Ashyn was floating. He drifted aimlessly, lying against a pocket of air. Weightless like a feather caught in a zephyr. Time seemed meaningless. The burdens of his world were completely irrelevant. He tried to open is eyes to observe this lush comfort he felt himself in, but he could not. His eyes were bound shut.
An eerie sense of déjà vu overcame him. He had done this before. A long time ago. He was only a little boy back then. She challenged him not to give up and die, but to live.
“I’m not going to die this time, am I?” he asked, knowing he wasn’t alone.
A melodic voice answered him, “That is yet to be seen.” It was deeper now than when he heard it over a decade past. It was feminine and very beautiful, and there was a weight to it now.
Ashyn tried again to open his eyes, but no luck. “You are not going to let me see you?”
“Not this time,” The ethereal voice answered him. “It would be too dangerous.”
“For who?”
“Everyone,” she answered simply. “We are adults grown now, dui Nuchada. Our actions carry heavy repercussions.”
Ashyn did not answer. There was no need. A single thought of the lowlands east of the Onyx Tower, now a wasteland was all he needed to know the true depth of the repercussions he carried.
“Why have you taken so long to contact me again? It has been many winters. You could have told me of the war your kind launched against the wizards. You could have warned me about Czynsk. None of our people would have died.”
There was a long silence.
“Things are not so simple sometimes,” the Exemplar answered. “I told you, you need to be patient.”
Ashyn laughed bitterly. “Patience is a few days, maybe weeks, a month at most. I’ve been waiting winters.”
Again, there was silence.
“You’re not going to answer me, are you?”
“There is nothing to say. I am Ferhym; time doesn’t caring the same meaning to me as it does to you. I did not have answers to give in the last few winters that you did not already learn on your own.”
“Yet you claim to follow me?”
“I do,” the voice came back honestly. “You are the dui Nuchada, and I am bound to you.”
“What does that really mean? Do I have two souls? I don’t understand,” Ashyn queried, confused. “For winters I thought I was different because I was a part-elf…”
The voice cut in, “There is no elf within you and there never was.”
“Then who am I?”
“You know who you are. The real question that burns in you is what are you?”
“Freak,” he answered. “I am a freak.”
“Perhaps to some that may be true. But I do not believe it to be the same for all. You are so much more Ashyn Rune.”
“Why won’t you give me a clear answer?” he pressed.
She sighed. It sounded like the soft moan of wind. He felt her breath against his cheek.
“The answers will come soon,” she said, “I know what the dui Nuchada is to my people, but I don’t know what it truly is to the rest of Kuldarr.”
It was a slight revelation to him at that moment. She didn’t really know. It was as if they were blind in this together. Bound on a journey neither understood. But she knew that they were in it together.
“But…” he began, but never finished.
~ ~ ~
Suddenly Ashyn’s world tilted and jostled and he no longer felt weightless. “Exemplar!” he screamed, but she was gone.
His buoyancy ended abruptly, and he felt himself crashing downwards. He hit hard, sudden pain surging up his back. Gasping he opened his eyes.
A voice chittered near him in Ferhym, “Pick him up.”
It was so dim that his eyes adjusted quickly and he wasn’t overwhelmed by blinding light. A rumble of thunder sounded above him, past the green canopy overhead. His face was wet from raindrops, though nowhere near the torrent he remembered.
He felt himself lifted roughly and placed on something hard and flat.
“He’s awake.”
Ashyn’s eyes darted around confused. A number of painted figures surrounded him. They were all Ferhym. He looked down. Only his small clothes remained. There was something strange by his stomach. A protrusion of garish flesh rose from the rest of his body. There were many of them, he realized with some nausea building in his guts. They all undulated together in a steady rhythm. Weakly he tried to touch it, when a firm calloused hand came down onto his shoulder. “Leave it.”
He followed the arm up to the voice. Jenhiro. Ashyn opened his mouth to speak, but Jenhiro did not give him the chance.
“The leeches will cleanse you of the bad blood. It has filled up your body; it must be purged.”
Leeches? The wizard was so confused, so tired. As if reading this, Jenhiro continued, “Sleep. It will be easier to heal.”
Ashyn lay his head back, and as he did, he caught glimpse of another strange wagon to his right. Tied down was the bull he defeated.
