Sci Fi & Fantasy / Chapter 5 - Raven Rising
Saavriin dumped the sack of coins on the counter of the inn early the next morning. The sound startled Lylah, who spun on him and almost threw a tankard, not recognizing him in his armor. She bent some, trying to see the elf's face under his hood.
“Is that you?”
He looked up and pulled his hood down, smiling a little. The expression was more grim than anything else, but the sight of Saavriin's face seemed to soothe the woman.
“That should cover the repairs,” he said, voice flat.
Outside of his friend's field of vision, Aden watched Saavriin. It was obvious a change had come over the dark elf, and it wasn't just his choice of dress. His stance was different. He stood more wide-legged, with his shoulders pulled back and his chest pushed slightly out, the way the knights did when in full armor on parade days. His hands hung at his sides, rather than in his pockets or crossed loosely near his stomach, and they were clenched into almost-fists. He reminded Aden of the older boys, the ones who had been on the streets since they were little with no help and no friends. Always at the ready for fight or flight.
They were talking, Saavriin and Lylah. The woman seemed worried, and she kept glancing down at the elf's two enormous knives. He's still Zhevir, Aden wanted to tell her. He hasn't changed that much, he's just being safe. He watched as Lylah reached up, and put her hand on the side of Saavriin's face; as the elf's eyes closed slightly and he only briefly rested the weight of his head on her palm. She handed him a roll of cloth, something that looked knitted, before saying one final thing and going back to her work. Saavriin scanned the room and caught Aden's eyes before heading upstairs.
The boy trotted after, catching up as the elf vanished into one of the still intact rooms.
“Hey, 'Rin. What's with the armor?”
Saavriin looked up from unlacing one of the myriad of ties and clasps that now adorned his body and shrugged.
“Something returned to me from long ago.”
Aden tilted his head to the side.
“You mean that's yours? You didn't steal it from the guy you knocked off?" Saavriin seemed to bristle a bit at that last part, so Aden held up his hands and waved them, as if to erase his words from the air. “Sorry.”
“Don't be, I'm just. I'm just not in a good mood.”
It didn't sound like that was a lie. The elf's voice was dull and tired, his expression subtly strained.
“Hey,” Aden offered. “Let me help you with that. I mean, the knights all have squires that help them in and out of that stuff, right?” When Saavriin didn't immediately reply, he walked over anyway and grabbed hold of the elf's arm and propped it on the top of his head. If Saavriin thought dead weight was going to save him, he was wrong. He started his work immediately, chattering to himself as he worked the clasps off, like he had seen the dressmakers in the trade district do. He didn't really expect Saavriin to say anything in return. The women in the dress shops seemed to have a grand old time talking to themselves while fitting an outfit to a young lady.
“I want to be just like you when I grow up,” Aden declared suddenly.
Saavriin looked down at him.
“What?”
“Look at yourself!” Aden had managed to get Saavriin most of the way out of his armor, even though that had involved almost getting crushed at one point by the mail hauberk he was wearing. The elf was bare-chested now, wearing only his breeches, boots, and sword belt. “You're all...” Aden trailed off and made claw shapes with his hands, making “grr” noises.
It just served to confuse Saavriin.
“I still don't get it.”
“You're all big and muscly and strong looking. Like the hero soldiers in the storybooks!”
“I certainly don't feel like a hero.”
“Because you killed someone?”
“Over money.”
“Heroes do that, too.”
“I can't say I'm familiar with human stories.”
“They kill people all the time!”
“To save people, I thought.”
Aden shook his head at that.
“Usually, but not always. What about in all the stories where the hero has to go and quest for some special weapon before he can save the damsel in distress? All the people that get in the way die. Usually some dragons and goblins, too.”
“I'm not trying to save a damsel in distress, though.”
“Yes, you are.”
Saavriin couldn't place anyone that fit the profile of a damsel in distress, and he gave Aden a look that said so.
“Lylah, stupid.” Aden smiled and laughed as Saavriin's expression changed from one of confusion to one trapped somewhere between realization and irritation at being called stupid. “She's your damsel in distress! And all that gold you just brought back? That was your dragon-slaying sword of fantasticness!”
“I don't think 'fantasticness' is a word, Aden.”
“It is now.”
Even Saavriin couldn't help but chuckle at that.
“Alright, if Lylah is my damsel in distress, what am I supposed to do with her when I save her?” The look Aden gave him could have peeled the flesh off his bones. “What?”
“You really are from someplace weird, aren't you?”
“We've been over this before.”
“You're supposed to sweep her off her feet! Ride away on your white horse! Take her to a castle somewhere and have a bazillion little black-and-white striped babies!”
Aside from the fact that dark elven half-breeds didn't come out striped, there were a whole collection of problems with that little string of events. Most of them dealing with the fact that Saavriin wasn't really alive.
