“How can they watch this?” I asked. “They salivate at the prospect of a spectacle death.”

  “A criminal,” Jarah said, shaking her head as we knelt side by side amidst the gathered masses. “That’s all he is. And the prince is their trusted judge and bailiff. What more do they need?”

  “This is what comes for your children and your peace,” the prince said. “We bring the war to the shores of the barbarian giants and we stop only when every last one has been slain!”

  The prince ripped the burlap bag away and kicked at a small stool that supported the man’s feet, revealing a cyclopean man smaller than Jarah but with the same slender limbs bedecked with long, powerful muscle. His large eye opened to widest extent, pleading and strained. A green iris, deep like forest moss, glinted with flecks of gold that swirled like mad within that ring of verdant color.

  The man could not speak, could not force his throat to form words against the tight and deadly bond around his neck. His legs, tied at the ankle, beat and kicked as best they could while his body dangled from the gallows for all to see.

  “Victor,” Jarah said, clinging to my body as I wrapped my arms around her. “That’s him. That’s my little brother Koby.”

  17

  “We must get Rikki at once and leave,” I said, Jarah’s body trembling within my embrace. “I’m so very sorry for your loss this day. Let us assure our own survival so we may avenge this wrong in the proper time.”

  “Aho!” a man called out. “Are you Victor Coin?”

  “I am,” I said. “And you?”

  “Messenger,” the man said. He wore the dark green tunic and dull chainmail indicative of the royal guard, his face partly obscured by the strip of metal extending down over his nose. He passed me a small fold of paper pinched between his fingers.

  My hand shook as adrenaline demanded I run, not read, but I stole a quick glance at the parchment that only forced me to keep reading on. It was signed, “Rikki.”

  Companions, I should not have brought you here. Prince Taron’s invitation was for me alone, and I have decided to set off that way — alone — to seek his company. Do not look for me. I will not be found.

  —Rikki

  This was senseless, a sure mistake. “Rikki!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Rikki!”

  “Sir,” the messenger said. “You’ll come this way.” He grabbed my arm, but I shook him off and held my staff before me to block him from handling me further. He yelled his instruction at me again, drawing notice from the surrounding crowd.

  Two more of the prince’s guards pushed toward us now, parting the sea of people with their long-shafted spears raising pointed tips well over the heads of the assembled audience.

  Those salacious onlookers shuffled and bumped against myself and Jarah as they cheered the lifeless body of her smaller brother, still swinging from the gallows rope.

  “Ai,” a man said. “She’s one of them!”

  Heads turned toward Jarah while I fought against the messenger’s firm grip. Someone shrieked, “We’re under attack!”

  “No,” Jarah said, raising her open palms toward them. “I’m a guest, a visitor who loves peace. My brother was no monger of war, he was a good man!”

  “That’s her kin,” another yelled, pointing backward toward Koby’s dangling body.

  More guards shuffled toward us as the crowd tightened and blocked our escape.

  “And now,” the prince yelled, ignorant of the ruckus forming at the rear of his audience or perhaps simply ignoring it, “the pageant shall begin!”

  My hand found Jarah’s, interlacing my fingers with hers. “Be strong,” I said, firm hands already gripping my body and pulling me away from her. Our hands clung together until we were torn mercilessly away. The guards dragged me toward the city gate and threw me out of it, instructing the watchmen outside to prevent my re-entry.

  Jarah’s height meant that I could watch her path toward the castle until I was tossed out. She would stay in there somewhere, and I out here, impossibly away from helping her or finding Rikki again.

  My ass throbbed with pain and indignity, having been tossed from the realm’s capital city like rubbish. The menacing faces of the guards turned to follow me as I stood and walked, along the outer wall, in the hope that there may be a secondary way in, one where the guards would take pity on me or fail to recognize my face as one so recently vilified. There was no such opening.

  How had it come to this? Weeks I had traveled to get us here. I gave up any hope of maintaining my shop, any tool of keeping my trade, and now my women were gone. One by choice and one by force, both absences felt like failures on my own part. I could neither keep them nor protect them.

  A hiccup jolted me from my sad reflections. A man, disheveled and drunk, lay on the ground, his head resting against the stone wall around the city while the rest of his body lay flat. A waterskin in his hand was stained a dark red, filled with a draught much stronger than the water it was designed for.

  “Sir,” I said. “Is there an alternate way into the city? Legal or not, I cannot care. Too much weighs upon this chance.”

  The man hiccupped again and shrugged. I sat by his side, long blades of grass tickling my forearms as I slumped to the ground. The forest lay ahead, with all of its dangers and the goddess I had disappointed.

  The sweet scent of wine rose from the man’s waterskin as he drank another long sip. I could go that same route, give into the sweet respite of drunkenness to abandon the pain of my sober life. Drown myself in the thick syrupy liqueur of—

  “Might I inspect your drink?” I asked.

  The man seemed wary at first, jealous of his wine, but then shrugged and handed it to me. He had no fight in him anyway.

