Dayn armallah

6. Shadows

I became the prince’s shadow. I lived in his house, slept in his bed, cooked for him as best I could, and generally took care of his household. He smiled to me, spoke to me, let me close to him. And everyone in the village soon learned that whenever they wanted their moody, aloof chief to listen to something, the most reliable means to achieve that was through me.

It took me considerably longer to realize this, and when I did I was at first deeply scared by the implications. For one thing, why wasn’t Alaish the chosen medium? But after a while I began to understand the reasoning behind it. For one thing, Alaish was wont to forget things if he didn’t get the chance to act upon them immediately. Secondly, he was too young and impulsive – not to mention high-born and therefore accustomed to being very direct with his intentions – to understand the subtleties of diplomacy. Whenever he wanted anything, he would go straight to the point, and such an approach was a surefire way to make his father bristle, even when the request basically wasn’t anything he was strongly opposed to.

I sometimes wondered what it was that had so endeared me to the prince. My best guess was that he simply enjoyed the attention I lavished upon him because I didn’t ask for anything in return. Nor did I see any sacrifice in that. I simply loved being with him, taking care of him, watching him, interpreting clues to guess his moods, trying to brighten those dark eyes. I soon noticed that even though he generally seemed to shun company and crave solitude, in fact he did not like to be left completely alone. Yet that was exactly what people tended to do when he’d remain mostly silent and brooding. When this dawned upon me, I took care to stay close to him even if I didn’t say anything, only busied myself with any task currently at hand. Many times he would sit for a long time by the fire, apparently quite lost in his thoughts, and then all of a sudden acknowledge my presence with a light touch or a couple of words that showed me he had been aware of me all the while.

I also realized that even though his daily treks in the surrounding woods were indeed essential for our survival, ensuring both food and protection, they also served another purpose: they wore him out, so thoroughly that at night he’d start nodding off right after supper. They ensured that he slept at night. Occasionally, when the weather was too bad or simply unsuitable for hunting, he had no option but stay the whole day in the village. On those days he grew increasingly tense and restless, sometimes even snapped at me towards the evening, and once finally in bed, he would toss and turn before at last falling asleep, head against my shoulder. I would listen to his breathing, comb my fingers carefully through his long tresses and hum an old silly song under my breath to soothe him. On those nights he would not speak to me much, too preoccupied with his demons to pay attention to me, and I never asked anything.

After a while he asked me to come hunting with him. I accepted in awe, certain that I could be of at least some use. After all, my former master had always dragged me along on his journeys and I had learned quite a few useful things, albeit more than just a little reluctantly at first. But the flash of appreciation in the prince’s eyes when he watched me skin my first hare in the forest was a precious reward for past unpleasantness and made my heart skip a few joyful beats.

So, instead of watching the prince disappear into the misty woods in the mornings, I would throw a bag on my shoulder and follow him, still munching on the last bits of an early breakfast. Of course it meant a lot of work in the evenings, when I was already weary after the day’s wanderings, and sometimes I had to stay behind to catch up with domestic chores. But when he noticed that, he insisted that I leave those tasks to the people who spent all of their days in the village, and simply pulled me into the cabin and to bed where I soon fell asleep despite the nagging of my conscience. Thus we all fell into a routine, the others making sure we had firewood and water, seeing to it that our clothes got washed and the cabin cleaned regularly; and me tending to our more immediate needs of a warm meal in the morning and evening, and staying by his side.

I was more than a little fascinated to observe his wonderful skill in hunting and prowling the forest, and even more so when I constantly had to remind myself that all of those skills had needs been acquired and honed over a measly two years. I knew with fair certainty that up until the destruction of Dayn Armallah, he couldn't have as much as set one of his princely feet outside the paved streets of the city, hardly even outside the Temple. As far as I could fathom, the skills required of the First Prince certainly didn't include tracking and snaring game, finding one's way through a tall, dark forest, shooting with a longbow, gutting hares, or drawing the blood from a felled deer. Nor should those years of light and leisure have very well prepared him for sliding through the forest like a dark shadow from daybreak to nightfall, covering uncounted miles on foot, enduring heat and rain and gnats and cold day after day, or surviving all that on the widely varying but always limited diet we relied on.

