Page 22 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 22- ELIAS

I couldn’t breathe.

I came in here when it got like this. There was something about how cold these tiles were that helped. My body was shaking, uncontrollably twitching. My heart was apparently undecided between beating so fast it felt as if it were about to explode and so slowly it felt as if it might stop. I had turned on the bath faucet before settling against the tiles, to drown out the sound of my gasping for air, and chattering teeth.

I was personally going to rip this Jurasan King’s fucking throat out.

Wait. No. That was a bad idea.

So was going to meet him. On that riverbank.

On that riverbank.

On that riverbank.

On that riverbank.

The blood, the smell, the screaming, the mist, the impossibly foul-smelling dark mist. The earth cracking in half. The sky. The sky turning red, raining blood, roaring so loudly my skull almost burst, burning through us like a dark rippling flame.

Shit.

Breathe, fucking breathe.

In and out

In and in.

No, in and out.

How the hell was I supposed to sit there and look at the Jurasan King, talk to him, stay focused on whatever he bothered to say, if I couldn’t even think straight? If I couldn’t even think of anything other than…than Milos.

The way he had begged me, begged me to make it stop. The way his eyes had turned black, his veins had rippled with a poison so viscous it made his skin…

Stop. Fucking Stop.

I leant over the sink and splashed cold water across my face. It didn’t help much, but it grounded me, it placed me back here.

Not a tactic I’d be able to use later.

What the fuck was I going to do later?

Who knew, maybe Aquos would find it in her heart to make it rain?

Not that she’d found it in her heart to stop the sorcerers from lifting up her precious water and drowning us with it that day.

I laughed into the sink. “Some help you are, Goddess,” I said to myself.

A few hours more passed, and eventually, after dressing myself in-between waves of unbridled panic, midday arrived. I always hated the coming back from one, the slow descent into reality. It tasted like adrenaline and salt.

I considered washing my hair for the first time in a while, but decided against it, instead, gathering part of it back in a messy knot held in place by a strip of leather. The rest fell down my neck.

Eliel arrived at my chambers as agreed and led me out towards the stables. He mounted a brown steed, different to his usual one, and handed me a black horse to ride. I had, at one point, owned my own horse, but he too, had perished. I couldn’t bear to take another after that.

Before setting off, Eliel offered me a large dark brown cloak and adorned himself with a similar one of a maroon shade. Unlike most of the clothing he possessed, these cloaks were of a much worse quality, designed no doubt, to make us appear much poorer, and more inconspicuous.

We said little on the ride towards the river, Eliel was clearly far too concerned with the passing looks of the pedestrians and townspeople we rode past, while I was doing my best to calm the raging fire of panic from emptying my stomach contents.

I had already thrown up twice before Eliel had arrived, which I knew to be from the anticipation of this visit, rather than the alcohol, which no longer affected my stomach at all.

They said that meant I could ‘hold my liquor.’

It only meant I couldn’t drown in it anymore.

After about two hours, as we were approaching the outskirts of Vasara, Eliel dismounted.

“Taking a shit?” I asked.

Eliel, without turning away from me, drew his sword from where he had attached it to his saddle and spoke.

“We walk from here.”

Walk? Fucking walk.

If I’d known a large portion of the journey would be spent walking, then I would have outright refused.

“That’s information I’d liked to have possessed before you asked me to come with you,” I said, still seated on my horse.

Eliel spun around and glanced up at me. “Will it be a problem?”

Will it be a problem?

For someone as intelligent as him, what a fucking stupid question. I knew I hid the impact of living with an artificial leg, and the constant pain well, but it still baffled me completely that everyone was willing to assume it had no bearing on my life whatsoever.

An excellent design, they would say. As if I gave a shit, as if its monetary value could replace the value of what I had lost. Some even quipped it was an improvement, that it appeared a limb of armour, a replacement fit for a warrior.

It didn’t feel like a replacement. It felt like a foreign intruder, crushing a limb I no longer had. As if the leg that had been torn from my bone still lingered like a ghost, invisibly asserting its place, fighting for dominance with the metal. Their battles riddled me with agony that only the alcohol had managed to touch. None of the tame herbs the healers offered had even come close.

