Sorry About Slowing Down

Here's the beginning of chapter 9 of the still unnamed Tengarra Story, sorry I haven't posted it sooner for those people who do choose to read my writing.

Chapter 9 Part 1

In Which the Fourth Piece is Accounted For

           

The gates at Lord Death’s northernmost temple were known for never having been closed. The priests and acolytes were known for never denying entrance to a person in need of shelter or healing, no matter their species. It was the only place where the war between the species was said to not be fought. That was untrue, of course. The war may not have been a physical presence on those in the temple, but since actual fighting had broken out no watu had attempted to enter the temple, and the permanent residents of the temple grounds had their own opinions of the watu and the war.

            

Cain had pulled out the sash of the high priest and donned it once more over his simple grey robes. As they rode their horses through the gates into the wide courtyard of Lord Death’s main temple a somber bell was rung to call the priests into their nightly prayers. As the temple’s residents hurried out of buildings toward the sanctuary for the dusk service they noticed the party’s entrance and two people hurried over to help.

           

Bowing low in front of Cain’s horse one of the brown robed apprentices said, “My Lord High Priest, I’m afraid that our own High Priest Michel is leading the service tonight and will be unavailable to speak with you until after his duties for the gods are done.”

            

Cain dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to the acolyte. We’ll be staying for a while so we’ll need rooms, and the girl is injured so you’ll have to have somebody show her and the boy where the infirmary is.”

            

The acolyte nodded, “Yes of course, Lord Priest.” He turned and snapped out some orders to the waiting initiate girl while handing her the reins of Cain’s horse. By this time the others had dismounted. The initiate girl was a tiny slip of a thing, swimming in her brown robes. She did not look at all cowed by the older acolyte. She moved to take the reins of the other horses and headed toward the stables, not even looking twice at Shula’s dress covered in dried blood. The acolyte turned toward Cain once more, “My Lord High Priest, if you would care to follow me, I can show you to where you can wait comfortably until the High Priest Michel is…”

            

Cain interrupted him. “I’ve been here before I know my way around. Get the girl to the damn infirmary then get some food for the rest of us sent to the snow hare room.” The acolyte did not look happy to be interrupted or told off like that by someone younger than he was himself, but in a place like this the high priest was the highest form of command, save for the gods themselves. Even the king was beneath the high priests in the chain of command when inside the temple grounds.

            

Gesturing imperiously for Seok and Shula to follow him, the man headed toward a long, low building connected directly to the temple’s northern most wall. They walked past the main hall where the sanctuary was and the shrine to Lord Death would be housed, as well as the hall where the treasures of the temple would be kept. Shula’s walk was unsteady, dizzy. Seok kept a hand on her arm to support her should she fall. He had tried to put her arm around his shoulder so he could take her weight without actually carrying her, but she had shoved him away.

            

The young man picked up a lamp from a stand beside the door to the infirmary and lit it with the flint that sat beside it. “I doubt there will be a doctor on duty during the ceremony, but you’ll get a dedicated to look at whatever’s wrong with her at least,” the acolyte told them.

            

“Regular cock rooster isn’t he?” Shula muttered to Seok in the language of the gods. The different tongue caught the attention of the acolyte, who had yet to so much as look at the people he was leading. In the light provided by the lamp he held he could see Shula’s blood covered condition, as well as the shocking orange of her hair. His eyes widened, then he turned abruptly back toward the building. Slipping off his sandals befire he crossed through the doorway. “This way. Take off your shoes.” His voice was clipped and he walked stiffly, placing his sock covered feet down with enough force that they made a solid thud against the wooden floor with each step.

            

Seok squatted down to untie his boot lacings and Shula flopped onto the ground next to him, careful not to use her injured hand to catch herself. “I feel like shit,” she mumbled, still using the language of the gods, she had not spoken a word of the human’s tongue that day. “You unite my boots for me. I’ve only got one hand.”

            

“Are you still cold?” Seok asked her, choosing not to comment on the command she had given, only starting on her shoes when he had finished untying his own.

            

“My left hand feels numb, it’s so cold. What the hell was on that arrow?”

            

“Left? It was the right that got hit.” Seok’s voice was concerned. “Do you think it had poison on it?”

            

“I should have let you beat the bastard that shot me to death instead of making you stop.” Shula’s head fell forward and she groaned, “It hurts...”

