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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 1562538" data-attributes="member: 463">Zana's Story pt 4ZANA THANZana was grappling with the great ape fire-demon in the ghost-forest.  She pinned its right arm.  Its strength was incredible.  Flames wreathed around her, charring her gear.  She felt nothing.   The fire was cold.  Katrin Baden pinned its left arm.  She was burning, in agony.  But yet Katrin still held on.Zana felt a sense of great detachment, looking down at herself from above.  Her body was wiry, athletic really, yet always seemed blocky somehow, square-cut.  Cut from the earth.  Her feet were always planted firmly on the ground.  Iron now, all human emotion and feeling long since seared away, burned off in Izrador's cleansing flames.Nothing could hurt her now.Katrin Baden stifled a scream as the fires charred her flesh.  Katrin was brave, braver than Zana Than had ever been.  Katrin was soft, vulnerable.  She wanted to live.  Yet still she held on.  For Zana it was easy.Zana wanted to die.Eventually - an eternity it seemed - Keeran and Pallas were coming up, weapons drawn.  The elves all around looked on at the scene, framed like a picture in an old book.  They didn't seem to move at all.  Like statues.  Zana fancied she could see right through them.Keeran, brother of Tane, poked ineffectually at the fire demon with his sword.  It barely seemed to notice, lashing angrily, trying to scrape the humans from its burning body.  Zana could barely hold on. Katrin's strength was amazing - the little redhead Dornswoman looked like nothing, but she easily matched Zana's strength.Inuriel didn't move, didn't step back from the beast that had slain her.  Caught like a puppet on its strings.  The script had to be followed.  The play's the thing.  Zana's father had told her about puppets and plays, about theatre and all the life that had been lived, before the Last War.  Zana's grandfather had told Lord Than, when Than was young - "Back in my day, son…" To a fourteen-year old girl, it had sounded like fun.This wasn't fun.Pallas came up, Vardatch raised.  He took his time.  He always took his time.  His face was a mask.  It was always a mask.  Katrin was burning.  The stink of her flesh.  The monster couldn't break free.  The Vardatch raised.  Pallas swung, execution-style.  The monster's head sprang from its shoulders, rolled on the grass.Victory.At that the elf Inuriel started moving.  A cuckoo-clock figurine, a wooden puppet sprung into semblance of life."My love!"Inuriel collapsed into Prince Daghu's outstretched arms.Everything was fine.  Happy ending.Nothing was fine.  Nothing had changed.Nothing can change.The world faded.  The forest transformed.  Jez's Band  stood in a clearing now.  Modern Erethor, or close to it.  Zana was there, with Katrin Baden - scorched, but not too badly burned .  Keeran of Tane.  Apari the elf, and Pallas.  Zana, Katrin and Keeran had returned to the ghost world to try to save them.  Apari had tried to have her killed.  Pallas seemed happy enough with that, too.  Pallas preferred the ghosts to the living.  Apari just hated humans.  Wanted them dead.You know who your friends are.The chief puppet was there, too.  Inuriel, a dead elven princess four thousand years gone.  Zana could see right through her.Inuriel the elf-ghost was thanking them for their services, prattling on.  Most grateful, the ghosts were.  Zana's head was muggy.  Mud for brains.  Her mother often said that.  She didn't understand.Apari seemed pleased, receiving the thanks of the elf-ghost.  A proud elven prince.Zana's mind turned slowly, like a water-wheel in mud.   Four thousand years ago, an elf prince had murdered his sister.  The elves had massacred more than two dozen innocent Sarcosans at a wedding cleansing ceremony, under a flag of peace.  This disturbed the elves.  They didn't like sullying their bright swords with human ichor.  They blamed us.Humans had been paying for this crime ever since.  What had Rennael the elf said, back in Treetown?  It was hard to understand.  Every hundred years or so, four humans and an elf were summoned.  To replay the ancient tableau.  At its conclusion, the fire demon appeared.  Inuriel was ripped apart, again.  The humans were murdered.  The elf returned to Treetown.  Rennael had been the last elf.One day, Rennael said, the humans would succeed.  The demon would be stopped.  The ghosts would be happy.  It was again time.  Rennael wanted Jez's Band to be the next five.  Lambs to the slaughter.  Captain Bernt had sent them.  If they succeeded, the ghosts would let the humans have Treetown.To Zana, it didn't sound like a very good deal.  She had turned Rennael down flat.  Hadn't she?  Their arrival at Treetown, their meeting with him, it was a fog, illusion over reality.  It wasn't real.  None of it was real.  The others had accepted the mission.  Zana had shrugged and bid them good-bye.  She followed them at a distance as they went with Rennael to the silver bridge that led into the ghost world.  She had watched Inuriel-ghost appear.  She had watched Jez's Band follow Inuriel, cross the bridge.  She had turned away.  Then… She didn't have a choice.In the dream - in the ghost-world - she had been a true Sarcosan, noble-blooded.  