The
Elven Chronicles
Episode
Three
The
Fugitive Bride
Chapter
6
Elf
Night rushed toward
her. Before she knew it the evening
feast had begun and Robb had reminded her of her
duty. This time she ate more
but also drank considerably more.
There was a plentiful supply of drink, more than usual as Robb had
decided that the thousand gold pieces they would receive in ransom would
more than pay for any small amount of brandy consumed
now. And the bandits had not
paid for the brandy in any case having stolen it from a wagon on the King’s
Highway. As a result Honoria
was so drunk she could barely stand when Robb sought her
out. Still, it was not enough
to prevent a thrill of fear stabbing through
her. “Oh goddess save me,”
Honoria said aloud. “I have
done nothing to deserve this.”
Robb
laughed. “The gods were
with me, not you when you fell into my hands,
princess. Now I will enjoy what
they have given me.” He
pulled her to the center of the camp and unlaced the bodice of her
gown. “She has breasts as
sweet and firm as ripe cantaloupes,” he leered, reaching inside to grope
Honoria’s left breast. Even
in her advanced state of drunkenness she fought to avoid her fate, but Robb
who had also been drinking heavily gripped her dress, and to the cheers of
his comrades, ripped it to the navel.
Honoria swayed drunkenly and then Robb pushed her to her knees and
began to loosen the ties on his trousers.
The arrow pierced his right
eye and came out the back of his skull.
The outlaw leader didn’t even scream as he slumped to the ground,
although some of those around him did.
Half inebriated, the response of the outlaw band was
slow. Four more arrows found
their mark before anyone reacted.
“We’re under
attack!” someone screamed. It
sounded like Vella, and then pandemonium broke
out. Bandits ran in all directions;
some for the safety of the forest and some to their
weapons. Arrows continue to fly
from the darkness, and then just a Jebb managed to organize a dozen of the
outlaws into some semblance of resistance a ball of fire flew into the centre
of the group exploding with a sound like a
thunderbolt. As Jebb screamed
in agony the rest of the band broke and headed for the
trees.
Within seconds Honoria found
herself alone in the centre of the camp surrounded
by seven
corpses pierced by arrows and Jebb’s body which burned
furiously. The only sound was
the shrieks of fear as the outlaw band fled into the forest, and the crackling
of the flames as Jebb burned.
Whoever had shot the arrows had been deadly
accurate. None of the figures
on the ground stirred.
Honoria raised her head
and tried to see beyond the light of the
campfire. A slight movement at
the edge of the camp caught her eyes and then a winged goddess stepped from
the shadows. She was tall, with
shoulder length hair the colour of fire.
Black wings swept out from her back, contrasting with the fairness
of her skin. She was nude from
the waist up save for a quiver of arrows on her back and straps that crisscrossed
between pink-tipped breasts that were so firm they barely quivered as she
moved. Below a hard, flat belly,
a dark skirt supported by a black belt fell to the front and back of her
loins, revealing long, powerfully muscled legs clad in back leather sandals
that were laced in black to just below her
knees. In her gloved hands was
a curved bow of polished dark wood.
“Winged goddess,”
Honoria murmured, falling forward in was she hoped was a properly reverent
position.
“Get up you drunken
fool,” the goddess said.
“There is no telling how long the outlaws will keep running and
we are both outlined by the fire.”
Honoria sat back on her
haunches and stared stupidly at her
rescuer.
It took her a second to
realize the voice was that of a normal human although with a hint of an accent
that she could not place. Through
eyes that had trouble focusing Honoria now saw that the woman who stood before
her was not winged as she had thought.
Instead the wings were clearly fastened by the leather straps
crisscrossing between her prefect
breasts.
“Princess Honoria,
get up and come with me. If you
do not I will leave you to the mercies of the
outlaws.”
The last threat and the
woman’s commanding tone jerked Honoria out of her drunken
stupor. Swaying unsteadily she
got to her feet and was promptly sick, spewing a thick mixture of venison
and brandy onto the ground.
“Come,” the red-headed woman prompted
again. “ I do not have time
for this.” Without further
comment she turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the
forest.
Terrified at being left
alone Honoria staggered after her.
Her head was swimming but she managed to spot the woman disappearing
into the trees. Without bothering
to pull up her gown Honoria ran after
her. She had gone only a few
feet before her dragging gown caught on a
branch. “The
goddess help me,” she gasped as she slipped
out of her gown and left it dangling from the bush as she floundered after
her saviour.
