Chapter 16 - Doorstep
The next morning's light stood in the narrow window of the room where Aren was recovering from the recent duel, when the Archiater appeared in the doorway without warning. He halted on the threshold and ran his eyes over the room, where Elara sat beside the bed and Leo had settled on its edge, and then they came to rest on Aren, who was awake and looking back at him.
Elara and Leo turned to him, and a slight smile came to his face.
"I see you are better already," he said, and moved to the bed at once without waiting for an answer.
Elara answered with a smile, half rising.
"He came round yesterday, and thankfully today he seems much better."
Leo climbed down from the edge of the bed without a word and stepped aside, letting the Archiater come up and stop beside Aren.
"Will you let me examine you?"
Aren gave a silent nod, lifted his torso off the bed and sat up. The Archiater went still for a moment, watching how easily he moved, and then began a slow examination from the waist up, keeping his eyes on the shoulders and touching them carefully to guide the turn of Aren's body.
"It seems... you really are... much better," he said.
Remarkable... The traces of burns, bruises and fractures have all but evaporated... and not even scars are left, which is in principle impossible...
He glanced briefly at Aren's face and straightened, and at that same moment Leo silently pushed a chair over, and the Archiater turned to him with a warm smile.
"Thank you, good young man."
Leo nodded with a smile and stepped back, while the Archiater sat down and settled his gaze on the shoulders again.
"Now I am going to ask you, please, not to move."
He focused and put out both hands, setting the thumb of one against Aren's forehead and pressing the other palm to the centre of his chest, and then his eyes closed and the room went quiet. A pulse of green aura ran out of the Archiater's body, flowed down his arms into Aren's body and spread through it from the centre, until it took on a blue cast and passed back up through the healer's arms. He opened his eyes, and his pupils flared blue for a moment before going out.
What is this... I clearly felt the signs of my own energy in him, but... stronger...
He took his hands away and straightened, then began studying the tattoos on Aren's shoulders and chest, moving his eyes from one rune to the next.
My energy should have dispersed by now... why do I still feel it in him, only stronger, and as though... it has altered... I am quite certain this was not there at my first examination...
The Archiater went on looking at the marks, lingering on the places where the lines interlaced.
Who is this young man?
"Is something wrong with me?.." Aren asked.
"Forgive me, no, everything is fine, I simply did not expect your body to heal this quickly," the Archiater answered, smirking at once and shaking his head.
"So Aren has super healing too?! That's awesome!" Leo said, his eyes shining.
Elara gave her brother a sidelong look with an awkward smile, while the Archiater let out a small laugh.
"It is not out of the question, though there is a great deal we still do not know, considering that yesterday his body was not recovering this quickly until I put my own healing energy into it."
"You put your energy into me?" Aren asked.
The Archiater nodded with a smile and raised a hand in front of his face, and the palm was covered at once by an unbroken layer of green aura.
"Healing magic. It lets us use the gift to create a particular energy that can accelerate the recovery processes of the bodies it is fed into."
"Awesome," Aren answered.
"What is truly awesome is what your body did, young man. My energy should have dispersed by now," he said, lowering his hand, and the aura dispersed with it.
"But for a reason I cannot name exactly, I still felt its presence in your body, and it had plainly been altered and... strengthened."
Aren exchanged a look with Elara, and both of them turned to the Archiater as she put her question.
"Does that mean Aren will make a full recovery sooner than expected?"
The Archiater paused a moment in thought, then rose without a word and walked to the wall, turning back to them.
"Try standing up and coming to me."
Aren waited a beat, breathed out slowly through his nose and got up from the bed, setting his bare feet down on the cold stone floor. He straightened and crossed to the Archiater at a slow but steady walk.
When he stopped, the Archiater glanced up at him, thought a little longer and then nodded, glancing across at Elara.
"I would say he has already recovered completely... though I still find it hard to believe," he said, and looked at Aren again.
"Tell me, young man, where are you from? And what do these runes mean?"
"I don't know. I woke up in these parts not long ago with no idea who I am, what this world is, or why my body is covered in these marks."
Silence hung in the room, and the Archiater looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds, then lowered his eyes to the floor.
