Chapter Two
The bandits took a strange path through the swamps. Obviously one they knew well, for it kept them safe from sinking. And when they arrived at the “camp” which resembled an impoverished, ramshackle selection of log buildings, they put Bethany into a wooden cage, with a mangy linen sheet for her to sleep on, and a roof to keep out the rain if it fell, but nothing else. She wrapped the sheet around her to protect herself from the stares as the bandits of the camp came to look at her. They took her glow necklace, leaving her in darkness.
Some of them jeered and talked about wanting to push her legs apart and take the virgin price for themselves, others just came to look without saying anything. Looking into a sea of hostile faces, knowing that none of them thought her worth a damn, made her lonely, angry, and scared.
And now she had choices. Shrink away from them? Say nothing, pretend she didn't see them? Or... make things slightly worse? “You took away my life, angered my people,” she spat, opting to make things worse. Terror and anger saturated her insides. “I'm not helping you any more than I possibly can.”
In response, some of them threw mud into her cage, until the leader, whose name she caught as Lars, screamed at them to stop. “Yeh want her to catch swamp gout? You meddling idiots.”
He ordered her sheets changed, and she was forced to change out of her wealthy clothes to tattered, musty-smelling furs. She was allowed a bathroom break and food and drink before returning to the cage, with Lars threatening to gut anyone who dared look at their cash cow the wrong way.
Filthy, half-collapsed buildings dotted the spongy landscape. The huts which did have light sources had them hanging on the outside as good luck charms against the night hordes. For the bandits lived off the path, out of the cities and towns, camping under the breath of the monsters that lived in the endless dark.
Over half the buildings didn't have light, and the bandits grouped around the ones that did, making it clear how much Bethany took the lightweavings in her city for granted.
Perhaps she was being stupid, acting undiplomatic, aggravating these ruffians further. She tried to recall what she knew about them. That fringe people, at the edges of everything, had little to lose. They acted very simply, seeking chances to increase their comfort and better their chances of survival. Some groups preferred the life of the lawless vagabond, pillaging and killing anyone who came their way, but they tended not to last long, since that way of life alienated them from everything else.
No, all humans, one way or another, resorted to some kind of control and laws in the places they lived. This Lars ran the show, able to peck down everyone else.
Bethany's eyes wandered from the pathetic huts over to the other cages. Four of the ten people who were supposed to be escorting her. Fine mercenaries who didn't do the job they had been assigned. Part of Bethany wanted to resent them, to reach out to them and blame everything on them for not doing their jobs, but she knew that to be ultimately fruitless.
Only faint wisps of light illuminated their frightened, dejected faces.
And Lars mentioned something about selling them off, didn't he? Kanthus didn't practise slavery. The nation of Golubria did, though. Did Lars have contact with them? Or was it someone else? Someone she hadn't thought of yet?
She caught Lars now out of the corner of her eye, beckoning for the other bandits to come into the biggest hut of them all. A meeting room. They all poured in, no more than thirty bandits. Probably going to distribute the gold. Lars needed to control the men somehow, and if you waved a lot of gold in their faces, you needed to be fast on your feet to prevent a potential mutiny from upsetting the order of things. On top of that, constantly proving yourself to stop your own men from stabbing you in the back would get exhausting over time.
What a frightening way to live.
The men came out of the hut, dragging something behind them. Something shackled by the arms, legs, and wearing a kind of iron mesh muzzle.
Bethany's blood curdled at the sight. A monster. A light brown, furred, humanoid beast.
A werewolf.
She'd heard about them. Even heard that these were the gods the Kanthians were supposed to worship. Creatures directly descended from the night hordes. Her blood curdled, but she pressed herself against the edge of the cage, drinking in this fearsome sight.
Her fear rapidly dissolved when she saw the numerous scarrings upon the werewolf's body, the torn ear, the clipped nails which were bloody stubs at the tip of his fingers and feet. There was a furred bulge between his legs—the organ there was covered up by the bulge, sort of like the penile shaft of some of the animals Bethany had seen. The dim light drifted over his head, and she saw a swollen eye, which looked as if it might be infected. Fresh wounds dotted his body, and she knew then for certain that whatever this creature was, the bandits absolutely loathed it.
One kicked the werewolf in the back legs. The werewolf might have been taller and broader, but bound and injured as he was, he could do nothing but stumble. The men laughed raucously.
