Prologue
“I once sang a tale of heavy sorrow,
a tale that shouldn’t be told,
a story of ancient shrine of Garrow,
the secrets that the place used to hold.
The man travelled from far away,
only bringing his clothes and his knife,
please help me o powerful fay,
bring me my dead wife to life.
With his pleas...”
Amra stopped singing when Lianne opened her eyes.
“Good morning,” Amra said as she walked to Lianne and kneeled down next to her. “Except that it’s not exactly morning.”
It took a moment for Lianne to get her bearings. She tried focusing on Amra and then to her surroundings. They were in a dark forest. Their horses were tied to nearby trees. A campfire was burning, warming up her legs. She was lying on top of a sleeping bag, her limbs aching and the feeling of her blood still boiling inside her.
“You were out cold longer than usual,” Amra said, looking intently at Lianne, checking that she was alright.
“How long?” Lianne asked with a hoarse voice.
“About ten hours or so,” Amra said as she got back up and walked to her lute.
Lianne let out a deep sigh as she got up to sit. “It happened again?”
Amra nodded and then hesitantly spoke, “There were six men. They wanted everything and we can’t afford losing to robbers. So, in other words, you saved us. Otherwise we could have gotten ourselves killed.”
Lianne looked at Amra for a moment. She had been her best friend ever since the age of six. Lianne trusted Amra with her life, and without her, she wouldn’t even be here right now. Amra was almost 27, a year older than Lianne. She wore her blond hair short, which accentuated her features. She always had her lute with her, where ever she went, and Lianne loved hearing her play and sing. Her voice had always reminded Lianne of a beautiful bird that sang it’s first songs in the spring time, waking the nature up after the winter.
Lianne and Amra had grown up in a small village, deep in the south. Their families had known each other, so it was natural for them to become friends. Lianne’s family was already gone, but Amra’s family still lived in the same village, in a house that was to become hers someday. Amra had a lot to go back to, but Lianne didn’t feel like she had any reasons to return one day.
“That’s good then, I think,” Lianne said, looking intentely at the fire dancing on the half burned branches. She held up her slightly worn out hands closer to the fire, to warm them up. Every time this happened, her waking up after being unconscious, she always felt a bit cold afterwards. Even though the night itself was warm, her slowly cooling blood made her feel the chill.
Lifting her hands, Lianne realised that there was blood on her arms and clothes. There was a lot, but she wasn’t fazed at all by the sight. She had seen it before.
“Is there water nearby?” Lianne asked, rubbing her hands together, to see if the blood would come off.
“Just there,” Amra nodded to a thicket nearby. “I set the camp here just for that. I knew you’d want to wash up.”
Lianne got up to stand, first feeling a bit faint, then steadying herself. “I’ll be back soon,” she said, taking her backpack, tossing it on her shoulder and heading to the river.
Lianne stripped of her cape, tunic and trousers, and dropped them all to the river. She took out a bar of soap from her backpack and started scrubbing, trying her best to get the blood off. As the dark red stains slowly started to dissolve, Lianne looked at the trails of coloured water now heading downstream, disappearing at the small fall behind the rocks ahead. Wind wasn’t blowing that night, but the stream just kept on going.
A small speck of blood stained water seemed to get stuck on a branch, not being able to move on. Lianne looked at it and felt somewhat nauseating. Not for the blood, but for the reminder that it was. Something she didn’t remember, but also couldn’t forget.
Lianne lifted her hand, and gathered a small amount of energy, feeling a warmth spreading through her hand. Then a small gust of wind blew to the red water, slightly moving the branch and letting the stain move on, out of Lianne’s sight.
Lianne had been trained in magic ever since she was little, and she was good at it. One of the best, according to Amra. Lianne knew that Amra wasn’t right, even though she was really talented in conjuring the energy needed for the use of magic. From very young she had always understood what was needed for the use of different elements, so it was natural for her to chase a career in magic.
After the visible stains were gone, Lianne took the clothes out of the river and squeezed the excess water out of them. She placed the clothes on a nearby branch to dry, water dripping to the moss underneath. Then she took the rest of her clothes off and slowly entered the water. It wasn’t cold since the season was quite warm, but it still made her flinch as the water touched her bare skin.
Lianne went in waist deep and then started inspecting herself. She had old scars across her body, mostly on her arms and legs, some new bruises here and there, but no new wounds. All of the blood must have been from the men that tried to rob them. Most of the time Lianne wasn’t this lucky.
Lianne took a deep breath and sank herself entirely under water, feeling immediately it’s soothing coolness surrounding her. She closed her eyes, and just for a moment, stayed there, letting the flowing water naturally purify her body.
After a moment of letting herself soak there, Lianne got up. She squeezed the water out of her long brown hair and made her way back to the shore. She quickly dried herself on a towel, trying to get rid of every last feeling of what had happened before. Then she took some spare clothes out of her backpack, dressed herself up, took the drying clothes from the branch and went back to Amra.
“How is it?” Amra asked curiously when Lianne got back.
“All the blood was theirs,” Lianne said with a detached tone in her voice as she hang up the clothes to dry near the campfire.
Amra sneered, “No wonder. You were particularly cruel this time.”
Lianne stopped abruptly, like some force had made her paralyzed. For a moment she was just still and Amra immediately knew that she shouldn’t have said that. Lianne never wanted to hear details about what happened, otherwise she would go grazy.
“I’m sorry,” Amra quickly said.
