Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Mother Speaks (24 page)

You were right before me, but I could not hold you.

When the Overgovernor saw me, he stopped. "What is this?"

I do not know if you remember, Torran, but you stepped forward decisively and said,

"My mother. And you leave her alone!"

"Ah, yes," said the Overgovernor, staring, recognizing me. "Come to rescue them?"

I did not speak.

"Actually," said the nethermancer, who had been helped up by the guards, "she brought me here. She was helping a group of troll raiders attack two mining ships. They were using one of our ships, Overgovernor.
The Pride
. The ship lost in a storm several months ago." The Overgovernor thought for a moment, then remembered. "The trolls used the lost ship to attack in conjunction with their usual long boats. She is more than a prisoner.

Most like she is a slave from
The Pride
, and she has information about the organized attack made by the trolls."

The Overgovernor raised his hand. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I have misunderstood. Did these barbaric raiders win?"

"Yes. They targeted two mining ships and flew in quickly. This one fired The Pride's fire cannon against us.

He stared at me as if I were a slug. "Who do you think you are?"

I swung around, striking him with one of my wings, and grabbed the two of you, one in each arm. He fell to the ground with a cry. The guards charged forward.

I raced for the window, and you both began to scream. But it all ended very quickly, for the guards set upon me, the edges of their swords cutting my flesh. One cut across my side, very deep, just above my hips. An abrupt dizziness overtook me, and I lost consciousness.

11

They put me in a box with a small door in it, the only light coming through the cracks in the door frame. Each night a small slot opened and a bowl of mashed rice was placed inside.

Days passed, then weeks.

I only discovered this later. Time soon lost meaning within the confines of the box. After several days I would fall asleep, wake up, and have no idea whether I had been asleep for twenty minutes or eight hours. A panic settled over me, and I thought I had been forgotten — forgotten by all but the hands that passed me food through the slot each night. (Was it each night? Perhaps they varied the feeding times? I had no idea.) The box stood up straight, and was not wide enough for me to sit, so I would lean against the walls, legs bent, my body pressing down and the bones straining.

I took to screaming, striving to get some attention. After death, with time, we are all forgotten. But to be forgotten while we're alive is too terrible to contemplate. The darkness of the chamber closed around me, and often I could not be certain if my eyelids were open or not. I sometimes did not know if I was asleep or awake.

Soon I began to confuse where and when I was. One time in particular kept coming back to me. I thought I was back in Blood Wood, a prisoner with J'role in a deep pit. That was where we first met, J'role and I, as prisoners of the elf queen. Your father was mute at the time, and in his eyes was a terrible anger. But I also remember thinking I had never seen so much sadness in anyone's eyes. Yet there was something about him that promised he would never surrender. He might be knocked downs but he would always get up. It was that attracted me, intrigued me.

In my confusion I began speaking to him.

"Why do you keep leaving?" I asked him.

"I have to go."

"Why?"

"Don't make me answer that."

"Why?"

"You'll rip me open. You don't want to do that."

"Why?"

"What's inside. It's too much for you to bear."

I slammed the door again and again. I could not feel my fist any longer. My legs had long since gone numb. "How dare you ... How dare you tell me what I can bear and what I can't. Don't you love me? Don't you care about us?"

He touched my hands, and I felt hundreds of needles press against my flesh. "I do. That's why I don't tell you. Don't you understand. If I tell you, you'll leave."

"J'role. If you don't tell me, you will leave, you always leave. If you tell me, I might stay."

"It's mine. It's all mine. Don't ask me to give it to you."

"It's ours. We're married. It's ours."

His hand pulled away from mine. He vanished.

My cries for help or attention were in vain. I remained trapped, alone with J'role, for a long time.

12

When the door opened, torchlight rushed into my eyes, peeling my sight back, blinding me.

"I told you," a woman said.

"I didn't disagree with you," said a man.

"You said it wasn't her."

"I said I didn't know."

"Well. Let's get her up."

