Cohthel
My castle room faces the edge of the cliff and the ocean far below. Not a scientist, but I detect more blue in the air than the moon’s violet gleam. Maybe a reaction between the violet light mixing with the thin, cold air and the decayed trees fighting for new growth. Mother and Markie live close to the castle and cliffs. My last letter to Markie reported I graduated from the Bladehand Towers.
My last letter.
Writing a letter now, no matter if written by a panel of scholars, would trigger Markie into understanding the letter’s purpose is to replace an actual visit, a visit I only need to walk down the street to initiate.
Atalixpshere, sprawled on the rug behind me, so close to the fire her white wings glow, says, “Should have allowed her to go and die along the way back to camp.”
“You know my standard.”
“I know, I know, I know. ‘If we encouraged those changing for the better, we’d see the day when hostilities stopped, would we not?’ Next time I quote it, I’ll tattoo it on my ass.”
“My planning worked.”
“So would have letting her die along the way.”
A falcon enters my room through a hole above the door and perches. “Neleci requests Cohthel’s presence in her room.”
I acknowledge the message with a raised hand, and the falkon flies out. I rise from my seat, passing by the full-length mirror, and flinch, stopping to observe my half-mask, black bladehand cloak, and Cinder Dream — the sword constructed entirely out of R’th, given to me by the Goddess of Fate, for a purpose I still think is useless.
“What am I supposed to do with the sword?” I asked Fate two years ago.
“Only hold onto it, because the kindred whom the sword is for can’t wield it yet. You are a bridge, Cohthel, covering the gap between the event and the kindred who will wield this sword. They will find you when they are ready.”
But that memory surfaces another one: the nameless Dream Woman who made strange claims about this sword, her sword, its ultimate purpose, and how a vague past had wrapped her into them both. Over the years I doubted that conversation ever happened, only haven’t abandoned its occurrence as the images of a stressed mind because the physical proof hangs on my back — a sentient sword made from condensed R’th gas.
“Nothing’s changed,” Atalixsphere says after I stare in the mirror a full minute, “you’re still ugly.”
Death. That’s what my reflection says. The half-mask covers death, the black bladehand cloak warns of death, and the R’th sword brings death. Neleci, just two hours ago, watched my attempt to commit a death. Not the look she needs right now who is shaken, hollow, and emotionally naked to face the decision she must her future self make.
I remove my sword first. Slowly, as if ripping off skin, I remove my cloak.
“Please don’t take off any more clothes,” the pegasus says.
My smile at her tease is a grimace. She can’t see nor feel the effort I force to remove the cloak and its constant balming R’th. I’ve been sleeping in it. I’ll show Neleci I’m more than just mask and shadow. I need her trust because I then need the entire Human Realm to trust her. Having reached the door, I grab a candle out of its holder and throw it at Atalixsphere, closing the door against her complaint.
I walk invisible. Freshly graduated from the Bladehand Towers, I still can’t shake the stifling air from sleepless nights, hunger, desperation, fear, and hate off my shoulders, all made worse without my R’th cloak cutting off the worst edges. I know everyone sees my intangibles, sees my mask absorbing them all. Fate said she gave me the invisibility R’th so I could live forever. I conclude that was a rhetorical statement because I’ve aged the last two years so eventually I’ll die of old age. I understand, however, that, invisibility mutes all my pains to tolerance. Which is how I carried a broken Atalixsphere on my back for nineteen days.
Down the corridor, two figures round the corner. They hook my curiosity immediately because their clothing resembles nothing in current human fashion or any fashion I’ve seen before. Both humans, a man and what appears to be his young son, wear long, vibrant blue coats that reach the middle of their thighs. The collars stand up especially high. Matching fat, red, jewel-like amulets hang outside these ridiculous coats.
Must be clerics, or Thoraus’ guests.
I reach Neleci’s door and knock. “It’s me.”
She opens it and I step in. A quick scan of the room says we’re alone, which I find curious that Ahinoam isn’t still in here comforting her big sister. She certainly helped bathe Neleci. Two cold cups on the table say she shared tea with her. But Neleci must have dismissed her.
Neleci wears a soft, full-length, creamy chemise. The dwarven time plate affixed beside the stone window sill reports it’s after midnight. Music and voices still curl along the corridor. In all my planning to bring Neleci here, I had been unaware of Torc Thoraus’ planned event that had been six months in the making. All torcs from all realms and all others who wanted came for the free food, music, dancing, and socializing to sustain Kingdom cohesion during this Nightmare crisis. This is, in part, why Torc Thoraus has given no time for his prodigal daughter the last five days.
A small part.
