Cerek, known once as “Lightfingers”, was dying, and dying in great pain and fear too.
The rope tied round his left wrist dropped some 15 feet from the bronze piton hammered into the cliff top, suspending him some 70 feet above the rocky canyon floor. The drop was nauseating enough but the pain from his severed right wrist was far more sickening.
“Not so many light fingers now!” The brutish bandit chief, Versaag had guffawed, as he hewed Cerek’s hand with his tulwar, before commanding his band to tie the thief and tip him over the edge on the rope. “Die slowly.”
Cerek had lifted his arm as much as he could to minimise blood loss, and managed to find the tiniest of ledges to tiptoe his feet, taking the weight off his tied arm. He could not climb with one hand and a stump. He was weakening with blood loss, thirst and pain. And, as the sun began to dip, he knew what would emerge from the shadowed openings he could glimpse on the cliff face below.
He knew it was delirium when he felt the tug on the rope. Knew it was false hope when he felt the upwards pull. Knew he was imagining the face and brawny arms of the scarred, one-eyed female minotaur who pulled his slender frame up over the edge. Surely the cool water she poured down his parched throat was a lie, too?
The water revived him to an extent. He took in the powerful minotaur and muttered a grateful thanks.
“She cannot answer,” a soft voice spoke, “ they took her tongue as well as her eye. She is one of the maimed. As are you; that is why I saved you.”
Cerek looked towards the speaker. A woman, richly clad, as a Musarran noble, dark-haired and young.....or maybe not so young, something in her eyes......
“Then I thank you, lady....lady?”
“.....Kivasa.”
And Cerek blanched in fear. Kivasa the Sorceress. Kivasa the Damned. Kivasa, whose name was whispered in fear. Kivasa who, tavern tales told, had been devoured by a summoned demon three decades before.
She laughed, though he had not spoken aloud, “yes, that Kivasa, who now rescues those who were tortured, maimed, unjustly harmed. That Kivasa, who has....seen beyond....and now seeks to save her very being from that which lurks...and you, young Cerek, can help me.”