Chapter Seventeen

Krissintha Arlonet Dar Ghelain swam, holding onto the plank, until she finally felt ground under her bare feet and could stand with her head just above the water. Soon she was stumbling on the rocky, pebbly shore, leaving the sea behind.

The clouds were breaking up, exposing blue sky, and she lay down on the beach, letting the weak but warm sunshine wash over her shivering body.

Land, finally, land. And she was alive. Soaking wet, cold, but alive. The sea had failed to take her — it had even sent a kraken, but it failed to take her. She laughed and cried, tears rolling down her face, staring at the sky.

She closed her eyes and found that opening them again was difficult. She tried to lift an arm, but it wasn’t any easier. She began to feel pain in every part of her body, pain that the coldness of the sea was no longer masking. She was spent. Sleep was calling, and she nearly answered, but … she heard voices. She groaned as she opened her eyes and groaned some more as she sat up. She looked where the voices were coming from, squinting. Sharp, barren cliffs in the distance at the end of a long, rocky beach, and … something moving and yelling.

‘Jevan,’ she whispered-yelped, recognising the figure stumbling towards her in a distance of four or five dozen paces.

She mumbled a curse at the sea for letting that man live. She scrambled to her feet, whimpering, trying to ignore the pain in her limbs. She glanced over her shoulder as she started running. The man was running, too, not too fast, but probably faster than her. And that bearded man with the cuirass was right behind him, trudging after the retainer, his spear somehow not lost at sea.

Krissintha saw the beach ending and some sort of a forest beginning, so she ran that way. The small rocks hurt her bare feet, but she ran as fast as she could manage.

‘Krissintha! Stop there!’ Jevan shouted at her, his voice distant enough for her to know the man wasn’t catching up yet, but too close to be sure of her escape.

‘Go away! Die! Rot!’ Krissintha screamed back without turning her head for another look.

She kept her eyes on the trees, willing her aching legs to move faster. She had a good idea what she could expect from the retainer — the man had made his hatred of her clear as day, along with his desire to defile her, break her and send her off to join the rest of her family. She didn’t know if any of the other sailors from the ship had survived or not, but she knew that the only thing that had protected her from becoming Jevan’s short-lived plaything — being merchandise to be sold to the Voysair — was gone. Jevan would show no mercy.

She ran past the first tree, brushing low hanging branches aside, and she was in the forest. Her feet sunk into the wet soil with every step, skidding on shrubs or stumbling on protruding roots. But she ran deeper and deeper into the forest, and it was getting thicker and darker.

Jevan’s voice was following her, so was the voice of the bearded man. Why were they still alive? Jevan with his weapons on his belt, and the man with his steel cuirass, should have been the first ones to reach the bottom of the sea. She hazarded a glance over her shoulder again, but only saw trees and undergrowth behind her. She had no idea where she was running, no idea if she could even get away from the traitorous retainer. How long could she keep running? Not for long, not with her starved, aching body already begging her to stop and rest.

Krissintha passed tree after tree. She had lost all sense of time — she had no idea how long she had been running. She slowed to a laboured jog, then to a crawl, her body trying to tap into reserves of strength that just weren’t there. She stopped, putting her hands on one of the thick trees, leaning against it, panting, coughing. She felt like she’d collapse if she let the tree go. Then she heard muffled voices coming from behind and she forced herself to keep going. One tree. Another tree and another, each looking like the last.

She heard the babbling sound of water. There must have been a river or a stream nearby. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself towards it, finding it more and more difficult to ignore the pain in her legs and feet, but she could hear the trickling of stream louder and clearer. Krissintha went around a tree and stopped as soon as she saw a pair of eyes looking right at her. For a moment she couldn’t comprehend what she saw. But the moment passed, and her chest tightened, several knots forming in her stomach with haste.

Only a few paces from her a mass of midnight-black darkness stood on four legs, two small pieces of glowing ember-like eyes glowering at her. Words from stories she’d heard as a child invaded her mind in an instant: hell-hounds. Hunting dogs of the underworld. Servants of the dark and evil spirits of hell.

