Before the Crow

by Aaron Bunce

  A sharp noise echoed off of the stone behind, and beneath him. He recognized the telltale crack of breaking wood, quickly punctuated by men arguing. Quietly, Brother Dalman slipped behind a stack of crates, and around the bend to his left. With no cover before him, the aged monk moved along quickly, keeping his back pressed firmly to the smooth stone of the building behind him.

  Brother Dalman could see the cart, its horse, and the men who had followed its progression through the city. Aware that he was exposed, he ducked down, and slid into the first arched doorway that appeared. Satisfied with the deep and concealing shadows, Brother Dalman slid slowly forward until he could see the men working.

  The cart was backed up to the river wall. The tarp covering its contents had been pulled aside, revealing a pile of large, neatly stacked bundles.

  The two men fussed and cursed, but appeared unable to lower the wagon’s gate. Finally, the men gave up and started wrestling one of the bundles up to the edge.

  Brother Dalman felt his breath catch in his throat as the piece tipped, and then tumbled down, landing with a splash into the fast moving current. He couldn’t see it as it floated by, but he saw it clearly enough as the men pulled it free. Even wrapped up in cloth, and bound in rope, he recognized the shape easily enough. The wagon was full of bodies.

  Another of the wagon’s occupants splashed into the river, and then another as the workers gained momentum with their labor. Brother Dalman watched the two men as they discarded the dead, working as casually as farm hands tossing bales of straw or hay. When they finally finished, the horrified monk counted over two dozen bodies.

  Brother Dalman wasn’t naïve; he’d seen such carts rumbling up lanes in numerous cities in the past, collecting the dead, or in some cases, the dying, like refuse. But those were times of plague, or conflict. He’d followed the wagon from Councilman DuChamp’s home.

  Clearly I have underestimated Gladeus, he thought darkly.

  The workers tossed the canvas tarp into the wagon and jumped down to the ground, talking and laughing openly. One of the men stopped next to the wagon, and after retrieving a thick coat he had removed prior, lifted it, and moved to pull it over his head. As he shifted, the sleeve of his shirt slipped down his wrist, exposing a bracelet, or shackle. It pulsed dimly in the murky night air. And then he was gone, following his counterpart back down Braggart’s Way.

  Brother Dalman started sliding back, and moved to pull away from the corner of the building, but froze when something caught his eye. A dark shape, little more than a shadow perched atop the wagon, moved. It was a glimmer that caught his attention, or perhaps something that sparkled. A heartbeat later, a dark cloak was swept aside, and a man appeared.

  The small figure, draped in darkness, had been on the wagon bench the whole time. Brother Dalman cursed softly, taken aback by his quarry’s sudden appearance. For a moment, the monk’s mind spun as he reconsidered everything he had seen since following the wagon.

  With a casual flick of his wrists, the figure on the wagon reached down and scooped the reins off a hook on the cart’s fore-panel. Brother Dalman stepped backward, feeling his way along the wall with an outstretched hand. The lanterns above him surged brighter. He wouldn’t let the man fool his senses. He had dealt with too many tricksters before to become rattled by such deception.

  Keep your focus on what is real. Single thought, single purpose, he told himself.

  Yet, he could feel the shadow receding around him, as if the sun itself had just broken the horizon to chase away the night. He became keenly aware of the cold stone snagging his robes, grating his skin, but he didn’t dare stop.

  The lights grew brighter, black soot pouring out of the blackened vents. Brother Dalman pushed backwards, the retreating shadows chasing him like a hungry predator. The light stung his eyes, unnerving him deeply.

  Not tricks, what strange power does he wield? Ignore the tricks, stay focused, Brother Dalman thought in a panic.

  This wasn’t oil bladders or flash powder stashed in lanterns to scare superstitious commoners. This man’s power felt real, and dark. It filled the air like an oily, slippery rain, tainting everything it touched.