"Curious... in all my years I have never met anyone like you..." he said.
He walked to the other end of the room in thought and turned back to all three of them.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
"But I may know who can help you with this. In the lower city, in the north-eastern district, there lives a seer by the name of Raina. Go to her, and I hope she will help you."
Aren exchanged a look with Elara, while Leo looked silently from one of them to the other.
At that same time, Aris Mancroft was still lying in one of the towers of the royal castle, the survivor of the slaughter in the Great Forest. She was still unconscious, and yet her body had begun to twitch, while the nightmare made her go back over fragments of what had happened to her before the rescue.
Scene after scene flared in her mind, beginning with York, who raised a hand and spoke without turning round.
"Shut up. Something is wrong here."
He stood, bracing his magic-steam rifle against his shoulder and aiming the barrel into the darkness between the trees.
The picture broke off, and Aris was already running through the forest with her elbows pinned to her sides, hearing nothing but her own hoarse breathing, while the trees behind her came down with a loud crack and the ground answered with a vibration through the soles of her boots. A low, terrible roar carried out of the depths, and her chest caught it before her ears did. York managed to turn at the moment of the blow, and then he was gone, and Aris ran on with his blood on her face and shoulders.
Vine ran alongside her, holding her sleeve and pulling her towards a drop between the trees, until his voice tore through the noise.
"JUMP!"
The ditch took them both with a hard impact, meeting their knees and palms with solid earth.
The dream threw her into a narrow cave, barely enough for the two of them pressed to the back wall, while outside the forest stood in silence. In the weak light coming through the gaps at the entrance, Vine's left side was wet and dark all the way through. He sat with his back against the stone, breathing hard, with pauses on the exhale, and slowly took a vial of potion from inside his coat, drank it and closed his eyes, and his breath began to level out.
The cave fell away, and Aris was walking with Vine through the forest on the morning of the next day, where the sunlight changed little, since the shadows stayed long and thick, the trunks ran up tens of metres, and the sky broke through the canopy of leaves in rare gaps. They walked on, choosing their direction by the moss and the scant light from above, until the first of the creatures, magical and unknown to them both, dropped soundlessly from overhead with its claws extended, aiming at Vine, and a second came down after it before either of them could react.
They fought the pack off, firing back with magic-steam pistols and with the heavy currents of wind magic Aris commanded. A sudden roar sent the creatures bolting away, crashing through the undergrowth, and the clearing emptied while Vine was still getting to his feet.
At last, out from between the giant trees came the thing Aris had seen once before, tall and massive and black, with six legs and white curved tusks, some five metres at the shoulder, with grey running through the dark of its nape. Vine turned to her and shoved her away, and after that his voice tore the air open.
"RUN!"
His hand left her shoulder in the same second that the ground shuddered with an impact behind her, and from then on Aris was running without him. The forest flicked past on either side in bands of light and shadow, roots caught at her boots, branches whipped her shoulders, and the taste of blood stood in her throat, while her legs moved without thought, obeying nothing but direction.
Suddenly she was caught, stopped short by two hands on her shoulders. In front of her was a face in a steel helm with the visor raised.
"Hey! Who are you and what the hell are you doing in the Great Forest?"
Several more knights stood around her in dark green cloaks bearing house crests, with their blades drawn.
Suddenly the trees behind her cracked, the knights raised their eyes as one and every face changed at once, as the roar came down over the clearing with an even pressure, spreading upward from the ground. The knights fanned out, taking their positions and levelling their blades, while the first of them stepped forward into a swing. The blade struck the creature's dark flank and broke in two, and the knight was thrown into the trunk of a tree. Armour was torn open by claws, bitten through at the joints, ripped in half.
Crawling backwards in terror, Aris felt someone seize her sleeve from behind and pull her away, and she turned at once towards the voice.
"Hey! Over here!"
Beside her stood a young man with short fair hair and pale eyes, in leather pauldrons over a plain jacket, holding a sword with a cruciform guard in his right hand. Elen Starkwood, son of Selma.
He pulled Aris aside, while at the far end of the clearing several people in hunting gear came at the creature from the flanks, cutting at its legs and rolling clear of its blows. The body of one of the fighters flew over them and went into the crown of a giant tree, breaking branches, and then the ground shoved up from beneath at the heavy strike of a paw against the soil, knocking them both off their feet.
