I recently finished the second draft of a story I’m working on, and I decided to share it online. I’m sharing one chapter at a time, and the story is about 487,000 words right now (roughly 5 paperback novels in length, give or take), so this will take awhile.
I estimate that 2nd draft is about 80% of the way there, story-wise; but 80% is not 100%. This chapter might show up in the final story completely unchanged. It might show up with minor changes, or heavy revisions; or might be cut from the final draft completely. If it does remain, it might be in a new place in the story or the same place.
Anyway, enjoy!
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CHAPTER 15
Iliar walked inland, bare feet digging into the cool wet sand. Gradually the sand turned darker and rockier. He stepped casually on a large rock, and hissed with pain as it cut into his foot. After that he stepped more carefully, picking his way to avoid the spiky gray stone.
Up ahead, the stone gradually gave way to trees. Stubby trees with gnarled bark and branches grew out of the rocks and sand here and there, their roots forming little ridges in the ground; and Iliar had to duck past their outstretched boughs. Eventually the sand faded altogether, and Iliar realized with a shock that he was in a forest.
He looked around, and it was like the haze in his mind cleared a little bit. Memories of the ship weren’t so clear and sharp, and he could start to notice things.
There were birds, chirping in the trees. High-pitched cheeps and tweets, and a bird singing from what sounded like high above. He walked through the forest, picking his way cautiously. His mind felt keener, and he felt more aware of where he was. He stepped on a slick brown root, easily keeping his balance; and ducked under a three-pointed wet green leaf. He picked his way forward again, through dappled shadows and sunlight, around trees wrapped with thick green vines like frayed rope; and paused as he saw a giant tree right in front of him. Its truck was as big as he was, and its smooth gray bark soared upwards into the air. There were black branches sticking out from it, thin and wiry, and at its top were yellow leaves.
He smiled, eyeing the smooth bark, the lack of handholds. That looked like it would be a challenge to climb.
For the first time in a long time–the first time before the ship–he felt…excited. Like he wanted to do something.
He walked around it in a circle, eyeing the trunk and branches critically; and then chose his spot and started to climb. He moved quickly, he bare feet digging into the wet bark and the small black cracks in the trunk, his fingers catching on slick round knobs as he hauled himself up. Higher up, there were branches. They looked too thin to support his weight, but he grabbed one right near its base and used it for a split-second’s brace as he shifted his feet.
Those branches were easier to stand on, he realized; though they bent worryingly under him and he still didn’t trust them with all his weight, they were fine as long as he had one foot on each of them. Or as long as he was supporting some of his weight with his hands, fingers grabbing a branch above or digging into a crack in the bark to hold him.
He kept climbing, higher and higher. Spreading his weight out, trusting his balance and his ability to stick to the mental map he had patched together for his journey as he examined the tree. There, a good handhold that let him brace himself while he shifted his feet. Here, a branch a little above knee-height, which he eased his weight onto until he saw it could hold him.
He climbed higher, the branches getting thinner. Next to his body, the trunk got slimmer too, and it started swaying in the wind. He clung tighter to it and kept moving.
He hadn’t climbed in…he didn’t know how long. Over three centuries; though somehow his memories of the ship didn’t feel as sharp and crisp as they had this morning. Didn’t feel as strong as his memories of that last day with Papa, when he had climbed the highest building in the city.
It never occurred to him that he might fall. Climbing was like walking. Even if you hadn’t done it in awhile–like that time he had broken his leg falling from a second-story balcony, and had been stuck in his and Papa’s home for a week–it came back to you as soon as you started up again.
High in the branches, Iliar grabbed for a new branch, holding it near its black base. As he shifted his weight to it, it snapped.
His body jerked down, breath whooshing out of him in shock, and he wrapped his arms around the trunk to hold himself aloft. He regained his balance on the branch supporting his legs, and swallowed hard.
He looked down at the forest floor. That would have been a long fall.
But still…up here it was beautiful. He looked around, eyes wide. Like he was looking at the world for the first time. Like all the intervening centuries between the last time he had climbed and now had vanished, and he was once more that ten-year-old boy with excitement bubbling in his veins as he scrambled up buildings all over the city.
A bird trilled nearby, its song high and clear. It was red, with a fat round chest and a black beak. Its wings flapped as it caught sight of him, but then it settled and just regarded him with one beady black eye.
Iliar didn’t move, didn’t want to scare it away. Just settled back on his tree and let the forest wash over him.
There were more birds trilling, cawing and singing in the high boughs of the trees. To his right, dense leaves rustled as something small darted along a branch. To his left, eyes watched him, calm and unperturbed. A hawk, curved beak facing him, waiting for his move.
