I've had this story up on FP for a while, and I've only just realised that I never posted the final two parts! And I even had the story labelled as 'complete'! Really, my ineptitude never ceases to amaze me. It's actually a source of great personal amusement, heh. ANYWAY, here is the COMPLETE (yes, really) VERSION OF "THE SILVER TOWER", in its full, five, fantastic fragments! (Isn't the alliteration beautiful?!) Do enjoy.

The Silver Tower

Part I

A slice of metal.

Luminous as the moon, it stabbed upwards out of the grass-strewn ground like a giant’s bony finger—unembellished, hastily constructed. It was a smooth, ugly, single-windowed, beautiful construction, constantly changing and muting and vanishing in the inconstant light. It stood at least twenty men high, so that it nearly equalled the two jagged slopes rising up on either side of it: the tower was cradled within a narrow valley through which ran a sparkling brook. At its base, the shiny wall was marred with dozens of small hand-prints, parting gifts of the children who had flocked around the miraculous silver construction in earlier days, searching for the hidden door. Sometimes, being children and of keener eye than most adults, they found it; but pull as they might on the handle, without a key they could not free the prisoner within.

This is not the tale of Rapunzel. There was no flaxen-haired damsel in distress trapped in the topmost room, mournfully brushing out her cascading tresses and waiting upon her well-built lover to gallop forth on his mighty steed. There was a damsel, aye, but she was an angry peasant girl whose name was Saran: a black-eyed lass with rough-cut hair the colour of cacao beans, long-limbed and sprightly, and dressed in trews and a patched tunic girt up around her waist. As of that very moment, Saran was lying prostate on her hard bed within the tower, slowly and deliberately dying of thirst.

Saran knew that her room was indeed at the top of the tower, for if she looked out of the only window she could almost see over the peak of the rocky slope not a half-league away, and if she turned her gaze downwards the sight was enough to make her head swim. This single square window, about five spans across, was frequented daily by a dwarf wyvern that brought her a leather flask of water and a round doughy loaf of bread. On occasion, the scaly waist-high creature brought an extra treat: a strip of cured meat, or a pouch of dried plums, or salty cheese. On stormy days, it didn’t come at all. It was an irritable beast that never lingered long, never stepped past the window sill, merely hovered there, flicking its barbed tail arrogantly while it emptied the flask into Saran’s wooden bowl. Clearly it thought itself far too important for such a mean, repetitive task.

Saran had tried to catch it several times, hoping to attach to its leg a piece of white cloth or some sort of symbolic cry for help, but had been left with superficial--but painful--burns to her hands and forearms. The creature may have been a dwarf wyvern, but it was a wyvern all the same, and it could breathe fire. While her injuries healed, and she rested, frustrated and supine and stretched out across her mattress, she conjured up a second, cleverer plan of escape.

She had forgotten how long she’d been a prisoner in this place; too many times had she walked in nauseating circles around her shiny prison, running her hands across the silver walls until her palms stained grey and stank of metal. Unlike the heroines of great fantasy tales, she didn’t dream significant dreams--she wished she did, even silly ones: it would offer her some relief from this cruel monotony. Her nights were restless and she had splitting headaches that carried over into the early afternoons. At the peak of these headaches, usually just on the point of waking up, she could sense that there were other people--Good Lord, other people!--not far away, and she would run to her window and thrust her head out in desperation and scream and scream until her voice crumbled into a hoarse whisper. But then the clarity of her mind would fade along with the pain and she would slide to the ground in an exhausted heap, and the other people that she thought she had sensed would merge into a single, faint, distant presence that needed just as much rescuing as she did.

Knowing that this routine would soon drive her crazy, Saran set about with her plan of escape at once. The floor of her room was reinforced silver overlaid with a carpet of straw, with one area of exception: a sturdy oak trapdoor that had been locked and sealed shut with mortar. The small planks of wood were so close together that Saran could not even slip a piece of straw between them. She knew that she had been brought into this room by her captors through that very trapdoor. She knew also that wood rotted, and when it was wet it rotted quickly.

And so when the dwarf wyvern brought her water each day, she began to forgo drinking it. She took only measured sips, and at nightfall poured the rest onto a folded woollen blanket which she pressed over the trapdoor, pushing the damp material against the oak and into the nooks and crannies of the wood. The first day, fired up with determination, passed quickly enough despite her growing thirst. On the second day her throat and mouth began to scrape and beg for moisture. The third day started off horribly and merely worsened: her throat burned, literally burned, and when the wyvern came it was all she could do not to gulp the entire contents of the bowl down in ecstatic relief. But Saran set her jaw and took the water straight over the trapdoor and poured it all into the blanket, and as she did so she felt tears of fear and despair wet her eyes, and she wiped those off her face also and used them to soak the blanket.

