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Rita Walsh - Dark Fantasy - 5 pages.pdf

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God of Torment

By Rita Walsh

Genre: Dark Fantasy

Chapter One

As an apprentice healer, I witnessed the horrors of disease more times than I could count.

I had never seen anything like this.

The walls of the trader’s wagon dripped with blood. Sprays of crimson spattered the ceiling and floor. Corpses filled every bed, their faces and clothing stained scarlet. Their eyes were forever open but never again seeing this broken kingdom. Dried blood flaked off rolled blankets and clung to vases. A smell of rotten flesh permeated the wooden space, turning my stomach and making my eyes water. I couldn’t do any good here. The traders had already succumbed to their disease.

“Please,” a whispered plea shocked me from the far end of the cart, and I squeezed my eyes shut. It would have been better if no one here was left alive. This sole survivor now had nothing and no one. All they had left was a slow and painful death.

I pressed on the cloth covering my mouth and leaned over the bunk, finding a young man, quivering with a blood-splattered tunic. Bloody tears leaked from his eyes and ears, soaking his pillow in crimson.

“Please,” he whispered again. “I have a message.”

“I know. You already delivered it. Please, be at peace,” I said in the soothing tone my mother drilled into me. The dying don’t need a detective or a mourner in their last moments, she would always say. They need a friend who’s compassionate enough to stay until the end and strong enough to end their suffering, if it comes to that.

I knelt on the floor and laid down my bag of equipment. I shoved open my bag, making the glass bottles of medicinal herbs clink in a discordant song. They were too slick for my leather gloves to grasp, and I dropped each vial in my lap so they wouldn’t touch any stray flakes of blood on the floor. Pulling out a funnel, I struggled to attach the tube to the nozzle, my thick leather gloves making the securing mechanism nearly impossible to latch on.

“Damn it,” I muttered to myself.

“I need to get a message to… Osin,” the man whispered. His thick accent reminded me of summer days in the mountains. This man was probably the same age as my oldest half-sister, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. He could have known my mother, who spent much of her time in the villages up until her death three years ago, tending to the sick.  The man lay among colorful blankets with the crisscross pattern distinctive of the craftsman from my father’s dukedom. Blood caked in his bristly beard. His shoulders were wide, and he had the stocky build of a laborer. He probably tended the horses of this caravan.

“You did get a message to Duke Osin. I’m the duke’s daughter. Your message is how I knew you were here,” I whispered when the mechanism finally latched into place. “My father will send aid to your village. So many people are going to survive because of what you and your family suffered.”

Even as I said the words, I knew they were more than likely a lie. Blood fever was a remorseless enemy. It took whole towns in a matter of weeks. It was a miracle that they had made it down from the mountains at all. What could my father even do for his citizens?

I shook my head to rid myself of my dark thoughts and lifted the funnel. “I need you to open your mouth, please. Blood fever won’t let you get medicine to your stomach, so I’m going to put this tube down your nose and all the way down into your stomach so I can get medicine into you. But we can’t have it go into your lungs, so when I tell you, I need you to swallow so it’ll go down the right path.”

“A message…” His words were barely a whisper. His bruised eyelids were open wide, but his eyes were glassy as he stared up at the bloody interior of his trader home.

“Yes, the message, I know.” I slid the tube into his nostril, finding the channel slick. The sheep intestine entered easily, and the man didn’t even seem to notice as I slid the tube deeper. His eyes stared at the ceiling, crimson tears clinging to his lashes. His chest rose, and his breath rasped in and out slowly. My tube met resistance, and I whispered, “Now I will twist it all of the way. Sir… sir, I need you to swallow now. Can you do it? Swallow slowly.”

His throat worked, and I glided the tube in further. “Keep swallowing.”

There was a loud bang from behind me, and frozen air whooshed into the caravan. A jangling sound clattered, and then someone yelled, “Hey! Get out of there!”

I twisted around, finding a soldier standing at the open doorway to the cart in a full imperial uniform with a fur captain’s cap. In his hand, a torch snapped in the bitter wind.

