Warm breath on my face woke me. I opened my eyes to see three unknown faces staring at me from a distance of inches making them a myopic jigsaw. I backed up and hit a wall not a bed. I wasn’t in bed but on the floor of a small room that looked like a closet. The walls were paneled with bead-board and had pegs above my head.
“Who the hell are you people? Where am I?” I shouted and pushed the faces away to be grabbed and hauled up off the floor as if I weighed nothing. All three of these men looked enough alike to be brothers or from the same tribe. They looked human but not quite human enough if you studied them close, their fingers were one too many, an extra joint between the arm and elbow, necks shorter than most so that their heads looked like they grew right out of their shoulders. Short, squat, built more like a hairless ape with dark brown eyes and bald skulls. Six fingered and their tongues were forked like a reptile. All three flicked my face and swallowed. I shuddered and struggled, couldn’t break their grip on me.
“Gross!” I yelled. “Get your...fucking tongue off me!” I saw her behind them and in a language I’d never heard before, she snapped at them and they dropped me. I landed on my feet but bounced into the wall denting the paneling.
“Where am I?” I demanded and she laughed at me.
“You’re in my home, little boy. Be good and I might let you live.”
“What do you want? You don’t want to piss off Murphy, he’s an...animal,” I threatened.
“What is your lineage, Little Raven? Your mother’s name? Your father? On what shadow were you born?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Her hand shot out and she grabbed my throat. Instantly, I couldn’t breathe, her touch froze the air in my lungs, my entire body became a solid block of ice.
“Humph,” she said slowly. “You are human. Disgustingly so. I thought she said he had the blood of the courts and would be easy to control. As he is, he is useless.” She threw me to the floor and I bounced against the wall skinning my elbows and palms. I still couldn’t breathe or move. She watched me for a moment and then left me, throwing words over her shoulder to the three...men or whatever they were. “Get rid of him. He’s not who or what I thought.”
“Alive or dead, Mistress?” they asked and she shrugged.
“Whatever. I don’t care. You can play with him if you chose just don’t leave the mess in the house. Take him to some shadow and leave the remains there. Preferably where his grand-mere can find him.”
One of the three grabbed my cuffs and dragged me out of the closet and down the hallway. Dark, painted black and with bare wooden floors, I slid without any effort or resistance. Before we reached the end of the hall, I could see the door; a great, big thing of bronze with angels and demons moving across its panels as if it were a video screen. I was able to breathe but not scream, I wanted to yell for Murphy but couldn’t form the syllables to call his name. My coat was still on me and as they dragged me, it billowed up under my armpits until I felt the hard lump of the dagger at my neckline.
I managed to fling my arms out and catch an open doorway making myself a cork in a bottle. The one holding my ankles pulled and I swear I stretched a few inches taller but didn’t let go.
The other one tried to peel my fingers off as the third creature kicked me in the stomach. Once again, I struggled to take a breath, felt my body go limp as dark patches filled my vision and sound became a buzzing in my ears.
I woke as they tugged off my clothes. I was lying in a small copse surrounded by trees, on top of rounded black gravel that was curiously warm. Behind them was an altar carved of obsidian and piled around its base were white rocks and sticks. As my eyes focused, I saw that they were bones, skulls and thigh bones, arms and ribs. Rivulets of darker bronze coated the sides of the altar. In the dank sky overhead, the moon in its crescent stage made everything seem greenish, the air smelled like vomit and seaweed. I gagged and kicked but two of them held my ankles and wrists down while the third stripped me naked. I screamed for Murphy and my voice echoed, came back to me in mockery as they hoisted me into the air to smack me onto the flat stone and fasten chains to my wrists and ankles.
“Blood or meat?” the first one asked, exposing teeth that no human male ever wore in his mouth. I flopped around like a gaffed flounder and begged them not to hurt me.
“Oh God! Oh God! Murphy, help me!” I cried out and only heard the thunder of my own pounding heart.
I pissed myself, I was so terrified and didn’t care. Nor did it deter them. He flung out his hand and a claw the size of a dagger slid out from his thumb. Slowly, he stuck it into my belly and ripped down. Blood burst out in a fine spray as white hot agony exploded through my gut. The three of them sucked it out of the air and moaned, eyes closing in ecstasy.
“Royal blood,” he whispered. “More than human.”
The thunder of my heart became louder than the sound of them feasting on my blood, I could feel my guts pushing their way through the tear in my belly wall and it freaked me out enough to dampen the pain until he ripped into my stomach with all six talons at once. I shrieked, a dying wail and he went flying backwards as a giant shadow blocked the wan moonlight.
Something slashed at the chains on my wrists and ankles while a mounted beast leaped over me, altar and all.
Murphy scooped me under his arms and bolted for the tree line, I saw a massive black horse-like creature bearing a caped rider chasing the three into the woods wielding a saber the size of a broadsword before the branches slapped at my face and cut off my view.
Murphy ran for miles with me tucked into his chest. Surefooted, strong, he never faltered or took a misstep. The trees grew close with little underbrush, no loam or needles under foot just that rounded gravel so that I heard his feet pushing aside the stones as he ran.
My blood ran down my belly and into his clothes. I shivered as the cold reached into the deeply buried core of warmth that was my life. He smelled the blood and cursed, laying me down under the bole of a fallen tree while his hands tore at his shirt. He tucked his coat around my shoulders and probed the tear and holes in my guts. His murmured curses were soft and in a language I did not often hear him use except in dire straits and his tone made me all too aware of its interpretation.
“I’m dying, Murphy?” I whispered.
“No, Corbin, master,” he said swiftly, wrapping the bundled shirt on my belly.
“Why, Murphy? Why did she do this to me? I don’t even know her.” I shuddered and felt him stiffen as the ground shook. He pulled at his coat and eased me down to stand in front of me holding a thin blade that glowed almost as bright as his eyes. I could see the dark shape of the horseman by the moon’s shade and the blade’s fire.
The creature stood at least 18 hands high, black as the inside of a well with feathered heels and cloven hooves. Its eyes were red in the moonlight, its head roman nosed and heavy, its forelock split by a horn nearly the length of Murphy’s blade. Spiraled and dark as obsidian, it tossed the point about so that I saw the blood tipped nearly to its halfway point.
The rider tossed its hood back and I saw the man’s face. High-brow, green-eyes and black haired, the face of a pirate; no humor in the flat eyes and grim lips. He barked a question to Murphy and Murph answered equally as terse. Both raised their blades and I saw murder there until Murphy spoke my name and named the rider.
“Julian,” he said. “This is Corbin, Raven. Your nephew. Grandson of Corwin, great grandson of Oberon but more importantly, he is the son of Merlin of the Courts of Chaos and a human woman. Harm the son of the King at your peril. I claim Sanctuary for him in King Merlin’s name.”
The nearly seven foot tall Julian dropped to the ground, removed his gauntlets and peered under the wadded up shirt before his eyes devoured my face. His words faded into the background as my hold on consciousness slipped away.