  Brother Dalman was moving one moment, and then he wasn’t the next. The stone wall surrounded him, and it took him a moment to realize that he had backed himself into a corner.

  The shadows slid towards him, ebbing and flowing like dark puddles of pitch. Brother Dalman pushed back into the corner, but there was nowhere else he could go. The shadows came to rest right before him, and then ever too subtly, they lapped up over his boots and then back again, moving like gently surging waves.

  A horse nickered loudly. A steel-shoed hoof pawed against the frozen ground. The noises jarred Brother Dalman’s attention off the shadows surrounding him, and onto the lane, and the strange figure seated upon the wagon.

  He couldn’t see their face through the heavy shadow of the cowl. A horrible doubt crept along his spine, and worked its way up until it throbbed in his head, pulsing painfully behind his eyes. In that moment, Brother Dalman experienced terror unlike any he had felt before.

  The air before him shimmered as his hands and legs started to quake. It appeared that the diminutive figure spoke, yet Brother Dalman couldn’t tell if it was just in his head, or if his ears were playing tricks on him. He tried to pull his gaze away, but found he couldn’t look away from the black void beneath the figure’s hood. A glint of metal glimmered in that darkness, followed quickly by a bright pulse of green light.

  Brother Dalman was running before he even realized that his legs were moving. He ran forward into the light and out into the lane, fully exposing himself, before ducking back into the shadows of a nearby alley.

  The monk’s heart pounded, and he couldn’t catch his breath. He didn’t dare stop. He knew that he had to get away from the terrible figure seated on the wagon…the figure with the metal face, and the ghostly green eyes.

  Chapter 7

  Moving Apart

  The path stretched out before them, obscured intermittently by pelting sheets of snow and ice. Julian’s head started to swim as the landscape tilted crazily around him. He slid his feet forward with each step, the strength to simply lift his feet from the ground almost completely exhausted.

  Julian and his hulking counterparts continued on for a great while, trudging forward against the icy drafts one moment and then stumbling forward when it dissipated. He struggled to maintain the pace set by the two warriors. With their longer gait they easily outpaced him, and grew impatient when he couldn’t keep up.

  “Waseek! Walk…faster,” the warrior growled and walked behind Julian. The force of two palms jolted him, rattling his body as he stumbled.

  Julian turned, glowering. He wanted to demand that they release him, but in truth, he would have settled for a rest. His exhaustion deepened by the footfall. His head pounded in time with his heart, and the bulk of his body became a tremendous burden.

  A gust of wind rose up in a crescendo, and for a moment, Julian stopped walking and was forced up straight. The warrior behind him came forward suddenly and struck forcibly, growling unintelligibly. Julian cried out and fell to a knee, his bones rattling painfully as if his muscles could barely hold his body together.

  Thoughts and memories swirled violently through his mind, flashing and breaking apart, like raw tidal waves of emotion. He could feel the cold, wet snow against his knees and hands, just as vividly as the violent hands of the warrior hefting him bodily from the ground. The entirety of the swirling storm fell away, sliding into the darkness.

  For a moment, Julian saw a dark underground cavern. It was wide and round, with a deep pool set within its interior. He knew the room, and in that moment he swore that he could feel the damp-covered stones and smell the musky air.

  In the next moment Julian was looking out over a green valley. The trees were lush and full. Rising above their dense canopies was a strange city, its buildings piercing the clouds like alabaster sp
ires. Julian felt a pang of familiarity, and with it, longing.

  The Nymradic withdrew deep inside, and in a disorienting rush, the emotions and vision were gone. Julian stumbled forward as the warriors pushed him into the darkness, and it took him a moment to realize that he was no longer buffeted from the wind.

  With great pain, he rolled over. One of the warriors huddled before him, while the other pulled several large branches over the opening to the cave.

  A spark flared, and then another. In the next moment a warm light filled the space and Julian smelled smoke. The disorienting rush in his head abated, and after a moment of rest, the painful pounding in his chest subsided. Julian pushed up onto his elbows, and then finally, managed to sit.