She wanted to scream, but the air got stuck in her lungs. She wanted to run, but her legs didn’t obey. So she just stared at the evil beast with widened eyes, trembling, waiting for it to lunge at her and drag her soul down to an old and mythical underworld she had never been sure existed. Not until this moment. Now she was sure.

The dark abomination, the hell-hound, sat down, tilting its head and wagging its tail.

Krissintha just stared at the evil thing, her eyes wide, her heart beating at an insane speed. Then she heard Jevan’s voice again. She glanced over her shoulder, but only saw trees. The hell-hound was just looking at her as if it was curious. Krissintha took a step away. The hell-hound didn’t move an inch. She took another step and another, going around a tree. The beast didn’t do anything. That settled it: maybe it wasn’t here to drag her to hell, but Jevan would do just that. With a new strength she didn’t know she had, she ran.

***

Trees became sparser, large rocks taking their place, jutting out of the ground. Krissintha kept going between them, towards the sound of rushing water. She finally arrived at the shallow stream. She dropped down immediately, scooping the fresh water with her hands, drinking, splashing it on her face, washing away the horrid, salty remnants of her misfortune at sea.

She should have felt refreshed, but she felt more tired and sleepy than ever. She knew she wouldn’t be able to run again even if her life depended on it. Which it did.

Krissintha looked around, appraising the weird looking outcroppings scattered among the few trees here. Hiding was the only option she had left, and here she could hide. She trudged along the stream, groaning and shivering, looking for a hollow tree-trunk, or a rock she could crawl under and disappear. And she found one. The rock was large and it had hole at its base, almost like the entrance of a small cave. Something had dug the earth out from underneath the rock, too, and it seemed large enough for her to fit in there. It was the best spot she could find. She crawled in, then pulled as much of the soil and dirt as she could to cover the entrance. She then curled up, staring out into the sunlit forest, listening to the splashing of the nearby stream.

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Krissintha had expected sleep to come immediately, but it didn’t. Instead, she was sobbing quietly as thoughts she didn’t want to have kept swirling in her mind. Everything that had happened: her family, her country, Jevan’s hatred and betrayal, the kraken’s tentacles, the uncertain fate she faced and feared. She didn’t deserve this, did she? Her life had been good, she had wanted for nothing. She had not done anything wrong or evil. Why was she here then? Why was this all happening? Why was a hell-hound lurking here, waiting to take her soul? Ah. She could have been nicer to others. She could have been more forgiving, more understanding of those below her: her servants, her suitors, the people seeking her favour, or those trying to get closer to her father through her; she could have treated them with less contempt and more … compassion. She could have treated her father’s retainers better, less like simple servants. But were these really transgressions? If so, were they so serious as to warrant all this? To be wiped out? For Jevan, then a kraken of all things, to try to kill her? And for a hell-hound to try to drag her soul to the underworld, to hell, so that evil spirits could torment her? It was unfair, she was sure of it. It was too much. She didn’t deserve this. She fell asleep.

***

Krissintha woke up to a loud crunching sound, coming from almost next to her. She opened her eyes and shut them again immediately. The hell-hound was here, right outside the little alcove she had thought safe, waiting for her, lying on the ground, gnawing on a bone. This was it. The end.

‘Please, don’t do this to me,’ she whimpered the words. ‘This is unfair.’

She heard a growl, then another crunch. She opened her eyes again. The bone in the beast’s jaws was broken now, one of the halves dropping to the ground. The hell-hound, still lying on its belly, was looking at her with those hellish, red eyes. Krissintha blinked a few times, unable to believe that she was so close to it and nothing was happening. So close. She could reach out and touch this servant of the dark spirits, but she dismissed the thought as fast as it came. Krissintha fidgeted, more than just nervous, not taking her eyes off the hound. Her legs were numb, but the alcove was too small to stretch them out. She felt nature calling and she fidgeted even more, holding it in, not wanting to relieve herself there and then: doing something so unladylike was one thing, but with a creature of hell watching her, she was sure she’d become the laughingstock of the underworld.