“Don’t be,” Lianne said while letting out a deep breath and getting the last pieces of clothes to dry. Then she sat down on her sleeping bag. “Do you think I’m getting worse?”
For a moment Amra seemed to ponder silently. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Might be, but who knows. It still doesn’t happen that often, so I don’t think you’re in imminent danger.”
Lianne nodded. That was the one thing that kept her going. She was still happy that this wasn’t happening very often. But if she was getting more cruel, it only meant that they should hurry. She needed to get to Clandmere.
Lianne and Amra had been travelling for months now, heading north. They had some clues to where they were supposed to go, but the details were in a haze. They didn’t know if the next town was the one they were looking for, or if they had to still continue. Clandmere was a puzzle, something that wasn’t easy to locate. Every little bit of information could help them on their way, but the clues were always hard to find.
“Don’t worry, I’ll live with it,” Lianne then said and Amra nodded, taking out her lute and starting to pluck a melancholic tune.
Lianne took some food that Amra had prepared and ate. She didn’t really have an appetite, but she also knew that she had to eat. She couldn’t let her strength diminish. They probably had a long way to go, and she couldn’t lose herself along the way.
The horses hooves knocked on nearby rocks, getting Lianne’s attention. “How did we get here anyway?” she asked while looking around the deep woods. “The last thing I remember was that we were on that plateau where the men appeared.”
“I tied you to the horse. I didn’t want anyone finding us there with that sight,” Amra said, still plucking some tune that Lianne seemed to recall from someplace in the deepest parts of her memory. That was a song that Lianne first heard Amra playing when she was still learning the art.
“Thank you,” Lianne said, even though Amra waved her hand as a sign that she didn’t need any thanks. Lianne knew that she didn’t, but she still always thanked her. She wanted to express her gratitude. Without Amra, Lianne wouldn’t probably even be alive at the moment.
Suddenly Amra stopped playing. “Now that I remember, I heard one of the robbers yelling out in a language I didn’t recognise, but I was sure I heard the name Yugtrass,” she said to Lianne, who immediately lifted up her head from the plate.
“Yugtrass?” Lianne repeated. “Why would anyone here call out to him?”
Amra shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe the robbers were from the cult? Who knows.”
“Well, whatever they were, it’s never a good sign when you hear that name,” Lianne said, feeling a shiver running up her spine. Then she put down her plate. “I’ll quickly go out to the woods,”
Lianne got up and left, hearing from behind how Amra started playing her lute again silently, creating a serene atmosphere to the forest, almost like she was calming the night down, to let them have safe dreams.
Lianne walked for a moment, to find a good place to do the necessities. As she came to a small shrubbery, she turned to look at the moon. The sky was cloudless and the moon so huge that it seemed to reflect the whole world. It was so bright that it shouldn’t matter if their campfire was burning all night. Nobody would see the fire from far away. These thick forests were not the ones anyone would go unless they were on the run, or needed to hide. It was a really small chance that they would actually encounter anyone. Normal people would never set foot on it during the night. On a warm and cloudless nights like these, predators were not on the prowl either.
Even though Lianne knew that, she still looked around before squatting down in the bush. For some reason she had a feeling like someone was watching her, but even though how hard she tried to look around or listen, she didn’t sense anyone nearby. Lianne chalked it up to being nervous of what happened, her body still on high alert after everything.
After a moment Lianne got back to the camp and lay down on top of the sleeping bag. She didn’t have to crawl in since the night was warm and the campfire heated the area more.
“Good night. I’ll stay up for a while. Just in case,” Amra said, stopping the playing for a moment.
Lianne pulled a cape on top of her, like that piece of clothing would made her feel a little bit more safe. She stretched out her legs, feeling her tired body relax. Even though she had been out for ten hours, she still felt tired. She had used too much energy to immediately be in working order.
When Lianne closed her eyes again, she immediately started seeing flashes of something that happened. Nothing concrete, just small traces of feelings, the scent of the iron in blood and someone yelling. She saw her own hands covered in that blood. She saw something flowing from a man before her. Then her vision shifted to her past. She saw her brother. She saw a thick dark fog oozing from her hands, building up around her as the feeling of desperation started taking over.
This happened to Lianne every time. When she closed her eyes at night, for a moment she saw what she had done and memories her body tried to keep a secret. First time this happened, Lianne couldn’t sleep. She refused to sleep. The horrible nightmares filled her mind. Since then she has gotten used to them. Closing her eyes didn’t feel that bad anymore.
Amra watched Lianne for a moment, seeing her body twitch a couple of times and then seemingly relax. She had fallen asleep quite quickly, which didn’t happen every time. Amra plucked her lute a couple more times, playing a beautiful simple tune, trying to send good dreams to Lianne.
This was the third time Lianne had gotten like this ever since they had started travelling. Amra had already gotten used to dealing with her in these times, but it still made her incredibly sad, something she never showed to Lianne. They had been friends for a long time, and she didn’t want to burden her any more. She was going through enough already.
Somewhere from the deep of the forest a screeching sound was heard, stopping Amra, making her immediately alert. She listened, her whole body tense, hand slowly closing in on her knife that lay next to her on the ground.
Amra listened, but never heard anything more. After a quick exhale, she drew back her hand and relaxed. She put the instrument down and took a more comfortable position, leaning against a log. Then she slowly fell asleep, trusting that the forest would be a safe place for them that night.
