Private Tales Where Even the Stones Scream

[Shrike]

The Shrike’s stare lingered on the thread of dripping sap gleaming against her skin.

“I sleep alone,” he said simply, deciding she had earned that much of an explanation at least.

Though she deserved only that - the merest of rationales. Not the knowledge of what he awoke with in the night, of the screams and fits of agony. None but his closest crew knew the truth - the ones still alive.

The well sculpted, bronze haired Anirian thrall, with his vacant green eyes and a vacuous smile would suit her needs such as they might be for a body, for warmth and the illusion of companionship.

“The expense is because I choose how to spend my coin, to toss them into the sea or to lavish you in gemstones. Whatever I please.”

He lowered his hand back down, fingers skimming across the surface of the amber sap.

“And as I told you before, I reward obedience.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

She didn’t know why she had asked. Perhaps she had assumed that he might call on her. Perhaps it was the pull of his shadows, the cold comfort they offered in their strange, inhuman way that she was beginning to quietly crave.. Or perhaps it was simply that she hated being alone. She had spent so many nights in solitude, curled against nothing, until she had found Roul, or he had found her, and she had known warmth, closeness, the comfort of someone beside her. Shrike was not that. Shrike could never be that. Yet perhaps this mindless thrall could serve as a pale imitation, and so she did not refuse it, if only for a single night of peaceful sleep.

She tilted her head, studying him as she considered his answer. “So,” she murmured softly, “you have too much coin and too many possessions, and nothing to do with it all…” Her voice carried a hint of wry amusement. “What else would you do with an armoire full of ladies’ clothes? There are no other women here. I suppose you’d rather I look presentable than wear the tattered rags I washed ashore and slept in several dungeons in..”

Keres cast her gaze to the second bathtub and stood then, unabashed, the sap running down her body like molten honey, catching the moonlight and candle glow, tracing the curve of her shoulders, her breasts, the slope of her hips. Naked, unashamed, she faced him as she stepped out.

 

[Shrike]

A crease slit the distance between eyebrows on the Shrike’s forehead, the slightest of frowns. She stood before him, defiant in the stark beauty of her nakedness. The Shrike exhaled, meeting her eyes, then allowing his stare to drift across every ridge and valley of her form, dripping with sap.

He paused her with a finger to her sternum, tip pressing into her flesh and the sap oozing down her body, around his nail.

“No other women,” his words came clipped and cold and snide, “So quickly you forget our earlier conversations.”

Many of his original crew were women. Now only Misandra and Ravenna remained.

“Listen tonight and you might hear the heaving sighs from Elide’s tower.”

His words turned cruel and he twisted the knife.

“Or the howls.”

Keres

 

[Keres]

She flinched at the bite in his tone. The way his words struck, cold, and deliberate, made something in her chest twist sharply. She had not seen another woman since the dungeon, since Elide’s sneering face had been the last she’d known before waking in his. She was about to say as much when he mentioned her — when he invoked Roul without speaking his name. The meaning beneath it struck harder.

Her throat tightened. She swallowed the ache, the fury, the hollow pang of longing that came all at once. Her eyes burned, shimmering with tears she refused to shed. A shaky breath escaped her lips, and she forced her chin up, defiance standing in for dignity.

“I will take your thrall to bed,” she said softly, the words trembling with restrained venom. Then she turned, stepping past him and into the second tub.

The water was cool as she sank into it, and she began to scrub - not gently, not with care, but as though she could scrape away the memory of everything. Her skin flushed red under her hands, her breath ragged with the effort, until she was clean and the sap was gone.

When she rose, she wrung out her dark hair and wrapped herself in a cloth before crossing to the wardrobe.

Inside, among silks and satins of stolen splendour, she found something from Amol-Kalit, a set of loose silks soft as whispers. The colour of midnight, trimmed in silver thread that shimmered like starlight when it caught the light.

The camisole hung low at the back, held by delicate braided cords that crossed over her shoulders and tied between her shoulder blades, leaving her spine bare. The fabric clung just enough to hint at the curve of her breasts and the narrowness of her waist before falling free. The matching trousers were cut from the same black silk, loose and flowing, almost translucent when she moved, gathered at the ankles with small silver cuffs shaped like crescent moons.

