Pixie's Pad

Marigold crouched in the shadow just inside the doorway and stared at the cage, breath caught in her lungs. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the hole in the deck above, highlighting the dust motes that floated through the air between her and the captured beast. She could see its silhouette rising and falling with its laboured breathing. It was alive, then. She crept forwards across the slanted floor, careful not to dislodge the broken planks and smashed furniture that littered the second deck of the wrecked Chorm sailing ship, skirting the sunlight in case the beast should turn. The Chorm were fond of keeping a few survivors from their raids as slaves and on first glance, until she’d seen the hulking form of the thing behind the metal bars, that’s what she thought she had here. A Ven like her, maybe – hadn’t Aleine’s Point been raided just last week? Then she’d seen the size of it. It looked humanoid, but curled up like that in the corner of the cage she couldn’t quite tell. “Don’t think I can’t sense you creeping.” Its voice was a quiet rumble, barely audible above the crash of the waves on the rocks beyond. She froze, not sure how to proceed. Slowly the beast moved, limbs stretching stiffly outwards as it navigated its confines until it faced her. “Teon’kith!” She gasped, finally recognising it for what it was. “ ‘Teon’kith’? You must be Ven, then. Come to gloat, have you?” Marigold backed up a few paces, sank deeper into the shadows. What was a Teon’kith – A Mazorn, in their own tongue – doing all the way out here? How had the Chorm even managed to capture it? She’d been under the impression that this would be a simple salvage mission. One ship separated from the fleet had wrecked in the overnight storm, left some straggling survivors outside that she’d dealt with easily enough, lending her peace and quiet to pick through the remains for any information her tribe could use. “Don’t worry, elfling,” it stopped to draw a laboured breath. Was it injured? “Even if I were bent to hurt you,” it – he, she could tell now, from its voice – paused again, and then kicked weakly at the bars; “this cage drains my strength. I am trapped.” “How did you come to be that way?” She asked. There were more questions, too many to sort out, and the shock of finding a Teon’kith here – and in a Chorm cage, at that – was distracting her from organising them. “An embarrassing tale that I care not for repeating,” he muttered, coughed again, and then sighed heavily. “Hurt?” “Not gravely, but I’m not healing in here.” “Was this ship a part of the fleet that raided Aleine’s Point?” She waited, counted the moments passing, but there was no reply. Had he fallen unconscious? Died? She crept closer, against her better instincts, but she believed he’d been telling the truth about the cage. There were tales that the Chorm were once capable of powerful enchantments – perhaps this cage was a remnant. Was he special, then? The Chorm usually had little dealing with the Teon’kith – not for want of power, but because the Teon’kith were savage and brutal, and the Chorm – though great in number – were cowards. For them to capture a Teon’kith in a magical cage... It couldn’t have been happenstance. She had closed half the distance to the cage when he moved again; shifted forwards so that his face emerged from the shadows. Sunlight danced sparkles in his sapphire eyes and bounced from his ivory tusks that jutted from the corners of his mouth, up and down, framing his lips in the promise of ferocity. Marigold tensed, meeting the stare of those legendary blue eyes. “Do you recognise me, elfling?” He regarded her with a curious expression. It took her a moment to place it – she was so used to seeing the Teon’Kith snarling that his face looked alien without that savagery. It was hope. The Teon’Kith culture divided its people into two branches of study. Warfare and blood magic. Initiation into either rank involved a ritual that permanently altered their eye colour; if the Teon’kith knew why this happened, they kept it a well guarded secret. To the Ven, at least, it wasn’t known for sure whether the change was purposeful to easily distinguish which sect one belonged to, or whether it was some deeper, spiritual change that manifest itself through the eyes. Those who chose to wield physical weapons had red eyes. Those who chose blood magic had oily back pits for orbs. Darok Earthweaver had once been a warrior. He had led an army as a War General and tales of his bone-hafted greataxe were legendary, even in the far reaches. He had been Vrikdarok then; Vrikdarok Bloodfist. The Teon’kith had almost grasped a victory that would have been devastating to the Ven and their allied nations, but at the last moment, they had chosen to fortify and hold instead of pushing their advance. The Bloodfist army disbanded. Vrikdarok vanished, for a time, and eventually reappeared as Darok Earthweaver. No longer a War General, and not a blood mage either. Something else entirely; the only Teon’kith with blue eyes. “Darok Earthweaver,” Her voice trembled. Darok’s nostrils flared with a huff of confirmation. He raised a hand and wrapped his thick fingers around a metal bar. Even weakened, on his backside in a cage too small for him to stand up in, the sight of his muscles working in those huge arms was enough to make fear-driven goosebumps course along her back. He fixed his eyes on her. “Free me.” What an absurd notion. Marigold shook her head once. “You’re Teon’Kith. I’m Ven. You’re in a cage. I’m not.” “You know who I am. Free me, and I’ll tell you everything I can about the Chorm that captured me. I’ll help you hunt them down, if that is what you wish, and cleave their wrinkled heads from their feathered bodies.” “I didn’t think you did that any more.” “Fight? I still fight, elfling. Just not for the same people.” So the rumours were true. That or he was playing her – maybe he knew about the tales that had spread through her homeland when Vrikdarok Bloodfist had vanished and Darok Earthweaver had appeared. Tales that he had shunned his generals and their war and forged his own path hence. “You’re Teon’kith,” She repeated – surely that was reason enough not to go any closer, let alone free him? “By race alone. Will you hold me accountable for the sins of my people, for the mistakes of my past?” Marigold frowned. His people had wiped out the entire Western coast of Ven. Had forced her people to retreat to the forests, a quarter of their number decimated. They couldn’t even go back and bury the dead; the Teon’kith war camps had set up on their captured territory with startling efficiency. Vrikdarok Bloodfist had led the charge that had decimated so many of her race. “I can’t.” She stared into his blue eyes. Darok’s startling eyes held hers for a long moment, and then his hand fell from the bar and he sank back into the shadow.

