Quarantined Night (4)

The voice was deep and sharp enough to pierce the wind.

The elf had thought herself alone. No one could possibly have followed her here. For a moment, she wondered whether her mind had finally begun to produce voices.

She gave a bitter little laugh and turned back toward the cliff.

“Are you deaf?”

Her shoulders jerked. The voice came again, unmistakably from behind her.

“I asked what you're doing here.”

She turned.

A man stood in the slowly subsiding snow, dressed as a nobleman. He had dark hair and calm light-brown eyes. With an expression entirely out of place on this desolate mountain, he swept windblown hair away from his face.

“Answer me. Or was my question too difficult for you?”

He brushed snow from his shoulders and straightened his sleeves as casually as a man leaving a comfortable drawing room.

The elf stared at him.

“You… How did you get here?”

“Is there some reason I couldn't?”

“Of course there is! Humans cannot climb this high. I put up a barrier. I even cast a spell to turn people's awareness away from this place. How did you get through?”

Theorad almost answered that he had entered her past.

He thought better of it. She wouldn't believe him, and telling her about memories would only add to her confusion. To the elf standing here, this was their first meeting.

Instead, he studied her in silence.

The grief in her eyes was so deep he could hardly bear it. Tear tracks had dried beneath them. Her coat was ripped and stained with blood that did not appear to be her own.

He could not imagine what she had endured to arrive here.

“Something happened,” he said quietly.

“Answer my question first—”

“Tell me what happened.”

The demand was almost rude. She could not understand why this stranger insisted on hearing the story.

But she had come here intending to die. Perhaps it no longer mattered whom she told.

“They called me a monster.”

“A monster?”

“I lived in a village nearby for quite a while. Everyone seemed so kind. I thought this time would be different.”

Her lips curved in a distant smile.

“I hunted the monsters that wandered near the houses. I protected the village. The elders called me their hope. Children said they'd grow up to be like their big sister.”

She laughed once, faintly and without joy.

“I was happy. I thought I'd finally found somewhere I belonged.”

The smile slipped away.

“Then the lord's soldiers arrived.”

She remembered their boots trampling the flower garden she had tended.

“They said I might be a monster in league with the Devil. I never aged, and no ordinary person could tear through beasts the way I did. They ordered me to stand trial at the lord's castle.”

She had agreed. She thought she had nothing to fear from an honest hearing.

“I had so many friends. Surely they'd tell the court I wasn't a monster. I went there believing they'd stand beside me.”

Her voice thinned.

“And there… I became one.”

Tears began to run down her expressionless face.

“So many of them came to the trial. Not one stood up for me. Not a single person said I wasn't a monster.”

She looked past Theorad.

“Only then did I understand. I was the only one who thought we were friends. I was the only one who believed I'd saved the village. To them, I was something monstrous that had moved into their home.”

She spoke as if each word were being drawn from a place already emptied of feeling.

“So I decided to be what they called me. I destroyed the courthouse and fought the people who came to kill me. A monster should act like a monster, shouldn't it?”

She took a slow breath.

“I'm tired now.”

Theorad thought of the proud Grand Master beneath the World Tree, who had left home determined to discover goodness in humankind. He could scarcely recognize that same spirit in the woman before him.

Again and again, she had trusted people and been betrayed.

Yet she had chosen to destroy herself rather than bring destruction upon humanity. To Theorad, it seemed she was taking the blame upon herself for the cruelty of others.

He wondered whether that was why she had climbed so high and hidden the place from searching eyes. Perhaps she feared that if the clans of the Great Forest found their Grand Master's body, they would go to war with humans.

She might mean to disappear without ever being found.

“You fool.”

Theorad could not stand by and watch her take everything upon herself.

“Do you think throwing yourself off this cliff is noble? Will anyone applaud when you die?”

“I know it isn't the answer,” she whispered. “But I don't want to live anymore. I don't have the strength to live out the rest of my life.”

He had no comfort to offer that would reach her. A stranger's command to have hope would be another kind of cruelty to a person who had lost it.

Damn it.

He thought desperately, then opened his eyes with a new determination.

“Then I'm glad you've decided to die here.”

The elf looked at him in astonishment.

Theorad smiled.

“I intend to have humans destroy the witches. I've already brought trustworthy people into the plan. Before long the Church will begin persecuting them.”

He knew something she did not: Rastain had said they were standing twenty-three years in the past. He knew the persecution of witches was about to begin.

Theorad was using that knowledge to make his lie sound real.

“People will believe the Church's accusations and slaughter innocent witches,” he continued. “They'll die for nothing more than being witches. If you kill yourself now, there will be no one to stop it. Two problems solved at once.”

“What are you saying? Why would you do such a thing?”

“Humanity has no need of impurities. Witches are parasites. Why shouldn't they be cleared away?”

Life began to return to the elf's eyes—not hope, but fury.

Theorad could bear her hatred. He had chosen a mask ugly enough to give her someone to fight. If anger kept her alive, he would let her despise him.

“I can hardly wait,” he said. “Imagine them screaming as they're killed. Humans will put witches on trial and call them monsters, just as they did to you.”

“You're lying. That can't happen…”

“Can't it? After what humans did to you, you still believe they're incapable of it? How revoltingly naive.”

The wind rose again.

The elf clenched her teeth and glared at him. Ice crystals gathered in the air, condensing into long spears.

“Are you serious?”

One last chance to take the words back.

Theorad did not flinch. He believed that, as a soul intruding upon the memory, he could not be struck as an ordinary body could.

“I am.”

The spears flew.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Ice shattered against the mountainside, throwing snow high into the air. The blast covered everything in white.

When it cleared, Theorad was still standing.

“How…?”

He did not explain.

His feet were already beginning to fade. Whatever time he had bought by breaking the bracelet was running out.

“Are you angry?” he asked. “Do you hate me enough to want me dead?”

The elf could not answer. She could see his figure breaking apart, beginning at his toes.

“Then stop the Church's tyranny. Come and find me once you've put an end to it.”

His voice grew faint. He wanted her to go on living, even if the only reason was to hate him.

“Remember me.”

He looked at the bewildered elf with an expression touched by sadness.

“My name is Theorad Deharem.”

He wanted her to remember that name and seek him out one day.

“The worst villain of all.”