Терри Брукс - Tanequil

«Prime Minister?»

He gave the doubt another few seconds, and then he dismissed it. There was never gain without risk, and risk always raised doubts. He knew his own mind well enough to embrace what he must do. Without Grianne Ohmsford to worry about, he could afford to take chances he might not otherwise take. The loss of a few thousand lives was not worrying enough to deter him. There was more at stake than lives.

«We will fly to Arborlon," he said.

Dawn broke in a flare of brightness as the sun crested the rim of the hills and began to lift into the sky. The Elves were settled in, most hidden from view behind hummocks and rocks and in the shadows of the defiles, ranks formed and weapons at the ready. Already, they could hear the sound of the Federation army marching to the attack, the pounding of boots and the thumping of spears and swords against shields steady and rhythmic and unnerving. Flashes of light reflected off the flat surfaces of blades as the Federation soldiers wound through the cut and began the long, twisting trek across the flats to where their quarry waited.

Pied, standing with his Home Guard, scanned his ranks for movement and found none. The Elves had disappeared as only the Elves could. They would not be spied out by the Federation until it was too late. He wished he had the services of cavalry to ride at the Federation flanks, but foot soldiers would have to do. He wished he had the use of catapults and fire launchers, but slings and arrows would have to do. He would be outnumbered, perhaps by as much as five to one. He lacked practical experience commanding on a battlefield, — he was Captain of the Home Guard, not a Commander of the Elven army. He was the highest–ranking officer present, and he had never been in a battle of such size.

There's a first time for everything,the old saying went. He just wished there wasn't so much at stake.

He looked down the ranks of those closest and found Drumun–doon standing almost next to him, tall and gangly and looking oddly out of place in his battle gear. Drum wasn't meant to fight on the line; he was meant to serve behind it. Yet there was determination in his young face, and when he caught Pied looking at him, he winked.

Reason enough to believe in him,Pied thought.Reason enough to believe in them all He tightened his grip on his sword and settled deeper into the shadows.

Grianne Ohmsford lay with her face pressed against the stone floor of her cell, her eyes closed. She was trying to escape, even though there was nowhere to run. Torchlight from the hallway beyond intruded on the darkness in which she wished to hide. Low voices and the soft shuffling of boots nudged her out of her hiding places. Water dripped and the earth rumbled deep within its core, reminders of where she was. Like hungry predators from the black holes into which she had tried to banish them, memories emerged and made her skin crawl.

But it was the mewling cries of the Furies, triggers to a mix of horror and madness from which there was no escape, that chased her down and found her out no matter how far inside herself she retreated. She cringed from them, drawing up into a ball, becoming as small and still as possible, willing herself to disappear. But nothing helped. She had used her magic to become one of them, and she could not change back again. She mewled with them. She hissed and snarled with them. She spit with poisonous intent. She flexed her claws and drew back her muzzle. She rose to greet them, responding to their summoning, a response she loathed but could not prevent.

She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut they hurt. She would have cried had there been tears to do so. Her world was a room six feet by ten feet, but it might as well have been the size of a coffin.

They had returned her to her cell from the arena in the same way they had brought her, in a cage and in chains, Goblins and demon–wolves surrounding her, Hobstull directing them. Back through the crowds and the blasted countryside. Back through the gloom and mist. Time had stopped, and her sense of herself and her place had disappeared. She was a captured beast. She was a lifetime removed from her role as Ard Rhys, and the Druids and Paranor were a dim memory. All the way back, she fought to regain her identity, but the rolling and the jouncing seemed only to exacerbate her confusion. It was easier to disappear into the role she had adopted than to try to follow the threads that might lead her out. It was simpler to embrace the primal creature she had awakened than to cast it aside.

They stripped and bathed her on her return, and she did not try to stop them. She stood naked and exposed and uncaring, gone so deep inside herself that she felt nothing of what they did to her. Cat sounds issued from her lips and her fingers flexed, but she did not see the way her captors drew back. She did not see them at all. She did not know they were there.

I am lost,she thought at one point.I am destroyed, and I have done it to myself.

Time passed, but little seemed to change. Guards came and went, the light dimmed and brightened as torches sputtered and were replaced, food was delivered and taken away uneaten, and the demons that haunted her kept edging closer. She wanted to break their spell, to banish them along with the hissing and mewling of her Fury memories, but she could not gather together the will to do so.

One time only did she sleep. She did not know for how long, only that she did, and that when her dreams took the shape of her memories, she woke screaming.

The Straken Lord did not reappear. Hobstull stayed away. She did not know what they intended, but the longer she was left alone, the more certain she became that they had lost interest in her entirely. There was no use for such as her, for a woman who was willing to take the form of a monster, to assume the persona of a raver.

There was no place, even in the world of demons, for something that lacked any moral center or recognizable purpose. She saw herself as they did, a damaged and conflicted creature, a chameleon that could not distinguish between reality and fantasy, able to be either or both, but unable to tell the difference.

She felt herself sliding over the edge of sanity. It was happening gradually, just a few inches at a time, but there was no mistaking it. Each day, she felt her Ard Rhys self fall just a little farther away and her Fury self close about her just a little bit tighter. It grew easier to embrace the latter and reject the former. It grew more attractive to see herself as inhuman. If she was no better than one of the Furies, her life became less complicated. The madness seemed to ease and the conflict to diminish. As a Fury, she did not have to worry about where she was or how she had gotten there. She did not need to concern herself with the increasingly fuzzy distinctions between different worlds and lives. As a Fury, the world flattened and smoothed, and there was only killing and food and the lure of life with her cat kind.

She began seeing herself as an imprisoned animal. She began making cat sounds all the time, finding comfort in the soft mewling. She flexed her fingers and arched her back. She bit her cheek and tasted her own blood.

But she did not rise or eat. She did not move from where she lay. She refused to come out of the dark refuge of her delusions. She stayed safe and protected in her mind.

Then, as if from a dream, she heard someone calling to her. At first she thought she must have imagined it. No one would call to her, not here or anywhere else. No one would want to have anything to do with someone as terrible as she was.

But she heard the voice again, hushed and insistent. She heard it speak her name. Surprised, she stirred from her self–induced lethargy to listen for it, and heard it again.