“Oh,” he breathed, looking horror-struck suddenly. “Oh, good Gods, no.”
Aden was taken aback. He thought Saavriin would be happy.
“What?”
“No. No, no, no, no. She can't fall in love with me!” Saavriin took to pacing in short circles around the room. Aden backed away from him, confused.
“What do you mean she can't?”
“I just... She can't... I can't...”
“Can't what?” He was worried Saavriin was going to start pulling out his own hair.
Saavriin made a whole string of noises, all almost-voiced phrases, gesturing at himself, Aden, and the room before throwing his hands in the air and dropping onto the bed. Aden sat down next to him, worried and a little scared he'd made the elf angry.
“'Rin, what did I say? What's wrong?”
Saavriin just groaned into his hands as a reply.
“Okay, fine. Don't tell me. I'll just go downstairs and tell Lylah that you're sick from being out all night last night and she'll come up here and worry all over you all day.” Saavriin's head shot up and Aden smiled in the face of his withering glare. “Or I'll sit here quietly and hope you don't eat me. That sounds like a better idea!”
“She hasn't, has she?” Saavriin asked at long last.
“Hasn't what?”
“Fallen in love with me.”
Aden could only shrug.
“How am I supposed to know, I'm only ten.”
“Aden...”
“Sorry. I don't know. I think she likes you, I guess? I mean, do girls touch guys a lot when they like them?”
Saavriin was slightly saddened to say that he didn't know. His breathing life had been focused around his career as a soldier and surviving the wrath of his jealous younger brothers. His breathless life had been rather devoid of any sort of feeling up until recently. He didn't know what to do.
“What's so bad about her falling in love with you? You're a nice guy, 'Rin.”
“That's not really the problem.”
“It's not?”
The conversation was drawing perilously close to Saavriin having to tell Aden all of his secrets. He didn't want to. What would the boy think? Would he be entirely aghast at the idea and never want to talk to him again? Would he be so frightened by the idea that he would flee and tell Lylah and they would both kick him out on the street. Saavriin didn't want to wander the world alone again for another eternity. He liked it here, he liked these people, he was comfortable and he felt safe. He didn't want that to change.
“'Rin?”
“Sorry. Thinking.”
“What's the problem?”
“It wouldn't really be, ah, healthy for Lylah to fall in love with me,” Saavriin said, trying to convince himself to just say it; mentally urging himself to just spill it all at once. Maybe the deluge of information would overwhelm Aden so much he wouldn't believe him.
“Are you sick? Is that why you're cold all the time? You've been here forever! No one else has come down with whatever it is if you are.”
“You could say I'm sick...” he let the phrase hang.
Just tell him. It was Zauaere's voice, once more in his head via the necklace. He's a little boy. Especially among humans, if you can't trust your deepest, darkest secrets with a child, you can't trust anyone with them.
Saavriin wasn't entirely sure that was true. Aden wasn't exactly a child. While he was young, yes, the things he had survived had lent him a cunning and street-smarts intelligence that many adults could admire. Telling Aden wasn't telling an innocent, sheltered creature and betting on its unfaltering love. It wasn't the same as yelling at the old family dog, who would love you just the same. Saavriin realized he was staring at Aden when he snapped back into reality, and when he did, the information just spilled out of him.
The elf practically ranted, first declaring that he was dead and then diving straight into the information only recently revealed to him through his sister's letter. He paced and gesticulated wildly, the volume of his voice varying widely, but never loud enough to be heard outside the room. He wouldn't allow that. When he ran out of information, Saavriin froze in his tracks and stared at Aden, waiting for the potentially destructive reaction.
Instead, Aden just sat there for a long while, digesting the information. After a time, he reached over and picked up the cloth that Lylah had handed to the elf and unwound it. It was a sweater, a knit one obviously having belonged to a human man at one point, for it was several sizes too wide for Saavriin. Getting to his feet, Aden padded over to the elf, keeping his eyes fixed on the sweater, until he was close enough to extend it, almost as if it were a peace offering.
“Aden?” Saavriin murmured, looking down at the boy.
Aden looked up and smiled a little, holding up the sweater a little higher.
“If you're dead, that means no one can ever take you away, right?”
“Right. I'm here forever.”
“Then I guess that's not so bad.”
Saavriin dropped to his knees and gathered Aden to his chest. The boy didn't struggle or resist, in fact, the threw his arms around the elf's neck and buried his face there.
“Aden?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Just being you.”
Later that evening, Saavriin had changed into the sweater that Lylah had given him. It was several sizes too big, so he snuggled down into it, pulling the collar up near his ears and covering his feet with the excess around the bottom. An early spring cold snap had settled in, so the working fireplaces in the inn had been set with blazing logs. Saavriin sat in front of one on a large cushion that had once belonged to a padded bench. Aden was with him, curled up against his side, fighting with a wooden puzzle that involved twisting bits of it in certain ways and patterns to undo a lock. Deciding to test Zauaere's claim that he could ingest food, Saavriin had accepted Lylah's offer of a hot spiced cider with rum in it. For the first time in ages he was warm both inside and out.