Dizziness and painful weakness overcame her and on the fourth day she drank a little water and lay down. Every part of her insides, from her mouth to her stomach, felt numb and papery dry. Her thoughts made little sense. She couldn’t eat because her throat was too dry to swallow the bread--it was like chewing on knives.

She wondered if she were crazy, lying there on her bed, barely able to lift her chest to inspire and expire. She was trading her strength and her life for the possibility--or rather, the impossibility--of escape. She had delusions; feelings of paranoia; out-of-body sensations; waking dreams; piercing headaches. She couldn’t tell whether she was sitting or standing. She could barely remember why she was doing this.

And then, a small blessing. On the fifth day the wyvern came with a small pouch of prunes. They were moist enough to chew without pain, and relieved her somewhat. She ate them slowly throughout the day, delighting in this small fortune, refusing to think about her powerful thirst.

On day six Saran lifted a corner of the soggy blanket and examined the wood. It was very damp, and much softer, and she stamped on it many times but it didn’t give way. Panicking, unsure of how much longer she could keep up this torturous tirade, she took on more desperate measures. She forwent the waste-hole in the corner of her room, and instead urinated and defecated on the trapdoor. The tower filled with a rancid stench and Saran lay face-down on her bed, buried in her pillow, unsure whether to laugh or cry at the horror of the situation. She knew she had gone insane. But she knew more that she had to get out.

And so on the seventh day, Saran dipped a large chunk of bread into her water and ate it thankfully, and mustered all her strength to bring the weight of her foot down on the trapdoor, and as she stamped and stamped she heard the wood creaking and bending and finally, finally splintering. The shards of the trapdoor fell through into the great space below, along with the soggy blanket and the offending excrement. Saran swayed to her knees in relief and exhaustion, but not before she crammed a fold of the blanket into her mouth and sucked it greedily, nourishing herself on the filthy, wet goodness.

Somewhat revived, she put her head through the hole. A simple ladder extended from the lip of the trapdoor, vertically descending all the way down the silvery-grey column of the tower and vanishing in the distant darkness. There was only one gap: about twenty rungs down, the ladder had been crudely and purposely smashed, leaving a long section missing.

Saran laughed softly. This new obstacle was nothing. She stood up, careful not to lose her balance, and groped for her bed-sheet, pulling it roughly off her mattress. Tucking it messily under one arm, she lowered herself through the trapdoor and began to climb down the ladder, a rush of exhilaration giving her newfound energy. Even so, it was tiring and terrifying work and she had to pause once to gasp for air and stop her head spinning.

At the broken section of the ladder, she twined her legs around the lowest rung for security, twisted herself at the waist and tied one corner of the bed-sheet securely to the second-lowest rung. She yanked on it to test that it was safe, then wound her fingers around the linen material and started to lower herself into midair--inch by painful inch. Her movements sent the bed-sheet swinging and she careened wildly about, which only worsened the dizziness, but suddenly, mid-swing, her foot caught onto the lower part of the ladder. She caught on by the toes, muscles cramping with the exertion, steadied herself, teetered on the very top of the broken ladder.

Much to her private embarrassment, she was stuck in this position for a good five minutes, too terrified to let go of the bed-sheet, clinging to the top rung of the lower section of the broken ladder with the tips of her toes. Finally she swore to herself that if she hadn’t let herself be trapped in that top tower room, she wasn’t about to let herself be trapped here in this ridiculous position. She crept hand-over-hand down the bed-sheet, foot-over-foot down the rungs, and suddenly she had released the bed-sheet and was speedily clambering down the ladder. Her heart was pounding like a war-drum. She could taste freedom--oh, mercy, sweet, sweet, glorious--

She hit the bottom, the stone and mortar floor, ran to the solid silver wall, searched for the door and dragged on the handle with all her might.

It didn’t budge.

How utterly stupid of her. Of course it would be locked. Of course there would be no key within reach. Her captors weren’t dullwits. Saran pressed clammy hands to her mouth to stifle a wretched sob. Oh, fires of hell, she had tortured herself for seven days to be stumped at the final hurdle.

She had just collapsed against the wall when, lo and behold, she heard a merry tune being hummed in a high, cheerful voice. At first Saran thought she was hallucinating. But the tune grew stronger and realer and, unable to resist the possibility of hope, she leapt to her feet and pressed her eye to the crack between door and wall.

And saw a man.

She was profoundly surprised for two reasons: firstly, that a male member of any species could possess such a high-pitched singing voice; secondly, that there was another living soul in these parts. Coincidence of all coincidences, it was the first person she’d seen since--since forever.

It was a young man, no more than twenty-five, with a haphazard shock of dirty blonde hair and a boyish, slightly foolish grin on his face. He was overdressed for his size and character; clearly, he thought himself some sort of adventurer, a courageous and noble crusader, perhaps. He had put on a polished, unused coat of armour over his tunic and breeches and was carrying a mighty double-edged sword. As he walked along jauntily he hummed the music to an old war ballad and every few steps would shout out, “Hie! For the land! Fie! Flee my hand!”

