by J. Gibson
In the garden grew lemon balm, chives, and mint, among other herbs. Trimmed hedges, crape myrtle flowers, maple trees, and white fringe trees ornamented the grounds, elaborate in alignment and immaculate in keep. His current station allowed him a fine vantage point.
As night fell, the rain left the stone walkways below wet and shimmering. It battered the window, and in the distance, lightning crackled across the sky, spreading out like veins and igniting the world underneath in melancholy shades of blue for a moment. Watery moons and reflective rings dripped thinly through the clouds.
“Father,” came a soft voice, behind him.
A figure drew his eye from its corner. A woman. He turned. Blonde hair framed a sculpted face, slim and symmetrical. Dead amber eyes watched him with uncanny stillness from delicate sockets. He did not recall having seen the young woman prior. She wore a gown of black velvet with a necklace of rubies that fastened tight at the throat. Not a deacon. The Church did not permit the sisters such finery.
“May I help you?”
“What ails you?” A monotonous smoothness layered her intonation, like a serpent gliding across motionless water. Her face glowed white in the moonlight that shone through the window at his back. The room warmed as the light spread.
He observed the stranger with a wariness, lungs convulsing. Did he appear ailed? With all that he had seen as of late, he must remain guarded. “Do I know you?”
“I am called Arulan, Father. Lady Arulan, if it pleases.”
“Lady Arulan?” he answered with a careful delay. “Have you but the one name?”
“But the one.”
An unnaturalness hung about her, not in anything she did or said, in particular, but in the slightest of her movements. Her face stiffened and expressed in unison. When he asked her name, the corner of her mouth twitched, as though eschewing a smile. A faint amusement played across her eyes.
My mind sees specters in every corner.
“Tell me, do you long to leave this place?” she said.
The question caught him by surprise. He knitted his brow, hesitant to engage her.
What is this?
“Mys, I’m afraid I don’t—”
The woman reached out and touched him at the neck. Her motion blurred. He heard a scream. It sounded as if it were outside of him, yet his throat rumbled. His skin burned at her contact, as though she were fire made flesh, and a blackness came over his vision. He fell, descending into a boundless pit, devoid of light or noise. The heat spread until it consumed him, and a coldness followed. He could not move. His body numbed with the chill. If he saw, nothing met his sight.
A droning racket pierced his mind; a dull, familiar squeal, quiet at first, then growing louder. It swelled until he could hardly stand the pressure. He had no hands with which to cover his ears, or ears to find. He had no mouth with which to scream. The Beast. She had found him. She had infiltrated the Priory and come to finish their business, to take his tattered spirit for her own.
The voice had returned.
His eyes opened in a daze, caked at their corners as if from a long slumber. Peering up to the night sky, cool droplets of rain sprinkled across his face. He moved to a sit, unsteady and struggling to take on the dual pursuits of restraining an urge to vomit and making sense of his surroundings. His eyes scanned the area at his sides, a road. Am I dreaming? Dead? Once more, a surrealness in which his senses were deceitful had thrust itself upon him. Or not. He could not know. One certainty existed, however: the power of this creature, this Beast, as he had called her, or it, exceeded their imaginations.
Across the street stood a house excluded from the neighborhoods, a stone hovel with a freshly-sodded roof. The rest of the common homes, lined in rows and blocks, were distant and dark in the pale moonlight. Trees and overgrown vegetation littered the area around him. Though his exact location remained elusive, he suspected he may be near Outmore Loch, well beyond the walls of Aros. How had he arrived here, so far from the Priory?
By the window of the dwelling passed a woman, or what he believed to be a woman, if she were real. What might have been an oil lamp lit her living quarter. The source burned too bright and constant for candles. Her home seemed illuminated solely to give him sight of her.
He pushed himself up, the inside of his skull pulsating. The joints of his body ached, his muscles tense and sore, as if overexerted. He tottered, yet kept his balance. His robes had torn at the edges and frayed at the seams. A rush of murky wind brought the scent of sulfur to him, drowning out the smells of the city and outer commune. I am between the countryside and the residential districts beyond the city’s walls. I must be.