His fate became clear. He was captured. That was the Exemplar’s warning on why it would be dangerous. He understood. Ashyn let a small smile take his face. They were taking him for judgement. They were taking him to Feydras’ Anula. They were taking him to his sister.
He let his mind fade away.
~ ~ ~
Consciousness came and went for what felt like several more days. He remembered catching glimpses of Jenhiro through it all, and occasionally a Ferhym with crazy brown hair with bones woven in. A druid.
He felt a curious sensation as his body was involuntarily assailed with magic. Though he knew that it was to heal him, he still felt violated. Nothing could be hidden from the healer.
Luckily, he couldn’t maintain consciousness for more than a few minutes at a time. He was always too exhausted, a combination of feedback and his injuries.
Finally, he felt strength growing within him. He had long stopped moving, and he hadn’t had any communication from the Exemplar again. Yet she knew he was coming.
Once more voices assailed him, pulling him from his dreamless sleeping. They were deep, male, and they spoke the Trade tongue, which confused him after speaking only Ferhym for almost a month now. Ashyn realized that they sounded human.
“Hey Yur, ye ain’t gonna believe this…” the deep voice said from somewhere to his left.
“Eh?”
“It’s him! Da Blood Wizard!”
That got Ashyn’s attention. He hadn’t expected recognition from people. He listened more intently, without trying to give away that he was awake.
“They ain’t fer findin’ no Blood Wizard ye fool,” the one Ashyn assumed was Yur, remarked. “No wizard would do a damn thing like gettin’ ’imself captured by no Wild Elves.”
“I’s a telling ye, Yur. Is a wizard, and I’s thinks he’s awake.”
Well damn. So much for hiding it already. Ashyn opened his eyes.
“He is awake! Run!” the man who had been leading the conversation screamed. Ashyn heard fumbling and saw commotion out of his peripheral vision. When he turned his head he was alarmed to see the bars of a cage. They were solid wood, naked of any paint or varnish, and they enclosed him from all sides, including the top. Like he was a beast.
Across from him was another cage, and there he saw about twenty humans, men and women. They were all screaming and packing themselves into a corner. As far away from Ashyn as possible. All but one anyway, who sat still on the ground staring at him.
Ashyn sat up. A groan emanated from his lips as a pain rippled from his abdomen to every point of his body. Reflexively, he put his hand to his side and felt the puckered rigid surface of crusted flesh. He looked down and saw a fresh pink scar. It was almost two inches in length, gnarled and thick. Whoever had healed him was solely concerned with keeping him alive. He could feel the muscles bunching and spasming at his sudden motion.
He breathed for a moment and waited for the fitful muscles to calm down. The man who sat there stared at him the whole time, while the others cowered in the corner refusing to make eye contact.
Ashyn used the bars of his cell to pull himself to his feet. The exertion made him woozy for a moment. He let it settle, and then took in the rest of his surroundings past his cell.
Solid granite surrounded them on all sides beyond the wooden cages. He tried to get his bearings. Am I still in the woods? Am I underground where the elves are rumored to live? He gazed upwards. What the hell? Clear skies? Not a thick canopy of trees, but sky! A deep indigo horizon fell over him with the bright white fires of stars blazing above.
It felt like a lifetime since he saw anything but leaves and branches. He must be out of the Shalis-Fey.
The heat of the one man’s eyes intensified. Ashyn stared back at the man, studying him. Filthy and in tattered garments, there was an odd familiarity about him.
Long, coal black hair tied back behind his head in a greasy ponytail. His face was round, almost comically so compared to his button nose. Yet his cheeks appeared hollow. The clothing hung limply, showing that at one time they filled a much larger frame.
Those features weren’t what stood out to him, though. It was the eyes. His eyes were shade of brown, but like his nose they appeared small and beady to his oversized face. Those eyes scrutinizing him felt oddly familiar.
“Can I help you?” Ashyn asked the staring man.
The human didn’t answer him, just continued to stare in an almost hateful way. Almost, because no one had stared at him with such vehemence as that of the female Wild Elves he encountered months back. With them only true hate resonated. In these eyes he saw disbelief, coupled with anger.
A cowering voice called from the crowd against the wall, “Dunna look at ’im like dat, Yur. I’s thinks he’s gunna hex ye!”