“Gotta walk the doggy!”
Was this a monster of the night hordes? A citizen of Kanthus? There was something oddly human in his remaining, open eye—though he looked forward in a kind of daze, not focusing on anything in particular.
As the men laughed and joked and roughly handled the werewolf, Bethany realized where Lars got some of his power from.
He had a scapegoat. Something they all hated. Something they were all allowed to abuse.
The other escorts were frozen in shock as they stared at the werewolf. One of them, a kindly young man called Harold, started weeping. Bethany couldn't reach out and comfort him, and she didn't want to speak to draw the ire of the other men.
The beast lumbered out of sight. Broken. Probably a victim of this malicious little band for a long time. Bethany chewed her lip, considering her options. She had gone from riches to rags.
The men here didn't care about her status at all, except for how much money it might get them. They couldn't sell her to Kanthus or Fjordan. They'd likely sell her as soon as possible. She had precisely one hairpin left, and that was because the gem had fallen off it, and the pin itself was buried under a thick layer of hair. She inspected her cage.
It had a padlock. Something that might be worked on with a pin.
The only reason she even knew anything about lock-picking was because her younger sister, Kiara, had shown a passing interest in it, if only to get into places she wasn't supposed to.
Bethany never tried it herself, but she did hear Kiara go on and on about it. Her sister, when fixated on something, could talk about it for a while, exploring every tangent. So if Bethany found a chance, she'd try it out. It wasn't like she'd have any difficulty with light, since the nasty bandit who killed Jason was right. She did know lightweaving. Up to about the fourth level, along with heat transference. Placing the light in inanimate objects, close to her, and at a distance. She was attempting to perfect the notion of a living light, but didn't put as much time into her studies as needed. The heat transference was most important. She used it now to give her tattered clothes a soothing heat, and then attached it to the blanket with thin strands of light to make sure that she stayed warm. The blanket didn't glow because she'd made the threads almost insubstantial.
Okay. So a possible plan to escape. How soon did she have to implement it? Not long. And if they had guards on them all the time, she might never get the chance. Best case scenario—she escaped, made it back to the path somehow by retracing her steps, then going through the Quaking Bog to make it to Kanthus. She didn't know any other route, and didn't want to risk it with unfamiliar territory.
Worst case—she got sold, taken to a new place, and forced into servitude. And no one cared about her status, or perhaps Golubria liked the idea of having stolen princesses.
She didn't know much about the place, except that people avoided them, because it was believed to be a lawless, wild city run by gangs of vigilantes and crime lords.
What did she know, really? She fell back in her cage and huffed with frustration. She didn't know how to fight. Her sex made her vulnerable to the impulsiveness of a sex-deprived man, which meant she needed to make sure she covered up. Now, on impulse, she reached out of the cage, and, trying her best to keep her stomach contents inside, reached for the mud on the floor, though she could barely see it, and began to smear it on her face. Getting rid of those rosy cheeks, if anyone shone a light near her. Downplaying her attractiveness as much as possible.
Sure, she could sit there, proud and resolute, but she didn't have the power right now, so her best chance was to reduce the focus on her.
Well, she'd already attracted a lot of focus.
She did have one advantage, however. The only thing that might save her.
She knew how to lightweave. And the men hadn't picked up on that. Even if she didn't know how it might come in useful for now, she knew that a secret kept from them was a secret she could use.
Then, exhausted, she curled up and tried to doze, though she kept her brain alert for any noises that might interest her. With the rippling warmth of her magic threading through the blanket, she at least didn't need to worry about the chill.
She must have fallen asleep at one point, because she heard voices suddenly waking her up, comments about when the Golubrians would be arriving.
So I was right, she thought, listening with her eyes shut. I am being sold to that place.
“We found another one of the beasties lurking around the place,” someone said. He had a sharp voice. At the word “beastie,” Bethany allowed her eyes to slip open.
She saw a gaunt, pale creature with huge, black eyes. Like a kind of deformed human, with jagged teeth and a thin layer of froth around its lips. The creature kept looking away from the light. Moaning. Clawing at its face.
“Everyone's so scared of the night hordes. But all I've seen of them are these skinny little goblins.” The bound creature snapped at the speaker, but whimpered again when he presented a torch in its face. The light obviously pained it. It wasn't designed to endure such intense light, since it lived in the endless dark.
Somehow. The more she examined it, the more she noticed a kind of pale black mist seeping out of it.
