Icebound - Chapter 6
#8 of Icebound
Chapter 6 of Icebound
Cormanthor Forest, 1372 DR. 1st day of The Fading.
The full moon bathed him in it's pale illumination from high overhead. The light of the stars high overhead twinkled in the night sky. Everything else around was dark, and he could not see where he was. A sense of calm surrounded him, and he realized he wasn't in pain.
A pair of glowing silvery eyes were staring at him. The eyes seemed somehow feminine, though Aiden could not make out the rest of her. Several brightly twinkling stars lay behind her in the distance, framing her eyes as a halo of heavenly radiance. The eyes shifted slightly, and he got the impression that she was smiling at him. Perhaps he had died and this was the afterlife.
At that thought, he heard a soft tinkling noise that reminded him of both chimes and laughter. The eyes peered at him intently, and he had the impression that she was peering into his soul. Judging him.
Memories flashed through his mind. Playing with Scruff. Exploring Shadowdale as a child. Training with his father. Going hunting in the forest. Helping his mother with injured animals. Playing pranks with his brother. Defending Shadowdale from the raiders and the flying mage. His brother bleeding to death in his arms. Shame, remorse, and grief wrenched at his heart.
Then he was in the forest, and the monster was leaping out at him. He threw his arm up. Bones crunched, and pain flared. The monster didn't release this time, holding his arm in it's mouth. It stared at him with unblinking gold eyes.
The monster was clearly feline, like some enormous house cat. Black and orange markings ran around it's muzzle and head. As he stared at it, the fur faded, replaced with fair skin and blond hair. The face was as familiar to him as his brother's. It was the same one he saw in the polished silver mirror every morning.
He was staring at himself.
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A stray sunbeam made its way across his eyes, irritating him enough to wake him. At least it was warm today, and dry. Aiden opened his eyes and looked around, with a vague sense of unease, like he was forgetting something important.
He was naked and dusty, lying on the ground, huddled next to a tree. Nothing around him was familiar. This was the second night in a row that he'd woken up naked. The sense of unease deepened, creeping towards panic.
It was possible he'd been carried or dragged here by an animal. He didn't see any paw prints in the area around him. Then again, the ground around him was fairly dry. Why would an animal drag him any distance without eating him? That explanation didn't make any sense, and didn't account for his lack of clothing.
There was no logical reason he could think of why he would have woken up without any clothes on. Thinking frantically, he came to the frightening conclusion that he may indeed have gone mad, tearing the clothes off himself as he slept, and walking in his sleep. A chill ran up his spine. What if he truly had gone mad? Did a madman know that they were mad?
He tried to put the thought out of his mind and took stock of himself. The bruising on his arm had faded to a sickly yellow.
Looking around, he found a scrap of cloth lying on the ground. It looked like it had been shredded. He spent some more time searching, and eventually found a trail of torn clothing. Several minutes of stumbling through the forest on his sprained leg, he eventually found the clearing that he'd fallen asleep in.
While the remnants of his clothing were too badly ripped to be used as much but cleaning rags, and too filthy for that, he did find one boot and his bow. At least his remaining boot was still good..Everything else had been torn to pieces. He sighed and resigned himself to walking home naked and starving.
As he thought about food, he smelled mushrooms, of the edible variety. Right now it was on par with fresh baked bread and apple pie. His stomach clenched itself to his backbone at the thought, complaining bitterly about lack of food. He sniffed for a second and turned around.
Surely enough, there was a small cluster of mushrooms growing nearby, almost underneath a fallen log. He grabbed one and lifted the top off it, looking underneath the cap for any unpleasant surprises. Finding none, he popped the brown mushroom in his mouth and chewed for a second. They were much better baked with a bit of butter, but anything was better than nothing. The remaining two in the cluster went down just as quickly as the first, though his stomach was still complaining.
He once again stood up using his bow. He clenched his teeth at the pain and set off limping towards home, trying to ignore the dull ache in his sprained foot and the spikes of pain shooting up from his arm with every step he took. He fell a few times, slipping in patches of damp mud going downhill, each time crying out with pain as his arm was banged about.
He limped out of the woods nearly at dusk, shivering from the cold, covered in bruises, mud to the knees and smears of dirt elsewhere from when he'd fallen. A child saw him walking out of the forest on the east side of town and let out a yell.
Within moments he had a cloak thrown over him as several people came out to see what was going on, including the same silver-haired lady, Storm, that he'd aided during the bandit raid. He blushed mightily at the thought of her seeing him in the nude. Everyone was babbling, asking what had happened, until Lady Silverhand yelled for everyone to be quiet.
As he limped over to his parents' house a ways up the northern road, she asked what had happened and Aiden came up blank for a moment. He couldn't tell them the truth. Nobody would believe it anyway. Then a sudden thought came to him. He mumbled something about bandits, capture, and escape, hoping the lie would be accepted as truth. A ripple of noise ran through the crowd.
Storm looked at him with an odd expression on her face, but didn't say anything further. Perhaps she believed him. Somehow he didn't think so.
As they approached the house, his father Bran, immediately rushed to help him inside while yelling for Leda to get her healing kit. Storm kept everyone outside, telling everyone that everything was fine and they would find out what happened later. Aiden limped inside the house, looking forward to having a bath and some real food for the first time in days.