Yet there he was, stalking sullenly some steps ahead of me, blond braid swaying from side to side on his back, his booted feet hardly making a sound in the undergrowth. His survival instinct had to be enormous, his will to live so burning and strong, that his desperation to stay alive had spurred him to accomplish all that. He'd had to have a teacher, that much I knew, and indeed the villagers had spoken to me about a wily old hunter, a truly exceptional man in his trade, who had almost managed to befriend the prince when he had recovered from his injuries. He'd died on the previous spring, not a very old man yet but aged beyond his years by hard work and more than one nearly fatal bout with predators larger and fiercer than himself.

I tried to think of the vision of the prince that I had carried with me, but it was hard to link that radiating creature with the man whose back I was watching. His slim, handsome body had turned into a wiry bundle of hard muscle and sinew, his artistic hands were hardened, a beard now hid his once smooth face. And yet the darkness in his eyes was the same. The anger. The pain. They were always there, and I had a sneaking feeling that, as frightening as it sometimes was to see them sidling to the forefront, that darkness was somehow responsible for what he was now.

I froze in my tracks when the braid in front of me suddenly stopped and the prince caught his breath. I didn't need to strain my ears to hear what he had heard first: some heavy animal was plodding through the forest. It might have been a deer, an exceptionally large buck maybe, except that deer didn't have bridles that would clink lightly in the breathing silence among the trees. It had to be a horse, with a rider. Our horses were few and besides, who of us would have been riding in the forest like that?

The prince turned around, and I swallowed painfully at the cold rage contorting his face. He motioned to me, jerking his hand towards a large tree a few steps away, and I obeyed the silent command without a word and slunk behind it. There I crouched down, pressed my body against the enormous trunk, and prayed.

To my astonishment the prince, warily looking towards the sound, easily climbed from one thick branch to another until he was about ten feet above me, perched amongst drooping boughs and face turned intently to see what was approaching us. I peered cautiously from my hiding place, saw something flicker farther away, and then two horses waded to sight.

When I saw the riders, two Forester men, I almost threw up, such was the fear, revulsion and hatred that roiled inside me. The one riding ahead was very burly and dark, the one following him slightly lighter in build, and both wore the familiar fur vests reaching down to mid-thigh. Their eyes were surveying their surroundings, alert and piercing, and I slowly sank deeper into the sanctuary of the tree.

And then I heard a whisper of a sound from above me, a sound that stopped my heart. It was a sound I had heard many times: a quiet crackle that signified the split second during which the prince pulled his bowstring tight, one arm extended and the other hand drawing next to his ear so that the bow itself bent nearly double and the string groaned in tension. The final breath before his fingers released the string and sent the deadly messenger into flight. I heard it, and then the whoosh of an arrow as it licked out from the tree and buried itself deep in the first man's chest.

He gasped and grabbed the shaft with both hands, startling his horse, but he was already dead before his gurgling body met the ground beneath the horse's feet, and his companion cursed loudly in their gruff tongue, head snapping around to catch where the arrow had come from. But he was a marked man, the bowstring snapped a second time with truly amazing swiftness and he, too, fell backwards on his horse's back, feet still hooked to the stirrups, an arrow through his eye. The sturdy horses panicked and galloped away carrying the taller man's corpse with them, their snorting and whinnying disappeared under the noise they made as they dashed madly through trees and bushes, and gradually died away.

I stood slowly up, my whole body trembling, and was nearly jolted off of my feet when the prince dropped himself softly to the ground and looked at me. His face was frozen into a stony mask of death, but its imperturbable coldness was betrayed by the blazing fury in his eyes as he looked towards the body that had rolled to lie on its side on the mossy ground. He stalked to it, pushed the corpse on its back with the heel of his boot and bent down to pull a heavy knife from the belt. I stayed further away, feeling too sick and too horrified to go closer.

The prince turned and looked at me, brows drawn together in disgust.

"Let's go."

I nodded mutely and ran to follow him again, silence falling over us as the fur-vested body of a Forester was left behind. The prince's stride was no less determined and stealthy than before, but I had to battle with myself to keep quiet enough as I dogged his steps, barely seeing where we were going. The day when he had saved me was once more playing in front of my eyes with sickening clarity. I could remember the man who had been my owner, smell his stench, feel the rocking of the horse underneath. I heard again the thud of the arrow so close to my ear, and I was afraid. Not of the man I was following, though. I was afraid for him. The darkness inside was eating him up, I saw it clearly now where I had only caught glimpses before, and I feared the day when this grim messenger of death and vengeance would be all that was left of him.

