Anyone who reads my fiction knows, I normally post a chapter for my fics every other day or so...or I try to anyway. This is not a normal fic and it will be taking its own sweet time. By this I mean about a chapter a week. The updates may be longer or they may be the same 1000-2000 word chapters I tend to write. This is my first Tamora Pierce fic, but please don't go easy on me.
Author's Note
I -sadly- do not own Tortall, etc. (Tamora Pierce) or the Gentlemen (Joss Wheldon...this is NOT a Buffy fic.). I don't waste my precious creativity on…
…ARE YOU STILL HERE! GET TO THE STORY YOU IDIOTS! If you don't scroll down right now, future chapters will have the worst DEPRAVITIES YOU CAN GIVE A TORTALL STORY!
I will misspell1 ROGUE as ROUGE (Also an X-Men problem, but it happens almost never since most offenders have been assassinated by fans)
2 ALANNA as ALLANA or worse
and all of those stupid mistakes where you use the wrong form of the word (ex: their, there, they're and so many more that would make you cringe if I stuck them in one place for you to read…hey…that could be fun…)
I will destroy the antagonists in the plot and make them black and white monsters with one-track-minds only fit to be in a silent movie…oops…too late. But that's beside the point. Don't you want a complex villain with emotions and motives that you wish would beat the crap out of the hero?---------------Damn little brainwashed simpletons…
I will end all effort to create a feeling for the story, in other words, Tortall and all that comes attached will no longer be a magical kingdom but a weird American Middle School with the odd curtsey and spell thrown in.
And, HORROR OF HORRORS!!
EVERY CHAPTER HENCEFORTH WILL BE ENTIRELY IN INCREDIBLY REPETITIVE SONGFIC FORM. (GASP! COVER YOUR EYES IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!!)
Ah! That feel good. Guys, I'm just kidding. I would never jade your innocence like that. Take the above as constructive criticism or an innocent joke at our expense. Yes, even me.
That brings me to a question. If I have any stupid errors in my stories, could you please tell me semi-nicely? I'm careful, but definitely not perfect.
Very truly yours,
Eternity's Voice...Oh stop reading the niceties and get to the real stuff!
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Unable to Scream
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Mira of Lesandor is the perfect knight-in-training, even if she is a girl. Strong as steel, her friends joke that she will break the Chamber, rather than the other way around. If only they knew that Mira is terrified of the Silence, and has a very good reason to be. The Silence killed her family in front of her eyes and still calls for her death.
Prologue
The people of Lesandor went about their daily routine unnaturally quiet. Winces struck faces as doors shut gently. That small noise was too loud. The bustle of the town's markets and the normally unending songs of workers were gone. The woodsmen, who held daily contests to see who could cut the trees the loudest, instead competed for the softest hacking of timber. The women weeding in the fields concentrated on the ground and never whistled their magic charms to help ease the stubborn plants from the dirt. No plump matrons were willing to stridently haggle with shopkeepers that day. The sellers of the goods felt the same and posted prices at a pittance of their goods' worth. All around the duchy, the maker of the smallest noise received glares so all was quiet.
Even the animals fell silent, as if they somehow sensed the terrible evil that had befallen their masters. Birds and wild beasts avoided the duchy, so hunters sipped ale timidly in strangely hushed taverns. Travelers, those newly arrived at Lesandor, did not understand but held their tongues to avoid trouble. It was not as if the people could not speak. That terror was now lifted from them. No, their own sickened horror sealed their throats. At least from words. Throughout the day, endless shovels were employed in burying vomit. Endless mugs were emptied to rinse bile out of quivering mouths. Grown, hardened men cried and mothers drew their children to their chests.
The poor children did not understand. In hushed whispers they would say, "Where is Mira?" "It's been two days, Momma." "Why hasn't Mira come down to play?" "Is Mira sick?" Their mothers only looked at them sadly and told them hush.
Only one child broke the silence of Lesandor. Screams filled the late Duke's residence and nothing would calm them. After two days and a night, the servants no longer tried to soothe their mistress. They allowed Mira to sob in their arms or pound on them with her weak fists. They fed her when she let them, wiped her tears when she would hold still. They kept the small girl from sharp objects and high places. No one left her alone, no matter how she fought. She was all the people of Lesandor had left, Duchess Mira. They would not lose her too.
It was that desperation to save the child that sent the second messenger to Corus. That rider Dryn Bachet rode twice as hard as his predecessor. He carried no trivial message of the unsolved murder of his lady's family and the strange happenings surrounding the event. His lady's life was at stake; it was in his hands. For two days, Dryn rode hard. He nearly ran the horse that carried him to the ground each day. If he had an alternate horse, he would have already. On the third day of riding west, he reached the cooler, less lush forests not far from the city of Corus. The paths grooved through the stands of hardy trees were broken by the occasional surfaced root. At the pace Dryn forced the horse, what happened next was inevitable.
