The Well of Fates

CHAPTER 16

  The Falcon

  A'lan sat watching his charge with no less interest now that she was asleep than he had when she was awake. If anything, it was safer now that she was not scowling at him from under lowered brows.

  Those grey eyes that so despised him in the day were closed in peaceful sleep. The expression on her face, relaxed and calm, was so altered she looked a different person altogether. Normally those lips were pursed in vexed silence, or snarling around bared teeth.

  By day she was a leashed wolf—or a caged falcon as Keravel says. A gift that had been stolen from her, and she badly wanted it back. Like any creature she wants to be free, and like any falcon, she wants to fly.

  He could see that yearning every time he looked at her, that and the fear that she tried so hard to cover: fear that centered around himself, his brother, and the Drethlords. To others, she might seem as calm and proud and brave as the day she stepped into the hall to meet Keravel, but not to A'lan.

  His life had hinged on reading the expressions of others, and he saw her almost every hour of the day. She is finally beginning to understand. Keeping up a brave front is to her credit, but it is only days until she collapses. As inconvenient as she could be, he was still not looking forward to that day.

  Brave or not, there was no other outcome. Keravel had decided she was the sacrifice the world needed, and that meant he was determined to control her. Once Keravel has sunk his claws into you, there is no escape.

  A'lan could have told her that himself. That was something he knew of, only his chains were not of stone, but blood. The blood of a single person, the only daughter of their father, that was what kept him here. He shoved the memories away, as was routine.

  For the hundredth time since he had taken E'dan's place, he held back a yawn. It was exhausting watching her every minute of every day. At first she had only tried to free herself. It had taken two weeks of constant battles, each ending with her getting the beating of her life, for her to recognize there was no opportunity to escape. Nothing had been altered a hair by her resistance, but she did not stop. Stopping would mean defeat.

  When they needed haste she dragged her feet, when they needed quiet she shouted, and when they tried to speak with her she was silent as a stone. She showed no respect to anyone with authority, but remained unfailingly polite to anyone without. E'dan and himself she merely called "Watcher" if ever she deigned to address them. From her lips it had the sound of someone summoning a servant.

  With the Drethlords, she was even less respectful. All of them she referred to as "boy" or "child," though most were three times her age or more. It was not feigned—he could sense her compassion for the underlings and her contempt and hatred for their masters. He had lost track of how many stripes she had taken for it.

  Then there was Firstborn Keravel, or, as she called him, Dog. And there was no mistaking the title with the affection one has for one's favorite hound, almost human and almost family. When she spoke to Keravel it was very clear that she meant ‘dog’ in the sense of a mangy pest of an animal that you tolerate only because you can't make it leave you alone.

  The beatings she had earned from those words A'lan had not lost track of. There had been four in the first two weeks alone, each enough to nearly flay her to death. It was not a pain that A'lan would have relished for himself, no matter his training. She did not stop, but there was a slowly growing despair in the slump of her shoulders and the shadows of her eyes.

  It dawns on her that she might never escape. Keravel himself took care of the more intensive aspects of her training. Rechane was generally in charge of torture, but his talents lay with the Elements. With the Bloodstone in place, Keravel took over. He had always preferred to use his hands, to feel what he was doing.

  It made A'lan's skin crawl to see it. Keravel had an especial talent: leaving his victims flirting with death, but never losing them. The men normally in charge of interrogation turned an uncomfortable shade of green if they stayed to watch the session, and they were not soft men.

  After four of those, it is no surprise that she sees death as another avenue of escape, maybe the only one. Only the devastating hopelessness of that conclusion could have inspired their conversation the next day. That had been the day she had stopped eating on her own.

  "Why do you stare? You'll not get anything better on camp rations." I warned, thinking she wanted something else.

  "I don't want it, Watcher." She said, not proud, just completely uninterested. But I did not understand.

  "If you do not eat it, you will be hungry, there isn't anything else." I should have known that quality was not the problem. She had eyes like ice when she answered,

  "I know." That was it. And then I understood.

  Even the memory sent a shiver down his spine. It was chilling. She welcomes hunger. She welcomes death like a cold man welcomes a fire, like a lover welcomes a kiss. It was wrong for life to want death that way, and it haunted him.

  Ever since that day, he and E'dan had been forced to watch her every move. The time she lurched for the huge wagon wheels would have ended in disaster if her slipper had not slid in the mud and slowed her scramble for death. Every man in camp kept close tabs on their tableware now, buried it deep in their saddlebags. Not so much as a fork was left unattended or unpacked. He had little half-moon scars on his forearm from her fingernails when he had tried to get the good metal knife away from her throat only a three days past. It was similar to the scar on Corin's arm inflicted by her teeth that first day. Truth she put up a fight for so small a girl! Now she is fighting to be free in a wholly different way.

