Benjamin Tate - Well of Sorrows

A cold rage settled over Colin, the same rage he’d felt as his mother cleaned his wounds after the locks, as she cleaned the piss from his body. A rage Colin had shoved deep down inside himself, that had simmered next to his heart since he’d been released from the pillory, seething as they crossed the plains, as they climbed the Bluff, as they hunted and camped and struggled to survive.

Colin let that hate out now, let it course down his arms, tingling with heat, prickling his skin. He let it show in his eyes, his back straightening.

Walter stilled, his eyes widening slightly, his sword dropping a few inches toward the ground.

With a surge of satisfaction, Colin spat to one side and turned his back, turned toward Karen. He caught a flicker of motion as one of the Shadows leaped, heard Walter curse, saw the so-called Proprietor duck down and roll beneath the underside of the wagon out of the corner of his eye, the Shadows a flicker of black movement behind him, and then he dismissed Walter completely from his mind.

Karen eyed him with a faint frown. “We need to find our parents. Now.”

The space between the wagons and the trees was littered with bodies, with Shadows and shrieking forms. He saw Sam swinging wildly with a whip, two women at his back, saw another group of men make a break for the open plains behind, saw three children huddling in the grass beneath one of the wagons and recognized Lissa’s face as she raised her head and stared out at the chaos, her younger brother’s body held protectively to her chest, his face buried in her arms so he wouldn’t be able to see. Colin headed toward the kids, had made it halfway to them, dodging feeding Shadows as he went, when Karen pulled him up short with a frantic, “Dad!”

Colin spun around. Karen’s father stood protectively over three others, a mother and her two children, their backs to the last wagon, a sword held uselessly before him. His face was lined in fury, with pure and unadulterated rage, the most alive and intense Colin had seen the man since he’d met Karen and her father in Lean-to. All the sorrow, all the grief over losing his wife and two children on the passage across the Arduon Ocean, had been transformed into one goal, one purpose: keep the Shadows at bay.

And the Shadows were playing with him, as they’d played with Walter. Nearly all of them were now, their initial frenzy gone. They moved with purpose, with intent, with a cold intelligence.

Karen’s shout distracted her father. He turned, yelled, “Karen!”

And the Shadows struck.

Karen’s hand wrenched from Colin’s. He cried out, tried to catch her, to hold her back. He heard her scream, “Dad!” again as she charged forward, her hair streaming out behind her, her dress flapping around her feet.

Colin leaped after her, his heart thundering in his chest, his skin flushed with sudden prickling heat. Not enough to smother the coldness, but it burned in his arms, his legs, his lungs. Nothing mattered but Karen and her father, nothing but the Shadows that had drawn back, their glistening darkness-so like cloth-shuddering outward as they readied to attack. All sound dampened except for his breath and the pulse of blood in his ears. Everything faded except for the brilliant patch of sunlight before the wagon.

Karen’s father drew himself up, back straight, as the Shadows streamed forward, smooth and deadly. He didn’t even use the sword. He tried to block the Shadows with his own body, his own life. The Shadows slid through his chest and pulled themselves up over his torso even as Colin saw the life in his eyes dim, as his body began to fall.

“No!” Karen screamed, and stumbled, reaching for her father, ignoring the Shadow that had bypassed him and those he protected, that was converging on her. Colin felt his heart shudder in his chest, felt the metal and glass of the vow burning against the skin beneath his shirt, felt a spurt of adrenaline shove him the last short space between them as a roar built in his throat.

He threw himself at Karen, the roar escaping. A roar of denial, of hatred, of anger and fury and determination.

A moment before he struck her, before his arms wrapped around her and pulled her down, he saw a tendril from one of the Shadows lash out, saw it connect, felt its bitter coldness as it passed over his shoulder.

Then he and Karen were rolling, his roar choked off as they struck the ground. Pain tore through his shoulder and he gasped, but he held Karen tight, tried to protect her as they tumbled, arms flailing wildly. They struck the wheel of the wagon. Wood cracked, and Colin’s shoulder twisted even more, pain shooting down his back, his entire arm going numb, tingling viciously, but he ignored it all, not even crying out. He struggled with Karen’s body, with the limp arms tangled with his own, with the folds of her dress. Rolling onto his back, his shoulders propped against the broken wheel, legs straight before him, her body over his, he shifted her toward him, fumbled for her face.

“Karen,” he gasped, and tasted blood on his lips, felt where he’d bitten the inside of his mouth. “Karen! It’s all right. It’s all right. I couldn’t save your father, but-”

His hands found her face, touched the skin there. Skin still slick with sweat but cold, so very cold. Like ice.

His breath caught, and something squeezed his chest hard, tightened like iron, like the slats of the penance locks. Tightened and wouldn’t let go. Beneath, something hard and bitter and fluid began to build, began to press outward, constrained by the locks.

He tried to swallow and couldn’t. His mouth was suddenly full of saliva, the back of his throat thick with phlegm, with the taste of blood, and still he couldn’t swallow, his throat working, a strange heat seething up his neck and into his face, burning in the skin beneath his eyes, prickling in his hair. He shoved the sensations away, shoved down hard on the pressure in his chest. His hand brushed Karen’s hair away from her brow, and he moved, so that her face rolled toward him, the motions careful, gentle.

“Karen?” he choked out, the name barely audible, almost lost in the pounding of blood in his ears, in his head. He reached for Karen’s cheek, his hand trembling, reached to touch her forehead above her dusky dead eyes, reached for the freckles that brushed her skin, even though he could feel the Shadows closing in around him, around them both. He traced the contours of her nose, touched the corner of her mouth, her too pale lips.

And then the pressure inside became too much. The penance locks broke.

He screamed and clutched her body close, felt the vow’s pendant crushed between them, felt its heat burning into his skin. He screamed into the blackness of the Shadows that loomed before him, the sunlight bright around them-a sunlight far, far too bright for the death taking place all around him, far, far too golden. He screamed into the face of the sukrael as the pain inside him surged outward, as it coursed along his arms and through his body, as it shuddered through his chest in waves. He shoved the hatred and grief away, toward the closest Shadow, the one reaching toward him with a tendril of darkest night, glistening with flecks of gold. A tendril that bled cold, that bled death.

And the Shadow hesitated.

Colin’s scream grew ragged and then broke.

He stared up at the Shadow before him-at the sukrael-stared up into its cold, considering darkness And then he pulled Karen’s limp body even closer, leaned forward over it, his head bowed down over hers, her face hidden in his shoulder. He could smell her hair, like freshly cut hay, like sunlight, like a breeze from the sea.

“I should have run faster,” he whispered into Karen’s ear, her hair tickling his face, catching in his mouth. “I should never have let go.” His face twisted into a soundless sob, and he squeezed his eyes shut, tears slick against his skin, tasting of salt.