Feldare Tales: High Society Ch. 06
"Yes," he said, taking a sip himself. "All the better to get a good days work out of a person." He grinned broadly at her mock look of annoyance. They spoke idly of her impending chores and finished the tea, eating some biscuits in the process.
A few more hours of the hard work and she returned to the little inn. Crissa was awake, sitting up in the bed, watching the door impatiently as Peris entered.
"He's not awakened yet?" asked Peris.
Crissa gave her a hard, upset look. "He has, twice," she said. "I've put him back to sleep both times. He's not happy with our ‘rescue'."
"What?" asked Peris.
"He says that he'll be killed," explained Crissa.
Peris thought a moment. "Did he say by whom?" she asked.
"He refuses to," said the sorceress. "Then he gets unreasonable and begins raving. That's when I put him to sleep." She cast an impatient glance at Kenett as he lay, sleeping.
"Whoever put that into his head surely is the same folk that tormented him," said Peris. "He was dying, or so the healer said."
Crissa's eyes widened. "Healer?" she asked. "I meant to ask you about that. Where did you find a healer, and how did you pay him?"
"The pay is still being worked off," said Peris, a tone of annoyance in her voice. "The where was the first one I came across."
"I hope you don't mean you. . ." Crissa let the statement go unfinished.
"No," said Peris, "though I was prepared to."
They both remained silent for some time, each taking their own counsel. Finally, though, Crissa broke the silence. "We need to calm Kenett when he awakens, and I don't know if just attaching him to one of us will suffice."
"He wouldn't get impatient with someone he loves would he?" asked Peris.
Crissa snorted. "It makes them love you, and often love or lust are rather over emotional," she said. "No, we need something more soothing to his nerves."
"Elves," said Peris.
The sorceress looked at him oddly. "Elves?" she asked.
"From what I know of him, elves are his whole life," she said. "He studies them ceaselessly."
Crissa stared at her for a moment. "Okay," she said.
- - - - - - - - - -
Kenett awakened and looked down at the coverlet. Beside him slumbered a pretty young woman with straw-colored hair.
"You have finally awakened," a feminine voice emerged from the darkened corner of the room, she was speaking elven.
He peered into the dim corner and his eyes gradually adjusted to make out the form of an elven woman sitting at the room's tiny table. As he watched in delight, she stood and walked toward him.
"Do you not speak?" she asked, walking fully into the light.
Kenett stammered a moment, and then said, "Yes, I speak, of course."
A huge smile formed on the elven girl's lips. "I am called Thenaldis," she said, placing her hand over her heart and bowing at the waist.
Kenett swallowed hard, almost bursting out of his skin with excitement. The only thing that kept him in the bed was his nudity beneath the coverlet. He had never actually spoken with an elf, and had only seen one once, when some elves passed through Norboro, heading northward.
"I am called Kenett," he said, his name sounded ugly to him, when spoken amid elven words.
"I am pleased to meet you," said Thenaldis. She smiled down at him, as he seemed to nearly twitch with excitement.
Kenett had never imagined an elven woman would be so appealing. He knew they were lovely beings, naturally, but to see one, up close and speaking to him, interacting with him was overwhelming. Thenaldis sat on the edge of the bed and the scent of cinnamon that he heard they gave off reached his nose. He sniffed deeply of it. Her silver eyes flickered in the candlelight of the room.
He glanced toward the tall girl beside him. He knew her name, but for the life of him could not remember it just now.
"You were badly injured," said Thenaldis, "and Crissa asked me to aid you."
The young man smiled at her. "Thank you," he said, performing a curt, elven head-bow.
Crissa, feigning sleep, was in truth working very hard, thinking very hard. She was filtering his perceptions of Peris, and even some of himself. He believed he was speaking and hearing elven spoken, while in truth, both spoke Westron. She ran their words through the lens of his perceptions with the result that he heard her speak and believed he spoke in elven.
Further, his perception of her appearance was likewise being changed to resemble what he thought an elven maiden should look like. Surprisingly for Crissa, convincing his mind was easy, as she could summon forth things that people felt affection for easily, and he loved elvenkind.
Long, delicate fingers reached to Kenett's brow and brushed back an errant curl. "We must know what you saw that night," she said in a soft voice.
Fear chased the mild pleasure from Kenett's face, a sudden panic quickly set in. "No," he stammered, "I cannot speak of it." He glanced at the door into the tiny room; sweat beginning to form on his brow. "They will know if I do."
Peris leaned forward, and Kenett saw the elven maiden widen her silvern eyes. "Who will know?" she asked. "Please, you must tell me for me to stop more horrible things happening."
He began to curl up, drawing his legs under the coverlet up to his chest and turning onto his side. "NO!" he screamed and pushed Peris away, knocking her from the bed, she managed to keep her feet under her and moved back toward him on her knees.
"You must!" she said in an urgent whisper. "Do not tell me I expended myself for one who puts fear before truth." She touched his shoulder, which had slipped from beneath the covers, her cool fingers moving over the warm, smooth flesh of his upper arm. "I was told you were a lover of all things elven." Her expression hardened, her silver eyes darkening to the color of steel. "Now I find that healing you was a mistake."
"No," he begged as she stood up and walked toward the door, a wash of cinnamon-scented air wafting over him. "Do not go."
Peris glanced over her shoulder and Kenett saw the elf give him a cooly regarding look. "You will speak?" she asked. "Or will you protect a murderer?"
- - - - - - - - - -
Some five miles north of Norboro, amid the ruins of an old farmstead, long abandoned, was pitched a concealed tent.
Cherle slipped through the flap of the tent and knelt before the seated figure. "We have done as you commanded, my lord," he said in a sober, placating voice.
"Yet?" asked the seated man. He had cruel and handsome features, with slicked back dark hair and hard, brown eyes.
The young nobleman found he could not meet those accusing eyes. "The elf-lover, our picked witness, was kidnaped from the asylum," he said.
"You were to watch him!" shouted the seated man, his eyes flashing to sudden rage. "I sent my best torturer to soften him and make him ready to tell the story we wanted to be told."
"And it was working my lord, he truly believes what we have told him to say," said Cherle.
"Which serves us in no good stead if he isn't there to act as witness in the young wizard's trial," said the seated man. Massive arms flexed in the dim candlelight of the tent. "It falls then to you and your coterie's word against his and his friends'."
"We are nobleborn!" exclaimed Cherle, his eyes widening.
"You're fools!" shot back the man, rising from the chair and pushing the kneeling youth back onto his rump. "They have a noble witness, as well, and they are gifted people, they are not commoners who can be simply shoved down the path to execution." He brushed past the young man as he walked to the far side of the tent. "You were to bring Lentan over to our camp gently," he said, forcing patience into his voice. "He was ripe for recruitment, yet you sprang the secrets upon him too quickly and he balked."
"Yes, milord," said Cherle. "He was not ready."
"So, instead of a new, influential Dark Alcolyte, we have a son of a nobleman dead and suspicion falls onto your very group of friends," said the powerfully built man. Even out of his armor, he was impressively large and powerful. "And now you lose the one key to throwing suspicions into another camp?" His dark eyes glinted with anger as he turned them upon Cherle. "Are you trying to destroy my hard works?"
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