Lorelle of the Dark, page 9
“Lorelle, we’re your friends. We’re trying to help you—”
“Good,” she interrupted. “Where is Rhenn? Have you found her?”
“We’re trying.”
“And failing,” she said. “Two weeks, and we still have nothing.”
Khyven opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“We are doing things,” Vohn said, his voice calm now that he was talking to someone other than Slayter. “Slayter has been scouring the histories for the last known locations of Plunnoi.”
Lorelle’s searing gaze stayed on Khyven. It was like she didn’t want to look at the other two, like she blamed him for Rhenn’s disappearance.
“What would you have us do?” Khyven asked.
“Do? Maybe you could have told us she’d be attacked.”
“What?”
“You brought Nhevaz down upon us,” she accused.
Vohn’s eyes widened, and he looked at Lorelle as though she’d said the moon was purple. Slayter’s smile faded, and his brows came together.
“He was unconscious,” Vohn said quietly.
“Nhevaz’s message was for you,” Lorelle said to Khyven, still ignoring Vohn. She blinked, as though she was looking at a light that was too bright. She clenched and unclenched her fists like she couldn’t stand to be in her own skin. “He took Rhenn and gave you a message.”
After they’d found Lorelle and undone the spell that had frozen her, she’d told them about Nhevaz’s final cryptic words: “He lived, and that means things will move quickly now.”
“We don’t know that was about Khyven,” Vohn said. “It’s only speculation. Why would he say that to—”
“Who cares why!” She stood up, knocking the chair over. “If Khyven had died, Nhevaz wouldn’t have come for Rhenn!”
“Maybe I should have died, then,” Khyven said softly.
She lifted her chin and he saw tears in her eyes. She turned away, like she wanted to banish them all from the room by simply not looking at them. One fist clenched at her side and the other moved up to push at her chest, massaging it like it was bruised.
She turned back and let out a strained breath. “I didn’t mean that,” she whispered, swallowing hard. “I-I don’t mean that, Khyven.”
She stumbled back, disoriented, looking clumsy for the first time Khyven had ever seen.
He came around the table, wanting to help her, to hold her in his arms, but Vohn was already there steadying her.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “It’s going to be all right.”
She glanced at Khyven, sorrow in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if she was about to apologize, but then turned her head away.
“Please. Sit down,” Vohn said softly.
“No,” she said. “No, I—You don’t need me here. I can’t help you here. I’ll… go see about Shalure. She needs… There are herbs that can counter the shkazat.”
She glided to the door without another word and left.
“How did she know about Shalure?” Khyven turned to Vohn.
“I think maybe she’s watching us. Hiding. Listening in on our conversations,” Slayter said, his head cocked to the side like he was contemplating a particularly engaging puzzle. “Her clothes are made exactly for that.”
Khyven didn’t want to say his next thoughts, didn’t want to acknowledge them, but he said them anyway.
“I think you’re right,” he said to Slayter, “about the soul-bond. The way she’s acting… I think you may be right.”
“Why?” Vohn asked. “Because she’s angry?”
“Because she’s in pain,” Khyven said. “Physical pain.”
Vohn glanced at Slayter in surprise, then back at Khyven. “She is?”
“I’ve been injured enough to know when someone’s trying to hide a wound. Did you see how she pressed her hand to her chest? How she could barely sit still?”
“Ah,” Slayter murmured.
“If we’re going to help her, we have to find this person she’s bonded with,” Khyven said.
“We do?”
“I want to know who it is.”
“What exactly will that accomplish?” Vohn asked.
Khyven felt his cheeks grow warm when he realized he didn’t have a good answer to that. He wanted to know because…
Because it wasn’t him. Because Lorelle had chosen a Human to bond with and it wasn’t him.
“If we’re going to find out how to reverse this thing she has done to herself,” he said, “we have to start somewhere.”
Vohn and Slayter exchanged a glance, and were silent for a long moment.
