whimpered softly, pathetically.
Aylah watched him, taking in his obvious suffering.
She saw the blood, saw the way he clenched his teeth and bit the vines to endure the pain as her dagger punched into his collarbone and wedged it free of the joint, popping it upward within the folds of his skin.
She watched, and waited, to feel anything.
Sympathy.
Pity.
Remorse.
Tears swelled in her eyes. Nothing. She felt nothing.
A swift, brutal thrust, and she shoved the dagger between two of the young man’s ribs to pierce his heart.
Laughter filled her ears. The trees vanished.
She saw servants kneeling, cups lifted, howling, someone was howling, was it her? Was it her?
“You can’t weep,” she said, fighting for her every breath. “Weeping proves part of you yet lives.”
And so we lift our glasses in praise of our goddess, Leliel, who delivered unto us this bounty, so that we may taste of everlasting life.
Aylah ripped her dagger free. The man was long dead, but she seethed at him nonetheless.
“Is that all I am to you, goddess?” she asked, and slashed his face. Not the controlled carving as before, but wild and careless.
“A bounty?”
Another slash, and another. She hacked at him, tearing apart the meat, bone, and muscle that made up a human life.
“A gift?”
More savage. With strength to rival Faron’s and Sariel’s. Snap and break everything that remained.
“A feast ?”
The vines withered away, and he fell in pieces to the forest floor.
Aylah screamed, choked and strangled so its volume was a whisper, just a phantom enactment of the true rage and horror clawing to be made free within her mind.
She sobbed and retched as she stabbed at the corpse, wishing Laurence was there, or Alise, or any of those vile servants who held the cups as she was bled again, and again, and again, night after night, year after year, left to bleed, to die , only to wake and be bled once more, cut and bled, cut and bled, sometimes dying, sometimes surviving, but never free, never found, always bleeding, her arm always burning, burning, until, until, until…
She collapsed amid the mess. Her chest heaved with her every breath. She looked to the bones and tissue and didn’t even recognize them as human anymore.
A footstep in the woods, crunching a twig. She flinched. There would be no hiding this, no explaining it away. She glanced over her shoulder, her hand tightening around the hilt of her dagger.
“Aylah?” Sariel asked. His face was an emotionless mask.
Aylah had to swallow before she could speak. No excuses here. The truth would have to suffice, even if it was the hardest to give. Three words, and each one deeply hurt.
“I’m. Still. There.”
Her brother removed his coat, set it safely aside, and then lowered himself before her. His hands settled around hers, and he gently took away her dagger.
“I know,” he whispered.
He used the dagger to cut off her blood-drenched blouse, having to peel it from her wet flesh. When done, he removed his shirt, bunched it up, and began to slowly clean her face and chest. All the while, he spoke in soft, gentle tones.
“What you have suffered goes beyond any cruelty we have ever endured. You were broken, Aylah, and I cannot imagine how deeply. But I also know that you are stronger than any human could ever dream of being. The broken pieces shall be mended. The torn and ripped, sewn together. Time, Aylah. Time heals all things, and it is ever our blessing.”
“Time,” she whispered. “Time was my curse.” She looked to him as he washed the blood from her neck. “I wanted to die, Sariel. To truly, permanently, forever die. And I couldn’t.”
There wasn’t much he could do for her hair, but he tried to clean it all the same, and then brushed it away from her face.
“You aren’t the first.” He set aside his bloody shirt. “But never forget this, Aylah. I would not walk this world without you. Time is my friend only so long as you, and the rest of my family, are there with me to watch these days and nights spiral forever on.”
“Family. Is that what we are?”
He did not answer. Instead he grabbed his coat and wrapped it about her. Its warmth settled over her, but it was not enough. Aylah flung herself against Sariel. His arms wrapped about her, and in that embrace, she finally felt the horrid, raw emptiness within her mind fade.
“I argued with them,” she said as the muscles in her back and neck relaxed.
She suddenly felt drowsy and weak. “Told them of my past, and all the lives I’ve lived.
I thought if I could convince them I was…
that I was real, and alive, they would acknowledge the horror they committed.
That they would feel guilt, or regret, for my imprisonment. ”
She closed her eyes and nuzzled Sariel’s chest.
“They only drank. They only cut and drank.”
He kissed the top of her head, and she wilted further.
“Are they worth all this, Sariel?” she asked. “These humans? Are they worth everything we have given, everything we have suffered?”
“You ask the wrong brother,” Sariel answered. “I care not for them. Only us.”
He stood, lifting her to her feet at the same time. His face filled her world, and she ached at realizing how much she’d missed him over those long, miserable decades.
The faintest hint of a smile crossed his lips.
“If you need to release the monsters within your mind, come to me,” he said. “You may scream, cry, and strike at me all you like. You may even cut me, if you so desire.” He glanced to the mutilated mess. “I’ll recover better than the fool who followed you into these woods.”
He buttoned the coat to hide her nakedness, then gestured toward the camp.
“Go. I’ll clean this up so Faron doesn’t find out.”
Aylah did as ordered, retracing her path to camp.
When almost out of sight, she dared a glance back.
Sariel stood in the center of the mess, his head tilted, his eyes closed, and his hands spread wide.
Silver threads spread in all directions from his fingertips, piercing the earth to flood it with his call.
Carrion creatures swarmed at his feet; ants, beetles, flies, and the like.
They feasted upon the remains, stripping them to bone and sopping up the blood.
Disguising her murder. Hiding her sin. Fixing the mess his sibling had made, as he so often did. It was why he had been beloved among them, and why he now led an army upon the Tower Majestic.
It was why his own fall from grace had caused the most ruin.
“I’m sorry, Sariel,” she whispered. “But this time, I don’t think there’s a way to make this right.”