Iskald opened his eyes a little more and stared at the girl for a moment with utter disbelief.

She smiled and kept her eyes locked with his, allowing him time to deal with the sudden news which, she understood, must have been quite shocking to him.

“Are you all right?” she asked politely after a longer moment of silence.

“Just weary...” Iskald was able to respond.

An uproar of contradictory, powerful feelings overwhelmed his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to regain some composure, but it required a great deal of effort on his part. Not knowing quite well how to respond to the news, Iskald stopped thinking and simply gave in to the feelings that overwhelmed him. The most powerful of those was the feeling of gratitude and happiness, one that he would be unable ever to express in words.

Its sheer power threw him back deeper into the pillows and brought tears to his eyes. He opened them and raised them up towards the tall ceiling, where he could almost see the figures of the ancient Lyonese gods sitting on their celestial thrones, looking back at him and smiling. His prayers had been answered and his weeping, heard; his pain was over. The heavens were not empty after all.

Iskald prayed.

Laela fell quiet after observing the effect her last words had on the young stranger. She could not of course know what went on the mysterious man’s heart, but she realized it must have been something quite significant, so she did not break the silence and allowed him to come back to her on his own.

Taking advantage of the pause in their exchange Laela again looked closely at the stranger. She had spent five days over him, she undressed him and she knew every part of his body distinctly well, but never before had she seen him awake.

The man was not a Nekryan, nor did he come from any other of the Southern races, she was sure of that. His black mane of hair, black as the blackest night, was a trait typical of the North. Though the Tha-kians had black hair as well, they were only relative newcomers to the South and no one considered them a pure race, but rather a breed of black and white tribes; besides Laela could spot a Tha-kian at a first glimpse. This stranger was definitely not one of them and the only explanation for his mane of dark hair that spilled over his shoulders, was that he belonged to one of the Northern races.

A Viking perhaps? Whoever he was he must have had a difficult life behind him despite the relatively young age. The complex and tightly woven web of scars left on his back by a variety of different whips and weapons of torture over the years were only one of the signs pointing to that.

Laela had the opportunity to examine the young man when she tended to him and she saw other evidence of torture and torment he must have endured. The latest bruises that had emerged all over his body following the beating he was receiving when she found him, were slowly beginning to disappear, but other evidence of inhumane treatment would never vanish. The slightly crooked heel of his right foot was one of them. The stranger must have limped at least a little as he walked, and this imperfection would probably stay with him forever.

Stroking his body she could feel the places where his bones were broken. His ribs particularly had been subjected to frequent fractures, probably on a variety of different occasions. Some of the fingers of his left hands were slightly deformed, and she noticed they were still tender. They must have been broken or smashed with something heavy not long ago. His rugged face was still swollen; Laela noticed that his nose and cheekbones also suffered fractures.

The most terrifying, though, were the scars on his upper body, especially his back. They were everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, one atop another, crossing and intersecting, creating a monstrous pattern. The Princess shuddered at the thought of the countless whippings this young stranger must have been subjected to over the years.

Contrary to what one might think, however, he was a handsome man. The bruises and the broken bones were healing fast, while the scars and the slight deformities of his body only added to the aura of masculinity that surrounded him, as opposed to taking anything away. They were evidence of a harsh life and no one who glimpsed the young man could ever doubt that he had experienced more than his share of cruelty at the hands of fellow men.

The mysterious stranger was mature much beyond his age, something that Laela instinctively sensed. Perhaps it were his ice-cold eyes, terrifying, almost clear, focused and intense. As she looked at him, her own eyes filled with awe and admiration, and an excitement that she was not quite sure how to handle just yet overtook her. She liked to look at him and to run her hand across his naked body, resting it for longer periods of time on his chest and then sliding it lower and lower, over the rock-hard muscles of his stomach.

She blushed then and quickly took her hand away, hoping that the stranger would not wake to find her in this rather uncomfortable situation. She would lean back in her chair, gaze into his face and daydream about him coming to her chambers at night.

Her excitement grew with each passing day and she wanted him to wake already, she wanted to find out who this stranger was and where he had came from.

Some more time passed before Iskald finished praying and opened his eyes again. He found Laela’s gaze fixated on him.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “You answered my prayers.”

“I couldn’t bear to watch you die like that,” she smiled and shook her head.

“You’re an angel,” Iskald smiled, too.

“No, I’m definitely not an angel,” Laela laughed and flushed at the same time. The thoughts she recently had were not those of a divine being, she thought. It was a good thing that the stranger could not know them.

“Besides, I should be probably thanking you,” she added after a short pause. “After all, you took one for me.”

She touched his face gently in the place where Isla’s stinging whip had left its final mark. Her eyes locked with his once again and Iskald could see them starting to get a little misty. Laela quickly drew her hand back as if embarrassed of what she was feeling, and just as quickly she regained composure.

“You haven’t even told me your name yet!” she exclaimed suddenly, breaking the awkward pause in the conversation.

Iskald did not respond immediately because the question found him off guard and he needed some time to gather his thoughts. The problem of his heritage had leered its ugly head, he thought.