  He watched the shorter of the two warriors huddle on the ground, splintering branches and laying them delicately over a strange bundle of burning material. It reminded him of the special bricks his parent’s house goblins used to start fires. They were bundles of dried sticks, pasted together with animal fat and lashed in course yarn.

  Behind them, the taller warrior busied himself at the opening of the shallow cave, pulling rendered branches from a nearby pine tree and laying them over the opening for cover. He nodded, apparently pleased with his work and turned to join his companion at the fire. They huddled together, talking too quietly for Julian to hear, occasionally looking at him out of the corner of their eyes.

  Julian watched them for a time, until his head started to droop and his eyelids grew heavy. The fire grew in strength, filling the cave with warm light, spitting glittering sparks towards the cold stone overhead. Julian stared into the weaving flames, and let his eyes slide out of focus.

  No matter how much he tried to deny himself, he constantly slid back towards the vision of Tanea. Somehow, he traveled back to Craymore, if only part of him, and only for a moment.

  The weariness pulling at his heart and making his legs and arms insufferably heavy was connected to the vision and the Nymradic’s strange power. That power was running out. He could feel it.

  The two warriors barely paid him any mind now, only occasionally glancing over to check on him. They pulled a large sheet of animal hide out a bag and crouched down, pouring over it in the firelight with their backs to him.

  Is it a map, or instructions? Will it help me get home? He wondered, but even those thoughts were swallowed up by his weariness.

  Part of him wondered if the warriors knew how truly weak he was, or if they even cared. He tried to sit back and really focus for a moment, to see if he could pick up anything from their conversation, but he found the task simply too taxing.

  Beyond the howl of the wind and the crackle of the fire, Julian became increasingly aware of the fatigue, and the hollow, empty feeling it left inside him. It seeped down his arms and into his hands and fingers. Without the dull sting of the cold wind to drown it out, he started to feel a strange sensation building just beneath his skin.

  Julian shifted his weight and wiped at his face, trying to direct his thoughts onto anything else, but found that it was no use. One of the warriors shifted as he squatted down before the fire, and with the movement, his hood fell down, exposing the gray skin of his neck.

  Julian instantly felt his insides squirm, and his weariness transformed into an intense hunger. He felt it leeching into him, bubbling and surging like worms in his blood. A buzzing cut into his mind, and his left eye started to burn, as it did every time the Nymradic’s voice returned.

  Julian tried to shut his eyes, and hold his breath, until the strange sensation subsided, but even that felt like an insurmountable task. His eyes were locked on the warrior’s neck, but not his neck, something deeper, moving just beneath the large figure’s skin. The buzzing grew louder and before Julian realized what was happening, he rocked forward silently onto his knees.

  He felt compelled to grasp the warrior’s flesh, and consume his vital essence that so longingly called out to him. The voice hissed in his mind, yet it was not words, or any speech he had ever heard before, but something much more powerful. The burning in his eye intensified, and without thinking, he lifted his hands toward the closest warrior.

  Julian was only faintly aware of the pale skin of his hands, set to dance in wicked shadows by the dancing firelight. The rope was still in place, painfully binding his flesh, but that didn’t seem to be a concern at the moment, only the essence. Julian could see it now, burning like bright wisps of starlight just beneath the two warrior’s skin.

  He was so close to the two now that he could smell them. The air around him became turbulent and Julian’s nostrils were filled with a strange, sweet odor. It reminded him of home, his parents, but also of Tanea. A glimmer flickered in the corner of one of the warrior’s eyes, and with a quick, practiced twitch, he spun. Julian was facing their backs one moment, savoring the energy tumbling off of their bodies, and then he was staring down their blades the next.

  The strange blue swords gleamed in the warm light, their forward sloped and finely honed edges dancing threateningly in the air. Julian brought his hands up before him defensively as he fell back against the stone wall. It was in that moment that his fingers came into focus before him. Even the shifting firelight could not mask the strange sight, as his fingers and hands flexed and coiled in the air.