The hell-hound seemed to notice her predicament, somehow: it stood and backed away from the rock, giving her the room to come out. She never would have imagined that a creature of hell could be so accommodating. But … should she actually get out of her hole? Was it safe? Wasn’t the hound going to pounce on her the moment she was out? She had no way of knowing. She took a deep breath.

‘Uhm … so … I’m coming out,’ she said, her voice almost failing her. ‘Please don’t … take my soul yet!’

The hound snorted once, sounding almost dismissive, as if to say “fine, do what you want”. Krissintha collected all the little scraps of courage she had left and she crawled out of the hole. The hound remained on the ground, chewing on the bone, only following her with its eyes. She carefully went around the rock to relieve herself.

Krissintha knew this was her best chance to get away from the evil beast, walking away slowly and quietly while it wasn’t watching. But the way it was behaving bothered her, and she couldn’t help but feel that the hell-hound wasn’t here to tear her to pieces, or at least not yet. When she walked back, she found the hound standing, waiting for her. She stopped a couple of steps from it, looking down into its burning, red eyes, her heart beating faster out of a sudden. It looked up at her and took a step forward.

Krissintha gasped as she saw a flash of dimly shimmering power coming and going around the hound as it moved.

This … this really was a creature of hell, a servant of an evil spirit. And that flash of power meant that the evil spirit was … here, right here in front of her. This was not good, not good at all, and she regretted her decision to not flee while she had the chance. She had no doubt now: she was going to be dragged all the way to hell, whether she deserved it or not.

Another glimpse of power in front of the hound signaled that it was happening — not later, not tomorrow, but now.

Krissintha felt a cold touch on both her shoulders. The spirit? Could spirits do this, evil or not? Her legs gave out and buckled, and she fell onto her knees, sobbing.

The hound stepped closer and sat in front of her, only a single pace between them. The pressure on her shoulders eased, then the touch left her completely.

Krissintha caught another glimpse of power, vague and dim like a strange kind of dust reflecting sunlight for a second. Then her mouth hung open. A line appeared on the ground, in the soil, slowly growing. Then another line drew itself, then another. In a few moments, she was gawking at a simple, child-like drawing, depicting a man with long hair held together with a ribbon, sword hanging at his hip.

‘Jevan,’ Krissintha whispered.

The hound snarled. Krissintha wasn’t sure what was happening or why. She nearly jumped up when a sword appeared out of nowhere, floating in the air between her and the hound. She’d never seen or heard anything like this in her entire life. But she stayed on her knees, staring at the familiar weapon. It was …

‘Jevan’s sword,’ she gasped.

The hound snarled again, as if to confirm her words. The sword rotated around in the air, slowly, faint, silvery-blue power blinking around it for a second. It floated down, it’s tip touching the ground. The sword then moved and crossed out the drawn image of the retainer. Then it disappeared from the air the same way it had come.

Krissintha stared at the hound, into its red eyes, more in astonishment then fear now, comprehending but at the same time not comprehending at all. What in the name of all the holy shrines was happening here? Did this mean Jevan was … dead? She was more and more sure that hell wasn’t just an old myth, but why was this evil spirit telling her that Jevan’s soul was going to be there with her?

The hell-hound let out a whining sound, almost like a yawn, then it lay down on its side.

Krissintha felt the same, cold touch on one of her hands, and for a second she saw a another sliver of power in the air. She shivered as the evil spirit — she was sure it was an evil spirit — pulled her arm forward, towards the hound. She knew there was no point in resisting, so she didn’t. Her hand touched the belly of the pitch dark beast, and the spirit’s touch guided her hand to … rub it? The hound let out some sort of happy noise, not unlike the ones she had heard from her father’s hunting dogs. The hell-hound closed its burning, red eyes, lowering its head to the ground.

Krissintha stared at her own hand in utter disbelief as it moved, feeling the dark, but soft and fluffy fur of the creature. After a short while she felt the touch of the evil spirit leaving her hand, but she didn’t dare stop rubbing the belly of the hell-hound.