The Sight of Blood: Rhen's Story

-7- Into the Forest

The screams were beyond piercing. They stabbed into Rhen like knives, blurring her senses and leaving her staggering and afraid as she tried her best to follow Celane through the gardens. What had once been a place of serenity now seemed sinister and poisonous. Leaves curled and blackened as they passed, and withered petals still clinging to color parted across the cobblestones in their wake.

Rhen felt the cold grip of fingers as bone-thin hands shot upward between the ornate tendrils of the iron grate set in the path and grasped for her feet and ankles. Stumbling, she let out a cry of surprise. Celane whirled around in place and rushed to her side.

“Are you hurt, dear one?” She placed her warm hands around Rhen’s ankles. Rhen shook her head. Celane looked past her and frowned when she saw the grate. “Who is there?” she demanded.

Shouts from within the temple became louder. A single booming voice echoed across the grounds, and like a ripple following a stone the ground began to shake. Rhen clung to her aunt, who held her close as all around them large sinkholes collapsed where the many iron grates had been. When the dust and debris had settled Rhen opened her eyes, and both rose to look into the hole that had just been formed beside them.

The girl was so frail, Rhen wondered that she had the strength to climb out of the pit, despite the strength lent to her by Celane’s guiding hands. Her skin was the color of honey, her hair black and cut close to her face.  She was half-starved, her eyes dark and restless and her face drawn like a dress that had been fitted too tightly. Rhen could tell she was in pain, and tried to conceal her gasps as she noticed the blue-green scales that lined her eyes and the backs of her hands. Celane, too, noticed them, and took the girl’s hands into her own, frowning. Her touch was gentle as she moved to brush her fingertips against the scales on her face, but her eyes were narrowed with concern. A trickle of blood flowed from her mouth as she gasped for each breath.

“I know…what you are,” Celane breathed, her expression frozen in shock.

The girl only nodded in response. As she closed her eyes for the final time, Rhen felt the rain fall more heavily on the nape of her neck. She remembered how cold she was getting, but the thought didn’t seem to matter. All around them the screaming failed to cease, but here in the center of the gardens there was a sudden and strange stillness. She took a step back as Celane lay the girl down into a bed of flowers, arranging her scaled hands so that she might be sleeping there beneath the white and purple blossoms. Though she was not quite sure why, Rhen could see that Celane was crying, her tears unhindered as they mixed with the rainwater that streamed down her face.

“My poor child…” she whispered before rising to her feet. “Come, Rhen.”

Celane’s steps were impossibly sure as she led Rhen through the maze of pits, fallen trees, and crumbled buildings. Even when tremors passed underfoot she did not so much as flinch, and held Rhen’s hand to steady her as she walked with a quickened pace. Her features were somber, stiff with determination. Rhen struggled to keep up, trying her best to ignore the ever-diminishing sounds of death and chaos. She wanted to cry, but knew that this was not the time.

They found Trissa’s body beside her house, which had somehow been left untouched. Celane knelt to whisper a few words over the woman’s body, and Rhen thought she noticed tiny white blossoms take bloom at the roots of her hair. Celane led her between the hut and the outer wall, then knelt again to face her.

“Rhen, do you know the moonshadow flower? The little blue ones?”

Rhen nodded, biting her lip.

Celane smiled, but in her eyes there was only sadness. “Of course you do, sweet one. They face north, did you know that? Always north, turning away from Delir. They will show you the way out. Out of the forest. I want you to go where the moonshadow points, Rhen. Always north, and far away from here.”

Rhen hesitated. “I do not understand. Aren’t you coming too?”

Closing her eyes, Celane shook her head. “No, no I wish I could.” She sobbed quietly as she took Rhen’s hands and kissed them. “I have been out of the world for so long, and I must make sure that things are at an end here.”

Behind them, shoots of new green vines sprouted out of the ground and began to crawl up the wall, weaving around one another to form footholds. Rhen felt a tug of fear. She had never been outside the temple walls before. Above them, the curling branches of black oak loomed.

“There will be people at the edge of the forest. Good people live there, Trissa told me once. They’ll look after you.” She pulled Rhen into a tight embrace, squeezing with a shuddering sob, and then spoke in a low voice that was just above a whisper. “Do you remember what your mother said before she passed, dear one?”

“Was it elvish, Aunt?”

“Yes, Rhen. Na’syrc ir crysen. Say the words.”

“Na’syrc ir crysen. What does it mean, Aunt?”

Celane pulled away, and looked her in the eyes, her expression grim. “It means ‘I remember your shame’, Rhen. I would tell you everything, if we had but the time, but I want you to remember those words. Can you do that?”

“I think so,” Rhen said.

Rhen had always been good at climbing. The footholds that formed naturally in the twisting vines only made it faster for her as she found her way to the top of the wall and looked over the side for the first time. The forest was dark and the ground damp, but here and there rays of sunlight pierced through the canopy and delicate blossoms of blue, white, and pink beckoned to her. In what seemed like a very short time Rhen had managed to navigate the chipped stone of the outer wall and found herself standing on moss-covered earth. She wanted to look back, to see the whitewashed stone and turquoise tiles that had enclosed the only home she ever knew, but something kept her moving forward. Taking a single, shaken breath, she began picking her route over the moss and roots toward the first sunlit patch, where a sprouting of moonshadow pointed her toward the rest of her life.

Had she looked back even minutes later, she would not have found the Forest Temple she had known. Strong vines the size of tree trunks rose out of the cobbled ground, twisting and wrenching as they pulled every wall and every stone into rubble. The remaining under-rooms collapsed into themselves, pulling the temple and the surrounding towers down until nothing was left but whitewashed ruins choked with foliage. At the edge of the havoc stood an elf, who watched the events before him with a bitter twist in his features. The knife at his belt was stained with the woman’s blood from that morning. He did not regret his decisions – maintaining the Forest Temple had been a fleeting hope, and he did not mind admitting surprise that it had been upheld for so long. Nevertheless, the council at Terdan would not be pleased. He would need something to show for all his efforts to prove they had not been wasted.

The girl would have to be enough, and he was sure it was. Even if he could not produce her, she was proof of concept. With a nod to himself to bolster his assurance, he turned to mount his horse, and began to ride south.