DAIN RUTTERKIN

Chapter 4

It is dawn. I know because there is a high window wherever I am and warm pink light has begun to trickle in as the sun clears the Spine in the east. I am still bound, with heavy rope wrapped about my chest pinning my arms to my sides and affixing me securely to the pallet I have been swooning on. My legs are likewise secured. My sandals have been taken. By the rough-hewn walls of rotting logs and gray mud brick, I am in the stockade.

Few of the smaller towns and villages have stockades, even this far to the south. Haven only has one because the town was named the site of Crowe the Cruel's temporary keep after he was awarded the surrounding lands, many years before I was born. Once the newly dubbed lord's permanent fortress at Dungirt was finished, he left his intermediary dwelling and its attached stockade to ruin. Now the places houses Luminar Emlyn at Crowe's order, the former fellow being unwelcome at Dungirt for reasons unknown.

I can just now hear the faintest chirps of the dawn birds calling out to one another in the trees outside. If I am lucky, one might alight on my window sill to greet me.

But I am not lucky. As instead my cell door opens to admit Luminar Emlyn. He is long-boned beneath his robes of office, and pale as ash. His face is gaunt, his lips thin and gray, his nose slender and hooked like a hawk's. His scalp is nearly hairless, but the hair on his cheeks and jowls is bright red. Around his neck is a heavy chain of copper links.

He greets me in the same manner he did yesterday morning, and the morning before that: "Good morning, Dain. How are you feeling?"

He pulls a chair up to my bedside. Being careful to keep his fingers away from my mouth, lest I try again to bite them off, he grips my forehead and chin and forcibly twists my head away from him, toward the window sill. For a man so slight, he is possessed of sinuous strength in his grip. He peers at the marks on my throat.

"Odd. They grow lighter by the day. There will be a scar, but the wounds are closed. Do you still feel ill in your stomach?" Emlyn releases my head.

The luminar has left a soil bucket near my pallet since since I arrived here, in case I should vomit in the night. If I do grow sick sometimes, it is only from remembrance.

"When will you let me go?" I say. "You can see I'm not sick with any plague."

Emlyn sighs. "Soon I hope, Dain. A few questions still remain unanswered."

I have heard these questions before: Why did the monster that so viciously murdered my parents leave me alive? Where was this Princely Isle the parchment note spoke of, and had I been there before? And how had the stranger come to decide upon my household, while leaving all the other residents of the village unmolested?

I give him the same answers that I gave yesterday, and the day before that.

The luminar shakes his head. "We must have the answers, Dain. And so must you, deep down."

Emlyn abruptly stands and pushes his chair aside. Then he turns and exits the cell, leaving the portal ajar. He returns a moment later, carrying an oblong box in his arms. He sits down again at my side with the box on his lap. He unlatches it and throws back the lid.

"These might be just the thing," he says. "What do you think, Dain?" He turns the box about on his lap and tilts it slightly forward so I can examine the contents.

I see the glint of coppery red steel inside. A plethora of ghoulish instruments, designed for the most intricate tortures of the mouth, the ear canal, and the nameless orifices.

"Now," says Emlyn. "Are you aware of my order and what we do, Dain?"

I shake my head. I know that the luminars wear robes and chains of different colors and metals to show rank; that they are often close advisors to kings and queens and other lordly folk; and that those with any sense generally make it their business to stay well away from them. But that is the whole of my knowledge.

"We have a great calling, Dain. It is we who are tasked with finding the truth wherever it hides from the light of the divine. We illumine the truth to better serve our world and the gods who govern it. Sometimes we must resort to hard measures in our quest. For you to be healed of your curse, Dain, you must first reveal your deepest truth. We must bask together in its revelatory light. Only then may you be cured of the plague from which you suffer."

I say I know nothing of any plague, and that the monster may have bitten me, but as the old fool himself can see, the wound has nearly healed of its own accord and there are no signs of fester.

Emlyn sighs. He stands again. And sets the box upon the chair with the lid raised. He draws out a tapering needle blade the length of a knife. He steps over to the foot of the pallet. My frame is too long for the bed and my bare feet hang over the edge. I can move them only slightly as my shins are lashed taut. The needle hovers over the big toe of my left foot.

"Who was the man who bit you?"

"Where is the Princely Isle?"

"Who authored the parchment bidding you travel there?"

With each succeeding question, the needle tip draws closer to my toe, until finally the cold red steel touches the yellowed nail bed. I struggle, flapping my foot, but the luminar holds it fast in one hand. Then he pushes the needle in under the nail and I roar, such a howling agonized roar it might be dimly heard on the other side of the Spine. If any dawn birds had alighted on my window sill, they have by now taken wing for more serene perches.

Emlyn abates for a moment, drawing the needle back out. My gurgling cries inform him that I wish to speak. And I do, telling him all that he wants to hear: Of course I have seen the monster before. It has long beckoned me in my darkest dreams, from deep within the Riftwood where it lurks in a black pit somewhere beneath the roots of the oldest trees. Doubtless others of its kin reside there too. And surely they must know the way to the Princely Isle, whence this dark menace has come to torment the good folk of Haven.

Emlyn sighs. The needle is scarlet with bright blood for half of its length. "Is that really the truth as you know it, Dain? Or more lies fed to you by the monster to placate me into freeing you?"

He plunges the needle in again and I howl like the damned in Hell. My vision is obscured by a red haze. Sweat blankets my brow. My muscles tense and strain, the blue veins threatening to burst forth from the flesh of my shoulders and arms. Beneath me the bed frame creaks in warning; the stout ropes wound tightly about me and the pallet are forcing the dry planking into a shape it is not meant to hold.

The luminar releases the needle with a quarter of its length still buried in my toe. And backs away from the bed. His face has gone ashen. "The Beast! The Beast has entered you, Dain! You must resist!"

A dry snap suddenly rends the air. I can feel the pallet give as the wooden frame splits on either side. The ruined bed collapses under my weight and I land on the dirt floor. The ropes about my arms and legs have slackened somewhat and I begin to squirm, trying to get an arm free. The needle is still in my foot but I cannot feel it now.

Emlyn finally comes to his senses and runs from the cell. He is screaming for help, calling to the heavens that the monster is free.

I get my right arm loose, then my left. I pull the awful needle from my toe and a scarlet rivulet issues forth. I cast the instrument aside and start in on the ropes securing my ankles. I hear roused shouts outside and then frantic footsteps growing closer. But a few moments more, and my feet are free of the bindings and I am limping forth from the cell.

Let me know how you are liking the story so far!  All comments welcomed!

Much Love,

Dave