It was a calm night, with the common space of the inn bathed in a warm, honey-orange light and the shadows of the rafters and scaffolding were deep and comforting. Most of the people who were working on the inn had stayed as well, so the space was filled with the gentle murmur of sleepy laughter as people talked over their own mugs and bowls of stew or games of cards. Saavriin just watched the fire, wondering why this contained blaze didn't bother him as much as the one that had devoured the back of the inn. He wondered too, what he was going to do about Lylah, if anything Aden suggested had been true.
Saavriin would admit that Lylah was attractive, considering he hadn't traditionally been attracted by most human body types. She was a nice, warm brown all over, with thick brown hair and dark brown eyes and golden-tinted skin that spoke of a heritage belonging to the lands far to the south of Tellhemport. She was only slightly shorter than Saavriin was, which was an unusual change, since human women had almost always been as tall or taller than he was. Lylah also sported a bit more weight than most women the elf encountered, a byproduct of living a comfortable life, and it gave her a pleasant curvy-shape and soft facial features. If things had been different on his end, none of this would have been a problem.
Next to him, Aden yawned and curled closer, hiding his arms in a fold of the sweater before dozing off. Not long after the boy fell asleep, Lylah joined them. “He's cute when he's asleep, isn't he?”
Saavriin nodded.
“He is.”
Lylah dropped another cushion onto the floor next to the elf and sat down, holding a tankard of cider in her hands. She pushed her toes closer to the fire to warm them up.
“I've probably asked you this before, but do you have any of your own?”
“No, it wasn't, ah, really on my list of priorities when I was younger.” For the leading Patron or Matron of a House, the more successful children one had, the more powerful the family. However, for a third child like Saavriin, with two older sisters in the way of being head of household when Mother and her chosen consort passed, children became a liability. Not only would siblings eliminate nieces and nephews in order to secure their own positions in the House, sons and daughters would murder aunts, uncles, even mothers and fathers, in order to climb the social ladder. No, Saavriin had been all too aware of his own perilous position being not only third in line, but the middle child of five, to have children while he still was able.
“Ah, career minded sort?”
“You could say that.”
“I don't know much about dark elves, so you'll have to excuse me if I say something silly.”
“It's fine,” Saavriin assured her. “The dark elves don't want you to know much.”
Lylah chuckled.
“You talk as if you're not really a part of them anymore.”
Saavrinn thought back to his sister and their sprawling compound that they owned, now, jointly. It was an unheard of union, first sister, now officially Matron of House Delyl, and third brother working cooperatively, out of love at that, to maintain a dying name. There was no word in the shadow tongue for love. Lust, passion, desire, yes, but not love.
“It's been a long, long time.”
“I've seen some of the elven dignitaries that come from the forest lands for meetings with our king. They look regal and old, even for elves. You don't look nearly as old. You don't even look as old as I am. It couldn't have been that long.”
“Elves are creatures of magic,” Saavriin said, trying to make light of the conversation. “It's amazing what a spell or two can do for one's appearance.”
Lylah smiled and Saavriin thought he had diverted her.
“Thank you. For the gold. I don't know where you got it, and I'll respect your secrecy, but we have more than enough to finish the repairs now. I couldn't have done it without you.”
He almost told her that the fire would never have happened if he hadn't been around in the first place, but instead, he smiled graciously and looked at his reflection in his cider.
“Zhevir, uh, I mean, Saavriin.”
There was a note in Lylah's voice that made Saavriin look up, although hesitantly. His hair had fallen loose from behind his ears and hooded one eye, so he could only see half of the woman's face. Yet, the eye he could see searched his face intently. He heard her take a deep breath, and watched as she bit her bottom lip nervously. The world seemed to slow to a crawl as Lylah leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
A thousand alarms went off in Saavriin's head, but Lylah was so warm and, as his hands wandered, so soft. S'hedemethil women weren't soft. They were sharp and cunning and hard, just as their world demanded of them. This was a woman who had been a mother once, not a ruler, and a wife, until her husband has passed away, not an owner of consorts.
Lylah pulled away and smiled.
“You're warm, for once.”
Saavriin smiled in return, but there was a sadness in his eyes, and Lylah took on an expression of questioning.
“I'm sorry,” he murmured.
She sighed, and kissed him again, but this time on the cheek. Somehow, she understood him. Perhaps it was just the instinct of a woman with experience, but Saavriin didn't need to explain himself.
“It's fine,” she whispered. “Just know that I'm here for you, all right?”