Another aroma came to him. The noxious stench of tainted flesh, filthy blood, and death. He could barely stomach it and covered his nose. The woman passed the window again. He felt a fresh compulsion. He was an eldered man, isolated, still recovering. She was a young woman. But even in his haggard state, he could overcome her.
Why?
Why did he think it?
She passed the window once more.
No, no.
I mustn’t.
I cannot.
“Go forth, Father,” a tone buzzed, as a hot breath crawling up his neck. He turned to find its origin. Alina stood beside him, her features sunken, wasted, as she had been in the cold, dark woodshed.
No! his mind screamed. It isn’t her! He did not speak it.
“It won’t be difficult,” the imitation Alina said, louder.
He stepped one pace away.
“Take her for your first,” the girl continued, moving nearer. “No one knows you are here.”
“Enough!” He swiped at the air, his arms and hands quivering to the fingertips. “You are not Alina! I saw her dead myself. The capital has her body.”
She gave a crooked smile, baring yellowed fangs. Then she cackled. The sound echoed among the houses and trees, and came from inside him. His mind filled with it. “She is weak, Garron. Weaker than you, such as you are.”
The words escaped her lips and rose from within him in union; disorienting, overwhelming. He continued to back away and almost lost his balance as his heel scraped over a stone that jutted up from the road.
“Take her, Garron!” she ordered. “Take her!”
“No!” His throat grew raw with the cold. He fought with every ounce of his strength to anchor himself in place, until his body burned with the strain. Laughter arose as a cacophony, as a hundred voices in chorus, shrieking in his head. He found himself at the woman’s door, hand on its surface. Please, Mother, stop me. Free me of this creature. Strike me down before I take another step.
That night began the end. It welled up from within, from the call of his spirit. Waves of heat pulsated through him and made him sweat. Cold air collided with his moist skin and chilled him. The world faded in and out. He heard no noise around him for a moment, then the sounds flooded back. His life had become a dream melted into waking. The hissing swarm in his head persisted as the only constant. So many words, tormenting and scraping, crying and laughing, growling and screeching. The most powerful, that cursed creature’s voice.
Take her, it demanded. Take her!
With a careful push, he opened the woman’s door, its hinges quiet. A small oil lamp on a desk in the corner lit the room. A damp cluster of decayed leaves covered the wooden floor near the entrance. The rest looked recently swept and tidied. The woman was nowhere in sight.
Why isn’t the door sealed?
Why, must I?
He stood in the fore of her home and gazed about the space. A modest hearth warmed the air, made it hazy and sweet. Dust and smoke wafted in the streams of light pouring through the window. With a few inaudible steps, he moved to the oil lamp and turned its wick knob until its flame faded out. Shadows crept up from the corners. This was certain to alert the woman, he reckoned, and it did. Measured footfalls approached from another room.
Leave, he begged inside. Turn away! Do not come!
Tak
e her, Father, began the voices again. Take her!
The woman stepped through the doorway of the common quarter and screamed at the sight of him. Garron lost himself at the noise. She turned to run, retreated to her bedchamber. Garron followed. She pivoted as he lunged and caught him with a dagger, but his size dwarfed hers, even in this state, and he took her by the wrists. They fell to the ground together and he positioned himself over her. She lost the blade and fought, clawing at his hands until she drew blood. She screamed and he screamed back, ribbons of saliva dripping from his mouth onto her face.
Take her, Father! Take her!
The squalling in his head expanded, louder and louder, a muddled clamor. He heard nothing else. It blocked out the woman’s pleas and cries for help. A pool of blood spread next to her. She must have stabbed him in the side with her dagger, but he didn’t feel it. He yearned to ruin her, empty of all things beyond that drive. They thrashed about one another like rabid dogs. She bit into his right hand and he struck her with his left, freeing her to claw him at the neck. She kicked and ripped and he grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, letting her tear at his forearms as she willed. Blood and hair and cloth spattered the floor around them.