Yur. That sounded familiar as well. Ashyn pulled himself to his full height to address the terrified group. “Please relax,” he started, “I mean you no harm.”
The one called Yur scoffed, “All wizards do is harm.” He spat on the floor.
“How do you know I’m a wizard?” Ashyn asked. He was curious how these people identified him by the sobriquet of Blood Wizard, when the only one to know the title was Xexial, who was dead.
Yur pointed up above, “Elves.” He said and spat on the floor again. “Been showin’ an image of ye, hour after hour fer as long as we canna remember now.”
Ashyn raised an eyebrow. An image? How could they have captured an image of him? Did one of the fleeing elves in the battle in the lowlands draw one of him? Was their art so fine?
“Don’cha rack ye brain hard,” Yur said to him. “These elves have foul magics jus’ as ye do Rune.”
Ashyn blinked in surprise.
“Yur!” his apparent friend exclaimed from the huddle.
The man stood then. Ashyn could see how others could fear him. In human standards, he was large. Ashyn assumed that when he was at full weight, he was a bulky man. But Ashyn wasn’t of normal human standards in height, and the normally tall Yur still had to look up to him.
In terms of muscular girth, Ashyn was sorely undersized. The trials of the woods had hardened him somewhat though, mainly in stamina.
Yur walked up to and leaned against the wooden bars, and snarled at Ashyn with yellow teeth, “I remember ye boy.”
“Ye’ll get us all killed!” one of them shrieked. Ashyn was barely listening. He was staring back into that round face and those deep, beady eyes. Now he knew where he knew those eyes.
Quietly he said, “Yur.” He looked at him, pondering, “As in Uriel?”
The man put a grimy hand to his matted hairy chest. “Ye remember me? Flattered,” he said condescendingly.
Ashyn’s mind flashed back to his short time in Czynsk as a child. Uriel had been one of the first boys he had met. Uriel and Macky had been in the hospice when he awakened.
Macky became a quick friend to Ashyn, but Uriel had always remained suspicious of him. Even though he and Macky were best friends, Uriel disliked Ashyn’s intelligence and his literacy. He had often accused Ashyn of witchcraft. Not too far from the mark now, Ashyn surmised. He guessed Uriel sensed this.
“I always knew,” the man gloated. “Always knew ye were destined for this path. Even whens we was boys.”
Ashyn had no quarrel with Uriel. Not then, and certainly not a decade later. He leaned forward against the wooden bars too. “You always were smart,” Ashyn agreed, trying to coax the man’s ego a little. “How is it you wound up here?”
Uriel’s expression turned dark. “I’m here because of you!”
Ashyn’s eyes went wide. “What?”
The human stared at Ashyn with disgust. “Yer ole’ chum Mactonal, ye remember him?”
Ashyn nodded, and Uriel scoffed and continued, “Idiot stood up ta the elves when they came ta town. Said we had ta fight’ ’em off.”
Ashyn leaned against the bars, “Macky said that?” He shook his head. “He always wanted to see the Wild Elves.”
“Ta,” Uriel agreed. “Until ye showed ‘im strength. Never was the same after ye left with the old coot wizard.”
Ashyn’s ears perked up. “What do you mean?”
The wizard saw Uriel’s beady eyes stare at him in a patronizing way. “After ye left, he started preachin’ about hows we should stands up fer ourselves. Dat sometimes penance could be wrongful, and we should stand against the bishop if falsely accused, or some such.” Uriel dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “He never got much backing from the other kids.” Hissing, he went on, “Avrimae, though…she ne’r left ‘is side in the Enclave after that.”
Ashyn could already see where this was going. Avrimae had been the subject of both the older boys’ hearts. They adored her, and Ashyn knew that unless she rejected both of them, one day she would cause a schism between the two.
Uriel continued, “Long story short, he became a leader of sorts. Did odd jobs fer a mason when ‘is charity was paid and he and Avrimae moved in together.
“Didn’t las’ long though. Tis one thing in the hospice, nother on ye own. She couldn’t take it; he couldn’t live up ta bein’ the man she thought he was. Had a brutal break up.” He added with a dark smile, “So Mactonal joined the Enclave and became a priest.”