Saavriin nodded and missed her warmth when she left to go to bed.
Out in the cold of that same night, Ilhyemir stood over the corpse of a monster. It was a huge, black-shelled, bug-like thing whose blood boiled and steamed in the chill night air. Ilhyemir's eyes glowed in the darkness. His night vision undimmed, they caught the glow of the moon and set the nighttime world ablaze with silver light. A predatory smile played on his lips.
Oh, how he wished Asthana was nearer now. The adrenaline of the hunt always set a fire in his gut. The arousal of power over the lives and deaths of his prey. It had been a long fight and the monster hadn't gone down easily, but still Ilhyemir was the undisputed victor and his body demanded its customary reward for success. Alas, his mistress was nowhere nearby and there was nothing he could do about it. Regardless, he savagely kicked the corpse of the beast until it rocked up on it's side and flipped entirely over onto it's belly.
Ilhyemir cursed and spat, stripping out of his armor to let the night air relieve him of some heat. He was every inch the coiled, hunting panther; muscle straining under the weight of his sheathed sword and against the demand of continued action. His chest heaved, still catching his breath from the battle and the expulsion of anger afterward, every exhalation a violent cloud of frosted fog.
It wouldn't be until later that the blade master would worry about where the monster had come from or why, in all of his centuries of hunting, he had never seen such a creature among the horrors of the Underbelly or the strange beasts of the surface. It wouldn't be until much later that he realized the creature had smelled of sulfur and ash. It wouldn't be until dawn that the memory awoke that the thing had spoken.
“Sssurender yoursssself, Otherlanderrrrr,” it had almost purred, its words punctuated by the clack of its huge mandibles. “We arrrrrre the one True Racccccce and you, imposssssster, yourrr time has come.”
It bothered him later, as he sat by a river, breaking the ice at its swollen banks so that he could refill his water skins. It had referred to him as an imposter. An imposter to what? And what had it meant by it being the one True Race? Even with the creature's strange inflection and voice, a sound that made it seem that several of the monsters were speaking all at once, Ilhyemir could tell that it was referring to itself with a title. Otherlander...
Ilhyemir shook his head. The same hypnotic lull had come over him when he first encountered the monster threatened to daze him once more. It still made him angry that he had stood there for so long, staring at the creature as if it had come to make parlance or discuss a trade.
He busied himself cleaning his wounds. The monster had never physically hit him, but somehow there were still thin lacerations under his armor, the edges washed white as if he had been burned. Somewhere deep in Ilhyemir's subconscious, under his rage and massive ego, it nagged at him that he was lucky to be alive. That he had just encountered a creature capable of assaulting without moving, without making a sound. That he had just matched up against a being entirely and terribly alien to the world he was accustomed to. He was aware that it somehow functioned outside of his rules, beyond the blade work and the magic that he was familiar with.
Somehow, he knew that the phylactery and it's newest owner would soon be the least of his problems.
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Ok—so all “10s” again, but I’m not being sappy. Its honestly a very publishable work, and you are obviously very talented, and it is sci-fi/fant. ect.
Megan you rock!
I love the little romance going between Lyhla and Saavriin. I am, of course, a old sentimental drip! (of course—you know me, I’m thinking, when are they going to “do it?”) That damned elf is just sexy to me.
Hmmm, but anyway… my only suggestion (on the romance part) would be about maybe adding another little scene or two building up the attraction between Lyhla and Saavriin (when he was Zhevir). This could be Urbis brain-fart too, because you know how it makes the reader miss important things the writer has beat you over the head with, but its more distracting than reading a regular book. (I hate being timed—its like soem kind of test at school, etc)
As usual, the interaction between Aden and Saavriin is wonderful! Aden is so precocious and insightful! What a great little character to play off Saavriin/Zhevir!
I particularly like the whole “black and white striped babies” sequence. What a hoot! I laughed outloud and got weird looks from Aimee (until I told her it was Megan).
I think you also explain Acden’s character well in Saavriin about his exposure to the world, like the old family dog, etc. (for dense readers who don’t get that yet) Good job!
I think you’re doing a great job of helping us still identify with Zhevir as Saavriin. No mean feat! This is what I have to constantly do with Karim, and it sometimes falls falt on its face. We also care a lot about Zhevir, so his shift to Saavriin worries us and you are stringing us along well, making us worry because we see he’s walking a dark edge, and we keep holding our breath, hoping he’ll be able to eventually find some way to save himself from the dark side.
**We’ve got a Ilhyemir again too! Love him! Want to know more about him. Monster-fight--VIVID--well done!
I love all of it (again!) didn’t look for typos, etc, just plot character development, so you get 10/A+++. You know you can message me if you have more questions on specific things. I don’t want you to have to earn a gazillion credits to open this. (Sick for me=longwinded)
Keep going! Keep going! Its all working!
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