Tripping and stumbling through
the dark, she barely kept the redheaded archer in
sight. Strangely, despite her
wings which project a foot to either side of her, the woman ahead of her
seemed to move through the thickest vegetation with
ease. It was not so for Honoria
who found herself thrashing through nettles and
brambles and catching on branches until her body stung with a thousand welts
and bled from dozens of scratches.
And then the woman suddenly
halted. “We are safe
here,” she said.
Honoria sank to her knees
and leaned forward on her hands, completely done
in. She doubted that even in
her state of panic she could have gone much
farther. In spite of her almost
complete exhaustion she was able to look around
her. She and the woman who had
saved her were in the middle of a circle of gigantic stones that had been
set on edge. Beyond was the darkness
of the forest.
Too tired to even ask where
she was Honoria watched as the woman put together a pile of sticks and then
with a flick of her fingers set the wood
alight. Honoria
blinked. Surely what she had
seen was witchcraft. Then she
remembered the ball of fire that had burst in the campground and Jebb exploding
into flames. “Who are
you?” Honoria gasped, her heart rate accelerating.
“My name is Ralasharia
and you need have no fear of me.”
Again Honoria was struck by the strangeness of the woman’s accent,
and her name was like none she had ever
heard.
“Ralasharia,”
she repeated slowly. “I
have never heard such a name before.”
“It means child of
flame,” the woman said.
“Come sit by the fire.”
Now that she was no longer
running for her life, Honoria realized that the sweat drying on her skin
was now cold. She shivered and
did as the woman suggested, wishing that she still had her
robe. “I will have to get
you some clothing,” the red headed woman said, “but for now wear
this.”
From a small pouch at her
waist the woman took out a filmy garment and handed it to
her. “What is it?”
Honoria asked.
“Here,”
Ralasharia said, “I will
show you.” She took the
cloth and pulled it out. Somehow
it seemed suddenly much larger than it had been when she had first taken
it out. Then she placed it around
Honoria’s waist and with a few quick twists and turns of her fingers
turned it into garment that fell between her legs before and
behind.
Honoria still felt naked,
especially since her entire torso as well as most of her buttocks were still
completely bare. Suddenly, however,
she was no longer cold. She looked
at Ralasharia disbelievingly.
“Are you a witch?” she asked.
Ralasharia smiled, her beautiful
face lighting up as she did so, but she did not answer the
question. Instead she took something
else from the pouch at her waist.
It was a tiny glass vial sealed with a glass
stopper. Carefully she removed
the stopper and tipped a single drop into a slight hollow in the bottom of
the stopper. “Open your
mouth,” she ordered.
Honoria looked at her
slack-jawed. Ralasharia smiled
again. “A little wider
please.”
Honoria suddenly understood
what the woman wanted and opened her
mouth. As carefully as she had
extracted the liquid Ralasharia let the single drop fall on Honoria’s
tongue.
“Oooooh!” Honoria
almost swooned as an incredible sensation rushed through her, beginning on
her tongue where the drop had fallen and then rushing through her body with
the speed of lightning. For as
second her body radiated heat and then sudden chills swept through her replaced
once again by a feeling of warmth and euphoria.
“What…” she
gasped. Her head reeled and then
suddenly she noticed that she no longer felt any pain from her ordeal of
the last few days and the numerous scrapes and bruises she had received had
disappeared. “What did you
do?” she finished.
Ralasharia got to her
feet. “I think you should
sleep now. We’ll talk more
in the morning.”
Honoria was about to comment
that her bizarre rescuer had answered almost nothing, but she was suddenly
overcome by an incredible feeling of
weariness. So much so that she
could barely get to her feet and make it to the bed of boughs that Ralasharia
had prepared for her. Within
seconds she was asleep.
For the first time since
her marriage Honoria awoke refreshed.
It was a strange feeling after so much fear and
torment. Sitting up she looked
about her. A few feet away Ralasharia
was stirring something in a small pot over the
fire. It smelled incredibly
delicious. “Hungry?”
the redheaded woman asked.
“I’m starving,”
Honoria answered, getting to her feet.
First though…
“Go outside the stone
circle,” Ralasharia said.
Honoria nodded and walked
beyond the stones. As she did
she looked back and saw to her amazement that even though Ralasharia should
have been in plain sight she could see nothing of
her. “A sorceress,”
Honoria muttered. “I’m
been rescued by a sorceress.”
She kept walking and completed her business and returned the way she
had come. Stepping between the
stones she once again found herself standing before her
rescuer.
Ralasharia stirred the contents
of the small pot slowly, intent on her
task. As she did so a strand
of her breast length hair trailed toward the
pot. Absentmindedly she brushed
her hair back and then looked up at Honoria with a
smile. “I think it’s
ready,” she said.
