Érad dreamt darkly. He dreamt that he was on a ship amidst a vast sea, the length of its hull adorned in gilded, glowing iconography that lit up the waters beneath them. He was but one of many sailors working the maintenance on board the glorious vessel, their crew in search of something beyond the capacity of his mind to understand.
Suddenly the ship’s bell rang across the foredeck and Érad whipped his head up keenly, peering across the deck. He could not explain why, but far ahead of them in the distance the sight of two horizons - one impossibly parallel to the other - brought him unfiltered joy. From the crow’s nest a fellow sailor shouted something in a strange language he could nevertheless understand.
“We’ve come, we’ve come!”
The vicious sea wind that lapped at the sails smelled strongly of salt and something beneath its fragrance that was far more subtle: the tantalizing aroma of a promised land. At the smell of it Érad felt his hands - small and weathered and of a dark color - move of their own volition, releasing the rope he had been meaning to tie again and reknot. He turned sharply on his heel and from behind him he could hear the ropes he had been working on begin to rattle and snap. He moved rapidly across the length of the deck, ignoring his fellows who began to suddenly shout that the rigging had gotten loose save for one whose gaze he caught: the navigator near the helm who remained unfazed, a swarthy woman whose hands looked as if they’d been dipped in fresh blood. She gave Érad a nod in passing that brought a smile to his lips. From the periphery of his vision he could see his companions hidden amongst the crew subtly position themselves in place.
Érad drew his weapon, a strange implement of steel and wood that reeked of smoke and fire, and dutifully ignored the beginning screams behind him, reaching instead for the shadowy door that led to the captain’s quarters. He leant in against its frame and then used his weight to break it open, spilling into the opulent den with his weapon raised to kill.
He didn’t expect the captain to be waiting for him, his own implement already aimed and at the ready with a long face clenched tight in a grimace of disappointment. The last words Érad could make out was like the sound of booming thunder localized within the confines of his small skull a moment before it shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Never trust a dwarf, eh?”
Érad awoke with a start to the sound of birdsong and smell of smoke, drifting into consciousness like a lost sailor borne unwittingly to an unfamiliar shore. He felt simultaneously both a pounding hurt and a hollowness in his skull, one that had his mind careening as if it had been left loose inside of his head. Although he had never seen the sea beyond just his dreams, Érad knew the taste on his tongue to be that of saltwater.
“Awake, are we?” a voice asked nearby.
The starting shine of the Knight’s golden shield had begun to breathe light into the forest again and Érad could see the colorful figure of Haran tending to the beginnings of a morning fire.
“Come on, boy.” the bard said in an animated tone. “Clear the remnants of whatever dreary dreams you’ve been having from your mind and join me.”
Érad rose wearily, wiping the thin layer of congealed sweat and dirt from his brow before trudging himself to a seat on stump opposite the bard, the new fire starting to crackle between them. The odor of moss and old vegetation was strong throughout the grove and the sound of pleasantly babbling water hinted at a brook somewhere hidden nearby.
Peace is plentiful here. A man could settle here and live long, Érad thought to himself as he took in a labored inhale. The air was rife with the taste of minerals, leaving the back of his throat tingling in the wake of each breath.
“You reek, boy.” Haran remarked casually. “Of sick-sweat and forest-stench. Here,” he said, reaching out to hand over hardened bread and cheese, “you must eat. We set out as soon as your friend returns.”
Érad accepted the proffered food, but found it hard to swallow. He could not get the taste of the sea from his lips.
“Where’s Delryd then?” Érad asked quietly in between bites, coming to wrap his woolen cloak around himself like a blanket. His hands he kept firmly tight around his own waist to try and suppress his shudders.
“She is out hunting more hares for our next stop. We are soon to enter wending wildlands where there exist no fox-paths nor rabbit trails and where every dell and pool has been left unnamed since the age of Dawn.”
“You lead us further into this forgotten forest then. Where are you taking us?”