When she pulled the silks over her skin, the cool touch of them soothed her raw flesh and she gasped quietly. She had never worn anything so fine in her life.

 

[Shrike]

Impassive, Alarak watched her movements as if he were simply a statue in the room until at last she stood clothed in a sable camisole of silk trimmed in silver, paired with loose pants in the Kaliti fashion.

He clenched his jaw, muscles writhing beneath skin the color of volcanic ash.

“Your choice.”

Ruby eyes flicked to the Anirian man.

“As for him, he is yours to do as you please. Throw him from the wall for all I care.”

Use of this thrall was a power he afforded her, knowing full well how addictive it might feel when only hours before she’d been utterly without a shred of dignity or strength. He was curious what she might do when she held the reins of control over another. Perhaps she would merely make the thrall wait at the foot of her bed like a dog. Or perhaps…

His mind drifted and so did his feet, carrying him to the window where once more he looked out over the ocean.

“Tomorrow your conditioning resumes with the executions. Back to your room then,” he waved a hand in dismissal, not even bothering to look at her.

The thrall led her out of the room and after a corridor or two they emerged from a doorway onto the battlements.

“This way, mistress,” the bronze-haired thrall said, voice the pleasant chords of a lyre.

In time he led her to her tower and up the flights of stairs until they arrived at her room, where the thrall stood, vacant-eyed, awaiting her instructions.

* * *

In the morning, she was brought to one of the fortress’ courtyards where a wooden scaffold had been erected. Three prisoners stood hunched over in stocks atop the scaffold - two men and an elf. The men looked unremarkable, though one of them was missing most of his teeth. All of them looked typical for the denizens of Cerak in the slaver’s village below the fortress. Nothing special here, but for that they drew breath in this world.

The elf’s mane of dark hair nearly covered up his ears, which had been sliced to ribbons.

All three of the prisoners looked miserable, left out all night to the elements.

The crowd watching was made up mostly of thralls, though a few Wardens stood amidst them. The jailor Gwyddion, with his curling horns, nodded mutely at Keres. A warrior who looked like a man save that half his skin was a patchwork of scales glared at her, his eyes a poisonous yellow with slitted pupils. A dark elf woman with her hood raised barely glanced at Keres with her one good eye - the other concealed by a cloth that ran diagonally across her face. She had a bow and quiver slung across her back and looked as if she had only paused for the moment to watch.

The Shrike was not among the crowd, nor on the scaffold.

He stood on the battlements above, distant, looking down on the courtyard like a specter - merely a shape shrouded in black by the fingers of dawn’s light cast by the sun that stretched out behind him.

Yet his voice slithered inside her mind, consciousness touching her own through more of his foul sorcery.

A red dawn. Are you prepared?

Keres

 

[Keres]

He hadn’t liked her choice, she could tell. The hard line of his jaw, the flick of red eyes over her before he turned away, that faint, barely contained fury that seemed to live just beneath his skin. Was it her defiance he despised, or the quiet dignity she’d managed to reclaim? The silks felt cool and light against her skin, comfortable in a way that almost felt like mockery. They did nothing to hide the pale latticework of scars on her back, each one a relic of her punishments, though the bruises and gashes from earlier had vanished beneath the sap’s magic. She felt almost whole. It unnerved her.

Her brows furrowed at his words. Conditioning. Executions. She nearly snapped back at him, nearly told him what he could do with his conditioning, but she caught herself, biting her tongue until she tasted blood. The thought of whatever awaited her in the morning curdled in her stomach. She only glared when he dismissed her so easily, fury burning in her eyes and trembling behind her lips, before turning to follow the thrall out.

When they reached her chamber, she regarded the thrall silently, unease flickering through her as his blank eyes turned toward her. “Get into bed” she ordered quietly. The thrall obeyed, folding onto the bed with puppet-like precision. “And close your eyes,” she added after a beat, suspicion prickling down her spine, wondering if the Shrike could see through his eyes too.

