Hello faithful readers!
Today I have two new scenes for your entertainment.
Let me just contextualise: the first of today's scenes takes place after the last scene you read, where Malvarl and Myrna dress in southern costume and enter Fort Gal-Ga-Rok. The second of today's scenes takes place way before that, after Myrna stumbles across the Nybelingnau encampment in the forest at night.
One more thing before you read on: I'd like to apologise. These two scenes are two of the most emotional scenes that I've dreamed up but I feel like I haven't really captured that in the writing of them. So... sorry. :( If you agree, would you mind terribly much sending me a quick message detailing where you think I went wrong? I'm wondering if maybe I "told" too much, breaking that ever-important show-don't-tell rule. Hmm :S if you disagree and are moved by the EXTREME FEELS caused by these scenes, please feel free to tell me that too. :P
Anyways, enjoy!
♥Nancy♬
The great expanses of grey rock that made up the throne room walls in Fort Gal-Ga-Rok looked as if they should be harsh and cold, but the room was actually quite a pleasant temperature, with more than one roaring fire contributing to the warmth.
“Stop,” said Gal-Ga-Wak, and we did. We stood in the very entrance to the throne room, staring down towards the throne of the Treacle King. We’d heard tell that the throne was made from human bones, but it was covered by so many furs that it was impossible to see if this were true. On the throne sat the biggest barbarian I had ever seen. He seemed to be naked, but an animal-fur blanket protected his modesty, or rather, ours.
“You listen at Gal-Ga-Spayk,” growled our escort.
We heard the sound of a throat being cleared. It took a moment for me to identify the source, out of all the barbarians crowded around the walls of the throne room. By the side of the throne of the barbarian king stood a normal, human girl. She was wearing a linen shift, stained red - I could only assume with blood - and over it she wore rabbit furs arranged to keep her decently clothed, by barbarian standard at least. Looking around at the other barbarian women, it was clear that the presence of the shift was a rarity. Most of the barbarian women simply wore animal furs down around their waists and up over their shoulders, covering sometimes both, but more often just one breast. I couldn’t fathom how they survived out in the cold.
The woman beside the throne spoke, in clear English. “Princess Mirella from the South, you will approach the Great King Gal-Ga.”
I walked towards the throne. Malvarl followed close behind. Remembering our previous discussions, I went all the way up to the throne until I was within arms reach of the Treacle King himself. He smelt of unwashed man and stale blood. I did not bow. Instead, I held out the precious glass and wood box that I had carried all this way.
“For King Gal-Ga, southern pearls harvested from poison snap-clams.”
The human girl, Gal-Ga-Spayk, stepped forward, bowed low to me in the southern fashion, and accepted the gift. King Gal-Ga turned towards the girl and spoke in his guttural barbarian tongue.
Gal-Ga-Spayk translated: “King Gal-Ga appreciates this product of brave deeds. He names your Nissetrold warrior a devil-creature. As a courtesy to you he offers a gift to appease the demon’s appetite...” Her voice trailed off, and I heard it catch in her throat. She coughed. I saw the movement of her jaw as it clenched and then watched as she forced herself to relax. She finished translating: “bring the devil-marked babes.”
A barbarian woman stepped forward, cradling a baby in each arm. At first I was silent, still waiting for the courtesy gift to arrive. When I finally realised, my mouth dropped open. Staying perfectly calm, Malvarl stepped forward and retrieved the babies. Figuring that the babies were safe with Malvarl - despite what Gal-Ga the Treacle King thought - I turned my attention back to our translator.
“Devil-marked babes?” I asked.
A series of grunts and growls passed between the King and his herald.
Then Gal-Ga-Spayk said to me, “they believe that twins are devil-marked and weak. They are happy to feed them to your servant. They go to great lengths to appease the Nissetrold.”
Her voice cracked.
“Nissetrold? The Nybelingnau, of the south and west?”