She gurgled and sputtered and her pale face and brown eyes reddened, the veins around her forehead and jaw bulging, her legs flailing against his. Her lips moved, attempted to speak, but the pressure on her throat prevented it. He slammed her head into the floor a few times in violent fits and jerks, dazing her. Her eyes rolled after the third strike and she spat up thick spittle, pink with blood, but she did not capitulate.
A grey hand came down next to his victim’s face, claws at the ends of long, spindly fingers scraping across the floor. Another had appeared in the room. The woman from the Vale. That wretched horned monster. Her empty eyes flickered and she grinned with rows of sharp crooked teeth, the same as Alina’s, when she had pretended to be Alina. He did not recoil in horror, but instead squeezed the woman’s neck harder.
“Kill her.” The creature gnashed at him. “Kill her!”
The woman under Garron did not react to the Beast, though it hovered at her side on all fours.
Is the creature real? Is this real? His fingers tautened, digging into the woman’s throat as her grip on his wrists lightened, nails unsunk like small knives from his aged, leathered hide. He bled down the hands from the wounds she had made. She had gouged him deep and well.
A chill swept through the center of his back and chest. No, no, no! Shouting in his mind. He resisted the voice, the compulsion, the mutterings; he defied his ensorcellment. With his full might, he loosened his fingers. The Beast had gone in an instant, in the time between. He tore himself off of the woman and fell, shoving away with frenzied feet until his back slammed into the chamber wall. The wood groaned at the force.
“Forgive—forgive me,” he rasped.
The woman wheezed and coughed, breathing jagged and labored. She wept between sharp inhalations, rolling onto her hip and shoulder. Her neck had already purpled from his grip. Much longer and he would have stolen the life from her. She had been close to losing consciousness.
Smeared with blood and sweat, her long chestnut hair had unbound and swept around her face, stuck at the eyes and lips. She bled from the nose and mouth from their struggle.
A mindless rage and fear coursed through him. Before the woman had time to regain her senses and retaliate or run for help, he fled. He flew from the house, raced down the dark stone streets. How much farther? How much farther? The whispers had ceased as soon as he had let go of her, but too late, for the damage had rooted deep and taken hold. His breath puffed from his mouth in white streamers and his sores throbbed and stung as his numbness subsided. The temperature had declined. How long had he been there, been gone?
Terror kept him running and shame brought him agony. He pressed a hand to his side as he ran on unbalanced and tender feet, aged legs weak and burning, realizing again that he bled. She had cut him. He had to stall the flow, or die. He might accept the latter. He wanted to fall to the ground and let the life seep out of him. Instead, he kept moving.
He came upon a river and collapsed to his hands and knees. The wind snapped at him from every direction, bit into his neck and ears. He hoped the cold might carry him off, release him from this shell. Why he had kept going, he could not confess. He did not deserve to live and be free.
Through his cries, he listened to the rushing water in front of and below him, spreading off into the darkness between walls of forest. “I’ll drown myself,” he said into the open air. “I do not deserve to live.” He clenched his teeth together and dug his fingers into the ground. “Mother!” he bellowed, a gruff, hopeless wail. He fell to his side on the riverbank, frozen and unforgiving. “Why! Why do you not protect me!” he sobbed with hysteria, pulling in desperation at the neck of his robes until his knuckles turned white.
“Garron Latimer,” came a voice.
“Father Garron Latimer.” A woman spoke.
Gohheia?
Is this the end?
“‘Tis he,” another woman, he thought, replied. “His appearance matches the description.”
“What’s happened to you, Father?” the first said.
“Never mind that. Let’s return him to the Priory. Archbishop Delacroix wants to see him. ‘Tis not for us to ask,” answered the second. “He’s out of his head.”