“Taking?” Haran sucked his teeth and winced somewhat as if slighted by the word. “I do not like the usage of the term. It implies a lack of agency on your behalf in this traveling of ours. I was under the impression that we three had agreed to a joint companionship.”
Érad let out a wet chuckle.
“What? What of me amuses you?” the bard asked as he leaned in further forward. His eyes gleamed with interest.
Érad mirrored the bard’s movement and came in closer to the campfire. The Knight’s influence came to accentuate the frame of the boy’s face, once vibrant green eyes tinged bloodshot red and sickly yellow, his blonde hair damp still damp from a night of little peace.
“Delryd was right about you. You have a way with words.” Érad paused, struggling to stifle a vicious cough that had his eyes scrunching from the pain. When he recovered he wiped the spittle from his lips and Haran noticed the boy’s fingers coming away from his mouth had stained a bloodied pink.
“Although I think you use too many of them for her liking,” he added.
“But not for you?” Haran took a long drink from his waterskin, hesitated, then offered it out to his companion. Érad took it gratefully, taking in a few long deep pulls to lessen his considerable thirst.
“No. Her speech with you distracts me from the pain.”
Haran scoffed. “At,” he said in a correcting tone.
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“At?”
“The girl does not speak to me. She speaks *at* me. I am merely a convenient focus for whatever accursed ire runs thick through the black ichor that is her blood.”
Érad chortled in reply, quickly reduced to a choking cough. Haran watched on as the boy struggled to regain his composure in between greedy gulps from his waterskin. He would not ask it back for the rest of the day he decided, kicking the fire’s base to flare up its light.
A silence fell between them, both their gazes drawn to the fire for different reasons.
“Do you see them, too?” Érad asked in a scratchy voice.
“See what, boy?”
“The shapes in the fire.”
Haran shook his head. “I see only the burning wood,” he replied. Haran noticed the way the boy’s gaze moved with obvious intent as if he were watching scenes of note happening within the licking tongues of burning light.
“Are you sure you are seeing something?” Haran asked cautiously, intently watching the boy’s face. “Go on. Take a closer look, tell me what you think you see.”
Érad spoke without averting his gaze from the fire, his face mesmerized.
“I see a dark river carried by trees with boughs made out of stone. Three men dangle dead from their stonework.”
Haran leaned in closer. “These men,” he whispered, “what do they look like?”
“I… I can't make out their faces, but all three seem to be wearing crowns. They're watching someone, a girl, pass underneath them astride a starved horse.”
“And the river?”
“It begins to roil and spill in the wake of the girl's passing. She-” Érad cut off abruptly, his eyes widening.
“What? What is it, boy? What do you see?”
“The girl. I… I think she can hear me,” Érad stammered. “She’s watching me watch her. And she’s saying something, smiling between the flames.”
“Tell me,” Haran whispered urgently. “Tell me what she says.”
Érad cracked lips parted to answer right as a shadowy blur suddenly invaded the periphery of his vision. Delryd rushed forward swiftly from the shadow of a nearby tree and began to kick up dirt and moss onto the flames. A breath later she began emptying her waterskin onto the campfire, its flames sputtering in protest, and stared hard at Haran with fury on her face until the fire petered out completely. The bard in return merely brought his shoulders up in a small shrug with an apologetic smile on his lips, acting the cat caught nipping the dog.
“And thus we are complete again,” Haran said lackadaisically as he stood up to pick up his traveling pack. He looked from Delryd to Érad then back again.
“Make sure he is ready to leave soon, eh?” he said to her as he stood up and walked over to where the horses were, leaving Delryd to stare after him in enraged silence.
Only when the bard had slipped out of view past the immediate treeline did Delryd turn towards Érad, crouching by his side and laying a hand on his shoulder.
“What did he tell you?” she asked him raspily, her voice choked with the sound of barely restrained anger. Érad had said nothing throughout the exchange, his gaze still transfixed on the remnants of the fire by his feet.