Saran kicked the metal door, which resounded satisfactorily. “Holla! You, boy, carrying that preposterous sword!” Since when had her voice been so croaky and soft?

She tried again. “You! Great warrior of the homeland!”

This time she got a response. The boy immediately stopped singing and jerked his head up. He wiped the idiotic grin off his face and replaced it with a manly grimace. Spying the silver tower, he loped across curiously.

They met eye to eye across the narrow crack, and the young man leapt back in astonishment. “Good God! What is a lady doing locked inside such a horrible place?”

“Trying to open this door,” answered Saran. “Can you help me?”

His grimace deepened and became, wonder of wonders, even manlier. “Fear not any longer, fair maiden, for the Lord smiles on you today! You have had the blessed fortune of being chanced upon by me. For I, Ervine son of Reve, will duly rescue you from your silver prison!” He contemplated the task before him. “Now, how does this door open?”

“By key,” said Saran, “but--”

“Aha! By key! I knew it!”

There was an awkward pause.

“But,” ventured Saran, “neither of us possess a key, so we must find another way.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. Well, I have buckled at my side a sword of great power,” said Ervine hesitantly. “On its own it can slice through three grown men in one fell swoop, disembowel an oak tree or shatter a stone into a million fragments.” He spoke of these acts as proudly as if he had tried each of them in turn. “What is more...a magician gave me a hex to speak over this sword, which can enable it to cut through even the hardest diamond. The...the only thing is, this hex can be used but once, and I was rather hoping to travel to the mountains and slay a few dragons in my time. So alas, fair maiden, although I feel great sorrow for you, it is with regret that I must leave you--”

“A hex!” cried Saran. “Use it, I beg you, and free me from this cursed tower!”

Ervine halted mid-stride. He fingered the handle of his sword, pulled it out of its sheath and stared at it for a moment. Then, wordlessly, he drew a torn scrap of parchment from his breast pocket and recited a string of words. “Incarno serram fortissimus re quattri, de daro et marindum qua caelis!”

Saran took a step back as the sword glowed fervently in a hot, white colour. She had hardly expected Ervine to change his mind, let alone so quickly. But before she could blink twice the young man was ostentatiously plunging the burning blade into the door and carving out a hole large enough for Saran to scramble through. She brought with her nothing at all save the clothes on her back and a triumphant smile on her face. “Ervine--”

“Thank me not,” declared the young man, holding up one hand. “It is my honour to have plucked you asunder from your metal cage and freed you with my bewitched weapon, my fair maiden. Slaying no earthly number of dragons could compare with the nobility of the deed of rescuing you, beautiful rose of the morning.” Ervine swept in front of her and grabbed her hand. “And now I, your handsome heroic saviour, shall escort you into the city, which is but a sevenday walk hence, and there I shall show you the delights of the world and of my bed, and you shall love me more and more with each growing day, dear evenstar.”

Saran looked at the lad with scepticism. Admittedly, she was hungry, fatigued, dehydrated and quite, quite lost. She could do with some sort of guide--any sort of guide, really; even Ervine. But there was something inherently disconcerting about the way he so quickly bent to her will, and was even now lavishing her with superlative praises and loving sentiments. “I shall follow you to the city, then,” said Saran weakly, but she wished heartily that he would simply leave her alone. The idea of seeing the delights of the world and of Ervine’s bed was far from appealing.

Seemingly absorbed, Ervine stood still for a moment, holding his sword aloft like a war trophy as the white-hot glow slowly faded from its blade. When the hex had vanished completely he slid it back into its sheath with a small sigh. “Ah, on second thoughts I see perhaps that our paths are not to intertwine, my darling. Although our love is strong, my passion is truly for the wind-beaten plains and the mazes of the mountains and the dragon’s cave.”

“Will you be off, then?” asked Saran hopefully.

“Aye, I shall,” replied Ervine with a regretful nod. He tipped his head at Saran and backed away. “Fare thee well, Lovely Maiden of the Silver Tower! Perchance we shall meet again!”

“If not in this life, then in the next!” agreed Saran, lifting one hand in a sincerely grateful wave. She watched as the funny character wandered off in a careening course down the valley, once more picking up his high-pitched rendition of: “Hie! For the land! Fie! Flee my hand!”

The glorious sound of fresh running water came to Saran’s ears, and she wondered how she did not notice the bubbling brook carving out its nearby course along the valley bed. Joyously she ran to the source of the noise and knelt on the damp, hard rocks and lapped up mouthful after mouthful, rubbing the cool wetness into her face and skin. She didn’t care that her knees were painful and soaking; she would have jumped bodily into the brook if it had been a warmer day.

