Iltherian's Sword - Chapter 02

Iltherian's Sword - Chapter 02


“I DID NOT provoke her on purpose,” Dalinna’s voice was the first Perytas heard as she came to. She didn’t sound all that happy, either, “I was there gathering spider venom for the healer in Randol. Nothing untoward. I had gathered all that I needed and my attention had wandered, when I was attacked by a red spider. I had almost defeated it when I realized that the Kamira had appeared. And that she had become most perturbed that I was killing a monster right under her nose. A good thing that I was able to dodge behind the spider just as she attacked. I think that was why she chased me so far; I had made her kill the spider with her attack,” there was a short silence, then a pained yelp, “Ouch! Stop that, Shar. ‘Tis only a scratch. You have a patient there; go help Pery.”


A warm chuckle sounded and Pery opened her eyes to see Dalinna glaring at the healer tending her, “Be still, Dal. Pery has been healed and by a much better healer than I. Sit still and let me finish. The scratch is deep and might become infected if it is not attended. Foolish girl that you are, you would ignore it until long after it becomes infected and you collapse from fever.”

Dal’s glare fulminated, “I am not as foolish as you say. I have had worse and they healed just fine.”

“You forget how well I know you,” the healer chuckled again and shifted, searching in her workbag for something and Pery recognized Lady Sharina, a seemingly-delicate healer in Dal’s guild.

Her vision exploded with sparkles. After a moment she realized that she hadn’t been hit in the head again. She blinked, clearing her vision, and her odd, frosty colored green eyes focused on the tiny form hovering in front of her face, peering at her just as intently.

“Verron worries for you,” a deep voice rumbled under her ear and she realized she was reclining not against a brick wall but a person. She tipped her head back and met the faintly amused gaze of the knight who’d helped her before.

Up close and personal, she was struck by his looks. Not precisely handsome as sin, but in Pery’s opinion, close enough. Strong features with a aquiline nose which had only been improved by being broken a time or two. Eyes as intensely blue as a lightning bolt twinkled warmly down at her, framed by eyelashes that any woman would kill to have. His lips stretched into a smile, revealing dimples, and Pery was reflected that it wasn’t fair that he was also armed with such devastating weapons. His hair was pulled back from his face and she remembered its was shining black, straight and long, flowing behind him like a tail.

“Really?” She was surprised at how faint her voice was, as she lifted her hand. The sprite landed daintily on a fingertip. Verron rose into the air as her hand dropped and she felt she couldn’t move another inch. She gave a tired sigh, “Oh.”

Shar had caught the movement and after watching Pery for a moment said, “Master, looks like she has come around.”

A shadow fell upon her, and she looked up to find one of Dratan’s Master Healers kneeling over her, “Ah so she is. Hold still, my dear,” he put a hand to her head and closed his eyes. After a mysterious moment, he opened his eyes and smiled at her, “Well, looks like she will make a full recovery. You just need rest.”

“Why am I so weak?” She was shocked at the faintness of her voice.

“Because most of the effort of healing comes from the patient, not the healer,” Lady Shar spoke, coming over to kneel next to her. “We just direct your body to do what it has to and encourages it to hurry,” she looked at the knight. “Come, she will be staying at our guildhall tonight.”

He nodded, ignominiously hoisting Pery up, rather like a large sack of potatoes. He followed Shar and Dal, as they walked to a large, rather squat building. Large as it was, most people couldn’t believe that this building could house all the members of the guildhall. It could, because, as with most buildings in Dratan, a goodly portion of the rooms were built down, into to the ground. Of course, it didn’t normally house all the members of the guild; since guild members were scattered across all the known countries of Iris. There was a guildhall in the capitols of all the countries, of course not nearly as large as this one and the one in Randol. Most of the members found it convenient to use them as their base of operations while on whichever country they happened to be in.

Pery stirred as they entered the cavernous entry hall, making a little sound that drew both Shar’s and the knight’s attention. A slight frown marred the elven healer’s face, “Something wrong?”

“Please,” Pery cursed her weak voice––it made her sound was if she were pleading, “not underground.”

It wasn’t that she had any particular fears of being underground. Nor was she afraid of being buried or closed in. No, her fears were more of not being able to escape. Of begin trapped and unable to run. Or more accurately, of being caged–in any sense of the word.

Shar’s brow cleared and she smiled, “Of course. This way.”

She led them upstairs, to a corner room that was austerely furnished with a bed, wardrobe, and washstand. The knight laid Pery on the bed and stepped back while Dal and Shar converged on the bed. When Shar reached for Pery’s mask when Dal stopped her by placing a hand on her wrist. There was a moment of silence until the knight realized Dal was glaring at him. His eyebrows climbed in inquiry until Dal asked, “Are you going to wait around until we undress her completely?”

Now Shar was glaring at him and he grinned, stifling his laughter, and threw up his hands in the air and beat a hasty retreat when Dal took a step towards him. Pery read in his face the sense that he might’ve done just that had they not chased him away.