Gal-Ga-Spayk nodded. A tear rolled down her cheek. She ignored it. I took a step towards her.
“The babes are yours?” I whispered. She nodded.
“We can return them, in secret. I won’t take your babes.”
She shook her head violently.
“I wouldn’t dare,” she whispered back to me.
I looked into her eyes. There was so much that I wanted to communicate to Gal-Ga-Spayk. I wanted to promise salvation from the barbarians. I wished I could promise her a safe life with her babies, far away from this blood-stained fortress. I ached to pass on all the wisdom I had acquired on my journey so far. But our perilous situation was too constraining.
I whispered back to her, “I’ll take care of them, I swear it. He won’t eat them.”
“Thank you,” she mouthed, with a smile on her face but her eyes full of tears.
Then she turned and grunted at King Gal-Ga. He laughed a deep belly laugh. I wondered what she had told him about our whispered exchange.
Composed again, Gal-Ga-Spayk announced, “King Gal-Ga is pleased. You may state your business.”
This was it. We had rehearsed this speech in private, trained me in the southern accent and prayed to our gods that I could pull this off. I straightened my ridiculous southern headdress, breathed as deep as I could in the restrictive gown and spoke.
“Dread King Gal-Ga, word has reached my southern principality that the terrible rogue Darach,” King Gal-Ga furrowed his brow when he heard this, and spat over the side of his throne, “has been seen in your lands. This man is my property, marked for death by the hand and teeth of my bodyguard. If you have him, I demand that you transfer him to my custody to deal with as is appropriate in our southern custom. If you do not, I humbly request any information you may possess.”
Gal-Ga-Spayk grunted and grumbled at the Treacle King, relaying my wordy message. Then he grunted and grumbled back. And then there was more grumbling and grunting and even some growling.
The real me, average everyday Myrna, would have waited patiently. The woman I was pretending to be, the fictional Princess Mirella, would not. I began to tap my foot.
King Gal-Ga paused, mid-grumble. He glared at me. I raised one eyebrow at him.
A moment later, Gal-Ga-Spayk turned back to me and said, “King Gal-Ga concedes to give you information. He will not give you Darach.”
King Gal-Ga spat again at the sound of Darach’s name. He growled at his herald.
“King Gal-Ga wishes to inform you that scum-of-the-earth Darach-” King Gal-Ga spat on the ground a third time - “is in the custody of the Baron o’ Mines. He will never be released. He says...”
Gal-Ga-Spayk paused. She turned to King Gal-Ga. She grunted at him. Even in the guttural tongue of the barbarians, I could hear her upwards inflection and knew that she was questioning him. King Gal-Ga let out a great roar. It was so loud that I had to cover my ears for a moment, but I watched as Gal-Ga-Spayk cowered from the barbarian king’s terrible roar. The throne room was utterly silent as the echoes faded away.
Gal-Ga-Spayk cleared her throat and said, quietly, “he says, scum-of-the-earth Darach is not even good enough to be food for the Nissetrold.” There was a long pause. Then she added, quieter still, “that was the barbarian’s worst and cruelest insult.”
I kept myself composed. I held up one finger to King Gal-Ga, in what I hoped was a universal gesture for “just a minute please.”
I turned to Malvarl. I didn’t have to pose the question that was on my tongue. Malvarl said, “no,” in the Nybelingnau tongue. I was confident that no one else in the room understood, nor did they want to.
I turned back to King Gal-Ga and delivered another speech, “my gratitude knows no bounds, Ferocious King Gal-Ga. There is no better place for scum-of-the-earth Darach. My bodyguard thanks you for sparing him from consuming something so base. Our quest achieved, we will depart your northern realm.”
I nodded at Gal-Ga-Spayk, trying to convey all the things I wanted to say her in a single glance. Then I turned on my heels, letting my southern gown swish around me, and walked past Malvarl towards the doorway to the throne room.