After drinking her fill she sat back for a moment, shivering. It was late morning but the clouds were scudding across the sun like a writhing mass of dark grey snakes, turning the world to muted sepia. She stood up abruptly, feeling a strange sensation shake her that was not just the cold. It was that sensation of a single, faint, distant presence, not quite there but not quite gone. It was a presence in need of aid. The splitting headaches that had previously accompanied these moments of clarity were now absent. Now there was nothing else in her head but this…

Saran began running towards the rocky hill on the western border of the valley, completely forgetting that she hadn’t eaten a proper meal for many days. As she bounded over the uneven ground, she knew that she was heading in the right direction; the presence was like a pinpoint in the map of her mind, guiding her. Panting violently, she came to the foot of the slope and paused for air. She took a moment to turn around and survey the silver tower that had been her prison for countless weeks. As her eyes traversed its empty walls and that single gaping window, she sensed hatred bubble up within her: hatred for her prison, but also for the captors who had locked her within. And now that she was free of the place she felt a deep gladness, but more tangibly and presently she felt a seething resentment. The tower was now smaller in the distance, and Saran wanted to be far away enough that it would be no more than a knee-high plaything, and she could lash out one leg and kick it and it would collapse.

It took her two hours to make the uphill journey over the western slope. She scrambled, mostly, clinging on to outcropping rocks and vegetation for support, and when she grew tired she didn’t deny herself a few minutes’ rest. She wished she’d had some way of bringing water—the thirst she had just quenched was returning with renewed fervour. But she felt stronger than her thirst: the presence that she sensed grew closer and closer, and she knew she was heading in the right direction.

The peak of the mountain ran up under her feet suddenly and unexpectedly. The rocky ground fell away beneath her into a precipitous slope, tumbling through scrubland and wildgrass. Further on in the adjacent valley the trees thickened into a sprawling forest from which a few clustered coils of smoke spiralled—a distant, remote village. Saran felt her heart leap. Other people; a safe bed; food and water: all less than a day’s walk away.

She careened down the mountain at a hectic pace, her legs flying forward wildly until she was buoyed by her own momentum into a barely controlled run. She scrambled through the thickening vegetation, ignoring the branches that plucked and scratched at her hair and skin. The downhill journey was many times faster than the uphill one had been, and less than an hour later she struck level ground with an impact that weakened her knees and sent her sprawling.

It wasn’t so much the physical force that collapsed her but rather the sudden, overwhelming sense that the presence was right behind her. Weakly she staggered to her feet and turned, but there was nothing there except for a short wall of rock shielded by a leafy tree.

Saran’s fear heightened into a dull, confused panic. Was she truly going crazy, then?

But then she put out her hands and parted the leaves of the tree and saw that there was a wide, vertical fissure in the rock where the very body of the mountain had shifted in opposite directions. And from this fissure emanated that same presence, so strongly it was like she could smell it in the air. Drawn by an irresistible feeling of urgency, Saran moved in line with the great gaping crack in the rock and felt a draft of cold air waft into her face. There must be some source of air and light within.

She stepped into the face of the mountain, letting the darkness of the crevice drape around her shoulders like a blanket of spiderwebs. Tiny gusts of air whispered at her ears. Black rock, cool and rough to the touch, flanked her on both sides, reminding her of the walls of her tower prison. The dirt under her slippered feet was earthy and moist and tightly packed.

The roof of the narrow cave was dotted with cracks and holes which were the source of the drafts of cold air, and also provided enough light to see by. About twenty paces in the fissure widened slightly to accommodate a low shelf of rock at about knee height. And spread out upon this shelf were signs of human life: a tattered blanket, all stained and moth-eaten; the ashes of a fire long extinguished; a long leather water-skin; a dusting of breadcrumbs. Wide-eyed, Saran pounced upon the water-skin and greedily devoured the last precious drops, then ran a finger over the crumbs and put them into her mouth. They tasted sweeter than the finest sugar.

Curiosity burned in her. The owner of these measly possessions could not be far away. Turning, Saran crept further along the cave, trying vainly to steady her breath and silence her footsteps. The tunnel curved sharply around a corner and widened--

--before coming to a dead end.

At first glance, it was a disappointingly blank face of rock that stood before her. But presently Saran saw the outline of a small boulder that sat in her path, about waist-high, round and stout. It was dusted in accumulated dirt, except for in one spot where a man’s handprint had blotted the surface clean. The handprint was upside down on the surface of the boulder facing Saran, but it dragged itself over the top of the boulder and disappeared down the other side: as though someone had clutched onto the rock in mighty distress, yet fallen away.

Almighty Father. Protect me.

Saran held her hands before her in readiness. Her body was roaring, telling her to run. But her mind pierced her, forcing her to keep moving. She edged around the boulder.

And pressed both hands to her mouth violently. Sweet powers of heaven, she cried within.

