by Libby Doyle
“Are you certain?” Pellus asked. “I see similar knives in here.”
“I told you, it’s not mine.”
“Monsieur Archibaud,” Pellus said. “We do not wish to bring you trouble. We only wish to know for whom this dagger was made. Tell us and we will be on our way. You will never see us again and no one will know we have been here.”
“There is nothing to tell. If you have no desire to engage my services now that you know I didn’t make that dagger, I would ask you to leave. I have work to do.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Barakiel said, glancing at Pellus before moving directly in front of Archibaud. “We’ve come a long way, you see. It’s critical we determine for whom this dagger was made.”
Staring down at the counter, Archibaud took a step back. “I told you I didn’t make it, so how would I know?”
“We don’t believe you,” Barakiel said. “You grew nervous the moment my colleague showed you the dagger. We know you made it. Tell us for whom, and you will have no trouble.”
Sweat broke out on Archibaud’s lip. He glanced sidelong at Barakiel, then tried to flee toward the back of his shop. Barakiel grabbed him by the collar of his heavy work shirt, grasped his leather apron and hauled him over the counter. When he had him on the other side, he pinned Archibaud against it, holding him by the throat. He loomed over him, speaking low and insistent.
“You should tell us what we want to know, Monsieur. I assure you, the people you fear are not half as dangerous as I am.”
“They’ll kill me,” Archibaud said in a hoarse whisper. “They’re perversions. Mother Mary save me.”
“We’ll rid you of them,” Barakiel said. “We know something of their vile purpose.”
“Who, who are you?”
“We are citizens who know of others they have harmed, and we are in a position to stop them. Tell us who they are.”
“I can’t,” Archibaud said. Barakiel frowned and squeezed his throat, causing him to make a choking sound.
“Die today?” Barakiel said. “Or take the chance you will not die tomorrow?”
Archibaud pounded his hands against the side of the counter. Barakiel released some pressure.
“I’ll tell you, God help me,” the craftsman blurted between gulps of air. “Please don’t hurt me. I have children.”
“You won’t be harmed.”
“They call themselves monks, but I don’t know. I don’t know what they are. They say they keep the traditions of the Abbaye d’Ulmet in the Camargue.” Barakiel snapped his head toward Pellus.
Abbaye d’Ulmet! This cannot be good.
“They’re not, uh, they’re not men of God,” Archibaud continued. “I’ve never feared a man of God.”
“Can we find them at the Abbaye?” Barakiel asked.
“The Abbaye is nothing but a ruin,” Archibaud said. “I think they live somewhere near the site, but I don’t know, not really.”
“When was your last contact with them?”
“I’ve told you who they are, now please, leave me alone.”
“We’re grateful for your assistance, Monsieur Archibaud,” Barakiel said. “I don’t know what they did to you to make you so afraid, but the more you tell us, the more likely it will be that you’ll never come into contact with them again.”
“They know things about me, about my family. They asked that I keep the work I do for them to myself, but their request was not a request. I was chilled to the bone,” Archibaud said.
“We’re not afraid of them, monsieur. What work did you do for them?”
“Sixteen of those daggers. I haven’t seen them since early December.”
“Thank you, Monsieur Archibaud. You’ve been very helpful.” The two Covalent turned to leave.
“Please, do what you say,” Archibaud called after them. “Don’t let them hurt my family.”
“We won’t let them hurt anyone.”
As soon as the Covalent had moved some distance from the shop, Pellus nearly broke into a run.
“The brothers in the Camargue!” he exclaimed. “They witnessed your battle with the demons, remember? I failed to conceal the fight because I was dealing with the Corrupted.”
“I remember.”
“This is terrible,” Pellus continued. “When did you live at the Abbaye, Barakiel?”
“The late 13th century. I left after they witnessed my battle.”
Pellus drew his hand roughly down his face before entering a small park. Barakiel followed and they stopped behind a yew tree. The thick foliage obscured them.
