The Whispers Of Trees

15. In Mourning

Awoken by loud complaining and the crackling of the squirming thorns, Alea sat up in bed, her body aching from the cold and shuddering from the damp.

Against his will, Darfin was pushed through the opening into the room, his reverberating demands and cries of outrage dizzying her sensitive senses.

He eventually fell silent, nothing other than his heaving breaths could be heard, even as she slung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

"Darfin?" She said to him quietly, reaching out for his shoulder below his dishevelled red curls. "Darfin what happened?"

The man spun around, his expression beyond fury.

"You happened! You just could not leave it alone could you!" He bellowed, unnerving Alea so much that she back up towards her bed.

"I don't know what you mean-"

"You made her angry, you kept denying the accusations and now I have been dragged down here with you. To suffer with you. To die with you!"

Alea was baffled. Speechless even.

"I denied them because they are just that, accusations!" She cried in reply, her voice hoarse and unsettled.

"Are they? Are they just accusations or are you lying to everyone?"

"Of course they're untrue. Darfin I am not a Tulsi!"

He approached her, rushed and on the brink of madness as it seemed. A madness that not even he as a healer could fix.

"Then why do I not believe you?" He spat, jabbing a smooth finger towards her.

"That is not for me to decide. But I would have thought that after everything, after all the rings you have known me, that you would take my word for it"

Her voice fell solemn as she awaited his response. It did come, from over his shoulder as he turned back to the blackthorn. His voice too softened, although what he had to say did not match.

"I believe in proof, Alea. I am a healer, I analyse data and vitals and determined the problem. They have found evidence of spell books in your home, trinkets and talismans, herbs of the rare kind and odd symbols etched into candles. I look to the proof, what Achillia or you say, it does not matter. What matters is what I can see and understand."

"Well it is good to know in that case, am I imprisoned with a friend or foe for the days to come?" she snapped, dragging her blanket off of the bed and moving to the one on the far side of the room, taking to organising it as a way to ignore him and the emotions threatening to burst from her chest in wracking sobs.

"We will not be here for long" he noted distantly, his body still and set in front of the bars as his eyes peered into the orange light in the tunnel.

"You mean that you will not be here for long. Achillia will come around and see your innocence-"

"She will be here soon, to carry out our sentencing"

"My sentencing" Alea muttered in correction, sitting herself with little care into the creaking bed.

"Our sentencing" he repeated, his tone low as if carrying impending doom. "We are to burn at the stake"

***

As Orym began to see the darkness turn to a dull grey between the dotted torches on the walls, he noticed the group that had surrounded them as they had gone along, as though picking up lost souls in the tunnels to guide them to the exit.

They were unsavoury-looking people, with long beards, some parts singed or missing altogether, their faces disgruntled and coal-like to match any bare skin on show.