The pain would disappear, for certain, they’d told me. They’d been lying. Even the healers amongst the Palace walls were fabricators and preachers of falsehood. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I supposed they had been desperate to offer me some hope. Harder to treat a sick man with no desire to get better. Easier for them to make such promises. Easier for everyone else to ignore the leg, to avoid the uncomfortable lack of certainty over what to say about it. I couldn't decide if I loathed them or forgave them all for it.

I grunted and dismounted, clumsily, as I always had done since my sense of balance had changed. “No Eliel. It’s perfect.”

“We need to—"

“Don’t bother explaining yourself. I’m walking with you anyway.”

Eliel clutched tighter at his cloak as a soft breeze played with the fabric. “Very well.”

Walking was anything but perfect.

I had brought some alcohol with me in a pouch underneath my cloak, but even that could not dull the sharp and throbbing ache clawing through my upper leg, and down towards my non-existent calf. There were moments the pain was so excruciating I felt like sitting down, or passing out, or both, but I just kept walking. I knew if I sat down, I would not get up again. I was barely finding the will to drag myself along to this wretched place as it was.

I swigged some of the alcohol back.

“Hide that when we get there.”

I gave Eliel a sidelong glance. “As if the almighty Jurasan King will be concerned about my drinking habits.”

“This is serious Elias.”

“Yes. This is seriously the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

Eliel was about to speak when we saw it. The River of Blood.

My heart rate sped up instantly. I could feel my palms clamming up as if fire were caressing them.

“It…” I swallowed, unable to finish my sentence.

Eliel turned to me slowly, clearly waiting for me to finish.

“It…it looks the same,” I said quietly. “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.”

“Go on,” Eliel said, turning back to the water.

After a moment processing, I spoke. “Oh, I see. You want me to go first in case there are any lethal traps.”

Eliel laughed. I hardly ever heard him laugh. It was light, pleasant, the exact kind of laugh you would expect to hear from him. Everything he did, said, the way he moved, spoke, and laughed…were all full of grace.

It was a gift to behold, and a horror.

“Drink some more, before you can no longer do so.”

“How kind of you, my liege. Let me kiss your arse while I’m at it as well.”

Eliel suppressed another laugh. “Save that for the King.”

I drank and we walked on.

Every step I took felt so much infinitely slower than it should have. Time slowed down. Every patch of grass, every crevice, every twist and turn at the river’s bend was a place, a moment etched in my memory. An area where a man’s face had lain as it was drained of life. A square where arrows had protruded from the ground, and from another warrior’s stomach.

I had thought being here would have been exactly like being in my washroom this morning, but this…this mental clouding, this distance, this feeling of floating, suffocating slowly, rather than drowning at a speed, I hated this even more.

It was also far more inconvenient, considering what we were here for.

Eliel stopped so suddenly I bumped into his back. He outstretched his hand and placed it on my elbow. I followed his eyes to their destination.

There was one horse, just one on the other side of the river. On its white hide sat a man, or at least what appeared to be a man from a distance. He was shrouded in a dark green cloak, the colour of the deepest trees surrounding us. His face was entirely hidden. His whole body was entirely hidden. He seemed to be more a wraith than a person.

“Is that… him?” I whispered to Eliel. I don’t know why I had whispered, it wasn’t as if he could hear us from that distance.

Eliel however, whispered back. “Who else could it be?”

“But he would come here? Alone?”

“We are alone.”

“You are an ambitious fool, and I have no regard for my own safety. The Jurasan King, however—"

“You may call it foolishness, but it is clear he shares the same thoughts as I.”

“This is—"

“Leave if you must.” Eliel could sense the unease in my voice.

“We’ve been over this. I don’t wish to leave but you have to admit this is highly strange.”

“Yes. But it is also our only opportunity to get the answers we need.”

“Answers to what exactly?” We were growing closer to the man now.

“You will see.”

“Very Kingly,” I muttered.

The figure shifted slightly, and although we could see nothing, we had the distinct impression he had turned our way. He remained impassive, still, waiting.

“Do we cross?” I asked Eliel.

“There is a passage…where the river run’s thinnest, we must walk there. He will follow.”