A man lay there, on the dusty ground behind the boulder, but it was a man strange and otherworldly. He was thin, so painfully thin that, crumpled up, Saran almost mistook the body for a pile of bones; and his colour--it wasn’t his skin, it couldn’t be skin--was the most terrifying white: not the milky white of a baby, not the deathly bone-grey of a corpse, but a white that was so plain and so blank it was the colour of something that had never even existed in the first place.

Saran ran forward and crouched over the man, almost weeping in pain for his emaciated frame and unconscious state. Was he dying? Tentatively, she rolled him over--his skin was breathy, had no real sensation to it--and gathered him up into her arms. He was hardly an effort to lift, and this fact made Saran even more horrified. He couldn’t be real.

But there he was, scrunched up in her arms, and just then Saran felt the lightest movement of air at the base of her neck, just sweeping sweetly between the two knobs of her collarbones, and she knew that she had to take this man to a place where she could help him. He was still breathing, barely. He was alive.

And she took off, practically sprinting back up along the cave tunnel, bursting out of the rocky mountain face like a wild horse, galloping through the trees until she broke into more open scrubland. She bounded over the hard, uneven ground until her ankles bruised with the impact. Sometimes she looked down at the man to see how he was handling all the jolting, but he hadn’t changed. He was still there, ghost-white, bone-thin, perhaps a little paler in the daylight.

She reached the spot she had seen from the top of the mountain, where the trees thickened into a sprawling forest, and paused for a moment to catch her breath. Here the sun, now low and orange in the sky, cast dizzying shadows of tree trunks that stretched three times their real length. Saran thought back to her view from the mountain, trying to remember which direction the closest village was in.

This way. She hoisted the man more steadily into her arms and ran on. The great roots of the trees and the tangled undergrowth did not trip her up. The dangling arms of grandfatherly willows and a steady shower of petals and leaves obscured her vision, but finally Saran spied through the trunks the edge of a village, off in the distance. And here she found a way through the trees that had been trodden into a path, and she joined it.

It was nigh dusk when she came to the cluster of dark brown huts, built up around the edge of a large clearing. The village had no wall, no sentry--obviously it felt safe and protected by the vast forest and the even vaster wilderness. Saran guessed that there were about thirty huts forming a rough oval perimeter, and in the centre a cluster of larger wooden buildings: a modest chapel, and several shophouses with dirty, glassed windows. Signs stood over doorways, lit up on either side by wall-mounted torches. Saran walked closer. A pub, from which emanated muted sounds of raucous laughter and music. A forest herbalist. A town cobbler, closed for the night. And a narrow double-storey place with a simple sign: a picture of a bowl of food and a bed.

A young man and woman rugged up in warm clothes, sharing a huddled embrace, scurried from their house to the pub to join the evening festivities. They both cast suspicious glances at Saran and the frightening shape in her arms, but said nothing. Their faces vanished into the gloom. A short burst of noise, as the pub door opened and closed.

Saran hurried towards the double-storey building that was offering meals and housing. Now that she stood in front of it, she could see that the lower floor was built of sturdy stone, and the upper floor of wood, as though it had been added on later. She nudged the door open with her toe.

The interior was brightly lit, and more spacious than she expected. The right half of the room was filled with squat wooden tables. A grey-haired man sat at one, tiredly but contentedly sipping at a mug of some frothy brew. Saran pushed the door open wider. The left side of the room was lined with an oak bench. Behind the bench sat a goodly-sized woman of about forty-five, with arms brawny from strong labour--logging, perhaps. She was long-nosed with a small chin, large cheeks, sparkling eyes and lank hair of a dark blonde colour. Behind the woman stood an even brawnier man in a leather jerkin, wiping mugs and setting them on a shelf.

“Hullo, dear,” said the woman, placing her hands down strongly on the oak bench. Her eyes dropped to the man in Saran’s arms. “Holy cow.”

Saran winced. Please, please don’t ask.

But the woman said no more. “What’ll you be after on this fine evening, then, young lass? Just a hearty bowl of soup and some warm cider, or a night’s lodging? Come a long way? Next village over, I’m betting, and that’s not an easy nor short walk. You look like you haven’t seen a good meal and a comfy bed for many a day.”

Will you say nothing, then, about the dying man in my arms? Saran thought, astonished. Nothing at all? She took a step forward uncertainly.

“Oh, forgive my rudeness. My name’s Linde, and this here be my husband Kurk.” Kurk turned around and nodded, grim but welcoming. “We two have owned this place for, oh, nigh on twenty years now, ainnit, Kurk?”

“Twenty-one next midwinter,” pronounced Kurk.

“Aye, twenty-one.” Linde winked. “We ain’t the young’uns that we look like!” She chortled. “Now, was that lodging for one or two of you?”

So she did see the man Saran was carrying. “Two beds, one room please, ma’am.” She hesitated, then added in earnest. “I can’t pay you, though.”