Honoria stared at her
open-mouthed. “You…
you’re… You’re
an Elf!” she gasped.
Ralasharia
shrugged. “Yes,” she
said. “You have seen my
ears. I am one of the
Jauntaur; the forest
elves. I had been seeking that
band of outlaws for several days.
Ever since I learned that they had set up camp in my
forest.”
“Your forest?”
asked Honoria.
“Yes,” Ralasharia
replied. “I know that your
father presumptuously refers to these woods as the King’s Lands, but
rest assured. My people rule
here. No Man enters here without
the leave of the
Jauntaur. Now would you like some
breakfast?”
Honoria felt famished, almost
as if she had not eaten in days.
She nodded quickly and Ralasharia spooned a small amount of what she
had been cooking into a small cup carved from the bole of a
tree. It was translucent light
green fluid and smelled delicious, but it hardly seemed like enough to satisfy
her appetite. As Ralasharia had
not provided her with any spoon she raised the cup to her lips and
drank. A warm feeling followed
the flow of liquid down her throat all the way to her
stomach. Her taste buds
tingled. The liquid was
overwhelmingly delicious, the taste remaining in her mouth long after it
had passed to her stomach. Almost
lost in the overwhelming taste sensation was the fact that her hunger had
completely disappeared.
“Elven magic,” Honoria
observed.
“To you perhaps,”
Ralasharia answered. “Just
as the making of iron weapons must seem like magic to those who work only
in stone.” She got to her
feet. “We must go
now. We have a long way to go
before we reach our destination and you have much to
learn.”
Honoria got to her feet
and shook her head. “I do
not wish appear to be ungrateful, but I do not intend to go anywhere with
you until you tell me what is going on.
Where are we going and what am I to learn?”
“Ah,” Ralasharia
smiled. “I am glad to see
that the horror of your ordeal has not robbed you of your
spirit. Very well I will tell
you. It would not be fair to
lead you into the dangers we may face
uninformed. But please walk with
me as I explain.”
“As I have told you,”
Ralasharia began. “I am
Jauntaur
what you Men call a forest elf. But
I am special among my kind. As
you have noticed I have certain powers and am regarded as a shaman among
my people. Some powers such as
that of calling fire I can control.
Others I have not yet mastered.
One of these is to see that which will happen and that which is happening
even though I am sometimes far away.
It is in this way that I first saw you in a
dream. I saw what would happen
to you and what was happening to you, but I was too far away to prevent it,
and perhaps I was not meant to save you from such
suffering.”
“What do you mean?”
Honoria asked. “You mean
you saw my marriage to the Duke and what he would do to
me?”
“Yes,” Ralasharia
replied. “I saw everything
that was going to happen to you and everything that did happen to you, but
I realized that I had been given this vision as a
summoning. I found you in time
to save you from your last ordeal, but was unable to intervene in what happened
between you and the Duke. It
was something I believe the gods intended to be that
way. But I saw something else
in my dreams as well, and that was that I was to find you and take you to
the Throne of Fire where you will meet your
destiny.”
“The Throne of
Fire? My
destiny? What are you talking
about?”
“Unfortunately, that
is something I do not know. I
only know that our journey there will be long and dangerous and that the
Throne of Fire lies deep in the southlands in a region of which I know
nothing.”
Honoria stopped
walking. “Let me understand
this. I have known you for only
a few hours. I know nothing about
you except that you are a
Jauntaur,
one of the forest Elves, and that after rescuing me from a band of
outlaws you wish me to accompany you on an epic journey fraught with
danger.”
Ralasharia
smiled. “Yes, that’s
about it.”
“Does this journey
perhaps involve the same sort of danger I faced at the hands of the
outlaws?” Honoria asked.
“That might be the
least of it,” Ralasharia replied.
“We could face ordeals much worse than
that. We must pass through the
lands of the Grothargs.”
“Grothargs?” Honoria
asked.
“Does the world of
Men know nothing outside its own
existence? The Grothargs are
brutal man-like creatures with all of the vices of Men but with none of their
redeeming qualities. We would
be well advised not to fall into their hands.”
Honoria took a deep
breath. During the last week
she had been forced into a marriage by her loving parents; repeatedly raped
and brutalized by her husband; and captured and violated by
bandits. She faced a charge of
murder if she returned home and would probably be in complete disgrace for
destroying the careful alliance with
Magdoran.
She didn’t think she really had very much to
lose. “I’ll go with
you. But would it be possible
to get me a sword?”
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