Mickey Reichert: The beasts of Barakhai

Zylas returned shortly with a slight woman in tow. Beyond her, Collins saw movement. Several others hovered in the tunnel behind them. Curious, he looked the other way. Another exit across from the first stretched into a blackness that contained several shifting shadows.

"Is Carriequinton… all right?" Zylas asked carefully.

"She's an adviser to the king. And she seems happy."

The woman spoke next. Small and mousy, she sported black hair and fair skin. Dark eyes looked out from small sockets. "Are you certain it was Carriequinton?"

"Trust me," Collins said, reveling in the irony.

The woman nodded.

Zylas resumed his crouched position in front of Collins, while the woman sat down beside him. "You requested explanation. I will give it to you."

Collins refused to let Zylas off the hook. "How do I know you're not just telling more lies?".

Zylas pursed his lips in consideration, then brightened. "I swear to God, with sugar on top, that I will tell you only the truth from this moment forth." He spat on his right palm and offered it to Collins.

The absurdity of the moment melted away most of Collins' malice. Caught by my own lie. Rolling his eyes, he spat on his hand and exchanged a shake before wiping it on his britches. In my effort to pacify Vernon, I invented a new way to spread diseases in this godforsaken, Lysol-lacking world. "Talk."

Zylas cleared his throat and sank to his behind. He studied the rocky ceiling, as if deciding where to start. The onlookers shifted, their whispers barely reaching him, uninterpretable. "Over the years, the royals have taken a stronger and stronger hand in the coming-of-age of Randoms."

Collins nodded to indicate that he knew. "King Terrin said he had to in order to separate out those creatures likely to murder others."

"That was, ostensibly, the original reason for doing so."

"Ostensibly?" Collins remembered having trouble with the idea of executing people who mutated to carnivores simply because they might harm someone. He recalled something more personal. "He said he had to execute your daughter."

Zylas' eyes watered, but he managed to suppress actual tears. "Trinya." His voice cracked, betraying the withheld weeping.

Collins continued, speech slowing as he watched the effect of his words on Zylas. "He said that's why… you… cause him… so much trouble." From the corner of his eye, he could see the woman cringing. She placed a hand on Zylas' shoulder.

Zylas could not hold back the tears any longer; they glided down his cheeks, pale dewdrops on a background of snow. "I was trouble long before… that."

Collins said nothing more, allowing Zylas to regain his composure.

The mousy woman stroked the fine, white hair and looked anxiously at Collins through beadlike eyes.

Zylas swallowed hard, wiping his eyes with the back of one white, long-fingered hand. "… before… he murdered Trinya and Erinal."

Collins shook his head. "Erinal?"

"His wife," the woman explained before Zylas could. "They were-"

"Seera…" Zylas warned. She talked over him, "-childhood friends-" "Seera," Zylas repeated, apparently her name. "-and obviously deeply in love. I never saw two-" Zylas' verbal prompting did not stop her, but his dark glare did. "Ben has more important matters to worry about than my relationship with my dead wife."

At the moment, Collins did not agree. The dead wife might have much to do with a situation he was continuing to sort through, hoping to fully understand. "What happened to her?" Seera's face went as chalky as Zylas', and she placed a hand over her mouth. She left the explanation to Zylas, who rose and paced, clearly distressed. "She wouldn't let go." He dropped his head, hair flopping into ivory disarray. "She wouldn't… let… go."

"Of Trinya," Seera explained softly.

"The king's guards couldn't… couldn't…" Zylas remained in place, clearly waiting for Seera to finish his sentence this time.

Seera complied. "They couldn't pry the two apart." Zylas finished in a rush of hissing breath. "So they tried to cut off Erinal's… her hands. But they couldn't get all the way in one-" He dropped to his knees, sobbing, and Seera rubbed his upper back. "Screaming. There was blood and-"

Collins grimaced, trying not to picture the scene. But he could not banish the image of a young woman pleading desperately, grasping for her terrified child with hands dangling from half-severed wrists. "Oh, my God." "If only I was-"

Now it was Seera's turn to caution, "Don't. You couldn't be any closer than you were. You were a hunted outlaw. They would have executed you on the spot." "But maybe Erinal and Trinya-"

"They would still be dead. And you, too. Then where would the rest of us be?"

"They wouldn't let me staunch the bleeding." Zylas was weeping uncontrollably now. "Why wouldn't they let me staunch the bleeding?"

Even Collins could answer that. "Because they wanted you dead more than they cared whether or not she lived." Zylas' grief ached through Collins. He felt helpless as a statue while his usually unflappable friend dissolved in front of him. The anger and bitterness vanished, replaced by a pure rush of sympathy so intense it left him speechless.

For several moments, they all remained quiet, drenched in a grief too intense to bear. Even the onlookers grew respectfully hushed and still.

Finally, Zylas spoke. "We should have known not to make a child, both of us distant descendants of Prinivere."

"Prinivere?" Collins blinked making a connection that seemed obvious but might prove absurd in this otherworld, where even the basic principles of science did not always apply. "Are you saying Trinya's switch-form was…"

"A dragon," Seera said, barely above a whisper. A chill spiraled through Collins. "A dragon? Is that… common?"

Zylas looked up. "As far as any of us know, she was the only Random ever to become one."

"If Carrie told the truth," Collins pondered aloud, "then there are at least two." He met Zylas' bleary gaze. "Zylas, your daughter might still be alive."

The conversation that followed left both men with unexpected hope. Collins came to understand that his companions had brought him from the castle to an area where dogs could not track him. Like the flowering tree where the group had hidden just before Korfius found them, the skunk odor that pervaded the quarters of Barakhai's downcaste garbage workers should hide their scent from second tier guardsmen.

After a meal and a bath, Collins felt more open to explanations. Alone in a straw-cushioned cavern with Zylas, he listened to the rat/man with an open mind. "You see, the less you knew, the safer you, we, and a pack of innocents remained."

"Maybe." It was a point Collins did not know if he could ever accept. "It might be the scientist in me, but I like to work with as much information as possible. The less my ignorance, the more I can figure out what to do to keep myself, you, and these innocents safe."

Zylas laced his fingers, dodging Collins' gaze. "I understand that now." He finally met the probing dark eyes. "But, at first, you didn't want to know that much."

"You mean when I thought I was going right home?"

"I guess so."

"But you knew I wasn't going right home. You should have told me that, too."

"I didn't know what the best thing was." Zylas threw up his hands. "It was supposed to be simple. Bring you here. Have you get the stone. Get you home."

Collins sat up straight, holding Zylas' attention now that he had finally seized it. "But you knew it wasn't that easy from the start. You brought others before me. Others who went mad. Others who died."

Zylas closed his eyes and nodded sadly. "But you were different. I chose you much more carefully."