1. Stranger
December 31, 2025 at 5:00 AM
The wound reminded me again, that the bandage only hides it. It opened, like an eye, still tired and drowsy, with sharp edges and needles instead of eyelashes. Something alien and disturbing was oozing from it, like pus, like bad dreams, that did not want to be seen. But the wound still stared deep down, where the quiet, sparkling blood was born.
It was as red in colour, as anyone else's, but looked like it had absorbed the drowning sun, spilling rays of a living light. Every drop had a star inside it, falling and fading slowly. No one has ever heard their cries, but the stars grew accustomed to it, just as I had long since gotten used to living with the dull pain, that stirred something salty and sweet inside my ribcage. It would taste the result later and curl into a crushing lump beneath the collarbones, having found the skeleton key to close the heart, and then edges would fuse again just as smoothly, with slow stitches through the living flesh.
It has not stopped that flesh from living yet.
But it still bothered me, that over the years this mysterious wound, located exactly a palm's width above my heart, began to open more and more frequently, like an old window sash, creaking in a strong wind. One might have thought, that it was trying to say something each time, bleeding light, but it could not.
Those incoherent truths scraped at my ribs from within, flowed through my arteries, reaching my brain, leaving behind fragments of someone else's distant memory, squirming like worms. As if someone unknown and misunderstood was drawing three parallel lines on the water surface with a pitchfork. The bandages were soaked with unrealistic hopes, slowly pumped out of my heart.
It was like something had broken inside, but I did not understand what it was, or how to fix it, since I did not know how it should have been. Only empty guesses lined up, like planets in the night, and some strange, slow chill of foreboding touched the back of my neck, forcing me to turn around involuntarily, tugging on the horse's reins, and peer suspiciously into the prickly morning mist.
Was someone standing there on tiptoes, motionless, searching for an abyss to stare into? Someone, who was predatory, nimble and cautious, with sewn-on ears and eyes of a much more dangerous creature, determined to learn something, I had never even dreamed of, and then leave the empty shell of their servant to pick up the pieces, knowing that the cut thoughts would no longer fit together.
HAPPINESS... there were not enough letters for it. Only A, P, I, and N were left...
... Nothing added up, but pain.
And there was, as always, no one behind me. Only the ashes of all burned bridges, fine and crumbly, already cooled down and settled on the road dust.
As far as I knew, this scar under my collarbone had been there practically since birth, bright and jagged, resembling a red caterpillar with its legs fanned out on a hot August midnight. It had been basking on my ribs and seemingly died right there. In reality, that caterpillar had simply been fast asleep, dreaming of what kind of a hawkmoth it might become and applying various skull designs to its abdomen. It woke up for the first time when I was sixteen, and liquid light and blood began to flow from the torn cocoon.
I remembered the sheet, spattered with this pulsating, living fire. We breathed together with the wound, deeply and raggedly, expecting betrayal from every gasp of air, which promised, that it would not become the last. I remembered the healer's hesitant words, coming through a thick layer of a cotton wool that filled not only my fox ears, which were trembling slightly, but also my entire body, like a rag doll, which could be so easily torn, and then the red cotton wool would start falling onto the iron medical trays for clamps and scalpels.
The healer did not know what it was, even though he was old, and the fur on his tail had thinned with age, but in his long life he had never encountered anything like it, and therefore could not even look me in the eyes. My vertical pupils, narrowed by the bright light, resembled the black darning. There was a lot of preserved blue sun there and not enough of me.
The little fox-boy, I used to be, was frightened then, thinking he was dying. He truly did die that day, but only for others. He matured and learned more than he wanted, but still less than he truly needed to learn.
For example, he found out that those, whom he had previously sincerely considered his parents, were, in fact, not his blood relatives at all. The head of the fox clan's merchant guild had taken a baby from a red-haired woman with blood-red eyes near a nearby temple, hoping to conceal from his wife, who, after a difficult delivery, was no longer able to bear children, that their long-awaited and already beloved cub had been stillborn. None of them had even paid attention to the strange mark on the adopted boy's unhealthily pale skin, which later revealed itself, oozing a mystical light, and transformed their "dear son" into a "witch's spawn" in his adoptive father's eyes, widened with animal terror.