How I wished I could do something to drive it away, if only for a few precious moments, and see true life flicker once more in the green depths of his gaze. I knew it was still alive there, but how rarely it showed itself nowadays... Miserably I thought that maybe I wasn't making his life better, after all; I had thought I could lighten his days somehow, but there was so little I could do, so terribly little. He wouldn't let me closer to him, not really.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly tripped over a sinewy root of a tree that the prince had overstepped easily, hardly noticing it. He spun around as I stumbled, and caught me by the arm, the grip strong and unyielding and yet not punishing. I looked up at his face.

"You're tired, Tarisha," he said with slight dismay and I bowed my head in shame, but his voice grew oddly more gentle. "Have I been pushing you too hard? You must tell me. I'm so used to being on my feet from dawn till dusk."

"No, my Lord." In my embarrassment I nearly stammered the words. "I am just... upset by... them."

To my surprise he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. "Tarisha," he muttered, lips tickling my hair, "surely you don't feel sorry for the people who destroyed everything our people ever had?"

"No," I said, although at the same time other pictures flashed in my head – women in their chores, children playing by the fires – and I did indeed feel a rapid pang of regret at the thought of some Forester woman maybe waiting in vain for her man to return. "I just remembered it all again... what it was like to be their slave."

He looked into my eyes, his own once more hard as flintstone.

"I'm sure you did," he said quietly. "But you also remembered something else."

I couldn't meet his gaze. His grip on my upper arms tightened perceptibly.

"I remember too." His voice was so low I barely heard it. "I cannot forget. And I can never forgive. The little suffering I can hope to cause them is but a small price for what they did."

He choked a little, and suddenly I couldn't bear it any more. I threw my arms around him and hugged him as tight as I could, breathing the delicate aroma of incense from his hair.

"You can never avenge them all," I managed to whisper. "Not alone. Not enough. Why don't you ever let yourself rest? This hatred... my Lord, it will kill you in the end."

Every muscle in his body tensed and he pushed me away from him, turned away.

"At least I will have avenged some," he breathed raggedly. "What else is there for me to do? Who else will make them pay for all the destruction and death they brought?"

"But they will never understand," I pleaded. "Why drive yourself to the brink of madness with such an endless, futile task?"

"Endless," the prince repeated, not turning to look at me. "Maybe, but not futile. And it will end when I die, Tarisha."

"Don't you want to live, my Lord?" I asked desperately. His shoulders sagged a little, his head sank a bit lower. "Isn't there anything worth wanting to live?"

He was so quiet for so long that I was afraid I had lost the fragile bond that had emerged between us. I stared at his back, praying to any deities I could think of that he would turn, look at me, do something, say anything. At last his head snapped up again.

"There never really was. Only duty."

I stood there agape until his retreating form had nearly disappeared into the shadows under the trees, then finally found my feet again and dashed after him.

Very few words passed between us for the rest of the day as we checked our snares and traps, gutted hares and stuffed their insides with twigs of juniper, made bundles of grouses that were nicely fattened on all the berries ripening around us. The hour had grown late by the time we reached the village again and could hand our catch over to the village women to be plucked, skinned and cooked. They were pleased with what we brought and took everything to the little clearing they used for the purpose, throwing ambivalent glances at all the former priestesses who were again gathering for their evening ceremony.

This time the old King was there, too, watching over the proceedings with eyes made misty by old age and reverie. He looked sharply at his eldest son who just walked through the as yet empty area of worship without a word or glance to acknowledge what was happening, with me close on his heels.

"Merilion!"

The prince stopped abruptly and turned slowly around to face his scowling father.

"I should have thought that you of all people would still remember how to show your gratitude to the Holy Mother."

The old man's words were dripping disapproval. I held my breath as the prince pulled himself straight as a rod and everyone around us stilled in expectation. This confrontation, I guessed, was the first one of its kind, and if I was right, then it definitely was long overdue.