******

“Where’s the key?” He let his head roll to one side, unable to find the energy to shift to face her voice. She was crouched at the edge of the pool of sunlight again; it had moved across the floor since the last time they had spoken. For a brief moment he considered goading her. Bitterness rose like bile in his throat; at his capture, at his people, at the world, for the series of terrible events that culminated here, now, on this broken vessel, his only hope of rescue a Ven that by his own hand was too afraid of him to set him free. “Slaver’s belt. Beak dipped in silver. Body should be around here somewhere.” The bruise on his ribs made it painful to talk. The effect of the cage’s magic made even drawing breath a laborious process. He fought the urge to close his eyes, waited for her response. There was none. When he lifted his gaze again, she had gone. He was less concerned than he knew he should have been. Without the energy to feel anger, all that was left was resignation. She would come back and free him, or someone else would come back and free him, or kill him. Either way, the matter was not in his hands. A Mazorn with no control over his fate was a sorry thing indeed. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, she was standing in the sunlight. He struggled to lift his head to meet her gaze and settled for leaning back against the bars, head tilted backwards. Minimal effort. “You came back.” She bent her knees, drawing eye level with him, and the sunlight played stars off the keychain that dangled from her fingers. “The ship ran aground at Kragspeak. Do you know the place?” He shook his head; an almost imperceptible movement. “The nearest civilisation is the makeshift camp I came from. Half a morning’s hike away. Beyond that, the closest settlement is Riverview, an entire day away. Farms, not much else. Beyond even that, Quelos’nira. Several days travel. The first real Ven town you’ll reach, inland.” “Your point?” He grumbled. His arms were heavy. His back hurt from being forced to sit for hours and hours. There were probably more cuts and scrapes and bruises on him than he dared count from the ship crashing on the rocks, but it was too much effort to peel his clothes back to inspect the damage. “Nobody’s coming here. Nobody will find you. When news spreads that a Chorm ship crashed on the coast, there’ll be even fewer people who’ll want to come out this way. Either I set you free, or you die of starvation.” He continued staring at her, waiting for her to draw her conclusion. She sighed, fumbled with the keychain, and then stood forwards and pushed the key into the lock. “I can’t leave you to starve in a cage of a common enemy. If you get out and kill me, I probably deserved to die for being so stupid as to free you in the first place.” She turned the key and the latch clicked. The gate swung open. He had wondered whether the door to the cage was also the door to the enchantment – whether just opening it would break the spell – but it seemed not. With great effort he moved to his hands and knees, and crawled out, spilling himself onto the wooden floor in the patch of sunlight. He saw her skitter back from him, but to her merit, she didn’t flee entirely. She had pressed herself into the corner of the cabin, her tiny form barely visible. “It would seem that my strength will not return immediately,” he mumbled. He could feel that he was free of the cage’s enchantment but the effects hadn’t, as he had hoped, lifted instantaneously. He would have to wait this one out, supine on the floor with a vindictive Ven in the room. No, that wasn’t entirely fair. Perhaps not vindictive – she had freed him, after all. Had stories of his disagreements with the Mazorn war efforts spread so far? They must have, or she wouldn’t have recognised him. “There’s blood on your shirt,” Her voice carried across from her corner. To her credit, it was strong and unwavering. “I don’t doubt. Something pains me there, but I hadn’t the strength to investigate.” He closed his eyes – gladly this time, and not fighting the cage’s magic – and rested in the warm sunlight. “I heard Chorm outside, after we wrecked.” “They’re dead now.” Her voice sounded closer. He cracked an eye open; she was standing over him, looking down at his chest, at the source of that pain that he hadn’t quite worked up the strength to look at himself yet. “By your hand?” “Yes.” She said it almost nonchalantly, as if it had been an easy thing. There must have been ten of them, at least. He hadn’t heard any other Ven. But then he hadn’t heard her move when she’d been in the same room as him, either. He had rather sensed her, some new presence, something watching him. “You have a shard of wood between two ribs. Doesn’t look deep enough to have gone right through. It’ll hurt less if I pull it out.” He chuckled, and then coughed. “Pulling a chunk of wood from my chest will hurt plenty.” “But not afterwards. The longer it stays there, the more likely it is to fester -” “You don’t have to explain physiology to me, elfling. Pull it out.” She looked around the room, and then walked away and vanished from his sight. Was she going to leave him here, then? Was that her game? Set him free and then walk away. Absolve herself of the guilt of leaving him locked up to die. He wouldn’t have blamed her – not had he been her. Teon’kith, she called his people. Death bringers. She reappeared with a scrap of fabric, and then knelt down at his side. Her hesitation, her fear, was still there – his strength was slowly returning and with it, his connection to the world. He could sense her fear of him, her hesitation. She was fighting through it. “I’m pulling it out now.” He nodded. Her slender hands reached towards him and he felt the pressure in his chest as she wrapped her fingers around the shard and pulled. For a second there was immense pain – he hadn’t the strength yet to brace himself – but then it faded. He felt warm wetness pool against his skin – fresh blood – and she quickly tore the cloth in two, folded one piece and pushed it against the wound, then lifted his hand and rest it atop. She didn’t flinch when she touched him. The fact that she had touched him at all was nothing short of miraculous. He narrowed his eyes at her, took in the delicate angles of her face, her pale skin, her sleek hair the colour of a winter sun. Everything about her was in stark contrast to his own form. Was she brave, then? Courageous? Foolish? She was saving his life; the distinction didn’t really matter. “Here,” She handed him the shaft of wood that she had pulled from his chest. He took it. It was half the size of her forearm, but little more than a glorified splinter in his big Mazorn hand. “What am I to do with this, elfling?” She glanced at him as she wrapped the remaining fabric around his wound. He had to shift for her to pass her arm underneath him and noted how far she had to spread her arms to navigate the width of his chest. “I don’t know. Thread it on a chain. Frame it. Throw it to the waves.” He settled with slipping it into his pocket. Maybe there would be a time for keepsakes, for bonds of kindness, in their future.