Dal and Shar glared after him then looked at each other, shaking their heads in exasperation, “Men. Honestly.”

Pery started laughing weakly.

* * * * * *

The monsters had long since been driven away from the wall, and the gates thrown open once again. Night had fallen and the stars Pery loved watching had all ignited and were winking brightly in the sky like diamonds strewn over soft, dark velvet. A solitary figure could be seen striding through the gates of the city; moving not with the caution of someone afraid of any lurking monsters, but of one who knew that they could deal with any monster.

That figure moved a certain distance from the city before stopping and crouching down and laying a hand on the sand. To the casual observer, it might have seemed the figure had become a part of the landscape, just another part of the landscape, so still it had become.

But not to the keen eyes which had been watching the figure for some time now. And now another figure walked from the town, following in the barely there footprints left in the sand by the first. It stopped, a horse-length from the first, waiting politely to be acknowledged. After a moment it came, a subtle thing, a slight shifting of weight merely, something easily missed in the darkness of night, but not by the waiting one.

“Something troubles you, Master,” Gaevin Silverlocks had meant it to be a question, but it came out much more certain.

“Aye, Apprentice, something troubles me,” the Master Sorcerer, Lord Therion, answered, forgetting, as he always did, that Gaevin was no longer his apprentice. “The attack earlier, something does not ring true.”

Gaevin was silent. It was something that had troubled him as well.

Few creatures that dwelled in Dratan were passive creatures. Here in this harsh clime, all creatures struggled for survival. Here eat-or-be-eaten was the order of the day. But still, even here, the attack on Dratan was unusual. It was too well-fortified, too well-guarded.

“It troubles me,” the Master continued, musing, “that the Kamira would be so aggressive. Of all the monsters who dwell here, the Kamira is the one who is closest to, if not equaling, our intelligence, and begrudges our interference with the creatures who dwell in this land. But still...she only attacks when attacked, or if you attack certain creatures in her presence. And if you outrun her, even she will break off pursuit after a time.

“So why,” he mused further, not really speaking to his former apprentice, but trying to work things out in his head. “Why would she chase that child all the way from the desert to the town, the heart of town, and whip the other creatures to do the same?”

“Can you feel it, Apprentice? In the air, in the land...”

“Yes,” Gaevin lifted his face, closing his eyes, allowing his consciousness to expand beyond his body, feeling the rhythms of the world. “Something waits...”

“Aye, something waits,” the Master stood, turning to make his way back to the town. “And somehow, I fear whatever waits bodes ill for us all...”

* * * * *

A shaft of sunlight falling on her face woke Pery from the first deep sleep she’d had since before she could remember. Even in her half-awake state, she frowned wondering if she’d left the wind open the night before.

No...she’d been too weak from her healing to even lift her arm. She hadn’t even been able to support Verron the sprite on her fingertips. So that meant that someone else had opened the window.

Not the night before, either. Dratan’s desert temperatures dropped considerably at night, could in fact, drop to near freezing, so anyone who spent any kind of time in the place didn’t leave doors or windows open at night.

So that meant...

She shot straight into wakefulness, rolling out of bed, away from the presence she now sensed next to the bed. She cast about, cursing, looking for her blades and not at first seeing them. And in her frantic attempt to locate them, her eyes zeroed in on the dark figure sitting in a chair next to the bed.

A figure that now chuckled warmly, “Easy now, Pery. I mean you no harm and that’s a fact.”

Pertyas scowled, peering at the seated figure. Now she realized who it was. The leader of Dal’s guild. A rather mysterious figure of a woman, with her hooded and masked face, BloodRaven was seated at her ease, legs crossed, leaning an elbow on the armrest and her other hooked over the back of the chair. Pery hoped she cut as mysterious figure when she was hooded and masked, but she sincerely doubted it. The woman seated before her exuded an air that she knew she’d never achieve in her entire life.

“If it makes you feel any better,” BloodRaven’s voice was amused as she pointed to a table, “your daggers are over there.”

Pery scowled, feeling naked without her mask. Her scowl deepened when a breeze blew through the window, skimming across her bare skin. She gasped and snatch up the blanket, wrapping it around her, her face flushing red as a beet root.

“Easy there,” BloodRaven chuckled richly, “we’re all women here.”

At the mention of we, Pery scanned the room and found the silent, still figure of another KnightHawk, in the alcove of the doorway, leaning in a seemingly casual way against the door and more conveniently completely blocking the view––and hearing––of anyone who might be at the keyhole. She’d never met this one before, had seen her though, speaking with Dal from time to time, a woman when went by the name of SilentShadow.

“Still,” Pery spoke, turning her attention from the young woman standing in the shadows of the doorway, “I’d feel a little better if I were dressed. Excuse me a moment.”

When at last she was dressed she sat down on the still-disheveled bed to hear what the other woman had to say.

