Paperback Writer

Death had come to Quatara.  It came in the form of two twisted creatures silently slipping through the night cloaked forest.  Their names were unknown to the inhabitants here as they were seldom seen in this land and any unfortunate enough to lay eyes upon them were never left in a condition to be able to tell others of the horror they had witnessed.  Death was their singular talent and they had come to Quatara to once again practice their art.  Someone would die before the dawn.

Unless he could stop them.

Faolan followed the two neruals as closely as he could.  They left no trail detectable by mortal senses but Faolan was not mortal and their stench cut a wide swath as they moved nearer to Parthalan, Quatara’s main settlement.  It had once been a city and would, Faolan assumed, be so again but now it was too newly ravaged by war and conquest.  What business neruals had here, in an already decaying land, Faolan did not know.  Who here so threatened their masters that Yelsneh would unleash his fiercest weapons upon an unsuspecting population, knowing their presence on the goddess’s earth would not long go unobserved, Faolan did not know.

But he would find out.

It was why he had not yet engaged them, why they still slid through the forest stalking their prey.  They had been dormant for so long, he needed to know, he needed to understand, why they had been sent.  He did not like the idea of using an innocent for bait but if it would save the rest, he would lose one gladly.

A crash sounded in the forest behind him and Faolan took his eyes off the neruals to be sure no threat lurked behind him.  There was nothing to be found but a feeling of malevolence  permeating the air.  It was hatred that would be beyond a nerual’s limited emotional capabilities.  Something else, someone else, was here.

Faolan turned back to the neruals’ trail only to find himself suddenly blocked by a wall.  The wall was invisible, even to him, but potent and sophisticated.  There was no way for him to get around it.  The neruals weren’t responsible.  They hadn’t the skill for something like this.

“Yelsneh,” Faolan said in sudden realization.  “He’s here.”

Whatever had brought the neruals to this dimension was important enough to Yelsneh that the god had come to be assured of the success of their undertaking.  And where Yelsneh went, the other three were never far behind.

Neruals, even the pair of them, were creatures Faolan could handle on his own.  The four dark gods, however, would be beyond his reach.  Far beyond his reach.  He quietly summoned the goddess, holding out hope that no matter how aware Yelsneh was of his presence, the god would not know what Faolan did behind his wall.  Laorans would make her presence known to Yelsneh but Faolan didn’t want to do it for her.

She said nothing upon her arrival but Faolan felt her just before the wall around him disappeared.  He moved forward then, trying to rediscover the neruals’ now obscured trail, trying to recover his time lost.  He knew he hadn’t been restrained for very long but time had been crucial when he thought the neruals to be the only dark creatures to be moving through the Quatari forests that night.  Now he knew the depth of the matter, every lost moment was the equivalent of a lost day.

Parthalan grew ever closer and still Faolan was no nearer capturing his quarry.  He was no nearer to finding his quarry.  Their trail, so easily discernible before was masked now as Yelsneh did his part to keep his weapons protected.  Faolan could feel Laorans’s mounting worry as he continued to navigate his way through the tangle of forest.

They must be found, Laorans said.  We must stop them.

He didn’t respond, only continued to cast out spells whose purpose was to find the neruals.  They failed to offer him any sort of direction, most likely blocked by Yelsneh or one of the others.

“I can’t find-“ he started to say even though his failure would have been perfectly obviously to the deity.  He stopped when the rank odor specific to the neruals filled his senses, flooding his lungs.  He looked toward Parthalan.  “They’re coming.”

But Laorans already knew that too.

They’re not alone. They have something- someone.

Someone?  “Alive?” he asked.

Alive.

Her tone made him uncharacteristically nervous.  Her actual response scared him.  Neruals were dealers in death.  They didn’t know anything else.  Their involvement, Yelsneh’s presence and knowing his enemies’ victim yet lived terrified him.  Something was happening here, something for which he was rather unprepared.  He did not like to feel that way when Yelsneh was involved.

But terror notwithstanding, Faolan steeled himself and locked his gaze on the direction from which he knew the neruals would come.  All around him swirled the deities’ power, determination and hatred like a strong wind heralding a destructive storm poised to break and ravish everything in its path.  Which was, Faolan knew, exactly what was about to happen and so he prepared himself to do what he could for the human hostage now held by neruals.  Laorans would handle Yelsneh.

They hit and broke like water upon rock.  Faolan spotted the neruals but saw nothing of their hostage until he realized one of them was running on three legs.  One of them carried a small bundle, cradled protectively against its body.

The hostage was a child.  An infant.

He couldn’t even begin to fathom what need Yelsneh would have for a human infant but he forced the question aside.  It didn’t change what he had to do.  There would be time enough for questions when the infant was safe.

Faolan threw out a wall of his own, casting the spell fast and hard so no one would feel it coming.  The neruals slammed into it without having slowed beforehand and were thrown back.  Faolan tore down the wall then and moved forward, hitting them again as they tried to right themselves.  The infant fell from the nerual’s grasp and Faolan hit them a third time, harder than before, to force them back further.  Again and again he hit them, conjuring more power, draining his stores.  Then, before he had wholly exhausted his power, he trapped them in the confines of another wall.  It wouldn’t hold them for long but he thought it would contain them long enough to get the child somewhere safe.