“This is beyond strange. Seven centuries ago! An eternity for humans, yet this must be about you. I do not see how it could be otherwise. How do they know you are in Philadelphia?”
“I have no idea,” Barakiel said, staring with unfocused eyes into the leaves as he absently rubbed his forearm.
“We must find out what is happening,” Pellus said, his normally serene voice edged with sharpness. He scanned the sky in search of a kinetic rift.
“Please do not worry so much, Pellus. We have two months until the summer solstice. Two months to find them and stop them from harming anyone else.” He put a reassuring hand on the adept’s arm.
They cannot hide from us. Not for long.
The Camargue, Earthly Year 1298, Phase 12790
The moonlight joined the ghostly whispering of the marsh grasses as Barakiel slipped out of the blockish gray edifice of the Abbaye d'Ulmet. Normally, he would enjoy such a night, when the étang gleamed like a pool of molten silver and the broad, flat expanse of the Camargue was transformed into a fullness of energy by the frosty heavens. But tonight was the winter solstice, and he had reason to curse the sky’s bright orb for taking away his cover. Tonight, he would battle the demons his father sent to attack him, their appearance as inevitable as the slumber of the Earth.
The battle itself didn’t worry him. Pellus would conceal that under a curtain of refracted light. The adept could easily manipulate particles in the air, arranging them in a lattice to serve as trillions of tiny lenses that transported light from one spot to another. All the weak eyes of humans would see, if they noticed anything at all, would be an odd flatness.
The trouble was, he didn’t want to waste energy concealing himself before a battle. Nor did he want anyone to see him as he traversed the spongy ground to where Pellus had told him the nearest branch of the axial rift would open, only a half mile from the Abbaye.
Barakiel reached the hard-packed strand that curved around the étang reasonably sure that no one had seen him. Though he could not sense Pellus, he had no time to worry. The demons shot out and rushed straight at him with gleeful howls, shaking their double-sided axes. Barakiel’s body gathered power from the salt marsh and the sea, his armor glowing in anticipation. That power would extend along his arm and explode into his sword and he would draw the blood of demons as he was born to do.
He ran to meet the sturdy beasts, plunging his sword into the chest of the closest with a yell, moving so quickly his victim could not elude him. Barakiel used his embedded blade like a handle to fling the dead demon into a gang of others nearby. When he yanked his sword free, a thick stream of brown blood poured from the demon’s chest.
The other demons cast the body aside, but Barakiel didn’t have time to make it out of the crowd as he had hoped. Two beasts flew in from the right. He managed to disable the first with a deep cut to its knee, then kill it with a quick stab of his dagger. At the same time, he struck the second in the face with the pommel of his sword, but this was not enough. The demon cut though Barakiel’s armor, leaving a red, pulpy gash in his side.
Betraying the merest hint of pain, Barakiel plunged his dagger into the demon’s throat with his left hand as it was made vulnerable by the closeness of its attack. He then pivoted to confront the demon attacking him from behind, raising his sword high across his body with his right hand and swinging it down in a powerful arc. He severed the demon’s head. Brown blood
pumped out of its neck stump as it fell.
With space now cleared in front of him, Barakiel ran through the high reeds toward the marsh. Being used to it, he could easily navigate the muck. He hoped the demons would find themselves knee deep. Then he saw them, a group of monks from the Abbaye, staring aghast at him and the slobbering clutch of demons.
What in all the realms? Where is Pellus?
Shaking off his surprise, Barakiel realized he needed to make quick work of the demons or they might decide to rip out the throat of a human for sport. He leaped onto a tuft of wiry grass about fifteen feet in front of him. The demons increased their speed, alarmed at this burst of movement.
The warrior smirked. They behaved exactly as he expected. The beasts ran into the marsh with no thought to their footing and were soon slowed by the sucking mud. Barakiel picked his way among them, taking their heads or impaling them as dictated by their position within the unsteady terrain. The demons’ clawed feet left little pools of silvery light as they struggled to move fast enough to evade the warrior’s sword. Not a single one succeeded.
