The Gems of Raga-Tor (Elemental Legends Book 1) (38 page)

“She was so innocent, so trusting, I couldn’t refuse. She hid, while I took the statue to the sorcerer. He asked about the maid who was to have guarded the object with her life.

“I lied and told him she lost her courage to protect it as she left it behind and fled into the sewers where I lost her trail. He accepted the explanation and gave me the gold,” Eris said and drank down the last of the wine.

“And when you returned to fetch her, she was gone,” Raga assumed. It was a familiar tale.

“No, she was there.”

“Really?” Raga marveled. “Didn’t she think you would ravish her just as quickly as anyone else?”

“I guess not, because I didn’t.”

“Well, that surprises me. Why not?” Raga asked curiously. “Any other young man on his first victorious campaign likely would have.”

A trace of a smile, the hint of a memory passed over Eris and Raga saw his features and his eyes soften.

“As I told you before, I’m a man of honor. My grandmother would have roused from her grave and whipped my ass had I done such a thing. Besides, she was already so scuffed and terrified by her escape from the temple, that I just took her away from there.”

“So, once there was innocence in you as well,” Raga said thoughtfully. “Then what?”

“I grabbed my horse and we rode from the city. My friends all cheered when they saw us ride out. In spite of her tattered appearance, there was no denying her beauty. They thought I had gotten the best prize, but it turned out to be the worst.

“Eventually, we arrived at another small town. She didn’t talk much and sometimes she made me feel uneasy. I found a boarding house and took a room for each of us. I had plenty of gold. We kept it that way for a while until one evening, when I came back from an errand or something, and found her waiting in my room. From then, on we were inseparable, and that night began the loss of innocence for us both,” Eris said. He suddenly breathed deeply and his eyes again looked haunted, tormented.

“Easy, my boy, that is all far away in the past,” Raga said quietly. “You can do nothing to change it. Let it rest.”

Eris nodded that he understood and wiped his face with the blanket.

“It wasn’t long after that night that the so-called sorcerer found us. Too late we discovered that the amulet she wore around her neck was somehow linked to the statue. I never did understand why she didn’t know that. Little did either of us know that it was his intention to use her in some cruel, unholy ritual,” Eris said.

“You keep referring to this girl as her and she. Surely you knew her name?” Raga finally had to ask.

Eris looked at Raga with a face drawn by sorrowful loss. His voice came out as an angry whisper.

“I don’t know it. I can’t remember it, yet I loved her. How can I have forgotten the very name of the girl who trusted me with her life? Who meant everything to me?”

“Stop, don’t say any more. Let it go. It isn’t important to what you’re telling me,” Raga said and watched Eris struggle to regain his calm.

“The sorcerer-turned-priest was enraged that I lied to him and swore he would have his revenge on me. They locked us in a cage and for three days we traveled through an ancient, half-dead forest until we came to a rocky summit. In that desolate place, someone had built a stone altar surrounded by carved-stone pillars. Each of the creatures carved into the rock was more hideous than the one next to it.

“As preparations for this ceremony began, the statue began to grow more and more grotesque in appearance. The girl screamed and pleaded with them to release us until she was prostrate with exhaustion. I struggled to find a way to free us, but I couldn’t. We were chained and too heavily guarded.

“On the second night of our journey, I had managed to break the cage's lock. Our escape would have been good had a wildcat not suddenly howled and startled the dozing guard. As punishment, they kicked and pummeled me to the point that I thought I would be the first to die. So even had I been able to think of some new escape, I didn't have the strength the carry it out,” Eris said. He pointed and held out his hand to Raga for him to give over his wineskin.

Raga hesitated knowing Eris would be able to taste the difference. Eris motioned again for him to comply, and did so reluctantly. Raga watched him tip the skin and pause after a couple swallows. He wondered what sort of reaction he was in for as Eris wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Raga was pleasantly surprised, when Eris picked up his empty skin and tossed it into his lap. Eris gave him a nod and looked away as the bag grew fat with liquid.