            

The acolyte leading them had stopped, and was waiting impatiently in the hall. Seok pulled Shula to her feet by her good hand, which did not feel at all cold, but rather too warm against his healthy skin. Leading her by the hand, Seok followed the acolyte down the hallway. They passed two doors before the man stopped. He paused to knock softly on the door before sliding it open to reveal a well lit room with an old woman wearing the white shirt and loose crimson split skirt of temple dedicates under a blue apron kneeling before the low writing desk placed in the far corner of the room.

            

The woman stood as Seok entered, pulling Shula behind him. “Oh, my,” she murmured with only one glance at Shula. “Sit her down in that chair there, young man, and tell me what happened,” the grey haired woman commanded Seok.

            

“Healer,” the acolyte’s stiff voice said from outside the door. He had not entered the room. “That girl, she’s...”

            

“I can see she’s got watu hair just fine for myself, acolyte,” the woman snapped. She knew as well as anyone living near the border that the easiest way to tell a human from a watu was their hair. Humans only had black ranging to brown hair. Watu hair came in all shades of red and orange. “Lord Death does not take sides in the war, and neither should one who professes to follow him.” She lifted Shula’s bandaged hand and pursed her lips as the girl flinched at the pain caused by the movement. Without looking away from Shula’s wrist as she began to unwrap the bandage she said. “Return to your duties acolyte.”

            

When he had slid the door closed the old woman addressed Seok, “Do you speak the common tongue boy or are you watu as well?”

            

“I’m not a watu,” he answered, “but I speak any language you want to talk to me in.”

            

The woman nodded. “Take that bucket by the door and go get some water from the well behind this building. She’s got a high fever and will need cooling down.”

            

“Is it from the hole in her arm?” Seok asked.

            

“That’s a nice thing to call it,” Shula muttered, looking down at the brown stains on the bandage the old woman was trying to pluck away from the wound. The blood had dried to the linen and Shula flinched when the cloth pulled at the wound. Her flinch pulled the bandage off the wound the rest of the way, taking with it the scab that had covered the hole. As soon as she had pulled away, Shula’s wrist started bleeding again.

            

“Hold still!” the woman admonished. “If you speak the watu language, boy, tell her to hold still or I could end up hurting her, then get going and fetch that water!”

            

“She understands you fine, the fever’s just confusing her so she hasn’t been speaking the human language since this morning.” Seok grabbed the bucket and hurried out the door. When he came back the woman had Shula laying down on a bed in the corner of the room and was pressing a poultice of some kind of herbs onto the girl’s wrist. Shula was biting the base of her left hand thumb in order not to scream at the pain in her wrist at the hands of the old woman, blood coated her lips where they met skin and she could not stop the moan when the woman shifter her grip to wrap a new bandage around Shula’s arm.

            

The woman looked up from her ministrations when she finished tying the bandage and commented on the new wounds on Shula’s other hand. Gesturing for Seok to come over, she dipped out a bowl of the water Seok had just brought in and handed him a dry rag and told him to keep it cool and bathe Shula’s forehead with it. “If the fever was from infection in the wound then I would probably have to take her arm off. It’s a nasty looking thing, and she’s luck she can still move her hand and fingers, but it’s not at all infected. The fever can’t be from anything except for poison,” she explained to Seok when he asked.

First After NaNo Post!

Well, as you can see from the edited header here, I managed to write those last 8,000 words on the 30th! How the hell did I do that? I would really like to know myself!

Chapter 8 End

In Which a Life is Threatened

When morning arrived, Larkin’s horse still had not. Shula still lay wrapped in Zija’s bed roll and with the men standing watch in turns during the night, only one had to make do without even the small comfort the padded blanket provided. She slept through Larkin checking her wrist, and explaining to a concerned Seok that he did not know if it would get infected as he did not know what newly infected wounds looked like, as well as the men breaking camp and tying their bags back onto the saddles.

            

Larkin, though he was no doctor, could recognize a fever. When he had picked up Shula’s wounded wrist that morning her skin had felt as if it were on fire. Putting the back of his hand to her forehead, he felt for her temperature there too. It was cooler than her wrist, making his concern about Cain’s suggestion of poison and Seok’s questions about infection grow. He knew that the flesh near a festering wound was fevered, but poison could do the same thing and either would also give the victim a fever as their body tried to fight the affront to its system.

            

The group had only three horses for five people plus the bags they carried. Zija and Cain stood talking about their route, and how the trek would take longer now that the horses would be carrying two people each. Seok joined the conversation, adding, “Shula needs a real doctor. No offence to Larkin or anything, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing any more than I would. I’ve never seen her sick in my life, any more than I can remember being sick.”

