Roar, page 9
Lastly the woman told Camille that there would be other meetings on the way. That they would bring more supplies. They would bring warnings too if need be.
Even when the avaryads had taken once more to the skies, Thorm found himself still captured by the thought that the woman in front of him was the daughter of the hag. And by an obvious question. How did the avaryads speak with her mother? Even if the hag was capable of speech she was locked away in the Palace of the Sun somewhere. Somehow he doubted the guards would allow her to have visitors. Not even winged ones.
But eventually he put aside his questions as he returned to the real world again. And while he had intended to settle down for the night again, it suddenly occurred to him that he was hungry. He hadn't thought about it before. He'd been too busy with everything else. Looking across at the sleeping prisoners it occurred to him that they had food. Surely they could spare a little for their rescuer. And as they were all asleep – including Camille who had returned to the land of dreams shortly after the visitors had left – he decided to help himself.
So he got up and crept out of the scrub he'd been hiding in, then padded over to the camp and helped himself to a small bundle of food. It was only a couple of wood pigeons cooked and spiced and a small loaf of bread. But he knew it would keep him going for a day or two and save him from having to rediscover how to hunt without weapons. By the Sisters he would have loved to be able to hunt with his rifles and then cook what he killed over an open flame!
Before he left the camp he spent some time studying the dark haired woman who appeared to be the hag's daughter, checking first and foremost for any signs of snakes in her hair. Thankfully there were none. Nor was there any sign of madness – although he had no way of knowing how to check for such a thing in a sleeping woman. Still, she seemed like a normal woman. Probably too thin after her years in the dungeon, her skin too pallid and blotchy, with heavy circles under her eyes. Her dark hair was too long for current fashions – again he guessed because she had had no means to cut it. And she was dressed in rags and covered in dirt. But all of that was to be expected. It was the same for all the others.
The one thing he didn't see was any sign of magic. Which seemed odd to him given that she was the daughter of the hag, one of the most powerful fell witches there was. And yet when he looked closely at her using his wizard sight he could see no magic in her. Perhaps though that was irrelevant. After all, he was the only one in his family with any magic at all.
After that he left the camp, heading for safety a little distance from the party, and then gulped down the food he'd stolen. It went down far too quickly. He wasn't a true lion and he didn't need as much food as they did, but still he was famished. And it tasted delicious. Well cooked, and just what he needed.
Next he decided he should get some rest. Everything was quiet and he was tired. He'd been up for a long time, used a lot of magic and walked a long way. He could not keep protecting these people forever without some rest. And for the moment they were safe enough. None of the pursuers were close as far as he could tell. The wild creatures of the woods were being kept away by the camp fires. And the spell of sleep was wearing off. Soon some of the soldiers would wake to keep watch. And there were surely a hundred of them. No animal would attack such a large group.
Still, as he finally found a safe place to sleep in the arms of a tree – that was another way he differed from normal lions as he discovered, he was quite happy to climb trees – he found himself once again thinking about the hag. About the possibility that the demented creature was not what he had imagined. That she was more than just some twisted, wild creature. That she was an actual woman. A mother.
He supposed he could accept the rest of what he had heard. That she was the King's prisoner. That she had been poisoned until her mind no longer worked as it should. That her body had been twisted into some sort of abomination. And that she hated the King and would fight him if she could. All of that he could accept.
But that she was a mother who worried about her daughter? No, he decided as his eyes closed, he would never believe that.
Chapter Eight
It was another day on the trail. Except that there was no trail. Just the path they were beating through the forest. It wasn't easy on a body Camille thought. But as hard as it was on her it had to be harder still on the others. Still, the hamadryads were right. A party of soldiers on horseback would find it even more difficult. Anyone who came after them would have to do so on foot. The roughness of the terrain was their protection. The hamadryads also claimed that those who were the weakest among them would gain the most from the extra time spent in the wilds. It would allow them to regain as much strength as they could. Camille wasn’t so sure about that one. The long days walking were proving gruelling and she was by no means the weakest in the group.
But as she crawled over yet another tree root and ducked under the low hanging branches, doing her best not to slip over in the soft dirt and mulch underfoot, she would have loved a road. She would have preferred anything to the mixture of soft dirt, pine needles, dead leaves and slippery moss her feet were having to find purchase in. She would also have given a lot just for some humble foot-wraps.
At least they had full stomachs and the promise of more food to come thanks to the avaryads – not that she had mentioned their appearance to the others what she had seen the previous night. They had water too, and she'd even managed to bathe in a small creek they'd come across. It had felt good to get some of the grime off, though of course it hadn’t taken long before it built up once more. Their newly provided clean clothes were already flecked with mud. But at least they were clothes and not rags. The clean bandages to bind injuries had also been welcome.
