Vhamnya's Tale: Rise of a Dark Queen - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Vhamnya and her mother fled deep within the forest. When they grew too tired to walk, they slept. At night Vhamnya watched over her mother, lest any wolves, bears, or monsters happen near. They found shelter under ledges and broke off low-hanging fir-boughs to cover and keep warm.

Heading into the wilderness, away from all villages, dwellings, and all help, should have meant death, but Rennyae surprised her own madness. In her youth she had trained as an herb-wife. So she knew which plants were eatable, and which were ill. The summer-tide offered these foodstuffs fresh and growing. Where mother and daughter might have died, they survived.

They found an abandoned woodman's hut and sheltered there. The roof leaked, but they piled up more boughs until it stopped. Then they spent days gathering greens and fruits to tide over for when the plenty ended. They had no fire and froze at night, but huddled together and shared warmth.

Not far off ran a lane through the forest. Vhamnya took to exploring along its cut, seeking any sign of the folk who had once come through here. One day, while she gathered brambleberries, she heard voices. The small dark girl snuck through the trees until she spied a band of hunters. Their hounds caught wind of Vhamnya and howled. She ran off before the hunters spotted her and got their dogs back on their prey.

That night, Vhamnya crept near again. Their campfire lighted the woods. She saw the three men and also their hounds sleeping deeply. On bare feet she walked into their camp.

The fire warmed her like she had not been warm in a long while, as she remembered the hearths and braziers she had known both in prison and at the abbey. She knelt before it. Tenderly she held forth her hand and dipped it into the dancing flames. She withdrew a handful of cherry-red embers. Cupping them in her hands, she ran out of camp before the waking hounds had a chance to bay and catch her.

She returned to the hut and woke her mother. "Look!" she yelped, holding forth her cradled hands.

Rennyae startled awake. Her eyes beheld the red-gray embers glowing in her daughter's hand. A whine strangled from her throat. She rocked back and forth and began muttering as she had not done in a long while.

Vhamnya backed off. She set the embers in the hearth, added tinder and kindling, and then went back out into the night to find firewood. Her mother's groans harried her.

Vhamnya came back to the cabin to eat. When she caught food, she brought it back and shared. She came indoors and huddled next to their newfound fire when the weather turned cold. But more and more she left the hut to her mother and spent more often in the woods. For the first time in the young girl's life she was free. No walls, no prisons, and no doors held her any more.

She wandered southward where the hills grew rocky. When she climbed the tallest trees, she glimpsed mountains warding the horizon. She wandered northward where the land dropped into swamp. There she caught the whispers of goblins who dwelled along the streams, who made tree huts hidden among the leaves, and who speared carp from the muddy waters. They scattered and vanished whenever she came near, though Vhamnya knew they watched. Despite their barbed spears they never tried to hurt her. She came to learn the Darkeave's paths and hiding places, what lurked among them, and what they sought for prey.

She learned to steal eggs from bird nests. Although they would shriek and dive at her head, they never came near enough to harm. Darkness, neither the gloom under the tree boughs nor the nights when they covered all land and stole light from the air, offered no barrier. Neither did it hide the hunters from her eyes, but them she learned not to fear. Rather, once in their first winter in the Darkeave, she came on three wolves eating a deer. They snarled and snapped, but when she strode near, they cowered and slunk off. Vhamnya dragged the carcass back to the hut and let her mother cook it.

Winter proved the hardest, for they lost the forest's fruits and nuts. Though they never starved, they were ever hungry. Vhamnya grew wider in her wandering and bolder in her thefts, even as her dark limbs grew longer and taller. Her knees showed naked below her hem. Her shoes wore out, and she went barefoot, even on the snow. She followed the huntsmen's track back eastward, back toward the land of men, farms, and herds. Under dark skies she stole sacks of corn, and even a knife and an axe. Nobody saw, and only a few dogs smelled her.

Once in daylight she wandered into a farmstead. A man stood in the yard while chopping wood. When he looked up at her, the axe dropped from his hands. Then his wife came out from their cottage, and her steps slowed and halted as she also stared. Vhamnya walked up to them. They brought her inside, where they poured her ale and fed her stew. Their children also drew around, and the whole family sat, all gazing wonderingly at their guest. One daughter came near. She stroked Vhamnya's face. Then she kissed the dark girl's cheek and laid head on her shoulder. They made her a bed for the night, but while they slept, Vhamnya returned to the woods. She did so with a new dress that better fit her long limbs.

Soon afterward, tales grew along the Darkeave of a dark fey child who dwelt among the forest's hidden parts. Vhamnya sometimes found stones piled altar-like at the forest's edge. Small cakes or fruits might be left atop them. Vhamnya shared them with her mother.

