The Prison of Angels

11

Jessilynn lay before the fire, without the strength to sit up. Her arms and back ached tremendously, the result of another lengthy set of hours training while Sonowin rested from their flight. Her fingers felt raw, and the idea of pulling back her bowstring even one more time made her queasy. Staring up at the stars, she breathed in deeply, then let it out, trying to relax her sore muscles.

“I do not understand why you are so upset,” Dieredon said, sitting across from her, the lazy fire burning between them. He picked at the remains of a groundhog he’d shot and cooked sometime during the day. “I was told you were familiar with a bow. A few hours of practice should be nothing.”

“It’s not the time,” Jessilynn said, doing her best to not sound defensive. “Before it was just me. With you, it’s different. Every shot has to be…I don’t know how to explain. Every single one has to be right with you. Ten arrows with you feel like twenty on my own.”

“Patience,” she heard Dieredon say. “That is the reason. I’m teaching you patience, giving the bow a greater chance to work on you. Your body will adjust in time.”

Jessilynn closed her eyes and laughed despite herself.

“Is this one of those ‘pain is good for you’ lessons? Because I hated those whenever Jerico gave them.”

Dieredon chuckled. Silence came over them, broken occasionally by Sonowin’s nearby rustling as she grazed on the pale yellow grass of the Wedge. Slowly Jessilynn shifted so she lay on her back, close enough to feel the heat on her face as she stared into the fire. She caught Dieredon watching her, and she felt her heart quicken. She had slowly gotten used to the elf’s presence, but still there were times when she could hardly believe where she was. How long ago was it she’d been sleeping in a cramped bunk within the cold stone walls of the Citadel? Two weeks? Three?

“Why are you here?” Dieredon asked. The abruptness of the question caught Jessilynn off guard, and she looked up at him dumbfounded.

“To learn,” she said, believing that the safe answer.

“You know I ask for more than that. There is something burning in you, something driving you beyond others your age. I watched you in practice. That final hour you were clearly in pain, learning little because of your exhaustion. Yet still you continued, not once refusing my demand to loose another arrow.”

A bit of anger bubbled up Jessilynn’s stomach.

“You were testing me?” she asked.

“Of course. I am your teacher, after all. Now answer the question. What is driving you?”

She looked away, preferring to watch the flame consuming the many twigs, which Dieredon had showed her how to stack as to lengthen the life of the fire. Her neck blushed, and she bit her tongue. The answer wasn’t hard, but she felt embarrassed to admit it. Still, Dieredon’s eyes were upon her, and he seemed perfectly content to wait until she gave her answer. And if she refused, well, it wasn’t that far a flight for him to dump her off at the Citadel…

“I want to be like Jerico,” she blurted out when it seemed his patience was finally wearing thin.

The following silence was painful as she waited for his response.

“Your hair isn’t red enough,” Dieredon said.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then giggled upon realizing the elf had actually made a joke.

“Not just Jerico,” she said, feeling herself relax. “Lathaar. Darius. Tyrus the First. People revere them. I hear the stories, and all I desire is to do even better. I feel jealous, even. Jerico stood before a portal, slaughtering waves of war demons, not stopping even when a spear pierced his side. Lathaar defeated the ancient evil, Darakken. Tyrus drove the remnants of Karak’s beasts into the Wedge near on his own, surviving even though engulfed by thousands and returning a hero. Darius prevented Cyric’s madness from overtaking all of Mordan. Every night I went to bed listening to these stories, and when I look at Jerico’s shield, I think…”

She fell silent.

“Speak your mind,” Dieredon insisted. “You will receive no judgment from me, and no mockery.”

Jessilynn slowly forced herself into a sitting position. Her hand fell to the bow that lay beside her in the grass.

“I see the glow on my arrows and believe there has to be a reason,” she said. “Jerico’s shield was unlike all others, and look at everything he’s accomplished. Now I bear a similar gift, a blessing no one in my order has ever received before. What will I do with it? The demons are gone, the ancient evils defeated. What can I do to have my name belong next to theirs, to allow me to stand beside the heroes of my order and not feel ashamed?”

She bowed her head, felt her voice tremble.

“I have such a gift,” she said. “I’m just scared that I’ll waste it.”

For a long minute she endured Dieredon’s silence.

“This world is not safe, Jessilynn,” he told her, rising to his feet. “Your angels have done great things, but I fear the illusion of safety they have created has been more damaging than they can possibly understand. The east has gone wild, and within the Wedge the beasts are on the move. Every day my kind patrols the borders of our forests, always in fear of orcish fire. The ancient evils may be gone, but new ones have replaced them.”

He scattered the fire with his foot so they might safely sleep in darkness.

“I do not know what you will accomplish with your life,” he said, his eyes glowing in the starlight. “If you desire to be a hero, you have the necessary strength inside you. I can see it, clear as the stars in the sky. But your heroes didn’t become who they were by accident. They bled for it. They died for it. Not for themselves, but for others. Before you yearn for glory, think of the costs.”