Delryd fought desperately to hold back her natural instincts to chide her friend as she would so often do in times back home, taking instead the time to look him over. His face was pale and shaky, but the cast of his countenance was a dark one as if troubled by ill thoughts. Delryd’s anger quickly faded at the realization that whatever had come to afflict her friend was continuing to seep into him, coming to take firmer hold of him with every passing breath.
“Érad?” Delryd said probingly, giving his shoulder a squeeze. Érad responded with a start, rapidly blinking himself out of his daze as he looked up at Delryd with clear bemusement.
“Delryd?” he asked in confusion. “When did you get back?”
“Just now.” she replied as she rose to her feet. She looked Érad over with some concern, noting the feverish cast of his eyes, before helping him to a careful stand.
“Head yourself to the horses,” she told him. “I’ll be right behind you. Can you walk on your own?”
“Yes.” Érad croaked as Delryd helped him tighten the cloak around his shoulders, before gently nudging him off towards the sounds of whinnies in the distance. She watched her friend traipse across the uneven forest floor, almost stumbling across stray roots, and turned to head back to her hiding spot behind a nearby tree to pick up her fallen hares. She’d returned just in time from her ranging to see the soft interaction between the pair of them and, for a brief few moments, she had begun to doubt her suspicion of the bard, grateful for his delicacy in regards to her friend. But when she caught the hungry sheen in the bard’s eyes, the rapacious look on his face as he stoked the fire with his feet, Delryd knew without a doubt that she had had the right of it.
Haran was a creature of poison.
**
Half an hour later, bundles of stray morning rays squeezed their way through the canopy of tall trees clumped together high above them, coming to fall in scattered splotches of crepuscular light whose shine slowly guided their path through the forest. A faint haze of morning mist still glided along the floor of the woodland realm, coming to enrobe the contours of ancient, gnarled giants like diaphanous gowns lightly adrift.
Haran pressed his hand on one of their trunks in silent thanks. A moment later, he began scraping the mollycaulk moss that was growing on its bark and collected it in his satchel.
“We are close now to the edge of Gläffantechte’s domain. These giants have been growing here in silence since times of early Noon,” Haran said as he took his mount gently again by the reins.
“Notice how many of their branches have come together, almost like interlaced arms? They were made to grow in joint grief. They still call this particular stretch of forest by its elder name: Carrin’s Procession.”
Haran led his horse further along on foot, keenly observing the sun-dappled forest floor for hidden holes and snares long abandoned by hunters that may have once ranged in these parts.
“He had been a king once, long before even Elia had made her mark.”
A company’s distance behind him was Delryd astride her mare, making no effort to keep pace and comfortably lagging behind. Érad sat upright behind her, his arms tied with rope around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder in an attempt to keep his head stable.
“What did he say?” Érad murmured sleepily. From beneath him he heard the sounds of ancient moss quelching and carpeted leaves being crunched under hooves.
“Nothing you needed to be awake for.” Delryd replied lazily, watching where they went.
“Or me, for that matter.”
Érad mumbled something under his breath in response.
“What?” Delryd tilted her head and gave her companion a sidelong look.
“What?” she repeated, giving him a gentle nudge with her elbow.
Érad had his eyes shut, not responding.
He is gone again, Delryd thought.
For that, the girl had to admit to herself, she was actually quite grateful. Ever since the encounter with the bard earlier in the morning, she had heard him mutter unnerving things under his breath in the barely-quiet.
So far removed from any other alternative, all Delryd could hope for was that the bard was truthful about at least one thing: that this elf-heir, Gläffantechte, could heal her friend.
Delryd took one last glance over her shoulder at the face of her friend and couldn’t help but let out a tired sigh. She then pressed her knees into the flanks of her mare, speeding up its ambling to a slightly more active pace. They rode thereafter in silence as they trailed after the bard garbed in his blue cloak, with only the sounds of disturbed birds singing in their wake indicating that they had even passed through that place at all.