The darkness of the forest frightened Alphana, but the pain in her right shoulder was far worse. She twisted her head to get a better look at the now puckered Emblem of Proscription. It didn’t look like anything to her at the moment except a red, swollen circle with puss weeping from beneath lines of scabs. But she knew that in a week it would look like a two-headed dragon with a sword in its throat. She remembered the white-hot iron, the heat of it even when it was a foot from her arm, the searing pain that nearly drove her mad when Parson Flander pressed it to her flesh and held it there for an unbearable ten seconds. But she would trade the pain of it now, twenty hours later, for those ten seconds. She had spent the night under a tree, the agony of the burn wrenching tears until her eyes refused to spill anymore. The anger smoldering in her heart had not raged and burned out, though. It still lay deep within her, like a smoking black-crusted mound of lava.

The sun was coming up. It hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon, but its rays painted the wispy clouds in hues of red and orange. At least it isn’t raining, she thought dismally.

A curl of smoke rose from the Castle to the north. Just one, which was odd. The grounds surrounding the castle inside and outside the city walls was home to countless refugees. Since the war began almost a year past.  The smoke of a thousand refugee cookfires had given the castle a new name, Mist.

Mist. That was the name of her horse, the same one her father had ordered killed because she was the one horse he couldn't ride. That horse had been her life, the stars in her night, and for a paltry handful of silvers he had been butchered like a pig. Alphana would never forget the day Mist died. He split a hoof and a stable boy’s skull trying to get away, snapping a dozen ropes until one man broke one of Mist’s legs with the flat of his blade and ten others wrestled him to the ground. Her father hadn’t the decency to drag Mist into the slaughterhouse but butchered him right there on the cobbles in front of the manor. The bloodstains were still there. Alphana wept there under the tree at the memory of Mist’s wailing cry that was cut gurgling short.

No, she would never forget that day or the two that followed, for in the two that followed, she would commit an unthinkable act. And that act would win her the Emblem of Proscription and a heap of guilt that smelled as bad as any dung heap.

***

Alphana hated her father. He was cruel to his servants, his animals and his children.  His stubborness was legendary.  It had been better when Alphana's mother was alive.  She had calmed him, the people said, but after her death he had reverted back to himself, only worse somehow.  And the war only made him harder.  He was a captain of ten thousand, the most disciplined ten thousand veterans in the kingdom, their last hope for winning the war.  When Mist bucked him, it was too much for his pride to endure.  It had happened in front of a hundred men, other captains and generals.   Alphana could imagine.  A man as great as her father, sitting atop her horse, jaw jutted forward, back held straight, looking spotless and shiny, the savior of their people––and falling off like some half-wit stableboy.

She lay on her bed in her elaborate chambers, alone. Down below, she could hear the laughing voices of her father’s men as they stripped Mist’s hide. Soon, Mist would only be a memory. One generation hence would forget him entirely.

She herself was not hungry, would never be hungry again she vowed. She was certain she would weep until there was no more water in her body.

Buried in her pillow as she was, she barely heard the clatter of boots on tile. The nerve! She would have the head of the intruder who hadn’t the decency to knock!

"I will not stand for you slouching in your rooms like some common street urchin!" It was her father. She pulled her head from the wetness of her pillow and looked up at him. "No daughter of mine will weep in her rooms over the loss of an untrainable horse. Clean yourself up and present yourself in the Rectory at once! You’ve a class yet to finish today."

Untrainable horse? Mist was the most gentle horse she had ever known.  She just didn't like her father.

His comment was a knife in her gut. And words came unbidden to her lips: "Just as untrainable as your mistress, father? What? You’ve nowhere to stick your pike, now? A pity."

His face had turned as red as her tear-stained cheeks. He reached for his sword, held a trembling fist on the pommel for a moment before raising his hand to point a long finger at her. "You will not speak to me in that manner or you’ll have thirty lashes for slander. Now, move!" With that, he turned and walked out.