“Finally, a few days later,” Eris said, resuming the tale, “they came for us. The girl was exhausted and blind with fear. She collapsed as they dragged her to the altar and away from me. But they needed her fear, her screams as a part of their ritual, and mine as well they decided in the end. They forced us to drink some foul liquid that made our skin, when lightly touched, burn with incredible pain. I had never known such pain before nor have I since. I’m sure you know what it was they gave us,” Eris said.

“I’ve heard of it, yes, but I’ve never used it on anyone that I can remember. It’s crude, but effective,” Raga answered.

“They put her on the altar, and then they tied my hands and stretched me between two stone pillars. When it was dark, they began their chanting and brushed over the girl’s skin with a long, black feather. Even now her screams echo in my mind and seem to go on forever,” Eris said quietly, and looked up at the stars twinkling overhead.

“And you? What did they do to you?” Raga asked. He felt his own skin ache as Eris told his story.

“They beat me with a knotted flail,” he answered in a slight whisper, and closed his eyes. “After that I don’t remember very much. Where her screams ended and mine began—”

“Stop. It's enough. Don’t torture yourself with trying to remember, just forget. I saw the destruction of the demon myself,” Raga said. He couldn’t even begin to understand how Eris had managed to live through what he was describing, yet he knew it was the truth. He shuddered to think about it.

“But do you want to know how and why the demon was destroyed?” Eris asked. His eyes were suddenly alert and focused intently on Raga.

“I had assumed the priest said something wrong or that the portal between the worlds began closing on the demon before they could get it all the way through,” Raga answered.

“Don’t think it was that simple. No, it was much more tragic and twisted. Their incantation provided for only one soul to be offered from that altar, but by some cruel twist of fate, there were two.”

“Two?”

Eris nodded and drank down a goodly portion of Raga’s wine.

“In the fire and destruction, I saw two rise up from the altar. Hers and that of a babe unknown to either of us. What fate, what god decreed that she should be with child in only a few weeks time, because that’s all we had? It was my child, Raga. Two innocent lives destroyed,” Eris said, but Raga found himself without words. “I thought these things were done with virgin sacrifice. Obviously, the naiveté goes deep with me. The demon was beyond rage. The sorcerer's mistake cost it its existence in any world. It tore him and his minions limb from bloody limb before it destroyed itself.”

“And yet, somehow you lived through it all. How?” Raga managed to ask.

“To this day, I don’t know why or how. I should have been destroyed along with all the rest, but the demon didn’t seem to see me. The blast of its final fury was unable to penetrate some barrier that was around me. Maybe it had something to do with those stone pillars. I have no idea.

“For two days I hung between those cold stones staring out onto that scorched, seared land fighting to not to close my eyes. When I lost to exhaustion, the things I had seen and felt would be in my dreams. Rain came on the morning of the third day and cooled the blistered earth. A great mist rose up and I barely saw my hands over my head. The ropes softened in the dampness and finally I pulled free of them.

“Hanging between those stones fighting fear, hunger, thirst, I vowed my revenge on any and all who command any form of sorcery,” Eris said. The strength and conviction in his voice was coming back.

“Charra-Tir was hardly the one to vent your anger against. She’s a second-level elemental and one of the strongest of those as well,” Raga said.

There was hardly a week or a month that went by without some hideous ritual performed on some unsuspecting wretch by one who sought the power to control men, their nations and fiends bent to their will. Knowing this, Raga couldn’t fault Eris for the hatred he carried in his heart and soul.

“She wasn’t the first, Raga,” Eris said, interrupting Raga’s myriad thoughts. “I can’t even remember the names of all those like that priest, magician, sorcerer, whatever you want to call him that I’ve destroyed. I will destroy them before they have the chance to kill innocent people and bring the world crumbling down on us all.

“As much as I fear them, I will fight the fools until my dying day. Their greed and hunger for power blinds them to the fact that they can’t control the mighty forces they try to bring here. I’m not even sure you could,” Eris said.

