Part Ten: Glenumbra Moors, 4E 212 (II)
The sun was already half-way to its zenith when Borrig and Prisa dragged themselves out of their tent, still sleepy, and began preparations for brunch. The most prominent feature of these preparations was a periodic collapse into each other's arms, not erotic, but…. celebratory, perhaps. The whole experience was like having a wonderful dream, and then waking up and realizing that everything in the dream and more was theirs in reality. Neither of them could remember any time in their previous lives that they had been even a fraction as happy as they were now.
Still, Borrig remained prey to worry. Encouraged by his new sense of responsibility as not only a partner and lover but a prospective parent, he periodically scanned the horizon for any sign of a dark cloud, only to have Prisa blow any and all worries away with a confident puff.
His chief source of concern was Prisa's family. His own, he knew that they could handle, given time. If he walked into his clan hall with twins in his arms and a beautiful Imperial at his side, the men would all start to bellow at him and glare at Prisa, he knew, but the women would fall over themselves to coo over the babies – twins would be particularly irresistible – and introduce themselves to their mother, and sooner rather than later, they would tell the men to sit down and shut up, or else. And in his clan, that was the sort of quarrel that the women always won. The Tharns, on the other hand….
Prisa was inclined to treat her mother as a minor problem, deflecting all concerns with a casual dismissal that left Borrig fretting. Prisa tried to reassure him.
"You just have to trust me in this. My family has to be told that they are not necessary to our future. They will imagine they're important, that they hold our fate in their hands, but… I don't care any longer. What they do, what they think, whether they even exist.
"My mother was going to try to trade me off like a piece of…. meat. No. That's too nice. She doesn't do nice. A fuck toy. She would have twisted my arm till it broke off to get me to open my legs for some impotent, insolent fart forty years older than me, just for a few months of political advantage. That's what she did to my two older sisters, and I was next in line. But Dibella gave me you, and damn it, I love you and I'm taking you. And our real family has already begun. In less than a year, I'll have two more to love, and two more whom you love, two someones, both part you and part me."
"But will your mother try to get back at you?"
"Not if she knows what's good for her," Prisa replied in a steady, soft voice. She had a look on her face that Borrig had never seen before, even back when they were open enemies just arrived at the College and looking to do each other a mischief. A relentless, unforgiving gaze free of any sort of mercy or restraint. An animal look. Like a mother wolf protecting her cubs, Borrig thought.
"She was the one who insisted on making me into a damned fine necromancer," Prisa continued after a momentary pause. "Never thought I might turn it on her, I suppose. I was always the quiet, meek one. But she knows what I can do if I have to. She knows that I'm better at necromancy, and all the Dark Arts, than she ever was. I won't hurt her any more than necessary, not at all if it isn't necessary, but if she touches you or our children, I swear I'll rip her skin off and pack her in a hogshead of salt. She doesn't know for sure about what I've done already…but she suspects. Let it be a lesson to her. Leave us alone or else. Is it really that much to ask?"
"What you've done already?" Borrig knew it might be a bad question to ask, but he also knew that Prisa wouldn't find peace until she had come to terms with all of her past.
Prisa nodded. Then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out and hugged Borrig to her so violently that it was painful, digging her fingernails into his back, grinding herself against him. It wasn't sexual in the least this time, Borrig realized. Prisa just needed to reassure herself, body and mind, that he was here and he accepted her, and so he returned the embrace with equal force. Still holding him tightly, she whispered into his ear.
"My eldest sister's husband… political marriage, Mother half forced and half lied my sister into it… told her it was for show only… she didn't want him, but instead of ignoring her, the way Mother had sworn he would, he raped her. She'd been a virgin, of course. Beat her until she was half unconscious and then had a couple of his servants hold her down so that he could tear off her clothes and screw her. Night after night. Sometimes he had the servants screw her while he watched and cheered them on. He did that when he couldn't get it up. Listening to her crying and screaming, and watching the servants get rough with her, excited him, and then he could do her himself. The worse they hurt her, the more they humiliated her, the more excited he got.
