"Perhaps there is a way to avoid this unhappy betrothal," Korel ventured at last.
Arinnea answered, "Lord Kelvan has been chief among my suitors. His station is well advanced of my own, and certainly any would call me a fool to reject his offer." Lord Kelvan, Korel knew, was part of the king's personal guard and held high rank in the royal cavalry, certainly a man who knew how to fight and had seen good success in endeavors of war. Also, he was personally connected to the king. This was a man who would not be put off easily.
Korel spoke, a thoughtfulness running through his tone, "There is a noble, a man of letters and the law, who has honor and an eye for the nobility in men that is otherwise hid by circumstance. He may have enough influence to help you. I could take you to him, and my introduction should be enough to secure his help." Targor had cunning and resources and was loyal to both his friends and the innocent.
"I will take any advantage and as soon as I may," said Arinnea. "When news of my father's death reaches the ears of the full court, Lord Kelvan will press his advantage immediately. I would go now, if you are able."
Korel felt her urgency and assented. He carefully opened the door of the apartment and found the passage deserted. He took Arinnea by the hand and led her quickly down the corridor until they came to the edge of the inner courtyard where Korel had battled Thoren some years earlier. Old pillars of unnamed rock stood in each corner of the courtyard like accusing fingers pointing toward an uncaring sky, but too tired and worn to convey any real bitterness.
As they hurried across the courtyard, Lord Kelvan and four lieutenants appeared from behind the nearest pillar to block their passage.
"Well, what have we here," Kelvan sneered. "Mistress Arinnea and a secret peasant consort. Surely, Lady, you realize that such an offense is punishable by death, both yours and that of your concubine. But perhaps I could be persuaded to protect your good name if you could find a way to gratify my desire to give you aid and succor in this troublesome matter."
With this last pronouncement Kelvan threw himself at Arinnea while the lieutenants grappled with Korel. Korel escaped the men easily, but as he turned toward Kelvan, he saw that the lord had taken Arinnea by the throat, holding her close, keeping her between himself and Korel. Kelvin smirked at him. "You must realize you've become your own judge and executioner. I would pity you, were there any such insipid weakness within me, but alas, for your fate I care not."
A faint sound began to rise all around, voices almost whispering, crescendoing quickly now. A snicker came from the corner, a giggle from the wall, then the whole courtyard erupted in laughter as the curtains obscuring the surrounding balconies drew back to reveal hundreds of lords and ladies, royals of the court all laughing uproariously at Korel and the scene unfolding before them. King Toresten, being foremost upon the balcony, called down to him.
"I was hoping we would have the courtesy of your entertainment. My only regret is that this performance must be your last. You have proven yourself a most delightful talent, and I will miss your comedy. Unfortunately the law must be fulfilled, and so . . ."
Toresten gestured almost imperceptibly with his hand. The slow gravity of time accentuated in the midst of the surreal laughter and applause (the slow drift of Arinnea as Kelvin pulled her closer, a drop of sweat falling from Korel's brow to softly moisten the dust under foot, a high laugh briefly standing out above the underlying strains of mirth and then suddenly sucked back into the endless sea of droning voices) now began to accelerate rapidly, almost impossibly fast. Ten royal guardsmen appeared at each courtyard entrance and began running full stride toward Korel. Arinnea's eyes widened in a silent plea as Kelvin's grip tightened on her neck, his hands roughly pulling her behind an ancient pillar, his face alight with desire; the chorus of the surrounding mob rose to a pitch of frenzy, howls of laughter transforming into bellows for lust and blood, a pillar of sound soaring into the sky and churning the tired clouds into a cyclonic rage that swirled overhead, lightning flashing in torrents of angry spite.
A shriek sprang from Arinnea's throat, her form obscured by the pillar, a cry of fear, pain, but mostly rage, the pillar vibrating slightly with its peal. As the guards reached Korel, a deafening clap tore through the sky above, a blindingly white scar searing the air, coming to touch upon the top edge of the pillar, blowing rock in all directions, and melting its topmost remnants, then continuing down along its descending edge to the ground, turning all it touched to clear liquid glass. Men fell to the earth and did not move.
Shouts arose from the mob in the balconies as people fled in all directions, the tempest overhead continuing to rage, and over all the deep bellowing laughter of Toresten presided as a voyeuristic witness to the carnage below.
Korel ran. How many broken limbs and body parts had he left in his wake as he fled the thirsty mob? He could not remember. He found himself running through the last outskirts of the city, ascending into the first foothills that made up the base of the Mount of Instructure. In a glen partway up the mountainside he collapsed as exhaustion took him and awareness left him.
He gradually awakened to find the sun setting in the distant west, a west that seemed much more distant than when the day first began. Then he remembered how he had left Arinnea to her fate and a nauseous heat erupted in his belly, a burning akin to a coal dying from red to gray ash. And he wept. Tears fell to the glen floor, raising small bursts of dust. The thirsty ground eagerly drank the drops falling from his cheeks, and soon no trace of his sorrow remained.