When the task of killing them was done, Barakiel raised his head in time to see the monks running towards the Abbaye, their numerous falls revealing their panic. He was considering his options when Pellus ran up from behind the reeds.
“I am sorry, Barakiel. I could not make it back in time to conceal your battle.” Pellus squinted at his side. “You are wounded. Are you all right?”
“Nothing to worry about.” Barakiel gestured dismissively at the gash in his side, causing Pellus to scowl.
“What would it take, I wonder, for you to treat a wound seriously? Severed limb?” Pellus cocked his head and stared at Barakiel’s side for a moment. The scarlet blood darkened and congealed. “There. At least your guts will not ooze out before I take you to the healers.”
“Yes, yes,” Barakiel mumbled. “But what happened? Why were you delayed?”
“The Corrupted. Lucifer tried to obscure them so they could travel through the axial rift. I was able to block them but it took some time. Do not worry. They will not delay me again.”
Pellus explained that Lucifer had been able to surround the Corrupted with a field of neutral particles of a type abundant everywhere in the cosmos. If the dark warriors had made it through, Barakiel would have faced a battle that few could survive. The Corrupted were Warriors of the Rising who had joined Lucifer in his rebellion. They had been the elite of the Council Forces, but bore a slavish loyalty to Lucifer and were afflicted with his same overwhelming lust for power. Although they no longer shined with Balance, they were filled with the baffling force of Destruction. Stronger than demons, with a keen intelligence, it would take much more than a trick with a salt marsh to defeat them.
“Thank the Guardians you stopped them, Pellus, but the monks witnessed the battle. What should we do?”
“What can we do?” Pellus flung up his hands. “To kill the monks would undermine your Balance, and you cannot afford it. I suppose these superstitious creatures will spin more tales of the servants of Satan, more fodder for the ancient myths. You should leave, of course. You should leave immediately.”
The Covalent moved back through the mire to the strand, where the adept scanned the sky to find the nearest kinetic rift. He pointed off toward the west.
“What about your belongings? Do you need anything?” Pellus asked.
“Not really. I regret leaving my vielle and my Saxon sword.”
“I will return concealed and retrieve them for you while you are with the healers. It will be hard enough to make a new place for yourself. You will need your music, even if it is normally a quickener’s pursuit. Nor would I want you to lose the only thing you have left from the Saxons.”
“Yes. Thank you, Pellus. That vielle has a pure tone. I would hate to lose it and I love that old rough-hewn sword. Silly, I suppose.”
“No, warrior, it is not silly,” Pellus said softly.
They trudged along, Barakiel a little slower with his pain. “You must be happy you did not get my usual argument against changing locations,” he said. “I do not regret leaving this place. These French Cistercians are corrupt. I think that is why they did not join their brothers when most of the Abbaye moved to Sylvéréal twenty years ago. They wish to avoid the scrutiny of their order. Why do you think they were wandering the marsh at night? They were returning from the garrison. Balance only knows what they were doing there.”
“I know you do not trust them. Do you have any thoughts as to where you would like to go?”
Barakiel shrugged. “Does it matter? For five centuries I have lived in the Earthly Realm, and I still feel like a stranger, at least since I left the Saxons. No matter where I go, I must remain apart. Perhaps I should haunt a high mountain, appearing in the villages wrapped in light like the Covalent of ages past, to bestow messages upon the humans from their God.”
“Oh, you are hilarious.”
The Camargue, Earthly Year 2014, Phase 18997
The two Covalent emerged from the rift onto the flat, windy sweep of the marsh not far from the monastery. It was indeed a dug-out ruin as Archibaud had said. Barakiel and Pellus walked among the rectangular pits left by some university project.
The site was alongside the Étang d’Ulmet, the brackish lake from which the monks had collected salt to sell so many centuries before. Barakiel looked out over the boggy expanse of the Camargue, flat and green and tan as far as the eye could see. The wind flattened the grasses on the verge of the étang, and the water birds cried as they plunged into the shallows, searching for food.