Alphana did clean herself up, but it wasn’t the Rectory where she found herself ten minutes later. She left the manor, right out the front gate into the city proper. There was a certain Mage who ran an apothecary on Ropoy street she wanted to talk to.

"Milady, I beg thee not to ask this of me. Your father is a King’s man."

"I’m not asking anything of you, Therilin. I’m giving you an order. You will do as I say."

"Milady, you are not a princess."

"I am a princess! My father has no male children. I am heir to his throne, however small that throne is."

"I cannot do this, Milady," said Therilin.

Alphana bristled. "Why are all men impossible? A woman hasn’t a chance in this world."

"If you ask me, Milady, it’s the women who’ve always ruled. A man falters in the face of subtlety, but a woman can be as shrewd as a cat."

"You’ve never liked my father, so why deny me?"

"Your father is arrogant and stupid, and it’s true I never have liked him," said Therilin. "But you’re asking me to kill a man a thousand times over a dead horse."

"It’s not just the horse," said Alphana. "It’s the injustice to you, as well."

"Ah! Appealing to my sense of revenge and inbred hate, are you? I’m too old for that now, Milady. In some men, hate and cynicism smolder until their souls are caste as hard as iron. I have forgotten the grievance I had with your father."

"You lie. You avoid him like the plague."

"Avoidance is an admission that we don’t agree, not proof that I still hold a grudge."

"You spin words as well as my mother," said Alphana. "Besides, Parson Flander would disagree with you."

"Parson Flander is as disagreeable as your father. Now there’s a man to curse! Why not him?"

"So you won’t do this for me?"

"I believe it’s exactly what your father wants, Milady. A thousand deaths will grant him a sort of sick immortality. He has always been unaware of his own mortality. Such a curse will make him yet more cynical and give him countless years to perfect his deviousness. Is that what you want?"

"Yes," Alphana said without hesitation. She gave him the sorriest, most pleading stare she could muster.

"Ah, you are a beautiful woman, lass. Not a stitch of your mother or your father. Are you certain they are your parents?"

"So you’ll do it?" she asked hopefully.

Therilin sighed. "You are a master of manipulation. I fear such a trait, however, is a much needed skill in your world."

"When?"

"God forgive the evil he put into me, I pray. Tomorrow evening. At Seventh Bell." Alphana opened her mouth to speak, but the old Mage raised a hand and said, "Don’t be late."

Alphana wasn’t.

Alphana stepped into the little Apothecary on Ropoy street right after the toll of Seventh Bell and closed the door behind her. At the tinkling of the bells hanging behind the door, Therilin appeared from behind a bead curtain. "Come," he said. She followed him into the room behind the bead curtain. There was a pentagram on the floor, the lines made of black sand. At each of the six points stood a candle, all of them unlit. A single lit candle puttered on a table at the far end of the room, casting shadows against the walls. Flasks and books and scrolls were ordered neatly on shelves and workbenches.

"I am almost ready," said Therilin behind her.

He walked over to a workbench. He unrolled a scroll, scanned it, put it down and unrolled another.

Alphana found a chair near the door and waited patiently. Just before she opened her mouth to demand that he get started, he turned from his books and scrolls and stepped over the black lines of the pentagram until he was standing in its center.

Alphana was expecting a display of fire or harsh, unintelligible words from the Mage, but he was silent. There was no display of fireworks or any other noticeable occurrence. Therilin did move his arms in strange patterns, though. He turned to each candle and repeated the gestures. The candles did not light. After Therilin had reached the last candle and repeated the arm gestures, he dropped them to his side and opened his eyes. "It is finished," he said breathlessly.

"But nothing happened!" said Alphana.

The old man laughed. "Youth often have the misconception that magic is performed like a play, with great displays of light and color. Magic is a boring business, Milady. Sometimes it can be downright drudgery."

"But how will I know the curse worked?"

"The first time he dies, I suppose."