Linde stared at her sharply, but when Saran met her gaze, the older woman’s eyes softened. “I shan’t charge you a penny, lass. Go on up the stairs, last room on the right is yours, the one with the redwood door and the big hearth. Here’s the key.”

“Thank you,” said Saran, her voice suddenly overcome with weariness. She felt thirsty and hungry.

“And I’ll bring up two bowls of stew and some hot apple cider in a jiffy as soon as you get settled in,” added Linde.

Good Lord, it was like this woman could read her mind. Saran’s thoughts flashed back to Ervine and the way he had so unexpectedly helped her. Could he hear her thoughts, too? Was her whole mind laid open like a wall display for everyone to examine?

No, the exhaustion must be making her crazy. She fixed her eyes upon the two innkeepers. “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”

“Not a bother at all,” answered Linde cheerfully, as Saran headed for the stairs. “Ooh, wait, girl, what be your name?”

Saran hesitated again. What was the harm? “Saran,” she told them.

She saw Linde’s nose crinkle up slightly. “Saran,” the woman repeated in a much softer voice. “Odd choice for your parents to make.”

“Odder still that you’ve chosen to keep it,” added Kurk, glancing at her with a curious interest. “If I were you I would have changed it ever since...you know. Don’t want to be associated with the likes of her. Not in any way.”

Saran was utterly confused. “The likes of who?”

“Where are you from?” exclaimed Linde incredulously. “Saran Silvertongue. Terrible, powerful lady. The things she did...she and the others...struck fear into the kingdom for many a year.”

“They say she’s gone now--defeated,” growled Kurk, “but I ain’t so sure. People of such great dominion don’t die off just like that. I warn you now,” he wagged a finger at her sternly, “stay away from anyone associated with her. Do not wander into her path. Be wary. She is a witch in every sense.”

A chill ran down Saran’s spine. For the first time she felt a striking fear--of this powerful, terrible lady that she had been named after. But it was fleeting, for she had more pressing matters to deal with. “I shall, thank you,” she said, and ran upstairs.

™˜

In the room at the end of the hall Saran lit a candle and set it on the small wooden table. She started a fire in the hearth, and filled the large pot over it with water from the bathtub in the corner. There was also a covered jug of water on the table, and two cups. She poured herself a cup and drank it slowly. The room was small and stolidly built, and the fire soon made the air toasty and warm.

There was one bed, wooden with a stuffed mattress, and two straw pallets. As soon as Saran had come in, she had lain the man down on the bed. Lying straight, his body stretched almost the entire length of the mattress. It was painful to look at him in such a state. She put a pillow under his head and pulled three blankets tightly over his body, but he still seemed cold.

Linde came up with two bowls of stew and the hot apple cider, as promised, as well as a hot water bottle. Saran brought everything over to the bedside. She slipped the hot water bottle under the covers, so that it warmed the man over his heart, and propped his head up, and ladled a little stew into his mouth.

“Swallow,” she murmured, and he swallowed, and he grew a little warmer.

When his share of the stew and cider were gone, Saran ate her own meal hastily and with less enjoyment than she would have liked, as she was growing very sleepy and bone-weary. She forwent the bath she had planned. She could wash herself in the morning. She dragged the two straw pallets to a space beside the bed, and slept between them for warmth. It was a restless night.

™˜

Saran stayed in the humble forest village for almost a month. The days began to settle into a somewhat homely routine. She would wake up each morning and check on the strange man, feeling his forehead, listening to his breathing, touching his hands and feet to see how cold he was. Some days she needed to fetch extra hot water bottles and place them around his extremities. One morning he was so cold that, fearing he was dying, Saran rubbed his skin ferociously until a faint warmth returned. Then she would feed him breakfast, usually porridge, and a cup of plain water.

After that, she took a few minutes to tend to herself, eating quickly and washing her face. Once a week she would bathe herself, and then clean the man as well, with a damp hot cloth. When she had first found him in the cave and brought him to the village, she had had barely time to look at him: now she saw that he was a young man, perhaps in his mid to late twenties. The thinness of his entire body gave his bones a fine, carved look: his ribs and joints and cheekbones jutted out almost grotesquely, his white, white skin stretched taut over his face. There was no colour in him. His hair was just as white as the rest of him, his eyelashes white, the fine hair on his forearms white.

As the days went by, however, Saran saw that the food was doing him good; slowly, gradually, the bones of his thorax, which before she could have easily counted from the other side of the room, sank into flesh; the outline of his pelvis became less defined; his arms and legs became less painfully emaciated and more lean. But there were some mornings still when Saran woke up and looked at him and it seemed that he had regressed severely in the space of a night: he was deathly-pale once more, and frighteningly thin, and fighting and gasping and juddering for his life.