A priestess of the Starry Host.  A fake priestess, but still.  It had hurt to leave.  Zana had wanted it to be real.  Had wanted it so much.  It had hurt too much to leave.The elves had betrayed her.Inuriel-ghost was still prattling on.   Less than a moment had passed.  Apari stood, chest puffed out with pride.  Zana hated him, then.Venom filled her.Kursu's hilt was in her hand.  She stepped forward, sword half-raised.  She glared hatred at Inuriel.  Inuriel was still talking."You!  You better have a good explanation for this!"The words were thick in her mouth.  Clumsy.  Not right.Apari frowned, his equanimity disturbed.  This wasn't how it was supposed to be.  Human filth weren't supposed to address their betters like this.  Ruining his moment.  He raised a hand dismissively, spoke to Inuriel."Ignore him…."Zana was not the most feminine of women.  Elves always had trouble telling human genders apart.  We're all filthy.  We all stink.  Apari did that a lot.  It never seemed to matter much.It mattered now.Apari had killed Jez.Zana shrieked, turned to Apari, Kursu raised to strike.  Cut him down.  Had to be fast.  Tricky elf, he'd cast a spell.  Web her again.  Colour spray, or worse.She saw the faces of the others blanche, their hands start to move, too slow now - Keeran, Katrin, Pallas - Pallas didn't matter.  Katrin mattered more.  Zana stayed her hand.The effort churned her gut, but she turned aside, turned back to Inuriel.  Kursu shone like silver.  The sword could hurt Inuriel.  Zana knew it.  Zana was screaming now."Talk fast, bitch!"    The world changed.    *   *    *Later, as Zana Than led her Sarcosan warhorse Blacky west out of Treetown, she reflected upon the conversations she'd had with the elven shade Inuriel, and then with Katrin Baden.  Zana had been initially distrustful of Katrin, seeing a naïve and privileged rich girl who saw Zana merely as an extension of her lost lover, Zana's father.  However, by this time Zana had to admit that Katrin was quite a remarkable woman.  It was easy to see why her father might have been attracted to Katrin.  The woman seemed older than her years, wise in her way, with an easy, supportive air, almost maternal.  Zana's own mother had been a bit of a shrew, Zana thought unfairly.  Not that it had been easy, raising five children with no man in the house…  Katrin Baden had an assurance and centre to her that Zana had always lacked.   Perhaps it was the relatively easy life she had led, but she seemed genuinely sympathetic to Zana.  She had made the road ahead easier.Inuriel - it didn't seem that much of the elf's psyche had survived all these millenia.  It was like talking to a butterfly.  A four thousand year-old, highly intelligent butterfly that had been murdered at her own wedding-cleansing ceremony.  Murdered by her brother.Zana had harangued the ghost, demanding to know why.  Inuriel-ghost had few answers and, infuriatingly, absolutely no animosity.  Inuriel had died at the ceremony, killed by the demon-ape.  She didn't know what had happened next.  She didn't know why - or even that  - she had spent the next four millenia luring people across the ghost-bridge to their deaths.  Zana idly wondered what Rennael's friend - Sammo? - had thought as he died, a hundred years ago.  Died for the elves.  As far as Zana could tell, the survivors of the massacre - Loren and his people - were wracked with guilt.  Not over the death of a few dozen Sarcosans.  That would be nonsensical.  No.   They had lied - in blaming the Sarcosans, covered up Prince Peleorin's crime.  The unspeakable act, the murder of a fellow elf, his sister Inuriel.   There was the guilt that could not be assuaged.  In time - centuries of time - they had presumably passed away.  Their guilty secret undiscovered, their spirits wracked with guilt, they had returned to this place.  And the play - the tableaux - had begun.  In the theatre of the ghost-world they had created, the play had run for a very long time.  The five-member audience was appreciative, even unto death.  And so it had gone on.Who to blame?  Inuriel, Zana had grudgingly admitted, was perhaps least of all to blame for this.  Her only crime, to love a foolish Sarcosan prince.  She had more than suffered enough. Peleorin?  Naturally.  The deaths of Inuriel, Daghu and his entourage lay at the murderer's feet.  But that had been a single bloody act.  Not centuries of torment.  It was Loren and the others - the elves who had covered up the deed, set the wheels in motion.  They were truly to blame - they and all elf-kind."We are weak.  You are strong.  But your souls are empty.  You are a dying race.  For all our suffering, all our pain, we will go on.  One day, there will be no more elves.  But Humanity will endure.  Fare well, Inuriel.  Rest in peace."With words something like these, Zana had turned away from the Inuriel-shade, apparently laid to rest at last, and rejoined the others in Treetown under a modern sky.  She could not stand even to look at Apari the Ghostwalker, who perhaps once she might have called friend.  Later, she had quietly spoken with Katrin, stated her intent to leave Jez's Band, head west alone into the forest.  Alone with her thoughts, and perhaps some kind of peace.</blockquote>

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