He recognized the women through blurred vision. Their attire, that is. Matching, ornate plate armor wrapped them, silver and glistening in the muted light. They were Martial inquisitors; religious police sent to retrieve him for the Ennead, no doubt, or to arrest him for his crime. It mattered little which.
Take her.
The voice had gone, but he could not shake it.
Take her.
He tried to yell, to get up and run and fling himself into the river before they seized him, to end the pain. His body would not move. The grey world around him spun. Thin and thick clouds of off-white swam overhead, combusted by the Earth’s moons. Those distant celestial figures, idle among countless, careless stars.
He drifted away.
CHAPTER VII: GHORA
Athenne
They continued their journey northwest, their leather satchels filled with aetherlight-infused powder bombs, concealed from weather and sight by hooded cloaks in dyes of grey and black. They rode in single file down a tapered path between endless leaning trees in copses and sparse rows. The trees at first were green, then rose in shades of orange and brown, then were barren. Empty branches sprawled upward and unfolded and dripped with the misting rain that fell. Darkness crept about them as a storm approached.
For a time, there had been the scent of clean earth and wilds; butterflies flittered, fox squirrels chittered, birds sang and flew. The further north they ventured, the stiller the world became, and the cooler, and the murkier. The wind died down, and only the sprinkle and white fog of the air remained, hovering on the road amidst wood trunks. Life seemed empty in this bareness. It emphasized the insignificance of their quest and themselves in the face of the great, expansive underrealm. So many of their fleeting moments, mortals spent watching the world pass by, eyeing the ground, moving from one place to another without a thought.
Athenne had alleviated her boredom from the trip by burying her mind in a maze of darting ruminations, most pointless beyond the escape they provided. Eclih and Bhathric did not always try to force her to socialize. When they did, she feigned interest and want of them as best she could. This endeavor must not, could not, be joyous. In a few weeks, they would be within the walls of Aros, slipped through as vermin crawling in crevices to flee exposure.
A cool wind revealed itself again and exhaled across her face and dry lips. The breeze blew her cloak such that she became aware of its heaviness and uncomfortable, rubbing dampness. Its seams and stray threads scratched at her shoulders and wrists and neck. Filth clung to her skin like epoxy resin between panels of glass. The stink of dirt and
living wrapped every inch of her. She despised the greased tangling of her hair and the incessant labor of grooming it back and rebinding it.
“I tire, but we ought to keep going. We rose late, for Bhathric’s handsomeness takes much rest.” Eclih shot Bhathric an amused glance and a sly smile.
Bhathric snorted and swept her hair from her forehead with her right hand, at war with the same problem as Athenne. “If I fall to the road, I’ll sleep where I land. We’re as the beasts in these backwoods.”
“Ever the lady, our dear Athenne,” Eclih called over his shoulder to her position at the end of their line. “Nary an ill word unto anyone, even in jest.”
“Nary an ugly word for Mys Bhathric,” Athenne said. “Lest I offend the Mother for insolence against Her loveliest daughter.” Her words would ring as an undeniable truth to anyone with sound eyes.
The union of Bhathric and Eclih defied social convention. Imperial women and men rarely spent so much time together, or kept to one another with such faith. Then again, they weren’t the staunchest Imperials to start with.
Women and men in Reneris, on the other hand, often made mutual pledges of exclusiveness, so Athenne went undisturbed by their prolonged coupling. Had she been Imperial-born and bred, she might have pitied Bhathric for their arrangement, detested Eclih’s forthright approach to her, derided them as nesters.
“You flatter me. Though, you’re not afflicted with a frightening likeness yourself.” Bhathric winked at her.
“Ah, I see.” Eclih chuckled. “You do conspire at my back.”
Bhathric laughed. “I am compelled.”
Athenne returned a smirk. She didn’t want to seem so perennially morose. She wished to jest and grin, to know them better. They evidently desired to understand and befriend her. Yet the means to maintain a joyful disposition stretched beyond her grasp, for the looming of odious deeds poisoned the task ahead.