He confessed to everything himself, though no explanation was demanded or even asked of him. He spoke quickly and haltingly, spitting words out as if he was trying to rid himself of hot coals in his mouth. They still burned his tongue and palate, because nothing passes without a trace, and the ingrained lie leaves transparent painful blisters behind.
"Do you understand now that he is not cursed? He is the curse himself! He is not our child! We do not even know what he is!" The fear was raw, viscous, and out of place in the voice of someone accustomed to commanding markets and caravans. It cut through the frozen knots of emotions and seared through the marble funerary mask that my adoptive mother's face had become at that moment. She did not move, did not even blink, only the tip of her silver fox tail trembled faintly. Her slender hands were pressed to her chest, as if a similar mystical wound had opened there as well, and she, too, was experiencing phantom pain. "Have you seen his blood?! Normal fox-people do not have blood like that! Maybe he is not a living creature at all, but a monster created by that witch!"
I heard it all from the top of the stairs, as, conquering my own weakness from the recent loss of blood with every step, I went out of my room towards the sounds of the quarrel, like a moth flying to the flame. The adoptive father did not know that his son was standing there, he did not look up, did not see the reaction to his words, did not hear the last of colour dripping from the fox-boy's face. How his breath broke. And the echo of that ragged pulse reverberated loudly off the golden moulding on the walls. It was a cage for predators... but no.
The closed heart did not let any sounds, that were quieter than words, in.
"No..." My adoptive mother's voice was weak and hoarse, almost unrecognisable. It flickered like a candle flame, falling to the carpet in drops of wax, and then, just as suddenly, the flame shot up with a scream. "No! He is still our son! My son! I raised him. I taught him to walk. I sang him lullabies. I held him tight, when he was cutting fangs. He is my child!"
My pupils involuntarily widened, focusing on the knot of bulging veins on my adoptive father's hand, which clenched into a fist and slammed down on the table, clattering the dishes. The eyes tore free, leaving a few nerves behind.
"Are you crazy?! I do not want that witch's spawn in this house! We need to find a knightly order, a magical academy, a monastery of Shelyn... anything! He must go away!"
Something snapped inside me then, abruptly and silently, as I exhaled. Something, that was, obviously, unnecessary. It burst, hitting my eardrums. It flowed down the sharp claws that scratched my palms even deeper.
"This creature, you call son, is a mistake of nature!"
I will remember it forever. How my pupils suddenly shrank into slits, crushing all lingering reflections like nutshells. How my thoughts crunched like ice on my fangs, contrasting with the molten molasses of the false calmness. How I raised my voice. How I responded, so controlled. Evenly. Clearly.
"Nature makes mistakes far less often, than you... father."
...and how pleasant it was to see the shudder of truth as he turned toward the stairs. He paled noticeably, as if the colour was draining from his face along with the cold sweat. His toes clenched convulsively, the claws pierced the wooden floorboards, his fox tail pressed against his buckling knees, but my adopted mother lifted her chin, also catching the distinct scent of fear through her parted lips.
"You are afraid of him."
She did not ask. She knew, that her husband's answer would be just another lie. The truth stayed in his shifty eyes. Their colour of leaves was turning yellow in terror before the onset of a long, blinding winter. He hated it for its inevitability. For its cold, icy-blue look, like the one of his son's, and its haughty eyelashes, white and sparse, wasted on making wishes. Stars fell deep into the pupils and faded.
Everything would come true, except for just one wish to return everything to the way it used to be.
But shattered childhood illusions were drawn in chalk, white on white. At least no one would notice or would be able to read those. I grew too old for them as if they were a chicken pox.
For twenty years since then, not a single healer, priest, wizard, alchemist... none of those, whom first my adoptive mother and then I myself turned to, could even guess, what this curse was or where it came from, let alone cure it completely.
My adoptive father did not kick me out of the house, he simply avoided me, became indifferent to everything except profit and prestige, dry and hard as sandpaper. But, to his credit, he dutifully paid for my education, whatever I wanted to learn, and then, yielding to my adoptive mother's persuasion, reluctantly gave me a job in his merchant guild as a "sales representative." He did not even hide his disappointment when, after undergoing comprehensive magical and combat training in the Order of the Hellknights, despite my family fortune allowing me to afford an escort of elite, well-drilled guards, I chose not to take the vows and join their ranks, but returned home. The knights, it seemed, were not happy about this either, but free students with no tuition fees left to pay had every right to leave.