And then he left her so she might sleep.

They spent much of the next two days in flight, landing only to let Sonowin rest. During those respites, Dieredon showed her how to light a fire with twigs, to hunt game, and forage for edible roots and berries. He barely let her touch her bow, telling her she should let her body rest and instead learn something new. Moving silently across the grass was the hardest for her, and more and more she saw her teacher growing frustrated with the clumsiness of her armor.

“It’s made for battle, not scouting,” he muttered one late afternoon.

“My arrows glow a bright blue,” she responded. “How stealthy do you expect me to be?”

He only shook his head.

“When the fighting begins, they’ll know your presence. It’s beforehand that matters. Sometimes you may not want to fight at all. It is a hard skill to learn, knowing when you are outmatched.”

“So you want me to learn to be a coward?”

“It’s not cowardice to adjust the battle more to your favor,” Dieredon said. “There’s a difference between them ten leagues wide.”

“What about all the times Jerico and Lathaar stood their ground when victory was hopeless, yet still won? Haven’t you done the same?”

She thought she had him, but instead he only looked more disappointed with her.

“I dare say they were left with no choice,” he said. “That’s either bravery, or poor forethought, depending on who you ask. Neither is something you should run foolhardily into.”

They took to the air on Sonowin’s back, and for the next hour Jessilynn sulked, upset at her inability to answer a simple question correctly. If Dieredon noticed, he didn’t mention it. The land passed below them, until at last the elf guided them back to the ground.

“Landing already?” Jessilynn asked, trying to pull herself out of her funk. She was being immature, and she knew it. “There’s nothing here.”

“That’s exactly the point.”

The elf crouched low to the ground as he walked, eyes scanning his surroundings. For what, she couldn’t begin to guess. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized she would never possess a fraction of his skills. The wilderness spoke to him in a way it never would to her. The arrows in his quiver were as familiar to him as his own fingers. Even the weather couldn’t surprise him, and twice when it rained he’d informed her a good twelve hours beforehand, showing her how to build a rudimentary shelter with just sticks and dirt. Jessilynn waited, feeling useless, following after when he strayed farther and farther away.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head after ten minutes had passed and they’d covered a large swathe of area. “Everywhere we go, nothing.”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“It seems the Vile Wedge is empty,” Dieredon said, standing and stretching the muscles in his back. “I can’t even find signs of recent passage.”

“That’s impossible,” Jessilynn insisted. “You said only orcs had gone east, and our boats patrol the western river, as does the Wall of Towers. If there’d been such a massive exodus, we’d have heard of it.”

“Perhaps,” Dieredon said, but he didn’t look convinced. “We’ll continue west for now. Tens of thousands of monsters don’t vanish without leaving a trace. They’re somewhere, and I will find them.”

Jessilynn’s butt and back ached from such long periods of riding, but she said nothing, only gritted her teeth as she climbed atop Sonowin and wrapped her arms around Dieredon’s waist yet again. The miles passed below as the horse’s wings flapped with a steady rhythm. Occasionally she glanced down, but it was always the same rocky hills and dull grass. Part of her understood why the creatures so strongly desired to escape. Living in such a bland, infertile land must have worn on them as the years passed. Not that she regretted it. Humans living peaceably next to wolf-men and bird-men? Preposterous. She knew well the stories Jerico had told of Darius and him making their stand against the army of wolf-men that had crossed the Gihon and made their way west. She’d often imagined herself sitting atop one of the homes, her bow in hand, releasing glowing arrows into the beasts, thinning the horde and saving dozens of lives.

“There,” Dieredon said, breaking her out of her daydream. Several hours had passed at a tedious pace. He pointed, and she followed his gaze. It took a few moments before they closed enough distance for her human eyes to see. From her vantage point it looked like a blob of darkness atop the yellow landscape. It helped none that the sun was beginning to set, obscuring it further.

“What is it?” she had to ask as Dieredon ordered Sonowin to fly higher.

“A group of hyena-men,” the elf said.

“Why aren’t we following them?”

Dieredon glanced back at her, gave her a wink.

“Consider it a hunch, as you humans might say.”

Once they were past the group Sonowin dipped lower. The land grew closer, and she saw more clearly the red stone jutting out from the grass, the spattered collections of trees that grew short and thin of leaf. Dieredon leaned so far off Sonowin’s side she feared he’d fall. They banked lower, lower, until the ground was frighteningly close below them. Jessilynn kept her legs clenched against the horse’s sides, begging Ashhur to calm her nerves.

Up ahead the hills grew taller, and above them drifted a lazy column of smoke. Dieredon said something to Sonowin in elvish, and then the horse’s wings sharply changed their angle, blowing back against the air current. They soared upward, killing more of their momentum, and then with hardly a bump they landed at the foot of the hills. Jessilynn hopped off Sonowin’s back, following Dieredon. Something about the way his body tensed made her uneasy, and the mischievous grin on his face helped none, either. He seemed excited, yet all she felt was fear.