By Vhamnya's tenth year, she was already grown as tall as Rennyae. Wildly she roamed the forest as a dark whip-thin waif, barefoot and half-naked in her rags, hair like patina silver falling to her thighs. She had learned to call the winds: they blew when she bade them, rustled leaves when she wanted, and quietened when she wished. She called birds to her hand and shoulder: owls brought her rabbits and squirrels they had hunted, and ravens with their bright eyes learned to croak and whisper in her ear. They brought news of things that moved through the forest. The wolves, instead of fleeing, lay at her feet and bared their throats and bellies. Vhamnya snuggled with them like dogs to stay warm.

Whenever her mother Rennyae saw these things, she retreated to their squalid hut. There she hid inside, rocked, and muttered weird things.

That winter was the worst they suffered since coming to the Darkeave. As Midwinter arrived, the forest froze, and the icy winds did not leave. The birds left. The squirrels and rabbits hid deep. The deer vanished, and the wolves followed. Vhamnya and her mother shivered in their rotting hut and starved. Vhamnya took to stealing out of the forest and taking from the farmsteads, but even they ran out of food. As one cold month followed another, the farmers had nothing left to give when she begged, and nothing left to thieve.

By the time the winds warmed, Vhamnya lay on the hut's floor with her mother, hardly with the strength to move. Her mother's sunken eyes had not opened in days. Vhamnya rubbed her shriveled belly, and then ran fingers over hard bare ribs. She rose without knowing why and staggered outside.

Out on a bough sat a crow. It cawed and looked at her.

Vhamnya lifted her hand. She whispered words of summoning, words of enticement. The crow cocked its head. It flew downward and landed on her shoulder. Vhamnya scratched its headfeathers. Her head turned and nuzzled it.

Then her long hand grabbed its body. Her mouth swiftly opened and bit, through feathers, flesh, and blood, into bone. A storm of wings and claws beat against her face and breast. She ignored them and ground her teeth. At last the struggles died, leaving her covered in blood and broken feathers. Vhamnya took the crow back to the hut, plucked it, and set it boiling in their stew pot. She added pine needles for more body to the broth. When it was cooked, she trickled it down her mother's throat.

Later, she went outside and scrubbed snow on her face to clean the dried blood. Somehow a taste lingered, not of the blood itself. She looked around. The shadows seemed deeper; the light fainter, and looking at her own skin seemed darker. She glanced to and fro, and then fled back to the hut. Tearfully she huddled against her mother. The crow's death had changed something within her.

Spring came slowly to the Darkeave, too slowly for the dark waif and her dying mother. Vhamnya looked around at the empty woods. She needed something to fill it to keep them alive, something that could come to them. She shut her eyes and let her spirit unmoor from her starved flesh.

Invisibly she flew through the forest, rounding in ever wider circles: eastward where the farmers had died in their cottages, northward where even the goblins had abandoned the swamps, westward where dragons had given up and slept through the winter's barrenness, and then southward where the stone rose through the earth and became mountains. There she found something.

They were orcs. Their tribe had wandered first down from the wilds north of Lake Kar, westward before fleeing the dragons' hunger, until they crept along the southern mounts, where they starved like everything else and slew all in their path to stay alive. When they could find nothing else, they ate each other; numbers slowly dwindling while the strong plowed onward. Their witch-wives, haggard females who had survived their sisters' otherwise short violent years, heard Vhamnya's call.

Vhamnya was waiting when the orcs ringed around the hut. They came at night, arrogantly believing only they could see. Slowly they closed in; massive warriors with swarthy greenish skin, thin bristle-like hair, fang-teeth, and arms like gnarled tree-stumps. They brandished axes and long blades. The tall dark girl felt their eyes, the moment they narrowed on her. She felt them tense; long-nailed fingers tightening on hafts. Her arms tightened as well. She knew how her appearance affected the men and women she had met before, how she enthralled them, how they wanted to please her. Would it work on these orcs as well?

She saw the orc chieftain: the largest of them all with a crown of horns. He grinned toothily. Just as he raised his hand, the witch-wives rushed forward. They shouted in their harsh, snarling tongue and set themselves between the orc warriors and the girl. They entered the hut and out dragged her mother, who came fighting weakly. They grabbed Vhamnya's arms and led her before the chieftain, but when he pushed forward, they would not let him reach her. While they shouted and roared, Vhamnya waited. A sick feeling crept into the pit of her belly. She sensed their hatred. They were cruel, just like the evil folk who had first owned her, and delighted even more in death. She might have mistaken in summoning them and now waited to learn whether she and her mother would live or die.

At last the witch-wives fell quiet. They parted before the chieftain, who walked up to Vhamnya and her mother. He took the girl's dark cheek in his hand.

"You ours now," he spoke in a tongue she understood. "You slave."

Continued in Chapter 5