If their first day of freedom had been slow torture, their second day was a little less terrible and they moved a little bit faster. And hopefully it let them put their pursuers a little bit further behind them. It also provided some conversation as everyone spent the day talking about the provisions they'd been given, and speculating about who had brought them. But it still felt like torture.
Camille was grateful when she crawled over another set of roots and then pushed her way through some scrub to suddenly find herself standing in a small clearing. More than grateful. They'd been forcing their way through this all but impenetrable forest for an entire morning, and she just didn't have the strength to keep going just then. No one else seemed to be in any better shape. They all needed a rest.
The moment their leader told them to take a break Camille collapsed to the grass. Nerod had driven them hard. And it was real grass this time and not the tussock and wild grasses they had crossed in the first part of their journey. She leaned back against an ancient stone block and let her body go limp. She wasn't the only one to do so. In fact she didn't know just how much further she could go. Fortunately Nerod – the leader of the hamadryads and the one who seemed to have taken charge of their group – called for a proper break. Only for an hour, but she was grateful for it. She needed all the rest she could get.
He was pushing them too hard! And yet even as she wanted to complain about the brutal demands the man was making of them, she understood why he was doing it. They couldn't fight and they couldn't hide from their pursuers. Speed was the only protection they had. So she kept her complaints to herself.
This clearing she realised, had once been an ancient structure of some sort. She was leaning back against a quarried stone, and more of them were laid out in lines throughout the clearing. The remains of walls she supposed. There were thousands of such places across the Plains, there from a time before the Eternal King had come. But few of them were sufficiently well preserved to tell them much about the people who had lived then. What exactly this ruin had been had been lost to time. The building's walls were gone, and all that remained were a few scattered stone blocks that had slowly been covered with moss. But she didn't care about that. She cared that they were large enough to support her as she leaned back.
Soon enough a couple of other women sat down beside her, looking just as tired as she was. One of them, a blonde woman with a wan smile, had her foot bound up in rags, and while Camille didn't ask she was sure it wasn't a simple cut. The pain that showed in the woman's face suggested something much more serious.
She was a pretty woman – or at least she had been. But her time in the dungeon had not been kind to her. It hadn't been kind to anyone. In Camille’s case her skin had become blotchy – the result of an unhealthy diet and an absence of sunlight. This woman had the deep wrinkles around her eyes – no doubt the result of worry and pain. She was also too thin. But then they all were. The guards did not feed them well. They were vermin!
The other woman who sat down with her had long dark hair and a pretty face. More than pretty – beautiful. She was the sort of woman that men would make fools of themselves over. Camille suspected that that was the reason she had been in the dungeon in the first place. The world was not a fair place, and the Volden Plains were a particularly hard place for a woman to live. Were a pretty woman to reject a man's advances she risked being called a witch and locked up. If she accepted their advances then she would be seen as having little virtue. There was no winning.
But the woman with the long dark hair was someone with a brain and a spine. Camille remembered her from the night of their escape. She was the one who had spoken against the hamadryad’s plan. She was bold and bright. She also had a good heart. Something she'd proved repeatedly when she'd helped the blonde woman walk with them.
“Hi.” The blonde greeted Camille with a shy smile. “I'm Elspeth – the defiler in cell twenty one.” She used the designation the guards had given her as they'd called their roster.
“Camille, the false witness in cell sixteen,” she responded in kind. Even though she wasn't a false witness, it was the only way they would know one another's name unless they'd shared the same cell. There was no talking in the dungeon. The piss pot guards punished them for that. “You're the one that saw the monster in the sewers aren't you?”
“The same.” Elspeth blushed a little. “But I did see it!”
“I believe you.” She didn't really, but she thought there was no point in offending the woman. “They say there are giant snakes in the sewers. And rats as large as dogs. The Seven Sisters only know what's actually down there.”
“Thanks.” She smiled. “And this is Mara –.”
“The strumpet in cell fifty one.” The dark haired woman jumped in. “But I'm no strumpet!” She sounded angry.
“And I'm no false witness,” Camille answered her tiredly. “They're just names the damned Magistrates gave us. Excuses for them to lock us away.” But really she thought, the woman should know that by now. Perhaps she was truly angered by the name? She seemed to have a temper. Or perhaps Mara hadn't been locked away in the dungeon very long. She recognised the title, but not as one that she had heard every day for the past three years.
“Bastards! I pray the Seven Sisters are chewing on their souls even now! And those of the shite pissing guards too!” Mara turned her head and spat into the grass. Her face had turned completely white with rage.
“There are a lot of souls they could chew on.” Camille agreed with her as diplomatically as she could. Truly she didn't believe in the gods. Certainly she didn’t believe in the Seven Sisters. They were supposed to care for the people of the Plains. If they did then they had clearly overlooked her mother and herself. But if the belief brought others comfort in their dark times that was a good thing.