I learned to live with my wound, especially since I could not remember a life without it. It periodically reopened and bled, but it always soon closed on its own without any consequences. Contrary to my adoptive father's fears, no other mystery connected with it had ever occurred. Yet. But if they said that Lady Terendelev, the most powerful healer from the dragon clan, had settled in the borderlands, then this was a chance to finally solve the problem once and for all.
Not to find out who my real parents were, no. If they were real, they would not have abandoned me to a childless couple as a baby. But I did not need a parting gift like this wound, so I took an indefinite time off in my father's trade guild "to improve my health" and set out on the long journey to Kenabres. Lady Terendelev simply could not have chosen a more dangerous place to live. On the other hand, she always had someone to heal there...
My horse snorted and tossed his head, sparks, escaping from his nostrils and mouth, quickly extinguished in the morning chill. Like me, he, even at this distance, sensed a completely different wound, one much deeper than mine. The Worldwound, as these dying, rotting lands were called, conquered by the lord of locusts Deskari, and the infection, seeping like mercury from the rifts in space that a hundred years ago had allowed him to come into the world of mortals, was killing so slowly that this process still could be called life by some.
Only the protective Wardstones, the enormous obelisks built in every city along the border, had, probably, prevented this plague from engulfing the entire world and breaking its last straw, to remain here forever. In every rustle. In every breath of air carried through the body by blood. A quiet, dormant infection accumulated in the leaves in the spring. Thus, the locusts always had something to feed on.
Do not go there.
I pulled the reins, turning right, and that right was to breathe in the morning air deeply. It was early. Too early to draw any conclusions, to make plans from the silence, shattered by the rhythmic clatter of flaming hooves on the stones.
The outlines of Kenabres spread across the hills in the distance, as if growing out of them like an extension of the same white morning haze. The fogs, quite frequent here, usually skirted the city itself, perched on a hill. Rarely wandering into the wide streets, fogs remained lying by the walls of the fortress, like grey-haired, thieving vagabonds, decomposing there very quickly, usually before dawn. They had not managed to steal anything, really, even though they were accused of everything.
The northeastern edge of the kingdom of Mendev shivered. Stripped of all unnecessary things, mummified, its face cracked with time, stony and frozen. It was indifferent to itself, bristling with stunted tufts of last year's grass and unwelcomingly pushing aside the bushy clouds in the sky, squinting at the still very cold sun.
Spring was different everywhere, but here, above these apathetic plains, it seemed meaningless, buried alive, like useless details untimely and, in fact, empty. The fog was hungry, devouring the salty outlines of the towers, crunching the silhouettes of the scattered trees. It was white-hot, unaware that it was burning from within, having bitten off more, than it could chew.
A deceptively quiet flame breathed and pulsed in my horse's almond-shaped eyes and around the bitten bridle. His fiery mane was combed hair to hair, obeying no one but its master. Horses of this breed were called nightmares by everyone, who dared not even dream of taming one. I called him a friend.
After all, who, but a monster, could understand another monster? We were alike, and not just because of our vertical pupils, our ability to dance in fire without burning, our heightened senses and reflexes. It was much deeper, lodged in our blood and bones, born with us, fragments of darkness, starless as his black hide.
There was no one to fear us on this long, empty road. But if the fear dwells within, then there will always be a nightmare outside. What could the guards at the gates and the archers on the fortress walls see? Only a rippling outline and smoke from a living flame, as if someone carried a torch, which would not make anything brighter during the day.
I could already sense their emotions, limp and marinated within their armour. A grated fatigue was the colour of walnut, rubbed into their eyes by a sleeve. They had clearly been bored at their post today, and the guards were glad of it, because so close to the Worldwound the absence of news was always considered the most welcome news.
Why were they still here, where even hope for a better life had died long before they were born? I was not going to ask the locals about that. They had probably gotten used to this slow agony over the cliff, just as I had gotten used to the blinking of an old scar.
It wanted to watch too.
"Oh, my... it is a fire horse! What the..."