I kept my eyes shut but could still see a hot red glare Two pairs of hands grabbed me roughly by the wrists and dragged me out of the box.

"I knew the paper work around here was getting too thick," the woman said.

"Didn't say it wasn't."

"You said we hadn't lost her."

"We didn't. She was right here. The whole time."

"I'm free?" I asked, though it came out as a sort of whisper.

My captors laughed. "In a way," said the woman. "Free of the box, at least."

"Where are you taking ...? Where are my boys?"

"We're taking you to Overgovernor Povelis," the man said. "And I don't know where your boys are."

"He has them. He has my boys."

"Then you'll soon be reunited."

The sun beat down, hot and clawing at my exposed flesh. Around me the stench and constant thrum of the city crowd.

I could see now, just barely. From the platform in the city square I glimpsed the merchants and traders and shoppers and beggars of Vivane. A crowd had gathered around the platform, and many among them stopped to stare at me. Chains attached to scaffolding held my wrists high above my head. My clothes were rags, and I felt terribly vulnerable. The Overgovernor stood beside me. To his right were two guards. One held a whip. Many more guards, standing at attention, surrounded the platform.

And, of course, the two of you stood on the balcony where I had landed weeks earlier.

You were down at the proceedings, crying and crying and crying.

"You understand I can kill you whenever, I wish."

I nodded.

"We have not been able to find your troll companions. Where are they?"

"Why do you care?"

"They have become ... a nuisance."

I looked up into his face, saw that he was trying to hide something between fear and annoyance. I realized that the raiders must be more than a mere nuisance. "I have nothing to say to you."

"Yes, yes, yes. But let's cut through the noble sentiments, shall we? I can kill you. Your children. I can torture you. Torture them. Which one, I wonder, is the magic to unlock your tongue? Tell me now, and we'll save ourselves a lot of time."

I looked into his eyes. His pale skin seemed loose on his face, and I thought he might be some kind of monster masquerading as a person. It all came too easily to him.

"You're not working very hard to gain my help."

"I'm not going to gain your help. I'm going to take it. Now, we know that the trolls are crystal raiders from the Twilight Peaks. But we don't know which clan. The expedition we sent to the mountains never returned, and we know that an attack might touch off resistance from all the raider clans — which is not something we want to do. We only want your clan." He leaned down close to my ear so his breath was hot against my flesh.

"Which clan? And where is it located?"

I found the energy for a terribly smug smile. "They are hurting you, aren't they?"

"Minor problems."

"But your people, they don't like minor problems, do they? I'll bet there's some official back in your homeland looking over reports you've written on this area's progress, wondering why you're having 'minor problems.' I'll bet he's wondering why you've allowed there to be minor problems, and if you're really the person to be handling these minor problems. And you're not going to last long if they continue. Isn't that so?"

He stepped back from me, the mask hiding all emotion suddenly dissolving revealing fear and rage. "Take her away," he said to the guards. "Take her away and rip the flesh from her body."

13

One of the guards, a woman, turned me so my back faced the Overgovernor and the crowd. The chains that held my wrists coiled around one another as she turned me, and the shackles bit deep into my flesh. I heard the slither of the whip sliding over the floor as the other guard pulled it back, then the rush of the air as he snapped it back. I braced myself for the blow — tried to — but pain shocks the body and the heart even when we know it is coming.

I gritted my teeth, letting no more than a grunt escape my lips. You two began calling out for me.

There is no need to go on. You saw it all. The blood, my cries that I could hold back only so long. Again and again the whip snapped at my flesh and soon the pain overwhelmed me. When finally I began to beg for mercy, the Overgovernor ordered the whipping stopped. He approached and asked, "What is the name of the clan? Where are they located?"

In this lull I collected myself and found strength again, though the pain ate at my back like thousands of biting insects swarming over flesh. I simply hung limp, letting the chains hold me up.

"Again," the Overgovernor said.

The whip sang through the air as it snapped. Again and again and again.

"Get the children," the Overgovernor finally said to a few guards at the base of the platform. Then he ordered the other guards to turn me around.

