Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (96 page)

“Stephanie Doreen Strong,” the face said. “For the first time you have used the power of the Bindu-ward art of magic and spell, and you have used it to kill. You will now enter the Bindu-trance. In this trance you will travel to the netherworld and meet the souls of the ones whose lives you have ended. This is necessary for them to begin the next phase of their journey. Do not worry, it will feel no different than going to sleep. But know this.” The voice got distinctly louder. “You must hide yourself, and take care that none who would do you harm are able to find you while you are in the trance, for were this to happen, you would be completely at their mercy.”

“I remember you,” said Doreen.

A look of puzzlement flashed briefly over the face in the strange stone.

“I must go now,” the face said, starting to fade.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Doreen, “they were going to execute me! That’s what they told me. I didn’t want to kill anybody … ”

“Hide yourself,” said the voice, and the face disappeared.

“Wait,” said Doreen. “Wait. Please. I want to ask some questions … ” But the talisman had faded yet again to the color purple and, not surprisingly, she could get nothing more from it. “Wonderful,” she said softly to the horse. “I have no idea where I am, but I’m supposed to hide somewhere. Where am I supposed to hide?” His blank stare did nothing to help.

She undid his reins and led him on a half-hour trek deeper into the woods, when the sickness began to overwhelm her again, and soon she found she could go not a step further. Tying him hurriedly to the nearest tree, she undid her bedroll, wrapped herself in it, and fell into a deep sleep. At first it was dreamless, but she awakened within it and found herself floating in a seemingly infinite black void. She felt a sudden, searing pain around her navel and, instinctively reaching for it, touched a strange protuberance jutting out from her belly. It was some sort of cord, about three inches in diameter, which was firmly attached to her and extended out past where her hands could reach. It had a squishy, jello-like texture to it, and seemed to be covered by a slippery, thin membrane.

Her strange umbilical fastening started to glow and pulsate, much like one of those Christmas light-ropes. This luminescent, jelly-filled cord projected away from her as far as she could see, disappearing into the darkness beyond. She tugged gently on it and it started to pull her forward, slowly at first, then faster and faster, gaining speed every second. Oddly, she felt no wind-effect as she held on tight, traveling forward now at a fantastic speed when, way off in the distance, a hazy-red glow started to form around the remote tip of her celestial tether. Larger and larger this hazy ring of crimson grew, drawing her closer and closer until it swallowed her up.

The black void that had first surrounded her now gave way to massive, glowing, red walls, looking more fluid than solid. They heaved and lifted rhythmically, as if breathing. The bottom of this fiery passageway now opened up into an expansive chasm out of which rushed a blast of acrid, ovenlike air. After reaching the center, she slowed to a stop. The combined odor of sulfur and pig waste that wafted up nearly caused her to vomit. She looked down at the cavern floor far below her and noticed that it appeared to be alive, as if covered with an infinite number of wiggling and squirming worms. Looking closer, she was struck by the realization that those were not worms at all, but people, and she could now hear the unrelenting drone of countless thousands of them, all moaning in eternal agony.

And then came the voice, softly at first, then louder and louder.

“I want her. I want her. I want her. I want her...”

The hair on the back of her neck bristled, her skin crawled, and again she felt she might vomit.

A great rumbling abruptly shook the chamber walls and, off to her right, some massive thing began pushing its way up from beneath the ocean of writhing bodies that were soon sprinkled over its towering form like so many maggots adhering to a rotting carcass. It had an immense head, with spiraled, ram-like horns. Phosphorescent orange-red dots were centered within each of its six, coal-black, deep-set eyes, and the mouth, which took up half its face, bore a macabre smile of row-upon-row of needle-like teeth. It slowly turned its gaze towards her, casually flicking away from its behemoth body dozens of the tiny terrified-looking souls that clung to it, the horrifying screams of whom echoed in her head as she watched them plummet back down into the pit. She desperately wanted to turn away from this thing, but found she was powerless.

Smashing hundreds with every step, it began wading towards her, raising its arms in a desire to grab. Now completely panicked, she pulled wildly at the cord. Finally, it responded, violently jerking her away from the monster’s hands closing in on her. She rocketed upward through a tunnel of hellfire and, with the flame tips licking at her heels, straight out into a nocturnal sky dusted with the sparkles of countless millions of stars. The iridescent indigo blues and sapphire reds of nebula clouds whizzed by her, and as frightened as she had been by her encounter with the beast, it was impossible to not hold her breath in wonder at these heavenly visions. But before long, the speed at which she was traveling caused these dazzling sights to blur and stretch until everything was whited out, flooding her in the light of a hundred suns.

Then, everything went still. She felt for the cord. It was gone. She sensed ground beneath her feet as she touched down from her trans-world crossing. Directly in front of her were three Trolls, each one chained to a massive white column, the tops of which disappeared high overhead. To the right was a pathway. To the left, a solid white wall over which she could not see. It looked to be made of polished marble.

“Please free us,” called one.

“Yes, free us,” called the second. The third echoed the first two.

“I know you,” she said. “You were the ones who were going to execute me a few hours ago. Tell me, why should I set you free?”

“Because you killed us, and we can go no further without your help,” said one. “We are dead by your hands and will remain chained here until you pass on, unless you free us. At least that is how it was explained to us. Are you sure you want to have it on your conscience that we will be chained here and suffering all that time, knowing you could have set us free?”