“How are we going to do that?” Vohn finally asked. “Obviously none of us can follow her.”
“I’ll do it,” Khyven said.
Vohn blinked. “Khyven…”
“What?”
“You’re about as stealthy as a bull.”
“Then I’ll get better at it.”
Vohn and Slayter exchanged another glance, but Khyven didn’t care. And he wasn’t going to wait. He turned and left the room.
Chapter Ten
Lorelle
Lorelle walked swiftly along the hall and leapt up the steps until she reached the next floor.
She was a fool. She should never have gone to the meeting. It was increasingly pointless, and dangerous. Being that close to Khyven nearly drove her mad from the pain, and she could barely manage it already without tempting fate.
She paused at the door to Shalure’s room, bowed her head, and pushed inside. The room was dark, and Lorelle breathed a long sigh. She didn’t know why, but the darkness soothed her pain, just a little. She far preferred darkness to daylight these days for that sole reason.
She looked down at the half-dreaming Shalure, sprawled on the bed. The baron’s daughter had removed her clothes and Lorelle saw a fresh tattoo on the woman.
Lorelle moved closer to look at the illustration on the angry red flesh. It couldn’t have been made more than a day ago. It was a beast of some kind. It had the face of a barn owl with Shadowvar-like horns sprouting from its head. Its body was that of a powerful cat—like a Kyolar—with skeletal wings reaching up from its back and surrounded by an inky mist.
The image of the creature coiled around Shalure’s arm, the rear of its body resting along her back. The claws curled around Shalure’s upper arm like black bracelets, and the owl head rested on her shoulder, seeming to look directly at Lorelle.
She had no idea if this was an actual beast from the noktum, cataloged in some obscure tome somewhere, or if it was simply the wild imagination of the tattoo artist.
Shalure moved a little, as though the sensation of slithering across the covers felt good to her. The woman’s life had been upended during the fight to reclaim Rhenn’s kingdom. Her dreams had been dashed, her social standing crushed, and her body mutilated. Shalure was a baron’s daughter from the far north who had bet everything on her journey to the crown city of Usara. According to Khyven, she’d hoped to secure a landed husband with her quick mind, clever tongue, and the lure of her body.
That hope had been crushed when Vamreth cut out her tongue.
Now, apparently, Shalure thought her life was over and that shkazat was the perfect conduit to hasten her end while immersed in an enjoyable fog. Lorelle knew the drug well. Shkazat washed over the body in a wave, exciting the senses and burying the mind.
But it was poison.
The wonderful effects Shalure was now experiencing were slowly, methodically destroying her body. Only the first month of shkazat usage was this pleasurable. Once the drug took root, the pleasurable sensations came less frequently, lasted shorter spans, and the need for the drug strengthened. In another month or two, Shalure would be smoking shkazat daily, not to feel good, but to keep from feeling horrible. A few months after that, it would claim her. Either she would continue smoking it until her body experienced vital organ failure, or she would stop smoking it, at which point her body would experience vital organ failure. Once the drug took root, there was no escape.
But Shalure wasn’t there yet, and Lorelle could help.
During her and Rhenn’s time in the Laochodon Forest, Lorelle had mastered Usara’s local herb lore. She had come across shkazat root, and its users, many times during that decade in the woods. As with all the other roots, leaves, berries, and barks she’d experimented with, she’d made herself understand shkazat’s effects.
And how to counter them.
She had found a purple leaf which, when combined with a pinch of ground shkazat root, formed a counteragent. In the right amounts, Lorelle had created a potion that could purge the body of the drug. But it only worked if it was delivered before the shkazat took root.
She pulled the strap of her herb satchel, bringing the pouch around from where it rested against the small of her back to the front, so she could open the flap. She pulled out a small glass vial of the purple liquid she’d called nettoye after the Luminent word for “clean.”
She sat on the bed and Shalure shifted, drawing a breath and seeming to sense Lorelle’s presence for the first time. Shkazat was like that. Nothing existed five or six feet away from the user, but everything within that small sphere was vibrant and compelling.