He made his way back to where the child had fallen and now lay in the dirt.  He glanced skyward quickly to judge the status of the second battle being raged.  He wasn’t truly concerned for the goddess’s well-being.  He would have felt it by now had she been in any true danger and he felt nothing but the weariness that had come from the exertion of his own actions.  An outraged moan from a throat that could only have belonged to Yelsneh, deep, shuddering and poisonous, further convinced Faolan of Laorans’s success and so he turned his attention to the infant.

He looked down at the child, a girl, and cringed at the sound of shrieking coming from her mouth.  It was interrupted by the exploding sound of the wall he had used to entrap the neruals.  The child froze, eyes flying open and mouth gaping.  She gasped for breath, quivered and resumed her screaming.  Faolan ignored it as he cast a spell that would shield them both from the neruals.  The blue light stretched overhead and worked toward encompassing them but it did not last.  It shrank in size and then disappeared completely, leaving Faolan stunned and bewildered.

He tried the spell a second time and received the same result.  He looked down at the child as he understood she was the reason behind his magic’s failure.

“Who are you?” he asked and she screeched in response.

He felt the neruals’ fast approach and prepared to throw a barrier in their path when Laorans arrived, her presence settling in between him and the neruals.  The creatures yelped as they were hit with the force of the goddess’s power.  She only had to force them back once before they retreated back through a portal of their own making to their own dimension.

Both Faolan and the goddess waited a moment more, waiting to see if their enemies had, in fact, been beaten back, but no more appeared and the night air became still once more.

It was done.  The storm had passed and they had won.

Faolan looked down at the still crying child again.

“She’s immune to my skills,” he said.

Yes, that is most curious.

Faolan didn’t think ‘curious’ was the word for it.  It was unimaginable.

“What did they want with her?” he asked.  “Who is she?”

That I do not know but we will find out.

“Yes we will.  So, what do you want to do with it- her?” Faolan asked.  “Give her back to her family?  Unless you think the neruals killed them all to get to her.”

No, Laorans said.  They did not kill all. Her family does come for her.

Faolan lifted his head and searched the darkness.  He could hear them now, faintly, still so far away, as they crashed through whatever obstacles they met in their quest to find their stolen daughter.

“Shall I stay here with her then and watch over her until the humans come along to reclaim her?” he asked.

Yelsneh will only send his assassins for her again, the goddess said.  We cannot give her back to her family.  To do so would mean their death.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked.

Save them all.

There was more light then, bright and blinding, even to him.  He adverted his eyes until its brilliance lessened.  When it had, he looked to see a wall of white light before him.  Out of its center emerged a tall, thin woman with long, dark hair and vibrant blue eyes.  She was dressed in gauzy robes of various shades of blue.  Her feet were bare but she walked over the rough terrain with a grace never found in humans.  She knelt before the child and touched the girl’s face with her willowy fingers before gathering the blankets and lifting the child into her arms.  She held the child close and whispered to her too softly for Faolan to hear what was said.  Whatever the words, their purpose was served as the child stopped crying.  He looked from the bundle in the woman’s arms to the woman’s face.  She smiled down upon the infant, the love and joy obvious in her eyes.

“So where shall we take her?” the goddess asked.  “Where shall we hide our treasure so that she might be safe?”

“She won’t be safe anywhere on this earth,” he said.

“No,” the goddess said.  “I fear you are right.”

“She may not be safe regardless of what earth she’s on,” he said.

“It is true her protection will not be easy,” the goddess said.  “But it is paramount that she be protected.”

“I don’t disagree with that,” Faolan said.  “I just don’t know who might be capable of such-“

“I can think of one,” the goddess said.

“I am not going to be its nursemaid,” Faolan said.

“No,” the goddess said, still looking down at the baby.  “Not you.”

“Then who-“ he started to ask before the answer came to him.  Then he asked, “How?”

“There are ways,” the goddess said.

“This is going to be a great plan,” Faolan said.  “I can just tell.”

“Are you lacking faith, Faolan?” the goddess asked.

“Have I ever?” Faolan asked.  “What do you want me to do?”

“I will see to the welfare of this child,” Laorans said.  “I need you elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?” he asked.  “Where elsewhere?  To do what?”

“There is another child to whom I would like you to attend.”

“Human?”

“Of course,” Laorans said.  “Don’t be a snob, Faolan.  We will need him.  Tonight has convinced me of his need more than ever.  The war is coming ever closer and we shall need him.  He is alone in this world so I would have you go to him.  You will look after him.  Be his nursemaid.”

“And do what with him?”

“Protect him, guide him,” the goddess answered.

She was clearly enjoying this.

“Do you think Yelsneh and the rest would have such fun at my expense?”

This amused Laorans even more.  Faolan could hear it in her voice.

“That and more,” she said.  “You know they would never take you, Faolan.  You don’t kill people.”

Her levity trailed off toward the end.  Her eyes lifted from the child’s face for the first time as she studied the darkness that surrounded them.  Faolan tensed, sniffing the air, expecting the scent of dark magic.  It was not to be found.

“We must now leave this place,” the goddess said finally.  “Her people approach and it will do us no good for them to find us.”

The goddess turned from him and carried the child into the distant dark.  Faolan watched them disappear and then looked in the opposite direction.  He could see the light of the torches the humans carried.  He could hear them moving through the forest, searching for their child lost.  He heard one man cry out, the child’s name on his lips.  From the agony in the man’s tone, Faolan could only assume it was the girl’s father.

“Mireille!”