That mist had something to do with keeping them alive in the darkness. The little she knew about the night hordes flooded her brain. Creatures that survived in an impossible environment, since life needed heat and sunlight to live. Just food and water wasn't enough.
Off into the hut the creature went, guarded by four of the bandits. The same hut where they had a werewolf.
She had a nasty feeling she wouldn't be seeing that night horde human again. She still pretended to sleep, even as she heard bandits bickering over the gold and clothes they'd gotten. Some of the men had cut off the dress edge with blades to give themselves haphazard shirts. Wearing her things. Her furs. Disrespecting her in every way.
Her eyes shifted towards a gaunt-faced bandit, wearing clothes too big for him.
With a start, Bethany realized that the him she looked at was a her.
The men ignored this boyish woman, who had her blonde hair cut short. They obviously knew what she was, since Bethany noticed the bulge of her breasts under the clothes, the slender hands, the piercing yellow eyes.
Yellow?
A single woman, with two glow necklaces around her neck, allowing her body to be fully lit up in a way the others lacked.
Why was she allowed to be free?
The short-haired woman stalked past Bethany's cage, paused, then spat on the ground, just in front. At first, Bethany assumed this to be a slight, but the woman then did it again, drawing a great, gurgling breath before spitting out more fluid.
Ill. Perhaps mild swamp fever. Greenish phlegm. Something about the jawline of the woman reminded her of something. Lars had a similar jawline. A similar nose.
His daughter? She seemed about the right age. Lars must have been in his early forties. This girl looked seventeen, maybe eighteen. About the same age as Kiara.
Now the girl looked at Bethany, who was swamped in darkness, and held a light closer to her. The girl in the cage next to Bethany, lit from the faint backlight of a hut, whimpered and turned over in her sleep.
Bethany locked eyes with the woman. Yes... she had swamp fever. Fatal for some. It left a few ugly red spots dotting the left cheek, under the main muscle, around the jawbone. You needed to keep good hygiene to combat swamp fever. And it didn't look like the girl was getting the hygiene she needed. Not in this place, without any of the proper facilities.
Still, not much to be done. Bethany didn't have the knowledge of medicine. Just a passing glance over it in her education.
“Father wants to sell you for a lot of money,” the girl said. Her accent wasn't as strong as her father's. It had a refined lilt to it. Probably inherited from her mother, since it was obviously the mother who had those color eyes.
Highborn eyes from the court of Kanthus. If Lars had married a highborn, what was he doing all the way out here?
Bethany didn't answer at first, unsure what she should even attempt to say. Though she saw no malice in those eyes, she had no way of knowing the girl's alignment. Most likely with her father.
“Says you were supposed to get married in Kanthus, before he went and robbed your carriage.” The girl's lips wrinkled in disdain. Disdain for what?
“That I was,” Bethany agreed, deciding that any information she could get from this girl might be worth it.
“Are you really a princess?”
“Yes. From Fjordan. Though I suppose the black hair gives it away.”
The girl nodded thoughtfully. “My mother was highborn. That's nobility in Kanthus.”
Bethany noted the was. Meaning the mother was likely dead now. A girl with a dead mother, in a camp of bandits, with a tyrannical father who kept them all under an iron fist and promises of riches. Best not to comment on it, however. No way to know what to expect from this girl. No way to stop the pulse of fear in the back of Bethany's heart, in her almost hopeless situation.
Almost hopeless, because she knew it was wrong to give up every last shred of it.
Except... maybe she could comment on something. “What's a highborn girl like you doing in a den of thieves?”
The thieves bothered the girl, and her lips twisted in irritation. “We're not thieves. We're outlaws.”
“And what do outlaws do?”
The girl didn't answer for a moment. “We operate outside the law.”
Hmm, Bethany thought. Proud girl. Proud of her father? “Where's your mother?” May as well go against what she thought wise.
Now the girl froze. “None of your business.”
“Dead, then,” Bethany said, half-astonished at herself for her bold words. Normally she wrapped such comments in layers of politeness. With the civility that had been ingrained in her almost from birth.
There was a certain freedom she relished about it. Words that were hers, not covered up by anything else.
“Yes, dead,” the girl finally said, though her knuckles were white with tension. Bethany examined her own dirty gloves, illuminated by the girl's light.
“It happens,” Bethany said. “Was she the source of your family wealth? Is that why you live out here with your father, Lars?”
