Feldare Tales: High Society Ch. 05
"They told me you would come, witch, and that you would kill me in my sleep," he screamed out. "Well, I'm too smart for you, bitch. I didn't sleep, haven't slept in weeks." He let out a high, tittering laugh as he pulled on the chain steadily. Trickles of blood flowed from around the metal collar where the edge of the ring bit into the soft flesh of his throat.
Their backs hugging the wall, the two girls sidestepped down the hall, trying very hard to stay out of the young man's reach. "I'll kill you witch, just you'll see!"
There were answering cries from up and down the corridor, mad ululations from both directions, randomly spoken words, and flung curses.
Crissa started up the stairs, and Peris peered back toward the open door, and could still see the young, handsome man peering around the corner of the doorway with intense, feral eyes. "Kill the witch," he whispered, "she deceives." Peris then turned and followed up the stairs. The words he spoke at the last were different from other words. They seemed cast of rubber, for they bounced about her skull, full of random echoes and odd reverberations.
The stairs carried them all the way to the third floor, the topmost floor. They passed the second floor without emerging from the stairwell and drew no attention to themselves as they moved upward. They could still hear the young man, two storeys down, screaming about the witch, his chains rattling.
"What do you suppose that was?" asked Peris.
Crissa looked at her with sad eyes. "One like me, a gifted person," she said. "But one whom the gift did not give the strength to fight it's fires. He could see me, and my gift, but as his damaged him, he assumes that it damages my mind."
Peris left her thoughts at that unspoken. However, Crissa's inability to be monogamous, and willingness to give her body to men at whim crossed into her mind. She wondered if the gifts had not marked Crissa more deeply than she knew.
They moved down the corridor in near silence, trying to not make any more noise than they must. "I can feel Kenett," whispered Crissa, "he is near."
Peris moved across the hall and approached the stained door opposite them. She had to step on her tiptoes to peer through the little window in the door. It was darkened in the room, without even a window to let in outside light.
Crissa's hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm, yanking her violently away from the door just before something slammed into it and two fingers shot out of the little window, long nails, grimy with filth, clawed at the air where her eye had just been. "Come back, little girl," a woman's voice called. "You have such pretty eyes, let me have them."
There was a look of horrified revulsion on Crissa's face as she pulled Peris down the hall toward the next door. "I felt her anger and desire just before she lunged at you," she said. "They rest quiet until something wakens their insanity, then it explodes." She shook her head, her long, golden hair glinting in the blue-white light. "It hurts my head to feel it do that."
"Lets hope that Kenett isn't like that, then," said Peris, still eyeing the digits clawing through the door's window.
Crissa nodded in agreement. They moved down a few more doors quietly, and then Crissa said, "Here."
They both eyed the door and the long steel bolt holding it shut. Crissa, taller than Peris, crossed the hall and said, into the little window, "Kenett?"
There was silence for a moment, then a small voice on the other side. "Yes?" he asked.
Crissa heard the rattling of chains beyond the door and decided he was shackled in the room. She slid back the bolt with a dull rasp and pulled the door open. The light from her rod illuminated a wedge into the room. Sitting against the far wall of the chamber, only six feet across was a huddled shape, cringing from the light.
"Don't hurt me, I'm staying quiet," he said, shielding his eyes from the dim illumination.
His body was bruised and his clothes gone. He cowered naked against the wall.
"We'll not hurt you, Kenett," said Crissa, stepping into the chamber. No flare of insanity flashed into her mind from him, only abject terror so strong that she could taste iron in her mouth.
Peris followed her and Crissa handed her the rod. "I promise, I'll not hurt you," she murmured, kneeling beside the young man.
One eye peered from behind his fingers. "You won't?" he asked, his voice full of fear, still.
Crissa touched his shoulder and he pulled away, jerking his arm and rattling the chain about his neck. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I only wish to help you."
"That's what they said, too!" he screamed, pulling away and scooting down the wall on his rump, almost crab walking. He wound up in the corner, his legs pulled up and arms forming a cage of limbs to protect his head and body.
Ugly bruises covered his limbs, and his sides as well. She had seen similar bruises on his face, too, while he had been moving.
"What have they done to you?" asked Crissa, crawling toward him, staying as low as she could, unthreatening, like approaching an animal.
"They. They hurt me," he said. "They said it was to make me better, to clear my mind." His voice broke into quiet laughter. "They want to help me, too, just like you."
"No," said Crissa. "They were hurting you. I won't hurt you, ever, Kenett."
The one bleary eye peered from his hands again. "How can I know that?" he asked.
Crissa pulled at the string holding on her skirt, and it slid around her waist and fell to the floor. She untied her cloak as well and she slipped off her tunic in a practiced motion. "I have nothing to hurt you with, Kenett," she said, crawling toward him again. "I'm as naked as you."
He lowered one hand, looking at her with wide eyes. "You're pretty," he said.
Crissa gave him a wide, toothless smile. "You think so?" she asked. "I'm glad if you do."
He returned her smile; his lip was split deeply, bleeding into his mouth. "Yes," he said, "very pretty."
She was now right beside him, and she sat up, resting on her knees. "I think you're handsome, for a bookworm," she said, grinning at him.
He let out a small laugh, "You'd be the first to think so," he said. His eyes darted toward Peris, as if noticing her for the first time. "I know her, her name is Peris."
The young noblewoman nodded. "Yes," she said. "We go to the academy together."
Crissa now touched his arms, gently urging them down as she looked over him. He had been badly beaten, and thoroughly. Bruises marked every part of his skinny body, big ones, some ugly and open, where the skin yielded to the sores and swelling beneath.
"We have to get you some help," she said, touching his cheek with her soft fingertips. "We have to get you out of here."
He cowered back. "They'll kill me," he muttered, looking toward the door with fear in his eyes.
"No," said Crissa, taking hold of his hands, "they'll not hurt you. I'm a sorceress, I'll protect you."
"You, you're Crissa," he said, stammering again. "They said you'd kill me if I didn't stay here."
"Who is they?" asked Crissa, growing a bit impatient of hearing about this mythical ‘them.'
He saw that impatience as a threat and shied away from her fingertips. "They of the eye," he said, pulling back.
"No, no," she said, reaching for him again. "I'm not angry with you, nor will I kill you, I promise those things."
He still looked dubious, but allowed her to take his hands again. He moved them to her shoulders. "Can you stand?" she asked.
He nodded, a jerky motion that set his curly hair to bouncing. Slowly she stood up, lifting him with her. Soon, he was upright. He was just shorter than her and looked up at her slightly.
"You're tall for a girl," he said.
She smiled at him and kissed his brow. "You're short for a boy," she retorted.
The gentle interplay of comments seemed to ground him in the real world a moment, even if only for that, and he looked at Peris again. "You're not with them are you?" he asked.
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