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Pugh’s eyes widened, his wine going down the wrong pipe. “Why didn’t you say that right away!?” he shouted, spitting up his drink. “I should have you thrown into the dungeons, and leave you at the mercy of the beast!” By now he had turned purple.
The man, prostrate at his feet, was about to be seized by the tunic by the nobleman’s fat hand when the blare of the rampart horn echoed through the city. Pugh stiffened, and treaded with heavy steps toward the window. Zund was at the gates; he had no time to spare for the messenger. And so he left him alone in the library as coldly as he’d welcomed him, frantically exiting the building to receive his guest.
“Pugh…” said Zund, disgust written all over his face.
“Great General Zund,” began a panting Pugh adoringly. “What an immense honor! What can I do for you, as your humble servant?”
Zund’s red eyes leered at him. He loathed the deal his father had struck, and despised that useless stooge human even more. “The King was disappointed in the quality of the tribute last month: withered, sour-tasting fruit.”
Pugh paled, and searched for the right words. “Grand General… we… I… have looked for the best fruits…” The tulvar’s silence seemed endless to the man; he felt his eyes on him, and did not dare to raise his head.
“I ought to punish you, but unfortunately I’m here for another reason,” said Zund.
The man gulped loudly, unable to say a solitary word. He guided the General towards his palace, where he himself served bloody meats and fermented keb-brew, made from the juice of kebs, pineapple-like fruits from Alceas that were so pungent that keb-brew was drinkable only by tulvars.
After the banquet, the nobleman really began to shake in his boots. It was never a good sign when Zund appeared. The man remained silent while the tulvar sipped the brew from his metal chalice.
“For some animals, you’d make for a great meal, with all the fat on you,” said Zund.
“Definitely, my General,” said Pugh, cowed.
Zund took the last sip and then, as if seized by a moment of madness, he rose quickly, for Pugh to find himself with the blade of a tulvaren sword pressed against his throat. The nobleman shivered, squinted his eyes, and held them shut until he felt the cold metal on his skin.
“Are you feeding the beast regularly?” asked the tulvar.
“Of course…” Pugh answered, trembling as he opened his eyes.
“Good.” The tulvar sat on the Lord’s throne. “That good-for-nothing Alston is later than usual. You had better make sure he’s coming,” he concluded with contempt.
“At once, General!” exclaimed Pugh, flustered and shaken.
In the meantime, Alston of the Low Liegedom had entered the city, and was preparing to appear at the palace. Pugh came out, and soon they were standing in each other’s company. Short in stature, and dressed in his usual blue velvet clothes, Alston wore a ring-shaped hat, from which a flap of blue cloth descended down one side. Over his chest, he wore a large brooch with his family emblem. His curly, blonde hair covered his ears, framing his long, gaunt face. His hook nose and small mouth did nothing for his looks. The inhabitants of the Low Liegedom often joked that his mother must have laid with a goblin.
“Well you took your sweet time!” snapped Pugh.
The nobleman looked at him, and with his usual monotone he said: “So where’s General Zund?”
Pugh started pushing his peer along. “You’d best present yourself to him immediately!”
Bored and listless, Alston entered the palace. “Grand General Zund! I can assure you that we didn’t expect you here in the Twin Liegedoms…” he said, inspiring terror in all the humans present.
Zund walked up to Alston. “Your idiocy is unmatched!” he shouted angrily. He took the aristocrat by the clothes and forced him to the ground, pressing his face with his foot against the muddy boot tracks mixed with dung and piss. “You shall pay for your insolence by crawling to my throne.”
Alston crawled across the room, coming to Zund’s feet with his clothes soiled. Terrified and trembling, he was sweating profusely, and as soon as the General leaned over him, he burst into tears like a child, his stammering, incomprehensible gibberish punctuated by moans.
“Now beg!” shouted the tulvar.
“Mercy! Have mercy!” whined Alston. “I’ll do anything, Supreme General… for you, and for our only King!”