Anger and bitterness swept through him again, the dying ember flaring red-white hot. The ember whitened to a near hatred of Toresten and an even greater hatred of himself. As the heat eased but a little, Korel remembered the old histories taught to him in the catacombs of the record keepers, part of his initiatory training in the instruction of the Quenivorian. It was rumored in the histories that a sleeping power dwelt in the East, a power as old as creation, passing almost out of knowledge all but forgotten, alone, hidden from the eyes of men.
As his mind wandered over the terrain of his own bitterness, there came over the distance the deep howl of wulvs (those wild ancestors of the common forest tracking wolf). Korel staggered to his feet and continued a loping trot east, straight up the face of the mountain.
Chapter 6
The wind played across the clearing, touching Korel's face. The smell of old ash, like remnants of forgotten memory, rode upon the air as the pale, wane light filtering through the mist-covered morning gradually penetrated the haze clouding his mind. Memory swirled around him and seemed to flash and grow out of the stone, trees, and air. The stone alter stood silently by, seemingly uncaring, unfeeling despite the pressure of memory rising out of the raw substance of the earth. In slow pieces, a numbing calm settled upon the clearing as Korel's memories began to sleep, receding upon the silence, fading into nothingness.
He sat up and put his back against a tree, the cold firmness of the petrified wood seeping into his back to lodge in his spine. The coldness rode upon a wind that entered from across the clearing, dispelling the mists, pushing the last gray clouds away, and leaving a pristine gray sky. Still Korel sat motionless. The intermittent grasses bobbed their heads up and down in silent prayer, the trees whispering quiet supplication, the dust swirling in scriptural ciphers. The grayness deepened to become grayer still, a gray wash filling the sky, the land, the clearing, and finally his head and heart. There was nothing but gray in the whole of the world, a blinding gray that became everything and numbed creation until all was ether, all an interminable sleep.
But for all the gray that swirled through creation, distilling everything down to an essential catatonia, Korel began to notice an icy finger upon the nape of his neck, then many, then a pressure as of many fingers squeezing the life out of him. Korel took hold of the fingers wrapped around his throat and pried them away, one by one. Once he could breathe a little, he tightened his grip on the wrist of his assailant and pulled him out from behind the tree to l
ook upon the author of this most recent ambush. Korel saw the familiar fear, rage, and loathing play across Hurnix's face as a rage of his own exploded to life inside him. His grip tightened as the decaying wrists began to crack and grind in his fists. He pulled Hurnix screaming, crying, and groveling toward the stone table and took a thong from his purse to bind the writhing creature to the stone table. A fire-filled rage consumed him and he felt the pillar of his passion rise up through his chest and above his head to swirl with invisible tongues of flaming anger. He retrieved from his purse the stone knife he had crafted upon the Mount of Instructure and gripped it high above his head, his fist trembling with the emotion pouring through him.
Hurnix continued to writhe pathetically, begging to be spared as the smell of rank decay permeated everything, his patchwork body twisting acrobatically as he strained at the cords that bound him. Then at last he seemed to tire as if all his misery had finally left him spent. Within the sudden calm, he barked in an alien croak, "End me!" and was still.
Korel's straining fist came down in a blistering arc filled with all the rage and venom of a lifetime, of a thousand lifetimes. He placed all his power behind the stroke, his arm aching with the strain of taut muscles. But as his arm approached mid arc, a pity he had nearly forgotten touched his intent. The fire of his rage suddenly burned at an even heat, and the blood in his eyes became the cool blue of the vein instead of the red-hot artery. Yet his arm still came down with terrible force, still potent with the initial passions that powered it. But at the very last, the course of the blade deviated enough to drive the stone blade one inch deep into the substance of the altar, just above Hurnix' left shoulder. There the blade stayed.
Korel unbound the unmoving Hurnix and held the limp, decaying body in his arms. The other roused a little and began to cry, placing his denuded arms around Korel, sobbing uncontrollably. He wept with Hurnix and together they cried for a time. Then he began to weep in earnest, his tears falling upon Hurnix as rain, his body heaving in great paroxysms. Little by little, Hurnix seemed to liquefy in his arms. The sinewy muscles fell in strands to the earth and the bones dissolved with the touch of every tear. Soon there remained little but some quickly disappearing remnants of skull and skin, lying in small heaps upon the ground. Then they too were gone.
Korel stood, feeling a new calm. Only a slight warm breeze stirred in the clearing, and a quiet born of peace reigned all around. His gut was cool and the wound on his index finger did not hurt, as only the occasional drop of clear fluid fell from his hand to the ground. The silent vigil of the stone alter continued unbroken, but it too seemed at peace. In a gesture more like a sigh than anything else, Korel took the tome from his purse (Of the Fall of Valyrea and the Madness of Thoren) and laid it down on the edge of the stone table, its pages fluttering haphazardly along their binding as the fancy of vagrant breezes pushed them to and fro.
At last, Korel turned and looked toward the peak of the mountain. Out of the clearing a faint path left the place of the altar to pick its way through shale and rock, quickly leaving all vegetation behind. Upon this course Korel made his way, blending in and out of rock, and soon the altar had lost all sight of him.
The Korellian Odyssey: Requiem Page 6