Chapter 20: Saelin
Saelin remained unmoving. Sethlzaar had spoken the words in the faintest of whispers, almost as if he borrowed a sliver of sound, unwilling to shake the silence. Although silent, with their foreheads together he thought them close enough that she would hear him; close enough that a request so soothing would convey itself. Now, he wondered if he should have lent his voice more power.
After a moment, she reacted.
Slowly, her grip loosened and the swords fell from them, embedding themselves in the snow.
"There we go," he said, leading her away from all the blood.
He placed her, wrapped in his cloak, against a tree. She gave no protest, simply letting him guide her through it all.
Certain that she was physically unharmed, he left her and went to work.
He retrieved the arrows from Frent's body. The shafts came out with much effort accompanied by blood and tiny pieces of flesh.
He turned to Saelin after. "Can you walk?" he asked her when he returned.
She nodded, rising to her feet.
"Good. This way." Heengaged her as she made to move in a direction he could only imagine held her shelter.
His shelter was not so big but he was sure that between him, her, and the old man, they could make it work.
The night had fallen by the time they arrived. Noting the absence of the old man and how cold the shelter was, Sethlzaar lit a fire and sat her beside it. He cleaned the bloodstains from her face with a piece of wet cloth soaked from the snow. Her hair proved tricky but he found his way around it, getting most of the blood out.
Certain she was clean enough, he turned to leave.
"I'll be back," he assured her as he rose. "There's something I must do."
"Don't leave me..." she looked up at him. "Please."
Her words were soft, lacking in confidence, and choked in the embrace of fear. But he had to do what needed to be done.
He'd barely taken a step when she reached and held his hand. "... please... Seth."
He stopped. Her grip wasn't strong. It was the name that compelled him. The way she said it.
Four years, he thought. Four years since he had last been called by that name. He had thought her happy in her new life. He had thought her gone to a better life. Someone he was doomed never to meet again. So by Truth why is she here, out in the cold, shedding blood, taking lives, suffering the torment of the winter? Why is Saelin a part of the church?
And for the first time in his life he cursed a god that would allow such a thing.
Saelin pleaded with her eyes, barely holding his hands. Sadly, he felt some things were too important to be left alone. Judging from what he had seen at the shelter, and the amount of snow at the entrance, he was certain the old man had left just moments after he had gone on his hunt. And from the absence of the man's belonging, he surmised it was for good. Deciding she would be all right, he left in search of Frent.
Before long he found him.
He cut up Frent's body with the swords Saelin had used, separating limbs and head. He worked with a calm and precision he never knew he had. He moved to the bodies of the men. He cut up their cloths, shoved the body parts into the different make shift bags he fashioned from them and rose to leave.
A good distance away he dug into the snow. It proved tasking but success came. He pulled out a leg from the bag—the last of Frent's body parts—and stuck it in the ground. What would I have done with this a week ago? he asked himself, knowing the answer as he shoved back dirt and snow over it.
The ordeal proved to keep a fair amount of the cold out of Sethlzaar's bones, but as he journeyed back, the cloak was no longer enough. Hugging it tighter around himself, he wondered what exactly had happened. The only thing that makes any sense is because she's...
... Nothing made sense.
He contemplated a while longer but only a question was born of it: How did Frent inform them of her location?
He arrived at the shelter as the night aged. There he found Saelin wrapped in his blanket asleep, next to the fire. She had been through a lot, and Sethlzaar, believing he knew a thing or two about betrayal, sat next to the fire opposite her, warming himself while eating a piece of meat.
When he was done, he found her shivering from the cold. He joined her, laid beside her, wrapping her in a warm embrace. Her shivers slowly subsiding, she sank deeper into him.
Her body had changed; her hips wider than he remembered. It caused her waist to deep. A perfect place to rest an arm, he noted. Her features curved slightly, giving her a feminine shape. Four years was a lot of years, and they had been good to her despite everything.
"Did he hate me?"
Her question startled him.
...Love, anger, hate, those are secondary and surmountable to being unimportant. Men fight because there is something they want that will not be given to them, so they take it.
After a while he spoke. "No," he said. "How he felt had nothing to do with what he did."
"Then why?" She sobbed. "Why would he help them?"
She knows who wants her dead, Sethlzaar realized. He wondered if she would come back from this. Taking a life wasn't easy, and she had taken three. What happened in the past four years? "What happened to you?" he asked.
She stiffened very briefly. But when he thought she would answer, nothing came. Soon her breathing rose and dropped in a steady rhythm.
"The man that adopted me," she said after a while, when he thought her asleep, "he had so many weapons in his study. Every day he would teach me how to use them. Not the best form of entertainment for a child but I enjoyed it. Elsahel was no different, after mass we would return home and he would train me."
It was against the credence and the laws of the Realm for training of any form of violence to take place on Elsahel. Saelin's adopted father had broken that law and disobeyed the credence. If the church ever found out, the man would rue the day. For in fact, Truth was as much a spiteful god as he was the loving father the church made him out to be.
"He had visitors very often," Saelin continued. "Among them was Prince Maekil."
There was no one in the Realm that didn't know the prince, even a place as lowly as the conisoir knew him. The first prince, and heir to the throne. A man loved by all of the Realm. People believed he would be a better king than his father.
"He would visit very often," her voice flowed, uncaring of the sobs that held it. "He was in his twentieth year then and he took a liking to me. He was a kind man; said my hair was beautiful. Apart from you and my father, he was the only other person to say something nice about my hair."
Sethlzaar remembered vividly how often the children had made fun of her for her hair at the orphanage. She had been different then. Even now, she was different.
"My father was a dissident." She paused. "He made certain I knew this and kept it a secret. In time, the prince found out and had him killed."
Sethlzaar bit back on the words he would have spoken. He knew of her father. The man's story was quite infamous in the seminary. The older boys often spoke of a dissident burnt at the stake for his heathen practices and refusal to accept Truth as the father of all. He had burned in shadow fire; a death worse than any.
Dissidents were put to the flame; it was common enough. But the priest that had presided over his execution by the hand of the king had said the use of shadow fire was for the crime of defiling the capital city of the Realm with his practices and adopting a child of the Realm to spread them.
Did she hold a grudge? he wondered. What did her grudge make her to do?
"I don't begrudge him for what he did," she said. "My father knew the risks. But my father's credence was not what he died for. I heard the conversation the night they took him. The prince demanded he give me to him. There was a depravity in his eyes when he spoke, like he was crazed. He demanded that he have me, Seth. Like I was something to be owned. My father refused. Even after the prince threatened to reveal his practices, he still refused."
Her sobs now were demanding her voice give them its attention, and Sethlzaar's chest tightened at the sound. "The Abbess of the convent came for me the next day. When the prince asked she hand me over, she told him I was to be purged of whatever my father had filled my head with." She sniffled. "You see, it is easy to strike down a man. It is a difficult thing attacking a mother of the church, but an Abbess is not someone that can be fought head on, so he will take me, steal me from the convent."
Sethlzaar wondered how many people she had told. They may not have believed her, but he believed her. It was the duty of family to believe each other. The verity of what a family member said was not meant to be the first thing to be questioned. The people he had once called family had questioned his words the moment he'd spoken them. This was where it led him.
"He was the one who requested the Abbess take me," she whispered, regaining his attention she hadn't known was slipping away, her sobs descending to silent sniffles. "She told me. Said that if anything did happen to him she should take me to the convent."
The Saelin Sethlzaar knew had always faced the world with a smile. She always looked happy and at peace whenever he remembered her; smiling at him with an eagerness he always wondered at... But not today.
Today she was like watching the snow flake; a residue of the effervescence that was herself.