Song of the Nightpiper by Hannah Meredith

Author:Hannah Meredith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hannah Meredith
Published: 2018-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

~ 13 ~

Faulk realized he was cold. He reached for the blanket that must have slipped off. The clanking of metal on stone brought him to full awareness. He was lying on his stomach on a stone floor. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, the motion making his head pound and his stomach revolt. A chain attached to a shackle on his right wrist slithered noisily across the floor as he tried for better balance.

Memory came flooding back to him in disgusting detail. He remembered the bathhouse, remembered his lack of caution and preparedness. “Stupid, stupid,” he muttered as he swayed on all fours, closing his eyes in an attempt to stop the world from spinning.

He stayed in this position for minutes, hours—time seemed both compressed and stretched. Finally, his stomach stilled and the shooting pain in his skull receded to a dull ache. His failure to anticipate what had happened filled him with shame. Anlin’s scream still echoed in his mind. He was conscious of his nakedness, chained like an animal in a pit.

He suspected that coming to a full up-right position was beyond him, so he pushed back on his hands and rocked back on his legs until he was sitting with his legs jutting out in front of him.

It was then he saw the boy squatting at a distance.

“Are you chosen of the sky god?” the boy asked. The cadence was unusual, but the words were definitely Fallucian.

Faulk shook his head and squinted his eyes to better see the speaker in the gloom. The area Faulk sat in was barely illuminated by some guttering torches high up on the wall, but he could tell that the speaker was a boy, all bony legs and arms with a Rennish face, slightly misshapen. “There is no sky god,” Faulk said, his voice grated like a rusty gate.

“There’s Cheelum,” the boy said.

“He’s just God.” Faulk could make no sense of this conversation. His head ached like he’d consumed an entire cask of ale. He wasn’t in the mood for a theological debate.

The boy chuckled. “The Seerin are right. Fallucians have forgotten.” The boy came to his feet with the speed of a released hare. He warily kept his distance from Faulk but walked in a circle around him. Faulk tracked the boy with his eyes, eventually having to turn his head and look over his shoulder.

“If you’re not chosen by your God, then why are you so marked?”

Faulk realized the boy was referring to the scars that crisscrossed his back. In different circumstances, Faulk would have found the boy’s observations ironic. The abbot who had wielded the scourge that had disfigured his back had done so because Cheelum had not chosen him. “Could I have some water?” Faulk asked, speaking of a need rather than the former ridiculousness.

“Oh, yes,” said the boy, who darted away. He returned with a wooden bowl that he placed on the ground at a distance.

Faulk assumed the bowl now sat within the range of his chain, but just barely.

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