  I sniffed at the open container. Yes, that’s what I thought. I took a small sip from the tiny aperture at the waterskin’s peak and allowed the sweet nectar of cherry wine to wash upon my tongue.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked. The man’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing. “Tell me where it comes from! Why will you not speak?”

  He hiccupped and gestured toward the forest. At the edge of the tree line, there stood a woman staring back. Her legs were covered in brown fur, ending in firm dark hooves. A spiral of ridged black horns rose in a pair atop her head.

  “Rikki!” I yelled. I scrambled to my feet and ran, off-kilter and crazed, my thighs soon burning from overexertion. The satyress scampered into the darker forest and I charged ahead, gasping for breath as I charged across the grassy plain and then dodged between the trees that formed the forest’s outer wall.

  The flick of a tail. The quick shadow of movement. The minor bleat of a woman working hard to run fast. I followed every sign of Rikki’s escape, calling out her name as I went.

  Yet, she did not slow. Would I not forgive her for an intemperate departure or a note sent on her behalf? Would she abandon Jarah to the same fate as her slain brother and return to the solitude she had known before our paths became one?

  My aching muscles would not relent until reunion or death. There could be no life between those poles anyway.

  When the woman I chased tripped and fell, she recoiled from my approach. I knelt and laid a calming hand upon her leg. “It’s me, Rikki,” I said between labored breaths. “Why did you leave?”

  The woman looked back. She had the same dark nose and large nostrils of my forestkind mate, but she was not Rikki. She was a beautiful woman, yes, but not my beautiful woman. I released my hand and sat, resting my staff on the ground beside me.

  “I’m quite the fool,” I said. “I let my hopes and my fears muddle my senses. I did not mean to provide such a frightful chase. I am sorry and I mean you no harm.”

  “Why?” the woman asked, the question trepid and slow to come forth. “You called me by her name, but she left us all aside.”

  “You know her then?” I asked. “You know my Rikki Silena?”

  “She served Kirsis by my side,” the woman said. “We all loved her dearly, but she was not satisfied to partake only in our pleasures, when other pleasures might await unknown.”

  “Do you serve him still?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then take me to Kirsis,” I said. “Take me to your god. I will pray and I will placate. I will undertake any holy task for the chance at finding her. Once she hears of Jarah’s fate, she’ll have no option in her mind but to return to us.”

  The satyress blinked at me, her large black eyes devoid of any white. She scraped her body along the ground by kicking the dirt until she had backed away from me. “It is not my place to lead you.” She stood, turned, and bolted.

  “Yet, it is mine to follow,” I said.

  Then we were off, running madly through the forest and taking twists and turns that made little sense to me, but seemed instinctual to her. I could not lose her. To quit this chase would mean to stand alone with my failures and my thoughts while evil workings continued unchecked.

  Whether the gods drew their power from divinity or deceit, theirs was a power I could not deny. Perhaps one last god would lend me their aid.

  More and more, the trees we passed held luscious fruits on their boughs, red and plump, waiting for harvest and fermentation.

  At the heart of the healthiest trees, whose leaves were barely visible through all the succulent fruit they bore, was a cherry tree whose trunk was wider than even my old toy shop’s storefront. A crack split down its center, and my fleeting guide slipped inside it.

  I followed.

  The inner rings of wood shifted and bent into a set of stairs that led to an underground chamber whose walls and floor were large chunks of stone, expertly laid. The air was cool here, with stone pillars supporting the forest above and stone walls carving smaller rooms from the larger cellar that opened before me.

  The creature I had followed was gone from my sight, lost in the dark maze of this basement temple. I tiptoed around corners and peered into small chambers, leaving the sliver of natural light behind and bathing my skin only in the flickering yellow glow of occasional candles on golden saucers.

  One room held three satyresses, wrapped in each other’s arms, goblets of wine by their side. Their hands and their tongues probed at each other’s bodies with reckless desire.

  I crept past.

  The next room held a male satyr, dancing a drunken jig, while a second male plucked a lyre with lazy fingers. Both men had drooping eyes and sloppy motions that spoke of impulse and excess. I recognized the bard’s tune as a fast and lively song kept for happy celebration. Yet, its melody had slowed in his hairy hands, likely as drowsy as his lone listener after a long night of constant play.

  I stalked further still.

  The third room held no satyrkind, only barrels, wooden and oversized, aging their cherry wine and infusing it with oaken aftertastes. A single barrel stood upright at the room’s far end perhaps awaiting its fill of fresh juices that would slowly become the god’s signature draught. It was taller than my whole body, with a stepstool next to it and a wide round lid lying on the floor nearby.

  I left that room behind me.

  A brighter flame beckoned me further into the heart of the temple. I peeked into a large and central room from just outside its doorframe. A man, of sorts, sat in the room’s middle and he was not alone.

  This had to be the god that Rikki once served. His shape was like other satyrs — massive black horns atop his head and legs covered in fur that ended at powerful hooves. He was no ordinary satyr though. His skin was the darkest red, his fur entirely black. His eyes were yellow orbs burning bright with energy and power.

