“Hush, my dear boy, hush,” a sweet voice soothed and the crying child I heard ceased its fretful wailing. “I know it hurts but I must pick out the dirt and torn flesh or it will fester. My Lady, do you have more of that poppy dust? It’s worn off and I still have over half his back to do. Gods of Oberon, bone is showing in places. The shock alone will kill him.” I could not see. The only senses I had that worked were my ears and my smell. The scent of diseased and bloody flesh contrasted with the sickly stench of attar of roses. I thought I must be dead midst the funeral flowers. I tried to feel for the sides of grave dirt and my hands would not move, they were bound to something below me as I lay on my belly. My cheek was pressed into a pillow. Gently, I bit it and tasted clean linen and feathers.
She touched me and I screamed at the fury of the pain yet all that came out was a mewl like a baby lamb. Something thin and flexible was placed inside my mouth and air puffed through it. Gritty powder coated my gums and the world receded from my awareness.
Days became nights, turned into weeks where I wandered in a cave of torments. My body was on fire, my skin eating itself, my very bones as brittle as May Day ice.
I would hear a man and woman shouting at each other over my head and the pain would escalate until I was driven mad by it. He would come in and sit with me, pick up my hand and kiss the palm. Promise me the world if I would return to it but all I wanted was to die.
She would take me in her arms, careful not to touch those places that the fire lived in and rock me to sleep. She sang to me and told me stories of a gargoyle and a unicorn. I believed neither nor did I believe in happy endings.
The door rebounded off the wall and booted feet hurried in. The Lady stood up, her hand on my shoulder as I lay in the crib made expressly to keep me from falling out of bed.
“The Master says pack your essentials. His, too,” the guard announced. “He’s moving to his headquarters behind the army.”
“I take it the Amber Forces are approaching?” she questioned.
“He said hurry or he’ll make it worse on the crow.”
“Will you send me help or must I carry it all myself?”
“One bag and a cart to carry him,” he replied. I heard the sounds of packing and she tucked another set of sheets and blankets on me. I lay under a sheet on my belly with only a thin strip across my genitals. Nothing else could I bear against my tortured flesh.
“I will need drugs to keep him quiet and out of pain. If he hurts, he will moan and yell, not a good thing on a forced retreat.”
“If you don’t keep him quiet, we’ll gag him,” he threatened. “And it’s not a retreat.”
“If you gag him, he’ll suffocate.”
“That’s your problem,” he was surly.
“Raven,” she said in my ear. “You must be quiet or you’ll be punished. Do you understand?”
More men entered the room and lifted me onto a stretcher, I cried out as they jostled my back. Muffled the next cries. “Quiet as a mouse in the churchyard,” I sobbed. “The gargoyles eat mice. Oh, I wish I were in the cells now, Murphy. It hurts too much to bear!”
“I know, beloved,” she whispered. “For my sake, you must hush and endure it. Remember, Raven, the Lighthouse waits for us.”
“Light thickens and the crow, Makes wind to the rooky wood,” I said in a sibilant whisper.
“Do you understand, Raven? If you shout at the wrong time, we could be found and attacked. I don’t want to gag you, you’re having enough trouble breathing,” she worried.
“Death has conquered me,” I answered sagely. “He took me and threw me back. I can only suffer, there’s no end for me.”
“He’s talking nonsense,” the guard said roughly.
“He’s out of his mind with pain and fever,” she protested. “I’ll keep him quieted, you just get us where we’re going!”
I swayed and dipped down a long tunnel out into the open air in the gray skies. Was placed inside a box on wheels with the lady at my side. We bounced and I bit my lip to keep from crying out as the movements jarred and pained me. By the time they stopped, I was once again insensible and she let me lay.
Vialle woke me to pass a flask of water down my throat. I fought her until her repeated urgent whispers told me it was drugged with more pain killers. “We’re halfway to Epping Wood,” she said and I remembered thinking should I know that place but she added further, “at least, that’s what Steen said.”
Somewhere, inside my tortured mind, I was glad that Steen was with us and not dead. I thought he was dead, I had seen his body hit stone with the finality of death. “Steen?” I questioned just above a whisper. “Is Steen hurt? I didn’t mean for him to get punished. Is he alright?” I asked everyone I saw, everyone who stuck their head in the wagon to stare at Amber’s Queen and the Master’s Blackbird brought low.
“Hush, Raven,” the pretty green lady soothed, brushing my forehead with cool hands. “Look at me, my dear son.” I stared into her green eyes and knew she could not see me so I raised my hand and a skeleton of a claw came up instead. She took it and pressed it into her cheek. “Long ago when the world was all under sea,” she said in a tone not unlike a melody. “There lived a wee boy who had seaweed for his locks of hair and eyes the pearly pink of the abalone. He played hopscotch with the giant clams and rode sea horses in races that he always won. His name was Erebnor and he was as spoiled as any prince-ling ever born.