They did. I found myself facing a fascinated crowd of onlookers. The pain of a few moments before was almost equaled by the shame of standing half naked and helpless before strangers.

"Not the boys," I gasped out, barely able to concentrate enough to make words.

"Yes, the boys," the Overgovernor said in a dismissive manner. "I made it clear what would happen ..."

"Not the boys."

He lurched toward me. "Then tell me."

"Not the boys."

"Again," he said.

I think the Overgovernor mistook my refusal for the physical strength to actually endure the torture. In reality I was probably very near death. The whip blows now tore at the front of my body, across my face and neck and breasts. It was much like drowning. The tip of the whip rushing toward me like water, and I turned my face away to avoid it.

I looked up to see you on the balcony, but guards had already led you away. I thought I would never see you again.

Then, a sight caught my attention. Black dots from the east rushing closer to the walls of the city. I thought at first it was a vision, for the blood in my eyes and the agony of my flesh had totally blurred my sight. But as I stared, the dots grew in focus and became ships.

Drakkars.

And a stone Theran ship with a rainbow of fissures lining the hull.

Cries came from the city's walls. The crowd turned from me toward the approaching ships with gasps and shouts of astonishment. The Overgovernor stepped toward the edge of the platform, as if those extra few feet would let him analyze the situation more clearly.

"Get a magician," he said to the guards. "Send word to Sky Point. We need the ships here immediately."

The two guards hesitated. The man finally said, "Overgovernor, the ships aren't at Sky Point. They're not available."

Between gritted teeth, the Overgovernor demanded, "Where are they?"

"They're out ...," the woman guard told him. "They're out looking for the troll raiders."

14

I was forgotten.

Above me, sailors boarded two Theran airships moored to the city's high spires. Captains shouted instructions to their crew. Sailors threw lines off the edge of the ship. Before me the crowd shook off its surprise and took on the mantle of panic. Merchants began sealing up their shops. Wealthy shoppers and slaves and artisans began to run from the bazaar.

But not everyone was panicked. Even in my pained condition I noticed some among the swirling crowd looking to each other with smiles. Hands touch the pommels of swords. A few men and women gathered and whispered among themselves like conspirators, then took off in different directions.

"Kill her," the Overgovernor said. "Quickly." With these last words he stepped down from the platform. The way his hands flexed suggested distaste, as if the whole situation had been disgusting enough before, but unbearable now. He seemed to want to wash his hands of it all.

Thinking of him as I record this moment, I wonder at how confused his Passions seemed.

He always seemed on the verge of something else. There is no doubt in my mind that in his desperate attempt to please his superiors and his bureaucracy he must have betrayed himself at nearly every turn, so that by the time he reached success, he was no longer truly alive.

A group of guards quickly surrounded him and led him off to the palace. They moved warily, keeping a sharp eye out on the crowd, and I realized that though the Therans controlled Vivane, they certainly did not feel safe in it.

The male guard pulled a knife from his belt and stepped toward me. The blade caught the bright sunlight, and in the light I saw my life, a brief shimmer of gold that would vanish with the thrust of the blade. Then whoops and hollers filled my ears and the guards turned. A half dozen men and women bearing swords surrounded us. Before the guards could react, the rebels cut them down, their blood sinking into the platform's dry wood.

A woman cut a large ring from the female guard's belt and starting trying keys to free my wrists. Meanwhile, she quickly told me her name.

"Releana,” I mumbled in return.

She finally undid the locks. "Well, any enemy of the Overgovernor is a ..." She stepped back and looked at me, a smile growing on her face. "Did you say Releana?"

I nodded and carefully lowered my arms. I wanted to rub my wrists, but my muscles were too weak.

"J'role told us to look for you."

"J'role?"

"J'role."

The shots of fire cannons rang through the air. I looked up and saw that the Stoneclaw clan had arrived, catching the two Theran ships just off the towers where they had been docked. Already the trolls had boarded the Theran airships, swarming over the vessels and slaying the crew.