Raga realized that in some cases he might actually be right. He also realized he was hearing a certain conviction, a return of vibrancy in Eris’ voice. Rising from the pits of his hellish memories, his courage and will to overcome was apparent and the warrior who was Eris Pann stirred back to life. It seemed to Raga that even that took no small amount of effort, as the dark memories were subdued once more. Yet the enigma of the fierce man beside him remained mostly unsolved.

Raga now understood what fueled Eris’ fears, but the question as to why and how he had survived remained. He supposed the carved stones might have had something to do with it, but he wasn’t convinced. He wondered what power dwelled in the recesses of Eris’ mind to drive him to exact his particular form of vengeance.

The name Riza, despised lord of the Seven Hells, came to mind. He remembered the sensation of the evil lord’s presence within Eris, when he probed for the cause of his sudden illness in Reshan. Riza, though a true demon and not an elemental, more or less aligned himself with the elementals and Raga didn't think Riza would necessarily approve of the whole-scale extermination of lesser practitioners of the arts even though some rightly deserved it.

No matter what the answers were, no man could live through that and not be changed.

“Now you know my darkest secret,” Eris said. He picked up his bowl and handed it to Raga. He tossed the cold food aside and gave him warm from the pot. When Raga handed the bowl back, he noticed for the first time the multitude of tiny, white lines and nicks of scars that marked Eris’ sword hand; the powerful hand of a professed enemy that he now more clearly understood.

“So will you seek to have my blood too, when or before this is over?” Raga asked.

“In deepest honesty, I can’t say no, yet at the moment it would serve no purpose. The gods know you’ve given me plenty of reason. I'm hesitant, but—”

“Never mind. Sorry I asked,” Raga interrupted. It was the answer he expected and he shouldn’t have dared to think it would be different, especially now. Yet there was a part of him that felt compassion stir and knew that if a single strand of a spider’s web held their alliance together, it would be enough.

“I’m not entering the Vale, Raga,” Eris announced and swallowed the last bite of dinner. “The name alone brings the smell of death to me. How can I make you understand, except to say remember what you’ve just seen? Imagine yourself in that nightmare.”

“Truly, Eris, I felt and on some level understand your fears, but as long as you are with me, nothing will happen to you. After all we’ve done and gone through, how can you want to give up now? In the morning, after you’ve had a good rest, I think you’ll feel differently,” Raga said.

“You don’t understand. I don’t want to give up. I’m still cursed, so I can’t give up. I just can’t go into the Vale. It will be like walking back into that nightmare. How can I survive that again? Every time that madness comes upon me I think I will never be sane again,” Eris explained. His breath caught in his throat.

“But you have kept your mind and you are strong in body. With me, you will walk in and out of the Vale as though it were any other place,” Raga encouraged. “I can even lessen the horror of that memory so that it will only seem unpleasant and not reduce you to a state of terror, but I need my gems to do it.

“I need them to live. You see yourself how every day my power lessens. Who knows what will happen when it has dissipated completely out of my control. Maybe I will explode like that demon, only this time you won’t be able to escape. You need the power of the stones to defeat Charra-Tir. We need each other. Neither of us can do this alone.”

Eris sat quietly and for a long time considered Raga’s words. He pulled and twisted them every way possible in an effort to come up with a convincing argument, but in the end, he couldn’t. He sighed and leaned back against the tree. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands across his weary face and through his raven hair. He clasped his hands behind his neck.

“Fine, I’ll go. I’m tired of arguing with you and will see this through to the end. I have nothing more to lose. I’ve cheated death more than once, and it must be tired of losing by now. Death… you never quite forget… the smell of it,” he mumbled, exhausted, as sleep came over him.

“Looks like trouble ahead, Raga,” Eris shouted and finally saw the source of the black smoke he’d watched for leagues on end. He twisted in his saddle to see Raga still at the bottom of the grassy slope he had just ridden up. His horse pranced nervously beneath him.

“What kind of trouble? We passed the last town on this road a few days ago. There shouldn’t be anyone out here,” Raga shouted back. He prodded his horse, but it was no use. The beast was tired and so was he.

With grim, driving determination Eris had pushed man and beast alike hard for the last four days to arrive at the Red Vale. For someone who didn’t want to come, he was definitely in a hurry.