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The town was called Intuscat. We came, out of the night, we of the no homes except the swamps and the wastelands. We who were once of Skyrie. The four moons of Xanusia had already waxed together, and in Intuscat, soldiers and citizens alike lay fat and bloated with food and wine, looted from our village and a dozen like it.

They had no walls. Their guards were drunk or asleep. They died quickly. I look back and am amazed at the capacity of my people for inflicting pain - and for their swiftness in learning. I had only to show them the way.

We moved like ghosts. We, who hunted the Nodwyr and the Skallaak with nothing but our hands, a net and a knife. We stole into their houses while they slept. We killed their men, young and old, from the smallest boy to the oldest cripple. All of them. The women we bound for our later pleasures. Yet of the people who had once been of Skyrie, it was our own women who were the most venomous. For a cycle they had been impotent against the violations they suffered each year. They suffered the worst,. And now they had learned of what revenge could be, they lusted for it the most.

I was young and foolish. Or, perhaps, simply inexperienced. They had such lust for blood, for torture, even, yet they stayed their hands. They did as they were required to do. A quick, silent kill when what they wanted most of all was to hear screams of agony and pleas for mercy. They understood how our victory must be complete. They understood patience. I should have seen that. I should have seen that in them as a warning. I should have killed the women of Intuscat as well as the men.

But I didn't.

Half the town was in flames. The other half silent, as dead as the men who lay in their beds, awash with blood, their throats ripped from their bodies.

I knew, even before we began, I would save the sorcerer for last. I wanted him to see what had become of his power. And I wanted him to see who had done this too him. I wanted him to see me, with my two fine legs, the brand he had given me faded to almost nothing. I wanted him to see that and I wanted to taste his fear. I would have him fall to his knees and beg for mercy, to offer me everything he had. And I would show none, take everything he had, and then curse him, as he had cursed me.

No, I would kill him. Slowly, but I would kill him. I would learn from his mistake. With mercy or a curse of hatred comes the opportunity for revenge. I would not give him that.

His palace lay in the centre of the flames, its tower a-leap with them, close to collapse. I didn't care. I had to see him die. A burned corpse would give no satisfaction. I had a sword now, a real one, made of metal, stolen from one of the fat, lazy, stupid guards we killed as soon as we arrived. I thought it a fine weapon, and bludgeoned aside failing timbers, in search of my nemesis.

I saw him. Briefly. I think he was waiting for me. In the same grand room of white carven marble where he cursed me, he stood. And as I strode in, he laughed. A wild laugh, of fear and revenge, of disbelief and madness.

"I know who you are," he said. "Your magic will not save you. You will never equal me." And he threw something, a sliver of wood, I think, which grew into a spear, and then yellow light exploded all around him and he was gone.

I parried his spear with ease, and when parrying was not enough, when it turned around and flew at me again, I split it with my sword, again and again, and seized the pieces and forced them, still struggling, into the flames. And my rage was as the fire, consuming all around it. My enemy, my nemesis, the one who had laid this curse one me had escaped, to where I knew not, to plot yet more revenge for my revenge, and on and on through the cycles. I destroyed all around me, shredding golden idols and carved alters, until the fire had such hold of the place I could no longer stand the heat and the smoke of it, and thrashed, coughing and still raging outside. I had entered the sorcerer's palace from a large open square near, or perhaps in, the centre of the town, but I emerged into a much smaller places, a square of cobbled stones and low buildings, backed against a surrounding wall as high as three men. The first ominous streamers of smoke rose from these as well, and I heard the cries of horses, as the smell brought out the fear in them. I had seen them in our village, seen how strong and fast they were, how great a weapon they could be. I would have his horses, then, until I could have his life as well.

I went in to free them. And when I had done so, I saw her. Alithi of the Raven. So I learned, much later.

But what I saw, stained in smoke and straw, was one of the raven-haired whores I had seen with the sorcerer in my first vision of him. I raised my sword high and screamed - a twisting cry of fulfilled hate. Yet she neither screamed and cowered, nor tried to run, nor even to fight. She simply stared my own hate back into me. She would die and return and I would have no victory here - all this she stared at me.

So I lowered my sword and forced her down into the straw and stabbed her with another, and was no less gentle with it. Then left her, with the flames tearing at the walls, my own rage sated, passed on like a disease.