Linde brought them new clothes: a woollen tunic for Saran, second-hand but much warmer and sturdier than her old one; a belt of fine steel to girt it up around her waist; linen breeches and boots; and for the strange man, woollen shirts and trews and another pair of boots. She didn’t charge, and Saran didn’t ask.

After three weeks in the village, the strange man gained some colour. He was growing healthier, and Saran felt triumphant. The ghostly whiteness was gone; in its place, a pale rose wash lay over his cheeks and a heavier tan spread on his limbs even though he hadn’t yet seen the sunlight. His hair, now mussed and thick, darkened to grey and then granite and then jet black. His eyelashes sat like two crescents of little dark hairs on the tops of his cheeks. His mouth reddened with life.

And then, one morning, something that Saran had been waiting and waiting for finally happened.

The man spoke.

Saran had been leaning over him in desperation, for some of the rosiness had left his cheeks overnight, and she was demanding it return to him, calling him back from wherever this poisonous magic was trying to take him.

That was when his eyelids lifted gently, just a sliver. The eyes beneath were invisible, hidden. The mouth moved. “Saran--”

Saran jumped violently. “You know my name? How?”

A mumble of incoherent words; the eyes fluttered wide open for a split second, and a pair of round, bright grey irises imprinted themselves in her memory.

Saran leaned forward urgently, placing her ear right up to his mouth. “What is your name? Will you tell me?”

A whisper of a breath. “Marcel.” A shudder. Then the eyes shuttered, the face closed. He slipped away once more.

“Darn it!” Saran leapt to her feet and kicked her straw pallet. Marcel. Definitely not a commoner’s name. It had too much of a ring to it; it carried the grandiosity of the courts of the nobles. Who was this strange man, and what had happened to him that had left him in such a state?

There was another thing that had happened over Saran’s few weeks in the village. She had wandered out of the inn quite a number of times during the day, to browse amongst the small trading market the villagers set up in the mornings, or to observe them at work in the afternoon, or to watch the modest festivities in the evenings. Being a foreigner, and foreigners being rare, Saran found that quite a number of the villagers wanted to talk to her. She offered only short, uninteresting conversation, dripping with sarcasm, and when they left she would hope intensely that they would forget ever meeting her. And the strange thing was, more often than not, they did forget. The same balding, toothless man that she had talked to one evening wandered into the inn for lunch the next day and, not recognising her, asked her name. Villagers who had spoken to her reintroduced themselves a week later.

And then there were days when Saran wished not to be noticed by the villagers at all, and she found that she could turn their eyes and their minds away from her so that they didn’t even look in her direction, or if they did, their gazes swept over her as if she weren’t even there.

It was then that Saran began to understand that she had some small gift of control over other people’s perceptions, and it was a thing that she should not be used unwisely. She had not realised it before, but she had exerted some influence over Ervine and even Linde and Kurk, and if she had to learn more about her ability if she were to avoid using it foolishly.

She practised it at times: “I shall owe you nothing for my stay here.” And Linde chuckled and remarked that Saran was crazy to think that she would charge her.

And she practised not using it: “I want you to run me a hot bath,” she said, but she kept her mind blank and free of desire--she didn’t really want a hot bath, she’d had one already. And Linde just glanced at her and said, “Pot and water upstairs, heat it for a good quart-hour over the fire and fill the tub.”

Exactly thirty days after her initial arrival in the village, Saran was sitting at her small table shelling nuts and thinking about what she was going to do with herself and with Marcel. Although the man’s progress had been long and uncertain, it would not be long before he was well enough to stand up and walk around. And then what? Would he want to leave? Did he have a family, a home, to return to? Would he thank her for her efforts and bid her accompany him back to his lordly manor as a small reward? No, more likely he would get away from her as soon as physically possible—noblemen rarely liked to associate themselves with anyone below their standing.

Saran didn’t mind—not really. Yes, she had tended to this man for more than four weeks and nursed him back to nearly proper health; but the circumstances surrounding him were too shadowy, too fraught with danger and power and treachery to attract her. She had found him dying in a remote cave, for heaven’s sakes. It would be best if she were to see off such a character as he.

Besides, she had her own plans. She wanted to leave the empty wilderness behind, and go to the city, and saturate her senses with the hustle and bustle of civilization: she wanted to be amongst the sights and sounds and smells of people. Swarming, thronging, pressing, rushing crowds of people. And once she was settled in to the city she would find herself a nice, normal job—an apothecary’s assistant, maybe, or a potion-mixer to a healer, or if she proved clever enough, perhaps even an alchemist’s apprentice.

Saran put down the bag of nuts for a moment to pick the remnants of shells out from under her fingernails. Her gaze slid, out of habit, to the bed, where Marcel lay yet asleep, one arm flung out horizontally so that a warm, healthy-pink palm faced up to the ceiling. The bedclothes were arranged haphazardly around his body. He had been tossing and turning a little; a very good sign, Saran noted with a smile. Apart from that he looked quite calm, with his face tipped serenely towards her, a lick of black hair falling at a comical angle across his forehead.