            

“How long have you known her exactly?” Zija asked.

            

“Didn’t you know? That kiss back in the shelter on the mountain was because I remembered that I knew her from before.” Seok shook Shula’s shoulder to wake her.

            

“Ok, you’ve been with Cain for four years. So that makes you what; you guys grew up together or something? Shit!” Zija glanced at Cain who rubbed his fingers together, pantomiming holding money. “Who the hell would randomly go kissing their childhood friends like that?”

            

Shula, now awake and climbing to her feet with her wounded wrist clutched against the blood soaked fabric at her waist put a smirk on over her grimace of pain. “If that’s all that confusing this’ll really throw you off. We’re engaged, Red.”

            

That got everyone’s attention. Zija gaped, swiveling his head to look between the two of them. Cain’s eyebrows rose in speculation, disappearing behind his shaggy blond bangs. Larkin, who had been rolling up the bedroll Shula had just vacated, had stopped to stare, much like Zija, while Seok pretended not to have heard. Zija managed to close his mouth long enough to comment, “When did you get engaged, when you were five?”

            

Shula smiled, “It’s not that odd for children to get engaged is it?”

            

“Now I really wanna know what’s going on here! Your families get you two engaged, and then the brat loses his memory, then who tied him up in that cave?”

            

“Our families didn’t plan it, we decided. If the Bitch had known she’d have had our asses chained up sooner than they were.” Shula’s words contained all the malice she felt for the woman who she termed the bitch, but they were given in a voice that carried none of the energy or fight that Shula usually showed. Her voice was tired.

            

“Priti knew,” Seok said. “He probably did tell her.”

            

“That stick in the mud?” Shula squinted from a ray sunlight that had just crested the trees. “He’s so formal and polite all the time, why would he have anything to do with her?”

            

“You forgot his other name didn’t you? Kama?” Cain watched this continued conversation carefully, though both Larkin and Zija had lost interest. The names Shula and Seok were using were actually words in the language of the gods. Priti meant affection and kama meant lust. He tried to remember why those words sounded familiar, not just as vocabulary, but as if it was something he had read then forgotten until now.

            

“You’re too stubborn to argue with and I don’t have the energy when it’s this cold,” Shula snapped at Seok, who had continued to describe the characteristics of the man who had known about their engagement. Seok reached out and grabbed Shula’s arm. It was radiating heat under his touch. “It’s not cold, you’re sick.”

            

“Whatever,” she replied, “Let’s just get going. I’m tired of standing here doing nothing.” She leaned back on Seok, looking as if she would collapse right there.

            

Because the weight of the riders had to be distributed evenly, Larkin ended up riding on Zija’s horse, because his gelding was the largest and strongest of their mounts. Cain got most of their bags behind and in front of his saddle, and Shula and Seok were to ride together like before, with Shula in the front this time. She was dizzy and reeling where she stood with feet solidly planted on the ground, and  Seok and Larkin both worried that she would fall out of the saddle if Seok did not have his arms firmly around her waist.

            

The party set off, looking rather woebegone riding double and with all their belongings tied to one saddle. Shula said little throughout the day, only complaining once of her arm hurting when the horse stumbled in a hole some animal had dug in the path. Several times she complained of the cold, asking Seok piteously for a blanket, until he broke down and wrapped her in another layer of the scarves she had used when crossing over the mountain. Holding her close, he worried about just how hot her body had become. This kind of heat was just not natural.

            

A sudden thought came to him and he dug Shula’s wounded arm out from among her wrappings. She protested the movement, but did not jerk her hand out of his grip for fear of hurting herself further. Shula whimpered as the young man held her arm up to look at the bandages. Her bracelet had been pushed back almost to her elbow to keep it out of the way of the bandages. Seok pursed his lips while looking at it. This was not good. Whether she wanted it or not, he was going to tell Cain what was really going on. He could not risk Shula dying because of something like that.

            

The group unanimously decided to continue on while dusk approached. At the rate they were going they would reach Lord Death’s Temple within two hours, and they were all looking forward to getting there and having a decent meal, a roof over their heads, and even one of the temple’s cushioned mattresses that they laid on the floor in place of beds seemed better than another night on the ground like the last four they had spent. Shula had fallen asleep, leaning against Seok’s chest when by the time they reached the high outer walls of the temple.