The scent of panic seemed especially sharp and sticky now, like sweaty palms pressed against the shaft of a halberd, trying to cling to something familiar. This guard was very young and so wet behind the ears, that his head froze at the mere thought about this lone traveller being, at the very least, the harbinger of the end of times. War was riding on the fire horse too.
"Calm down, son," the second guard was older, more reserved. He had surely seen worse with his single eye, including the one, that had left crudely stitched, slanting scars across his face and a black eye patch over his empty socket. Whatever that creature was. "It is just a nightmare."
How many times had each of us heard similar words, spoken by another, much warmer voice of a parent, after having woken up in the middle of the night, still seeing a strange, awkward and unnatural bulky creature in the shadows in the corner of the room? Silent and faceless, it twitched slightly, as if in convulsions, tore apart old stitches with its disproportionately long fingers with extra phalanxes, peered inside a dying body and saw nothing.
Was this what fear looked like? No. It was pain. Because the fear always had eyes.
The young guard stared into them now, trying to appear menacing, to prove to himself more than to his brother-in-arms, who was old enough to be his father, that he was up to this job. But the tarry drops of his pupils boiled on the hot coals, and the reflection in them melted helplessly, distorted, wary.
"Documents," his gaze suddenly darted up, as if he was afraid, that the nightmare horse would suddenly speak instead of me. Kenabres was behind this youth, the archers on the walls were ready to fire at his signal, and he tried not to think, that, if it comes to it, these arrows would not save him. "Your horse does not look trustworthy."
"Yet, he is worthy of trust."
I did not add "more than many, who walk on two legs," just dismounted, having leaped softly into the thick fog, that drowned the fluffy sounds before they could have even opened their eyes.
The guards did not make the same mistake. Neither of them even blinked as I reached into one of the inner pockets of the pink gold-embroidered robe I wore over my usual red shirt, which hided the blood stains so well. Paper was waiting for its time there to beat stone. Stamped, neatly folded and bearing seals, it authorised me to represent my father's merchant guild even in these lands, which still considered themselves not forsaken by the goddess Iomedae.
There was also a much more modest letter of invitation from the dragon healer. Her large handwriting was almost illegible, as if she was accustomed to writing by dipping her claw in ink, rather than being able, like all dragons and some foxes, to shapeshift and blend into the crowd. Because of this, the guards studied the letter much longer than my documents.
"Lady Terendelev? I doubt she will be able to see you today. There is a celebration in Kenabres."
My fox ear twitched, reaching for the escaped words, which I had heard clearly, but still could not put together. A celebration? Seriously? What could even be celebrated in a kingdom, where none of its citizens even remembered the land not being a bleeding wound for a hundred years? Was it some anniversary of victory in one of those battles, that Mendev considered great, but the relatives of the fallen considered terrible? Or was it the birthday of queen Galfrey, on whose head her subjects, if only they could, would have put a halo to complement her insufficiently heavy crown? Or maybe it was the commemoration of the first magical obelisk built along the border, celebrating the protective chain, which had amputated the cursed and decaying Drezen province like a limb, having deemed it beyond saving? No, it was simply an excuse to show off a ceremonial officer uniform...
...or to get drunk.
Judging by the senior guard's tone, he would not have refused a sip of something stronger in this cold himself, if he had not need to work even on the national day-off.
"You may find Lady Terendelev at the main square, but it is better to rent a room at the inn for the night, take a walk today, get some rest..." His slightly disdainful and suspicious scarred gaze slowly shifted from me back to my horse. The dirt did not stick to the fire anyway, but crumbled into ash, clean and white, like stars crunched between his teeth. "But, please, leave your... mount in the stables, sir. There is no need to have the Eagle Watch boys worried for nothing."
The Eagle Watch. I had heard that name of the knightly order that hunted spies and secret followers of Deskari's cult within the city walls, but the watchmen usually looked for the wrong people and in the wrong places. For example, there was a very big scandal, when a cultist had been discovered among the high-ranking members of the Eagle Watch itself, so my horse was certainly the last thing they should have been worrying about.
"Are there any ostlers here, who can handle such horses?" I asked coolly, and my horse, apparently doubting it even more, snorted, sending crackling sparks flying from his nostrils. The words stirred embers deep in his throat, and the streaming smoke sought its own fire.
"Believe me, everyone in Kenabres is familiar with nightmares."