  This god was an old one, with a long mane of wavy gray hair and a matching beard sprouting only from his chin and trailing down his chest. He reclined on an oversized chair, its seat and back and arms all carved from a single stone. A dozen satyresses held cherries nearby, taking turns feeding him. He spat the pits onto the floor where another satyress stooped to retrieve and inspect them.

  I stepped into the open doorframe, expecting to draw gasps and stares from the god’s attendants, but none paid me any heed. “Excuse me, your grace…” Still nothing. Not even a passing glance.

  This was not the time for timidity. I thumped the handle-end of my staff against the stone floor, forcing a loud and insistent echo from the clacking of wood against stone. “Holy Kirsis!” I yelled. He and his attendants stopped all other motion, turning their eyes in unison on the mortal that dared interrupt their subterranean devotions.

  “My name is Victor Coin, and I require your aid.”

  18

  “My temple is always open to a man in need,” Kirsis said without bothering to change his position. He did wave his hand, though, signaling his servants to back away.

  “Have you a fête that requires the lubrication of my boisterous brew?” he asked. “Or does your lugubrious look suggest a post-celebratory slump, a hangover in need of a causative cure?”

  His attendants giggled at the suggestion that my woes were so trivial as the headache of overindulgence.

  “This is about Rikki Silena,” I said. This drew the attention of every satyress at his side, with gasps and chatter that he quickly quelled with another wave of his mighty hand.

  “What about her?” Kirsis asked.

  “Prince Taron has taken an interest in her, and subsequently she left my company, bound for a castle pageant I fear will only shame and insult her. It comes at a time when our loving companion Jarah Lin was abducted by guards moments after her brother was hanged in the town square.

  “I must reclaim them,” I continued. “A life with them was the life I was always meant to lead, and without my intervention I fear they have lost their chance at their best lives as well. Please, I beg you. I would offer anything that I have or that I am, only to bring them back safe.”

  “I cannot offer the help you desire,” Kirsis said.

  “But surely a god—”

  “Rikki left you,” Kirsis said. “Just as she left me. Yours is not a special loss, it is a common one, suffered by those who open their hearts too wide.

  “I felt once that Rikki was special,” he continued. “I offered her the coveted role of acolyte, but she panicked and fled. To keep a satyress is to expect a quick turn of mind, but hers turned sharply away. Some satyrkind have much to experience before they accept permanency in any regard.”

  “And Jarah, my cyclopean mate now in the hands of the prince’s guards? What hope have I to free her?”

  “None,” Kirsis said. “This realm is on the eve of war. Your Jarah is dead, if not already then soon. The prince will not suffer her to escape.”

  “Then I am lost,” I said. “I have risked what little I had and came up short. I drew others into my folly and they are worse for it. I have less than no one. I have the emptiness where lovers would be had I not led toward their demise.”

  “I have lived long enough to know that heartache is man’s only eternal companion,” Kirsis said. “My divine brew is a tincture of pleasure best sipped by those afflicted with such despair.

  “Could I bring Rikki back, I would, but not to you,” he continued. “She could serve me yet, should her wildness exhaust the possibilities offered by the world beyond. Alas, I am powerless to lure her again into my service, let alone to yours.

  “I can, however, offer you a drink.”

  “So what then,” I said. “Drink away my despair and yield to a half-life of numbed pain and forgotten loves?”

  “With Rikki’s departure,” he replied, “I am reduced by a servant with the harvest on its way. You are a man with no home, no trade, and no love. My wine will transport you. It can soothe your ache, but in exchange I require a servant. Promise me this, now, or our exchange comes to an end.”

  I looked back through the doorway, at the stone hall lined with chambers of fermentation and lust. The life Rikki left behind, who was I to take her place? And yet, she gave my place away to Prince Taron, the man she’d rather keep by her side.

  The very thought stung my soul.

  “I promise,” I said.

  “You promise what?” Kirsis’s voice boomed through the stone-walled cellar.

  “I promise you a servant to round out your number before the harvest is upon you.”

  “Very well,” Kirsis said. “A servant must devote themselves to their task with no reservation. A servant must be… prepared.”

  “I am prepared,” I replied.

  “No, not yet. My servants gather fruit and mash it under hoof. They churn the must and tend the yeast. They strain the stems and pits at season’s ends. You would spend your days at menial tasks, just for a sip of the wine that steals the sting from your loss?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Yet,” Kirsis said, “I have choice aplenty. What marks you a suitable servant for a god such as me?”

  I took a deep breath and wondered what response might satisfy this god and what skill or experience I had that could ready me for the work ahead.

  “I was an emissary of Redelia, the goddess of captured light,” I said. “The holy task she set me to remains unfinished, but I was worthy enough to serve her once. I would strive to earn a similar privilege through you.”

  “An emissary?” Kirsis said. “Of Redelia?” He laughed a hearty guffaw. “Of all the bold lies ever told in my temple!”

  He stood now, clacking his mighty hooves upon the stone. His horns tapped the ceiling as he extended to full height.

  “I do not lie,” I said, holding his eyes with my own. “I have lost Rikki and Jarah. I have lost Nessa and my livelihood. I have lost my purpose and my hope. But I have not lost my candor.”

 

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