How could he tell this beautiful creature that he not only came from a Realm that was a mortal enemy of Nekrya, but that he was also its rightful ruler? What would she say, how would she react? The Nekryans hated the Lyonese and were loathed in return. The hatred traced back to Antiquity, to a time before history. It spread over the years and although Iskald was not aware of what had transpired in the world since he was taken into captivity, he was sure that the hatred between Nekrya and Lyons still lived. The death of Vahan could not have extinguished it. Nothing could extinguish it.

He could not, he simply could not tell Laela the truth. She would loathe him as one loathes a despicable monster; he was a part of something that she was taught to hate, something ugly and evil.

“My name is Iskald,” he said and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “I come from the Biyackian Empire.”

A Northerner then, as she suspected! It was no wonder that this man excited her so much: he was part of a legend, part of something dangerous. He was part of a history of blood-thirst and murder, part of an ancient and vicious Kingdom whose exploits turned it into a superpower back in the Antiquity. And although this power diminished over the passing years, the memory of it still remained vivid and alive in legends passed through generations. Iskald was part of something that Laela only heard of, but never actually saw or touched before, and this excited her even more.

She blushed again and asked quickly to hide her consternation: “How is it that you ended up here? Like this?”

Iskald did not answer her question at once because, having thought of his own path to Nekrya, he suddenly recalled that Isla’s mines were still functional and that many more enslaved boys and men were still tormented as he had been. It had to be stopped, he cried out, rising on the bed. His covers slid off and Laela could clearly see his erect manhood peering from underneath them. The pace of her heart quickened, but she controlled herself. She firmly pushed Iskald back onto the bed and casually pulled the covers back up again. But she could not resist her rising excitement and as she pulled the hides, she allowed her hand to slide over the bulge visible under the covers.

Swallowing hard, Laela withdrew her hand and, vainly trying to stop the tremble in her voice, she said that it was already all being taken care of. She was glad that Iskald was too distressed by the sudden recollection to even notice what had just happened

“Several others we freed that day told us everything,” she continued. “We couldn’t do much about it right away because there was only a few of us there and it would be suicide to charge Isla’s mines with a handful of warriors who were, on top of everything, only prepared for a hunting trip. We’d been chasing game for the past several days and stumbled into Ayoove completely by accident on our way home.

“Having freed the slaves we took them with us to Arrosah, where we luckily met my father who had cut his trip to the Northern borders a little short. My father sent regular troops to Isla’s mines right away, but...” the girl hesitated to continue, not knowing what sort of news the young man expected to hear. Maybe he had someone close and dear to him in the mines, a family member perhaps, or a woman maybe?

“But what? What happened?”

She resolved to continue. “The previous day Kyla flooded the mines and killed everyone inside. Everything collapsed; hundreds of people either drowned or were buried under the rubble.”

Iskald said nothing.

“Apparently the richest area to explore lay beneath the river, so even though he was warned of the risks associated, Isla decided to mine the ore in that part of the mines as well, hoping to finish the extraction before it all came crashing down. Needless to say, he was wrong about that; not that it matters to him right now, anyway.”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Iskald sighed. The weakness that left him for a while was back now and he closed his eyes again.

“Maybe you’re right,” Laela said. “From what I heard, most of those working in the mines would have a hard time adjusting to life above ground. Most them had gone mad from the torture, I heard.”

“Mad from the pain,” Iskald echoed quietly.

“And you?” Laela hesitated the question. “How did you not go mad?”

“I think maybe I did,” Iskald whispered. “I just don’t know it yet.”

Laela did not pursue the matter, sensing that it was something the stranger did not wish to talk about.

“What about the keepers?” he asked after a while.

“Those who weren’t killed in the mines were hanged yesterday in the main square. I saw to it myself.”

“Good.”

“They were animals.”

“Yes.”

Laela leaned forward and peered into Iskald’s face.

“How long were you there? How were you captured?”

Uncertainly, she rested her hands on his chest. A pleasant shiver went down her back when she felt his warm skin beneath the palm of her hand. Iskald looked at her, but did not respond. Laela continued to slowly caress his naked chest.

“I should probably go to sleep,” Iskald closed his eyes.

The spell was broken. The Princess withdrew her hand and sank back into the chair. She hoped she had not ruined anything by asking too many questions or by being too forward. After all, Iskald had just come around and was just getting accustomed to the new surroundings. The idea that he was free was novel to him as well, especially after gods only know how long of a period of time spent in captivity.

“You’re right, what am I thinking?” Laela rose quickly from the chair. “You should rest. I’ll see you tomorrow anyway.”

She turned and walked briskly towards the massive doors, while Iskald looked after her. Right before she opened them, she turned back. “Can I ask you a question, though?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to go back home?”

“No,” Iskald’s answer came quickly and without any hesitation.

“No?”

“I have nothing to go home to,” he said. “Everyone I loved is either dead or gone. There’s nothing for me to go home to.”

Iskald was not being completely honest as he spoke. He had people to go back to, people like Aezubah and the warriors of the Order of the Northern Wolves, people among whom he had grown up. And he had something to go back to, he had something to do: to reclaim his heritage and his throne.

Proceed to Chapter 8, part 1...

Copyright © 2008 by Slawomir Rapala