Ashyn flinched. Macky had been a member of the Enclave. He knew the Enclave had burned to the ground because the Wild Elves didn’t get the fight they had wanted from Xexial and him. Not that Ashyn hadn’t wanted to give it to them at the time.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Ashyn said somberly, “but the Enclave is gone.”
Uriel nodded. “We was there.” Then he looked sharply up at Ashyn. “No thanks ta ye, wizard.”
It wasn’t like that, Ashyn wanted to tell him, but he knew Uriel wouldn’t understand. In a monotone voice he surmised, “So Macky is dead.”
Uriel gawked at him. “Hells no. Not yet, at least.”
Ashyn looked up at him in alarm.
“Dat’s what I’ve been trying to tell ye, before ye interruptin’ me. Mactonal thought he was some type of leader after ye left. Even all dem winters later, when the Wild Elf scouts first came in ta Czynsk, Mactonal wanted ta fight ’em.”
Ashyn blinked dumbfounded, but didn’t say anything. He needed to hear it all.
“First elves came in week’s a’fore and ’twas helluva surprise. They was civil enough, speaking strange fractured Trade tongue, tryin’ ta find a way ta contact ye wizards. I knew the bishop knew how ta get in touch with em, seens it done many times when I was a kid. I told em so.”
Ashyn wanted to yell at Uriel and tell him he was a fool, that he had helped invite the destruction of the Enclave, but he knew he couldn’t. As much as he may not have been friends with Uriel when they were children, if the elves had been civil, he could not have known what was going to happen. He hadn’t had to flee from them for days on end through the Shalis-Fey.
“They go to the Enclave, and Father Mactonal,” he sneered as he said it and Ashyn realized that Avrimae’s choice in Macky over Uriel must have thoroughly destroyed their friendship, “he turns them away.” Uriel looked Ashyn in the eyes. “Cuz he says he knows da truth about dem. Dat they hunted ye fer days in the forest. Overheard it from ye mouth and the wizard’s. Even winters later, he stood up fer ye!
“They leave, angry,” Uriel continued, “and returned two days later. This time they came in force. Marched right through town they did, straight to the Enclave, and demanded ta have a message sent. Otherwise dey would start a balancing.
“Fool ass still told em no, but in da interest of saving lives, the Bishop relented and sent ye wizards a message. Bishop told em, that the wizards’ be comin’ in a few days’ time. Elves left.”
Uriel blew out a sigh and sat down with his back to Ashyn, his hatred of the wizard momentarily lost as he recalled those events. “We heard thunder for the next three days in the Shalis-Fey. Then on day four, a day afore ye arrive, they march out from the woods.
“Scariest of things we ever did see, wizard. So many came. Too many. They came right up to Czynsk and surrounded the town. Their leader said that they were there to balance it! That us just having a way to contact the evil wizards, marked us as corrupted. Imagine that! Theys ask us ta do sometin’, we dos it, and we are evil? Hypocrites!” Uriel threw his hands in the air.
“They executed the bishop on the spot for being a collaborator. Then pitched ‘is head into our water well so that we’d all taste the bitterness of his corrupted spirit or some such.”
Ashyn heard a few of the others begin to sob as Uriel recounted the events.
“Then they says, any others who resist would be balanced, lethally.
“There were outcries, and Mactonal even orchestrated a rebellion of sorts against ‘em, preachin’ that if it be their time then the Maker would smile upon ‘em for standing up for ‘emselves against the tyrants.” Uriel preached, and then spat, “Me wife was among the volunteers.”
“Your wife?”
Uriel nodded, “The rebellion was a pathetic joke. A ridiculous blunder. We not be warriors trained to kill like the elves. The first few were slaughtered. Cut down like wheat by a farmer’s scythe. They gathered the rest and sought to use ‘em as bait against ye. Rile ye up inta violence. But ye fled like cowards afore they could.” His eyes were as bitter as his voice.
“As they were wheeling our people away, claimin’ ta take em fer reclamation, I took my chance. I tried ta free me wife.” Uriel looked down at the disheveled clothes on his body, “I failed, and dey took me, too.”
With a deep sigh he looked up at Ashyn. The hatred that burned fervently a moment before now was lost to sorrow. “And the rest is history.”
Ashyn leaned his back against the bars. “Where is Macky then?”