When she finally slipped into the bed, she turned her back to the thrall and pulled his arm around her, gripping his wrist until he held her tightly. The warmth of another body, even a hollow one, steadied her shaking. Only then did she allow herself to cry silent tears that bled into the pillow until exhaustion dragged her under.

---

By morning, her stomach was a knot. The murmurs of the gathered thralls and wardens filled the air, their stares following her. Why were they all looking at her? Her heart hammered so loud she thought they might hear it.

The sunlight caught her dark hair, left soft and shining from the sap’s cleansing, and the wind played at her silken clothes. It should have felt freeing, but under so many eyes it felt like being stripped bare again.

She looked to the three figures in the stocks, each filthy and broken, their misery as tangible as the scent of rot. She didn’t know why her feet wanted to stop, why she couldn’t look away from the elf’s shredded ears. Something about the sight turned her stomach.

She searched the crowd, and when she didn’t see the Shrike, she almost dared to breathe. Until a voice like cold iron slid into her mind.

A red dawn. Are you prepared?

Keres spun with a sharp gasp, eyes wide, expecting him at her back. The air itself felt wrong, too close. Then her gaze lifted to the battlements above, where a shadowed figure watched her like a god surveying his altar.

“Don’t fucking d—” She caught herself, jaw snapping shut before the curse could finish. A low, frustrated huff tore from her instead. “I hear enough voices without adding the living,” she muttered through her teeth, rubbing the back of her neck as if she could scrub him out of her head. She heard the dead, but they weren't in her mind like he was, it was a violation, it was unnerving.

Her gaze shifted back to the scaffold. Her throat tightened.

"Am.. I the executioner…?” she whispered, voice small now, lost beneath the sound of the morning wind and the restless crowd. Her eyes found the elf again, then drifted back to the battlement.

 

[Shrike]

Such naïveté.

She spoke when words were not required, not when two minds brushed so intimately.

“Of course you are.”

The words rang in her mind, heedless of objection.

“You know how to touch the souls of the dead. Now you will touch the souls of the living.”

The power to absorb the life force of another was no easy feat. The sorcerers of Thakath specialized in such practices, festooning themselves with rubies holding the power of those they drained.

Ripping away the soul from its mortal shell was another matter entirely.

Either would be permissible today, though the power to harness the soul would prove far stronger if she learned to wield it.

The Wardens below watched her, as did the thralls.

The elf in the stocks spit on the ground.

“Who the hells is she? Wait a minute, I recognize you. We were selling you the other week down at the village.” The elf, missing both his ears and delirious with pain, laughed. “Come to join us, wench?”

Keres

 

[Keres]

The voice inside her skull felt like ice under skin, intimate and obscene all at once. It burrowed in, naming things she had always skirted at the edges of, and the mention of them, of tearing a living soul free, made something in her recoil.

“N-no,” she managed aloud first, a stupid little sound that came out of her like a child’s protest. Her hands twisted in the silk at her waist.. She knew the way the dead clung and how to lure them close, how to pry at the seams between breath and bone. But a line lay there she had never crossed - taking a life while it still burned, dragging the light out of a body that still wanted to live. Necromancy had damned her enough as it was, but this was another calibre of sin.

The image she conjured in her mind made bile rise. “Can’t I just.. cut their throats and be done?” The question was half plea, half practicality, spoken so low she thought only the stones could have heard. Kill them quick, stop the suffering, stop the ritual. End it.

A laugh from the stocks cut across her inward shudder, the sound mocking. She recognised them too, she realised, and she cast a look up at Shrike.. For a breath she let herself feel the relief of not being alone in shame. The insults, the recognition, the casual cruelty of being sold and traded, each barb loosened that last, stubborn knot of mercy. If they could deride and trade lives so casually, why should she stand on ceremony?

Her mouth hardened. She had lived hunted for the power she bore, she had felt the dead press at her like friends and tormentors. The thought of taking a living soul, of learning to hold that kind of strength, still made her stomach drop.

Keres looked at the three figures again, at the elf’s torn ears, at the ragged man missing teeth, at the other broken face, and felt something settle like iron in her chest. The choice was no longer only for her conscience. It was a lever.