  He spent half his waking hours suspicious and on edge, watching for the sudden alertness that was all the warning he had. This is not what the oath is meant to be, I am not supposed to be a shield from her own hand. But Watchers are not supposed to be leash-holders to their Wielders either.

  The Linking, too, was intended to be the connection between the caster and their appointed guardian to keep them together, not to prevent one from escaping. And a Watcher was meant to be a legendary fighter bound to a cause. He supposed he was a fighter, for all it mattered, it was the cause to which he and his brother were bound that was the root of these peculiarities.

  Whatever the purpose of Watchers or Wielders, this particular Wielder refused to touch any tableware as soon as anything dangerously sharp or hard had been removed from reach.

  Feeding her was a trial– they trying to sustain her, she trying to choke or starve herself. If anyone got too close, she'd bite them as hard as an unruly mare. Eventually, they had thought up a device to help. They had bored a hole through a wedge-shaped bit of wood that they forced between her teeth to pour soup into her mouth. It disgusted him that it came to this. It was a disaster that he endured his role in twice daily.

  Despite their moderate success, she was getting thinner and thinner all the time. Clothes hung off her like ill-made sacks instead of the tailored dresses that they were. The only effective way to physically force her to eat was to use Elements, and that was not an option. Threatening force only played into her plan to die.

  He knew that no matter how she strained for death now, no matter how thin and weak she looked to him, the instant the Bloodstone did not connect them she would crush the Brethren like so many ants. Untouchable as he was, A'lan did not think he wanted to find out just how creative she could be. A fist of Wind cannot kill me directly, but if it dropped a wagon on my head what is the difference? Dead is dead, by the Elements, with the Elements, or otherwise.

  It had taken her a few attempts with loose reins and a strip of cloth torn from her dress to decide that strangling herself would not work, since one of them always noticed—it took too long to hang herself properly, and simpler ways failed when she went unconscious and could not keep from breathing. The body always wanted life, even when the spirit did not. Plus, one or other of them always noticed the fuzziness of the link and investigated.

  Truly,
I do not think she wants to lose her life. She just doesn’t think this is life. A fine distinction. Every so often, when she forgot where she was, he could see it. Once one of the dogs that lingered around the camp following the casters came bounding up to drop a stick the size of a small tree at her feet. Faced with big hound eyes and a canine smile, the Wielder had laughed and hurled the log as far as she could. The game went on for nearly an hour, before the beast was absolutely exhausted and the Wielder was spotted with mud, bark, and slobber. It was the only time he had ever seen her smile. She has a beautiful smile, a beautiful laugh. It goes as quickly as it comes when she sees someone watching.

  It made him wonder what she had been like before being chained. The pieces of memories from the Linking were hardly indicative. A man and woman chained in a wagon, seen through a screen of branches, and a child’s confusion and fear. A drop of dew shivering on a leaf in a net of silver and sapphire, and blood-racing excitement. An flash of white light on the horizon, and a world of pain and fear and loneliness. Too few pieces of the puzzle to make out the whole.

  Her flashes of life were always swallowed up by the Wielder's purpose, her drive to be free of himself and his brother. Sparkling eyes hardened right back into cold, emotionless slate. The brilliance of those moments was hastily choked off when she saw his surprise.

  By itself that showed how peculiar she was; nothing anyone did made him surprised or happy or anything else. They simply were, and they simply did, with the exception of E’dan and Sarina.

  Even if something did make him feel, it was never enough to show itself on his face. Yet here was this Wielder that genuinely surprised him with something as simple as laughter and noticed that she had. A truly puzzling occurrence. Perhaps that was what it meant to be a person of prophecy—unusual. Or maybe it was because he knew she was unusual that it affected him this way, or maybe it was the Link and his oath. Whatever it was, he did not like it.

  He frowned at the sleeping form on the blankets, ignoring the biting wind that snuck in the cracks of their wagon. What a peculiar little cage on wheels. The strangeness of it struck him yet again.

  She is the Guardian, being guarded. I am the captor, but with the way she dominates our days, I wonder who is whose captive. We are Watchers, Linked to her and she to us in an inescapable bond. She is the most dangerous being in the world, and we have to keep her alive every second of the day.

  She was Elaina Aridal Tristarine, Last of the Order of the Guardians, Wielder of the Elements, Mistress of Hasile. Or that was who she should have been; now she was a prisoner.

  He was Cade A'lan Gidedrian, High Blade of the Thousand Lances, Lord of the Morayen Isles, Prince of Antral. Or he had been, once. Now he was just the best of the watchdogs. To guard her was the duty he owed to the ones who held the leash, and he would see it done with or without her help.

  Oh yes, as surely as the sun rose, once Keravel has you, you are finished in the world of the living, regardless of how long it takes you to die.