“Now, his parents who were the king and queen of the Sea warned him that he could not take for granted that everything in the vast oceans would love or even like him.
“So, he charmed his way across the ocean kingdoms and said, ‘see, King Father and Queen Mother. I am be-loved by all I greet. The Kraken adore me, the giant whales give me rides upon their backs and the great sharks let me scratch their bellies!’ Still, his parents warned him and in his blithe ignorance, he traveled far until the ocean floor led to a great light over his head. Of course, he had to explore this and presently, he had his first sight of the other world’s sunlight and the immense glowing orb we call the sun.
“And being young, foolish and full of himself, Erebnor came out of the sea’s embrace to walk upon the sandy beaches for which he had no words. He found the sunshine exhilarating, unaware that it was drying out his skin, burning the delicate flesh of his eyes. Nor did he realize that men lived upon the land for he had only seen their drowned bodies and bones as they fell to the ocean’s floor.
“Erebnor went right up to the first man he saw and smiled his most charming smile, introduced himself and the man saw only a disgusting fanged sea creature that he promptly pierced through the middle with his harpoon.
“Erebnor died on the sand and the fisherman brought his catch back to his village to show the townspeople what manner of sea monster had threatened and almost eaten him. When they were done with his baked flesh, they threw his bones back into the sea where they drifted down to the lonely depths where his mother and father found them and recognized his fate.”
The driver and guards who rode alongside said dryly, “that’s a horrible story.”
“You were expecting the Little Mermaid?” Vialle snorted elegantly. “Ah, he’s nearly asleep.”
“Is he dying like they say? He really defied the Master and tried to protect Steen?”
“He is forever dying,” she said sadly. “That...monster can torture him to the point of death over and over again yet he can’t die.”
The guard lowered his voice, his eyes lowered in disgust. “The Master...used him?”
Vialle spat, her voice seethed with hatred. “He raped him, raped a boy too young to have even experienced love for a woman. Worse than anything I’ve ever seen. He’s bled for three days from that alone. There are places on his back and buttocks where the bone shows through, he used a whip I wouldn’t have used on a direwul. He’s been tortured and abused and yet he worried more about a man who aided that fiend than he did about himself.”
“Is it true he is Random’s Heir?”
“Yes,” the Queen spoke so quietly I barely heard her. “Until we have children of our own, Random has proclaimed Raven as his Heir.”
The sound of horns broke in the distance and the wagon jolted as the animals reached a faster gait. Voices shouted and pierced my delirium.
“Forward, double time!”
“Bring the wagons forward to the lead! Cavalry emplacements to the rear and both flanks! I want the Griffons and the Wyverns scouting ahead!”
“Sergeant, a squad to protect the Queen and see to it that the wagon reaches Epping Wood and the Palisade before nightfall, the Marshall of Arden is only a day behind us.”
“Kennel Master, have the hell hounds leashed and ready at dusk, inform the Thrids and the Weilor handlers to patrol if we are still on the march.”
The wagon swayed violently back and forth, the very same motion that made me so ill on the Mercat. My belly undulated in noisome response and I vomited copious amounts of frothy bile. On my belly, it reduced me to laying in it and the smell made my caretakers swallow in sympathy. “Nellie!” she called and it was one of the guards that replied.
“She’s ridden ahead, My Lady, to make ready a place for the both of you.”
“He’s sick to his stomach. You must slow down,” Vialle ordered.
“Not unless you want the enemy cavalry firing on your...rear,” he returned. “Advance scouts are engaging Lord Webster’s army. We’re taking heavy casualties and the Lord is leaving his wounded behind.”
“How many does Amber have?”
“Over a hundred thousand,” he swallowed.
“And Webster?”
“Between the Barons and the lords of the Gray Realm, nearly the same number of men. Plus the Magic creatures.”
“What mystery force does he hold in reserve that he dare to wage war on Amber?” she asked.
“I do not know, Your Majesty, save that the Barons do not fear losing, not even when they heard what Webster had done to the boy and taken you.” He hesitated. “I will see you and the Prince safe to the Palisade, Majesty.”
“I would be grateful if you found Steen and my maid, Nellie, too.”
“Aye, Mum.”
I heard the sound of running hoof-beats and she wiped my face, trying to get me to keep something down without up-chucking. If I could have moved, I would have tossed and turned. Instead, I cried between bouts of emesis which only made the oozing lacerations on my back hurt worse. I screamed for my mother, I cursed the gods and the Master, I implored fate and witches in general to deliver me from the results of that cursed spell. I prayed for death, I longed for it with the passion of the most devout flagellant yet it was denied me.
Vialle cried as my suffering continued. If she could have ended my life, I believed she would have done that for me.