“Get up, scum!” Zund nodded to one of his soldiers, who recalled about twenty tulvars into the palace, and they settled along the walls of the hall; at that point it was clear that they would not leave soon. The door opened, and in stepped Auril, Zund’s younger sister. On the orders of the General, Alston was chained and gagged by the soldiers while Pugh took the brunt of Auril’s magic. The priestess, with a quick swish of her hand, raised the man from the ground as he moaned fearfully. Auril’s invisible power wrapped around Pugh’s throat, and his feeble flesh was devoid of the strength with which to resist.
Zund approached the man, and motioned for his sister to ease her grip; Pugh’s toes barely touched the floor. “Tell me where the crypt is located,” ordered the tulvar.
“What crypt!?” choked Pugh. He yelped when he felt a sharp pain in the abdomen, as if a dagger had pierced him. Auril clenched her other hand into a fist, and he felt his guts squeeze.
“That’s enough,” Zund told his sister. “The ancient crypt, you useless chowhound! Tell me where it is!”
The man did not reply. The torture continued and Zund asked him the same question over and over.
At her brother’s behest, the Priestess threw him against a wall, prompting the man to shriek anew. She crept into Pugh’s head in search of his deepest fears, and when she found what she was looking for, she smirked. The man saw the being he feared appear before his eyes. He began scampering every which way across the hall, gripped by a profound terror. He wanted to escape, but Auril’s grip forced him to the wall, and when the being approached him, he screeched.
“Leave him,” Zund ordered his sister.
She obeyed, and Pugh started running with the animal chasing him, eventually curling up in a corner and covering his eyes, waiting for the horrid beast to disappear.
“That’s enough! Make that hen disappear!” cried the man, worn out and whimpering. “I don’t know of any accursed crypt! There have never been crypts here!”
Auril dispelled the hen, and the man remained curled up in the corner.
Zund came up to him and whispered, “I’m choosing to believe you for now…”
Alston began fidgeting, making it clear that he wanted to speak; the tulvars took his gag off. “There are no crypts here, only orchards and poor peasant villages!” stressed the nobleman, trying to convince him as best he could.
“How can we be so sure?” asked Auril.
“They’ll talk,” said her brother.
Zund ordered his soldiers to retrieve two cages in town, to be hung from the ceiling with the two men locked inside. Having seized the palace, he deployed troops in the two cities of the Twin Liegedoms. Finding traces of the ancient artifact would take longer than expected.
The dungeons of the Palace of the High Liegedom were dead silent. Auril had made her way down into these dark corridors. She brandished no torch or brazier; only the virk crystal at her neck illuminated her path. The beast being kept in one of those rooms was a jorfang—a woman who lived in the woods, and who transformed into a wolf, appearing during times of hardship. Legends painted the she-beasts as protectors, defending any children, injured people, and the otherwise troubled who had found themselves in the woods by taking them to safe havens, pouncing on any who would do them harm. Being the personifications of the wolf of the goddess Sesta, jorfangs were considered a boon, but whenever they were torn from their mission, they became unable to turn back into women, and the beasts were beset by an uncontrollable bloodlust. With her magic, the priestess was one of the few able to control a jorfang. Having reached the beginning of the corridor that housed its prison at the other end, she could already hear its heavy breathing. She heard it groan when, now at the heavy wood-and-iron door, the light emanating from the crystal aroused the beast from its torpor. A swift lunge, and the creature was at the door; Auril felt its warm and smelly breath through the small grate. The priestess opened the door without hesitation and entered. Auril’s red eyes shining, the beast sensed her power, and stepped back, quietening down and growling lightly.
“I see it hasn’t been long since you’ve fed,” said Auril, satisfied. She knew that the more prey the jorfang received, the more ferocious and voracious it became. The stench of what remained of its meal was unbearable, the dried blood staining the beast’s fangs and mouth as well as its claws. The Priestess heard the door to the dungeons open, and saw the jorfang was getting worked up at the sight of the approaching torches and the odor of the guards. Auril left the cell and closed the heavy door behind her. The two men, terrified, hid a little girl. The priestess approached her, studying her. The little human, about seven years old, was undernourished, with blonde shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, and a pale pink complexion. She wore peasant clothes and hailed from a family of drifters.
