Wayfarer's Dream by Rachel Starr Thomson

Author:Rachel Starr Thomson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love, friendship, journey, adventure, sacrifice, rachel starr thomson, dragon, pilgrim's progress
Publisher: Little Dozen Press
Published: 2015-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHRISTANYA RETURNED to the abandoned stables, where she found an old length of rope and several candles. Looping the rope over her shoulder, she covered herself with her cloak and waited for the night to blot her away from human eyes. The town fell eerily still with the coming of darkness. Fear seemed to pervade the air as Christanya left the shadows and crept through the town square toward the courthouse.

There were no guards. She pushed the door open and waited, tense, for something to happen. Nothing did. She took a candle from the folds of her cloak and lit it.

The scant light illuminated a narrow room with wooden seats in four tiers up either side. At the far end of the room was a high-backed wooden throne, and over it a grotesque carving of a scaly creature with massive teeth. The candle flickered, making the creature move in the orange light. Christanya shivered.

She turned slowly, looking for a door to another room, a staircase... anything to indicate where the guards might have taken Mercy. Not until she had turned all the way around and was facing the throne and the carving once more did she notice the gaping black spot on the floor. The candlelight was hardly sufficient to prove what it was—it might have been cloth, or a painting... or a hole.

Slowly, unwillingly, she walked toward it. Its blackness seemed to deepen with every step. At last she stood at the edge, and found herself looking into a deep pit.

She swallowed a painful lump in her throat and slowly knelt. She held the candle over the pit, and in its depths she made out a girl’s slight form, leaning against the side of the hole. She swallowed again. She was crying already.

“Mercy,” she whispered. There was no response.

Christanya stood and looked around. The throne was only a few feet away, and it seemed to be bolted to the floor. Christanya took the coil of rope from her shoulder as she mounted the few steps to the throne. She knelt and began to tie the rope to the leg of the throne. Tears kept getting in her way; blurring the already meager light. Impatiently she wiped a few away, but they would not stop coming, so she blinked furiously and worked all the harder at making the knots secure. When she was finished she descended the steps again, threw the other end of the rope down the hole, blew out her candle, and began her descent.

The sides of the pit were slippery, and a noxious scent assailed her. Bricks jutted out here and there, giving her a toehold to keep her from slipping. Clumps of dirt and moss came loose under her feet and rained down into the pit.

Mercy’s voice came up from the darkness, small and thin with pain. “Who’s there?”

Christanya opened her mouth to answer but no words would come out. She heard Mercy stirring beneath her. She bit her lip suddenly, and held tightly to the

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