Chapter 3

“Wha….What happened? Where am I?” Cearth asked. His voice was a harsh whisper and his eyes searched the cool mud hut. 

“You’re alright love,” he heard a familiar voice say and grasped Alyanna’s hand that’d been resting on his cheek. 

“What happened?” He asked, kissing his wife’s reassuring hand. 

“You nearly died during our flight. Do you remember?” she asked Cearth.

Cearth’s eyebrows creased as he recalled the recent events. “Vaguely…I remember we stopped for the day and I fell asleep.”

Alyanna looked on him with worry. They hadn’t stopped to rest. He’d dropped from exhaustion.

“When I woke up, you weren’t there so I assumed the worst. I went searching for you, but couldn’t find you. Then I saw the search party. I though they’d taken you, so I allowed myself to be captured, figuring that they’d lead me to you, but they decided instead to execute me on the spot when they realized that I was alone,” Cearth said before pausing for a couple of minutes to rest his depleted body.

Alyanna watched as he rested.

“They shoved me to my knees and one of them pulled out a scimitar. I dropped the seeds as soon as I fell to the ground, and as my executioner raised his sword, I shot the vines into his heart. Seeing their partner fall, the other two Ashkani pulled out their short bows, and let out some volleys of arrows,” he told her, pausing every once in a while to drink some of the goat and wild onion broth that Alyanna had brought when he had awoken.

“How did the the two archers end up dead?” Alyanna asked, breaking the silence that had followed after his last break to slurp down the broth.

“Well…I knew they wouldn’t risk coming close to me and meet the same fate as their comrade in arms, so I let myself get shot. They didn’t think to use their magic against me as they saw the blood pouring. It was a risk, but I knew that playing dead would be the only way that I could lure them close enough for me to attack,” he answered her quiet question.

Alyanna wanted to ask him so much more, but his drooping eyelids quieted her. He needed rest. 

“I was so worried about you,” Cearth repeated over and over like a mantra as sleep took him. 

*****

“She truly is bearing his cub?” the deeply wrinkled chieftain asked, his vision was blurry behind milky white cataracts. It didn’t matter though, he rarely used his own eyes anymore.-

“Yes she is. What she told us was no lie, she’s carrying the child of that Abrax man,” the tribe’s healer affirmed. 

“This truly is a great opportunity,” the wizened leader said, his fingers danced through the sand as he sketched out plans, his movements bringing to mind the large spiders that came from their burrows at night.

“That Abrax, Cearth, will be of great benefit to our crops this year. We will tell him that the price of our protection is for him to grow our crops,” the chief said.

His name had been forfeited when he took the mantle of leadership, as was customary among his people.     

“And the child?” the healer asked in a lilting tone. She was in her mid forties with long dreadlocked hair.

“We have plans for the cub,” he barked, his old voice still carrying power.

“What sort of plans?” she asked hesitantly, earning a harsh glare from chief.

It soon faded and he sighed. ”Well…you were to be told eventually if it were true that she was with his child. We will make sure that they are well taken care of while they live among us; they won’t want for anything. We will keep them happy until it is time for that Ashkani woman to birth her runt. When she does, well, she will have complications during the delivery that will be too much for her body to take. Her husband will soon follow her to the grave,” the chieftains voice was strong despite his years.

“Why kill them?” his command didn’t sit with her. 

“Do you realize the power that the child will be born with?” He asked before answering his own question. “Imagine it. If what I suspect is true, the child will not only have the ability to help our struggling crops grow as an Abrax would, but it will also have that accursed magic of the Ashkani’s. We will have something only spoken of only in stories, a child of two worlds. Imagine being the ones to control that power!” he said as madness crept through his milky eyes. 

*****

“How are you darling?” Alyanna asked, examining her shirtless husband. How was it that his fresh scars only made more attractive?

She blushed.

“I’m much better now, especially seeing you and the little bean,” he said as he rested his hand on her stomach. “Are you are ok with what they are asking of you?” he asked.

“I have any choice but to be,” Alyanna stated bluntly. “We have no home in the desert, you’re an escaped slave and murderer, and I am a heretic and whore in their eyes. We’re marked for death,” deep sadness shone in her eyes.

What is a person without a home? A people to call their own? 

“Anyway, how about you?” she asked. “They're asking much of you, especially after what you went through. Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

“I'm in their debt. I would be forever so if I didn’t accepts. Most importantly though, I’d lose my honor,” Cearth replied.

Alyanna knew the Abrax people considered honor the greatest virtue and had seen Cearth displaying it many times. She still remember when she first realized that she loved him; she’d given Cearth the opportunity to escape, but he’d refused her proposal, stating that he was bound by honor to stay in his service.

He told her he’d been bought fairly by her father, and no matter the circumstances that had led to it, he would abide by his masters rules.

He’d only ever disobeyed his master when he had taken Alyanna’s hand in marriage.

Love was the only reason an Abrax would dishonor themselves, they considered it the greatest honor of all.

“So, yes,” he said. “I’ll use the magic of my people in exchange for protection for you and the bean. Many less scrupulous of my people will trade magic for anything,” Cearth said, cutting through the silence of their thoughts.