“What are your names?”

“I am Jobst Nunns,” said one.

“I am Martus Kisk,” said the second.

“I am Forbst Grottos,” said the third.

“My name is Doreen,” she said. “At least that’s the name I have been using, although I’m told that my name is Stephanie Doreen Strong. The thing is, I have, like, no idea who I am. I have no memory beyond a day when I met a boy named Erik. He’s the Prince of Ravenwild. Or was, anyway. Some Troll who cracked me on the head took that memory from me. Why he did that I don’t know, but what I
do
know is, had he not, I would at least know who I am. Okay, Jobst Nunns, tell me, why you were going to kill me?”

Jobst Nunns looked puzzled by the question. Doreen walked up to him and put her face in his. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? It’s a simple question. Answer it.”

He looked down at his feet. “I have no good answer for you except to say that we were acting under orders.”

“Besides, we weren’t going to execute you,” said Martus Kisk. “We were only taking you to be executed. As Jobst said, we were just obeying orders.”

“Just … obeying … orders,” said Doreen. “That’s a pretty lame excuse for taking somebody’s very life, don’t you think? All right, Forbst Grottos, you answer it, why was I being executed in the first place?” She moved over, now standing directly in front of him.

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Well, you
better
understand the question, or I swear I will walk down that pathway and leave you here to rot,” she barked. “For the simpleminded, I will ask it like this. What did I
do
to deserve the sentence of death? What was my crime?”

“I am sorry, Stephanie Doreen Strong,” said Forbst Grottos. “I still do not understand the question. We are, or were at any rate, nations at war and acting on orders from our commander. When you are at war, the rules are different. Our orders came from our commander. And those same orders, by the rules of war, came down from our Emperor. To have disobeyed them would have meant that we were guilty of treason and ourselves put to death. We had no choice in the matter. Soldiers obey. That is what we do. Did.”

“Yes, and besides,” interjected Jobst Nunns, “the plain truth is, we were going to eat you. Well, maybe not us, but you
were
going to be eaten. Meaning yes, your life would have been forfeit, but your body would have served to keep some of us alive. So your death, however tragic, would not have been a total waste.”

“Eat me?”
screamed Doreen. “You were going to
eat me?
How sick is that?”

Nobody spoke for a while as Doreen walked over to a white stone bench that had suddenly materialized out of nowhere on the far side of the trail. She sat down and put her head in her hands, trying to sort it all out.

“We are Trolls,” said Jobst Nunns softly. “It is what we do. It is what we have always done.”

“Tell her the rest,” said Martus Kisk. “Tell her how she was going to die.”

“Yes,” said Doreen. “I thought about that a lot last night. Do tell.”

Jobst Nunns looked nervously at Forbst Grottos, licking his lips, then back at Martus Kisk. “You brought it up,” he said. “You tell her.”

“All right,” he sighed. “I will. You would have been boiled alive in a cook pot, screaming to the end … ” his voice trailing off to a whisper.

“Great,” she mumbled, all the while holding her head. “What a happy thought. And what purpose would that have served? The torture, I mean?”

All of the Trolls remained silent.

Doreen stood, shaking her head, a look of disgust on her face. “I’m going to take a walk now. Maybe I’ll come back. Maybe I won’t. I need to think about this.”

She walked along the pathway until she was out of sight of the three Trolls. She could hear them calling to her, but didn’t pay any attention to the words until she heard one of them yell, “We are sorry. We were wrong.”

She walked on a bit further and came across another bench that faced a beautiful stream. It gurgled happily in front of her. Birds called out cheerily, and squirrels chattered noisily all about. The sounds stirred something deep inside of her. She was certain she knew those sounds. She remembered them from somewhere, but she could not remember from where. But she knew there was something right about them, something that was good and decent from the life she had known before her memory was taken from her on that terrible day.

She remembered how she had awakened in the castle of the Troll Emperor, and the love that had been given her by that wonderful doctor whose name she had never known, and how he had died that horrible death on the Great Slovan Plains. She thought about the warm embrace of his assistant, a Troll. What was her name? Daria. That’s right. She remembered how she had tended her, and fussed over her, the gentleness in her touch, the caring. And how her brother had risked his own life to save her from the beast who was going to have her killed the same way that those three Trolls she had walked away from had admitted they were going to end her life.

All at once, there was no bench, there were no sounds, and not a breath of air broke the stillness. With only the feel of her chin resting on her hand, everything around her lost all color and clarity. In a moment’s time, she found herself in a bank of fog so dense she could not see her hands before her face.

Then the voices started, coming from out of the pall. A few at first, they whispered to her, and then a few more calling out softly, and then more and more, until there were dozens of them, then hundreds, then thousands. All clamored for her ear, pleading with her to hear
their
voice, to listen to
their
story, but she could only make out a word or two of any one particular voice before it was lost in the din. If only she could sort them all out. If only she could make it all stop.

Then one spoke, a little louder than the rest. The others calmed and faded away, and as quickly as the fog had appeared, it too abated to reveal a familiar place, but not the one she had moments before left. She sat high in a sand dune overlooking a dark blue sea, the hue so deep as to make it appear almost black. She was in her “other place”. It was a place she knew. And she had been here before. She knew this as well.