“There’s nothing fearsome about you,” she said in disgust.
The girl did not answer, instead going toward the cell. She opened the door, and the jorfang remained crouched in a corner, its yellow eyes observing the little girl without ever losing sight of the slightest move on the part of the guards, who dragged the remains of its meal out. The little girl’s eyes wandered aimlessly in the dark in which she was always wrapped; she was blind from birth, and had been chosen for this dubious honor for that very reason.
Two floors above, Zund was organizing three patrols to comb through the territory of the Twin Liegedoms and find the crypt. After a spot of torture, Pugh and Alston had let spill a local legend that spoke of an ancient elven sanctuary dating back to before the Great Exodus, when elves dominated the entirety of Elantion. The two men, hanging inside the cages suspended from the large ceiling beam, lay motionless, moaning occasionally due to the wounds that had gotten infected after a few days.
The patrols were already out of town, headed for the orchards. Upon their arrival at the place they had been pointed toward, they found a large, doubtlessly millennium-old apple tree. The village that was situated a little further on was deserted; everyone had barricaded themselves inside their houses, but when the Captain of the battalion threatened to set the entire village on fire if they did not leave posthaste, doors swung reluctantly open, and the tulvaren soldiers fettered the inhabitants, forcing them to dig.
In the meantime, a tulvaren messenger arrived at the Palace of the High Liegedom with an order from the King, calling Auril and the General to Eyjanborg.
“At long last!” exclaimed the priestess, happy to be able to leave the city. “Have you chosen their punishment?”
“Release them,” ordered Zund.
The soldiers let the cages down, and when the cages touched the ground, the soldiers dragged the two dying nobles out of them.
“Sort them out quickly; I can’t stand to stay here any longer,” urged Auril impatiently. “Or you can leave them to me,” she said, hinting at a spell to attack the two of them.
“No, Sister!” he admonished her. “Bring the beast!”
The little girl led the jorfang to the palace hall, where the two men awaited their end. Zund, seated on Pugh’s throne, motioned for the girl to be taken away, and for the beast to be allowed to go wild. “I’d like to savor the throes of their agony,” he said, his tone harsh and base.
The jorfang stood upright, in all its grandeur: slightly taller than Zund, massive, and muscular. Its arms, shoulders, head and back were covered in black, bristly hair, and its long hands sported sharp claws. Its greyish skin had many scars; in Zund’s eyes, it was at once monstrous and magnificent.
With a leap, it set upon Pugh, crouching to sniff at him; the man felt its breath and the bristly hairs on its face, and saw the yellowed fangs that dripped their slobber on him. The she-beast’s hands pressed him, its claws piercing clothes and flesh alike. The nobleman screamed in pain, his gaze terrified, and his endurance pushed to its limit. His eyes rolled upwards, and he lost consciousness. The jorfang bit him on the head, its jaws cracking the man’s skull. Blood spurted everywhere. Driven by bestial instinct, it reared up and vigorously shook the body of the liege who was now a tattered rag doll. Zund watched with satisfaction, sipping his keb-brew. Alston, not far from the lake of blood, tried to move, to run away. The beast pounced on him, and he flailed, crying and moaning, every part of his body aching from the torture. It jumped on his back, and the bones of his spine and neck were summarily broken. Alston was dead. The jorfang sniffed it, tearing at his back with one paw and turning over the corpse. It opened his belly and tried to partake, but found the man’s entrails unappetizing. Satiated, it squatted down in a corner of the room, sniffed the floor, and lay down.
Zund was satisfied, and rose from the throne.
“What ought we to do with the beast?” asked a tulvar.