******

Darok was sitting upright now, propped against an overturned wooden device of some kind that Marigold could only assume was something to do with torturing slaves. She shuddered, calmed herself by revisiting the recent memories of how easily her blade had bitten hungrily into Chorm throats earlier in the day. The pool of sunlight had moved from the floor and was climbing up the far wall of the cabin. After binding his wound with the torn drape she’d found, the bleeding had stopped, and some colour had returned to his red-brown Teon’kith skin. He hadn’t made so much as a move against her so far. She had yet to determine whether that was because of his weakened state, and forced herself to remain alert, regardless of how placid he seemed. Several thoughts had crossed her mind on how to progress. Leave him to fend for himself? The most appealing option. Run, run and never look back. Tell stories to her clan children about the Teon’kith she once freed from a magical cage who didn’t chop her head off and hang it from a post when he got out. But Darok quite probably had information on Chorm movements. He could tell it to her, and she could relay it to Warden, but she knew Warden rather speak to the Teon’kith himself – would need to see Darok Earthweaver with his own eyes. “We’ll need to leave if we’re to get back to camp before dark.” Darok arched a heavy brow in her direction. “Camp? You wish to take me to your Ven camp?” She shrugged. “It’s the best plan I can think of.” “Leaving me here isn’t the best plan? I’m surprised you’ve kept me company this long.” “You have information.” “Ah, yes,” He tilted his head back against the wood and smiled, baring his tusks. “Information – the staple of a good barter system. And under what conditions will I be visiting your camp?” “Conditions?” She stood, tired of sitting and waiting for his strength to return. Her legs needed to move. “You’re going to walk into your Ven camp with a Mazorn on your arm and expect your people to welcome me with open arms?” “Well, no, not exactly.” He held his arms out, palms upwards. Those hands would encompass hers twice over, she thought, and looked away with a shudder. “I will accompany you as a prisoner. Bind me if you have to. I do not wish for there to be blood spilled. I will talk to your people, tell you everything I know.” “Binds will be useless. I have nothing that can hold a Teon’kith, that you can’t break out of.” “I did not mean for practicality,” He chuckled heartily. “As a gesture of good faith. A symbol.” “Ah,” She frowned. Was he giving himself up so easily? “And then?” “And then,” He sighed and glanced up at the hole in the ceiling, squinting at the afternoon sun. “Hopefully, I walk away and that is the last we ever see of each other, elfling. No blood spilled.” “What if I take you to my camp and you kill us all?” “I haven’t harmed you, have I?” “Maybe that’s because you’re waiting for me to lead you back.” Darok pulled himself slowly to his feet. Marigold skipped back a few steps, but though her heart pounded in her chest, she didn’t run. He stood taller than the doorframe; his shoulders were so broad he’d have to turn sideways to walk through it. “I can tell you that I won’t, but you have no cause to believe me. For all I know, however, you could be leading me into a fully armed outpost where I’ll be chained and tortured. We both must make leaps of faith, Ven. Without them, we have little hope for our future.” What an unusual thing for a Teon’kith to say. What future was he hoping to see, if not the one the rest of his kin slaughtered her people for? But he was right – she could leave him here or she could take him, and she had already decided to take him.