Page 116 of The Burning Mountain
“Are you looking for Kanchana?” came a guttural voice to his left, making his jump. He swung the torch around, his hand automatically going to the sword hilt. The man who spoke leaped back as if afraid of the flame, but the soldier had a brief glimpse of the weathered face of a man obscured by thick, matted ringlets of hair.
“Yes,” he said. “Do you know where she went? The village people will be leaving early morning. I’m rounding up the last of them for a safe escort.”
“Follow me,” said the man as he walked ahead, his misshapen wooden staff striking the ground first before he stepped on it, cleverly avoiding bogs, traps, and the unsuspecting snakes.
The soldier hesitated briefly. Something didn’t feel right, but he didn’t have a lot of time. Kanchana was supposed to have returned hours ago.
Most of the village had left already. The few stragglers had been ordered by the king to evacuate before it was too late.
Everyone was on edge with Meru’s explosion now only days away. The soldier turned his head toward the northeastern part of the sky, which never darkened these days, even in the deepest of nights. A red glow illuminated that patch of the sky, blotting out the familiar stars.
“A bit too late in the evening to be roaming by yourself. What are you doing around these parts, er…I don’t believe I got your name,” asked the soldier.
The man didn’t answer, heightening the soldier’s suspicion. His hand crept toward the sword again.
The moon rose suddenly from behind the rolling range of mountains at the horizon, heightening the shadows. The grass-strewn ground assumed a pale off-white, green shade. Shapeless patches of a dark substance stood out on the forest floor. The soldier crouched and dipped a finger to the substance and held it to his nose. He recoiled from the foul smell. Blood.
Blood that had been left to rot.
He glanced up suddenly. The old man had disappeared. The soldier raised his torch as he stood up. “Hey? Where have you gone?”
Breeze suddenly fluttered the flame of his torch.
“Paarth!”
The soldier ran, recognizing the voice, and found the woman he had been searching for in a grassy clearing with vine-bound hands and feet.
“Kanchana!” He dropped to his knees beside her, planting the torch into the harmless boggy ground and untied her swiftly. “Who did this to you?” he asked, taking her by the shoulders.
Kanchana’s face had a dull cast to it in the pallid moonlight. Her dark eyes widened at something over his shoulder.
Paarth whirled, his sword unsheathed in one hand, reflexively grabbing the torch with the other, holding it up high.
“You!”
A wind gusted in a sharp burst, extinguishing the flame of his torch.
The man from earlier stood before him, his gaunt form in sharp relief against the bright moonlight, and the soldier picked up on the details he had missed earlier. The weeping wounds, the unkempt hair, the incongruous threadbare clothing in this cold weather, and the curious flat stare of his eyes. The staff he had thought was misshapen showed itself to be made of four shrunken skulls at its top. A smell of decay drifted toward him.
Paarth moved in front of Kanchana, shielding her, his heart beating fast as he recognized the man in front of him to be a wizard.
“Are you lovers?” asked the wizard, as he pulled out something from the tattered remains of his clothes—a long femur sharpened to a wicked point.
Paarth heard rustling behind him. He pivoted and watched speechless as Kanchana freed herself from the vines and climbed to her feet. She rounded past him and reached the wizard to take the extended bone dagger.
She then turned to face him, the dagger clutched in her hand with almost a spasmodic desperation, her eyes wide with fear, the tendons in her neck standing out as she seemed to struggle against an unknown force.
“You may speak,” said the gaunt wizard, almost lazily.
Words rushed out of Kanchana, a tangled gibberish in their haste.
But Paarth understood the meaning, anyway. She wanted him to run.
“What’s going on?” he asked, standing, keeping his eyes on the wizard, who appeared slightly more animated, judging by the flicker of enjoyment in his eyes.
Paarth bounced on the balls of his feet, some unnamed instinct urging him to flee. But Kanchana…
He glanced at her. She swallowed visibly and spoke slowly, the act of getting the words out a chore to her, despite the permission from the wizard.