“Well, what shall we do, Pellus? I see a group of buildings off in the distance. Shall we investigate?”
Pellus assented and they walked in that direction. When they got closer they saw it was a ranch, judging from the structures, but one that didn’t appear to be functioning.
“I need to conceal us more thoroughly,” Pellus said, his eyes taking on the penetrating quality they got when he was seeing something only a traveler could see. The two Covalent hopped the fence and headed to the ranch house, a large, two-story structure in whitewash. Barakiel stepped onto the porch and listened.
“I do not hear any movement,” he said. Pellus stared at the door for a moment, then tapped the lock plate. Barakiel heard the tumbler. He swung the door open and they moved slowly through the house, looking for anything that would indicate the people responsible for the rituals in Philadelphia lived there. Pellus intently scanned the walls.
“Follow me,” he said. He led Barakiel to a room in the back fashioned as a chapel, complete with stained glass windows glowing blood red in the slanted afternoon sun.
“That is a false wall.” Pellus pointed behind the altar. Barakiel examined it.
“Under there perhaps, to the right,” Pellus added, pointing to a heavy tapestry depicting Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Barakiel pulled back the tapestry to reveal a seam. He applied pressure and a door popped open. He held the tapestry so Pellus could enter the secret room. Barakiel followed, crouching to get through the small aperture.
“What in all the realms?” Pellus said. They slowly turned, taking in murals depicting demons engaged in various acts of hedonism or violence. The demons copulated with each other, and with humans and animals. In one mural, they fell in a frenzied mob upon a Covalent, judging by the figure’s armor. At the center was a depiction that froze Barakiel’s heart in his chest.
My father.
None of the figures had been given distinct features, but Barakiel knew it was Lucifer because of the sword held aloft by the huge warrior.
“I know that sword,” he said. “I traced my tiny fingers along its jeweled hilt when I was a child.”
Demons worshipped at Lucifer’s feet in the mural, and on either side, falling away from the center, hordes of humans drank, feasted and fornicated.
“Pellus, what does this mean?”
“I fear these monks worship your father,” Pellus said. “
Look, an altar and a basin for catching the blood. I can see the residue. It quivers there. Balance help us, they sacrifice humans to him.”
“I must kill them. I have not killed a human in twelve-hundred years.”
“We need to think about this, Barakiel. You will pay a heavy price for such an act, which will interfere with your duties as a warrior. To kill such weak creatures will tilt you out of Balance. If you were to ask the Council, they would forbid it.”
“Of course the Council would forbid it. They do not care how many innocent humans are murdered, but I do. I must stop this.”
“I understand, but we need to be sure.” Pellus said he thought it best if he returned to the Camargue alone, close to the summer solstice, to see if the false monks planned a trip to Philadelphia. He wanted confirmation that they were killers before Barakiel took the drastic step of ending their lives.
“Yes, certainty will help me,” Barakiel said. “I do not want to kill humans, not even these craven creatures. I remember how it feels. I remember how I became disgusted with myself.”
“I will watch them, and you will have your certainty.”
“But we cannot let them kill anyone else! We cannot let them kill someone in Philadelphia.”
“Do not worry. I can intervene.”
“What about Archibaud? What about the people here?” Barakiel had to make an effort to keep his voice down.
“We are concealed. They will never know we have been here. Archibaud is in no worse a position than when we entered his shop. They already have the daggers for the solstice ritual so they have no reason to go back there. He will be safe until I confirm their vile deeds.”
“And the people here? What if someone is taken?”
“It cannot be helped, Barakiel.”
“But I should help them! Protect them!” He turned to glare at the image of his father. “It is my duty. This is my fault.”
“Please, be patient. You will protect the humans, but I do not want the cost to be too high.”
“What cost is too high for me to bear?” Barakiel paced across the room. “Obviously, I am responsible for this. Somehow my presence here gave rise to a band of murderous monks who slit people’s throats in the name of my father. I was not even aware. I cannot imagine how the monks’ exposure to my battle with demons led to this, but it can hardly be anything else, now can it?”