“Mmmm,” Shalure said, reaching up and touching Lorelle’s elbow. The tattooed owl-creature’s claws appeared to reach for Lorelle, the owl’s intense eyes glaring. Shalure’s fingers lingered, moving down toward Lorelle’s hand as though the tight cloth over Lorelle’s arm was the most fascinating thing she’d ever felt.
Lorelle held up the vial of purple liquid. It glimmered in the scant starlight from outside the window, and Lorelle knew that in Shalure’s vision the bottle would seem like a dazzling purple gem, flickering with fire.
“Mmmm!” Shalure purred, reaching out for it.
“If you think it looks nice,” Lorelle said softly. “Wait until you taste it.”
Lorelle dramatically uncorked the vial.
Shalure sat up, leaned back her head, and opened her mouth. Gently, making sure every drop went into Shalure’s mouth, Lorelle poured out the contents of the vial.
Shalure swallowed and shivered at the sweet flavor, then lay back against the soft pillows. Lorelle had made sure the concoction first sent shivers of pleasure through a shkazat user. An addict might reflexively spit out something bitter, and Lorelle had learned long ago that there was more to herbalism than just the effect of the drug.
Unfortunately for Shalure, that would be the end of the pleasure. Nettoye worked fast. It didn’t just leach the poison from the blood, it transformed it. It would take about as long for the shkazat to be purged as it would take for Shalure’s blood to circulate throughout her body.
The transition, Lorelle had been told, was like jumping into a pool of icy water.
Shalure gasped and her eyes flew open. She sat up and glared at Lorelle in horror.
“Goohhhh!” she exclaimed as the indulgent fogginess of the shkazat vanished. She grabbed Lorelle’s arm with both hands, wide eyes beseeching. “Ease!” she begged. “Ease!”
Please.
Lorelle put a soft hand on Shalure’s desperate claw.
“I’m sorry,” Lorelle whispered.
“Oooh!” Shalure shook her head.
No.
“It’s for the best,” Lorelle said. “Though I know it doesn’t seem so.”
Shalure’s lips curled into a snarl and she looked like she wanted to slash Lorelle with her fingernails and march straight back to the shkazat den. Which, unless Khyven and the others watched her all day was probably exactly what she would do.
“I know you think your life is over, but I would ask you to consider something.” Lorelle corked the empty vial and slid it back into her satchel. “Why are you in this bed?”
Shalure’s auburn eyebrows crouched angrily over her eyes.
“You’re in this bed because Vohn asked Slayter to find you,” Lorelle answered her own question. “And then Slayter told Khyven about the shkazat den. And then Khyven marched into a guarded basement and took you by force.”
Lorelle paused to let that information sink in. Shalure crossed her arms like a petulant child.
“You have many friends for someone whose life is over.” Lorelle stood to leave.
“Ah onk oo aye!”
I want to die!
She glanced down at Shalure. “Your life will never be easy again, Shalure. That much is true. If an easy life is all you are capable of living, then perhaps it is best if you run back to the shkazat den the moment Khyven’s back is turned.”
“Ah ang ohgkess!” she shouted.
I am worthless!
“You have been wounded,” Lorelle said. “And I’m so sorry for that. But it is only a wound.”
Shalure slapped her bare chest with a hand. “Ah angok eek!”
I cannot speak!
An idea rose within Lorelle then, but she didn’t want to do it. She almost turned to go again, but instead she opened another pouch and withdrew a weathered, leather-bound book. It was small, barely the size of her hand. She carried it with her everywhere, had carried it since she and Rhenn had learned it almost a decade ago.
It was a book of annotated hand positions for a silent language. It was old, with a strange, gray paper, and Lorelle wasn’t sure in which kingdom it had originated, but it had been invaluable to the two girls.