"She told me. All of it. She didn't dare tell anyone else. She was crying and crying, and she's my sister, my big sister, the one who was more like a mother to me when I was a child than my own horrible mother ever was… And now she wanted to kill herself. She begged me to get her some poison. I told her no, I would think of something else, something that would make everything right for her again….So I killed him."
Borrig felt Prisa shudder, but her voice remained calm.
"The only person I've ever killed, really, and I killed him the ugliest way I knew. Mother doesn't really believe that I did it, because she still doesn't realize I could do things like that so early. I was barely fifteen when all this happened. But she wonders. Suspects. Fears. That's good."
Borrig turned to brush Prisa's hair off her face and kissed her. "If taking revenge for a family member's mistreatment were a sin, then nine out of ten of my ancestors would be in the Ashpits," he said. "You did what you had to do to protect your sister. My family would never object. Quite the reverse. They'd see you as a hero, especially since you had to do it when you were so young, and all alone."
"But I went too far….I was fifteen, I'd never even thought of physically harming any one of the Ten Races before, but after my sister told me what her husband was doing to her, I was so angry that I couldn't think straight. I just wanted to make him scream, burn him alive, dissolve him in acid, something gruesome and painful, the more gruesome, the more painful, the better.
"And it was then that I happened to come across one of Abnur Tharn's old notebooks, and in it was this spell. But Abnur had written under it that he'd never cast this spell, and he never would; he only recorded it for reference. Abnur Tharn, the most ruthless old devil who ever lived – and even he thought this spell was too disgusting to use. But that was like a signal for me to use it. I should have thought more clearly, but I knew my sister was getting raped almost every night. And I remembered that her husband's first wife had died of an illness, or so he had said. Died of mistreatment, I'm sure. Raped to death, or something close to that.
"The spell was called Sanguine's Inferno. It was cast on a powder, and the powder didn't have any effect at all on women, ever, or on men unless it came into contact with their sex organs. But if a man did get some there, even a tiny amount…. after a day or two, your equipment and the whole area would become inflamed and incredibly sensitive, so that you couldn't piss or shit without howling in agony. You could reverse the effects of the spell then, if you knew what you were doing, but that was the last chance you had. After a week or ten days more, everything down there would begin to go rotten, and stink horribly, and become full of huge maggots, and the maggots would spread up into your guts as well, burrow through your butthole and spread all through your body, and eat your internal organs until you died. But when you died, they would all instantly disappear, since they were projections, brought there by the spell, fetches from some horrid corner of Oblivion, not real maggots. That was why no doctor could treat them successfully….
"The spell included instructions on making the death more or less painful, more or less prolonged. And may all the gods forgive me this, but I was so angry that I ensorcelled the powder as powerfully as I could, so that the torture would last weeks, and be horrible enough to drive him mad. I took the powder to my sister. I didn't tell her what it did. I just told her to dust it between her legs, and if he or the servants raped her again, it would be the last time. She did, and of course, they did too. And it was the last time.
"My sister told me after it was over that her husband died a nightmare death. It took more than a month for him to expire. He spent the last week insane, thrashing about in agony as if he were being slowly roasted alive, screaming night and day, and he looked so awful and stank so badly that no one could bear to be with him. At the very end, when the maggots were coming out of his eye sockets and he'd gone blind, they just slammed the door of his chamber, locked it tight, and ignored the noises from behind. So he died alone in the dark, out of his mind, rotting and stinking and screaming in a puddle of his own excrement. His two servants had started to rot as well, but they'd both had the common sense to kill themselves when it got to that point. He tried to hang on, the fool, and he was tormented past all endurance before the Dread Lord came.
"When my sister told me what had happened…. I laughed. Exactly what the bastard deserved, I thought. But even then I knew something wasn't right. She thanked me for freeing her from her nightmare, but my sister wasn't happy. She was dazed with horror. She didn't blame me, but she told me that she could still hear her husband's screams. So I went back home and burned the page of the old notebook that contained the spell. I suppose I'm the only person who knows it now, and it will die with me.