I held up a hand. “Don’t come any closer. Blood fever is spread by contact with infected blood,” I called back. “The walls in here are dripping with it. I’m covered from head to toe, but you have plenty of skin showing.”

“We’ve been ordered to burn this cart! I said get out!”

“This man is still alive!” I turned back and continued to slide down the tube. “He’ll be alive for hours or maybe even days.”

“My orders are to burn it!” The captain’s voice was as pitiless as the disease that had taken these traders. “Move your ass, or you’ll burn too!”

 “You… you can’t possibly mean to burn this man alive.” I shook my head, as if I could wake myself from this horror with the motion.

“Well, I’m not coming in there to kill him. This area has been quarantined off for burning by the emperor himself. We’ve already soaked this caravan in oil.” Milky blue eyes drilled into mine, and the soldier lifted his torch to the wooden doorframe. “This is your last warning. If you don’t get out of there, I’ll burn this caravan with you in it. That man is an infected corpse. Get out or die.”

The soldier lifted his torch to the doorway, seeming as if he had already decided to burn the cart with me in it. Panic surged up in me, and I yelled, “My name is Lady Vasilisa Osin, Duke Osin’s daughter, and I am not going to leave this man to be burned alive. Either you let me deliver medicines into his system that will end his pain, or you will have a lot to explain to the emperor, who is my father’s personal friend!”

Shock fell over the man’s features, and his face paled to a sickly pallor. For a second, I thought he’d listen and give me time to give the man a painless passing— but then a slow calculation ticked away in the captain's blue eyes. I could almost read his thoughts. I was the duke’s bastard child— not a legitimate one. The duchess’s hatred of me was well known.

He dropped the torch directly onto the caravan. Fire exploded out, licking up the caravan walls. Smoke filled my lungs as I turned back to the dying man. My eyes stung and my vision blurred, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the smoke or the adrenaline pumping through my body.

The man before me moaned, and then he started gasping for breath.

“Damn it.” I fumbled open a bottle of liquid Atropa Belladonna, deadly nightshade. I’d been planning just to give enough to calm his pain, but I poured the entire bottle into the funnel, lifting it above his head and watching the liquid pour down.

Smoke scratched at my throat, and racking coughs ripped through my chest as I jumped to my feet, turning to face the caravan.

“Message!” I wheeled around to see the man’s eyes open, eyes ice blue and sharp as the ice cliffs to the north. He rasped, his voice a death rattle, “The gods cursed us. You break…” Frothy blood bubbled up from his lips. He writhed in the bed, and I rushed back, hoping that the poison would at least kill his pain while the fire consumed him.

I shaded my eyes and stumbled toward the only exit, finding nothing but a fiery inferno. Sparks flew at my arms and face, burning through my clothing and biting into my skin. A wall of flame rose, impenetrable. My eyes streamed and, for just a second, I could swear that the fire was reaching toward me with long fingers. A loud crash came from the wall beside me, and a jagged piece of the wall ripped away.

A man stood at the other side of the broken wall. He stood wreathed in fire like a demon from the Celestial Realm. Just like a devil, his face was too sharp and flawless to be real; his cheekbones could cut glass. His hair was dark as elderberries, and his green eyes were furious. Even in the heat, I hesitated, but he reached in and grabbed me with strong, calloused hands.

“Be more careful, Vasilisa.” It was a command, an order. He looked at me like I was the most despicable creature in the world.

Then he tossed me onto the frozen earth, and I barely had time to get my hands up to break my fall. Sweet oxygen filled my lungs, and I choked on it, retching on the clean air. As I caught my breath, I considered whether I should thank my savior or slap him— slap was the one I was leaning towards.

Hands grabbed my arms and dragged me away from the heat, over rocks, and onto a patch of frozen earth. But when I raised my head, it wasn’t the man with midnight-black hair and cruel green eyes. The soldier who stared at me was younger, maybe eighteen, and had bushy blonde hair from the top of his head to the bottom like most of the people in the village town.

“We are so sorry, your ladyship,” the soldier said through harsh breaths as he leaned over me, hands on knees.