Elen crawled over to Aris, lifted her and pulled her to a horse at the edge of the clearing, where he got her up into the saddle, turned the horse north with one hand and struck the animal's hindquarters with his palm. The horse bolted, and Aris, turning back and holding to the saddle bow, caught Elen standing in the middle of the clearing with the sword in both hands, raising his voice towards the giant beast, which turned to him while the trees at the edge cracked under heavy steps. The wind beat against her face, and Aris turned her eyes forward again and shut them, without looking back.
The dream and its echoes dissolved little by little, and Aris opened her eyes to a pale stone ceiling above her with narrow window openings, from which a steady morning light came. She lay without moving for a few seconds, while somewhere far below the city made its noise.
Meanwhile Magister Kyle's cell sat on the lower tier of the northern tower, where the daylight came in through a narrow grate, and the magister himself stood at it with his hands behind his back, watching a strip of city roof washed in morning sun.
The lock clanked, and the door opened.
He turned, expecting a guard, but went still at once at a face he knew.
"Aris…"
She stood behind the Queen in a plain dark dress with a narrow belt, clearly issued from the castle stores, her hair drawn back, while Aurey kept beside her without stepping aside so much as a pace. Kyle looked her over from head to foot, lingering on the dress, breathed out and went back to the bench, lowering himself onto it with effort.
"I see you have recovered. I am glad of it."
Aris said nothing, turning her eyes aside and not moving from where she stood. Kyle caught it, and his eyes narrowed.
Edith came forward and stood half-turned between them, and spoke to Aris.
"Aris. Tell him what you told me."
Aris faltered, choosing her words, then drew a deep breath and looked the magister straight in the eyes. Her account ran only a few minutes, covering the deaths of York and Vine and the slaughter itself. Kyle listened with his eyes on the floor, and by the middle of it his elbows had come down onto his knees, his palms come together in front of him and his fingers laced.
When Aris fell silent, the quiet in the cell held for a few seconds, until she closed her fingers into a fist and asked.
"Tell me, Magister Kyle. Did you know?.. Did you know that something like that lives in that forest?"
Kyle did not answer, leaving his eyes on the floor. Aris set her teeth, ready to take the silence for an answer, until he finally spoke.
"I took it for a myth."
She raised her eyes to him, her face changing.
"Before I sent you here, I went through the local rumours and whatever was recorded about that forest. The creature came up only in children's tales and campfire stories. I thought it had been invented to keep locals and outsiders away from the place."
"It did not keep you outsiders away all the same," Edith added.
Kyle said nothing, feeling the weight of the Queen's stare on him. Edith moved her eyes to Aris, who had not taken hers off the magister.
"Aurey."
"My Queen."
"See Aris back to her chambers. Have her properly looked after."
"As you command."
Aurey stepped to Aris and guided her towards the door with a careful gesture that did not touch her, and the door closed behind them. Edith looked a moment longer at Kyle, sitting with his head down, and with a small breath she crossed to the grate of the window, beyond which the tiled roofs of the lower city stretched away, washed in a steady warm light.
"On the strength of her account you will be brought to trial over the tragedy in the Great Forest."
No answer came, and she turned from the window and made for the door, where Kyle's voice stopped her right at the threshold.
"This is only the beginning."
She turned to him, while he slowly raised his head and looked her straight in the eyes.
"From my earliest childhood…I have been sensitive to the Unified Field. I have often felt how different its density can be, its strength, in different parts of Prime."
He looked away to the window, paused and went on.
"Yesterday I felt something… Something happened in this city."
Edith turned to face him fully, drawing her brows together.
"I have never felt a field this dense. It is still growing stronger. Anomaly or not, you may be certain it will bring nothing good with it. Whatever it is, it is already on your doorstep, and you must be ready for it."
She stood without moving for a few seconds more, then went out and closed the door behind her. The corridor beyond met her with cold stone and silence, and she stopped there with her palm on the boards of the door, turning over everything that was now happening in the kingdom, then drew a deep breath, let it out and walked on.