"And my sister…she was safe from him then, but the strain of everything that had happened was too much for her. She couldn't handle it, and I guess she just gave up. She became simple-minded, confused about the most common things. Living in a fog. She's a nun serving Arkay now, praying for the dead. I told her abbot what had happened, and they have been very gentle with her. I visit her now and then, when I'm in the Imperial City. She still knows me, and loves me. She doesn't remember anything that happened in her marriage, though, only old incidents from our childhood together. I suppose that's due to the mercy of the gods. She's happy again, or at least content. But I'll never know whether it was her husband who broke her mind, or whether it was my clumsy attempt to get revenge for what he was doing to her that pushed her over the edge."
"That's the wrong question, love," Borrig said, quickly and firmly. Prisa looked up, into his eyes. "There's someone more important than even her husband."
"The right question is who started all this, and the person who started it was your mother. She was the one who forced this union on your elder sister, and made it impossible for you not to act. Perhaps you did go too far. But you wouldn't have gone anywhere at all without the marriage in the first place. And your mother must have known what sort of a person her daughter's prospective husband was. It was her business to know, even if it meant digging out some of the man's former servants and bribing the truth out of them. Without your mother, nothing would have happened at all."
Prisa nodded, but made no reply.
"That's why I worry, love," Borrig continued. "She would do something like that to her own daughter….even if she isn't a monster of wickedness, she's dangerously selfish and careless. What happened to your second sister, by the way? You said your mother married her off as well. Did she have better luck?"
Prisa laughed, "She did. For my mother, the worst possible outcome….My second sister's husband may have been an old fart on the outside, but on the inside, he was a pushover. After a bit of cautious tiptoeing around each other, they found out that they really did have a lot in common, and eventually they fell in love with each other, despite the difference in age. He does anything my sister wants; thank goodness she's not the greedy sort. And he got so lost in indulging her and enjoying his good fortune so late in life that at her suggestion, he withdrew from the political world and court life entirely and became something of a patron of the arts instead. That meant the entire marriage became useless in my mother's eyes, since he was no longer active in politics and she didn't care what painter or composer got his patronage. She was furious; I tried not to laugh. But even before we turned to each other, I had no intention of gambling on having the same kind of luck."
She changed the topic suddenly. "Better not stay here all day. We were delayed enough with that extra time in Whiterun, more than a week in the end, but since we got so much done…." She patted her stomach, no outward sign yet, of course, of her condition. "….I don't regret it. But if we don't move on, we'll annoy our escort."
It took only half an hour to pack up their tent and distribute the load between their two horses. Borrig had already noticed, to his relief, that for a city girl Prisa was very good with animals and an excellent horsewoman. One less thing she could be mocked for by his family, he thought. Most of them had a poor opinion of the overprotected and coddled residents of the Imperial City, and Prisa's obvious expertise and comfort when dealing with horses would go a long way toward overcoming it.
"Who taught you to ride, love?" he asked, as they mounted their horses and began to walk them down along the path leading away from the battlefield, now so silent in the early spring sunshine.
"Family servants," Prisa replied. "Some of them could almost read an animal's mind, and they taught me a few tricks to keep horses from getting restless. One of the older women had even been with the Wyrd in her younger days, before marrying and coming to the city. I loved to listen to her talk – so different from my ever-scheming mother – and I learned a lot from her that doesn't fit into a regular curriculum, even one for a magician…."
The two meandered back over the battlefield one last time, just in case, but there was nothing there except the occasional animal or bird, and the morning mist curling from the lowest and most boggy sections. It promised to be another superb spring day, with scarcely a cloud in the sky. Passing through the opening in the hills that ringed the battlefield, they turned their horses onto the road to the north, moving a little faster now, and trotted off under the mid-morning sun. Next stop Pariah Abbey, Prisa thought. Another place with a history. May the peace and acceptance we found here be present there as well.