BloodRaven reached out and took Pery’s chin in her hand. Pery fought the urge to pulled free from the grasp. On the whole, she didn’t like anyone touching her––even in as gentle a grip as BloodRaven had––without her permission. It wasn’t something other people understood and generally Pery never let anyone close enough to even attempt it. Still, there was something about BloodRaven, a certain charisma, that kept Pery from pulling away and allowing the other woman to finish her examination. There was something in the woman’s dark gaze that made her feel as if it wasn’t a normal scrutiny she was being put under. She felt as if it were some sort of test the woman conducting, and if she pulled away she’d fail the test.

“Ah, such a pretty young face,” she couldn’t see BloodRaven’s face, but she knew the woman smiled, she could hear it in the woman’s voice. “The entire town is positively buzzing about you, you know. That was quite a brave thing you did, throwing yourself upon the Kamira like that.”

“Brave? Or stupid?” Pery snorted, somewhat relieved when the other woman released her grip.

“Perhaps a little of both,” BloodRaven laughed, resuming her seat in the chair. “Let me tell you a little tale...”

So Pery sat as BloodRaven told her what happened after she’d been incapacitated. She found she’d been extremely lucky. She had taken most of the brunt of the Kamira’s fury, but not all of it. If she had, she wouldn’t be sitting there listening to the tale.

And she now had cause to owe a deep debt to the knight––BloodRaven supplied is name, Sir Dedrick of RedGables––who had carried her to the guildhall. He had, as foolishly as she, thrown himself into the path of the Kamira’s attack. He hadn’t reached her before she was hit, but had thrown himself over her during the midst of the blow. It turned out his shield and armor were all magically, heavily enhanced. Even so, the shield and some of his armor had disintegrated during the onslaught.

He might’ve been killed with the Kamira’s next blow had Dratan’s Masters not come boiling out of the guild halls, like lava from a volcano. The air bristled with arrows and flying axes. The stink of magic filled the air and still-glowing ashes were blown about by the wind. And the flash and glint of blades finished the last of the monsters.

There came, as the last of the lesser monsters fell, a sharp war-cry ripped from a female throat and a burst of light. Two arrows flew from the great ash bow of the Archer Master, Lady Ferra, streaking in two great arcs towards the Kamira. The Kamira’s death cry, as she was pierced by the two arrows, was a terrible assault on the ears and had caused the hairs on the nape of BloodRaven’s neck to rise and her skin to erupt with chill bumps.

“Lady Sharina had gotten to the both of you first,” BloodRaven smiled through her mask. “Sir Dedrick was hurt, but he wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying. You, however...You had died.”

Those three baldly spoken word raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She had died. Unconsciously she put her hand to her chest, as if to reassure herself that her heart was still throbbing strongly in her chest. Both BloodRaven and SilentShadow noted this small gesture but didn’t comment on it.

“Not that it stopped her from trying to resurrect you,” there was a kind of fierce pride in BloodRaven’s voice as she told of how Shar had kept casting her resurrect spell over and over without success. Her power wasn’t sufficient to restart Pery’s heart, wasn’t even sufficient to actually resurrect anyone, “In the end, although she couldn’t pull you back, it was enough to hold your spirit in your body until the Master Healer could do the job.”

“It was the Kamira’s thrall that kept the monsters here, as it turns out,” SilentShadow spoke from her place in the doorway, her voice light and lyrical in marked contrast to her leader’s dark, smoky voice. “Once it died, the monsters that were still beating at the walls to get in stopped and began wandering about as if nothing happened. We let them kill each other for a little while before the Royal Guard sent units out to drive them away from the town.”

“So now everyone has heard of the two of you, you and Dedrick,” BloodRaven took up the narrative again. “How you tried to save your friend Dal and how Sir Dedrick acted with the typical bravery of a knight and tried to save you––did save you––from the Kamira’s fury,” her voice was laced with amusement now. “You’re hailed as heroes.”

“Oh, terrific,” Pery shook her head. “That’s the last thing I need.”

BloodRaven laughed at the girl’s chagrin, “Well, now the question is, what are we to do with you?”

“What you’re to do with me?” Pery’s eyebrows rose, her expression slightly disbelieving. “There’s nothing for you to do with me at all. I think I can take care of myself from here on out, thank you so very much.”

BloodRaven laughed, not at all offended, and leaned back against the chair, “I take it then that an offer to join the KnightHawks will be rejected?”

“I’m flattered,” Pertyas sat back, mollified by the other woman’s tone, “but I think that I’d prefer to remain unaffiliated for the time being.”

“Very well,” BloodRaven smiled through her mask again. “But know that the offer to join the KnightHawks remains open if you’re ever inclined to join. You’ll be welcome in the guildhall in either case from here on out. We’ll leave you now; I’m sure you’ll be enjoying the fruits of your brave act before the end of the day.”

She laughed when Pery groaned in consternation and buried her red face in her hands

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