The Fires of Cerran

Chapter Thirty-Four

The words of the Hellhounds hung in Melran's mind as the company rode onwards into the early evening. Under the dark sky they saw little change as the sun set and the skies were blanketed with the stars. The marshlands of Tu Ton lay as memory now, dark and cold and best kept at the very edge of the mind, and as they set up camp on the edge of a dark forest, they talked little of the day's ride.

Melran, now huddled against a tree, sat with her chin resting on her knees. Her backside ached from the ride, and she now realised how much of a terror saddle-sore could be. If only that were my only worry, she thought as she watched Ramon hacking at dried wood as he went about building a fire. Her hands were wrapped tightly around her dagger, almost on instinct alone and the whispering woods that sat behind her offered little other than more paranoia.

She watched Lenren as he looked over the horses, a caring soul and honourable both to man and beast, and she smiled as the man whispered to his own ride in some apparent private conversation.

Astriel had taken to sleeping early, and already she lay snoring against a thick elm, only her brow poking from beneath her cloaks and robes. A princess, never to sit upon a throne or feel the love of her people, her family usurped by a man they trusted and brutally murdered. Melran shivered at the thought of that, it rang too close to home for her to contemplate further. The girl drank from her skins, the water cold to her throat, almost burning. She thought back to the days before she had taken to walking East, to what had been before that. Little true memory remained, purposefully blocked or taken she could not determine, but even now she realised that her powers were draining her. Little by little, like an hourglass draining the sand from one bulb to the next. But she did could not turn her hourglass again, she could not refill the bulb that was her mind. Her sand, which was herself, was slowing leaving her.

Flashes of memories came to her sometimes, in the days of her stay in the caves of the White Woods. Though whether they were fact or fiction she could not attest. She had hoped them to be true, but the powers she had been opened to had influence over most things, including the desires which a person may hold in the deepest caverns of their minds. It made her laugh sometimes, that things that came into her mind, for she knew them to be threads of life she had never lived. Something felt untrue about them, and of these she often cared more than most things. She wondered where they had come from, who's life she was watching over as she slept or daydreamed. In her dreams she had seen valleys, seemingly endless, with folk dancing and singing. She would be dressed in fine golden dress, adorned with a pearl necklace, and watching over the children as they performed their melody of hymns for her. A Queen perhaps, or a Lady of the realm, she could not be sure of whom she shadowed in these dreams, but she was certain they were not her own wants or desires. She held no thought at all for power over people, no dreams of holding any throne. She was a pawn, a play piece, and at only eighteen years of age she knew full well of how those around her viewed her. She was a commodity, taken from place to place, serving as much of a perhaps as they might find for her until they ran out of things to do with her.

It was a cruel life, a life she had never wished for but one she would never leave. Her fate was sealed, whether she did as he had asked of her or not. Her part was being played out, her section of the song now being sung, and it would end as quickly as it had begun.

In her time with the Sisters, she had read of slavers in the East. She had read of vicious men with vicious thoughts who performed vicious acts. Of course, the Sisters would never speak of such things beyond then general flippant comment that The Sister would serve them the truth upon her return to the earth, whenever that was. Watching over the growing flames, with Ser Ramon's hulking figure beyond them, the girl thought back to those days. And in the firelight, she was certain she saw the shadows of those long-gone days, dancing and weaving themselves between the flickering flames. Let them burn, she thought, let the whole damned thing burn. She looked up, seeing Ramon staring down at the flames himself.