She sits on a cotton-stuffed chair in front of the fire, draping a short leg over the arm. She indicates I should sit beside her. She is short, having thick thighs and bosom in school — the exact body type Thaen attracts to. Having spent the last year living on campfire food, hunting, and gathering, she’s lost enough weight now to classify as slim.
Pegasi maximum carry weight is around two hundred pounds. Atalixsphere can carry a bit more, having strengthened with my weight, which is why she bore mine and Neleci’s weight without problem. Had Neleci been taller, or heavier, I could not have kidnapped her on pegasi back.
We sit in silence for a long time. Hot, warping wood crackles in the earth. Pin sap sizzles through open resin pores.
“Are we still friends, Cohthel?”
“Yes.”
Silence again. Music touches my ears from the party in the Grand Hall. I conclude she doesn’t want to talk, only wants my presence, even jilted and bladed after the Bladehand Tower. Words or presence. I’ll give her whatever she needs.
“Why didn’t your sword hurt Ahinoam? That, and I want you to know you were extraordinarily cruel. My heart will never recover.”
I lean back in my chair, boots relaxed far in front of me on the carpet. I talk about Cinder Dream on a need-to-know basis only. It’s not meant for human comprehension. I do, however, owe Neleci an answer. My ears still ring from her scream.
“The sword…is not normal. Not natural. Someone gave it to me two years ago. I won’t say by whom. The reason it didn’t harm your sister is because it’s sentient. The sword, it thinks. It knows. It makes decisions I can’t control. The sword will even change its shape: shrink, grow, disintegrate, and put itself back together. One thing I learned is it only kills whatever it wants to kill. Your sister and I practiced. When I struck her, the blade shrank. Shrank up to the hilt. It refused to touch her. For whatever reason, it decided not to kill her.”
“Cruel.”
Effective.
We’re silent a long time again, and I understand she’s bantering with this talk, warming up to tell me what presses on her mind. Then she opens without preamble, diving back to the day two years ago when dark elves kidnapped and held her as a political hostage underground, robbed of sunlight for a full year, all to allow Nightmares to grow under the support of dark elves.
She recounts her forced association with the Dreamer who spoke to her every night in dreams, wearing her defenses thin, over and over until she couldn’t tell lies from truth and who was telling which.
Released from her year sentence, she came home. Though coerced into the Dreamer’s ideals, she recruited humans under his banner. Recruited many. Three hundred to start, enough to train recruits to recruit yet more. A third of the human population is now indoctrinated under the Dreamer’s culture-tearing, humanity-stripping, identity-erasing banner.
“I started it all,” she says, gaze fixed on the fire.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Had I never recruited so many, the Unconquered…the Nightmares would never have gained a foothold.”
“You progressed the Nightmares forward, but you didn’t start them. My father is the one who unburied the Dreamer.” That long ago day when Rodrue came to me, and I nearly accepted the Dreamer’s banner for myself. “But I’m glad you, Neleci, recruited so many. You recruited them because they believed you, and they will believe you still when you call on them to egress.”
“Therein lies the problem. I see now. I see now. Mercy killing is not the Paragons’ intent.”
I tense. “So you still believe the Dreamer is right?”
Her hesitation brings back hope. “His ideals…they feel right. Cohthel, they felt right the first night I dreamed with him. I resisted for three months before I succumbed. But those three months I resisted, I felt that, what he said, was true. Or, as true enough as he could translate his own feelings from it.”
The music in the Grand Hall changes tempo. I slouch in my chair until my lower back hurts. I sit straighter. “I agree with you.”
For the first time that hour, she looks at me. Then narrows her eyes. “This isn’t another setup, is it?”
I raise my sword hand and shake my head. I left my sword and cloak in my room so nothing more ominous would come from me tonight. “I, too, on a deep, instinctive, natural level believe humans should act in a higher purpose.” I first discovered this about myself when Atalixsphere swore exclusive service to me, which is why she accompanied me to the Bladehand Towers, waited for me, sticks with me now. “But that’s not the same as living better than other races. Rather, I feel the Paragons assigned humans a divine role…and we are not fulfilling it. At first, one might think this validates humans to become kings. But that, on a deep, instinctive, natural level, feels wrong, too. The Paragons meant for humans to act differently than other races. I just don’t think we discovered what that is yet.”
“But the Dreamer said—”
“Neleci, if you’re going to leave the Nightmares, you’ve got to stop quoting his ideals. The Paragons gave you, and all of us, the power to know what we should do. We don’t need validation. You know humans should function in a higher purpose which is not to be kings, but also know mercy killings are wrong. Build from there.”
She chews on her thumbnail. “I have to go back to camp.”