The General glanced at the servants of the Palace, who had been forced to silently observe from the open gallery. He signaled, and the soldiers made the servants come down and stand before the General. Zund observed them all in turn, analyzing them. He brushed against them with his slender hand, lingering on a well-built young man. Though Zund’s gaze was chilling, the human stared right back, an act of audacity that surprised him. “He will remain here. Chain the others and send them to excavate,” he commanded, his eyes still on the human. “Enjoy the comforts of the Palace, and survive if you can.”
“You’ll be defeated one day! Mark my words!” the man shouted defiantly.
“We shall see,” said Zund, leaving the Palace. “Block all of the exits.”
V
Clarice and Kaj proceeded swiftly through the thick of the Shadetrail Forest toward Nidath. Five days had passed since Fenan, and when they arrived near a crossing, Clarice motioned for him to stoop down. After a moment, he could make out some chittering in the distance. Kaj leaned out of the bushes a little, and saw a gang of about ten goblins dragging a dead and partially eaten horse with ropes. The noisy and scatterbrained nature of goblins made them easy to identify, especially for those who, like Clarice, had traveled extensively. The barefoot, olive-skinned things were small and skeletal, with long arms and large hands. Their elongated heads were sprinkled with a few bristly hairs, and their hirsuteness varied. Their prominent eyes were large and yellow, their noses wide and flattened, and their mouths wide with thin lips that hid sharp teeth, perfect for biting and tearing. They wore only light shirts, often full of holes, and trousers in leather or wool, frayed and dirty. They did not suffer from the cold, having always lived in harsh climates. Armed with daggers, they were very fast and sneaky. They could jump on the shoulders of an unfortunate soul and start biting until their prey breathed its last.
“Come here, Kaj!” she scolded him softly. “We don’t need them spotting us. We’ll take them by surprise.”
He squinted, thinking. “It can be done…”
“At my nod, we attack. Wait here.”
The Vagabond waited for the last goblin to pass their hiding place, strung her bow, and killed two in rapid succession. The creatures, alarmed, threw themselves at Kaj, who had emerged from the bushes in the meantime. He stabbed the first one that stood before him, and narrowly dodged another’s blade, lunging to the side and wounding that goblin, which collapsed. The elf struck them with arrows as Kaj engaged them. By the end, only one was left, and it was in the throes of death; Clarice strode toward it with an arrow in her hand, and stuck said arrow in its throat. With a pained grimace, the goblin was killed outright.
Cold and deadly, Kaj thought.
“Nice work,” nodded the elf.
“I haven’t held this sword in such a long time! I had forgotten how well-balanced it is,” he exclaimed, slicing the air with it some. Kaj’s eyes glimmered with a young boy’s enthusiasm.
“That’s good to hear. You’ll be forced to use it often,” said the nalnir.
“Yes, though I’ll have to practice. I’m a bit rusty…”
They began to collect whatever might come in handy, and they found themselves staring at the dead horse with a certain craving. One shared glance, and they knew what needed to be done.
Late that night, the fire was still burning merrily before their eyes. The bits of horse had made for the perfect dinner; the meat cooked over the fire had become tender and juicy, and they ate it all up in in next to no time. Kaj, leaning against a rock and wrapped in a bear’s fur, was enjoying the heat of the fire; Clarice was lying down a little further on, covered by her cloak and sleeping soundly. Kaj felt snowflakes on his face.
“Clarice.”
“What is it?” she asked, immediately alert.
“Sorry to wake you up, but we have a problem.”
She looked up, and understood. “Snow. Just what we needed. I was hoping it at least wouldn’t snow tonight. We’d better get moving.”
“I can hear lalks in the distance,” Kaj said, concerned.
“I hear them, too…” she said, sharing his worry.
They gathered their belongings, donned their furs, and continued down the path, each wielding a torch. Traversing the forest was going to prove much more difficult than expected.
The light snowfall soon took a turn for the stormy. The freezing winds, and the snowflakes, which had become little pellets of ice, made the path slippery and their footing uncertain. More and more, they could feel the cold creeping through the leather of the boots. The hours before the dawn seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Eventually, they were forced to leave the path to seek shelter. Not far away, they found a rocky ledge that formed a kind of roof. With some not-too-damp brushwood that they found in the clefts of the rocks, they created a beautiful fire, somewhat brightening the otherwise sad dawn that awaited them. The sky was gloomy, the clouds low and full. In the distance, they could still hear the chilling howls of the lalks that were stalking them relentlessly.