Alphana stamped her foot.

"I’ve done as you have asked, Milady. May God have mercy on my soul."

Alphana would not stay a moment longer. She stood, knocking her chair over in the process. She open the sack at her waist, fished out three gold crowns. She threw them on the ground. The coins broke two lines of the pentagram, splashing the black sand on Therilin’s shoes. He did not so much as flinch or protest. "If it doesn’t work, I’ll be back for those," she said.

"I never asked for payment. Besides, I expect nothing good will come of this day’s deed. Already I regret it."

Alphana huffed and left the apothecary.

She didn’t have to wait long for news of her father’s first death. The very next morning after the curse had been set, he died, trampled by a horse. Supposedly broken, the horse had bucked him. Alphana remembered his screams that echoed throughout the manor house for the better part of the day. He had been pronounced dead at Sixth Bell that evening. At Seventh Bell, to the profound astonishment of the servants and his wife, he awoke, bones mended, punctures healed, life restored, but the memory of his torments remained agonizingly strong, almost as if he still bore his wounds.

He wasn’t a happy man.

"I have been cursed," he proclaimed. "And when I find the Mage who did this, I’ll string his body on the parapets of the city gates."

And find him he did. It wasn’t difficult. Therilin, afterall, was the only Mage in Mist.

Alphana wanted to run away. But she had been raised to abhor cowardice. She was certain Therilin wouldn’t betray her, but when her father came to her at Tenth Bell the day of his first death, the betrayal was in his eyes. He knew.

He found her hiding in her room. She stood regally before him, just as he had taught her. Head high, mouth pursed, a don’t-let-them-know-your-thoughts placid look in her eyes. She tried to calm the quaking of her knees as he walked right up to her, his armor squeaking with every step.

"You did this to me," he said. Her silence was all he needed to hear. A backhanded slap of his gauntlet split her cheek open. When she turned her head around to look at him, her pent up rage let loose and she lashed out with the most potent weapon a woman had in her world: her tongue.

"May each death be infinitely more painful than the last," she said.

He drew his sword, thrust her to the bed. He held the point to her stomach. She felt it rip the fabric. She was certain he would drive it home, but a hint of self-control flashed in his eyes and he pulled back. "I don’t want your blood on the sheets or the floor."

"Then take me out to the cobbles where you did your other butchering!"

"You spawn from hell," he hissed. "You will have the Emblem of Proscription." He sheathed his sword and strode from the room.

The Emblem of Proscription. The curse would lash out at her, as well.

She wept for a long time. Whether the tears were for the death of Mist, regret, or fear, she wasn’t entirely sure.

Alphana stood. The pain in her arm had subsided substantially. The tip of the sun had crested the horizon. It’s warmth was a welcome relief to the coldness of the night. She had not even been given a blanket before she was thrust from the city gates by a screaming mob of people who had nothing better to do than make themselves feel superior.

Looking east into the woods, she gathered up her strength. There was a new life out there. Many others had the Emblem of Proscription. She would find them, try to carve a life out of this madness. Once more, she thought of her father.

She had given him exactly what he wanted: Immortality.

A greater truth, one like bile in her throat, forced it’s way up. She would deny it forever, would not admit it even though it stared her in face. Her father had also given her exactly what she wanted: Freedom. Freedom from courtly politics. Freedom from Parson Flander’s rote, monotone sermons. Freedom to roam wherever she liked. But freedom had its own curse. She had a brand to hide, now, and most cities checked for the Proscribed before allowing entrance. The hills would become her home. The great forests of the Westland where her childish dreams had so often led. It all seemed so ironic, now. It was hard to believe that a single fit of rage could so alter a person’s life.

Revenge did not fill her with sweet victory. Rather, it knotted and churned within her like a swath of maggots in the carcass of a dead soldier left on the battlefield of a senseless war.

She walked into the forest.
 

Copyright © 1999 Chad Cottle

You can e-mail Chad chad@titanzine.com