A Sacrifice for Varkanah (On Indefinite Hold)

A Sacrifice for Varkanah Chapter 8

Chapter VIII

 Hathien wept openly, her tears freezing as they ran down her face. It was so, so cold. For only being awake less than an hour, it was already turning into the worst day of her life as of yet. Two friends had collapsed, one for reasons she did not know, and could not understand in her drowsy, terrified state. The other she had seen, and yet she could not make herself believe it true.

Magic, by the gods! She couldn’t deny what she had seen with her own two eyes, and what she was certain the others had seen as well. First Irilden had fallen, and then Rivatha had gone into frenzy. If being attacked by hundreds of goblins in a mountain hundreds of miles from home wasn’t strange enough, then it had turned even stranger! The snow had boiled beneath the feet of the goblins; she knew that it had. Rivatha had spoken in some foreign tongue, the words rolling past one by one too fast for Hathien to follow. Then the water froze again, freezing the goblins with it. Even if she had had half a mind to deny it, the proof was right there in front of her: two solid walls of ice to either side of her, filled with the carcasses of goblins.

She felt like passing out herself. It had been magic sure enough. Even she, who had never even gone to Heyterhill Village just miles down the road from home, could tell magic when she saw it. But how could it be true? Magic was forbidden by every law in Terrilor; every local priest in every city and village had denounced it. There were stories of brave knights who travelled the land in search of witches, who they then burned! It was devilry, heresy, and so much worse!

And yet it had saved all their lives. Hathien remembered the fear she had felt just minutes ago—though the fear hadn’t been lessened, really, only changed to a new kind of fear—when she had thought them all doomed for certain. When even Irilden had gone down, and Saeran had refused to get up, she had been holding her breath for the moment when a goblin knife bit into her neck to end her pitifully sheltered life. Oh, what would my parents think of this? She had thought then. But then the goblins had died, and she had been saved by the very devilry she’d been taught to fear from her earliest years.

It was almost as if she were in a different world than the others, as she watched Hesio treat the gash in Irilden’s leg as the knight tried to make his way to where Rivatha lay. She wanted to help the Queen of Riverthorn, she wanted so bad to help the woman who had saved her life. But she just couldn’t. No matter what she wanted, her legs refused to move. 

It took another hour for the others to rouse Rivatha, and Saeran rose shortly afterwards. Both were groggy and weak, Rivatha particularly so. She needed help just to stand up, and even so felt dizzy and nauseated. She looked green with sickness, and Hathien thought she noticed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes that had not been there a day ago.

Saeran was plagued by paranoia for hours after he woke up, looking all around himself for monsters and demons that weren’t there. Whatever had happened to him last night, he adamantly refused to speak of it, though Hathien knew that it must have been terrible. In all the years she had known him, Saeran Randsly had been a kind, talkative, if careful person. There was not a time that Hathien could remember when he was so afraid, so wholly and completely terrified.

They did not, could not continue moving that day, with Rivatha’s exhaustion and Irilden’s leg wound. Hesio had closed up the gash with some linen bandages that they’d brought with from Riverthorn, after he had cleaned the wound with boiling water—the snow had let up long enough for him to start a fire that day. The grimace on Irilden’s face as that had happened was so pained, so agonized, that Hathien simply could not imagine the torment of what he was going through. She had kept her distance from him that day, not wishing to think about it.

In fact, she kept her distance from all the others that day. Hesio was busy helping Irilden, Saeran had had to have Lark tell him the story of the night before, while Drennan was aloof as usual, and every time she looked at Rivatha, she was reminded of the stories she’d heard as a child, the stories in which the witch would cook and eat anyone unfortunate enough to meet her. Rivatha won’t eat me, she told herself again and again, and yet the image stuck.