A calm hoarse voice seemed to detach itself from the solid stone wall, as a newcomer took a step forward. Unlike one of the guards, he was not green, far from it. Autumn hues permeated his simple but sturdy clothing, there were the soft yellow hint of fallen leaves and the coolness of raw clay. Among the city buildings, it was almost a camouflage, practical, with a thick leather vest and matching patches on the knees, trimmed with short fur, like his boots. Soft and without heels, they allowed for silent and predatory movement. The tip of the agile hairless tail was never touching the ground, resembling a snake poised to strike.
Tiefling. As far as I knew, their kind was unpopular in Mendev, often forced to do the most menial labour. In fact, in many lands, they were the scapegoats. Their horns, strong and sturdy, contributed to that. This tiefling's horns practically matched the shape of his head, curving back, and were several shades darker than his sleek light-brown hair, with a slight golden tint where the sun was touching it.
In the corner of my eye I managed to glimpse the guards' emotions, fresh and rich, without the disdain or cautious desire to keep their distance, as members of other clans usually did around tieflings. They both clearly knew this guy. Moreover, they seemed to respect him, having shown this to me unknowingly with short nods of their heads, which looked like the muted bows.
Now that was interesting.
"You do not look like a stable hand," I remarked.
The tiefling did not even flinch as my nightmare horse reached out to sniff him, drawing the scents deep into his nostrils to melt in the blazing fire. He did not smell a horse thief here either.
"Appearances can be deceiving. Call me Rekarth."
I noticed, that Rekarth's evasive answer neither confirmed nor denied anything. He merely shrugged, nodding toward the city stables, and glanced prudently at the documents, he had helped move from the senior guard's hands back to me.
"You, by the way, do not look like a travelling merchant either."
That is because I am here on a personal matter. And what is your excuse?
Obviously, I did not say anything like that out loud. If high-ranking officers in Kenabres preferred to check on every visitor incognito, that was their own problem.
I simply wanted to finish my business and leave Mendev as quickly as possible. Even the silence here was oppressing, confused by whether it was before or after the storm. Probably, it was in-between. And from this, oppressive premonitions, like two walls with rusty, sore spikes, approached my throbbing temples from both sides. They were crushed by the feeling of something lost from sight, something terrible,cutting the very edge of the reflection in the glass and disappearing beyond the horizon. Somewhere where butterflies were beating their wings, and every forge kept loosing nails.
"And who, do you think, I look like?"
Rekarth accepted the calm unemotional challenge, thrown like a glove, with metallic words wrapped in velvet, with dignity. He was interested solely in actions.
"You look like someone, who is used not to bargaining, but to taking what is his. And who can easily take, what is not his, as well."
My face had long ago learned to be expressionless at such moments, blank as an unlined sheet of paper. I drew a smile on it and cut out a thin, tight line of curved lips. What is not mine, he said? All the swarms of locusts, the hungry crackling of their wings, the edges of the eaten-away abscesses on the earth, in the sky, and on everything that still lay in between, breathing and screaming only through the wounds?
Do you really think I need this?
"Do not worry," I assured Rekarth, following the nightmare toward the stables in the direction, pointed by the guards. They were no longer watching our every movement, and our footsteps stole the silence from the travel bag of the chilly transparent air. "I do not intend to cause trouble in Kenabres."
"But, I suppose, you do not intend to solve them either?"
Rekarth, hiding his already soft steps behind the clatter of my horse's hooves, stared at me suspiciously, and I could see my own reflection in his slightly elongated, horizontal pupils. Even with the tiefling's eyes wide open, those were giving the impression of a tense squint.
I have never liked mirrors, their bitter truth, which tasted of silver, the cracks of early wrinkles around the eyes, the sickly pallor, outlined with the blue pulse, pounding through my veins. Sometimes I wondered, if my skin had such a hideous shade since childhood also because of this wound, which constantly caused me to lose not only blood, but also light.
It was strange, that there were so much light within me to begin with... I have never considered myself a flawless and noble knight. And those, who fancied themselves as such, had been flocking to Kenabres like white moths to a flame.
"Are you talking about joining the crusade against the lord of locusts?"
The very idea was wild, snarling and growling, waiting for the right moment to bite the hand, that dared to offer it some food for thought.