“What’s beyond the hills?” she asked, keeping her voice a whisper. She already felt too loud because of the soft rustling of her chainmail against the studded leather backing.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Dieredon said as they continued to climb.

“Then why not fly over with Sonowin?”

The elf shook his head, a gesture Jessilynn was becoming all too familiar with seeing.

“The sun’s not yet set, and the sky is clear,” he said. “I don’t want them to know we’re here.”

He hurried ahead, his excitement growing. Despite his speed, he made not a sound. Jessilynn bumbled after, more and more thinking she needed to make some adjustments to her armor. Why he hadn’t forced her to already was baffling. Perhaps he was waiting to see if she did it on her own, just as he waited to see if she would complain when he pushed her too far in her training.

When Dieredon neared the top of the hill he lay on his stomach and crawled to its peak. When he looked beyond, she saw a jolt go through him. He held his palm open toward her, and she dropped to her belly, figuring he wanted her to show equal care. Something in the way he froze there, the way his excited grin had fled…what was beyond the hill? What could scare the Scoutmaster of the Quellan elves? Elbow over elbow she crawled across the yellow grass, until at last she joined the elf’s side and overlooked the land below.

“Ashhur help us,” she whispered, unable to stop herself.

The hill ended sharply, revealing a wide cleft. It looked like a gash rent into the world, with many surrounding hills also ending just as steep. The space between was wide and flat, much of it covered with dry red clay, the sparse grass there smashed or dead. And in that massive area, spread out below them like colonies of ants, were the creatures of the Vile Wedge.

Nearest to her were the wolf-men, packs of them gathered around the small fires that dotted the ravine. She couldn’t even begin to count their number, but they were the most numerous of all the species as far as she could tell. Amid the cacophony of sounds rising up to them, it was their growls that were the loudest. Beside them, in the heart of the gulch, were the bird-men. They sat in circles, their feathery arms wrapped around their bodies. Their colors varied wildly, more so than any of the other beasts. Most were dark black, like a raven, but others were white, blue, red, even a few pinks and purples among their plumage.

Beyond them were the goblins, miniature humans with grotesque heads. They were the only ones gathered that wore clothing, tattered loin cloths sewn from the yellow grass of the Wedge. Their encampment seemed the most industrious, with actual tents scattered about. Their skin varied in color, though not as much as the feathers of the bird-men. Most were an ugly green, with red the second-most common color. Also unlike the rest, they wielded crude weapons made of wood and stone. Nearest to the goblin camp were the hyena-men. They were the most hyper, yipping about and snarling at one another. The hunch in their back looked uncomfortable, almost obscene. Unlike the rest, their fur was unanimously a dirty shade of spotted orange.

On the far end of the ravine, their forms just barely visible to her eyes, were the goat-men. She’d heard of them rarely, their numbers were few. They walked about, bare-chested, their faces long and horned. Their arms and hands were like that of a human, but their legs were covered with fur, their feet ending with hooves as large as a horse’s. She saw them talking, but the distance was too great for her to make out any sound.

Between each race were large gaps, with what appeared to be poles or spears jutted into the ground to form the borders. Fire, ordered encampments, alliances between races…all of it was counter to what she’d believed possible. The creatures in the Wedge were mindless, brutal, devouring each other like the monsters they were. They weren’t supposed to reason. They weren’t supposed to be more intelligent than any other pack of wild animals. From them she heard yips, snarls, random curses, and amid it all were words shouted in the common tongue. That she could understand them, could listen to their words as they shouted and mocked one another…

Most terrifying, though, was their number. It was beyond counting, almost beyond estimating, but between them she knew there had to be twenty thousand, if not more.

“What is going on?” Jessilynn whispered. She almost felt paralyzed as she lay there. If any spotted her, or even smelled her with their animal noses, they’d swarm in an instant. Sonowin wasn’t far down the hill, and surely they could reach her before any beasts curled around the sides of the ravine, but still, that was a race she didn’t want to take part in.

Directly below her she watched a wolf-man come in from the south entrance of the ravine, carrying what looked like the upper half of a cow. It flung the corpse before one of the fires, and with frightening speed dozens of the beasts tore into the thing, grabbing at innards and ripping flesh free with their claws. Jessilynn watched, a chill spreading through her veins.

“A gathering of the subhuman,” Dieredon whispered, and over the sounds below he was barely audible. “Of the like I’ve never seen, never even dreamed.”

“I don’t understand. They hate each other, don’t they?”

He nodded.

“It’s that hatred that has allowed us to keep them in check. But this…this isn’t normal. I’d say it impossible if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. The entirety of the Wedge has been making its way here for months, abandoning all former territorial lines. We must find out who leads them, who is capable of creating such an army. Perhaps magic is involved, maybe even priests or wizards.”

“How?” Jessilynn asked. “How do we find out without them discovering us?”

Dieredon stared, and the longer the silence lingered the greater her fear grew.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.

It was the most frightening thing he could have possibly told her.