Uriel nodded up above the rock face. “The worst of us skewers are up there, near the pond. On the real bad nights, we canna hear them screamin’.”
Ashyn didn’t want to ask, but he needed to know, “And your wife?”
Uriel nodded and looked down to the ground. “Ta. She’s up there too, somewheres.”
Ashyn had no clue what up there looked like. He was confused as to why they had placed him in his own cell to begin with, let alone left him with the general populace. Unless they didn’t know he was there.
No. Ashyn answered to himself before even trailing that thought too far. He remembered the look on Jenhiro’s face. He remembered the betrayal of seeing a dui Nuchada. Why then was Ashyn even alive? Perhaps the same reason he had kept Jenhiro alive. They had needed each other.
Pain stabbed through his thoughts, and Ashyn looked down to his abdomen. He was alarmed to see a green fluid seeping through the puckering scar where he was stabbed.
Ashyn touched it. It was tacky. When he brought it up to his nose, his senses were quickly assailed with the sharp piercing odor of mint.
Must be a healing remedy of the druids, Ashyn thought, or at least hoped, anyways. It didn’t seem infected or gangrenous. The scar, though severe, wasn’t swollen, painful, or red. The only pain came from the spasms and contractions of his injured muscles. Everything seemed okay, minus the fact that he was generating the green liquid, of course. He had no idea what druidic healing consisted of. It might be normal.
Once more he felt the heat of Uriel’s eyes on him. Ashyn looked down to see Uriel’s beady gaze analyzing him. “They hurt ya good?”
Ashyn looked from Uriel to the crowd of scared people cowering in the corner. “Nothing I won’t overcome.”
Uriel stood back up and walked towards the crowd of people. “I knew the boy, afore he was a wizard,” Uriel said loudly. He turned and looked Ashyn in the eyes, the flare of anger had returned. “Watch your back, Ashyn Rune, for you have no allies here.”
~ ~ ~
“Dui Nuchada,” a voice said in the darkness. Ashyn opened his eyes wearily. Though well rested from his ordeal, he knew he still had a long way to go until healed, and he knew it was likely, once the Council of Elm found out he was here, he would find very little peace and rest afterwards.
The voice whispered harder, “Dui Nuchada.” Ashyn became suddenly more alert. The voice hadn’t come from the cage next to him, but from above. Ashyn looked up. It was some hours later after he spoke with Uriel.
There standing against the moonlight he could see the outline of a male figure. Pointed ears cut like sharp daggers across the night sky. A Wild Elf.
The voice whispered, “There is little time, and after this moment we must be enemies.” Ashyn recognized it then.
He stood, whispering, “Jenhiro.”
“Shhh! Just listen to me. I do not know what the council will have in store for you, dui Nuchada, but you saved my life. I, in turn, have spared yours. I do not know if you will live or die at this point, I don’t know if I have placed you in hell, but we are even. That is what I want you to know. We were allies in the Fey, now in Feydras’ Anula we must be enemies.”
“I understand.”
Ashyn sat back down and looked at his hands. There really couldn’t have been any other way. The Wild Elves swore to the balance of life. Everything about Ashyn was counter to that in their mind. At least Jenhiro confirmed that he was in Feydras’ Anula.
Ashyn looked back up to where the elf was. To his surprise he still saw him there, watching, likely lost in his own personal conflict.
The two survived the hunt from a powerful adversary together. They bonded in blood and sweat on a field of battle. Though they might call each other enemies, Ashyn thought that there was more to them now. At least, perhaps it was a dream. Seeing Jenhiro still above him, perhaps it was more than just hope.
He whispered, “Elf,” not daring to use Jenhiro’s name again so that he may protect him. The Wild Elf’s eyes gleamed down to him in the moonlight. “My life is irrelevant. If you really want to be even with me for saving your life and bringing your unbalancer to justice, find the skewer they call Julietta. She has hair like mine, and we share the same complexion as well. You will know her when you find her for she is…” Ashyn took a breath to control the anger he felt rising in his guts. “…she is blind, with crescent-like scars around her eye sockets.”
Jenhiro continued to stare down the whole at him, as if weighing the young wizard’s words. Then Ashyn felt a flood of relief as he saw the elf nod. “I will do this for you.” And the elf was gone.
For the first time since he had learned of Julietta still being alive, Ashyn had hope.