We cleared the town and made it ours, and I spared no further thought for the sorcerer's whore. I had led my people to their first victory, and now they looked to me as leader. An unwanted role, but it was clear enough that without direction, they would simply revert to their old ways, their old simple lives. And perhaps be the happier for it, but I knew the sorcerer would return, with more soldiers, and the next time he came, they would not stop at taking our food and raping our wives. I had taught him a new lesson in warfare, and as I remembered his face, the gleam of his eyes in the moment I saw him, I knew he'd learned it well. So I set them to work. To rebuild. To arm themselves, to fortify what they could. And set myself to the task of mastering more of this sorcerer's art, so I, too, would be prepared. The women of the town were sent gather food or starve. Many never returned. I thought little of it.

Then, three days after our victory, she came to me again. I had no guards, for I had no need of them, and what use would they be in repelling the sorcerous attacks I most expected. So the first I saw of her, she stood in the doorway to the ruined house I now called my own - ruined, but still a far more splendid place than any village hut of mud and straw and rotting wood.

She stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light of the four waning moons.

"I am Alithi," she said. "Alithi of the raven."

I didn't recognise her. All I saw was her shadow, her outline. And we had never spoken. At least, not with words. I think I didn't even look up from the charred fragments of parchments I had begun to piece together.

She took a step towards me. "Do you remember me."

I felt, more than saw, the movement, as she took another step, and shrugged away the robe she wore. Gleaming naked in the moonlight, midnight hair streaming around her shoulders.

"Yes," I said. "I remember you."

"You raped me," she said.

"Yes. And left you to flee or to die, and cared little of which it was to be. Have you come to kill me?" For I could think of no other reason why she should seek me out, though her method seemed strange.

"No. I have come to give myself to you." And in truth, my thoughts found this an agreeable suggestion. She was quite beautiful. My enemy chose nothing but the best for himself. And the thought struck me - how fitting for me to own what had once been his, to flaunt it in front of him and all who had once served him.

"Why?"

She took another step, close enough I had but to reach out and I would touch her skin.

"I was a servant to the sorcerer you have bested. Though I detested him, it was not without its rewards. And you, you are so much younger. Stronger. Happily I will become yours, if you will have me as your handmaiden."

"Certainly I will have you." I reached, touched, pulled her close and drew her down to the rags and furs that had become my sleeping mat, and she groaned her pleasure for me for much of the night, until at last, with the first glimmer of dawn at the threshold, I was finally sated and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Yet, for all her words, I could not trust her, and so before I lay my head down, I muttered a quiet rune, to wake me should she stir before me.

The next day, I sent her out, among the ruins, to find what little remained of her sorcerer master's magic, what little had survived the fire, and to take as her own anything of her fancy. And well she rewarded me, with trinkets and tokens imbued with petty powers I would surly have overlooked. I would study them while she searched for more, and then, as night came down, we would eat our fill and lie down together, and she would teach me of another art of the night, not sorcery, perhaps, but of no less power. And each night, before I slept, I would cast my rune, for I still would not trust her. And so we were together, and Alithi fo the Raven became my first lover. For four days and four nights.

On the fifth night she came to me, she came with an eagerness to pour pity on the four before it. She screamed and clawed as a wild thing as though lust had made her into an animal, and within this storm of passion, I barely noticed the bracelet she wore. Yet I did not forget my rune.

I don't know what woke me. A breath of wind. Her body moving across the window, across the dawn sunlight. The scent of the morning dew on her feet. The rune was gone. And as I opened my eyes, I saw her face, suspended over mine, glittering with all the hate I had seen on that first straw-filled night. Except twisted with a gleam of victory. And the knife she held, already flying towards my face, too fast, too soon, too far gone for me to roll away. My awakening completed her triumph. I would see, for a moment, know, for an instant, who had killed me.

I caught the knife in my hand. The blade, cleanly through the palm, between the bones of the middle two fingers. The edge gouged my cheek and sunk into the furred hide of some long-dead plains beast. For a second, we stared at each other, grasping to understand, the knife now in my hand alone, not hers.

"I will find you," she whispered. "On another day, I will find you." And as I struggled to rise, fought with the flood of pain, she ran. I chased after her, tore the knife from my flesh, threw it into her back, the blade to bite deep into her neck. A quick death, though she deserved worse. But as the blade would strike, she vanished, a yellow bloom of light swallowing her into the air.

I understood. As I bandaged my wound, and watched the blood still leak from beneath the dressing, I thought of the sorcerer, my enemy, his dark hair and glittering eyes, and I understood.

She was no handmaiden. She was his blood.

Alithi of the Raven. She made good her promise, and more than once. I have come to admire her tenacity. Sometimes, I wonder why I allow her to live. Perhaps to remind me of a mistake I have never and will not repeat. Or perhaps for some other reason. Perhaps I hope... but hope has no place here. Life is too simple for that. There is do or there is do not. There is no hope.

The content of this page is © copyright Stephen Deas 2001 and is used here with permission.
It may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the permission of the author.