The Golden Deer

Chapter 15

It felt like walking through a lace curtain, soft and hazy. The air was warm and still. Evy peered hesitantly through her eyelids then, startled, she opened them wide. She had imagined all manner of terrible and appalling things, things that would haunt her for the rest of her days. Instead she found herself in a small, dim cave.

Looking at a tall, young woman.

There were no torches or candles in the cave yet it glowed with a dull, golden light. The walls were perfectly smooth and the floor shimmered as though made of golden glass. The cave was oddly reflective so it seemed as though there were really a thousand slightly distorted Evys staring about in shock,.

The woman stood at the very center of the cave where the pattern of a star had been carved into the gold floor. She was stunningly beautiful, long golden blonde hair, brightly pale skin wrapped in a glittering golden dress. She regarded Evy with eerily luminescent golden eyes, her head tilted curiously to one side.

There was no sign of Francis.

"Hello," she said politely, her voice bearing traces of an accent Evy did not recognize.

"Hello," Evy replied uncertainly.

"You are not who I expected," the woman said simply.

"I know," Evy struggled to keep her voice as even as the lady's.

"Where are the other men?"

"I hit them with a rock," Evy admitted.

"That was very wise," the woman said gravely. "They will find no fortune here."

"What about me?" Evy asked. The woman smiled at her, it was a dazzling smile.

"Fortune will never have to seek you. You will find it first," she said enigmatically. "You are Princess Evelyn of Eldi."

"How do you know my name?" Evy asked, a shiver running through her.

"I know many things."

"Then you must know why I am here," Evy said, stiffly.

"I do."

Evy waited. The woman looked at her for a long time, Evy felt like she was reading her very soul. "Well?" She asked eventually, feeling unnerved.

"I enchanted your brother," she said simply.

"And all his friends," Evy said bitterly. "Twenty-one men."

"Yes," she bowed her head as though shamed. "And many more than that."

"Why?" Anger shook Evy's voice. "Why would you do that?"

"It is my purpose," she said soberly. "Once I was the sacred pet of a goddess, wise and just. She gifted me with great powers and sent me out into the world to teach respect to those who abused the bounties of nature. I sought the men who killed more than they needed, who allowed hunting to become a sport of boast and power. I enchanted them, wound myself around their thoughts until they could think of nothing but me. I drove them into madness and thusly, into death."

"You killed people," Evy said flatly.

She held her head high as she spoke, drawing her golden robes about her she looked the part of a goddess herself, fierce and proud.

"I brought justice upon those who deserved it," she said coldly.

"And what of my brother? Everything he hunted was used. What did he do to earn your wrath?"

The woman sighed, deflating slightly. "Nothing. I served the forest until I was captured by a most foul sorcerer, a powerful and evil being who made a slave of me. Now I ride out and lure back victims so that the Sorcerer might consume them. I have no dignity or honor. I am a harbinger of death."