But usually, if people arrived in Kenabres with sheathed swords, it was for precisely for this reason. Their eyes glowed, their hearts were open and laid upon the sacrificial altar of some ideals and delusions, but the most recruits were fast to realise, that there was nothing grand or heroic about these crusades, there were only corpses, entrails, decay and filth.
Some of them were dying even faster, though, and without even realising anything.
"No, thanks... I am not willing to march at anyone's command," I snorted, shaking my head and even the white tip of my fox tail, which twitched involuntarily in disapproval. "And as for those, who command, they are, probably, not willing to let me do that in their place either."
Besides, their place was not even in the sun. On the contrary, it was at the very edge of darkness, and the echoes of its sweet putrid scent continued to melt every thought slowly and methodically, as if they were buried in the cavities of the brain.
I could not see Rekarth's face, nor could he see mine. The silence between us was curling into tendrils, melting easily on the nightmare's coal-black fur. This pause pretended to be anything, but a fuse, already burning. And the first guess has exploded, as it was expected.
"So, if I understand correctly, you want... to lead... the next crusade?" Rekarth asked me slowly. His words were thrown like crumpled paper through the fiery mane accurately, but they did not burn.
I merely raised an eyebrow, weighing his question like a page of history folded into a crown. It was even pleasant, impossible and therefore weightless, like my childhood dream of actually being a prince and becoming a king one day. I used to fantasise about it often soon after I had learned, that my guardians were not my real parents. And then I grew up.
In reality, crowns rarely ended up on those heads, which could really think.
"What I want is not important," I exhaled, letting the very memory of that illusion go. "What matters is what I can do."
And Rekarth, even being an Eagle Watch spy with commendable powers of observation and the cover story, that left much to be desired, had no idea what I was truly capable of.
"But, as I have already said, I do not intend to cause trouble. And I am not going to stay here any longer than necessary."
"We will see," Rekarth shrugged. He tried so hard to blend in, that he stood out in that way alone. But in Kenabres, I could not avoid being noticed even like that.
Here, besides the humans of the sun folk, forest gnomes and the mountain clans of dwarves lived. Among the nobility one could occasionally meet sky folk, poetically known in these parts as aasimars, winged people, who often looked down on everyone, literally and figuratively. The moon folk made ends meet in the poor quarters, and I was not even sure the tieflings knew that in the Kitsune language they were called like that, because my fox clan kept far from these parts.
During the long journey through the kingdom of Mendev to the borderlands, I have not seen a single kinsman. And if wary glances were bound to be thrown as stones, then I would rather let them burn in the mane of my magical horse, than cling like overripe burdocks to my fox ears and tail, crawl like white threads through the needles of my vertical pupils, and sew shady rumours to a bright fire.
The centre of attention was not the place, where I wanted to be.
But I have always loved the sun. Like a fox, for whom, even in the darkness, bits of it still linger in the glowing eyes...
On the way to the stables a few passers-by, naturally, glanced warily at the nightmare, whispering among themselves, but the web of roads softly digested them all, dissolving their voices in dust and stomach acid. They lingered no longer, than sparks from burning hooves on the pavement.
Each building along the wide street was made from stone and majestic in its own way, without architectural embellishments, but ready to stand firm. Having grown from the planted seed of an enchanted obelisk with protective runes, the former village knew a hundred years ago that it would become not just a city, but the last line of defence, which the lord of locusts would never cross for sure.
Perhaps, the legendary fortress of Drezen had once believed so as well, but now it was lodged deep in the throat of the infected lands, like a bone, and the locusts were gnawing at its remains with relish.
It was a shame, really. In the Hellknights' history classes, I was told, that it was a truly remarkable place. Although, how could they have known for sure? Even the oldest veterans had seen Drezen only on paintings by now.
Suddenly I wondered, if anyone would be drawing cityscapes of Kenabres during today's celebration...
This view was not bad. A large sign reading "Defender's Heart" on a sturdy building, that refused to show its age, hinted, that a stone could beat too. Calmly and steadily, without any emotion it filled the core of the city, which was breathing the rot of many wounds. Here, closer to the centre, the proximity of the contaminated lands could be hardly felt, but further away it was fogs and acid rains, which truly reigned there, not the crown.