When the horse lamed its foot, Bachet let out a string of curses he never knew he knew. A harsh voice reprimanded, "Such language, child! What would your mother say?" Whirling around in the small clearing he and the horse had tumbled into, the messenger saw he faced a monster. He turned white as the thing resting on a tree limb cackled, "Never seen a Stormwing before, have you man child?" Not to be swayed from his duty, Dryn pleaded with the Immortal. "I beg of you, milady." It was a female. "Tell me the direction of the nearest town. I must replace my horse to reach the palace in time."
He tried to swallow the dry contents of his mouth as she glared at him. "Time. You mortals are all so concerned about time." She cocked her head to the side as only those with bird blood could. "Still, you look desperate. Shall we play a game, mortal? Tell me why you must hurry. If your cause is worthy of my help, I will point you to a trader of horses, now headed to the capital. You will never find her trail without me, but it is close enough that you may catch her on foot. If your excuse is pathetic, I will torture you and slake my thirst with your fright. Why so silent, child? Speak up or you will be screaming shortly."
His words spilled out in a torrent. "Milady, I was sent by the Duchy of Lesandor to travel swiftly to the city of Corus and beg the king to send back a mind healer for our duchess. I am the second messenger to leave from our lands in three days, but my message is more important. Mira, the youngest daughter of Duke Kirn, was found two days ago screaming. It was the first sound we heard after the mist left." Dryns voice began to crack. "We found the duchess in the same room as her family, only they were dead. Their hearts were…cut out of their chests. We can't find the hearts. The duchess has not stopped screaming. We fear for her sanity.
"Please, Stormwing! She is only six years of age. I must save her. If she is not healed soon…" He shuddered and tears escaped his eyes.
"Enough!" a strangled voice cried. Bachet looked up, startled. Surely that young, compassionate voice could not belong to the ages old Stormwing. She had withdrawn from view, hiding in the shadows on the ground underneath the trees. "No Stormwing would dare risk the sanity of a child, traveler. Go!" A hand shot from the darkness, pointing. "There is a brook not far from here. The trader Onua has stopped there for evening. Her horses are untrained, but fast, long winded, and born for rough terrain. Go!"
Go the messenger did. Such was his rush to find the trainer that his mind ignored several strange things about his encounter. He did not miss the possibility that the Immortal had been toying with him and was sending him to his doom. It was the other things that eluded him. When he first met her, the Stormwing had perched on a branch. Her bird feet explained that, but she had ended up on the ground after his plea. Stormwings could barely stand on the earth because of their talon feet, yet she had easily. The Stormwing's last words had been sweet and melodic, while the monsters were known for their harsh, crow-like caws. All of that was excusable. It was something else.
The Stormwing had pointed the way with her hand. It was a pure, clean limb, one that could only be found upon the most gentile noble maiden. Stormwings did not so much have hands as horrible claws. Filthy things, covered by centuries of rotted remains. No Stormwing could possess such an arm. A fact that Ravri the Stormwing knew all too well.
"Could it be?" she mused with a faint awe for the beauty of her hand. She knew much of her body had reverted to what it had been before its defilement, but she dared not look. Ravri averted her eyes from that physical exquisiteness for she might remember the original beauty of her heart and soul. She could not bear to know it again; it had brought her so much pain before. Why else would she have accepted the curse as a blessing? The only motive was to be free from guilt and doubt for eternity.
But now a deceptive and deadly poison filled her silvery veins: hope. "Could one of the children have returned to us?" She whispered the venom's lie aloud. It reverberated through her and she knew it would not stop until she purged the taint from her heart. The children would never come because they were dead, every last one. Ravri had taken a hand in their demise. The Dark One's gift had been offered to her because of the entrails on her beautiful hands and the horrid guilty tears on her porcelain face. She hardened her heart to the hope and cried out, "Impossible!" The delicate fingers turned back into talons, proving the miracle had only been from her momentary and silly concern for the mortal child. Ravri set out to defile her purified limbs at once. She smiled at the lamed horse, grinning broader when its heart burst with fear. "This horse the mortal lamed will be adequate until I can find a proper human corpse."
Dryn found the stream and the train of horses. He also found a sturdy crossbow aimed at the space between his eyes. "And you would be who, young fool? This is not the area to traipse about alone, especially on foot. There are worse things here than wild cats and wolves. Are you –or rather, were you- one of them?" This woman he assumed was Onua the horse trader was dusky skinned and had dark eyes. The effect was handsome, but foreboding. She stood tall and straight, but held herself loosely and looked very flexible. There were most likely muscles under her loose shirt, but those hardly mattered when the weapon only required a finger twitch to kill.