"Gratitude?" The way he said the word made it into one long sneer. "What reason do I have to feel gratitude to her? What did she ever do to help us when we truly needed her? Did she lift her little finger for us? Didn't we perhaps pray enough, or give costly enough presents?"

His voice had risen dangerously, and by now I knew that the worshippers were not the only ones to hear it and be struck speechless. The old King glared at him and opened his mouth, but the prince would not be silenced.

"Oh, I do feel gratitude," he continued icily. "I am deeply grateful to a handful of people who had enough spirit in them to act when everybody else was just standing helplessly around and wailing. But I really can't see any reason to feel gratitude to a goddess who just smiles serenely when her people and her city are burning around her. Maybe she was too weak? Or maybe she just didn't care? Whichever!" he thundered, hands balling into fists by his sides. "All I know is that there's no higher power in this world that I would trust more than the strength of my own arms! So don't waste your time, and mine, by asking me to join in that brainless charade. Me and Tarisha have spent the day out there, hunting for food to eat and guarding this place from more intruders, keeping you all safe and fed so that you could happily go on living like you did in the city, completely useless to everybody around you."

He whirled around so that the soaked hem of his cloak slapped on his high boots, and walked away. I hovered for a moment, looking at the horrified faces of the priestesses, the indignant fury of the old King and the darkly sympathetic gaze of a village woman who had stopped to listen, a wicker basket full of wet laundry propped against her hip. Unable to say a word, I rushed to our cabin and fed some more wood into the fire that somebody had thoughtfully kindled for us. My hands were trembling uncontrollably, and more than once I nearly let the flames lick my arms.

The prince was standing by the door and hanging his cloak under the eaves to dry. His face was expressionless but the tightness of his mouth told me more than enough. I stole furtive glances at him, quickly preparing food for both of us, while he shed the wet topmost layer of clothes and spread them on the crude racks with meticulous care. The brew began to bubble lightly, for a while I had to focus on stirring it, and thus I was nearly startled out of my skin when a hand descended on my shoulder.

"Tarisha," the prince scolded me with a weary shake of his head. "Your clothes are wet, too. Get out of them, you'll get cold."

"But I'm warm," I protested, mortified by the reaction the day's events had triggered in me at that simple touch. "Really, my Lord, I am, sitting here so close to the fire!"

"Tarisha," he said again, patiently. "You need to hang those clothes out to let them dry properly. Aren't you usually the one to tell me these things?"

He pried the scoop from my fingers, squatted and began to stir the pot that was now boiling happily. I stared at his hand, all of a sudden realizing how deadly tired I was, until he glanced up at me once again.

"Tarisha..."

I put some water to heat while we ate in a customary silence that somehow felt distinctly more companionable than it had for a good few days. The prince was once again deep in his thoughts, and only the touch of a wet, warm rag on his shoulders shook him out of his contemplation. I washed his body, he washed mine, as the night darkened around us and the last of the villagers crawled to their huts to rest at last. Only the night watchman was out there, listening with pricked ears to anything out of the ordinary in the wilderness around us.

My limbs were leaden when I crept after the prince to our cabin and slunk to press my body against his. He was warm and cool at the same time, his body was so warm but his calves cool, and he started a little as I curled my cold toes against them. I listened to his heavy breathing for a while before burying my face into his shoulder, and his breath hitched at the contact.

"Alaish and you," he murmured softly. "Alaish and you are the only things that have ever kept me alive."

I raised my head, even though I couldn't even see the faint glimmer of his eyes in the darkness, and shyly lifted an arm to rest across his stomach. I felt the muscles bundle at first under my touch, then they relaxed slowly.

"My Lord... what is that pain in you?" I asked quietly. "Why do you say such things?"

He didn't answer and I decided to press on, hoping for at least some clue. "Is it because you have lost your faith?"

He chuckled joylessly. "Oh no, Tarisha. Why should I grieve for losing something so meaningless... if indeed there was anything to lose in the first place."

I remembered his haunted eyes amidst the splendor of the ceremony I had witnessed, and felt cold. I clutched him tighter.

"This darkness..." I whispered. "This darkness inside, it's killing you, my Lord. Is there anything I can do to help you?"

"Help me endure." It was a resigned breath, nothing more, before a stubborn silence.

I listened to his heartbeat for a long time, and finally I wasn't sure which one of us fell asleep first.