Here, though, the air was cleaner and seemed to sparkle, saluting the honey-scented sun, arranging sparse clouds as if in preparation for the parade. The sounds of loud music from the central square reached even here in colourful splashes. But the stables next to the inn were dry. This calmness was crunching underfoot together with the straw, brittle as the stars of the tiny white flowers trapped in it. I looked around, searching for an unoccupied stall for my horse.
An old man was sleeping on a chair in the corner, and he looked much more like an ostler, than Rekarth did. His slouch hat was shielding him from the daylight, that filled every wrinkle to the brim. A thin smile grew around the chewed blade of grass, clasped between his cracked lips. He was not having nightmares. But one came to him with waking up.
The old man winced, catching the scent of sulphur in the air with his hooked nose. Smoke caught the grey hooks of eyelashes, lifting his eyelids. My horse had inhaled his fear before the old man even realised, who was standing before him, and he jumped up from his chair, which creaked angrily, as if it had dozed off too.
"What kind of beast is that?!"
"A horse," I replied calmly, seeing that Rekarth, who was standing now near the elderly ostler, gently pat his tense shoulder, either reassuring or warning him not to interfere. "A special one, but still a horse."
The old man swallowed my clarification. He apparently knew Rekarth well enough to believe in his safety next to him. But even so, I still did not think, that Rekarth actually worked in the stables. A confident, springy menace, unfazed by sound, was palpable in his every step.
He could, probably, say the same about me, which is why he has been watching me closely.
"The nightmare horse will stay here until the venerable merchant finishes his business in Kenabres. I will make sure of that," Rekarth promised the ostler, though the last sentence took a dig at different soil. Chronic fatigue and irritation were growing there in abundance. And so, frequent weeding was necessary.
"Thank you," my cold politeness cooled the air along with the protective charms I had cast routinely on the stall. "He is tame. Like a fire in a hearth."
But even so, you should not play with fire, because otherwise the fire will play with you.
Having soaked deeply into the wood, the magical energy gave it a whitish hue and a transparent glow, as if some jar of preserved moonlight had been broken. The shards did not hurt, everyone had their own truth for that.
"You mean, a snap of your fingers is enough to stop this special horse from burning down the entire stables?" The words crunched like icicles on the old man's teeth, as if he could feel the cold without touching the enchanted boards and the straw, covered in magic like in the morning frost. "You will answer me for the damage!"
"I have never had to," I answered anyway, if it made him feel any better. "This spell lasts for a day, and I will be back by evening at the latest."
The nightmare, who had already entered the enchanted stall calmly, knew his place, unlike the ostler.
The black hide was hot, but not scalding, as I ran my fingers down the horse's neck, without touching the mane, which flared slightly brighter. Flames were trailing through the air, thin and mesmerising, like long red braids, ignoring the advice of the drafts, who thought they knew and heard absolutely everything.
The nightmare lowered his head eagerly, reaching for my other hand, on the palm of which a magical fire had ignited a second before. It was not destructive, but steady, almost gentle. The horse took the heat with his lips, as if it was a slice of an apple, and the flame went down the throat like a sip of life-giving nectar.
"Oh, my, and I thought they only fed on fear," the old ostler chuckled ungracefully, shifting his hat to scratch his head. That usually did not help to stir the thoughts like coals
"Among other things, yes," I did not go into details. The nightmare had already eaten his fill, he did not need fresh fears right now, and I did not have time for any more questions. Rekarth smirked. He was certainly aware, that these horses were able to drain their prey of their life force, leaving only a desiccated shell, with the blood itself evaporated inside the veins, and the heart beating a few more times in agony, pointlessly trying to pump the emptiness. "But eating fire is enough for them, too."
Especially since the old man's crispy idle fear had not actually gone anywhere, resembling dry blades of grass in the pasture. Speaking of the bandage, that only hides the wound...
"Thank you for feeding him a little."
I left the horse in Rekarth's care. There was no scent of deception about him, he smelled only of wariness, transparent and bloodless, like a fish swimming under the ice without trying to break it. It will melt on its own.
"Fare well," Rekarth said with a dark irony in his voice, making it clear he had drawn the right conclusions from Lady Terendelev's letter. He walked me to the door, stopped, leaned against the door frame, and blurred into a dark outline against the light.
"I will try."
That was my plan for visiting Kenabres, until it failed.