She had asked for power, and he was giving it to her. Her back straightened, her chin lifted.

'Alright...'

She swallowed, hair and clothes caught in the breeze as she stepped forward.. “Fine,” she said, voice small but steady. “If that’s what you want, if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it.” Her eyes flicked to the battlement, then to the crowd, then back to the stocks.

 

[Shrike]

“If you want to use the knife, use the knife.”

The reply came with a cold, detachment as if neither way mattered to him. He cared little. She would not be the first dead speaker to fail him. Alarak would watch as he always watched, from the battlements. His distance bred fear and awe. Familiarity would not do, not with her and not with those who dwelled near his fortress and thought to deny him tribute.

“But you asked to learn. This is part of the path to power. Deny yourself this and you will never overcome the agents of the Radiant Church.”

As if on cue, Gwyddion stepped forward toward her. The horned man lowered his head slightly in greeting, his perpetual downcast face even more so today.

“You rise from captive to captor,” the horned one’s voice was gentle and soft, as if he was not the chief jailer and torturer of the fortress. He insisted on the title Steward. He looked behind her to the thrall that had followed her here. “It seems the king has designs for you.”

From a voluminous sleeve, Gwyddion produced an unsheathed dagger, its surface a rippling obsidian. Corded leather and animal glue bound it to the off-white bone handle. He gave her the dagger.

“He instructed me to give you this, expecting you may want to… end them quickly.”

Gwyddion inclined his head again in deference and backed away, leaving her free to mount the stairs and deal with the three condemned men.

Keres

 

[Keres]

She feels the answer in the air before it comes, the Shrike’s clipped permission like a blade in a hand. She frowned, but didn't answer him. Her jaw tightened instead, and when Gwyddion stepped forward, the horned steward’s soft words caught her off guard.

Captive to captor..

It seems the king has designs for you...

Her brows knit. “It seems so,” she murmured, glancing up toward the dark silhouette on the battlement above.

The dagger he offered caught her eye. It was beautiful, in a dreadful sort of way. Trust the Shrike to send her a weapon both exquisite and cruel. Her fingers curled around it, feeling its weight, its chill. He had expected her to take the easy way out, but there was nothing easy about taking a life.

The crowd had gone quiet. The eyes on her were heavy, expectant, and she felt her pulse throb in her throat as she climbed the scaffold. Each step seemed to echo, her heart hammering against her ribs. The prisoners waited, all of them filthy, broken things.

It was the elf who drew her focus, who grinned at her with bloodied teeth. The same elf who had spit and called her a wench. She remembered him, and her stomach turned.

She stepped closer, taking a handful of his hair, the dagger lifting to his throat. The edge kissed his skin, and she could feel his pulse thrumming against it. For a long moment she just stood there, staring at the thin edge of the blade poised to end him. Her chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm. She was aware of everything; the weight of the dagger, the wind against her face, the quiet waiting of those behind her.

He expected her to fail.

Her hand trembled. And then, instead of cutting his throat, she pulled the blade back and grabbed his hand, slicing across his palm. Blood welled in a bright line, spilling freely. She dragged the flat of the dagger through it, coating the blade in crimson before drawing it across her own hand in turn. Her blood joined his, the droplets mingling as they fell to the wood beneath her feet.

She took a step back, raising her hand. Blood trailed in a thin line down her arm, and her lips parted as she began to speak.

The words were old, too old and long dead, and yet they came easily, tumbling from her tongue..

“Anarûl’esh vereth tal’kor nûm-vahr dras...”

By blood-bound tether, unbind the soul, come forth and be bartered.

The air changed. The wind picked up, whirling around her in sudden, sharp gusts that tore at hair and cloth. The crowd fell into silence as the sound deepened, humming through the wood beneath her feet.

The elf’s grin faltered. His breath caught. His body seized as something unseen began to stir inside him. Keres could feel it; the tug, the strain, the pull between his soul and his flesh. Her heart pounded as she reached out, bleeding palm open, and the air between them shuddered with a power that terrified her..