He slowly edged himself down to rest his hands on his knees and pant. The woman's aim followed. He gasped, "Worse things? No , not me. Just a lord's messenger." He raised a hand to reveal the silver pendant wrapped onto the wrist. His late duke's seal was engraved in it. Bachet turned it from side to side, revealing the light layer of enamel in the grooves as it flashed in the light. He hoped the trader knew that it meant he was authentic. Onua lowered the bow; she was apparently aware of the crown's newest trick to prevent counterfeits. She mumbled some complicated words in a language he didn't understand and the pendant's enamel glowed crimson. She was very aware of the trick. The crossbow was lowered but not unstrung. The trader held it at the ready near her hip. As he caught his breath, Dryn thought about what the woman had said. A bit of irony struck him and he chuckled, "I'm not a worse thing. I suppose that Stormwing I met a few minutes back would count though." The crossbow's aim was immediately redirected to the trees behind him. He waved a dismissive hand and she lowered the bow, about an inch.
"She won't bother us. Too busy with my poor horse, I suspect. Are you the horse trader Onua?"
Her black eyebrow arched and he explained, "The Stormwing told me you were this way."
"Why? Why did she tell you and why did you actually believe that thing?"
The man dropped to the ground and looked up at her. "Don't think that I didn't know I might run off a cliff following her directions, but I hardly had a choice. You must understand I must obtain help for my lady quickly. Arriving at Corus too late would be worse than not arriving at all, for I would know I had failed. I needed a horse and I had to take the chance she actually told the truth." He looked back into the trees. "I must admit, when I explained why I needed to obtain a horse, she couldn't get me moving this way quickly enough." The quirked eyebrow switched sides and he continued, "Lesandor's child duchess is in great danger of going insane." He avoided reason why: the butchering of her family in front of her eyes. "When she heard this, she cried out that no Stormwing would risk a child's sanity and screamed for me to come this way. The Immortal sounded sincere, if you can believe."
She shook her head. "I can't believe." She tapped her foot. "Well, are you waiting down there for, spring to come? That pony on the end can take you to Corus. Lame her and you're a dead man. Leave her at the palace stables and I will take her back. Your horse will be replaced there, I'm sure. Go."
For the second time that day, Dryn followed the go command. He was gone in minutes, pausing only to accept some of the supplies that had been in his late mount's saddlebags rather than his own pack. A moment later, a girl appeared from inside the trader's tent. She had the Scranran features that many people in Tortall possessed, but hers were authentic. From the sleek golden dreadlocks to her vividly colored costume, which Onua's eyes found both appealing and painful, she was Scranra itself. "Packing and moving are we? Because close is the steel feather woman?" Although her accent was barely noticeable and her vocabulary in Imperial common immense –a feat the trader found astonishing since the girl had known nothing of the language at the beginning of their journey- she had no sense of sentence structure. It wasn't hard to understand and had a slow beauty like a waltz, but it did grow annoying. Onua swore her companion spoke that way on purpose. "On the head, Krimise. Behind you."
A pony attempted to bite the Scranran. Again. It was the most unusual thing about the mysterious child in her opinion. The ponies were constantly trying to chomp on Krimise, but not out of anger. When they managed to nibble, it was as if they were saying, "Greetings, I have the utmost respect for you, but I must have a taste." It almost seemed like they thought she was the proverbial grass clump of the god horses. All tethered ponies insisted that the juicy bit just beyond their reach was that holy patch. Unfortunately, Krimise was very much in range. The girl deftly twisted away from the pony's teeth and lightly pounded a fist on its head. The tawny animal made a sound very much like a sigh and went back to the real plants at its feet.
Onua sighed and set about packing up the tent. In the past few years, she had managed to pick the most unusual riding assistants. There had been Mosdri, who had been followed by a magnificent golden eagle. It had an uncanny ability to increase his boy's marginal Gift to the power and brilliance of a portable sun. It went through all sorts of magic testing but turned out to be only a normal bird. The mystery went unsolved when the two vanished on Midwinter Night, much to Numair's disappointment. She had been through two others: a young man who was possessed by a very small but extremely nosy god and a child who had a habit of walking in people's dreams. It was suspected that the second had been a demigod herself, but had also disappeared before anything could be proven.
She looked at the way the Lord's messenger had gone and then at the direction he had told her the kindly Stormwing rested. 'Horse Lords, is nothing in this country normal anymore?"