Chapter 21 : The Soaked Vengeance
"His nose was crooked from being broken, his body marked with stripes, his face with scars both new and old. Yet, none of these marks of suffering made him appear miserable—"
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Places mentioned:
Castle Katella
A self-sufficient, city-like castle where the King and the Queen and the unmarried Valrinos live.
Tyrannoson:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, ruled by the Valrino family.
Spring
The capital city of Tyrannoson.
Linsaidea:
One of the three kingdoms on the Central Continent, northwest of Tyrannoson, across a narrow sea, the Rustless Sea, to Mandia. A nomadic, rather savage people that tame mammoths.
Mandia:
An island nation, northwest of the Central Continent, cut off by the Rustless Sea. It was conquered by Tyrannoson three years ago when the narrative begins.
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Creatures (that can speak and have names) mentioned:
Yisreal Valrino
A son of the King. Leopoldo met the young Yisreal in the woods while hunting. Then the King brought him back to Castle Katella and announced him to be his son.
Nicholas Valrino
The youngest son of the Queen.
Meredith
A mysterious murderess—presumably a mermaid—entrusted to Ivan’s custody by Yisreal, who was supposed to execute her.
Princess Lorien
The daughter of the King of Linsaidea. She arrives in Tyrannoson to fulfill a marriage promise between the two nations, a condition for the Tyrannoson army to pass through the Mammoth Plain to invade Mandia. At this point, it turned out that she is not the real Princess of Linsaidea but a mysterious character who almost killed Yisreal (from Chapter 1).
Mr. Galorde
Ivan’s grandfather’s apprentice, having served both his grandfather and father as their assistant.
Elan
A gladiator Carwen rescued from the arena three years ago, now is Yisreal’s groom.
Lewis
Ivan’s apprentice, working at the Medical Tower.
Mitheran
One of the two guards and mammoth riders for Princess Lorien. At this point, it turns out that he is not from Linsaidea but disguised himself to infiltrate Tyrannoson in search of the “thief.”
Armoros
One of the two guards and mammoth riders for Princess Lorien. At this point, it turns out that he is not from Linsaidea but disguised himself to infiltrate Tyrannoson in search of the “thief.”
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21
I couldn’t respond. Neither option was true, and neither felt right. If I said yes, they might kill me; if I said no, they might force me to sell “the other” out.
“Who are you?” the whistler asked, on alert. So were all the slaves in the surrounding trees.
“Go your way,” I said. “I mean no harm.”
“How did you get here?” the whistler continued his interrogation. “And where are you going?”
“I want to check the dam.” I grew impatient and just wanted to get rid of them.
They exchanged glances. Somehow I felt they knew something I didn’t, so I blurted out, “Are you too?”
Their first reaction was cluelessness, which troubled me even more. If their escape was unrelated to the dam failure, then something worse was—something supernatural, like Yisreal had said. The water volume had already surpassed what the reservoir could possibly hold and still hadn’t stopped increasing.
Could it be that the dam held back not just the water in the reservoir, but another body of water? A body of salty water that had broken through? It did not come from the ocean, nor could it possibly have come from underground—
A chill ran down my spine as a faded memory reappeared: the Featherlead River in Sanlostier.
Philemon said, “This is the Featherlead River; nothing can float on its surface.”
I looked at the river’s to-and-fro motion. “Does it run out of the forest?”
“It does,” Philemon said. “But I don’t know where it ends or where it comes from.”
“You’ve never traced the river to see its origin and end?”
I waited, but he didn’t answer.
“What if it goes out to the human realm? Does the riverbank rise over time since everything sinks to the bottom?”
He turned a bit of his face, glanced at me, and lowered his eyes, pondering.
“And this boat—the canoe—can float!” I knocked on the canoe’s body. “What is this made of?”
I wasn’t sure if it was the fear overshadowing my face, or a distraction that made me look dumb, that put the slaves at ease. They lost all alertness and interest in me altogether and decided to move on.
They threw their floating items into the water and began climbing down from the trees—some had already jumped in. Yet my mind was racing, feeling an urge to stop them but finding no justification.
If these buckets can float, then this surely isn’t the Featherlead River. So where else? What world, other than Sanlostier, is parallel yet connected to the human world through channels?
What if the dam is the channel?