“Neleci…”
“I have to.”
She said those exact words when I first kidnapped her. Losing patience, my tone comes out clipped. “Have you set me up? Stringing me along saying you’ll fix your heart and dismantle the Nightmares only to laugh at the lie you told me?”
Shock wrinkles her forehead. Her expression contradicts my accusal. “No. You took me away unprepared. And I need to see Thaen.”
“Is he at camp?”
“I don’t know. He would have returned to camp already but would have also left. We were prepping all Uncon—Nightmares to move permanently inside the Dream. There’s a high chance he might be on his way there.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to leave to find him and bring him here.”
“Kidnap him in his underwear and barefoot?” Her cheeks dimple.
“Upside down and inside out. Yes ma’am.”
Her smile falls. “Bring him back to where? Here, in the castle? My father already doesn’t want me here. And I’m his kin.”
“Your father is also in my plans. As for Thaen, since my mother married and moved in with my stepfather, she’s left the deed of our house to me. I haven’t seen it for two years, so I might need to chase vagrants out, but I’ll bring him there. Can you give me anything that would motivate him to come without a fight?”
Her cheeks pale and she looks back at the fire, chewing her thumbnail as if it were a thorn aching in her finger.
“Neleci?”
“I motivate Thaen. Take me with you.”
“I can’t. My only ride is Atalixsphere. She’s grown accustomed to my weight, and you are small and light enough the two-day travel with you and without your gear to Malandore was of no importance, but if Thaen is not at camp and I have to search Eloshonna for him, Atalixsphere cannot bare your weight. You’d need to bring your own gear to sleep, camp, and hunt and Atalixsphere cannot carry that much weight. I don’t know a dragon or gryphon willing to fly me anywhere on a whim, and I possess zero money to pay them, so that’s out.”
She goes from chewing her thumbnail to biting her knuckle.
“Write me a sealed letter of something Thaen would only understand as coming from you and I’ll deliver it to him as proof that you are here. Will that suffice?”
“Yes.”
I catch a hitch in her tone. “Neleci? What are you thinking?”
She shakes her head.
“Neleci, I need to know everything. Unless I haven’t sold you on abandoning the Nightmares?”
“No, I’m sold. There’s…something else.”
“What?”
“I just need to get back to camp. Take me without gear so Atalixsphere can carry me too.”
“I’m not leaving you at camp, nor can I stay there with you. Just tell me what it is.”
Her heavy sigh, with a little more strength, could have put out the fire. “Are we still friends?”
“Yes.” I’ll never tire of answering that question for her.
“Back in school together, you said you would keep my secrets and would never betray to my father my heart’s forbidden desires. Is all that still true?”
“True, and stronger than before.”
“Because I need your help.”
“You’ve got it.”
“My father can’t know. And for that, I don’t want you telling Thaen, either. I’ll tell him. And then I’ll decide how to tell my father. I need your help protecting my secret, at least until my father accepts me back and holds a brighter view of the future. I need you for…I just need a friend, to be with me and help me, whatever that help is. At least until life is back to normal.”
Whatever normal is, anymore.
I now fear my past promise to her and what I unwittingly swore to keep secret for her.
She slouches in her chair. “I’m pregnant.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Oh, Neleci, that’s…” I don’t what that is.
“Bad timing. I planned to tell Thaen as soon as he returned…” She swings a slow jaw toward me. “But you kidnapped me first.”
I need to go back to camp, she had said. Of course, every female on Mortal Earth in all the races would have picked up on that cue.
Like a slug chugging across the dirt, implications arrive: nurses and medical for the birth, baby food. Diapers? Neleci uninvited to live in the castle, not to mention she’s known throughout the Human Realm as having run away to join the Nightmares and may not be authorized the medical care. Cut off from the family funding, she has no money to support herself living on her own. If the rangers found out I was housing known Nightmares in my house, they’d arrest them if they didn’t escape first, and then come after me. Would that happen before or after the birth?
My mind chases and chases until I arrive at a vision of only Thaen and me attending her birth in the forest — in winter — and neither having a knuckling clue what to do.
“Oh,” I say.
From down the corridor, an enormous bellow of ringing bells clamor in a raucous echo, and heavy boots thunder across the carpet outside her door.
Neleci rises. “That sounds like the alarm bells.”
“Alarm for what?”
She stares at the ceiling, fingers clenched on the arms of her chair. “I’ve known about them, but they have never sounded before. Unless they changed in the last year, they mean to lock down the castle and make all knightlords available.”
“Available for what?”
“I don’t know.”
I rise from my chair. “I’ll find out.” I turn invisible and leave.
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