Iliar looked down. The ground was far below; he hadn’t realized how fast he had been climbing. Had forgotten how fast he could climb, or how far down the world looked from the top.
Down below, through the branches and small yellow leaves around him, he could see pieces of trails, of small dirt paths wending their way through a forest. He wondered what had made those. Humans?
Orcs, maybe? He doubted it. Orcs were sixteen feet tall and so broad one wouldn’t fit through the door to his and Papa’s home. He had never seen one, of course; but he had heard the stories.
No orc could make a trail that fine, wending between trees instead of smashing through them. Maybe it was a large animal, something that grazed these woods often enough to carve a path through them.
He tilted his face up towards the sun, partially obscured by the branches and green leaves above him, but still hot and bright. He closed his eyes, drinking it in. Gods above, but that felt good. He had spent so long dreaming of the sun on his face, dreaming of what it would be like to see anything but the damp and the dark of the ship; and now he could have that, just by tilting his face upwards. As he closed his eyes and basked in the red glow behind his eyelids, he felt the memories of the ship start to vanish, unraveling like the cobwebs he had sometimes walked through as a boy.
The sun had just been its own height above the horizon when he had started out today. Now it was close to midday, a hot burning orb floating directly overhead.
He knew he should be getting down, but why? He wasn’t hungry yet, having had as much seaweed as he could eat when he woke up; and he wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Why not enjoy himself?
Besides, as he drank in the sunshine high in the tree, that fog around his mind kept fading. He had barely seen the beach, had barely noticed anything. Now he noticed everything. He tasted the air; it tasted different from the beach, richer and more alive. Wet, and earthy, and like good black soil. It smelled like damp wood and moss and flowers and leaves. He inhaled deeply, drinking deep of everything around him; and felt a sudden and wild urge to laugh.
He was free! Free of the ship! He was free, he was alive, he felt sunshine on his face and a cool breeze in his hair and he was never, not in ten thousand years, not if he had to kill every slaver on every sea in the world, going back on that Gods-be-damned ship.
He basked in the feeling. Basked in the feel of the bark, wet and a little chalky beneath his hands. Basked in the damp but hard branches beneath his feet, flexing but holding his weight where he stood near the base. He spun carefully, keeping his feet centered on the slick wood as he released one hand hold and grasped a branch above his head; so he could see out over the whole forest.
With his back to the trunk, gently swaying in the breeze as Iliar held on, he could see everything. See the round tops of some trees, their branches radiating out from the tops of their trunks like domes covered in yellow leaves. Could see the spiky tips of other trees, rising a little above the tops of the forest, narrow and conical. Could see birds flapping between limbs, and another hawk flying above the trees and far off, its keen eyes searching upper branches for easy prey.
There were a couple of clouds in the blue sky, white and puffy and far from the sun as it beat down on the forest. And there, far off, Iliar could see the ocean.
He shivered, seeing those waves crash onto the shore. Memories pushed into his mind: the waves crashing into the hull as he rowed, the dim light and the always-wet bench and oars below decks, the cobwebs and fog around his mind and the vacant stare he had given those waves as he pulled the ship through them.
He shook his head, trying to clear the memories. He did not like the ocean, he decided. Did not like seeing it, did not like remembering it. Best be getting on, moving further inland.
He shimmied down the tree, going from branch to crack in the trunk and back to branch, until he leapt the last ten feet and landed on some wet leaves. His knees bent, taking the impact; and he set off deeper into the forest.
He walked quickly now, wanting to put some more distance between him and the ocean. Between him and any slavers that might be scanning the beach, searching for strong rowers to kidnap and enslave.
He wasn’t weak anymore, he reminded himself. He wasn’t ten years old and half the size of the men who had grabbed him. Wasn’t weak with shock over what they had done to his Papa.
He was strong, muscled. His shoulders were broader than those of either of the sorcerers who had gone down with the ship. He had rowed for hours, for days, without getting tired.
And he had magic, if that man who had kidnapped him was to be believed.
He snarled. He would not be caged again.
From up ahead he heard something.
“No, please don’t! I’ll get you your gold, I swear it!”
Iliar froze, his black thoughts banished in an instant by the sounds he was hearing.
That was a man’s voice. Only…it sounded scared. Terrified.
Then: “No! You had one week. One week to give me my gold, after you failed last week. Now, I will take it out of your woman’s hide.”
“No, Gan’ash please! I’ll pay you twice what I owe next week, I’ll throw in an extra gold mark, I’ll do anything. Hurt me instead!”
“If I hurt you, you can’t work to get me my gold. I’ll hurt your woman. That will motivate you.”