The girl looked as if she regretted crouching in front of Bethany to talk. However, something made her stay. Something stopped her from snapping at Bethany. Something hungered in the girl's eyes. And Bethany didn't understand it, but she now saw an opportunity to stoke whatever it was that compelled the girl to talk to her.
Loneliness, maybe? “I'm sorry if I seem forward.” Now some of the politeness seeped back into Bethany's voice. “I'm just surprised to see someone like you here. And, well, look where being nice got me.”
The girl actually twitched her lips in a small smile at that comment. “I'm Yelena,” she said, some of the antagonistic gleam gone from her eyes.
Bethany's eyebrows raised. “Bright, shining one. An interesting name. Kanthian, right?”
Yelena blushed, but nodded. “And yours?”
“Bethany. Bethany Noble.”
They stared at each other for a while longer, before Yelena started coughing again.
“I've got to go,” Yelena said, standing up. “Father needs me.” Just before she left, Bethany stopped her.
“Keep yourself clean. Wash out any infections. Place anything that can clean on your face in particular. Alcohol, maybe. You will find yourself getting better.”
Yelena nodded, before hurrying off.
Strange girl. Maybe she wanted a reminder of her lost nobility. A life she could have had—if her mother had lived.
Bethany could only guess at this point. In the meanwhile, she thought of home. Of the easy royal life, of playing with Kiara.
She waited with impatience until the last of the lights had shimmered down, and only two guards were on duty. The faint lights that lit their forms in the murky night weren't enough to see well with. Only the light by the escort's cage might be an issue with their ability to see Bethany, so she turned towards that light now, and gently tugged on its energy. Siphoning it out, until the light became a pathetic glow.
Imperfect bindings were known to malfunction. And since the bandits didn't know she was a lightweaver, it remained her biggest advantage. The weapon that might break her out. The weapon that would let her find her way in the dark.
The light fizzled out. The two guards didn't react, didn't seem to care. She heard the escort whimper beside her, but no help for that.
She'd just done something terribly illegal. Something that, if any Fjordans had caught her doing, would have had her flung into jail. Princess or not. Even if they replenished the light a second later, it didn't matter.
No one was meant to steal light. And for good reason. Her mouth felt dry as she let the lost light evaporate. Even in spite of her current situation, she felt like a criminal doing that. Would have been a criminal back in Fjordan, if they caught her siphoning light out of a source that wasn't hers.
Now Bethany fumbled in her hair for the last pin, taking it out and letting some of the light coalesce in her blanket to shape it for the padlock.
So far, so good. The tricky part was unlocking it and escaping before they came to let her out. She'd had a bathroom break about two hours ago. Should be okay. Just needed to be careful, quiet... and think of a distraction.
Just a shame she couldn't yet weave living light. What about heat, though? Usually, heat didn't work past the type of warmth she used for her blanket. And people didn't think about it much, since they always associated it with crops and warmth. But could she do anything with it?
Experience said she couldn't. Heat transference only worked based on a human's mean body temperature. You didn't get any hotter than that.
Shame. Would be nice to melt down her enemies.
Mother and Father would be laughing at me now. Having me strike out boldly on my own, only to become some slave to a bunch of thugs. That thought galvanized her, spurring her to start working on the padlock.
However, she only had been working at it quietly for maybe ten minutes when a blur of light burst out of the main hut. She instantly tucked away the piece and slumped into a sleeping position, wrapping her blankets tighter, as if she was cold in this merciless night.
“It's latenight,” she heard someone mutter. “Give them more blankets, or we're going to have dead slaves in the morning. Check if any need bathroom breaks. And remember. No violating.”
She waited until they reached her, mind whirling with opportunity. Perhaps her idea to pick the lock and get out might not be as sound as this. She accepted the bathroom break, just to have further opportunity to examine her surroundings. The exit past the left of her cage. The werewolf in the building—she saw him through a glowing window, chained against a wall, slumped and broken. There were more rooms, but she couldn't see inside them. The big hut—best lit place in the whole area.
Light... a plan flickered into place. One that placed all her former notions to shame. One that made her nervous to even consider.
She went into the hut. They needed to take her past the werewolf, which she supposed was allowed to hang there to instill fear into the slaves. Smart. He did appear terrifying on one aspect. But also weak and beaten on the other. Many of his wounds had healed up now, including his eye.
