fiction – Page 8 – Joan Spilman

This Textured Darkness, #83

Oren began to use his fists. He’d heard the crack of neck against stone, and watched as a Red Robe tumbled down the stone steps.

Mirella’s desperation became clear. She was being forced to flee because of her testimony. Had she been threatened? Struck?

Oren was lying in a dungeon cell. The straw beneath him, what there was of it, smelled of urine and fear.

Red Robes had stomped his left hand. They hadn’t touched his right, the hand with the mark, which they avoided out of fear.

I piled everything in a skillet and heated it until it was palatable, dumped everything in a big bowl, and marched out to his run.

“Elymas has been killing the children for 300 years. I’ve seen them in dreams from which I couldn’t awaken. Sweet faces of angels frozen in death.”

“Ranald steps closer to death every day. The tips of his fingers are black now. Elymas is poisoning him, but I don’t know how,” said Laveth.

“Ranald needs his tonic,” replied Laveth. “He’s gone without for three days and his bones are needled with pain.”

“The twisted stairs. Spiders are there. I haven’t swept them for two weeks.”
” Twisted stairs?” asked the Queen. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, yes,” said Laveth bitterly and closed the shutter with a bang. “There’s no use railing against what I can’t change.”