“No, please! Please, I’ll do anything!”
Iliar wasn’t even aware of moving. Wasn’t aware of racing through the trees, branches snapping as he smashed through them.
He crashed into a clearing, and he barely registered what he saw. Barely registered the massive, hulking green thing, shaped like a man but ten feet fall and thick. Barely registered the human, a scrawny man with straw-colored hair, cowering and begging before it.
The creature’s back was turned, and before Iliar could think twice he had crashed into it like a thunderbolt.
The creature–an orc, it had to be with that green skin–barely moved. It grunted and stumbled forward a step, then spun to face Iliar.
Iliar’s eyes widened. Up close, the thing was even more massive. Its torso looked as thick as a tree, with bulging abdominal muscles, and it had moved about as much as a tree when Iliar smashed into it.
It pulled back one meaty fist as big as Iliar’s head and punched him.
The impact felt like a sledgehammer to his face. Pain flared, hot and blinding; and suddenly Iliar was in the air. He crashed into a tree and landed in a heap.
He staggered to his feet, blood spraying from his nose onto the plants at his feet; and his thoughts were slow and sluggish. His vision swam, and his ears rang. He wondered, distantly, if he had it in him to try again. He wanted to be a hero, wanted to be like Papa and someone the victims of the world could hide behind; but Gods above that hurt.
He winced, moving from foot to foot, trying to think of his next move past the pounding in his head. The huge orc was watching him like it was about to pounce, and was just waiting for its prey to make a fatal move.
That decided it for Iliar. He was no-one’s prey. Never again.
He reached out–not with his hands, but with…something. Something in him, his spirit or his anger or his desperation to never be caged again. He didn’t know what. All he knew was that when he reached out, he grabbed something deep inside of him, something solid and strong and pulsing with energy. Something golden sprang up out of nowhere, something he could both see and not see, something that connected him to the orc; something that seemed to wrap around both of them; and, barely able to think, not even sure what he was doing, he tugged through it
Strength flooded into him.
He stood up straighter, his big muscles bulging with energy. Crackling with it. Like he could punch straight through the orc and hit the tree behind, and even put a dent in that. His nose cracked and slurped, and suddenly the pain was gone and the bleeding stopped.
The pain vanished from his head and his back, and suddenly he felt as hale and healthy as he ever had.
And the orc…the massive green-skinned creature with a broad flat face and arms as thick as Iliar’s torso, with rippling muscle underneath its torn jerkin and stained pants…it staggered. Its thick knees wobbled, like all the strength had leeched out of it and it was all it could do just to stand.
And Iliar charged.
He smashed into the massive creature and it fell to the ground under his weight. Iliar scrambled up it and punched it in the face, hard enough to break bones.
And almost cried out. Gods-be-damned, that hurt! His fist felt like it had hit a brick wall. An instant later, though, the pain was gone in another rush of strength.
The orc tried to throw Iliar off, tried to grab his arms and chest and yank him to the ground; but Iliar batted him away. It was like fending off a child; the huge monster felt weak as a kitten.
Its eyes were wide, and it reached down into a sheath in its pants and pulled out a knife.
Iliar lunged, getting his hands around the creature’s wrist and forcing the knife down. He didn’t know what he was doing, had never been in this kind of fight before. But with that strength surging, crackling beneath his skin, he wasn’t scared. He felt a kind of giddy delight in the fight, like nothing the orc could do could possibly hurt him.
He grabbed the knife hilt, pulled it out of the orc’s grip like he was pulling a piece of driftwood from a child, and stabbed it into the orc’s throat.
Blood gushed, hot and wet as it spattered all over Iliar. The orc convulsed, but Iliar hung on, stabbing its throat over and over as it spasmed. The light went out from its eyes, but he kept stabbing. Not knowing what he was doing, but wanting to make sure it was dead.
Some time later, the red haze cleared from his vision. Iliar stared in horror at the dead orc. What had he done?
His stomach roiled as he saw the shredded throat, those blank eyes. He leaned to one side and was violently sick.
He had never killed anyone before. Had never so much as hurt someone, unless you counted that sorcerer on the ship. And if any man had deserved it, it had been that bastard.
But…he wiped his mouth, stomach still heaving. He had expected to feel like a hero. Had expected to feel like he imagined Papa did when he had killed that man with the knife who had been following Sarah around one day.
But he didn’t feel like that. Didn’t feel anything, except hurt and wrung out and nauseated.
He staggered off of the corpse, suddenly unable to be near it. He staggered to the end of the clearing, to a big tree with cracked bark and thick branches. And was promptly sick all over its roots.
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