I knew the passage of which he spoke. In fact, I knew this whole river better than I knew my own ass from my elbow most days.

Eliel, without waiting for my agreement, walked onwards. I followed him, careful not to look at anything, at any part of the whole scene, for too long.

It wasn’t working.

This place was making me physically unwell, but I kept putting one foot in front of the other, and for once, was thankful for the agony in my leg. It served as a twisted kind of distraction for the agony in my mind.

The figure on the horse moved as well, so silently, as if he were a spirit. In the same direction, on opposite sides of the river, we moved. Two sides, two Kingdoms, merging into one.

We reached it. Here the river was about as narrow as thirty hands side by side. The King reached it after us, despite the fact his horse would easily have allowed him to arrive first.

He trotted up to the edge and dismounted, facing towards us the whole time. His cloak was so thick its passage off his horse, and onto the ground by his feet, was audible.

We stood there in silence. Eliel removed his cloak. I did the same.

The Jurasan King did not.

If this even was the Jurasa King.

“How do we know it’s you?” I raised my voice to ask.

Eliel didn’t react. He made no visible indication my question had irritated him, but I knew from the way he gripped the tips of his forefinger and thumb together that it had.

The Jurasan King…or not the Jurasan King, didn’t answer.

Definitely an arsehole.

“You…the Jurasan King is a man of mystery. You could be anybody,” I added.

The man’s chest rose and fell in calm and precise movements. Although Eliel had obviously disliked the way I had asked the question, he was clearly wondering the same, since he had not intervened, or tried to shut me up, as he often did.

Seconds passed.

Then more.

Nothing.

“You have five minutes,” the man suddenly said.

His voice was deeper than any I had ever heard before. He sounded completely calm and infuriated at the same time. We still could not see his face.

“We’ve travelled for three hours and you’re giving us five minutes?” I couldn’t hide my irritation.

The man didn’t answer again. It was as if talking was something that repulsed him.

Eliel’s silence though, was encouragement enough for me to continue.

“Aren’t you at least going to prove you are who you say you are. I doubt you’d want us being so careless with the information we intend to share with His Majesty.”

“Four minutes,” he said.

I looked at Eliel, unable to hide the expression on my face displaying how much I wished to leap over the river, and smack this possible Jurasan King in the face.

Eliel did not return my glance and instead said, “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. Since you are so pressed for time, I will skip the formalities. You are already aware of what I want to know. Indeed, if you are the Jurasan King, there will be no need to explain what that is, since it was he, I have been informed, that received my letter and request.”

“Seriously?” I murmured under my breath. What had been the point in wasting that first precious minute of the Jurasan King’s time if Eliel had known how to prove his identity all along? The way his mind worked was so frustratingly complicated.

Eliel ignored me, but the Jurasan King did not.

“You were here that day,” he said unexpectedly, looking up as he did. His cloak cast his face in darkness, only the vague sharpness of his long face and the extensive length of hair was visible.

The slight flicker of tension across Eliel’s jaw was the only sign he was shocked by the Jurasan King’s statement. I unconsciously gripped my hand tighter around my sword, which it had been resting on.

“I’m not here to reminisce,” I said, trying to stop myself from shaking as I did.

“But you are here,” the King replied.

“I thought that time was of the essence, Your possible Majesty?” I felt sweaty.

Ignoring my remark, the man stated, “You answer one question, and I will answer yours.”

His head turned between Eliel and I, his face still completely covered by shadow.

“As you wish,” Eliel said.

“What are you doing?” I snapped.

“Obtaining answers.”

“And giving them,” I reminded him.

Eliel, still facing towards the King and not me, said, “What is it you wish to know?”

The King took one step forwards. His long dark boot caught the sunlight for a brief moment. He turned to me.

“How did you survive?”

A soul crushing weight of fire inside my chest burned again. It rose, threatening to escape my lips in a burning cry I would not be able to silence. Ever.

I shifted my weight onto my left, artificial leg, hoping the pain would draw me out of the spiral.

It didn’t.

Eliel glared at the King with an icy intent but seemed completely unbothered by this turn of events. He only seemed to care about receiving his answers, and not how he did so.

