Telwyn rose from the stream and dried her fingers on her cloak. "We're about halfway to Dravon, with two and a half days of travel left to go. Which will stretch into three days if we don't get a move on swiftly." She grinned, softening away any possible reproach in the latter statement. Taking the bag of salve from Micah, she glanced around the little group and waved a hand cheerily, "Time to go! Break's over!" With that, she plunged straight into the stream at a certain point that came up to her knees. A few strides and she was on the other side, glancing back at them and laughing. So they followed her.
All the rest of that day, she led them through thick undergrowth, drooping boughs and mossy patches, in sun and shadow, and
out of the way of any other travelers. If there was human life anywhere about other than themselves, they never saw or heard it.
When the sun was ready to vanish and the shadows were longer than the lines of the Fates, Telwyn brought them to a very large rock, seeming to sit in the middle of nowhere, geologically. No other stones sat near this one; it seemed to have been dropped straight from the sky. If it had come hurtling down from the heavens, it had done so a long time ago. A grove of trees formed a sheltered ring around one side of the rock, shielding that area from wind, some amount of rain and every amount of scrutiny. When Telwyn first skipped cheerily through the thick, dark and clinging undergrowth, heavily covered by the overhanging boughs, she vanished almost right before their eyes, so quickly did the flora swallow her up. They might have hesitated longer in following her, had Telwyn not poked her head back out again and laughed at them. She said nothing, but they got the picture and took the plunge.
A brief shove through impossibly thick vines, small brush and huge low branches, and suddenly they were tumbling into a small area covered in smooth grass, soft and so tall it was up to their knees. Telwyn was standing in the center, hands on hips, feet spread apart, laughing at the wonder on their faces.
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"
Where is he?"
Grace twisted her wrists slightly, feeling the rough ropes scrape across her skin.
"We know you know where he is. Tell us now."
She leaned her forehead against the stake and wriggled her wrists again. The stake the rope was tied to was driven deep in the mortar of the stone floor. It had probably been there for many years. It was not going to move for her now.
"I'm not going to ask you again.
Where. Is. He."
She sucked in a deep breath and scuffed her light boot across the filthy straw littering the floor beneath her. Why had they even bothered trying to cover it? The effort was useless.
Suddenly a hand snapped up from below her down-turned face and struck her full on the nose and mouth. It flung her head back sharply and caused her to gasp in surprise and pain. She found herself staring into the eyes of the man assigned with her... Dealings.
"Now, you can be difficult, or you can be nice and simple and both of us will be the better off for it. I can go home at a decent hour and you can actually sleep tonight in relative comfort." He had a deep and rough voice, not just harsh in tone, but harsh in nature.
She tasted blood. The unmistakeable irony flavor trickled into her mouth and she ran her tongue over her quickly swelling lips, picking up more of the unsettling liquid in the process. How much more of it would be spilt tonight?
The man snarled, "Stupid wench..." and jerked away from her.
Am I doing the right thing? Oh, but of course I am. Instead I should be asking, am I strong enough to keep doing the right thing when the going gets tough? There was a sharp sound behind her, an evil, snapping sound that echoed in her ears. She knew what it was. She knew what was coming. But she wasn't prepared for the shock of the whip snaking across her lower back, curling around her side and the post in front of her, then snapping harshly across her face on the opposite side. It made her suck her breath in sharply and bite her tongue to keep back the scream that threatened to rip out of her throat. The draw back of the whip dragged through the raw ruts made by the first strike and tore them open further. The agony and the suddenness of the attack kept her from regaining her breath and she leant forward to press herself against the stake as the whip came across her a second time.
Then the man came around to look at her face again. She closed her eyes.
"Are you going to be easy, or are you going to be hard? Now that you've had a taste of this, I doubt you'll think I'm lying when I say that another hour of this will leave you in a very undesirable state of existence. If, that is, you exist at all anymore."
He spoke with pretty good vocabulary for a man with such a brutal job. Was he once something better? Perhaps a man fallen from grace? Was his business-like way of dealing with pain and death a result of the harsh hand life had dealt him?
She kept her eyes closed as the whip fell across her back a third time.