Chapter Two Elvine #4
“Tielwald, I…” Coelnyr stammered then mastered himself.
It was strange to see fear upon a visage previously so lacking in emotion.
He cast a quick glance around, seeing no escape.
The parapet at his back had been hewn away to make space for the new gate, and Colvyn and Elvine barred his path to the ladder. “I have done nothing—”
“Oh, but you were going to,” Gruinskard cut in.
“And not even for any reward our enemies might have offered. Just to feed that beast inside you, a beast you could hide from me, but not her.” Gruinskard pointed at Lynnea.
Elvine saw how Coelnyr’s fear began to edge into outright terror as he gazed upon the newly appointed Tielwald.
“She saw your hunger, Coelnyr,” his master went on.
“Followed you to that little den you’d made for yourself beneath the library ruins.
Found all the toys you’d collected. Moreover she saw your mind, saw the way you looked at the Spear Maiden even though I’m sure you went to great lengths to hide it. ”
“I…” A brief quiver overtook Coelnyr’s face before he re-exerted his prior control. “A lapse of judgement only. An indulgence in imagination…”
“Something I would be so very willing to believe, Coelnyr, if Aldunna had not come too with her concerns over your latest request for a compound. A mixture that would paralyse the subject but leave them fully capable of experiencing pain. I assume you were waiting for the storm. Easier to strike amid the confusion of all that white fury. You would have been discovered eventually, of course, but only after several hours of solitude to play your terrible games.”
“You perverted filth!” Colvyn hissed, sword scraping free of its scabbard as he took a step towards Coelnyr.
“Hold!” Gruinskard snapped, holding up his remaining hand. “This man is my most faithful servant. And long years of service have earned him mercy.”
“Not from me,” Colvyn growled, continuing to advance until Elvine reached out to touch his sword arm. Shaking her head, she held him in place and watched Gruinskard set his hand upon Coelnyr’s shoulder.
“The queen ordained the Crimson Hawk for you,” the old man said. “But my word still holds some sway with her. Instead, she granted me the boon of casting you out of this realm.”
“Please,” Coelnyr stammered, his face now twitching in constant animation, eyes shifting from Gruinskard to Elvine where they lingered.
She shuddered at the naked desire she saw in both his expression and the feverish coiling of his aura.
His master was right: a beast lurked within this man.
One that mere exile would unleash upon the world.
She tightened her grip on the spear, resolving that this creature would not be leaving this port, regardless of the queen’s edict.
“Please,” Coelnyr said again, returning his gaze to Gruinskard. “Do not send me from your side. You… you are my anchor. Without you…” He faltered into a sob, tears streaming from his eyes, hands clutching at Gruinskard’s furs. “This world… I do not… I cannot exist in it without you…”
“I know, old friend,” the ancient man said, cupping Coelnyr’s cheek, a father comforting a distraught child. “I know…”
His stump moved in a blur, the barbed spike a flicker of steel.
Coelnyr let out another sob, short and guttural, before further sound was smothered by the blood erupting from his severed throat.
He collapsed to his knees, hands clutching at the wound in a vain attempt to stem the crimson torrent.
He cast one last look at Gruinskard’s downcast, sorrowful visage, then Coelnyr slumped forward, his face slapping hard to the timber walkway.
He twitched while his blood stained the planking, then lay still.
Hearing a soft scuff of shoe leather, Elvine turned to see Lynnea disappearing back into the fog.
“You,” Gruinskard grunted at Colvyn, the old man wincing as he stooped to gather up Coelnyr’s body. “Help me get him in the water.”
Ice had already begun to form on the harbour waters, but hadn’t yet hardened. The thin sheet shattered into a matrix of white and black as the corpse plunged through it, the shards soon settling into a placid swell as they drifted back into union.
“Our scales are now once again balanced, Spear Maiden,” Gruinskard told Elvine before mounting the ladder. He descended from view without another word, steel barb thunking softly into the rungs.
Elvine turned to watch the fog settling over the water, the ice creeping out from the wall into Aeric’s Fjord.
As a girl, she had seen people skating upon the fjord, so thick did the sheet become.
Now, once the storm had abated, others would do the same, gracefully careening across the surface of a channel choked with too many dead to easily count, joined this night by one more.
“Come along,” she told her brother, turning away. “I’ve a sense we’ll find Nyhlssa has some mulled wine on the hob. Though, I warn you, my mother is intent on embroiling us in another rendition from one of D’Ambrille’s plays.”