In their ten years learning to live in the woods and later as they began building Rhenn’s rebellion, the two friends had used these hand signs to communicate silently, a skill of great usefulness when sneaking into the city or dodging patrols sent to kill them. After a year of inventing and practicing, they could carry on an entire conversation without opening their mouths.
Lorelle didn’t need the book anymore—she’d long since memorized its contents—but she had kept it, a loving memory of two scared girls who had bonded so strongly that they could speak without saying a word.
Lorelle squeezed the book with both hands and mentally let it go.
“This is for you.” She set the book on the bed.
“Ah ig ik?”
What is it?
“A new language. A different way to speak.”
“Ah ong ang ik!”
I don’t want it.
“That is your choice, but the book now belongs to you.”
Shalure picked it up and hurled it across the room. The precious catalog of Lorelle and Rhenn’s silent language hit the wall and fell to the floor. For Lorelle, it felt like her heart had struck the wall. She wanted to turn on Shalure and scream at her.
Instead, she clenched her fists and held her anger.
She knew what it was to be in pain, to feel your whole life slip away like you’d dropped through a hole in the floor. Lorelle had precious little compassion to give right now, but Shalure needed it even more than she did.
Lorelle took a deep breath and turned to face the blazing rebellion in Shalure’s eyes.
“Vamreth’s cruelty was monstrous.” She raised her arm and pointed directly at Shalure’s mouth. “He did that to you. You didn’t make that choice.” Then she gestured at Shalure’s skinny body, at her bedraggled hair, and finally at the little book laying in the corner. “But you are making this one. Your friends care about you. Let them help you.”
“Ah ave oh oiyses!” she gargled.
I have no choices!
“After I lost my parents, I thought the same. I felt helpless, spent, scared. I wanted to lay down and die. But Rhenn picked me up and saw me through that time even though she had lost her family as well. She made me see that I still had so much left to give and to live for—an entirely new life. With her help I found my way again.”
She walked to the door and paused, turning a final time to regard Shalure. “You may feel alone, that you’re the only one feeling so much pain, but you aren’t. Rhenn, the last scrap of family I have, has been taken from me, and I swear I’m going to find her or die trying. What will you die trying to do?”
She left the room.
Chapter Eleven
Lorelle
Lorelle closed the door, leaned on the wall, and pressed her hand to her chest, pushing at her breastbone as though that would quiet the flames inside. She felt she could have handled that better with Shalure, but it was so hard to concentrate. It took so much effort to simply stand and not scream at the pain. She needed rest, but she couldn’t sleep. It was like trying to sleep while someone was branding her with glowing hot iron.
Enough, she thought. Feel sorry for yourself after you rescue Rhenn.
She strode up the hallway. What she needed was more experimentation on the Plunnos. The Nox said it was fake, but Nox were liars. The Plunnos was where she needed her concentration. Not on Khyven. Not on the Nox and his silver tongue.
Her tattered soul suddenly flared as she reached the intersection of the corridor. She gasped, pulled up short, and looked to her left.
Khyven was leaning against the wall, one leg cocked up behind him, his arms crossed over his powerful chest. He exuded the power of a crouched Kyolar. Lotura, the man was only a few weeks from his sick bed, and he already looked like his old self.
At the camp, Rhenn had called him “Khyven the Pretty,” and that’s all Lorelle could see now. The light scars on his face from the Helm of Darkness only served to make him more compelling, just as Rhenn had joked. His carved jawline, the muscles in his neck, and the hollow of his throat drew her eye. His rough, capable hands, large and callused from years of sword wielding made her want to put them on her body. She wanted to run her fingers through that careless mess of his thick, brown hair that looked just right on him. She wanted to let those rich brown eyes warm her with their intensity.
Since she’d given half her soul to him, he seemed perfect in every way.
She hesitated, glancing to the side, and thought about bolting. He would chase her, of course. In the Night Ring, he had been trained to stalk his objective, trained never to stop.
If he found out the truth of their half soul-bond… he would take charge, take the decision out of her hands, attempt to complete the soul-bond immediately and damn the consequences.