He heals fast. The implication made her shudder. So they maim him regularly.
Was he intelligent? Did he have any brain in there that was able to perceive the world, or was he a beast? She didn't know. The eyes might look human, but that was the only real indication.
For a moment, his yellow eyes locked onto hers. As if he sensed the nervous excitement in her. Her eyes traced over his bindings. Another impulse hit her. Those eyes were filled with pain. With suffering that made her heart wrench.
So she stumbled, bumping into the muzzled wolf, collapsing, whilst the two guards cursed at her. He didn't budge, even when she nudged his foot. She stammered and apologized, pretended to be scared out of her mind from the wolf, and dashed into the bathroom and shut the door. No windows. And they wouldn't expect her to be in there long.
It was likely pointless, what she had done. Her actions assumed that he had human consciousness behind those eyes.
But all the same, there was something oddly human about his expressions. Even past the snout and animal yellow color of his irises.
Just beneath his right foot lay her hairpin.
It was the least she could do, right? If he had any sentience at all, something like that must help to deliver hope. And he looked like he could do with some hope.
She sat on the toilet, just a wooden box with a hole in it, and retraced all the lights she had seen. The visual contact helped. Harder if she hadn't pinpointed every one.
Then, taking a deep, excited breath, she seized all the light sources that she could sense. Including the ones in each building.
It was considered a crime to touch another person's lightweaving in Fjordan. But, well, she wasn't in Fjordan anymore.
She fizzled out all the light. Extinguishing all sources at once. Letting it dissipate into nothing, since her body couldn't hold that much. The second thing she did was tackle another light source. Another one she wouldn't have dared contemplate in a better place.
The fires.
Lightweaving came from light, after all. Inside, and outside.
She sucked the light out of the torches. What this made, and she'd seen it a few times in her lessons, was just the heat. The flames flickered and burned, but left nothing but a kind of void where the light had once been.
Something scholars theorized had happened to some of the night horde. Their light had been stolen, but the heat remained.
She never would have dared do anything like this. It never normally would have occurred to her. But seeing some of the depravity for herself, and the fear all around, made her start thinking outside the box. Letting her travel down paths previously left alone.
This wouldn't be possible either if there was another lightweaver of the same ability as her. They could simply reverse the flow of magic, since it was easy to sense when someone used lightweaving. They could have grabbed the energy she wasted before it had a chance to disappear.
She heard the gasps and shouts echoing from outside, and she knew it had worked. She didn't say anything, focused on the bandits’ fear, and sought an opportunity to crawl out.
More shouts. Talking. She heard the door creak open. Without lights, everything was plunged into absolute darkness.
The men couldn't see her, and she thought to duck and slide past, because they'd be at first waiting, then perhaps reaching.
Now, how had the room been designed? Four steps to the right... and yes. A window. The werewolf was diagonal from this one. She remained quiet as the men started barking orders. One lit a torch. She sucked the light from that. More curses.
Someone blundered nearby, and she heard the creak of the front door. “I'll guard the front! You, light a bloody torch.”
“But I can't see...”
“Find something! Use your hands! Ah... I don't know what's going on...”
She discreetly fumbled along the window. Found the brass twister. Waited for more noise, before slowly turning it. It creaked slightly, but no one commented. Then, gritting her teeth, she felt along the edges of the window and tugged it up when one of the guards crashed into what sounded like a table.
Wasting no time, she clambered out of the window, her body damp with sweat, her heart beating so fast that she didn't know how it stayed inside.
So much chaos. All wrought by that good little princess who did everything her mother and father previously asked.
I think I understand what it feels like to be my sister, now. She had so much freedom, didn't she?
Bethany crawled along the muddy ground, sucking at any more attempts to light torches. This caused massive confusion, as people would try to touch the end of the torch, wondering what had happened, and got themselves burned for their efforts.
And... yes.
She could smell the spreading of ghostly fire. Someone had dropped their torch. Maybe several someones, not realizing that their torches were still burning.
Something like that made it logical to see why people banned the excessive stealing of light. Imagine being destroyed by something you could only hear and feel, but not see? Imagine that terror as the invisible smoke crept into your lungs, and your body caught on fire, and without the dignity of being covered up, you could see everything crumble and cook?
Lightweaving was a lot more dangerous than people realized.
Taking the light from everything invited catastrophe. But right now, Bethany needed that distraction to escape.
She needed chaos.