Before I knew it we were back inside a carriage, heading down the mountain path, barbarian-free. The gong boomed five times and the sweet wind blew in from the Sugar Hills.
“This is a fool’s errand, Myrna. Forget the man who sowed his seed and focus on your child.”
I looked into Malvarl’s big, whiteless eyes. Who could tell if they seemed sincere or nasty? But there was something about the timbre of his cacophony-of-a-voice that made me think he was just trying to be kind.
“He has a right to know that he’s a father. I’m not asking him to marry me.”
“The way is dangerous, Myrna, and worse still for a woman and worse still for the child. And what will you do if you don’t find Darach at the Leaping Griffin?”
“I’ll keep looking, o’ course. I’m nothing if not persistent.”
“Which is how you ended up here,” Malvarl replied, flatly.
I could leave anytime. Despite the terrible stories I had heard of the Nybelingnau, I now knew that they would never eat me or even keep me prisoner. Still, convincing Malvarl that I should leave the Nybelingnau caravan to adventure into the Far North seemed somehow important.
And so I said, “can you imagine not knowing your children, Malvarl?”
His tattered ears stopped twitching and his many piercings fell silent - a telltale sign of Nybelingnau fear, although of course the stories try to pass it off as sneakiness and cunning.
“A convincing argument, Myrna,” Malvarl admitted.
I smiled in triumph.
“I will accompany you.”
My smile dropped. I didn’t need a travelling companion. It was a ridiculous idea!
“I do not like to consider life without my children, Myrna, so I appreciate your quest. But I also do not like to consider my Charna travelling so far, alone and with-child. This time, Myrna, it is my argument that is convincing.”
The next thing I knew, Malvarl was packing a travel bag, chattering away to his companions as he did so. My grasp of the Nybelingnau tongue was much too flimsy to understand what he was saying.
“Myrna,” he called, in a sudden burst of English, “prepare yourself, we leave as soon as possible.”
I had little to prepare; all my food was long-since eaten and I’d barely brought anything else. I packed my blanket away in my bag and decided that I was ready. I sat down on a wooden stool beside the still-smoking coals of last night’s fire.
“Myrna,” Malvarl called, “one moment, and then we leave.”
I watched across the clearing as Malvarl turned around from facing me to find himself nose-to-nose with Charna. She screeched at him, in pure, soul-destroying Nybelingnau. Malvarl chattered back at her. His voice, which still conjured up images of serpents and harpies and hell’s worst creatures, was a sound I had almost grown accustomed to. Almost. Malvarl reasoned and pleaded with Charna and she ranted and raved right back at him. Although their speech was totally foreign, the positions of their lanky alien bodies seemed close to human. When Charna began to cry copper-coloured tears and covered her face with her hands, I had the utterly absurd thought that she could have been any wife from my village, instead of a creepy Nybelingnau female. She grasped Malvarl’s shirt with her three-jointed fingers and pulled him close to cry into his neck. It was all so human...
Malvarl took a step back from Charna. I continued to watch, captivated by their exchange. Malvarl dropped to his knees on the grass in front of Charna. Even from afar I could see his eyes fill with copper tears. He began to tear at her dress, ripping through the weave of the fabric with his sharp nails. For a brief moment I wondered whether I should leave - I didn’t want to be witness to a Nybelingnau mating.
But Nybelingnau anatomy is humanoid and Malvarl stopped ripping Charna’s dress apart after he had exposed her stomach. He put his hands around her waist. I realised what was happening a split-second before he kissed her now-revealed skin. I watched in awe as Charna cried copper-coloured tears onto Malvarl’s bald head and Marlvarl kissed her belly, his eyes leaking tears too, kissing her belly again and again as if... as if he couldn’t bear to leave her and their unborn babe.
I stood up and walked away from the campfire, to wait with the Nybelingnau until it was time to leave - and time to tear Malvarl from his family indefinitely.
No comments:
Post a Comment