The slaves floated past beneath me, and though I was concerned for them, I had far greater concerns to attend to first. I looked for Yisreal in the direction of the forest’s heart, where the oldest tree was said to reside, but I couldn’t find him. Even when I located the colossal tree he had been seeking, I didn’t see him nearby. It was certainly tall enough to cross the width of the dam and thick as if from an ancient time. And it wasn’t just this one; the trees surrounding it were likewise majestic. The flood had blurred my sense of direction, but it wasn’t until I looked at these trees through magic that I was hit with a déjà vu—I had been here before. These trees weren’t common in the human world, where most could not live out their time before being cut down. But this forest, and this old tree—
I forcefully snapped off the remembrance to look for the broken dam, reasoning that Yisreal might be there instead. Through the green shadows of the trees, my eyes traveled to the border of this forest, which had originally been split apart by the dam. Now, there was no drop height, no rapids, no waterfall, no spindrift—only a broad, muddy expanse of water without form or order. It was like a monster that fed on the dry land, and the more land it devoured, the bigger it grew.
I could no longer see the dam, not even its remains. A twinge of worry gripped me as I gripped the necklace Yisreal had left me. He could only move by swimming or jumping from one tree to another now. I hadn’t seen him jumping, and it was too dangerous to swim near the dam. The closer to the dam, the faster the water ran, for the significant drop height buried beneath it still existed.
I couldn’t stay here high and dry. The slaves were going nowhere, even after risking their lives to escape the arena; and Yisreal was nowhere to be found. Though I doubted he would die, I feared that he would be washed away somewhere—I truly did, as if the very thing that gave me a sense of purpose here would be gone with him.
I was looking at the necklace chain Yisreal had left me, hesitating about throwing it into the water to search for him, when I heard the honk of the mammoth in the distance. I turned and, using my wizard’s eyes, discovered a man—swimming in the water, shaping his mouth into a whistle that mesmerized the mammoth. The mammoth circled him with its trunk and threw him onto its back, where Lorien was sitting.
The man had long black hair and a short black beard. He was tall and had a lean, tight physique, with a fresh pink scar on his right forearm that extended to the back of his hand. He struggled to stand up, holding the reins to keep his balance. I couldn’t see his face with his back towards me, but Lorien’s expression revealed that she didn’t know him. Though she kept her composure, she had unconsciously held her breath in front of this intruder, who controlled the mammoth as well as she did.
I didn’t yet know how to see and hear at the same time, so I had to switch to hearing as a conversation seemed to be starting.
“You are the little princess,” the man said, “from the Mammoth Plain.”
“Who are you?” Lorien asked.
“We are neighbors.”
Lorien didn’t answer.
“You came here to marry one of the Valrinos, didn’t you?”
Still, I didn’t hear her voice. For a moment, I almost thought my magic had failed, but I assumed she simply didn’t know what to say. After all, she was not “the little princess” the man had mistaken her for.
“Which one?” the man continued.
Again, only silence. Then, an abrupt noise made me open my eyes, and immediately I lost the hearing.
The man choked her neck, threatening her. She grabbed his wrist, trying to struggle away, when she noticed the scar on his hand and forearm.
I shut my eyes to listen, and the man’s threat exploded in my ear right away: “Say it! Who?”
She coughed, taking a few ragged breaths before she was able to utter, “Yisreal.”
Quietness from the man, then an outburst of maniacal laughter. I was surprised to hear her answer, unsure if she was being honest or if she knew something—perhaps the letter Mitheran handed to the King at the first banquet had clarified they wanted Yisreal. But all this time, while they were here, I had sensed that the King was unwilling to give Linsaidea—or Mitheran and Armoros—what they wanted, and hence he delayed finalizing the wedding. Galorde had bet on that, saying the King would never let Yisreal go.
But at this point, nobody knew if that letter was fabricated or truly written by the King of Linsaidea. The only certain thing was that Mitheran and Armoros wanted Yisreal, and as long as Yisreal left Tyrannoson with them, he would be in danger.
“Yisreal! HAHAHAHAHA—Yi—sreal—” The man managed to bite the name through his teeth in a gap between his laughter.
“Your father,” he said with a sneer, “always knows what to choose. When will you leave for Linsaidea with your bridegroom?”
“I don’t know,” she said in a faint voice, still recovering from the choking.
Then the conversation ceased. I opened my eyes again. The man cut the reins from the mammoth and tied Lorien up with them instead. He kept her sitting in the same spot, walked around behind her, and holding the end of the rope, he blew a whistle or made some other sound. The mammoth started swimming in my direction.
That man!