“If they just dined on that vile Enforcer, that would be enough for me.” Elspeth threw in.
“By all the lamaia in all the underworlds, yes!” Camille agreed with her, this time with true passion. If there was one miserable creature who needed to suffer it was him. She hated that foul beast with a passion. But then they all probably did. Directly or indirectly he had been responsible for sending them all to the dungeon after all. The Royal enforcer was in charge of the Magistrates as well as the Inquisitors. And the guards too. But what he and his Eternal King had done to her mother was worse. They were monsters. But while the Eternal King might have given the command it was the Royal Enforcer who had carried it out.
“And Thorm as well.” Mara threw the name in to her list of people to suffer at the gods' hands and teeth.
“Thorm?”
“Thorm Endorson. The piss pot that got me locked up.”
“Oh!” Camille didn't know quite what to say to that. Except that probably most of them had other people they could blame for their misfortune. She decided she probably didn't want to ask the details. But it seemed Elspeth did. And Mara was happy to explain.
“He was my fiancé. He also turned out to be a wizard in hiding! The fool blaggard got himself found out and I was accused of hiding his secret by the Enforcer. Bastard!”
“It happens,” Camille replied diplomatically, wondering which of the two men she was calling a bastard. And it did happen. It had happened to a lot of people, herself included. It was why they had both ended up in the dungeon. Although she knew of no one else who had been gaoled as a hostage against a witch. But many others had been locked up simply for having divided loyalties between family and King. They had not wanted to give up loved ones who were unfortunate enough to be cursed with magical abilities until it was too late. At that point they shared some of their loved one’s fate when it all went wrong.
Actually the family of the loved one often suffered worse. Those cursed with magic were either killed immediately or forced into the King's service. They didn’t end up in the dungeons or at the mercy of the torturers like their families. What sort of a monster was the Eternal King that he could treat the families of his victims so horribly? Of course many others probably asked the same thing for a thousand different reasons, and got back only the one answer. He was the Eternal King. He had been there a thousand years before when the Volden Plains had been formed. He would be there at their end. All else was meaningless.
“It shouldn't have happened! He made guns! Guns of all things! Technological things, not magical things! How could he have been a wizard?”
Camille didn't answer her save to make noises of agreement. She could have told her that there was no reason a gunsmith couldn't also be a wizard. Magic and technology weren't somehow opposed to one another. That it was just gossip that said otherwise, and gossip was usually wrong. But what would be the point in that? The woman was upset and angry. She didn't want to be told facts. She wanted to be agreed with. And Elspeth stayed quiet too.
That should have been the end of it. They had heard Mara's tale and commiserated a little. So Camille thought it should be done with. After all they all had similar tales, and really she just wanted to keep staring at the sky. It was such a beautiful sight after so long staring at stone and shadow. But Elspeth kept going, asking Mara questions, and drawing the rest of the sorry tale out of her. And then finally Mara hit on the one thing Camille had never expected to hear.
“Three years ago?!” In a heartbeat Camille's attention, which had until then only been intermittently focused on Mara’s tale suddenly became deadly sharp. Because suddenly she knew who this wizard had to be. There had been so few wizards captured over recent years. It used to be that her mother was sent out to hunt another one down every month. The last few years it had been every six months. Either there were less of them or they were getting better at hiding. And three years ago there had only been one rogue wizard that she could recall.
“Yes. He was the one who caused the big explosion that tore an entire city block apart. I barely got out alive. The Enforcer escaped too but was injured. Others were killed.”
Thorm! Suddenly Camille had a name for the wizard who had crippled her mother. She hadn't had that before. All she’d known was that there had been a battle which had seriously injured her mother. There was a bitter taste in her mouth as she accepted that truth to her. And it grew more foul as she realised that there was nothing to be done about it. She knew that this Thorm hadn't destroyed her mother out of malice. It had been a battle. But that was no excuse for her. Not after what he had done to her mother.
Even knowing that the man had acted in self-defence and not out of malice, she still hated him. She hated him for the pain his actions had caused both her and her mother. It was true that her life had not been perfect before. She had been locked away in a small home inside the palace grounds. Kept there as a hostage to make her mother cooperate with the King's wishes. And her mother had been forced to drink foul potions that twisted her body and her thoughts. Those potions had turned her into something other than the woman she had been. But at least then they had had a life. There had been good moments. There had been love.
And then the battle had happened and her mother had been brought back, burnt and broken. She had always been a tough woman but she had been screaming with pain. Her face had been burnt black. Her hair burnt off. Her ribs had been broken and one of her shoulders all but crushed. Worse still, she would never walk again. Even now Camille found it hard to wrap her head around what had happened Even though she knew her mother had been sent to kill this wizard and that the man had fought for his life, what he had done to her was just too terrible to accept.