  “What are you doing?” the shorter of the two warriors growled angrily and pressed his sword point against Julian’s neck.

  “I…was,” Julian stammered, lifting his chin and edging away from the blade. “Cold, just wanted to warm by your fire.”

  Julian watched his fingers, which had been slithering about like serpents a heartbeat earlier, shrunk down, and with a pop, went still.

  “You come at our backs, like a sneak. And your face, it shines. It is as they said in our stories,” the larger of the two warriors said in his broken accent.

  “No, it’s just the cold, you see. I need to warm by the fire, just for a bit,” Julian continued, and let out a captured breath when one of the warriors withdrew his blade.

  He slid it back into its scabbard and reached down into his robe, yet his companion did not lower his blade.

  “It is more than you say, soft skin, just as you are more than you say. Perhaps you are what we have been watching and waiting for. That which the elders have spoken of…a sign. For so long that mountain was quiet, like a tomb, and nothing entered or came forth. Yes, for so long, many births, and many deaths. The days of darkness are at hand,” the taller warrior said slowly, and cryptically.

  He spoke in perfect common tongue, and for a moment, Julian lost track of who his captors were. When the warrior pulled his hand back out of his robes again, he held something round that shone in the pulsing light.

  “I’m just a…” Julian started to protest, but the warrior came forward and held the round object up before him. It was a mirror.

  Julian’s protest died away, choked off as his throat tightened. The face staring back at him was shocking, truly a stranger inhabiting his likeness. Angry scars traced their brutal history across his face.

  His skin was pale, and his cheeks were sunken, but what frightened him most was when the pressure in his head surged, a pulse of green light, trapped within the ringed iris of his left eye, burned bright.

  Now you see me, the little voice chimed in, breaking the silence.

  Julian pushed back, kicking and clawing with his hands and feet. The two warriors watched him, their expressions resolute, but neither moved. He could feel the stone of the cave pressing against his back, and in a panic moved to stand.

  Pain and darkness enveloped him as his head collided with the sloped roof of the cave. He crumpled to the stone, where he lay for a moment, his thoughts scattered and a dull ache throbbing from the top of his head. The fire was next to him, and the two warriors stood above him.

  “You knocked yourself senseless. You spook like a yearling deer,” the closer, and smaller of the two warriors said mockingly.

  “Stay away from me!”
Julian grunted, and rolled away from the two figures.

  The vision of a face flashed through his mind. It had pale skin, horrific scars, a wide, bloodshot brown eye, and the other, pulsing with a strange, haunting green radiance. He managed to roll up onto his side, but realized that neither of the warriors had moved.

  His hands twitched up to his neck, and like curious spiders, crawled over the strange terrain of a face he didn’t recognize. The two warriors watched him quietly, the smaller of the two still clutching his sword.

  Julian slumped back against the unforgiving stone, his vision going fuzzy and dark. He slid his hand to his head, where he found a painful lump. He pulled his hand down to his eyes, and grimaced. His hand was covered in a large clump of blood-matted hair.

  Julian let his head come to rest against the stone and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would take him quickly.

  Chapter 8

  Breaking the stalemate

  Tanea sat on the cold stone, her legs crossed. She was deep into her meditations. So deep that, for a time, everything around her was lost. She focused with absolute clarity on those things that brought her peace, while willfully pushing away those things that would set her into turmoil.

  Tanea’s attention wavered for a moment. It lasted the span of a heartbeat, but something broke her from her meditation. Perhaps it was nothing more than the gentle kiss of a breeze upon her neck. She focused on the swell of her breast as she drew air into her lungs, and then recited one of the ten moderations as she exhaled, determined not to be distracted again.

  She used the ancient decrees as a focal point to clear her mind, and with the chaos outside, and inside the city of late, she needed simple, concrete things to help keep her mind from wandering.