Jean Rabe - Redemption

“Damn Dhamon Grimwulf,” she said, looking up and noticing him talking with Ragh and Maldred.

“Damn him for everything.” She blew the gnats away, then turned the blade so she could observe her acid-scarred reflection in it. “I look like a monster, every bit as awful as the three of them.” She stared at her face, not noticing that the runes along the blade had begun to glow faintly blue. “Worse than a monster.”

What you seek, the sword told her, breaking its long silence. The female Knight stood up, feeling the sword tug her away from the stream. What you seek.

She glanced once more at her companions—the traitorous ogre-mage, the wingless draconian, and Dhamon, who did not look so far removed from a black spawn himself now. “Monsters, the lot of them.”

Where was Rig? she wondered.

What you seek.

“Just what do I seek?” Fiona asked the sword.

The female Knight quietly left the clearing, the sword guiding her through a row of young cypress trees, then around a haze-covered bog. It led her almost a mile away. She paused to untangle herself from a vine and glanced over her shoulder. Her companions had evidently not yet noticed her absence.

“What do I seek?” she repeated dully.

Beauty and truth, it replied.

The sword brought her to the edge of a small clearing. There was a blanket of ferns in the center, and a young girl with coppery colored hair sat cross-legged there, her fingers teasing the fronds. The girl looked somehow familiar. Fiona thought she had seen her two or three times before, and in each instance bad things happened, but after all she was just a child, out here all alone, probably afraid, and she awakened Fiona’s maternal instincts. The child beckoned Fiona closer.

What you seek.

“Who are you?” Fiona called.

“I am what you seek,” the child said.

Fiona knelt next to her, and the little girl ran her hands over Fiona’s face. The tiny fingers were warm, and they tingled pleasantly.

“Who are….”

“Magic, Fiona,” the child whispered. “I am magic.”

Insects flitted around the child and the Solamnic Knight but didn’t land on either of them. The child began to hum, a quick tune she interspersed with chirps and clicks. Then her fingers were tugging and pushing at Fiona’s curls, tickling her eyelids, smoothing her tunic. When the tune ended, the child rose and motioned to the Knight to follow her.

Her sword sheathed, Fiona took the girl’s hand and was led to a clear pond beyond the ferns. The child pointed. Fiona tilted her face for a better look.

“Oh! In the name of Vinus Solamnus!” She saw her own face reflected in the still waters, but this Fiona was unblemished, her eyes clear, and her hair looked freshly-combed. She looked younger, too.

Perfect. “I am beautiful.”

“Of course you are beautiful. I made you so.”

Odd, but the little girl didn’t have a little girl’s voice any longer.

“Rig will be happy to see me so beautiful,” Fiona told her.

“Rig can’t be happy,” the child said flatly. “Rig is dead. Very dead.”

Fiona stammered, shaking her head and saying that wasn’t true, that Rig had been with her not too long ago.

“Dead. Dead. Dead,” the child cooed in a sultry seductress’ voice.

“No!” Fiona stepped away, heel catching in a root and falling down. The child stretched out her hands, grabbing her, fingers fluttering over Fiona’s face again, magic boring in. This time the fingers didn’t soothe. This time they gave her a horrible vision, replaying over and over the events of the night in Shrentak when Dhamon had rescued them from the prison cell beneath the city streets.

Again and again she watched Rig boost her up onto the manticore’s back. An arm’s length away from her, he was then cut down, his blood spattering her.

“No!” Fiona buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “Oh, please no.”

“Dead. Dead. Dead.” The child smiled evilly. “And the one who as much as killed him, Dhamon Grimwulf, will be coming to get you soon. Run, Fiona. If he finds you, he’ll kill you, too. Run. Run. Run.

You mustn’t let Dhamon catch you. You must make certain that Dhamon, Maldred, and that wingless Ragh never see you again. Run!”

Nura Bint-Drax turned and ran playfully through the ferns, casting one last look over her shoulder at the Solamnic Knight. “Flee, beautiful Fiona! Rig is dead, and your enemies come for you!”

It was several minutes before Fiona regained some semblance of composure. Trembling, she tried to turn back to where she thought she’d left her companions. “I must tell them about the strange child and…”

“Fiona!” Maldred called.

The lying ogre.

“Fiona!”

Dhamon must be with him. Now Ragh was calling for her, too.

“Fiona! Where are you?” Maldred’s voice again.

“Fiona!” shouted Dhamon.

“Oh, Rig,” Fiona cried. “Rig, you are dead, and your murderer calls to me.”

Relying on all the skills she’d learned in the Solamnic Knights, she turned and ran, managing to elude her pursuers until dark, when they finally stopped looking for her. When they resumed searching for her the next day, she was already farther away and successfully hid her tracks. She crept close to watch them from time to time, giggling at their foolishness but constantly moving when they neared again. She took great pains to cover her tracks so that even the expert tracker Dhamon wouldn’t have a clue as to her whereabouts.

Finally the three enemies gave up. Finally they headed east.

“I’m safe,” Fiona said to herself. As the little girl had been when Fiona found her in the clearing, the female Knight was all alone.

The child sat on a mountainous rocky ledge, feet dangling over the side and legs idly kicking. She was a few hundred feet above a winding trail, looking down on a small merchant caravan and debating whether she should pay them a visit in her Ergothian seductress guise. There might be something inside one of their wagons that would please her master, and perhaps something that might also please her.

The shadow dragon lay deep inside the mountain, sleeping. He had been sleeping more than usual, his waking intervals shorter. Late yesterday afternoon, he spoke to her only briefly before he fell into one of his fitful slumbers that sent tremors through the chain. It was twilight now, and he still hadn’t awoken.

She watched the wagons until they disappeared from sight, wondering if she had allowed an exotic, tasty morsel or an especially pretty bauble to elude her. She watched as the sky darkened and the stars slowly winked into view. Everything here in Throt was dry and boring. The craggy brown mountains looked like the spine of some massive, dead beast. The air smelled like… nothing. No hint of rain. Nura missed the damp and suffocating warmth of the swamp with its tang of rotting vegetation and assortment of hideous and beautiful beasts. There were birds here, but so little variety to them, all blacks and browns, all with the same annoying chirp. There were lizards—small ones with curly tails, but most of them the drab color of the mountains. Nothing tasty about them.

If Dhamon had not been so seditious, she and the shadow dragon would still be basking in the glorious swamp. If Maldred had been more trustworthy… if only she had anticipated that there would be a problem with that fool.

She brooded about Maldred until the sky lightened and the rocks shuddered beneath her. She jumped to her feet, ran to a wide slash in the mountain. Standing just inside of the opening, she shed her child image and slithered inside the dusty cave as the snake Nura Bint-Drax.

There was scant luster left on the dragon’s scales, and he looked more gray than black.