I knew I had been an instrument in his plans, but I did not think I would be a topic of interest to the Jurasan King. To converse with him like this would have been a great honour for many. Many grovelers and how was it the Vulture had put it? ‘Circus leaders.’

“Three minutes,” the Jurasan King said, breaking the silence.

I still didn’t speak after that. Eliel’s fingers were dancing around each other now, in an anxious manner.

“I don’t know,” I replied eventually. The truth. But one I knew, the Jurasan King would not be satisfied with.

I added. “I hope you won’t hold that against my cousin here.” I pointed at Eliel. “If you know the answer to his question, do not withhold it because I did not know the answer to yours.”

The man was still, so utterly still. It was if he blended in with the forest behind him somehow.

“The sorcery did not affect you?” he asked.

“That’s two questions, isn’t it?” I said, frustrated.

“Two then,” his deep voice declared insistently.

“It did.” I practically had to heave the words through my teeth. Now talking was repugnant to me, as well as the Jurasan King.

“Then how?”

“Three? They won’t believe us back at Vasara when we tell them how talkative you actually are.”

The Jurasan King didn’t respond. He was so tall, I’d only just noticed. Taller than Eliel and I. Taller than Kalnasa’s escort who had told me politely, to fuck off at that opening ceremony, who had towered over the others at that table. The Jurasan King didn’t seem entirely human.

“Very well,” the Jurasan King said. He inclined his head in Eliel’s direction and continued, “Yes. They have been here.”

“When?” Eliel asked.

“Weeks ago.”

“And you did not know?” Distrust coloured Eliel's voice.

“No,” he replied.

“How is that possible?”

“Three,” the King said, turning back to me.

The third question from both parties was the same.

How.

Eliel looked at me with a silent command to answer the Jurasan King’s third question.

I was never helping this little shit again.

I closed my eyes for a few moments, as if the blanket of black replacing the trees would help me understand, but it couldn’t, it never had.

“I don’t understand it myself. It’s not as if I was immune.” I pointed to my leg, opening my eyes. I sighed, trying to find the most evasive words, “It was as if the sorcerer…”

The Jurasan King lowered his chin, looking at my leg as he waited. "Yes?”

“As if it…took its time on me. Purposefully. As if it was…enjoying it. I…” I cleared my throat. Eliel was looking at me incredulously. It was a horrific feeling. I had never really spoken of that day, or of my thoughts on it. I had asked myself the same question the Jurasan King put to me several times now, but I had never voiced my suspicions about the answer out loud. I was the only survivor. It sounded utterly ridiculous.

The Jurasan King tilted his head slightly to the left and looked at the river.

“They use sorcery to hide their location, it seems,” he answered Eliel’s question.

“Why would they do that?” Eliel asked himself rather than the King, clearly done, thankfully, with offering up my memories as trade for his answers.

“Don’t the others?” I asked him.

“No. That much sorcery, to conceal that many people for that long is…”

“Difficult?” I guessed.

“Unheard of,” he replied. “Whoever is with them, whoever is leading them, is very powerful.”

The Jurasan King, without offering a farewell or acknowledging our conversation, turned back to his horse. As he re-mounted, I could see the slightest strand of hair escape from his cloak, the end of it almost at his knees.

Ash blonde. Not golden like some had said, not honey, not dark…Ash.

“Once again, Your Highness, I am grateful. I am in your debt,” Eliel said, bowing.

“Would you repay it?” The Jurasan King said, grasping at the reins of his horse, who remained as still as his owner.

“Would you seek repayment?” Eliel sounded wary.

“If I agree to meet with you here, as, and when you wish. If I agree to share what I know, then would you?” His deep voice had become slightly louder.

“What do you seek in return?”

“You will not take my sister as Queen.”

Eliel looked thoughtful. He asked the very question I myself was thinking.

“Forgive me, Your Highness, why send her as a candidate at all?”

“That is the law,” the Jurasan King replied dryly.

“It is the law to send a suitable candidate, it need not have been your sister.”

“Do you agree?” the King pressed, clearly growing impatient.

“I—"

But before Eliel could declare his answer, an arrow flew through the forest and sank deep into the eye of the Jurasan King’s horse.