The door slammed open.

Before she had even torn her eyes away from the bed, before her smile even wiped itself off her face, Saran knew that this was not right. Linde never opened the door without first knocking. And she never slammed.

Besides, of course, Linde was not a broad-shouldered soldier decked out in glistening silver armour, wielding a double-edged sabre and a look of fire in his flinty eyes.

Saran scrambled backwards in shock, sending her chair toppling, and found that she had flattened herself against the far wall. Behind the first soldier, at least five other men crowded in through the doorway. They were all equally huge and determined. They strode in with a purpose.

The first soldier who had slammed the door open cast a surveying glance over the room, then marched to the bed and hauled Marcel by his free arm into an upright position. “This is the man.” His voice was a throaty growl, almost a snarl.

At the soldier’s brutal grasp, Marcel seemed to shudder and visibly diminish before Saran’s very eyes. He jerked awake for one horrible instant, and stared up at the soldier with terror in his face, but then almost immediately his eyes rolled back into his head and his body paled all over to a frightening white. This only seemed to encourage the soldier, who dragged him violently from the mattress and deposited him on the floor, unceremoniously.

Without realising what she was doing, Saran launched herself off the wall and screamed, “Let go of him, beast!” Fires of hell, she had devoted a month of her life to nurturing this man back to full health, and now these devil-spawned soldiers were undoing every good thing she’d accomplished. They were killing him.

She literally flew at the brawny soldier, not caring that he had a sword, not caring that he was at least twice her weight. But mid-leap, one of the lower-ranking soldiers seized her from behind and wrestled her back with a grunt. He pinned her by the neck and shoulders like she was some barnyard chicken about to have its throat slit.

Saran struggled massively, and the two of them—soldier and girl-captive—staggered backwards as one, half-collapsing against the small table. Saran gasped and grabbed wildly at the bowl of nuts. She came up with a handful of prickly, shredded shells which she shoved into the soldier’s eyes. He howled.

Sensing that his friend would appreciate some assistance, another soldier moved forward in two great strides and held Saran down by her other side so that she could no longer move a muscle. She thrashed, but it was no use. Their horrible, huge, clammy hands were all over her, suffocating her body. She felt like she was being torn apart, flesh from soul. She had never wanted so much to be able to move. Still she struggled, and twisted, and yelled, and bit.

The first soldier stood triumphantly over Marcel. He used one dirty boot to roll him over onto his back. Saran winced. Marcel’s left arm and leg were twisted painfully beneath him. The soldier pushed back Marcel’s fringe with the flat of his sword. There was a hungry glint in his dark jade eyes as he stared at the face of the man lying on the ground.

Then, slowly, the soldier raised his boot and, even more slowly, pushed it down against Marcel’s face. He pressed and ground his shoe down until Saran was screaming in revulsion and there was blood streaming out from who knew where underneath the soldier’s sole, and when he finally lifted his boot Marcel was still lying unconscious on the ground, but now with blood pouring from his nose and mouth.

“You demon,” spat Saran, her voice bubbling with acid. The two lower-ranking soldiers had to drag on her arms to restrain her violent lunge.

The soldier met her gaze for the first time. “Oh, I’m the demon, am I?” And the amusement in his voice as he glanced once more at Marcel infuriated her to no end. Then he nodded at two more of his troop who were still in the doorway. “Take him, quickly. Bind him well. And don’t forget his eyes.”

Saran felt intense horror seize her, and she trembled as the men moved forward with ropes and gag and cloth. She squeezed her eyes shut against the injustice of it all, and suddenly, not out of her own will but rather involuntarily, an intense feeling of protest rose up in her mind like a titanic tidal wave. Her body shook as the solid wave erupted from her mind’s core and raced to fill the room like something tangible. She knew then that the power of it would have easily penetrated the minds of the soldiers—they would have dropped her and Marcel like hot coals, and fled at once from the village.

But something stopped it. The wave came up to each of the soldiers, but it hit something reflective and hard—a barrier—that sent her mind-wave crashing in all directions, spinning and losing its focus. They were protected from her, somehow.

She was utterly powerless against them.

And so the men took Marcel from the room, dragging him by the legs so that his back scraped all the splinters off the floor, his arms thrown up around his head like a rag doll. And Saran could only watch mutely until the two soldiers pinning her back finally released her and ran after their companions. But before Saran could take a step, the first soldier—the leader, the one who had put his boot in Marcel’s face—ran back into the room and strode right up to her. He had sheathed his sword. He grabbed her head and pulled her hair back so that her scalp roared in pain, and peered into her face.

“Mm,” he said as if making up his mind, and, binding her hands, took her captive too.