“You’ll be even sorrier if you don’t wash those hands with vinegar or alcohol…” I managed. My lungs burned like the fire had crawled up inside them. “I don’t want to have to be feeding you all deadly nightshade while someone burns your house with you and your dead family in it.”

“Yes, ladyship,” the young man said, but his captain yanked him up by his collar.

“She’s not the lady of the dukedom. Her stepmother is. We don’t take orders from her,” the captain who set fire to the cart barked before giving his soldiers directions and rushing away.

Hacking coughs ripped through my chest, keeping me lying on the road for what seemed like forever. The black-haired soldier had completely vanished. It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to know my name. I was the duke’s daughter, and there had been speculation that I would marry the crown prince since birth, but that soldier spoke to me as if he knew me personally. He saved me from the fire — not kindly — but he did save me.

When I could finally stand, I turned to the flaming husk of a wagon. It was a home on metal wheels that once held a family of traders from the mountains. My mountains. That family had been brave enough to push on for a hundred miles while dying of blood fever, all so they could get word to my father that disease was spreading through our dukedom.

The traders' last words ran through my mind.

Vasilisa Osin. The gods cursed us.

They were words that terrified me to my core. More than anything, the word “curse” drove into my consciousness, echoing again and again with a dark foreboding. We were cursed. The gods cursed us.

Even with the heat from the fire, a chill crept into my bones, and I didn’t relish what I had to do next, but it was necessary. I stripped off my clothing carefully, throwing each piece into the fire. I burned the loose smock I’d purposely left untied before I yanked off my spare boots, head wrap, and the cloth covering my face. Last, I pulled off my leather gloves and tossed them into the embers.

“Lady?” A voice called, sounding strained.

I found the officers at the other end of the road, staring at me with their mouths hanging ajar. They gaped at my thick underclothes with wide, shocked eyes. Their cheeks turned so ruddy they almost looked purple, and I was getting the feeling that even with all the atrocities they witnessed today, my underclothing was what was going to stick in their minds. One of the men whipped off his cloak and held it out. He averted his gaze. “Here, take this, please.”

As I crossed the icy road, I realized that the entire capital would likely hear about this by nightfall. They wouldn’t hear about the poor soul who died in a blaze of fire. They’d hear about how Lady Vasilisa Osin stripped in front of a company of imperial soldiers. 

“Thank you.” I wrapped the fur-lined cloak around me, though it did very little to lessen the cold. “I will send my servant to return your garment to the barracks.” Feeling that there was nothing left to say, I started up the embankment in my thick socks. A hand clapped down on my shoulder, and I whirled around, looking at the captain who’d almost killed me.

“Stop. What are you doing? That’s the Forest of Bone,” he said, and his voice was laced with fear. The man was probably twenty years my senior with threads of gray in his thick mustache and poking out from his cap. “Baba Yaga will kill you and eat you as soon as she catches you.”

“Thank you for your concern, but…” I stepped back, breaking his grip, “I grew up in this forest, and I’ve never seen a single sign of the witch in the wood.”

I didn’t give the man the opportunity to grab me again. I broke into a run, scrambling up the embankment and plunging into the safety of the Forest of Bone.

Chapter Two

The Forest of Bone wrapped around the Osin Dukedom like a cape blown out in a fierce wind. The ivory trees tangled in a web of limbs all around the dukedom, touching almost every corner of the land, and yet no one would set foot inside it. That was why I was careful to slip in and out of the forest unnoticed before I washed and headed up to my father’s study.

If I had it my way, I would have rushed straight to him to tell him everything I saw, but I needed to wash and dispose of my clothing properly. My bag and so many of my precious herbs and medicines were lost to the fire. It would take months to replenish my stock, and we were heading into a long winter.

As I approached my father’s gilded door, night was already falling. A warm yellow light spilled out of his study along with low, male voices.

I hesitated just a second with my hand on the cool brass doorknob. I recognized my father’s low tenor, but there was another voice… one I didn’t recognize. Or perhaps I did. It was familiar and not, and it made my stomach form a hard knot.