“You haven’t slept a single wink,” said the elf. “We have a few hours; try to rest. I’ll stand guard.” Clarice’s tone revealed her concern. She placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, and motioned for him to lie down. Kaj thanked her, and as soon as he lay down, he felt all his muscles relax. The heat of the fire and the fur were invigorating, and before he knew it, he was asleep.
He woke up to a gloomy morning, but at least the forest was less scary. The snow was abating, and when he got up, he saw that Clarice was not there. He stirred, turning around to look for her. She came out from behind a tree.
She stood in front of him, staring. “Take it.” She tossed him some bread and cheese from the bag, and then started stoking the fire.
Kaj looked at her. “Thank you.”
It was too wet out, and Clarice’s efforts to light the fire were in vain.
“Ugh! Damn snow!” she exclaimed, chucking a piece of wood into the distance. “Let’s get going. We should take advantage of the distance between us and the lalks. The closer we get to Nidath, the safer we ought to be.” She looked around, carefully inspecting their forest environs.
The snows turned heavier and heavier as the storms raged. The trees looked like skeletons, their bare branches unable to beat back the snow’s invasion of the forest floor. On the contrary, the pines and firs bore branches full of snow, which, by falling, threatened to bury Clarice and Kaj a couple of times. The air was cold, and felt like a hundred blades nicking their faces. The bitter chill exhausted them to the bone. Kaj turned his gaze to Clarice from time to time, and noticed that she kept bringing a hand to the thigh which had been injured by the lalks, pressing and rubbing it.
A few days passed. The winds were domineering, icy, and incredibly strong, penetrating even the smallest crevices of their clothes. They skirted along a rock face in the hopes of finding a cave or other ledge that could help them get through the night. “It looks like we’re not going to have as much luck this time,” said Kaj, utterly worn out and breathing heavily.
“But I remember there being a cave around here.” Clarice examined the rock. “Maybe we’re there already. Aha! Here it is!”
Kaj heaved a sigh of relief, happy to finally escape the elements. They gathered as much wood as possible, hoping to be able to light a fire.
“Hurry up,” said the elf. “There are lalks…”
“Where?” Kaj asked worriedly.
“Hidden among the trees. We’re talking at least a dozen.” Clarice was not okay. Her hands were trembling. Her last misadventure with lalks was fresh in her mind. As she tried to light the fire, she looked around non-stop, nervous and frightened. It was the first time Kaj had seen her this way.
“Let me do it.” The man enclosed the nalnir’s hands in his, trying to calm her down. He looked her in the eyes. They were deep, magnetic. For a moment, he stayed like that, enchanted. “We’ll face them if have to. We’ll make it.”
The elf withdrew her hands, leaving the flint in Kaj’s. The man gave a sharp blow with the dagger, and the spark set the tinder on fire. Clarice stood brandishing a torch, lighting two fires at the threshold of the cave to create a safe perimeter. In front of the second fire, a lalk’s eyes shone. They were terribly close, much more than usual.
Clarice put down her torch and walked slowly away, without turning her back on it. “Looks like the fire isn’t scaring them this time…”
“That’s just great,” said Kaj, worried. “Do you have a real plan?”
Clarice’s response was not what he was expecting. “Not really, but they’ll soon get tired of waiting… we ought to wait for them to make the first move.”
Several hours passed. The Vagabond’s prediction hadn’t been very accurate, and the wait was unnerving. Kaj was crouched by the fire. He wanted to keep the movements of those beasts under control; they were in position all around, watching. The man saw the sheen of their fur under the moonlight, and heard their wound-up nervous panting. Suddenly, they both heard a noise from very close by. Kaj saw one of the lalks advancing, and Clarice quickly took up the bow.
